By Laura Wright, OnEarth Magazine

Martha Herbert, a pediatric neurologist at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital, studies brain images of children with autism. She was seeing patients one day a few years ago when a 3-year-old girl walked in with more than the usual cognitive and behavioral problems.

She was lactose intolerant, and foods containing gluten always seemed to upset her stomach. Autistic children suffer profoundly, and not just in their difficulty forming emotional bonds with family members, making friends, or tolerating minor deviations from their daily routines.

Herbert has seen many young children who've had a dozen or more ear infections by the time they made their way through her door, and many others -- "gut kids" -- with chronic diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems, including severe food allergies. Such symptoms don't fit with the traditional explanation of autism as a genetic disorder rooted in the brain, and that was precisely what was on

Herbert's mind that day. She's seen too many kids whose entire systems have gone haywire.

During the course of the little girl's appointment, Herbert learned that the child's father was a computer scientist -- a bioinformatist no less, someone trained to crunch biological data and pick out patterns of interest. She shared with him her belief that autism research was overly focused on examining genes that play a role in brain development and function, to the exclusion of other factors -- namely, children's susceptibility to environmental insults, such as exposure to chemicals and toxic substances.

Inspired by their conversation, Herbert left the office that day with a plan: She and the girl's father, John Russo, head of computer science at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, would cobble together a team of geneticists and bioinformatists to root through the scientific literature looking for genes that might be involved in autism without necessarily being related to brain development or the nervous system.

The group scanned databases of genes already known to respond to chemicals in the environment, selecting those that lie within sequences of DNA with suspected ties to autism. They came up with more than a hundred matches, reinforcing Herbert's belief that such chemicals interact with specific genes to make certain children susceptible to autism.

Although some diseases are inherited through a single genetic mutation -- cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia are examples -- the classic "one gene, one disease" model doesn't adequately explain the complex interplay between an individual's unique genetic code and his or her personal history of environmental exposures.

That fragile web of interactions, when pulled out of alignment, is probably what causes many chronic diseases: cancer, obesity, asthma, heart disease, autism, and Alzheimer's, to name just a few.
To unravel the underlying biological mechanisms of these seemingly intractable ailments requires that scientists understand the precise molecular dialogue that occurs between our genes and the environment -- where we live and work, what we eat, drink, breathe, and put on our skin.

Herbert's literature scan was a nod in this direction, but actually teasing out the answers in a laboratory has been well beyond her or anyone else's reach -- until now.

Consider for a moment that humans have some 30,000 genes, which interact in any number of ways with one or more of the 85,000 synthetic, commercially produced chemicals, as well as heavy metals, foods, drugs, myriad pollutants in the air and water, and anything else our bodies absorb from the environment.

The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 armed scientists with a basic road map of every gene in the human body, allowing them to probe more deeply into the ways our DNA controls who we are and why we get sick, in part by broadening our understanding of how genes respond to external factors.

In the years leading up to the project's completion, scientists began developing powerful new tools for studying our genes. One is something called a gene chip, or DNA microarray, which came about through the marriage of molecular biology and computer science. The earliest prototype was devised about a decade ago; since then these tiny devices, as well as other molecular investigative tools, have grown exponentially in their sophistication, pushing medical science toward a new frontier.

Gene chips are small, often no larger than your typical domino or glass laboratory slide, yet they can hold many thousands of genes at a time.

Human genes are synthesized and bound to the surface of the chip such that a single copy of each gene -- up to every gene in an organism's entire genome -- is affixed in a grid pattern. The DNA microarray allows scientists to take a molecular snapshot of the activity of every gene in a cell at a given moment in time.

The process works this way: Every cell in your body contains the same DNA, but DNA activity -- or expression -- is different in a liver cell, say, than it is in a lung, brain, or immune cell. Suppose a scientist wishes to analyze the effect of a particular pesticide on gene activity in liver cells. (This makes sense, since it is the liver that processes and purges many toxins from the body.)

A researcher would first expose a liver cell culture in a test tube to a precise dose of the chemical. A gene's activity is observed through the action of its RNA, molecules that convey the chemical messages issued by DNA.

RNA is extracted from the test tube, suspended in a solution, then poured over the gene chip. Any given RNA molecule will latch on only to the specific gene that generated it. The genes on the chip with the most RNA stuck to them are the ones that were most active in the liver cells, or most "highly expressed."

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By The Associated Press

Raleigh, N.C. - Children with disabilities are more likely to live with a single woman - whether she is a mother, grandmother or a female foster parent - than other children, according to a new study.

The findings by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicate that organizations aimed at helping disabled children must also consider the particular problems faced by the single women who often care for them, said Philip Cohen, an associate professor of sociology at the university.

"In the patchwork of arrangements to care for children with disabilities, we have to realize that the system is also dealing with issues of gender equity," Cohen said.

The study, conducted by Cohen and his former student Miruna Petrescu-Prahova, now a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, was published Friday in the quarterly Journal of Marriage and Family.

The study examined 2000 Census data on 2.3 million children ages 5 to 15. More than 130,000 were reported to have mental disabilities, physical disabilities, or both.

It found that while 62 percent of children without disabilities live with a married, biological parent in a two-parent home, only 46 percent of disabled children do.

Single mothers care for 17 percent of children without disabilities, but for 24.5 percent of those who are disabled. Fewer than 5 percent of disabled children live with a single father, about the same percentage of non-disabled children living with fathers.

In homes where no biological parent is present, Cohen said disabled children were more than twice as likely to be cared for by a single woman than were children without a disability.

The findings are not particularly surprising, but offer a different perspective the challenges faced by single, female caregivers, said Avis Jones-DeWeever, director of poverty, education, and social justice programs at the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

The institute's own research has shown an inordinate number of women getting government aid are either themselves disabled or taking care of a disabled child, Jones-DeWeever said.

Single mothers often have multiple challenges causing them to fall through the cracks of existing assistance programs, she said. She agreed with Cohen that his data show "perhaps we need to think more concretely about what kinds of policy supports these families need."

Both said the largest unanswered question in all the research is why women end up dominating such caretaker roles. Most probably, it's simply "the cultural norms and a combination of what we as women tend to do," Jones-Deweever said.

A new blog by NEWSWEEK's Sharon Begley examines new scientific research that makes you think about the world in a new way.

By Sharon Begley
Newsweek

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - Even their parents struggle to draw the tiniest hint of emotion or social connection from autistic children, so imagine what happens when a stranger sits with the child for hours to get through the standard IQ test. For 10 of the test's 12 sections, the child must listen and respond to spoken questions. Since for many autistics it is torture to try to engage with someone even on this impersonal level, it's no wonder so many wind up with IQ scores just above a carrot's (I wish I were exaggerating; 20s are not unknown). More precisely, fully three quarters of autistics are classified as having below-normal intelligence, with many deemed mentally retarded.

It's finally dawning on scientists that there's a problem here. Testing autistic kids' intelligence in a way that requires them to engage with a stranger "is like giving a blind person an intelligence test that requires him to process visual information," says Michelle Dawson of Rivière-des-Prairies Hospital in Montreal. She and colleagues therefore tried a different IQ test, one that requires no social interaction. As they report in the journal Psychological Science, autistic children's scores came out starkly different than on the oral, interactive IQ test—suggesting a burning intelligence inside these kids that educators are failing to uncover.

That failure has lifelong implications. "If we label these children as below-normal in intelligence, that is how they're treated," says Laurent Mottron, who led the study. The disparity between scores on the two IQ tests also makes you wonder who else the tests, which are used for everything from screening military recruits to filling "gifted" classes, are mislabeling.

For the study, children took two IQ tests. In the more widely used Wechsler, they tried to arrange and complete pictures, do simple arithmetic, demonstrate vocabulary comprehension and answer questions such as what to do if you find a wallet on the street—almost all in response to a stranger's questions. In the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, they got brief instructions, then went off on their own to analyze three-by-three arrays of geometric designs, with one missing, and choose (from six or eight possibilities) the design that belonged in the empty place. The disparity in scores was striking. One autistic child's Wechsler result meant he was mentally retarded (an IQ below 70); his Raven's put him in the 94th percentile. Overall, the autistics (all had full-blown autism, not Asperger's) scored around the 30th percentile on the Wechsler, which corresponds to "low average" IQ. But they averaged in the 56th percentile on the Raven's. Not a single autistic child scored in the "high intelligence" range on the Wechsler; on the Raven's, one third did. Healthy children showed no such disparity.

The Wechsler measures "crystallized intelligence"—what you've learned. The Raven's measures "fluid intelligence"—the ability to learn, process information, ignore distractions, solve problems and reason—and so is arguably a truer measure of intelligence, says psychologist Steven Stemler of Wesleyan University.

That presents a puzzle. If many autistics are more intelligent than an IQ test shows, why haven't their parents noticed? Partly because many parents welcome a low score, which brings their child more special services from schools and public agencies, says one scientist who has an autistic son (and who fears that being named would antagonize the close-knit autism community). But another force is at work. "We often think of intelligence as what you can show, such as by speaking fluently," says psychologist Morton Ann Gernsbacher of the University of Wisconsin. "Parents as well as professionals might be biased to look at that" rather than dig for the hidden intellectual spark.

The challenge is to coax that spark into the kind of intelligence that manifests itself in practice. That is something autism researchers are far from doing. Worse, much of the expert advice might be counterproductive. Many experts dismiss autistics' exceptional reading, artistic or other abilities as side effects of abnormal brain function, "not a reflection of genuine human intelligence, which it is likely to be," says Mottron. They advise parents to steer their child away from what he excels at and obsesses over, such as letters and words and details, and toward what he struggles with, such as faces and the big picture. Dawson, who is autistic, thinks that's a prescription for intellectual failure; autistics should be encouraged to build on their strengths, as everyone else is. The problem of a lurking intelligence that won't be coaxed out by the usual education and parenting methods is not necessarily unique to autistics. It makes you wonder how many other children, whose intellectual potential we're too blind to see, we've also given up on.

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff | August 13, 2007

Nancy Duley wants desperately to know why her daughter Kira, happy and healthy in her first year of life, then "slipped away into her own little world" -- the isolation of autism. To that end, when Duley was recently pregnant with her third child, she eagerly gave blood samples to researchers, and kept batches of urine samples in her freezer for them to collect.

"When no doctor can tell you why your child has autism, or how you could avoid it or treat it or cure it, as a parent that is the most horrifying feeling to have -- that there are no answers," Duley, a resident of Fairfield, Calif., said last week.

She was speaking at a press conference at the University of California at Davis announcing $7.5 million in new federal funding, including about $2 million for a groundbreaking study that seeks to track, earlier and more closely than before, potential environmental triggers for autism -- beginning in the womb.

As the ranks of children diagnosed with autism grow, researchers are focusing more on such efforts. They are casting an ever-widening net to try to detect possible environmental factors -- such as chemicals or infections -- that could be interacting with genetic risk factors.

Money is beginning to stream toward researchers who are on that trail, supporting a new wave of studies.

"Environmental research will be a much bigger field going forward," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "A lot of parents have been telling us about their concerns; now we're listening very closely."

Until recently, about 90 percent of autism research has focused on genetics, and only perhaps 10 percent on environmental factors, said Dr. Gary Goldstein, chairman of the scientific board of Autism Speaks, a national research and advocacy group. In the coming years, he expects the ratio to be 1 to 1.

Dr. Martha Herbert, a Harvard neuroscientist and Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, said a few years ago, autism researchers would be marginalized if they talked about environmental factors. But now, "any major article or proposal concerning the causes of autism is coming to be considered incomplete if it doesn't talk about a potential role of environmental factors."

Some say this shift in autism research did not happen sooner because it has been so hard to find obvious targets to track.

"There's been no smoking gun," Insel said. "There's been nothing like tobacco and lung cancer."

For years, many parents have argued that the smoking gun was thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines. But studies have failed to bear that theory out, and autism rates continue to rise even though thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines several years ago.

The dispute over thimerosal long tainted the whole idea of environmental triggers for autism, discouraging scientists from entering the field, some researchers and parents say.

Career-wise, "It has not been safe for scientists to work on this problem" of possible environmental factors in autism, said Mark Blaxill of Cambridge, cofounder of Safe Minds, a parent group. But the rates of autism have reached epidemic proportions, he contends, and clearly, genes cannot account for such rapid change.

Even with broad agreement that the attempt is worthwhile, the challenge of pinpointing environmental triggers remains daunting. Researchers must examine thousands of chemicals in the environment that could be damaging children's brains and creating the social and communication impairments of autism.

Last month, California public health researchers reported early findings that among 29 women who had lived near farmland sprayed with pesticides called organochlorines during the first trimester of pregnancy, eight bore children who developed autism. That was six times the risk of autism in a control group who did not live near sprayed farmland. The researchers cautioned that the findings were highly preliminary, but called for further research into a possible pesticide-autism link.

And toxic chemicals are only one category of possible environmental factors: There may be infections, medical procedures, medications.

"We are starting with such an open field," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an environmental epidemiologist at UC Davis, who focuses largely on autism.

One of her current studies is gathering data on a wide array of possible environmental exposures from parents of more than 500 children with autism. It asks hundreds of questions about the mother's pregnancy: Did you have a urinary tract infection? What household products did you use? And it continues with questions encompassing childhood exposures: Were pesticides sprayed near the home? Did you use flea powders on your pets?

It also examines biological specimens: blood drawn from the child as a baby, locks of baby hair, and urine samples, looking for signs of everything from heavy metals to infection.

Hertz-Picciotto and colleagues are also leading the new study whose funding was announced last week with Duley's help.

Markers of Autism Risk in Babies -- Learning Early Signs, or MARBLES, includes the sophisticated analysis of specimens from women even before they give birth, along with cord blood from the baby at birth and the mother's breast milk later on.

Duley, one of its first participants, said she hopes to answer the "burning questions" that torment many parents of children with autism: "Why is this happening? What did I do? Is there anything I could have done to prevent this?"

A huge study underway in Norway aims similarly to follow 100,000 children from the womb through age 6 in search of causes of a broad range of diseases, and its leaders have agreed to collaborate with Columbia University researchers to try to track factors in autism.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also gathering biological and environmental data on hundreds of children with autism, and planning to examine hundreds more.

Herbert, the Harvard neuroscientist, argues that environmental exposures might not only help trigger autism, they may also continue to influence an autistic child's health and mental state, creating "striking good hair days and bad hair days." The mechanism may involve the immune system or brain chemistry or the body's metabolism -- or all three.

If continued exposure is part of the problem, she says, perhaps such ongoing effects could be treatable, even reversible.

Goldstein, who is also president of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, recalled wistfully the success of epidemiologists who cracked Reye's Syndrome, a rare brain-swelling disease that killed young children in the wake of benign infections such as chicken pox. Researchers figured out that Reye's was triggered among genetically vulnerable children by that staple of the sickroom: aspirin.

"The proof of the pudding was, take away the aspirin and it's gone," he said. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we found something like that?"

By Dorsey Griffith - Bee Medical Writer
Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Researchers have long suspected that autism's causes are rooted in one's genes, combined with some kind of a hit from the environment.

But pinpointing the interplay of these factors has been daunting, in part because the probing tends to come after a child is diagnosed.

A new study at UC Davis will examine potential clues pointing to the neurodevelopmental disorder before it occurs -- prior to birth and during a baby's earliest years.

"We are quite concerned about the role that environment might play in autism," said Nigel Fields, a scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one of two federal agencies to fund the $7.5 million research. "We would like to understand the complex interaction of genes and environmental factors as early in the developmental process as possible."

Autism, once a fairly rare disorder, is now the fastest growing developmental disability in California, increasing at astronomical rates. As of the end of June, 34,656 people in California qualify for state services because of an autism diagnosis. Autistic children often have trouble talking, exhibit repetitive behaviors and are unable to connect with other people.

Researchers in the new study will look at the mother before, during and after pregnancy, and at the baby throughout its first three years. The goal is to learn how to identify children most susceptible to environmental exposures that may lead to autism.

The project, known as MARBLES for Markers of Autism Risk in Babies -- Learning Early Signs, is the first of its kind to look in real time at environmental exposures. They could include a mother's infections during pregnancy, an infant's routine childhood vaccinations, and other potential contaminants such as mercury, flame retardants and common, chlorinated chemicals such as those found in pesticides.

MARBLES is an extension of another project under way examining the influence of genes and environmental factors in more than 800 families in which a child is already diagnosed with the disorder.

That study, called CHARGE, Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment, already has found that autistic children's immune systems respond differently to certain substances than do those of children who do not have autism, leading experts to suspect that autism is an immune function disorder as well as a neurological disorder.

"But if you really want to get at causes, it's crucial to go back in time," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a UC Davis environmental epidemiologist and one of the project's principal investigators.

MARBLES will enroll more than 200 pregnant women who already have had at least one child diagnosed with autism, since mothers of autistic children are at least 10 times more likely to have another child with the disorder.

Researchers will comb their homes for potential environmental poisons -- gathering the contents of vacuum cleaners, carpet dust and samples of air. They will conduct extensive interviews with the mothers about their exposures to everything from nail polish products to mercury-tainted fish. They will collect blood, and immediately after the baby's birth, placental tissue, umbilical cord blood, as well as mother's breast milk and urine from both mom and baby.

The intrusion is more than welcome for Nancy Duley, a Fairfield mother who gladly enlisted in the study while she was pregnant with Jordan, her son, now 6 weeks old.

Duley's first child, 6-year-old Kira, was diagnosed with autism before she turned 2.

Duley said Kira was hitting developmental milestones until after her first birthday, then lost her desire to imitate what was going on around her. At 16 months, her condition worsened, and the Duleys presumed their daughter was deaf.

Duley believes Kira's autism was the result of her infant immunizations, since she was developing typically until after getting the shots.

"I felt environmental toxins would be implicated in some way," she said. "I am happy to be a guinea pig if it means someone else could avoid the pain we have been through."

Isaac Pessah, a UC Davis molecular biologist who runs the university's Center for Children's Environmental Health, which oversees both autism studies, said researchers suspect they won't find a single environmental cause of autism, "but uncover patterns of susceptibilities and external influences that can lead to different forms of the disorder."

Tracey Dinh is a Sacramento mother of two and MARBLES study volunteer. Unlike Duley's autistic daughter, Dinh's son showed signs of autism very early on.

Now 4, her son Austin was diagnosed with autism at age 2 1/2, but his symptoms showed up in infancy. Dinh has questioned the possible reasons for the onset of his condition ever since.

"When I was pregnant, I didn't watch what I was eating," she said. "We lived in an apartment where someone bombed the apartment next to us for roaches and didn't tell us. I rode the subway to work. I could wrack my brains to figure out what could have happened."

Giving up some privacy for the sake of finding possible answers is worth it, she said. "There is nothing in the world that tears your world part like this," she said of her son's disorder. "Having these people come into my life doesn't feel as invasive as the diagnosis itself."

Women interested in enrolling in MARBLES who live within two hours' driving distance of Sacramento can call (530) 754-0612 or toll-free (866) 550-5027 or e-mail marbles@ucdavis.edu for more information and to find out if they meet recruitment criteria.

By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer
July 29, 2007

Women who live near California farm fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides may be more likely to give birth to children with autism, according to a study by state health officials to be published today.

The rate of autism among the children of 29 women who lived near the fields was extremely high, suggesting that exposure to the insecticides in the womb might have played a role. The study is the first to report a link between pesticides and the neurological disorder, which affects one in every 150 children.

But the state scientists cautioned that their finding is highly preliminary because of the small number of women and children involved and lack of evidence from other studies.

"We want to emphasize that this is exploratory research," said Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health. "We have found very preliminary data that there may be an association. We are in no way concluding that there is a causal relationship between pesticide exposure of pregnant women and autism."

The two pesticides implicated are older generation compounds developed in the 1950s and used to kill mites, primarily on cotton as well as some vegetables and other crops. Their volumes have declined substantially in recent years.

Examining three years of birth records and pesticide data, scientists from the public health department determined that the Central Valley women lived within 547 yards of fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides during their first trimester of pregnancy. Eight of them, or , 28%, had children with autism. Their rate of autism was six times greater than for mothers who did not live near the fields, the study said.

Susan Kegley, senior scientist of Pesticide Action Network North America, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, said the report added to an existing body of evidence that endosulfan and dicofol, already banned in some countries, are harmful.

"This is one of the first papers that links use of pesticide to incidence of a disease, and autism in particular," she said. "The findings are very strong. This is a six-fold risk factor in comparison to someone who is not exposed. There aren't too many studies that come out like that."

Even though small numbers of children were involved, "it is still one of those things that make you sit up and pay attention," she said.

The findings suggest that 7% of autism cases in the Central Valley during the years studied — 1996 through 1998 — might have been connected to exposure to the insecticides drifting off fields into residential areas. Births during those years were analyzed because children born later might not yet be diagnosed with autism.

Children with autism spectrum disorders have impaired social and communication skills. The causes are unknown, but because diagnoses have been increasing, scientists have been exploring various environmental factors, including children's vaccines and chemical pollutants.

"The good news is we've used a new research technology to generate hypotheses and possible associations, so we are making progress in the battle to get more information" about the cause of autism, Horton said.

The goal of the study was to "systematically explore the general hypothesis that residential proximity to agricultural pesticide applications during pregnancy could be associated with autism spectrum disorders in offspring," the authors wrote in their study, published online today in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The scientists collected records of nearly 300,000 children born in the 19 counties of the Sacramento and San Joaquin river valleys. Of them, 465 had autism. The scientists then compared the addresses during pregnancy to state records that detailed the location of fields sprayed with several hundred pesticides.

For most pesticides, no unusual numbers of autism cases were found but the exception was a class of compounds called organochlorines. Most, including DDT, were banned in the United States several decades ago because they were building up in the environment. Only dicofol and endosulfan remain.

The autism rate was highest for children of those mothers who lived the closest to the fields and it declined as the distance from the fields increased.

There is no other human or animal evidence that the two chemicals can cause autism. But both are neurotoxins — they affect nerves and the brain — and cause reproductive effects and alter hormones in animal tests. In addition, dicofol is a possible human carcinogen.

The scientists concluded that "the possibility of a connection between gestational exposure to organochlorine pesticides and autism spectral disorders requires further study."

A July report by the Department of Pesticide Regulation said endosulfan can spread far from fields via the air and expose the public, based on air monitoring in Fresno, Monterey and Tulare counties. The state Department of Pesticide Regulation is likely to designate endosulfan as a toxic air contaminant soon, and dicofol could follow. That designation triggers a review by the agency to see whether steps should be taken to minimize the chemicals drifting off fields into nearby communities.

Glenn Brank, spokesman for the pesticide agency, said officials there are "very interested" in the new autism data but say that "more work" on the potential link is needed before it can carry much weight in assessments of the chemicals' risks.

The two insecticides are now used much less often than in the years that the possible connection to autism was found. As a result, there is less likelihood that pregnant women are exposed today. Nearly 774,000 pounds were applied in 1996, compared with 277,000 pounds in 2005, down nearly 64%, according to state records.

"In the past couple years, the bottom has dropped out of these two," Brank said.

Insects have built up resistance and cotton farmers have switched to new compounds.

The two chemicals are not found in household or yard pesticides. Traces are found in food, but the study looked only at possible exposure from the air. They are used most extensively in Fresno, Kings, Imperial and Tulare counties. Dicofol is mostly used on cotton, oranges, beans and walnuts. Endosulfan is used primarily in tomato processing and on lettuce, alfalfa and cotton crops.

By Lynne Mielke in the Contra Costa Times

As a physician who specializes in treating autism and the mother of an autistic child, I would like to express my opposition to the viewpoint in Dr. Rahul Parikh's editorial, "Junk science vs. real thing in autism trial."

Parikh implies that the research showing a link between autism and vaccines is wrong and that the vaccine preservative Thimerisol (which is about 50 percent mercury) is safe.

It is no surprise that pediatricians as a group have been slow to acknowledge the evidence that vaccines may play a role in the causation of autism in some children.

After all, it is pediatricians who administer those vaccines. Many vaccines still contain Thimerisol, although it is less now than in the peak mercury years -- the decade of the '90s. No one questions that pregnant and nursing women should avoid mercury pollution, mercury-containing seafood and should not have dental work involving amalgam silver-colored fillings, which are also about 50 percent mercury.

But some doctors still say that injecting a pregnant woman or a newborn baby with a mercury-containing vaccine is OK. Many toxins are implicated in the causation of autism, not just mercury, but it is certainly one of the worst.

Veterinarians realized how toxic Thimerisol is and removed it from animal vaccines years ago.

There are significant differences in how people react to the same toxin. A good example is cigarette smoking.

Some people who smoke get lung cancer, but others will get emphysema or heart disease. Not everyone who is exposed to mercury and other toxins will become autistic.

Genetic predisposition, timing of exposure, amount of exposure and type of exposure all interact to produce a unique symptom complex. Toxins also have been implicated in the causation of ADD, sensory integration problems, and language and learning disorders, among other things.

One in six children now has some sort of neurologic problem. If that is not an epidemic, I don't know what is.

Most of the studies claiming that vaccines are not related to autism were done by researchers with financial ties to vaccine manufacturers -- a clear conflict of interest.

Most of those studies are epidemiological studies done on large populations that could easily miss an issue that affects about 1 in 150 children. Epidemiological studies are retrospective and are the easiest type of research to manipulate statistics to get the outcome you want.

The designs of those studies were extremely flawed, as the group SafeMinds has clearly shown.

The science showing direct harm on a cellular level from Thimerisol is biological, prospective science and has been done by many fine upstanding clinicians and scientists who have risked their careers to publish unpopular findings.

The link between toxic exposure and autism is clear, not only from the science that shows it, but also because the treatments that address that exposure and its many consequences improve the level of functioning of autistic children.

Unfortunately, families of autistic children are victimized twice -- first from the poisonings that damaged their child, and then from the doctors who misinform their patients that there is no science behind treatments that work.

There are huge financial and political forces against this truth because the liability and the stakes are so high. What gets lost are the needs of the affected families who struggle with heartbreak every day under incredibly difficult circumstances, with very little help from the government and insurance industry, and often even their doctors.

Mielke is a physician in Pleasanton, California.

By David Kirby, Huffington Post

For quite some time, the American government, health establishment and mainstream media have repeated the mantra that mercury-containing vaccines were eliminated "several years ago," yet the number of autism cases continues to climb -- the inference being that injecting organic mercury into newborn babies has now been proven to be 100 percent safe.

The problem, though, is that there is no proof that mercury was eliminated "years ago" and, more importantly, now there are signs that autism rates among the youngest children might actually be falling.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Developmental Services released data from the second quarter of 2007, showing that the number of three- to five-year-olds with autism in the state system increased by 169 children over the first quarter of 2007. This is about the same quarterly increase seen in the state over the past several years.

But it turns out that a private citizen has paid the state each quarter to analyze the autism numbers according to year of birth, and not just by age group. State law requires that such privately funded analyses be made available to anyone else who asks for it.

So I asked for it. What I got was rather interesting.

After breaking down the current data among three- to five-year-olds by year of birth, you notice that the number of cases among children born in 2002 (who are now roughly five years old) and 2003 (or roughly four years old) continued to go up.

But among those kids born in 2004 (who are now turning three years old) the number of cases has fallen, as compared to kids born in 2003.

For example, at the midpoint of 2006, there were 2,250 children born in 2001 (or roughly, five-year olds) with autism counted in the system. By the same period of 2007, the number of kids with autism born in 2002 had risen to 2,490, an increase of 240 children, or 10.7 percent.

Among "four year olds," the increase was even more dramatic, with 326 more kids diagnosed with autism midway in 2007 than in 2006, a startling jump of 17 percent.

But among the very youngest kids counted, the story was the opposite. At the end of June 2006, there were 688 children born in 2003 with autism diagnoses. This June, the number of kids born in 2004 with autism was 632, a statistically significant drop of 56 children, or 8.1 percent less than last year at this time.

This marks the second drop of its kind among the youngest children in California (which only tracks so-called "full spectrum" autism, and not milder forms of the disorder). It follows the first quarter of this year, when 251 children born in 2004 entered the system, compared with 264 kids born in 2003 who were enrolled in the first quarter of 2006 - a modest decline of 13 students, or 4.9 percent.

Keep in mind that these drops are being reported despite the fact that:

1) Rates among kids born just one or two years earlier continue to spiral upward

2) California has experienced a recent baby boomlet (the number of 0 to four-year-olds rose by 9,369 in 2002, according to census estimates; but jumped by 62,393 in 2004).

3) Legal and illegal immigration continues to rise from countries that still use the full amount of mercury in childhood vaccines.

4) Aggressive early intervention campaigns have consistently brought down the average age of autism diagnoses.

Intriguing though the numbers may be, it is far too early to know if this refreshing downward movement will turn into a bona fide trend. The deficit of 56 children could be made up by the end of the year.

But the decline does not come in a vacuum. Minnesota, for example, tracks autism among children as young as two years of age, (though the counting is done through the school system, and is considered less reliable than California's data).

The rate of two-year-olds diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Minnesota peaked in 2003, at 4.45-per-10,000 kids. By 2005, the rate fell to 3.88-per-10,000, and last year it was 3.55-per-10,000, a drop of 20.2 percent since 2003.

We will have to wait until these kids get a bit older to see if the decline holds true.

Meanwhile, back in California at the massive Kaiser Permanente healthcare, officials reported that, among five- to nine-year-olds in their system in 2006, the rate of ASD was 93-per-10,000. But among the youngest kids, two- to four-year-olds, it was 66-per-10,000 - a 40% difference.

One would naturally expect to see fewer two- to four-year=olds than five- to nine-year-olds with an ASD diagnosis. But in 2004, Kaiser began recommending routine ASD screening for all children at 24 months of age. Presumably, the majority of the two- four-year-olds in the system have now been screened for ASD, which must, by definition, appear before age three for a diagnosis to be made.

Sadly, more two-year-olds at Kaiser will end up with ASD, and some stragglers among the three- and 4-year-olds will also turn up. But whether they can make up the 40% deficit compared with their older siblings remains to be seen.

Are autism rates dropping? I would never say they are for sure. We simply have to wait and see.

But there are tantalizing hints that autism is indeed starting to decline among the very youngest children, born and vaccinated more recently, when mercury was transitioned out of most shots.

Which brings us to the, mercury was removed "several years ago" mantra, whose best retort is probably: "Says who?"

According to the Boston Herald, the last mercury-containing shots given to U.S. children expired back in 1999. The Washington Post, meanwhile, put the date at 2001, the FDA said it was 2002, the Institute of Medicine and the Immunization Action Coalition said 2003, and the Council of State Governments claimed it was "early 2004."

Who's right? We may never know. But we do know that companies were still manufacturing mercury-containing shots for American kids in 2001, and most vaccines have a shelf life of about two years. And we know that 90 percent of flu shots given to pregnant women and infants still contain the full amount of mercury today.

The number of California kids born in 2004 who have autism is, by any measure, still too high. True, we don't know how many of those 632 children were exposed to mercury in routine vaccines overseas, or flu shots here at home. But with numbers this lofty, it's highly unlikely that thimerosal alone was responsible for the entire autism epidemic.

If mercury is but one cause of autism, there must be other causes as well.

Let's say that autism cases among three-year-olds fall by 10 percent or so by year's end. Could thimerosal be the cause of 10 percent of autism cases? That would still mean tens of thousands of Americans injured by mercury in their vaccines. Moreover, identifying the cause in just 10 percent of cases might help us discover what is causing the other 90 percent.

But I am writing way ahead of myself here.

Regardless of one's position on the mercury-autism contretemps, I hope everyone can agree that an actual drop in the numbers, no matter what the cause, would provide a welcome respite from the endless chorus of grim news we all seem to face these days.

By Dan Olmsted
UPI Senior Editor

WASHINGTON, July 18 (UPI) -- This is my 113th and final Age of Autism column. United Press International, which has been the hospitable home for this series, is restructuring, and I'm off to adventures as yet unknown -- although I intend to keep my focus on autism and related issues.
Why? Because it is the story of a lifetime.

"Autism is currently, in our view, the most important and the fastest-evolving disorder in all of medical science and promises to remain so for the foreseeable future," says Dr. Jeffrey A. Lieberman, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Columbia University's school of medicine.

Most mainstream experts believe autism is a genetic disorder that's "increasing" only because of more sophisticated diagnosis. But based on my own reporting, I think autism is soaring due to environmental factors -- in the sense of something coming from the outside in -- and that genes play a mostly secondary role, perhaps creating a susceptibility to toxic exposures in certain children. As the saying goes: Genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger.

So to me, the issues autism raise -- about the health and well-being of this and future generations, about the role that planetary pollution, chemical inventions and medical interventions may have inadvertently played in triggering it -- are so fundamental that by looking at autism, we're looking very deeply into the kind of world we want to inhabit and our children to inherit.

It is impossible to summarize all the issues I've raised in my columns, but to me, four stand out:
-- The first question I asked when I started looking at autism in late 2004 was this: What is the autism rate among never-vaccinated American children? Vaccines are the leading "environmental" suspect for many families of autistic children. So I was stunned to learn that such a study had never been done, given that it could quickly lay to rest concerns that public health authorities say are dangerously undermining confidence in childhood immunizations.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., introduced -- and just reintroduced -- a bill to force the Department of Health and Human Services to do just that (generously crediting this column for finding enough never-vaccinated children to show that such a study is indeed feasible). She calls it "common sense," and it is an example of ordinary people -- through their representatives -- telling the experts they want better answers, and fast.

Recently, such a study was in fact done with private funds. It was a $200,000 telephone survey commissioned by the advocacy group Generation Rescue that, as limited as it is scientifically, suggested a disturbing trend: Higher rates of autism in vaccinated as opposed to never-vaccinated U.S. children, along with similar ratios for other neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD.

I reported the same possible association in the Amish community. That's been criticized as inherently unscientific and undercut by the fact that Amish genes may differ from the rest of us and that increasingly, the Amish do receive at least some vaccinations.

All true, but intriguing nonetheless. I also found a family medical practice in Chicago called Homefirst that has thousands of never-vaccinated children as patients. According to its medical director, Mayer Eisenstein, he's aware of only one case of autism and one case of asthma among those kids -- not the 1 in 150 and 1 in 10 that are the national averages for those disorders -- and he has the medical records to prove it.

I wrote about that in 2005, yet when I met again with Mayer in Chicago last week, he told me not one public health official or medical association has contacted him to express any interest. Nor has any other journalist -- not a one.

-- That brings me to my second theme. I am sorry to say my colleagues in the mainstream journalistic community have, in the main, done a lousy job covering this issue. They, of course, would disagree -- two were quoted (anonymously!) in the Columbia Journalism Review saying "Olmsted has made up his mind on the question and is reporting the facts that support his conclusions."

Actually, my mind is made up about only one thing: Both vaccinations and autism are so important that definitive, independent research needs to be done yesterday -- and the fact that it hasn't should be making more journalists suspicious.

I think Big Media's performance on this issue is on a dismal par with its record leading up to the Iraq war, when for the most part it failed to probe deeply into the intelligence about WMDs and the assertions about Saddam's link to al-Qaida. And it's bad for the same reasons -- excessive reliance on "authorities" with obvious conflicts of interest; uncritical enlistment in the "war on terror" and "the war on disease" without considering collateral damage or adverse events; a stenographic and superficial approach to covering the news, and an at-least-semiconscious fear of professional reprisal.

In the case of Iraq, that fear included being cut off -- like my exemplary fellow ex-Unipresser Helen Thomas -- from precious "inside sources" in the government; in the case of autism, fear of alienating advertisers lurks silently in the background.

To see how squeamish and slow-on-the-uptake the media can be in the face of an urgent health crisis, look no further than the early days of AIDS, as chronicled in Randy Shilts' "And the Band Played On."

-- Another angle I explored intensively involved a group of families in Olympia, Wash., who noticed their children regressing into autism after getting four live-virus vaccines -- mumps, measles, rubella (MMR) and chickenpox -- at an early age and in close temporal proximity. These cases seemed to have little or nothing to do with the mercury preservative in other vaccines, called thimerosal, that many parents blame for autism (it was phased out of most routine immunizations starting in 1999).

That raises an ominous prospect: the still-rising autism rate might be related to some other aspect of the immunization schedule as well -- timing, age, total load or other ingredients. (I didn't invent that idea; the head of an expert panel mandated by Congress expressed it to me in an interview -- and again, her comments were largely ignored.)

One focus of that seven-part Pox series last year was a case of autism following a small clinical trial of a new vaccine called ProQuad, which contains the live-but-weakened MMR and chickenpox viruses in one shot. The chickenpox virus in ProQuad is about 10 times the amount in the standalone chickenpox shot, a boost needed to overcome "interference" among the four viruses (and a possible sign of trouble right there). Manufacturer Merck says the vaccine is safe and not related to autism.

Earlier this year, the company announced it was suspending production of ProQuad -- barely a year after its introduction -- because supplies of chickenpox vaccine had run unexpectedly low. The company, however, will keep producing its other products containing chickenpox virus: the standalone chickenpox shot and a new vaccine for shingles.

A Merck spokesman told me the suspension of ProQuad had nothing to do with any safety concerns, that it had been selling well and would be reintroduced as soon as chickenpox vaccine supplies were replenished. As I've written before, I found Merck to be quite accessible and forthcoming when I asked questions about this issue -- much more so than the Food and Drug Administration, in fact.
So I take Merck at its word. But -- in the spirit of trust-but-verify -- I'll be watching for the return of ProQuad.

-- The Age of Autism columns that may mean the most over time (IMHO, of course) are about the first cases of autism, reported in 1943 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore among 11 children born in the United States in the 1930s.

With crucial observations from Mark Blaxill of the advocacy group SafeMinds, I've suggested a pattern in some of those early cases: Exposure, through the father's occupation, to ethyl mercury in fungicides. That's the same kind of mercury used in vaccines, and both were introduced commercially around 1930, right when those first autism cases were identified.

This is only a hypothesis, and critics have suggested it is a classic case not of connecting the dots, but of finding what I went looking for. That may be, but put yourself in my place when -- more than a year after publicly proposing the mercury fungicide idea in a column -- I identified the family of autism's Case 2 and located an extensive archive for the father, a distinguished scientist.

I sat down in the North Carolina State University library and opened the first box, took out the first folder and opened it to the first page. It was a yellowed, typewritten paper from Spring 1922, summarizing a fungicide experiment the father conducted as a grad student in plant pathology -- an experiment in which mercury was the main ingredient (and in the title). By the time his son was born in 1936, he was working with the new generation of ethyl mercury fungicides -- yes, the kind used in vaccines.

Though others will disagree, I find that just a bit outside the parameters of chance, given the timeline of the disorder and the independent belief of so many of today's parents that the same kind of mercury, in a totally different context, triggered their child's autism.

It also suggests that whatever's causing autism could be coming at us from several directions -- our increasingly mercury-toxic environment as well as any medical interventions that may be implicated. Check out "Mercury Link to Case 2" in the series to get the full picture.

So thanks to UPI for supporting this work. And thanks for reading, responding to -- and critiquing -- this column. Truth is, you haven't heard the last word from me. Not by a long shot.

--

The entire Age of Autism series is available at upi.com under Special Reports. E-mail: olmsted.dan@gmail.com.

Clear links to neurological disorders ignored, removed from animal vaccines but fine for babies

Infowars.net | July 20, 2007
Steve Watson

President Bush is to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children despite its known links to autism and other neurological disorders and despite the fact that he pledged in 2004 to support such a move when campaigning for re-election.

The White House stated on Tuesday that President Bush would veto the FY 2008 HHS-Labor-Education Appropriations Bill because of the cost and "objectionable provisions" such as a measure to ban the use of childhood flu vaccines that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, a press release from Autism advocacy group Safe Minds on the PRNewswire-USNewswire states.

Bush is calling for an amendment that would remove the children's safety provision from the bill.

Safe Minds warns:

"Under the current administration, mercury has been and will continue to be knowingly injected into the youngest of American citizens. The controversial mercury-containing preservative thimerosal has been linked by thousands of parents as being the cause of their children's mercury poisoning and autism."
The flu vaccine, which continues to be manufactured with mercury, is recommended for all pregnant women, infants and children despite the fact that the Institute of Medicine in 2001 recommended against the policy of exposing these same sensitive groups to thimerosal containing vaccines.

Mercury is the second most toxic metal known to man behind Uranium. Thimerosal is used in vaccines not because it is good for you, but purely because it prevents vaccine contamination. Yet some have questioned why thimerosal is even considered for vaccines because there are obviously safer alternatives to preventing contamination. Questions also remain about how pharmaceutical companies conduct vaccine research and how the government regulates those companies.

By Lucy Johnston, Health Editor Daily Express

Children are being used as guinea pigs in a risky and potentially deadly vaccine experiment, a new book claims.

Author Dr Richard Halvorsen said: "The truth is the Government continually misleads us over vaccines. There are unfounded claims about their safety and effectiveness and I believe jabs may be doing potentially serious harm to hundreds if not thousands of children every year."

His controversial book, The Truth About Vaccines, to be published later this month, will embarrass the Government, which has promoted childhood jabs and consistently played down possible risks. It also bears out claims by Dr Andrew Wakefield, currently being prosecuted by the General Medical Council after he challenged the safety of the MMR jab.

Dr Halvorsen, an NHS GP in London, has analysed thousands of scientific papers and interviewed scientists and senior Department of Health officials about vaccine safety. He claims doctors and parents are being grossly misled.

In one example, he says a brand of MMR was brought on the market even though the Government was aware of its dangers. It was withdrawn four years later after increasing reports of deaths and brain damage.

Paradoxically, says Dr Hal­vorsen, the Government plays down the dangers of vaccines despite paying out millions in compensation to relatives of victims. He says risks have not been properly assessed because, unlike drugs, vaccines do not have to undergo proper long-term safety trials.

One area that particularly concerns Dr Halvorsen is the use of aluminium – a known brain and nerve toxin – which is being added to the new five-in-one baby vaccine given at two, three and four months.

Aluminium has been found to help stimulate the immune system, making vaccines more effective. But the amounts added to vaccines exceed the recommended safe level by up to 1,000 times. Although many doctors
have expressed concerns, they cannot get funding to research the side-effects.

"Though we know aluminium is highly toxic and babies are receiving far more than the upper safety limit, there seems to be a conspiracy of silence on further investigation," said Dr Halvorsen.

"This may not affect all infants, but premature babies or those with a genetic susceptibility may be harmed." His analysis is borne out by research in France which suggests aluminium in vaccines may be responsible for triggering MS and other immune disorders.

"Children are now given 25 vaccines by the time they are 15 months. There's been no proper testing of the long-term effects of this on the developing immune system. We know the rate of immune system disorders such as eczema, asthma and diabetes are rising dramatically in under-fives.

"It seems entirely possible vaccines have contributed to this. The UK schedule of vaccinating at two, three and four months is one of the earliest and most compact in the world. This comes with a risk of greater side-effects, and I am concerned we may be giving too many vaccines at an early age."

He claims there are many vaccine sceptics among the medical profession, but most are afraid to speak out because they risk being discredited and losing their jobs.

"Whenever a doctor questions a vaccine he is discredited or made out to be a maverick. Many doctors were afraid to talk to me during my research. Some had even signed the Official Secrets Act. This is very worrying. We're not talking about national security. We're talking about the health and well-being of our children and babies."

Dr Halvorsen, a father of two who offers single measles, mumps and rubella jabs to his patients in his Holborn practice, also questions the safety of the controversial MMR vaccine. And he cites non-government research showing that measles vaccination can cause serious disorders leading to permanent brain damage.

Dr Halvorsen also thinks vaccinating against mumps has done "more harm than good" because the vaccine is only partially effective. He said: "Mumps is a mild disease that is rarely dangerous and most people who are affected naturally are immune for life. Vaccine immunity wears off within years.

This has increased the age at which children catch mumps to an age when side-effects are more likely to be severe, including permanent hearing loss and possibly infertility."

But despite his concerns he said some vaccines offer good protection. "I'm not anti-vaccine. Some jabs are important, but they are not being responsibly used. Indis­criminate mass vaccination which is happening now is irresponsible and potentially dangerous."

*The Truth About Vaccines by Dr Richard Halvorsen is currently available via www.amazon.com and other booksellers.

Editor’s note: This article made every newsletter in England and most of Western Europe about the same time. Most of the articles were on the front page of newspapers – 20+. This barely made the news in the United States.

August 25, 11 am-3 pm

Kelly McKinnon & Associates and The Talk Institute are excited to announce their new “Talk the Talk” classes, teaching and supporting children with ASD and their parents the facts about puberty and sexuality. Class format will be adapted to accommodate high functioning students with ASD and will include mini lectures, videos, games, and role-plays to accommodate a variety of learning styles. You are invited to take part in our series of Talking THE Talk Together designed for 10-14 year olds covering the following topics: Male/female anatomy, puberty and hormones, menstruation, nocturnal emissions, personal hygiene, what ‘sex’ is, pregnancy and childbirth, HIV/AIDS, resisting peer pressure, and last but not least, building relationships.

Take advantage of INTRODUCTORY PRICING- $125.00 per parent/child pair – ($55.00 additional for sibling in same classroom).   Please return the completed form along with payment to Kelly McKinnon. Questions? Email Kelly McKinnon or Jennifer Barber at The Talk Institute 760-846-6555.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007, 7-9 p.m.

Preparing your sons and daughters for a life in higher education is a challenge no matter who you are, but the endeavor may prove even more trying when your child has ADD, AD/HD, or any other learning disability. Combining her knowledge and experience in health care, adolescent development, and college counseling, Jan Kerschner founded The College ADDvantage, a consulting, coaching and tutoring resource for college-bound middle, high school, and college students who have been diagnosed with a LD and/or Attention Deficit / Hyperactive Disorder. Jan will share insight into the challenges faced by students with LD and ADHD as they prepare for college and how parents can help them meet the challenges.

CHADD is a parent support group that provides a forum for continuing education for parents and professionals interested in learning more about ADD and ADHD in children and adults, CHADD also helps assure that children are provided with the best educational experiences and resources available for their needs.  For more information on CHADD, please call Barbara Henry at (714) 630-5214 or visit our website at www.chadd.org

Online registration is underway for two exciting and informative Defeat Autism Now!(DAN!) conferences set for this fall. Both events will focus on teaching parents and practitioners how nutrition, intestinal disorders, detoxification and other metabolic issues impact behavior, attention, speech and the general health of children on the autism spectrum.

Fall DAN! Conference October 11-14 (with a Clinician Seminar on Monday October 15th) at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Garden Grove, California (Orange County, near Disneyland). Both conferences are sponsored by the Autism Research Institute (ARI).

Why Attend a DAN! Conference? More Answers for More Children...

Elizabeth Mumper, MD, medical director of the DAN! Conferences:  "The Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) network of parents, clinicians and researchers is at the forefront of connecting research that makes a difference, to treatments that lead to improvements in the quality of life for autistic children and their families."

In addition to bringing the most credible researchers and clinicians to the podium, DAN! Conferences provide a decision-making framework for parents and practitioners addressing the biomedical issues presented by individuals with autism. There is no other conference on autism that devotes its entire agenda to teaching how nutritional deficiencies, intestinal disorders, problems with detoxification and other metabolic issues impact behavior, attention, speech and the general health of children on the autism spectrum. DAN! Conferences focus intensely on these important issues.

Special speaker for this event: JENNY MCCARTHY!