The most heavily vaccinated are the most sick
Iwant to express my heartfelt gratitude for your editorial regarding a parent's right to have vaccine choices.

I am the proud grandfather of a lovable 9-year-old, nonverbal boy who regressed and was diagnosed autistic just prior to 3 years of age.

Admittedly, our family has no scientific evidence to prove his regression was caused by the numerous childhood vaccines he received, most of which contained thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative commonly found in childhood vaccines. Unfortunately, in the six plus years since our little guy regressed, public health officials have given us no scientific evidence that would rule out that possibility. Instead, they offer a carefully constructed sentence claiming they have no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism, which is just another way of saying they have no evidence there is no link either.

I did not arrive at my distrust of vaccines without just reason. My daughter, now 44 years of age, and the mother of three of my five grandchildren, at the age of 4 was diagnosed with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, which "experts" assured my wife (25) and I (27) was a blood disorder so rare that her condition could only be described as bizarre. In any event, after a long hospital stay, my daughter's spleen, which had inexplicably began to destroy her own blood platelets, was removed.

No one mentioned her blood disease may have been caused by a vaccine but decades later when my grandson was diagnosed autistic, I discovered the blood disease that was "rare" had become just one of the myriad of problems of Gulf War veterans — all heavily vaccinated prior to deploying to the Gulf area.

Indeed, I have since learned there is a danger of vaccines called molecular mimicry, where a vaccine virus becomes a host in a patient's otherwise healthy organs — the heart, liver, or, in my daughter's instance, her spleen.

In any event, three of my five grandchildren have problems. Two boys (9-18) have serious allergies and asthma. One boy has autism. His first cousin, a boy twin, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within three weeks of receiving eight vaccines during a "well visit." His twin sister broke out immediately in the pediatrician's office with hives that scared everyone and a shot was administered to calm her system down.

If it were just my family that suffered these troubling numbers, I would believe it might be purely genetic. Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that one in every six American children suffers some type of early-childhooddevelopment problem, such as autism, allergies, asthma, juvenile type 1 diabetes, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, ADD, ADHD, etc.

Can someone please explain to me why the most heavily vaccinated generation in our country's history is so sick?
Bob Moffitt
Sloatsburg, N.Y.