You said it all Julie and you told my son's story as well. Thank you

Makes sense, Did not really think much of it until we had a child with autism but then realized that 3 other boys on the same block (over a span of 18 years) were on the spectrum. Another woman passed away from cancer, we did not live there more than 3 years but both children that were born when we lived there (in our family)have issues.

Paul Shapiro
I agree 100%. It's the same thing that happened with cancer, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and almost any other disease you can think of. As a matter of fact when is the last time that the medical industry cured anything. I can't think of any thing since polio and antibiotics and polio wasn't really a cure. I guess they're just too big to cure!
Denise

There are as many opinions as to the cause(s) of the Autism Spectrum epidemic as there are opinions.. And guess what?

I am convinced that the FDA, CDC, the vaccine and medication companies, the doctors, the lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers, the schools, the UN over seers, the US vaccine court, supervisors of group homes, and on and on and on love the circumstance of not knowing the cause or cure because all involved are fully employed and making a wonderful living off this scourge. This house of support has taken on a life of its own.

Only the parents of these poisoned children are suffering. Let me describe a scenario of the past that can be applied: Years ago there was a shortage of engineers. Industry made a big stink over the shortage. They complained to the politicians, to the universities, and to anyone one that would listen.
Well the universities geared up and expanded their engineering departments, the text book authors started writing text books, professors switched to the engineering school and more engineers were been trained and graduated in large numbers. Everyone was satisfied.
Finally a point was reach where the needs of industry were met. However, this umungus engineering training infrastructure had tremendous influence and sway and did not want to see their life style and jobs come to end. So they exerted their political force and continued producing engineers whether there was demand or not, until they saturated the engineering field, destroying the demand and salaries for engineers.
I believe the support that has grown for autism is traveling the same path. Please don’t find the cause or a cure because I will be out of a job. It really is sad!

It looks like we are exporting our environmental toxins to Africa, wonder which vaccine might be causing this. But CDC scientists are unable to recognize vaccine damage when they see it.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=childrens-nodding-syndrome-stumps-experts

Bob,

With all due respect, the Powers That Be do NOT want, nor will they, inject common sense into this equation. The PTBs absolutely know and understand the damage they are causing to millions with these vaccines (and other pharmaceuticals, for that matter).

I can see and feel the questions from so many posters, i.e., the absolute lack of common sense with all of this, the absurd notion that the FDA would label formaldehyde a known carcinogen, yet not warn about its usage in the vaccine industry. NONE of this makes sense, does it?

I have been researching vaccine safety and efficacy for well over 18 years, now. To me, the conclusions are inescapable. And no, I'm not stating that all pediatricians, nurses and others in our healthcare industry, are evil. Quite the contrary.

But you've got to ask yourself why is it that medical students and nursing students are NOT taught about vaccine ingredients in med/nursing school. Because they are not. I know - I've interviewed many of them. To the last one, they ALL have explained to me that it is verboten to even dare to ask some of these hardcore questions, such as what ingredients ARE contained in vaccines; what occurs during the manufacturing process, and what is the downside to vaccines. Those questions are frowned upon when students ask those very questions. Med/nursing students are CONDITIONED TO ACCEPT that vaccines can cause NO harm, that they are the best way - the ONLY WAY - TO PREVENT DISEASE.

Money may, perhaps, be the bottom line, but given that vaccines and all those lurking foreign RNA/DNA particles are still left floating around in those very vaccines of which are injected into human bodies, one MUST ask what else these vaccines are doing to the human race. These foreign particles and other excipients/adjuvants, etc., were NOT MEANT to be injected directly into the human bloodstream.

Perhaps good intentions are normally paved in gold, but now that there truly is a plethora of information vis-a-vis science which simply refutes the adage that all vaccines are good and no vaccines can harm, it's time to ask those really hardcore questions.

The FDA recently identified formaldehyde as a carcinogen .. and .. just about every article warned readers to avoid "touching, ingesting or inhaling" formaldehyde products. None warned of "injecting" formaldehyde contaminated vaccines directly into children.

In my humble opinion .. if the environment .. rather than genetics .. is now understood to be the greater contributing factor in causing autism .. wouldn't it be common sense for public health officials to BEGIN warning parents and pediatricians .. about the increased hazzardous exposure when INJECTING formaldehyde into children?

By the way .. does the Supreme Court believe vaccine manufacturers have no responsibility to remove what is now known as a carcinogen from vaccines .. because .. vaccines are inherently "unvoidably unsafe"?

I just read (Daily Mail online), that there was a study, where "people who have an autistic brother or sister 'carry dormant form of disorder that makes them less empathetic'. Siblings of autism suffers have a dormant aspect of the disorder which affects their brain activity. Scientists have known for some time that the brothers and sisters of those with autism are up to 100 times more likely to suffer from the disorder."

The personality trait they are talking about is found in the brains of introverts and scientific minds (AQ test). It's a personality trait, not a disorder born in about 25% of the population. Introversion was once a well-understood, and even well-respected, phenomenon. A world without introverts would be a world with few scientists or mathematicians. Research shows that introverts have higher levels of certain types of brain arousal and are more sensitive to some kinds of stimuli. Introversion is hard-wired in the brain from birth. The dramatic increase in autism can not be explained by this personality trait alone because there have always been introverts in the world. They have married and had children just like the 75% of extroverts who make up the rest of the world. But, perhaps, it is this specific trait and the way the brain is wired, that is responsible as to why genetics play a role in autism; the genes for introversion and for some the vaccine trigger (from introverted to autistic). So, while some children may be born autistic, some children have the potential to develop autism after an environmental trigger.

I'm not so sure about the connection between women who took anti- depressants and having a child with autism. I mean, it seemed like they (anti-depressants) started to become very "popular" by the /90's, right around the time they ramped up the immunization schedule (maybe even mid eighties). Those effects would all have to be differentiated. Funny that Orac hasn't tackled the new twin study, or the News of the World implications.

I think Professor Temple Grandin, who has AS has it just about right:

“Asperger’s has always been here, that’s the milder autism — ‘the nerd’ is the common term for it,” she said. But there is an increase in severe autism, she said, “where a child seems to be normal until about 24 months, where he is developing speech and then loses it. That’s called regressive autism, and it’s on the rise.”

Theories on autism abound and are often controversial — and the diagnostic criteria for the syndrome have widened.

Grandin believes the syndrome is largely genetic — but like others knowledgeable about the illness, she doesn’t know what is causing the increased prevalence.

“There’s a lot of talk about vaccine reactions, and I’ve talked to enough parents where I think that is a factor,” she said. “In some of these cases I think some sort environment insult to the brain” — such as heavy metal poisoning — “may be a factor.”

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March07/Temple.Grandin.html

The American Academy of Pediatrics should be in the headlights on all this as they deliver most (or all) of the interventions in question and avoid doing the testing that would prevent toxic overload and injury.

Plus, of course, they take big bucks from the drug companies.

Thank you for this. Our kids had the same "cocktail" minus the tuna (only because I hate fish). And that's the main point: in the end, the cause(s) of the epidemic cannot be a kitchen sink arrangement. I'm sick of that cowardly approach to it-- let's blame such a big mass of potential chemical causes and "emotional environment" factors so that the search never narrows down and we can treat it like a mystery forever. No, let's not.

Autism is too specific a disorder to be caused by "anything/everything" and the central culprits would have to be something rather ubiquitous and things likely to occur together. Occasionally there may be new wrinkles-- autism caused by a rare drug intervention, etc. But the rare wrinkle would logically also turn out to have overlapping toxic mechanisms with the causes responsible for most of the epidemic. Antidepressants are a great case in point, though I believe what the research found was that antidepressants are a "facilitator", much like Tylenol-- probably not the direct cause.

I also welcomed the antidepressant study, though it alarmed many people, who assumed that A) this could turn blame on parents; and B) this would become a decoy cause theory to draw away from vaccines/mercury pollution (and the combination you mentioned above) as cause.

The first concern is tempered by the same issues surrounding vaccination though: since the Mother's Act (named for a woman who, ironically, killed herself after being given antidepressants, which increase risk of suicide by many fold), the drugs have been heavily marketed in pregnancy as a "post partum depression preventive". Doctors will say these meds are like "insulin for diabetes"-- that you "have to" take them to get better. So the choice to take the meds is presented to parents much like the "choice" of getting vaccines for an infant. We are responsible to a degree, but this is tempered by the fact that parents are not given proper information, therefore can't give truly informed consent-- and the real responsibility still traces back to pharma which fradulantly marketed the drugs in pregnancy and health regulators and doctors who accepted pharma's "safety in pregnancy" reassurances too credulously.

The latter concern over antidepressants being used as a decoy would be impossible since only a certain small (unfortunately growing) percentage of mothers in general or mothers of children with autism took antidepressants during pregnancy. Not that this would stop some from speculating, which is annoying, but it would at least have the effect of denting sales of the drugs and making people think twice, which is a good thing.

After reading the text of the antidepressant/autism study, it was clear that the study was actually complementary to vaccine/mercury cause theories-- not a "counter" theory-- because one of the chief actions of SSRIs and other classes of psychotropes is to cause mitochondrial disorders. http://tinyurl.com/6boo8kc

SSRIs also cause disruption of tubulin assembly and may disrupt glutamine/glutamate in a way which could elevate serum ammonia, just like mercury as it happens: the whole process actually relates to mitochondrial damage. The same process of damage has been found in Depakote as well- a drug which has been acknowledged as a rare cause of autism. Depakote is a known mitochondrial toxin as well, which is why it's no longer given without acetyl-L-carnitine, which many might recognize as part of the "mito-cocktail" given to children with mitochondrial disorders.

I don't know if antidepressants can cause autism on their own. Theoretically, the drugs could set children up for susceptibility to subsequent toxic exposures such as vaccines and pollution (and Tylenol, antibiotics, etc.). It seems to be all about compounding damage to certain pathways. Since SSRIs, like other classes of psychotropes, were originally formulated from (get this) industrial solvents, dyes and herbicides, it's not a surprise that Rachel Carson's warnings about mito-toxic chemicals would end up applying to these medications.

Many also assumed that the antidepressant study was really only uncovering a link between autism and maternal depression. Those who embrace the "genetic" theories of depression and autism leapt to this conclusion and those who do not feared that this would become the buzz. This is what the mainstream "experts" were saying in the LA Times after all, but only because they ignored the actual content of the study. The study did control for maternal depression/mental illness by having diagnosis-matched, unmedicated control subjects to compare to medicated subjects. The results were clear: it was not depression or mental illness per se in moms which raised the rate of autism in offspring above the average. That might have been the most important finding of the study, since it contradicts most mainstream genetic theories which are attempting to kill two birds with one stone: link autism in offspring to genes in parents-- with a bonus of "proving" that autism parents are nutcases (and therefore no one should listen to the 50% of them who claim vaccines played a role their children's disabilities).

There is one hitch to the study which the authors didn't seem to address. Women suffering from depression or other mental disturbances who refuse to take antidepressants in pregnancy also might be slightly more likely to curtail or forego the full vaccine schedule. I still suspect the authors found a genuine correlation between autism risk and antidepressants, though it would have been an even more thorough study had they also controlled for vaccination in offspring.

Wow! Very nicely said! We just returned from an annual check up of my 10-year-old step-daughter. She exhibits anxiety but is otherwise considered neurotypical. She is 5th percentile on weight and 7th percentile on height but the doctor wouldn't give us a daily recommended calorie count. We asked. Instead he said he would refer us to an endocrinologist where we could get growth hormone shots to give her once per month for about 2 years!

As we were walking out the door, he said, "oh, you can't leave, I have to give her a shot". He went on to say that she needed her second chicken pox vaccine before going in to seventh grade (she's going in to 5th this fall) and that it was state law so we might as well do it now so she wouldn't have to have 3 that year. He told us we had to and he restated that she wouldn't be able to go to public school without it. I retorted there are ways to avoid it. He said, "religious exemption doesn't work when you've already given 15". And I said, "Well we didn't find God until late in life."

He's been drinking the cool-aid and we need a new pediatrician.