According to the most recent CDC estimates, one in 166 children in the US suffers from an autistic disorder. Twenty years ago, autism only affected one in 10,000 children.
For years now, studies have shown that exposure to mercury in childhood vaccines, not only causes autism but can also result in immune, sensory, neurological, motor, and behavioral dysfunctions similar to traits associated with autism.
On May 21, 2003, after a three year investigation, "The Mercury in Medicine Report" was released by the House Committee on Government Reform, and stated in part:
"Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal and the sharper eyes of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin. The public health agencies' failure to act is indicative of institutional malfeasance for self protection and misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."
The Congressional report also said that the CDC, due to its "biases against theories regarding vaccine-induced autism," had chosen to fund researchers "who also worked for vaccine manufacturers to conduct population-based immunologic studies. . ." and stated:
"The CDC in general and the National Immunization Program are particularly conflicted in their duty to monitor the safety of vaccines, while also charged with the responsibility of purchasing vaccines for resale as well as promoting increased immunization rates."
The autism epidemic cannot be denied. On February 15, 2005, the GAO, released a Report titled, "Special Education Children With Autism," that revealed the number of children ages 6 through 21 diagnosed with autism receiving special education services has increased more than 500% over the past 10 years.
In a transcript, obtained under the FOIA, of a secret meeting attended by officials from the FDA and CDC in 2000, Pediatrician Bill Weil, acknowledged the epidemic and stated, "There are just a host of neurodevelopmental data that would suggest that we've got a serious problem.... The number of kids getting help in special education is growing nationally and state by state at a rate we have not seen before."
Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that was developed in the 1930s by Eli Lilly, and has been used regularly in vaccines ever since basically to boost vaccine maker profits by allowing drug companies to package vaccines in large containers instead of a single dose.
However, years ago children only received a small number of vaccines that were injected with a period of time in between and one dose at a time. Since 1988, the number of vaccines given to children before the age of two has tripled.
Lisa Blakemore-Brown, a psychologist in the UK, has been investigating the vaccine-autism link for years and says the reason the epidemic in autism did not occur sooner is because before the 1990s children "were given single vaccines with single amounts of mercury."
"But with the introduction of triple vaccines," she explains, "the amount of mercury contained within the preservative was multiplied and the cumulative effects are only just now being discovered by the public."
Once the cumulative amount of thimerosal that children were receiving through injections of 30-some odd vaccines was finally measured in 1999, the FDA discovered that infants were receiving more than 100 times the EPA's safe limit for mercury by 18 months.
Internal documents from the FDA and CDC show public health officials knew about the increased mercury they were receiving at least since 1999. A June 29, 1999, email from FDA scientist, Peter Patriarca, to the head of the CDC office on vaccine safety, warned that the FDA was going to be criticized for being "'asleep at the switch' for decades by allowing a potentially hazardous compound to remain in many childhood vaccines and not forcing manufacturers to exclude it from new products."
Mr Patriarca also pointed out that calculating the cumulative amount of mercury in vaccines was not "rocket science" and involved only ninth-grade math. He also noted the questions that agency officials would likely be asked as:
"What took the FDA so long to do the calculations? Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"
After many years of watching theories wax and wane, like many scientists, I too am convinced the mercury theories and measles theories are bogus. As an engineer with college-level statistics coursework, I understand what makes some studies valid, and some studies worthless. Just within the past few weeks another study has come out of Canada making the same conclusion as the Japanese and Danish studies; there is no link between vaccines and autism. The way these studies were structured made them essentially "bullet-proof"; in order for them to not be valid, one would have to assume bizarre coincidental offsetting biases, repeated thousands of times, in several different cultures. That's the beauty of a study which shows no connection; no reasonable person could find a fault in it. A person with a good college education in statistics would understand this intuitively; if you don't understand it, I'm sorry but I can't give you an education in statistics in a blog.
Yeah, some other "studies" have shown connection, but I have not seen a single one which used proper control methods. They did not control for base population, or they did not control for population shifts, or they did not maintain consistent definitions, etc.
Articles like this one are a big part of the problem. It makes utterly unsubstantiated claims of an epidemic. I often see bogus numbers like the oft-quoted 1 in 166, which came from an Atlanta school district; why would that number apply to the entire United States? How many of those parents moved to that district specifically because they had better care for children with disabilities? What were the definitions of autism used for that study? Did it include Asperger's? Did it include children with birth defects from fetal alcohol or drugs who used to be labeled "retarded" before autism became chic. What were the demographics of the population there? Is it near a college campus where the children of professors with Asperger's syndrome reside? Is it near a computer facility, where autism is noticeably more prevalent, like in Silicon Valley or near IBM in Minnesota, because of all of the assortive mating of Asperger Geeks? The latest Federal study was actually done by phone interview! What a waste of taxpayer dollars!
The amount of misinformation out there is staggering, from the "Rain Man" being autistic (he wasn't, he is a split-brain savant), to autistics not having emotions (autists are just less likely to recognize it on faces if it is subtle).
Within the past few months a study came out which pointed out that, gee, yeah the number of people labeled as "autistic" has gone up, but wait, the study also pointed out that everyone seems to forget to notice that there has been a corresponding drop in people labeled as "retarded". Duhh. We have been vaccinating children with the same vaccines with the came mercury preservatives for decades, but in 1994 the psychiatric diagnostic and statistical manual recognizes Asperger's and suddenly we have an "epidemic" of autism! I can assure you that I did not get a diagnosis of Asperger's when I was a kid, nor did my children; the psychiatrists knew something was wrong with my oldest son, they had seen kids like him before, but before 1994 they didn't have label for it, and he obviously wasn't retarded, in fact he is quite intelligent. Where are all the autists born before 1994? Well, I estimate one quarter of engineers are on the autism spectrum!
If you were going to design a proper study to see if mercury causes autism, you would have to have a large population. OK... you would have to have a stable population, i.e. you couldn't look at someplace like Silicon Valley where there has been a massive outflux of Geeks since the dot-com bust. You would have to use the same diagnostic criteria, scientifically or medically applied consistently, so you would not be able to look at anything before 1994. Well, every study that followed those guidelines found no link between vaccines and autism.
So what if mercury is toxic? That's the whole point of a PRESERVATIVE; to be toxic in certain concentrations, and not harmful once diluted. In high enough concentrations, even water and salt can kill. It only takes a few grams of Sodium Nitrite to quickly kill, yet we enjoy our hot dogs and ham which are preserved with Sodium Nitrite. (I actually eat ham daily to prevent migraines!)
The actual causes of autism are pretty simple; either the mother had a wild night of partying at 22 days of gestation, or had some other viral or drug problem at that exact date, and the poor child has fetal trauma birth defect autism, or the child inherited it, in which their genes are the cause. Just yesterday there was an article that told of seven autism spectrum children sired by the same sperm donor to seven different mothers; and some people still deny the genetic connection?!!
22 days of gestation; it's that precise, that exact, which part of the brain, if damaged, can cause autism. Of course you will usually see other co-morbidities, like ears twisted back, malformed teeth, flat faces and retardation. Yet I've seen parents of some of these retarded kids blaming mercury for God's sake! And it is just so chic to call them "autistic" instead of "retarded".
Some scientists have recently started calling inherited genetic autism "essential" autism. It's just a label; I have no problem with that. Just within the past few weeks a study has come out which announced that scientists could discern autism genetic anomalies in placental tissue. If you can discern autism genetics at birth, how could a vaccine be causing it? Another study has followed the growth patterns of the infant brain, and noted a characteristic growth pattern in autism where the brain is smaller than normal at 8 months, but then goes through a growth spurt to where the brain is larger than normal by the time the child is a toddler. Of course previous studies had shown that there was a difference in the ratio of white matter to gray matter in the autistic child's brain. There is simply no way a vaccine at 18 months can retroactively cause a difference in the fundamental structures of the brain! And those kids with fetal trauma; a brain scan will show the precise structure which didn't bud and grow at the right time. It is not coincidence that cartoonists draw nerdy children with oversize craniums; their heads really ARE bigger!
The MU Thompson Center is studying essential autism and is looking at the structural differences in the brain; interestingly they are using wide-set eyes as one of the study criteria. No reasonable person would be able to connect mercury and how wide set the eyes are! How could mercury possibly retroactively change actual physical structures of the brain? How could it alter the ratio of gray matter to white matter?
The best way I found to demonstrate inherited "brain wiring" is to compare breeds of dogs. There are herders, ratters, terriers, pit bulls, pointers, retrievers, setters, each with the brain "pre-wired" by selective breeding for specific hunting, farming or herding tasks. We wouldn't blame mercury if we had a mild-mannered pit bull! No pill or "cure" is going to turn a pit bull into a herder! We would never expect a pill which could repair a hare-lip or some other physical deformity; why would anyone ever think that you could "cure" autism, or that mercury could have caused it, when the entire structure of the brain is different?
All these parents are dead certain their child developed autism after a vaccination. Well we used to burn witches and blame crop failures on solar eclipses too. The tendency of humans to blame things on events which are in fact just coincidences is called "apophrenia" from the Greek for "out of mind". One recent study found that you couldn't possibly diagnose autistic behavior before one year of age or so because that study showed the brain wasn't even wired for empathy/self/logic yet. We can't possibly recognize autistic behavior until age two or so, and every child gets the vaccine at around the same age, so vaccines "must be to blame". If you believe that logic, then you should believe that the vending machine in my office causes hair to thin and either turn white or fall out, because it is happening to all of the older men in my office, and the only thing we eat in common comes from those vending machines. It doesn't seem to affect the women though, but we'll neglect that, just like the vaccine sirens neglect the four to one male to female ratio in autism. (I have recently seen statistics that show if you weed the birth defect autism back out, the ratio rises to eight males to one female.)
I actually know a lot about apophrenia; my mother was the patron saint of apophrenia. As each obviously geeky child became evident, she would ascribe an event which must have caused it. For my older brother she claimed it was a tranquilizer she had been given. For me she said it was caused by my Rh problems at birth. For the next two she insisted it had been caused by the trauma of a crib death in our family. She blamed herself for the next geek; she must have been a bad parent after the crib death. She blamed a teacher for the next geek. The next three were girls, and she didn't recognize that two of them are also autistic, (but Asperger's is much less noticeable in girls.) One got a degree in computer engineering, and the other became a Navy tech for sophisticated electronics, in spite of her obsessive-compulsive quirks. Even after one of my brothers was professionally diagnosed with Asperger's she refused to consider we consider we could have a common inherited condition.
One of the things which skews the correct perception of autism is mothers of autistic children can be advocates and spew all they want without damaging their careers. She has a child with autism, and suddenly she is an "expert". I don't have that luxury. I made the mistake of mentioning that I had Asperger's at one job once, and everything changed, and I was treated as if I was retarded. It is amazing how quickly you can go from the oracle who knows everything to a complete retard! Therefore many of your people who are really knowledgeable cannot set up web sites or publicly confront these idiot apophrenic mothers. Another problem is misinterpretation of scientists. No scientist will ever say something is impossible; in fact we have a slogan "never say never". For instance scientists will never flat-out deny a link between autism and mercury because of the one in a 100 million chance that some obscure type of autism in a person with an obscure type of metabolism and genetic make-up could possible have mercury cause it. Unfortunately, as soon as the words leave their lips, some one will to twist it to "so you say that mercury could cause autism?"
Since most autism is pretty clearly inherited, it brings up another interesting, but seldom mentioned point about the autism/Asperger's community; many of the autism parents themselves have autism/Asperger's, and some of them are pathological liars. Not the hyperbolic use of the word "pathological", but rather the true and correct use of the word "pathological"; i.e. having a mental defect which rewards lying. We are talking about some pretty nasty people who have no empathy and no guilt who are a portion of the autism/Asperger's community. In some autists there is almost no middle ground; either the autistic person rigidly follows society's rules (drives 55, goes out of the way to pay taxes, etc., or the autist only follows laws if they think they could get caught. Some of these people who are "convinced" vaccines cause mercury want someone else to pay for their problems, and it is sad to say some have actually won lawsuits based on totally bogus claims.
Oh and yes, some of these bratty autistic children "improve" after some of these nasty, invasive and or intense treatments. If you had to endure some of these treatments because of your autistic behavior, might you alter your behavior in hope of avoiding the "treatment"? Interestingly, back when my parents were raising autistic brats, and it was still politically correct to spank, my parents had few discipline problems, and if we miss-behaved at school, we got whacked there too!
So what will be the consequences of this naïve article? The headline "Government Investigation Finds Autism Vaccine Related" will probably cause some parents to not vaccinate. Right now there is a measles epidemic sweeping across the UK after the autism-vaccine scare there, and there have been measles deaths there (not to mention blindness or deafness). Measles has broken out in Boston and Indianapolis and mumps has broken out in Iowa and is spreading across the Midwest. There will probably be deaths here soon; how sad.
We may soon even see German measles break out again, and surely some of those mothers will have their fevers spike on the 22nd day of gestation.
by
Bill Mathews (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 1:01:54 PM
My autistic daughter has the vaccine strains of Herpes, Rubella and Measles viruses infecting her intestines. She has off-the-chart mercury, lead & aluminum toxicity because she was not able to process the heavy metals she received from her vaccines in the late 90's. She is responding to the biomedical treatments used in the "DAN (Defeat Autism Now) protocol."
I'd challenge FrankL and others ignorant in real science to watch videos on these pages:
quote
Within the past few months a study came out which pointed out that, gee, yeah the number of people labeled as "autistic" has gone up, but wait, the study also pointed out that everyone seems to forget to notice that there has been a corresponding drop in people labeled as "retarded". Duhh.Where are all the autists born before 1994? Well, I estimate one quarter of engineers are on the autism spectrum!
unquote
I am sorry, but which study are you refering to? And how did they learn the social skills to become engineers when they were misdiagnosed as retarded? Or, does this mean that we used to have a bunch of retarded engineers?
quote
So what if mercury is toxic? That's the whole point of a PRESERVATIVE; to be toxic in certain concentrations, and not harmful once diluted. In high enough concentrations, even water and salt can kill.
unquote
Ok, lets take the Pepsi challenge with one glass of salt water, and one glass of Thimerosal. Heck, i will even let you dillute the glass of Thimerosal with half water. While the glass of salt water might taste bad, it won't kill you. Drink a glass of thimerosal and you will die. duh!
quote
The actual causes of autism are pretty simple; either the mother had a wild night of partying at 22 days of gestation, or had some other viral or drug problem at that exact date, and the poor child has fetal trauma birth defect autism, or the child inherited it, in which their genes are the cause. Just yesterday there was an article that told of seven autism spectrum children sired by the same sperm donor to seven different mothers; and some people still deny the genetic connection?!!
unquote
If you had bothered to read Evelyn's post, you would see she does not deny a genetic factor, but it is just part of the equation.
quote
Since most autism is pretty clearly inherited, it brings up another interesting, but seldom mentioned point about the autism/Asperger's community; many of the autism parents themselves have autism/Asperger's, and some of them are pathological liars.
unquote
And where did you get this statistic?
And lastly Mr. Frank L scientist, I would like to challenge you to find one scientific study proving Thimerosal to be safe. Not epidemilogical, but scientific. It seems to me that if Thimerosal was safe, the drug companies and the CDC would be falling all over themselves to prove it with good scientific evidence, which is something they can't do because Thimerosal is not and has never been safe.
by
Ed Johnson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 9:54:09 PM
Frankl shows the type of rigid thinking that characterizes Aspergers. His chant of genetic causes overlooks the blunt numeric fact that genes express proteins. Protein expression is regulated, turned on or off by evironmental events - such as temperature, existing levels of other proteins, etc.
SUDDENLY the genes for autism are expressing at 500% the rate ever seen.
I say this as a scientist who is in the field of bioinformatics, and looks at things strictly by the numbers.
by
Maria (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 2:17:14 PM
I see I got a lot of interesting responses; a lot of people obviously didn't read with comprehension, but I don't really expect to sway some people's opinions.
To those who think I am an idiot; I manage multi-million dollar international utility projects. I take great care to read original research where available in any of the five languages I can read.
May I suggest some of you do some Googling on the structures of the brain which are in play here; search on the "Corpus Callosum", or on the ratio of gray matter to white matter. The physical differences in the structures of autistic brains are facts which are easily verified with a few clicks.
There is a difference between extreme (and unsubstantiated) statements like there is an epidemic of autism, and what would be a true statement; there has been an increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism presenting for services.
The other day I saw an autism newsletter which was showing a bar chart showing the steady rise in the autism cases since 1994 (this happened to be for Indiana).
Nice, steady rise. No sudden jumps, no declines, just nice and steady. Indiana is a good state to look at; a stable population not affected by the dot-com bust like California was.
Indiana has always required immunizations; they didn't suddenly start in 1994; I presume the table starts with 1994 because they don't have data before then. They didn't suddenly start putting mercury in vaccines in 1994 either.
Lets think logically about our steady climb. For vaccines to have caused the climb, each and every year for every year on the table either a higer percentage of kids would have had to have been vaccinated, or a higher percentage of the vaccine would have had to have had mercury, or a greater number of shots would have had to have been given to kids in succeeding years.
None of that would have happened; all kids were required to be immunized, with the vaccine scares a rising number of parents fought immunization, and fewer vaccines even have mercury in them.
We should have seen these events cause at least a fluctuation in the steady rise, either up or down, but the table stubbornly rises slow but steady. If mercury was added, we should have seen a spike; if mercury was dropped, we should have also see a drop in our table. If there was a change in immunization law, we should have seen a drastic change. No change; just the steady rise.
As I mentioned in my first note, one recent study correlated a drop in the "retarded" label which corresponded with the rise in autism labels. Before 1994 we did not even have Asperger's in the diagnostic and statistical manual, and we didn't suddenly recognize children with Asperger's, it was more a gradual thing.
The Asperger's/autism is certainly present in the engineers I see every day at work. We have toe-walkers. We have innapropriate facial expressions. We have rigid diets and desks covered with diet aids and food supplements. We have obsessive-compulsive hand washers and men who will wear the same plaid clothes every day. At every engineering office I have worked, at least one fellow engineer had had a child diagnosed as autistic. This hasn't happened overnight; the engineers range in age from ready to retire to just out of college.
I can see where to a mother, to suddenly have a diagnosis of autism is traumatic and unknown. For me it was fascinating and somewhat of a relief when we had the first professional diagnosis of Asperger's in the family; it at least explained why we were geeks. It explained why I have an IQ of 180 and speak five languages, but bump into walls and go through life trying to pretend to be like neurotypicals or be ostracized. For all the newness of the diagnosis, it did not change the occurance: examining my generation, my parent's generation, and my children's generation amongst the extended family (a group of over one hundred), shows a pretty stable percentage of geeks in each generation.
Another interesting trend is the decrease in mercury exposure. Fluorescent lamps now have less mercury in them. We no longer slather mercurichrome on a cut. We have gotten rid of thermometers full of mercury so we shouldn't have beads of mercury still rolling around our homes. Mercury tanning chemicals have dropped off in use, and we are much more careful to not have paints and pigments with mercury in them.
We have moved the coal octopus furnace out of the basement and replaced it with a gas furnace, so we aren't exposed to the mercury in the coal any more; the coal is burned at a distant powerplant with precipitators. The gas companies have removed the mercury regulators which used to be on every service, and replaced them with spring regulators. We have stopped swigging patent medicines with mercury in them too. We are all having DRASTICALLY less exposure to mercury, yet some people connect mercury to autism by exposure. Go figure. Hasn't seemed to have affected my family one way or another from generation to generation.
Out of curiosity... how many of you hired an environmental disaster contractor to decontaminate the last time you broke a fluorescent lamp?
by
Bill Mathews (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 2:06:44 PM
"Dr Mark Geier is probably the most credentialed expert on vaccines in the US."
Where'd you get that? It's hysterical!
Perhaps you want to read the latest from the continuing expose of the Geier father and Geier son and their grossly unethical and possibly criminal behavior. Do a google search on "Mark Geier Lupron." Darlin' Where you been? Not doing investigating, that's obvious.
Ayoub says that vaccines are a plot by the illuminati to depopulate the world! Yes! That's what he says! Ask Erik, he works with Ayoub.
A sample of what looks a lot like plagiarism, to put it politely:
From Verstraeten 2000 (p. 3)
We have restricted our cohort to children born between 1992 and 1997 into one of the two HMOs with the most complete automated outpatient data set (GHC and NCK). For these two HMOs we have follow-up data to the end of 1998. Children in the cohort thus have a follow-up time of 1 to 7 years.
To ensure capture of all vaccination in the first year of life within the HMO, we restricted the cohort to children that were born into the HMO, continuously enrolled for the first year of life and that received at least 2 polio vaccines within the HMO by the age of 1 year. We excluded infants with ICD9 codes indicative of congenital disorders, severe perinatal disorders, recipients of HepB immunoglobulins, and gestational age les than 38 completed weeks. For this last group we performed separate analyses.
From Geier 2005 (p. CR163)
In the present study, as independent researchers, we analyzed data from a cohort of children born between 1992 and 1997 into one of the two HMOs with the most complete automated outpatient data sets (GHC and NCK). For these two HMOs, follow-up data to the end of 1998 was analyzed. Children in the cohort, thus, have a follow-up time of 1 to 7 years.
To ensure capture of all vaccinations in the first year of life within the HMO the cohort was restricted to children who were born into the HMO, continuously enrolled for the first year of life, and received at least 2 polio vaccines within the HMO by the age of 1 year. Infants with ICD-9 codes indicative of congenital disorders, severe perinatal disorders, recipients of hepatitis B immunoglobulins, and those who were born at gestational age of less than 38 completed weeks were excluded.
I don't know if I'm allowed to post links here. Do a search on "Verstraeten Geier" and you should find an article exposing Geier's not so subtle "borrowing" from Verstraeten, and there's lots more.
Do a search on "david ayoub autism agenda" and read about Ayoub's connection to the illuminati (part-human, part-reptilian aliens who secretly run the world, in case you don't know) phobes.
by
Fontagne (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 1:27:15 AM
Fontagne is parroting the often-mistaken Kathleen Seidel when he accuses the Geiers of plagiarism. Last year, Geier & Geier published a study where they replicated another study done in 2000 by Thomas Verstraeten. To replicate the study, they used the same study design, the same data sets and very similar descriptors, etc. The similarities were intentional, but their conclusions on the study data were markedly different.
If those in the "neurodiverse" camp want to make accusations, by all means... go through official channels and see how far your accusations go. About as far as a lead tennis ball, would be my prediction.
by
quantumerik (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 7:23:39 AM
I forgot to mention Fontagne's hilarious comment about Dr. Ayoub. He mentions a few search terms that lead one to a few obscure autism weblogs where someone made a passing comment connecting Dr. Ayoub's research to a belief in Illuminati & world domination wacko conspiracy theorists. Yet no documentation is provided in support of this. Just another attempt to try to discredit researchers when they cannot discredit the RESEARCH.
BTW, my grandfather was illuminati and VERY SENSITIVE of his reptilian DNA, so I'd appreciate it if you keep your racist comments to yourself! :-)
by
quantumerik (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 7:31:13 AM
This is a powerpoint slide presentation by Dr. Ayoub implicating the Illuminati. Dr. Ayoub seems to believe in a worldwide and easily exposed conspiracy of extreme evil to control the world by way of vaccines.
Mr. Nanstiel, your loyalty to the Geiers and Ayoub is really kind of sad. Did you read the letter where one of the authors of the paper in question complained to the editor of the journal that it was plagiarism, no deliberate borrowing. Verbatim borrowing, when done deliberately is supposed to be set off from original writing in quotation marks. Otherwise, it's plagiarism.
There is no evidence that there has been an actual increase in the number of autistic children. There are 1.5 million autistic people in the United States. 1 in 166 of all ages. You may ask Autism Speaks and Autism Society of America if you wish to confirm this. Bob Wright director of Autism Speaks, General Electric, and NBC, is of course, a member of the illuminati, though. And they speak with forked tongues.
by
Fontagne (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 at 5:42:42 PM
How about admitting you're against curing autism and will do ANYTHING to discredit researchers when you offer NOTHING in the way of science to discredit their research?
by
quantumerik (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 6:43:02 AM
If Mr. FrankL actually checked deeper in his references he would note the Canadian study was insanely biased. It was authored by "Dr. Eric Fombonne, a thimerosal litigation expert witness on behalf of various pharmaceutical companies". Conflict of interest??
My own son disintegrated within days of receiving his DTP and MMR together.
This is no mommy's story, no fairy tale. This happened within days.
A bright, talkative, active, curious, joyous 20-month old child regressed to a miserable, mute shell of his former self.
What pray-tell started to bring him back? Speech therapy? No. Floor time? Playgroups? Physical therapy? etc... no.
What started us on the road? CHELATION. HE WAS TOXIC.
Until all you study-clinging smart-alecks actually get out there and speak with real parents and hear their real stories, your opinions are based on a very one-sided, controlled, biased viewpoint.
Regressive autism is real. It happens.
The vulnerability is there. Vaccines aren't the only thing to blame, but they play(ed) a big part.
These autistic kids are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Our environment is become more and more toxic.
FYI another Montreal conference revealed preliminary study results showing measles vaccine virus in the guts of 85% of autistic children with bowel problems. I see that was glossed-over, eh?
Here's another interesting bit of info:
"Children with autism disorders in the San
Francisco Bay Area were recently found to be 50%
more likely to be born in neighborhoods with high
amounts of several toxic air contaminants,
particularly mercury, according to a
first-of-its-kind study by the California
Department of Health Services. The new findings,
which surprised the researchers, suggest that a
mother's exposure to industrial air pollutants
while pregnant might increase her child's risk of
autism."
And just to follow-up on the Fombonne study, here is a commentary on that study:
FOMBONNE AUTISM STUDY RIDDLED WITH INACCURACIES, RADICAL CONCLUSIONS, SAYS
NATIONAL AUTISM ASSOCIATION
DRUG-COMPANY PROPONENT DR. ERIC FOMBONNE IGNORES SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, USES
FRIVOLOUS RESEARCH TO OBTAIN DESIRED FINDINGS
Nixa, MO - Dr. Eric Fombonne's new Quebec study will soon be published in
the July 2006 issue of Pediatrics. Fombonne, a thimerosal litigation expert
witness on behalf of various pharmaceutical companies, will reportedly state
that it is "very clear" there is no relationship between mercury-based
thimerosal and the onset of autism.
According to the research group SafeMinds, Fombonne's research is
dangerously inaccurate:
- The study looked at 27,749 students in grades kindergarten
through 12th grade in a Montreal school district and found 187 cases of
autism.
- The vast majority of these cases (more than 90%) were born in
years in which thimerosal vaccines were widely used for infants in Quebec,
as they were in the US.
- Only a tiny fraction of the autism students were born when
thimerosal-free DTP and Hib vaccines were given, and these students may have
been exposed to thimerosal from the Hepatitis B vaccine newly recommended
for infants of foreign-born parents, which made up over one fourth of the
greater Montreal population.
- Dr. Fombonne wrongfully claims that large-population studies in
the United States, England and Denmark also disprove a link between mercury
and autism.
- Although multiple respected researchers state otherwise, Dr.
Fombonne maintains the radical conclusion "there is no autism epidemic."
- He conveniently ignores the vast body of scientific evidence,
which has shown that environmental factors such as mercury may have caused
the increased number of autism diagnoses in the US and other countries.
- Dr. Fombonne's actions have historically been in the best
interest of various pharmaceutical companies, not families with autism.
Fombonne has also declared himself an expert witness in thimerosal-related
litigation.
SafeMinds states, "Thimerosal is a serious poison that is harmful via
inhalation, ingestion or contact with skin. Furthermore,
thimerosal-containing vaccines elevate mercury levels in the body to a level
where adverse neurological outcomes are known to occur. It is irresponsible
for any pediatric doctor to justify injecting our children with mercury.
"The prevalence of all autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has risen to 1 in
166 children in the past 20 years. Several independent federal agencies and
respected scientists and researchers have received federal funds to
investigate the autism epidemic and the biological plausibility of a link
between mercury and ASDs. Multiple studies have indicated that there is a
connection between childhood vaccines containing thimerosal and the
incidence of autism. No conclusions have been made rejecting a link between
mercury and autism."
The National Autism Association (NAA), along with multiple advocacy groups
and researchers, hope that Fombonne's conflicts of interest will be
disclosed in Pediatrics. "These significantly weak conclusions certainly
work to Dr. Fombonne's benefit. It is only appropriate that his partnership
with pharmaceutical companies be revealed," says Claire Bothwell, Board
Chair of NAA.
For more information, visit www.nationalautism.org
by
gregc (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 7:13:25 AM
I'm not an expert on autism, nor do I have an autistic child..however I am a scientist (not an engineer), with college/grad level statistics and a few comments and observations:
Calculation of the cumulative dose of thimerosol in vaccines seems pretty darned straightforward, no statistics required for that. It seems reasonable to me to err on the side of caution when administering ANYTHING containing mercury to children because the *developing* nervous system is exquisitely sensitive to mercury exposure. There are many, many studies in refereed journals demonstrating this time and again in animal models. Several states in the US have advisories against eating fish (women & children), mostly due to the accumulation of mercury in fish. The toxic effects of mercury compounds have been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny for decades, this is not news.
Mercury is the baddest of the bad when it comes to neurotoxicity, so why mess with it at all? Why NOT avoid using it? Why take a chance? Why wait until it's too late and then fumble around trying to prove or disprove effects epidemiologically?? How can you possibly get a realistic handle on individual Hg body burdens and individual exposures/timing of all Hg exposures, much less genetic variability within a cohort? You can't, it's going to be a guesstimate. At best.
This is not to disparage epidemiology at all, rather the philosophy that we use it first and then worry later about the effects. Makes no sense to me. There were/are alternatives to the use of thimerosal that should have been used. Thimerosal should have been a last resort, not the first one.
I saw Isaac Pessah (from his page at the M.I.N.D. Institute, UC Davis--Director of Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention: Environmental Factors in the Etiology of Autism--multidisciplinary Center that examines the influence of environmental xenobiotics on the incidence and severity of childhood autism) speak in 2004 and he seemed convinced at that time that there are genetic loci associated with autism, and that administration of thimerosal can indeed lead to (precipitate?) autism.
Frank (above) uses his own family to make the case for autism being exclusively of genetic origin...that just doesn't cut it, 'scientifically' speaking. Superficially, it appears that in his family autism/related disorders ARE primarily genetic in origin. In no way does this exclude alternative hypotheses for the rest of the affected population, nor does it preclude the possibility that that family may have been at the unfortunate juncture of genetic predisposition + environmental factor.
by
Trysh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 11:44:36 AM
Genetics play a role in autism, no doubt. I and my daughter share the same genetic defect: two snips on the MTHFR gene that gives us an impaired glutathione pathway... and a lesser ability to excrete heavy metals. The difference between us is that I wasn't overvaccinated in the late 60's and early 70's when I was at a developmental age. When my daughter was inocculated in the late 90's/early 2000's, she was hit with levels of mercury exceeding that which is considered toxic waste, when taken in parts-per-billion! If I had been born in the late 90's, I would be autistic... unless I were Amish!
Adding to the damage caused by mercury toxicity, my daughter's mercury-impaired immune system couldn't handle her MMR vaccine... so now she has severe gut damage due to these live viruses infesting her intestines. Poor kid.
by
quantumerik (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 11:52:59 AM
Just recently several of my friends and co-workers have been told their children or grandchildren have autism. Interestingly now at the time of diagnosing they are all over 7 years of age. Since I have not read the studies which suggest autism numbers are increasing or decreasing, I was wondering is anyone looking at the ages of newly diagnosed children? The last thimerosal laced DTaP multi dose vial given at our little girl's children's clinic was Dec. 2003. So saying thimerosal has been out of vaccines since 1999 is out and out misleading.
by
Faye (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 4:35:13 PM
AAP 2001 Quote "Mercury in all off its forms is toxic.....
Thank you for covering this subject!
Mercury (Thimerasol).
I was surprised, as you may have been when a doctor diagnosed my son over 8 years ago with toxicity and began treatment for mercury poisoning resulting in my sons symptoms fading in addition to him regaining his speech.
All these childhood diseases, ADD, ADHD, Bipolar, speech delays, childhood diabetes.etc..when did you ever hear of juvenile arthritis? not when I was a kid.
these kids are toxic to say the least.
take a good look at www.generationrescue.org and tell others
Good Job!!
Keep up the good work of covering this issue and you will be helping many
Adrian, NJ parent
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS:
Technical Report: Mercury in the Environment: Implications for Pediatricians
Lynn R. Goldman, MD, MPH, Michael W. Shannon, MD, MPH, and the Committee on Environmental Health
"Mercury in all of its forms is toxic to the fetus and children and
efforts should be made to reduce exposure to the extent possible to
pregnant women and children as well as the general population."
American Academy of Pediatrics
by
Adrian (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Monday, August 14, 2006 at 7:53:48 PM
What I wrote to the President of India based on this article
To:
H E Sri A P J Abdul Kalam Azad,
Hon'ble President of India,
Rashtrapati Bhawan,
New Delhi.
Dt: 16.08.2006
Most Revered Sir,
Please accept my respectful pranam. I have been writing to you regularly regarding our suspicion that vaccines, and their ingredients, could be behind many of the autism related behavioral disorders and also neurological problems in children. The vaccine manufacturers as well as the US based CDC and FDA have been regularly denying this link. Recently a CDC Official resigned presumably because he did not support the coverup in this regard. And now the coverup has been exposed. As per a US govt led investigation, as early as 1991 doctors have expressed that the vaccine ingredients are a probable cause behind the many incurable illnesses that confront children today.
Sir, even though we, the vaccine damage victims, have been very sure about this coverup and have been pleading to our Health Ministry to probe the vaccine - development disorders, autism link, and even though we have always been cold shouldered, this report does shock us. We can no longer have any faith upon the medical community now who have kept quiet on facts that have harmed us and our children for the last one hundred years or so.
In India too the doctors have often cautioned the Health Ministry about the dangers of an indiscriminate mass vaccination procedure. They have repeatedly pointed out that;
1. Vaccines are not the answers to epidemics,
2. Vaccines are an untested medical procedure,
3. Vaccine side effects have never been properly determined,
4. Vaccine ingredients are too toxic to be ignored,
5. Vaccines have caused the very disease they seek to prevent,
6. Vaccine may cause death and irreversible autoimmune disorders.
7. Pregnant women, sick children, underweight children, children of parents
with autoimmune disorders, malnourished children should not be vaccinated,
8. Mercury is not the only dangerous ingredient of vaccines, there are other heavy
metals, carcinogenic compounds and other neurotoxins in vaccines besides
the dangers of contaminated serum,
9. There should be a national database of vaccine damage victims,
10.Vaccine damage victims should be treated at government expenses, be
compensated and rehabilitated at government expense,
11.Doctors should be trained on how to treat vaccine damaged infants.
12. Vaccines should be given only in emergencies, to children in immediate danger
and after obtaining the informed consent of parents.
13. Vaccines could be shifted to a more mature age to cause the least possible
damage.
14. Vaccine advertisements should also specify the probable vaccine after effects.
However, under pressure from the World Health Organisation, our Health Ministry has never been able to really address these problems. The attitude of the doctors who support vaccinations too is a factor that has delayed a review of the vaccination policy.
Now that the truth stares us in the face I beg of you and appeal to you on behalf of the millions of vaccine affected infants, and on behalf of the future generation that will choose India as their destination, to save us from this scourge. The children have no voice, their parents are not educated on vaccine dangers, the doctors scare those who are reluctant to vaccinate their children with imaginary and implausible scenarios.
I feel our government can no longer remain silent on this issue, which has even been taken up by some sections of the press, as the pressure on them is mounting to reveal the truth. Therefore it will be better if the government acts before it is put on the dock by the aggrieved parents of the innocent victims.
I feel Sir, that you can do something to shake the government machinery from its slumber. Otherwise we will no longer feel that we are citizen of a democratic country, and that our leaders care for our welfare.
Most respectfully yours,
Jagannath Chatterjee,
Vaccine damage victim,
Health Reform Activist.
encl: Article a,a.
cc: Sri Dr Manmohan Singh, Hon'ble Prime Minister,
Madam Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson UPA,
Sri Somnath Chatterjee, Hon'ble Speaker, Lok Sabha,
Sri L K Advani, Leader of the Opposition,
Sri Dr Anbumani Ramadoss, Hon'ble Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare,
Smt Panabaka Laxmi, State Minister for Health,
Sri P K Hota, Secretary, Department of Health,
The Secreatary, Department of Family Welfare,
The Director General, Health Services,
Director, Department of AYUSH,
Director, Central Council for Research in Homeopathy,
Director, Central Council of Homeopathy,
Hon'ble Chief Justice, Supreme Court of India,
Chairman, National Human Rights Commission,
Hon'ble Members, AutismIndia & India Developmental Disabilities.
Dr Leo Rebello, Director, Natural Health Center, Mumbai.
August 13, 2006 at 07:10:23
Government Investigation Finds Autism Vaccine Related
by Evelyn Pringle
Evelyn Pringle mentions mercury testing done by Health Advocacy in the Public Interest (HAPI) in her article about autism and vaccines. Dawn Winkler, the executive director of HAPI, is running for governor as the Libertarian candidate. Please check out Dawn's website at www.dawnforgovernor.org
