Speaking of Silent Spring, we came across a striking discussion this week while reading  Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 book that launched the environmental movement.  She was writing not about autism but about mitochondrial dysfunction. That, of course, is the "co-morbid" condition Hannah Poling has. The public health establishment has spun the government's remarkably clear concession that vaccines caused Hannah's autism into a fuzzed-up fantasy about an "underlying mitochondrial disorder." We are assured by the CDC's Julie Gerberding that none of this has anything whatsoever to do with any other person diagnosed with autism in the history of the universe – meaning since 1943, when it was first reported in 11 children in whom environmental mercury exposure is a plausible link. (See my Age of Autism column, Mercury Link to Case 2 HERE.)

But Rachel Carson turns out to be an inconvenient icon -- she links malfunctioning mitochondria not to genetic inheritance but to the rise of toxic environmental chemicals.
 
"The mitochondria are the 'powerhouses' in which most of the energy-producing reactions occur," she writes. "Medical research has only rather recently turned to the functioning of the individual cell in producing the energy that is the indispensable quality of life.

…Yet the nature of many of the chemicals used against insects, rodents, and weeds is such that they may strike directly at this system, disrupting its beautiful functioning."
 
Carson notes "the charging of the battery … is coupled to the oxidative process; the close linking is known as coupled phosphorylation. If the combination becomes uncoupled, the means is lost for providing usable energy."

And what might cause this catastrophic uncoupling? Radiation, for one. "Unfortunately," she continues, "a good many chemicals also have the power to separate oxidation from energy production, and the insecticides and weed killers are well represented on the list.

"The crowbar to wreck the wheels of oxidation can be supplied by any of a number of chemicals commonly used as pesticides. DDT, methoxychor, malathion, phenothiazine, and various dinitro compounds are among the numerous pesticides that have been found to inhibit one or more of the enzymes concerned in the cycle of oxidation. … This is an injury with the most disastrous consequences, only a few of which can be mentioned here."

Suffice it to say those include birth defects in humans. While Carson pays scant attention to fungicides and especially seed treatments, those fall under the rubric of pesticides, and as I've shown, new ethyl mercury fungicides can be linked to the first three cases of autism. That, of course, is the same kind of mercury used in vaccines.

Boyd Haley, the bete noir of the "mercury is good for babies" school of vaccinology, recently pointed out the ways mercury can mess with mitochondria. He concluded:
"The young girl in the latest autism story may or may not have had a mitochondrial disorder before receiving her thimerosal containing shots. This would have to be proven by a genetic testing. However, she, nor anyone else getting high doses of thimerosal at an early age, would necessarily have to have an underlying mitochondrial disorder to have a negative reaction to thimerosal exposure. Thimerosal exposure at a young age could definitely be the cause of the mitochondrial problems she had subsequent to the vaccines."

But what about the "highly heritable" theory? Haley says: "The young girl's mother would have the same mitochondrial DNA, as all mitochondria are 100% inherited from the individual's mother. So why didn't the mother develop any neurological problem as she certainly had to have some immune-system stress in her life sometime? This is just grabbing at straws to prevent what is already common knowledge to scientists, which is that mitochondria are extremely sensitive to thimerosal and other types of mercury-related toxicities."

The mitochondria-chemical link was as obvious to Rachel Carson 46 years ago as it is to Boyd Haley today. So why is "the other side" so hell-bent on turning Hannah's mitochondria disorder into a vanishingly rare genetic anomaly? It's because facing up to the idea that chemicals – especially a vaccine component, and in particular mercury – caused both disorders would be the beginning of the end. (Memo to the AAP and CDC: The end is in fact near.)

I can't help pointing out two other comments by Rachel Carson, a wise observer not just of nature but of human nature. Talking about crabgrass killers, she writes: "Marketed under trade names which give no hint of their nature, many of these preparations contain such poisons as mercury, arsenic, and chlordane." The benign-sounding thimerosal (the highly toxic ethyl mercury in baby shots) kind of fits that bill, wouldn't you say? And she's horrified just by spraying mercury on the lawn, let alone sticking it in a newborn's thigh.

Then she talks about the fact that the "experts" of her day routinely denied environmental damage that was so eff-ing obvious (my phrase, not Miss Carson's!) it was ridiculous. See if you can spot the analogy here: "The citizen who wishes to make a fair judgment of the question of wildlife loss is today confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand conservationists and many wildlife biologists assert that the losses have been severe and in some cases even catastrophic. On the other hand the [pest] control agencies tend to deny flatly and categorically that such losses have occurred, or that they are of any importance if they have. Which view are we to accept?
 
"The credibility of the witness is of first importance. The professional wildlife biologist on the scene is certainly best qualified to discover and interpret wildlife loss. The entomologist, whose specialty is insects, is not so qualified by training, and is not psychologically disposed to look for undesirable side effects of his control program. Yet it is the control men in state and federal governments – and of course the chemical manufacturers – who steadfastly deny the facts reported by the biologists and declare they see little evidence of harm to wildlife. Like the priest and the Levite in the biblical story, they choose to pass by on the other side and to see nothing. Even if we charitably explain their denials as due to the shortsightedness of the specialist and the man with an interest this does not mean we must accept them as qualified witnesses."
 
Wow. The government and the manufacturers steadfastly deny eyewitness reports and evidence of harm caused by the toxins they introduced. They minimize the importance of any damage they are forced to concede. They choose to see nothing.

Including the truth about Hannah Poling.
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Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism