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TACA E-Newsletter

October 2009 #1

Here is your update on TACA (Talk About Curing Autism). If you are new to our site... WELCOME! This newsletter is produced two to four times each month.

We are an autism education and support group. We want to make this e-newsletter informative for you. As always, contact us your thoughts and/or questions so we can improve it.

We focus on parent information and support, parent mentoring, dietary intervention, the latest in medical research, special education law, reviews of the latest treatments, and many other topics relating to autism. Our main goal is to build our community so we can connect, share and support each other.

Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) provides general information of interest to the autism community. The information comes from a variety of sources and TACA does not independently verify any of it. The views expressed herein are not necessarily TACA’s.

1. Find a TACA Meeting

Come to a TACA Meeting!

TACA holds monthly meetings in many locations throughout the United States that feature educational speakers on important topics and allow family members to connect with one another and stay on top of the latest information in the autism world. Each TACA group maintains a resource library of the latest autism books, CDs and DVDs that can be checked out by members at no charge.

Check out our group listings: each contains information on TACA meetings and special events as well as a contact form.

Are you wondering what happens at a TACA meeting? Watch our video.

2. Join Us for Coffee Talk!

Come and receive some extra support or to chat all topics related to autism and meet other TACA families at these informal, monthly get-togethers.

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3. Adopt-a-Family Holiday Campaign

We are very excited to announce our fourth annual Adopt-a-Family Holiday Campaign to help autism families in need. This campaign is open to residents of the United States who have a child affected by autism living with them.

Apply to be adopted

Find out how to help

How does a holiday giving program help families affected by autism? Read DeDe’s story.

4. Big Thanks to Our Ante Up for Autism Sponsors

Thanks to our sponsors for making the 3rd Annual Ante Up for Autism a great success!

Premier Sponsors:
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Participating Sponsors:
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Three anonymous sponsors

In Kind Donors - $20,000+
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5. Daily Autism Updates for Families

All news related to autism:  

For daily updates to all autism legislative issues: ChangeforAutism.org

AgeofAutism.com

6. CDC quietly revises autism rates to 1% of US children

Special Needs Kids Examiner Tina Cruz

Recently the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reportedly revised the rates of autism for the United States and the numbers are alarming. In 2007, the reported numbers were 1 in 150. Today, those numbers have skyrocketed to 1 in 100, and some say the numbers are closer to 1 in 89. According to David Kirby, the data is due to be released any day now.

Corroboration of this number has been tough to find, with much circular logic, pointing to blog posts who point back to his blog. According to Lee Grossman, CEO for Autism Society of America, and quoted by Kirby, that number is correct.

When I tried to verify the numbers, the CDC still lists the 2007 statistics of 1 in 150 in their official report, the new report has not been released) but the numbers on the webpage have been modified to reflect "1 in 100 to 1 in 300 with an average of 1 in 150" for prevalence in autism. The last modification that was made to the page was September 25, 2009. When I checked the internet archives, for earlier cached versions of the page, it was odd that the data page was missing from the archive. But Google cache revealed the subtle refinement of the details. As of yesterday morning, the website was changed to reflect the new numbers. It is interesting that the modification occurred yesterday, Friday, the day traditionally known for burying news that the media doesn't publicize. I don't want to say there is a conspiracy, but why hide the data? Is the CDC trying to bury these numbers? Why isn't the media shouting this from the rooftops? Exactly how common does autism have to get in order to get the attention, research and funding for programs it needs?

According to the numbers David Kirby cites from a 2007 telephone interview of almost 82,000 children conducted by National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), which is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services, your odds of being told you have a child with autism is a staggering 1 in 63. If that child is a boy, odds skyrocket to 1 in 38. That's 2.6% of all male children in the United States. Is this possible?

Further, the report goes on to state that parents told researchers that "60 per 10,000 children had autism at some point but not currently." My thought on this telephone survey is, were these children officially diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, or is this parents who are finding quirky children and giving them the self-diagnosis du-jour? Of course, even accounting for that trend, the numbers are still incredibly high.

How much worse does it have to get? If 1 in 38 boys was born blind or with no legs, would we do something then? If 1 in 63 children was diagnosed with cancer, would we be moving heaven and earth to find out what is causing the epidemic? Would we be studying every avenue, leaving no stone unturned, simply on the word of a few? Or would we use all of science at our disposal, creating studies without exclusions, leaving out our biases and using every available tool that we have?

We don't know what causes these children to have autism. It is probably a complicated set of factors. But at what point do we start researching as though we really want to figure it out? Whether vaccinations are part of the puzzle or not, who knows? Can thousands of parents be wrong? It is just good science to actually explore the possibility. That is, if scientists really want to conduct science. To date, no study with real controls for vaccinations has been done. Is it that hard?

What does the CDC not want us to find out?

7. Kathleen Sibelius: “Autism Now Hits 1 in 100 Children. We Have No Idea Why.”

By David Kirby
 
Washington loves to dump its bad news on a Friday afternoon, and today it confirmed that one percent of American children  (and by extension, perhaps 1-in-58 boys) - has an autism spectrum disorder.
 
On a hastily arranged telephone “visit” with US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius and the autism community, the health chief announced that “the prevalence of autism might be even higher than previously thought.” But, she added, “We don’t know if it has gone up, and we are hoping to unlock these mysteries.”
 
The Secretary then declared autism “An urgent public health challenge,” declared that President Obama was “right to make it one of our top health priorities,” including research into “treatments and a cure” for the disorder, and promptly ended her visit.
 
Helping to fill in some of the details was Dr. Thomas R. Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and Chair of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, who confirmed that CDC data to be published later this year will estimate the current childhood ASD rate at 100-per-10,000 children.
 
The data, collected from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, shows a significant uptick in ASD prevalence estimates in just two years.
 
According to ADDM, the average rate of autism among eight-year-olds across all study sites was 67-per-10,000 in 2000 (the 1992 birth cohort), and 66-per-10,000 in 2002 (the 1994 birth cohort). Only six sites were included in both studies, and their average prevalence rate increased by 10%, from 67-per-10,000 to 74-per-10,000.
 
Now, CDC has announced that among the 1996 birth cohort, the estimated rate of ASD is 100-per-10,000; a staggering 50% increase over the 1994 birth cohort.
 
It is easy to understand why the Feds would call autism an “urgent” issue, but any sense of urgency by the officials on the phone was clearly absent, at least from my perspective. In fact, most of the discussion was centered around providing services and education to the growing ranks of Americans with ASD, an entirely laudable goal, to be sure.
 
But no one expressed any alarm that up to 1 in 58 boys in this country is now on the autism spectrum. The officials on the call seemed to think that wider diagnostic criteria – such as adding Asperger Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified - to the concept of an “autism spectrum disorder” vastly inflated the rate of ASD in the United States.
 
There was no alarm, and little time for questions from the community that was invited to “visit.” After about 15 minutes, questioning was cut off, and the call abruptly ended. I tried three times to ask a question (via a telephone switching system) and so did many other people on the call, which lasted a total of 39 minutes.
 
And so, here is my (expanded) question, directed to Dr. Insel:
 
Dr. Insel, thank you for arranging this call. I understand that the estimated average ASD rate increased from 66-per-10,000 to 100-per-10,000 between the 1994 and 1996 birth cohorts. Officials on this call believe this increase could be attributed purely to expanding diagnostic criteria and greater awareness, though they don’t know for sure.
 
But how could you attribute a 50% increase in just two years to wider diagnostics, especially when the 1994 cohort would have been diagnosed, on average, in 1998 and the latter cohort in 2000? The expansion of the ASD definition to include Asperger and PDD-NOS occurred in the early 1990s, so how can you explain this sudden and delayed explosion in the numbers?
 
Also, you have declared that the vaccine-autism link had been disproven, yet all the studies you cite have only looked at MMR and thimerosal. But why is the IACC, which you chair, not investigating the possible role of Hep-B vaccine, given the following facts:
 
1)      For the 1994 birth cohort, Hepatitis-B vaccine was given to 27% of all newborns, but in 1996 it had jumped to 82%. http://www.cdc.gov/nis/
 
2)      An abstract just published in the Annals of Epidemiology said that giving Hepatitis B vaccine to newborn baby boys more than triples the risk of ASD.
 
http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org/article/PIIS1047279709002075/abstract?rss=yes
 
3)      A study just published in Neurotoxicology reported that infant male primates who received one dose of Hepatitis-B vaccine were far more likely to display developmental delays than unvaccinated controls.
 
http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/pr/delayed-acquisition-reflexes-newborn-primates-thimerosal-containing-hep-b-vaccine.php
 
4)      A study last year in Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry showed that boys getting the 3-shot HepB vaccine series were eight times more likely to require early intervention services than boys who did not have the series. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a905442343~db=all~jumptype=rss

5)      A study in the journal Neurology found that children who received the Hepatitis B vaccine series were 50% more likely to develop "central nervous system inflammatory demyelination" than children who did not receive the vaccine. http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/72/10/873  
 
Finally, why does your committee ignore evidence associating heavy metals and other toxins with ASD, why did you jettison the vaccinated-vs.-unvaccinated study that your own committee had previously voted to recommend, and why are you spending only 39 minutes speaking with the community that represents, according to your boss, one of the nation’s “top health priorities?”
 
I am also sending this question to HHS, to see if I can get a proper response. But I am not holding my breath.

8. American Academy of Pediatrics questions autism data

By Sheilah Downey

A study published today in Pediatrics stating that autism rates are affecting 1 in 91 children is raising alarm bells throughout the nation, with some health officials calling it a "public health crisis."

But the statistics in the study are "not as accurate" as an earlier study, says the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in a response to parents.

The autism study data was taken from a telephone survey of 78,000 parents who were asked if they had ever been told their child had autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Based on the parent's reports, the study estimated that the prevalence of the disorder was 110 per 10,000 children or 1 in 91.

Based on the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health, the study found that an estimated 637,000 children ages 3 to 17 had a current diagnosis of the illness.

In a response to the study posted on their website, the AAP says the statistic, 1 in 91 children, is off base because of the way the study was done. The more valid statistic, 1 in 150 children, was taken from the 2002 Autism and Development Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network.

"ADDM data is more accurate than a survey based on parent responses because it confirms the reports of parents and caregivers with a review of the children's medical records," states the AAP letter.

Researchers on the National Survey of Children's Health suggested the numbers may be higher because other disorders, including Asperger and pervasive developmental disorders, were included in the survey.

They also said that public awareness and identification of autism is increasing, leading to higher and earlier diagnoses.

The odds for having autism were four times higher for boys than for girls, said researchers, and white children were more likely than black children to have autism.

Approximately 38 percent of the children who were diagnosed with autism were reported to no longer have the diagnosis.

The AAP said it is possible for children who have been diagnosed with autism to "improve over time."

"Studies have found three percent to 25 percent of children improve to the point they are no longer considered to have autism," states the release. "However, they may continue to have other developmental and behavioral symptoms. The children who improve are likely to have good learning abilities and to have received behavioral therapy."

The AAP also said it is important to have children screened early for the disorder, as early as 18 and 24 months of age. An early diagnosis will lead to effective interventions so that children with autism and related disorders may reach their maximum potential.

Autism causes

Because ASD has so many variables, says the AAP, it has posed "a great challenge to researchers" looking for a cause.

One of the factors that contribute to the condition is genetics, according to the AAP.

"There appear to be multiple genes that predispose an individual for the development of specific symptoms of ASD. Identifiable genetic conditions may account for 10 percent to 20 percent of ASD cases. Siblings of children with ASD have a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with an ASD, or to have isolated symptoms of ASD."

Another factor is environmental factors. There is evidence that prenatal exposure to particular medications (such as valproate), testosterone level, alcohol exposure, and infections (including rubella and cytomegalovirus) may be associated with an increased risk of autism, says the AAP.

Children born prematurely and at very low birth weights are also at higher risk of developing autism.

And while many mothers are worried about vaccines, the AAP that has already been ruled out as a link with autism.

"The one exposure that has been studied is vaccines," says the AAP. "Expert review of the scientific literature finds no causal link between vaccines and autism."

Scientists studying autism and other disorders are examining brain function and are identifying abnormal connectivity between brain cells responsible for imitation, facial expression and sensory processing.

9. Do YOU Believe That 1-in-60 American Males Have Autism?

Huffington Post, by David Kirby

It amazes me to see how rather nonchalant the Obama Administration and mainstream media have been about the startling news that 1-in-100 American children – and 1-in-60 boys – have an autism spectrum disorder.
 
On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told listeners on a conference call about an upcoming CDC study showing that the reported rate of autism increased by 50% among children born in 1994 compared with those born in 1996.
 
Among children studied in select areas around the country, the CDC found an average ASD rate of 66-per-10,000 (1-in-150) in the 1994 cohort, but this jumped to 100-per-10,000 (1-in-100) in children born just two years later. (Keep in mind that the 1996 data pertain to 13-year-olds today; officials say they cannot tell us the rate among children younger than that).
 
Males are four times more likely to have an ASD. So according to Secretary Sebelius herself, among 15-year-old boys, the reported US rate is 102-per-10,000 (1-in-98), but among 13-year-old boys, it explodes to 172-per-10,000, or 1-in-58.
 
Ms. Sebelius said the government does not know if the actual rate has gone up, “and we are hoping to unlock these mysteries."

Meanwhile, many experts interviewed by the media are trying to brush this increase off as a mere artifact of better reporting, wider diagnostic criteria, greater awareness and early intervention programs among younger children. They don’t seem to feel that rising levels of environmental toxic exposures could be at play here and, frankly, they don’t seem too terribly alarmed by the news.
 
An ASD rate increase of 70% among US boys born between 1994 and 1996 does not seem to faze them, and some have called it “good news” that doctors are now so proficient at diagnosing. But these children were diagnosed, on average, in 1999 and 2001, respectively - which was several years after the ASD classification was expanded (in the public schools and in the DSM-IV) to include Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder – not otherwise specified, or PDD-NOS.
 
Moreover, these boys were 8 years old when they were studied, so early intervention cannot be the reason for the increase. And while greater awareness has undoubtedly boosted the numbers, it is hard to see how this could explain such a large jump in just two years.
 
In order to accept that actual ASD rates have not gone up at all, one must also now acknowledge that the ASD rate among US males has always been around 172-per-10,000, and that all lower estimates were mistaken and all of those children went undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
 
But how is it possible that tens of thousands of parents - not to mention relatives, teachers, schools, nurses, counselors, clinicians and pediatricians – could miss 40% of the 15-year-old boys with ASD in their midst, but they can easily detect ASD in virtually all of the 13-year old boys?
 
These kids live in the same communities, attend the same schools and see the same physicians. It is hard to understand why so many more parents of 15-year-olds would fail to get autism services for their children than parents of 13-year-olds at the same school.
 
In my opinion only, for the Obama Administration and the mainstream media to play this story as if things have always this way is, frankly, wishful thinking and unsettlingly wrongheaded.
 
They are, in effect, telling pregnant women viewers that, if they are having a boy, there is a 1-in-58 chance he will have ASD - but not to worry, because it has probably always been this way, we just never noticed. Autism is very common, and it is just part of the human condition.
 
Many will call me an alarmist, but I believe that 1-in-58-boys with an autism spectrum disorder is a national crisis - and not just a reassuring confirmation of how things have always been.
 
So, if you believe that autism rates are not increasing, then you must also believe that roughly 1-in-58 American males – of all ages -- have an ASD.
 
Do you really believe that 1 in 58 American men are autistic?
 
I don’t. I have lived in many different cities, worked at nine different jobs, and met thousands, if not tens of thousands of people throughout my years. I cannot recall even one of them who showed the characteristics of high-functioning autism – think Temple Grandin. There were not 1-in-58 boys with ASD in my schools and there are not 1-in-58 men with ASD in my neighborhood. I think I would have noticed them by now.
 
I also spend time speaking with teachers and special education administrators who have been in the business for decades. One of them said she had surveyed every single long-term teacher she had worked with (those with 20, 30, or even 40 years on the job), “and every single one of them said that these kids just weren't there in anywhere near these numbers when they started teaching - under any diagnosis.
 
And Anne Dachel, a Wisconsin mother of an autistic son, a national advocate, and a teacher who works extensively with ASD students, said it was “an insult to 1,000s of teachers and counselors and doctors - who apparently ‘stupidly’ ignored these kids in the past. If they were always here, but we just called them something else, then what did we do with them? We would have had to provide services even if the kids weren't called ‘autistic.’ So why are there waiting lists for services and more and more of a demand for special education teachers?”
 
Anne also frets that the new ASD numbers are “being presented as good news,” in some media she said.  “Autism hasn't increased--we just never realized how common it really is.  No official ever calls autism a crisis, no matter how bad the numbers get.”  
 
Finally, if you can explain away an increase in autism, you can also ignore the mounting evidence and belief among some scientists that most cases of autism have an environmental component. You can also ignore the growing clinical, animal and epidemiological evidence to suggest that mercury, other heavy metals and other environmental toxins might increase the risk of ASD in genetically susceptible subpopulations.
 
Consider mercury. Rising levels have been documented in rivers, lakes and waterways nationwide, and rising levels in humans is now a sad and terrifying fact as well. A new study has shown that inorganic mercury was detected in the blood of 30 percent of US women in the CDC’s most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). That figure was 1500 percent higher than what was reported in the 1999-2000 survey, when only 2% of women had inorganic mercury in their blood.

Other studies have shown a correlation between heavy metal exposure and autism risk. A paper published this year in Neurotoxicology showed a higher rate of ASD in schools located near Minnesota superfund sites, which typically contain high levels of “lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and arsenic.”  
 
Another CDC-funded study found that children born in the most polluted tracts of the San Francisco Bay Area were 50% more likely to have an ASD. “The individual compounds that contributed most to these associations included mercury, cadmium, nickel, trichloroethylene, and vinyl chloride,” the study concluded.
 
Mercury has been shown to cause immune problems, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and neuro-inflammation . These symptoms can also be found in at least some children with autism. And research on the brains of people with autism show markers that are associated with heavy metal exposure.

I personally believe that toxins like mercury can trigger ASD in children. These toxic exposures are on the rise, and so is the incidence of ASD.
 
One-in-58 13-year-old boys has an ASD, but I don’t believe the same is true for 43-year-old men. It is time to stop pretending that the autism crisis is not happening.

10. Dr. Story Landis: Autism not a multi-symptom disease but a money making scheme?

Age of Autism

Managing Editor's Note: Click on the photo to enlarge it. The PDF of the full note is clearer (HERE) and includes a bizarre comparison to the cochlear implant community and homosexuality.

By Katie Wright

The way the Reagan administration responded to AIDS in 1981 is looking pretty good compared with how some NIH bureaucrats are now reacting to the autism epidemic.

Never before has a community of advocates and suffering kids been treated with such contemptuous disrespect as the NIH and IACC treats families affected by autism.

When we last left off with the IACC story, we learned that according to Dr. Yvette Janvier, GI diseases and immune disorders do NOT exist amongst the ASD population. In fact, Janvier was “offended” by the mere suggestion. (Click HERE to read about Dr. Janvier.)

When the subject of adverse vaccine reactions and vaccine court arose, Dr. Landis and Dr. Matt State rolled their eyes and furiously passed notes with each other each. No, this isn’t 5th grade; it is the Interagency Autism Committee, sponsored by the federal government.

After the meeting adjourned a parent in the audience noticed a bunch of notes on the floor near where Lyn, Story and Matt had been seated. You will not believe what Story’s note said. Well, you will believe it but you will be appalled. CLICK HERE TO READ THE NOTE.

“I wonder if Lyn Redwood is pushing autism as a multi-symptom disorder in order to feed into vaccine injury awards.”

I must be doing something really, really wrong because autism has nearly bankrupted my family. Where is Christian’s big award? Where did I go wrong? Maybe Story can explain how autism is really a get rich quick scheme? Like fools, my husband and I have paid out hundreds of thousands in therapy, medical tests, doctor consults, etc. If only I had known that my son’s regressive autism = big injury award and Easy Street!

Seriously, probably the second most powerful member of IACC has attributed the medical symptoms of autism to greedy parents looking for an easy payday. All that GI, autoimmune and regression research we have been pushing is merely a means to cash in? Those years of bloody diarrhea, febrile seizures, chronic autoimmune dysfunction, and loss of fine and gross motor skills were all part of our plan to win some money in vaccine court?

Dr. Story Landis needs to resign from IACC. How could Landis imply that families are “trying to make” autism into a total body disease in order “to feed into vaccine injury awards.” Dr. Landis, I think I speak for most parents with regressive kids, when I say; we didn’t try to make autism into a total body disease, it just is. In fact, we spend almost every waking moment trying to make our kids healthy again. How dare you suggest that any amount of money could ever begin to make up for the torment and pain our children have endured.

11. 50 Ways to Never Waste Food Again

Simple ideas that make a big difference in your budget and help save resources too.

By Colleen Vanderlinden

"Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" is a favorite adage in both frugal and green circles, and it is something I strive to live by. One of the best ways to "use it up" is to think differently about our food and ways to avoid wasting it. Lloyd wrote a great post a while back about the statistics for how much food we waste in the U.S., and the numbers are, frankly, appalling. On average, we waste 14% of our food purchases per year, and the average American family throws out over $600 of fruit per year. Most of the food we waste is due to spoilage; we're buying too much and using too little of it.

We've all had it happen: half the loaf of bread goes stale because no one wants to eat sandwiches today, and the grapes we bought as healthy snacks for the kids' lunches languish in the crisper. With a little creativity, and an eye toward vanquishing waste in our lives, we can make use of more of our food before it goes to waste. Here are a few ideas for you.

Using Up Vegetables

1. Leftover mashed potatoes from dinner? Make them into patty shapes the next morning and cook them in butter for a pretty good "mock hash brown."

2. Don't toss those trimmed ends from onions, carrots, celery, or peppers. Store them in your freezer, and once you have a good amount saved up, add them to a large pot with a few cups of water and make homemade vegetable broth. This is also a great use for cabbage cores and corn cobs.

3. Don't toss broccoli stalks. They can be peeled and sliced, then prepared just like broccoli florets.

4. If you have to dice part of an onion or pepper for a recipe, don't waste the rest of it. Chop it up and store it in the freezer for the next time you need diced onion or peppers.

5. Roasted root vegetable leftovers can be turned into an easy, simple soup the next day. Add the veggies to a blender, along with enough broth or water to thin them enough to blend. Heat and enjoy.

6. If you're preparing squash, don't toss the seeds. Rinse and roast them in the oven, just like you would with pumpkin seeds. The taste is pretty much the same.

7. Celery leaves usually get tossed. There's a lot of good flavor in them; chop them up and add them to meatloaf, soups, or stews.

8. Use up tomatoes before they go bad by drying them in the oven. You can then store them in olive oil in the refrigerator (if you plan on using them within a week) or in the freezer.

9. Canning is always a good option. If you're doing tomatoes, you can use a boiling water bath. If you're canning any other type of veggie, a pressure canner is necessary for food safety.

10. Before it goes bad, blanch it and toss it in the freezer. This works for peas, beans, corn, carrots, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and leafy greens like spinach and kale.

11. Too many zucchini? Make zucchini bread or muffins. If you don't want to eat the bread now, bake it and freeze it, then defrost when you're ready to eat it.

12.Pickle it. Cucumbers are the first veggie most of us think of pickling, but in reality, just about any vegetable can be preserved through pickling.

Ideas for Cutting Down on Fruit Waste

13. Make smoothies with fruit before it goes bad. Berries, bananas, and melons are great candidates for this use-up idea.

14. Jam is really easy to make, and will keep for up to a year if you process the jars in a hot water bath. If you don't do the water processing part, you can keep the jam in the refrigerator for a month, which is a lot longer than the fruits would have lasted.

15. Dry your fruit and store it in the freezer or in airtight containers.

16. Make fruit leather.

17. Make a big fruit salad or "fruit kebabs" for your kids. For some reason, they seem to eat more fruit if it's in these "fancier" forms.

18. Use up the fall bounty of apples by making applesauce or apple butter.

19. Don't throw out those watermelon rinds! Pickled watermelon rind is a pretty tasty treat.

20. Make a fruit crumble out of almost any fruit you have on hand. Assemble and bake it now, or leave it unbaked and store it in the freezer for a quick dessert.

Putting Extra Grains to Good Use

21. Make croutons out of day-old bread.

22. Turn day-old bread into homemade bread crumbs.

23. Freeze leftover bread. This way you'll have day-old on hand whenever you need bread crumbs, or croutons rather than using fresh bread.

24. All of those little broken pieces of pasta in the bottom of the box? Collect them and mix with rice and veggies for a simple side dish.

25. A few tablespoons of leftover oatmeal isn't enough for a meal, but it is great sprinkled on top of yogurt.

26. Add chopped bread to a soup. It will dissolve and thicken the soup.

27. Made too many pancakes for breakfast? Put them in the freezer, then toss in the toaster for a fast, tasty weekday breakfast. Ditto waffles.

28. If you make plain white or brown rice with dinner, use leftovers for breakfast the next morning by adding them to oatmeal. This provides extra fiber and allows you to use up that rice.

29. If you our your kids don't like the bread crusts on your sandwiches, save these bits and pieces in the freezer to turn into bread crumbs later. Just throw the crusts into a food processor or coffee grinder to make them into crumbs. Season as you like.

30. If you have just a smidge of baby cereal left in the box, and it's not enough for a full meal, add it to your babies pureed fruit. It adds bulk and fiber, and keeps baby full longer.

Make the Most of Meat

31. Don't toss those chicken bones after you eat the chicken. Boil them to make chicken stock.

32. Ditto for bones from beef and pork.

33. The fat you trim from beef can be melted down and turned into suet for backyard birds.

34. Turn leftover bits of cooked chicken into chicken salad for sandwiches the next day.

35. Use leftover roast beef or pot roast in an easy vegetable beef soup the next day by adding veggies, water, and the cooking juices from the meat.

Use Dairy Before It Expires

36. If you've got a few chunks of different types of cheese sitting around after a party, make macaroni and cheese.

37. Eggs can be frozen. Break them, mix the yolks and whites together, and pour into an ice cube tray. Two frozen egg cubes is the equivalent of one large egg.

38. You can also freeze milk. Leave enough room in the container for expansion, and defrost in the refrigerator.

39. Use cream cheese in mashed potatoes or white sauces to give them thickness and tang.

40. Put Parmesan cheese into the food processor with day-old bread to make Parmesan bread crumbs. This is excellent as a coating for eggplant slices, pork, or chicken.

Herbs and How to Get the Most Out of Them

41. Chop herbs and add them to ice cube trays with just a little water. Drop whole cubes into the pan when a recipe calls for that type of herb.

42. You can also freeze herbs by placing them in plastic containers. Certain herbs, such as basil, will turn black, but the flavor will still be great.

43. Make pesto with extra basil or parsley.

44. Dry herbs by hanging them by their stems in a cool, dry location. Once they're dry, remove them from the stems and store them in airtight containers.

Don't Waste a Drop

45. Leftover coffee in the carafe? Freeze it in ice cube trays. Use the cubes for iced coffee or to cool down too-hot coffee without diluting it. You can do the same with leftover tea.

46. If there's a splash or two of wine left in the bottle, use it to de-glaze pans to add flavor to whatever you're cooking.

47. If you have pickle juice left in a jar, don't pour it down the drain. Use it to make a fresh batch of refrigerator pickles, or add it to salad dressings (or dirty martinis).

48. You can also freeze broth or stock in ice cube trays, and use a cube or two whenever you make a pan sauce or gravy.

49. If there's just a bit of honey left in the bottom of the jar, add a squeeze or two of lemon juice and swish it around. The lemon juice will loosen up the honey, and you have the perfect addition to a cup of tea.

Finally....

50. If you can't think of any way to use that food in the kitchen, compost it. Everything except for meat and dairy will work in a compost pile, and at least your extra food can be used for something useful. Such as growing more food!

12. A Worrisome Trend: Autism more prevalent than previously thought

By Ken Carlson, Modesto Bee

Ryan Rodriguez, 6, spins on a "dizzie disk" as he does exercises that help him with autism in his home in Riverbank, Sunday, October 15, 2009.

Two recent government studies have called attention to the rising number of U.S. children with autism disorders.

Once thought to occur in 1 in 150 children, the new data suggest the rate is closer to 1 in 100 children.

That would mean about 1,600 children ages 17 and under have autism in Stanislaus County.

"My hope is that these studies will cause parents who have young children to look at the signs," said Michelle Rodriguez of Riverbank, an organizer of Central Valley Walk Now for Autism Speaks, scheduled for Saturday at the Modesto Junior College West Campus. "People tend to pay attention only if they know their children have it."

Some experts fear a growing health problem is revealed in the study results released this month, and the trend is reflected in the number of families seeking services for autistic children in the Northern San Joaquin Valley and foothills.

The Valley Mountain Regional Center saw new autism cases grow from 427 in 2005 to 714 in 2008. The agency had 434 new cases in the first seven months of this year, already more than the number for all of 2005, said Paul Billodeau, a deputy director for VMRC.

"It has been a steady increase," he said, adding that he doesn't think it's because of population growth in the region. "We've always had people moving here from the Bay Area. I think there are just more kids that happen to have autism and the experts don't seem to know why."

The increased caseload has a social cost. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year to provide intensive therapy for a child with autism. Those who don't become functioning adults will be dependent on family or social services for life.

"It makes me nervous that we don't have real good budget years ahead and I'm not sure we will be able to provide all of the services needed," Billodeau said.

2 studies found higher rate

The study results have spurred debate since their release. One study was based on the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health, a telephone survey asking more than 78,000 parents if their children had ever been diagnosed with autism. It revealed a rate of 1 in 91 children, although many parents said their child had a mild case or no longer had the diagnosis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which looked at education and health records in selected cities, announced preliminary findings of about one case in 100 children. Federal health officials said greater awareness, broader definitions and earlier diagnosis of children could explain some of the increase.

Children with autism don't socialize with others, often have speech delays and learning disabilities, exhibit repetitive behaviors and may have obsessive interests. Some of the children are able to function better than others.

Early diagnosis is essential so these children can receive intensive training to teach them language and social skills before starting school.

Rodriguez said the former rate of 1 in 150 was bad enough and the rising numbers cry out for more research into the causes of autism.

"It is not a rare disease," she said. "It is something that could very well happen to your child or someone you know."

Her 6-year-old son, Ryan, was diagnosed at age 2, enabling her to apply for services and to have tutors come to their home for as many as 40 hours a week. Today, Ryan attends the second grade without a tutor.

She is relieved her two younger daughters, ages 3 and 14 months, have shown no signs of autism.

Misdiagnosed for years

Janice Bradshaw of Turlock said her grandson was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder for six years before he started treatment for autism this year. The 8-year-old is attending a special school in Turlock.

"If he had been diagnosed correctly, he could have gotten training and he would have been schooled differently," Bradshaw said. "I think these studies show we need awareness and help for our children."

About 2,000 people attended last year's autism walk in Modesto, most of them part of a growing community of families affected by the disorders. Saturday's fund-raising walk will be held on campus, because autistic children are sensitive to noise and may bolt without looking for cars, Rodriguez said.

"We all walk together and if your child throws a tantrum then the other parents understand," she said.

About $85 million in federal stimulus funding is going to autism research in the next two years to look for answers for parents such as Ali Hernandez of Modesto.

"It is appalling that the numbers continue to rise," said Hernandez, who has an 8-year-old daughter with autism. "The government can't ignore these numbers. ... We need to find out what is causing it, so we can eliminate as many factors as we can."

Researchers believe a combination of genetic and environmental factors leads to autism. The Hernandez and Rodriguez families have been involved with the autism research of the MIND Institute at University of California at Davis. Family members give saliva and other test samples in hope of detecting physiological differences in autistic children or evidence of environmental triggers.

"I would like to know in my lifetime what causes it," Rodriguez said.

13. Autism Chair Thomas Insel Refuses to Ride in Elevator with an Autistic Child

On April 17, 2007, Holly Bortfeld attended an autism hearing in the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee run by Senator Tom Harkin. At that hearing Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, now current head of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, was there to testify.

Beforehand, Ms. Bortfeld, was waiting with her 11 year old son Max, who has autism, at an elevator on the way up to the hearing. When the doors opened they got on. After they did, Thomas Insel and a female companion approached and entered the elevator just before the doors closed. Ms. Bortfeld reports that once they were on the elevator together...

"...Max stimmed. Insel looked at him, looked at me (yes, he had his little name tag on, so he knew that I knew he was) then he hit the open door button and ushered his coworker off. As the doors were closing, he said "I'm not riding up with them", looking at my son."

The head of the National Institutes of Mental Health refused to ride an elevator with a child with mental health issues.

...again for clarity and perspective on this episode...

The chair of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee will not share an elevator with a child with autism, on the way into an autism hearing.

This odious behavior is not one of a healer committed to the well being of the disadvantaged or disabled, it is the behavior of a bigot.

It is just one more example of the pattern of astonishing contempt that Insel shows towards the autism community, as he routinely leaves IACC meetings early, dismisses the input of the autism community, and chairs an autism committee with some completely inappropriate appointments, like...

Alison Singer, who was asked to resign from Autism Speaks because of her behavior on the IACC, but is still considered qualified by Insel to be on the committee, presumably because she now runs an "autism organization" out of her basement that she subsequently founded with vaccine maker Paul Offit (who admits he has never treated a child for autism), and despite the fact that she is widely disliked by both members of the neurodiversity community and the biomedical community. (Or perhaps because Singer went to college with HHS head Kathleen Sebelius?)
Dr. Yvette Janvier, who is highly offended at the idea that people with autism could possibly have GI dysfunction despite the fact that now even the denialist CDC now tells docs to screen for GI disturbances in children with autism, and who, despite being neither a person with autism nor an autism parent, is holding a seat meant for members of the public
Dr. Storey Landis who resigned this weekend after passing notes during an IACC meeting disparaging another member who is an autism mom
And perhaps the strangest appointment of all to the committee, Insel's neighbor, a reportedly pleasant autism parent that does not represent any group, does not do any public advocacy, does not seem comfortable with discussing autism science and doesn't seem to have any qualifications for being on the IACC. What are the odds that one of the most well qualified autism parents to sit on the most powerful government panel on autism just happens to live in the neighborhood of the chair of the IACC?

Add to that the fact that after the IACC voted to add vaccine/autism research to the government's strategic plan for autism, Insel pulled classic, corrupt smoke filled back room shenanigans, schemed to get people to change their votes, and then surprised public members of the committee with a revote, not on the agenda, but known to Alison Singer who had parted with Autism Speaks the night before because they didn't approve of her upcoming vote change, to ditch the vaccine research.

Insel also canceled research on chelation as a treatment for autism with the justification that DMSA chelation was to dangerous to even study, despite the fact that it has been the standard treatment for metal toxicity since the Navy developed it in the late 1950's, and is the treatment of choice for lead poisoning in children.

And why was Insel, the head of the National Institute of MENTAL Health present to testify with CDC chief Thomas Frieden at the H1N1 hearing held by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee? Flu is not a mental health issue, is it? [Update - My bad... it was Anthony Fauci at the hearing... not Thomas Insel.]

Could it be that vaccines are the Insel family business and Insel's participating in this whole IACC political theater is merely to protect the vaccine program? It is surely is not because he has a heart for those with autism, as he won't dane to be in their presence and it cannot be because he is fascinated with autism itself, as he can't be bothered to sit through the meetings themselves.

Insel cares so little for people with autism that he actually ended a meeting early, preventing the testimony to the IACC of a child with autism who had flown in from California to address the committee. The child actually had to give his speech to an empty room.

Thomas Insel is an embarrassment to NIMH and the IACC is an complete farce under his leadership. I join with Dan Olmsted and call for his resignation from his leadership positions of both organizations, and for him to take his bogus committee appointees with him.

Please contact President Obama and demand the dismissal of Thomas Insel from NIMH and IACC, and put an end to the fraud, corruption and CYA in autism causation. Demand that someone who loves and values those with disabilities, who will legitimately pursue autism treatment and causation, WHO HAS A TRACK RECORD OF BOTH, be put in his place, not another elitist bureaucrat.

End the charade of the IACC, its obstruction of advancement in autism research and its complicity in the growing autism epidemic.

14. Autistic student shot by police

High school kid shot 5 times by SC police had autism

A 16-year-old high school student who was shot five times and killed by a South Carolina school officer had a form of autism, news reports say.

Trevor Varinecz, who died within hours of being shot by school resource officer Marcus Rhodes, had pulled a knife and stabbed the officer, according to NewsChannel 5 in South Carolina. His mother told the TV station that Varinecz had suffered from Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning version of autism.

Horry County prosecutors say Officer Rhodes was justified in the shooting.

The incident took place on Friday morning at Carolina Forest High School in Conway, South Carolina, when Varinecz is said to have pulled a knife on Officer Rhodes and stabbed him several times. The officer responded by shooting Varinecz five times. Rhodes was hospitalized for his wounds, and released from hospital several hours after the incident. Varinecz died shortly after altercation.

According to an Associated Press report, the county coroner said one of the bullets struck Varinecz in the chest and killed him.

15. Dr Richard Halvorsen: I'm not opposed to jabs but there are serious worries

By DR RICHARD HALVORSEN

Evangelists for mass vaccination like to claim that these programmes are of universal benefit to public health. Indeed, so zealous is their enthusiasm for vaccines that, through a cocktail of scaremongering and propaganda, they attempt to suppress all debate.

The result is that people, especially parents, feel bullied or patronised if they dare to challenge the official drive to vaccinate against every possible risk of disease. Moreover, this climate of fear is ruthlessly exploited by the big pharmaceutical companies, which see vast profits in exaggerated health concerns.

Yet the sudden death of Coventry schoolgirl Natalie Morton after a jab against cervical cancer highlights the reality that vaccination programmes are not without their risks.

The tragic irony for Natalie was that the injection may have triggered a reaction far more lethal than any future, distant threat of a comparatively rare disease.

And this exposes a fundamental problem about the Government's growing obsession with vaccinating children and teenagers.

We have to be absolutely sure that the medical and political establishment's growing reliance on vaccines does not ultimately do more harm than good.

As a doctor, I have been concerned for some time about this issue. I should stress that I am not in any way opposed to vaccinations.

Indeed I run an immunisation clinic which offers a wide range of vaccines as a protection against various diseases. But I am increasingly disturbed by the lack of any debate either about long-term vaccine safety or about the excessive influence of commercial interests.

Contrary to what Government officials and pharmaceutical giants pretend, the health of future generations could be compromised if we are not allowed to question this official fixation with mass vaccination.

In the research for my recent book on this subject, I discovered that not only are inoculations being introduced with less and less research on their safety, but, just as worryingly, they are being promoted for diseases which do not represent a widespread danger to the public.

Major player: GlaxoSmithKline are one of two pharmaceutical giants producing cervical cancer vaccines

The cervical cancer jab that Natalie Morton was given shortly before she collapsed is a classic case in point.

For all the hysteria that the Government and big business generated in support of the vaccine programme for teenage girls, cervical cancer only comes in 19th place on the list of cancers that kill women in modern Britain.

In 2005, just 911 women died of the disease. Though every death was obviously a terrible blow to the victim's family and friends, this figure pales beside the 12,000 who died from lung cancer or the 11,000 who succumbed to breast cancer.

Indeed, cancers of the brain and the kidneys proved more deadly to women than those of the cervix, yet there is little publicity about these diseases.

Chaos over cervical cancer jab for girls: Thousands cancel vaccines after 14-year-old's death

Second girl from Natalie school in 999 drama after cervical jab

The fact is that the huge nationwide programme - which has already led to the vaccination of a large number of young women against cervical cancer - has partly been driven by naked commercial pressure.

For decades, vaccines were the Cinderella sector of the medical industry, neglected because there was little money in them.

But all that is changed. Vaccines are now the fastest growing part of the pharmaceutical business so the giants, such as GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, which manufacture the two leading anti-cervical cancer drugs, have a vested interest in deliberately whipping up public anxieties.

In this world of cynicism, there is no sense of genuine proportion. Everything is geared towards the bottom line. Indeed Merck, which produces the anti-cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, openly boasted in 2006 that its marketing campaign was 'proceeding flawlessly'.

Devastated: The classmates of Natalie Morton mourn her tragic death
The company even won the industry award for 'the Pharmaceutical Brand of the Year' for creating 'a market out of thin air'.

In 2007, Merck made $1.5billion from the Gardasil vaccine and the same vast sum in 2008. GlaxoSmithKline is also doing well out of Cervarix, the drug used in the British vaccination programme.

One of the insidious ruses of the pharmaceutical companies - in which the medical establishment colludes - is to heighten the pressure for vaccines by drawing a false comparison between the present and the past.

In the Britain of the late Victorian age, tens of thousands of children died of tuberculosis, measles and whooping cough, but today such fatalities are almost non-existent.

This is taken as evidence of the effectiveness of vaccines and is therefore used as an argument for an extension of programmes.

But such a claim is historically false. In fact, the death rate from measles and TB had fallen dramatically during the mid-20th century, well before any vaccines were introduced. This decline was mainly due to social factors, such as improvements in diet, housing and hygiene, as well as the discovery of antibiotics.

For all the noisy public relations campaigns, it is not clear that these vaccines even work anything like as effectively as their proponents claim. For instance, the jabs Cervarix and Gardasil only prevent a fraction of the number of viruses that can lead to cervical cancer. In truth, by suppressing those particular viruses they may encourage the growth of others in their place.

Given that these two drugs have been introduced in such haste with such limited testing, it will be 20 years before we know whether they are truly effective in achieving their primary purpose: that of fighting cervical cancer.

Nor should we be dismissive of the side effects of all these vaccines. It is now normal for a British child to be given no fewer than 25 vaccines by the age of 15 months. The Government's advisers, led by the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, say they are relaxed about this figure. Indeed, they have implied that there may be no upper limit to the amount of vaccines that a young child can take.

As their defence, they point out that children constantly swallow lots of bugs and bacteria in their daily lives.

But that goes to the heart of the issue. When a child crawls around on all fours and takes in bacteria by licking hands, that is just part of natural human activity. Indeed, it is essential for strengthening of the immune system, the body's own vital defence network.

But that is very different from chemical injections, which completely by-pass the whole immune system.

There is mounting evidence that, by artificially stimulating the body's immune system, a barrage of vaccines can actually promote auto-immune disorders such as multiple sclerosis in susceptible people. Furthermore, some vaccines contain toxic metals such as aluminium and mercury. The fact is that the human body is a finely balanced eco-system, which overzealous vaccination can upset.

What this all means is that we have to be more careful about vaccines. Colluding with the pharmaceutical giants, the Government has become far too cavalier about their use, promoting them as a risk-free solution to all sorts of medical conditions, no matter how low the incidence.

It has been madness, for example, to talk of vaccinating the entire population against swine flu, when the number of deaths from this illness is tiny compared to the annual toll for ordinary flu.

Vaccines cannot be used to build some medically controlled utopia, in which all disease has been banished. Indeed, the attempt to do may end up undermining the health of future generations.

Richard Halvorsen is author of The Truth About Vaccines, published by Gibson Square.

16. Officials getting ready to monitor flu shots' effects

System aims to quickly detect problems

By Lauran Neergaard, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — More than 3,000 people a day have a heart attack. If you're one of them the day after your swine flu shot, will you worry the vaccine was to blame and not the more likely culprit, all those burgers and fries?

The government is starting an unprecedented system to track possible side effects as mass flu vaccinations begin next month. The idea is to detect any rare but real problems quickly, and explain the inevitable coincidences that are sure to cause some false alarms.

“Every day, bad things happen to people. When you vaccinate a lot of people in a short period of time, some of those things are going to happen to some people by chance alone,” said Dr. Daniel Salmon, a vaccine safety specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Health authorities hope to vaccinate well over half the population in just a few months against swine flu, which doctors call the 2009 H1N1 strain. That would be a feat. No more than 100 million Americans usually get vaccinated against regular winter flu, and never in such a short period.

How many will race for the vaccine depends partly on confidence in its safety. The last mass inoculations against a different swine flu, in 1976, were marred by reports of a rare paralyzing condition, Guillain-Barre syndrome.

“The recurring question is, ‘How do we know it's safe?’ ” said Dr. Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic.

Enter the intense new monitoring. On top of routine vaccine tracking, there are these government-sponsored projects:

•Harvard Medical School scientists are linking large insurance databases that cover up to 50 million people with vaccination registries around the country for real-time checks of whether people see a doctor in the weeks after a flu shot and why. The huge numbers make it possible to quickly compare rates of complaints among the vaccinated and unvaccinated, said the project leader, Dr. Richard Platt, Harvard's population medicine chief.

•Johns Hopkins University will direct e-mails to at least 100,000 vaccine recipients to track how they're feeling, including the smaller complaints that wouldn't prompt a doctor visit. If anything seems connected, researchers can call to follow up with detailed questions.

•The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is preparing take-home cards that tell vaccine recipients how to report any suspected side effects to the nation's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system.

“We don't have any reason to expect any unusual problems with this vaccine,” said Dr. Neal Halsey, director of Hopkins' Institute for Vaccine Safety, who is directing the e-mail surveillance.

After all, the new H1N1 vaccine is a mere recipe change from the regular winter flu shot that's been used for decades in hundreds of millions of people without serious problems. Nor have there been any red flags in the few thousand people given test doses in studies to determine the right H1N1 dose. They've gotten the same sore arms and occasional headache or fever that's par for a winter flu shot.

But because this H1N1 flu targets the young more than the old, this may be the year that unprecedented numbers of children and pregnant women are vaccinated.

The CDC is racing to compile a list of what's normal: 25,000 heart attacks every week; 14,000 to 19,000 miscarriages every week; 300 severe allergic reactions called anaphylaxis every week.

Any spike would mean fast checking to see if the vaccine really seems to increase risk and by how much, so health officials could issue appropriate warnings.

Very rare side effects by definition could come to light only after large-scale inoculations begin — making this the year scientists may finally learn if flu vaccine truly is linked to Guillain-Barre, an often-reversible but sometimes-fatal paralysis. It's believed to strike between 1 and 2 of every 100,000 people. It often occurs right after another infection, such as food poisoning or even influenza.

The vaccine concern stems from 1976, when 500 cases were reported among the 45 million people vaccinated against that year's swine flu. Scientists never could prove if the vaccine really caused the extra risk. The CDC maintains that if the regular winter flu vaccine is related, the risk is no more than a single case per million vaccinated.

17. Don’t Blame Flu Shots for All Ills, Officials Say

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
As soon as swine flu vaccinations start next month, some people getting them will drop dead of heart attacks or strokes, some children will have seizures and some pregnant women will miscarry.

But those events will not necessarily have anything to do with the vaccine. That poses a public relations challenge for federal officials, who remember how sensational reports of deaths and illnesses derailed the large-scale flu vaccine drive of 1976.

This time they are making plans to respond rapidly to such events and to try to reassure a nervous public — and headline-hunting journalists — that the vaccine is not responsible.

Every year, there are 1.1 million heart attacks in the United States, 795,000 strokes and 876,000 miscarriages, and 200,000 Americans have their first seizure. Inevitably, officials say, some of these will happen within hours or days of a flu shot.

The government “is right to expect coincident deaths, since people are dying every day, with or without flu shots,” said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine and co-author of “The Epidemic That Never Was,” a history of the 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign.

Officials are particularly worried about spontaneous miscarriages, because they are urging pregnant women to be among the first to be vaccinated. Pregnant women are usually advised to get flu shots, because they and their fetuses are at high risk of flu complications, but this year the pressure is greater. Expectant mothers are normally advised to avoid drugs, alcohol and anything else that might affect a fetus.

“There are about 2,400 miscarriages a day in the U.S.,” said Dr. Jay C. Butler, chief of the swine flu vaccine task force at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “You’ll see things that would have happened anyway. But the vaccine doesn’t cause miscarriages. It also doesn’t cause auto accidents, but they happen.”

In the opening days of the 1976 vaccination campaign, which eventually vaccinated 45 million Americans, three elderly Pittsburgh residents died soon after receiving their shots at the same clinic. Though scientists believe it was just a freakish coincidence, some news reports suggested the vaccine had killed them.

“Press frenzy was so intense it drew a televised rebuke from Walter Cronkite for sensationalizing coincidental happenings,” Dr. David J. Sencer, who was then the director of the C.D.C., wrote in 2006 reflections on the vaccination campaign.

Two months later, reports emerged of vaccine recipients suffering from Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves, leading to temporary or permanent paralysis and, in a few cases, death. That effectively ended the campaign, as officials suspended it to investigate. Experts still disagree over whether the vaccine caused cases to increase that year, and the C.D.C. will be on high alert for reports of it this year.

Guillain-Barré’s cause is unknown, though different studies have suggested it more often affects people who have had a flu shot, the flu itself, some bacterial infections — or even, according to Dr. Sencer’s paper, people who have been struck by lightning.

In any case, after the suspension, there was no reason to restart because the predicted swine flu epidemic never emerged.

That, experts emphasize, is the great difference between 1976 and 2009. The earlier virus apparently burned out the previous winter inside Fort Dix, N.J., before any vaccine was even made, while this pandemic H1N1 virus has already infected millions and, unchecked, will probably reach over two billion, according to the World Health Organization.

In 1976, getting flu shots into 45 million Americans was unprecedented. Now about 100 million get annual shots, and the government has ordered twice that many doses of swine flu vaccine.

Other changes since 1976 worry officials. The 24-hour cycle of news on television and the Internet did not then exist; public health officials now must be ready to respond to rumors instantly. In 1976, the C.D.C. did not hold news conferences, and it took it five days to respond to the Pittsburgh deaths, Dr. Fineberg said.

“Back then, it was a neat thing to have a fax machine and get out four pages a minute,” said Joe Quimby, a press officer for the disease centers. “Now, communications have to be multimodal. Turning on the three broadcast news outlets is not going to reach everybody any more.”

The agency now has a “war room” in its Atlanta headquarters and, since the pandemic began in April, has held news conferences, sometimes even daily, at which reporters from around the world ask questions by phone. They can be seen live on the agency’s Web site, and it has another Web site, flu.gov, devoted to the pandemic, as well as a constantly updated Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Complicating the challenge for officials, some experts argue, is that health news coverage has suffered since 1976.

“I’ve seen the rise and fall of experienced medical reporters,” said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I can’t tell you how many reporters have come to me since last spring who don’t really know what flu is.”

Also, antivaccine activists are far more powerful now. Thirty-three years ago, vaccines were enthusiastically welcomed; many parents or grandparents still remembered children dead of smallpox, measles or polio. The minority opposing them were often followers of natural healing or traditional chiropractic beliefs.

In 1976, autism was not on the public’s mind, and the problem was still attributed to indifferent mothering. Vietnam veterans with chronic illnesses usually blamed Agent Orange, a defoliant.

Today, many parents blame vaccines for their children’s autism and some ill Gulf War veterans blame their anthrax shots.

Some antivaccine groups are raising fears of thimerosal, a preservative used in some brands of flu vaccine. Others issue dire warnings about squalene, an immune booster used in military vaccines and in some European flu vaccines but not in any American ones.

And, in the rancor over health insurance reform, unfounded rumors are spreading that the Obama administration will make swine flu shots mandatory. Administration officials have emphatically denied that. But a recent decision by New York State to make them mandatory for all hospital employees has reinvigorated those rumors on the Internet.

To defend itself, Dr. Butler said, the C.D.C, has compiled data on how many problems like heart attacks, strokes, miscarriages, seizures and sudden infant deaths normally occur. And it has broken those figures down for various high-priority vaccine groups, like pregnant women or children with asthma. When vaccinations begin, it plans to gather reports from vaccine providers, hospitals and doctors, looking for signs of adverse events, so it can detect problems before rumors grow.

“Then we’ll try to verify the signal, see if it’s real,” Dr. Butler said. “Then we’ll try to see if it’s associated with the vaccine. If it is, we’ll say so. The process will be as transparent as we can make it.”

18. Is Autism Associated with A Viral Infection?

Last week, researchers from the University of Nevada, the National Cancer Institute and The Cleveland Clinic announced the startling discovery of antibodies to a little known retrovirus in 95% of patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), a debilitating neuro-immune disease impacting more than a million people in the United States.

The finding, published in the highly respected journal Science, "clearly points to the retrovirus as a significant contributing factor in this illness," said lead author Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., director of research for the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, which is affiliated with the University of Nevada, Reno. It was the first study to isolate particles of the retrovirus, XMRV, in human blood and demonstrate that it is transmitted between blood cells. XMRV was first discovered in prostate cancer tissue of men with certain genetic defects. Like the more well-known retrovirus, HIV, this pathogen is blood-borne, and not transmitted through the air.

The findings have potential significance for a number of other disorders including, it turns out, autism.

Researchers tested blood samples from a "small group of children" with autism and found that 40% of them were positive for XMRV, according to a statement from the Nevada Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorders. More testing is underway which, the Commission said, "could dramatically increase that 40% positive finding." (Given the small sample size, such a statement is purely speculative).

As Dr. Mikovits explained to a television news program in Nevada, "It is not in the paper and not reported, but we have actually done some of these studies (in ASD children) and found the virus in a significant number of samples that we have tested for. It could be linked to a number of neuro-immune diseases, including autism. It certainly won't be all, because there are genetic defects that result in autism. But there are also the environmental effects; there is always the hypothesis that, 'My child was fine and then they got sick, and then they got autism.'"

According to Dr. Mikovits, XMRV (which admittedly sounds like a satellite radio system for your Winnebago) can lie dormant in people, until it is "turned on or off" by other factors, such as stress hormones like cortisol, or in response to the presence of inflammatory "cytokines," protein molecules secreted by immune cells to help regulate the immune system.

And then Dr. Mikovits dropped a bombshell that is sure to spark controversy.

"On that note, if I might speculate a little bit," she said, "This might even explain why vaccines would lead to autism in some children, because these viruses live and divide and grow in lymphocytes -- the immune response cells, the B and the T cells. So when you give a vaccine, you send your B and T cells in your immune system into overdrive. That's its job. Well, if you are harboring one virus, and you replicate it a whole bunch, you've now broken the balance between the immune response and the virus. So you have had the underlying virus, and then amplified it with that vaccine, and then set off the disease, such that your immune system could no longer control other infections, and created an immune deficiency."

So there you have it - a possible explanation of regressive autism in a significant number of cases associated with immune system deregulation triggered by vaccination.

Of course, much more work is needed to nail down the exact significance of such an association. For example, is the virus implicated in the cause of autism, or do children harbor the virus as a result of autism?

Either way, it is notable that such questions are being asked by mainstream sources such as the University of Nevada, and by extension the NCI and the Cleveland Clinic: Can XMRV infection plus vaccination create the right conditions for regressive autism? That remains to be seen. But it also means that the thousands of parents who claim their children did regress shortly after vaccination may not be so crazy and "fringe" as they have been portrayed by experts such as Dr. Paul Offit of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Dr. Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute of Mental Health and Chair of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC).

"We certainly are advocating vaccinations and how important those are to the well being of the children," explained Annette Whittemore, founder of the Whittemore Peterson Institute.

"But what we are hoping for is, by finding out whether or not one is positive to XMRV, whether it is in one family member or another, and then looking for it in children, you could alter the immune response in such a way that you can protect the child and still be able to vaccinate and avoid autism in these kids. And again, I don't think ether one of us is sitting here saying, 'Vaccinations cause autism,' but rather a number of factors; a genetic susceptibility to the illness, to the infection itself, and then on top of that you are adding something to that mix that takes that child over the top."

Apparently, the CFS findings have impressed the scientific community. "We presented these data three times: Twice at closed conferences at the NIH, and one at an international meeting a few weeks ago, and you could hear a pin drop in the audience - it's amazement" Mikovits said. "The scientists are excited, everyone is working on it, so we know we are going to get a lot of help. It's just amazement, it's an entirely new field of medicine and everyone who's ever worked in this family of viruses is, now that we've shown it's a human pathogen, is extremely excited."

Whittemore added that researchers hoped to develop a vaccine against XMRV quickly, noting that "It would be easier to find a vaccine against this than HIV, because it is a simple retrovirus."

The discovery raises more questions than it answers. What, exactly, is it about immunization that might switch on XMRV viral expression? Could the effect of heavy metals upon cytokine balances be at play? Where did this retrovirus come from, and how did it apparently become so prevalent in children with autism? Did these children inherit the virus from a parent, or was there some other unexplained route of transmission? Why has the NIH said nothing about XMRV in association with autism, and did Dr. Insel know about these findings without sharing them with the IACC?

Finally, Dr. Insel has said that a vaccine against autism may one day be developed. Was he actually referring to a vaccine against XMRV, and what role, if any, might he or members of his family play in the development of such a vaccine?

According to Insel's own biography, in 1994, he went to Emory University, Atlanta as a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, and Director of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. "As director of Yerkes," his bio says, "Dr. Insel built one of the nation's leading HIV vaccine research programs."

19. H1N1 vaccine: Past reactions have parents shrugging off the experts

Christina Blakey has heard the persistent messages from doctors, health experts and government officials about the importance of inoculating children against swine flu. But because of her family's experience, she said she opposes injecting the vaccine in their arms or squirting a mist up their nostrils.

Over the last decade, Blakey and her husband, Jack, an assistant state's attorney in Cook County, have done their own research on vaccines for children. Though scientific studies show no connection, they have concluded that the vaccines their sons received as infants contributed to their 10-year-old's autism and their 12-year-old's asthma, which almost killed him as a toddler.

"I'm not categorically opposed to vaccines, but I have seen reactions in my own children," said Blakey, 37, who does paralegal work. "I'm skeptical of everything I bring into my house for my children, and I temper that with a lot of common sense, rather than emotion."

According to polls, Blakey is among more than a third of American parents who don't plan to vaccinate their children against swine flu this fall. They give various reasons, from concerns about the ingredients in the vaccine to whether flu vaccines in general are effective. Their arguments often do not stack up against the scientific studies cited by health experts, who stress that the flu vaccine is not only safe but the best way to keep children healthy and prevent them from spreading it to others.

"It's always a concern when people don't want to immunize their children," Dr. David Tayloe, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "But if parents choose not to immunize, we're not going to force them. We will do the best we can to educate them."

The news Friday about the death of a 14-year-old Naperville girl with the H1N1 virus did not change Blakey's perspective. Though troubled by the family's loss, she said she would like to see equal attention paid to skeptics' questions about the vaccine and more natural ways to keep children healthy.

"Why are we seeing all these diseases coming up?" she said, referring to H1N1 and other illnesses. "We should be looking at the quality of our food supply."

Rather than a vaccine, she prefers a healthy diet to help her children ward off viruses. She is particular about what her three boys eat. On a recent evening at the family's Oak Park home, the boys gathered at the dinner table for a meal of organic meatloaf and vegetables from a local farm.

She keeps the children away from sugar products, which she describes as "very dangerous" to the immune system and loads them up instead on fruits and fresh juices.

"We got something over the summer for a few days, and I just kept them home and made them chicken soup," Blakey said, adding that she is not sure whether the flulike symptoms were H1N1.

Like many of the parents who oppose the H1N1 vaccine, Blakey is concerned about its long-term health impact. In particular, she is worried about injecting her children with the H1N1 virus used to develop the vaccine, as well as Thimerosal, a mercury-based derivative used as a preservative in multi-dose flu vaccines.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and most other health professionals have rejected what they call false "rumors" that Thimerosal causes autism, and specific studies have not shown a link between the two.

Some anti-vaccine parents, when asked if they are concerned that their children could pass the virus to others at school or the day-care center, contend that other children would be safe if they were vaccinated. Tayloe said that is a false assumption, because vaccines are not always 100 percent effective with every child.

But, among Blakey's circle of friends, it's not hard to find parents who share her fears. They e-mail information about vaccines and offer each other support. And, like Blakey, they won't be lining their children up for the shots.

"If they get swine flu, I have full confidence in their body's ability to heal," she said. "Nature will win."

20. Could Hepatitis B Vaccine Be Harmful?

In New Research, Vaccinated Monkeys Showed “Significant Delays" in Development of Critical Reflexes Compared to Control Group

Play CBS Video

(CBS) In a newly-published study, vaccinated monkeys demonstrated “significant delays in the acquisition of critical survival reflexes" compared to an unvaccinated control group, reports CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

It was the first time researchers had time compared vaccinated animals with unvaccinated controls. Researchers vaccinated 13 newborn rhesus macaque monkeys with Hepatitis B vaccine containing a standardized amount of thimerosal - a vaccine preservative thought by some to cause developmental issues. The thimerosal dose matched that given to human babies until the early 2000s. Four monkeys received a saline placebo and three more had no shots at all.

The study found the unvaccinated animals developed normally, while the vaccinated monkeys demonstrated the survival reflex delays. According to one of the lead investigators, Dr. Laura Hewitson of the University of Pittsburgh, “Infants of lower birth weight and gestational age were at greater risk.”

The study, published last week in the scientific journal NeuroToxicology, was not designed to determine whether it was the thimerosal or another component of the vaccine that caused the observed delays.

“We undertook these experiments largely because we were unable to find any safety studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated animals,” said another study author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield of Thoughtful House, which provides resources for children with developmental disorders.

Watch: Part one of Attkisson's interview with Dr. Wakefield

Research conducted by Wakefield and his colleagues on a small group of autistic children in 1998 in Great Britain unleashed a firestorm of controversy. The findings were published in the British Journal Lancet. Based on the research, Wakefield recommended that studies be conducted on the safety of administering the three MMR vaccines (measles, mumps and rubella) in one jab. Until such research was done, Wakefield recommended children get the vaccines as three separate shots.

The study became the centerpiece for an ongoing and nasty fight between vaccine safety advocates who embrace Wakefield's research and believe vaccines can be administered in a safer fashion, and public health and government officials who attack Wakefield and believe his ideas threaten international vaccination programs.

Though the FDA and American Academy of Pediatrics have said thimerosal is safe in the doses it has been used in childhood vaccines, in 1999 they recommended that it be removed from vaccines as soon as possible. They said they made that recommendation out of an abundance of caution and because some parents and health professionals disagreed that thimerosal is safe for use in childhood vaccines. Despite that recommendation for removal in 1999, thimerosal remains in most flu shots, and is found in recently-licensed Novel H1N1 (swine flu) vaccines. Smaller amounts of thimerosal also remains in some other vaccines, even those marketed as “preservative-free.”

Watch: Part two of Attkisson's interview with Dr. Wakefield

More on Wakefield's research:

Feb. 28, 1998: Wakefield Lancet Article Abstract
Feb. 28, 1998: Wakefield Lancet Article
March 2004: Dr. Wakefield Statement for Lancet
Sunday London Times: The Wakefield Factor
The Autism File: Wakefield addresses critics (PDF)

According to the CDC:

“All Hepatitis B vaccines for the U.S., including for adults, are now available only as thimerosal-free or thimerosal-reduced containing formulations… The term "preservative-free" indicates that no preservative is used in the vaccine; however, traces used during the manufacturing process may be present in the final formulation. For example, some vaccines may be preservative-free but may contain traces of thimerosal (1 micrograms mercury or less per dose); in such settings, this information is noted in the package insert. Similarly, the term "thimerosal-reduced" usually indicates that thimerosal is not added as a vaccine preservative, but trace amounts (1 micrograms mercury per dose or less) may remain from use in the manufacturing process.”

The government tracks the number of injury and death claims filed in the special vaccine court regarding HepB and other vaccines. While most vaccine injuries are never brought to the little-known court, it is still interesting to read about those that are. Click here and scroll down for claims filed, compensated or dismissed: by vaccine type.

Click here for more information on the FDA's list of of thimerosal-containing vaccines.

21. Swine Flu and High Anxiety

We're a month into the school year and it's the time of year when it seems our kids are spending more days sick than well. Please don't be fooled into thinking that this winter is so different from previous winters.  
Swine Flu does not pose a realistic risk to your family:  There will be millions of cases reported and rare fatalities highly publicized.  
 
 Some of us will get high fevers and have to miss school and work for a few days and 99.9999% of us will remain completely unaffected after the flu season except that those who contract Swine Flu this year will be protected if it gets meaner and more virulent in coming years as expected.

 Every winter there are dozens and dozens of different viruses.  The immune system is built by catching and beating these bugs and acquiring antibodies and "memory cells" for the next time the virus appears.  
 
 There is no way around this process and no shortcut.  Children, in particular, must suffer through a lot of winter illnesses because their immune systems are so inexperienced.
 
 Colds and coughs have an acute phase of 2, 3 or 4 days during which children are contagious and may need to stay home from school.  
 
 Following this contagious period, there can be extra mucus, congestion, cough and malaise for another week or so.  By the end of this ten-day period, most children will have been exposed to, and maybe contracted, another 2 or 3 other viruses!  It's really no surprise that your children and many others might seem to be sick for weeks on end.  
 
 Some children and adults have allergies which compound the congestion and coughing problem.
 
 A new study showed that when you examine the blood of children who've been sick for a couple weeks or more the majority of these kids show antibodies to 2 or 3 different viruses:  In other words, children and adults don't have ten-day viral illnesses, they have a series of 2 and 3 day bugs which might look daunting but are actually just a part of a normal winter viral season.
 
 Why do we get more illnesses in winter?  There are more social and school gatherings in confined spaces, the air is drier, more people travel during winter holidays and we eat more junk food during these months.

New viruses get more people sick than older ones and this year the Swine Flu H1N1 virus is the newest common infection. The media are taking advantage of this situation and are creating more anxiety about winter illness than at any time in recent memory.

Except, maybe, for the SARS scare.
 
Or the Bird Flu scare.

Or the West Nile Virus scare.

The CDC released fatality data this past week and were quite clear in their assessment of this relatively non-virulent strain of influenza:
 
 75-80% of the 76 children had significant or severe underlying medical problems.
 
Any child's death creates an extremely difficult public discussion but of the 300,000,000 Americans there are 45,000,000 children and teens and there have been 76 deaths of younger people.  About 15 of these deaths occurred in seemingly healthy children and teens.
 
Please put all of these numbers in the proper perspective and realize that there are many important lifesaving topics for the media to publicize but none which sell papers and create TV viewership quite as well as this new flu.
 
 In July CDC and World Health Organization officials stopped counting the number of cases of Swine Flu and are now relying on a patchwork reporting system which is reporting both "lab confirmed" cases of H1N1 and fatalities from cases which are associated with symptoms of Swine Flu.  The science is terrible but the publicity is geared towards increasing fear, selling vaccines and Tamiflu and keeping us all on edge.  
 
They are reporting deaths from "secondary" bacterial infections and some unofficial  sources are even urging people who might be sick with Swine Flu to immediately see their doctors to get vaccines which might prevent bacterial pneumonia.  This, by the way, is a serious misinterpretation of certain vaccines' purpose and an even more serious misunderstanding of how long it takes a vaccine to work.
 
 Vaccines, including the flu shots, should not be given to sick children or adults.

 In the past 18 months, budget cutbacks have led to the loss of over 15,000 public health department jobs.  It might be overly cynical to assume that a full court press about H1N1 could lead to some of these jobs being restored or, at least, might stem the budget cutbacks and preserve further job loss.

Every winter I tell the families in my practice that winter viruses--including this new H1N1--are very unlikely to cause serious illness in healthy people but you may choose to so your very best to avoid them before a vacation, an important school event or just because you want this to be a quieter winter for your family.
 
I don't think that this year's pair of flu vaccines will create disasters but I also don't think that they're a good use of our health care dollars.  They are definitely not worth the amount of media and medical attention they've received and continue to receive.
 
 Swine Flu vaccines are now available and they may be just as safe as the CDC and others say they are but they are not the most important measure for keeping your children free of viral illness.
 
Try to get a good night's sleep!!  Somehow.

• Wash your hands. Teach your children to wash their hands. A good long hand washing, about as long as it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" twice or the ABC's once through is about what it takes. Hand sanitizer is acceptable in moderation when there is no soap and water.
• Work with your children's schools to have children wash their hands, especially before they eat snacks or lunch. Hand washing is no small benefit in flu and cold prevention but involves a good deal of parental requesting to truly implement at most busy schools.
• When you and your children come home, wash hands again.
• Avoid refined sugars, dairy and fried foods which make you and your children less healthy, replace antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables and may lower your immunity. Work with your children's schools to stop serving cupcakes at each and every birthday. If one kid's mom or dad brings in sweets for celebrating, then everyone's mom and dad does. Make it a "no one" does policy, so no one feels singled out and everyone stays healthy. Ask your child's school to not serve sweet sugary snacks at all. Get your Parent/Teacher groups on board. Pack healthy and well-balanced meals for your kids.
• Support your child's immunity with herbs and supplements (look for brands that are not loaded with additives and sugars)  For the most part, they're not proven effective but most have centuries of safe use behind them and seem to help promote good health and stronger immunity.
  • Astragalus:  one dose three times a week will help support immunity during flu season (This herb seems to be valuable only before an illness and not during.).
  • Echinacea and Goldenseal:  one dose every day in a liquid or chewable form.  My favorite is echinacea tea.
  • Vitamin C and Bioflavonoids:  I recommend for children (and take) 500 mg of vitamin C per year of age divided into 3-4 doses each day during cold and flu time.  (A five year old would get 2500 mg and a 10 year old 5000 mg.  The maximum dose is 10,000 mg--Less if C gives you diarrhea.)
  • Elderberry is a patented and proven viral treatment
  • Probiotics: 5 to 10 billion CFUs each day to build immunity

Fever is one of the immune system's best tools for fighting viruses and bacteria and should be left alone whenever possible. Higher fever might need to be decreased  for a child's comfort and, mainly, for assessment.  
 
104 degree children all look like they might have a terrible illness.  Using a long bath, natural remedies and even Tylenol or Ibuprofen will give you a "window" to look at a child with a much lower temperature.  A cooler child will usually smile more, drink more and look more like herself.  
 
You can then see that there might be a pretty big fever but the illness underlying the fever is a small illness.  Worry and stress levels can drop.  
 
If your child has an illness which is preventing good hydration or if lowering a child's fever still doesn't allow you to adequately evaluate the illness, call your doctor.
 
Again, this winter is not different than previous winters.  Swine Flu does not pose a realistic risk to your family.

Best,
 
Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP

22. The Questionable Efficacy Of Flu Vaccines... And The Pandemic That Wasn't

Dana Ullman for the Huffingtonpost.com

Evidence to date suggests that the “H1N1 flu is not a major threat <http://medicalconsumers.org/2009/09/24/why-the-h1n1-virus-is-not-a-major-threat> ,” and there is little evidence that flu vaccines are effective in preventing the flu, so says Tom Jefferson, MD, arguably the world’s leading expert on influenza vaccines.

Dr. Jefferson has authored 10 reviews of research on the influenza vaccine for the Cochrane Collaboration, which is a widely recognized leading international science institution that evaluates clinical research.  

Jefferson notes  that Australia has just completed its wintertime, and only 131 deaths related to the flu occurred this year.  Because Australia’s population is 22 million people, this death rate is not significant.  One does not need to predict the future when the future has already happened somewhere else.  

Jefferson’s previous detailed analyses of flu vaccines show very little efficacy in providing real health benefits. Jefferson’s team asserted strongly, “There is not enough evidence to decide whether routine vaccination to prevent influenza in healthy adults is effective.”[1]  Jefferson’s research confirmed that flu vaccination did reduce slightly the number of adults experiencing confirmed influenza, but there were increased numbers of adults experiencing “influenza-like illness” (its symptoms are similar to the flu, though are presumably causes by other viruses, not the flu viruses).   The bottom line is that the number of adults needing to go to the hospital or take time off work did not change between those adults giving the flu vaccine and those who did not.

Although the media commonly promotes the flu vaccine for children, Jefferson and his research group summarized their investigation on this subject by asserting, “National policies for the vaccination of healthy young children are based on very little evidence.”[2]  They expressed strongest concern about the lack of efficacy and safety of flu vaccination of infants two years of age and under.  They did note that the flu vaccine is effective in reducing the flu in children over two years of age, but they found little evidence that the flu vaccine was even effective in reducing school absences.  Further, they found “no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications and community transmission of influenza.”

The strongest evidence of benefit to the flu vaccine is in the elderly.[3]  However, the researchers found that the benefits to the elderly were “modest.”  In fact, the number of flu-related deaths in elderly Americans has actually increased steadily during the past 33-year-period despite the fact that there has been a large increase in flu vaccinations for this population.  Only 20% of all elderly Americans had a flu shot in 1980, compared with 65% in 2001.  

Jefferson expresses some considerable surprise at how few studies have been conducted on the elderly, especially recently.  He notes, “Only five randomly controlled trials have been carried out in elderly people, of which only one was carried out in the past 2 decades using vaccines available today.”[4]

Dr. Jefferson’s team noted that the benefits of the flu vaccine for the elderly are “consistently below those usually quoted for (national policy) decision or economic model making.”  

What about the H1N1 Vaccination?

Jefferson had some particularly harsh words about the safety and efficacy of this vaccination. The FDA recently announced the approval of four (!) H1N1 vaccines.  And Dr. Jefferson has expressed serious alarm about the “evidence” for the safety and efficacy of these vaccines:

1) The study was tiny, only 240 adults. The authors made reassuring statements about Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), which is ridiculous because GBS occurs in one out of 750,000 to 1 million vaccinations, and this study only had 240 participants;

2) One-third of these volunteers had side effects that resembled influenza-like illness (fevers, headaches, sore throats, etc.), so they were vaccinating to prevent symptoms that they were causing;

3) There was no placebo arm in the study, yet there’s no ethical excuse for not having a placebo arm because these are experimental vaccines; and

4)      The description of what additive substances were in the vaccine was unclear. We know that there is thimerosal [mercury] in this H1N1 vaccine, but its manufacturer did not say whether there are additional substances like aluminum, which can be found in many other vaccines. We just don’t know. And they are advising this vaccine for pregnant women and children over six months of age!

Is There Really a Pandemic?

Something “fishy” seems to be going on at the World Health Organization (WHO).  WHO has declared a “flu pandemic,” in part because they changed their definition of the word “pandemic” in May, 2009.    

The earlier version defined pandemic  as: “An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness [emphasis in the original document].”  The NEW definition of pandemic was changed to: “A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease. An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity.”

Because flu viruses change on a regular basis, the WHO will declare a new “pandemic” when simply one more death than the “normal” is observed.  Big Pharma “warn” people about the yearly possible pandemic, pumping more fear into the hearts and minds of the susceptible and gullible public.

When Jefferson was asked about the “flu pandemic,” he responded directly:  “this pandemic really is a commercial operation.”

In light of some recent efforts to make the H1N1 vaccination “mandatory,” it seems that Big Pharma’s commercial operations have become so successful that they have successfully lobbied politicians to require health and medical workers to get the H1N1 vaccine.  Big Pharma’s efforts have been so successful that they have almost successfully fooled other scientists to think that it is “unethical” to conduct a placebo-controlled trial due to the (incorrect) assumption that flu vaccines are effective.  

Even Big Media whose coffers are filled with Big Pharma’s advertising are not immune to this influence.  Isn’t it a bit strange that the research of Tom Jefferson and his team have been virtually ignored by Big Media, despite the fact that their research has been published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), the Lancet, the Cochrane Database, and other high-impact scientific journals.  One would hope that the media and government would follow the research rather than the money.  

NOTE OF DISCLOSURE:  Although many colleagues in the field of homeopathic medicines are critical of vaccination, a greater number have a similar perspective that I do, that is, they (we) believe that each person and each vaccination has to be evaluated individually and in light of long-term community health.  In this light, I should not be determined to be either pro-vaccination or anti-vaccination in over-simplistic terms.  Further, because the very “father of immunology,” Emil Adolph von Behring, directly pointed to the origins of immunizations to homeopathy, we homeopaths do not have anything fundamentally against this utilization of the underlying principle of homeopathy, the use of small doses of whatever may cause illness in order to catalyze immune response.  When von Behring was asked about the origins of immunology, he responded, "(B)y what technical term could we more appropriately speak of this influence than by Hahnemann's word "homeopathy" (Von Behring, 1906).   

[1] Demicheli V, Di Pietrantonj C, Jefferson T, Rivetti A, Rivetti D. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD001269. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub3.

[2] Jefferson T, Rivetti A, Harnden A, Di Pietrantonj C, Demicheli V. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004879. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD004879.pub3.

[3] Rivetti D, Jefferson T, Thomas RE, Rudin M, Rivetti A, Di Pietrantonj C, Demicheli V. Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD004876. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD004876.pub2.

[4] Jefferson T. Mistaken identity: seasonal influenza versus influenza-like illness. Clinical Evidence. 2009.  

23. Drugmakers, Doctors Rake in Billions Battling H1N1 Flu

Swine Flu Is Bad for Victims, But Good for Businesses That Cater to Expanding Market

By DALIA FAHMY

Americans are still debating whether to roll up their sleeves for a swine flu shot, but companies have already figured it out: vaccines are good for business.

Drug companies have sold $1.5 billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked earlier this year. These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20 billion global vaccine market.

"The vaccine market is booming," says Bruce Carlson, spokesperson at market research firm Kalorama, which publishes an annual survey of the vaccine industry. "It's an enormous growth area for pharmaceuticals at a time when other areas are not doing so well," he says, noting that the pipeline for more traditional blockbuster drugs such as Lipitor and Nexium has thinned.

As always with pandemic flus, taxpayers are footing the $1.5 billion check for the 250 million swine flu vaccines that the government has ordered so far and will be distributing free to doctors, pharmacies and schools. In addition, Congress has set aside more than $10 billion this year to research flu viruses, monitor H1N1's progress and educate the public about prevention.

Drugmakers pocket most of the revenues from flu sales, with Sanofi-Pasteur, Glaxo Smith Kline and Novartis cornering most of the market.

But some say it's not just drugmakers who stand to benefit. Doctors collect copayments for special office visits to inject shots, and there have been assertions that these doctors actually profit handsomely from these vaccinations.

It is a notion that Dr. Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Practitioners, says is simply not true.

"According to most of the physicians I have talked to, the administration of these vaccines is done for the community's benefit as opposed to anything that helps profit," she says. Heim adds that even though doctors will not have to shell out for the H1N1 vaccine, they will bear the usual costs associated with storage and administering the shots.

"There is an administration fee, for the costs that you can't get reimbursed through Medicare or Medicaid," she says. "This is usually less than, or right at the break-even point."

Still, pharmacies also charge co-payments or full price of about $25 to those without insurance and often make more money if patients end up shopping for other goods.

"Flu shots present a good opportunity to bring new customers into our stores," says Cassie Richardson, spokesperson for SUPERVALU, one of the country's largest supermarket chains. Drawing customers to the back of a store, where pharmacies are often located, offers retailers a chance to pitch products that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Even companies outside of the medical industry are benefiting: the UPS division that delivers vaccines in specially designed containers, for example, has seen a bump in business.

New Entrants in Flu Shot Business

The intensifying competition has irked some doctors.

"Retailers and other non-medical professionals have siphoned off the passive income that once helped to cover medical overhead," says Dr. Caroline Abruzese, an internist in Atlanta. "The larger retail chains can invest up front in large volumes of vaccine at low prices, and market to customers already in their stores."

The promise of profits has attracted new players into the business. Some of the world's largest drugmakers, who in the past avoided the vaccine market because of its limited scope -- its not easy to convince healthy adults to get a shot for measles -- are now jumping into the fray.

Last month alone saw three large vaccine deals. Abbott Labs bought a Belgian drug business, along with its flu vaccine facilities, for $6.6 billion. Johnson & Johnson invested $444 million in a Dutch biotech firm that makes and develops flu vaccines. Merck, which already makes vaccines for shingles and other diseases, struck a deal to distribute flu shots made by Australian CSL.

Smaller biotechs are also angling for a slice of the action, making vaccines one of the fastest-growing areas of research in the biotech industry.

Large and small drugmakers are drawn to the business largely because of scientific advances that promise to radically expand the range of health problems that vaccines can address. In addition to preventing childhood diseases such as measles and polio, vaccines can now also ward off cervical cancer, and researchers are working on vaccines for HIV and tuberculosis.

Scientists believe they can create therapeutic vaccines than treat diseases such as Alzheimers and diabetes after they have set in. (At least one company is betting on a vaccine that helps cigarette smokers quit.)

"These innovations broaden the market potential for vaccine makers and partly explained the renewed interest by drugmakers," says Anthony Cox, a professor at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business who specializes in the marketing of medical products.

But Mark Grayson, a spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents the country's leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, says that drugmakers are also compelled by the government to join efforts to ensure that there is enough vaccine to go around.

"Because of national security implications, the government felt that they needed to encourage and ask [vaccine manufacturers] to move much quicker," he says. Grayson adds that vaccine manufacturers also face significant costs; aside from the expense of fitting a new vaccine into a tight production schedule, drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur were forced to acquire new vaccine production facilities in recent years to keep up with demand.

Alternatives to Vaccines Are Few

While this promise of new treatments for painful diseases brings hope to many, vaccines continue to attract critics. The National Vaccine Information Center, a non-profit advocacy group, is at the forefront of a movement demanding that vaccines be tested more thoroughly before hitting the market. Although there has been little evidence to support their claim, detractors -- including the comedian Jim Carrey -- believe that vaccines are at least partly to blame for the sharp rise in autism in recent decades.

The swine flu vaccine has also attracted its share of critics. Frank Lipman, a New York-based doctor who specializes in a mix of Western and alternative medicine, points out that the swine flu is rarely fatal and that it's too early to tell if it's safe because it hasn't been widely tested.

Others argue that Americans have little choice. The cost of a widespread pandemic, similar to Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918, which killed 675,000 Americans (and 50 million worldwide), would be devastating. The Trust for America's Health, a Washington-based non-profit organization, estimates that a severe pandemic could push down GDP by more than 5 percent and cost Americans $683 billion.

"We're not seeing a pandemic that's this severe," says Jeff Levi, director of Trust for Americas Health. "We've dodged a lot of bullets."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/20/study-swine-flu-vaccine-too-late-to-help-most/

The authors said that this is the week, through Oct. 24, during which the greatest number of people would be infected. The vaccination program has barely started in the U.S.

"The model predicts that the peak wave of infection will occur near the end of October in week 42, with 8% of the population being infected during that week. By the end of 2009, the model predicts that a total of 63% of the population will have been infected," the authors wrote in a conclusion that ignored the effects of a CDC vaccination program.

But even "when the model was modified to include the effect of the planned vaccination scheme," that adjustment yielded only "a relative reduction of about 6% in the total number of people infected" by the end of the year 2009.

24. Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) - The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research that will be presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.

Flu vaccine (trivalent inactivated flu vaccine-TIV) has unknown effects on asthmatics.

"The concerns that vaccination maybe associated with asthma exacerbations have been disproved with multiple studies in the past, but the vaccine's effectiveness has not been well-established," said Avni Joshi, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. "This study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the TIV in children overall, as well as the children with asthma, to prevent influenza-related hospitalization."

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend annual influenza vaccination for all children aged six months to 18 years. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (3rd revision) also recommends annual flu vaccination of asthmatic children older than six months.

In order to determine whether the vaccine was effective in reducing the number of hospitalizations that all children, and especially the ones with asthma, faced over eight consecutive flu seasons, the researchers conducted a cohort study of 263 children who were evaluated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota from six months to 18 years of age, each of whom had had laboratory-confirmed influenza between 1996 to 2006. The investigators determined who had and had not received the flu vaccine, their asthma status and who did and did not require hospitalization. Records were reviewed for each subject with influenza-related illness for flu vaccination preceding the illness and hospitalization during that illness.

They found that children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization, as compared to children who had not received the vaccine. In asthmatic children, there was a significantly higher risk of hospitalization in subjects who received the TIV, as compared to those who did not (p= 0.006). But no other measured factors-such as insurance plans or severity of asthma-appeared to affect risk of hospitalization.

"While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations," said Dr. Joshi. "More studies are needed to assess not only the immunogenicity, but also the efficacy of different influenza vaccines in asthmatic subjects."

Adapted from materials provided by American Thoracic Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

25. Separate measles, mumps, rubella vaccine formulations discontinued

http://www.pediatricsupersite.com/view.aspx?rid=44823

A representative from Merck announced that the company plans to discontinue production of monovalent measles, mumps, rubella vaccine formulations during the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice's meeting yesterday.

. . . Feinberg added that the company will focus attention to meet current prevention needs on production of the combination M-M-R II vaccine. "When we receive questions from parents or other interested parties we will refer them to the useful information provided by the CDC, the ACIP, the AAP and other professional organizations."

The announcement occurred during discussions to streamline recommendations made during the past year in the committee's 2010 immunization schedules for children and adults.

Adapted from materials provided by American Thoracic Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

26. Obama declares swine flu a national emergency

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency and empowered his health secretary to suspend federal requirements and speed treatment for thousands of infected people.

The declaration that Obama signed late Friday authorized Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to bypass federal rules so health officials can respond more quickly to the outbreak, which has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States.

The goal is to remove bureaucratic roadblocks and make it easier for sick people to seek treatment and medical providers to provide it immediately. That could mean fewer hurdles involving Medicare, Medicaid or health privacy regulations.

"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Obama wrote in the declaration, which the White House announced Saturday.

He said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources."
Because of vaccine production delays, the government has backed off initial, optimistic estimates that as many as 120 million doses would be available by mid-October. As of Wednesday, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctor's offices and other providers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said.

The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine out by mid-November and 150 million in December.

The flu virus has to be grown in chicken eggs, and the yield hasn't been as high as was initially hoped, officials explained.

Swine flu is more widespread now than it's ever been. Health authorities say almost 100 children have died from the flu, known as H1N1, and 46 states now have widespread flu activity.

Worldwide, more than 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday. Since most countries have stopped counting individual swine flu cases, the figure is considered an underestimate.

27. Doctors May 'Fire' Parents Who Don't Vaccinate Children

Some Parents Fear Vaccines Cause Autism, but Doctors Fear Disease Outbreaks, Too

By LAUREN COX of ABC News and EMILY WALKER of MedPage Today

When Cathlene Echan walked into her pediatrician's office two weeks after giving birth, she was nervous about discussing her recent decision not to vaccinate her second baby.

But Echan, of Orange County, Calif., did not expect to be asked to leave.

"The doctor said it was too much of a liability to have us as patients," said Echan, a 28-year-old stay at home mom. Echan's oldest child, Josiah, now 5, had just been diagnosed with autism around the same time her second son Torren, now 2, was born.

Echan said she did research and read articles online about autism, she talked with other parents and then came to the pediatrician's office with doubts about vaccines.

"I hadn't come to a conclusion at that point when I saw the doctor, but I was so nervous because they're brothers, and I thought there could be a predisposition for it," said Echan. "As a mom, I can't knowingly do something to my second child when I believe it played a role in causing my older child's neurological disorder.

"She was very nice at first, but when I asked her to give him [Torren] a checkup, she said, 'you need to leave,'" said Echan.

Echan's situation is a growing problem for parents and pediatricians alike. Despite adamant statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control that vaccines have no link to autism, an anti-vaccination movement is growing online, from parent to parent, and through activist celebrities, such as actress Jenny McCarthy.

Now, more and more doctors are feeling compelled to say "no" back to these parents. The issue was raised Wednesday at the annual American Academy of Pediatrics meeting in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Gary Marshall, a presenter at the meeting, said there are some cases when it's ethical and legal to refuse to continue to see, or treat, a child.

"In the middle of treatment, you can't just say, I'm done," Marshall, of the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said during a session that addressed parental concerns about vaccinations and how pediatricians can respond.

Why Doctors Fear for Unvaccinated Children

"But if it becomes obvious that you and the family will never see eye-to-eye on a specific issue, there's no reason not to 'fire' them, providing you follow the steps necessary to avoid charges of abandonment," Marshall explained in the meeting. "Those include providing written notice that you will no longer treat their children and giving them a set time frame -- at least 30 days -- to find another physician."

Dr. Mary Fallat, chair of the Committee of Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said doctors should try hard to work with parents, if they refuse to vaccinate, by providing information and trying to come to an agreement about a vaccination schedule.

"If that doesn't work, and the pediatrician feels really strongly that they cannot care for the child -- which is not the norm -- then they need to find another pediatrician who can take care of that child," said Fallat.

In some cases, Fallat said, doctors may feel an ethical concern about families who don't vaccinate their children.

"Ethically, that is a real concern on the part of the pediatrician because there are some diseases that are really disabling," she said. "If a pediatrician says, 'OK, I agree, it's OK for you not to immunize your children' and they do come down with some of these diseases then& it makes the doctor feel like he's partly to blame."

Yet, while in theory, doctors should find another physician who will treat an unvaccinated child, in the real world, it can put families in a difficult spot.

After Echan left her first pediatrician, she said she could not find another doctor who would take her family, once she told them she was unwilling to vaccinate her children.

"I don't know what happened to my older one, I just know that he has autism and he wasn't born with it," said Echan. "So I don't know what to do then, I'm scared."

Dr. Steven Abelowitz, director of the Coastal Kids clinic where Echan was first turned away, says the process of dealing with parents who don't want to be vaccinated is evolving.

When Doctors Fear Consequences of Unvaccinated Children

Abelowitz didn't see Echan, nor could he speak to what happened that day. However, he said he does try to work with families who fear there's a link between vaccines and autism.

"Four or five years ago, it really was a rare instance that someone wouldn't want to do vaccines," said Abelowitz, who is an adjunct professor at the University of California Los Angeles and University of Southern California.

"Now we deal with vaccine concerns 10-20 times a day," he said.

Abelowitz says his office tries to provide as much information as possible on the risks and benefits of vaccines, and Coastal Kids even works with families to spread out the vaccination schedule over a longer period of time.

"The big, big change came after Jenny McCarthy came on TV," said Abelowitz. "Knowing now how many people fear it, we really want to try to work with parents."

However, Abelowitz said he does have concerns about keeping unvaccinated children in a practice, especially if the children aren't vaccinated against whooping cough, or pertussis, which can be fatal in young children and is still found in the United States.

Abelowitz also says he worries about babies coming into his office having contact with older children whose parents have refused to allow vaccinations.

"We also have to be responsible to the kids in the waiting room ... my biggest fear is [for] these young babies who are under the age of 2 months who are not vaccinated."

In the end, Echan took her children to see a naturopath -- a person who studied holistic medicine but does not have a legal license to practice medicine in most states.

"I love doctors; I'm not opposed to doctors. I just haven't needed them yet," said Echan. "I know that there are pediatricians out there who will take children who aren't vaccinated."

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