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.
The Past Is Prologue
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."
Autoimmunity Epidemic
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.
Minimal Brain Damage Epidemic
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.
ADHD Epidemic
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.
Autism Epidemic
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.
California Autism Rates Soar
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.
Other States Report Similar Increases
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.
New Behavior Disorder Blamed On Bad Parenting
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.
Source: FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
