Marc Joseph Nutrition - Blog

A large phone survey, commissioned by the non-profit Generation Rescue (GR) and conducted by independent opinion research firm Survey USA, found that, relative to unvaccinated boys, vaccinated boys were 2.5 times more likely to have a neurological disorder such as ADHD or autism.

The survey queried 11,817 households in Oregon and California, and gathered data on 17,674 children ages 4 to 17, including 9,175 boys and 8,499 girls. The survey method closely paralleled the approach and age ranges that the CDC has used to identify national prevalence rates for neurological disorders.

Survey Results

Significant relationships between vaccinations and neurological disorders (NDs) were found only in boys, which, as GR notes, is not too surprising, given that boys represent 80% of all ND cases.

Here are a few of the survey’s amazing findings:

A. All vaccinated boys, compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Were 155% more likely to have a neurological disorder
- Were 224% more likely to have ADHD
- Were 61% more likely to have autism

B. Older vaccinated boys, ages 11-17, compared to older unvaccinated boys:
- Were 158% more likely to have a neurological disorder
- Were 317% more likely to have ADHD
- Were 112% more likely to have autism

(GR notes: “Older children may be a more reliable indicator because many children are not diagnosed until they are 6-8 years old, and we captured data beginning at age 4.”)

C. All vaccinated boys, removing one county with unusual results, compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Were 185% more likely to have a neurological disorder
- Were 279% more likely to have ADHD
- Were 146% more likely to have autism

Also, all vaccinated boys and girls were 120% more likely to have asthma than their unvaccinated peers.

Call for Larger Scale Study

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There have certainly been many questionable articles dismissing the suspected vaccine-autism connection, but the San Francisco Chronicle opinion-piece (The Truth About Autism) written by Kaiser Permanente pediatrician Dr. Rahul K. Parikh is probably one of the more egregious in its twisting of the truth.

Parikh begins by discussing one of his patients:

“Since learning of her son’s diagnosis, Andy’s mother had been vigilant. In her research, which she presented to me in a binder, she was positive about two things:

First, Andy was part of an epidemic of autism that has afflicted kids during the past 20 years. Second, the routine, life-saving vaccines that Andy had received during the first two years of his life had at least contributed to — if not been — the cause of his illness.

On both of these issues, nothing could have been further from the truth.”

One would think such a bold statement denying a vaccine-autism link would be followed by strong supporting evidence. However, Parikh fails to provide that.

Instead, Parikh says:

“The increase in autism cases is due to a better understanding of the disorder and its prevalence.”

Parikh goes on to provide nothing but subjective reasoning to support this claim:

• There is “more professional and public awareness.”
• Kids previously classified as mentally retarded or developmentally disabled are now classified as autistic.
• There is greater incentive to diagnose kids with these disorders because kids diagnosed on the autistic spectrum qualify for state aid.

Question:

If the increase is just a case of better diagnosis, where are all the 40 year-old autistic people? If there has been no change in the rate of autism, there should be millions of autistic older adults.

And, yet, there aren’t.

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As reported in The Huffington Post by David Kirby, journalist and author of the book Evidence of Harm, today marks the start of a key event in the vaccine-autism debate:

On Monday, one of the most important legal proceedings in American medical history will get underway at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. There, a special panel of three judges will begin hearing evidence to support — and refute — the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines and/or the live-virus measles-mumps-rubella [MMR] shot caused autism or autism-like symptoms in some American children.

Monday will mark the first time ever that evidence of autistic harm from childhood vaccines is examined and cross-examined in a court of law. This is far from a slam dunk case for either side, and the stakes - professional, financial, emotional — could not be more intense.

The case being heard beginning today (Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services) is the first test case selected from over 4800 autism claims filed with the federal claims court (aka the Vaccine Court). Any decisions in the case will likely affect future guidance for other Vaccine Court and autism cases around the country.

The Stakes

Back in 1986, a vaccine compensation system was developed by Congress to limit the liability of vaccine manufacturers. A 75-cent tax has been levied on each vaccination shot and put in a compensation fund, which currently totals $2.5 billion.

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In a recent Canadian study, a research team led by Dr. Eric Frombonne, Director of Pediatric Psychiatry at The Montreal Children’s Hospital, found no difference in mercury in the blood and hair samples obtained from autistic children and their mothers relative to samples from non-autistic children and their mothers.

Frombonne and his team concluded:

• Autism is not a form of mercury poisoning.
• “Chelation therapies, whereby heavy metals are removed from the body using specific compounds , are not useful in the treatment of autism. Chelation has never been proved efficacious as a biomedical intervention to treat autism.”

We can all go home now. Nothing at all to see here. Move along.

What They Didn’t Tell You

As it turns out, though, it’s a little more complicated than that.

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The current issue of Discover Magazine includes a cover story (”Autism: It’s Not Just in the Head“) that is to-date likely the best, easy-to-understand overview of the latest biomedical understandings and treatments for autism:

A disparate group—immunologists, naturopaths, neuroscientists, and toxicologists—is turning up clues that are yielding novel strategies to help autistic patients. New studies are examining contributing factors ranging from vaccine reactions to atypical growth in the placenta, abnormal tissue in the gut, inflamed tissue in the brain, food allergies, and disturbed brain wave synchrony. Some clinicians are using genetic test results to recommend unconventional nutritional therapies, and others employ drugs to fight viruses and quell inflammation.

Above all, there is a new emphasis on the interaction between vulnerable genes and environmental triggers, along with a growing sense that low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a major contributing factor to autism and its related disorders. A vivid analogy is that genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. “Like cancer, autism is a very complex disease,” says Craig Newschaffer, chairman of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University School of Public Health, “and it’s exciting to start asking questions about the interaction between genes and environment. There’s really a very rich array of potential exposure variables.”

“What we’ve got here is a far more comprehensive set of characteristics for autism,” says [Harvard pediatric neurologist Martha] Herbert, “one that can include behavior, cognition, sensorimotor, gut, immune, brain, and endocrine [hormone] abnormalities. These are ongoing problems, and they’re not confined just to the brain. I can’t think of it as a coincidence anymore that so many autistic kids have a history of food and airborne allergies, or 20 or 30 ear infections, or eczema, or chronic diarrhea.” …

Herbert likens autism to a hologram: “Everything that fascinates me is in it. It’s got epidemiology, toxicology, philosophy of science, biochemistry, genetics, systems theory, the collapse of the medical system, and the failure of managed care. Each child that walks through my door is a challenge to everything I ever knew, and each child forces me to think outside the box and between categories.” …

… All this marks a Copernican-scale shift in our approach to the disorder. I myself [the article’s author, Jill Neimark] was irresistibly drawn to the subject when viewing an online video of a heavily affected 11-year-old who, after a series of chelation treatments to remove mercury, announced to his mother, “Mom, I’m back from the living dead.” The statement was heartbreaking in its simple eloquence. Mercury chelation, in this particular child’s case, was a near panacea.

Why should you care?

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From the January 1, 2007 issue of American Family Physician (AAFP):

2007 Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedules - Evolution or Intelligent Design?

“The first childhood immunization schedule was released in 1983 and provided guidance to physicians as to which of the four vaccines recommended at the time (i.e., diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and pertussis [DTP], oral poliovirus vaccine [OPV], measles, mumps, and rubella [MMR], and tetanus and diphtheria toxoid [Td]) to administer at each of seven age ranges (i.e., two, four, six, 15, and 18 months, four to six years, and 14 to 16 years). All told, a child born in 1983 would receive 11 vaccine doses between birth and 18 years of age…

…The recommended schedule continues to provide guidance to busy physicians. Today, American children receive 39 recommended vaccine doses by age 18, a 3.5-fold increase over the past 25 years. This explosion of antigens has been associated with a 6.3-fold increase in vaccination-related costs. The estimated 1983 private market cost for one child to receive all recommended vaccines was $254 (adjusted to present day, excluding administrative costs); this amount has grown to $1,601 ($1,744 when optional annual influenza vaccine is added for children six to 18 years of age).2 The vaccine cost alone to fully immunize each U.S. birth cohort (approximately 4 million children) is an estimated $6.4 billion.”

PDF of the 2007 Recommended Child Immunization Schedule

Concerns

Evolution or Intelligent Design? Are those our only two choices?

11 vaccine doses in 1983 vs. 39 doses today. Wow.

I’m not necessarily anti-vaccine. There are some pretty terrible diseases out there (e.g., polio). However, that sure is an amazing increase in antigen exposure over a very short period of time.

My health concerns are two-fold:

1. The cumulative toxin exposure, e.g.:

• Ethyl mercury in the preservative thimerosal, which is still used in 90% of all flu vaccines for children and adults, as well as in other adult vaccines, such as tetanus/diphtheria booster shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still does NOT recommend mercury-free shots to either pregnant women or children, despite the fact that a mercury-containing flu shot has 50,000 ppb mercury, while liquid with only 200 ppb is considered hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
• Aluminum hydroxide, a common adjuvant (immune stimulant) added to vaccines, which is linked to Gulf War Illness and causes motor neuron death in mice.

2. The potential immune system imbalances created by both the increased number of vaccine antigens injected into young children and the interactions between them.

Financial Incentives

As noted above in the AAFP article excerpt, the pharmaceutical industry’s financial incentives for expanding vaccination schedules are significant. $254 in revenue per child in 1983 vs. $1,601 today.

This recent article in the LA Times describes the “renaissance” in vaccine development:

Breakthroughs in technology, increased funding and higher profits are spurring a boom in vaccine discovery and development that could save or improve the lives of millions of people by attacking such scourges as cancer and malaria …

… “It’s clear there is a renaissance going on around vaccines,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We have made more progress with some [vaccines] in the past few years than we have in the past 30.” …

… Perhaps the best evidence of a vaccine revival is that the pharmaceutical industry is returning to the market …

… Overall, the number of vaccines in development has risen from 285 in 1996 to 450 today.

Drug executives say they can charge considerably more for today’s vaccines — up to several hundred dollars or more — versus a few dollars for older vaccines.

Might financial incentives and political influence be driving the introduction of some of these vaccines?:

Texas Governor orders anti-cancer vaccine

“Perry has ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company’s three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff. His current chief of staff’s
mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.

The governor also received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign.”

Bottom Line

I’d like to see greater study into the potential interaction between the different vaccine antigens and the effects on the immune system. Creating products that help most people with the risk of potential harm to a small subset of people doesn’t seem like such a good bet when you’re one of the people in the small subset.

With autism and developmental disorders continuing to skyrocket (record numbers in California in 2006 — a topic I’ll cover in a separate future post), we need to better understand the potential risks created by these greatly expanded vaccination schedules.

In this blog, I regularly raise the topic of vaccines and potential toxin and immune injury. The reasoning is that:

1. These injuries affect potentially millions of people in both acute and subclinical ways, with effects that may last lifetimes.
2. The emotional and financial costs of helping family members deal with these illnesses are extremely high.
3. Nutritional and other biomedical interventions can play a significant role in helping people to heal and recover.

It’s long been suspected that viral infections, such as those caused by Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus, play a primary role in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Recently, in a small, preliminary clinical trial, researchers at Stanford University found that chronic fatigue patients treated with prescription anti-viral medications for a relatively long period of time (6 months) experienced significant improvement (21 out of 25 treated patients). Now, the same researchers are going to perform a larger, randomized study in an attempt to replicate the study’s results.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome currently affects more than 1 million people in the U.S. alone, and results in debilitating, long-term fatigue. Other common symptoms include insomnia, digestive problems, swollen lymph nodes, memory loss, inability to concentrate, and depression.

The condition often, but not always, begins after the onset of flu-like symptoms, which suggests that infections may play a role. Interestingly, the researchers in the study above found that chronic fatigue sufferers who did not experience flu-like symptoms prior to the onset of the condition, did NOT improve significantly after the anti-viral treatment. Perhaps there are different subgroups of affected individuals.

There is also clinical evidence that suggests viral infections are involved in many cases of autism. This factor would make sense, as impaired immune function is present in that condition as well. Many parents and clinicians have seen improvement in autistic children when given prescription and over-the-counter (OTC)* anti-virals, especially in combination with other treatments, such as methyl-B12, proteolytic enzymes, and heavy metal detoxification.

* Olive leaf extract is a potent and often helpful OTC anti-viral substance.

It’s unclear exactly what is causing the immune impairment in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autistic cases, but heavy metal toxicity is a primary culprit. There is often significant symptom overlap in heavy metal toxicity and chronic fatigue cases.

You can learn more about treatment approaches for both Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autism here and here.

David Kirby, author of the excellent book Evidence of Harm that discusses the role of the mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal in autism, has a great post (There is No Autism Epidemic) on The Huffington Post blog.

Kirby notes that there is a group of people who call themselves “neurodiverse” and appear to be high-functioning autistics (often described as Asperger’s Syndrome). This group strongly resists the autism label and the stigma associated with it. Kirby says that’s fine and entirely understandable.

What isn’t ok, in both Kirby’s opinion and mine, is saying, as neurodiversity proponents do, that autism doesn’t represent a significant and widespread health problem, that children with much more severe forms of autism are “neurodiverse” and should be allowed to just live “as is” without treatment. Kirby goes on to list some of the common traits of these affected children, e.g.:

I am talking about kids who begin talking and then, suddenly, never say another word.

I’m talking about kids who may never learn to read, write, tie their shoes or fall in love.

I’m talking about kids who sometimes wail in torture at three in the morning because something inside them hurts like a burning coal, but they can’t say what or where it is.

I’m talking about kids who can barely keep food in their inflamed, distressed guts, and when they do, it winds up in rivers of diarrhea or swirls of feces spread on a favorite carpet or pet (no one said this kind of “autism” was pretty).

Kirby minces no words in calling out the severity of the situation:

American kids are in huge trouble. One in six has a learning disability. Asthma, diabetes, allergies and arthritis are ravaging their bodies in growing numbers. And little of this is due to “better diagnostics” or “greater awareness.”

It can only be attributed to radical changes in our environment over the last 10-20 years. There is something, or more likely some things in our modern air, water, food and drugs that are making genetically susceptible children sick, and we need to find out what they are.

Mercury remains a logical candidate for contributing to “autism spectrum disorders,” either alone or in combination with other environmental insults. Mercury exposure can kill brain cells. It can cause loss of speech and eye contact, digestive and immune dysfunction, social withdrawal and anxiety, and repetitive and self-injurious behaviors.

Go check out the entire post. It’s a good read. The reader comments are interesting as well.

It’s clear that what today are called autism spectrum disorders are really biomedical disorders strongly shaped by environmental factors, such as toxin exposure, and involve significant damage to the nervous, immune, and gastrointestinal systems. Surely, both scientists and practitioners will continue to push forward in 2007 to better understand the environmental triggers and to refine biomedical treatment approaches.

There’s already quite a bit that can be done today using dietary, supplementation, and detoxification interventions to help individuals affected with autism and ADD/ADHD heal and recover function. You can read more about these approaches here.

Bad news if you live near or downwind of an existing cement manufacturing plant.

(That would be many folks in the Northeast, north-Midwest, north Texas, north and east of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. Here’s an interactive map showing the locations of cement kilns in the U.S.)

The EPA denied two court orders to set restrictions on mercury emissions from cement kilns, and instead ruled that only plants built after December 2005 will have to limit and measure emissions.

Older cement kilns get EPA pass on mercury

EPA Fails to Limit Toxic Mercury Pollution from Cement Kilns

Mercury is a known potent neurotoxin. The EPA estimates 1 in 6 women of childbearing age have unsafe blood mercury levels. Also, autism rates have been found to be significantly higher in areas with higher mercury emissions.

Industry lobbying seems to have paid off:

Parts of the decision, signed late Friday by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, closely follow industry requests to the agency. Industry officials also met with White House staffers Nov. 30 to discuss the pending decision, and EPA staffers phoned in to the meeting, records show.

1997 EPA data suggests that that cement kilns account for less than five percent of all mercury emissions (created when mercury is released from limestone when heated during the manufacture of cement). However, it seems as though cement manufacturers may have been drastically understating their emission estimates:

Although federal law requires cement plants to report their mercury emissions, it does not require those reports to be based on actual measurements. Where kilns have tested their emissions, the data has shown their earlier “reporting” to be gross understatements of actual emissions. For example, a plant located in Alpena, Michigan, routinely reported emissions of approximately 50 pounds of mercury per year. But when the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality required the cement plant to test their actual stack emissions, it turned out the kiln was really emitting 581 pounds of mercury. A similar instance of underreporting has been uncovered at a cement plant in Oregon, which is the nation’s third worst mercury polluter.

“If reporting from the rest of the cement industry is as inaccurate as the reporting from Alpena, this industry could be putting out between 25 and 50 tons of mercury every year,” said Jane Williams, Chair of Sierra Club’s Air Toxics Task Force. “That would put cement kilns in the same category as coal-fired power plants, which have long been recognized as the worst culprit for mercury contamination.”

Cement manufacturers argue that it would be too costly and ineffective to implement measures to restrict mercury emissions, but environmental groups disagree:

EPA environmental engineer Keith Barnett, of the agency’s air-quality planning and standards office in North Carolina, said it would cost a cement manufacturer “$1.5 million per year per kiln for a wet scrubber” that might reduce emissions by 42%, which he said was not a large enough reduction to justify the cost.

Marti Sinclair of the Sierra Club said $1.5 million would be a small price to protect the public, noting that one of the nation’s leading cement producers had reported revenue of $1.1 billion last year and had already installed such technology in Switzerland, where it was required.

I have to side with the latter group. $1.5M per kiln seems like a small price to pay for reducing mercury emissions by nearly half.

More background on the issue is available here.

If the EPA’s decision strikes you as a poor one, write your Congresspersons and ask for them to push for a review of the decision.

Autistic individuals often have an impaired ability to interpret social cues as communicated through speech intonation, eye movements, and body language. Researchers have theorized that autistic individuals may have lower levels of a hormone called oxytocin, and that the deficiency may help to explain some of the impaired ability to interpret social cues.

Oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain. In women, the hormone stimulates contractions of the uterus during labor and release of milk during breast-feeding. In both men and women, oxytocin is associated with increased feelings of trust, commitment, empathy, and compassion.

In a study from earlier this summer:

Oxytocin Increases Retention of Social Cognition in Autism.

researchers found that autistic adults given oxytocin showed improved ability to interpret emotion in speech comprehension tasks.

And, now, in a more recent study of non-autistic individuals, researchers have found that oxytocin seems to also improve the ability to interpret the mental state of others through social cues in the eye region:

Oxytocin Improves “Mind-Reading” in Humans.

This “mind-reading” ability was measured using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), which evaluates how well one can interpret emotions just by looking at photos of the eyes of different subjects.

You can take the quiz yourself here. Try it out. It’s pretty neat.

(I got 32.)

Oxtyocin therapy, although not necessarily addressing a root cause, may prove helpful as part of treatment for some autistics.

Note: It wouldn’t be too surprising if oxytocin levels were off in autistic individuals. Heavy metals, such as mercury, are suspected in the development of autism spectrum disorders. These metals concentrate in structures in the brain, such as the hypothalamus gland, pituitary gland, amygdala, and hippocampus, that help to regulate nearly every hormone in the body, emotions, learning, and memory.