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January 15, 2001 Search
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Autism & Vaccines: A New Look At An Old Story .1
A Comprehensive Report
This comprehensive report by the National Vaccine
Information Center on a matter of topical importance to the autism community
has been distributed to thousands of health care professionals throughout the
United States, including pediatricians, as well as every member of every state legislature
throughout the country and every member of the US Congress.
Expenses for the production and distribution of the report
has been covered by the generous contributions from the attendees of the DAN! conference in San Diego last year.
We are reproducing the report in segments in the FEAT
Daily Newsletter
over the next two weeks.
The document in its entirety can be found at the
NVIC website.
http://www.909shot.com/NVICSpecialReport.htm
The connection between vaccination and autistic behavior,
first reported in DPT: A Shot in the Dark (Coulter & Fisher, 1985) fifteen
years ago and now being discussed in the medical literature, has finally
entered the U.S. public arena after simmering for more than a decade. This
enhanced public awareness has been fueled by persistent reports by parents in
the U.S., Canada and Europe that their children were healthy, bright and happy until
they received one or more vaccines and then descended into the isolated,
painful world of autism marked by chronic immune and neurological dysfunction,
including repetitive and uncontrollable behavior. Conservative estimates are
that about 500,000 Americans are autistic but that number is growing daily,
with new evidence that perhaps as many as 1 in 150 children are suffering from
autism spectrum disorder that can include a range of neurological, behavior and
immune system dysfunction.
In 1999, as states revealed skyrocketing rates of autism
spectrum disorder among children and a congressional hearing was held in the
U.S. Congress, the media began to
explore the medical controversy in print and broadcast reports. At the heart of
the debate stand a few courageous physicians whose independent,
multi-disciplinary approach to investigating the possible biological mechanisms
of vaccine-induced autism is serving as a counterweight to the steadfast
denials by infectious disease specialists and government health officials
defending current mass vaccination policies. As scientific evidence reveals
that a portion of autism lies on the vaccine injury spectrum, parents
determined to find help for their children are turning to doctors exploring
diet and immune modulating therapies.
Parents of now grown vaccine injured children, who warned pediatricians
and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials in the 1980’s that their once
healthy, bright children regressed mentally, emotionally and physically after
reacting to DPT vaccine with fever, high pitched screaming (encephalitic cry),
collapse/shock, and seizures, are grieving with a new generation of parents
whose healthy, bright children suddenly regress after DPT/DTaP, MMR, hepatitis
B, polio, Hib and chicken pox vaccinations. The refusal two decades ago by
vaccine manufacturers, government health agencies and medical organizations to
seriously investigate reports of vaccine-associated brain injury and immune
system dysfunction, including autistic behaviors, is reaping tragic
consequences today.
Now parents of old and young vaccine injured children in
the U.S. and Europe are joining with enlightened doctors in a rejection of the unscientific
a priori assumption that a child’s mental, physical and emotional regression
after vaccination is only coincidentally but not causally related to the
vaccines recently given. They are calling for credible basic science research
into the biological mechanism of vaccine adverse events to develop pathological
profiles which will separate health problems caused by vaccines from those that
are not; the development of screening techniques to identify children at
genetic or other biological risk of developing vaccine-induced health problems;
the institution of informed consent protections in vaccination laws;
re-examination of vaccine licensing standards; and an end to one-size-fits-all
vaccination policies.
This, while the U.S. government, the pharmaceutical
industry and international corporate interests announced on March 2, 2000 the
creation of a new multi-billion dollar alliance called the Millennium Vaccine
Initiative (MVI) to vaccinate all of the world’s children with existing and new
vaccines, including those being targeted for accelerated development for AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria. According to the annual NIH Jordan Report, there are
more than 200 vaccines in various research stages. Dozens are under
consideration for childhood use. Even as the race to add new vaccines to the
routine child vaccination schedule rushes forward, parents, whose children
became autistic after receiving existing vaccines, are changing the direction
of autism research and the vaccine safety debate.
Increase in Autism Reflects Real Increases in
Childhood Chronic
Diseases and Disability
The incidence of autism, like that of learning disabilities,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), asthma, diabetes, arthritis,
chronic fatigue syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune and neurological
disorders, has risen dramatically in the U.S. and other technologically
advanced countries, while high vaccination rates have caused the incidence of childhood
infectious diseases to fall just as dramatically in these countries. Instead of
epidemics of infectious disease, there are now epidemics of chronic disease.
A University of California study published by the U.S.
Department of Education in 1996 found that “The proportion of the US population
with disabilities has risen markedly during the past quarter-century . . . this
recent change seems to be due not to demographics, but to greater numbers of children
and young adults reported as having disabilities.” The study concluded that “these
changes may be partly accounted for by the increases in the prevalence of
asthma, mental disorders (including attention deficit disorder), mental
retardation, and learning disabilities that have been noted among children in
recent years.”
After heart disease and cancer, autoimmune disease has
become the third leading cause of illness in the United States and in many technologically
advanced countries. According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and
Immunology (AAAAI), the autoimmune disease, asthma, is now “the most common
disorder in children and adolescents, affecting nearly five million children
under the age of 18, including an estimated 1.3 million children under the age
of five. Fifty to 80 percent of children affected with asthma develop symptoms
before they are five years old.” (http://www.aaaai.org).
A 1997 study published in Science found that asthma has
doubled in prevalence in Western societies during the past 20 years and in the
United States causes one-third of pediatric emergency room visits. A 1995
report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stated that between 1982 and
1992, asthma increased 52 percent for persons between 5 and 34 years old and asthma
deaths increased 42 percent.
Another autoimmune disorder, arthritis, is also “on a
steady rise” according to the CDC in 1998, which estimated that arthritis now
plagues more than 40 million Americans and projected that the number will grow
to 60 million by 2020. Cases of diabetes, yet another chronic autoimmune
disorder, have tripled in the U.S. since 1958, now affecting nearly 16 million Americans
and ranking fourth in the leading causes of death in America. The CDC concluded
in 1997 that “the number of newly diagnosed cases of diabetes was almost 50
percent higher in 1994 than in 1980” and did not appear to be a result of the
aging of the population.
In Europe, a new report issued by the EURODIAB study group
(Lancet-2000), evaluated the incidence rate of diabetes from 1989 to 1994 in Europe
and Israel and found a 63 percent increase in children under 5 years old; a 31
percent increase in children five to nine years old; and a 24 percent increase
in children 10 to 14 years old. They said, “The rapid rate of increase in
children under 5 years old is of particular concern.” There is no explanation
for why adult-onset diabetes, once extremely rare in children, has become more
prevalent in American children in the past ten years.
In addition to an unexplained increase in autoimmune
disorders during the past three decades, there also has been an unexplained
dramatic increase in the numbers of minimally brain damaged children who are
filling special education classrooms in schools across America.
A disability survey of U.S. children under 17 years old in
1991-1992 published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (August 25,
1995) stated that the “6 to 14 year old age group had the greatest number of disabled
people.” Learning disability led the way, occurring in nearly 30 percent of all
disabled children. A total of 1,435,000 children were listed as learning
disabled with another 1,446,000 children reported as suffering from speech
disorders, mental retardation, mental or emotional disorders, epilepsy and
autism.
The 1997 Digest of Education Statistics looked at children
0 to 21 years old served in federally supported programs for the disabled
between 1976 and 1996 and found that the numbers of children with specific
learning disabilities more than tripled in those years; those with serious
emotional disturbances nearly doubled; and the numbers of autistic children
served rose from 5,000 in 1991-92 to 39,000 in 1995-1996 to produce a
staggering 680 percent increase.
About five percent of U.S. school children (at least two
million children) are now estimated to have attention deficit disorder (ADD) or
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). According to Sears and Thompson
(1998), a 1990 survey of 2,400 practicing physicians showed there were about
two million patient visits associated with the diagnoses of ADD and by 1994, it
had increased to 4.7 million, with 90 percent of the visits resulting in drug
therapy. By 1995, there were 1.5 million children taking Ritalin and in a
recent study (Zito, JAMA) it was reported that the number of two to four year
olds taking prescription drugs like Ritalin and Prozac rose 50 percent between
1991 and 1995.
According to one NIH official, 40 percent of children
diagnosed with ADHD have learning disabilities and “anywhere from 20 to 70
percent of children who have ADHD also have conduct disorder” often involving delinquent
behavior (www.intelihealth.com).
The growing numbers of children with an ADHD diagnosis is cause for concern
because, as one researcher observed in 1988: “Adults with a history of
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder appear to be over represented in the
ranks of felons.” (Cowart, JAMA).
In his 1990 book Vaccination, Social Violence and
Criminality, medical historian Harris Coulter, Ph.D., expands on the evidence
he and Barbara Loe Fisher first presented in DPT: A Shot in the Dark and draws
parallels between the residual learning disabilities and hyperactive/abnormal
behavior caused by complications of disease or vaccine-induced encephalitis and
the hyperactive/abnormal behavior and learning disabilities being exhibited by more
and more American children.
Many children with learning disabilities, ADHD and
developmental delays exhibit signs of autoimmune dysfunction, with severe
allergies to foods, drugs, and environmental toxins. (Geschwind, 1982;
Geschwind & Behan, 1982; Colgan & Colgan, 1984; Boris & Marvin,
1994). In her book, Is This Your Child’s World?, Doris Rapp, M.D. documents
compelling evidence for the association between allergies, learning
disabilities and ADHD.
Responding to the concern of a Dad, whose healthy son
became autistic following a series of DPT, Hib and MMR vaccinations, in 1998
the California Legislature decided to analyze the history of autism in the
state. Rick Rollens, father of two, former Secretary of the California Senate,
and co-founder of FEAT (Families for Early Autism Treatment - (http://www.feat.org)
and the University of California-Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, persuaded the legislature to fund an investigation by
the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) into state autism statistics
after he concluded his son, Russell, now 9, was not the victim of a rare
disorder but one that had become quite common in children.
Sure enough, in an April 1999 report (http://www.dds.ca.gov)
DDS found a 273 percent increase between 1987 and 1998 in the numbers of new
children entering the California developmental services system with a
professional diagnosis of autism. The report concluded that “the number of
persons with autism grew markedly faster than the number of persons with other developmental
disabilities (cerebral palsy, epilepsy and mental retardation)” and “compared
to characteristics of 11 years ago, the present population of persons with
autism are younger (and) have a greater chance of exhibiting no or milder forms
of mental retardation. . . .”.
Although autism has been cited by public health officials
and autism researchers to occur in 2 to 10 in 10,000 children nationwide, the
Centers for Disease Control in a report released in April 2000 found the
incidence of autism in Brick Township, New Jersey in 1998 was 1 in 150 children
(the incidence in the Granite Bay, California public elementary school district
is 1 in 132 children), which may be more reflective of the true rate of autism
in the U.S. today. The Autism Society of America estimates that “more than
one-half million people in the U.S. today have autism or some form of pervasive
developmental disorder,” making autism one of the most common developmental
disabilities. (http://www/autism-society.org).
After the California report documented the dramatic
increases in autism in the past decade, the California legislature voted to
appropriate one million dollars to the UC-Davis M.I.N.D. Institute to look for environmental
and biological factors, including vaccine use, that could have contributed to
this autism increase. At the same time, parents began to check autism statistics
in other states.
The story is the same in other states. The 1998 Maryland
Special Education Census Data revealed that the state experienced a 513 percent
increase in autism between 1993 and 1998, while the general Maryland population
from 1990 to 1998 increased just seven percent. A comparative analysis of the
16th and 20th Annual Reports to Congress on the implementation
of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) conducted by Ray Gallup,
President of Autism Autoimmunity Project (http://www.gti.net/truegrit) and father of
Eric, who has vaccine-associated autism, showed increases of more than 300
percent in autistic children served under IDEA between 1992 and 1997 in the
states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South
Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
The brain and immune system dysfunction diagnosed in
previously healthy children after viral and bacterial infections or vaccination
complications, documented in the medical literature, parallels the brain and immune
system dysfunction suffered by previously healthy children who become autistic.
But it took nearly forty years for the medical profession to agree that the
cause of a child’s autistic behavior was not to be found by putting Mom on the
psychiatrist’s couch but by looking in the microscope at the cells, molecules
and genes - by evaluating the biological basis for the constellation of
physical, emotional and mental symptoms which were first called childhood
schizophrenia and now have come to be known as autism.
In 1943, when child psychiatrist Leo Kanner first
described 11 cases of a new mental illness in children he said was
distinguished by self absorbed detachment from other people and repetitive and
bizarre behavior, he used the word “autistic” (from the Greek word auto,
meaning “self.”) Pointing out similarities with some behaviors exhibited by
adult schizophrenics, Kanner and other psychiatrists assumed autistic children were
exhibiting early-onset adult-type psychoses.
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INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR
GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE
KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED
AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.