Children Are Not Political Props

So, I was looking for things to keep me occupied on a Friday night--and to stop me from continuing graduate school admissions anxiety--and happened across some YouTube videos from various individuals claiming that their child had been "damaged" by vaccines. There seem to be several common elements in these videos:

1. A montage of family photos. Apparently, this is meant to show how a "normal" child became autistic. This "evidence" is rather flawed. Roland Barthes, one of the foremost theorists on photography, argues that photographs are emotionally significant to us because each photograph marks a kind of "death." The camera captures a moment which will never happen again. Only through our memories and own personal connections can we re-interpret the photographs in our family albums. Barthes would most likely scoff at this kind of presentation. Moreover, I didn't even really see much unusual in the pictures--just photos of the same kid at different times. Truly, such photo montages are Rorsach ink blots. If one is inclined to believe that evil vaccines cause autism, that's what you'll see.

2. Some such videos include family video tape, and many of the same problems with photographs persist, especially when the parent videomakers try to interpret the autistic child's social responses. Can a nine month old baby truly be compared to a two and a half year old, when the expectations are so different? And again, I didn't even necessarily see many differences. One video I saw showed a girl (supposedly "pre-autism") not speaking when encouraged to repeat words by her parents. The "post-autism" video of the same girl showed her...not speaking when encouraged to. This is supposed to be an argument?

3. Videos almost invariably had some kind of sappy music in the background, which often grew darker and more sinister when the "post-vaccine" segment of the video began.

4. One particularly appalling trend was for some (not all) of the makers of these videos to insert written dialogue written (supposedly) from the autistic child's perspective. "I am vaccine damaged." "I was born perfect and was damaged by vaccines. Help me re-gain what I lost." That's the general idea of many of these narratives, and they're pretty much beyond the pale.

This shameless, ableist exploitation of autistic children appears to be sadly common among the anti-vax movement; just see pictures from the Green Our Vaccines rally. I doubt that most anti-vaxers can ever be convinced that vaccines don't cause autism, no matter how many reputable studies say so. But I just wish that this crowd would stop being so blatantly disrepectful of their own children. I wonder if they even stop to consider how their children might feel, were they to see such videos and posters at a later date. Mostly I think the vaccine issue distracts from autistic advocacy issues, but seeing some of these videos reminds me just how appalling so much of the anti-vax movement is.