Autism - is there a Cover-Up?

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Carole Caplin's column: Autism - is there a Cover-Up?

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 11:43:01 +0100

 

 

 

 

Autism - is there a Cover-Up?

(UK) Mail on Sunday, Night & Day, 11/9/05.

by Carole Caplin

 

After my column last week, about the evidence now emerging that

mercury poisoning from childhood vaccines may account for the huge

increase in autism, I've been flooded with letters from parents of

children suffering from this mysterious disorder.

 

The vast majority utterly reject, as I do, the soothing reassurances

from government health authorities and many doctors, that the huge

rise in autism and related conditions such as Asperger's Syndrome over

recent decades, is due merely to better diagnosis and reporting.

 

As Dr. Margaret Cook, a consultant haematologist, who has also written

about this subject, recently pointed out, autism was unknown prior to

1939, when vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative called

thiomersal were first introduced.

 

Just ten years ago, the number of children diagnosed with autism was

one in 2,500. Today, with children being given more and more vaccines

at an ever earlier age, that figure is one in 166. As Dr. Cook says,

if autism simply went unrecognised in children in past decades, where

are all the adults walking around today with this condition? The

official excuses simply don't add up.

 

It's reassuring that mercury-based preservatives are no longer used in

vaccines; but what are parents of older children supposed to make of

Alice-in-Wonderland assurances from health officials that no, there

wasn't any problem with thiomersal - it just had to be very hastily

discontinued?

 

So worried is the US government about the links between mercury

poisoning and autism, that a clause barring thiomersal-related

litigation was suddenly and at the last minute, tacked on to an

entirely unrelated bill going through Congress in 2002.

 

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but having researched the subject of

mercury and other heavy-metal toxins at length, I'm convinced there is

a cover-up of extraordinary proportions going on. Many powerful

industries and lobbyists assuredly do not want researchers

investigating possible links between modern health problems and our

ever-increasing exposure to environmental toxins such as mercury.

 

Yet there are now doctors, dentists, nutritionalists and other health

professionals the world over who are convinced that environmental

pollutants play a role in the huge increase in certain cancers,

stomach disorders such as candida and irritable bowel syndrome, to

name but a a few illnesses.

 

Recently, an American scientist presented a fascinating paper that may

go some way to explaining why some people are more vulnerable to the

effects of environmental toxins than others.

 

Taking blood samples from 21 autistic children and comparing them with

those from children without autism, Dr. Sandra Jill James, professor

of paediatrics at the University of Arkansas, found significant

differences in levels of glutathione, an antioxidant that helps rid

the body of toxins.

 

In her presentation to a medical conference in San Diego, Dr. James

reported that 80% of the children with autism had significiantly lower

levels of glutathione as well as depleted levels of the amino acids of

which it is made up. She postulated that without sufficient levels of

ths antioxidant, mercury and other heavy metals might build up much

more quickly in the body, potentially causing damage to the brain,

gastrointestinal tract and immune system. If there is already a

genetic predisposition to autism, then such a build-up may well be a

trigger.

 

My advice to parents of children with autism - or anyone keen to know

more about this subject - would be to search the web for information,

including the names of reputable practitioners who understand how

vitally important it is to reduce exposure to environmental toxins.

These include nutritionalists and also dentists who specialise in

removing mercury fillings safely.

________

 

Autism: the mercury trail

Margaret Cook

Monday 8th August 2005

Powerful evidence points to a preservative in vaccines as the likely

culprit, writes Margaret Cook

 

The classic juvenile tactic to get out of a scrape is to deny it

vehemently, even if that means claiming black is white. Curiously,

governments adopt the same technique, reinforcing their indignant

denials with name-calling.

 

This has been the response from both US and British establishments to

parental fears that autism is causally related to vaccines. Andrew

Wakefield was sent packing after he suggested MMR vaccines were

suspect. His failure to declare an interest in connection with his

research was used to destroy his career, even though his lapse pales

into insignificance beside the conflicting incentives present in the

entire chain of vaccine-policy command from Cabinet Office to

consulting room.

 

But it is more difficult to bully away the question of mercury in

vaccines and its putative link with autism. A book published in the US

this year, Evidence of Harm by David Kirby, makes a compel-ling case.

Any unbiased doctor who reads it, following the golden rules of

listening to the parents' stories and assessing the evidence the book

quotes, cannot fail to be persuaded. Yet the response in the British

Medical Journal, in a review by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, is to rubbish

it in a hectoring tirade, the theme of which is that parents are not

reliable witnesses and the experts know best. How dare the parents

side with " credulous journalists " and defy the " authoritative US

Institute of Medicine " ?

 

Since 1939 a preservative called thiomersal (thimerosal in the US) has

been used in some vaccines, and it contains nearly 50 per cent

mercury. Mercury is a nerve-cell poison, but the amounts in vaccines

were said to be " traces " only. It was used in, among others, the

diphtheria/tetanus/ pertussis vaccine given in three doses early in

infancy. It is not present in MMR or other vaccines containing live

viruses. In the US, pre-school vaccinations are compulsory and, under

this blanket, jabs upon jabs were added to make a worryingly crowded

programme. It was nearly a decade before the Food and Drug

Administration added up the mercury being injected into infants in the

first few months of life, and then it found that it was well in excess

of federal legal limits even for adults. In 1999 regulators in the US

and Europe advised phasing out mercury in childhood vaccines in the

shortest possible time - while continuing to deny it was harmful.

Believe that if you will.

 

Autism and related disorders were un-known before 1939. The

exponential in-crease in recent years seems to parallel the rising

number of mercury-containing vaccines given at an ever earlier age.

The infant blood-brain barrier is not developed until six months of

age, and it is to be expected that even minuscule amounts of this

cumulative toxin can do harm. A causal association between the metal

and autistic disorders is wholly biologically plausible.

Epidemiological studies have come up with conflicting results,

depending on the mindset of the researcher.

 

There is evidence that autistic children have a (probably genetic)

problem in excreting mercury. It now seems likely that these

predisposed children, burdened and immuno-suppressed with toxic metal,

then given a dose of MMR live vaccine, suffered a triple whammy

causing full-blown autism. The history obtained from parents of

children with autism is consistent and should not be dismissed so

contemptuously as the reviewer Fitzpatrick did. The story that a child

progressed normally until an adverse reaction to a vaccine seemed to

tip him or her into a slide into autism is heard again and again.

 

The extraordinary increase in autism among children - one child in 166

now suffers from an autism spectrum disor- der - cannot be explained

away by better recognition and diagnosis, as claimed by psychiatrists.

If it were so, where are all the adults with covert autism?

 

So worried was the US government about the mercury question that a

rider barring thiomersal litigation was tacked on at the 11th hour to

the (unconnected) Homeland Security Bill 2002 - a sign of the US

health, federal and industrial establishments ganging up to evade a

mercury fallout.

 

Mercury was removed from UK infant vaccines in 2004. Parents of

autistic children in the UK struggle to engage the support of public

services, and many find that physical symptoms are ignored. Autism is

compartmentalised as a mental illness and doctors tend to leave it to

psychiatrists. Gastro-intestinal aspects of autism were Wakefield's

speciality, and look what happened to him.

 

Yet this disease needs to be wrested back into mainstream medicine and

that will happen only when the establishment seriously addresses the

theory of mercury as a contributory cause.

 

The writer is a retired consultant haematologist, formerly at St

John's Hospital, Livingston

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/Ideas/200508080011

 

 

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