David Kirby: Dr. Douglas Wallace Comments on Vaccination

Top Mitochondrial Researcher: “We have always advocated spreading the immunizations out as much as possible.”

By David Kirby

I recently noticed that the minutes from the April 11, 2008 meeting of the Vaccine Safety Working Group of HHS’s National Vaccine Advisory Committee were published online HERE.

I will be commenting more soon on the extraordinary meeting, and on the CDC’s draft vaccine safety research agenda, which was the topic of this meeting, held on the top floor of HHS headquarters in Washington. But I wanted to highlight the remarks of one of the public speakers – Dr. Douglas Wallace, a leading mitochondrial researcher in the country.

Dr. Wallace is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of California, Irvine and director of its Center for Molecular and Mitochondrial Medicine in Genetics. (Read his bio HERE.) He has worked on mitochondria and their role in human disease for nearly 40 years. His lab helped define the original genetics of mitochondria and demonstrated maternal inheritance to mitochondrial DNA. It was also first to identify mitochondrial DNA disease.

Dr. Wallace is a parent of two children, as well, including a 23-year-old son with autism. His wife, with two Masters Degrees, “has spent her entire life taking care of this child who will never live independently,” he told the committee. “So we certainly appreciate the complexities of having a disabled child and the lifelong burden that such a challenge will have for a family.”

Dr. Wallace, speaking on behalf of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, where he sits on the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, flew to Washington to attend the meeting along with Chuck Mohan, CEO of the foundation.

I spoke with both men that day, and they were kind, respectful and, it seemed to me,  supportive of my work. Mostly, they were tremendously grateful that the word “mitochondria” was being uttered in the halls of public health. Some of the world’s leading vaccine safety experts were present.

“When it became clear that there was a question about vaccines, mitochondria and autism, which was so ably enunciated by Ms. Poling (Hannah’s mother Terry, who had just testified), the Scientific Medical Advisory Board has had a lot of discussions about what position the UMDF should take on vaccines in relation to people that suffer from known mitochondrial disease,” he testified before an attentive committee.

“I think it's fair to say that the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board strongly advocates continued vaccination of children,” he said. “However, I think it's also fair to say, and this is true for my practice, that we have always advocated spreading the immunizations out as much as possible because every time you vaccinate, you are creating a challenge for the system, and if a child has an impaired system that could in fact trigger further clinical problems.”

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Wallace conceded, “we don't have any data to support any of our discussions on this area. We do not know what is safe. We do not know what is not safe. We do not know the actual risk of a person with light mitochondrial disease has and being challenged either by vaccination or by a latent - by a severe infection.”

Dr. Wallace said UMDF believes that a severe infection would cause “far more stress” than a vaccination, but added, “We can control the vaccinations; we can't control the infections. So I think we need a much more careful consideration about how to use the vaccinations to the maximum benefit of the patient, even a patient with mitochondrial disease.”

The question, then, becomes, “is there a relationship between mitochondrial disease and vaccination and mitochondrial disease and autism?” Dr. Wallace told the committee. “Would a vaccination or infection initiate an incipient mitochondrial disease, as has been suggested?”

There is no way to prove this, he said. But he did bring up a disease called Leigh’s syndrome, the best known pediatric disease associated with mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation defects. Children with Leigh’s are normal at birth and the first several years of life (in contrast, Hannah began regressing at 19 months), “then invariably they're reported by the parent to have a transient increase in temperature that is B febrile, and then progressively lose intellectual and motor milestones, the baso ganglia dies out, and they die.”

Hannah Poling, of course, did not have Leigh’s syndrome, nor did she have any classic form of mitochondrial “disease.” She had a much milder form of mitochondrial “dysfunction,” which was possibly acquired.

Dr. Wallace also said that mitochondrial diseases are not rare. They may, “in fact be the most common cause of pathophysiology that is known.”

Why don’t we know for sure? Modern medicine, says Dr. Wallace:

“Medicine traditionally has been organized around anatomy and, therefore, there are specialists in all the different organ systems, and so in fact it is very difficult for an organ specific specialist to understand a systemic disease, but in fact life is related to both structure and energy and energy is systemic even though structure is organ specific,” he testified.

“So we've spent most of our care health-care dollars looking about at structure and organ specific symptoms and not thinking about systemic disease, and systemic disease is about energy, and energy is about the mitochondria because mitochondria provides 98% of the energy.”

If science can be poetry, Dr. Wallace comes awfully close.

The sad lack of data on mitochondria and vaccines makes it difficult to know what to recommend vis-à-vis childhood immunizations, Dr. Wallace said. That’s because “that whole area, the energy biology of health and disease is essentially unexplored.”

The UMDF, “really has tried to champion redressing this lack of information so that we can provide parents with the right answers and actually formulate the right questions,” he added.

In the meantime, this leading expert on mitochondria and human health told this stellar committee of vaccine experts: “I really hope you will take the initiative to give us the facts so that we can either make the right decisions -- or reassure the public.”

But for now, he said, “I stand as someone who sees patients regularly and runs a diagnostics lab, and when they ask me about vaccinations, I have a hard time giving them a straightforward answer.”

There wasn’t a person in the room who did not applaud, myself included.

David Kirby is a journalist, author and contributor to Age of Autism.

Comments

[Lisa]

Dr. Wallace's words are beautiful and basically state the tenets of holistic medicine, which is to look at the body as a functioning whole, rather than a composite of parts and symptoms. Bravo!

Lisa

[Twyla]

Thank you so much for telling us about this. Very interesting, and so encouraging to hear this established expert taking these concerns seriously.

[getitright]

For more mitochondrial dysfunctions - acquired - look at

* Alzheimer's disease. The similarities are astounding.
* ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)
* Huntington's disease
* Freiderich's ataxia
And these are just as a few examples.

Saying that “that whole area, the energy biology of health and disease is essentially unexplored” is just incredibly uneducatd.

Doing a search for "mitochondrial dysfunction", in PubMed will retrieve more than 3,700 citations.

Anything with more than 3,700 cites is not repeat NOT "essentially unexplored."

However, PEDIATRICIANS may not have 'explored' mitochondrial dysfunction. It has been heavily researched. Perhaps they could look into some of the existing research?

.

[Jeanne]

I think this is incredible news! Thank you Mr. Kirby!

What I can't figure out is why statements such as these are not reported on by anyone else. Why isn't someone else talking about this? It is, for lack of a better word, maddening.

[Lawrence]

This is a fascinating post. Dr. Wallace has an important story to tell and should be prominent part of the international debate about the aetiology of autism. He seems to have the solid research background and well-reasoned style that can't be easily debunked or ridiculed by the Orac Militia. I hope we hear a lot more from and about Dr. Wallace.

With his help the mitochondrial issues in autism could be a real game changer in our understanding of the apparent autism epidemic. Given the depth of his knowledge about mitochondria, it would be interesting to pose these questions to him and his colleagues at The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation.

1. Is he aware that millions of people in this country are suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which seems to involve mitochondrial dysfunction?

2. Does he see any link between the mitochondrial dysfunction in CFS and the mitochondrial dysfunction involved in all or part of the autism spectrum epidemic?

3. Is he aware that the leading candidate for the cause or trigger of CFS is a virus called HHV-6A, and is he aware of the damage that virus might be doing to mitochondria and the basal ganglia? (HHV-6 and basal ganglia reference: http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/76/4/362)

4. Is he aware of the prevalence of serious, potentially systemic, infection with HHV-6 among children? (According to the HHV-6 Foundation, "A surprisingly high percentage of pediatric emergency room visits are due to primary HHV-6 infections. In some areas as many as 13% of infants with acute HHV-6 infections develop seizures and other manifestations of encephalitis.")

5. Does he think that in addition to screening children for mitochondrial dysfunction before and after vaccination, that they should be screened for HHV-6A infections?

HHV-6 is a catastrophic viral epidemic today and it was also a major problem 23 years ago when his autistic son was born--just around he time the HHV-6/CFS epidemic was being recognized nationally, but ignored by the CDC.

In less than a year it has become impossible for the well-informed to talk about autism and vaccines without also talking about mitochondria. The question that Dr.Wallace and the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation could help answer is whether we should also be discussing HHV-6 when we discuss autism. Mitochondrial issues now have a seat at the table. Maybe HHV-6 deserves one too.

[Gatogorra]

Thanks for this great coverage, as always. I have this feeling of breathless anticipation that the mt investigations are right on track, that more answers are coming soon now that the choke hold on independent research is loosening a bit. Of course we all want simplified answers but some have been offered before but they seemed like too much of a stretch. This seems different on so many levels.

About what Dr. Wallace said-- the question is if infection alone could trigger autism, where are all the people with autism prior to 1930? Why weren't the rates higher before the mid-90's?

The mt angle seems to provide answers about why the rates may remain high even if the amount of ehg is knocked down to pre-90's levels. Is it that there's more mitochondrial-damaging "facilitators" around-- pollution, pesticides, mt-damaging medicines, even growth hormones in milk, etc.-- to make what hg there still is in shots more potent?

[Kent Heckenlively]

David:

Thank you for your article.

As a science teacher I'm always telling my students about how much science doesn't yet know about the world around us. We must proceed very cautiously when we attempt to modify nature.

All the best,
Kent Heckenlively

[Julie Obradovic]

"We don't know what's safe. We don't know what's not safe. We do not know the actual risk of a person with light mitochondrial disease has and being challenged either by vaccination or by a latent - by a severe infection.”

Well, if that doesn't just about sum up this whole disaster, I don't know what does. Only, I will argue we actually do have a pretty good idea of what's not safe...hundreds of thousands of kids have shown us.

[Tim Kasemodel]

Dr. Wallace asks “Would a vaccination or infection initiate an incipient mitochondrial disease, as has been suggested?” I hope this question will spark some doubt in the minds of those who consistently buy the totally unsupported idea that Hannah's mito disorder was "inborn".

When I lobby for mercury free vaccines in Minnesota I drill a variation of this as much as possible. I pose that research is very suggestive that vaccinations, with the help of mercury or other toxic insult in an infant, causes the immune system to fail to some degree. This in turn is a possible trigger - the failed immune system then allows for any virus, vaccine or toxin to lead the body to "exceed its' metabolic reserves".

This is how I help people understand two very important counterpoints to my argument for mercury free vaccines. First they say kids with the same vaccine exposure do not all become autistic - No shit - It all depends on their "metabolic reserves" doesn't it?

Then they say "unvaccinated kids get autism too" which I respond that vaccinations are not the only source of environmental and viral insult - both of which can cause decreased immune funtion allowing the body to "exceed its' metabolic reserves".

This also helps to explain to someone what we mean when we say "toxic tipping point" as well.

Thanks David for sharing this, It is nice to see Dr. Wallace is so well spoken. We can add one more powerful supporter to our side of the debate.

[Kecia]

Wow, all I can say is WOW!
I hope Dr. Wallace's words will spur this Committee to take action. It's time to do the right research and give us all the answers we seek.
Thank you again, David, for all of your hard work!