"I Used to Be an Anti-Vaxer"

"My family and I were thrilled about Wakefield’s “discovery.” If vaccines were the problem, autism could be prevented, even if it couldn’t be cured. I wanted to have kids someday and I knew that autism tended to run in families. So I was thrilled to think that if I didn’t give my future kid an MMR shot, he or she would never develop autism. Wakefield only discussed MMR, but I grew suspicious of all vaccines. If one vaccine was dangerous, weren’t they all?...

instead of feeling relieved that I could rule vaccines out as a potential cause of autism, I felt cheated. I couldn’t accept the truth: In the 15 years since my brother’s diagnosis, no one had figured out what causes autism, so there was nothing I could do to prevent having an autistic child. I held on to my opposition, figuring I should avoid vaccinating my future kid “just in case.” I wanted to believe that I could control whether my future kid would be autistic or not. I had witnessed my parents, their friends with autistic kids, and my brother’s doctors navigate a labyrinth of shifting medical-insurance coverages and autism-treatment fads, hoping to improve their kids’ social and language skills enough to let them hold a job or live in a group home. I knew I didn’t want to have a kid who couldn’t talk if I could avoid it."
http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/i-used-to-be-an-anti-vaxer/385786/