Autism: We simply just don't have the answers.. - Dr Gerberding, Director CDC.

[Guest guest]

Ped Med: Autism picture still incomplete By LIDIA WASOWICZUPI Senior Science Writer http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDaily/view.php?StoryID=20061121-020244-9498r SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Right or wrong, the comparatively minuscule minority convinced mercury in medicines lies at the root of autism's ascent has something the American healthcare behemoth does not: a cause. Going against the mainstream grain, some parents and physicians tie neurodevelopmental and certain other chronic health problems increasingly diagnosed in America's children to the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, once widely used in vaccines and still present in some booster and flu shots. Others are

convinced potential harm also may lurk in other components of the ever-expanding childhood immunization schedule. "It is just as logical to argue that the chronic disease and disability epidemic that has developed during the past 25 years, in which autism takes a leading role, is more associated with an increase in the different types of live virus and inactivated bacterial vaccines given to all children, as well as the increases in total number of doses, than it is to one component of those many vaccines," said Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the advocacy group National Vaccine Information Center. "Human infants have never in the history of man experienced their environment in the way that they are now experiencing it, which includes having their first immunological experience at 12 hours of age with an atypical manipulation of the immune system when hepatitis B vaccine is injected," she

explained. "This is followed by continuing atypical introduction of lab altered live viruses and inactivated bacteria into the body during the first six years of life, including seven vaccines at 2 months, seven more at 4 months, eight more at 6 months ... (B)y age 6, a child will have received 48 doses of 14 vaccines," Fisher said. "The cumulative effects of over-vaccinating children, especially the effects of simultaneous injection (of) many vaccines at once, whether the vaccines contain mercury or not, is a plausible explanation for why so many children today are chronically ill, suffering with a variety of brain and immune system problems, including autism," Fisher concluded. To public health authorities, however, the matter appears much less settled. "We just simply don't have answers to the cause of this disorder or the disorders that fall into the autism

spectrum," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The agency, which has steadfastly denied a vaccine-autism association, has a workforce of more than 9,000, an annual budget of more than $8 billion and a mission to protect and promote public health. Gerberding told reporters at a news briefing that "we don't have a complete picture of the scope of the problem." Nor even of its definition. "We don't really understand that whole landscape very well," conceded Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. "We don't know where the dividing point was, or is," he said at a conference on autism, sponsored by the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Should it be around language? Should it be

around neuropsychological function? Should it be around time of onset? There's just a whole series of questions that we need to begin to define answers to much more precisely." To a degree, all the uncertainty bespeaks the decades the disorder -- and the hundreds of thousands of families it affects -- spent languishing in inattention. Whatever the cause, autism has retained much of its mystery and intractability. "Ironically," Insel admitted, "this is such a high priority for the National Institutes of Health -- and we have a large hospital and a huge clinic, with 18,000 people here in Bethesda -- (but) there has not been an autism program here until now." As it is, autism has arrived at the stage where polio stood in the mid-1950s, he said. "We had to do something to address the tens of thousands of cases of polio acutely, to make sure that we had a way to get iron

lungs and other kinds of treatments that were then available to the people who most needed them," Insel said. "But it's important that we didn't stop there, that somebody thought about how we also needed to develop a vaccine," he continued. "And so for autism, as it was for polio, it's finding this balance between making sure that we're investing in research that will really make a difference, as well as taking those things that we know now make a difference and making sure that those are provided to the kids and to the families who most need them." Encouraging agendas for action notwithstanding, there is a disheartening lopsidedness to the lengthy laundry list of things to do that dwarfs the checklist of tasks completed. "We need to understand the biological basis of autism. We need to understand what it is we're dealing with. We know what it is from a behavioral perspective,

but we really don't have a very good sense of what is happening at a molecular and cellular level," said Peter Bell, executive director of the parent-founded, research-focused group Cure Autism Now. "Second, we need to find the children," he continued. "We need to get the early identification models working. We need to identify biomarkers that can spot these kids as early as possible so that we can put them into interventions earlier on and get the best outcomes." "Lastly, we need to find the resources," Bell added. "We need to have better databases and be able to bring it all together and understand the population of kids." (Note: In this multi-part installment, based on dozens of reports, conferences and interviews, Ped Med is keeping on eye on autism, taking a backward glance at its history and surrounding controversies, facing facts revealed by research and looking forward

to treatment enhancements and expansions. Wasowicz is the author of the forthcoming book, "Suffer the Child: How the American Healthcare System Is Failing Our Future," to be published by Capital Books.) Next: Seeking solutions in surveys, studies -- UPI Consumer Health welcomes comments on this column. E-mail: lwasowiczIt seems that we may almost have a double standard as far as medical theories are concerned. As long as man does something, it's science. When nature does something, it's quackery. - Dr G E Poesnecker, (Nature Cure 2000).

Check out the all-new Mail beta - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.