ndavis: "Amaral has moved away not only from the idea that vaccines might cause ASD in a small subset of individuals but also that the causes of ASD might best be found if affected individuals were grouped more closely according their condition."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.1746/full
Editorial: Time to give up on Autism Spectrum Disorder? Ralph-Axel Muller and David Amaral January 2017

Time to give up on ASD? Well, that's one way to stop the autism rate increasing and stop people talking about the epidemic.

After Dr Amaral's research showed that parents were right and there were many more children who were losing skills after perfectly normal development for 12 months or more than the few diagnosed with Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (because of the ridiculous 24 month cut-off for a diagnosis) one might have expected to see the group of regressed children studied separately, but what did the American Psychiatric Association do? In 2013 the APA subsumes Childhood Disintegrative Disorder into one large ASD "autism" category, effectively striking out regressive autism as if it had never existed. I strongly suspect that Ari N'eman of ASAN as a regressive-autism denier and advisor to the DSM-V committee had something to do with that. He said, "There's a misperception that autism is some thief in the night that takes a normal child and places an autistic child in its place. That's not true."

Autism experts should have informed Ari Ne'eman, ASAN members and other neurodiversity advocates that autistic regression might not happen overnight but it does happen and told them that their own brand of autism, Asperger's Syndrome, is not the same as Autistic Disorder or CDD. Instead, they placed them all under the same ASD category and called them all autism, blurring the important differences between them. Now, according to Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes, it's an Asperger's world, and Leo Kanner was wrong.

Asperger's Syndrome and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder are very different and they shouldn't be thought of as one disorder. Fred Volkmar and Michael Rutter wrote twenty years ago that, "The identification of cases of CDD may be of particular importance for research". (J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 1995, 34, 8:1092–1095). It should be. Loss of skills at any age indicate brain damage.

Neurodiversity activists have been given free rein by autism experts for over a decade to deny the reality of regression, and paint a totally false picture of autism.

To me, it is totally nonsensical for the IACC to appoint high-functioning Aspies like Ne'eman, who says he spoke early and didn't have a problem with language, Aspie author John Elder Robison, and Harvard Law School graduate and autistic self-advocate Samantha Crane to the IACC committee supposedly to give everyone on the spectrum "a voice", when their path to an ASD diagnosis and outcome is so markedly different from non-verbal or semi-verbal children and adults who spend many years in speech therapy struggling to learn and understand their own language like non-native speakers.

The most obvious division between these two groups is language, although the neurodiversity advocates seem to think that once given a communication device and a guiding hand, the non-verbal can not only speak for themselves but can spell and communicate far better than the average neurotypical. Science has shown that they are wrong, Facilitated Communication is a dangerous fraud. (Frontline: Prisoners of Silence 1993)

Unfortunately, I have yet to hear an autism expert who is familiar with the entire spectrum of disability talk about how devastating it is for parents to watch their perfectly-developing children lose their skills, and how devastating it is for a child to be robbed of his or her speech. I have never heard an autism expert speak up for parents who are caring for autistic children and adults with severe language and auditory processing disorders which, unable to communicate their needs, can so often lead to severe tantrums and aggression. It is as if the experts are intimidated by the autistic self-advocates who celebrate all autism and consider it a difference that should not be prevented or cured. That might indeed be true for the highest-functioning Aspies, whose language problem, like Ne'eman's, might simply be a difficulty understanding sarcasm, but it is certainly not true for people with Autistic Disorder and regressive autism who suffer from severe language problems.

In 1971, Rutter and Lawrence Bartak wrote:". the language and cognitive defect constitutes the primary handicap in autism, the social and behavioral abnormalities arising as secondary consequences. " (Causes of Infantile Autism: Some Considerations from Recent Research)

Within two months of my son's vaccine reactions at age two which triggered a sleeping disorder, he had lost all language and sounded exactly like Jackie Murphy's son Fenton in the Unlocking Autism video. When our children stop responding to their names, lose their words and start covering their ears at normal everyday sounds that didn't bother them before, it is incomprehensible to me that researchers would focus on eye-contact and theory of mind, instead of damage to the auditory system.

It is primarily language that separates Asperger's Syndrome from the other disorders on the spectrum, and I think the APA, autism experts, the IACC, and researchers have let us and, more importantly, our children down.

Unlocking Autism video:
@ approx 4.30
http://media.mindinstitute.org/video/specials/UnlockingAutism_web.mov

Dr. Amaral says that head/brain enlargement starting at 4 to 6 months rules out vaccines as the cause of autism. That makes no sense. Vaccines often begin on the day of birth with the hepatitis B vaccine, and then continue at 2, 4, and 6 months. There are two very obvious ways that vaccines could cause enlargement of the brain:

1) Inflammation of the brain
Vaccines are known to cause encephalitis, which means inflammation of the brain. It's on the HRSA vaccine injury table. And a huge growing body of research links inflammation of the brain and autism.

2) Microglial cells play a role in synaptic pruning

“As the principal CNS immune cells, microglial cells represent the first line of defence in response to exogenous threats. Past studies have largely been dedicated to defining the complex immune functions of microglial cells. However, our understanding of the roles of microglia has expanded radically over the past years. It is now clear that microglia are critically involved in shaping neural circuits in both the developing and adult CNS, and in modulating synaptic transmission in the adult brain.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173279/

Study Finds That Brains With Autism Fail to Trim Synapses as They Develop
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/health/brains-of-autistic-children-have-too-many-synapses-study-suggests.html

Children with Autism Have Extra Synapses in Brain
“Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions.”
http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2014/08/21/children-autism-extra-synapses-brain/

Synaptic pruning by microglia is necessary for normal brain development.
“Microglia are highly motile phagocytic cells that infiltrate and take up residence in the developing brain, where they are thought to provide a surveillance and scavenging function. However, although microglia have been shown to engulf and clear damaged cellular debris after brain insult, it remains less clear what role microglia play in the uninjured brain. Here, we show that microglia actively engulf synaptic material and play a major role in synaptic pruning during postnatal development in mice. These findings link microglia surveillance to synaptic maturation and suggest that deficits in microglia function may contribute to synaptic abnormalities seen in some neurodevelopmental disorders.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21778362

“Fine-tuning of neuronal activity was thought to be a neuron-autonomous mechanism until the discovery that astrocytes are active players of synaptic transmission. The involvement of astrocytes has changed our understanding of the roles of non-neuronal cells and shed new light on the regulation of neuronal activity. Microglial cells are the macrophages of the brain and they have been mostly investigated as immune cells. However, recent data discussed in this review support the notion that, similarly to astrocytes, microglia are involved in the regulation of neuronal activity. For instance, in most, if not all, brain pathologies a strong temporal correlation has long been known to exist between the pathological activation of microglia and dysfunction of neuronal activity. Recent studies have convincingly shown that alteration of microglial function is responsible for pathological neuronal activity. This causal relationship has also been demonstrated in mice bearing loss-of-function mutations in genes specifically expressed by microglia. In addition to these long-term regulations of neuronal activity, recent data show that microglia can also rapidly regulate neuronal activity, thereby acting as partners of neurotransmission.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3610058/

I admit it is hard to listen to Joel sitting atop his ivory tower passing judgement as we try to keep our children from headbanging because they're reacting to food and they're allergic to almost everything and are dealing with overgrowth of yeast, viruses and bacteria that mainstream doctors don't realize but we know because GAPS diets are helping their once horrible eczema to heal and reducing their self injury and aggression but it's still an issue. Also, some parents dealing with seizures that don't stop. Joel's arrogance and condescension are hard to endure as we deal with the aftermath of their so-called science. Is it scientific to not do double blind studies on vaccines? Vaccines are not treated as a pharmaceutical drug, and therefore new vaccines are compared against other vaccines or neurotoxic substances like aluminum, not sterile water. Is it scientific for top CDC scientists to throw out data when it isn't to their liking? Are all the 400 recent critical vaccine studies linking vaccines to seizures, death, asthma, allergies, autism wrong? Is it scientific to not compare the health of populations of never vaccinated children to totally vaccinated children? Does science only happen in a controlled study or are parents seeing science happen at home, but being ignored by their doctors because they've been misinformed in pharma-funded medical schools?

David Amaral and the MIND Institute uu-scientific positions, perfectly illustrate the necessity for a Vaccine Safety and Scientific Integrity commission. No doubt Dr. Amaral is justifiably afraid of the third rail seeing people getting Wakefielded, Kennedyed and Seared. David Amaral and the MIND Institute: Leading the way with tobacco science and tax payer dollars.

Joel Harrison, I find the rudeness of your response to John Stone shocking. As someone with a degree in Music and English I believe music is closer to the sciences than the arts. But then, my father was a Phd and senior lecturer in pharmacology. I don't find it difficult to spot the difference between papers which have scientific integrity and those like Dr. Amaral's which are clearly trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible. As for your MPH, I paraphrase Margaret Thatcher - There's no such thing as Public Health, just individuals and families!

The simple fact they don't run a titer test before giving a second round of vaccines to see if it's even necessary tells me all I need to know about the vaccine program and how profit driven it is. It doesn't take some one with a PHD added to the end of their name Mr Harrison to see that.

It is ALL the vaccines that overload babies, toddlers and children with a toxic mess of bacteria, viruses, aborted fetal cells, glutaraldehyde, aluminum, formaldehyde, monkey kidney tissue, on and on. It is not JUST the MMR causing gut problems and probable autoimmune encephalitis and allergies, eczema; it is the accumulation of ALL these toxic vaccines. So it's not surprising that during the first six months of life when they're given at least 24 vaccine doses that their head enlarges/encephalitis. They can't detoxify so much toxic mess injected into them. We're the only developed nation that injects a sexually transmitted disease on the first day of birth and we have the worst infant mortality rate of all the developed nations. Barbara Loe Fisher said it well on the Doctors, "Why are highly vaccinated children so sick?"

Jackie,
As much as the MIND Institute has helped, they have fallen far short and could have helped so much more while preventing harm that has come to millions of other children. What can be done to bridge the gap? As Dr. Stoller has pointed out, the MIND Institute would have to be willing to conduct research that their corporate sponsors would not approve of. The ball is in their court.

Typical for Age of Autism that you allow someone to post a comment, in this case Dr Amaral, then attack what he said without any further comments by him responding to the attacks. It is impossible to anticipate in one or even a couple of comments what others will say and, thus, by his not responding gives a biased picture, clearly a set-up, not a forum for an honest dialogue.

*********

And yours is a very typical response from an academic crybaby. Who can't stand that parents are finally calling bullshit, on what people like you have been peddling as real science.

Joel

I am basing my understanding on many things - years of reading and experience. Things which in the official account do not add up at even a basic level, and I am tired of flannel. What Dr Amaral said manifestly did not make sense at all or there was something missing. I said this right away, politely, when I posted his comment, and several people - some of them highly qualified doctors and scientists - came and made very similar observations. But you are playing the ad hominem card: you are bringing me into it, and not what I said. It doesn't answer the questions, it is just distraction and bluff. And what is most significant so far is that Dr Amaral has not answered.

Anne Dachel thank you for presenting this article.

As a witness to agencies morphing themselves into a status quo, rubber stamp of the CDC, from a previously investigative, even real science stance on the vaccine-autism connection, I am left with the only conclusion that these agencies never had the steel to blaze new trails in the first place.

Was there ever an example of ingrained, cultural belief as the genesis of ignorance exampled by the 180 degree flip of the MIND Institute?

@ Bob Moffit:

You write: "With all due respect .. as I understand it .. the studies that were done on smoking .. for decades .. are notorious for their lack of scientific integrity .. relying heavily on epidemiological studies .. which are well-known for being unreliable."

Exactly, "as [you] understand it." First, any study can be manipulated, whether lab or epidemiological; but the beauty of science is that it is peer-reviewed and then open to all who wish to critique it and attempt various replications. Am I to believe that you doubt the science back of tobacco being the major cause of lung cancer, as well as other cancers, and heart disease? "As [you] understand it." As I asked Stone, what do you base your understanding on? I could recommend some good books; but I really doubt you would take the time to read them.

@Joel A. Harrison, PhD: Dr Amaral is free to respond in the comments here. In fact, I would like to ask him a question (and you're free to respond to it, too, if you can answer it):

Dr. Amaral's comment in answer to Anne Dachel: "We found that it was the children with evidence of regression that generally had enlarged brains. We also found that head enlargement started at 4-6 months of life - long before the behavioral regression."

In that paragraph, he strongly implies that this establishes an impossibility that environmental factors after this point play a casual role in autism.

And that's the problem.

That kind of assumption runs counter to what science is all about.

What about the possibility that an enlarged brain at age 4-6 months might predispose the child to neurological reaction to later vaccines?

What about the possibility that 13 vaccines by age 4 months, and 20 vaccines by age 6 months play a causal role in brain enlargement?

Until those questions are addressed, then Dr. Amaral's dismissal of vaccines is, at best, unprofessional. If it turns out that vaccines play a causal role in regressive autism, even if it's only in a relatively small subgroup, then Dr. Amaral's failure to consider them is, in my opinion, criminally negligent.

The results of this new investigation show the presence of micro- and nanosized particulate matter composed of inorganic elements in vaccines’ samples which is not declared among the components and whose unduly presence is, for the time being, inexplicable. A considerable part of those particulate contaminants have already been verified in other matrices and reported in literature as non biodegradable and non biocompatible.

http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/here-is-more-scientific-proof-for-why-you-should-refuse-vaccines/

John Stone: Thank you. One would think a person with academic credentials would understand the use of tenses in the English language, and the difference between fact and opinion. There were actually only two factual statements in my original post: The tripling of the vaccine schedule, and that so much our tax money is spent on rubbish (which passes for science and is printed in all the best journals). All the rest was opinion, opinion with a deep grounding in knowledge and life experience. The most salient point, which I did not include in my original post, was that they know it-they know that vaccines cause autism; they simply don't want to get hammered by the thugs who are in charge. They like their jobs and the living they provide, the status and perks which accrue from them. It would be a wonderful thing if Dr. Amaral responded to some of the comments, such as those of David Foster.

@John Stone:

As usual, you read into things. Ogden stated that smoking doesn't need clinical trials. That is correct, because the overwhelming evidence from lab and epidemiological studies makes them unnecessary. You are splitting hairs. In addition, the point is that clinical trials never were nor could be conducted on humans, so claiming they don't need them now is a useless statement. Or, perhaps, you believe that if smoking was still controversial as to its health consequences, that we should run clinical trials. Please explain how you would design them?

If anyone following this blog has read any of my papers, available at: http://www.ecbt.org/index.php/facts_and_issues/article/expert_commentary they will notice that each contains numerous, up to 150 references. They took me up to three months to research, write, and revise. Dr. Amaral was foolish to even comment since it would take a lot of time and effort to refute each of your so-called "experts", something I could do; but I already have a list of over a dozen articles that I will be working on. I doubt if Dr. Amaral has the time to devote to preparing responses to each comment.

By the way, Stone, how do you and Dachel and others know if your list of "experts" are correct? Since you seem from writings to have some level of expertise in Mozart's operas, I can't for the life of me figure out how that gives you an understanding of microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, biostatistics and other relevant subjects. So, please explain what you base your "BELIEF" that your "experts" are correct? I guess since I've watched a few Mozart operas, being an expert in the aforementioned, maybe I should start writing articles about Mozart?

And what is Dachel's expertise?

Oh, I know, you are absolutely certain you are right since you have god-like abilities. Me, I am a mere mortal and rely on my training and education and multiple colleagues; yet, I readily admit that I lack absolute certainty. I have a suggestion. We have a lake/reservoir in my home town. If you visit and walk across it (never freezes here), I will accept your absolute certainty regardless of what I know as then you will have demonstrated abilities beyond that of us mere mortals.

@Gary Ogden: I tried accessing medcravenonline.com/IJVV/IJVV-04-00072.pdf didn't work!

Joel A. Harrison PhD, MPH:

"They didn't do clinical trials on people with smoking. It was based on a combination of in vitro lab animal studies, and epidemiological studies, e.g. case control, cohort. Get your facts right.They didn't do clinical trials on people with smoking. It was based on a combination of in vitro lab animal studies, and epidemiological studies, e.g. case control, cohort. Get your facts right."

With all due respect .. as I understand it .. the studies that were done on smoking .. for decades .. are notorious for their lack of scientific integrity .. relying heavily on epidemiological studies .. which are well-known for being unreliable .. easily manipulated to reach a predetermined outcome .. so much so .. they eventually became known as "tobacco science" .. defined as "science" done on behalf of an interest defending it's cash cow from overwhelming credible science that shows it is harmful or detrimental to public benefit in some way?

Perhaps head size and rapid enlarging of the head is a precursor to people susceptible to possible vaccine damage. Obviously it occurs in the same time frame as vaccines. My daughter is autistic and received all her vaccines and her head is in the 95%, however my son's head jumped up to the 85% at his 9 month well visit but is anything but autistic, he also hasn't had any vaccines, how would one know if there has never been a study on vaccines and head size.

When the rise in diagnosis is attributed to better screening , I am puzzled. I talk to parents who are reluctant to have their child "labeled" and avoid seeking evaluation or diagnosis. How many kids have ADHD, OCD, Dev Delay, speech delay , etc or are quirky, clumsy , shy, or any number of acceptable tags? With a six month wait to even beginning to get a diagnosis that may take 6 more months and multiple appointments before the A word is whispered , I'm wondering when the actual number will be known. More likely is that we will normalize these behaviors as we move deeper into this swamp. Talk to an early childhood educator with more than 30 years on the job . This new normal is overwhelming.

We have run and will continue to run comments by Dr. Amaral if he chooses to comment. Thank you for reading AofA.

A toddler who developed severe neurological symptoms including blindness associated with chronic encephalitis and died following MMR vaccination was found to have vaccine-derived mumps virus in his brain, a new study reports.

Published in the current issue of the journal, Acta Neuropathologica, the study is the first of its kind to conclusively demonstrate chronic brain damage in the form of “panencephalitis” due to a vaccine-derived strain of the mumps virus. In light of a recent epidemic of mumps in highly vaccinated populations, the research raises questions about the dangers of live vaccine virus mutations and about public health claims that the MMR is a completely safe and effective vaccine without serious side effects.

https://stuartjeannebramhall.com/2017/01/28/the-vaccine-did-it-mutated-mmr-mumps-virus-in-the-brain-of-a-child-caused-his-death-british-researchers-confirm/

Dr Amaral:

"The beauty of science is that you are taken where the evidence leads you."

This is an argument FOR the urgent need of a Commission to investigate vaccine safety and scientific integrity" .. unless you are fearful of where the "evidence" of THAT Commission will "lead you".

In other words .. opposing the Commission to investigate scientific integrity .. is in direct conflict with Dr. Amarl's description of the "beauty of science" .. which REQUIRES him to seek .. rather than avoid .. learning where the "evidence will lead him".

The beauty of an academic position is that you are taken where your funding source wishes to lead you. There can be no question that the explosion of autism which has occurred over the past quarter century is fundamentally of environmental origin. What environmental factors are likely candidates for causing this, and thus, whose exposures should studied without delay? The vast number of industrial and agricultural chemicals, including endocrine disruptors, which are feminizing males across species, in wide and expanded use, and the tripling of the vaccine schedule. We now know that manufacturing standards for purifying vaccines are weak at best, except in the case of those for veterinary use, and that they are contaminated with a wide variety of debris, including red blood cells of unknown origin and metallic elements which shouldn’t be in any injected medical product:
medcravenonline.com/IJVV/IJVV-04-00072.pdf
Real science advances through curiosity driven by intellectual integrity, not through tenure, publication, and numbers of citations. The most astonishing thing about Dr. Amaral’s response is that he appears to think that vaccine safety has been fully vetted. Parachutes, seat belts and smoking do not need clinical trials, but the toxic burden to health, especially in our most vulnerable, of vaccines and chemicals most assuredly do. I would remind Dr. Amaria that he is spending my tax money to obfuscate this crime being perpetrated upon our children, and I don’t like it one bit.