By Dan Burns and Dr. William Walsh

Dr. William J. Walsh is an internationally recognized expert in the field of nutritional medicine. He earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Iowa State University. He’s authored hundreds of scientific articles and reports, and he directs physician training programs in Europe and Australia. Working at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, he organized a prison program researching the biochemical causes of violent behavior, and he developed biochemical protocols to treat behavioral disorders, ADHD, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, and autism. I’ve been talking to him about his new book Nutrient Power, where he predicts that nutrient therapies will revolutionize the field of mental health. Our discussion today centers on autism and violence.

DAN: In a recent series of mass murders in Connecticut, Colorado, and Norway, we see young men who either carry or are presumed to carry an autism spectrum diagnosis. Families of ASD children and adults are deeply concerned. Do individuals with autism have a higher risk of psychopathology and violence later in life? Where is the silver lining, if any, around this cloud?

BILL: There are many challenges and concerns regarding persons in the autism spectrum, but this is not one of them. The school shooter in Connecticut was incorrectly identified as autistic in early media reporting. The Colorado movie assailant clearly had experienced a schizophrenia breakdown prior to his crime. The Norway killer apparently suffers from a delusional disorder, not autism. Prior to clinical work with 10,000 behavior-disordered patients, I was a prison volunteer and ran an ex-offender program for hundreds of parolees released from Stateville Prison. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a violent criminal with a history of autism. I’ve evaluated 6,500 autism patients over the years and the most cases involving violent behaviors were adults who had never received biochemical therapies until adulthood and had developed mental retardation. I believe ASD persons need antioxidant supplements throughout life to protect them from neurodegeneration.

DAN: In his book Dyslogic Syndrome, published two years after his death, Bernard Rimland argued that due largely to “brain cripplers,” including pesticides, heavy metals, and over-vaccination of infants, “We’ll soon be faced with a biological epidemic that goes beyond autism to include thousands of young predators who rape, rob, and kill without reason, mercy, or awareness of the consequences of their actions.” Those are Dr. Rimland’s words, not mine. Comment?

BILL: As always, Dr. Rimland was right. He was generally right about everything and he was absolutely right in this area. We know environmental “brain cripplers” are responsible for the increase in autism incidence. However, an important question is: “What happens to brain-damaged persons who escape autism? I’m sure the answer is higher incidence of mental and physical disorders, including higher incidence of violent crime.

DAN: You’ve said that people with anti-social personality disorder (ASPD) have a lot of the same biochemical abnormalities and epigenetic errors that you see in autism.

BILL: I’ve tested more than ten thousand violent children and adults, including hundreds of ASPD persons like Charles Manson and Henry Lee Lucas who are often called sociopaths or psychopaths. Autistic persons and ASPD criminals both exhibit undermethylation, toxic metal overload, OCD tendencies, socialization deficits, and evidence of epigenetic causation. However, the similarity ends there and the two groups exhibit strikingly different characteristics. For example most sociopaths have excellent verbal skills and were never plagued by food sensitivities, immune problems, yeast overgrowth, etc. The greatest difference is in behavior -- more than 75% of sociopaths will have a history of a criminal arrest whereas the autism population has a very low crime rate.

By Anne Dachel

Read Anne's comments after the jump.

August 6, 2013, Huffington: Girls With Anorexia Show Characteristics Of Autism, Study Finds

August 6, 2013, Fox News: Anorexic girls also have autistic traits, study finds

August 6, 2013, Mercola.com: The Witch Hunt of Jenny McCarthy for Talking About Vaccines

August 5, 2013, Miami Herald: Preschool for students with autism expands

August 5, 2013, Huffington: What Causes Autism Spectrum Disorder?

August 5, 2013, The Atlantic: Dating on the Autism Spectrum

August 5, 2013, The Washington Times: ‘Docs vs. Glocks’ showdown in Florida Physicians have no business interrogating patients about their guns
 

By Julie Obradovic

If anyone were to ask me if I have any doubts about what my recovered daughter will be able to accomplish in her life, I would honestly say, yes. I’m cautiously optimistic about her future, just as I am extremely realistic about her past. I usually teeter between a space of profound sadness at what she lost and profound gratitude for what she didn’t.

Although I am most often in a state of gratitude, I do worry about her future. I’m not naïve about the obstacles she still faces, and I’m not dishonest about them either. The years are ticking by at an alarming rate, and issues that I had desperately hoped would be 100% resolved are yet to be such. Most of them are academically based.
   
However, if anyone were to ask me if I think she will live an independent, otherwise normal life, my answer would also be, yes. She will live and work independently, no doubt.
And likewise, were anyone to ask me if she will have true friends and date and go to prom and even marry, I would also say, yes.
   
Or so I thought.

An automatic response to a hypothetical, however, proved otherwise.
   
It happened over the weekend. My husband and I were celebrating our anniversary in downtown Chicago. While sipping a complimentary drink gazing out over the Chicago River, we fantasized about being able to live like the 1%. We were staying at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, where everything is and everyone has the finest in luxury. (Only a few minutes before we had stepped on the elevator with a woman who had just purchased a new pair of shoes since she had forgotten hers at home…you know how that goes, she laughed…just a nice set of Jimmy Choo’s from Nordstrom’s next door, only $850.)
   
We continued talking and dreaming about our next fifteen years, examining some of the mistakes we’ve made, relishing in the accomplishments we’ve had, and contemplating the lessons we’ve learned in the last fifteen. We planned our next major financial goals and discussed our distant retirement plans with excitement.

By Anne Dachel

August 4, 2013, The Brownsville (TX) Herald: Project recruiting families for autism research 

August 3, 2013, TheDailySheeple.com: In Defense of Dr. Wakefield's 1998 Paper on the Link between Vaccines and Autism

August 1, 2013, WBUR Boston: Vaccine 'View': McCarthy's New Job Conjures Controversy

August 1, 2013, South Florida Sun Sentinel: Family of autistic teen files wrongful death suit against sheriff's office

August 1, 2013, Miami Herald: Sweetwater Police: Autistic man was kept in 'dungeon-like conditions'

August 1, 2013, CBS News: Study: Brain chemistry in autistic kids differs from others with developmental delays

July 31, 2013, FromtheTrenchesWorldReport.com: New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield's Research on Autism - Again

July 30, 2013, Sacramento Bee: Former teacher accused of abusing autistic kids

July 27, 2013, Wake Up Call: What Happened When I Refused My Tetanus Vaccine

July 27, 2013, WhiteOutPress.com: Courts quietly confirm MMR Vaccine causes Autism

By John Stone

Despite Karen Ernst’s repeated insistence that Voices for Vaccines - who recently got up a petition against Jenny McCarthy on Change.com - is an independent parent-led organization speaking up for the vaccine program, the evidence that it was started by the Atlanta based non-profit partner of the Centers for Disease Control, Task Force for Global Health, to promote their joint policies is overwhelming. John Stone (UK editor of Age of Autism) reports:

A few days ago I wrote about vaccine program advocate Prof Dorit Reiss, her unconventional views about agency capture, and her links with Voices for Vaccines “an administrative project” of Task Force for Global Health a partner organization to the Centers for Disease Control and Emory University in Atlanta. The first response to my article was from Karen Ernst a Minnesota based officer of Voices for Vaccines :

“Voices for Vaccines has as its fiscal agent The Task Force for Global Health. They take in our donations and cut checks for us. Many non-profits who are too small to handle their own 501(c)3 status use fiscal agents in this way; it's quite common. We have absolutely no access to their money, nor do we benefit from their money. Voices for Vaccines is not tied to any pharmaceutical corporation or to any government organization. Thus far, all of our donations have been small and have come from individuals. Thus, the dots you have connected paint an incorrect picture.”

Ernst was again engaged the other day with Steve Schneider's article Big Pharma's faking a "grass-roots" campaign to keep Jenny McCarthy off "The View" in Mark Crispin Miller's News from the Underground blog noticed that a Change.com petition against McCarthy was being promoted by ‘Voices for Vaccines, St Paul, Minnesota’. Ernst was first to respond once more :

“I’m one of the two moms who runs VFV. Your blog post is curious to me, seeing that you are an academic. It seems you consulted Barbara Loe Fisher for her anti-vaccine conspiracy theories about who we are, but you never bothered to actually consult us.

 “I am the person who started the petition. I have been in contact with exactly zero people who work for pharmaceutical companies or who work in the government about the petition. At best, your headline is misleading. The rest of your blog post is inaccurate. You’ve misrepresented our relationship with our Scientific Advisory Board and our fiscal agent.”

For the record the current Voices for Vaccine website states:

“Voices for Vaccines was re-launched in early 2013 after two young parents, Karen Ernst and Ashley Shelby, volunteered to lead the organization in rallying parents of immunized children to combat vaccine misinformation and increase immunization rates. In 2010, Shelby and Ernst founded the blog Moms Who Vax, which offers resources on vaccine information, commentary, and first-person stories from parents who immunize. They are currently working to develop a new organization, the Minnesota Childhood Immunization Coalition.”

The name ‘Voices for Vaccines’ rang a bell but I could not immediately find any pre-2013 references on Google. The web archive was rather more helpful, however, with the earliest page holding any text dating from 13 May 2008 (passages in bold are my emphasis):

By Cathy Jameson

Ronan has a vaccine injury, mitochondrial disease and seizures.  He can’t talk or use the bathroom on his own.  He can’t be left unattended or perform typical daily living skills.  Ronan requires a special diet, round-the-clock care and a team of professionals to teach him.  He has another team to medically treat him and to support him.  He’s a severely affected child.  I’ve known all of this for a long time now, but nothing could prepare me for a day like last Thursday.  That’s the day Ronan’s adaptive stroller arrived.  The stroller, while it will be very useful and will allow Ronan to see more of the world, is a reminder that he remains very dependent and sometimes, very weak.  Ronan just can’t keep up like other children can.  

When I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I knew only of a few children who had as severe issues as Ronan does.  Poor neurological developmental cases were not among them.  One boy in my K-8th grade elementary school was physically disabled and used a wheelchair.  A friend’s younger brother had gross motor delays and needed physical therapy.  Out of everyone I knew or knew of, only one child’s issues demanded intensive, long-term medical care.  Don’t get me wrong.  Other kids that I knew needed care or equipment and were in and out of the doctor’s office.  But more times than not, the equipment were crutches, and the doctor visits were to treat broken bones or get stitches after a hard day of play.  Their pain and medical management was temporary.  Children’s health forty years ago wasn’t fragile like that of today’s generation.  And unless they were being hidden, cases of severely affected children were drastically fewer than what exist today. 



As I stepped into adulthood in the early 90s, I prepared for my career in the education field.  Only then was I introduced to children like Ronan.  While real, these children were unknown to me personally.  They were highlighted in case studies that I was assigned to read in journals found on the shelves of my college library.  These children and their diagnoses were quite rare.  So was the number of cases of them.  Fascinated by how out-of-character their significant struggles and troubles were compared to children I encountered in my childhood, I felt sympathy for their parents.  It wouldn’t hit me until after Ronan’s diagnosis in the mid 2000s what those parents went through.

By Lisa Stuckey

There are thousands of chemical additives in our food supply today.  These chemicals, by and large, do not even have to be tested for their effect on the human nervous system or immune system.  Yet they are still widely used in our foods to the detriment of children and adults as well. 

Artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners and preservatives are even allowed to contain lead, arsenic, mercury, benzidine and other contaminants at certain levels deemed acceptable by the FDA.   The usage of synthetic food dyes has greatly increased in our food supply today compared to decades ago and the FDA has astronomically increased the allowable amounts per person.  If Autism is understood by medical professionals and parents to be a neurological condition that is increasing in numbers in our country, then why are more of them not recognizing the connection between the voluntary ingestion of chemicals with autistic symptoms such as impairments in cognitive functioning, behavioral abnormalities, and negative physical impacts?
   
Many autism parents are already cleaning up their kids’ diets, but there are those who could still benefit from learning about the effects of dietary intervention.  How many autism support events or fund raisers, often run by parents with children on the spectrum, have you been to where the food being sold, the items being raffled or sold, or given away are of the highly processed petroleum laden variety?  How many times have parents of children on the spectrum hosted events and provided treats and meals that contain artificial ingredients and remarked or thought later about the hyperactive, impulsive, irritable behavior of the children? 

We have shared the story of Harry Horne-Roberts, a young adult with autism whose life was cut short in 2009.  His parents have delved into the circumstances surrounding his death. His death was ruled a heart attack.

His Mum, Jennifer Horne-Roberts has three books available to download including Harry's Art Book which includes Harry's own drawings.

We invite you to take a look at the book and download onto your e-reader, Droid or iDevice using the Kindle app.  

Jennifer Horne-Roberts on Amazon.

SAFE MINDS ACTION ALERT! – Support Passage of HR1757 on Capitol Hill

Date: 31 Jul 2013

By: Eric Uram

What is HR1757? – Also known as “The Vaccine Safety Study Act,” this bill, introduced by Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), directs the National Institutes of Health to conduct a retrospective study of health outcomes, including autism, of vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated children, and to determine whether exposure to vaccines or vaccine components is associated with autism spectrum disorders, chronic illnesses, or other neurological conditions.

Currently before the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the bill, if implemented, “should bring an answer to this decades-long question,” Rep. Posey stated on the House floor.

Why is this important? Nearly all drug-safety and toxicological studies include investigations of exposed and unexposed populations in order to determine negative health outcomes and degrees of risk. Every 7th grader knows you cannot do a proper experiment without a rigorous control group that can be compared with the exposed group. Yet this most basic science has not been done when considering the totality of the US vaccination program, only with individual vaccines or combinations of certain vaccines. No study of vaccinated-vs.-unvaccinated children and autism has ever been attempted anywhere in the world. Without this basic data, no one can say with certainty whether or not the current vaccination schedule is associated with a greater risk of autism and other chronic health outcomes.

Why hasn’t this been done before? Everyone concerned about autism and vaccine safety should be asking this question. Some studies have looked at high thimerosal exposures versus lower and zero exposures, including one CDC analysis obtained by SafeMinds through the Freedom of Information Act. It showed risks of autism, ADD, sleep disorders and speech/language delay were consistently elevated in the more exposed group: Increased autism risk in one-month-old infants with the highest exposures ranged from 7.6 to 11.4 times higher than zero-exposure infants.

Another study published in January found that unvaccinated children (due to parental choice), had significantly lower emergency room and outpatient visits without any increase of in-patient visits.

Is it feasible? Yes. Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the CDC and now head of Merck’s vaccine division, said on CNN that, “this is the study that could and should be done.” It would be unethical to conduct a prospective study in which some children were vaccinated and others were given placebos, but that is not what this bill calls for. Several populations routinely exempt their children from immunizations for religious, medical or other beliefs. These individuals offer access to a control group for comparison with exposed children in retrospective research.

Managing Editor's Note: What is it about the name "Schneider" that makes for strong, outspoken men?   Here's a look at the campaign against our friend Jenny McCarthy. Please comment directly at the News from Underground site and express your thanks.

A News from Underground exclusive

Warning shots: Who’s behind the campaign to keep vaccine talk off “The View”?
By Steve Schneider

When it was announced that Jenny McCarthy would be joining TV’s “The View,” America’s op-ed pages were filled with the protests of pundits worried that she would use her position on the show to further her crusade against childhood vaccinations. (McCarthy claims that her son was afflicted with autism and blames vaccines for his condition; she has urged other parents to question and/or reject the vaccinations many pediatricians recommend.) For some of McCarthy’s detractors, whether or not she would actually get to discuss vaccines on the program, and to what degree, was almost immaterial: **Slate**’s Phil Plait argued that just by having her on the show, its producers were lending tacit credibility to a cause that he (like many other advocates of the pharmaceutical status quo, both official and self-appointed) considers reprehensibly dangerous.

Plait had already orchestrated a reader write-in campaign to prevent the hiring from going through. Though it failed, the tactic is now being revisited in a petition circulated by Change.org, which seeks to have McCarthy replaced on “The View” before she can even shoot an episode as a series regular. That petition, curiously, is bylined “by Voices for Vaccines; St. Paul, Minnesota.”

So what is Voices for Vaccines, and why is it authoring Change.org’s content? On its own website, Voices for Vaccines describes itself as “a parent-driven organization supported by scientists, doctors, and public health officials that provides parents clear, science-based information about vaccines and vaccine-preventable disease…” But one look at the specific names involved makes it clear why the organization might be very interested in preventing any anti-vaccination talk from coming to “The View.” The Scientific Advisory Board of VFV includes one Paul A. Offit, identified in a CBS News report as holding a $1.5 million dollar Merck-funded research chair at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. According to CBS, Offit “holds the patent on an anti-diarrhea vaccine he developed with Merck”; in 2008, future royalties for that vaccine, Rotateq, were sold for $182 million, CBS reported.

The money trail doesn’t stop there. According to Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center, the Voices for Vaccines board is rounded out by another advisor (Stanley A. Plotkin) who is a vaccine developer, and two others (Alan R. Hinman and Deborah L. Wexler) with significant ties to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That last connection isn’t as innocuous as it might sound: As Maine-based M.D. and public-health blogger Meryl Nass explains, the pharmaceutical industry “funds CDC through the conduit CDC Foundation”; in turn, CDC funds the Immunization Action Coalition, another pro-vaccination advocacy group. (Voices for Vaccines advisor Wexler also heads the IAC.)

By Anne Dachel

August 1, 2013, The Lakeland (FL) Ledger: Value of Vaccines: Messages Endanger Children

August 1, 2013, WILX TV Lansing MI: Locals Train First Responders In How To Recognize And Help People With Autism

July 31, 2013, ABC Pensacola: Latest Autism statistics staggering

July 31, 2013, WFMJ Youngstown, OH: Youngstown school will educate autistic students

July 31, 2013, WKBN, Youngstown, OH: Autism students welcomed at new high school

July 30, 2013, Savage Nation: Over-vaccinating is causing life-threatening allergies in kids

By Anne Dachel

This past May at Autism One in Chicago, I attended a packed luncheon with lots of autism parents.  One of the speakers was Toni Bark, MD.  She was very impressive.  Her talk was a pointed attack on what I refer to as the pharma-medical complex which now controls government and our health care.
 
Dr. Bark practices family medicine in Chicago and she's a homeopath. Every time I hear about a doctor like her, it gives me hope.  Regarding the issues close to us, she is an incredible voice speaking out about the dangers of an unchecked, unsafe vaccination schedule.

Vaccination and Autoimmunity, is There a Link?

More Insight Into "Flu" Season and "Flu" Deaths"
 
Her blog is called The Center for Disease Prevention and Reversal.

I also found this story from Feb 2013, where Dr. Bark posted a number of damning comments about the ignorance of doctors and the lack of oversight when it comes to vaccination.  It was on a local story from Deerfield, IL.
 
Doctors like Toni Bark are rare.  Most physicians never deviate from the standard mantra, VACCINES ARE SAFE, VACCINES SAVE LIVES.  They risk huge reprisals if they dare to challenge official denials.  Because they are ignorant, afraid, conflicted, or just lazy, most doctors keep their months closed and their eyes shut.
 
Not so for Dr. Bark.  She's not going to stop talking about what's happening and I'm very grateful for her work.  I recently spoke with Dr. Bark about what she said at Autism One.  She described herself as "an outraged academic" because of the rampant corruption and malfeasance in our health care system.  There is no "whistle blower" protection for those who want to speak out about what's happening.  Pharmaceutical money dictates what legislators will do.
 
The following links are to parts of my interview with Dr. Bark:
 
The most important point in this first segment is Bark's charge that the claim, "studies show no link," is fraudulent.  She makes it clear that they've never done any study that would scientifically prove there's no association between vaccines and autism. They've never compared vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. 
 
Dr. Bark also told me, "There's no wiggle room.... You have to meet the definition to make that claim....They didn't look at the unexposed, so they can't make a claim about attributable rate of autism to vaccines.  You can't attribute zero autism to vaccines because you didn't look at the rate of autism to the non-vaccinated. You just can't make that claim. It violates a very basic rule of public health statistics."
 
Dr. Bark explained to me how she practices medicine as a homeopath.  Her attention to the total health of a patient is incredible. She said, "No two patients are ever alike."  She typically spends two hours on an initial visit with a patient.

CONGRATS TO LEONA AND THERESA OUR WINNERS!

Thank you to our friends at HandHold Adaptive (a local Connecticut company founded by an autism Dad and Uncle) for giving us TWO free downloads of a pre-release version of iPrompts PRO, HandHold Adaptive's latest suite of apps. iPrompts PRO combines iPrompts (visual supports), StoryMaker (Social Stories) and SpeechPrompts (prosody exercises) into one powerful, research-based app.


Check out the HandHold Adaptive website to learn more.