Age of Autism Weekly Wrap: The Parent-Blaming Trap -- Again
By Dan Olmsted
Last week I wrote about an alarming report out of Britain that fully a third of children coming into the education system have issues with speech, socialization and toileting. This iatrogenic, man-made, unprecedented catastrophe -- which is what it is unless you just want to argue it's always been this way -- was airily displaced onto kids having too much smartphone access, not enough parental interaction, and so on. I said it was another species of parent-blaming -- it now appears to be the primary task of moms and dads these days to keep their children away from all the appurtenances of modern life lest they be ineducable by age 5. But unless you want to turn the phone to airplane mode and go on retreat in the hills of Virginia (as I did this past week, in fact), that's not a very reasonable expectation. And I'm not sure why letting Johnny play Wib Wob during dinner at Outback is any more toxic for the kid than coloring bunny rabbits on the place mat. Is he supposed to discuss the threat to democracy posed by the presumptive Republican or Democratic nominee?
Recently the reliably tone-deaf Autism Speaks plied another version of the "parents did it" canard with one of its Weatherstone grants to post-doctoral students. From AS: "Eric Rubenstein, of the University of North Carolina, will explore the association between autism symptoms in children diagnosed with the condition and autism-like behavioral traits in their parents (who don’t have autism). The goal is to better understand how and when inherited factors play a role in the development of autism and then use this information to tailor interventions that can best meet a child’s needs. The study also promises to deepen understanding of the inherited traits and biology of different subtypes of autism."
Nothing against Rubenstein, but here's the role autism-like traits play in making your kid autistic: None. Now give me my grant money! This reeks of the Geek Syndrome, in which mere oddities in adults somehow get magnified when they mate in Mountain View et voila, you've got a disabled kid. In fact, 20 times more disabled kids than two decades ago.
Even rainy weather points to poor parenting. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in 2008, a study found higher rates of autism in rainier counties. Could it be (cue Church Lady's voice here) mercury? In water picked up from toxic lakes and streams and dumped on Johnny's house? No: "This week's peer-reviewed paper raised the possibility that heavy rainfall forces vulnerable children indoors, where there is greater exposure to cleaning chemicals and television, and less exposure to sunshine -- and the vitamin D it produces."
Vitamin D -- maybe, although we've had dark days since the dawn, so to speak, of time. But letting a child get within half a mile of cleaning chemicals and TV -- that's bad parenting! Get your toilet scrub at Whole Foods and play patty cake with your child all day or face the wrath of the autism causation committee! (A similar "association" followed Hurricane Katrina, in which a spike in autism cases was attributed to maternal stress, not, never, no, of course not, to the toxic sludge that spilled into neighborhoods. If only these moms had meditated for a week with me instead of getting hysterical about a little old hurricane. It's their fault, you see.)
Back when I first started writing about autism for UPI, and was just starting to suspect the role of toxins in the early cases, I wrote that "it's not who the parents were, it's what they did." But that I meant that it wasn't their personalities, or their intellectual and mathematical and science bents -- and by the descriptions of Leo Kanner and others they did seem a bit bent -- it was the unrecognized environmental risks from their occupations. People seemed to forget that doctors, scientists, engineers, researchers are the leading edge of toxic exposures to novel chemicals of all kinds. Boyd Haley used the great term "bucket chemists" to convey what lots of them did -- slop chemicals into beakers and pour them into each other and suck up (with their mouths -- really) enough liquid in pipettes to keep the experiment rolling.
I've written about it before, so let me repeat myself, to wit:
Is mainstream science and medicine ever going to recognize the real significance of the repeated clues linking parental occupation and risk of autism? I vote no. A study from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston found thusly, according to Science Daily:
"Children of fathers who are in technical occupations are more likely to have an autism spectrum disorder, according to researchers. Fathers who worked in engineering were two times as likely to have a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Those who worked in finance were four times more likely and those who worked in health care occupations were six times more likely to have a child on the autism spectrum. There was no association with a mother's occupation."
And what might account for this seeming hodgepodge of risks? According to a study author, "Parental occupation could be indicative of autistic-like behaviors and preferences and serve as another factor in a clinician's diagnosis of a child with suspected autism. Medical students can be taught that this is one of the things to consider."
I guess that means that perseverative and detail-oriented anti-social types would be drawn to those fields It makes no sense that fathers, not mothers, would be 100 percent of the risk factor, unless both were in technical fields. I suspect that points to the real clue here -- toxic exposures. The workplace is where engineers, lab workers, chemists get the exposure and bring it home one way or the other. (Finance, I would guess. points to higher income and more medical interventions. And medicine points to, well, a lot of medicine!) Women get it from all kinds of things -- mercury flu shots in pregnancy come to mind -- that directly expose the fetus or infant without needing to be mediated by occupation. That adds enough noise to drown out the occupational clue for moms alone.
The bad faith that defines the mainstream medical response to autism is entirely evident here. You really need to turn away from a well-marked trail of evidence to get lost in these weeds. This is something Mark Blaxill and I have been writing about for years, and at the risk of repeating ourselves, let me marshal the evidence again.
In the 1970s -- closer to the start of autism than to today, and better able to tease out signals -- two complementary studies starkly outlined the risk between parents' exposure to toxins and the risk for autism. I wrote about that at UPI, in a two-part series in 2006 that "highlighted a study by Thomas Felicetti, now executive director of Beechwood Rehabilitation Services in Langhorne, Pa. As Felicetti described it in the journal Milieu Therapy in 1981, he compared the occupations of 20 parents of autistic children, 20 parents of retarded children and 20 parents of "normal" children who were friends and neighbors of those attending the Avalon School in Massachusetts where he taught at the time.
"The results did, in fact, suggest a chemical connection," he wrote. "Eight of the 37 known parents of the autistic children had sustained occupational exposure to chemicals prior to conception. Five were chemists and three worked in related fields. The exposed parents represent 21 percent of the autistic group. This compared to 2.7 percent of the retardation controls and 10 percent of the normal controls. The data, subjected to statistical analysis, demonstrated a chemical connection.
"The results of this study point in the direction of chemical exposure as an etiological factor in the birth of autistic children." [He emphasized that educational level had nothing to do with it. One father of an autistic child was a roof tarrier. That's chemicals, not credentials.]
What makes Felicetti's study, though small, even more compelling is that it was designed to test earlier work by Dr. Mary Coleman, one of his mentors.
In the 1976 book "The Autistic Syndromes," Coleman described her study of 78 autistic children in which she noticed "an unusual exposure of parents to chemicals in the preconception period." Out of 78 autistic kids, 20 were from families with chemical exposure; four were from families where both parents had such exposures -- seven out of eight of those parents as chemists. Still, Coleman worried that because the parents volunteered for the survey they might have been scientifically inclined, skewing the results toward careers like chemistry.
Felicetti effectively confirmed the validity of her finding by selecting the participating parents himself.
Coleman's study has an interesting origin: It was suggested by Bernard Rimland, the pioneering figure whose 1964 book, "Infantile Autism," established that parental behavior was not a cause of autism. In 1974, Coleman recounts, Rimland "and other members of the National Society for Autistic Children approached the Children's Brain Research Clinic of Washington, D.C., to discuss the possibility of the Clinic studying their autistic children at the time of that annual meeting to be held in June."
Those children were the ones on whom the research was based. And a chemical connection was a key finding: "In the preconception history questionnaire filled out by both the father and the mother, there were two areas of marked difference between the parents of the autistic children and parents of the controls," Coleman wrote. "One of these areas was exposure to chemicals."
Coleman wrote that "since the incidence of individuals exposed to chemicals in all related occupations in the United States is 1,059,000 in 91,000,000 or 1.1. percent of the population ... to find that 25 percent of any sample has had chemical exposure is quite startling.
"We feel it can not be dismissed because of the theoretical possibility that chemical toxins could affect genetic material prior to conception. Attempts to identify a particular chemical toxin to which many parents were consistently exposed in our sample failed; the parents recalled exposure to a great multitude and variety of chemical agents with no one chemical or classification of chemicals singled out in the data. Clearly, this is an area where more prospective research is needed."
(The other difference Coleman found in parents of autistic children was "the presence of hypothyroidism in the preconception history.")
And there's more. In the 2002 book "Impact of Hazardous Chemicals on Public Health, Policy, and Service," the authors review those studies and cite another -- an unpublished manuscript by Marcus and Broman: "They found a higher incidence of occupations involving exposure to chemicals among the parents of children with autism."
--
And the link goes back to the very beginning. As we describe in our book, The Age of Autism -- Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-made Epidemic, we found and identified most of the anonymous 11 children in the first case series report of autism, in 1943. In brief, mercury was everywhere in the family backgrounds, especially the newly commercialized ethyl mercury in pesticides and, alas, vaccines. You could see it clearly in the parents' professions -- forestry professor and plant pathologist and chemist dads; well-baby visit, vaccine-pioneer mom; nurse mom; four psychiatrist dads back when mercury was used to treat a common form of mental illness.
This is just a hunch, but I think Leo Kanner saw oddities in parents, such as they were, that pointed to their own exposure to the same toxins that injured their kids (along with the stress of having such disabled kids and knowing they were being blamed for it, to boot). One father, a chemist, was described in ways -- irascible, painfully shy -- that suggested the mercury-exposure disorder called erethism. Now that's really sick, if you think about it -- missing the fact that both parent and child had been damaged by the same substance, then assuming the parents had either induced the condition in their child through their parenting or their DNA. No wonder our understanding of autism has lagged about a half-century by missing the simple point that it's not who the parents were; it was nothing intrinsic to their psyche or their DNA or their "autistic traits" (but not autism); it's what they did.
Come on, folks! Ethyl mercury triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930s and the epidemic exploded in 1988 when the mercury load from infant vaccinations rose nearly threefold after the vaccine "court" gave manufacturers tort liability.
It's a simple tale, really. But Kanner, the psychiatrist who described those first cases, missed the "chemical connection" and speculated, as scientists still do, that something about who these perseverative, autisticky parents were -- rather than what they did, and what, thereby, they and their children were exposed to -- causes autism.
Seventy five years later, we've got a third of kids in England too messed up to educate, which means our collective future is in serious doubt. The only thing that hasn't changed is it's still the parents' fault.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
Kapoore,
"Maybe without all those vaccines and neurological damage kids could withstand more assaults from electro-magnetic fields."
Or, maybe without all those non-ionizing electromagnetic fields and neurological damage kids could withstand more assaults from vaccines!
We have become victims of a 'divide-and-conquer' strategy. We are choosing A or B as the 'cause' of a disease when it is the synergy of A and B that is the driving factor. Non-ionizing EMF is deadly in selected frequency ranges (especially RF and ELF), and the emerging 'Internet of Things' will result in a dramatic increase of wireless radiation that allows for communications among these 'things'. It will only expose people to far more non-ionizing radiation, and greatly exacerbate the adverse effects of vaccines and other potentially toxic stimuli.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | May 27, 2016 at 09:28 AM
I want to add to my last comment that in Magda Havas' presentation she shows via a map how the U.S. wireless network has grown over time.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 27, 2016 at 07:22 AM
Kapoore,
I'm glad that you looked into EMF/RFR.
Here are 3 expert presentations fyi. The first is by Devra Davis. She presents the research about effects of cell phones and wireless on sperm and the fetus - I hope you all see at least the first one
(DAN please see Dr. Davis' talk below - it definitely relates to your article):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZaZQ4fDm5o (Devra Davis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBo8f73QJE0 (Magda Havas)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN1nl9GNpUU (Lennart Hardell)
There are other presentations from the same Canadian conference that Drs. Davis and Havas spoke at above that you can find on youtube if interested.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 27, 2016 at 12:31 AM
I bought a book on electro-magnetic waves--basically a book that gives ways of a voiding toxicity from them. Probably elector-magnetic waves or just plain old electricity can be bad for you. That was one of the reasons I decided against an electric car. Also I have wondered if the early death of so many rock stars might have something to do with their spending so much time in cages of electricity playing electric musical instruments and wearing electric plugged in headphones. Even back in the 80s when I had my kids everyone said to stay away from those "buckets" on telephone poles. Cell phone towers shouldn't be next to neighborhoods, in schools, near playgrounds, at police and fire stations. People don't want them and should not be forced to have them.... Also it's probably better to say no to smart meters, and to NEVER go through any security wave machine at the airport. ( Electro-magnetic frequencies should have safety standards...dream on with our ridiculously fraudulent FDA and CDC.)
What seems harder to do is to go back to a jack phone only---no cell phone, or to get rid of WiFi, or stop using a lap top. I really wish that cell phones weren't baby sitters for little toddlers and that children weren't glued to cell phones day and night. Still if I have to pick and choose my battles I'm sticking to vaccines as the causal agent in autism and the epidemic of disease. We are injecting known toxins into babies, toxins that have been proven to cause cell death. Maybe without all those vaccines and neurological damage kids could withstand more assaults from electro-magnetic fields. .
Posted by: kapoore | May 26, 2016 at 05:24 PM
Re the PKU. As an aunt, maybe you can help your nieces get the medical treatment they need?PKU as others have said has nothing to do with vaccines, but needs to be treated. A visit to a doctor would be very necessary. How did your sister get a diagnosis, but no one told her the treatment for her and her children?
Here is some info re PKU I found on the web, but they need to see a doctor for medical advice.
https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pku/conditioninfo/Pages/treatments.aspx
Posted by: Hera | May 25, 2016 at 01:04 PM
I just watched and listened to Dr. Humphries. It clearly states that aluminum is bad for anybody. So, my hunch, that aluminum is in vaccines for no reason other than to fake an immune response, is correct, at least that's what I get out of her talk. The vaccine manufacturers don't want to take it out because it would take going through testing of a substance that might not exist that actually does enhance an immune response. That gets me to my point below. Aluminum is used as an adjuvant for no other reason than "because" what?
Going further, mercury (one of the most toxic substances known to man) in vaccines is made worse by the synergistic effect with aluminum which should not have been put into vaccines to begin with because it is bad for us. Did I also hear something about rabbit's blood in vaccines?
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 25, 2016 at 12:38 PM
ATSC! Thank you for the info. Some of these things are not clear when they are discussed or written about.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 25, 2016 at 11:14 AM
Linda1, Thank you for the link to the article on umbilical cord clamping!!! The new NICE guidelines were pointed out to me soon after they appeared in December 2014, and I pointed them out in a reply to an AoA article by John Stone shortly after that. Let's see if need for special education begins to decline five years from now.
Ten years??? Retired obstetricians George Morley and David Hutchon have been trying to point out the hazards of clamping the umbilical cord since at least 1998. Notice they didn't dare until after they retired. The medical establishment is malicious.
Judith Mercer, retired professor of midwifery at the University of Rhode Island, has carried out many research studies that provide evidence of harm from clamping the cord, especially in premature infants. in PubMed lookup the paper she wrote in 2002 with R Skovgaard on neonatal transition: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11911621
This in no way lets vaccines off the hook. Hep-B at birth adds insult to injury. Synthetic vitamin K injected at birth during the 1940s and 50s had to be stopped following its association with brain damage from bilirubin. It is time to question the need for vitamin K at birth, a practice begun in the 1930s.
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | May 25, 2016 at 06:40 AM
Birgit,
Attenuated viruses don't need an adjuvant.
Have you watched Suzanne Humphries video on aluminum?
@3.50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZe99K12740
Posted by: ATSC | May 25, 2016 at 06:18 AM
There is a good case against aluminum in vaccines. It just happens there is a better case against mercury, any kind of mercury. It could even be from dental amalgams or fish.
It happens that the synergistic effect of mercury and aluminum is particularly strong. So, in fact aluminum is bad. But mercury is worse because it interferes with so many enzymatic processes that it disrupts the human metabolism more severely than almost any other substance, and it is insidious. It does not kill immediately no matter how lethal it is. Aluminum is used as an adjuvant to enhance the immune response.
It has always struck me as a bit ridiculous that on the one hand the virus in the vaccine has to be attenuated, meaning it has to be made less virulent, and then because it is not virulent enough aluminum has to be added.
Does anyone know whether these adjuvants are added to fool us into thinking that the vaccine produces a reaction or do the adjuvants actually produce a better immune response?
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 25, 2016 at 01:48 AM
Eileen,
Did you see this from May 2015?
http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/news/a50495/something-that-always-happens-right-after-birth-is-about-to-change-forever/
"The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has officially changed the guidelines for cutting umbilical cords to now state that doctors and midwives should not routinely cut the cord "earlier than one minute from the birth of the baby." It also suggests that the wait last anywhere from one to five minutes, or longer per the mother's request."
Posted by: For Eileen Nicole Simon from Linda1 | May 25, 2016 at 12:56 AM
Barry! Apparently you know a better way to force the vaccine lobby to stop what they are doing. Look at Dr. Wakefield. Do you believe he is a slow and low man? I have been around the block several more times than most of the parents of autistic children. I do not need to be told how things work. I know how doctors treat children who don't talk. I have seen one of Erik's doctors practice on my son the skills he did not have. He did not do the simplest things right. He had no clue, and yet he got away with malpractice. Can I sue for malpractice? No lawyer takes that kind of case. The award is not high enough.
I have no idea what works. If your approach works, prove that fast and high works.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 25, 2016 at 12:01 AM
I don't claim to have all the answers, but being too dogmatic also does not help.
**********
I couldn't agree more.
Which is why I struggle when I see anyone arguing for the "low and slow"approach, on giving poisonous vaccines to children.
There's no such thing as a safe level of injected poison, especially when it comes to children. Even if it's being delivered in the form of a vaccine.
If you can't admit that to yourself, then you have no right referring to my views as dogmatic
Posted by: Barry | May 24, 2016 at 07:53 PM
Dan,
"Come on, folks! Ethyl mercury triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930s and the epidemic exploded in 1988 when the mercury load from infant vaccinations rose nearly threefold after the vaccine "court" gave manufacturers tort liability."
Just as the mercury load increased nearly threefold, so did the aluminum content in the same vaccines, and children vaccinated according to the current schedule receive almost 5 mgs of aluminum by eighteen months of age. Reducing mercury to trace amounts hasn't stopped the brain-damaging effects of vaccines, nor has it halted the epidemic, so mercury by itself can't be the cause for the ongoing epidemic. Mercury is far more toxic when combined with aluminum.
I found out only recently that a Workshop on Aluminum was held one month before Simpsonwood when those of us with vaccine-injured children, and the media, were focused on thimerosal or the MMR. Why was this conference held? Did they suspect that the increased aluminum in vaccines could have been responsible for Verstraeten's findings of "tics, attention deficit disorder, speech and language disorders"? Verstraeten who most likely attended that workshop asked at Simpsonwood, "How do we know that it is a Thimerosal effect? Since all vaccines are Thimerosal containing, how do we know that it's not something else in the vaccines such as aluminum or the antigens?"
In 2004, "Despite a lack of good-quality evidence" the Cochraine Collaboration recommended that no further research on aluminum was to be undertaken. Why not? Because most vaccines wouldn't work without it, and to find and test the safety of an alternative adjuvant would take many years.
With current research in mind, isn't it time to stop highlighting thimerosal as the sole trigger of the Age of Autism?
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/03/31/aluminum-vaccines.aspx
The Case Against Aluminum in Vaccines - March 31, 2015
Posted by: ATSC | May 24, 2016 at 07:06 PM
I am a person to use my judgment to see what's good for me. I use supplements because I think they are good for me. I am not suggesting that everybody follows my advice. The vaccination question should be a matter of choice. I am against too many too soon. But I am also in favor of letting kids play in dirt and not wash their hands every time and to shake hands with somebody. Exposing yourself to a wide variety of germs might also protect you because that's how you and I make antibodies. Those actions are basically mild forms of inoculation. I don't claim to have all the answers, but being too dogmatic also does not help.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 24, 2016 at 03:56 PM
Vaccination has nothing to do with power-mad politicians and certainly not with the two current presidential candidates. The idea to vaccinate is not a bad one. It's the how and how many at what age that matters.
*********
So vaccination in not a bad thing, you just have to be careful to not give your baby too many, too soon?
Wow, that sounds like a pretty huge risk to expect any parent to navigate. Because if you're lucky and guess right, you're golden. Guess wrong however, and you just disabled your own child.
To avoid getting it wrong, how many would you say is too many? And how soon is too soon?
Posted by: Barry | May 24, 2016 at 07:04 AM
@ Birgit Calhoun
Smallpox is part of the vaccine myth; Leicester in England used a combination of quarantine and limited vaccination with much better results than mass-vaccination programs, which killed/injured large numbers of people. Have you read Dr Humphries' Dissolving Illusions on smallpox? Quite enlightening.
This is online/free:
http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2013/08/27/vaccination-a-mythical-history-by-roman-bystrianyk-and-suzanne-humphries-md/
Posted by: Tim Lundeen | May 23, 2016 at 08:34 PM
Vaccination has nothing to do with power-mad politicians and certainly not with the two current presidential candidates. The idea to vaccinate is not a bad one. It's the how and how many at what age that matters. If anyone thinks that the idea is bad you need to go back to the Middle Ages to see the faces of people who survived smallpox. Smallpox is a disease of the past. And it clearly is a success story. So, let's not get carried away with generalization, but instead educate yourself.
PKU testing is done at childbirth. It is very important and it is not new. Not taking heed regarding PKU is negligent toward your baby. It is genetic. And when a doctor tells you about giving your baby a special diet, it's for your baby's life. Your baby will be more intelligent with the diet. PKU is not to be fooled with. It's a serious condition. Vaccination is, too. But is a completely different problem.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 23, 2016 at 06:26 PM
barry -- Am I suggesting the MMR vaccines "DO contain mercury?" arghh! you are harshing my buzz.
*******
Not sure what that means. But my was question was for you, not Bob and Cherry. So let me pose it a in a slightly different way.
Is there a reason why you said
" Come on, folks! ETHYL MERCURY triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930s and the epidemic exploded in 1988....
instead of
"Come on, folks! VACCINES triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930s and the epidemic exploded in 1988....
Posted by: Barry | May 23, 2016 at 04:54 PM
Interesting anecdote, Bendetta. Thank you for sharing. Good to know something other than letter by letter might make it easier.
Posted by: Too messed up to Educate | May 23, 2016 at 04:04 PM
Dorie Southern, I'm not aware of there being a vaccine against PKU,there certainly wasn't when my sons were born in the early 80s. Babies were tested for the condition soon after birth so that it could be treated mainly with diet thereafter. So I don't think your parents need to blame themselves for not having your sister vaccinated. You seem to have all done very well on it!
Posted by: Grace Green | May 23, 2016 at 07:21 AM
It is not likely to matter who gets elected when it comes to real action. I don't believe that government can function as constructively as it still did in the '60s. I don't believe that government will solve our autism problem. Unfortunately the people who are running for office are too beholden to the status quo and too shot up by vaccines to make accountable decisions any more. "Quem mercurius perdere vult dementat prius." Freely translated it means: "It's the mercury stupid!" That came from Alfred Stock, a famous German chemist who knew that he was mercury-poisoned because he worked with mercury in his lab.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 23, 2016 at 02:34 AM
When it comes to hormonal problems there is plenty of evidence they are connected to mercury. There is a lot of evidence that people who are mercury-impaired also have problems with luteinizing hormone (oxytocin), insulin, thyroid hormone and more. I find it very peculiar that there is so much barking up the wrong tree. Dogs don't bark up a wrong tree. And I even venture to say that when people bark up the wrong tree they do it in order to obfuscate.
Why don't those wise AS people go to the most obvious reason and investigate there? Is it that they are afraid that they might find something?
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 23, 2016 at 01:05 AM
Kapoore,
I took the gamble of no vaccines as did my mother before me. We worked on the theory, "if ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise." It worked for me and my four children. It did not work for my sister who by some mystery got PKU as a gift from our parents. The other four of us did not.
She was not terribly affected -- not retarded but certainly learning disabled. Even worse, her children went on to have disabilities as a result of her PKU. I had never even heard of PKU until last November. My sister prefers not to talk about it. The doctors preferred not to do anything about it.
Some people say that some of our power mad politicians (Hilary comes to mind) want to cull the population. Could this be one of the reasons that children are being disabled?
Unfortunately I think there are people evil enough to do that. The rest are just sheep who do what they are told. How do we get the fluoride out of our water and the vaccines out of our bodies? They tell us vaccines are safe and will save our lives and the lives of our children.
As an unvaccinated person I can say that I think I had a number of childhood illnesses. They came and went. I have no memory of them. That is how bad it was.
Posted by: Dorie Southern | May 22, 2016 at 09:59 PM
Linda 1 and Ronald Kostoff,
Thank you for the thoughtful replies. I have not studied electro-magnetic fields or glyphosate. I'm sorry if my paragraph seemed to dismiss these theories. ( I was reacting to the "anything but vaccine" propaganda that is so common now and was suggested in the article. ) Russell Blaylock believes in synergistic causality and he is a pioneer in brain chemistry. Wouldn't it solve a lot of unknowns if there were a well designed vaccinated versus unvaccinated study.
In my case, my daughter could have gotten a child form of chronic fatigue illness, which was going around her nursery school. Everyone was super sick with it. When the whooping cough came through she got that (despite two rounds of vaccines against it), on top of chronic strep infection, and then she got the MMR at age 4. Who knows...maybe we should blame nursery school education for some of the epidemic because kids get sick and some never get well.
Neurodegenerative diseases could also be linked to monkey viruses that came in on earlier vaccines and then were spreading like an epidemic (through California at least) in the 80s and 90s. Still it's hard to dismiss the aluminum adjuvant as a factor because that clearly causes mitochondria disease that has a proven link to autism. The vaccine schedule exploded after the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act--more vaccines, more toxic aluminum and other chemicals entering the brain from the muscle through the lymphatic system. I guess if I had to gamble with a child's health and I had to pick my toxin I would completely avoid vaccines, and pray for the best.
Posted by: kapoore | May 22, 2016 at 07:02 PM
Kapoore,
"Don't these researchers who say "it's the electro-magnetic field that cause autism" have to fit exposures into the autism time frame?"
It seems to me that the autism phenomenon has to be explained on the micro and macro levels, allowing for the possibility of multiple synergistic causes.
For example, the doses of MMR vaccine given in the USA followed a step-function trend over time, as shown in
(http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/Supplement_3/S141/F1.expansion.html).
There were roughly seven million doses annually from 1971 to mid-1989, and approximately twice that number (because of a recommended second dose) thereafter. Autism began a noticeably increasing rise starting about the early-mid-1990s, paralleling the increase in e.g. glyphosate usage and cell phone subscriptions
(http://www.medicaldaily.com/autism-rates-increase-2025-glyphosate-herbicide-may-be-responsible-future-half-316388);
(https://www.bellyarmor.com/radiation/health-risks/autism/).
While the glyphosate and cell phone curves are correlations with the autism time trend, the researchers who generated these curves also offer credible physical mechanisms for a causal linkage. And, the exposure levels of these toxic stimuli that translate into contributing factors vary widely, given individual susceptibilities.
If vaccines were an isolated driver of autism, why would a significant increase in autism rates not have been seen starting in the early 70s? It seems clear to me that an MMR vaccine-autism association was not observed in the period from early 70s to early 90s because some of the key synergistic components were not in place in sufficient strength. While I have identified glyphosate and RF radiation as potential contributing factors to the increase in autism, this does not rule out other potential contributing factors that may have co-existed as well. The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in myriad potentially toxic stimuli in our environment, some of which could also be contributing factors to autism. It appears that once these critical contributing factors were in place, the impact on the immune and other critical systems was sufficiently large to enable the MMR vaccine to effect the observed behavioral and intestinal problems characteristic of autism. This comports with the observation of many mothers of these children that the symptoms occurred soon after the vaccine was given. Could the autism have occurred without the MMR vaccine if the non-vaccine environmental components had become sufficiently large? Who knows; that was not the large-scale global experiment we decided to run.
Posted by: Ronald Kostoff | May 22, 2016 at 05:51 PM
Thank you, Mr. Olmsted. I hope more pay attention to the research highlighted here before everyone is too chemically polluted (and EMP irradiated) to perform any further research.
Joe (can't resist making a puppet-political argument--it might have something to do with having a beyond reasonable number of dental amalgams, or ...let's just say it's that-- though maybe this is more like a really nagging question),
Some have expressed concern that the reason Trump has been "allowed" to run is to wash out better candidates (in juxtaposition with Hilary) which it seems he has done, thoroughly (probably with some powerful support, the kind that makes candidates bow out right after pledging to fight).
So--assuming that Hilary's threat to democracy, unalienable rights, etc, etc, etc, goes without saying--if Donald Trump gets enough support (and I'm not sure all the support he is getting is coming from a good place, for "democracy" or unalienable rights, or any etc.) to overcome whatever trumped-up result some feel they can automatically hand to Hillary...at least I don't think it's too hard for some to tweak polls and give people the impression that 40-60 is actually 60-40 and steal 20% of the vote and not raise many suspicions, so that a candidate that is not OK with TPTB (for want of a better expression and assuming they are in agreement which they might not be, but I think they were in agreement prior to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY02Qkuc_f8 which illustrates some the nagging stuff I can't get over) might have to have a lead on the order of about 80-20...if Trump is elected on either that much actual popular support or some mix of partial public support and TPTB support, what do you expect or hope he will be able and willing to do?
Or, are you hoping Trump will just do less (which I personally do happen to hope, as Trump sounds to me like he might support a mandate if it can be made out to be less irrational than what's already being done)?
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | May 22, 2016 at 05:50 PM
Totally agree! One of the dumbest grants AS has EVER funded.
This grant both - helps no one AND perpetuates the most stupid stereotype re bad parenting causes autism
Posted by: Katie Wrigh | May 22, 2016 at 04:36 PM
Joe -- just changed it to trump or clinton. hope that takes it off the table so to speak.
Posted by: Dan Olmsted | May 22, 2016 at 04:01 PM
Kapoore,
Please get a hold of Sam Milham's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Electricity-Electrification-Diseases-Civilization/dp/193890818X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463944598&sr=8-1&keywords=sam+milham
He shows how the rise in certain diseases followed the installation of electricity. The allowed EMF exposure, the amount considered safe by regulators, is very high. If a person lives near a high tension wire or if a person sleeps close to or on the other side of a high emitting appliance or a junction box, there will be high chronic exposure that the person isn't even aware of. Sometimes houses can be wired incorrectly so that the inhabitants are exposed to high EMFs without their knowledge. There's more to it. Please see the book.
As far as the early 90s and cell phones, people did sit in front of VRT terminals. They emitted high radiation. They were quietly phased out and replaced with the flat ones. But the public was never really informed about the dangers and harm done by the old ones. Same thing with the old TVs - emitted super high fields. I had an big old JVC TV and once I got an EMF meter and tested my house, I realized that with that TV on, my entire living room was flooded with a high field. These old TVs are donated to charity and then are used by the poor. It's just disgusting.
Then too, the old wireless land lines flooded homes with radiation when the phone rang. Still do - the newer DECT phones are worse. Held up to one's head, a wireless land line is just as bad as a cell phone. We had those in the early 90s.
But, not saying that this is the cause of any particular person's autism. But it definitely could be causing or contributing to or exacerbating some cases. Please see also the BioInitiative Report online. Has the research.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 22, 2016 at 03:29 PM
Dan, if the Trump insult was "just a posited dinner conversation," somehow I don't see you putting Hillary's name in there "as a threat to democracy." Of course she is just that and more, and will push big, big government on everyone, which means an ever-increasing toxic vaccine assault on infants, children, AND adults.
What adults are missing in the Age of Autism, is that they're next. SB277 is only the beginning, folks. Mandates are coming for ADULTS.
You are hopelessly naive if you think otherwise. Being a seasoned reporter, however, you most likely realize the stakes. I can think of no other political issue that would take precedent over the integrity of your own mind and memory against Big Pharma's assault.
If you think you the rate of Alzheimer's is high now, just wait. Mercury in flu shots is cumulative. Heavy metal intoxication will wipe out the memory of millions, including you. It already has for millions more.
Guess you have other political fish to fry, Dan.
What a shame.
Posted by: Joe | May 22, 2016 at 02:59 PM
joe -- i didn't say trump is a threat to democracy, i just posited it as dinner table conversation that a child would not be interested in. there was no covert intent. I've said what i have to say about trump, which has been mixed, and will say no more...
grace -- i don't think that pointing out an unrecognized toxic risk for autism in a parent's profession is blaming them for making their child autistic. the blame-the-parent paradigm is all about things that parents supposedly should and could have done better -- child-rearing chief among them. "blame" for harming hundreds of thousands rests with the careless introduction of new toxins in manufacturing and medicine and -- especially -- the failure to recognize and remedy the consequences and -- double especially -- flat-out covering it up these past many years.
barry -- Am I suggesting the MMR vaccines "DO contain mercury?" arghh! you are harshing my buzz. see bob and cherry's comments.
Posted by: Dan Olmsted | May 22, 2016 at 02:19 PM
Dan, must you be reminded once again that the Republican nominee who, according to you, is a threat to democracy, is the only candidate who has a real problem with the HORSE SHOTS given to 6 month olds? Do you really think big government Hillary or Bernie will call the CDC to account? Please do not allow sexual identity politics to cloud your thinking - you risk your credibility
Posted by: Joe | May 22, 2016 at 11:58 AM
Dan, forgive me, I may be missing something, but after a lifetime of inexplicable persecution from the UK government, and then finding out I have autism, and ME, and remembering my father was a pharmacologist, I can't help thinking there must be a connection. So am I being paranoid if I feel that saying autism is caused by the parent's job is also blaming the parent? That's the only sense I can make of what's happening to me. I suppose the real problem is that once there's a vested interest people can't afford to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Posted by: Grace Green | May 22, 2016 at 11:48 AM
The autism epidemic has a time frame. It began in the early nineties. Don't these researchers who say "it's the electro-magnetic field that cause autism" have to fit exposures into the autism time frame? How many of the kids who formed the early years of the epidemic grew up with a cell phone in their strollers. There were early users (techies) but the big usage I would guess came after the year 2,000. I didn't even own a cell phone in the nineties when the epidemic was beginning to rev up. I remember moms who had chronically ill children like mine even in the early nineties. We didn't own computers or cell phones. I barely watch any TV and I was an at home mom who had more or less banned chemicals from my house. I wouldn't even put flea repellant on my dog for fear of poisoning my kids. I guess we didn't eat organic but I bought my food at the health food store. It could have been the frozen apple juice I would put into my daughter's bottle because it wasn't until years later that I learned there was anti-fungal pesticide on that. My kids were barely vaccinated, but my daughter got more than my son. He was a home birth so didn't have the vitamin K shot. She eventually was tested for viral overload, which she had. Something got to her very early and it wasn't the cell phone.. Oh and my daughter's Apgar score was 9, and for the first six months she was a powerhouse--early walker, early talker, best coordination in mommy and me class, etc. After the MMR she could barely hold a pencil.
Posted by: kapoore | May 22, 2016 at 11:47 AM
Patience, your story is very moving, and enlightening. I had a thought when reading your last comment. What is "Kanner autism"? It seems to me that autism is just a word we use to describe a certain kind of injury sustained in childhood. It may be that that injury was caused by a stroke. If an adult has a stroke they may end up with aphasia. They will not be called autistic, but a stroke patient. There are causes, processes, and outcomes. The words we use are important, and I think its detrimental to the political battle which we're engaged in not to stand alongside others who have the same malfunctions, but to a different degree, and starting at a different age.
Posted by: Grace Green | May 22, 2016 at 11:24 AM
Keeping humans off the endangered species list is going to take a multi-pronged approach.
It's going to take people tracking down and exposing the triggers; folks like Dan, Teresa, Ronald Castoff. It's more than obvious that the gov't slows down and hinders that process, rather than embracing the opportunities to do this that were initially vested to groups like the CDC and the EPA and the FDA and the NRC, etc.
It's going to take people parsing out the mechanisms of the damage as it unfolds: The body has a finite set of pathways but the exposures are unlimited. Anything damaging critical pathways is a problem. For instance, Eileen Nicole Simon's focus on damage in critical areas of the brain as a result of lack of oxygen, Teresa's interplay of the micro biome, eli-genetics' research on SNPs and histone changes, amino-acid displacement or corruption from GMOs, etc This knowledge requires ongoing back and forth communication with the trigger-trackers, so that the most common triggers become the point of focus, i.e. vaccines with known pesticides in them (thimerasol, and other heavy metals), or live viruses, or cord clamping, or pesticides or gross in food that open up tight junctures leading to inflammation that can lead to internal self-mutilation and cellular asphyxiation, etc.
It's going to take educators advocating for the prevention of human exposure to the triggers in order to rebuild a sustainable, intelligent human race. If autism and all the overlapping chronic diseases ravaging the human race right now has escalated over the past 2-4 generations, the damaged people trying to procreate will continue to compound the issue until the this barreling locomotive of destruction is slowed down, stopped, and eventually reversed. Do we know yet how many generations this will take? I'd think at least another 2 to 4, if not more. Groups like Safeminds, Mom's Clear Air, Families for Safer Chemicals.
It's going to take healers to heal the currently damaged people, i.e. all of us, in an attempt to create a generation of healthier current parents, and grandparents, and children. These healthy people will be needed to support our currently damaged ones who may be permanently disabled while we grow healthy babies again. AutismOne, or functional medicine, environmental medicine, clinical nutritionists, complementary/alternative health, etc.
None of these groups are mutually exclusive, and each group's efforts will fail if they fail to recognize the value of the others and keep open lines of communication on where to focus pressure on society and politics to ensure a future for people on this planet. Our duel party politics have done a great job so far keeping the knowledge and efforts of these groups away from each other.
Posted by: Jenny | May 22, 2016 at 10:23 AM
Benedetta, Thank you! Autism is forever, and it is always diagnosed in childhood. People claiming their autism (or social disorder) was first diagnosed in adolescence or adulthood, are suffering from a different disorder, not Kanner autism.
I am grateful I am still able to take walks in the sun. Yesterday it was along Nantasket Beach at high tide, a beautiful beach to walk, even at high tide. My son was with me, but off walking the other direction. I am grateful that he has developed so well, but he remains autistic. His primary problem is an auditory processing disorder. He has difficulty trying to talk with people who "talk a mile a minute."
Science is the answer, and research on autism must focus on the brain. Loss of language in adulthood is tragic, and based on the discoveries of Broca in 1861 (motor aphasia) and Wernicke (sensory aphasia) in 1874, research remains focused on the brain. Aphasia is never dismissed as a matter of normal human diversity.
Who are these "autism experts," who are being pushed around by proponents of the neurodiversity movement? They blame parents; the blame belongs on them!!!
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | May 22, 2016 at 06:35 AM
Govt of the pharma,
"Also a question to you moms I fell asleep every time i nursed him could that have been Mercury being released?"
Definitely not. Hormone oxytocin released during nursing makes mother sleepy. Perfectly normal.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 22, 2016 at 06:01 AM
I have often thought of this as the invasion of the alien Mercury. Okay. Mercury lives in my teeth and all the tuna I ate. I am add but luckily still able to go to high level college due to test
Scores. The Merc caused strabismus so I am shy. When I discover email I am amazed. A way to talk without having to be face to face! I become a geek --because of how my body cannot prices Mercury. I move to Silicon Valley land of Mercury mining. I take all those vaccines because I believe in science and think those poor autism parents are misled by a coincidence of timing. I marry an aspie type because they are everywhere here. I later learn his dad was a scientist and got him lots of childhood vaccines. But we are both very functional. We have the brilliant baby he ends up in icu from the hep b hours after he is born . They don't know what's wrong so they give him IV antibiotics for 4 days and a Spinal tap. That hep b shot sure gets them lots of insurance money. We don't connect the dots. Each vax makes him
Sicker but he is still him. We don't connect the dots. He gets the MMR and disappears before our eyes. We finally see it. We stop the shots we go to Dan Drs to erase the Mercury and thoughtulhouee to treat the gut. We go to all the conventioanal therapies and get him on diets. He will probably be okay and I am grateful but the joy in his eyes is gone. But there is hope because of those who spoke up and helped us connect the dots. .. I grew up in a steel town and had a mouth full of Mercury. I had rhigham and Flu shot while pregnant. I had a filling replaced. How my child can even talk is a miracle. But the dose made the poison. His parents cannot process Mercury but we got far less. Also a question to you moms I fell asleep every time i nursed him could that have been Mercury being released? And I had post Partum depression anxiety could that have been Mercury and vitamin d deficiency. And Eileen thank you for your tireless info.
Posted by: Govt Of the Pharma by the Pharma and for the pharma | May 22, 2016 at 03:02 AM
Eileen;
It is one of those nights, I have yet to put my mind to rest enough for sleep.
I keep thinking about you.
I know what it is like to have children in their 30s and they have not launched. .
What must it be like when they are in their 40s or 50s or even 60s and they still --- .
I suppose walks in the sun, living every moment in the moment.
I am so sorry Eileen, things have turned out as they have.
I think though that you are a scientist in your soul, and you will always want to know, you will find some comfort in searching, and I hope that we all find the answers.
And I wouldn't mind at all if along with that - perhaps see some people in some orange jumpers.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 22, 2016 at 02:44 AM
I agree 98% BUT don't dismiss the effects of electro-magnetic frequencies on this generation. The smart phones and other Wi-Fi connected technologies are adding to our toxic environment. Just look at Martha Herbert's research -
http://www.marthaherbert.org/library/Herbert-Sage-2013-Autism-EMF-PlausibilityPathophysiologicalLink-Part21.pdf
"A critical intellectual turning point for me was co-authoring the long paper “Autism and EMF? Plausibility of a Pathophysiological Link,” now peer-reviewed, indexed on PubMed and published as Part I and Part II in the journal Pathophysiology (2013). EMFs (electromagnetic fields) target the same physiological vulnerabilities as do other toxicants. These are also major weakpoints for many people with autism — and many more with other chronic conditions. I have come to see autism (and many other conditions) as a problem of allostatic load or total load, which means that the difficulties posed by autism cannot be solved just within the limits of “autism.”
Posted by: Nancy | May 22, 2016 at 12:58 AM
Hypersensitivity to sound (hyperacusis) is extreme in many autistic children. Covering the ears is a gesture associated with autism. We may be startled when someone turns on the vacuum cleaner, but quickly hear the sound only as background noise. Inhibitory neurons are activated, but these appear to be missing in autistic children (or adults) who are hypersensitive to noise.
Specialized circuits like the auditory pathway are affected in autism, not the brain as a whole. Blood flow is higher in the brainstem auditory pathway than anywhere else in the brain. This was a surprise finding reported by SS Kety in 1962, and his paper is free online in PubMed. In PubMed enter keywords mercury auditory; I see 86 citations this evening. Keywords asphyxia auditory brings up 172 citations; valproate auditory brings up 97. I see several worth looking into.
A focus on brain and neurologic signs is needed in autism research. I will continue to try to point this out.
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | May 21, 2016 at 08:15 PM
@ Barry .. in my humble opinion .. Dan's unequivocal comment that "Ethyl mercury triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930's and the epidemic exploded in 1988 when the mercury load from infant vaccinations rose nearly threefold ..... does not mean that the "MMR vaccine does not cause autism". ..
I believe Dan's "unequivocal statement" is correct .. but .. that does not mean that Wakefield's link of the MMR vaccine with autism is "incorrect".
I can't speak for Dan .. but .. I believe BOTH "mercury" and the "MMR" vaccine are LINKED to the epidemic of autism .. and .. without BOTH .. the EPIDEMIC would not have been as catastrophic to where "1 in 45" are being diagnosed autistic today.
I don't think Dan has ever suggested that the vaccine manufactures are lying, and the MMR vaccines DO contain mercury?
Again .. I can't speak for Dan .. but .. I believe NOTHING LIVING can survive after exposure to Thimerosal .. including "live" MMR viruses .. ergo .. no "mercury" in MMR vaccines.
There are so many stark and lingering differences between "isolated children with autism" .. I believe it would be very unlikely that only ONE source of contamination to a toddler's undeveloped immune system can be blamed for it all.
The bottom line is .. for Autism Speaks to CONTINUE squandering MILLIONS of dollars on "research" that seeks "explanations" by which to blame PARENTS .. rather than ENVIRONMENTAL insults .. (Thimerosal & MMR vaccine) .. that coincide exactly with the otherwise INEXPLICABLE EPIDEMIC of autism .. is a deliberate waste of valuable TIME .. and .. scarce MONEY.
Posted by: bob moffit | May 21, 2016 at 08:05 PM
http://therapyfunzone.net/blog/do-occupational-therapists-do-handwriting/
Posted by: Benedetta | May 21, 2016 at 07:41 PM
Too messed up to Educate
I have been through this cursive writing.
I am an educator: My Mother was an educator. I have taught kids to write, my Mother is a second grade teacher has taught kids to write.
I failed -- I could not do it. Mother seemed to ignore it - until we hit the seventh grade. Note; I did not even know my kid had autism - I thought he had PDD-NOS - LOL!
But I attended an autism meeting at university and saw lots of little kids that acted like my little kid acted.
I went home; called up the special ed director at the board of education, told her that my kid was now in the seventh grade, going on into the eighth, that I had failed to teach him how to cursive write and I needed help.
They sent over a physical therapist. She tested him and she said she was surprised that there was problem. Guess what - she did not teach him how to draw each letter -and then connect them - there was something that went on - I could not catch on to myself - but it had to do with some kind of matching card game. I kid you not. I son can cursive write now. Not well - still awkward, but he can read it now -- and guess what - up to that point he could not read it.
He and every one in his special ed class - which by the way - his special ed teacher was at a lost to understand - and that was the first year she had had a room full of them - claiming they could not cursive write and they could not read it.
You need to get on to the special ed department about this - tell them what you want.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 21, 2016 at 07:28 PM
Again we see the ludicrous "autism-like traits [behaviors?]". To be able to distinguish between autism behaviors and autism-like behaviors is entirely subjective and could be debated ad nauseum before any real line of distinction could be agreed upon by TWO psychiatrists, let alone a whole college, . . . and then be able to update the DSM in a way meaningful enough to conduct reliable and repeatable science?
It has really become sickening to see so much waste in time and money while the three monkeys, See-no-evil, Hear-no-evil and Autism-Speaks-no-evil, deliberately avoid what has become so obvious. Error of omission? No! Error of conscience.
Posted by: Peter Miles | May 21, 2016 at 06:11 PM
Re hypothyroidism, which Coleman found is a risk factor for having autistic kids, is often caused by mercury toxicity. Background levels today are much higher than historically, and lots and lots of people have mercury fillings. Too bad Coleman's study didn't look at the correlation between autism and the number of parental mercury fillings. I expect parental mercury burden is a strong risk factor for autistic kids, but unfortunately it's difficult to measure total body stores from past exposure.
Re Vitamin D, very few kids actually get any from the sun. All the kids at our school (except my son) are slathered in sunscreen before they leave home, and it is reapplied during the day by the school if there is any chance it has worn off. Despite that, I do think Vitamin D is protective: it modulates and reduces the strength of the immune response, so reduces the likelihood that a vaccine will trigger autism.
Re environmental causes: the head of our school says that kids started having weaker hand-grasp and less ability to hold a pen/pencil, starting about 20 years ago and getting worse every year. That would say that kids born around 1990 were the first with these problems -- just when the vaccine schedule started ramping up. One more point of evidence, as if we needed any more! (Of course she blames the parents, sigh...)
Posted by: Tim Lundeen | May 21, 2016 at 06:07 PM
Barry, I think that the mercury causes autism and MMR causes autism hypotheses are not necessarily an either or situation. In fact , Dr. Boyd E. Haley (mercury toxicologist) says that he and Dr. Wakefield have no scientific quarrel with each other. There may be other ways of looking at it, but the way I look at it is that mercury may be sequestered in some manner in the brain and when you get the encephalopathy of the MMR.,the mercury is liberated to cause new damage. Correct me if I am wrong- but dont the kids who get autism after the MMR have essentially the same symptoms as those who seem to get autism solely from mercury. And those symptoms are clearly symptoms of mercury toxicity.
Posted by: Cherry Misra | May 21, 2016 at 05:03 PM
Regarding rain on the west coast, I read articles in the LAT and NYT a few years ago about how much mercury is emitted by coal burning power plants in China. There has been a huge increase in these power plants in recent years, most without the kinds of emission controls commonly used elsewhere. According to these articles, the air polluted with mercury wafts over the Pacific ocean at high altitudes and rains down on the west coast of the U.S. - especially in OR and WA, where they found measurable increase in the mercury content of the soil.
Posted by: Twyla | May 21, 2016 at 03:35 PM
Kelley -
So sad that doctors are not trained in recognizing signs of vaccine injury, and that family history isn't taken into account. Even people who value vaccines need to understand what an outrageous travesty it is to dismiss vaccine injuries as coincidence, instead of studying these adverse reactions in order to make the vaccine program safer.
Posted by: Twyla | May 21, 2016 at 03:16 PM
Barry -
There isn't just one cause of autism. If mercury can cause autism, that doesn't mean that the MMR can't cause autism.
Perhaps a lot of autism is due to inflammation of the brain and nervous system - which can be caused by various components in vaccines (whose purpose is to stimulate the immune system) - and can be caused by other environmental exposures.
Perhaps some cases of autism are not related to inflammation at all, although studies show that neuroinflammation is often a factor.
Posted by: Twyla | May 21, 2016 at 03:10 PM
Our kids too messed up to educate, special needs on the rise, the refusal of mainstream to acknowledge and truly address the problem. No crisis! It is infuriating the people. As Milo Yiannopoulis (you HAVE to watch his videos) states, people are discovering that when they start to find out how much the media lies about one area, perhaps even about something innocuous like video games, or in our case, the more serious matter of autism, they begin to question other areas. Are they (mainstream) telling the truth about immigration? Climate change? The economy? Milo states that he knows many who have moved to the right over Liberal media bias and whitewashing.
THIS IS A MUST WATCH
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eClLiuKqoQE
Posted by: Reader | May 21, 2016 at 12:37 PM
Too messed up to Educate,
What's sad too is that the new young teachers can't do it either. They'll instruct students to print because they can't read cursive.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 21, 2016 at 12:28 PM
"Come on, folks! Ethyl mercury triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930s and the epidemic exploded in 1988 when the mercury load from infant vaccinations rose nearly threefold after the vaccine "court" gave manufacturers tort liability."
********
So are you suggesting then, that MMR does not cause autism?
Or are you suggesting that the vaccine manufactures are lying, and the MMR vaccines DO contain mercury?
Posted by: Barry | May 21, 2016 at 12:19 PM
Also, health care workers are exposed to strong cleaning chemicals and sanitizers and lots of EMF emitting machinery. They of course, handle pharmaceuticals (I wonder if pharmacists were included in the HCWs in this study?).
Many HCW also work at night, which also increases disease risk.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 21, 2016 at 11:54 AM
Dan,
Re the finance workers - lots of radiation emitted by the computer screens and office machinery (the big IBMs I believe gave off a lot of chemicals) and more recently, by laptops and other gadgets.
But considering occupational exposures - I wonder what the difference is in chemical/toxin (including EMF/RFR) exposure is in the average person then vs now and compared to occupational exposures at both points in time? Is the average person's exposure in 2016 similar to what occupational exposures were 50 or more years ago? Considering the food, the chemtrails, the massive overuse of pharmaceuticals (prescribed and in the water), etc. Are we to the point where one doesn't have to be a chemist in order to have a chemist's exposure?
You know I have to respond to this:
"And I'm not sure why letting Johnny play Wib Wob during dinner at Outback is any more toxic for the kid than coloring bunny rabbits on the place mat."
I guess Wib Wob is a phone game. The answer is that different activities affect brain development differently. Interactive computer or TV games are instantly gratifying and addictive. In my opinion, not good for a tiny person whose brain is still being wired. Lots has been written about that, but the telecommunications industry is powerful enough to drive social use despite any scientific opposition.
The other big thing is the radiation. Again, yesterday, I'm behind a woman and her baby in the check-out line at the grocery store. The baby, not old enough to walk yet, is holding the smartphone, staring at the screen. I couldn't help myself, I told the mother that those phones give off radiation. She politely made excuses that giving the baby the phone is the only way that she can shop, that the baby "doesn't get much screen time". Screen time. I was talking about the radiation. Went straight over her head. She *needed* to use the phone so she could shop. How did we ever buy food without cell phones? Anyway, as we left the store, I saw her again as I got into my car. The baby still held the phone as her mother lifted her out of the shopping cart and into her car seat.
Dan, I completely agree with you about what you've written. Except EMF/RFR is a serious pervasive toxin. It is a big exposure and a big problem.
Posted by: Linda1 | May 21, 2016 at 11:50 AM
Dan, Thanks. What I would most like to get across is the likely pattern of damage within the brain that results from all causes of autism: Prenatal exposure to alcohol, valproic acid, mercury, lead, prenatal rubella infection, asphyxia at birth, abnormal metabolites produced in genetic disorders like PKU, measles infection in childhood, lead poisoning, and vaccine components like mercury.
Brain damage is something none of us wanted to consider at first. We wanted a cure. But when despite all efforts we are still coping with language problems, hyperacusis, diminished environmental (or social) awareness, tics, jerky movements, sadly we have to admit permanent neurological problems remain.
The sudden increase in prevalence must be viewed as a new environmental factor, and most likely iatrogenic. The increased vaccine schedule is the most visible factor, and the medical establishment must do more than epidemiology. They cannot prove that mercury does not damage the brain. Clear evidence in the medical literature proved long ago that mercury damages the same brainstem pathways damaged by alcohol. These are also the same pathways damaged by asphyxia at birth. These same pathways have higher blood flow and aerobic metabolism than any other region of the brain... More later. I have to go out and take a walk in the sunshine...
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | May 21, 2016 at 11:45 AM
Since I can't pin down the toxic exposures in my family history, I do know that both my husband and I had adverse reactions to vaccines in the 70's and 80's as children and in our older years, prior to putting the pieces of vax injury together. Both of us had adverse reactions to MMR at 3 years of age. I went on to have grand mal seizures after DPT vaccines at 8 and 12 years respectively. Our one and only son started reacting to vaccines at 6 months. But of course, we were told this was normal for our child to constantly be sick and the doctor would continue vaccinating regardless of the illnesses he never could quite overcome. Then, the 18 month vaccines and he was gone, lost everything he had acquired in skill. I do believe there is genetic susceptibility....to vaccine injury that is. I am sure my husband and I were a sort of toxic soups as well and couple that with the 32 vaccines my son received before regressing into autism, well it was a recipe for disaster.
Posted by: Kelley | May 21, 2016 at 11:34 AM
"a third of kids in England too messed up to educate"
I recently took it upon myself to homeschool my children on how to write in cursive. For some inexplicable reason the schools only teach it for 15 mins relatively speaking but schools do not require students to use it with their writing assignments.
Envisioning my kids taking notes in college or in corporate or customer meetings and still writing so slowly in print is just too much for me to bear.
So my vax-injured now 14 yr old who by all outward appearances is normal and smart among her peers, decides she will take my dictation test to "place out" of this mom-taught course.
Hey, if you can already write cursive, no problem, I'm happy to give you a pass on this, I said.
What transpired next was so incredibly sad - I've always known there were lingering effects barely detectible by most except mom in the sensory integration/slight general paralysis realm.
My 14 yr old was brought to tears trying to hold a pencil, then a pen and make herself write in cursive. What she put on paper in extremely sloppy, barely legible cursive was "I don't even know how to hold a pencil....this feels so wrong, so awkward I can't even do it."
"Can't even do it." I hung on those words. It never occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons cursive is no longer taught and required in schools is because so many kids "can't even do it."
Sad.
Posted by: Too messed up to Educate | May 21, 2016 at 11:08 AM
"Parents were divided into those who had more non-people-oriented jobs (technical) or more people-oriented jobs (non-technical).
Fathers who worked in engineering were two times as likely to have a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Those who worked in finance were four times more likely and those who worked in health care occupations were six times more likely to have a child on the autism spectrum."
Perhaps this has more to do with health insurance and access to "health care"? Look who's got the highest risk. By a mile.
Posted by: Carol | May 21, 2016 at 10:31 AM
The hypothalamus is linked to the GI track, and to my surprise gut microbes.
There is a long list of chemicals that affect the hypothalamus.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 21, 2016 at 10:29 AM
Eileen;
You have stated many times it was the difficult birth, and the brain stem damage from lack of oxygen. I am sure that is true.
But perhaps you should go a step further. Why did you have a difficult birth in the first place?
There is mention in Dan's article of hypothyroidism. Hypo, or hyperthyroidism - can be a straight forward auto immune disease; our own immune antibodies attacking it, or it can also be a messed up pituitary - which leads us back to the hypothalamus and all the hormones it is responsible in orchestrating.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 21, 2016 at 10:27 AM
maybe we should do our own research with parents who read AOA. Speaking of earlier exposure in mothers of children on the spectrum-my daughter and mother of Josh, had a father(my spouse) who was a nuclear engineer. His job was to travel to nuclear sites and handle the nuclear accidents that had taken place(and there were many)when he wasn't in the office or a lab. He died at the age of 58 from cancer.
Posted by: Maurine Meleck | May 21, 2016 at 10:01 AM
"Come on, folks! Ethyl mercury triggered the Age of Autism in the 1930s and the epidemic exploded in 1988 when the mercury load from infant vaccinations rose nearly threefold after the vaccine "court" gave manufacturers tort liability."
By Dan's simple statement of FACTS .. Autism Speaks could have saved themselves the financial cost and organizational embarrassment of awarding a Wheatherstone grant" to NC University to "explore the association between autism symptoms in children diagnosed with the condition and autism-like behavioral traits in their parents (who don’t have autism).
AND THE BAND PLAYS ON .. AND .. ON ..
Posted by: bob moffit | May 21, 2016 at 08:44 AM
Thanks Eileen. I have no doubt you are pointing to an important factor -- in fact i think at aoa we could almost define ourselves by saying we believe, as i mentioned at the start, that "autism" is iatrogenic and man-made (a bit redundant) and therefore preventable. i try to paint with that broad brush and then often go to vaccines and especially mercury just because my own research has convinced me those are key players.
i may have cited this before, but it's worth repeating -- we could say the earliest child in the asperger-kanner series, so in that sense the earliest ASD case in the literature, fits your description. we mentioned it in our book.
“All [Asperger's cases] were born in the 1930s except Harro, who was born in the mid-1920s and “had severe asphyxia at birth and was resuscitated at length. Soon after his birth he had convulsions.” He, too, was delayed physically, starting to walk and talk only at the end of his second year. “However, he then learnt to speak relatively quickly, and even as a toddler he talked ‘like a grown-up.’ ” He was also “grotesquely fat” and, unlike the other Asperger and Kanner cases, “His appearance was grotesque. On top of the massive body, over the big face with flabby cheeks, was a tiny skull. One could almost consider him microcephalic.” In retrospect, Harro appears to be an outlier in this group, which would make Asperger’s true case series really three.”
Posted by: Dan Olmsted | May 21, 2016 at 07:59 AM
Here here!
Rachel Carson is dead, long live Rachel Carson!
The clues practically jump up and hit you in the face even when you aren't looking at them. Even when you try to read just for entertainment and distraction.
Pick up the book "Dimestore" by Lee Smith. It has nothing to do with any of this and has everything to do with all of this, and the author has not a clue.
Posted by: Jenny | May 21, 2016 at 07:53 AM
Geraldine Dawson recently wrote a blog post in Scientific American in which she is linking autism with prenatal exposure to alcohol and smoking. There have been articles this week about how it's caused by too much prenatal folate. Before it was too little. I'm sick of all this mother blaming. I'm sick of Aspergers and severe autism being lumped together. I'm sick of how nobody is looking for a medical cure for our suffering children.
Posted by: AutismGoAway | May 21, 2016 at 07:05 AM
Dan, thank you for your hilarious description of present-day research. I majored in chemistry, and worked in a medical research lab until I happily accepted a much higher-paying job as a computer programmer (IBM 704) in the Satellite Tracking Program. But also, I had horrific childbirth experiences.
More evidence in the medical literature points to complications at birth in autism than any other factor. The conclusion of most of these reports is that some problem with the mother or infant caused the difficult birth. What should have been emphasized were low Apgar scores and need for resuscitation.
Brainstem damage caused by 6 to 10 minutes of asphyxia at birth sits ignored in the medical literature. I will continue to try to draw attention to the research between 1959 and 1972 of WF Windle and RE Myers. But I am just another mother, too long blamed for my inability to be more graciously accepting of autism...
Posted by: Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon | May 21, 2016 at 06:27 AM