Generation Hg? Is Autism puzzle solved?

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http://readthehook.com/stories/2005/04/07/coverGenerationHgIsAutismP.html

 

COVER- Generation Hg? Is Autism puzzle solved?

 

Published April 7, 2005, in issue 0414 of the Hook

 

BY COY BAREFOOT and ALISON BELL COY

 

PHOTOS BY JEN FARIELLO JEN

 

She was a beautiful baby with her mother's eyes. Daddy was there with

the video camera when she took her first steps. She loved to play

tickle monster.

 

She was about 18 months old when she stopped smiling and stopped

talking. She didn't want to play anymore. She stopped looking at

people. She started waking up in the middle of the night and screaming

for hours.

 

The pediatrician told the parents they were worrying for no reason. He

said every child is different. He said, " Let's wait and see. "

 

By the time she was two, she had chronic diarrhea and drooled

uncontrollably. She walked on her toes, flapped her hands, and spent

much of her time staring into the middle distance.

 

The distraught parents rushed her from one doctor to another, begging

for an explanation. An answer finally came: Your child has autism.

It's a genetic brain disorder. We don't know what causes it, and there

is no cure. Forty hours a week of therapy might make her behavior more

acceptable, but it's not going to " cure " her. You need to start

looking at institutions now because the good ones have long waiting lists.

 

The doctor sent the parents home with a video, and they sobbed as they

watched children like their own daughter rocking, flapping their

hands, and screaming. The narrator said, " We all have great dreams for

our children. With the diagnosis of autism, the dream dies. "

 

***

 

Thousands of Virginia families and millions worldwide are living

through similar versions of the autism nightmare.

 

Lanier Rossignol, a Charlottesville mother of two young boys diagnosed

with autism, recalls a similar experience with her first son.

 

" By the time he was 10 months old, " says Rossignol, " he never looked

at me, never responded to his name, and he was obsessed with spinning

objects. I knew something was wrong, but no one believed me. Everyone

said, 'He's fine, you're just imagining things.' "

 

Seven months later, her son was diagnosed with autism.

 

Rossignol describes how her second boy " totally regressed " when he was

six months old. " He stopped responding to his name, " she says. " He

started hand-flapping. "

 

Twenty years ago, autism affected fewer than one in 2,000 children;

now the Centers for Disease Control estimates it's one in every 166.

But just as the numbers of cases are growing, so is skepticism that

it's a genetic disorder.

 

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no

sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't

quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. from

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

 

" Mad as a hatter " -- the phrase originated not in Lewis Carroll's

story, but in a psychiatric illness common among 19th-century hat

makers that became known as Hatter's Disease.

 

Physicians were baffled throughout the first half of the 20th century

when they were confronted with an epidemic of sick babies suffering

from skin rashes, poor circulation, and respiratory distress.

Thousands of babies died. The illness became known as Pink Disease

because the fingertips, toes, and nose turn pink.

 

In the mid-1950s, in a fishing village on Minamata Bay, Japan, cats

started shaking and inexplicably jumping into the bay. Then the

villagers got terribly sick. Some died. Babies were born with mental

retardation, uncontrolled tremors, and permanent palsy. Before mercury

dumped by a nearby factory was pegged as the culprit, doctors dubbed

it Minamata Disease.

 

Hatter's, Pink, Minamata, Barometer Maker's Disease-- no matter what

doctors labeled the disorders, each was later conclusively found to be

mercury poisoning.

 

" There are doctors out there telling parents they need to accept this,

that there's nothing they can do. Do not listen to whoever tells you

that! They are talking out of ignorance. " -- Amanda Slim, a

Charlottesville-area mother of a six-year-old child diagnosed with autism

 

Slim is among the growing numbers of people who believe that mercury,

well known as among the most neurotoxic substances on the planet, is

the culprit in autism.

 

To chemists, Mercury is " Hg, " the only metal that is liquid at room

temperature. That seemingly playful property earned it the moniker

" quicksilver " from ancient Greeks. But inside the body, its effects

are insidious.

 

Hundreds of times more toxic than lead, mercury wrecks the immune

system and can serve as the spark that leads to a blazing spectrum of

physical and psychiatric symptoms-- some of which take months to manifest.

 

" If what I write in the book is all true, we have just experienced one

of the largest medical catastrophes of our time, putting a generation

of American children at terrible risk with possibly devastating

results " says David Kirby, author of Evidence of Harm, Mercury in

Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, released in

March by St. Martin's Press. (Kirby, a health/science contributor to

the New York Times, will be speaking in Charlottesville later this month.)

 

Kirby's not alone in asking whether autism is a misdiagnosis for

mercury poisoning. An increasing number of families, physicians,

scientists, and some in Congress point to a growing body of evidence

linking mercury toxicity with otherwise unexplained disorders like

autism, Asperger's Syndrome, ADD, ADHD, and a host of escalating

illnesses that afflict today's children in great numbers.

 

" Autism, Asperger's, PDD, ADD, ADHD, all of that stuff I think it's

all the same thing, " says Nell Goddin, a Charlottesville mother of a

child diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. " Until we get to a point

where the labels are something other than subjective behavioral

descriptions, that isn't science. That's just spinning your wheels. "

 

The fact is that unprecedented concentrations of mercury were injected

into children via vaccines beginning in the late 1980s. And the

symptoms of mercury toxicity and autism are nearly identical.

 

Intriguingly, according to Kirby's book, autism rates began falling in

California in 2004 after the removal of mercury compounds from

vaccines. And many parents of children already suffering with autism

are celebrating the fact that a growing number of children diagnosed

early are making progress undreamed of a decade ago through " heavy

metal chelation, " a therapy that binds a sulphur compound with heavy

metals such as mercury to flush them from the body. While chelation

can be dangerous, many parents swear by it and are telling the world

that the mysterious puzzle of autism has been solved.

 

Yet there are powerful forces who aren't about to swallow that pill.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the Institutes of

Medicine, the entire pharmaceutical industry, its lobbyists, and

influential allies in Washington-- virtually the entire medical

establishment-- stand united in opposition to the theory that mercury

toxicity has something to do with autism.

 

" I believe that my grandson became autistic at least in part because

he received vaccinations. He received nine in one day, and six of

those contained mercury. He acted like any other normal child. Yet

within one week he was running around flapping his arms, walking on

his toes, banging his head against the wall, and he could not speak

clearly anymore. " Congressman Dan Burton, 2001

 

Mercury has been in vaccines since the 1930s in the form of a

preservative called Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethylmercury. In

the early 1990s Thimerosal was banned from animal vaccines because it

was too toxic. In 1998, it was removed from over-the-counter products

because of safety concerns.

 

" Current scientific evidence does not support the theory that vaccines

have caused autism, " the American Academy of Pediatrics announced in 2003.

 

And yet that same year, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Human Rights

and Wellness wrote, " Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is

likely related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all

probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been

asleep at the switch regarding injected Thimerosal and the sharp rise

of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin. "

 

Thimerosol is still legal for and widely used in vaccines and flu

shots. But it is hardly the only way for mercury to get into human bodies.

 

It's in our teeth. A so-called " silver " filling is at least 50 percent

mercury, purportedly enough to pollute a 10-acre lake. Some studies

suggest mercury vapor enters the bloodstream every time we chew or

grind our teeth.

 

It's in the air. The EPA estimates that the nation's 1,100

coal-burning power plants spew 50 tons of mercury each year.

 

It collects in the water, builds up in fish (as it did in Minamata,

Japan), and becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food supply.

 

It's in breast milk. According to the CDC, one in 12 childbearing

women " already has unsafe blood levels of mercury, " enough to cause

neurological damage in her unborn children.

 

When her six-month-old began exhibiting many of the autistic symptoms

that his older brother had, Rossignol had her breast milk tested. She

discovered that her baby was getting 10 times the EPA daily limit of

mercury.

 

Generation Mercury was born in 1988, the year Dustin Hoffman's Rain

Man made autism a household world (even though the character Hoffman

played also had Savant Syndrome, a rare and separate disorder). That

was also the year that, beginning with the Hib vaccine, several new

shots were added to the vaccine schedule.

 

Over the next few years, the number of vaccinations recommended for

children under the age of two went from 8 to 20. The amount of

ethylmercury injected into the bloodstreams of babies and toddlers

jumped 246 percent. Within the first six months of life, a baby

received 187.5 micrograms of ethylmercury, far beyond EPA safety

limits. And infants don't produce the bile necessary to excrete

mercury from their bodies.

 

It was not until 1999 that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the

CDC, the FDA, and the National Institutes of Health issued a joint

statement " urging " vaccine manufacturers to remove Thimerosal. Despite

an agreement to phase Thimerosal out of vaccines for children,

existing stocks of Thimerosal-laced vaccines could still remain on

shelves.

 

Thimerosal is still present in most flu shots. It is used in the

manufacturing process of a variety of pharmaceutical products. And

vaccines currently being shipped overseas have high concentrations of

Thimerosal.

 

Receiving the Hib vaccine with Thimerosal on the first day of birth is

the equivalent of a 200-pound adult male consuming 1,400 cans of tuna

in a single day. The analogy is not exactly fair unless the adult male

stops producing enough bile to excrete the mercury. Generationrescue.org

 

Dr. Neal Halsey was in charge of the vaccine program at the American

Academy of Pediatrics from1995 to 1999. When asked about the mercury

that babies received under his watch, he told a reporter, " My first

reaction was simply disbelief... what I believed, and what everybody

else believed, was that [mercury] was truly a trace, a biologically

insignificant amount. My honest belief is that if the labels had had

the mercury content in micrograms, this would have been uncovered

years ago. But the fact is, no one did the calculation. "

 

Someone evidently did. A 1991 Merck memo obtained by the LA Times

warned that six-month-old children would get a mercury dose up to 87

times higher than the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish.

But whoever wrote it-- and whoever read it-- kept quiet.

 

Over the decade that followed, the rate of autism shot up 1000 percent

nationwide.

 

" The injection of Thimerosal into expectant mothers and newborn

infants represents without a doubt a severe, major toxic exposure and

is most likely causal in autism spectrum disorders. " Boyd Haley,

Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky, 2002

 

Dr. Susan Anderson is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the

University of Virginia and director of the autism program at the Kluge

Children's Rehabilitation Center. Does she believe autism is a

misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning?

 

" I think not, " she says. " If it was, then we would be seeing a lot

more of it than we do. I mean, everybody got the immunizations. "

 

Like the majority of her colleagues, Anderson believes that autism is

a genetic condition that causes a disorder in brain neurochemistry and

not a manifestation of heavy metal toxicity-- and that it has nothing

to do with vaccines. As Anderson puts it, " Tying [the increase in

autism] to the change in the vaccine schedule is wrong. "

 

Dr. Anderson, like most pediatricians, does not see an epidemic of

autism. Genetic epidemics are, after all, a scientific impossibility.

While she agrees that the numbers of children diagnosed with autism,

Asperger's, and pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), have climbed

(an increase of 726 percent in Virginia between 1990 and 2003), she

attributes most of that to better diagnostic tools.

 

Dr. Mary Megson disagrees. A Richmond-based developmental

pediatrician, Megson specializes in biomedical approaches to the

treatment of autism.

 

" Are we just better at diagnosing [autism]? " Megson asks. " Well, you

don't miss a child who's been talking and then becomes nonverbal,

flaps, paces, and doesn't look you in the eye. "

 

For most pediatricians, the fact that autism shares over 100 symptoms

and characteristics with mercury poisoning [see sidebar], the fact

that its incidence has increased among American children as the

mercury load in vaccines has gone up, and the fact that autism was not

diagnosed in the U.S. until after mercury was added to vaccines in the

1930s, are all unfortunate coincidences.

 

They form a regrettable pattern that has led many desperate parents

and some in the medical community to draw hyperbolic conclusions that

can't be substantiated with, in Anderson's words, " convincing,

evidence-based research. "

 

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and

Family Medicine at the University of Virginia and president of

Advocates for Children, a pediatric clinic in Lynchburg. Mumper

believes the evidence supports a connection between mercury and

autism. " I have seen a bibliography of well over a thousand articles

looking at Thimerosal and showing the various ways in which it's

harmful, " she says. " The evidence is there-- good, reliable scientific

evidence. Getting physicians to look at it is another story. "

 

Mumper regrets that few of her colleagues share her belief in the

connection between autism and mercury exposure. " I've made very little

inroads with my mainstream colleagues because I have not been very

successful at getting them to come to meetings, " says Mumper, who is

speaking at one such meeting April 30. [see sidebar]

 

Another local physician familiar with autism who asked not to be

identified in this article says, " The research is there. But

[physicians] won't take the time to look at it. These kids have been

poisoned. I think pediatricians have been in denial for a long time.

And they're in denial because they are too horrified at the possibility.

 

" We're looking at a generation of babies who've been poisoned due to

negligence and incompetence. I can't be more clear about this: there

is no hope for a child with autism today in mainstream medicine.

Twenty years from now, the fact that we even debated [the

autism/mercury link] will be ludicrous. "

 

Results of one powerful study were published last month. Led by

Raymond F. Palmer of the University of Texas Health Science Center in

San Antonio, the study, forthcoming in the quarterly Health and Place,

found an association between rates of autism and mercury pollution.

Every 1000 pounds of environmentally released mercury corresponded to

a 61 percent increase in the rate of autism, the study showed.

 

While the CDC, the FDA, and the American Academy of Pediatrics concede

that babies and children vaccinated in the late 1980s and throughout

the '90s were exposed to cumulative mercury levels far beyond what is

considered safe, they still maintain that a connection between

concentrations of mercury in vaccines and the epidemic rates of autism

among America's youngest generation cannot be proved.

 

In other words, according to this logic, there's no proof excessive

mercury exposure can cause the symptoms of mercury poisoning.

 

The authors live in Albemarle County. They have a three-year-old child

diagnosed with autism who has made dramatic improvements following

chelation and biomedical treatments. Bell is an assistant professor of

anthropology at Washington and Lee University. Barefoot's books

include The Corner: A History of Student Life at the University of

Virginia and Thomas Jefferson on Leadership.

 

#

 

SIDEBAR- Autism Awareness Month noted locally

 

April 14-15, Thursday and Friday, Cavalier Inn

 

" Behavioral Approaches to the Education of Children with Autism, "

conference sponsored by the Virginia Institute of Autism. 923-8252

viaschool.org

 

April 19, Tuesday, New Dominion Bookshop, 5:30pm

 

New York Times Science/Health contributor David Kirby discusses his

new book, Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism

Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. evidenceofharm.com

 

April 30, Saturday, Omni Hotel, 8:30am-4:45pm

 

" Recent Advances in the Biology of Autism, " conference sponsored by

the Virginia chapter of the National Autism Association. Speakers

include Drs. Andrew Wakefield, Jeffrey Bradstreet, Sandra Jill James,

and Elizabeth Mumper. 977-4198 naa-va.org

 

SIDEBAR- Evidence or coincidence?

 

Some of the over 100 symptoms and characteristics shared by both

mercury poisoning and Autism Spectrum Disorder

 

Social withdrawal

 

Lack of eye contact

 

Delayed language use

 

Loss of speech

 

Hand flapping

 

Rocking

 

Toe walking

 

Anxiety and Irrational fears

 

Hypersalivation

 

Hypersensitivity to light, noise, touch

 

Uncoordination, poor motor skills

 

Head banging

 

Staring spells

 

Sleep difficulties

 

Visual impairment

 

Gastrointestinal disorders

 

Eczema, rashes

 

ADD and ADHD traits

 

Source: " Autism: A Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning, " Journal of

Medical Hypotheses, April 2001

 

SIDEBAR- Mercurial data

 

Thimerosal is 49.6 percent ethylmercury. Ethylmercury is many times

more toxic than the organic mercury that permeates our environment.

 

Thimerosal was added to vaccines as a preservative beginning in the

early 1930s and has been in use ever since.

 

Autism was first diagnosed in America around 1940.

 

In the 1990s, the number of vaccines mandated for American children

under the age of two went from 8 to 20. The amount of ethylmercury

received by children jumped 246 percent.

 

Since that time, the incidence rate of autism has shot up

approximately 1000 percent nationwide. A child is diagnosed with

autism every 20 minutes.

 

Rates have also skyrocketed for ADD, ADHD, speech delays, childhood

diabetes, eczema, asthma, and allergies. According to the CDC, 1 in 6

children now has some type of developmental or behavioral disorder.

 

#

 

 

Lanier Rossignol with her sons, 4-year-old Isaiah and almost-2 year

old Joshua (both diagnosed with autism)

 

 

The 1972 Life magazine publication of this photograph of a mother

bathing her severely mercury-disabled teenage daughter woke up the

world to what happened in Minamata, Japan.

W. EUGENE SMITH (1918-1978)

 

 

Julian Baumer

 

Nell Goddin with family: Nellie Baumer (age 4), Julian Baumer (age 6),

and Chris Baumer

 

 

David Kirby, longtime health/science contributor to the New York

Times, speaks in Charlottesville April 19.

PHOTO COURTESY ST. MARTIN'S PRESS

 

 

 

Kathy Young, a resident of Albemarle County and president of the

Virginia chapter of the National Autism Association, has a

seven-year-old daughter diagnosed with autism. " When Anna was about

18-months old we began worrying about her speech delay. She was sick a

lot too with ear infections. She had no eye contact. The doctors kept

telling us the same thing: wait and see, wait and see. Two years later

Anna was diagnosed with autism. "

 

#