Vaccines/Autism?

[Sylph]

Vaccines And Autism: Many Hypotheses, But No Correlation Found

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2009) — An extensive new review summarizes the many studies refuting the claim of a link between vaccines and autism. The review, in the February 15, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and now available online, looks at the three main hypotheses and shows how epidemiological and biological studies refute these claims. Vaccines And Autism: Many Hypotheses, But No Correlation Found

[sharingwisdom]

Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC, went on CNN's House Call with Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss the Hannah Poling case and admitted that vaccines trigger autism in a subset of the population with mitochondrial disorders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-nkD5LSIg&feature=related Lawyer Robert F Kennedy Jr. is the senior attorney for the National Resource Defense council and author of Deadly Immunity in Rolling Stone discusses Vaccine Autism Coverup. YouTube - Robert Kennedy on the Vaccine Autism Coverup ----------------- U.S. Government Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism

Monday, March 3, 2008 9:36 AM Newsmax.com - U.S. Government Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), recently conceded the first vaccine-autism case. This case was filed in the no-fault National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program as part of the Autism Omnibus proceedings in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims. It was one of the first three cases chosen that alleged Thimerosal in childhood vaccines significantly contributed to a child developing autism. Clifford Shoemaker, of Shoemaker and Associates of Vienna, Virginia, is the attorney of record in the Hanna Poling v. Secretary of HHS (case: 02-1466V). Experts filing on behalf of the petitioner, Hanna Poling, included pediatric neurologist, Dr. Andrew Zimmerman of Johns Hopkins University, and Maryland geneticist and epidemiologist, Dr. Mark Geier of the Genetic Centers of America. This concession shows the dishonesty of the continual media spin coming from public health officials and others who maintain there is no evidence that Thimerosal, or any other part of any vaccine, has ever caused autism or, for that matter, has harmed anyone in any way. The facts are that the Vaccine Compensation Act has already compensated over 2,000 individuals who proved that they were harmed by vaccines, resulting in settlements of nearly two billion dollars. Additionally, hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific/medical articles from some the world’s best universities have long implicated Thimerosal in vaccines as a causal factor in neurodevelopmental disorders including autism. Furthermore, in 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Government Reform Committee, after a 3.5-year investigation, concluded that Thimerosal caused the autism epidemic and that the FDA and health authorities were guilty of “institutional malfeasance” in covering it up. Evidence supporting the connection between mercury and autism include: 1. Published studies from the US and France showing that urinary porphyrins, a biomarker for body-burden of mercury, are elevated in patients diagnosed with autistic disorders (CoMeD). 2. A published study by researchers at Harvard University that found twice as much mercury and oxidative stress in the brains of those with an autism diagnosis as found in the brains of those who were normal. 3. A study from the US showing a significant relationship between increasing blood mercury levels and an increased risk of a diagnosis of an autistic disorder. 4. Numerous papers by independent researchers showing a link between increasing mercury exposure from childhood vaccines and the risk of a child developing an autistic disorder. 5. Several papers showing that adding low levels of Thimerosal to certain blood, brain, eye, immune, liver and/or muscle cells poisons their cellular mitochondrial pathways and can induce cell death. Today, despite being banned in Europe and restricted in 7 U.S. states, Thimerosal-containing flu vaccines are still recommended for routine administration to pregnant women and infants, with little or no warning of the presence of this known poison in these and other vaccines. Vaccines have and will continue to save many lives. However, an immediate ban and recall of vaccines and other drugs containing mercury compounds used in their production must be instituted immediately to stop the epidemic of developmental disorders, including autism, caused by the unsound use of mercury in medicine. For more information, please visit CoMeD’s website: www.mercury-freedrugs.org --------------- David Kirby: Government Concedes Vaccine-Autism Case in Federal Court - Now What? Excerpt ) What are the implications for the vaccine-autism debate? It's too early to tell. But this concession could conceivably make it more difficult for some officials to continue insisting there is "absolutely no link" between vaccines and autism. It also puts the Federal Government's Vaccine Court defense strategy somewhat into jeopardy. DOJ lawyers and witnesses have argued that autism is genetic, with no evidence to support an environmental component. And, they insist, it's simply impossible to construct a chain of events linking immunizations to the disorder. Government officials may need to rethink their legal strategy, as well as their public relations campaigns, given their own slightly contradictory concession in this case. 9) What is the bottom line here? The public, (including world leaders) will demand to know what is going on inside the US Federal health establishment. Yes, as of now, n=1, a solitary vaccine-autism concession. But what if n=10% or 20%? Who will pay to clean up that mess? The significance of this concession will unfortunately be fought over in the usual, vitriolic way -- and I fully expect to be slammed for even raising these questions. Despite that, the language of this concession cannot be changed, or swept away. Its key words are "aggravated" and "manifested." Without the aggravation of the vaccines, it is uncertain that the manifestation would have occurred at all.

Vaccines And Autism: Many Hypotheses, But No Correlation Found

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2009) — An extensive new review summarizes the many studies refuting the claim of a link between vaccines and autism. The review, in the February 15, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and now available online, looks at the three main hypotheses and shows how epidemiological and biological studies refute these claims. Vaccines And Autism: Many Hypotheses, But No Correlation Found

[Sylph]

U.S. Government Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism

In one case in a girl with an unusual disorder, and it’s not a slam-dunk scientifically that she even has autism. What a misleading title.
Why did autism continue to increase after thimerosal was taken out of vaccines?

Hannah Poling Case Revisited:
NEJM -- Vaccines and Autism Revisited -- The Hannah Poling Case

Case Study: Autism and Vaccines - TIME
“U.S. Government Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism”

But there are circumstances that make Hannah's case a bit unusual. For one thing, she received an unusually large number of vaccines in 2000 (when thimerosal was still in use). Because of a series of ear infections, Hannah had fallen behind in the vaccine schedule, so in a single day she was given five inoculations covering a total of nine diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae.
Experts on autism spectrum disorders believe that most cases are caused by a combination of genetic vulnerabilities and environmental factors. There may be hundreds of roads to autism, involving numerous combinations of genes and external factors.
Even Hannah's father believes in the importance of vaccines:

"My daughter's case raises more questions than it answers," concedes her father, Dr. Jon Poling, a neurologist who also has a Ph.D. in biophysics. Poling believes in the importance of vaccinating children: "Vaccines are one of the most important advances in the history of medicine," he says, "but people need to know there is a risk to every medicine. There may be a small percentage of people who are susceptible to injury."

Autism and vaccines | Salon News
“Not Autism”
In this case, "CHILD [Hannah Poling] v. Secretary of Health and Human Services," the court "concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder. Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners."
Does that mean vaccines caused Hannah to become autistic?

No. Look again at the court statement: Hannah has "an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autistic spectrum disorder." Throughout the document, both Hannah's doctors and lab results support the diagnosis of mitochondrial disorder.
Not a diagnosis of autism?

Right. Mitochondrial disorder does not equal autism. Generally speaking, mitochondria are the parts of our cells that help generate energy. When they fail, the body's cells go awry, which can lead to failures in any number of normal body functions. There are at least 40 known mitochondrial disorders, and probably many more we haven't yet found. But it's clear from the transcript of the court's decision that this was not a case of vaccines causing autism. Rather, this is a case where the court deemed it plausible that vaccines aggravated an underlying disease caused by bad mitochondria, and that some of the symptoms Hannah showed were similar to autism. …there are even questions about that conclusion.