[Lia]

I don't believe because i live on a place where kids are massively vaccinated (see, i live on a poor country - here vaccination is a MUST , on USA there's not that problem, and it's not a big deal because you almost don't have infectious diseases) and it doesn't seems that here it's THAT common , as USA.

I believe more in the overdiagnoses and in the tendency of everything being medicated - an active child isn't considered just active anymore, he/she has to have ADHD and be medicated.

And also, there's the fact that psychiatry itself only began to really develop after the 60's - before that, there were no efficient drugs, and people with mental illness were just labeled as 'crazy' and institutionalized - and 'treated' with things like lobotomy and eletric shocks - which could be effective, but on most of cases were uneffective and hurtful.

So, there were no such thing as autism = the kid was just weird or cucko.

PS> here we don't have on the public system (which means for free) the chicken pox vaccine - we have:

The polio one (the sabin, not the salk);
Measles, mumps and rubella;
Hep b
BCG (which is controversial, but it's still kinda useful)
Diphteria, Tetanus, Pertussis and Haemophilus influenzae type B - caused meningitis
Yellow Fever - we recently had some outbursts of that disease again on another state
And against diarrhea induced by Rotavirus

I had 2 friends who had rotavirus (as adults) and they told me it's the worst thing you can ever have - you spend 1 week puking and having diarrhea at the same time - for an adult, it's just a PITA, but for a kid it can mean his/her life *because of dehydration*;