It had already been quite a week in the ongoing controversy regarding vaccines and autism. Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institutes of Health, criticized public health officials for too quickly dismissing the link between vaccines and autism in a CBS interview with Sharyl Attkisson and called for intensified investigation into the link between vaccines and autism.
But the real bomb fell Friday from London at the International Meeting for Autism Research.
cross posted at Daily Kos
Both Dr. Healy and Attkisson were interviewed separately later in the week by Don Imus where they continued their call for more research into the role of vaccines in autism.
On the same day as the CBS interview, May 12, the Omnibus Autism Proceedings got underway again in Washington, D.C., for the second round of test cases that take up the issue of the role of the mercury preservative thimerosal as a contributor to autism. This second round had to find a new test case after not one but two cases were conceded by government health officials. One of those cases, that of Hannah Poling, initiated a debate that continues.
The London Bomb – International Conference for Autism Research
Yesterday, in the first of three presentations at the meeting, Dr. Laura Hewitson of the University of Pittsburgh, reported on the results of her study of macaque monkeys (the animal used by industry to test for vaccine safety), to whom she administered the same vaccine schedule as administered to human children in the 1990s. Dan Olmsted, editor-in-chief of the Age of Autism, describes the study’s results this way:
Although couched in scientific language, Hewitson’s findings are explosive. They suggest, for the first time, that our closest animal cousins develop characteristics of autism when subjected to the same immunizations – such as the MMR shot — and vaccine formulations – such as the mercury preservative thimerosal — that American children received when autism diagnoses exploded in the 1990s.
Hewitson’s Friday presentation (Pediatric Vaccines Influence Primate Behavior, and Brain Stem Volume and Opioid Ligand Binding) will be followed by two more today that arise from the same research study.
Today’s presentation, “Microarray Analysis of GI Tissue in a Macaque Model of the Effects of Infant Vaccination,” addresses a concern of many critics of the vaccine schedule: The FDA approves the safety of vaccines individually, and the CDC recommends an overall vaccine schedule; however, the cumulative effects of the total vaccine load, 30+ vaccines given in the first two years of life, have not been “adequately compared” to the health outcomes of having had no vaccines. According to the presentation’s authors:
This animal model examines the neurological consequences of the childhood vaccine regimen, Functional and … brainstem anomalies were evident in vaccinated animals that may be relevant to some aspects of autism. The findings raise important safety issues while providing a potential animal model for examining aspects of causation and disease pathogenesis in acquired neurodevelopmental disorders.
Omnibus Autism Proceeding – Round Two
The Omnibus Autism Proceeding began the week with expert testimony from Dr. Greenland, who criticized the use of epidemiological studies and pointed out that the foreign studies included countries in which the thimerosal dosage was half of what it is in the United States.
Dr. Greenland made it clear that in his opinion taht none of the studies yet presented have ruled out an association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
Dr. Aposhian, who spoke to the role of neuro-inflammation in regressive autism, criticized the 2004 Institute of Medicine Study (for which he consulted) for failing to cite laboratory studies on monkeys and mercury exposure from the mid-1990s and failing to discuss ideas of neuro-inflammation in this population.
Additionally, he added, the IOM study group was made up completely of epidemiology and vaccine company representatives. There were no toxicologists, immunologists, or biochemists in the group.
One of the highlights of the week’s testimony came from Dr. Deth, who is credited with discovering the receptors that carry out the body’s methylation process. Deth presented the results of his studies of brain matter from deceased autistic children which showed evidence of neuro-inflammation, leading him to hypothesize that regressive autism results from a genetic/environmental interaction, which could include vaccines.
It seems that a new consensus is emerging from this hurricane of news:
- The epidemiological studies of the past accurately predicted that vaccines were safe for most children; however, those studies were not able to focus on a susceptible subset of children, a subset that has grown as the number of vaccines increased along with toxicities in the environment.
- In the past, the fear that parents would not immunize led to an “all or nothing” mindset in order to maintain “herd immunity” for the nation. The mindset resulted in health officials “digging in” and resisting any change to the vaccine schedule.
- However, serious consideration is now being given to the need to identify children susceptible to vaccine injury and to adjust the immunization schedule for this subset without jeopardizing the important benefits of a vaccine safety program to the society at large.
Vaccines & Autism – Dr. Healy on CBS NEWS May 12 ,2008
