Mary- Yes the kids have been affected by mercury/thimerosal but many of their behaviors stem from the downstream effects -- the toxic stew of metals, bacteria, yeast, viruses -- inflammation and oxidative stress.

Which leads me to Lenny's statement-

"If people with autism do anti-social things, it is not because of their autism, but because of other issues."

These "other issues" are autism...the behaviors listed in the infamous DSM manifest due to the medical issues of "autism". Treat them incorrectly with psychotropics, stimulants etc and/or ignore the GI issues, bacterial infections, parasites, yeast, brain/GI inflammation, etc and increased tragedies are the result. Suicides and homicides are not part of autism but we are in the midst of an epidemic and in an epidemic, fear and panic can set in and hope can be lost.

VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM

@robert hook
This administration and health care transformation? Are you really that naive or are you just kidding? Obama and this administration of socialist perveted idealogues are point blank stupid and have recently admitted to lying about how much money the health care bill will save. The truth is it will save no money and they have acknowledged that.

Any business owner with an iota of sense will tell you that increasing overhead does not save money and bringing our corrupt government and the weight of it's bureacratic waste into healthcare will not only not help but only hurt our health care system.

ROBERT HOOK YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT NONE.

Look at the Canadian health care system we are trying to emulate without saying so, it is completely broken and destitute economically, PATIENTS GET TREATED LIKE SHIT AND WE DO NOT NEEED MORE OF THAT HERE.

Do not take my word for it, listen to what the Canadiens think of it.I want the Americans and Canadians who like the Canadian system to see what Canadians THEMSELVES are saying about their socialized health care system :

(AP) A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies." Americans who flock to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians, rich or poor. But tell that to hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament.

"It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now," said Jane Pelton. Rather than leave daughter Emily in pain and a knee brace, the Ottawa family opted to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic in Vancouver, with no help from the government.

"Every day we're paying for health care, yet when we go to access it, it's just not there," said Pelton.

The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from province to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40 percent of every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The system is going broke, says the federation, which campaigns for tax reform and private enterprise in health care.

What about the availability of healthcare here are the stats
An estimated 4 million of Canada's 33 million people don't have family physicians and more than 1 million are on waiting lists for treatment, according to the Canadian Medical Association. Meanwhile, some 200 physicians head to the United States each year, attracted by lower taxes and better working conditions. Canada has 2.1 physicians per 1,000 people, while Belgium has 3.9, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

What about rationing health care does the Canadian system ration? Yes they call it queuing

Queuing

Queuing is a controversial measurement, not least because there may be many explanations for the queuing, many of them medically justifiable, so that aggregate queuing figures may conflate those whose waiting poses no health or other risk with those whose health may be impaired or may suffer pain while waiting.
That being said, in a system in which health services are free at the point of consumption, queuing is the most common form of rationing scarce medical resources. And since patient satisfaction plays no part in determining incomes or other economic rewards for health care providers and administrators in the public system, patients' time is treated as if it has no value. There are no penalties in the system for making people wait
All of this is due, as I argued in a major paper I co-authored in 2002,10 to the conflict of interest at the heart of Medicare, in which the people who are the ultimate providers of health care services in Canada are also the people charged with regulating the system and quality assurance. Since no one is a competent judge of his or her own performance, and no one likes to be held accountable for his or her work, the result is that the health care system simply does not set tough standards or collect the information that would allow us to hold the system's administrators accountable for their stewardship of our health care and the billions of dollars that they spend. The people who would collect the information are also the people whose performance would be assessed if useful information were made available. There appears to be no legal obligation on governments actually to supply the services they have promised to the population as their monopoly supplier of health insurance. This is an appalling double standard, as no responsible regulator would permit a private supplier of insurance to behave in this way, as a recent background paper for my Institute makes clear.11

What about the politicians and physicians that work in Canada? Listen to their opinions

VANCOUVER (CP) - The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says the country's public health-care system is headed for crisis, but a greater role for private health care could be the right prescription.
Dr. Brian Day said in his inaugural speech to Canada's medical establishment Wednesday that contracting out health services isn't new and has helped slash wait lists.
"Let's be clear: Canadians should have the right to private medical insurance when timely access is not available in the public system," he said to applause from about 270 delegates at the annual convention.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE FATHER OF THE CANADIAN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM CLAUDE CASTONGUAY? WHAT DOES HE NOW THINK?

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”

VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM AND socailized medicine leads to these types of unmitigated perverted power moves which could only be accomplished by bullying weak pediatricians into unnecessarily vaccinating millions of children against diseases which they have little chance of getting or dying from for profit by what appears to be a government headed for plutoacracy and or revolution.

No Robert Hook you better get back onto your ship with your crew of wierdocrats and go back to your distorted never never land where you never get any brains,never get any common sense, never get any ethics, never get any compassion, never get any courage, never get any concious,and never get any fear of God

VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM

Health care (transformation) is one of the best issues this current administration has done thus far. With this change individuals will have the opportunity to seek professional and quality health care services. Who would want to return to the days of the horse and buggy, b/w tv sets, manual typewriters, pac man, you get the point? That's about how old the health care system was in the USA. Each day the news is filled with social tragedies in which lives are taken at the hands of known acquaintences and/or family members. Our society is stricken with the institutions of white collar crime permeating throughout this great nation and greed which tends to strike at the very fabric of our country. If you are looking for affordable health insurance check out http://bit.ly/9fDY7U . I hope everyone will soon recognize and use the resources made by this transformation to seek professional medical attention as the need arises rather than turning to illegal and criminal activities to resolve their issues.

The Drug Industry put the Knife in his hand.

The evidence is emerging more and more that psyche drugs have a high risk potential for both homicide and suicide and yet Big Pharma runs the show in this country and gets away with murder while making a big fat profit. A minimum of 100,000 people die every year from "properly prescribed medications", and the real figure is much higher since the average physician reports of drug reactions and deaths are only 10%. Therefore easily a million people are dying from manmade patented prescription drugs which can be replaced with totally safe and effective natural remedies. Big Pharma owns congress and they own the medical system and they own the FDA and CDC so they are continually scheming to remove alternative medicine so that they can maintain their total monopoly. They financially bribe their way into getting what they want, so it's OK if 100,000 to 1 million people lose their lives from their toxic drugs every year??? While they continually attack natural remedies that resulted in only TEN deaths in a 23 year period of reporting.

VITAMINS VERSUS DRUGS SAFETY AND EFFECTIVENESS by Dr. Andrew W. Saul

(4) More than 100,000 patients annually die, just in the USA, from drugs properly prescribed and taken as directed.

(5) On the other hand, a review of poison control center reports reveals that vitamins have been connected with the deaths of a total of ten people in the United States. . . over the last twenty-three years.

100,000 reported deaths x 23 (years) = 2,300,000 MINIMUM

1 million deaths x 23 (years) = 23,000,000 MAXIMUM

2,300,000 - 23,000,000 drug deaths versus 10 vitamin deaths in the same 23 year period.

YES THE DRUG INDUSTRY PUT THE KNIFE IN HIS HAND; first they mercury poisoned him with vaccines and then they added insult to injury with psyche meds.

We need to stand up to these tyrants and education is the key to awareness. I read recently that 2 counties in California have an 80% vaccine refusal rate. How did these 2 counties get educated to achieve this result? We need to figure out how to accomplish this ourselves. All I can do is hand out vaccine awareness flyers to everyone I run into and send info by email to people I talk to on the phone. But here is what I have noticed in the past few months...more people responding with "I know about the vaccines so we no longer vaccinate". AMEN.

AoA and other autism and vaccine organizations are spreading the word and achieving results with the people who can then make the logical decision to "Just Say NO". Sorry Dadadvocate but Autism Speaks not only fails to educate regarding the vaccines, they actually SUPPORT this horrendous vaccine schedule that is wreaking havoc with our childrens health and lives.

Excuse me, but what's up with Autism Speaks? There is not one mention of the word "Vaccines" regarding the cause of autism. If you will notice from the following information from the Autism Speaks website, anything and everything BUT vaccines are being researched with their massive funding budget of 33 million for 2008, of which only 2% is going towards vaccines.

Autism Speaks is right in there with the rest of the mainstream medical denial of the reality of Vaccines being the primary single cause of autism. It seems apparent to me that Autism Speaks is involved in the vaccines cover up propaganda. Autism Speaks does NOT speak for our family or for my grandson.

http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science_news/geri_dawson_vaccines_autism_interview.php

"If questions remain, what do you tell parents when they ask whether they should get their child vaccinated?

Let me be clear: Autism Speaks fully supports childhood immunization and strongly encourages parents to vaccinate their children. Our vaccine program is one of our nation's most effective programs for preventing serious infectious diseases."

What about 1 in 6 children with neurological/learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD, plus Allergies, Asthma, Diabetes and Cancer steadily increasing with this vaccine schedule. America leads the world in vaccines and all of the above. Gee what a "coincidence"???!!!

Dadadvocate says:"Autism Speaks = The Great Satan crowd at AoA". AMEN TO THAT.

The autistic are not dangerous freaks who kill their parents when they grow up. Autism is not a disorder of sociopaths, psychopaths and dangerous malcontents. If people with autism do anti-social things, it is not because of their autism, but because of other issues. Let not accused murderers, assaulters and rapists use autism as a blanket excuse so that society comes to fear and loath their autistic neighbors. Let autism be a consideration in the sentencing of a person found guilty, but let it go no further. We need compassion for both the innocent as well as the guilty. Let's not help paint autism falsely criminal in order to pimp autism awareness. It will only backfire.

His family took him to the emergency room to have his medication adjusted.
----------------------
This sounds like a job for Paul Offit and Autism Speaks. He's the self-proclaimed Autism expert, and, of course, Autism Speaks dabbles in insurance governance relating to the quest for membership in the Allopath Hall of Shame.

Autism pill....my eye.

My comment on the Dallas blog:

Thank you for lending a voice of reason and experience to this, Dan. Because of things I observed about the effects of certain prescription drugs when I volunteered as a crime victims' advocate, the first thought that came to me when my twins were diagnosed in 2006 was "Every orthodox doctor and school is going to pressure to medicate". My second thought was "Over my cold, dead body".

I had already read every reform psychiatric tome on side effects in an effort to understand why even typical children and adults seemed to go berserk on these drugs. As my husband and I explored biomedical treatments for autism and read up on environmental impact on physical systems in autism, I was struck by the overlap between the cellular level damage of the drugs and damage from toxins in vaccines, pesticides and pollution. It's not precise enough an overlap to be a competing theory of cause of autism, not to mention the fact that mothers of autistic children (including myself) were not universally on these meds before or during pregnancy or breastfeeding. But the potential was pretty evident for the psychoactives-- all classes-- to compound preexisting injury in autism or to potentially make manifest genetic susceptibilities seen in some autism families (such as fragile mitochondria, a condition which can be benign if not for concentrated toxic assault).

Long before the rash of "autism murders" and murder suicides were being publicized, I wondered if it would turn out that family members of individuals with autism might themselves be particularly vulnerable to adverse effects-- including the listed risks of violence, suicide and "abnormal thinking"-- of prescription antidepressants, anxiolytics, sedatives and neuroleptics (any generation). Certainly no group of parents could be more squeezed, isolated, buried under debt and stress and therefore more vulnerable to getting that first prescription for chemical cosh in any case.

Typical parents seem to be killing typical children at an alarming rate in the ""Prozac age" as well (from the time that Prozac and other SSRIs were marketed in 1987-88 to 1993, rates of "filicide" in the US leapt a terrifying 7.9%-- at which point the government stopped taking clear statistics on child murders). But if there is a slightly higher potential for murder-suicide in autism families, I wonder if this would have to do with an increased risk of reaction to the drugs which may be at the root of a general increase in certain types of previously rare violence in the US.

The whole scenario of the autism epidemic seems like some demonic experiment to see how much humans can take before they explode or reach for the (profitable, on-patent) pills: insurance companies refusal to cover, lack of services, denial of appropriate medical treatment, denial of cause, denial of compensation, social isolation and stigmatization caused by the public being misled about the true nature of the epidemic-- or even that there is an epidemic and that their own family members could be affected next--the abuse in schools that render once gentle disabled children into angry rampagers; or drugs which do worse, putting families on a roulette wheel trying to find drugs to treat the violent side effects of the drug that came before and on and on.

Round and round she goes, and when we crack, nobody knows. Pharma profits on both ends of the catastrophe and from the grief and anxiety which spread into communities from every violent tragedy. I don't think the "demonic experiment" was planned-- I think it's a "happy accident", sort of the profitable upside of systematic incompetence.

It doesn't matter if one leans politically right or left-- I think there's a sad lesson in the late Howard Zinn's history of various American activist struggles we scarecely hear about because they lost their battles. As the epidemic is turned into a "self cleaning oven" and whole families are sometimes dying, I feel more and more determined to make sure we don't end up on the list of lost causes.

Dadvocate nailed it
"Bureaucrats, policy makers, and legislators won't magically "do something" unless they are led to the trough to drink. It's our job as a community to grab the reigns and lead them on a wide number of issues."

to add;
they need to be lead with a simple, cohesive & collaborative effort that unifies the autism community.

I have been on the autism journey almost 11 years. I have glimmers of collaboration and not enough unity. More divide than together we conquer. Change cannot come until there is Collaboration with a strong, focused voice.

Bob - At the risk of bringing out all the Autism Speaks = The Great Satan crowd at AoA, there are few effective national advocacy groups fighting for dollars and supports for adults, which is why Advancing Futures for Adults with Autism (AFAA), a collaborative partnership group largely put together by Autism Speaks was created.
http://www.afaa-us.org/site/c.llIYIkNZJuE/b.5063863/k.BE3C/Home.htm
I love the ASA folks but think their organizational structure is so convoluted that it diffuses any and every message that needs to be sent to the key people in government. For many, many years the effectiveness of ASA on policy issues has been extremely limited in my opinion.

A lot of people and groups are working hard on issues like supports and safety and funding. I strongly recommend you get involved with one of these groups, whether it's AFAA or one in your community.

Bureaucrats, policy makers, and legislators won't magically "do something" unless they are led to the trough to drink. It's our job as a community to grab the reigns and lead them on a wide number of issues.