• Wytch@lemmy.zip
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    20 hours ago

    I have a staunchly leftist but older co-worker who thinks no one she knew growing up had autism.

    “I still think something is causing it” despite being pro-vaxx.

    The propaganda is extremely effective unfortunately

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Considering how provaxx they where back then, it’s insane seeing people who grew up with polio repeating antivax shit.

      Like back in the day. No one got cancer…cause they didn’t know wtf it was, doesn’t mean the shit wasn’t around. Science didn’t stop in 1904.

      • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        So I’ve talked to my elderly union dem mom about this recently. Maybe it’s just her, and she did vax me completely, but she said something along the lines of how even in the 70s and 80s it was a personal decision that people thought about before executing, while most went ahead with it. But I was never exposed to a single skeptical thought at home, at school, in my community, or anywhere

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        Just on cancer as an example, there’s a solid argument to be made that it was historically diagnosed as a consumptive disease. My great great aunt died of cancer awhile back and she was practically wasting away.

        • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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          15 hours ago

          consumptions usually refers to TB, its has been called wasting sickness forever, because one of the symptoms of cancer(terminal) was cachexia which is your body wasting away. i found it interesting inuyasha mentioned its old term"wasting sickness" which immediately knew it was cancer.

            • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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              12 hours ago

              i remember consumption being the old name for Tuberculosis, its also known as the white death, due to people looking sickly and pallor when having the final stages of tb.

              wasting was always associated with cancer, and then HIV/AIDS. if you hear films using old terms like wasting sickness, you can bet its cancer.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          14 hours ago

          Even bronze agers knew what cancer was, they just called it weird things.

          I’ll never forget looking at a virally trending obituary from the 15th century and seeing “Cancer, and Wolf” as a cause of death.

          If you look it up you’ll see other things like “King’s Evil” aka scrofula or jawfaln (lock jaw from tetanus)

        • Forester@pawb.social
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          15 hours ago

          I’m pretty sure the over 1,000 atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons over the last hundred years had zero effect on background radiation levels and on levels of human contamination from eating radioactive fallout…

          I’m not saying we didn’t have cancer before but I would be very surprised if the rates are not elevated. Even counting misdiagnosises as consumptive illness.

          On a similar note, I do suspect that our current petrochemical heavy environment has changed the human microchoism enough to possibly make it more likely for some of the classical autism traits to be passed on generation to generation influencing their heritability in society at large. Sincerely, an artist with two autistic parents in denial. And at least three autistic grandparents.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      15 hours ago

      looks like she bought into the partly anti-vax prop, probably heard jenny mcarthny once about vaccines and she was hooked.

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      I really do think autism and cancer have gotten much more common. And it’s very likely something is causing it.

      Not vaccines. Vaccines are fine.

      Could be plastic. Could be pfas (forever chemicals). Could be lots of things, or a combination. But there’s most likely an environmental cause rather than genetic or just an increase in diagnosis. (Though the increase in diagnosis and recognition is also real.)

      • Jaysyn@lemmy.world
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        7 minutes ago

        If it is environmental pollution, the current administration would never admit it anyhow.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        There’s also the fact that we have WAY better technology and techniques for discovering and understanding both autism and cancer nowadays compared to even 20 years ago.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        I’m disappointed that Lemmy feels the need to downvote such a mild differing opinion that doesn’t even conflict with your own.

        All these things can be true. Diagnosis, treatment, and recognition are all much better; we agree there.

      • cynar@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Modern society is making both mild autism and ADHD more obvious. It both brings out traits associated with them, and makes it more acceptable to have them and not mask completely.

        As for cancer, that’s mostly an age and treatment thing. People with cancer live longer, due to treatment, so you hear far more about it. Also, if you live longer, you get cancer. Therefore an older population has more cancer cases.

        My personal concern is neurological and plastics. People with degenerative neurological conditions tend to have more micro plastics in their brains. We’ve no idea of the long term implications of this. It could possibly be the modern equivalent of leaded petrol.