No, Anti-Vaxxers, I Don't Have Munchausen By Proxy-- But You Might.

Anti-vaccine activists have hurled a number of false, and often strange, accusations at me since I first began publicly advocating for vaccines. Mostly, I hear that I'm not a real person; I'm a sockpuppet for the pharmaceutical industry. I also hear pretty often that I'm a shill. Most recently, a number of anti-vaccine activists informed each other that my daughter does not really have autism. They say that I conditioned her to act autistic, either because I crave victimhood or because I get paid by the pharmaceutical industry for it. They have publicly stated that I suffer from Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

MBP is a very serious form of child abuse. It involves a caregiver (usually, but not always, the child's mother) claiming that a child has symptoms of serious illness, and either behaviorally forcing the child to act sick, or actually poisoning, starving, or injuring the child to cause sickness. The victims of MBP are in and out of hospitals with mysterious symptoms. They miss school. They're underweight. Many of them die from their mothers poisoning or starving them. If I had MBP, it would mean that my kids were in very serious danger, and for their sake, I would hope that someone would intervene if that allegation were true.

So let me at least clear this one thing up: no. My children are healthy and very well cared for. My youngest's biggest health problem is that he's cutting his teeth too early and it bugs him. My oldest child's biggest health problem is that she makes poops the size of submarines that I can't flush. They see their doctor routinely, are up-to-date on their immunizations, have never had an unexplained illness, and have never been hospitalized except at birth. My oldest was diagnosed with autism by a team of well-qualified experts who conducted over a dozen tests and closely observed her at home and on the classroom. There is absolutely no merit to that accusation.

The thing that I would find funny if it weren't so tragic is that this accusation came from the anti-vaccine movement, of all places. Not all anti-vaccine or vaccine-hesitant parents have MBP-- I was once anti-vaccine, and I did not have MBP then and don't have it now-- but almost all people with MBP are anti-vaccine. The anti-vaccine movement provides a safe haven for parents with MBP, both because these parents can often get fraudulent diagnoses from unlicensed health care providers, and because the conspiracy-theorist culture of the anti-vax movement encourages them. It's easy to hide medical abuse when you're among conspiracy theorists who claim that the government hides vaccine injuries and kidnaps babies for no reason.

Many might recall Lacey Spears, the notorious "mommy blogger" whose son spent his entire short life under the care of naturopaths, bouncing from one vague diagnosis to the other, before finally succumbing to poisoning by his mother. And just recently, we wrote about Caroline, a little girl whose parents have been subjecting her to nothing short of medical torture in an attempt to cure her alleged vaccine injury. Caroline's family shows classic symptoms of MBP, right down to their attention-seeking Facebook pages and blogs where they discuss her "struggle."

The anti-vaccine movement is so filled  with Munchausen by proxy that it's alarming. In fact, anti-vaccine websites, forums, and Facebook pages have support forums specifically set aside for parents who say they are being "falsely" accused MBP. Anti-vaccine support groups are full of people giving accounts of what can only be described as MBP symptoms. They diagnose with own children with food allergies, autism, brain damage, encephalitis, heavy metal poisoning, chemical sensitivities, autoimmune disease, systemic yeast infections, and intestinal parasites. They imagine that their children's bodies are delicate snowflakes that can't withstand the vaccines safely tolerated by all but one in a million kids. When their doctors tell them that that their children do not have these conditions, they go elsewhere. They accuse their doctors of fraud and seek naturopaths who back up their misdiagnosis.

Again and again and again, anti-vaccine activists claim that their doctors are involved in fraud or cover-up. When they diagnose their children with lead and mercury poisoning, and the doctors say that the bloodwork doesn't show it, they seek the aid of labs that willfully falsify test results-- enablers of Munchausen by proxy. When they diagnose their own children with encephalitis and their doctors say that crying after a vaccine is normal and not a sign of brain inflammation, they spread conspiracy theories about cover-ups-- neverminding, of course, that children with untreated encephalitis invariably die. When they diagnose their own children with vague food allergies and insensitivities, restricting their diets to the point of causing severe malnutrition, they insist that doctors just "don't know" and that their claims as parents matter more than the results of diagnostic tests.

I would be writing this post for weeks straight if I found all the accounts that sound like Munchausen by proxy by anti-vaccine activists, but here are just a few screencaps of just a few of them.

The thing that's crystal-clear is that the most prominent members of the anti-vaccine movement show all the most worrisome signs of Munchausen by proxy. Their children tend to suffer from vague symptoms that can not be explained through medicine or science. They diagnose their own children with conditions that doctors say they don't have. They put their children through experimental treatments that are condemned by mainstream medical experts. They hop from one "expert" to another when caregivers begin to notice signs that the parents may be responsible for the illness. The scariest thing is that many of them are successful not only in abusing their own children, but also in convincing others to do the same. Anti-vaccine forums have largely become support groups for people with Munchausen by proxy who are helping each other maintain abuse without prosecution or accountability. It's dangerous and it's deadly.

I have two very happy, healthy children. I am grateful for that every single day. My oldest has autism, but I not only don't consider that to be a disease, but her form of autism would be impossible to "condition" or create. There is no way to condition a six-month-old to have gross motor delays or to condition a two-year-old to have echolalia, or to condition a five-year-old to write entire pages of text in perfect mirror-image. These traits are not the result of my conditioning, but of a unique and beautiful neurology that I joyfully accept and embrace. If you could possibly accuse me of having Munchausen by proxy, it might be time to check and make sure that you're not in fact looking into a mirror.