“Conclusive” vaccination study?

This is regarding the study that came out that supposedly found no link between autism and the MMR vaccine. No wonder there were so many news stories about parents who don’t vaccinate against measles a couple of weeks ago! This is a classic set-up. I’ll bet “they” hope it reassures the questioning sheeple that all is well in Vaccine Land.

Source: TampaBay10.com.

St. Petersburg, Florida—A local pediatrician, who treats many young patients with autism, is speaking out against a new government study on childhood MMR vaccinations.

The Centers for Disease Control released a new study, claiming there is no link between the combination Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism nor gastrointestinal disorders.

While several researchers said this study is “conclusive” proof that there is no link, Tampa pediatrician, Dr. David Berger says the study is too small (38 children) to make that claim and not comprehensive enough to give parents 100 percent assurance.

Dr. Berger says larger, longterm studies are needed.

The Tampa board certified pediatrician advises parents to separate the live combination virus vaccine so they can tell if their child has had an allergic reaction to any of the vaccines. That will help parents when it comes time to give kids their MMR booster shot around kindergarten.

Dr. Berger says he uses the same cautious approach when it comes to introducing new foods to kids, try one at a time.

Many parents of autistic kids and advocacy groups suspect that combination MMR vaccine may have triggered their child’s GI (gastrointestinal) disease and autism, but there are no longterm studies to support that claim.

Watch Heather’s story on “Why some Bay area parents are separating combination MMR vaccines.”

Click here to find a pediatrician or location that will separate vaccines.

Here is Dr. David Berger’s online interview:

-What is your reaction to this study?

If this study was done in an attempt to try and replicate the original research that was done by Dr. Wakefield, the researchers completely missed the point.

Dr. Wakefield specifically looked at children- who had developed symptoms of both autism and intestinal abnormalities after receiving the MMR vaccine, and in those particular patients he was able to identify the presence of the measles virus.

In this current study 80% of the patient’st had abnormal gastrointestinal symptoms prior to receiving MMR.

-Do you agree this study is conclusive of no link?

It is not possible for a study such as this to be conclusive . There was a small sample size, for one thing. I guess that one could conclude that the evidence from the study shows that the small group of children studied who have abnormal intestinal symptoms prior to getting the vaccine do not show evidence of measles in the intestinal tract, but I think it would be reaching to go further than that .

-Does this put the controversy to rest?

Absolutely not.

-What are your concerns about this study?

As stated above.

Also, this study is only looking for presence of the measles virus itself. We know that there are immunological changes that occur when a person is injected with a virus which is different than what happens when a virus is either inhaled or ingested. These immunological changes may persist, and it can be independent of the virus itself persisting.

-What are you advising cautious parents to do?

Follow their instincts

-The government claims there are many studies proving no link and combination MMR is safe. Do you believe these studies are adequate?

I do not.

-What type of study is needed?

Someone needs to replicate Dr. Wakefield study done in the exact same manner that he did.

Drugs.com Lists “Autism” as Known Adverse Reaction to DTaP Vaccine Tripedia

From Adventures in Autism:

In Drugs.com’s “A to Z Drug Facts” section the entry on Diphtheria / Tetanus Toxoids / Acellular Pertussis Vaccine contains the following Central Nervous System Adverse reactions for Sanofi Pasteur’s Tripedia:

“Tripedia
Drowsiness (29%); irritability (25%); anorexia (10%); fussiness (6%); autism, convulsion, encephalopathy, grand mal convulsion, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence (postmarketing).”

Hats off to Drugs.com for actually providing informed consent to consumers. To my knowledge they are the first to do it.

HT: Allison Chapman

Paul Offit: WHY IS ANYONE TAKING THIS GUY SERIOUSLY?

I hope I’ll have the time to listen to the mp3 file of the teleconference for pediatricians sponsored by the Pennsylvania Immunization Education Program; the link is below.

Source: Wade Rankin, Injecting Sense.

Before I joined the corporate world, I spent many years as a litigator. One of my most frustrating experiences in the courtroom came when a judge (who was well past his prime) allowed the other side’s expert testify in technical areas well beyond his expertise. I have much the same reaction whenever I hear Paul Offit speak.

Dr. Offit, of course, is a specialist in infectious diseases. My understanding is that he does not have a private practice. Indeed, he would have almost no time for it. He spends his time working on the development of new vaccines, acting as a spokesman for the vaccine industry, writing books, and generally holding himself out as an expert in a variety of fields regardless of any expertise he may have in those fields.

Reportedly, he is presently at work on a book about autism, although I doubt he has ever treated a single patient for autism. And without really understanding what autism is, does he really have the qualifications to expound on what may trigger ASD?

Of course, Doc O has never let a little thing like lack of qualifications stop him before. It is his repeated pronouncements on the deficiency of the American legal system ⎯ an area I know a little about ⎯ that drives me crazy.

Doc O recently presented at a teleconference for pediatricians sponsored by the Pennsylvania Immunization Education Program. It’s now available on-line. The subject was how to reassure parents that they should continue to rigidly adhere to the official vaccine schedule in the post-Poling era.

Although he spent time discussing his opinions on the theoretical dangers of the number of vaccines (or in Offit’s opinion, the absence of any potential danger at all), most of the presentation was devoted to a hysterical rant about the manner in which the legal system deals with cases alleging vaccine damage.

Keep in mind that Doc O was speaking as an expert in public policy and the legal system, yet he insisted on parading his ignorance of that system by continually referring to the “decision” made by “the court” in the Poling matter. There was no decision by the court; there was a concession by the attorneys representing the government (i.e., the defense), which has paved the way for the Poling family to recover damages (an award has not yet been determined). Offit repeated that mischaracterization of what happened several times, to the point of specifically criticizing the special masters (attorneys appointed by the Court of Claims to hear the matter in much the same way as a judge does and to make findings of fact). Finally, when the floor was opened for questions, one of the doctors listening corrected Doc O, the “expert” brushed aside the distinction as mere “legal language” and pronounced that it was a “decision” because they had to decide to concede. Huh?!?!

Offit believes the vaccine compensation system once served a purpose, but has now gone into dangerous turf because the court is having to address claims that do not fit neatly into the vaccine compensation injury table. Parenthetically, I have to admit to getting the giggles when I heard Doc O extol the virtues of the table, which in his own words, “includes injuries, which clearly have been shown either biologically or epidemiologically to be caused by vaccines.” In criticizing the hypothesis of a vaccine connection to ASD, Offit has relied almost exclusively on epidemiology, especially since the mounting biological evidence does not support his beliefs.

In any event, Doc O’s thesis is that we shouldn’t have lawyers making medical decisions. Indeed, there is always a danger of empowering courts of law to determine broad scientific or technical issues. Nobody should believe that the issue will be decided simply because a legal decision is made. The only thing that can happen is that the court will attempt (or not, if one remains skeptical) to reach a just decision based on an understanding of the present state of scientific knowledge. The court’s understanding, of course, may be right or wrong.

The answer, though, is not to take the decision-making power away from the courts. That is the answer Paul Offit clearly wants: to take the issue away from courts of law altogether, and hand such cases over to some kind of body run by the mainstream medical community. That solution puts us on the slippery slope of removing the power entrusted by the founding fathers to the judiciary simply because the subject matter is technical.

There is no doubt that the system is a mess. By mandating the filing of claims within a short temporal window, we are seeing the Court of Claims trying to make sense of a scientific question that is far from settled. There s no easy solution. The interests of potential claimants, dealing with a relatively short period of limitations, have to be balanced against the interest of potential defendants (the industry and/or the Vaccine Compensation Fund) in a reasonably certain period in which they must face liability. But Dr. Offit advocates a lack of balance.

The debate as to how we fix the system is legitimate, and it is important. All interested parties deserve to be heard, but having a spokesman like Paul Offit does nothing to foster a reasonable discussion.

Dr. Offit, in addition to apparently not understanding the most fundamental aspects of the legal system (i.e., the difference between advocates and the finders of fact), continually resorts to utilizing the plaintiffs’ bar as a bogeyman to scare the bejeesus out of us all. He’s done it before in his well-accepted (an acceptance I don’t understand) book on the “Cutter Incident,” in which he deconstructs a very bad court decision from a few decades ago, and then waves it around as a cautionary tale while ignoring some very real corrections the courts took upon themselves.

He’s still using the same scare tactics. In the recent presentation to the pediatricians in Pennsylvania, Doc O said one of the dangers of the Poling “decision” is that personal injury lawyers will now be alerted ” to an area that might become “lucrative,” and they’ll take their claims to state courts.

Now, I am not a big fan of the plaintiffs’ bar. I’ve spent my professional life fighting those guys. I think I know pretty well what motivates them, and they’re not going to see a defense concession in a single case as being a green light on the road to riches. Those guys want easier pickings with a lot less waiting time. That’s why the vast majority of plaintiff lawyers who jumped on the bandwagon jumped off a long time ago.

But using scare tactics and misrepresenting his opponent’s position is what Paul Offit does best. He is finally acknowledging that the debate is broader than just the MMR or just thimerosal. But he does so by sneering about “shifting hypotheses.” Maybe I’m just a layman when it comes to science, but I thought the entire idea was to keep exploring until you find the truth. What we seem to be finding is that neither the MMR hypothesis nor the thimerosal hypothesis were wrong per se, but neither were right in an of themselves. Both appear to be part of a broader process that we are only starting to understand. Understanding the problem, however, may not be in Paul Offit’s interest.

My overriding interest in this question is the health and wellbeing of my son. That interest dictates that I constantly reexamine the validity of what I believe the truth to be, so that I may help my child. Paul Offit’s interest in seeing that the status quo is not disturbed seems to be a very curious approach for someone who constantly preaches science and the scientific method. Science, like the law, is not meant to be static. Our understanding must evolve as we continue to learn.

In a casual conversation, a pediatrician once told us that he really didn’t have the time to take a good look at issues like the potential connection between vaccination and the triggering of autism. Rather, he simply adopted the position of the AAP as a default. And that’s the same attitude demonstrated by some of the doctors who asked participated in the recent Pennsylvania teleconference. They wanted to know when they could get a “tear sheet” of talking points. One pediatrician bemoaned having to spend five minutes of uncompensated time whenever she was asked questions about vaccine safety. She said that Offit’s argument s would be convincing to “intelligent parents,” a comment which triggered a sarcastic, “yeah, good luck” from Doc O.

That’s the arrogance of Paul Offit. He refuses to use the words “intelligent” and “parents” in the same sentence. He refuses to acknowledge that lawyers and other laypersons are capable of understanding scientific explanations that come forth in a court of law. He refuses to acknowledge that he may not have a monopoly on “the truth.”

Paul Offit is an expert in the field of infectious diseases. Although one may disagree with his opinions in that field, he certainly deserves a respectful listen when he speaks on issues relating to his specialty. He is woefully ignorant, however, about autism, and he has demonstrated repeatedly a complete lack of understanding about the American legal system (which one would think is a lot easier to understand than infectious diseases). Why is it that he continually speaks as an expert on the issues he is least qualified to address.? Why is anyone taking this guy seriously?

ADDENDUM:

After drafting this post, I found out that Paul Offit will be on a panel for the 2008 US Court of Federal Claims Judicial Conference. The session is entitled “Vaccine Compensation Under the Act: A Mix of Science and Policy?,” and it appears that Offit will be the only physician to participate. Could the conference coordinator not have done better?

Vaccines: “A Timely Truth Untold… Again”

Yep, that Time mag. article on vaccines was lame, but pretty much what you’d expect from the lamestream media.

ETA: Just found an excellent blog post about the Time’s article. Here’s the first few paragraphs:

Debunking vaccine propaganda: Part I

Let me preface this by saying: why on earth does anyone read the flagship publication of a corporate giant like Time-Warner– i.e. Time magazine? As if these rich business titans don’t have any agenda? Ha! And furthermore, why expose oneself to a known participant in Operation Mockingbird and all its successors at the CIA? Might as well read Pravda.

Time’s June 2 issue has a cover story on vaccines which is a masterpiece of propaganda. I wasn’t going to read it, in defense of my blood pressure and adrenal glands, but my husband talked me into it. “I already know what it’ll say,” I argued. “No no, it’s much worse than you can even imagine,” he assured me. “You’ve got to see it to believe it.”

So true. Right off the bat you have a picture of a baby about to be vaccinated, with the caption “Six-week-old Gavin Hubbard of New Hampshire bravely faces his series of five immunizations in the comforting grasp of Mom.” Give me a break! A 6-week old baby does not “bravely face” anything; this happy little guy is entirely unaware that he is about to receive 5 injections containing 14 weakened pathogens, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, animal tissues, neomycin (not to be used internally– ha ha!), MSG, and god knows what else. If he was circumcised he is likely to experience PTSD-like symptoms such as emotional withdrawal and uncontrollable crying, based on observational studies comparing circumcised and intact boys during immunization. And he is not “in the comforting grasp of Mom”; rather, Mom is helping to hold him down so the nurse can get all five needles into his thighs.

LOL! For some reason, those kinds of fine details seem to escape the notice of dutiful vax-jabbing, prick-mutilating parents. Whoo! Fun times ahead for THOSE kids.

***************************

By Deirdre Imus, Huffington Post.

This week Time magazine’s cover story “The Truth About Vaccines” carries an ominous suggestion… “worried about autism, many parents are opting out of immunizations. How they’re putting the rest of us at risk.” (June 2, 2008). Finally, a major periodical puts a spotlight on the most emotionally charged and inaccurately reported medical controversy in modern history. And what does Time do? Blame parents for a crisis in confidence created by public health officials. If you were hoping to learn the “truth” about vaccinations, you are not going to find it in this issue of Time.

In her article, “How Safe Are Vaccines?” Alice Park attempts to address growing concerns about vaccines and asks the million-dollar question that parents around the country really want to know. Unfortunately, Park’s version of the “truth” does a disservice to readers when it falls into the same trap that has plagued similar reports; gross inaccuracies, reliance on industry-funded spokesmen whose conflicts are not disclosed, and the all too familiar and constant beat of immunization dogma suggesting doomsday disease scenarios.

Those of you who have read my postings before know that I am very skeptical of both the public health officials and the mainstream media’s ability to objectively and forthrightly cover this issue. The Time article does nothing to change that opinion. If anything, it confirms it.

At the heart of Park’s report, however, is the question about parental rights. Should parents be forced to vaccinate their children given the growing concerns about vaccine safety?

For over a year now, there has been a steady stream of articles about school districts and health departments’ heavy-handed actions towards parents who choose not to vaccine their children. Intimidation tactics that included monetary fines, expulsion from school, even threats to call in child protection agencies were used to try and coerce parents into compliance with the current immunization recommendations.

In March, the New York Times ran two separate articles on the subject of parents deciding not to vaccinate their children (“More Families Are Shunning Inoculations” [March 2], “Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines” [March 21]). Other news organizations around the country ran similar stories.

Throughout the article, Park implies parents are too “confused” to do their own homework on this subject or lack the good sense to make an informed decision. In reality, parents are deciding to opt out of vaccinations because they are concerned that vaccines may put their children at risk for adverse reactions that they feel are more threatening than the diseases the vaccines are purported to prevent. Chief among these concerns is the possible association between vaccines and autism.

As the Time article details, concerns about thimerosal-containing vaccines is one of several concerns that continues to weigh on the conscience of many parents. In one sentence Ms. Park states, “Thimerosal can do serious damage to brain tissue, especially in children, whose brains are still developing” and then dismissively trivializes parental concerns about a possible link between the developmental neurotoxin and autism by saying “that link could be merely temporal, of course; babies also get their first teeth after they get their first vaccines, but that doesn’t mean one causes the other.” The absurdly of this analogy ranks with one of the most nonsensical comments I think I have ever read. This “temporal” association has been reported by literally thousands of parents across the country who have documented evidence of their normally developing child regressing into a world of silence and isolation. To consider these vaccines containing neurotoxins like mercury and aluminum, along with other toxins, would seem to be reasonable, absent any other logical explanation.

The article also inaccurately reports that thimerosal-containing vaccines were “replaced” with thimerosal-free formulas in 2001. Thimerosal-containing vaccines were not recalled as the article suggests and remained on clinic shelves well into 2003, according to government communications. In addition, the majority of flu shots, given to pregnant women and babies as young as six months, still contain 25 micrograms of thimerosal.

According to the article, “In the first four months of this year, 64 confirmed cases of measles were reported in the U.S., scattered across 11 hot spots…the most by this date for any year since 2001; 54 cases had links to other countries, an only one of the 64 patients had been vaccinated.” Interestingly, the map denoting the location where the outbreaks occurred show that in four of the 11 “hot spots” only 1 case of measles was reported and only three states had more than 10 cases.

So let’s put the reports about the recent measles outbreak into some sensible perspective.
Out of the approximately 40 million children born in the last ten years, hundreds of thousands of which are not vaccinated, there have only been 64 cases of measles reported nationwide, all of whom recovered although 14 did require hospitalization.

Now let’s compare this statistic with the one that really has parents frightened, the 1 in 150 children who have been diagnosed with autism for which the health agencies have no logical explanation.

Like other articles on this subject, Time attempts to reassure parents about the safety of vaccines based on very selective information from conflicted sources and fails to cite recent published research and independent voices that support parental concerns. Nowhere did we read about the study that suggests delaying vaccinations for just two months might reduce the risk of developing asthma by half.

The article cites a 2003 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report as showing “no scientific evidence to support the link” between vaccines and autism. Actually it was 2004, and the same report also said the committee could not rule out an association in a small susceptible sub-group of children. In addition, it has been four years since that report was released and there have been dozens of published, peer-reviewed studies to suggest there could be an association. Those studies did not make into the Time article.

Having spoken to literally thousands of moms, I know many parents are terrified of the dozens of vaccines given to babies today. They want to do what is right for their children and want to protect them from diseases. Ms. Park notes that 77% of children are fully vaccinated and therefore supposedly protected from the childhood diseases, the author fails to acknowledge that these same children are among the sickest children in the world in spite of being the most vaccinated. They may not get the chicken pox, measles or mumps but they are beleaguered with serious developmental and autoimmune disorders that last a lifetime.

This is where Time fails to really explore the reasons and the truth about why parents are opting out of vaccinations and examine the mindset behind a modern day medical dictatorship that will go to any lengths, including school expulsion and threats of taking children away from parents in order to carry out their mission.

Suggesting that the reason parents don’t vaccinate is because “the illnesses kids are being inoculated against are rarely seen anymore,” Ms. Park opines, “Once you’ve seen your neighbor’s toddler become paralyzed, you’re a lot more likely to worry that the same thing will happen to yours.” There may be some truth to this but many parents would look at this suggestion another way. Once you see your healthy, normal toddler, or your neighbor’s healthy toddler develop autism following a series of vaccinations, you are a lot more likely to worry that the same thing could happen to your child.

Parents are not “confused,” Ms. Park…they are concerned and have every reason to be concerned.

It isn’t parents that created this crisis in confidence; it is the government and medical establishment for dismissing parental concerns and failing to make vaccine safety a priority. It is Congress’ fault for failing to do proper oversight.

Parents who chose to vaccinate their children should have nothing to fear from the relatively few who are not vaccinated. But ultimately, the choice of whether or not to vaccine a child must be made by the parent who will live with the life-long consequences.

The government bears the burden of proving vaccines are safe. Not parents. And the government has not proven the number of vaccines given to children today are safe, or that injecting our babies with mercury, aluminum and formaldehyde is safe.

Former NIH Head Dr. Healy: GOV’T TOO QUICK TO DISMISS VACCINE LINK

Thank goodness for doctors like her; I was wondering how many in her position still have any integrity left.

From CBS News.

Dr. Bernadine Healy is the former head of the National Institutes of Health, and the most well-known medical voice yet to break with her colleagues on the vaccine-autism question.

In an exclusive interview with CBS News, Healy said the question is still open.

“I think that the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational,” Healy said.

“But public health officials have been saying they know, they’ve been implying to the public there’s enough evidence and they know it’s not causal,” Attkisson said.

“I think you can’t say that,” Healy said. “You can’t say that.”

Healy goes on to say public health officials have intentionally avoided researching whether subsets of children are “susceptible” to vaccine side effects – afraid the answer will scare the public.

“You’re saying that public health officials have turned their back on a viable area of research largely because they’re afraid of what might be found?” Attkisson asked.

Healy said: “There is a completely expressed concern that they don’t want to pursue a hypothesis because that hypothesis could be damaging to the public health community at large by scaring people. “First of all,” Healy said, “I think the public’s smarter than that. The public values vaccines. But more importantly, I don’t think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you’re afraid of what it might show.”

As an example, Healy points to the existing vaccine court claims.

CBS News has learned the government has paid more than 13,000 brain injury claims in vaccine court since 1988, but is not studying those cases or tracking how many of them resulted in autism.

The branch of the government that handles vaccine court told CBS News: “Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries…may ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track cases on this basis.”

“What we’re seeing in the bulk of the population: vaccines are safe,” said Healy. “But there may be this susceptible group. The fact that there is concern, that you don’t want to know that susceptible group is a real disappointment to me. If you know that susceptible group, you can save those children. If you turn your back on the notion that there is a susceptible group… what can I say?”

Government officials would not respond directly to Healy’s views… but reiterated, vaccines are safe.

How to Prevent Vaccine Injury

The best way—don’t get vaccinated. At the very least, evaluate the likelihood of your child being exposed to diseases on a case-by-case basis. Never receive more than one vaccine at a time! In addition, breastfeeding is the single most important thing a mother can do to boost her child’s immune system.

Source: Byron J. Richards, CCN, News With Views:

It is a colossal failure on the part of our government to not warn parents of the actual risks associated with vaccines. The blind insistence that vaccines are safe and effective is not supported by science, at least for a significant number of our children. There are now 25,000 children per year developing autism (1 in 150), a problem that has expanded in direct proportion to the increase in vaccinations. How do you know if your child is at risk?

The government’s primary goal appears to be to prevent parents, en masse, from refusing to vaccinate their children. To prevent such a “run on the public health bank” all caution is being recklessly thrown to the wind. American children are now the most vaccinated people in the world. What are we actually doing? The vaccination problem needs to be objectively solved so that public health is maintained, yet needless vaccine injury is avoided.

It should not be of any great comfort to parents that scientists hardly understand how the immune system works. The simplistic idea that vaccines offer protection against disease has an element of truth and a significant element of risk. This article explores the risk in greater depth. I will first explain what is known about the nature of the risk and follow with some natural options that can really help out.

Vaccine Adjuvants – A Double-Edged Sword

Giving a fully active virus as a vaccine would obviously cause the disease. On the other hand, a weakened or deadened form of the virus may not produce much of an immune response thereby making the vaccine worthless. This problem has been “solved” by combining the weakened disease with an immune activator called an adjuvant.

An adjuvant does not contain the disease; rather it is intended to initiate the first step in fighting an infection – the inflammatory response. This is like giving a general wake up call to the immune system. This can be done with an irritant or a more specific toxin the immune system is likely to recognize based on eons of exposure.

In the irritant category the most common adjuvants used in vaccines your child will get are salts of aluminum (aluminum phosphate and aluminum hydroxide). The safety of aluminum salts has been called into question following the poor health of many Gulf War Veterans who received multiple aluminum adjuvant vaccinations. Many scientists consider that their poor health was caused by the adjuvants in the vaccines they were given. In 2003 French researchers identified aluminum hydroxide vaccine adjuvants as the cause of a new disease consisting of pain and chronic fatigue; noting similarities to problems in Gulf War soldiers.

In a recent study mice were given aluminum hydroxide at doses comparable to Gulf War soldiers. Extensive testing was done of their cognitive ability as well as analysis of the nervous system upon sacrifice. The results showed that aluminum hydroxide caused nerve-related motor defects. Analysis of brain tissue showed 255% increase in inflammatory markers along with 35% loss of motor neurons.

It has been over a year since this study was published. Why isn’t the CDC doing the same experiment with the adjuvant load from their recommended vaccine schedule? Any substance that is adversely neurotoxic in an adult is likely to be more neurotoxic in the evolving nervous system of a baby. Not following up on this is gross negligence on the part of the CDC.

Another common adjuvant is bacterial endotoxin (the outer membrane of the cell wall of Gram-negative bacteria), also known as lipopolysaccharide or LPS. Since we have been battling bacteria since the beginning of our evolution, our immune systems recognize LPS as an invasion – setting off a powerful inflammatory immune system reaction. The toxicity of any bacterial infection relates to LPS.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health freely acknowledge that the proinflammatory effects of adjuvants in vaccines “underlie many of the observed toxic effects.” What the new science shows very clearly is that all the inflammation that is generated by adjuvants is actually not necessary for activating the immune response.

This means that our government is sticking by a vaccine program that relies on firing a toxic shotgun at the immune system even though they know a laser-guided approach would have much less risk of vaccine injury from direct toxicity. The problem for our government is that they don’t currently have the ability to make safer vaccines; thus they blindly defend the safety of a very crude approach and refuse to conduct tests that would easily show the current vaccine program is not safe. It is quite clear that an inflamed nervous system is an undeniable feature in autism.

What Does NF-kappaB Have to Do With It?

Nuclear Factor kappa-B is the “brain” residing within every cell of your body, including cells of your nervous system. It is a gene transcription factor, meaning that it tells your cells how to behave depending on what is happening. When everything is running smoothly, NF-kappaB has its feet up on the lawn chair in a relaxed mode of operation. Under stress NF-kappaB initiates survival strategies. NF-kappaB is the main regulator of all inflammatory and immune responses, and is intimately involved with the healthy function of your nervous system. NF-kappaB is an active intelligence within your cells. The last thing you would ever want to do is mess up NF-kappaB.

Adjuvants, due to their intentionally inflammatory mode of operation, activate NF-kappaB. This is done to ramp up the immune system so it can “see” the weakened virus in the vaccine. The million dollar question is: “How much NF-kappaB activation can a child take before their NF-kappaB system overheats and sets a fire in their brain called autism?” When NF-kappaB overheats it generates large amounts of inflammatory immune system messengers (like TNFa and IL6) and massive numbers of free radicals that damage nerve cells.

If a child is already acutely inflamed then the NF-kappaB pump has already been primed and the risk for vaccine injury is greater. Acute inflammation is caused by illness, injury, surgery, poor diet, and stress at home. This problem is magnified if the child had a history of inflammation while in the womb, was born prematurely, or had health struggles during the first few years of life. Even a previous round of vaccines can prime the inflammatory NF-kappaB pump. Environmental toxicity is another factor that cannot be ignored, as is the health of the mother prior to and during pregnancy. A mother’s obesity and eating habits have a significant effect on the nerve health of her child.

The main point to understand is that if the NF-kappaB system is already on the edge of overheating due to other factors, then the intentional pushing of this system with vaccines poses a serious risk to the child. Multiple vaccines given at one time, with multiple pro-inflammatory adjuvants, obviously increase the risk. Any person objectively reviewing the science on this issue could reach no other conclusion.

The issue of NF-kappaB is so important that the next generation of vaccines will utilize it in an attempt to make less toxic vaccines (the laser-guided approach rather than the shotgun). While NF-kappaB-targeted vaccines will be less blatantly toxic, making them free of adverse side effects is another story altogether. Manipulating NF-kappaB is playing with the essence of the life force of a cell. At any given time there are numerous ons and offs relating to how NF-kappaB is naturally working to maintain health. The new vaccines will turn on the inflammatory aspect of NF-kappaB – which could easily upset the applecart in some other needed aspect of health.

No matter how good research scientists are at developing new vaccines, there will always be a percentage of at-risk-already-inflamed children who are likely to respond in a poor manner. Vaccine safety is not just about better vaccines; it’s also about protecting those who are most likely to poorly react to them. It is not possible to have a good public health policy for disease prevention that fails to take this fact into account.

Nutrients that Can Help

Mother Nature has provided an array of NF-kappaB modulating compounds. Unlike drugs, nutrients are far more compatible with genes as we evolved using nutrition to assist survival. When we provide our cells needed nutrients, NF-kappaB seems to know what to do with them. It is very clear that NF-kappaB uses nutrition to help cool itself off – like a tall glass of ice water on a hot day.

A diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables is the foundation for NF-kappaB anti-inflammatory nutrition. When a mother eats this way during pregnancy and while nursing she is passing tremendous benefit to her child. It is now clear that such good health habits are passed along, a type of fetal programming of the taste system, wherein the child is now more likely to eat healthfully and consequently have better function of NF-kappaB.

On top of a good diet there are certain “super nutrients” that significantly help NF-kappaB behave in a healthy manner. These help NF-kappaB not get overheated or too bent out of shape. The following list of nutrients is by no means complete; I’ve selected them because I’ve used them for years and I know they work. There is plenty of science to support their common sense use, for young and old.

Such extra nutrient support can be used as needed to:
1) Calm down nerves from existing life stress or a pattern of wear and tear,
2) Calm down nerves following an inflammatory event, such as vaccinations,
3) Stabilize nerves that are struggling,
4) Generally improve cognitive function and nerve development.

The five nutrients I’ve selected for discussion are the tocotrienol form of vitamin E, the herb silymarin, grape seed extract, lipoic acid, and acetyl-l-carnitine. This is a treasure trove of NF-kappaB modulating nerve and energy support nutrients.

Tocotrienols are a special form of vitamin E with unique antioxidant properties that are in many ways superior to plain vitamin E. For example, a recent study showed that tocotrienols offered superior protection to the nervous system from methylmercury – a potent nerve toxin. It is very clear that tocotrienols work by modulating NF-kappaB, are a superior brain protecting nutrient, and are also helpful for inflammation in the circulatory system by reducing NF-kappaB.

Silymarin or Milk Thistle is an herb that is commonly used to protect the liver as well as to help the liver clear toxins. Silymarin also works by modulating NF-kappaB to turn down inflammation. One study showed it was able to stop the LPS induced toxicity in brain cells. Another study showed it stop the autoimmune-driven damage to nerves (demyelination) while reducing inflammation.

Grape seed extracts contain proanthocyanidins that have also been shown to directly turn off LPS toxicity by turning down NF-kappaB. Taking the extract before damage to the nerves, as from alcohol consumption, helps prevent brain damage. Taking the extract after damage to nerves is already in progress helps stop the damage. Grape seed extracts are another top choice for nerve protection.

R-Alpha Lipoic Acid and Acetyl-L-Carnitine work synergistically to restore mitochondrial energy production in nerve cells. It is now believed that one factor involved with vaccine injury is poor mitochondrial function. Lipoic Acid is another nutrient now proven to lower NF-kappaB and reduce the inflammation associated with LPS toxicity. Acetyl-l-Carnitine has been extensively studied for its role in memory and cognitive function. It also exerts powerful nerve protection by a variety of different mechanism.

As you can see, there is plenty of science to support the use of nutrition to help out the brain – and this is just a sample of some of the better options. These nutrients are typically quite easy to mix into juice, apple sauce, or yogurt. The tocotrienol oil can be squeezed from the softgel capsule directly into the mouth. Powders can be mixed in water and administered with a dropper during nursing. Moms can take any of these nutrients which will transfer in her milk.

Nutrition excels at the safe and natural regulation of inflammation, including nerve inflammation, primarily by helping NF-kappaB work normally.

Father: Child’s [Hannah Poling's] case shifts autism debate

By Jon S. Poling, for the Journal-Constitution:

Autism in the U.S. has reached epidemic levels, at 1 in 150 children. Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has recently upgraded autism to “an urgent health threat.” The most contentious issue of the autism debate is the link to routine childhood vaccines. My daughter’s case, Hannah Poling v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has changed this debate forever. Hannah has pointed us in a new and promising direction —- the mitochondria.

On Nov. 9, 2007, HHS medical experts conceded through the Department of Justice that Hannah’s autism was triggered by nine childhood vaccinations administered when she was 19 months of age. This concession was granted without any courtroom proceedings or expert testimony, effectively preventing any public hearing discussing what happened to Hannah and why. Contrary to some reports, the Special Masters, “judges” who preside over the “vaccine court,” did not issue a decision.

Four months later, on March 6, with trepidation my wife, Terry, and I stepped forward to announce this news —- providing hope and awareness to other families. The HHS expert documents that led to this concession and accompanying court documents remain sealed, though our family has already permitted release of Hannah’s records to those representing the almost 5, 000 other autistic children awaiting their day in vaccine court.

Mitochondria key

To understand Hannah’s case, it is important to understand mitochondria, which act like batteries in our cells to produce energy critical for normal function. Because the government’s concession hinged on the presence of Hannah’s underlying medical condition, mitochondrial dysfunction, some claim the decision is relevant to very few other children with autism. As a neurologist, scientist and father, I disagree.

Emerging evidence suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction may not be rare at all among children with autism. In the only population-based study of its kind, Portuguese researchers confirmed that at least 7.2 percent, and perhaps as many as 20 percent, of autistic children exhibit mitochondrial dysfunction. While we do not yet know a precise U.S. rate, 7.2 percent to 20 percent of children does not qualify as “rare.” In fact, mitochondrial dysfunction may be the most common medical condition associated with autism.

Biological markers

Although unlikely, if the Portuguese studies are incorrect and mitochondrial dysfunction were found to be a rarity occurring in less than 1 percent of all autism, it would still impact up to 10,000 children (250,000 worldwide), based on current estimates that 1 million people in the U.S. (25 million worldwide) have autism. If, on the other hand, the research showing that 7.2 percent to 20 percent of children with autism have mitochondrial dysfunction is correct, then the implications are both staggering and urgent.

Autism researchers do not currently understand whether mitochondrial dysfunction causes autism or is simply a secondary biological marker. Autism clearly has many different causes, and should really be separated into multiple autism(s). I propose that we clearly identify and research the subpopulation term of “mitochondrial autism,” which is distinguished by its unique biological, but not genetic, markers.

Based on what we know now, it is time to follow the prestigious Institute of Medicine 2004 report regarding autism and vaccines:

“Determining a specific cause (for autism) in the individual is impossible unless the etiology is known and there is a biological marker. Determining causality with population-based methods requires either a well-defined at-risk population or a large effect in the general population.”

A paradigm shift

When the IOM report was published, mitochondrial dysfunction defining an autistic subpopulation was not firmly established. Today there is no doubt that mitochondrial dysfunction represents a distinct autism subpopulation biological marker. I urge health officials and the IOM to embrace their own report and pursue this breakthrough in the science of autism. National public health leaders, including those at CDC, must now recognize the paradigm shift caused by this biological marker with regard to their current position of dispelling a vaccine-autism link.

In light of the Hannah Poling concession, science must determine more precisely how large the mitochondrial autism subpopulation is: 1 percent, 7.2 percent, 20 percent?

Based on the 2004 IOM analysis, if the mitochondrial autism subpopulation is found to be relatively uncommon, then all conclusions from prior epidemiological studies refuting an autism-vaccination link must be discarded. New studies then need to be performed exclusively with the mitochondrial subpopulation. If mitochondrial autism turns out to be common, then we could re-analyze the data from prior studies to determine if these studies were powered sufficiently based on a predicted effect size. If not powered appropriately, the conclusion refuting an autism-vaccine link would again have to be rejected. These statistical concepts are basic.

The current vaccine schedule, co-sponsored by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics, injures a small but significant minority of children, my daughter unfortunately being one of those victims. Every day, more parents and some pediatricians reject the current vaccine schedule. In an abundance of caution, meaningful reform must be performed urgently to prevent the re-emergence of serious diseases like polio or measles.

Need for research

As a neurologist, I have cared for those afflicted with SSPE (a rare but dreaded neurological complication of measles), paralytic polio and tetanus. If these serious vaccine-preventable diseases again become commonplace, the fault will rest solely on the shoulders of public health leaders and policymakers who have failed to heed the writing on the wall (scribbled by my 9-year old daughter).

The mitochondrial autism scenario that my daughter has so eloquently painted has the CDC and public health experts logically cornered. Denial and fear tactics won’t close Pandora’s Box. Whether we find that mitochondrial autism is rare or common, there is urgent research left to be done to fully understand the interrelationship of vaccines, autism and mitochondria.

Reform of the vaccine schedule will be an important part of the solution, whether vaccines play a major or minor role in autism. Our public health agencies and programs need a reconstruction plan. Day one of the reconstruction hopefully starts at the Vaccine Safety Advisory Committee’s Working Group, to be held at HHS headquarters today in Washington.

> Dr. Jon S. Poling is a practicing neurologist in Athens and clinical assistant professor at the Medical College of Georgia.

Former NIH Head: Fighting the Autism-Vaccine War

By Bernadine Healy M.D. on April 10, 2008 from U.S. News & World Report:

At some level, the decision was a vindication for families who have been battling with the vaccine community, arguing that some poorly understood reaction to components of vaccines or their mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, could cause brain injury. Yes, vaccines are extraordinarily safe and bring huge public health benefit. (Remember the 1950s polio epidemics?) But vaccine experts tend to look at the population as a whole, not at individual patients. And population studies are not granular enough to detect individual metabolic, genetic, or immunological variation that might make some children under certain circumstances susceptible to neurological complications after vaccination.

A trigger? Families are not alone in searching for a trigger that might explain why autism and autism spectrum disorders have skyrocketed; now they reportedly affect about 1 in 150 kids. No doubt some of the increase is soft, due to broader diagnostic criteria, greater awareness, and—now that the notion of a detached “refrigerator” mom as a cause has blessedly fallen by the wayside—greater openness. But the rise of this disorder, which shows up before age 3, happens to coincide with the increased number and type of vaccine shots in the first few years of life. So as a trigger, vaccines carry a ring of both historical and biological plausibility.

Go back 40 or 50 years. The medical literature is replete with reports of neurological reactions to vaccines, such as mood changes, seizures, brain inflammation, and swelling. Several hundred cases of the paralytic illness Guillain-Barré after the swine flu vaccine were blamed on the government and gave Gerald Ford heartburn—but eventually led to the vaccine court.

Pediatricians were concerned enough about mercury, which is known to cause neurological damage in developing infant and fetal brains, that they mobilized to have thimerosal removed from childhood vaccines by 2002. Their concern was not autism but the lunacy of injecting mercury into little kids through mandated vaccines that together exceeded mercury safety guidelines designed for adults. But as in all things vaccine, this move too was contentious. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization remain unconvinced that thimerosal puts young children at risk.

There is no evidence that removal of thimerosal from vaccines has lowered autism rates. But autism numbers are not precise, so I would say that considerably more research is still needed on some provocative findings. After all, thimerosal crosses the placenta, and pregnant women are advised to get flu shots, which often contain it. Studies in mice suggest that genetic variation influences brain sensitivity to the toxic effects of mercury. And a primate study designed to mimic vaccination in infants reported in 2005 that thimerosal may clear from the blood in a matter of days but leaves inorganic mercury behind in the brain.

The debate roils on—even about research. The Institute of Medicine in its last report on vaccines and autism in 2004 said that more research on the vaccine question is counterproductive: Finding a susceptibility to this risk in some infants would call into question the universal vaccination strategy that is a bedrock of immunization programs and could lead to widespread rejection of vaccines. The IOM concluded that efforts to find a link between vaccines and autism “must be balanced against the broader benefit of the current vaccine program for all children.”

Wow. Medicine has moved ahead only because doctors, researchers, and yes, families, have openly challenged even the most sacred medical dogma. At the risk of incurring the wrath of some of my dearest colleagues, I say thank goodness for the vaccine court.

CNN Helps Autism Debacle Blow Up in Government’s Face

Vaccine-Autism Link No Longer in Question

Via NaturalNews.com:

On April 2, 2008 CNN spent the day bringing awareness to the problem of autism. Larry King’s segment, which included Jenny McCarthy along with a panel of guests, was particularly enlightening. My hat is off to Jenny, a celebrity mother who is making it quite uncomfortable for the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to ignore parents of autistic children seeking answers. Why does a mom have to do the work of the CDC? The answer is rather simple: our government’s zeal to insist on too many vaccines while ignoring the actual risks is the driving force behind the autism tragedy. Sure there are many related factors – but the bottom line is that our government is causing disease at an alarming and devastating pace.

It is an interesting comment on our society that an outspoken and impassioned mother of an autistic child, along with her partner (actor Jim Carrey), are the catalysts that are likely to cause a warped empire to crumble. Many before them have tried; and typically been burned at the stake. Jenny and Jim are the government’s worst nightmare. They can’t shut down their medical practice because they don’t have one. They can’t financially damage them into silence. And as they lead their autism March on Washington D.C. this June 4th it is quite clear that they haven’t a prayer of shutting them up. A powder keg is about to blow.

Jenny, to her credit, takes a diplomatic view on vaccines. Here main point is that there are too many vaccines given too soon and that the vaccines contain too many toxic components. As both a leading defender of health freedom in this country and a top nutritionist who has helped numerous autistic children, I am more than happy to put the entire problem into perspective and give insights that will help many parents.

A Brief History of Vaccines, Profits, and Politics

Vaccines started the Big Pharma sickness industry over 100 years ago. While the public views vaccines in a preventive health context our government’s position is much more complex. Vaccines and germs are part of warfare, and the issue is deeply woven into national security interests. Military personnel are frequently subjected to experimental vaccines. Vaccines are a key component of herd mentality; i.e., the ability of those in power to get a population to behave. Public health is never in the best interest of any one person, which is why laws are concocted to enforce compliance. Unelected bureaucrats and scientists in our government agencies, tied financially to the profits of the drug industry and linked to the military, have been playing God for many decades. They know full well there will be deaths and injuries from vaccinations; collateral damage that is justified by prevented disease (a convenient and fear-driven argument).

Our government has no problem manipulating data so that the benefits appear to outweigh the risks. Imagine having a calculator that always has the same conclusion no matter what data is entered. How can the risk of injuring 1 in 150 children for life be acceptable to Big Pharma and the revolving door CDC and FDA management? Any business would love to have the opportunity to produce a product and have the government mandate its sale. Government officials find lucrative jobs in the industries they regulate – after doing “good work.” Autism is partly a side effect of the cancer within government agencies.

Our government will never pay the price to screen children at risk for autism – that would be too proactive and expensive on the front end. They won’t even prepare a reasonable patient history checklist that reflects obvious risk for vaccine injury – as too many parents would opt out. Rather, our government specializes in lazy medicine – fire a shotgun and if someone gets injured it is their fault for standing there. Costs are now the burden of families on the back end of the equation; more profits for the sickness industry. If autism didn’t have painful little faces connected with it this problem would simply be swept under the rug, as is the 100,000 Americans (mostly elderly) killed by Big Pharma drugs every year.

The problem for our government is that an admission of guilt on the autism-vaccine link causes the entire paradigm of the Big Pharma-driven Western-medicine sickness industry to collapse. Even worse in their eyes, it would send an earthquake through the brotherhood of Big Pharma, public health, the CDC, the FDA, the global elite, and the military. Other public health programs would be questioned – like polluting our water with a neurotoxin called fluoride that makes a population more docile and controllable.

Unfortunately for parents combating autism, the problems of their child is only a portion of the issue they now must try to solve. They are up against a government dead set on preventing the truth from ever coming out. Once cornered, our government will play the national security card before fessing up to their sins or making any real effort to correct the damage they have done.

A Major Crack in Our Government’s Armor

The case of Hannah Poling is raising quite a stir. She is now 9 years old. As a healthy and normally developing 18-month-old girl she showed up for her well baby visit and was pummeled with 9 vaccinations, two of them containing the mercury preservative known as thimerosal. Her health immediately deteriorated into full blown autism.

Her case was the first to be settled of 4,900 autism cases pending before federal Vaccine Court. She claimed that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism. In a shocking turn of events the federal government conceded this autism case saying that “compensation is appropriate.”

However, our government refused to admit vaccines caused her autism. Indeed, the government settled the case before there was even a hearing. The last thing the government wants is to put vaccines on public trial, and place pictures of injured children on the news every night, especially when the evidence of the case is so clear that vaccines will certainly lose.

Rather, the CDC is hinting that it was Hannah’s mitochondria that were to blame, not the vaccines. This argument opens another Pandora’s box (more on that later).

The defendant in all vaccine cases is the Department of Health and Human Services. The CDC is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Talk about conflict of interest! A pack of foxes is in charge of the national chicken coop.

How Our Government Defends Itself When It Is Clearly Wrong

It is somewhat unfortunate that those who have helped to champion the cause of our government’s involvement in vaccine injury have placed so many eggs in the thimerosal basket. Of course mercury is a nerve toxin and its involvement in autism is likely as a percentage of the problem. However, neither thimerosal nor any single vaccine is an adequate overall explanation for autism.

Our government is using various studies to deflect the vaccine-autism link. These studies relate to thimerosal and MMR vaccines, but not to the collective number of vaccines given at one time and the overall number of vaccines given so early in life (the real problem). This flimsy government defense is being used to deflect attention away from vaccines as a causative link to autism. (Read their vaccine studies here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/vaccines.htm)

This is a classic stalling tactic used by corrupt government and industry when they have been caught red-handed. This approach involves acknowledging certain aspects of the problem, making changes (they took thimerosal out of many vaccines), creating doubt (their “study” defense), and then continuing with the mass vaccination program even though they know it causes harm. This strategy will deflect most of the legal liability from vaccine-related injury, delaying it and then minimizing it over time. A legion of government-funded scientists can be paraded in a courtroom for decades with the sole purpose of creating doubt and delaying taking responsibility for the problem. An admission of guilt opens a floodgate of liability lawsuits.

They think their skimpy studies give them breathing room so that they can now direct attention elsewhere to mysterious possibilities like genetics or environmental toxins that will also take them decades to figure out. True enough, these issues are also a percentage of the problem – so much so that they can be used to confuse the vaccine link for a long time. The government’s defense is always that more research is needed. This is not research that proves what they are doing is safe before they continue to do it; it is research that proves what they are doing is harmful before they stop doing it. Unfortunately, behind closed doors they cherry pick their research results as well as what they choose to study.

In the mean time these unelected bureaucrats continue to unabashedly administer a vaccine program that injures and kills. Most societies would either call this murder or involuntary manslaughter. Why don’t we hear Bush, McCain, Clinton, or Obama weighing in on this issue? Why don’t they stand on stage with a group of autistic children and tell mothers everywhere how important vaccines are?

When the Hannah Polling case got on the radar map and blew up in the government’s face, a damage control press conference was held. Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the CDC, stated, “There’s absolutely nothing changed in the adamant recommendations that we are making to get children vaccinated. This is proven to save lives and is an essential component of health protection for children across America and the world.” Dr. Gerberding should be the first to stand trial. (http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/transcri…)

Why Vaccines are a Problem

It is quite clear that the rate of autism in this country is directly time-associated with the increased numbers of vaccines given to children. The explosion in autism between 1987 and 1992 coincides with the tripling in the numbers of vaccines given to our children. While such data is not proof of cause and effect, it is significant and cannot be ignored by any responsible parent (it is ignored by the government and medical profession).

Numerous parents report taking their healthy child to the doctor, getting a barrage of vaccinations, having their child run a high fever, and their child never again being the same. THAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM THAT PARENTS SEE WITH THEIR OWN TWO EYES.

The current government strategy is to keep arguing about thimerosal and MMR vaccines – as they know they can create enough doubt to win that argument in the majority of the scientific community. What the government does not want to discuss is the adjuvant in vaccines – which will clearly be shown to be the autism trigger.

Vaccines contain weakened “signatures” of a disease. By themselves they are not strong enough for the immune system to mount a response. This problem is solved by adding a “booster” compound called an adjuvant. An adjuvant does not contain any signature of the disease. Rather, the adjuvant initiates an inflammatory reaction (the first step in any immune response). The idea is to get the immune system revved up so that it can see the weakened disease and learn what it looks like so that if it ever sees it again it will be more prepared to fight it. This concept, in and of itself, has validity – but only given the right set of circumstances.

It is clear that those with autism have an excessively inflamed brain. If pressed, the CDC would likely argue that the brain inflammation is a result of the autism and that they need more studies to determine the cause. I will argue that they don’t need any more studies at all and that the cause is blatantly obvious based on an understanding of existing science. The multiple inflammatory insults from the adjuvant in vaccines, at a rate of 1 in 150 cases, sets the brain on fire and causes autism. As an aside, and to a lesser extent (but just as important to society), a minor brush fire causes ADHD and impaired intelligence. References: http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro…
http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro…
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How Your Brain Works

The crumbling paradigm of Western medicine likes to break down body function according to convenient classifications such as nerves, immunity, hormones, etc. In reality your brain is a central processor of all systems in your body and thus has connections that link nerves, immune function, and hormones into one symphony of function. In other words, it is not possible to study only neurotransmitters like serotonin or dopamine and actually understand what your brain is doing.

Ten percent of the cells in your brain are neurotransmitter related. The other 90% are glial cells, also called astrocytes. For decades scientists thought that 90% of your brain was nothing more than a structural framework, simply because scientific tools were not adequate to understand what glial cells were doing, but that has changed in the past 10 years. Glial cells run your brain and your neurotransmitters. They are the brokers of all information coming into your brain – with direct links to your immune system and endocrine system (hormones).

Glial cells are the inflammation brokers in your brain. When stress, a toxin pollutant, or a destructive food additive (like MSG, aspartame, or food coloring) enter your brain they induce excitotoxic reactions that inflame brain cells. This inflammation is buffered primarily by the hormone leptin and other antioxidants, a process that intimately involves the healthy function of glial cells.

When the buffering anti-inflammatory capacity of glial cells is overloaded, then inflammation becomes chronic. Minimally, this results in brain wear and tear. It is the mechanism behind all accelerated brain aging and, depending on a person’s genetic weaknesses and other health issues, leads to various states of early cognitive decline and nerve-related diseases of aging such as Alzheimer’s.

There is also a point at which low grade brain inflammation catches fire. In adults with an established nerve network this causes a “power outage” in the head, otherwise known as spreading depression. Such an event is typically triggered by emotional pain or physical pain of a prolonged nature or acute intensity (elevating substance P to abnormally high levels). Such trauma pushes struggling nerves over the edge.

The difference in a fetus or small child is that the nervous system is still rapidly evolving. If the brain catches fire at this age proper development of the nerves can be seriously disturbed (the autism spectrum of disorders) or functionally impaired (ADHD, lower IQ).

The adjuvant in vaccine is pro-inflammatory; i.e., neurologically excitotoxic. That is intentional so as to boost the effectiveness of the vaccine. The problem comes about when giving so many of them at once, which can injure even a perfectly healthy child. Giving multiple adjuvants is like playing Russian roulette with a child’s brain. Children with already inflamed nerves are at much higher risk for reacting to multiple vaccines, as their nerves have been conditioned to hyper-react. Don’t think for a moment that Dr. Gerberding and other scientists at the CDC aren’t fully aware of this issue.

Government Responsibility

Our government has the responsibility to prove the safety of any vaccination being recommended for broad public health, as part of an overall vaccine program. Our current knowledge of science, the immune system, and the brain would make it unlikely that broad vaccine programs could ever be approved for use today if they hadn’t being going on for so long.

Our government is not only grossly negligent on the vaccine issue itself, but on numerous other true public health issues that pose a significant risk for brain inflammation in fetuses and children. The CDC, the EPA, and the FDA all play large roles in creating huge autism risk for our population.

Space in this article only allows a few examples; there are many. Environmental pollution that is fat soluble can cross the placenta, exists in mother’s milk, or occurs in the general food supply fed to small children. Fat soluble toxins cross the blood-brain barrier and induce nerve inflammation.

Huge public health risks include widespread contamination of our food supply with fat soluble PCB toxins, a problem that would cost at least 50 billion dollars to clean up. Another example of broad exposure is the neurotoxic pesticides used on food (originally Nazi nerve gas agents). Another example is the military’s poisoning of our water supply with perchlorate, a contaminant now found in breast milk of mothers across the country. This interferes with thyroid function in the baby, resulting in a serious risk for faulty brain development.

Another example is iron fortification of baby formulas, which encourages the growth of hostile bacteria and Candida Albicans in the child’s digestive tract; organisms that produce neurotoxic waste products. Another example is the use of antibiotics before age 1, which also encourages the growth of the very same hostile bacteria and Candida. C-Section deliveries also increased the risk for a hostile digestive terrain in the baby. Candida itself directly communicates to and promotes inflammation in the human immune system causing it to malfunction.

Yet another example is the widespread use of antidepressants by pregnant and nursing mothers, which drastically disturbs the evolving function of nerves and overall health of the fetus or baby. And then there is the vaccine preservative thimerosal (different than an adjuvant), which is a neuro-inflammatory in and of itself. And this is the short list.

All of these issues play a role as a percentage of the problem that induces friction in the developing nervous system of a fetus, baby, or young child and primes the nerves to hyper-react to vaccines. Each of these problems is a true public health problem because they are caused by industry and are allowed to continue by various vested interests. Each one will take tens of billions of dollars to fix. However, that is actually the responsibility of government – to fix costly and broad public health problems – not to make them worse.

The Genetic Red-Herring

The case of Hannah Poling has forced our government to show its hand – and a very weak hand it is. They will continue to bluff and confuse the public with scientific gibberish in an effort to misdirect. Their defense in the Poling case, even though they conceded the case, is that the child had genetic mitochondrial dysfunction.

Mitochondria are the car engines in your cells that produce energy (ATP). ATP is the energy currency in your body, much like money in your wallet. You spend ATP, as needed, to do anything. Inflammation uses up ATP by causing your body to go into a hyper mode (like a 911 phone call). If ATP production is compromised then inflammation can run wild – contributing to the brain fire called autism.

True mitochondrial gene mutations are too rare to explain autism, so the government is trying to blame this mechanism in the Poling case to deflect the idea that vaccines are a risk for the majority.

What the government isn’t saying is that, independent of a true genetic issue, mitochondria can be taxed into a state of stress that predisposes any child to autism risk. You don’t need to have a gene mutation; that is simply a diversion and cover-up attempt.

Furthermore, the glial cells in your brain use ATP to communicate, a separate function than energy currency. This means that any time you run low in overall body energy, brain function is compromised and tilted into a pro-inflammatory mode. This is why stress makes you tired and causes you to feel physical wear and tear. It is also why any time you exercise, which conditions your body to make ATP more efficiently, your head feels better. When glial cells run low on ATP they enter a low grade chronic inflammatory mode – a condition that seriously predisposes to vaccine injury.

Reducing the Risk for Adverse Vaccine Reactions

The bottom line for any parent is to not expose their child to vaccines under circumstances that are likely to increase the odds of a brain fire that results in autism. Fewer vaccines in general, not giving so many at once, and giving them at older ages are all common sense.

Additionally, proper nutrition during pregnancy, during lactation, and the overall fitness and health habits of the mother have a profound effect on having a child with a stronger nervous system. It is quite clear that the obesity hormone leptin is elevated in the blood of autistic children. This is a risk factor linked to obesity in the mother with consequent abnormal fetal programming of the developing brain which is then handicapped to buffer inflammation from toxic exposure like vaccines. ((http://www.wellnessresources.com/newsro…)

High leptin in the blood means that leptin isn’t getting into the brain. Leptin is the primary buffer in the brain against inflammatory excitotoxic damage. This is why boys have four times the rate of autism compared to girls. Girls have naturally higher levels of protective leptin in their brains, mostly to help them get pregnant and nurse their children in later life. My books on leptin (Mastering Leptin and The Leptin Diet) explain how leptin works in much greater detail. A mother’s health and eating habits, prior to and during pregnancy, play a large role in the health of her baby’s nervous system. ((http://www.wellnessresources.com/Books/…)

Likewise, family stress during pregnancy and early childhood development are important to how a child processes stress and consequent nerve inflammation. Conflicts between husband and wife, in front of a child (including a child in the womb), primes nerves to be inflamed. Providing a stable environment for mother and child is a main reason for the family unit – and in my opinion the responsibility of men.

Thus we see that there are multiple factors, some under your control and many that are not, acting in one way or another to prime the nerves into a chronic low-grade inflammatory state which sets the stage for increased risk of vaccine injury.

One of the very worst times to vaccinate a child is directly after an illness or surgery – which are highly inflammatory events. Unfortunately, doctors don’t seem to understand health very well and it is often the case that the parent has brought the child to the doctor because of an illness or a follow up from some other medical procedure. At that time the doctor says “Oh, your vaccinations are not up to date.” And then gives them to a child who is already neurologically inflamed. Such medical malpractice is a disaster, and common in this country.

Parents who have children with digestive problems, recurring infections, asthma, allergies, or any other sign of immune weakness should not vaccinate until such problems are fully resolved. These problems also indicate a high level of existing brain inflammation.

It is pathetic that the CDC does not publish a list of guidelines for parents that would dramatically reduce the risk for vaccine injury (low cost and low tech). The “more research is needed” excuse is enough to make everyone vomit. Of course we could do far more by screening for inflammatory brain markers and immune system dysfunction ahead of any round of vaccines (high cost and high tech). The days of blindly vaccinating children according to a schedule, while ignoring the child’s state of existing nerve inflammation and immune system function are over. Parents should revolt. This is a national tragedy. The government’s vaccination program is indeed the cause of the autism epidemic.

About the author: Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources (www.wellnessresources.com), is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, and educator. He is the author of Mastering Leptin, The Leptin Diet, and Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA’s Betrayal of America.

CDC Has Lost Control of the Autism Argument

HuffPo

David Kirby
Sat, 05 Apr 2008

On Wednesday, CNN’s Larry King hosted Jenny McCarthy, myself, and several others to discuss the growing evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The CDC refused to send someone to appear on the show. Instead, on Thursday, the agency issued a statement meant to reassure the American public that all vaccines are safe for all kids.

But the CDC statement only served to show how out of touch the administration of George (really? gas costs 4 dollars?) Bush really is.

A recent government decision to award nine-year-old Hannah Poling taxpayer dollars for her multiple vaccine-induced autism, has left parents anxious and alarmed, especially when their own kid has a pending appointment to receive 5 or more vaccines in one sitting (Hannah had 9 at once).

So the CDC now issues a written statement meant to soothe jittery parents, by saying that “the recommended vaccine schedule is flexible.” Such decisions, the friendly announcement said, “are best made in consultation with the child’s doctor, and parents shouldn’t be reluctant to have such discussions.”

Of course parents shouldn’t be reluctant to have this discussion, but they are. I get nasty emails from some pediatricians, and the number-one complaint I get from them is that, because of people like me, they must now “waste” (their word, not mine) precious billing hours talking to layperson parents about vaccine science.

These doctors’ hostility is palpable, (and they hopefully represent a minority of pediatricians). And while I cannot imagine ever consulting anyone of such temperment for medical care in the first place, many parents are simply cowed into silence. For them, the CDC suggestion to ask vaccine safety questions at a well-baby visit is laughable, if not risible.

Interestingly, after years of being told that autism is purely genetic, and not some environmentally triggered epidemic, parents now learn that the CDC has begun a massive investigation, called the SEED study, to look at “genetic, environmental and hormonal factors, as well as selected mercury exposures,” that cause autism

This is encouraging news, though one can assume that thimerosal is not among those mercury exposures that have been “selected” for study.

But the real problem here is the track record and credibility of the CDC to continute conducting any vaccine safety studies at all. This is not helped when the CDC continues to issue statements such as:

“Top scientists — with the open-mindedness that characterizes good science — planned and conducted the highest-quality, large-scale (vaccine safety) studies. No links to autism have been found.”

Now, I have no doubt that CDC officials believe these truly were the “highest quality” studies available. But but many scientists, including some who authored the studies, disagree. They say many of the studies were flawed and/or inconclusive.

THE U.S. STUDY

The flagship study was a four-year analysis by the CDC of a large US database called the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). This study, published in the journal Pediatrics, was authored by Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, a visiting researcher from Belgium.

The final, published version of the study found no evidence of a link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, though earlier analyses — discovered through the Freedom of Information Act — showed remarkable correlations.

At the time, the CDC called it one of the highest quality studies of its kind ever conducted.

But in 2006, Congress asked the National Institutes of Health to convene a special panel to investigate the quality and usefulness of the VSD database — and by extension, the Verstraeten study itself — as a means of investigating such a link.

The panel determined that there were “several serious problems” with the database and the study, including many “weaknesses” and “limitations” that could render certain analyses “uninformative and potentially misleading. “

The NIH Panel was “concerned” about how autism diagnoses were made and recorded by HMOs who take part in the database, and questioned if the HMOs had adequate services for autism families, who might seek care elsewhere. Panelists said these and other problems likely led to an “under-ascertainment” of autism cases in the HMOs.

The panel also cited many problems with the Verstraeten study design. It warned that a “large proportion, around 25%, of births were excluded from the analysis.” Panelists wrote that these same children “may represent a susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal.”

Other “serious problems” were the facts that there was no consideration of pre-natal thimerosal exposures from immune globulin, or “other vaccinations given during pregnancy,” (i.e., flu shot), and no accounting for, “the cumulative exposure to organic mercurials through diet or other environmental sources. “

The NIH panel determined that these problems, “reduce the usefulness” of the VSD to prove or disprove a link between thimerosal and autism.

Shortly thereafter, panel chair Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of Public Health at U.C. Davis School of Medicine, told Dan Olmsted (formerly) of UPI that the VSD study “was not the last word… things need to be looked at again, perhaps with different methodology.”

And Verstraeten himself said the study proved nothing. In a letter to Pediatrics, he wrote that, “We found no evidence against an association, as a negative study would. On the contrary, additional study is recommended, which is the conclusion to which a neutral study must come.”

THE DENMARK STUDIES

Two studies conducted in Denmark are always referred to by the CDC and others when trying to defend the injection of organic mercury into the systems of newborn babies and infants. These are among the best of the “highest quality” studies, we are told, that show no link between vaccines and autism.

The main Denmark study reported that the removal of mercury from vaccines was followed by a sharp increase in reported autism cases. But the authors admitted that much of this increase was possibly due to a major change in the way Denmark counted its autism cases during the study period (switching from inpatient diagnosed cases only, or about 13% of the total, to cases diagnosed in inpatient AND outpatient settings, or 100% of the total).

The CDC touts the high quality of the study, even though the authors cautioned in the study itself that “methodological limitations” — such as the exponential expansion of patients (due to counting both inpatient AND outpatient cases) — “may have spuriously increased the apparent number of autism cases.”

Adding insult to understatement, Dr. Hertz-Piccotto said that, as bad as the VSD study was, the Denmark papers were even worse. “Some studies are stronger than others,” she said. “The Verstraeten study was an improvement on other studies, including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs.”

THE IOM REPORTS

In 2004, a committee of the Institute of Medicine reviewed the US, Denmark and a few other similar studies (whose methodology have been questioned in other venues including my book, “Evidence of Harm”).

The IOM committee relied almost exclusively on large population studies (epidemiology), and virtually ignored the growing body of evidence emerging from clinical, animal and test tube studies from the fields of toxicology, immunology and other scientific disciplines.

(Interestingly, the US Federal Court system has determined that epidemiology alone is “insufficient” when trying to disprove a link between exposures and outcomes in an individual).

The committee concluded that the evidence did not support a vaccine link to autism. But it added that, “We cannot rule out, based on the epidemiology, the possibility that vaccines contribute to autism in some small subset,” something that parents have been saying all along.

Finally, in 2005, another panel of the IOM criticized the CDC for a “lack of transparency” in its vaccine safety programs, particularly the VSD database. The IOM panel report noted that a CDC official had testified that some of the original datasets in the Verstraeten study, “had not been archived in a standard manner,” and, “may not allow all the re-analyses that one might want to do, or in fact may not be available at all.”

This same IOM committee, citing the Federal Information Quality Act, which makes it a felony to intentionally lose or destroy any publicly funded records, recommended that vaccine officials at the CDC’s National Immunization Program “seek legal advice.”

And despite all of this (and more) the CDC wants us to believe that these studies represent the “highest quality” analyses available.

The leadership of CDC Director Julie Gerberding has been replete with crushing morale depletion, embarrassing media coverage, congressional investigations into Katrina trailers, and a general sense of an agency in decline.

Sadly, the words “CDC” and “highest quality” can rarely be used in the same sentence anymore.