FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER Sacramento, California
http://www.feat.org
"Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the Planet"
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November 14, 2001 News Morgue Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp
MEDIA – AUTISM AWARENESS
* On PBS: A Dangerous Choice
PUBLIC HEALTH
* Boy Barred From School Until Vaccination Dispute Resolved
RESEARCH
* Study: Porcine Secretin Not Effective
* Brain Imaging In Neurobehavioral Disorders
Growing Up Different Series - A Dangerous Choice
Autism Related Segments in Series on PBS
Check website for local airing:
http://www2.pubtv.net/online/saf/
[PBS - Scientific American. The first segment related to autism in
this series ran yesterday and included a report of a family doing primarily
ABA therapy with their autistic child. The report described below has not
run yet. The entire series will be repeated, however. Thanks to Sally
Bernard.]
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/features/autism.htm
Their stories are strikingly similar. Parents welcome a healthy new
child into their family. The child begins to develop normally, even thrive.
But in the second year of life, the child stops progressing, stops babbling
and acquiring new words, stops hugging and making eye contact. Soon after
comes the crushing diagnosis: autism, the mysterious developmental disorder
that seems to rob many children of their emotions.
Stunned and saddened, many parents look for answers. Noticing that the
onset of autism occurs right around the time their children receive their
regularly scheduled childhood vaccines, some parents have begun to organize
and agitate for more research into the possible connection between vaccines
and illness. Could the public health panacea of the 20th century turn out to
be the medical menace of the 21st?
An Enigmatic Disorder
First described in 1943, autism was thought to be a mental illness,
likely caused by bad parenting. By 1964, however, scientists began to
search instead for a biological--specifically neurological--basis for the
disease.
Today, autism remains an enigmatic disorder. It is often accompanied
by mild to severe mental retardation, but many autistic individuals have
exceptionally high IQ's. Each autistic person expresses the disorder
uniquely: there is no definitive diagnostic test and--though it appears to
run in families--no gene has been found.
Although statistics vary widely, the Centers for Disease Control
estimates autism may occur in as many as one out of 1000 children, making it
one of the more common developmental disorders. Some research indicates
autism may even be increasingly common.
A California study found the number of children with autism increased
by 273 percent between 1987 and 1998. Similarly, a Maryland study found a
513 percent increase between 1993 and 1998. And, the Centers for Disease
Control found an apparent cluster of the disorder in a New Jersey town where
one in 150 children is autistic. What could be the cause of this sudden
surge in the numbers of children diagnosed with the disorder?
In 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield of the Royal Free Hospital in London
correlated the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to gastrointestinal
disease and autism. In an article published in the British science journal
The Lancet, Wakefield reported finding measles virus in the intestines of 11
children--none of whom had actually had measles but all of whom had
developed bowel problems and autistic behavior soon after receiving the MMR
vaccine. Wakefield hypothesized that the measles particles in the vaccine
(more on vaccines) might have had an adverse affect on the bowel,
interfering with the absorption of some vital nutrient, which in turn
interfered with normal brain development.
Although Wakefield's report made headlines, scientists--including
Wakefield himself--emphasized the study's limitations.
*************In a follow-up study
with a larger sample size, Wakefield did not find a correlation.*****************
Nor did any
other research group looking into the possible connection, which included
the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.
Still, the implications of Wakefield's original report were fuel for a long
smoldering fire.
"It's all a coincidence?"
In 1980, Barbara Loe Fisher's son went into shock and suffered brain
damage within four hours after receiving a vaccine. In 1982, Fisher
co-founded the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). Ever since then,
she's agitated for more research into vaccine safety and the right to
informed consent to vaccination.
Though her son did not subsequently develop autism, Fisher cannot
ignore the chronological coincidences in children who do.
"What is so compelling is that the pattern is the same, the stories
are all the same," she says. "And, the main defense is 'It's all a
coincidence?' It's illogical, it's unscientific and it's irresponsible."
Not only does the condition first seem to manifest soon after
vaccination; the history of the disorder also seems correlated to the rise
of vaccination as a public health tool.
Vaccination programs virtually eliminated small pox, diphtheria and
pertussis as childhood killers in the 1940s- the same decade the first cases
of autism were identified. By the 1970s, children were also routinely
inoculated against measles, mumps, rubella and polio. By 1999--the year
after state public health studies had documented huge increases in the
incidence of autism--the average American child received almost three dozen
doses of vaccines by age five.
"In the public health infrastructure, the primary method of disease
control is vaccination," says Fisher. "Because it's the cornerstone, there
is tremendous reluctance to acknowledge that not all children are the same,
that there is biodiversity."
While Fisher does not discourage immunization, she does insist the
medical establishment should reexamine vaccine safety.
"We believe there is a certain percentage of the population that is
genetically vulnerable to vaccines," she says. "In 2001, we have the
technology to look at what's going on in the body on the cellular and
molecular level after vaccination. But we are not taking advantage of it
because it would complicate the one-size-fits-all approach."
A Very Real Debate
Public health officials disagree. Agencies in the United States and
Britain have been conducting research into the possible connection between
vaccines and autism. In April 2000, the Institute of Medicine (IOM)--a
private, non-profit research arm of the National Academy of Sciences--issued
a report concluding that the MMR vaccine was in fact safe and effective and
not correlated to autism.
In October 2001, the IOM released another report into the possible
connection between autism and Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used
in some vaccines since the 1930's. Mercury is a known neurotoxin, but the
compound had been proven safe in the small doses received via vaccine. But
as more vaccines became routine, some wondered if too much mercury was
accumulating in children's systems.
The IOM concluded that while they could not find a causal relationship
between Thimerosal and autism, they could not rule one out, either. The IOM
recommended that only Thimerosal-free vaccines be given to infants and
children. However, the IOM also noted that vaccines containing the
preservative should be administered rather than foregoing immunization where
Thimerosal-free doses were not available. Infectious disease, the committee
reasoned, poses a much greater risk than does autism.
"The committee recommended further work, and the National Institutes
of Health has the initiative," says Dr. Marie McCormick, Chair of the
Department of Maternal and Child Health at Harvard's School of Public Health
in Boston and a member of the panel. "People are dealing with it
responsibly, although there still are questions to be resolved."
Despite these unanswered questions, McCormick believes the science
belies what some parents' eyes tell them.
"The timing association makes it seem causal," says McCormick "The
second year of life is when children are vaccinated and also the time when
autism becomes most obvious. But if you look at videos from even earlier,
you can often see early signs of autism there."
Moreover, according to McCormick, new research on autism suggests
there may be chemical abnormalities associated with autism that are present
at birth. Detecting the disorder so early would resolve the question of
whether vaccines can induce autism in otherwise perfectly healthy children
once and for all. But the problem public health officials face today is how
little is understood about autism.
That very murkiness could have a lot to do with the seeming increase
in rates of autism. According to McCormick, the diagnostic guidelines for
autism have changed four times in the last 30 years. The current guidelines
include Aperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism that may have gone
undiagnosed in the past. Additionally, increased awareness of autism likely
led to more diagnoses. McCormick also sites changes in special education and
institutionalization that may have had an impact on research into the
disorder's prevalence.
"In short," concludes McCormick, "there is no good evidence [that
rates of autism have increased] one way or the other."
In the aftermath of the Wakefield study, British parents increasingly
chose not to vaccinate their children. But in evading one danger, these
parents were putting their children--and others' children--at increased risk
for potentially lethal illnesses.
"When people are not immunized, the wild-type diseases come back,"
says McCormick. "It varies by disease, but measles returns when fewer than
90% of the population is vaccinated."
In the summer of 2000, a measles outbreak claimed the lives of three
children in Dublin, Ireland. In January 2001, Britain's Public Health
Laboratory Service warned that more deadly outbreaks were imminent, given
that just 88% of the population had been immunized, falling as low as 75% in
some regions.
Today, most U.S. public schools, most private schools and colleges, as
well as many camps and programs require vaccinations. But some groups
advocate changing these requirements. They could be inadvertently putting
American children at risk of diseases not seen for several generations.
According to McCormick, that's part of the problem.
"Today's parents have never seen these diseases. Diphtheria, pertussis
were killers before the 1930's. Measles had fatal complications," she says.
"These are not good diseases."
"Given the relative risk is hypothetical versus the very real risk of
disease, I'd say the risk benefit analysis comes down on the side of being
vaccinated," says McCormick.
