He had Lyme disease.

I would like to say the following about the conspiracy theory that the journalists are engaged in when they talk about whether there is a connection between vaccines and autism. Yes, it is a conspiracy, but it is an unwitting conspiracy. It's the co-operation between people who are on the same page and yet are adhering to concepts that are as old as mercury itself and false.

Mercury has been a known poison for as long as people have used it for all its known purposes. But because it appeared to be so useful it became in itself a co-conspirator. Mercury is insidious like that because it fools people into mistakenly thinking that it might/can be used as a medicine. Offit iterated what Paracelsus had said over half a millennium ago that the "dose makes the poison."

The problem with that mantra, when it comes to mercury, is the fact that the signs of poisoning do not show up quickly. A deadly dose can kill months after dispensing it. The reason for that is how mercury achieves it deleterious effect. It does it by attaching itself to enzymes after it has reached the blood stream. These enzymes are rendered useless. If most of a person's enzymes are thus rendered useless, the organism cannot feed the cells and the person essentially dies of starvation. This is the case because enzymes are the transporters of nutrients to the individual cells of all the body parts.

Different enzymes do different things, but if they are loaded with mercury they cannot be used for their essential functions, and there is a limited number of enzymes in each individual. So when there is more mercury in the body than enzymes, the body is sure to die.

That's not the only way mercury works. It also attaches itself to organ systems. It can sit around nerves and just cause them to act in a deranged manner if it doesn't destroy them. It can go into cells and maim them or render them useless. At any rate. They do damage insidiously, and mercury is definitely not like Lime disease or any other infectious disease.

My son had language delay. He talked when he was 3 and a half years old. It was obvious very early that he was intelligent which later was proven by a test. His IQ was 135. It was obvious that something affected my son early. IN his case it was the fact that a pediatric dentist claimed that my son had over 30 cavities before he was three. This man inserted 30 amalgam fillings into his teeth. If I had know then what I know no, life would have been different with him. Another thing, when I was pregnant 1965) with him, the pediatrician gave me fluoride pills that were thought to make the babies' teeth cavity-free. My other children were not born with fluoride pills in their system. The pediatrician suddenly decided that fluoride pills were not good for pregnant women. Back to Adam Lanza. To say that Aspergers children do not have language delay is questionable. What is not questionable is the fact that children who were mercury poisoned have language delay. I contend that a very good case could be made that Adam Lanza was mercury-poisoned. There should be an investigation how Adam Lanza might have been poisoned by mercury. Hint the area around Newtown was the hub of felt making.

Ammunition is mostly made out of lead and jacketed by copper. To leave it in - is to

As in eating canned foods in lead cans; ending up like

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

And finding graves of Franklin's mean

I am just now reading Peanut Allergy by Heather Fraser - kindle has it for just 1.99 right now.

But I might have to order it and give it to all my health medical friends.

It says that back in the 40s that there as this real huge increase to cottonseed oil allergy -- turns out cottonseed was intergrated into everything.

It waas traced to aluminium/pertussis/cottonseed vaccine. they took it out and the allergy went down.

So why won't they do it again?

Is it because of the 1986 ruling they can't be sued and they don't give a dam
Is it because they are stupid beyond measure?
Is it because they are culling (no it is not because they are getting rid of the guys with the best immune systems) just thought I would point that out.

Is it because they want to make us all sick and make new drugs and make lots of money.

Is it because some one really does want ot lower the population of humanbeings on this earth to make more room for black bears?

Take your pick - but something is going on that is way over the top.

There are so many ways to silence unwanted rhetoric. One of my favorite possible scenarios is to take a little "harmless" SV40 virus, add lots of radiation, and you've induced cancer. I have heard some suggest this in relation to the cancer that caused Jack Ruby's death. It sounds way to far fetched, and in the old days I would have totally disregarded it, but now I keep it in the back of my mind in case it ever needs to be revisited. Ruby died less than three weeks after diagnosis with brain and lung cancer (and maybe some other cancer as well). SV40 is associated with brain and lung cancers. Before the diagnosis, he indicated more than once that he had important disclosures to make. Now whenever I hear of some important person dying of cancer, especially brain cancer, I get an uneasy feeling - especially if that person is the source of unwanted rhetoric.

Taximom,
You're right. I don't know the specifics of the last case, but it could be the same in that all 3 were targeted, just different tactics were used. They couldn't get away with a chemical lobotomy on Dr. Wakefield, although I bet they would have liked to.

Mark Taylor's story is horrible. I went on the ColumbineFamilyrequest.org web site and watched his videos. Because Mark spoke out against SSRI's and the Pharmaceutical industry, they forced him into treatment and then chemically lobotomized his brain with SSRI's leaving him in a zombie like state. He is not the same bright, articulate young man he used to be and can no longer drive or live independently. He can barely hold a conversation now. We are dealing with monsters here!

Vicki Hill, true that you can't blame everything on meds, but there is an association between anti-depressants and violence.
See Dr. David Healy's books and blog.
http://davidhealy.org

Dear Dan,

As a parent of a now adult son with autism, vaccine induced, but still labeled as having ASD, I'd caution folks to use what in is print to speculate on causation of something as tragic as Sandy Hook. This is especially true when it involves others who will attribute such acts to being connected to an individual with autism no matter how that is deflected. We have felt this collateral damage before from such negative press and this article is no different for a variety of reasons. I don't see it as gripping at all and am very, very disappointed that again we have to pull up our boot straps and defend autism. I also don't feel we can negate Adam's Lanza's Asperger Syndrome diagnosis as being not applicable due to this story and the characteristics noted. Many diagnosed with AS had speech difficulties as children too Dan and that may be a different disability not related to AS. Please don't pigeonhole a dx and say it is not possible. However when we look at this I do think from comparing all accounts that there was a medical illness never addressed that caused his health to erode. Sad really when you think this family had the means to seek proper medical intervention.

Please also consider that Peter Lanza is providing this picture into Adam as he wants it framed and to do what is most likely best for him and chose Andrew Solomon for a reason to write this piece. Nancy Lanza is not here to defend it nor is anyone else for that matter. Peter Lanza did not physically see his son the last two years of his life and as many know, adolescent males who have absent fathers often suffer emotionally from what is felt to be abandonment, especially those with ASD. Additionally what made me feel worse as a parent was Lanza using the word "weird" to describe his son, not once but several times. It's obvious that if he felt this way about his son to discuss it, Adam most likely knew he felt this way as well. For the many of us that know our children, they are very intuitive to the ways others feel about them.

It's also interesting that the author of this article, Andrew Solomon, did his PhD thesis on Attachment Disorder and has a connection to the pharmaceutical industry. Solomon's father, Howard Solomon, is on the Board of Directors for Forest Labs which produces Lexapro.

http://investor.frx.com/investor_center/board_of_directors

He also was the one that worked to get FDA approval for the drug Celexa after he attributed it to assisting Andrew Solomon while he suffered from depression. Solomon has been linked to controversy before within the autism community after writing this piece and is very supportive of the use of medications, something he discloses in this article "The Autism Rights Movement". He also discloses in this piece he has dyslexia and his parents attempts to address that which made him feel marginalized it seems.

http://andrewsolomon.com/articles/the-autism-rights-movement/

Additionally it has been previously noted that Solomon's book "From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity" is a dismal portrayal of children born who have no connection to their parents. The book features sections with interviews of parents of children who have autism.

As a side note it is interesting to see that Forest Labs profits last year were 3 billion dollars and they just acquired Aptalis, a privately held specialty pharmaceutical company focused on gastrointestinal disorders and cystic fibrosis, for 2.9 billion dollars. Sounds to me like this article was prepared and provided much more purpose than to provide an insight into Adam Lanza.

Thank you and hopefully you will look into this possible connection because I see no benefit to the ASD community in this article, the very opposite is true unfortunately.

Information on the status of pharmaceuticals used by Lanza seem to be guarded. There is also a lot of controversy about pharmaceuticals and the Columbine shooting. One of the victims (Mark Taylor) who survived the shooting became an activist against the use of antidepressants. Apparently he sued an antidepressant drug maker (the maker of the drugs prescribed to the shooters) and settled for some unknown sum of money. He continued his activism, but more recently, he was held in a psychiatric hospital and placed on anti-psychotics (ironically). In the more recent videos I have seen of him, he seems incoherent. He had other controversial stories about the Columbine shooting as well, and the whole story seems incredibly bizarre. None of it makes the news. I wonder if there will be the same sort of bizarre unreported stories in the years to come following the Sandy Hook shooting. In general, people just don't want to hear about conspiracy theories.

Hera; Tereasa;
Middle school is time for puberty.
He became sicker at that time
Remember puberty causes-- things started back in baby hood to esculate - such as more profound irritability/depression, more seizure activity, girls have more trouble with their periods (mine did) all this happens when the endocrine system is matureing-- and more things become apparent of what has been damaged in the past.

So it does not have to be another flu shot or bullied, or stressed at that time - just horomones.

It is a continuation of damage that had occurred in childhood and had yet to---- heal.

Not all of us get on the low carb- gluten free/casein free diet. Not all of us find out that we can't break down long chain carbohydates -- instead - like me -- they continue at that age to give them the typical American diet - with lots of corn syrup and very extra gluten wheat. Seizures and the Ketogenic diet will get you there -- but it is not as well known that it can heal mood issues too. But it is coming along. I was shocked to see that it is true that 1 out of 3 families have gone gluten free.

For those who question, I'm going on the basis of (1) The New Yorker, where Dad said he had refused all psych medication after that early negative reaction, as well as (2) an early report where a police officer said they found no medications in the house and (2) the autopsy as reported publicly, which gave no indication that any medications had been found in the body.

As to JerseyGuy's quote above, I had never heard that, so I just Googled it and found the video of it here: http://www.infowars.com/state-of-connecticut-refuses-to-release-adam-lanzas-medical-records/ If you listen to it, you quickly realize that you have misinterpreted it. He did NOT say that Lanza had been using a medication. Rather, he said that the premise that he might have been using something was not adequate to qualify for a report under Freedom of Information and...even if he did, it would still not be appropriate because it might cause someone in very different circumstances not to take their medication. The gentleman speaks English as a second language, which explains his curious choice of wording. But he absolutely does not say that Lanza was taking anything.

I have a son with symptom development much like Lanza's. Lanza was taken to a psychiatrist because of symptoms BEFORE he was first given medication. So was my son. While I understand the fears and concerns regarding medications, I know firsthand that psychiatric symptoms can and do show up in some people BEFORE any psychiatric medication has ever been tried. You just can't blame everything on meds.

Just to clarify what I was saying earlier; it certainly seems like Adam Lanza had an autism spectrum disorder, and that his condition got worse in middle school. It would be interesting to know if Adam had a reaction to possible booster shots given in middle school. Or if he had some severe trauma happen to him around then.
it just seems that their is a lot not being said about his time at school, and why he was pulled out. The unpopular kid with no friends, that no liked, but who no one remembers "ever" being bullied? Yeah, right.

Some kids who are bullied develop PTSD and someone with an autism spectrum disorder may have even less resources than the average person to cope with dealing with it.

And I could well imagine that anti depressants could also have pushed him over the edge.
I'm just guessing though that being bullied and possibly abused at school might also be part of the picture.

re: "when Adam was thirteen, Peter and Nancy took him to Paul J. Fox, a psychiatrist, who gave a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. … Peter and Nancy finally knew what they were up against.. ‘It was communicated as ‘Adam, this is good news. This is why you feel this way, and now we can do something about it."

Yeah, right. The diagnosis immediately sparked effective treatments.

Vaccine Compensation Court -- admits -- (say the word) vaccine induced brain injury.

What most of us on here are disagreeing with is the "RATE" this is happening.

They say RARE
and we
say EVERYBODY.

I think it's a mistake to assume that specialists have been able to construct accurate boxes in which to place people with ASD. Reality has always been more complex and confounding. I couldn't believe my daughter had autism because I had read people with autism were aloof and unable to connect or communicate with others. My baby was happy, smiling and laughing all the time. When she was nearly one, she loved her binky, and I thought it was funny that several times she took it out of her mouth and tried to put it in mine, to share the pleasure. She loved to be held and cuddled, and the Parents as Teachers woman was amazed that, when she started to cry, and I picked her up and started singing familiar lullabies to her, she immediately calmed down, as though by magic. Thinking about it, I realize that after the DTaP booster at 18 months, that I don't have pictures of her smiling and laughing anymore, but just a lot of ones with her somber and unsmiling, but still beautiful with her blong Italian curls and blue eyes.
I was very slow to speak, and even when I started kindergarten at four and a half, no one could understand me when I spoke, and I was put in the slower class, even though I had already taught myself to read, and did little else. My mother had also not started to speak until she was nearly in school (reaction to diphtheria vaccine), and would hide her head in her mother's skirt when people talked to her, and they would say Has the cat got your tongue? My daughter, of course, had two words erased by the DTaP booster and didn't speak again until nearly three, continued to be very delayed, and is still extremely low-verbal. My older nephew, diagnosed with Asperger's, was extremely delayed in starting to speak. His brother and sister, considered NT, were slow to speak as well, though not as much.
They say that Einstein didn't speak until he was three.
This is just to say that I don't think it's correct to say, as they do, that Asperger's people did not have speech delay as small children. The important factor seems to be whether at some point they acquire the ability to compehend verbal and written communication and express ideas themselves. The more they can, the higher they ascend on the ASD scale, moving up to and past high-functioning autism to Asperger's, and then up into the broad range of neurotypical, without any completely definitive diagnostic boundaries.

I think that they gave him an Asperger's diagnosis because he was very smart. His dad maintains that the diagnosis wasn't the whole story, that it masked an underlying problem that he has labeled as "evil." That to me, is terrifying on so many different levels. The movie hall shooter in Aurora comes to mind, as does the Unabomber. Very smart weird people, and intent on killing other people for whatever reason.

Vicki: The State of Connecticut won't release Lanza’s medical records because revealing the antidepressants he was taking might “cause a lot of people to stop taking their medications,” quoting Assistant Attorney General Patrick B. Kwanashie. That does seem to be evidence of a coverup -- indeed, practically an admission. Given who Solomon's dad is, I'm not sure we can trust his assurance that Lanza stopped taking Lexapro long ago.

I've always assumed that at least part of Adam Lanzas problem was severe bullying at school. When he died there was NO ONE who the media noted as as ever having been his friend. Everyone described him as weird.
It was mentioned that he was put in a program for kids at risk of being bullied; but everyone is sure that even though he was put in a program for bullied kids, "no one" had ever bullied him.
Normally if a parent pulls a kid out of school permanently, as his Mom did, it is for a pretty serious reason.

I do wonder what kind of things happened to Adam Lanza at that school.

Thanks for writing about this, Dan. Your looking at pieces of evidence is important and this comment -- "His shop teacher said he could hold a Bunsen burner to his wrist and not flinch."-- actually gave me a chill. My own daughter too has little perception to pain especially heat or burns.

What came to mind immediately was Mark Blaxill's post from a few years back:

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/11/rat-on-a-hot-tin-plate.html

The Warsaw group’s paper followed a protocol for thimerosal administration in rodents first designed by Mady Hornig at Columbia University. Hornig’s group used two different genetic mouse strains (one that was susceptible to autoimmunity and another that was not) and in each strain compared unexposed infant mice to those injected with thimerosal (injections were on days 7, 9, 11 and 15) on a schedule designed to mimic the typical vaccine schedule for human infants (with vaccinations at months 2, 4, 6 and 15) and at comparable weight adjusted doses. The Warsaw team followed the same plan of thimerosal injections with infant rats of two different strains and followed up the exposures with measures of mercury metabolism and infant development, comparing rats injected with thimerosal to those injected with a saline placebo.

When the rats reached 6 weeks of age (an human equivalent age just under 3 years), the Warsaw experimenters tested them for impaired “nociception”, or the “neural processes of encoding and processing noxious stimuli.” In this case, they tested the rats to see how sensitive they were to heat by placing the infant rats on a hot plate (a little over 130 degrees Fahrenheit) and seeing how long it took them to show their discomfort, either by licking their paws or jumping from the plate. This “hot plate test” is a highly standardized animal protocol for pain sensitivity testing, finely tuned to provide just enough heat to generate discomfort but not enough to actually burn the baby rodents (after 30 seconds on the hot plate, the infants were removed “to prevent tissue damage” if they didn’t show any reaction). The amount of time before paw-licking or jumping is measured using a stop watch.

In the susceptible strain, the Warsaw team found that the difference between the infant rats exposed to thimerosal and those with no exposure was highly significant. Unexposed rats took about 10 seconds before they demonstrated discomfort on the hot plate (8 seconds for males and 11 seconds for females); rats exposed to vaccine level doses of thimerosal took about twice as long before they reacted to the heat (over 15 seconds for the males and close to 25 seconds for the females). The researchers concluded that this was the result of “long term neurodevelopmental alterations in brain organization and function.”

Adam was born in 1992 and like my Meg, born in 1993, the amount of Thimerosal they received was horrific.

Per The New Yorker interview with the father, only once had Adam Lanza tried a medication for his problems. That was years earlier, he had a bad reaction and stopped it after 3 days and from then on refused the suggestion of meds. The autopsy confirmed that he was not taking any meds.

Many people in the autism community presumed his actions were med-related, but there is zero evidence of that.

There is no telling what other coexisting, mental disorders Adam Lanza may have had. It was reported that he had been on psychiatric drugs. Those drugs may have been improperly prescribed to treat his behaviors associated with autism....or maybe he had some co-existing psychiatric disorder. I have always wondered if he might have had Schizophrenia or a psychotic illness coupled with autism....which most certainly could be a recipe for an act as seemingly "evil" and most certainly incomprehensible and heart wrenchingly tragic as Newtown. I've always thought that this young man was not "evil," rather he was VERY ill, with autism coexisting with mental illness, possibly drug induced. Seems our system failed him and his family tremendously.....and there is where the blame should lie. We should all be demanding answers as to what we are doing to our own humanity rather than trying to wish Adam away.