Andrea and Josiah Sovern had two beautiful children. Kassie was a
toddler and Kolin was just beginning to walk. Both kids were
healthy, curious, expressive and thriving. To anyone who has ever
longed to have children, the Soverns seemed richly blessed.
The family delighted in watching Kolin, who was big and strong
for his age, learn and grow.
"He made all his milestones on time," Andrea Sovern said. "He was
talking. He was walking. He was smiling and giggling. He was very
interactive."
When Kolin was 16 months old, his progress came to a halt. He
started having accidents and not paying attention to others.
"We started to suspect there was a problem when he stopped
talking," Andrea Sovern said.
The Soverns had no idea what was wrong with Kolin. They took
their son to a doctor who gave them a frightening diagnosis: Autism.
"When he was diagnosed with autism, there was no mistaking it. It
was hard," Andrea Sovern said.
He hurt himself and other people as an expression of his
frustration. He threw tantrums for 45 minutes two to three times a
day.
"There was no controlling him," his mother said. "There was no
going to the store, no going to a restaurant. I had to quit
working."
Before her son's diagnosis, she didn't have a clue about autism,
Sovern said.
She started learning as much as she could.
"Research became my therapy," she said.
What is autism?
"It's not a specific disease. It's a disorder of brain
development that has a strongly genetic basis," said Dr. Quentin
Humberd, who is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics to
diagnose and treat developmental and behavioral conditions.
Humberd is the medical director for Premier Medical Group's new
Center for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, which began
taking patients last week.
Autism is now called autism spectrum disorder to include the
broad range of problems that fall under the classification, he said.
Humberd said autistic children have:
problems with social interaction
language or communication problems -- no speech or odd,
repetitive patterns of speech, and
a global delay in development.
Autistic children have unusual patterns of interest, activities
and behaviors. They may only play with two of the 20 toys they have,
or may insist on eating the same foods at every meal.
"They have this need for sameness," Humberd said.
Some highly-functioning autistic adults describe their
experiences in detail, like Donna Williams, who wrote the book
"Nobody Nowhere."
Williams described her routine when waking up each morning. She
became fixated on dust sparkling in a beam of sunlight coming
through her window. Nothing else existed. Not even she existed,
Humberd said.
"Once they're stuck in this sparkly dust world, they can stay
there a long time," Humberd said.
Stephen Edelson, a doctor at the Center for the Study of Autism
in Salem, Oregon, who has studied autism for 25 years, wrote that
autistic children are often unable "to realize that other people
have their own unique point of view about the world."
Based on her research and her experiences raising Kolin, now 4
1/2, Sovern offers a way to relate to an autistic child's world.
"Imagine you had put on eyeglasses that magnified your vision 100
times and amplifiers by your ears and you were put in a room with
bright lights and loud sounds for a day, then drank 10 pots of
coffee and tried to walk through the world," she said. "These
children's perception of reality has been altered completely."
Many autistic children develop self-stimulatory behaviors, such
as rocking, hand-flapping, rubbing their skin, making certain sounds
or blinking repetitively.
"You try to find the thing that comforts you," Sovern said.
Causes
"We've been struggling with finding a cause," Humberd said.
Edelson and Humberd agree that a single cause of autism remains
unknown. Evidence indicates a genetic influence, as demonstrated in
identical twins (who share identical genes) both developing autism
at greater rates than fraternal twins (who share half of the same
genes).
The genetic link to autism may come from three to five specific
genes, or it may be a genetic disposition to a weakened immune
system, Edelson said.
A virus may cause autism, Edelson said. Exposure to rubella
during the first trimester of pregnancy increases a woman's risk of
having an autistic child. Viruses in vaccines, "such as the measles
component of the MMR vaccine and the pertussis component of the DPT
shot, may cause autism," Edelson said.
Researchers are investigating whether environmental causes, such
as pollution, can cause autism. High rates of autism in small
communities such as Leomenter, Mass., and Brick Township, New
Jersey, indicate environmental factors may cause autism.
Sovern's experience leads her to a conclusion that thousands of
other parents of autistic children have reached: mercury poisoning
caused her son's autism.
"His shots, without a doubt in my mind, were the cause," she
said.
Kolin had TRiHIBit, MMR and IPV vaccinations all at one time.
"All these shots have their own mercury load," Sovern said.
The mercury is found in thimerosal, a preservative used in
vaccines, which is 49 percent mercury, Sovern said.
According to a May 2003 report by the American Academy of
Pediatrics, "all routinely recommended infant vaccines currently
sold in the United States are free of thimerosal as a preservative
and have been for more than two years."
The report's primary assertion is that there is no relationship
between thimerosal and autism.
"I'm convinced that the MMR is not a cause of autism," Humberd
said.
He pointed to a Denmark study that compared 500,000 vaccinated
children with 100,000 unvaccinated children and found the rates of
autism in each group the same. Dr. Leo Kanner, a psychiatrist at
Johns Hopkins University, first applied the term "autism" to a
specific condition in his famous 1943 paper on the subject.
"If you look back at Leo Kanner's time, before we had the
vaccine, we had children with autism," Humberd said.
As much evidence as there is against it, Sovern said there is
plenty of evidence that vaccinations and mercury poisoning can cause
autism. Chat rooms on the Internet are filled with parents who share
Sovern's belief.
"The mercury was poisoning his body," she said. "His body was in
autoimmune response."
That a genetically-weak immune system may contribute to autism,
as Edelson said, supports Sovern's theory. Children with healthy
immune systems can process mercury and other toxins more
efficiently, while for Kolin and others, the toxins build up in the
liver, causing severe problems. Kolin had a blood test that
determined he was arsenic, lead, aluminum and mercury toxic, Sovern
said.
"The stuff you and I would just get rid of, he couldn't get rid
of," Sovern said.
Stacy Smith Segovia's report on autism will continue next week
with a look at treatments. Readers who wish to comment can reach her
at 245-0237 or by e-mail at
stacysegovia@theleafchronicle.com.
Originally published Tuesday, July 15, 2003
