Autism
by Dr Viera Scheibner
and Bronwyn Hancock BSc.
There has been a fair degree of publicity
recently, more in some parts of the world than others, in relation to the
research that has
linked the MMR vaccine to autism.
What is the most publicized is that UK
researcher DR Andrew Wakefield and his group of researchers studied children
who developed Crohn's disease and autism and linked them to the MMR vaccine
that they had been administered (Lancet 1998).
It is good that this is being brought to
light, but since parents have been repeatedly reassured by many doctors that
the vaccine is safe, which they now can see is not true, it is important for them to logically reason that
they cannot trust ANYTHING they are told by doctors, particularly about
vaccination, and see that they need to research the whole vaccination issue.
Sadly, when this is done, it is realized that this MMR/autism link is only the tip of
iceberg.
There are various relevant very important
issues which are not addressed by this publicity, and which I will cover
here. It will then be recognized that this is a much wider problem, and only
after understanding this can parents make an informed decision about what to
do. The issues are as follows:
1. Is the MMR triple vaccine the only cause of autism?
2. Is the administration of measles, mumps and rubella
vaccines individually a solution to the problem of autism?
3. Are gastrointestinal problems the only mechanism causing
brain dysfunction characterized by the diagnosis of autism?
4. What constitutes the evidence of causality?
5. What IS the solution to the problem?
The answer to the first three questions, which we will address first, is a resounding NO!
The fourth and fifth questions are
addressed subsequently.
1. Is the MMR triple vaccine the only cause of
autism?
There is not only a documented link of autism to the
MMR vaccine, but also to the other
vaccines, such as the DPT and polio. We also know of a case of a child
developing autism after the Hepatitis A vaccine and others after the
Hepatitis B vaccine.
2. Are gastrointestinal problems the only mechanism
causing brain dysfunction characterized by the diagnosis of autism?
Even though it is evident and proven that
the MMR causes
bowel problems which result in
malabsorption and malelimination of waste product of digestion, which results
in brain dysfunction called autism, autism as a diagnosis was defined for the
first time by Kanner (1943 and 1944).
This was the time when the measles, mumps
and rubella (and the MMR) vaccines did not exist. However, it WAS the time of
intensified diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus vaccination.
The recipients of these vaccines developed encephalitis (or
encephalomyelitis) and the mechanism of behavioral problems described by
Kanner as autism was soon described by others as postencephalitic syndrome.
This is another, in fact the original,
explanation for the observed behavioral problems often alternatively
described as post--vaccinal encephalitic syndrome and caused by ANY vaccine.
This is amply described in a book written by Harris I. Coulter:
"Vaccination: Social Violence and Criminality, the Assault on the
American Brain."
3. Is the administration of measles, mumps and
rubella vaccines individually a solution to the problem of autism?
The researchers above and parents,
particularly in the United Kingdom, are calling for the three vaccines
(measles, mumps and rubella) to be administered individually as if this were
the solution to the problem.
However it is not just the combined
vaccines, such as MMR or DPT that cause autism, and therefore the separate administration
of the vaccines will NOT resolve the problem.
In fact we know of cases of autism
occurring after the individual vaccines. Indeed, the risk may, to the
contrary, be even increased.
DR Wakefield has not referred to ANY
research that has looked into the relative risk of developing autism after
the separate vaccines as opposed to the combined MMR (and we are not aware of
any), so there is no basis for such a recommendation.
It appears to be purely based on
speculation, and even that speculation can be said to be founded on a poor
amount of study of the available published refereed research, which shows in
more detail what the cause of the problem actually is. Much of this research
is covered in "Behavioral Problems in Childhood - The Link to
Vaccination", by DR Viera Scheibner.
It is important to understand that ANY of the vaccines - any type and given either singly or combined, can disturb the balance in the
body and cause autism.
In fact it has even very rarely developed
after an immunological assault that was NOT vaccination (we know of 2 such
cases), but it does NOT develop otherwise in unvaccinated children. Notably,
we know of NO cases of autism in which there was no clearly identifiable
immunological assault preceding its development.
4. What constitutes the evidence of causality?
Let us start by not relying on the words
of medical "authorities" in western countries.
A clear illustration of how truly
authoritative their assertions are can be seen from looking at what has
happened in other countries.
For example, Sugiura & Yamada (Pediatr
Infect Dis J, 1991;Vol 10(3):209-13) describe what happened in Japan. Very
briefly, when the MMR triple vaccine was shown to cause meningitis in 1 in
2026 recipients, not only did the Japanese health authorities recognize the
causal link to this vaccine, they also discontinued its use (and also significantly, no unusually large epidemic of any of these
infections followed).
Not surprisingly, the incidence of
vaccine-caused (and overall) meningitis plummeted (the minority who were
hell-bent on getting the vaccine could still get it). So, there is a
precedent of a whole major country abandoning the offending vaccine and of
recognition of the causal link between the offending vaccines and the
observed reactions.
Yet despite this, medical
"authorities" in other countries, such as Australia, the UK and the
US, continue to
ignore (or not read?) the research
in published, refereed medical journals, and claim that there is only a
temporal and coincidental association.
It is important to note that the only
studies that have claimed to discount the link of the MMR vaccine to autism
have been funded by vaccine manufacturers (the most recent being Merck, which makes MMR, and reported in
January 2001 in The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal).
This is a case of history repeating itself
- how many times have tobacco companies published research
"demonstrating" that cigarettes do not cause cancer or heart
disease, etc?
Looking at
the arguments in relation to the causal link.
It is unfortunate that rather than simply
caring to take the scientific approach of searching for and studying the
published literature revealing the mechanisms for how vaccines cause the
development of autism, vaccine promoters will simply follow the politician's
approach of making weak claims and reasoning to discount the link. They even
deny such literature exists, presumably because they have never searched for
it.
An example of this is that Dr. Eric
Fombonne, from the Institute of Psychiatry in London, UK claims in a letter
in Pediatrics (Pediatrics 2001;107:411-413) that the rise in the number of
reported cases of autism over the past 30 years was caused by doctors
adopting a broader definition of the disease and using better diagnostic
tools.
While doctors may be more aware of autism
now and as a result look for it more, the reason they are more aware of it is
because it is more evident - it is now occurring at a much higher rate.
Autism is
not just a label.
Autistic children are placed into special
schools, or special extensions of existing schools, because it is so obvious,
and always would have been, that their needs cannot be met in a normal
classroom.
Special schools for autistic children are
now overflowing and greatly increasing in number. Further, it is well
documented that there has been a rise in the numbers of children who are
diagnosed with a host of developmental, speech and learning disorders, regardless
of what you choose to call their problem. These facts should put an end to
any debate over diagnostic criteria changes.
Dr. Luke Tsai, a professor of psychiatry
and pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor,
said that if the disease was caused by a vaccine, "we would see hundreds
of thousands of kids with autism.
And we don't." Well, if DR Tsai has
studied so much medicine and yet has still no concept of variations in
susceptibility from one individual to another (let alone all the other
factors that vary from one administration to the next), one really has to
wonder what they DO learn in medical school, apart from pharmacology (i.e.
which toxic concoctions interfere with which efforts of the body to defend or
heal itself).
Apart from that though, with autism
occurring at the rate it does, there ARE at least two or three hundred
thousand children in our developed countries around the world with autism!
What planet
does he live on?
Vaccine promoters also commit another politically
motivated lapse in logic:
they admit
that the REACTIONS to all vaccines do occur, but say that they are only
TEMPORAL and COINCIDENTAL.
To our dismay, many of them seem to
actually believe this nonsense which represents an insult to basic intelligence.
This is because firstly, the word "reaction" itself is a word that
directly implies causality.
Secondly, establishing a TEMPORAL
relationship is the first precondition of causality.
Thirdly, why do they not even consider the
significant fact that these REACTIONS never occur BEFORE and always AFTER
vaccination? The magnitude of this "coincidence" is impossibility
in the realm of probability calculus.
It is actually considered prudent medical
practice that if a medical procedure is administered and symptoms occur
afterwards, that procedure must be considered as the cause. However further
to this there is plenty of information available that enables one to piece
together not just that there IS a link, but how the damage occurs.
Suppose you are a parent who has never
even picked up any medical literature at all on vaccination or autism.
To start with you might know only that
vaccines do SOMETHING to the immune system. Then you observe that after a
vaccination your child develops a condition that clearly involves an immune disorder - you can see this because when the child eats
certain foods his behavior goes particularly abnormal.
Then you communicate with other parents of
autistic children and lo and behold, they have observed the same temporal
link. A statistical probability then forms. If you read that more than one in
175 of all children in the UK ("Telegraph", 18 Feb, 2000), and
similar in other "developed" countries with high vaccination
compliance, suffer autism, but not in developing countries, which have low
vaccination compliance, you see a statistical link on a larger scale.
(Notably, a similar pattern of confinement
to developed countries occurs with cancer, leukemia, asthma and other modern
scourges of children.)
Then you
learn what is in vaccines
- .01-.025% each of formaldehyde, mercury (or substitute
#6-pheno-oxyethanol, a protoplasmic poison), aluminum, paint thinner,
coolant, antifreeze, dye, detergent phenols, solvent, borax, disinfectant,
MSG, glycerol, sulfite & phosphate compounds, polysorbate 80/20,
sorbitol, polyribosylribitol, betapropiolactone, Amphotericin B and other
chemicals, plus hydrolyzed gelatin, casein, dead animal tissue and blood
(e.g. cow, chick embryo, monkey, sheep, pig, dog, etc), aborted human fetus
cells, mutated (more virulent) human viruses, contaminant animal viruses
(e.g. SV40, which causes cancer in humans), bacteria, bacterial endotoxins,
antibiotics, yeast & animal, bacterial and viral DNA (which when injected
can be incorporated into the recipient DNA).
You reasonably conclude that perhaps it is
not enormously healthy for your child to be injected with this big mixture of
poisons, and it just MIGHT cause some damage to the immune system?
Then you might go further and look at what
these poisons are documented to do. You might start with the first one on the
list -
formaldehyde. You ask Poisons
Information or the National Research Council what its potential effects are and they give you this list:
Eye; nasal; throat and
pulmonary irritation; acidosis; acute sense of smell; alters tissue proteins;
anemia; antibodies formation; apathy; blindness; blood in urine; blurred
vision; body aches; bronchial spasms; bronchitis; burns nasal and throat;
cardiac impairment; palpitations and arrhythmias; central nervous system
depression; changes in higher cognitive functions; chemical sensitivity;
chest pains and tightness; chronic vaginitis; colds; coma; conjunctivitis;
constipation; convulsions; corneal erosion; cough; death; destruction of red
blood cells; depression; dermatitis; diarrhea; difficulty concentrating;
disorientation; dizziness; ear aches; eczema; emotional upsets; ethmoid
polyps; fatigue; fecula bleeding; fetal asphyxiation (and they say they don't
know what could cause SIDS?)
flu-like or cold like illness;
frequent urination with pain; gastritis; gastrointestinal inflammation;
headaches; hemolytic anemia; hemolytic haematuria; hoarseness; hyperactive
airway disease; hyperactivity; hypomenstrual syndrome; immune system
sensitiser; impaired (short) attention span; impaired capacity to attain
attention; inability or difficulty swallowing; inability to recall words and
names; inconsistent IQ profiles; inflammatory diseases of the reproductive
organs; intestinal pain; intrinsic asthma; irritability; jaundice; joint
pain; aches and swelling; kidney pain; laryngeal spasm; loss of memory; loss
of sense of smell; loss of taste; malaise; menstrual and testicular pain;
menstrual irregularities; metallic taste; muscle spasms and cramps; nasal
congestions; crusting and mucosae inflammation; nausea; nosebleeds; numbness
and tingling of the forearms and finger tips; pale, clammy skin; partial
laryngeal paralysis; pneumonia; post nasal drip; pulmonary edema; reduced
body temperature; retarded speech pattern; ringing or tingling in the ear;
schizophrenic-type symptoms; sensitivity to sound; shock; short term memory
loss; shortness of breath; skin lesions; sneezing; sore throat; spacey
feeling; speaking difficulty; sterility; swollen glands; tearing; thirst;
tracheitis; tracheobronchitis; vertigo; vomiting blood; vomiting; wheezing.
Then you
investigate mercury?
Aphthous, stomatitis,
catarrhal gingivitis, nausea, liquid stools, pain, liver disorder, injury to
the cardiovascular system and hematopoietic system, deafness, ataxia,
headache, paresthesia of the tongue, lips, fingers and toes, other
nonspecific dysfunctions, metallic taste, slight gastrointestinal
disturbances, excessive flatus, diarrhea, chorea, athetosis, tremors,
convulsions, pain and numbness in the extremities, nephritis, salivation,
loosening of the teeth, blue line on the gums, anxiety, mental depression,
insomnia, hallucinations or central nervous system effects.
Exposure may also cause
irritation of the eyes, mucous membranes and upper respiratory tract. Acute
poisoning may cause gastrointestinal irritation, renal failure, fine tremors
of extended hands, loss of side vision, slight loss of coordination in the
eyes, speech, writing and gait, inability to stand or carry out voluntary
movements, occasional muscle atrophy and flexure contractures, generalized
myoclonic movements, difficulty understanding ordinary speech, irritability
and bad temper progressing to mania, stupor, coma, mental retardation in
children, skin irritation, blisters or dermatitis. Exposure may be fatal.
Well how about that?
These
ingredients cause exactly the type of damage that your child is suffering.
Be sure to
read Part 2 of
this article
 If
you find this newsletter interesting and valuable, help support it by
recommending it to some friends by using this button.
Return to Table of Contents #203
|
