Vaccines and autism: a new scientific review

March 31, 2011 11:32 AM
Vaccines and autism: a new scientific review
Posted by Sharyl Attkisson 229 comments

For all those who've declared the autism-vaccine debate over - a new scientific review begs to differ. It considers a host of peer-reviewed, published theories that show possible connections between vaccines and autism.

The article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology is entitled "Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review." The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what nobody else apparently has bothered to do: she reviewed the body of published science since autism was first described in 1943. Not just one theory suggested by research such as the role of MMR shots, or the mercury preservative thimerosal; but all of them.

Ratajczak's article states, in part, that "Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis [brain damage] following vaccination [emphasis added]. Therefore, autism is the result of genetic defects and/or inflammation of the brain."

The article goes on to discuss many potential vaccine-related culprits, including the increasing number of vaccines given in a short period of time. "What I have published is highly concentrated on hypersensitivity, Ratajczak told us in an interview, "the body's immune system being thrown out of balance."

University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Brian Strom, who has served on Institute of Medicine panels advising the government on vaccine safety says the prevailing medical opinion is that vaccines are scientifically linked to encephalopathy (brain damage), but not scientifically linked to autism. As for Ratajczak's review, he told us he doesn't find it remarkable. "This is a review of theories. Science is based on facts. To draw conclusions on effects of an exposure on people, you need data on people. The data on people do not support that there is a relationship. As such, any speculation about an explanation for a (non-existing) relationship is irrelevant."

Helen Ratajczak, author "Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review."

Ratajczak also looks at a factor that hasn't been widely discussed: human DNA contained in vaccines. That's right, human DNA. Ratajczak reports that about the same time vaccine makers took most thimerosal out of most vaccines (with the exception of flu shots which still widely contain thimerosal), they began making some vaccines using human tissue. Ratajczak says human tissue is currently used in 23 vaccines. She discusses the increase in autism incidences corresponding with the introduction of human DNA to MMR vaccine, and suggests the two could be linked. Ratajczak also says an additional increased spike in autism occurred in 1995 when chicken pox vaccine was grown in human fetal tissue.

Why could human DNA potentially cause brain damage? The way Ratajczak explained it to me: "Because it's human DNA and recipients are humans, there's homologous recombinaltion tiniker. That DNA is incorporated into the host DNA. Now it's changed, altered self and body kills it. Where is this most expressed? The neurons of the brain. Now you have body killing the brain cells and it's an ongoing inflammation. It doesn't stop, it continues through the life of that individual."

Dr. Strom said he was unaware that human DNA was contained in vaccines but told us, "It does not matter...Even if human DNA were then found in vaccines, it does not mean that they cause autism." Ratajczak agrees that nobody has proven DNA causes autism; but argues nobody has shown the opposite, and scientifically, the case is still open.

A number of independent scientists have said they've been subjected to orchestrated campaigns to discredit them when their research exposed vaccine safety issues, especially if it veered into the topic of autism. We asked Ratajczak how she came to research the controversial topic. She told us that for years while working in the pharmaceutical industry, she was restricted as to what she was allowed to publish. "I'm retired now," she told CBS News. "I can write what I want."

We wanted to see if the CDC wished to challenge Ratajczak's review, since many government officials and scientists have implied that theories linking vaccines to autism have been disproven, and Ratajczak states that research shows otherwise. CDC officials told us that "comprehensive review by CDC...would take quite a bit of time." In the meantime, CDC provided these links:

Interagency Autism Coordination Committee: http://iacc.hhs.gov

Overview of all CDC surveillance and epi work: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/research.html

CDC study on risk factors and causes: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/seed.html

Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home To encourage healthful eating

Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home
To encourage healthful eating, Chicago school doesn't allow kids to bring lunches or certain snacks from home — and some parents, and many students, aren't fans of the policy
April 11, 2011|By Monica Eng and Joel Hood, Tribune reporters

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Monica Eng, Chicago Tribune

Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

"Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?" the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: "We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!"

Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: "Do you see the situation?"

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.
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Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," Carmona said. "It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception."

Carmona said she created the policy six years ago after watching students bring "bottles of soda and flaming hot chips" on field trips for their lunch. Although she would not name any other schools that employ such practices, she said it was fairly common.

A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman said she could not say how many schools prohibit packed lunches and that decision is left to the judgment of the principals.

"While there is no formal policy, principals use common sense judgment based on their individual school environments," Monique Bond wrote in an email. "In this case, this principal is encouraging the healthier choices and attempting to make an impact that extends beyond the classroom."

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad.

Educating Our Children: The Evolution of Home Schooling

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/09/educating-children-evolution-home-schooling/?cmpid=cmty_fb_Gigya_Educating_Our_Children%3A_The_Evolution_of_Home_Schooling

Homeschool Blog Carnival

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The Tools To Talk

My mom majored in deaf education for a short while in college, an education that may have seemed by some to be wasted entirely when she married my father and became a full time wife and mother.

In due time however, an adoption added to our family a beautiful young lady who had been born with cerebral palsy and profound retardation, she would never function at any higher level than a two year old and she could not speak. But she could sign.

So my family learned some basic sign language, nothing elaborate but the basics. And as we learned sign language for her it naturally began to transfer to the babies in the family, it is amazing how quickly they pick up on things. Eat, and milk, more. Please and thank-you and Mommy and Daddy, those are just a few of the signs that are both simple for an infant to learn and yet very valuable.

Infants develop the ability for receptive speech long before the muscles needed for vocalization have developed to the point necessary for speech, and this can often be a cause of frustration.

As Haydon has gotten old enough we have begun to introduce some basic signs to him. ("Dog" is his favorite, how could it not be when his mother's been brain-washing him since before birth to be in love with dogs?)

They ("They" being those anonymous experts that everyone refers to when they don't really know what they're talking about) used to say that if you taught a child to sign it would delay speech. They know they were wrong now, in fact quite the opposite is often true.

I don't know how they came to think that signing delays speech, but it seems to me that the fallacy had its roots in some common misconceptions about what communication is and how it is learned.

Vocalizing your thoughts into words, what we call speech, is the most common form of communication and the most recognizable. But in and of itself, it is not communication. Communication is a discussion, a taking of turns and a sharing of thoughts, sharing one's intentions with another for the purpose of feed-back.

While words are a very effective tool for communication, the mere use of words themselves does not constitute communication.

Consciously or subconsciously, we all instinctively realize this. How many times have you over-heard a conversation among a group of adolescents where there was a multitude of words and absolutely no communication? "He was all like, ya know, I don't know, and I just like, didn't how I felt about it, ya know?"

We all know that is not communication.

To claim that sign language will delay speech is essentially to claim that the entire deaf community does not have true communication, but we call sign language "language" for a reason. Oral communication may not happen, but communication itself does. (Infants born to deaf parents often learn to sign as early as three or four months old, incidentally.)

Teaching apes and monkeys sign language was all the rage several decades ago, and while it is possible to claim that the apes were taught to sign, to claim that they were taught language and communication is a claim of outrageous arrogance.

Simians already knew how to communicate, they already had a language of their own. Watch two monkeys in a zoo for a while and you will soon realize that without words of any kind they are still communicating their intentions to each-other. Apes and monkeys already had all the skills for communication that they needed in their own community. Watch dogs interact for awhile, you will see communication without words.

Communication without words is a world-wide and interspecies phenomenon, with no limits on age or ability.

My sister has a t.shirt that reads "Not Being Able to Speak is Not the Same Thing as Having Nothing to Say", and I suppose that is the crux of the issue.

Infants are born with things to say and as they grow and progress in their experience and understanding of the world at a rapid rate their desire to communicate their needs and interests grows with them. The coordinated abilities for spoken speech are in fact often months behind an infant's ability to understand the concept itself of communication.

They just need tools. Left to themselves babies will often create signs of their own, but these signs are tragically lost when the adults around them have their heads stuck in the sands of their own low expectations of an infant's abilities, when they're stuck in the rut of oral communication alone.

But when care-givers listen, when they pay attention, when (even better) they introduce new tools in the form of new sign words, the door can be opened for a rich wealth of communication between the child and the world.

The advantage of signing is that by the time the vocal cords and the muscles of the tongue and mouth have matured enough to the point of being capable of producing speech, a strong foundation of those things essential to true communication (turn-taking, the communication of intent, etc.) has already been laid down.

In other words, when the tools arrive the child is ready for them.

Shadow Man

I am a murky shadow of the man I used to be
I do the shadows of the things I used to do
While recalling murky shadows of the things I used to see.
Some witch's spell has wasted all my mind and memory
Now I'm haunted by confusion and a sense of dimming light
Knowing once I was a man, a man still strong and free.
I am troubled by the murmurs of all memory turned to dust
Knowing things I used to know, not knowing what they were
How can I search for answers when its the questions that I've lost?
Now I'm waiting for the ending when the shadows shroud the pain
I am a Shadow Man
Dementia is my Name.

The Sequel

It was Saturday night. The air was cool and clean. A girl was out walking her baby and her dog. The baby in a stroller was talking quietly to himself, the dog was on a leash sniffing politely here and there.

The dog found a bush. He became excited, startling the quiet of the night with his barks and lunges. A creature emerged from the bushes and ran down the road with the dog tearing after him, having ripped the leash out of the girl's hand.

The girl, recognizing the imminent danger but lacking the presence of mind to simply turn and flee, ran after the dog who had now cornered the terrible beast and forced him to turn his back end to the girl.

"Zeus, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" she cried. But she cried too late. A moment later....



Well, a moment later I called my husband (at work, for crying out loud) to rant and rave, knowing full well he could nothing at the time. "THE DOG JUST RAN AFTER A SKUNK AND I GOT SPRAYED AND ZEUS GOT SPRAYED AND NOW THE DOG HAS RAN OFF BUT I DON'T CARE I COULD KILL HIM AND STOP LAUGHING, THIS ISN'T FUNNY."

Then I called my mother, to rant and rave some more. The dog came back. I yelled at him to stay away, stay far away.

The rest of the walk home is a blur of ranting and raving and stench, but somehow I arrived by my front door. One of the Rescuing Aunts (Rebecca, in this case) was on her way to take Haydon while I bathed Zeus and then myself. Being unwilling to pick up my son in my current state, I rocked him in the stroller until Rebecca arrived.

Out, out I bravely went to give the Zeus Dog what would be the first of his many tomato, vinegar, and baking soda baths.

Riddle me this. I smelled like skunk. You would have thought this would have been a natural mosquito repellent. In fact, I was eaten alive and with each new splash of skunk-drenched water from the dog and each new bite you could hear my nerves snap audibly.

"GOOD GRIEF,' I cried to the moon and stars in general, "SKUNKS AND MOSQUITOES, I HATE NATURE!!" (Hardly a typical thought for me, but we all have our moments.)

The bath hadn't done much for Zeus, but I was done. I ran into the house and threw my clothes in the washer and showered and showered. I had no idea how my hair was going to look the next morning, I just grabbed anything that looked promising and smeared it into my hair. Witch Hazel, Mary Kay satin hands exfoliant, baking soda, etc....

By this time Haydon was at the end of his rope as well, so I took Haydon and fed him while the Rescuing Aunt departed. (And she needed a shower too, by then, having walked through the haze of aroma that followed the dog and I wherever we went.)

Jeremy picked up more vinegar and Baking soda on his way home from work and upon his arrival he took Haydon and I began the preparations for Zeus's second bath. Tomato sauce, vineger, and baking soda all went into a tremendous bowl and being in a tremendous hurry and more than slightly crazy by this point, I promptly whisked it all together. (It sounds oh so very stupid when I write it down like that.)

A moment later, a volcanic torrent of tomato sauce was spewing and frothing all over the countertops and running down to the floor. And that towel? You know that towel about which I said "No Jeremy, please don't use that to smother the fire in my microwave?"

It was the first one to hand to stem the tomato sauce tide.

That was the end for me. I sat down on the floor with my head in my hands and announced my resignation.

Haydon and I went to bed, Jeremy gave Zeus yet another bath that didn't do him any good. We had at first intended to leave him outside for the night, but with a tornado watch and a horrific thunderstorm we couldn't exactly do that in good conscience.

Lacking a proper garage, we tried the vacant upstairs but the storm was driving Zeus crazy and nobody was getting any sleep anyway.

So down he came.

Well, I could go on. But no doubt you've had enough gory details for one reading, so suffice today that by yet another tomato bath and a few days later, we faced the sad facts and clipped the poor dog. He looks most unmanly.

But the real tragedy? Every once in a while, when the wind is just right, you can still catch a whiff of skunk on him.