Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Vaccinations: 'The potential implications for autism...are staggering'

 
"There is no greater rancor in medicine than the autism-vaccine debate, and this debate has reached the federal vaccine court where 5000 autistic kids and their families are requesting compensation for vaccine injury," said Jeffrey Dach MD

In the aftermath of the government concession in a lawsuit brought by the parents of Hannah Poling, a child who following vaccination developed autism, public awareness was heightened as the potential dangers posed by vaccines for some children, is being openly discussed. The debate is in full swing, notwithstanding the brigade of denialists, most prominent among these, Dr. Paul Offit, co-inventor of Merck's rotavirus vaccine, and Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Before age 6, a child gets well over 30 inoculations, often those shots dispense multiple vaccines. The safety of those shots has been the center of a contentious battle in the US and the UK. The association between autism and mitochondrial mutations--which Hannah Poling is said to have--was confirmed by Ricardo Segurado Am J Psychiatry 162:2182-2184, November 2005.

Furthermore, mitochondrial disorders are thought to be the most common disease associated with autism. Some journal articles and other analyses have estimated that 10% to 20% of all autism cases may involve mitochondrial disorders, which would make them one thousand times more common among people with ASD (autism than the general population. [Link]

Thousands of parents whose previously healthy children suffered neurological brain damage following vaccination have been trying to gain access to the unpublished evidence about adverse vaccine effects--much as parents had battled to get the truth about the suicide risk linked to SSRI antidepressants.

In both cases, the powerful medical establishment--which has a huge financial stake in the business of medicine--fought side by side with manufacturers and government agencies against consumers. In both cases government officials--from the FDA and the Center for Disease Control--not only denied the risks, but helped conceal the evidence in their own file drawers. In both cases, lawsuits, which afford plaintiffs the opportunity to subpoena documents, uncovered evidence to support the claim that the drug (or vaccine) triggered harm.

Parents want to know more about studies that link vaccine content--including mercury--timing, and the number of shots given at once, to risks of serious lifelong disabilities.

The government settlement with the Polings (November 2007) remained secret until it was reported by David Kirby on the Huffington Post (Feb. 25, 2008).

Since the Poling case, CDC officials were made aware of a Portuguese study, published last October, which reported that 7.2% of children with autism had confirmed mitochondrial disorders. The authors also noted that, "a diversity of associated medical conditions was documented in 20%, with an unexpectedly high rate of mitochondrial respiratory chain disorders." [1] See: [Link]

On March 26, Kirby broke another news bombshell: a confidential conference call was held on March 11 between vaccine safety officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several leading experts in vaccine safety research, and executives from America's Health Insurance Plans, (the HMO trade association) to discuss childhood mitochondrial dysfunction and its potential link to autism and vaccines. Kirby suggests "it could soon become known as the Conference Call heard 'round the world."

The teleconference was scheduled by a little known CDC agency called the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Network, a consortium of six research centers working on "immunization-associated health risks," in conjunction with the CDC's Immunization Safety Office and the health insurance lobby -- whose companies cover some 200 million Americans. The hot topic of the day was mitochondria - the little powerhouses within each cell that convert food and oxygen into energy for use by the body. Recent news events have implicated mitochondria in at least one case of regressive autism, following normal development.

Some researchers on the call reported that mitochondrial dysfunction is probably much more common than the current estimate of 1-in-4,000 people. The potential implications for autism, then, are staggering. See: [Link] [Main points that were discussed are outlined below by Kirby]

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