By Mark Blaxill
As we enter the heart of flu season, industry pressure to rehabilitate thimerosal (the ethyl mercury-based vaccine preservative) has been escalating. Just last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece blaming swine flu vaccine shortages on the demand for mercury-free formulations. According to the author, venture capitalist Scott Gottlieb, one of the main reasons you can’t get the swine flu vaccine is that the Obama administration has been “too cautious” in managing vaccine safety. He blamed three “fateful policy decisions” for restricting swine flu production, one of which was that “the government demanded single-dose syringes because they contain smaller amounts of thimerosal than multi-dose vials.” According to Gottlieb, “This mercury-containing vaccine preservative continues to stir concern it can trigger childhood autism, even though this has been firmly disproven.”
Coming from Gottlieb, this argument should be taken with a grain of salt (Gottlieb has acknowledged relevant conflicts. As a former FDA official in the Bush administration, see (HERE), he had to recuse himself from decisions involving Eli Lilly drug approvals; Eli Lilly sponsored research led to the invention of thimerosal). But Gottlieb was merely the point man for a commonly held view in the vaccine and medical industries. And over the last few months the vaccine industry has shifted their promotional activities into overdrive, eagerly exploiting the opportunity to market the novel threat of the swine flu. In the process they have bundled their full throttle marketing of flu vaccines with a renewed push to eliminate what they see as unnecessary obstacles to flu vaccine production (what others might call prudent product safety measures).
But this new propaganda blitz suggesting that thimerosal is safe—and that merely providing a thimerosal free option is excessively cautious—has scant scientific evidence to support it. Indeed, the overwhelming weight of evidence from animal studies suggests that exposing infants and fetuses to ethyl mercury always was, and continues to be, a bad idea.
In September, a new animal study from a group at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw provided the latest evidence of harm to infants from vaccine level doses of thimerosal. One of the methods they used, a heat sensitivity assessment called the “hot plate test”, had a special resonance for me. I saw my daughter flunk a real life version of this test just a few days before she got her formal diagnosis of autism.
Sick rats
[The] epidemic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is one of the most alarming public health problems, as the prevalence of autism has been dramatically increasing during the past 20 years world-wide with tragic personal and social consequences. Before 1970 the incidence of ASD was 1 in 2000 children, now in the USA and many other developed countries it is 1 in 150 children. The etiology of ASDs is multifactorial, having both genetic and environmental components, but the evidence strongly suggests that early-life – prenatal and postnatal – exposure to hazardous substances may be responsible for the observed rise in the incidence of autism.
The objective of this research project is to investigate, in a combination of multidisciplinary clinical and preclinical studies, the biological mechanisms of neurodevelopmental toxicity induced in children by certain environmental toxins, particularly mercury and lead.
Conference abstracts often provide the first signals of future publication results and the sponsor group’s abstract, entitled “Vaccine Preservative, Thimerosal, Causes Wide-Spread Neurodevelopmental Disturbances in Young Rats”, provided just such a clue. The abstract didn’t provide much detail, but it made clear that the research was showing evidence of harm to infant rats after receiving an exposure to thimerosal similar to that received under the American childhood immunization schedule during the 1990s.
And in a September article published on line in the journal Brain Research, the Warsaw team revealed their first peer-reviewed findings (HERE). The study design was simple and the results unambiguous. But the methods might strike close to home for some autism parents unfamiliar with the term “nociception.” They certainly struck home for me, and I’ll admit I had to look the word up.
The Warsaw group’s paper followed a protocol for thimerosal administration in rodents first designed by Mady Hornig at Columbia University. Hornig’s group used two different genetic mouse strains (one that was susceptible to autoimmunity and another that was not) and in each strain compared unexposed infant mice to those injected with thimerosal (injections were on days 7, 9, 11 and 15) on a schedule designed to mimic the typical vaccine schedule for human infants (with vaccinations at months 2, 4, 6 and 15) and at comparable weight adjusted doses. The Warsaw team followed the same plan of thimerosal injections with infant rats of two different strains and followed up the exposures with measures of mercury metabolism and infant development, comparing rats injected with thimerosal to those injected with a saline placebo.
When the rats reached 6 weeks of age (an human equivalent age just under 3 years), the Warsaw experimenters tested them for impaired “nociception”, or the “neural processes of encoding and processing noxious stimuli.” In this case, they tested the rats to see how sensitive they were to heat by placing the infant rats on a hot plate (a little over 130 degrees Fahrenheit) and seeing how long it took them to show their discomfort, either by licking their paws or jumping from the plate. This “hot plate test” is a highly standardized animal protocol for pain sensitivity testing, finely tuned to provide just enough heat to generate discomfort but not enough to actually burn the baby rodents (after 30 seconds on the hot plate, the infants were removed “to prevent tissue damage” if they didn’t show any reaction). The amount of time before paw-licking or jumping is measured using a stop watch.
In the susceptible strain, the Warsaw team found that the difference between the infant rats exposed to thimerosal and those with no exposure was highly significant. Unexposed rats took about 10 seconds before they demonstrated discomfort on the hot plate (8 seconds for males and 11 seconds for females); rats exposed to vaccine level doses of thimerosal took about twice as long before they reacted to the heat (over 15 seconds for the males and close to 25 seconds for the females). The researchers concluded that this was the result of “long term neurodevelopmental alterations in brain organization and function.”
This finding of harm due to thimerosal exposure is by no means the first in such animal models. In a 2004 paper, Hornig’s susceptible strain of mice showed clear evidence of developmental delay and altered brain development when compared with unexposed mice. In 2007, Peruvian researchers published similar experimental evidence using hamsters; they followed Hornig’s protocol and found clear evidence of developmental delay and brain injury (HERE).
Interestingly, neither of these two studies exposed the study animals to thimerosal at birth. When a recent study group from the University of Pittsburgh and Thoughtful House examined infant primates to see whether a birth dose of thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccine influenced development (HERE), they found significant delays in a group of survival reflexes in the exposed infant monkeys.
In the only other study performed on mice, a group from the University of California that was funded by NIH attempted to replicate Hornig’s mouse model, but found little effect from thimerosal. This apparent contradiction left open the question, which group was correct, California or Columbia? Based on several recent studies, the weight of the evidence seems clear: only the NIH group has been unable to replicate Hornig’s work (suggesting the California team’s methods may have been flawed), while researchers from Peru to Poland have supported the Columbia findings.
In short, Hornig was right. Thimerosal in vaccines is dangerous to infants.
When science imitates life
In late August 1998, our family took a vacation at a friend’s house on the Gulf Coast of Florida. One sunny day, I was sitting in a chair reading a book when I noticed my daughter Michaela, who was then just shy of three years old, toddle up to a reading lamp that was standing right next to my chair. It was early in the afternoon, the room was full of light and I thought the lamp was turned off. She put her fingers up to the light bulb and just after touching it pulled her hand back sharply. Then she just wandered on about the room, with no further reaction or indication of discomfort. I was concerned, however, so I reached up to check the lamp and was surprised to find that the bulb was scalding hot. It was one of those adjustable brightness lamps, and someone had turned the brightness all the way down without switching the light all the way off. I watched Michaela a bit more, waiting for the inevitable wail of pain that never came. Figuring there was nothing to worry about, I switched off the light and continued reading.
The next day, we were all walking towards the beach when I reached down to hold Michaela’s hand as we were about to cross the street. I noticed that her fingers had an angry burn on them where she had touched the light bulb the day before. Her skin had started blistering and it was clear that her brief encounter with the standing lamp had given her what must have been a painful burn. I told my wife about what had happened and we went back to the house to tend to her wound.
But what amazed me most was that my little girl never showed a hint of distress. If I hadn’t seen her pull her hand back from the bulb I would never have known what had happened. She never cried; she never displayed any sign of pain or “nociception”; she barely even noticed.
And, of course, she never spoke a word because she wasn’t speaking at all back then. Just a week later, on the Friday before Labor Day, we had a meeting with a developmental pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and received official notification that Michaela was autistic. The Labor Day weekend that followed was a time of profound shock, and that Friday was the day our lives changed forever.
But in my mind’s eye, I often return to that image, just a few short days before, of Michaela touching the light bulb. It was for me, the single most vivid demonstration that something wasn’t quite right with my little girl. Looking back, it’s clear that she had stumbled into a domestic version of the hot plate test, one operating at temperatures that would provoke charges of cruelty in an animal experiment, but one with starkly similar results. Born in November 1995, Michaela received almost the identical weight-adjusted thimerosal doses as the Columbia University mice, the Peruvian hamsters and the Warsaw rats (more, in fact, since she had also received the birth dose that the Pittsburgh primates had received). So reading this new study from Warsaw meant more to me than most other scientific papers; it was one of the handful of papers I’ve ever read where the experiment literally jumped off the page.
After all, I’d already seen it with my own eyes.
Mark Blaxill is Editor At Large for Age of Autism.
Has anyone noticed how many hucksters are on this and many other similiar websites? Adds for items which are marketed to help those conditions we wish to banish...but which themselves have not been tested.
You probably won't see this comment since the author of the article has to approve it and the site receives money to market the products.
Posted by: P. Phelan | November 13, 2009 at 12:47 AM
Sensory Integration Dysfunction...sounds like a lot of peds, and other medical authorities, these days...
'These days': I recall reading, in 1955-6, in a monthly (that I think was The Atlantic), a mother's report of her then-teenaged son who had been diagnosed with a strange new condition starting to appear called autism. Besides the usual symptoms (even then) - of being in a world of his own, etc. - he displayed two in-particular peculiar features. One was that he would put his face right up into reading lamps, as if fascinated where the light was coming from (It never seemed to hurt his eyes, reported his mother to the interviewer.) the other particular peculiarity about him was that if he saw a bottle of cooking or salad oil he would grab it and guzzle the whole thing down, if not stopped.
I had been a pre-med up until then, and though I chose not to continue on in to medical school, I still had a pre-med's scientific bent of mind; and I remember wondering, What is this all about? What could be causing this obvious brain damage? That conclusion was obvious to me, because of the symptoms in general; and as for the obsession about the cooking/salad oil, that had to be because of the ingredients; and even I knew that the brain was largely made up of fats/oils...
...even I knew...
..and all these years later, the medical authorities are still scratching their heads, and wondering... -
No. I don't buy that. They're not wondering, any longer.
They know.
John Stone mused, a ways back in this thread:
"What has come over so much of the scientific community that they will countenance this great evil and connive at it?"
I used to think, 'They just don't have a chance to read the alternative literature on this subject; they just don't know.' Or as a last resort: 'They're still convinced that the benefits of vaccines so "far outweigh" the risks that they are just true believers.'
But no. I can't give them - my just-about peers in life - the benefit of the doubt any longer.
They know. And John Stone's question is the correct one to ask.
And my answer?
That it's more than just venality, John.
It's power. And the power to corrupt absolutely thereof.
They are the priests of our day.
No. far more. They are the gods of our day.
And they are riddled with moral corruption.
Because without a vision - a vision of something more than Man - the people perish.
And their keepers go first.
Posted by: Stan | November 08, 2009 at 12:36 PM
It's a shame that greed is still overcoming the better judgement of the Health industry and that the Majority of Americans think people like us are crazy, ater all the CDC/FDA and US Government wouldn't allow harm to our children right? Sure, just like they didn't with tobacco. Our day is coming, just not soon enough for some children. Mercury is no doubt bad, I think with the current schedule the MMR is the worst offender though. It's a shame pediatricians don't educate themselves, they could prevent alot of damage.
SCD Diet, LDN, B-12 folic acid, antifungal parade until all food allergies are discovered and ceased.
Good luck to all!
Posted by: RF | November 06, 2009 at 07:19 PM
We too, had a "hot plate" incident which now in hindsight, I can see as a red flag, but back then, we just thought what a "tough kid" she was.
There were 3 parents standing in our kitchen and Macie was playing on the floor at our feet. She was about 13 months and she had just received her vaccinations. (Her b-day is in April and the set of shots that "took her away from us" were given on May 22 and then a flu shot several weeks later.) Looking back at this incident, this truly was the beginning of us losing her to autism. By about 16 months of age, she had lost all language, eye contact, social skills and interaction and the tantrums, rashes and diarrhea, were constant.
We had a fairly new "chef's stove" — a big, silver monster that was turned on and I had felt the entire front of it, including the glass, to make sure it wasn't hot to the touch because we were all standing and playing so close to it. It was actually cool so I felt it safe for her to be there with us. The next thing I knew, Macie was making a funny noise — not too loud, not screaming, but her hand was up and under the stove. I pulled her away, thinking that she got her hand "stuck" and noticed blisters! My husband grabbed her and threw her hand under water while I called 911. While talking to the 911 operator, I was trying to get my hand where Macie must have put hers, feeling around for heat. I found the spot, but my hand was actually too big to get to the place where she must have put hers — it was just a small crack on the underside of the stove where the door connected. The whole time we were running water on her hand — there was just some minor fussing. When at the hospital and while they were peeling her skin away — still, little upset from her. I, on the other hand, was distraught.
She has a big scar to this day - one she will want plastic surgery on when she is older and a constant reminder of that day. It is the only visible or noticeable sign that she ever had autism. And every time I look at her hand, I am reminded of how far we have come and how lucky we have been to have her back with us — whole and healed, but for this small imperfection.
Posted by: krissie | November 06, 2009 at 04:20 AM
I got a meesage for these pharmaceutical vaccine manufacturers, but I can't bring myself to swear that openly on this forum, nor are there words that can describe the bitter trials they envoked on our family....there are no words for the times I held my son through a grand mal seizure, no words for the times I had to clean up autistic enterocolitis, no words for the stares and glares we have had to endure from the public, and no words for the type of professional medical pronouncements/misjudgements/diagnosees of life long disorder and just forget about them. I have no words for these people who knowingly put chemicals in our children's brain with known mitochondrial poisons, known carcinogens, and myelin eaters. No known words for the retroviruses, and contaminations they knew were in them, which causes persistet immune dysfunction and damage to every part of the brain, gut, thyroid and any organ willing to harbor them. There are simply no words for these people who laugh while they are on the shores of the Caribbean with their wives with diamond rings, while I relax on the shores of my blown up swimming pool, because we can't afford vacations because of the medical mockery they call untreatable autism. No words for the lack of funds I will have when I die, because I could not bring myself to take off one vitamin or mineral off their routine because I saw it did something for them in the positive territory and eased their obvious pain. I don't like suffering, never had, and never will...yet, they seem to glory, and enjoy it, as long as it's not their child.....or any other family member (excuse me, I have to make a phone call to my grandaughter who is having a baby)....he hemmm. NO I don't excuse you, I want you front and center, and I want you to witness what your committe wants to hide. Its called real incontravertible truth and science...you know...the kind of science that is not taught in medical schools where you have to actually use your brains? The recipe of autism...ah yes...some say no child is alike...I agree...but one thing is for sure...they didn't need thimerosol ever...RETROVIRUSES/CONTAMINATIONS + METALS + INABILITY TO DETOX = Autism...DUH!!!!!!???
Posted by: Kathy Blanco | November 06, 2009 at 12:20 AM
Hey, vaccine companies - remember you are in the sales business. You are selling a product. Even if you don't think there is a problem with Thimerosal much of the public clearly doesn't want it in their kid's vaccines, period. Make a product they feel comfortable with injecting into their children and you won't have a problem selling it. It really is as simple as that.
Posted by: AnaB | November 04, 2009 at 08:46 AM
This Hot Plate study about the rats should be put on all the news shows, CNN, ABC, NBC,CBS. That's good enough evidence for me that thimerosal disrupts the development in our children. My Son is also a victim as a result.
Posted by: Carl Fletcher | November 04, 2009 at 08:07 AM
Jessica, you should never be disappointed in your child. This was no where near his fault, hun. I am right there with you in feeling the anger at the denial of what has happened and continues to happen to our children; in feeling the humiliation when you are told by doctors, whom you are supposed to trust, that you are confusing correlation with causation and that you are an idiot; in being disappointed at science who is covering the butts of those with the most money instead of doing the research that needs to be done. But this isn't your son's fault; our children have done nothing wrong. We also shouldn't blame ourselves; we did nothing wrong either. We are responsible members of society who felt it was the right thing to do by getting our children vaccinated. The ones who should be feeling guilty and who should be feeling disappointed in themselves are those that are dismissing us for doing the right thing and watching our children suffer for it.
Posted by: Craig Willoughby | November 04, 2009 at 07:56 AM
My son never received any TVCs and his routine blood, porphin, and zinc/copper ratios all indicate mercury exposure that is considered within the normal range. But, he still had 2 vaccine reactions: 1 to the 6 mo. DPT and the other the MMR, which triggered the seizures & GI.
Posted by: AnaB | November 04, 2009 at 07:27 AM
I think a class action lawsuit is in order, and I would like to be a part of that.
My daughter was born in 1998, and received TCV's early as she was premature and the schedule was not delayed to account for that.
At 12 months, only a week after those vaccines, she had a pink diaper. I took her to the ped, who told me it was "probably something she ate." Turned out it was blood and she had a kidney stone. She was not showing extra fussiness.
I also remember when she was 3 yrs old and we were on a short trip. She was getting fussy and writhing in her car seat. It was the first time I realized her constipation must be causing her some significant pain.
OUR POOR BABIES.
Posted by: Angry in Michigan | November 03, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Mark
Thanks for your efforts. You are appreciated. Sadly we have a 'hot plate' story too. It never ceases to astonish me what our kids go through and how these important experiences are discounted or pushed aside.
Thanks for advocating for our kids
Posted by: Lisa @ TACA | November 03, 2009 at 10:42 PM
Lisa, they never "removed" the thimerosal. What they are supposed to have done is produced the vaccines without using it in the first place, thereby necessitating the use of single-use vials. The thimerosal was the preservative enabling them to use a multi-use vial, where they could stick up to 20 (I think?) syringes and not have bacteria grow as a result of certain contamination from the (supposedly clean, but not sterile) syringes.
In the 1980's, thimerosal was banned in all OTC products. Single use tiny vials of eyedrops are now available (with no preservatives of any kind, let alone mercury). Yet, we are still expected to inject thimerosal into our children's veins.
When will they figure it out??
Posted by: Taximom | November 03, 2009 at 10:25 PM
"Sometimes when we are disappointed in our children, they can manifest that disappointment as a delay."
I was disappointed in my son. I was disappointed that he had rock hard stools followed by months of chronic diarreah after his 4 month shots. My ped told me rock hard stools that made my son's anus bleed were totally normal.
I was diappointed that after I took my son into the ped's office with full-body eczema they wrote on his records the words SHOT REACTION and never, ever told me this is what happened - even they knew!
I was disappointed he screamed for hours on end in obvious pain and I was unable to help him or find anyone who would treat him.
I was diappointed he suffered - suffered terribly - and was failed by the entire American medical establishment before we could stop it.
I was diappointed to find out how much crap was really wrong with my child - including standard, run of the mill allergy testing - that our pediatrician refused to order because "all autistic kids are like THAT" (whatever the hell THAT means).
I am further diappointed by people who don't bother to read, research or talk to a single parent of one of these sick children before passing judgement by accusing parents of being just "disappointed" that their kids aren't reciting Shakespeare at 12 months. Sounds like someone has been listenting to Shock Jock radio -didn't we just go through this shit?
Posted by: Jessica | November 03, 2009 at 08:22 PM
P. Jennings and other posters - despite living in southern Florida, my child (suspected celiac) NEVER sweated until we started the biomedical approach to helping him.
It is absolutely amazing . . .
Posted by: SFM | November 03, 2009 at 08:01 PM
Mark,
Thanks for sharing this research and how it so personally effected you. I have had this encounter too, where a study on paper takes me back to a memory of Meg's regression. This study shows me why she still is unable to sense the temperature in the bathtub or why she can walk on burning hot cement in bare feet. She gives no indication of pain but her poor skin will be red and burned. At age 16, this tells me the damage from thimerosal is still there, wreaking havoc.
My first experience with the sobering realization of the depth of Meg's injury was when I read ,"Autism: A Novel Type of Mercury Poisoning." As I read it, the words "sweating abnormalities", jumped out at me as I remembered vividly a reunion picnic we had attended when Meg was about 2.5 yo,which took place on a hot July day. All of the people, young and old were sweating except my Meg, who was beet red but not a drop of perspiration. She was crying and never smiled. It must have been torture for her but we didn't know then.
"Autism: A Novel Type of Mercury Poisoning" is the most comprehensive paper I have ever read that describes autism in my daughter. I could go on and on describing the myriad symptoms that Meg had and continues to have so this is my opportunity to thank all of the authors- Sallie Bernard,Albert Enayati,Teresa Binstock,Heidi Roger,Lyn Redwood, and Woody McGinnis who have taken us up right to today with their diligent research on mercury/thimerosal damage and what we see in our kids- from 10 years ago, their research has almost predicted the science of today in autism -
http://www.autism.com/triggers/vaccine/mercury.htm
"Mitochondrial dysfunction, especially in brain"
"Low levels of glutathione; decreased ability of liver to detoxify heavy metals"
"More likely to have allergies and asthma; familial presence of autoimmune diseases, especially rheumatoid arthritis; IgA deficiencies"
"Indications of on-going immune response in CNS"
"Skewed immune-cell subset in the Th2 direction and abnormal CD4/CD8 ratios"
"Elevated glutamate and aspartate"
"Diarrhea, constipation, gaseousness, abdominal discomfort, colitis"....and much more.
Posted by: Teresa Conrick | November 03, 2009 at 06:06 PM
to Pamela @"can anything be inferred about this reference to the opioid system and our children's reaction to wheat gluten, given the apparent opium like effect wheat has on so many of them?"
Yes.
But imo not necessarily just because of gluten etc foods acting as opioids... but because of raised chronic inflammation in our kids and because the immune/inflammatory (chemokine) systems are intrinsically connected to opioid systems. (Hence LDN)
Posted by: Natasa | November 03, 2009 at 05:44 PM
"Sometimes when we are disappointed in our children, they can manifest that disappointment as a delay."
It's things like that that make me lose my mind. We have had a taste of that bull shit a couple of times before.
From Ben's pediatrician's notes recovered after Ben's diagnosis:
mom concerned doctors unable to be positive he has OM vs. viral and wants to know if Ben could possibly have leukemia or anything else that may be causing chronic and recurring fevers.
mom also asked about seizure activity, during the day he will stiffen up and kind of be unresponsive however will have no shaking. he will wake up in middle of night or during nap screaming and crying and acts as if parents are not there, not interacting with them.
mom wonders about high fever and how it may have affected his brain and whether it can account for his behavior problems
Ben well appearing , playful, no apparent distress
seems to exhibit age appropriate behavior, maybe a bit on hyperactive side
mom very preoccupied with Ben’s behavioral what she perceives to be Ben’s behavioral disorder and is eager to find the cause at this point
mother concerned about lack of speech and not responding to name
advised to wait until first of year
vaccines given today, DPaT and flu
Posted by: bensmyson | November 03, 2009 at 05:10 PM
Still thinking about this and wondering if they checked the rats' heart rates, or even if, like humans, rat heart rates are elevated when they are in pain...
Posted by: A Mom | November 03, 2009 at 05:08 PM
Not to get off topic, but I am wondering if anyone here knows whether and how it has been confirmed that the drug companies actually removed mercury from the vaccines that they were supposed to remove them from. I don't trust these drug companies as far as I can spit. And since we know they are still selling their mercury-laced vaccines to the developing world, it seems like it would be fairly easy for them to do a switcharoo, periodically shipping the mercury-laced vaccines to unsuspecting (and perhaps uncaring) U.S. doctors. This would avert what for them must be a dreaded before-and-after comparison of health and developmental outcomes in children who received maximum mercury exposure vs. the supposedly reduced exposure levels on the schedule today.
I am really concerned about this. I know it sounds like a vast conspiracy theory, but these drug companies have already proven themselves to be capable of lying about anything and everything in order to look more attractive on Wall Street.
Please let me know if either you yourself have checked the vials -- not just the labels but the contents of the vials themselves, or if you know of somebody who has. Unless this is being routinely audited by a government agency, who's to say what's really in those containers?
Posted by: Lisa | November 03, 2009 at 05:00 PM
I don't believe it is an insensitivity to pain at all. I believe it is an inability to verbalize, with words, pain or to demonstrate that they are in pain. It's like something stops the process in between the onset of pain and the reacting to it.
The best example I can give is this: When I was passing a kidney stone, I was in excruciating pain. Pain like labor pain but in a different, smaller area. I was given powerful pain meds. They didn't diminish the pain at all but they did diminish my ability to keep complaining about the pain. I was so f'd up on pain meds that I couldn't speak. But the pain was no less. No less at all! I am sure the nurses thought I was in less pain though, because I stopped complaining.
Posted by: A Mom | November 03, 2009 at 04:45 PM