Marc Joseph Nutrition - Blog

Autism is getting more much needed attention in the mainstream press. For example, it’s the cover story in this week’s issue of Newsweek.

And it certainly deserves to be. More than 500,000 people under 21 are diagnosed with autism. Approximately 1 out of every 166 children (and 1 out of every 100 boys) is diagnosed with autism (versus 1 out of every 10,000 children twenty years ago). 1 out of 6 children today is diagnosed with a developmental disorder.

The article discusses the efforts of parents and advocacy groups to pass the Combating Autism Act, which passed unanimously in the Senate and sets aside nearly $1B for autism research. Currently the bill is blocked by Rep. Joe Barton, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who says the legislation conflicts with his own proposal to reform the National Institutes of Health.

The bill approved by the Senate designated $45M for special centers that would focus on environmental research. Barton’s proposed revisions would eliminate this mandate. Also, some advocacy groups wanted the legislation to specifically include vaccines on the list of environmental factors to be assessed. The pharmaceutical industry lobbyists made sure that wording was removed in the Senate version of the bill.

(Update: Negotiations continue on the House version of the bill. Currently, the bill still includes the environmental language. Also, the last sentence in the paragraph above is incorrect. The $45M for environmental research still includes wording for research on vaccines and their components.)

The primary focus of the article, though, is on the absence of social services for people affected by autism once they become adults.

A few states like California and Connecticut, newly aware of the crisis, have launched efforts to meet adult needs. But until programs are widely available, families are left to cobble together a patchwork of solutions—from informal day care to hourly caretakers to private residential programs. But these are stopgap measures. Parents worry that they will run out of money to pay for these services—and that they won’t be around forever to arrange them for their children.

The entire article is worth reading and eye-opening to say the least.

Some Still in Denial

Amazingly, some practitioners and government representatives continue to suggest that the increase in autism rates may be the result of better diagnosis. This isn’t an issue of diagnosis. Anyone who has ever met a person affected by autism knows that the symptoms can’t be hidden.

Where are all the 40, 50 and 60 year-old autistics? Most people over the age of 30 would have trouble remembering if they met even one autistic person in school. Today, entire classes and special schools are being set up in school districts around the country to handle the dramatic increase in autistic and developmentally disabled children.

This is an epidemic, an epidemic that destroys lives and families, both health-wise and financially. And without better research into causes (including environmental factors such as mercury exposure) and effective treatments, the immense financial costs of taking care of autistic individuals, estimated to be in the trillions, will be felt by everyone.

Getting the Real Story

Unfortunately, the real story, examining the environmental influences and how biomedical treatments can help to restore function, isn’t being told by most folks in the mainstream press. There are, though, journalists, such as David Kirby and UPI’s Dan Olmstead, who have fought tirelessly to uncover what’s really going on, as well as many parents, organizations, scientists, healthcare practitioners, and even a few politicians.

Hopefully the word will continue to spread…

In news that you certainly didn’t see on the evening news, the organization Put Children First commissioned a survey of 9,000 individuals regarding the use of mercury in flu shots and got some very interesting results, e.g.:

• 76% of respondents are unaware that most flu shots contain mercury (the vaccine’s preservative, thimerosal, contains 50% mercury).
• After learning that mercury is an ingredient, 74% are less likely to get a flu shot and 86% say they are less likely to get their child a flu shot.
• 77% believe mercury should not be an ingredient in flu shots given to pregnant women and children.
• 73% believe the government should warn pregnant women not to get a flu shot if it contains mercury.
• More than 70% agree that Congress, doctors and medical groups (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics) should take responsibility for ensuring vaccines do not contain mercury.
• 80% of respondents and 84% of parents are willing to pay the $2.50 additional cost for a mercury-free flu shot.

Check out the results overview page here. Put Children First includes many eye-opening items of interest, including:

• 90% of the flu shots distributed this year for both adults and children will contain mercury (in the form of thimerosal, as will many other adult vaccines, such as some tetanus/diptheria booster shots).
• A mercury-containing flu shot contains 50,000 ppb (parts per billion) of mercury. If liquid contains more than 200 ppb, it is classified by the government as a hazardous waste. Drinking water cannot contain more than 2 ppb. Simply amazing.
• Mercury is estimated to be 1000 times as toxic as lead. Could you imagine the uproar if lead were included in vaccines? According to the Material Data Safety Sheet for thimerosal, no safe occupational exposure level has been determined.
• Links to recent articles published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the British Medical Journal (BMJ) questioning the effectiveness of flu vaccines.
• Links to studies documenting thimerosal’s extreme toxicity.

Certainly some information to consider before getting that next vaccination…

A new review study to be published in an upcoming issue of The Lancet notes that there are over 200 industrial chemicals that may damage the human brain, yet most are neither examined for potential effects on the developing brain nor tightly regulated. With one out of every six children now affected by a developmental disorder, the stakes are high.

As one of the study’s authors notes: “We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public health protection. You have only one chance to develop a brain.”

This article does a good job of summarizing the study’s important points:

Few chemicals are assessed for neurotoxicity in the developing brain:

The authors then examined the published literature on the only five substances on the list–lead, methylmercury, arsenic, PCBs and toluene–that had sufficient documentation of toxicity to the developing human brain in order to analyze how that toxicity had been first recognized and how it led to control of exposure…the number of chemicals that can cause neurotoxicity in laboratory animal tests exceeds 1,000

The toxicity issue is most critical for children:

A developing brain is much more susceptible to the toxic effects of chemicals than an adult brain. During development, the brain undergoes a highly complex series of processes at different stages. An interference–for example, from toxic substances–that disrupts those processes, can have permanent consequences. That vulnerability lasts from fetal development through infancy and childhood to adolescence. Research has shown that environmental toxicants, such as lead or mercury, at low levels of exposure can have subclinical effects–not clinically visible, but still important adverse effects, such as decreases in intelligence or changes in behavior.

The impact is significant, both in terms of people and dollars:

[Researchers] conclude that industrial chemicals are responsible for what they call a silent pandemic that has caused impaired brain development in millions of children worldwide. It is silent because the subclinical effects of individual toxic chemicals are not apparent in available health statistics. To point out the subclinical risk to large populations, the authors note that virtually all children born in industrialized countries between 1960 and 1980 were exposed to lead from petrol, which may have reduced IQ scores above 130 (considered superior intelligence) by more than half and increased the number of scores less than 70. Today, it’s estimated that the economic costs of lead poisoning in U.S. children are $43 billion annually; for methylmercury toxicity, $8.7 billion each year.

What can be done?

The study’s authors have four recommendations:

1. Document chemicals that have caused toxic effects on the nervous system in humans to facilitate targeted preventive action against releases of these chemicals;
2. Document human exposures to neurotoxic chemicals and identification of subgroups at risk due to residence, occupation, diet, and other factors;
3. Research the consequences of developmental exposures to neurotoxic chemicals to expand our understanding of the long-term consequences of such exposures; and
4. Screen for neurotoxicity of commonly used chemicals to identify those that may present a hazard to brain development.

But they mention that these actions are expensive and will likely not be taken soon.

In the meantime, there are steps that individuals can take to protect themselves and their own children, including:

• Drinking filtered water
• Avoiding produce that is high in pesticides
• Reducing the use of harmful cleaning products in the home
• Selecting safer personal care products
• Having your residence tested for lead if it was built prior to 1978, and having lead paint professionally sealed and/or replaced
• Avoiding mercury in fish, amalgams, and vaccines

And for people who suspect toxin exposure may be an issue for either themselves, their own children, or future planned children, there are also other actions that can be taken.

Earlier this year, researchers took a look at air pollution levels in the Northern California Bay Area and the potential association with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

The study, published in the respected journal, Environmental Health Perspectives, found that the risk of ASD was 50% greater in babies born in areas with chlorinated compound and heavy metal air pollution levels in the top quartile. Compounds that had the greatest individual risk of association were mercury, cadmium, nickel, trichloroethylene, and vinyl chloride.

The researchers examined other potential variables that may have affected the results (including maternal age, race, education, and parity; paternal race and age; low birth weight, preterm delivery, and child race), but found them to not have significantly altered the chemical group findings. The results, of course, could not take into account potential individual exposures to the various chemical compounds.

Not Just the Bay Area

The results mirror those in another 2006 study that examined data for each county in Texas and found that autism rates increased by 61% and special education rates increased by 43% for every 1,000 pound increase in mercury emissions. Fossil-fuel burning power plants were the primary heavy metal source.

Few areas of the country are really immune from these potential air pollution effects, as evidenced by these stories discussing the effects of mercury in cement plant emissions in both Michigan and the NY Hudson Valley areas.

Clearly, more attention needs to be paid to air pollution levels of these compounds. As mentioned in the NY Hudson Valley article, efforts to regulate lower emissions haven’t been enacted quickly:

In 2000, a federal judge ordered the EPA to draw up rules for limiting mercury, hydrochloric acid and hydrocarbons at the nation’s cement plants. The decision was prompted by a lawsuit by EarthJustice and the Sierra Club, and the judge agreed the new rules were required by the Clean Air Act.

After the EPA took no action, the environmental groups joined with others in a coalition and again sued successfully, in 2004, to force action.

Last fall, the EPA proposed new rules, and determined new and existing plants would face limits on hydrochloric acid and hydrocarbons, but that cost and technological barriers prevented regulation of mercury. The environmental coalition has protested. A final decision is expected in December.

“It’s just ridiculous,” said Jim Pew, an attorney for EarthJustice. “These guys are big emitters and for whatever reason, EPA has decided to blow it off.”

For those who are affected by these air pollutants, especially heavy metals, waiting for government action isn’t really a good option. There are steps that can be taken to reduce the impact of these toxins.

An interesting study in the American Journal of Medical Genetics found that abnormally low cholesterol levels were much more common in autistic children. 19 out of 100 autistic children studied had low cholesterol (< 100 mg/dl), a level lower than that found in 99 percent of children ages 4 through 19.

The researchers also found that the low cholesterol levels seemed to be the result of a reduced ability of the body to naturally make cholesterol (which occurs primarily in the liver), and not the result of low dietary cholesterol intake or a decreased ability to absorb it from the GI tract.

Cholesterol levels that are too low can be just as bad as high cholesterol levels, as cholesterol is used as a building block for:

• many hormones - e.g., sex hormones, cortisol
• bile acids - which the liver produces and helps with both the excretion of toxins and the absorption of fats
• and vitamin D - which is essential for proper immune system function

Perhaps not surprisingly, autistic individuals often have hormone and fatty acid imbalances, difficulty excreting toxins, and immune system irregularities.

Two bills relating to autism have recently been introduced into Congress.

The first bill (the Comprehensive Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of 2006 co-sponsored by Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Tom Osborne, R-Neb) would require the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study and compare health outcomes (including autism) in both vaccinated and unvaccinated* populations.

* e.g., the Amish:

“I have not seen autism with the Amish,” said Dr. Frank Noonan, a family practitioner in Lancaster County, Pa., who has treated thousands of Amish for a quarter-century.

“You’ll find all the other stuff, but we don’t find the autism. We’re right in the heart of Amish country and seeing none, and that’s just the way it is.”

Such a comparison would be a simple and straightforward way to identify whether immunizations may play a role in the autism epidemic.

The second bill (the Vaccine Safety bill co-sponsored by Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and David Weldon, , R-Fla.) would give responsibility for the nation’s vaccine safety to an independent agency outside the CDC.

Currently, the CDC currently oversees both the recommendation of and safety monitoring of different vaccinations, which puts the agency in the difficult position of essentially regulating itself as well as the primary suppliers (pharmaceutical companies) of products that enable the fulfillment of one of the agency’s primary directives (i.e., ensure high vaccination rates among the general population).

Bernard Miltenberger, in a recent column in the Cumberland Times-News, raises many important questions that need to be asked (and answered) with regard to the autism epidemic:

• Why did the CDC and the FDA allow mercury exposures from childhood vaccines to more than double between 1988 and 1992 without bothering to calculate cumulative totals and their potential risks?
• Why was there a corresponding spike in reported cases of autism spectrum disorders during this time period?
• Why did autism grow from a relatively rare incidence of 1 in every 10,000 births in the 1980s to 1 in 500 in the late 1990s?
• Why did it continue to increase to 1 in 250 in the year 2000 and then 1 in 166 children today?
• Many should ask why trusted health agencies would allow a known neurotoxin to be interjected into the bodies of small babies - in amounts that exceed federal safety exposure levels for adults by up to 50 times per shot?
• Why are rates of ADD, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), speech delay, and other childhood disorders also rising?
• Why does one in every six American children have a developmental disorder or behavioral problem?
• Why does autism affect boys at a 4-to-1 ratio over girls?
• Why to this day, is thimerosal still found in the majority of flu shots, which the U.S government recommends for pregnant women and children between six months and 23 months of age?
• Why in 2004, did the CDC decline to state a preference for mercury-free flu shots for infants?
• Why is autism research that has been successfully treating this disease as mercury poisoning using chelation and glutathione not being recommended to combat this epidemic?

You can’t argue with his conclusion that:

“Every citizen of this country should stand up and demand accountability from public health officials and the pharmaceutical industry.”

The topic of autism and related disorders such as Asperger’s and ADD/ADHD is one that I’ll regularly revisit here. With the number of children affected by developmental or behavioral disorders estimated at 1 in 6 in the U.S., it’s an issue that merits serious attention.

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.