SCHAFER AUTISM REPORT "Healing Autism:

No Finer a Cause on the Planet"

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Wednesday, January 08, 2003

ADVOCACY

* Parents of Thimerosal-Injured Children Hold DC Rally Today (Wed. Jan 8th)

AWARENESS

* Myths Spread of Famous Folks’ Learning Disabilities

COMMENTARIES

* Power Expansion By Feds Sets Stage For Forced Vaccination Of Civilians

* Shots to Keep Your Child Healthy

ADVOCACY

Parents of Thimerosal-Injured Children Hold DC Rally Today (Wed. Jan 8th) To Support Repeal of Homeland Liability-Shield Provision

Organizations And Advocacy Groups Are Asking Who Will Support The Repeal Of Homeland Security Provisions

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) To Introduce Repeal Legislation At The Rally During A Press Conference At 10:15 am

Today, January 8th, parents of autistic children injured by the mercury preservative Thimerosal will gather on Capitol Hill for the "Know the Cause, Find the Cure" rally in support of legislation that would repeal the liability-shield provision inappropriately snuck into the Homeland Security Act. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) will introduce the legislation at the rally during a press conference scheduled for 10:15 a.m. near the fountain at Upper Senate Park on the corner of Constitution and Delaware. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and US Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) are also expected to speak in support of the new legislation.

On December 11th, Stabenow vowed to fight the special-interest provisions.

"The provision approved in the Homeland Security bill would severely limit parents' ability to get justice for their children," she said. "Instead of just creating a department to protect American families-which it is intended to do-this bill seems to be protecting the financial interest of a company whose CEO was in the top five for compensation in 2001, a company which posted $11.5 billion in revenue in 2001, and a company in an industry that makes higher profits than any other industry."

The Autism Autoimmunity Project is hosting the rally and founder Ray Gallup plans to make sure adequate support is given to those introducing the legislation. "It's crucial that legislation reflects our children's best interests. We will continue to support the senators and congressmen that support our children, and those who make sure the parents and families come before company profits," says Gallup.

According to recent Centers for Disease Control investigations, Autism Spectrum Disorders affect approximately 1 in 150 American children today. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine released a report suggesting the link between autism and Thimerosal is "biologically plausible."

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AWARENESS

Myths Spread of Famous Folks’ Learning Disabilities

The claims are everywhere: on posters and T-shirts, on the Internet and in books, even sometimes headlining the national news. Thomas Jefferson’ s eccentricities were actually a form of autism. Albert Einstein’s genius flourished despite a learning disability. And Winston Churchill overcame a stutter and later suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

The conclusions, made many years after the deaths of these famous men, grab the public’s attention, inspire today’s patients and bring in money for research and advocacy. There’s only one problem: Often, the diagnoses are wrong. "It’s a lie. It’s like saying to somebody, ‘Churchill overcame this; therefore you can.’ Maybe you can, but it shouldn’t be a lie, or a misrepresentation," says Dr. John Mather, a Washington physician who has debunked several medical myths about Churchill.

The roll call of historic disease sufferers seems endless: Hans Christian Andersen was supposed to be dyslexic. Marie Curie may have had a form of autism. Frederick Chopin could have suffered from cystic fibrosis. Sergei Rachmaninoff may have had Marfan syndrome.

Scholars, physicians and history buffs always have been fascinated by the medical stories behind famous people. The connections also are compelling to the public. "There’s something very powerful about this, particularly for people who don’t have any direct experience with the disease," said David Shenk, an author who recently spent time examining similar claims for his book on Alzheimer’s, The Forgetting. After extensive work, he concluded Churchill didn’t have the condition. Said Shenk: "It’s so easy to be reckless about this."

Those who make these retrospective diagnoses, sometimes called "pathographies," say they have researched biographies and other evidence. But historians say old records can be scanty and unreliable. Few if any contemporaries are alive to speak for the dead. And most of the time, the bodies can’t be examined.

Yet plenty of people are publicizing their spin on history.

The Stuttering Foundation of America ran a full-page ad in a May issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, with a photo of Churchill and this headline: "The voice of freedom never faltered, even though it stuttered." The foundation cites five sources, all dated before 1975, making references varying from a "slight stutter" to a "stutter that took him years to overcome." Mather and others say Churchill never had a stutter; they point to tapes of his speeches and a medical evaluation that shows Churchill simply had a lisp on his S’s and P’s.

Likewise, a color poster of six accomplished figures from history, including Andersen, Churchill, Thomas Edison and Einstein, highlights them as people who had learning disabilities and managed to succeed. Created almost 20 years ago by the Hill School in Fort Worth, the poster has gone into its third printing and is hanging in 41 states and 13 countries. Lucille Helton, the school’s former principal, says a committee, looking for famous figures to inspire children, found the information in the local library.

But experts who have closely studied the lives of these men say there is little or no evidence that some of them had a learning disability. Edison got kicked out of school for not paying attention and later had a hearing problem, but historians say there isn’t any proof that he had a learning disability. Similarly, besides speaking later than most children, Einstein never revealed in his schoolwork or voluminous writings problems consistent with a learning disability, experts say. "Something that can’t be proved is taken very blithely as fact," says Marlin Thomas, an expert in learning disabilities at Iona College who published an analysis of the claim about Einstein.

Two years ago, Danish researchers published an analysis of Andersen’s letters, poems and diaries and concluded that a longstanding claim that Andersen was dyslexic was wrong.

It’s unclear where the rumor started that Churchill had Alzheimer’s. But the connection circulated enough that recently, when Charlton Heston announced he had the degenerative disease, ABC’s World News Tonightand Fox television named the former British prime minister as another prominent person who died with the condition.

In a celebrity-driven culture, the strategy is a popular public relations tool. Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly hiring stars with health problems, such as actress Kathleen Turner and skater Dorothy Hamill, to promote medicines. Patient advocacy groups post names of prominent patients on Web sites such as "Famous People With Asthma" and a quiz that matches celebrities with their disorders. "It’s just one of the pitiful facts of our society that you have to have a famous person to get the attention," says Abbey Meyers, president of the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

CELEBRITY HOMEWORK But those who have advanced some of these connections say they have done their homework, closely reading biographies and looking for symptoms and patterns. Jane Fraser, the Stuttering Foundation’s president, said Churchill’s stutter wasn’t always evident because he memorized his speeches. "I think he [Mather] doesn’t have an in-depth understanding of stuttering," Fraser said. "And I think by denying that Churchill stuttered, he’s trying to turn it into something to be ashamed of."

Norm Ledgin, a former educator and newspaper editor, has written about famous people with autism. The Kansas man was reading biographies of Jefferson when he began to notice dozens of traits consistent with a rare form of autism, Asperger’s syndrome, that Ledgin’s teenage son has. Ledgin wound up writing a book detailing the connection, called Diagnosing Jefferson.

Wanting to inspire young people with autism and their parents, Ledgin published a follow-up book this year that described other famous characters whom he says most likely had a form of autism, including Curie, Charles Darwin and Einstein. "I’ve done it with people who can’t defend themselves against me, but I’ve looked very closely at their childhoods. I based it on what their biographers said," says Ledgin, who has spoken about his book around the country. Parents and children with various forms of autism have said the book turned their lives around.

Historians worry that some of the people making these diagnoses after the fact have preconceived ideas of what to look for. "Jefferson is such a complex and varied personality that you can pull out any strands to support what you want," said J. Jefferson Looney, editor of The Papers of Thomas

Jefferson: Retirement Series, referring to the diagnosis of autism.

Ultimately, like much of history, it boils down to how one interprets the evidence. And using the facts selectively can lead to the wrong conclusion.

If these conclusions are new or unusual, they’re much more likely to get attention in the news media. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe, scholars had said for years that the writer died from chronic alcoholism. When doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center decided to review the case as an exercise, they offered a new cause of death: rabies.

Only now, years later, in reviewing the case, has Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak, the Poe exercise organizer, determined that the doctors’ analysis was skewed by the facts that they had been given.

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COMMENTARIES

Power Expansion By Feds Sets Stage For Forced Vaccination Of Civilians

Drug Companies Get Liability Protection In Homeland Security Bill

It all started at 5:17 a.m. EST on Wednesday, November 13, 2002 as dawn began to break in the nation’s Capitol and the Administration delivered the Homeland Security Bill (H.R. 5710) to the U.S. House of Representatives. By that night the House approved the bill 299 to 121 and sent it to the Senate. What would happen over the next seven days would change the historic balance of power between the Executive and Legislative branches of our government; give power to federal health officials to force vaccination of all citizens without their informed consent; and bar lawsuits against drug companies for injuries and deaths caused by bioterrorism and pediatric vaccines.

The Homeland Security Bill was supposed to focus on setting up a new Department of Homeland Security to address the potential threat of future terrorist attacks against America in the wake of September 11, 2001. Yet, the 484-page bill not only created a new department to handle terrorism threats, it also provided for the biggest reorganization of the federal government since the Department of Defense was created in 1947 and removed the historic checks and balances that Congress has exercised over Presidential authority since the U.S. Constitution was written. In the process of granting unprecedented power to the President and federal government employees, Section 304 of the bill removed from the states their historic control over public health laws, including vaccination laws, and handed it over to federal health officials. Simultaneously, Sections 1714-1717 of the bill shielded the pharmaceutical industry from lawsuits for injuries caused by FDA-approved vaccines, such as mercury containing pediatric vaccines associated with the development of autism in many children.

But the Homeland Security Bill went even further and eroded laws preventing the federal government from conducting the people’s business in secrecy, while creating new opportunities for federal employees to snoop into the private lives of their fellow citizens. The public’s right to know how government operates was severely curtailed in the bill with Section 214 gutting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which has allowed the media and private citizens to obtain documents and transcripts of federal health agency meetings such as the FDA and CDC Advisory Committees regulating vaccines and making vaccine policy. Title 2 of the bill also gives federal employees unchecked surveillance power to access and track every American’s email, internet use, travel, credit card purchases, phone and bank records without a court order.

What happened when the bill landed in the Senate on Thursday morning is now a matter of public record as an informal coalition of citizen groups concerned about vaccine safety, health freedom, informed consent, privacy and civil liberties mobilized a grassroots effort to inform citizens about the bill. Among these were the National Vaccine Information Center, Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education (PROVE), the Connecticut Vaccine Information Alliance, the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, the Institute for Health Freedom, the Liberty Committee, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). While the word was going out to Americans over the internet and in the media, key leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress were protesting that the bill was being rammed through Congress without enough debate on new provisions inserted into the bill by the Administration at the last moment, especially liability protection for vaccine makers. Among those legislators most concerned were Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), who has held a series of congressional hearings on vaccine safety and liability since 1999, and Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Robert Byrd (D-WV).

In the four days that led up to the vote on the Homeland Security Bill in the Senate, opposition to the bill came to center on provisions specifically giving liability protection to the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, the maker of the vaccine mercury preservative, thimerosal. As the emails, faxes and phone calls came pouring in to Senate offices from parents whose children descended into autism after receiving mercury-containing vaccines and the C-Span2 TV cameras filmed gavel to gavel coverage of the Senate proceedings, the floor of the Senate became a national platform for public airing of the safety and liability issues relating to the mass use of smallpox vaccine as well as pediatric vaccines.

The spotlight on vaccine risks that resulted from the C-Span TV coverage of the Senate debate of the Homeland Security Bill came on the heels of C-Span TV coverage of the first day of the three-day Third International Public Conference on Vaccination sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center Nov. 7-9, 2002. That historic five and a half hour TV coverage of NVIC’s conference on Nov. 7 brought the vaccine risk and liability issue into the homes of millions of Americans as they heard from soldiers crippled when they were forced to take the anthrax vaccine and parents whose children were brain injured by pediatric vaccines. They heard about drug company cover-up of vaccine dangers and conflicts of interest between the vaccine makers and government vaccine regulators and policymakers. C-Span viewers also saw an African human rights activist describe oral polio vaccination at gunpoint in his country after a trial lawyer described the neurovirulence and contamination of oral polio vaccine with a cancer-producing monkey virus. Finally, the American people watched parents of vaccine injured children attending the NVIC conference come to the microphone and ask for help from speakers like Andrew Wakefield, M.D., who talked about the potential synergistic effect between mercury in vaccines and the live MMR vaccine leading to regressive autism.

In less than one week, C-Span2 viewers would tune in to find the Senate discussing the very same vaccine risk issues that had been the focus of NVIC ’s conference six days earlier. But this time, on Nov. 19, they witnessed the influence that the powerful and wealthy pharmaceutical industry has on American politics as the Lierberman-Daschle-Byrd amendment to strike out the vaccine injury liability bailout for big Pharma was voted down 47 to 52. That night, the Senate would approve the Homeland Security Bill unamended by a vote of 90 to 9.

There are reports of a last minute deal made between the White House and rebellious Republicans (Maine senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee) threatening to vote for the Lieberman amendment in order to protect vaccine injured children’s right to have their day in court, the compromise would only provide for lawsuits currently filed against vaccine manufacturers to remain in the courts. All future lawsuits against vaccine makers alleging harm from vaccine ingredients would be barred.

So, in one piece of federal legislation designed to address terrorism threats against the United States, federal health officials were given the power they had been seeking to force vaccination on citizens without informed consent and generally be held blameless for the vaccine-induced death or injury of any citizen. Understanding that public health and vaccine laws are under state control, in 1999 the Centers for Disease Control commissioned the drafting of model state legislation which would give broad new powers to public health officials. Known as the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA), this draft legislation would make it easy for public health officials to persuade Governors to declare a "public health emergency" and use the state militia, if necessary, to arrest, quarantine and forcibly vaccinate citizens, while those who make vaccines or enforce use of them would be exempt from liability for any vaccine deaths or injuries which occur. This draft legislation was immediately released post-September 11, 2001 and passed by nearly half the states by November 2002.

However, not all the states passed the MSEHPA legislation and some states amended the legislation to include informed consent protections in the form of medical, religious and conscientious belief exemptions to vaccination and medication. Section 304 of the Homeland Security Bill allows the Secretary of DHHS to issue a "declaration" after concluding that "an actual or potential bioterrorist incident" or "other potential public health emergency" warrants the administration of "a substance or substances" to "individuals during the effective period of the declaration." The law provides for no exemptions to vaccination or medication and is expected to override state public health and vaccine laws which currently provide exemptions to vaccination for school entry. This federal law also does not preclude the use of the U.S. military to enforce the administration of vaccines or other "substances" ordered by the Secretary of DHHS to be administered to individuals just as the MSEHPA legislation provided for use of the state militia to arrest, quarantine and forcibly vaccinate individuals.

When Congress returns in January, there will be an opportunity for legislators to amend the Homeland Security Bill with White House approval, although few expect substantial changes to the bill to be made. However, there is still an opportunity to ask legislators to insert informed consent protections to vaccination and medication by adding exemptions for religious and conscientious held beliefs, as well as one that allows a doctor to exercise individual professional judgement in giving a medical exemption. These changes are necessary to prevent widespread abuse of civil and human rights if an "imminent" or actual public health emergency is declared by the federal government.

The only way that individual citizens can have an impact on the laws which govern them is to make their voices heard. The voices of many parents across this nation, both those with vaccine injured children and those who have healthy children, were heard in Washington, D.C. in November 2002. Those voices will be important in the months and years to come as we continue to fight for health freedom and the legal right to informed consent to vaccination in America.

Commentary opinions are not necessarily those of the Schafer Autism Report.

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Shots to Keep Your Child Healthy

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It's time for school, and your child is making his way into a jostling, coughing, sneezing band of playmates.

Is he at risk of catching a serious illness? The answer is yes.

Immunisations are the most effective means by which parents can protect their children against infectious diseases.

When your child is given a vaccine, he actually receives "weakened" or "killed" infectious organisms that stimulate his body to produce antibodies to fight against disease- causing organism.

These antibodies will protect him against the disease should he ever come in contact with it.

Because most parents today have not personally encountered the diseases for which vaccines have been developed, they wrongly presume that these serious diseases have been eradicated.

They worry whether a child can handle the growing number of vaccine shots - as many as 10 - that are now recommended for children by age two.

On the Internet, there are many high-profile anti-immunisation sites, most started by activist parents, which challenge the safety of the commonly recommended shots and have fuelled anxiety among many mothers and fathers.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in June 2002, researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago concluded that anti-vaccination Internet sites rely more on emotional appeals than solid scientific evidence in warning parents that vaccines may cause everything from autism to hyperactivity to diabetes to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

More recently, fear of autism being related to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine caused a decline in immunisation figures in Britain, causing, in turn, an increase in reported cases of measles and related hospitalisation.

Safety and effectiveness are reasonable concerns for parents.

All vaccines have the potential for some adverse effects, most commonly swelling and soreness at the injection site, low-grade fever, and crankiness in children.

Serious reactions may occur in rare cases, but the benefits of receiving the vaccines usually greatly outweigh the potential risks involved.

"The success of immunisations can make parents think these diseases no longer exist.

For example, many parents have never seen a child with measles.

They may think of it as just a mild childhood disease that would keep their child home for a few days," writes D.

"But the truth is that before the vaccine became available, measles killed 3,000 children a year in the United States.

Just a decade ago, we saw measles immunisation rates drop.

As a result, there was a measles outbreak with over 55,000 cases reported, more than 11,000 hospitalisations, and 125 deaths." According to the World Health Organisation, Malaysia registered 8,727 cases of measles in 1980 and this number dropped to 483 in 1998 but saw an upsurge to 6,187 in 2000.

The Health Ministry says many of the cases occur before the eligible age of immunisation.

Immunisations are given at different times throughout a child's life.

The first few sets are generally received between birth and 15 months of age.

Some booster shots are given before children enter school and once again when they are adolescents.

If children are not vaccinated at the right time, they could catch diseases that may cause brain damage, heart problems, crippling of the limbs, deafness and blindness.

It is important that children receive immunisations before being in an environment like school, where they could be exposed to infection.

Under the Ministry of Health's programme thus far, government clinics offer vaccinations against tuberculosis, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), polio, measles, rubella and hepatitis B.

Last September, it introduced a new immunisation schedule in which a combined vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) was launched in government health facilities, along with another vaccine to protect children aged four and younger against a serious bacterial infection which can cause meningitis, sepsis, and pneumonia.

Immunisations also are available against typhoid, influenza, rabies, pneumococcus, chicken pox and hepatitis A for special circumstances.

At each immunisation visit, your family physician can provide information about the benefits, risks, and common side effects of the vaccines given.

You should also understand that no vaccine is 100 per cent effective.

Most vaccines are probably 80 to 95 per cent effective in preventing disease when given in the specified number of doses at the appropriate time intervals.

Commentary opinions are not necessarily those of the Schafer Autism Report.

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Autism Resources

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Lenny Schafer, schafer@sprynet.com Kay Stammers Edward Decelie

CALENDAR EVENTS@doitnow.com Michelle Guppy Ron Sleith

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