David Kirby on HuffPo: Dr. Francis Collins of NIH Speaks Out
Please click HERE to read and comment on David Kirby's HuffPo "NIH Director Francis Collins Blames Resignation Of Top Health Official From Autism Panel On "Tension And Lack Of Trust." Thank you.
...Meanwhile, Dr. Francis Collins, head of the NIH, has spoken out on the resignation of Dr. Landis from the IACC, in a video clip posted by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.
Dr. Collins called autism a "disease" (as opposed to a disorder) that "ravages" children, and conceded that parents have "understandably" been left frustrated and impatient. He also rightly stated that we need to "poke around in every possible way" and not assume that there is just "one path" to solving the riddle that is autism.
But, some parents also wonder, was the NIH Director admonishing them for making Dr. Landis feel it was "necessary" for her to resign from the IACC? Was Collins also demanding that parents "step back" from pressuring federal offcials to find the cause of their children's disease?
David Kirby is author of Evidence of Harm, a founding contributor to Huffington Post and a contributor to Age of Autism. His next book, Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment will be released within the year and is available now for pre-order at Amazon.
And, as Dr Walsh has said, autism IS neurodegenerative. He has seen some autistics in their thirties who never got an antioxidant in their life, their brains are disturbingly in the death mode. I mean that with all sinceity, this process of autism is not constant. This is why the oxidative stress model of autism is so important, any neurologist would agree, that a constant flood of high ammonia, and false neurotransmitters, viral process, bacterial process, and immune process, constitutes a disease, sometimes in all body organs....???? Why do you think our kids die of heart attacks, seizures, strokes, and cancers?
Posted by: Kathy Blanco | October 24, 2009 at 10:53 AM
To Josephius@ "De novo mutations…occur within one generation, from parent to offspring"
Precisely so. And they are occurring BECAUSE of environmental influences, because of things like environmental toxins - http://tinyurl.com/yhtl8sg - and infectious agents.
Retroviruses a case in point:
Retroviral Elements and Their Hosts: Insertional Mutagenesis in the Mouse Germ Line http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articlerender.cgi?artid=505628
Very interesting where they discuss protection from “harmful genomic consequences” of those retrovirus-induced de novo mutations through things like improved DNA methylation (mb12, DMG/TMG, SAMe anyone?).
Genetic mutations are not a life sentence.
In case you missed it, our knowledge on how and why genes mutate, and on how and why they are expressed/translated in actual proteins (a process highly influenced by environmental factors) – has come a long long way since Mendel poked about with his peas.
For those interested, more on copy number variations, immune and inflammatory predisposition, and host/viral gene interactions:
CCL3L Copy Number Variation and the Co-Evolution of Primate and Viral Genomes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2628739/?tool=pubmed
Posted by: Natasa | October 23, 2009 at 10:09 AM
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About the question of whether there has been a rise in numbers. (Not that there *is* any question . . . )
If every family with an autism-spectrum child would send one postcard -- one postcard for each child -- to Oprah, the Oprah show could do a tally and report those results.
Each postcard should include name, city, AGE of child.
The statistics that the government does not, and will not, collect would be there. There would be some number of "children" in their 30s. More in their 20s.
The numbers of teens and younger would be, and are, staggering.
Or if not the Oprah show, then someone should collect these statistics. Is there a national database somewhere? This is not rocket science, it's a simple Excel database thing.
Oh, and the "in group" of docs and researchers and other so-called 'scientists' always have current, trendy words. (One of them these days is "emergent." What does THAT mean?)
The definition of "disease" according a website at Princeton is "an impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning." Vague? You betcha!!
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Posted by: P. Jennings | October 22, 2009 at 11:34 PM
Well, Dr. Collins is right! It is a damn disease! Took 'em long enough!
Posted by: Benedetta | October 22, 2009 at 09:13 PM