4.    Why does CDC’s most recent autism surveillance cover children born in 2002, well over a decade behind, and only begin surveillance in a population born in 1992? This lackadaisical pace of surveillance combined with the narrow time period of inquiry appears almost consciously designed not to shed light on the problem. The CDC’s feeble and illogical response to the autism epidemic lies at the root of the problem and has helped perpetuate what has clearly become a national emergency.
 
5.    Do you deny that 1 in 68 children born in 2002 being diagnosed with autism can be anything else but an epidemic of historic proportions? How much is this epidemic costing the US?
 
6.    What do you consider your personal accountability for the failures of the IACC and the CAA?
 
7.    Parents of autistic children have been witheringly critical of your leadership of IACC and national autism groups have repeatedly called for your resignation. What do you say to their concerns that the IACC is a dysfunctional group, composed of “public” representatives that are simply there to rubber stamp the failed policies of your NIH bureaucrats?
 
8.    What do you say to accusations that scientists are ruthlessly intimidated who don’t toe the official NIH line that autism is genetic and that reported increases are simply a result of better diagnosis?
 
9.    As CDC has testified that nothing is off the table on autism causation, including vaccination, as there are tens of thousands of parental reports of autistic regression following vaccination, as research is now coming in that does associate vaccines and autism, and as the VICP has paid autism cases from the fund and there is no published vaccinated v. unvaccinated research to look at the increased risk of autism in vaccinated children, is it not prudent, logical and just leave the choice on how to vaccinate a child in the hands of their parents and their health care providers and create a federal vaccine exemption?

10.    Why is autism not being discussed and researched as an outcome of a disease of the immune system, and subsequent treatments being pursued by IACC?

11.     Parent groups and medical professionals have independently developed many medical treatments and approaches to treating the underlying medical conditions that are believed to be causing autism behaviors for many decades, but despite thousands of reports of successes and research on their effectiveness, they remain labeled as "controversial" and out of the reach of most mainstream families and physicians.  What has IACC done to vet emerging treatments and get doctors educated on their effectiveness?  

12.    Why has there been no follow up to the PACE law review paper, looking at how many of the cases already paid out involving neurological injury have led to or included diagnoses of autism?
What follow up has taken place, to connect the similarities of injury and presentation of injury to assess; 1)possibly successful treatments; 2) possibly trending predisposition to injury from vaccine, ie familial autoimmune disorders or mitochondrial dysfunction, tylenol administration, vitamin D status, etc.
 
13.    Why has the court become so hostile to petitioners and their parents presuming a stance of faking it or lying when injuries and regression are so apparent and documented, especially when the court was set up and meant as a no fault program for those who are injured? injury is known for a certain percentage of individuals hence the reason for the court in the first place.  And why is there such a disparity and discriminatory stance towards certain diagnoses on the petition like autism?
 
14.    Why has the court not given proper notice to the 5000 omnibus cases to refile with their accompanying medical dysfunctions and regressions when seizures, encephalopathies and other medical contributors to regression, known to be adverse reactions, are present on their medical records? Why are these cases all decided upon by only 4 test cases, especially when one of these cases was taken out and compensated?
 
15.    Why has there been such hostility and delay towards paying petitioners lawyers limiting the number of lawyers who will take these cases and wait the many years before seeing any funds to continue on for their clients.

16.    Why was there never follow-up to what Dr. Bernadine Healy called for in 2008 on CBS--namely that we studied the children who were fine and then regressed? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-open-question-on-vaccines-and-autism/


17.  (Submitted by Rolf Hazlehurst) Mr. Insel,

I assume you are aware of the  indictment of Dr. Poul Thorsen , a CDC scientist who allegedly stole over one million dollars in funds which was supposed to be used to fund research into the issue of whether vaccines can cause autism.

I would like to read to you portions of that indictment.

Paragraph 2. "Beginning in or about 2000, ...CDC... awarded grant money to Denmark for research involving infant disabilities, autism genetic disorders, and fetal alcohol syndrome. The CDC awarded the grant to fund studies of the relationship between autism and the exposure to vaccines,.."

Paragraph 6. "In 2002, after CDC awarded the grant, the defendant THORSEN went to Denmark and became the prinicipal investigator, responsible for administering the research money awarded by the CDC to Denmark."

Paragraph 8. "From in or about February 2004 through in or about June 2008, defendant THORSEN submitted over a dozen fraudulent invoices, purportedly signed by a laboratory section chief at the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, for reimbursement of expenses that defendant THORSEN claimed were incurred in connection with the CDC grant. The invoices falsely claimed that a CDC laboratory had performed work under the grant..."

Paragraph 9. "In truth, the CDC Federal Credit Union accounts were personal accounts held by defendant, THORSEN. He used the accounts to steal monel under the CDC grant."

Paragraph 10. "Defendant, THORSEN purchased a home in Atlanta, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, an Audi and Honda vehicles with the proceeds of his fraud."

Paragraph 11. " Defendant THORSEN obtained over $1 million from his scheme to defraud."

Now despite this CRIMINAL charge isn't it true that the 2004 I.O.M. Report to Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services and IACC's argument that vaccines do not cause autism is largely based upon the Danish Studies and the work of Dr. Poul THorsen?

When the primary investigator of a study steals over a million dollars of the research funds and uses the money to buy a house, 2 cars and a motorcycle rather than fund the reseach doesn't that seriously undermine the credibility of the study?

18.  Why is regressive autism not on the agenda? Why has there been no recommendations for halting, treating and preventing regressions? Why is there no research being funded by the IACC for halting regression due to medical comorbidities like seizure, inflammation and encephalopathies that lead to full blown autism? 

 19. Why aren't subtypes of autism recognized to pair symptoms to cormorbidities, and treatment of cormorbidities to symptom alleviation? Along with thousands of parental testimony, many studies corroborate these cormorbidities are happening in large numbers of the cases of autism. Do you have teams working on connecting all of these dots and if not, why? Are you gathering studies already done to develop a tiered treatment protocol system due to presentation and comorbitity?

 20. What research are you doing to gather information on familial immune dysfunction? What patterns have you seen? If not, why???

 21. Why have children who have recovered not been studied?

 22. What research are you funding on prevention? And Medical Treatments of comorbidities? What recommendations have you made to OBs and pediatricians for from that research? 

 23. Why is the greatly rising numbers and counting being watered down to claims of better diagnosing and higher functioning when there is no research to back that claim? 

 24. Why hasn't the IACC made attempts to educate the medical community on the many comorbidities to look for in cases autism? Especially correlated to severity. 

 25. Why is there such a lack of regressive autism representation on the panel? 

 26. Why are parent's observations not an integral part of the discovery process, especially for those that witnessed regression after adverse reactions to vaccination. Is there discrimination on the panel against these testimonials because of their observations of vaccine involvement?

 27. Why are the testimonies sent in to the IACC from stakeholders not made public? 

28. In the fall of 1998, the CDC descended upon Brick Township, New Jersey (population approximately 70,000) and within 4 months were able to count every child aged 10 and under, compile and analyze the data for how many had autism, and present the results of the study, which they did in January of 1999.

In that study, not a single child aged 9 or 10 in the entire township had a diagnosis of autism per the CDC (Sallie Bernard email), and yet, over 30 children aged 4 and under did. The CDC then claimed this was not significant.

A few questions:

A)  How is it possible to come to the conclusion this is not significant?

B) If it were possible for the federal government (through the CDC) to canvas, study, and report on 70,000 people with regard to the incidence and prevalence of autism spectrum disorders of varying birth cohorts in a matter of months all the way back in 1998, how is it impossible to do this now? And why haven't we?

C)  Why DON'T we want to know how many adults have autism?

29.  It can not be disputed that there are tens/hundreds of thousands of parental reports, both here in the U.S. and worldwide, implicating vaccines in the subsequent development of what the medical profession labels "autism".  As such, and considering that the U.S. government has refused to commission an independent vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study to compare the health, development, and well-being of the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated, both short and long term, it is prudent, logical, and imperative to immediately ban vaccine mandates in the U.S., in all 50 states, and make vaccines completely voluntary, and not a requirement for daycare, school, employment, or the military. Then, and only then, will things begin to change.  

30. How can two parents with ZERO family history of autism produce 3 daughters (GIRLS) with severe autism – despite, proper prenatal care, unmedicated deliveries, breast feeding, copious social interaction and every upper middle class advantage. This family has been WIPED OUT by autism. They deserve answers.

31. Question #1:  Do you definitely know what causes autism?  If no, proceed to question #2.

Question #2:  Would you place your right hand on the Bible and answer before God and man this question:  Do you know for a fact that vaccines do not cause autism?  If no, proceed to question #3.

Question #3:  Then why do you refuse to listen to tens/hundreds of thousands of eye witness accounts by intelligent parents who report that their child(ren) developed/regressed into "autism" following from their routine childhood vaccinations?

Question #4:  Explain to us why it is not prudent and sensible to immediately halt vaccine mandates until we know more about the short and long term consequences of vaccines.

32. In July of 2011, Stanford released a very comprehensive study showing that non-genetic factors played the greatest role in determining autism risk. Before this study it was believed that 90% of risk factors were due to genetics and only 10% were influenced by the environment. This ground breaking study show close to the exact opposite, 38% were due to genetic factors and 62% were environmental. 

http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2011/july/autism.html

In March of this year, the University of Chicago released a study that showed again that the environment was main factor in developing autism.

http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2014/20140313-autism.html

Mr. Insel, can you tell us how much federal research is being spent looking at genetic factors vs. environmental?

After the July 2011 study from Stanford came out, why wasn't there a major shift in autism research towards the environment?

Question #2

Whose responsibility is it to respond to the autism crisis in America? Who is in charge?

Questions #3

Mr. Insel, what is your full time job? Do you feel being in charge of managing the autism crisis through IACC should warrant more than a part time status? Isn't that effort deserving of at least 40 hours of work each week?

Question #4

Thousands upon thousands of parents have reported changes in health and development after a vaccine reaction. The VICP has compensated more than 1300 individuals for brain injury, many of those who are brain injured also hold an autism diagnosis. Why haven't those individuals been thoroughly studied to see what their genetic vulnerability is to react to vaccination?

Add your own questions in our comments.  Thank you.