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By CLARA TUMA, KVUE News

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It’s called the GFCF diet, but some parents of autistic children say it’s nothing short of a miracle.

With his infectious laugh and beguiling set of imitations, three-year-old Sander Stone grabs attention wherever he goes. But less than a year ago, Sander was making entirely different kinds of sounds.

“When he wanted something, he would walk up to you and say ‘abalab uh huh, abalab uh huh huh’ and you were supposed to know that meant, ‘I want ice cream,” said Meagan McGovern, Sander’s mom.

After doctors diagnosed Sander with a severe speech disorder, McGovern believed Sander was headed toward being diagnosed as autistic, as are about one in every 150 children.

“They wait until after three (years of age) for an official diagnosis, but he was not responding to his name,” said McGovern. “He was up all night, screaming every night.”

McGovern, like a growing number of mothers across the country, turned to vitamins and a new diet to see if it could help Sander. She says it did.

“We’re talking about a three-week span where he jumped a year-and-a-half in speech,” said McGovern. “We’re not talking about a slow, quick burst. We’re talking about nothing short of miraculous.”

Actress Jenny McCarthy is drawing attention to what’s known as the GFCF diet, meaning a diet that’s gluten-free, casein-free. Casein is the protein in dairy products.

Though not all doctors embrace it or believe autism can be treated through a diet, some say it can make a dramatic difference.

“Once they go on this diet, you usually see a great calming,” said Dr. Kendal Stewart, a neuro-otologist, board certified in ear, nose and throat disorders with training in neurology and neurosurgery. He says autistic children all have troubled immune systems. “These kids do have a higher rate of having sensitivities to wheat and casein,” said Dr. Stewart. “They can't break those products down as well, so it puts them at a very high risk and actually contributes to a worsening of their social and behavioral status.”

But cutting out wheat and dairy is no easy task. Christianna Hale says her son, Blaze, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, went through withdrawal similar to a drug addict.

“He was doing a lot of screaming, a lot of tantrums, a lot of physical aggression,” she said.

But within three weeks, she says Blaze was remarkably calmer.

“It's wonderful. Before, we weren't even able to go eat at a restaurant or go to a movie, so we were pretty much homebound,” said Hale.

She says Blaze is more social, and now sometimes responds to strangers, something he never did when he was eating wheat and dairy.

“What I did is just pretty much modify all the things he was eating already, and I found them in a gluten-free form,” said Hale.

Fellow mom Jonasu Mangum switched her autistic son, Zefram, to the diet last year. She says he’s talking more and making contact with strangers, new behavior that she says came with the diet.

“He talks on the phone to people. He goes up to people and says, ‘Hi’ and he wants to hug. He's never hugged before,” she said.

Mangum says Zefram’s fifth birthday party last year illustrated his autism.

“I'm trying to get him to play with them and he's just not,” she said. In the video you can hear him, all he's saying is ‘cake’, that's a new word he heard that night is ‘cake cake, I have birthday cake.’”

But just a few weeks ago, Zefram was acting more like a typical five-year-old.

“He was playing with me. My child has never played with me before. He has never responded to me playing with him,” said Mangum.

We want to stress the mothers don’t say the diet will work for every child, and they admit it’s not a cure for autism. But they insist their children regress if they eat wheat or drink milk. McGovern says she’ll never feed her son wheat again, and has converted her bakery into a gluten-free, casein-free business. She and other moms admit the diet is tough, but they say, so is watching an autistic child struggle through a day.

It’s the controversy that won’t go away. Is the skyrocketing rate of Autism in children due in any way to the mercury long contained in childhood vaccines? It’s an issue our chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson has stayed with from the start…and Steve will science ever answer this one?

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It could happen one day but only if researchers keep looking… and with 1 in 150 children now diagnosed with Autism in this country—more than 100 new, young victims every single day—a lot of skeptical parents and others believe there’s a big incentive for industry and government to cover up the truth.

Dr. Renee Jenkins, M.D./Pediatrician: I don’t think anybody is saying you want to inject mercury. (Wilson) Why would I do it? Why would I allow it to happen? (Jenkins) Well, for routine vaccinations, we don’t allow it to happen.”

A loving grandmother and president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Renee Jenkins is among those in medicine, in government, in the media, pretty much telling parents this problem’s been solved…there is no mercury in the routine schedule of childhood vaccines anymore, except maybe just “trace” amounts. She’s talking about a mercury-based vaccine preservative called Thimerosal…and the truth is there’s still as much as ever in 11 vaccines including most flu vaccines injected into pregnant women and kids, and some of them younger than 9 get two doses in a season. And also high levels of mercury from Thimerosal in tetanus shots and the boosters routinely injected into 11-year-olds…and also in some meningitis and diphtheria-tetanus formulas, too.

Heidi Scheer/Mother of Autistic Child: …and I know for a fact people that have gone to their physician and have been told there was no Thimerosal in their vaccine, then the parents asked to see the package insert and they find it there.

Mrs. Michigan joined parents of other autistic children marching on Washington just recently not only to alert new parents but to point out the half-million children already stricken, they believe by the large doses of mercury they got in the increasing number of vaccines the government and their doctors recommended.
A congressional committee that studied the matter has already concluded: “Thimerosal…is directly related to the Autism epidemic.”

It could have been prevented or curtailed “had the FDA not been asleep at the switch” allowing the untested toxic to be part of the vaccine recipe, something the committee report blamed on “misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.”

Presidential candidate John McCain says now there’s “strong evidence” of a link between skyrocketing Autism and the mercury in vaccines. Boyd Haley is a scientist and pioneer in the study of this issue.

Dr. Boyd Haley/Researcher: And I want to talk to a lot of the journalists here because you’re a big part of the problem. Most of you… (crowd cheering) … you’ve allowed the CDC to hijack what’s perceived as the science of Autism. There hasn’t been one publication ever published where Thimerosal was tested against a living cell, a living animal, where it wasn’t found to be severely toxic, psydotoxic and neurotoxic, and yet you can go in there and they’ll tell you ‘Oh we know it’s not connected.’ Why don’t you go read the papers?

Some examples of the scientific papers he’s talking about?

• A study of monkeys that showed vaccinated primates showed increased neurological disorders and non-social behavior similar to Autism;

• Another animal study that shows the kind of mercury used in vaccines ends up in the brain and stays twice as long as the mercury in fish;

• A study of vaccination records which seems to match increased Autism with increased vaccinations containing mercury.

And then there’s the circumstantial evidence:

UPI found only 4 cases of Autism among a community of 22,000 Amish people who generally shun vaccines. Statistically there should be about 130.

Robert Kennedy/Environmentalist: …and three of them were adopted after receiving their vaccines and the fourth on lived outwards of a coal-burning power-plant

Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy has also studied the issue and wrote about it in a recent edition of Rolling Stone. America hasn’t heard enough of the truth, he too believes, partly because the mainstream media too often just blindly reports the press releases of mainstream medicine and public health agencies and Congress is too slow to act.

Robert Kennedy: So we know what the truth is…and let’s not let them go another day without some legislation banning this stuff!

And then there are those remarkably similar stories from tens of thousands of parents who say within hours of vaccination, their children became withdrawn, socially uncontrollable…and ultimately diagnosed with Autism.

Amy Carson/Moms Against Mercury: And I have full medical proof that I have a very mercury-toxic 11-year-old child. I gave birth to a very healthy child, a very neuro-typical, normal child who changed with each set of vaccines. But I kept vaccinating because I didn’t know any better.

On the other hand, while no study has proved to a scientific certainty that vaccinations have or have not caused a single case of Autism…the government has now conceded the link in the case of Hannah Poling.

Her parents say she developed Autism right after she received five vaccinations in a single day. Now, perhaps she was particularly vulnerable due to a pre-existing condition but the government concession of a vaccine-Autism link in the first of 5,000 such cases pending gives hope to other claimants.
Meanwhile, many parents say there’s no proof because there’s been no serious effort to look.

Indeed, in its last report on the issue issued after this 2004 meeting, the government’s Institute of Medicine said there’s no point in further research. If a link was found, they reasoned, it might risk “the broader benefit of the current vaccine program.”

The health editor of US News & World Report, Bernadine Healy, herself a physician and a former director of the National Institutes of Health, says public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the possibility of a link…
And even the current head of the Centers for Disease Control now seems to agree…

Dr. Julie Gerberding/CDC Director: …But it’s kind of our job to do the science and help clarify and separate concern from scientific fact… Autism is a huge challenge and it is much more common than anybody realized and we need to do more.

And back in Washington again, Robert Kennedy is not the first to ridicule the “science” that is often cited to show there is no problem here.

Robert Kennedy/Environmentalist: …and I saw studies that weren’t good. It wasn’t even high-quality fraud. This is low-quality fraud. You don’t even need a scientist to tell you where the fraud is.

In his Rolling Stone article, Kennedy lays out evidence of what he calls “a chilling case of institutional arrogance, power and greed.”

His own research has convinced him that Congressional committee was right: for many years vaccine makers and government health officials have colluded to cover up the true dangers of mercury in vaccines. As actor Jim Carey put it at that rally in Washington…

Jim Carey/Actor: And I certainly wouldn’t trust the drug companies to regulate themselves. God knows they’re too busy fighting the scourge of Restless Leg Syndrome!

Carey’s involved now that he shares his life with actress Jenny McCarthy and her son Evan who also contracted Autism which has improved considerably with diet and special treatments.

So now, to keep things in perspective, even in wake of all you’ve seen and heard, what do most parents of allegedly vaccine-damaged children say you should do when it comes to your own child or one you care about?

Jackie Martin Sibell/Mother of Autistic Child We’re not anti-vaccine. We do believe in vaccines. We know that they are doing a lot of good. We know that without them people would be dying

Sheryl Melling/Mother of Autistic Child: We all love our children. We all want to protect our children. We don’t want our children to get diseases but on the other hand we certainly don’t want our children to get a neurological disorder that is lifelong as well. We want to make this vaccine safer so that we can all have trust in what we’re injecting our children.

Tara Glaspie/Mother of Autistic Child: I would never tell anyone don’t vaccinate your child but I would definitely tell them to do the research and make sure your comfortable with the decision you make.

And the final word from the doctor who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization, by the way, that called for the removal of all mercury from vaccines nearly 10 years ago.

Dr. Renee Jenkins, MD/American Academy of Pediatrics: …the progress we made in keeping children from dying from disease that we give them immunizations for is very important. I think that over the time that we begin vaccinating children we’ve made these vaccines safer and safer as they’ve developed…so what you are looking at is not ‘here is a perfectly healthy child and I’m giving them something that has no benefit. It has tremendous benefit.

To see which vaccines still include mercury, visit the website below:

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

Huffington Post
DAVID KIRBY
Posted July 19, 2008

This week, actress Amanda Peet called parents who don't vaccinate their kids "parasites," and then essentially went on to lie when she announced that scientists have concluded there is "no association between autism and vaccines."

Peet saw fit to blast "the media and journalists" and "a few fringe medical groups and parent advocacy groups" for "presenting vaccine safety as a controversy." She thinks the debate, save for a few dangerous holdouts, is over.

I thought that Ms. Peet (and her ill-advised advisors such as Dr. Paul Offit) might want to see from whence these parasitic, fringey parents and doctors have been getting their cues of late.

Here are just a few recent examples:

July 15, 2008 - A workgroup report of the IACC (the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which includes HHS, CDC, NIH and others) says that some members want "specific objectives on vaccine research" included in the new, multimillion-dollar national autism research program, as mandated by Congress in the Combatting Autism Act.

Notes from the meeting indicate that workgroup members want federal researchers to consider "shortfalls" in epidemiological studies cited as proof against a vaccine-autism association (by Offit, Peet, et al); as well as a specific plan "for researching vaccines as a potential cause of autism." The workgroup also says that the final research agenda should "state that the issue is open."

July 14, 2008 - Rep. Brad Miller (R-NC), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, (Committe on Science and Technology) writes to HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt to complain that current federal autism research "shows a strong preference to fund genetic-based studies," even though there is, "growing evidence that suggests a wide range of conditions or environmental exposures may play a role" in autism. He cites a recent study on vaccines and monkeys, presented as a poster (unreviewed) at the International Society for Autism Research, which, "suggests that research on primates is about to emerge that will provide additional evidence of environmental contributions to ASD."

Rep. Miller specifically cites the case of Hannah Poling as "just one example that is suggestive of very important lines of inquiry," and he recommends some "very suggestive writings along these lines," such as the April 5, 2008 letter from Terry Poling, (Hannah's mother, an attorney and former nurse) to The New York Times titled, "Vaccines, Autism and Our Daughter, Hannah."

Finally, Rep Miller writes that HHS "has lost much of the public's trust," and urges Mr. Leavitt to form a Secretarial-level Autism Advisory Board to provide public feedback, liaise with parents groups, and "assist in reestablishing the public trust" that Ms. Peet herself said was lagging. Miller recommends tapping groups such as Safe Minds, Generation Rescue, Autism Speaks and the Autism Research Institute for their, "experience evaluating research' and an "in-depth knowledge of the current body of ASD research." All four groups support vaccine-autism research, and thus presumably fall within the rubric of what Ms. Peet terms as "fringe."

May 12, 2008 - Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the NIH and the American Red Cross and current Health Editor of US News & World Report tells CBS News that, "Officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational," and says they "don't want to pursue a hypothesis because that hypothesis could be damaging to the public health community at large by scaring people."

But, unlike Amanda Peet, Dr. Healy believes that, "the public's smarter than that. The public values vaccines. But more importantly, I don't think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you're afraid of what it might show."

April 21, 2008 - Presidential Candidate Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, answers a question about autism by saying: "We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it."

April 11, 2008 - The HHS Vaccine Safety Working Group (comprised of the nation's leading vaccine experts) meets to review the CDC's draft research proposal for vaccine safety issues. Among the top vaccine questions that CDC wants answered: "Are neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, clinical outcomes of vaccine injury?" And, "Is immunization associated with increased risk for neurological deterioration in children with mitochondrial dysfunction?"

March 29, 2008 - Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the CDC, speaking about the Hannah Poling case on CNN says: "If a child was immunized, got a fever, had other complications from the vaccines, and was pre-disposed with the mitochondrial disorder, it can certainly set off some damage (including) symptoms that have characteristics of autism." And she adds: "I think we have to have an open mind about this." Meanwhile, the CDC website lists autism studies it currently funds on thimerosal and the MMR vaccine.

March 11, 2008 - The CISA Network (Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment), headed by the CDC, receives a report from top researchers at Johns Hopkins University that 30 typically developing children with mitochondrial dysfunction all regressed into autism between 12 and 24 months of life. At least two of them (6%) showed brain damage within one week of receiving simultaneous multiple vaccinations.

Included in this vaccine safety network is the US health insurance industry - which is now being forced by many states to cover autism treatments, and wants to know what possible role vaccines are playing in the neurodevelopmental health of children. A month later, the CISA network announces it has "formed a working group to study methods related to mitochondrial disorders and immunization."

February 25, 2008 - Presidential Candidate Sen. John McCain says at a rally in Texas that "It's indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what's causing it. And we go back and forth and there's strong evidence that indicates that it's got to do with a preservative in vaccines." McCain notes that there's "divided scientific opinion" on the matter, with "many on the other side that are credible scientists that are saying that's not the cause of it."

February 22, 2008 - Medical Personnel at HHS concede an autism case filed by the family of Hannah Poling in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, before the claim can go to trial as a "test case" of the theory that thimerosal causes autism. Though portrayed by some (ie, Dr. Offit) as a legal decision, it is in fact a medical decision. HHS doctors admit that the "cause" of Hannah's "autistic encephalopathy" was "vaccine-induced fever and immune stimulation that exceeded metabolic reserves," which exacerbated her underlying mitochondrial dysfunction. At 19 months of age, Hannah was given 5 injections containing nine vaccines.

January, 2008 - Presidential Candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, responding to a questionnaire, says that autism is "epidemic," and that she is, "committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines." When asked if she will support an autism study of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children, she replies: "Yes. We don't know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism - but we should find out."

So there you have it. Since the beginning of the year, we have heard from:

1) Three United States Senators
2) The next President (and possibly Vice President) of the country
3) The Director of the CDC (and her "open mind")
4) The former head of the NIH and the American Red Cross
5) The Chairman of a House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight
6) A respected Pediatric Neurologist and Resident at Johns Hopkins University Medical School (Dr. Jon Poling)
7) The HHS Vaccine Safety Working Group
8) The CDC's Vaccine Safety Research Agenda authors
9) Medical personnel at the HHS Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
10) The Strategic Planning Workgroup of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee
11) The Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network
12) Leading autism researchers at Johns Hopkins University Medical School
13) America's health insurance companies

Virtually all of the above advocate, or have at least considered, exploring the possible links between vaccines and autism.

I am not a parent, and I am not anti-vaccine. But if I were going to listen to experts on this subject, I would be more likely to consult some of these people, rather than a well-meaning but grossly misinformed actress who is guided by a doctor who will likely make money from his own work helping to develop a childhood vaccine.

Ms. Peet apologized for calling parents "parasites," and that's nice. But it is her continued use of the "fringe" label, I believe, that will ultimately come back to bite her the hardest.

The vaccine-autism debate may be over in the firmly closed minds of Peet and Offit, but for serious, rational thinkers such as those listed above, this debate (and the real work that lies ahead) has only just begun.

Since publishing our profile of Amanda Peet, we've gotten lots of reader feedback about her pro-vaccine stance. Many of you feel she was harsh in her depiction of people who don't vaccinate their children; others applaud her for advocating vaccines as a public health benefit. Here, we interview two doctors on opposite sides of the debate (one of them is Paul Offit M.D., the doctor whom Peet consulted when she wanted to learn about the vaccination issue).

PAUL OFFIT, M.D.
Chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and co-inventor of and holder of the patent for the rotavirus vaccine.

Why do you think staggering vaccinations is not a good idea?

There is no data to suggest why we should delay or space out vaccines. We give 14 vaccines by two years of age, which can mean up to 5 shots at one time, and I can understand why that feels overwhelming. But vaccines are very well tested. Every time a new vaccine comes onto the market you have to do something called concomitant-use studies to show that your vaccine, when given either alone or in concert with the existing schedule, doesn't affect the safety and efficacy of other vaccines and that the other vaccines don't affect your vaccine.

The problem is, when you separate or delay or space out vaccines, you're only increasing the period of time during which children are susceptible to certain preventable diseases. And that's never to your advantage. And further, the schedules that people want to use and test out on their own, those haven't been tested.

What do you say to parents who are concerned about the increased schedule of vaccinations?

The schedule has increased because we've discovered more vaccines. That's why we're healthier; that's why we live longer. And the antivaccine camp will say, "Well, we've just traded infectious diseases for chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis"—but [that's not correct]. The main difference is that with vaccines we're living longer. I think where people get confused is when you have a 4-month-old and you watch five shots get lined up on the table. I think any reasonable person is going to recoil at that. But the fact is, if you take all the immunological components in vaccines—like a bacterial protein, or a viral protein—and add them up, you get about 150. That's fewer than what was in the smallpox vaccine alone 100 years ago.

Have levels of the preservative thimerosal (ethyl mercury) increased overall in the past 25 years as a result of the increased vaccination schedule?

The birth of thimerosal vaccines came in the late 1930s. Before that, we used primarily multidose vials, which required preservatives. Basically we've now moved from multidose to single-dose vials, which don't require preservatives. Live viral vaccines also don't require preservatives. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the numbers of vaccines increased, and so levels of thimerosal did get as high as 187 micrograms. In 1999, as a precautionary measure, the American Academy of Pediatrics spearheaded a movement to try to eliminate thimerosal from vaccines.

By 2001, thimerosal was gone from all but one preparation: the flu vaccine. Not only have the rates of autism continued to increase but, more important, we now have six excellent epidemiological studies [that compared the populations who had thimerosal vaccinations to the ones that didn't], that show that thimerosal does not increase the risk of autism. The studies were done in this country, Denmark, Canada, the U.K., and others; there were many different populations.

What about claims that vaccines contain antifreeze and dangerous levels of aluminum?

Vaccines do contain aluminum in the form of aluminum salts, which typically enhance the immune response and enable you to give fewer doses and a lower quantity of immunological components. But again, if you look at the data on the recommended safety levels of aluminum—which is not a heavy metal, despite what people think, it's a light metal—it's eliminated very quickly from the body.

Vaccines don't contain antifreeze. One particular vaccine contains one component of antifreeze, propylene glycol. Propylene glycol is in many products we use, including salad dressing.

How can parents feel confident that doctors are unbiased or uninfluenced by pharmaceutical companies?

The conflict of interest issue is off the point. I go through this all the time—because I am the co-inventor of a vaccine, people think I must be evil. The reason we did the work is because it saves lives. But it's true that I also make money out of it—as a co-inventor, I'm a co–patent holder, and as a co–patent holder of a revenue-generating product, I make money off this. But it's certainly not the reason I did it, and it's not the reward. It's not like I co-invented a method to freebase cocaine—I mean, vaccines are a good thing.

All of the recent scientific studies have found no link between vaccines and autism, and a majority of the authors of the original Lancet paper have repudiated their findings. So why is there still so much controversy over vaccine safety?

Well, we're now at hypothesis number three. The first hypothesis was that MMR [the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine] caused autism. People panicked; parents of more than 100,000 children didn't get the MMR vaccine in the U.S.; and there were major outbreaks of measles in the U.K. that caused deaths. Now there have been about ten studies that have shown no difference: Get the MMR, don't get the MMR; autism rates remain the same. So that was hypothesis number one. Hypothesis number two was that it wasn't MMR that caused autism, it was thimerosal. And there were six studies that showed that that wasn't true. So then you look at hypothesis number three, which is where we are now, and it's that kids are getting too many vaccines. This is much, much harder to study. Maybe you could take kids who are homeschooled, who aren't getting vaccinated. They'll probably do these studies, but if they don't show anything, we'll move onto something else.

There's a hypothesis that in a small subset of people with a genetic predisposition, like a mitochondrial disorder, vaccines and other environmental factors may trigger autism. What's your take on this theory?

Here's why I think that that's not it. Epidemiological studies are actually quite powerful. For example, in 1976 there was an influenza outbreak, and we made 40 million doses of the vaccine and distributed it throughout the country. The vaccine was found to cause Guillain Barre syndrome, a nervous system disorder, in 1 in 100,000 people—about 400 people.

When the Rotashield vaccine was given to about a million children, a very rare intestinal blockage affected 100 children. [The ability of these studies to isolate those numbers]—that's pretty powerful.

You have this omnibus autism proceeding going on in federal-claims court in D.C., where parents of 5,000 children say that vaccines caused autism. But if this were right, it would easily be found in retrospective studies. We're saying that autism occurs in 1 in 150 children. If mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies accounted for one percent of that, you would find it in epidemiological studies.

So what do you think does cause autism?

Within autism, there's a broad spectrum [of symptoms and severity], but it's clearly genetic. When you look at the so-called family studies, such as twin studies, and see what the incidence of autism is in one twin if the other has it, in identical twins it's over 90 percent; in fraternal twins it's less that 10. But I certainly believe that the environment can interact with genes in ways that affects their development—if you define environment as anything other than genetic, not just environmental toxins, which is what many people leap to.

JAY GORDON, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, UCLA Medical School Former Senior Fellow in Pediatric Nutrition, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute

Why do you advocate staggering vaccines?

I think the immune system, like every other system of the body, matures slowly, and that it can better tolerate viral infection at older ages and better tolerate one virus at a time. The other thing is that vaccines all contain other ingredients. They contain aluminum, they contain tiny bits of formalin [an aqueous solution of formaldahyde]. So I recommend waiting as long as parents are comfortable, and vaccinating very, very slowly. I also ask parents to wait at least six months before the first vaccine. I prefer to wait a year. I have patients who choose to get no vaccines at all, and I support that. I have patients who choose to get almost no vaccines at all, and I support that. I have patients who choose every vaccine except this one or that one; I support that.

What do you think are the risks of vaccinating a newborn or 1-month-old?

The first part of my answer is: I don't know. And that bothers me. [In my practice] I have a natural orientation, but when I give medication, I can usually explain the side effects and what causes them. What bothers me is that when I give vaccines and I see side effects, I don't know what causes them. I think that there is a so-called neuro-immune response, where the immune system and the central nervous system have complex interactions, and I think that there can be problems.

What are some of the side effects you've seen besides fever and bruises?

I've seen kids who developed autism shortly after vaccination. When I first went into practice in the '80s, I would get a lot of phone calls from moms, and they would say, "You know, after the shots, she's just acting a little different. Is that normal?" And I'd say, "Yes it is." And they'd call back a week later and say, "He's still a little bit off. I can't quite describe it." That scared me.

Now, many people would argue that vaccines are only for the better. I would say that there's no free lunch; it is lovely to be immune to whooping cough, but if I have to diminish your health a little bit to do that, I have to hesitate. Integrity demands that I tell you other parts of the story: I saw one child who developed seizures two days after her two-month appointment, and she didn't get any shots. It's true that the onset of autism often coincides with the time that kids are getting their shots. But the vast majority of times that I see a temporal relationship, I'm assuming it's not a coincidence.

I am 100 percent convinced that vaccines, while creating some excellent public health benefits, also create problems. I've been doing this for 29 years. I've watched it really closely, and I've seen kids who get shots undergo changes.

Why is there so much controversy specifically about the MMR vaccination?

It's a live-virus vaccine. A live-virus vaccine, in order to work, creates a little bit of an infection. And when you get measles, you get it through your nose and your throat, [which triggers a very specific immune response.] When we inject measles, we are bypassing that system and going right into the bloodstream. And we're finding that yes, there can be some impact on the intestinal tract and to the brain from the measles vaccine. And it's a vaccine of almost no benefit to American children, one by one. Now, in terms of public health, I don't want to be the guy who said, "Boy, this vaccine stinks." It doesn't stink. It works very, very well. The reason we don't have measles in America is because the vaccine works great. But sit down, please. Let's talk about the fact that your cousin and your other cousin both have autism. Or that your son has some questionable neurological issues, he seems to be speaking or walking a little later. I don't want to mess with him.

What about the ethyl mercury compound thimerasol in vaccines?

Here's what people are saying in America: "Look, we took all the mercury out of the vaccines. And there's still a rise in autism." But they didn't take the mercury out of the vaccines. The flu shot recommended for your 6-month child on up? It has 25 micrograms of mercury. The tetanus booster that your 7-year-old gets for a rusty nail? 26 micrograms of mercury. So, they're lying. [Note: Go to fda.gov to see current amounts of thimerasol in vaccines; most are thimerasol-free.]

What does it mean to "green our vaccines"?

Right now we're creating vaccines using ingredients that are cheap preservatives, but it could be done better. It means, let's see if we can get the aluminum out of them. Let's see if we can get the formaldehyde out of them. Let's see if we can produce them in a way that makes a little more sense for safety.

What do you say about reports that in a certain subset of people who have a genetic disposition, vaccines and other environmental factors might trigger autism?

I am 100 percent certain. The NIH child health division has a poster that says, "Genetics load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger." And that was invented mostly for pesticides and cleaning fluids underneath your sink. But we know that there is a genetic predisposition for diabetes, but you need a trigger. They've done identical-twin studies, one gets it one doesn't. What the hell happened? We know there's a genetic predisposition to autism, but I don't think that accounts for all cases.

How do you reconcile the notion of not vaccinating with the public health benefit that you mentioned earlier?

I think that the public health benefits to vaccinating are grossly overstated. I think that if we spent as much time telling people to breastfeed or to quit eating cheese and ice cream, we'd save more lives than we save with the polio vaccine.

By Robert W. Sears
Mothering, Issue 146, January/February 2008

Vaccines have become the most controversial parenting topic of the decade. When parents are considering whether or not to vaccinate their children, one of the things that must be considered is aluminum toxicity.

Aluminum is added to a number of vaccines to help them work better. Normally, one wouldn't consider aluminum to be a problem. It's a naturally occurring element that is present everywhere in our environment—in food, water, air, and soil. It's also a main ingredient in over-the-counter antacids. And because the body doesn't absorb aluminum, it's harmless when swallowed.

I didn't think much about aluminum when, 13 years ago, I began researching vaccines. In fact, the early seminars on vaccine education that I offered to parents included a brief statement that aluminum was nothing to worry about. But as I read each product insert and saw the number of micrograms (mcg) of aluminum contained in several vaccines, I wondered, "Has anyone determined what a safe level of injected aluminum actually is?" I didn't have to wonder for long, because the answer is easy to find; go to www.fda.gov, search on "aluminum toxicity," and you'll find several documents about aluminum.

The first document I came across discusses the labeling of aluminum content in injected dextrose solutions (the sugar solutions added to intravenous fluids in hospitals): "Aluminum may reach toxic levels with prolonged parenteral administration [i.e., injected into the body] if kidney function is impaired. Research indicates that patients with impaired kidney function, including premature neonates [i.e., babies], who received parenteral levels of aluminum at greater than 4 to 5 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day, accumulate aluminum at levels associated with central nervous system and bone toxicity. Tissue loading [i.e., toxic buildup in certain body tissues] may occur at even lower rates of administration."1 For a tiny newborn, this toxic dose would be 10 to 20 mcg; for an adult, it would be about 350 mcg.

The second document discusses aluminum content in IV feeding solutions, or Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) solutions. The FDA requires these solutions to contain no more than 25 mcg of aluminum per liter of solution. A typical adult in the hospital would get around 1 liter of TPN each day, thus about 25 mcg of aluminum. The FDA document also states, "Aluminum content in parenteral drug products could result in a toxic accumulation of aluminum in individuals receiving TPN therapy. Research indicates that neonates and patient populations with impaired kidney function may be at high risk of exposure to unsafe amounts of aluminum. Studies show that aluminum may accumulate in the bone, urine, and plasma of infants receiving TPN. Many drug products used routinely in parenteral therapy may contain levels of aluminum sufficiently high to cause clinical manifestations [i.e., symptoms]. . . Aluminum toxicity is difficult to identify in infants because few reliable techniques are available to evaluate bone metabolism in premature infants. . . Although aluminum toxicity is not commonly detected clinically, it can be serious in selected patient populations, such as neonates, and may be more common than is recognized."2

Elsewhere, I found a relevant 2004 statement by the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN), a group that monitors oral and injectable nutritional products for safety and side effects. It reiterated the cited FDA warnings to the letter, and recommended that doctors purchase IV products with the lowest aluminum content possible, "and should monitor changes in the pharmaceutical market that may affect aluminum concentrations."3

The source of the daily limit of 4 to 5 mcg of aluminum per kilogram of body weight quoted by the ASPEN statement seems to be a study that compared the neurologic development of about 100 premature babies who were fed a standard IV solution that contained aluminum, with the development of 100 premature babies who were fed the same solution with almost all aluminum filtered out. The study was prompted by a number of established facts: that injected aluminum can build up to toxic levels in the bloodstream, bones, and brain; that preemies have decreased kidney function and thus a higher risk of toxicity; that an autopsy performed on one preemie whose sudden death was otherwise unexplained revealed high aluminum concentrations in the brain; and that aluminum toxicity can cause progressive dementia. The infants who were given IV solutions containing aluminum showed impaired neurologic and mental development at 18 months, compared to the babies who were fed much lower amounts of aluminum. Those who got aluminum received an average of 500 mcg of the metal over a period of 10 days, or about 50 mcg per day. The other group received only about 10 mcg of aluminum daily—4 to 5 mcg per kilogram of body weight per day.4 This seems to be the source of this safety level.

However, none of these documents or studies mentions vaccines; they look only at IV solutions and injectable medications. Nor does the FDA require labels on vaccines warning about the dangers of aluminum toxicity, although such labels are required for all other injectable medications.

All of these studies and label warnings seem to apply mainly to premature babies and kidney patients. What about larger, full-term babies with healthy kidneys? Using the 5 mcg/kg/day criterion from the first document as a minimum amount we know a healthy baby could handle, a 12-pound, two-month-old baby could safely receive at least 30 mcg of aluminum per day. A 22-pound one-year-old could receive at least 50 mcg safely. Babies with healthy kidneys could probably handle much more than this, but we at least know that they can handle this much. However, these documents don't tell us what the maximum safe dose would be for a healthy baby or child, and I can't find such information anywhere. This is probably why the ASPEN group suggests, and the FDA requires, that all injectable solutions be limited to 25 mcg; we at least know that that level is safe.

Calculating Aluminum in Vaccines
Here are the current levels of aluminum per shot of the following vaccines, as listed on each vaccine's packaging:

DTaP (for Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis): 170-625 mcg, depending on manufacturer
Hepatitis A: 250 mcg
Hepatitis B: 250 mcg
HIB (for meningitis; PedVaxHib brand only): 225 mcg
HPV: 225 mcg
Pediarix (DTaP-Hepatitis B-Polio combination): 850 mcg
Pentacel (DTaP-HIB-Polio combination): 330 mcg
Pneumococcus: 125 mcg
In other words, a newborn who gets a Hepatitis B injection on day one of life would receive 250 mcg of aluminum. This would be repeated at one month with the next Hep B shot. When, at two months, a baby gets its first big round of shots, the total dose of aluminum could vary from 295 mcg (if a non-aluminum HIB and the lowest-aluminum brand of DTaP are used) to a whopping 1225 mcg (if the Hep B vaccine is given along with the brands with the highest aluminum contents). These doses are repeated at four and six months. With most subsequent rounds of shots, a child would continue to get some aluminum throughout the first two years. But the FDA recommends that premature babies, and anyone with impaired kidney function, receive no more than 10 to 25 mcg of injected aluminum at any one time.

As a medical doctor, my first instinct was to worry that these aluminum levels far exceed what may be safe for babies. My second instinct was to assume that the issue had been properly researched, and that studies had been done on healthy infants to determine their ability to rapidly excrete aluminum. My third instinct was to search for these studies. So far, I have found none. It's likely the FDA thinks that the kidneys of healthy infants work well enough to excrete aluminum before it can circulate through the body, accumulate in the brain, and cause toxic effects. However, I can find no references in FDA documents that show that using aluminum in vaccines has been tested and found to be safe.

So I did what any pediatrician would do. I turned to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), who in 1996 published a policy statement, "Aluminum Toxicity in Infants and Children," that made the following points:

Aluminum can cause neurologic harm.
A study from 30 years ago showed that human adults increase their urine excretion of aluminum when exposed to higher levels of the metal, which suggests that adults can clear out excess aluminum.
Adults taking aluminum-containing antacids don't build up high levels of aluminum in their bodies.
Reports of infants with healthy kidneys show elevated blood levels of aluminum from taking antacids.
People with kidney disease who build up bloodstream levels of aluminum greater than 100 mcg per liter are at risk of toxicity.
The toxic threshold of aluminum in the bloodstream may be lower than 100 mcg per liter.
The buildup of aluminum in tissues has been seen even in patients with healthy kidneys who receive IV solutions containing aluminum over extended periods.5
However, nowhere in this paper was there any mention of aluminum in vaccines.
To put this in perspective: Because the body of the average adult contains about 5 liters of blood, receiving more than 500 mcg of aluminum in the bloodstream all at once will be toxic if the kidneys aren't working well. (Toxicity has also been seen in patients with healthy kidneys.) Because a newborn's body contains about a liter (300 milliliters) of blood, more than 30 mcg of aluminum floating around in the bloodstream could be toxic if the baby's kidneys aren't working well. The body of a toddler or preschool-age child contains about 1 liter of blood, so more than 100 mcg in his system could be toxic—and, as we've seen, babies can receive more than 1000 mcg of injected aluminum all at one time. Fortunately, this amount doesn't all go into the blood at once, but is slowly diffused into the bloodstream over a period of time from the muscle or skin where it was injected.

But that is the main point of this article. No one has measured the levels of aluminum absorption by the bloodstream when it is injected into the skin and muscle of infants, or the levels of excretion from the body via urination. All of the FDA and AAP documents that I've read state that aluminum might be a problem, but that they haven't studied it yet, so we should limit the amount of aluminum included in injectable solutions. But, again, no one is talking about the levels of aluminum in vaccines.

What I think may have happened is that because aluminum used to be found in only one vaccine—DTP, an older version of the current DTaP vaccine—no one thought much about it. Then, in the 1980s, the PedVaxHib brand of HIB meningitis vaccine was released, which also included aluminum; but other brands of HIB vaccine did not, so again, no one thought much about it. In the 1990s, the Hepatitis B vaccine began to be widely used; in the 2000s, the Pneumococcus vaccine; and, more recently, the Hepatitis A vaccine. Administering one aluminum-containing vaccine at a time involves only a small amount of the metal; administering four such vaccines simultaneously is a different story. It seems this issue has simply escaped everyone's attention. Or has it?

Limited Studies limit thinking
Several years ago, some suspected cases of aluminum toxicity resulted in various neurologic and degenerative problems. The Cochrane Collaboration, a group that studies health-care issues around the world, wanted to look at a very large study group to see if there was a real correlation between neurologic problems and the aluminum in vaccines. They investigated all the reported side effects of one aluminum-containing vaccine, DTP (no longer used), and looked for any evidence that such vaccines caused more side effects than non-aluminum vaccines. Other than more redness, swelling, and pain at the injection site, they found no indication that an aluminum-containing vaccine caused any more problems, and concluded that no further research should be undertaken on this topic.6 That is a very bold statement. Most researchers will draw conclusions from the findings of their own research; it's unusual to say that no one else should do any more research into the matter.

This is especially surprising because of the limitations of the Cochrane Collaboration's study. They looked at the effects of only one standard aluminum-containing vaccine, rather than the effects of all four being administered at once. They didn't study aluminum metabolism itself. They didn't test aluminum levels in children after vaccination, nor did they explore whether or not the amount of aluminum in vaccines builds up in the brain or bone tissues. They looked only for evidence of external symptoms of aluminum toxicity, not internal effects. Nor did they do their own research; instead, they reviewed all available studies conducted by other investigators. Despite all this, the Cochrane Collaboration study essentially closed the book on investigating aluminum toxicity from vaccines, without really having opened it in the first place.

The most obvious way to study this matter would be to inject various amounts of aluminum into children and see what happens to them internally. We know from the FDA documents that aluminum toxicity does occur from other types of injectable treatments; that it accumulates in the brain and bones in toxic amounts; that this may occur more commonly than is recognized; and that aluminum toxicity is hard to detect by looking for external symptoms. The question remains: What happens when these amounts of aluminum are injected via vaccines? Vaccine manufacturers may have begun to wonder about the same thing; I found some interesting research in the product insert of the new HPV vaccine, Gardasil. In researching the safety of Gardasil, Merck & Co., Inc., the vaccine's developer and manufacturer, added a step to their testing procedure by injecting aluminum into a separate group of test subjects used as a safety control group. They then compared the side effects of the Gardasil vaccine with a saline placebo that contained neither Gardasil nor aluminum, as well as with the placebo containing no Gardasil but the same amount of aluminum as the vaccine. They found that the placebo containing aluminum was much more painful than the saline placebo, and about as painful as the full HPV shot. The aluminum placebo also caused much more redness, swelling, and itching than the saline placebo, though not quite as much as the full HPV shot.

Unfortunately, Merck looked only at the effects of aluminum at the injection site. Nor did they state in the Gardasil product insert what role the aluminum placebo played in all the other standard side effects, such as fever and flu-like symptoms. Nor did they study the body's internal metabolism of aluminum. However, their research did show how irritating aluminum can be when injected into the muscles. It was a good first step. If aluminum can be toxic, why not just remove it from vaccines, as is being done with the preservative thimerosal, which contains the neurotoxin mercury? It's not that simple. Aluminum is an adjuvant; in other words, it helps vaccines work more effectively. When the metal is mixed with a vaccine, the body's immune system more easily recognizes the vaccine and creates antibodies against the disease. Thimerosal was easy to omit, because it has nothing to do with the efficacy of the vaccine itself. But the pharmaceutical companies would need good evidence that aluminum is harmful before they would invest in coming up with new, aluminum-free vaccines. (The Cochrane Collaboration report pointed out that removing aluminum from vaccines would then require extensive trials of the reformulated vaccines.7)

What, exactly, does a toxic level of aluminum do to the brain? While no one has studied healthy babies to see how much, if any, aluminum builds up in the brain from the amounts of aluminum used in vaccines, the study on IV feeding solutions in premature babies mentioned above revealed that aluminum impaired their neurologic and mental development.8 But that was in premature babies, not healthy, full-term infants. I found several animal studies involving aluminum and/or aluminum-containing vaccines that did show neurologic harm. Not only did aluminum build up in the brain and cause damage, but some of the damage looked similar to what is seen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.9-1314 However, it's hard to draw conclusions about aluminum's effects on humans from studies of animals. What we need are more studies of human infants.

A Call for Better Research
There is good evidence that large amounts of aluminum are harmful to humans. Because no meaningful research has specifically been done on aluminum in vaccines, there is no existing evidence that the amount in vaccines is harmful to infants and children. However, no one has actually studied aluminum levels in healthy human infants after vaccination to make sure it is safe. Should we now stop and research this matter? Or should we just go on, continuing to hope that it is safe to use aluminum as an adjuvant in vaccines?

Vaccine policy makers and advocates may read this article, review my perspective, and initiate research studies to explore the risks of aluminum. I would hope that those researchers do not conduct a retrospective review of all the old vaccine safety studies and journal articles to look for the side effects of aluminum. As the FDA, AAP, and others have stated, aluminum toxicity can't be detected by external observation alone. It would be a waste of time, and a grave disservice to the health of America's children, to have several such reports show up in the medical literature. The only way the issue of aluminum safety can be put to rest is to conduct real-time studies on thousands of infants and measure aluminum levels after vaccination.

In such a study, the researchers should look not only at blood levels. They should also find out whether or not aluminum accumulates in the body, where it accumulates, how the body eliminates it, and at what rate. Once I see such research, and have determined to my satisfaction that aluminum has been proven safe, I will post an update on www.thevaccinebook.com, and revise future editions of the book accordingly. If such research finds that aluminum may not be safe, then I would expect a new vaccine schedule to be adopted in which the administering of vaccines is spread out to minimize the amount of aluminum a child receives at any given time. I would also expect vaccine manufacturers to begin finding ways to reduce or remove aluminum from vaccines without compromising their effectiveness. We need to know the answers to many questions: Why does one brand of HIB vaccine require aluminum to make it work while another brand does not? Why does one brand of DTaP vaccine contain four times as much aluminum as another?

Learning from the Past
I worry that aluminum may end up being another thimerosal. I am relieved that, as of 2002, the mercury-containing preservative had been removed from most vaccines. But according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Merck & Co., the makers of several vaccines, knew in 1991 that the cumulative amount of mercury in vaccines given to infants by six months of age was about 87 times the level then thought to be safe.14 The article includes a copy of an internal memo, written by one of Merck's research doctors and sent to the president of Merck's vaccine division, clearly stating the doctor's worry about mercury overload. What was done with that information back in 1991? We'll never know. What we do know is that vaccine manufacturers knew that we were overdosing babies, but that the mercury wasn't removed from vaccines until 10 years later. This was because few paid attention to the potential problems with mercury. When we did find out, we hoped it wasn't harmful, we did extensive research to try to show that it wasn't, and we slowly removed it from most vaccines.

The issue of mercury toxicity from vaccines is moot for infants receiving vaccines today, as long as doctors and parents choose a flu shot without mercury, know which brands of vaccines still contain barely detectable traces of mercury, and are aware that some plain Tetanus and Diphtheria-Tetanus vaccines still contain mercury (though these last vaccines are not parts of the routine vaccine schedule). [For a current list of vaccines and their thimerosal contents, go to www.vaccine safety.edu/thi-table.htm.—Ed.]

What isn't moot is the question of aluminum toxicity. As doctors, we can choose certain vaccine brands that contain less or no aluminum. We can be careful about giving only one aluminum-containing vaccine at a time. And we can talk about it instead of sweeping the issue under the rug. I pray that my fears about aluminum are unfounded, and that objective studies performed by completely independent groups with no ties to vaccine manufacturers or political organizations show that it is safe. If not, I would hope that manufacturers would start to reduce or eliminate the aluminum content of their vaccines as soon as possible. I know this won't be an easy task, but our children are worth it.

Excerpted from The Vaccine Book, 2007 by Robert Sears, MD. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved. For more information, see www.thevaccinebook.com. For the notes to this article, see www.mothering.com/ articles/growing_child/vaccines/aluminum-new-thimerosal-notes.html.

Julie's Health Club

Below, I've posted the response by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to my recent blog item The AAP gets tough on vaccine dissenters.

In the piece, I pointed out that some parents are unnerved by the sheer number of shots that are currently recommended and in many cases, mandated. The new combo vaccines are sure to raise more questions and concerns, especially since parents are currently trying to unbundle the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) shot.

In the rebuttal, which will appear Wednesday in the Chicago Tribune's Voice of the People section, AAP president Renee Jenkins emphasized the safety of vaccines, even though I never directly addressed the issue. She added: "The number of vaccines has increased because new vaccines have been developed to prevent more diseases. That is a good thing."

She also says, "Pediatricians spend many hours in their day counseling parents about the safety and importance of immunization and answering their specific questions."

Has this been your experience? Was I "less than fair?" Or should parents be tossed out of the doctor's office for refusing shots, which is what the AAP suggests?

Here is her full letter:

New vaccines are preventing more diseases

"The American Academy of Pediatrics is disappointed that a premier newspaper like the Chicago Tribune would publish such a one-sided, fear-mongering report as columnist Julie Deardorff’s June 27 blog post, "The AAP gets tough on vaccine dissenters."

"Deardorff parrots the misleading pseudoscience of the most strident anti-vaccine Web sites and the scare tactics of celebrity-funded ad campaigns. In quoting the number of vaccines children receive today compared to 1982, Deardorff takes the extra step to write the numbers in boldfaced type, suggesting she believes these numbers alone should give parents pause about immunizing their children.

"The fact is, today's vaccines are safer than any in history. Current vaccines are more refined than older versions, so children receive fewer immune-challenging antigens overall even though they get a larger number of immunizations.

"It's true that doctors recommend more vaccines for children today than they did two decades ago. The number of vaccines has increased because new vaccines have been developed to prevent more diseases. That is a good thing. That means children will not have to suffer devastating diseases such as Hib meningitis, which once killed 600 children a year and left thousands more with deafness, seizures and mental retardation. The vaccine available today has wiped out 98 percent of these cases.

"Deardorff is less than fair in her depiction of how the American Academy of Pediatrics is responding to parents with questions about vaccines. Pediatricians spend many hours in their day counseling parents about the safety and importance of immunization and answering their specific questions. Pediatricians want to provide parents with accurate information; our job is made all the harder by misleading reports like this one."

Host Michael Savage Mocks Those Living with Autism and Smears Minorities with Asthma
Listen to Audio or Read Transcript of the remarks

Washington, DC – Media Matters for America today condemned nationally syndicated conservative radio host Michael Savage for incendiary comments directed at those who live with autism and their families. During the same broadcast, Savage, the No. 3 talk radio host in America, also attacked those in “the minority community” who suffer from asthma.

“What Michael Savage said was foolish, mean-spirited, and hurtful,” said J. Jioni Palmer, spokesman for Media Matters. “It’s unfortunate he would use his radio program to make fun of and belittle these kids. Instead of ridicule and cheap shots, the children suffering from autism and asthma and their families need support and compassion.”

During the July 16 edition of his show, Savage claimed that autism is “[a] fraud, a racket. ...I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ ”

Savage also stated: “[W]hy was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I’ll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], “When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], “I don’t know, the dust got me.” “See, everyone had asthma from the minority community.”

Talk Radio Network, which syndicates The Savage Nation, claims that Savage is heard on more than 350 radio stations. The Savage Nation reaches at least 8.25 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, making it one of the most listened-to talk radio shows in the nation, behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.

From the Autism Society of America:

Both leading presidential candidates have responded to ASA's request for statements on autism and health care issued in conjunction with the NHC town hall rally "Putting Patients First" at our National Conference last week. Read the statements from John McCain and Barack Obama on ASA's Vote for Autism page.

Statements on autism from presidential candidates:
John McCain Barack Obama
Read ASA's 2008 Presidential Candidate Questionnaire

An explosion in the number of children diagnosed has parents, insurers and state and private institutions battling over coverage. The case of Andrew Arce is a window into the conflict.

By Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 6, 2008

By the time Andrew Arce was 15 months old, his parents suspected he was autistic.

He refused to cuddle, flapped his arms and stared into space a lot. On occasion, he picked at his nose until it drew blood and, with it, smeared the walls of the family's Pasadena town house.

Three documentaries put faces on autism

It was nearly a year, Guillermo Arce said, before Kaiser Permanente, the family's healthcare provider, confirmed their fears. The diagnosis wasn't much help, though. Kaiser refused to provide most of the treatment that specialists said Andrew needed -- until the state ordered it to in April.

Last month, Andrew, now 2 1/2 years old, began getting the disputed treatment -- including individual training in how to eat and play.

"He is still young," his father said. "He will always be autistic, but maybe he could be fully functioning."

Guillermo Arce's battle is a window on a political and legal struggle playing out across the country amid a surge in diagnoses of autism. Parents, insurers and the government are tussling over who is going to pay for treatment.

"It's health plans versus schools versus regional centers," said Diane Anand, executive director of the Lanterman Regional Center in Los Angeles, one of 21 state-funded centers that serve the developmentally disabled. "It's going to take years to sort this out."

Autism is a disorder that impairs communication and socialization and is often marked by repetitive behaviors such as rocking and head banging. Although there are many theories, its cause remains unknown. There is no cure.

Treatment is mainly behavioral training, teaching such skills as dressing. There is wide agreement that the sooner treatment begins, the more effective it is, and that early intervention pays off in the long run by developing self-reliance.

But it costs money -- as much as $70,000 a year per child. The state spent $320 million last year, up from $50 million a decade earlier. Nationwide, the tab is $90 billion annually, a figure expected to double in a decade.

Parents, in growing numbers, say insurers aren't doing their part. Proposed class-action lawsuits -- including one filed in April by Arce against Kaiser and another filed late last month against Anthem Blue Cross -- allege that California's largest health plans are shirking their duties to autistic members.

Health plans say they cover medically necessary care. The problem, they say, is that parents ask for treatment that insurers deem experimental, or for basic skills training that has long been provided by state-funded regional centers and schools.

"What we're concerned about is we're seeing a shift of the state's responsibilities over to the health plans," said Chris Ohman, president of the California Assn. of Health Plans. "To just say 'We need to have health plans cover all treatments' could have unintended consequences."

But Kristin Jacobson of Autism Speaks California contends that the healthcare industry has "washed its hands of autism entirely." Parents of children who don't qualify for public programs "bear the full burden of the treatment costs and pay their premiums," she said. "They aren't asking for a free ride. They are paying premiums."

The significantly impaired -- about 1 in 5 autistic patients -- qualify for help from the regional centers, which currently serve about 37,000 people with the disorder. As the fastest-growing diagnosis at the centers, accounting for 60% of new intakes, autism adds 11 clients a day.

California's mental health parity law, enacted in 2000, was supposed to settle the issue, requiring insurers to cover autism and other behavioral disorders the same way they cover any medical condition. But critics say insurers are failing to follow the law.

Dr. Benjamin Chu, head of Kaiser in Southern California, said the law requires health plans to cover autism but not particular treatments. So, he said, Kaiser covers what it deems medically necessary.

Kaiser and other insurers say conflicts arise when parents expect them to cover services that schools and regional centers should provide, such as training to change self-destructive behaviors.

"Whether a health plan is responsible or not is a gray zone," Chu said.

But critics contend that health plans are looking for any excuse to avoid paying for expensive treatment.

"Kaiser is really just illegally dumping patients again," said Scott Glovsky, a Pasadena lawyer representing Andrew Arce in the Kaiser suit. "But instead of dumping poor, homeless people on skid row, they are dumping autistic children on the taxpayers."

A state commission report issued in September gives health plans low marks for autism care. It concludes that coverage for medical, behavioral and psychotherapeutic services "is limited, inconsistent or excluded altogether."

State-sanctioned independent medical reviews have concluded that insurers wrongly denied care to autistic patients in dozens of individual cases, but regulators have not issued a single citation.

With complaints on the rise, however, California's Department of Managed Health Care is now looking into the matter, Director Cindy Ehnes said.

Help can't come soon enough for many parents. Already exhausted by the daily struggle to care for their children, they must fight insurers to get the therapy that their own physicians, experts and government authorities say their kids need. In the end, many spend their own money and taking on debt.

Shelley Bell said that she and her husband have spent about $350,000 on treatments for their autistic son, Jason, 11. The family has had four insurance carriers over the years. Bell said she had to battle every one and usually lost.

"A lot of parents just don't have the fight in them," Bell said. "It's almost like a full-time job corresponding with these insurance companies: the follow-up letters, the denial, the appeal. The word among autistic families is the insurance companies turn down everything and wait to see if you are going to appeal."

The Bells refinanced their Westminster home, using the money to pay for treatments. But, Bell said, they still owe about $80,000.

"As much as I hate this debt, it's been great to see the progress," she said. "My son is not fully integrated. But he talks. He's social. He's funny. It's been worth every penny."

Pending lawsuits could change the way insurers deal with their autistic members.

A spokeswoman for WellPoint Inc., parent of Anthem Blue Cross, declined to comment on the suit against the insurer. In general, Shannon Troughton said, Blue Cross covers care it deems medically necessary, including screenings, medications and some therapies for autism.

In Andrew Arce's case, specialists concluded that he needed an array of therapies, including 20 hours a week of applied behavior analysis. The intensive, one-on-one therapy breaks down tasks such as eating into small steps and drills each until mastered.

Several insurers -- Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Health Net and PacifiCare -- decline to cover the treatment, saying it is unproven.

But advocates say this is a misreading of the medical literature. The U.S. surgeon general concluded in 1999 that it was good medicine, saying 30 years "of research demonstrated the efficacy of applied behavioral methods in reducing inappropriate behavior and in increasing communication, learning and appropriate social behavior."

Kaiser also declines to cover the therapy, but on the grounds that it is educational and not medical. Kaiser is reviewing its policy in light of the state's order that it provide the therapy for Andrew Arce.

lisa.girion@latimes.com