This is part 2 of a comprehensive report by the National Vaccine

Information Center on a matter of topical importance to the autism

community. It 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 NVIC and 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

Education, I.Q. and "Refrigerator Moms"

Kanner's young patients came from well-educated middle and upper class

families in Baltimore with mothers and fathers who were doctors, lawyers and

professors. In 1954, Kanner said, "we have not encountered any one autistic

child who came of unintelligent parents." This concentration of autistic

children in educated and professionally successful families led Kanner to

develop the "refrigerator Mom" theory as the cause of autism, theorizing

that the warm maternal instincts of educated working mothers was absent or

diminished. Embracing the popular psychiatric, Freudian themes echoed by

Kanner, for decades pediatricians were persuaded to blame mothers of

autistic children for being cold and emotionally rejecting, causing the

children in turn to coldly reject contact with other people.

By 1954, Kanner had started to modify his "Blame the Mother" stance in

recognition that the brothers and sisters of autistic children were often

well adjusted, high functioning children and suggested that the development

of autism was also a result of genetic or "constitutional inadequacies" as

well as bad parenting. By 1971, Kanner admitted Mom was not to blame.

But the damage had already been done. The rejecting parent theme was

taken up by psychoanalyst Bruno Bettleheim in various books and articles,

such as The Empty Fortress (1967). Bettleheim insisted the autistic child

was behaving in abnormal ways in retaliation against a rejecting mother who

had traumatized the child by failing to provide enough love or attention.

A Father Shows The Way

But even as Bettleheim's influence was growing, a California

psychologist and father of an autistic child, Bernard Rimland, Ph.D.,

already had taken on the psychiatric establishment which had dominated

autism research and treatment. In his landmark book Infantile Autism: The

Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior published in

1964, Rimland methodically dismantled the psychoanalytic theory of autism

and argued for a biological, specifically a neurological, basis for autistic

behavior. He documented the similarities between brain injured children and

autistic children, liberating parents from the destructive guilt associated

with having an autistic child and pointing autism research in the direction

it should always have taken: investigation into the biological mechanisms

underlying the brain and immune dysfunction symptoms and their possible

causes.

After founding the Autism Society of America (ASA) in 1965 and

establishing the Autism Research Institute (ARI) in 1967, Rimland began

distributing a questionnaire to parents of autistic children. Some 33 years

later, his databank includes information on more than 30,000 cases of autism

from around the world. In analyzing the data for age of onset of autism, he

discovered that before the early 1980's, most of the parents reported their

children first showed signs of abnormal behavior at birth or in the first

year of life. But after the mid-1980's, there was a reversal of this

pattern. The numbers of parents reporting that their children developed

normally in the first year and a half of life and then, suddenly, became

autistic, doubled. Today, said Rimland, "the onset-at-18 months children

outnumber the onset-at-birth children by 2 to 1."

(http://www.autism.com/ari).

Class, Vaccines and Autism

Rimland, like Kanner, noticed early in his research that autistic

children often came from intelligent, well-educated parents who were

successful professionals in their communities. Upper middle class families

in America have always sought out and received quality medical care.

Children, whose parents are well educated are the most likely to take full

advantage of the latest developments in medicine. This would have been

especially true in Kanner's day as two miracle drugs of the 20th century -

antibiotics and new vaccines - elevated trust in and reliance upon

pharmaceuticals to a new plateau.

In the early 1940's, state-of-the-art pediatric medical care would

have included a smallpox vaccination plus a separate dose of diphtheria

vaccine. In 1944, pertussis vaccine was recommended for all babies. By 1947,

the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended routine use of the new

combination DPT vaccine. By 1958, Kanner's case files contained more than

100 cases of autism.

In 1969, M.S. and W.C. Goodwin reported a dramatic upsurge of autism

cases in their pediatric psychiatric practice after 1964. By 1964, the

well-cared-for American child was getting simultaneously vaccinated with DPT

as well as polio vaccine at two, four, six and 18 months of age (the

inactivated polio (IPV) was licensed in 1955 and the live virus oral polio

(OPV) vaccine was licensed in 1963). After 1959, more than three million

children were injected with the combination DPT-IPV shot (Quadrigen) before

it was pulled off the market in 1968 for safety and efficacy reasons. By the

mid-1960's, many state-of-the-art pediatric practices were also giving

babies the new live virus measles vaccine, which had been licensed in 1963

and was routinely used by 1965.

More Vaccines and More Vaccinations

By 1979, a combination live virus measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine,

which was licensed in 1971, had been added to the routine child vaccination

schedule and given to children at 12 to 15 months of age; federal grants

were being given to states to provide free DPT, polio and MMR vaccines to

children in public health clinics; and the CDC was encouraging states to

enforce mandatory vaccination laws to raise national vaccination rates. By

1979, rubella vaccine, which had been licensed in 1969 for use in children

also began to be routinely administered to mothers in hospitals after giving

birth (Preblud, 1985; Tingle, 1986).

In 1988, the CDC added haemophilus influenza b (Hib) vaccine to the

child vaccine schedule; in 1991 the CDC recommended the recombinant

hepatitis B vaccine be used by all newborn infants and children; in 1993 the

combined DPTH vaccine was licensed; and in 1995, the live varicella zoster

(chicken pox) vaccine was put on the market.

Almost Three Dozen Doses By Age Five

In 1999, the average American child regardless of the parent's

educational level or ability to pay was being injected with hepatitis B

vaccine at 12 hours of age and 1 month; with DPT or DTaP, Hib, OPV or IPV at

two and four months; with DPT/DTaP, Hib, OPV/IPV and hepatitis B at six

months; with live varicella zoster at 12 to 18 months; with MMR and Hib at

12 to 15 months; with DPT/DTaP, OPV/IPV at 18 months; and with DPT/DTaP,

MMR, OPV/IPV between four and six years for a total of 33 doses of 10

different viral and bacterial vaccines by the age of five. National

vaccination rates for children under age three have climbed from between 60

to 80 percent in 1967 for DPT, polio and measles vaccine to 90 percent in

1999 for DPT, polio, MMR, and Hib vaccines. Vaccine coverage rates with core

vaccines for five-year-old children entering kindergarten have reached 98

percent plus in many states.

Vaccination today is not just a medical intervention afforded by the

rich and taken advantage of by the well educated but an equal opportunity

extended to the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated alike, and

enforced in the U.S. by state mandates. Although cases of autism in the 1940

's and 1950's were concentrated in the upper and upper middle classes, today

the growing numbers of children affected with autism come from all social

classes.

Encephalitis: From Disease and Vaccines

Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis, encephalomyelitis,

encephalopathy) has been documented for more than 200 years in the medical

literature to be caused by viral and bacterial infections as well as the

vaccines containing altered viruses and bacteria. Smallpox infection can

involve brain inflammation with symptoms ranging from fever, vomiting,

drowsiness, and convulsions which progress over a period of one to four

weeks, sometimes ending in coma and death.

The vaccinia virus used by Edward Jenner in 1796 to prevent smallpox

was found to cause acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) within one to

six weeks of smallpox vaccination estimated to occur in 1 in 5,000 persons.

Smallpox vaccination has also been reported to cause a slow, subacute

persistent viral infection that can emerge years after vaccination (Adams et

al, 1972) and end in death. (The myelin sheath that encloses many nerve

fibers helps the transmission of neural impulses and if the myelin sheath is

damaged through traumatic injury, metabolic disorders, toxic insult, viral

or bacterial infection or vaccination, it can cause degeneration or

demyelination).

Pasteur's Rabies Vaccine

Rabies, a viral disease of the central nervous system (CNS), can take

10 days to a year for the virus to reach the brain but, once it does,

encephalomyelitis symptoms include excessive motor activity, excitation,

agitation, confusion, combativeness, bizarre aberrations of thought,

seizures and other CNS dysfunction. After Pasteur began to inject patients

with rabies vaccine in the 1880's, it became obvious that brain inflammation

was a side effect. Encephalitis and polyneuritis has been estimated to occur

in as many as 1 in 400 vaccinated individuals, with Hemachudha, Griffin, et

al in 1987 presenting evidence for an immune-mediated mechanism involving

antibodies to myelin basic protein.

Measles and EEG, Behavior Changes

Within three weeks of even a mild measles infection, one in 1,000

cases can develop encephalomyelitis with signs including fever, headache and

drowsiness. Residual brain damage from measles encephalitis ranges from

mental and behavior changes, including subtle changes in performance, to

seizure disorders and mental retardation. Changes in the

electroencephalogram (EEG) have been demonstrated in half of those who have

had measles but do not show other signs of CNS dysfunction.

Measles virus infection has long been known to be associated with

demyelinating disorders. Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) has been reported

following measles disease (Lidin-Janson, 1972) and after measles vaccination

(Grose and Spigland, 1976). Optic neuritis and multiple sclerosis in

children has also been reported after measles disease and measles

vaccination (Riikonen, 1989). In 1973, Landrigan and Witte described 45

cases of encephalitis occurring between 6 and 15 days following measles

vaccination.

Persistent Measles Virus Infection

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a rare subacute

encephalitis complication of measles infection which causes slow

demyelination of the brain over a one to two year period and ends in death.

It has also been reported after measles vaccination (Schneck, 1968). In

1994, the Institute of Medicine concluded that the live measles virus

vaccine can cause death from measles vaccine strain viral infection.

In 1998, officials of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation

Program, Public Health Service (Pediatrics; March 1998) found that a causal

relationship exists between live measles vaccine and encephalopathy after

analyzing cases of children who received measles vaccine alone or in the

combination MMR shot and, within 15 days of vaccination, suffered neurologic

signs that progressed to death or mental regression, retardation, chronic

seizures, motor and sensory deficits and movement disorders.

An outbreak of aseptic meningitis in Brazil has been linked to the MMR

vaccine (Am J Epidmiol, 2000). A research team found there was a sharp

increase in the number of cases of aseptic meningitis three weeks after a

1997 mass MMR vaccination campaign in northeastern Brazil. The researchers

"conservatively estimated" that the risk of aseptic meningitis is 1 in about

14,000 MMR vaccine doses. (A type of brain inflammation involving the

meninges, aseptic meningitis can be caused by viruses and bacteria as well

as stroke, lead poisoning, and vaccine reactions (Berkow, 1987). Most people

recover from aseptic meningitis without damage but some are left with muscle

weakness or other motor dysfunction).

Mumps, Rubella and Brain Inflammation

Mumps has been known to cause meningitis and encephalitis since the

eighteenth century. Russell and Donald, observed in 1958 that "the clinical

resemblance between mumps

encephalitis and the encephalitis which may follow measles, varicella and

rubella, and the fact that the histological appearance of perivascular

demyelination are common to them all, suggest that they arise from the same

pathological process. The nature of this process is unknown, but it may be a

non-specific allergic reaction to virus protein (Miller and Evans, 1953) and

similar lesions have been produced experimentally by the injection of brain

material with adjuvants (Lumsden, 1949).".

There have been many case reports and studies documenting meningitis

within three weeks of mumps vaccination (Brown, 1991), and after MMR

vaccination (Sugiura and Yamada, 1991), primarily with the Urabe vaccine

strain virus. There have also been reports of meningitis after vaccination

with the Jeryl Lynn mumps vaccine strain (Ehrengut and Zastrow, 1989) now

used in MMR vaccine.

Rubella disease is caused by an RNA virus and, although mild in

children, it can be transmitted from mother to fetus in utero and cause

enchephalitis and devastating harm to the unborn child, including mental

retardation, hearing and vision loss, heart and neuromuscular deformity. In

the rubella epidemic that swept the U.S. in 1964, an estimated 20,000 to

30,000 children whose pregnant mothers were infected with rubella were born

severely damaged and a high rate of classic and "partial" autism was

observed in those children by Chess in 1971. In 1977, Chess reported that

the rate of autism in children born with congenital rubella from the 1964

epidemic was equivalent to a rate of "412 per 10,000 for the complete

syndrome of autism and 329 for the partial syndrome, giving a combined rate

of 741 per 10,000" compared to the rate of autism in children without

congenital rubella syndrome (estimated in 1966 to be 2.1 cases of autism per

10,000 children (Lotter, 1966).

Encephalitis and Mild Brain Damage

In the 1920's, when a mini-epidemic of "von Economo's encephalitis"

swept through Europe and America, doctors found that some of those who

recovered were left with minimal brain damage including changes in behavior,

restlessness, insomnia or disturbed sleep patterns, irritability, short

attention span, emotional disorders and seizures. In 1934, Kahn and Cohen

described a group of children with the inability to sit still or

concentrate, which they attributed to exposure to von Economo's

encephalitis.

Japanese encephalitis can cause permanent CNS changes including

personality and behavior problems featuring emotional lability and

irritability, speech disorders, hemiplegia, mental retardation and seizures.

Chicken pox and mumps infections can, in rare cases, progress to

encephalitis and brain inflammation has also been reported to follow chicken

pox and mumps vaccines.

Polio and CNS Damage

Poliomyelitis is caused by an enterovirus in which one to two percent

of infected individuals develop disease in the central nervous system, and

fewer go on to have residual paralysis or die. Likewise, within one to six

months of receiving the live attenuated polio vaccine, complications can

occur which, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1994, can cause

Guillain-Barre syndrome as well as vaccine strain viral infection ending in

paralysis and death. In both cases, the polio virus invades the CNS and

destroys neurons. (Since 1979, the only cases of paralytic polio which have

occurred in the US have been caused by the live oral polio vaccine (OPV) and

it is no longer recommended by the CDC or AAP, having been replaced by the

inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) which cannot cause polio in the person

vaccinated or a person who comes into contact with that person's body

fluids).

Bacteria Also Cause Brain Inflammation

But brain inflammation is not only caused by viruses and viral

vaccines. Bacterial infections and bacterial vaccines also can cause brain

inflammation ending in permanent CNS damage.

Encephalitis has always been the most dreaded complication of

pertussis or whooping cough, with endotoxin and pertussis toxin in the B.

pertussis bacteria responsible for most of it. Pertussis toxin is one of the

most lethal toxins in nature and can cross the blood brain barrier when

conditions are right. It has long been known that a severe case of whooping

cough accompanied by brain inflammation symptoms such as fever, lethargy,

vomiting and seizures can be fatal or cause permanent brain damage ranging

from seizure disorders and mental retardation to learning, personality and

behavioral disorders (Lurie & Levy, 1942).

Pertussis Toxin Lethal

Since the 1950's, scientists conducting experiments have added

pertussis toxin to a solution of nerve tissue and injected it into

sensitized mice to deliberately induce brain inflammation. However pertussis

toxin is also thought to be involved in acquiring immunity to the disease,

both after natural infection and after vaccination (Pittman, 1979).

Vaccine developers continue to have a problem making a pertussis

vaccine that contains pertussis toxin inactivated enough to be safe but

active enough to be immunogenic, which is why the purified DTaP vaccine is

associated with the same CNS complications as the whole cell DPT vaccine,

although they are reported to occur at a much lower rate with DTaP. (The

more reactive whole cell DPT vaccine has not been taken off the market and

it is still being used by some pediatricians, especially in the combination

DPTH (DPT plus Hib). Parents who want the purified DTaP for their children

must ask for it by name.)

Source: FEAT Daily Newsletter