Hi isis,
This is quite an interesting article. Vaccines are not included in the five leading hypotheses as to why Type 1 is on the increase but it is worth a read,
Interesting. It does certainly seem that there are many modern conditions that were not so prevalent in previous times. The rise in autism for instance, which seems to be a purely modern phenomena.
If vaccines effect your immune system, perhaps they affect the likelyhood of developing type 1 or 2 later in life; particularly as they are taken when the child is very young and the immune system is still developing.
What happened before the development of vaccinations?
Diabetes has been around for centuries. Diabetes was first recorded in English in 1425 (according to that reliable source Wikipedia ). I don't think that they had vaccinations back then.
Personally, I didn't get the standard childhood vaccinations (not sure why my parents didn't do this) but I still have Type 1 and a host of other autoimmune diseases.
One of my pet theories about the development of diabetes (at least in some subsets of patients) is to do with modern diets, specifically wheat/gluten.....
It is probably more interesting to find out if certain viruses cause diabetes. Reports of diabetes in Australia increased in those who had Influenza A. Did the virus cause their diabetes or did the illness trigger an odd auto-immune response?
My personal feeling is that genetics is this biggest factor in diabetes. Khaleb has Down's syndrome (Chromosome 21 in triplicate) and he was given a 1 in 50 chance of having diabetes. Statistically his poor genes will give him a much higher chance of many things.
As for Autism and Aspergers or ADHD I think many years ago these people just went undiagnosed if they were still high functioning. If I think back at school there would of been many classmates that would have fit the profile but there was no label put to the condition.