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which have helped with her own ASD kid (whether vaccines played a role or not): http://www.generationrescue.or...
"5. Explore an Allergen Free Diet
Improvement has been seen with the removal of certain allergens such as gluten, casein, or soy from the diet. Explore a variety of special diets, including the gluten-free, casein-free diet and other allergen free diets through the following resources:
Explore the the gluten-free, casein-free diet
Body ecology diet
Elimination diet
Rotation diet
Other allergen free diet
6. Consider Supplementation with multi-vitamins and other beneficial nutritional support
Multi-vitamins and multi-minerals
Probiotics
Digestive enzymes
Fish oils
MB12
Natural detoxifiers
Anti-virals
Anti-fungals
Anti-yeasts"

See also:
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/1...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org...

I agree with your point about conflict of interest, which I mention in other replies. Does look like US military personnel get little choice about orders to be vaccinated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://thinktwice.com/military...

VItamin D deficiency, lack of phytonutrients, lack of iodine, lack of omega-3s, excessive preformed vitamin A, lack of early breastfeeding, lack of exercise to move lymph around, artificial ingredients in food, food allergies or lactose intolerance, environmental toxins including heavy metals, and so on could all contribute to weakened immune systems and a build up of toxins in the body leading to mental dysfunction (relative to a historic normal). Examples:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/autism/
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/12/09/breakthrough-discovery-on-the-causes-of-autism/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/adhd-dr-fuhrmans-antiadhd-plan.html

In that mess of possibilities, some small quantity of mercury, aluminum, and other toxins from vaccines is possibly just one more drop in the bucket. Ideally, the bucket is constantly getting emptied by the body (including through the immune system and other cleaning systems) so it does not overflow and lead to things like mitochondrial dysfunction.

But some stuff, like vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy and the first few years, is structural about how the brain is wired.

Many people have reported success making thing somewhat better with the above approaches to addressing autism (beyond behavioral approaches as well, like training to read facial expressions better). The oft-vilified on Slashdot Jenny McCarthy's "Generation Rescue" website has some success stories of improvements via better diet and other interventions:
http://www.generationrescue.org/recovery/stories-of-recovery/

Whatever one thinks of the vaccine connection, eating better generally is unlikely to hurt. Although I'd look to someone like Dr. Fuhrman or Dr. Hyman for better general dietary advice than just "gluten/casein free', even as food allergies may be a piece of the puzzle for some kids labelled autistic.

I agree though that parents and guardians of autism spectrum children may often feel desperate, and that is, as you say, a risk for getting preyed on in some way (whether by alternatives or the mainstream).

Good luck with your grandson! Hopefully he can learn to make the most of his unique strengths and connections as "Positive psychology".

Today's schools have become so different from those of a generation ago, making all this even harder. Watch out for "the war on kids", especially the push in many schools to drug boys for wanting to be outside in the sunshine running around playing:
http://www.thewaronkids.com/

Anyone taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy http://www.generationrescue.org/ has no one to blame but themselves when their child is injured or killed by an easily preventable disease.

And interestingly, McCarthy recanted her claim that vaccines caused her child's problems a little over a year ago.

Not quite. Careful not to be called out on the hard facts, she now says she thinks "vaccines should be studied more carefully," and she still works as a speaker for the anti-vax movement. The current homepage for Jenny McCarthy's Generation Rescue organization includes the headline, "Recent Dr. Andrew Wakefield Media Circus: Much Ado About Nothing," where the organization flatly denies that Wakefield's study was a fraud.

ScienceBlogs is supposed to be a place for creative, and sometimes controversial, opinions. My favorite ones are Respectful Insolence and Tomorrow's Table, and all the time, you read things there that plenty of people would get all in a huff about. Does anyone think the Pepsi blog would do that? Do you think they would ever once mention the insanity of the anti-vax movement, or the senselessness of the 9/11 truthers, or call alternative medicine purveyors out on their incoherent conspiracies? Think they'd ever mention politics or evolution or anything else that might upset a customer? No, because this blog was not written by an individual, it was by a company, for a company. And besides, plenty of clueless conspiracy minded nutters would point to this as the link between a scienceblogger, and therefore believe them to be discredited, since no small amount of people already believe scientists to be in on the Big Pharma/Monsanto/Illuminati/New World Order genocide conspiracy, so this would kinda make ScienceBlogs as a whole look a little less independent and reputable if they're willing to put corporate interests there for money.

I think he just broke under pressure. There is supposedly evidence from a survey preformed in the US in 2007 that supports Wakefield's findings. http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html I am only interested in this because I am about to have a child. Where I am from we get vaccinated a lot later than in the US. I think I got vaccinated around 9 or 10, not before 2 like in the US

Someone should do a study to see if it is socially possible to stop it with vaccinations. Something tells me that is a better question.

You might have a problem with that. Because her current boyfriend, Jim Carrey, recently gave her anti-vaccine organization $50 MILLION. And if you don't believe that, look at the website for her anti-vaccine organization. There he is, with the madwoman and her little darling, in the top banner.

If you want to hear the parents' side of the "does mercury in vaccines cause autism?" debate, PLEASE PLEASE visit the website http://www.generationrescue.org/ There are links to testimonial videos which show before and after footage of children who were deemed to be (sometimes profoundly) autistic, but then after the mercury and other heavy metals came out of their children's body (through chelation), the results are absolutely incredible.

The "experts" who dismiss Thimerosal as a causative agent in autism may have their points, but you can NOT dispute the video footage. And if you are a parent of a child who shows symptoms of autism (which overlap almost exactly with symptoms of mercury poisoning), and then that child comes back to the point where he/she is "recovered" through biomedical intervention -- there is nothing that the naysayers can say which will convince you that it is all about genetics, etc.

What almost everybody can agree on is that . . . nobody agrees on the cause of autism. However, I have found that http://www.generationrescue.org/ is a very persuasive source of information about the autism debate. Please read and decide for yourself.

If you want to hear the parents' side of the "does mercury in vaccines cause autism?" debate, PLEASE PLEASE visit the website http://www.generationrescue.org/ There are links to testimonial videos which show before and after footage of children who were deemed to be (sometimes profoundly) autistic, but then after the mercury and other heavy metals came out of their children's body (through chelation), the results are absolutely incredible.

The "experts" who dismiss Thimerosal as a causative agent in autism may have their points, but you can NOT dispute the video footage. And if you are a parent of a child who shows symptoms of autism (which overlap almost exactly with symptoms of mercury poisoning), and then that child comes back to the point where he/she is "recovered" through biomedical intervention -- there is nothing that the naysayers can say which will convince you that it is all about genetics, etc.

What almost everybody can agree on is that . . . nobody agrees on the cause of autism. However, I have found that http://www.generationrescue.org/ is a very persuasive source of information about the autism debate. Please read and decide for yourself.

• The number of autistic children has grown so epidemically over the last 20 years, even 10 years (Between 1992-2002, the Department of Education estimates that there has been a 714% increase in the number of autistic children. Today, the CDC acknowledges the number is about 1 in 166, even Eli Lilly, the maker of Thimerosal, says it's 1 in 150. In my neighbourhood, there are 3 autistic children, including my son; all of these are aged 2-4 years old).
• Nearly all autistic children you'll meet were born in the late 1990s and early 2000s (coincidentally, as more and more vaccinations were added to the list mandated by the government)

To put it differently - there is no such thing as an "genetic epidemic". Autism is by far and large an enviromental issue. The only thing that has changed so rapidly over the last 10-20 years in terms of environmental exposure is the number of vaccines that these kids are given.

It is also a fact that the levels of mercury in these vaccines exceeds the levels approved by the FDA for adults 30-40 times. These vaccines are given starting at birth - to infants that do not even have fully developed liver functions. Moreover, ethyl mercury (found in vaccines) is probably more harmful than methyl mercury (found in seafood, and forms the basis for FDA's recommendation).

To address your points one by one:

• If your wife's degree is in Psychology, the professional journals she is reading are not very likely to deal with biomedical issues related to autism, such as the role of exitotoxic agents on the glutamate receptors in your nervous system. For this type of information, you are better off trying to understand some of the biomedical science that is performed in this area, such as that provided by Bernard Rimland & others at the Autism Research Institute. Another excellent, though somewhat technical, explanation of what is going on with regards to thimerasol, specific viruii in vaccines, and the body of autistic children, is provided by Dr. Amy Yasko. Unfortunately, only a fraction of this information is on her web site - but if you are really interested in this subject, I strongly recommend her books ("The Puzzle of Autism", and "The Power of RNA") along with her conference presentations (available on DVD via the same site). She boasts a near 100% recovery rate of the patients she is seeing - which are often the hardest ones - those for whom traditional chelation (via DPMS or DMSA) failed to work.
• Beware that there are siginifcant amounts of "bad" science conducted under direct or indirect sponsorship of pharmaseuticals, such as Merck, that will seek to discredit links between Thimerasol and Autism (just like they were doing "resarch" do discredit the link between Vioxx and heart failures in some patients). For instance, referalls to the so-called "Danish Study" are often used to "prove" that there is no link - wheras in reality this "study" (actually it was not a real study, just a snippet of government data extracted by the main Danish producer of Thimerasol-containing vaccines) would show the opposite. See this link for a more detailed explanation.
• Thimerasol has never been evaluated for use in humans by either the manufacturer (Ely Lily), the pharmaseuticals that use it (Merck, Avent

• The number of autistic children has grown so epidemically over the last 20 years, even 10 years (Between 1992-2002, the Department of Education estimates that there has been a 714% increase in the number of autistic children. Today, the CDC acknowledges the number is about 1 in 166, even Eli Lilly, the maker of Thimerosal, says it's 1 in 150. In my neighbourhood, there are 3 autistic children, including my son; all of these are aged 2-4 years old).
• Nearly all autistic children you'll meet were born in the late 1990s and early 2000s (coincidentally, as more and more vaccinations were added to the list mandated by the government)

To put it differently - there is no such thing as an "genetic epidemic". Autism is by far and large an enviromental issue. The only thing that has changed so rapidly over the last 10-20 years in terms of environmental exposure is the number of vaccines that these kids are given.

It is also a fact that the levels of mercury in these vaccines exceeds the levels approved by the FDA for adults 30-40 times. These vaccines are given starting at birth - to infants that do not even have fully developed liver functions. Moreover, ethyl mercury (found in vaccines) is probably more harmful than methyl mercury (found in seafood, and forms the basis for FDA's recommendation).

To address your points one by one:

• If your wife's degree is in Psychology, the professional journals she is reading are not very likely to deal with biomedical issues related to autism, such as the role of exitotoxic agents on the glutamate receptors in your nervous system. For this type of information, you are better off trying to understand some of the biomedical science that is performed in this area, such as that provided by Bernard Rimland & others at the Autism Research Institute. Another excellent, though somewhat technical, explanation of what is going on with regards to thimerasol, specific viruii in vaccines, and the body of autistic children, is provided by Dr. Amy Yasko. Unfortunately, only a fraction of this information is on her web site - but if you are really interested in this subject, I strongly recommend her books ("The Puzzle of Autism", and "The Power of RNA") along with her conference presentations (available on DVD via the same site). She boasts a near 100% recovery rate of the patients she is seeing - which are often the hardest ones - those for whom traditional chelation (via DPMS or DMSA) failed to work.
• Beware that there are siginifcant amounts of "bad" science conducted under direct or indirect sponsorship of pharmaseuticals, such as Merck, that will seek to discredit links between Thimerasol and Autism (just like they were doing "resarch" do discredit the link between Vioxx and heart failures in some patients). For instance, referalls to the so-called "Danish Study" are often used to "prove" that there is no link - wheras in reality this "study" (actually it was not a real study, just a snippet of government data extracted by the main Danish producer of Thimerasol-containing vaccines) would show the opposite. See this link for a more detailed explanation.
• Thimerasol has never been evaluated for use in humans by either the manufacturer (Ely Lily), the pharmaseuticals that use it (Merck, Avent

You seem to be just as much a victim of misinformation, relying, for instance, on a completely debunked Danish "study" for your argument. Just like in the case of Vioxx, pharma reports that draw on publicly available study data tend to draw the exact opposite conclusion of what the data itself suggests.

Just the fact that a single thimerasol-containing vaccine (such as the flu shot) contains 40 times more mercury than the FDA guidelines allows for adults, and that these vaccines are given to infants ought to set off some warning bells.

My firstborn son was diagnosed as autistic last January, at the age of 2 1/2. We had been increasinly concerned about his language delay, and specific stereotypical behaviors (hand flapping, head banging, etc). Looking back, we believe that these behaviors started appearing at around 18 months of age. Well -- guess what - during a 1-month period at that time, he had received 8 vaccines in 6 shots (including 5 vaccines in 3 shots on the day he got his MMR, and a flu shot 3 weeks later).

My wife had also received some dental fillings (amalgam) during her pregnancy. Despite denials by the ADA, there is also statistically significant data that shows that recent dental fillings in pregnant women will cause autism. I participate in various discussion groups related to autism - and this, too, seems to be a recurring theme: Multiple dental fillings around the time of pregnancy.

Then there is the genetic component. Some individuals are more prone to mercury poisoining than others. In partciular, individuals with a high level of early cognitive activity ("intelligence") are susceptible - because they tend to have higher releases of the peptite "glutamate" in their brains and nervous systems. (Glutamate, if not properly converted to GABA, and without proper levels of glutathione, will cause sensory overload - and over time kill a large percentage of nerve/brain cells in the body. Glutathione is normally produced in the liver, but this production is inhibited by mercury. For more scientific detail on this subject, see articles by Dr. Amy Yasko at www.autismanswer.com.

The only reason there is any controversy around the link between mercury poisoning and autism (and for that matter, asperger's, ADHD, ADD, alzheimers, and parkinson's) is political: the self-interest of pharmaseutical companies like Merck, coupled with unwillingness to face the reality as seen in bodies and organizations like the Centers for Disease Control, National Institute of Health, and American Dental Association.