Lindsay M. Oberman, Ph.D. commented recently:
"I have heard anecdotally that people with ASD get less sleep, and perhaps that could also explain the increased, but not stable connectivity that we are seeing in the ASD brain."

In reply to her, I then wrote:
"Sleep (and dreams) add to the integrated extensiveness of being, experience, and thought, thereby improving attention and memory.
Indeed, dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general, thereby improving both memory and understanding.

The increased connectivity is understood as reducing what would otherwise be the balanced/stable and integrated extensiveness of their thought and experience."

Now, also consider that the following translates into a toxic/diseased/damaged body, consistent with a disintegration, contraction, and detachment of being and experience (including consciousness, sleep, and emotion):

The NUMEROUS vaccines are biologically active, and yet they are unnatural and foreign to the body. So when the body THEN reacts as if it is infected with disease (via immune responses/antibodies), is it not diseased/ill/damaged/infected to some extent? All of these NUMEROUS and altered/unnatural immune responses/vaccinations will eventually compromise our immune function. The answer is common sense and simple, and there is no way around this.

NOTE: Emotion is manifest (and differentiated) as sensory experience and feeling.

The integrated extensiveness of being, experience, thought, emotion, and feeling is improved in the typical, healthy, intelligent, and mature individual.

The following “big picture” is essential to this entire discussion.

The NUMEROUS vaccines are biologically active, and yet they are unnatural and foreign to the body. So when the body THEN reacts as if it is infected with disease (via immune responses/antibodies), is it not diseased/ill/damaged/infected to some extent? All of these NUMEROUS and altered/unnatural immune responses/vaccinations will eventually compromise our immune function. The answer is common sense and simple, and there is no way around this.

Also consider: The vaccines (viruses and bacteria) are altered and unnatural; AND the disease/infection process is fundamentally different as well (via injection). This is all very significant, in keeping with everything else that can be/has been said.Understanding that autism meets the definition of a disintegration and contraction of being and experience is very helpful in understanding, preventing, and treating this disorder. The increasing numbers of vaccines and the rising rates of disorders involving mind/emotion/body are of very serious concern.

The NUMEROUS vaccines are biologically active, and yet they are unnatural and foreign to the body. So when the body THEN reacts as if it is infected with disease (via immune responses/antibodies), is it not diseased/ill/damaged/infected to some extent? Also consider, all of these NUMEROUS and altered/unnatural immune responses/vaccinations will eventually compromise our immune function. Life is fragile, as it is delicately and precisely regulated and balanced. Artificially reconfigured/replaced sensory experience (including pollution, toxins, processed foods, television, vaccines, etc., etc.) is making us increasingly unconscious and reactive in various and unpredictable ways. We are becoming more inanimate.

The reconfiguration, replacement, and loss of sensory experience (and feeling) includes toxins, vaccines, lack of exercise, processed foods, television, etc., etc. This is making us increasingly unconscious and reactive in various and unpredictable ways; and this involves sensory processing disorders as well.

Autism is a disintegration, contraction, and detachment of being and experience (including consciousness). This also meets the definition/description of anxiety, depression, cancer, obesity, sleep disorders, and the experience of television. The NUMEROUS vaccines are biologically active, and yet they are unnatural and foreign to the body. So when the body THEN reacts as if it is infected with disease (via immune responses/antibodies), is it not diseased/ill/damaged/infected to some extent? Moreover, all of these NUMEROUS and altered/unnatural immune responses/vaccinations will eventually compromise our immune function, and worse. We are becoming more inanimate. The natural and integrated extensiveness of being and experience go hand in hand, as the disintegration, contraction, and detachment of being and experience go hand in hand as well. Author Frank Martin DiMeglio

The great revelation of art (including music) is that the world requires and involves man; although science has been slow to recognize this; for the danger of technology is that it is creating a world of experience that is toxic and foreign to the self where man is neither truly involved nor required. By pervasively and fundamentally changing our various sensory experiences (including the range of feeling thereof), the self’s ability to represent and form a consistent, comprehensive, and relatively extensive approximation of sense is being compromised; whereby sense and feeling [increasingly] cannot be properly experienced, utilized, and understood as the expression and extension of the self’s desire; and it is not only our loss of language that we face. (Consciousness and language involve the ability to represent, form, and experience comprehensive approximations of experience in general; and this includes art and music as well.) The reconfiguration (i.e., disintegration, alteration, reduction, and/or replacement) of sensory experience in general (including range of feeling) is progressively involving a disintegration and contraction of being and experience (including thought). This is evident in (and includes) sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, autism, obesity, and the experience of television. (Clearly, obesity involves a disintegration, contraction, and detachment of being/experience; and it is associated with increased risk of death from all causes.)

Moreover, there is no true difference between what is foreign/unnatural and toxic. Artificially reconfigured sensory experience (including pollution, processed foods, television, etc.) makes the self increasingly unconscious (and reactive) in unpredictable ways. The disintegration, alteration, reduction, and replacement of sensory experience and feeling involve the loss of the instincts; as the self is disconnected and detached from what is natural and truly sustaining. The disintegration and contraction (and this includes detachment) of being and experience go hand in hand. Being and experience are becoming excessively (and increasingly) unconscious and less animate. Finally, in reference to sleep disorders, it is important that dreams involve a fundamental integration and spreading of being and experience at the mid-range of feeling between thought and sense, in conjunction with the natural extensiveness and interactivity of being and experience.

In both depression and anxiety, the emotional disintegration and contraction of being and experience involves increased feeling at the emotional center of the self. In anxiety, this is consistent with excessive concern, the reduction in the desirability of experience, emotional imbalance (or variability), bodily aches and pains (i.e., emotional disintegration), the mind “going blank”, panic attacks (involving a sort of generalized paralysis and loss of experience), etc. Comparatively (and similarly), in depression, there is a contraction, detachment, disintegration, and loss of being and experience that also involves a loss of emotion. The loss of desire in both depression and anxiety involves a significant reduction in the comprehensiveness and consistency of both intention and concern as they relate to experience in general; and this has the dream-like effect of reducing thought, emotion, and memory, including the desirability and totality of experience as well.

Here is yet more information as to why the effects of the vaccines (or the reactions by the body thereto) would not necessarily be predictable or uniform.

Visually, the universal experience of the body is one of visual transparency (i.e., invisibility). Accordingly, when our bodies are visually distinguishable (or visible), then each of our visible experiences of the body (and of everything else for that matter) must necessarily be different (or unique); and individuals are then visually distinguishable as well. Since all of our bodies are visually transparent (or invisible), each of our bodies (considered individually) must necessarily be different when visible. Since the experience of the body is both visible and invisible, the visible experience of the body is necessarily changing (or inconstant), unique, and finite. The disintegration of the visual experience when an object is close to the eyes is demonstrative of the relationship between visibility and invisibility. The visible appearance of the body (including that of experience in general) is relatively unique, finite, and limited. (This conclusion is also in keeping with the fact that thought and vision are necessarily different.) The thoughtful understanding of the visible is properly understood as variable and finite in relation to the totality of experience, including that of the body.

Thoughts and emotions are differentiated feelings. Our thoughts, emotions, and feelings are largely (or often) indiscernible to others in keeping with the fact that the body is transparent (or invisible inside the eye).

David,

Thanks for your thorough reporting on this. Full speed ahead in 2010!

thank God for reporters like David Kirby. It isn't even that he reports fairly on the issue. It's the fact that he has investigated/reported on it at all.

I think in our day in age, the age of crappy foods, toxic buildup in our bodies, that we must now decleare WE ARE anti vaccine. There are so many factors that breaks down the immune system to not handle them, that you cannot predict who can, or, who can't. I could tell you a few reasons how to detect that, but of course, we don't do that, we treat our children like cattle and sheeple, and trust the white coats they will fair the vaccine schedule. And I agree with some of the posts here...some of the rights of passage diseases of our youth, are now "called deadly". This is a vice to get us to scare us into submission. I liken them to the terrorists attacks, which attacks our psyche, therefore we give up personal freedoms.

Mercola had a good argument. We prime the pump of vaccine reactions, by the very foods we eat.

Much of the free glutamate in the brain of depressed people comes from within, that is it escapes from special cells within the brain itself (microglia and astrocytes). Free glutamate, that is, existing outside the neurons, is very toxic to brain connections and brain cells themselves -- mainly by a process called excitotoxicity.

This connection between high brain glutamate levels and major depression was discovered quite by accident, when researchers observed that the anesthetic drug ketamine could relieve depression for a prolonged period. Ketamine is a powerful blocking drug for a class of glutamate receptors (NMDA receptors).

For quite some time it was known that depression could cause a loss of neurons in the hippocampus of the brain-the area most important for recent memory (declarative memory or working memory), the form of memory most affected in Alzheimer‘s disease.

This shrinkage of the brain usually occurred with long-term depression, yet it was shown, using sophisticated testing, that even without brain shrinkage, memory could be adversely affected. Some antidepressants could not only reverse the memory loss but could reverse the shrinkage as well.

The implication was that the elevated brain glutamate, via excitotoxicity, was destroying brain connections and later killing brain cells in the hippocampus and that the antidepressants were lowering brain glutamate levels. Subsequent studies have confirmed that drugs that block excitotoxicity also reduce depression and that some antidepressants reduce brain glutamate levels.

The Link Between Elevated Brain Glutamate and Inflammation

A tremendous amount of research has now demonstrated the link between chronic low-level brain inflammation, elevated brain glutamate levels and major depression. We know that as we age, the level of inflammatory immune cytokines increase (such as interleukin-1ß (IL-1), IL-6 and TNF-a). That is, the level of inflammation in our body increases, with high levels being seen at the extremes of life -- the 80s and 90s.

This progressive elevation in the body‘s inflammation increases our risk of a number of inflammation-linked diseases, such as cancer, arthritis, muscle weakness, fatigue, sleep disturbances, memory loss and confusion. People with Alzheimer‘s and Parkinson‘s disease have even higher levels of these inflammatory cytokines -- much higher.

When inflammatory chemicals are elevated in the brain it makes brain cells more vulnerable to a number of toxins, many of which are in the environment. One study demonstrated, using a series of sophisticated techniques, that if brain cells were exposed to low levels of a pesticide there was little toxicity seen and that if you exposed these same brain cells to an immune stimulant alone, little damage occurred.

But if you first exposed the brain cells to the immune stimulant, the same low dose of pesticide could destroy a great number of brain cells.

The importance of this observation was that the vaccine made the brain cells hypersensitive to the toxin so that even in concentrations that normally would do not cause harm, could wiped out most of the neurons. One of the strongest connections between an environmental toxin (pesticides) and a neurological disorder is with Parkinson‘s disease.

The reason it is more common in the elderly is that they have the highest levels of inflammatory cytokines. This also explains the high incidence of Alzheimer‘s disease, which reaches incidences of 50% after age 80.

The link to depression was also serendipitous

Doctors using immune cytokines to treat patients with cancer or hepatitis found that one third of the patients developed major depressive illness within days of the treatment and that it resolved only when the treatment was terminated. Other studies, in which inflammatory cytokine levels were measured in people with major depressive illness, also found most had high levels of these inflammatory chemicals.

To their surprise, they found that many of the antidepressant medications commonly used lowered inflammatory cytokines levels and that patients who failed to respond had the highest level of the cytokines.

So, how is this linked to excitotoxicity?

Neuroscientists have known for some time that inflammatory cytokines cause the brain to release higher levels of glutamate -- the more intense the inflammation, the higher the brain glutamate level. The highest levels are found in the prefrontal lobes and limbic system, the areas most related to mood control. MSG also increases brain inflammation.

Vaccination and Brain Inflammation

A great number of studies have shown that when you vaccinate an animal, the body‘s inflammatory cytokines not only increase dramatically, but so do the brain‘s inflammatory chemicals. The brain has its own immune system that is intimately connected to the body‘s immune system. The main immune cell in the brain is called a microglia. Normally, these brain cells are lying throughout the brain in a resting state (called ramified).

Once activated, they can move around, traveling between brain cells like amoeba (called amoeboid microglia).

In the resting state, they release chemicals that support the growth and protection of brain cells and their connections (dendrites and synapses). But when activated, they secrete a number of very harmful chemicals, including inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, complement, free radicals, lipid peroxidation products, and two excitotoxins -- glutamate and quinolinic acid.

In essence, these brain immune cells are out to kill invaders, since the body‘s immune system sent an emergency message that an invasion had occurred. With most infections, this phase of activation last no more than a few days to two weeks, during which time the immune system successfully kills off the invaders.

Once that is accomplished, the immune system shuts down to allow things to cool off and the brain to repair what damage was done by its own immune system.

What researchers knew was that during this period of activation, people generally feel bad and that what they experience closely resembles depression -- a condition called "sickness behavior". Most of us have experience this when suffering from a viral illness -- such things as restlessness, irritability, a need to get away from people, trouble sleeping, fatigue and difficulty thinking.

Studies have shown that there are two phases to this "sickness behavior"; one in which we have the flu-like symptoms and a later onset of depression-like symptoms that can last awhile. They have also shown that all of these symptoms are due to high levels of inflammatory cytokines in the brain, which come from activated microglia.

A number of studies have also shown that after age 50, people have exaggerated and prolonged "sickness behavior", much more so than younger people. This is one of the reasons why many elderly hang onto flu symptoms for months after exposure.

There is also another immune phenomenon that plays a major role in vaccine-related brain injury. Researchers discovered that when you vaccinate an animal, the brain microglia immune cells turn on partially (called priming), that is, they are in a state of high readiness. If the immune system is activated again soon after (days, weeks to months), these microglia explode into action secreting levels of their destructive chemicals far higher than normal. This overreaction can be very destructive and make you feel very depressed.

Stimulating your immune system with a vaccine is far different than contracting an infectious illness naturally. Vaccines are made of two components -- the agent you wish to vaccinate against -- for example, the measles virus; and an immune system booster called an immune adjuvant.

These adjuvants are composed of such things as aluminum compounds, MSG, lipid compounds and even mercury. Their job is to make the immune system react as intensely as possible and for as long as possible.

Studies have shown that these adjuvants, from a single vaccine, can cause immune overactivation for as long as two years. This means that the brain microglia remain active as well, continuously pouring out destructive chemicals. In fact, one study found that a single injection of an immune activating substance could cause brain immune overactivation for over a year. This is very destructive.

So basically, my argument is this...until we know our bodies are able to handle such an insult, why risk it? Why is there an explosion of such magnitute as today with our children, who ROUTINELY ingest MSG in eighty percent of our foods supply, not to mention, the formulas they suckeled on before and during vaccines?

Another argument...and I have said it for a long time...when your child is teething, do you think their immune system is ready for vaccines? I have personally seen an unvaccinated baby during this time. There are times they get fevers, stomach upsets...the immune system is busy. Do we want to make it more confused and busy at the same time? Why is it that the timing of MMR occurs RIGHT DURING THIS TIME? Be smart people...your child is learning how to prime their immune system. I don't get why we need to make it more busy, and more confused? And if not, more inflammated?

Time to put our stone wall up and produce children without vaccines, and let them have the natural infections, with lifetime supports of good MSG free diets, full of whole nutrition, rather than this SHIT they call the medical system of doom.

what is paul offit's response to these new autism numbers?

My bottom line: vaccination for certain diseases in infancy is important for the majority of people: whopping cough, Meningitis. Some of these vaccines are unnecessary for most people: chicken pox, rotovirus (in the U.S. where we access to clean water), Hep B at birth, annual flu shot. Nobody should be stuck with a vaccine needle until genetic predispostion to vaccine injury is ruled out and the creation of testing for such should be A NATIONAL PRIORITY. Despite my belief that of 95% of people should be vaccinated with the most important vaccines, there are people, who after hearing my position still call me "anti-vaccine". That's absurd: anti-means entirely against. What part of what I just said equates to entirely against? Therefore, I must deduce that these people are not interested in intelligent discussion with me on the subject, but in emotional arguments. If they call people like me anti-vaccine then they hope to put me on the defensive where I have to defend myself against that charge, thus leaving the question of whether some people cannot handle vaccines unattended. It is a strategy full of logical fallicies, which is why I simply just let they call me whatever they want because they are obviously not hearing my point anyhow.