Mark, Doug,
After my frustrated outbirst at Leary who seems to say that autistic people are lazy, stupid, blah-didi-blah, blab a little poop at them, making himself feel so bloated that his head must be near evisceration on to explosion (goodness, what emotional cartharsis this is, I thought that perhaps at least I could try to help the actual discussion just a bit,

As far as drugs are concerned, at this point, Depakote, P rozac, Respiradone (Respiradol), and Lorezapam PRN, along with tylenol and magnesium for the stomach, sometimes with a small amount of caffeine, seem to produce the overall best results.
A daily activity plan also helps. Regular physical exercise outdoors if the weather is good. Mentally stimulating conversation about the usually regular supjects (which are often limited, due to the part of echolalia (a normal part of the autistic syndrome) which means that repetition is necessary within the confines of those subjects.

There are no known causal factors because there is not enough epidemiological information available, and because the “scientific community” (oh, balther blaudity BS)is more concerned about producing medical results, including the so-called “studies” of anecdotal evidence, which ofen boils down to which anecdotal respondents a clinical study chooses to listen to (Uh. Who set up a “fund” to pay for the study?). Many of the trials end up bringing drugs to the medical establishment whose test results may well have been truly faulty.

If you go back into the history of the last 48 years, a shocking speech was made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jan. 17, 1961. In it, after warning us all, especially his young successor, Kennedy, about the massive power of the military-industrial complex and it’s power over Congress, the newly open-eyed Republican described a scientific community that used room-filling computers to aid in scientific research.

He went on to say that the results of such research often depended on those groups and corporate entities that contributed to political campaigns. (Meaning, the political campaigns of candidates running for Congress.) I’m guessing that the same influence is being bought and sold today.

Thanks, Doug. I had a feeling that we’d find common ground.

I agree with the article that “autism,” like “cancer,” refers to a wide range of conditions which have much in common but may have many different causative factors.

The “first do no harm” PCRM approach of eliminating as many risk factors as possible and avoiding any additional risk factors when possible, makes sense to me.

Figuring out what is and isn’t a risk factor is beyond my capability, but I can, based on their past track record, sometimes figure out which sources are more credible than others. On that basis I trust PCRM a lot more than I trust the government or the pharmaceutical industry.

Mark E. Smith,

I understood your point much better after your latest response:

“Many people believe that vaccines have something to do with autism. These vaccines were approved for broad usage. The approval process is, in many ways, deeply flawed.”

While I agree the approval process is not perfect, I don’t think it has anything to do with Autism. However, I respect your point as stated in the quote above.

And I agree with this wholeheartedly:

“As long as we cannot rule out pharmaceuticals as a possible cause, we probably shouldn’t rely entirely on pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments and solutions.”

I think words like “farce,” “inflammatory,” “diversionary,” and “irrelevant,” are coded ad hominem smears designed to stifle a dissenting viewpoint.
*********************************************

Compared to many of the battles I’ve been in here, including one under Ear to The Ground about the sting in NJ going on right now, these sound like love-taps in a VERY civilized debate!

No offense guys, but you are both behaving pretty nicely…not that I object to that!

If you can’t stand the heat….and right now you guys don’t have it higher than “warm”. 

You’ll know you’ve hit the limit when TruthDig starts deleting your posts, or eMails you a warning!

Dear DougTheCoder

You write: “1) Your article link only applies to approvals for human trials that are federally funded. The FDA has a separate and rigorous approval process for drugs and vaccines for broad usage.”

Then why have so many drugs that were approved for broad usage later found to be dangerous and recalled?

You continue: “2) The original article is about causes of autism. Your post’s connection to the original discussion is tenuous at best. Implying (which is what you were doing, whether you intended to or not), that vaccines were developed or approved for general use in a faulty manner by posting a link about the process for approving human trials by federally funded programs offers little to no substance to the discussion. Instead it simply creates confusion about the real issue.”

I thought there already was confusion about the real issue.

You continue: “The real issue is kids that suffer from autism. As of yet, we don’t know definitively what causes it. Let’s try to figure it out and develop some treatments.”

If you’re just looking for a scapegoat, how about second-hand smoke? Everything else gets blamed on it, so why not autism?

You continue: “Your posts are inflammatory diversionary tactics that deserve to be pointed out for their irrelevance.”

Ah. So while searing for the cause(s) of autism, we can eliminate the government drug approval process, as it is beyond reproach?

Many people believe that vaccines have something to do with autism. These vaccines were approved for broad usage. The approval process is, in many ways, deeply flawed. I think that might be relevant, but you are welcome to disagree if you think it couldn’t possibly be relevant.

I think words like “farce,” “inflammatory,” “diversionary,” and “irrelevant,” are coded ad hominem smears designed to stifle a dissenting viewpoint.

With regard to your autistic niece, you wrote, “Anecdotally, one thing that seems to have been the causal factor in her gradual improvement has been a change in diet…nutritionally balanced, gluten and dairy free and mostly organic.”

That’s exactly the sort of thing that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recommends. As long as we cannot rule out pharmaceuticals as a possible cause, we probably shouldn’t rely entirely on pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments and solutions.

Dear Mark E. Smith

1) Your article link only applies to approvals for human trials that are federally funded. The FDA has a separate and rigorous approval process for drugs and vaccines for broad usage.

2) The original article is about causes of autism. Your post’s connection to the original discussion is tenuous at best. Implying (which is what you were doing, whether you intended to or not), that vaccines were developed or approved for general use in a faulty manner by posting a link about the process for approving human trials by federally funded programs offers little to no substance to the discussion. Instead it simply creates confusion about the real issue.

The real issue is kids that suffer from autism. As of yet, we don’t know definitively what causes it. Let’s try to figure it out and develop some treatments.

Your posts are inflammatory diversionary tactics that deserve to be pointed out for their irrelevance.

DougTheCoder writes in response to my earlier post, “By your logic, treatment A is a farce. So, treatment B, C, and D must be farces as well since they went through the same approval process. Does that mean all treatments are farces since one treatment was approved erroneously? Does a faulty approval prove conspiracy or tragic fault with the entire system? Your logic seems to be the only farce.”

What the article I posted actually said was that the approval process is so faulty that the federal government’s own Government Accountability Office was able to register a fictitious scientific review board headed up by a dog named Trooper, and that they had gotten an actual scientific review board to approve a wholly fictitious product.

That does not say or imply that all scientific review boards are fictitious or that all approved pharmaceuticals and treatments are untested, dangerous, or nonexistent. All it says it that the approval process is so deeply flawed that, “Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chair of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said the findings raise serious questions about ‘the entire system for approving experimental testing on human beings.’”

If you wish to ignore those serious questions, you are free to do so, but others might want to take them into consideration.

I drew no conclusions, logical or illogical. I simply joked, “Okay, so tell me again what’s in those flu vaccines and how they got approved?” But it isn’t really a joke, since the vaccine companies have been granted immunity from lawsuits for any harm they cause. So if a vaccine saves a thousand children for every one it harms, and yours happens to be the one child that is harmed, perhaps incapacitated or made to suffer for life, or even killed, you cannot sue the company responsible.

It might seem like a worthwhile gamble to many, since the odds are that their child will be one of the majority who are saved rather than harmed. I’m just glad that my kids are grown and I hope that I won’t be forced to take the vaccine myself. I hope that it will be my decision to make, as I don’t want the government or the pharmaceutical industry making my decisions for me. I’m willing to gamble that if I do get the swine flu or the avian flu, I’ll be one of the majority who fully recover, rather than one of the minority who dies. Since it’s a gamble either way, I think the decision should be mine alone.

Outraged:
Maybe the government is working with major drug manufacturers to kill or disable America’s children for profit, as you imply.

Me. I’m not so cynical.

Mark E. Smith:
By your logic, treatment A is a farce. So, treatment B, C, and D must be farces as well since they went through the same approval process. Does that mean all treatments are farces since one treatment was approved erroneously? Does a faulty approval prove conspiracy or tragic fault with the entire system? Your logic seems to be the only farce.

Heather:
Your point about proving a negative is one I would like to reiterate. How many studies that are designed to determine if there is a link between autism and vaccinations does it take? Right now it’s a couple hundred to zero in favor of no link. What if it was 10,000 - 0? 10,000,000,000,000 - 0? Where’s the cutoff? Of course, you can never PROVE that there is no link no matter how many studies you do. But after a couple hundred studies come back with no link, it starts to look like there is no link. You can say that a couple hundred studies is not proof. You are right. But it is about as close as we are going to get.

Autism is a contention issue for reasons mentioned in the article. It’s time we stop bickering, meet in the middle, and try to figure how to solve the problem. Anecdote is not science and science is not anecdote. But both have their place in solving the problem. Let’s admit that, talk to each other, and work on a resolution.

I’ll start. My niece is autistic. She will be 4 this fall. She doesn’t talk or communicate with any coherence. She has a lot of repetitive motions. She has gone through various treatments and therapies over the course of the past two years. Anecdotally, one thing that seems to have been the causal factor in her gradual improvement has been a change in diet…nutritionally balanced, gluten and dairy free and mostly organic. I am not going to speculate as to why that might be helping her. But it does seem to have helped her. She has not been on any medications. There is no genetic history of autism. She leads an otherwise normal American life for a child of her age. She has a brother who is not autistic.

When I think about possible causes my brain hurts. There could be a trillion causes that I could speculate on. I just want something that will help her deal with her daily overstimulation and isolation. She is a wonderful child who seems to be at times suffering from her condition, attempting to self-soothe by withdrawing and doing repetitive tasks/motions. As her uncle, I want her to be able to enjoy life’s ups and downs like the rest of us. I understand that part of working a cure usually involves understanding the cause. But that is not always the case. Can we please just set aside the ridiculous arguments and start working on a solution together, recognizing that there is value in both anecdote and science?

Maybe there’s more to the story than meets the eye:

“In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children’s health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to “rule out” the chemical’s link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten’s findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been “lost” and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government’s vaccine-related documents—including the Simpsonwood transcripts—and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the “Eli Lilly Protection Act” into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism.”

Makes me wonder…..hmmmm.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14510

By Rontruth, July 24 at 1:25 pm
““As parents of an adult autistic human being, we do the extra fine things each day for him, and to the extent possible, with him. He is unable to remember many things because of his limited speech, which as all you brainy imbeciles might know, or maybe not, has internal as well as external interrelated features.
****************************************************

I am not familar with autism so I can’t speak from experience(though I belive myself to have some degree of ADD, due most probably to the fact my mother both drank and smoked during my gestation and my other brothers as well) but I think I would not be far off the mark when I say that allowing corporations to pollute the environment with all the chemicals that we the people allow them to keep dumping into OUR environmental habitats could most probably have a part in this and many other myriad problems inflicting any living thing on this planet with even the smallest amounts being able to disrupt normal life functions, slightly or dramatically; try a check on the homind species way back into the past to see what paleoanthropolgists have detected in the ‘historic’ peoples versus the ‘modern’ peoples(agricultural age & the industrial age) and the dieases prevalent in those groups.

I have found in my readings that there is a noticable difference when only researching the information on diets, so yes, I will point a blame and I feel it has a lot of merit to it.

The reason we vaccinate is simple:  The number of people saved from the disease is ALWAYS on the order of 100:1 (usually more) to those who die from the vaccine itself.

The odds are something like 300:1 (I don’t swear to that number) that your child will have a DANGEROUS negative reaction to the pertussis vaccine—but his/her odds of getting whooping cough become terrifyingly high if they don’t have it.  In Europe, whooping cough has been on the rise due to parents refusing that vaccination.

Consider the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918—it killed 50 million people, making it the most deadly disease over a set period of time ever.  Had there been a vaccine that 1 out of 100 people died from and world-wide inoculation, that means 49,500,000 would have survived, and 500,000 would have died. 

Which would be preferable?

Meantime, I live always with the fear in the back of my mind that my children at some point in the future will be exposed to Smallpox and not have any defense against it.  I never knew, until my first child was born, they had stopped the vaccinations. I still have my scar, and I was re-inoculated in 1971, but I had no reaction as I was still immune.

Rontruth’s post spells it all out—Ron, you have my sympathy—I know a few people with autistic kids, from low-level functioning to high level, able to attend public high school without too many problems. My best wishes to you.

This is from the summer 2009 issue of “Good Medicine,” published by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and although it is on their website (second story on the linked page), I can’t find any more about it:

Approved… But It’s Fake

The Government Accountability Office found major flaws in the system for approving medical research. In a disconcerting test, the agency won approval for a fake product to be used in testing and registered a fictitious medical review board.

Any drug or device used in federally funded testing on humans must be approved by an institutional review board of scientists. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was able to register a fictitious review board—headed up by a dog named Trooper—with the Department of Health and Human Services.

In a separate test, a real institutional review board based in Colorado Springs, Colo., approved a medical protocol that would have required doctors to pour an entire liter of a GAO-fabricated product into a woman’s stomach after surgery.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chair of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said the findings raise serious questions about “the entire system for approving experimental testing on human beings.”

————————————————-

Okay, so tell me again what’s in those flu vaccines and how they got approved? ROFL

As the father of an autistic son whom my wife and I take good care of, the use of the word, “shit” in the article, therefore gives me the right to use it in return: The doctor is one A-hole who is full of it. He has a form of constipation that lends credence to the term “he needs an enama.”

Autism, as a disorder, is often complicated by retardation in varying degrees. Blaming anyone, or anything for it is escapism of the most destructive kind. Most of those who blame something, someone, anyone or anything, are looking for a way to say “I AM NOT TO BLAME. They are also attempting to say, “Why do I have to assume responsibility for what happened to this person since I am not to blame?”

They transmit this to politics in the form of “let’s just do the minimum, make sure they have a bed to sleep in, food to eat, basic medical care, but nothing more. Afterall, they might not be able to fully appreciate the finer things in life, anyway.”

As parents of an adult autistic human being, we do the extra fine things each day for him, and to the extent possible, with him. He is unable to remember many things because of his limited speech, which as all you brainy imbeciles might know, or maybe not, has internal as well as external interrelated features. The lack of “connectedness” (Wow. What a psdeudo-sophisticated term), meaning neuro-synaptic malfunction, in and between Wernickes and Brokau’s centers in the brain and between them both and the anterior (frontal) cortex, are the main causal problems. All the other deficits are variously related.

Specifically, the causes of autism; why the above and associated problems occur, no one in hell has any fricking idea, so just let it rest that, even if someone thought to study the water people drink, the highly saturated meat fats (people just luv that red meat. Right?) or the vitamins they take, or whether their mommy carried a gene that just somehow got transmitted through wonderful sexual activity to their offspring, is NOT and should NOT be the issue.

As Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary sang about in 1967, “In the days of long confessions (and we have some long-winded TV preachers whose mouths are open while their flies are also open), -we cannot mock the soul. When there’s too much of nothing (and the upper income groups love doing nothing, and more and more of it, while paying less and less, relatively speaking, for it), no one has control.”

And, control is what the selfish really have in mind when they pander unproven half-truths and outright lies about someone or something to blame for autism.

As some Christian said to this Messianic Jew who forgot to wear his kippah to Church when talking about a different subject, “Well, we need to ask ourselves, what would Jesus do about it?”

What is the answer?

I wholeheartedly agree with this:

“there is a growing body of evidence and research demonstrating that autism is a disorder with a multifactorial etiology that is highly treatable with causation likely to be based on genetic susceptibilities and exposure to environmental factors.”

and this:

“If their children are diagnosed with a disease, parents have to fight through a bureaucracy that isn’t made to make it easier for them. And while the whole system is stacked against them, they are dealing with the pain and sorrow of their children.”

This is the answer:

“The way forward demands that the political, scientific and medical community and the paying public that it supposedly serves, including parents of children with autism, meet in the middle of the battlefield, shake hands and rebuild that inefficient system from the ground up”

That’s my opinion…as stated very well in the article.

Uh, Denis Leary is a comedian. You’re doing him a favor, you’re lending him credence, you’re helping him financially by mentioning his work.

Did you see what happened to David Letterman’s ratings after Palin picked a fight with him? 

If Leary reads your article he will fall on his back with laughter, rub his belly with joy, click his heels with glee, kick out his legs in ecstasy, and thank you from the bottom of his clogged heart. 

As someone who has a close family with Asperger’s Syndrome, I can sincerely say the rest of your points are valid but starting out as you did casts a pall over the report.

How are we supposed to take an article about autism seriously when it mentions Andrew Wakefield’s study that ignited the autism-vaccine storm without mentioning that Wakefield’s study has been thoroughly discredited?  It has been shown that he simply made up data and lied about the children he was studying and that he was paid to conduct the study by lawyers representing a group of parents who suspected vaccines caused the autism of their children.  He has no credibility whatsoever except amongst those desperately clinging to the ridiculous idea that vaccines harmed their children. 

Also, what about the recent ruling when the very best of thousands of autism-vaccine cases (chosen as the best by the claimants and their lawyers) were rejected for not even approaching any standard of proof that vaccines caused harm? 

This is just another is a too long stream of articles purporting to ask what causes autism while in fact pushing the blame mainly on vaccines.

One other thing, I swear more than anyone I know but using “fuck” in an article such as this takes away from the work.

To nestoffour: I know of a family of five, count them five autistic children. They range in symptomatic problems from the high end of the spectrum to extremely autistic.
How, I ask myself, does this mother survive the day, let alone the teenage years of a child diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome?
It is amazing that the medical community, including the ‘pharmaceutical’ industry, refuses to study their own products to the point that is sufficiently viable, so that it can quell the fears of parents and doctors in their quest for answers and healthy children. We must remember that this is our future we are endangering with the cavalier attitude that we do not have to do the most extensive and safest studies, to make sure that we are not making our future an ending within the next few years.

Re: steele505

Your comment: “5. The government’s tracking system for vaccine injury (VAERS) cannot assess causality and there is under-reporting to VAERS. Thus, there is no real paper trail for determining how many children are adversely affected by vaccines, or even if the vaccine caused their problems or not. To me, this is inexcusable. If the government wants me to use these products, it needs to know. Here again, it seems the medical community is in no hurry to protect children from vaccine injury, dismissing problems as “coincidence” all too often.”

While I agree with you for the most, it is important to distinquish CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT from government itself.  I have read many books and articles regarding vaccines through the years and did not vaccinate my own children in their infancy.  Like you, I would like the FACTS and not the rhetoric.  As my children grew there came a time wherein I chose to vaccinate them against specifically Tetanus, for several reasons including environment, ability to discern the TRUE effects of the vaccine, ablilty to “paper trail” the manufacturers….etc.

Also like you, I find NO EXCUSE for the lack of studies and accurate information regarding vaccines.  I have experienced much dogma regarding the vaccination of children and childrens medicine in general, a slippery slope indeed.  Having come from a large family, I’ve heard the most outrageous claims and have been called to the fore many times regarding ideological mantras spewed by emergency room doctors regarding the “well-being” of many relatives.

Something reeks to high heaven here.  I have argued (more than once with emergency room doctors) that A SICK CHILD should not be suddenly and flippantly vaccinated because their viral symptoms happened to flare Sunday afternoon when the ONLY place (at least then) was the Emergency Rm. for needed meds. and care.

I have also found much discomfort with the realization that SIDS happens most often during the fouth month of infancy, a month that just happens to coincide with the second set of vaccinations.  I don’t KNOW, because studies have not be forthcoming regarding this possible link or non-link. However, it certainly leaves a discerning parent to come to the determination of “better safe than sorry” especially IF the child had had a reaction to the first vaccination.  This is exacerbated by the fact that many first time parents (rightfully so) are NOT as intuitive as experienced parents with their newborn child. 

It is common med. knowledge that as allergic reactions go, the first encounter will “make you ill”.... the second, could kill you.  This too, is pause for consideration.  Yet, many doctors completely IGNORE parents’ summations of events, family history and medical pertinence and “go ahead” with SECOND vaccinations even AFTER warning signs have been verbalized and attempts to document symptoms are patently disregarded.  Some doctors completely OMIT intial reactions from their records altogether.  My premise would be that this amounts to somewhat of a “safe-gap” measure should any troubles arise.

Vaccinations do change periodically, for the good or bad still appears to be non-researched, at least CONCLUSIVELY.  Additionally, some time ago….oh, twenty years or more we had the scandal of pharmaceutical companies shipping “bad lots” of vaccines to undeveloped countries and charging the U.S. Government full price (the vaccines were worthless in America).  This situation didn’t bode well for Americans putting their trust in these same manufacturers. Regardless, profit in healthcare is a recipe for DISASTER, and there are NO ifs, ands or buts about it.

Why not examine environmental toxins? For example why not follow up strongly on this promising lead: A relatively unknown, but very significant source of neuro-developmental toxins to children are the chemicals added to bedding, pillows, cribs, to meet excessive and unnecessary flame retardant standards.

These chemicals which have not been studied well enough to prove their safety are PDBE’s - polybrominated diphenyl ethers.
In dozens of animal studies, these fire retardants have been shown to harm reproduction and scramble brain development. Studies are underway to determine if PBDEs are contributing to increases in autism, hyperactivity, birth defects, infertility, diabetes and obesity in people. PDBEs kill house pets through kidney toxicity.

They are used because politicians blindly pass laws requiring flame resistance, at the specific bidding of fire fighter groups who, with good intentions want to reduce fire losses to people and property, but without regard to risk management principles.

These flame retardant laws only slightly reduce the number or severity of fires caused by smokers passing out with lit cigarettes falling onto furniture, if at all.  And the laws fail to require flame resistant only if it can be done safely, and without environmental risk. 

As a result, manufacturers just slather on the cheapest most readily available functionally flame retardant chemical (PDBEs) into the upholstery fabrics of bedding and furniture to meet the requirements.  Amazingly, these laws often specify flame retardants particularly for infant bedding, without regard to the balance of fire risk in infant bedding compared to the health risks to the infant from exposure to PDBEs. 

The potential PDBE toxicity issues are, naturally, tamped down by the chemical manufacturers and their public affairs front, the American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association). This is the familar paradigm: when there is no glaring scientific study demonstrating a highly significant, easily seen cause and effect with minimal exposure leading to large adverse effect - then nothing can be done to stop it.

Without a scientific “smoking gun” the chemical manufacturers can put the chemicals into commerce first, and require the public (ie government) to prove they are dangerous before they can be taken out of commerce.

Meanwhile we have, within the recent past developed an enormous bio-burden of PDBEs in our personal living environments.  More importantly, the rise of PDBEs in our kid’s bedding, seems to mirror the time line in the rise in autism.

PDBEs are bio persistent and flake off fabric from bedding and furniture and become part of the dust of the house and are ingested by children and pets at a higher rate than adults. On average, dust in California homes contains 10 times the PBDEs found in dust from other states and 200 times the amount in houses in Europe, according to a new study from the Silent Spring Institute.

Worse, Californians have twice the level of this fire retardant in their blood as do people in other states. A recent research report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group showed that American toddlers have, on average, a level of fire retardant in their bodies that is three times higher than that found in their mothers.

This issue needs to be brought to the attention of the public…especially those who are looking for an environmental causation element in the rise of autism.  It may not be the complete cause of all cases, but it could certainly be involved with some, if not many of the cases.  And it seems far more logical to investigate these types of significant environmental exposures rather than chasing the tail on vaccines.

It is probably true, that nature and nurture combine in autism,(63-98% chance in separated twins, depending on study) but,if you have ever worked with autistic kids or adults, you wil have no doubt that there is a neurological cause at the root—either genetic or environmental, or both. True, all people are different, but autisms exhibist a very marked and continual set of repetitious symptoms that “bad parenting” would be extrenely unlikely to produce. The sterotypy of the movements , the rare but formidable, ‘savant” of many autistic people brains, (formerly called idiot savant—“good with numbers” “good on piano” etc. although “Rain Man” was a real stretch) and the lack of focus are not just AADD.

I know of no pill or pharmaceutical that is help, in any way, in treating autism.

If there is a shadow of a doubt, considering how pervsive the disorder is,take thermerosal ( and all mercury ) out of vaccines, for christ’s sake. As far as I now, there have been no real double blind studies of vaccinated vs unvaccinated, partly becaue most countrties now require vaccination. I am not saying to not get kids vaccinated…I am saying that parents deserve a better explanation. Science has “tested” stuff like this on people for years..the mistrust didnt just come out of the air.

Something is causing the huge rise in autism rates, and, while it is true that there is more ‘awareness” and , probably, therefore, diagnosis (Asperger’s alao—which may or may ot exist), there is no doubt that there is an increase. Considering how life-altering the diagnosis is,I think that the scientific comunity owes us—and kids—better.

BTW—the “refrigetator mother” idea was advanced by Bruno Bettleheim (a strict Freudian, more prone to blaming mothers than Freud himself!!)and has been dicredited by anyone with a brain. He was an Austrian PhD whose only reasonable contribution to psychology could be said to be mileu therapy (basically, a closed environmental system), and the symbolism of unconscius role-modeling. (If you ask me, many had advanced his theories in better ways before he did)True , children with problems often do better in a group setting with professionals but it is not usually because they are not around their mother..He opened a “school” for these children of horrible mothers (now word about fathers really), called if I recall correctly, the Golden Door, where a “child’a face would light up, seeing the first glance of what it was like to be accepted.” Hogwash.
He comitted suicide in 1990, I believe.

JayZee,

Here is an excerpt from the investigative article “Deadly Immunity” by Robert Kenedy, published in 2005 (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0616-31.htm):

“As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines—the kind of population that scientists typically use as a “control” in experiments—Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three—including one child adopted from outside the Amish community—had received their vaccines.”

This article purports to give an even view, but I suggest you read the following to get the real stuff on why people are opposed to vaccines.

National Vaccine Information Center at
http://www.nvic.org/

and
http://www.vaccineawakening.blogspot.com/

and the following from
http://vaccinesandmychild.blogspot.com/
: Questioning Vaccines in a Nutshell
If I could sum up in a concise list some of the reasons I don’t have absolute trust in the vaccine program anymore, this is it. I may add to this list in the future, but for now, this was a quick list I jotted down to highlight my major concerns.

1. There is too much money at stake for pharmaceutical companies, which lobby Congress and are intricately involved in the nation’s public health bodies (According to a 2/23/09 article in The Wall Street Journal, vaccines will generate $21.5 billion in annual sales by the year 2012). They also have an unsettling amuont of control over vaccine studies in scientific journals, as recently reported in the British Medical Journal.

2. Thimerasol (mercury) was used in vaccines for years (and is still in the flu shot, as far as I know) and was given to children in their shots sometimes in levels over 100 times the EPA allowable “safe” limit. The government denies that there is any link between neurological disorders and the neurotoxin mercury given to children in shots. (Read the book Evidence of Harm by David Kirby for the story of parents who discovered their kids were poisoned by mercury and have been ostracized by the medical community.)

3. There exists much information about harm from vaccines in medical journals, but we, the public, don’t have the privilege of hearing about it like we do for most other pharmaceuticals.

4. The government had no tracking system in place to monitor adverse events from vaccination until parents of vaccine-injured children lobbied for it (The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986). See the “History of NVIC” section on this page for a brief summary.

5. The government’s tracking system for vaccine injury (VAERS) cannot assess causality and there is under-reporting to VAERS. Thus, there is no real paper trail for determining how many children are adversely affected by vaccines, or even if the vaccine caused their problems or not. To me, this is inexcusable. If the government wants me to use these products, it needs to know. Here again, it seems the medical community is in no hurry to protect children from vaccine injury, dismissing problems as “coincidence” all too often.

6. After recognizing a biological marker (a mitochondrial disorder) that supposedly set Hannah Poling up for regressing into autism after vaccination, the CDC was not concerned enough to start screening children for mitochondrial disorders. They said this would be risky, expensive and would raise “ethical questions.” To me, this says that protecting kids from vaccine injury is not as important as protecting the vaccine program. Autism is also risky and expensive, and it raises ethical questions for me regarding why the CDC would rather risk my kid getting autism than risk not vaccinating. (See “CDC Responds to Questions About Vaccines,” March 28, 2008)

7. The government has never done a comprehensive study on the overall health of vaccinated kids versus unvaccinated. Yet a parents group, Generation Rescue, conducted a survey of 17,674 children in California that found that vaccinated boys compared to unvaccinated boys were 155% more likely to have a neurological disorder, 224% more likely to have ADHD and 61% more likely to have autism. Though this can’t substitute for in-depth scientific studies and cannot point to definite conclusions, I wonder then, why won’t the CDC take on the responsibility of doing this? We need answers. I think the CDC is afraid that they will find the same things, or worse, and have to deal with answering for a public health disaster.

Gee, don’t you know? It’s a conjoined plot between MOSSAD and the NSA.

Speaking of old religion…What’s up with that Amish anomaly?

I personally would love to see the “scientific method” used to test a group from the ever growing population of un-vaccinated children in the US compared to a group of vaccinated children.Short and long term for both autism and ANY immunopathology.

Let the chips fall.

This is a terrific blog. It is so important. For starters, I want to say that the “vaccinated public” serves the purpose of testing a myriad of things (in vaccines), on unsuspecting, or scared poopless people (swine-bird-whatever-flu). The rest of the ingredients are just dangerous, expedient things. Unfortunately, in this country,( I do not know about others), there is a long history of this type of “testing” or “experimentation” on people who do not suspect. Prime candidates have been (and surprisingly, still are) minorities, old people, children in the school “system”, prisoners, servicepersons, blacks, orphans, and so on. You get the picture. Some of these vaccine-makers get sick of radicals protesting abuse of animals, and the scrutiny involved. So, they just find people. For some reason it lags in sympathy or awareness with the public, just a little, but it shouldn’t.

What has happened is that, in the autism debate, anecdote has replaced science in parents’ minds.

This is just an offshoot of the old religion vs. science debate. The problem is most people don’t understand “The Scientific Method”.  A viable challenge or argument should not be mistaken for what is accepted by the scientific community as “truth”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method