Whether you are directly affected by autism or not, you would benefit from watching these short videos.
Part 1
Part 2
Precious moments with my husband and children are like bubbles. They appear suddenly, float by gently and disappear. I'd like to try to capture them here. Grandma always told me "It's the best time of your life when your babies are small." I'd like to prove her right and savor every minute.
Showing posts with label autism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autism. Show all posts
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Jenny McCarthy on autism
Autism statistics show that 1 in 166 children will be diagnosed with autism. They also say that 1 in 104 males will be diagnosed. Which means males are 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than females. It also means that an estimate of 67children are diagnosed a day.
Whether you are directly affected by autism or not, you would benefit from watching these short videos.
Whether you are directly affected by autism or not, you would benefit from watching these short videos.
Friday, December 08, 2006
The Role of MMR in Autism
The following is an excerpt from "What your Doctor may not tell you about children's vaccinations" by Stephanie Cave, M.D., F.A.A.F.P
The Role of MMR in Autism
One of the vaccines that have been implicated in autism and autism-related disorders is MMR. Before most children even receive the MMR vaccine, they have already been exposed to a total of 187.5 micrograms of mercury through vaccines. All that mercury has many effects on the body, including on the immune system. When mercury attacks the immune cells, it causes the TH1 lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) to stop doing their normal job: fighting viruses, parasites, and other disease-causing organisms. Thus the immune system is compromised.
The MMR vaccine – which contains three live viruses – is injected into the body of children whose lymphocytes cannot fight off viruses effectively. According to Andrew Wakefield, M.D., a pediatric gastroenterologist in London who has done extensive research on the link between measles vaccine and autism, the measles virus is transported to the gastrointestinal tract, where it multiplies and causes a persistent measles infection. Dr. Wakefield has documented the presence of live red measles particles in the gastrointestinal tracts of many autistic children in his practice and believes that the live MMR vaccine may cause children who are genetically at risk to have a chronic measles infection in their intestinal tract. This infection causes the walls of the intestinal tract to become inflamed, which then expands to the minute openings in the intestinal wall and allows harmful substances from the intestines to cross through the wall into the bloodstream.
Among those harmful substances are morphinelike substances called casomorphin and gluteomorphin, which are from the diet and get carried in the bloodstream to the brain, where they cause abnormal behaviors.
Measles Vaccine and Autism: A Missing Link?
Andrew Wakefield, M.D., one of the most prominent figures in the field of MMR vaccine research, has published several papers on his findings. In an article in the Lancet in 1998, he described a group of twelve autistic British children, eight of whom had been developing normally before receiving their MMR vaccination. These eight children developed autistic behaviors and severe intestinal problems simultaneously (Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases) after the shot. Five of these children had had a negative reaction to vaccinations before receiving this MMR dose.
In another study, Dr. Wakefield described twenty-five children who had sudden-onset autism. Twenty-four of the children had traces of measles virus in their bloodstream that matched the genetic makeup of the MMR vaccine. Only one of fifteen children without autism had the virus.
In March 1999 at the Second International Autism Conference, Dr. Wakefield explained how children who have a preexisting immune disorder may be predisposed to harboring the measles virus in their intestinal tract. When these children are given the MMR vaccine, it may stimulate an autoimmune response, which means the body literally attacks it’s own tissues, and leads to central nervous system damage. He also told of a healthy, normal fourteen-year-old boy who, within one week of receiving an MMR shot, developed strange behavior that was diagnosed as schizophrenic. While receiving an MMR shot at fourteen is not unusual (MMR shots are recommended for adolescents who have not been vaccinated with MMR as infants), developing schizophrenia at fourteen is uncommon, as it is usually diagnosed in males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.
Billy’s Story
In 1990, at the age of thirteen months, a bright, healthy child named Billy was taken by his mother, Sally, to get his MMR vaccine. Two weeks later, Sally said things started to change. Before he had received the MMR vaccine, Billy had been alert and sociable. After receiving his MMR, he avoided eye contact, stopped responding to his parents, and lost his language skills.
At age eighteen months, Sally took Billy in for his Hib vaccine, and immediately his behavior got worse. “He started flapping his arms, twirling and spinning,” said Sally. “Noise terrified him…He gagged on his food. He exhibited autistic, compulsive, and hyperactive behaviors.”
Terrified and confused, Billy’s parents began taking their son to various professionals who specialized in learning disorders, speech and hearing problems, and psychology. When a pediatrician conducted blood tests and found that Billy had a borderline high concentration of rubella, Sally thought this was unusual, given that it had been a year since Billy had gotten the MMR shot. Her research into the medical literature revealed that rubella infection can cause autism in children who have congenital rubella. Therefore, couldn’t the live rubella virus in the MMR vaccine do the same thing? Her research convinced her that it could. She also suspected that injecting the live virus into the bloodstream disrupted the immune system and had a negative effect on the immunoglobulin (IgG) levels that aid in the absorption of nutrients in the gastrointestinal system.
Sally sought help from Sudhir Gupta, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine and immunology at the University of California. Dr. Gupta started intravenous treatment of immunoglobulin while Sally changed Billy’s diet by reducing milk and wheat products (common allergens in children with autism and sources of casein and gluten, respectively) and giving him supplements to boost his immune system and gastrointestinal tract. Within weeks Billy’s behavior improved dramatically. His rubella titers dropped and his immunoglobulin levels stabilized. By the age of four he had regained normal behavior, eye contact and speech. At age eleven in 2000 he was getting A’s in his classes in a regular public school classroom and playing sports.
The Role of MMR in Autism
One of the vaccines that have been implicated in autism and autism-related disorders is MMR. Before most children even receive the MMR vaccine, they have already been exposed to a total of 187.5 micrograms of mercury through vaccines. All that mercury has many effects on the body, including on the immune system. When mercury attacks the immune cells, it causes the TH1 lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) to stop doing their normal job: fighting viruses, parasites, and other disease-causing organisms. Thus the immune system is compromised.
The MMR vaccine – which contains three live viruses – is injected into the body of children whose lymphocytes cannot fight off viruses effectively. According to Andrew Wakefield, M.D., a pediatric gastroenterologist in London who has done extensive research on the link between measles vaccine and autism, the measles virus is transported to the gastrointestinal tract, where it multiplies and causes a persistent measles infection. Dr. Wakefield has documented the presence of live red measles particles in the gastrointestinal tracts of many autistic children in his practice and believes that the live MMR vaccine may cause children who are genetically at risk to have a chronic measles infection in their intestinal tract. This infection causes the walls of the intestinal tract to become inflamed, which then expands to the minute openings in the intestinal wall and allows harmful substances from the intestines to cross through the wall into the bloodstream.
Among those harmful substances are morphinelike substances called casomorphin and gluteomorphin, which are from the diet and get carried in the bloodstream to the brain, where they cause abnormal behaviors.
Measles Vaccine and Autism: A Missing Link?
Andrew Wakefield, M.D., one of the most prominent figures in the field of MMR vaccine research, has published several papers on his findings. In an article in the Lancet in 1998, he described a group of twelve autistic British children, eight of whom had been developing normally before receiving their MMR vaccination. These eight children developed autistic behaviors and severe intestinal problems simultaneously (Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory bowel diseases) after the shot. Five of these children had had a negative reaction to vaccinations before receiving this MMR dose.
In another study, Dr. Wakefield described twenty-five children who had sudden-onset autism. Twenty-four of the children had traces of measles virus in their bloodstream that matched the genetic makeup of the MMR vaccine. Only one of fifteen children without autism had the virus.
In March 1999 at the Second International Autism Conference, Dr. Wakefield explained how children who have a preexisting immune disorder may be predisposed to harboring the measles virus in their intestinal tract. When these children are given the MMR vaccine, it may stimulate an autoimmune response, which means the body literally attacks it’s own tissues, and leads to central nervous system damage. He also told of a healthy, normal fourteen-year-old boy who, within one week of receiving an MMR shot, developed strange behavior that was diagnosed as schizophrenic. While receiving an MMR shot at fourteen is not unusual (MMR shots are recommended for adolescents who have not been vaccinated with MMR as infants), developing schizophrenia at fourteen is uncommon, as it is usually diagnosed in males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.
Billy’s Story
In 1990, at the age of thirteen months, a bright, healthy child named Billy was taken by his mother, Sally, to get his MMR vaccine. Two weeks later, Sally said things started to change. Before he had received the MMR vaccine, Billy had been alert and sociable. After receiving his MMR, he avoided eye contact, stopped responding to his parents, and lost his language skills.
At age eighteen months, Sally took Billy in for his Hib vaccine, and immediately his behavior got worse. “He started flapping his arms, twirling and spinning,” said Sally. “Noise terrified him…He gagged on his food. He exhibited autistic, compulsive, and hyperactive behaviors.”
Terrified and confused, Billy’s parents began taking their son to various professionals who specialized in learning disorders, speech and hearing problems, and psychology. When a pediatrician conducted blood tests and found that Billy had a borderline high concentration of rubella, Sally thought this was unusual, given that it had been a year since Billy had gotten the MMR shot. Her research into the medical literature revealed that rubella infection can cause autism in children who have congenital rubella. Therefore, couldn’t the live rubella virus in the MMR vaccine do the same thing? Her research convinced her that it could. She also suspected that injecting the live virus into the bloodstream disrupted the immune system and had a negative effect on the immunoglobulin (IgG) levels that aid in the absorption of nutrients in the gastrointestinal system.
Sally sought help from Sudhir Gupta, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine and immunology at the University of California. Dr. Gupta started intravenous treatment of immunoglobulin while Sally changed Billy’s diet by reducing milk and wheat products (common allergens in children with autism and sources of casein and gluten, respectively) and giving him supplements to boost his immune system and gastrointestinal tract. Within weeks Billy’s behavior improved dramatically. His rubella titers dropped and his immunoglobulin levels stabilized. By the age of four he had regained normal behavior, eye contact and speech. At age eleven in 2000 he was getting A’s in his classes in a regular public school classroom and playing sports.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Vaccine-Autism Connection
The following is an excerpt from "What your Doctor may not tell you about children's vaccinations" by Stephanie Cave, M.D., F.A.A.F.PThe Vaccine-Autism Connection
Bernard Rimland, PH.D., a psychologist, father of an autistic child, and found of the Autism Society of America in 1965, established a databank that includes information on more than thirty thousand cases of autism from around the world. His analysis of the data shows that before the early 1980s most parents reported that signs of autism were apparent at birth or during the first year of life. But after the mid-1980s things changed: Suddenly the number of parents reporting that their children developed normally during the first year and a half, and then became autistic, doubled.
What had happened during that time? The combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) was added to the routine child vaccination schedule in 1979 and was given to children at age twelve to fifteen months. At first, the number of children vaccinated was low, but within a few years that changed as federal grants were given to the states so they could provide free MMR vaccines, along with free polio and DTP vaccinations and mandatory vaccination laws were more strictly enforced. In 1988, the Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) vaccine was added to that schedule.
The dramatic increase in autism continued, and so did the number of vaccines and doses added to the childhood vaccination schedule. Between 1993 and 1998, for example, autism increased 513 percent in Maryland. A total of twenty-four other states reported increases of more than 300 percent between 1992 and 1997. And in California the Department of Developmental Services reported a 273 percent increase in autism between 1987 and 1998.
By the end of the 1990s the average American child was receiving a total of thirty-three doses of 10 different vaccines by the time he or she was five or six years old, beginning with a hepatitis B shot at birth and ending with DTP/DTaP and polio vaccinations between four and six years of age. As the number of vaccines given increased, so did the incidence of autism. Not only did the number of vaccines climb but so did the percentage of children receiving them, as federal grants made free vaccinations available to low-income families.
And this fact highlights another interesting observation; Cases of autism were primarily confined to upper- and upper-middle-class families in the 1940s and 1950s. These individuals were the ones who could afford to pay for health care and vaccines for their children, as well as diagnostic testing. As the government made vaccines free to all who could not afford them, autism crossed class lines. Today autism is widespread in all socioeconomic groups.
The parallel increase in vaccinations and autism is only the overall picture. We need to take a closer look at the different factors that could explain it.
The Mercury/Thimerosal-Autism Connection
Between 1991 and 1999 the United States embarked on what might be labeled a bold, ill-planned experiment: the recommended vaccination of newborns with the hepatitis B vaccine. This vaccine contained 12.5 micrograms of mercury (thimerosal), which is more than twenty-five times the EPA “safe level” of 0.1 microgram per kilogram of body weight per day. This toxic dose was followed by not one but two more doses: one at one to two months and another at six months of age. In addition, infants and children were also given four doses of mercury-containing Hib at two, four, six and twelve to fifteen months of age; plus four doses of mercury-containing DTP at two, four, six and twelve to eighteen months of age. By the age of six months, vaccinated children had received 187.5 mcg (micrograms) of mercury – a poison that accumulated in their bodies because production of bile, which helps clear toxins from the body, is not developed in children less than four to six months of age.
When mercury can’t get out of the body, it travels to the brain, changes into inorganic mercury, clings to brain tissue, and damages the nervous system. Mercury doesn’t cling to just any part of the brain; it goes exactly to those areas involved in autism: the cerebellum, amygdale, and hippocampus. The cerebellum is involved in the execution of balance and movement, such as walking and running, and the smooth movements of the eye; the amygdale controls emotional processing; and the hippocampus is involved in the formation, sorting, and storage of memory.
Perhaps there is no way to better illustrate the relationship between mercury and autism than to look at the characteristics of each. The accompanying chart shows the similar and overlapping traits of mercury poisoning and autism in seven categories plus their similar population characteristics. These facts are strong evidence that many cases of autism that have been diagnosed in recent years and that continue to be diagnosed today are a form of mercury poisoning.
Comparison of Characteristic of Autism and Mercury Poisoning
CHARACTERISTIC: Movement Disorders
AUTISM: Arm flapping, jumping spinning, rocking, circling; abnormal posture and gait; clumsiness, uncoordinated; difficulties crawling, lying down, sitting, walking; difficulty swallowing or chewing; walking on the toes
MERCURY POISONING: Arm flapping, ankle jerks, rocking, circling; uncoordinated, clumsiness; inability to walk, stand, or sit; difficulty swallowing or chewing; walking on the toes
CHARACTERISTIC: Sensory abnormalities
AUTISM: Oversensitive to sound; abnormal sensation in the mouth, arms and legs; doesn't like to be touched
MERCURY POISONING: Oversensitive to sound; abnormal sensations in the mouth, arms and legs; doesn't like to be touched
CHARACTERISTIC: Speech, hearing, language problems
AUTISM: Delayed language or failure to develop speech; mild to severe hearing loss; problems with articulation; word use errors
MERCURY POISONING: Loss of speech or failure to develop speech; hearing loss; deafness at very high doses; problems with articulation; word retrieval problems
CHARACTERISTIC: Cognitive problems
AUTISM: Borderline intelligence, mental retardation; may be recovered; poor concentration, shifting attention; difficulty following multiple commands; difficulty comprehending words; difficulty understanding abstract ideas and symbols
MERCURY POISONING: Borderline intelligence, mental retardation: may be reversed; poor concentration and attention; difficulty following complex commands; difficulty comprehending words; difficulty understanding abstract ideas and symbols
CHARACTERISTIC: Visual problems
AUTISM: Poor eye contact; blurred vision
MERCURY POISONING: Poor eye contact; blurred vision
CHARACTERISTIC: Physical problems
AUTISM: Decreased muscle strength, especially in upper body, incontinence; rash, dermatitis; abnormal sweating, poor circulation, high heart rate, diarrhea, constipation, gas, abdominal discomfort; anorexia, feeding problems; seizures; tendency to have allergies and asthma; family history of autoimmune symptoms, especially rheumatoid arthritis
MERCURY POISONING: Decreased muscle strength, especially in upper body, incontinence, salivating; rash, dermatitis; abnormal sweating, poor circulation, high heart rate; diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain; anorexia, nausea, poor appetite; seizures; sensitive individuals more likely to have allergies, asthma; more likely to have autoimmune symptoms, especially rheumatoid arthritis
CHARACTERISTIC: Unusual behavior
AUTISM: Sleeping difficulties; injures self, such as head banging; staring, unprovoked crying, social isolation
MERCURY POISONING: Sleeping difficulties; injures self, such as head banging; staring, unprovoked crying, social isolation
These are just a few of the many similarities between people who have mercury poisoning and those with autism. At the biochemical and cellular levels, there are many additional similarities, which are much too technical to address here. This information was adapted from a heavily referenced research paper, "Autism: A Unique Type of Mercury Poisoning," by Sallie Bernard and associates, copyright ARC Research, 14 Commerce Drive, Cranford, NJ 07016, April 21, 2000.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)