The Autistic Spectrum

                  ELIZABETH LANDT / Staff 
                  MITOCHONDRIAL DISORDERS 
                  Energy for our bodies is created within our cells. This massive job is handled by the mitochondria. When these tiny guys can't
                  do their job, our whole body suffers. 
                  
                  Normal mitochondrion 
                  1. Mitochondria are tiny power plants inside human cells that convert food into energy. 
                  2. If the mitochondria are not working properly, the cell does not get the energy it needs to do its work within the body.
                  
                  Diagram includes a cell containing normal and dysfunctional mitochondrion; the inside of a normal mitochondrian; its Energy-producing
                  particles; DNA. 
                  Organ systems:  
                  3. The brain, heart and lungs require the most energy to function properly. If they don't have adequate energy, these organs
                  begin to fail. Symptoms vary depending on the part of the body involved. 
                  —-
                  Possible symptoms
                  Mitochondrial disorders are rare. Not everyone who has these symptoms has dysfunctional mitochondria. 
                  Brain: Developmental delays, seizures, autistic features, migraines, atypical cerebral palsy
                  Eyes and ears: Visual or hearing loss, degeneration of retina cells  
                  Heart: Heart blocks, Cardiomyopathy 
                  Muscles: Weakness, cramping, gastrointestinal problems, muscle pain 
                  Liver: Low blood sugar, liver failure 
                  Kidneys: Failure to excrete acid or wasting 
                  Pancreas and other glands: Diabetes and inability to make digestive enzymes, low calcium 
                  Nerves: Weakness (may be intermittent), fainting, Chronic nerve pain 
                  Systemic: Failure to gain weight, fatigue, unexplained vomiting, short stature, respiratory problems 
                  
                  Mitochondrian disorders generally involve three or more organ systems and in some cases produces symptoms similar to autism.
                  
                  
                  Sources: United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation 
                  

Source url: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2008/03/06/autism0306b.html

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Deadly Immunity

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.

The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to Frist.

Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.

I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"

It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation's pre-eminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the twenty-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.

What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.

"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."

Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."

In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.

In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."

For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"

But by that time, the damage was done. At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 99 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisers, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next twenty years, because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."

But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and was part of a team that developed the measles vaccine and brought it to licensure in 1963. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.

Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."

Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works."

Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."

Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.

If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.

For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."

Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.

In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.

The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"

Under pressure from Congress and parents, the Institute of Medicine convened another panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the way the VSD had been used in the Verstraeten study, and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.

So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two other states.

But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."

I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen."

It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.

NOTE: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms - an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.

An earlier version of this story stated that the Institute of Medicine convened a second panel to review the work of the Immunization Safety Review Committee that had found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the IOM convened the second panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program, including those raised by critics of the IOM's earlier work. But the panel was not charged with reviewing the committee's findings. The story also inadvertently omitted a word and transposed two sentences in a quote by Dr. John Clements, and incorrectly stated that Dr. Sam Katz held a patent with Merck on the measles vaccine. In fact, Dr. Katz was part of a team that developed the vaccine and brought it to licensure, but he never held the patent. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.

CLARIFICATION: After publication of this story, Salon and Rolling Stone corrected an error that misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms ? an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. At the time of the correction, we were aware that the comparison itself was flawed, but as journalists we considered it more appropriate to state the correct figure rather than replace it with another number entirely.

Since that earlier correction, however, it has become clear from responses to the article that the forty-percent number, while accurate, is misleading. It measures the total mercury load an infant received from vaccines during the first six months, calculates the daily average received based on average body weight, and then compares that number to the EPA daily limit. But infants did not receive the vaccines as a ?daily average? ? they received massive doses on a single day, through multiple shots. As the story states, these single-day doses exceeded the EPA limit by as much as 99 times. Based on the misunderstanding, and to avoid further confusion, we have amended the story to eliminate the forty-percent figure.

Correction: The story misattributed a quote to Andy Olson, former legislative counsel to Senator Bill Frist. The comment was made by Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to the senator. Rolling Stone and Salon.com regret the error.


Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7395411?pageid=rs.Politics&pageregion=single1&rnd=1122143108250&has-player=false

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Mercury Connected to Neuro Problems

Source:
http://www.medscape.com/reuters/prof/2000/07/07.12/20000712plcy002.html
By Steve Mitchell

WASHINGTON, Jul 12 (Reuters Health) - Although the US environmental Protection Agency's threshold level of exposure for methylmercury appears to be protective for most people, the level may not be low enough to reduce the risk of neurologic damage during prenatal development, according to a report issued Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council.

The report suggests that children born to women who consumed large amounts of fish and seafood during pregnancy may be at an increased risk of neurologic problems.

"Although we believe EPA's guideline on methylmercury is generally adequate to protect most people....we need to better understand how this chemical affects brain development in fetuses and children," Dr. Robert A. Goyer, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in a press release.

The committee's report estimates that 60,000 children may be born in the US each year with neurologic problems due to exposure to methylmercury in utero. An EPA spokesperson told Reuters Health that this "is unacceptable." However, the agency representative maintained that the report "strongly confirms the protective level that EPA uses," which is a threshold of 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day.

There is evidence to suggest that methylmercury also may affect the cardiovascular and immune systems, the report notes. The possibility of damage to these systems during prenatal exposure "is of some concern," committee member Dr. David C. Bellinger of Harvard Medical School told Reuters Health. "The committee would like to see additional research focused on this," he said.

Dr. Bellinger noted that the committee's findings support the level set by the EPA. As for whether the report could result in a lowering of the exposure threshold level for pregnant women, he said that that "is really a policy call."

The report calls for additional research in several areas in relation to methylmercury exposure. Dr. Goyer suggested that "trends in methylmercury exposure including regional differences should be analyzed, as should subpopulations whose diets are high in fish and seafood."

The committee's report requests further investigation into the carcinogenic, reproductive and immunologic effects of life-long exposure to low-dose methylmercury. It also calls for more research on individual variance, such as genetic makeup, age, sex, health and nutrition, that may affect response to exposure.

Dental fillings are a source of mercury that "needs to be looked at more closely," Dr. Bellinger said. There is a "fair bit of evidence that the level of mercury in fillings could be substantial for some people," he added. In conjunction with the mercury exposure obtained by consuming fish, dental fillings may be associated with adverse events, he said.

In regard to how the report will affect the EPA's decision to control mercury emission from the largest source of mercury air pollution in the US, coal-fired power plants, as it is required to do under the Clean Air Act, the agency spokesperson would only say that it will make that decision by the end of the year.

The EPA representative noted that "the Clinton-Gore administration already has taken several major actions to significantly reduce mercury releases into the environment, including controls on municipal waste combustors and hazardous waste and medical waste incinerators."

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Mercury Fact Sheet

Source:
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts46.html
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

This fact sheet answers the most frequently asked health questions about mercury. For more information, you may call the ATSDR Information Center at 1-888-422-8737. This fact sheet is one in a series of summaries about hazardous substances and their health effects. This information is important because this substance may harm you. The effects of exposure to any hazardous substance depend on the dose, the duration, how you are exposed, personal traits and habits, and whether other chemicals are present.

HIGHLIGHTS: Exposure to mercury occurs from breathing contaminated air, ingesting contaminated water and food, and having dental and medical treatments. Mercury, at high levels, may damage the brain, kidneys, and developing fetus. This chemical has been found in at least 714 of 1,467 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency.

What is mercury?

Mercury is a naturally occurring metal which has several forms. The metallic mercury is a shiny, silver-white, odorless liquid. If heated, it is a colorless, odorless gas.

Mercury combines with other elements, such as chlorine, sulfur, or oxygen, to form inorganic mercury compounds or "salts," which are usually white powders or crystals. Mercury also combines with carbon to make organic mercury compounds. The most common one, methylmercury, is produced mainly by small organisms in the water and soil. More mercury in the environment can increase the levels of methylmercury that these small organisms make.

Metallic mercury is used to produce chlorine gas and caustic soda and also used in thermometers, dental fillings, and batteries. Mercury salts are used in skin-lightening creams and as antiseptic creams and ointments.

What happens to mercury when it enters the environment?

Inorganic mercury (metallic mercury and inorganic mercury compounds) enters the air from mining ore deposits, burning coal and waste, and from manufacturing plants. It enters the water or soil from natural deposits, disposal of wastes, and volcanic activity. Methylmercury may be formed in water and soil by small organisms called bacteria. Methylmercury builds up in the tissues of fish. Larger and older fish tend to have the highest levels of mercury.

How might I be exposed to mercury?

Eating fish or shellfish contaminated with methylmercury. Breathing vapors in air from spills, incinerators, and industries that burn mercury-containing fuels. Release of mercury from dental work and medical treatments. Breathing contaminated workplace air or skin contact during use in the workplace (dental, health services, chemical, and other industries that use mercury).

Practicing rituals that include mercury.

How can mercury affect my health?

The nervous system is very sensitive to all forms of mercury.Methylmercury and metal vapors are more harmful than other forms, because more mercury in these forms reaches the brain. Exposure to high levels of metallic, inorganic, or organic mercury can permanently damage the brain, kidneys,and developing fetus. Effects on brain functioning may result in irritability, shyness, tremors, changes in vision or hearing, and memory problems.

Short-term exposure to high levels of metallic mercury vapors may cause effects including lung damage, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, increases in blood pressure or heart rate, skin rashes, and eye irritation.

How likely is mercury to cause cancer?

There are inadequate human cancer data available for all forms of mercury. Mercuric chloride has caused increases in several types of tumors in rats and mice, while methylmercury increased kidney tumors in male mice. The EPA has determined that mercuric chloride and methyl mercury are possible human carcinogens.

How can mercury affect children?

Very young children are more sensitive to mercury than adults. Mercury in the mother's body passes to the fetus and can pass to a nursing infant through breast milk. However, the benefits of breast feeding may be greater than the possible adverse effects of mercury in breast milk.

Mercury's harmful effects that may be passed from the mother to the developing fetus include brain damage, mental retardation, and incoordination, blindness, seizures, and an inability to speak. Children poisoned by mercury may develop problems of their nervous and digestive systems and kidney damage.

How can families reduce the risk of exposure to mercury?

Carefully handle and dispose of products that contain mercury, such as thermometers or fluorescent light bulbs. Do not vacuum up spilled mercury, because it will vaporize and increase exposure. If a large amount of mercury has been spilled, contact your health department.
Teach children not to play with shiny, silver liquids.
Properly dispose of older medicines that contain mercury. Keep all mercury-containing medicines away from children.

Pregnant women and children should keep away from rooms where liquid mercury has been used.

Learn about wildlife and fish advisories in your area from your public health or natural resources department.

Is there a medical test to show whether I've been exposed to mercury?

Tests are available to measure mercury levels in the body. Blood or urine samples are used to test for exposure to metallic mercury and to inorganic forms of mercury. Mercury in whole blood or in scalp hair is measured to determine exposure to methylmercury. Your doctor can take samples and send them to a testing laboratory.

Has the federal government made recommendations to protect human health?

The EPA has set a limit of 2 parts of mercury per billion parts of drinking water (2 ppb).

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set a maximum permissible level of 1 part of methylmercury in a million parts of seafood (1 ppm).

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set limits of 0.1 milligram of organic mercury per cubic meter of workplace air (0.1 mg/m³) and 0.05 mg/m³ of metallic mercury vapor for 8-hour shifts and 40-hour work weeks.

Source of Information
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). 1999. Toxicological profile for mercury. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service.

Animal testing is sometimes necessary to find out how toxic substances might harm people and how to treat people who have been exposed. Laws today protect the welfare of research animals and scientists must follow strict guidelines.

Where can I get more information?
ATSDR can tell you where to find occupational and environmental health clinics. Their specialists can recognize, evaluate, and treat illnesses resulting from exposure to hazardous substances. You can also contact your community or state health or environmental quality department if you have any more questions or concerns.

For more information, contact:

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Division of Toxicology
1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop E-29
Atlanta, GA 30333
Phone: 1-888-422-8737
FAX: 404-639-6359

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Public Health Service
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

Autism-Mercury support/discussion list at Yahoo Groups. A great support list that discusses current issues related to the increasing incidence of autism and the potential link between excessive mercury exposure via thimerosal in infant vaccines. Click anywhere on this text to send an e-mail to the moderator to request subscription.

"Is the astonishing rise in autism a medical mystery or a pharmaceutical shame?"

By Lesli Mitchell (August 02, 2000)

As an Internet project manager in telecommunications,I am familiar with the symbiotic business relationship of industry and government. I understand the dynamics of profit, getting new products to market as quickly as possible, negotiating "value-added" partnerships, and above all the potential for ethics to be sublimated to the bottom line.

As a mother, I didn't want to believe that the same business practices applied in medicine, because that would have meant accepting the possibility that my child was perceived first and foremost as a target market. A new mother is particularly vulnerable, and most of us harbor a trust bordering on reverence for the medical community, believing its members to be omniscient and above reproach.

When I held my baby in my arms for the first time and understood the magnitude of my responsibility, my faith in medicine translated into an implicit contract with my doctor: My job is to love him; your job is to keep him well.

And my baby was well, at least until 1998, when, at 2 years old, he was diagnosed with autism. When I read statistics from the Department of Education that said autism in school-age children had increased 556 percent in five years, skyrocketing past any other disability, I was shocked and horrified. But I trusted what my doctors told me: that the increase was due to better diagnostic skills, not to any real increase in autism.

It took two years for that trust to erode, chipped away by increasing evidence that business motives had mandated my child's health. I learned that congressional investigations were underway into key members of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control who vote on U.S. immunization policy despite a web of conflicts of interest: panel members who owned stock in vaccine makers, received research grants from those companies or even owned vaccine patents themselves.

I found out that vaccines given to my child had unsafe amounts of mercury, contained in the preservative thimerosal: a fact that led to the introduction this year of new "thimerosal-free" vaccines. I learned that last year a rotavirus vaccine was rushed to market too soon, without enough research, and had to be suspended by federal health officials because children were experiencing life-threatening bowel obstructions.

But it was during a conference this June that I crossed over to the other side, from conventional mom to vaccine-reform advocate, and began sounding more and more like Mulder in "The X-Files," saying to anyone who would listen, "The truth is out there."

At an autism conference in Irvine, Calif., I heard the first theory that made sense to me intuitively, not just about autism but about other children who were sick, children I could see around me every day, children of my friends, the "typical" children who shared my son's classroom. Respected doctors and researchers presented evidence that the rise in autism over the past decade was related to immune system impairment, part of a spectrum of other childhood illnesses on the rise such as allergies, asthma, ADHD, learning disabilities and seizure disorders.

What was causing the immune system to turn against itself? The research was pointing to bombardment by multiple vaccines that overwhelmed the immature immune systems of infants and toddlers.

My son Connor was a perfect baby, the kind you see in commercials: engaging,happy, angelic. I had a normal delivery after a pitocin-and-epidural labor, and Connor scored a 9 on his Apgar, nursed vigorously, never had colic, smiled early and even laughed in his sleep at six weeks old. We figured we were doing everything right. When he got sick with his first ear infection at three months -- the first of many to come -- we did what most parents do: We relied completely on his doctor for treatment.

The American Academy of Pediatrics cautions against vaccinating children who are sick. I didn't know this policy at the time, and apparently neither did anyone in the doctor's office, because I was never told about it. What I did know was that he was supposed to get 33 vaccines before he started school, many of them simultaneously. My refrigerator magnet "freebie" of the vaccination schedule, included along with my complimentary diaper bag and free formula from the hospital, showed that he would be receiving as many as eight vaccines at the same time: combined measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), combined diptheria, tetanus, pertussis (DPT), polio and haemophilus influenzae type B. It seemed like a lot at one time, but I was simply grateful that the combination vaccines meant he would have fewer overall injections.

The ear infection and vaccination pattern continued unabated during Connor's infancy and into his toddler months. His reactions to vaccines ranged from nothing to crankiness to occasional fevers. All of these reactions were considered normal, and all of them passed within a day. The ear infections became harder to treat over time, as if Connor's system was building up an immunity to the frequent antibiotics.

One day in June of 1998 I noticed that his left ear was pushed out from his head. I had no idea what it meant but I took him to the doctor. Despite being on antibiotics, his latest ear infection had progressed into mastoiditis and he was rushed to the emergency room to get tubes in his ears that same day. The ear infections ceased. But an illness remained with him that was far worse than we had ever anticipated.

Much of his first year had been a period of triumphs. I marked his skills in my dog-eared copy of "What To Expect Your First Year," noting with satisfaction that he was hitting all of his milestones early. I could see that he was a sharp kid, alert to the world around him, and I was proud of his precocious awareness. This ability to focus extended to people as well -- he was compassionate and gentle in his temperament, possessing an unusual insight into the moods of the people around him. I honestly believed he showed early gifts of self-awareness and sensitivity to others.

Around his first birthday everything began to change. Connor regressed in his social behavior and speech and seemed to lose ground on all of his milestones. We had trouble getting his attention. We would call his name over and over again and finally had to look him in the face to get a response. At his birthday party, he was more interested in his balloons, ribbons and boxes than his new toys or the people celebrating around him. He would play with his toys repetitively and in unusual ways, like flipping over his bubble lawn mower to spin the wheels or rolling objects down a ramp for 30 minutes straight. Family members commented jovially that he might be a physics or engineering prodigy, already testing objects to see how they performed.

But when his language started to deteriorate, we lost any hope for his Nobel Prize and wanted desperately for him just to act normal. At 22 months he was mute; instead of pointing or naming things, he would lead one of us by the hand and place it on the thing he wanted. He preferred to watch the same video of "Thomas the Tank Engine" all day long rather than play with us. When people came over to our house he was shy, more than shy -- he would run away and hide -- and if we forced him out he would throw his body to the ground and scream.

I could see that the core of his real personality was still there, but I could only bring it out in him when he was totally at ease, which meant without distractions or interruptions in his routine. Even his diet changed for the worse. He would only eat about five foods -- crackers, Cheerios, McDonald's French fries, chips and cookies.

Time to take Connor back to the doctor, I thought. He'll know. He'll confirm my mom's intuition that something is very wrong. But he didn't. "He used to talk and now he's quit talking."

"Well, he's been sick from the ear infections. Have you considered having his hearing tested?"

"Yes, we thought of that. His hearing is normal. I'm also worried that he's only eating a few foods, and he's not getting any vegetables and fruits anymore."

The doctor laughed. "My kids are extremely picky, too. As long as his weight is OK -- looks like he's in the 80th percentile -- I wouldn't worry about it. Toddlers are very finicky. As long as he's getting a multivitamin he's getting everything he needs."

Meanwhile Connor is flapping his arms and spinning in circles. I watched for a while. "So he's OK?"

My doctor's forte was reassuring worried moms. "Of course. He's fine. Let's see him again in a month and make sure his weight is on target."

As it turned out we didn't see the doctor again for a few months. By that time Connor's day care staff had evaluated his development and determined that he was autistic.

Months earlier, when we hadn't suspected any problems, I had enrolled Connor part-time in a day care program that mixed typical kids and special needs kids. My mother was physically disabled, and I wanted Connor to grow up in an environment that didn't exclude the handicapped. As it turned out the decision was a blessing -- the staff therapists had seen plenty of autistic kids, unlike my doctor, who had never seen even one (and who admitted humbly, later, that he only got three days of education on autism in med school). But the day care staff was able to diagnose him earlier than many kids with the same condition, which was probably the key to Connor's eventual progress.

I remember very clearly my first reaction to the label of autism: "But my kid's not Rain Man." And he wasn't. When I started reading I found out the real statistics on autism, and they were scary. There was a new crop of kids who had what many called "acquired autism." Unlike Dustin Hoffman's character, the kids progressed normally until their second year and during that period lost any accumulated skills and socially retreated from people.

The late-onset kids made the current genetic theory suspect -- if the cause was inborn, the kids would never have gained ground in the first place. Plus, the rate of these kids was staggering: In 10 years the incidence of autism had increased from one child in 10,000 to one child in 500. No one was sure why.

So I continued to go to doctors -- immunologists to help me understand why Connor's mosquito bites took six weeks to heal; neurologists to explain why his IQ was so low it couldn't be measured; allergists to tell me why his cheeks and ears got red when he ate certain foods; gastroenterologists to relieve his constipation. Over and over again I was told that the outlook for autistic kids was grim, there was no treatment available for his symptoms, that perhaps I should consider putting him (and myself) on Prozac to help with his behavior.

Frustrated by the lack of sympathy and knowledge in the medical community, I networked with parents on the Internet and read as much as I could on my own. I decided to focus on cures instead of causes. Some parents had actually been able to "recover" their children with behavioral therapy, or ABA. This therapy used a one-on-one approach to teach autistic kids how to interact in the world, to talk, to socialize, to learn academic concepts, to regain the skills they had lost or never developed. We started within weeks of Connor's diagnosis. In my heart and in my prayers I asked for one thing: Please, please let him say "mama" to me again.

And, amazingly, he did progress. One of Connor's doctors, who had seen the results of the therapy with her own eyes, agreed to write a prescription for this treatment, and I sent it along with my claims to the medical insurer. The claim was denied because the therapy was considered educational." We continued to spend around $2,000 every month on behavioral treatment anyway. It was the only thing that was working.

Within a year Connor began talking again, regaining his old words first: mama (Yes!), daddy, cookie, no. Then he had a cognitive leap when language finally seemed to "click," and he was off and running. He sought out adults and other children to talk to and play games with, caught up to age level in comprehension, bypassed his classmates in academics, and even developed a sense of humor (he renamed Carnotaurs from Disney's "Dinosaur" movie to "Connor-taurs").

In March of this year he finally lost his autism label, after a year and a half (at 25 hours per week) of intensive ABA. His speech was still a year behind, but it was appropriate, and his therapists predicted that by the time he started first grade he would have the same basic skills as his peers. I breathed my first tentative sigh of relief -- he had a chance of living a normal life.

It was only then that I began to focus attention back to the cause of Connor's condition, and listened with interest to the congressional hearings on autism in April, spurred by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the Committee on Government Reform. Burton had almost lost his granddaughter to anaphylactic shock after her DPT vaccination, and lost his grandson to autism within a week of the child's receiving 11 vaccines administered in a single office visit.

I read the media coverage, too, most of it from medical professionals who pitied Burton's situation, but tended to dismiss him with red herrings, "out-sensationalizing" Burton with claims that not vaccinating children would lead to outbreaks of life-threatening diseases. (A recent Newsweek story does this too, ending on the note: "Autism aside, the measles virus can kill.")

But Burton wasn't interested in eradicating the vaccine program, just in getting some answers about the rise in autism. He asked CDC representatives about their investigations of the Brick, N.J., township where the autism rate was dramatically higher even than the rising national average. He wondered aloud about California Department of Developmental Services statistics, now replicated in many states, that reported a 273 percent increase in autistic kids in the school districts.

Autism was an epidemic, Burton insisted to the CDC. What are you doing about it?

The vaccination issue had come up many times in online chats about autism, but I didn't think it applied to me. Unlike many autistic kids, Connor was not whisked away to the emergency room after his MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccination for seizures; he didn't "turn" autistic within hours of his DPT. He had a few mild reactions, nothing more.

But I didn't discount the parents' claims: I knew these parents personally and respected their judgment. Many were doctors or research professionals themselves. The only thing that connected a lot of us was a common history of chronic infections, mainly ear infections, and consistent doses of antibiotics.

I decided to attend a conference on autism and learn more about the biological research.

Before I left I went through Connor's photo album. I did this soon after he was diagnosed, but perhaps I was too close to him and too ignorant of autism to recognize dramatic changes. This time, I saw it: Connor at 11 months, smiling for the camera, looking into his daddy's eyes, touching his mommy's hair. Connor on his first birthday, after his morning visit to the doctor's office and MMR vaccination, no longer looking at anyone, no longer smiling. And perhaps the most revealing picture: Connor walking on his toes, one of the most common behaviors in autism. Within a day he had changed.

The conference speakers presented the theory that autism was part of a spectrum of related immune disorders on the rise in children. The immune dysfunction in the body was triggered by reactions to multiple vaccines, either an ingredient in the vaccines themselves or the accumulated damage of multiple vaccines to the immune system. The body reacted by attacking its own cells, an "auto-immune" response, with reactions in the body ranging from mild allergies and behavioral changes to severe neurological damage such as autism and seizure disorders.

This evidence made a lot of sense to me because I was seeing these kids with my own eyes everyday -- friends of mine whose kids were prone to severe allergies, asthma, attention and learning problems, all with no family history. When I was growing up, there was always one kid in the classroom who was allergic to eggs, who had circles under his eyes and pale skin. I never saw an autistic kid at all. Now I look around and see sick kids everywhere.

Dr. Andy Wakefield's presentation was particularly compelling. A respected gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he had been minding his own business studying inflammatory bowel disease and Crone's disease when he encountered something very curious that he hadn't seen before. When he tested the growing number of autistic children who had come in with bowel problems, he noticed that their GI systems were damaged as if they'd been diseased for years.

Wakefield listened to parents about the late onset of symptoms, the similar stories of regression and the parents' belief that vaccine damage may have caused the problem. When he ran more tests on the children he found measles virus in their GI tracts, where it wasn't supposed to be. He published preliminary findings in a respected British medical journal, the Lancet, and immediately came under fire from colleagues in the U.S. and UK.

As I listened to the evidence Wakefield had gathered, I looked around at the other parents. There was no commonality among us -- we were of all races and ethnic backgrounds and geographically spread out. A few of us had a genetic history of autism or allergies but most of us didn't.

If you controlled for all of these factors, what common link was there? Controlling for genetics, allergy histories in families and environmental toxins from varied geography, there was only one candidate left that applied to all of us -- a mandated vaccine program. Industrialized countries like the U.S., the UK and Canada were experiencing this tremendous rise in autism and other neurological disorders. And these were the same countries where modern medicine flourished.

Interestingly, Japan didn't figure among the other countries' high increase, and had withdrawn the MMR in 1993 because of concerns about adverse reactions. I started to become uneasy.

"I'm going to ask everyone a question," said the conference host after Wakefield's talk. "How many of you here believe your children have been damaged by vaccines?"

Seventy-five percent of the attendees stood up and raised their hands. One woman a few rows behind me was crying, and I knew intuitively that her faith in the medical establishment had finally crumbled. Her suffering was genuine; she sobbed quietly. When I looked back, she was embarrassed, covering her face with her hand.

But I was moved by her anguish, her private suffering, and I relived for a moment my own struggles since Connor's diagnosis. The long nights of guilt I felt as a mother, constantly wondering what I had done wrong to give him autism; the long days of research to find a cure -- the doctors told me to put him in an institution, but I wasn't going to leave him; the countless doctor visits and tests Connor bravely endured without understanding why he was hurting or receiving little relief.

And finally -- unsurprisingly -- I was overwhelmed with rage. I felt it building within me and it was like nothing I'd experienced before. I knew very clearly at that moment that I had crossed over to the other side, that I was convinced my son was a cash cow for an industry that tested its products in production rather than the lab, motivated by $2 billion per year in profits, no different in its potential for corruption than any other industry.

There were no higher standards in medicine than in any other business -- the rule of caveat emptor applied to vaccines as surely as it applied to any other consumer product. I could not trust the FDA and the CDC to protect me from pharmaceutical companies that wanted to get their products to market with as little testing as possible and to promote the repeated use of their products in order to maintain their monopoly under the guise of the public good.

I don't have a medical degree, but I have learned how to be a thoughtful medical consumer. Connor's up for his mandated boosters next year. I know now that he can have a simple blood test of his antibody titers, which measures his antibodies and confirms that he has the protection he needs against disease. I had the blood test done and he's protected.

There's no medical exemption from these boosters in my state for "sufficient protection based on antibody titers," so I'll have to use a religious exemption instead. I've accepted that there is no binding contract between me and the agencies and companies that purport to protect my child. But my bond with Connor remains, my responsibility as his mother expanding to include advocacy -- even activism -- along with love.

About the writer ~ Lesli Mitchell is a writer and editor who specializes in education and technology. Her children's book about autism, "Party Train!," will be published in September by DRL Press.


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Please click on any of the text below to reach the website described.

Autism:Treatments ~ Chelation of Mercury by Amy S. Holmes, M.D.

"Autism and Mercury " - by Tim O'Shea,DC - This article is excerpted from Dr. O'Shea's revised edition of The Sanctity of Human Blood.

Investigate the Autism-Mercury-Thimerosal Connection

Autism and Mercury Coincidence or Cause and Effect?

Is Mercury Toxicity an Autoimmune Disorder?

Mercury has been a known poison for centuries. Toxic levels of mercury can cause or exacerbate autoimmune diseases, infections, unexplained chronic fatigue, depression, nerve impairment, memory problems, decreased mental clarity, bowel disorders, and many other problems that are seemingly unrelated. With laboratory testing and a thorough history and physical examination, experienced health care professionals can detect harmful mercury levels and formulate a plan of detoxification.

Mercury Exposure believes that the uncontrolled use of mercury and lack of awareness and proper diagnosis and testing is cause for concern and threaten stability.

Mercury in Drug and Biologic Products

Mercury in Vaccines.....What We Know

Safe Minds ~ The content in this web site focuses on the hypothesis that there is a link between mercury and autism as well as other neurological disorders such as attention deficit disorder, language delay, and learning difficulties.

Links on Vaccines

Anthrax: The Disease and The Vaccine

Chickenpox Vaccine & Disease Information

DPT Vaccine Information

MMR Vaccine

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is a national, non-profit educational organization founded in 1982. It is the oldest and largest national organization advocating reformation of the mass vaccination system and is responsible for launching the vaccine safety movement in America in the early 1980s. They provide assistance to parents whose children have suffered vaccine reactions; promote research to evaluate vaccine safety and effectiveness as well as to identify factors which place individuals at high risk for suffering vaccine reactions; and monitors vaccine research, development, policy making and legislation.

Latest Vaccine News from Yahoo News

The Vaccine Page ~ provides access to up-to-the-minute news about vaccines and an annotated database of vaccine resources on the Internet.

Vaccination Liberation is a national association dedicated to providing information on vaccinations not often made available to the public so that one can make an informed choice.

How to get a hair test, with or without a cooperative doctor and more.

Hair Test Interpretation: Finding Hidden Toxicities By Andrew Hall Cutler, Ph. D., P. E.

A Bio-Medical Treatment Approach to Autism Spectrum Disorder, Including Heavy Metal Detoxification By JAQUELYN McCANDLESS, M.D.

Great Plains Laboratory - Getting tested.

Order a Hair Test to Verify Your Toxic Levels

Hair Test Kit Info