Four years ago I watched The World According to Monsanto, and was horrified to learn that I had been feeding my children poison. We had switched Chandler to a SCD diet the year before, and saw dramatic improvement in his behavior, language, happiness, relationships, and his puffy belly went flat. Check out my posts on his gains from the spring of 2007:
I wondered if his healing was not just because I had been giving him only simple sugars, but also because this diet was now organic, and he was not getting GMOs any more.
I wrote about it in post entitled, Monsanto GMOs: My Questions about Monsanto's GMOs and Autism. I got a response from Árpád Pusztai, one of the worlds experts on Lectins who got Wakefielded when he discovered that gm foods caused autoimmunity, GI problems and acted as an adjuvant in lab rats. He said, yes, it was plausiblethat GMOs could be facilitating some of the damage we see in our kids with an "autism" diagnosis.
Now THE master of the GMO fight, Jeffrey Smith is confirming that it is likely part of the assault on our kids is by Monsanto and her sister witches. He gave an amazing presentation at Autism One, and if there is only one speech you watch from that conference, it should be this one. This is the speech he gave there. And this is not just for those with autism. Everyone with a mouth should watch this.
Marine Corps 1st Lt. C. Chandler Perine was my uncle and he loved me.
He died in the service of his country on November 15, 1970 at the age of 26 when the plane he was piloting suffered mechanical failure during take off from McGuire AFB, New Jersey
Chan, my father's younger brother, served as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, a football player in college and "class flirt" in high school.
My youngest son, Chandler Perine Taylor, is named in his honor.
In October of 2003, while attending the Perine family burial plot for my grandfather's internment, Chandler, just 18 months old at the time, wandered away from me and our group, and walked straight to the grave of his name sake. He lay down the truck he was playing with on Uncle Chan's headstone, and began to stroke the rose that had been laid there a few minutes earlier.
My sister followed him with her camera, and this is the picture she took.
So, so sick of these people and the GARBAGE that they put out. Lost my temper a bit today.
Seth Mnookin is a guy that pretends to be a journalist, and writes hit pieces that encourage people to neglect the medical needs of children with autism. He is now attacking Autism One, about which he knows neither Jack nor Squat. My comment on his blog:
Autism One is amazing.
Seriously... it is like coming home. Being in a place where there is so much
information and encouragement and people (both professionals and parents) with
a driving passion to find things that will make your child's life better is
like coming into the sunlight after having the crap beat out of you in a
tornado.
You sit next to a mom, start chatting, figure out your child
has a problem that hers used to have... "Does he also have X symptom? Have you had him tested for Y? Because Dr. M is speaking on that in two
hours. Here is my phone number and
email... if you think this might be what is happening with him, call me and I
will get you a copy of Research Paper W, and you should call Professor T at
University P. If he does have it, call
me, I host a weekly conference call of parents dealing with it and they can
offer tips on what worked when they did intervention Q, and what side effect L
looked like in their child so you know what to be careful of."
And then you do it and he has it and you treat it and when
he wakes up at 2 am with strange behavior K, and you can't your pediatrician on
the phone, and Seth Mnookin is comfey in his bed and of no help... but that mom
who was a stranger to you when you sat down is happy to take your call and let
you know that, "Yes... 2 am Behavior K is something that we see often...
it only lasts about three nights, no worries, call the doc in the morning." or "No... I have not heard that from
anyone, might wanna stay up and keep an eye on it," or "Beth's son
did that, and thirty minutes later he had a massive seizure. You might want to get to the ER."
Or should I call you at 2am to get your advice Seth? What with you being so invested in my child's
health and functioning.
Hey... while I have you... Chandler
as of late has been giggling in class a lot more, and it started at the same
time that he got a mild rash on his back.
Any thoughts on what that might be?
Because my pediatrician never has answers to questions like this. Or should I just accept it because looking
for a solution is anti-science and means I hate my child and don't accept him
for who he is? Could you tutor him on
the stuff he is missing in Social Studies because he can't stop thinking about
how hilarious Phineas and Ferb are?
Oh... wait... I am going to Autism One in three days. There will be about 3,000 people there who
will have ideas on what might be going on with him, have medical, dietary, and
educational ideas on how to help him, and will be happy to call me for the next
month to see how he is progressing.
But Seth Mnookin says I should not go because Jenny McCarthy likes to be
naked. Gosh... tough call... find
cutting edge solutions to make my beautiful baby happy, healthy, functional,
social and educated from people who spend all day every day thinking about how
to help kids like mine; or be in the same building with someone who is
slutty. What to do, what to do.....
The things that that community has done for my son... well I
cannot put into words how grateful I am for what people have risked and
sacrificed and spent on our child and those like him. I have one doctor who spent 4 hours with me
doing a detailed history, he guy is a fricking Columbo, and never charged me a
dime. To be with people who could not
give a crap what the world thinks of them, that they just want to see my baby
healed and happy and living his best life... It is like walking into a hotel
full of love and wisdom. And kids (and
adults) can be as weird and difficult as they possibly can be, and instead of judgment
and crass bitchiness like you put out... they are surrounded with understanding
and affection and two dozen people with in year shot who drop what they are
doing to figure out how to help (not jerks who declare them
"disruptive" and have them escorted out of the building)... Seth...
you are so clueless!!!
Seth... you truly have no idea how wrong, destructive and
awful your writing is to children like mine.
Chandler
was severe when we started, and now he is happy, verbal and mainstreamed in a
4th grade classroom with an aid. Your
opposition to biomedical treatment for children with autoimmune disorders, mito disorders, chronic
viral and bacterial infections, and who have been poisoned (all of which
resulted in neurological regression) is the avocation of child abuse and
neglect! It is a joke. It is pathetic. It is cruel.
'Stop healing children!
I declare it unscience and disallow it!
Quick... get a petition out there to say we disapprove of making
children healthier! Don't even TALK
about new possibilities for children with autism! Put them in a closet and ACCEPT that they
will stay sick, unhappy, aggressive, disconnected, confused, obsessed, anxious,
afraid and stressed out beyond measure!
To do otherwise is anti-science and means you hate children with
autism!'
SHUT UP SETH! SHUT
UP, SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!
Autism One is freaking awesome. And strange how you don't mention that
professors from Harvard also come, and that the keynote address is being given
by a Nobel Prize winner.
People's children are sick and seizing and drowning and
being assaulted in school, but Seth is on the story.. on the difference between
"Free" and "A $25.00 processing fee?! for like two hundred hours
of lectures on ALL topics autism... that is being streamed for free online?" Someone get this man a Pulitzer.
Mr. Mnookin... Go away and leave our kids alone. You clearly could not give a rodent's hiney,
about our children, you have already declared parents like me who want to make
their own vaccine decisions, "Total Assholes." We have registered
your opinion. Now just stop
talking.
Your journalistic carpet bagging is pitiful and transparent. If you were looking for a safe career move,
you should realize that you came late to the party and this is a poor long term
investment. If you had been making these
claims like Orac in 2004, people might have listened, but biomed is now
mainstream. The strange little club of
people who want to let children with gut issues continue to suffer in them is
coming apart quickly. Where I was mocked
for taking gluten out of my son's diet eight years ago, there is now gluten
free everything in every food seller in this country. And half my neighbors are gluten free to
treat their own autoimmune issues!
And you did hear your friend Kurt Anderson's interview with
Walter Zahorodny where he did not get the answer to the vaccine/autism question
that he was quite expecting... didn't you?
http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-walter-zahorodny-believes-vaccines.html
"Kurt Andersen (Seth Mnookin's friend): “I guess we
know what they (the causes of autism) aren’t, for instance childhood vaccines.
Right?”
Dr. Zahorodny: “Vaccines don’t play a significant role in
autism increasing. Some small number of children probably do have autism
because of an adverse vaccine reaction, but they don’t make for the overall
rise.”"
If you have trouble discerning what he was saying... his
answer to the yes or no question on whether vaccines can cause autism was YES! If you sit quietly and listen to which way
the wind is blowing... that is happening a lot these days. But I don't know if you can hear it over the
sound of you and your friends screaming "SCIENCE!!" at the top of
your lungs.
The open secret it out.
Vaccines can cause autoimmune reactions that cause brain inflammation that
cause brain damage that cause "autism"! Addressing that autoimmunity and other
factors allows the brain to heal. Addressing mito issues allow the brain to be
powered. Addressing blood flow issues
allows the brain to be oxygenated.
Addressing GI issues allows the brain to be fed. Put it all together and the brain gets
healthier and works better. THIS IS NOT
ROCKET SCIENCE! It can be explained to the
man on the street in 15 minutes.
Everyone gets it now.
There is a reason that you are having to stomp your feet at
every new media piece on vaccines, autism or biomed... because people are
becoming educated, they know how much damage is being done, they know the
vaccine program and the toxic assault on babies is not sustainable, that autism
is a rising disaster, and that pretending that Off it is not completely absurd
in his claims is not longer an option.
AND YOUR BULLYING DOES NOT WORK ANY MORE, because people care more about
children than they do about being in your stupid faux science club!
Have you not noticed how your world/fans/meetings/book sales
are getting smaller and smaller, as ours are getting bigger and bigger?
You have stepped into the end of a dying paradigm. Best career move you could make now is to go
write another book about baseball or move on to an in-depth exploration of the
evolution of classic American Blues into Rap in the information age.
Or go ahead and stick around until the party is completely
over. Just make sure you turn out the
lights when you leave.
Stop what you are doing and feast your eyes on the Magnificance of my beatiful and talkative and excited and happy and funny and engaged boy! Remember that when we started all that "Quackery" he was only able to say "Uh Oh" and "All done" and could not even call me Mommy, look me in the eye or answer to his name.
Two weeks ago I took him to the Maine Republican Convention.
On the 30 minute wait online to get into the Augusta Civic Center, Chandler
invents a new way to hold hands with Mommy. He calls is "Backpack Mode"
and stays there for almost the entire wait. Mommy is pleased.
If you read any of the coverage, you know that it was a barn burner, and that it was two ten hour days of alternating fighting and boredom. At the end of BOTH days, I had people come up to me and say, "I just have to tell you, I have been watching your boys all day and I am really impressed with how well behaved they are." You can imagine their surprise when I told them that one of them has "autism." "It's true" I say... "We have found some wonderful medical interventions for him...." And so the conversation begins again and yet another person becomes "immune" to the inane "anti-science" rants of Mnookin and co. Because my son is awesome for ANY boy, much less a boy with "autism."
Please tell me that eight years of biomed was DANGEROUS for him and what a big mistake we made doing the same things that that stupid HO Jenny McCarthy did for her son. Tell me how I should have left him rocking in a corner and accepted him. Tell me there is no evidence that biomed makes children better. Tell me I am a bad parent for the way I have raised Chandler.
Say it Seth... I fucking DARE you!
(Angry autism mom is Angry!)
And to Ed and Teri Arranga, and Bernie Rimland before them, and all who have made my son so happy... you have all of my love and gratitude. See you all on Wednesday, at Autism One in Chicago.
Just want to point out the double irony of this, as his initial post included complaints against a publisher for not responding to his criticism. Hypocrisy, thy name in Mnookin.
Can't handle your critics, even when they are the actual stakeholders making legitimate points about how egregious your "journalism" is? Erroneously declare them "disruptive" and have them removed from the building. Ignore them and shut down your comments section.
Seth you are a coward and a child and your shallow, crap "reporting" on the autism epidemic just adds to the damage that your predecessors have piled up. Find a new hobby.
The whole story, including the answer to the question, "Who is Charlie Cheater?"
The long version:
The short version:
Original Post:
We interrupt our regular reporting on the corruption in the autism epidemic, to report on the corruption in the Romney for President Campaign.
So this was my day:
I think that the guy is an actual Romney campaign guy. After the video was finished, I saw him outside the venue and confronted him. He had changed his shirt as to become stealthy I guess? Not working.
I asked him who he was and he would not tell me. Where he got the slate and he said he didn't know. Why he put me on the slate and he said he didn't know.
Back in the convention hall I asked him again for his name, and no go. He was not wearing any credentials, which I am pretty sure is verboten.
I am sure we will find out who our friend is who thinks so highly of me that he wanted me to go to Tampa.
I really hate corruption. Seriously. It bothers me.
UPDATE:
So Sunday at the convention Mr. Redshirt had a name badge on. I am told it was a volunteer badge, the first name was Charlie, and that the paper was folded or something so you could not see the last name.
As an aside, I did run as an alternate delegate on the Paul slate on Sunday, and was elected. So I will be going to Tampa.
The interesting thing is that the list of people running as alternates on Sunday, had not been released on Saturday, and yet several of the people, including me, who were on the fake slate on Saturday, where the ones who would be running as alternates on Sunday. So did the Romney campaign get the Paul alternate slate the day before it was released by the Paul campaign?
Update:
Romney campaign had their top lawyer there, Benjamin Ginsberg, one of Bush's laywers during Bush v. Gore. NO WONDER the convention was so delayed! I heard Romney's lawyers were arguing every point, I didn't know they had this level of commitment to ramming Romney through in Maine. News report on the event, and Romney's fight for Maine. Good information, but most importantly it contains footage of me in better lighting. ;)
And frankly, if Ginsberg is in Maine to fight like hell for our piddly little four electoral votes, you know Romney co is seriously afraid of the fact that Ron Paul is picking up so much steam.
Update:
I am told that the man at the mic who was nominating all the people on the fake ballot (not shown on the footage) was David Sorensen (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-sorensen/29/939/2a7), policy aid for the Maine House of Representatives. His picture certainly looks like the man I approached at the mic to ask why he nominated me. I would feel more comfortable if we had video confirmation though. Anyone have footage of him nominating people? (update... footage found)
Reading Sorensen's twitter feed, it seems likely that he is the guy. He clearly has the requisite contempt for Ron Paul supporters needed to try to sabotage their delegates.
It really bothers me that people in Maine government feel so comfortable speaking so poorly of a significant percentage of his fellow Mainers and his own political party (Didn't Paul garner a third of the votes at the Maine Republican Caucuses? Romney 39% and Paul with 34%.) I want grown ups running my government and setting policy, not contemptuous frat boys who look down their nose at the unwashed masses.
I also wanted to comment on the reception that the delegation got from Charlie Webster following the convention. Afterward, the elected delegation met outside with Webster and I was expecting it to be a bit stressful. I was pleasantly surprised at how congenial he was. He was very cheerful, said he knew that there would be a challenge to the delegation, but "that doesn't have anything to do with me," and "I will fight for this group." He said we should go ahead and start making plans to elect a chair for our delegation and make plans to go to Tampa.
I was very encouraged by this, and taking him at his word. I hope that this is a sign that the current Maine GOP leadership may warm to the idea that the Paul camp is here to stay, and hope that this will be the beginning of a better relationship between the groups. We will see! (another update: Charlie says the same thing on camera, and calls the convention, "Exciting" http://www.wabi.tv/news/29907/republican-chair-charlie-webster-answers-critics. "The way I look at this an election was held. We're going to fight to get our delegates seated in Tampa, that's our position. That's what we're ready to do.")
However it is pretty clear that the RNC has already chosen Romney, in violation of their own rules, and that they are likely going to work with Romney's lawyers to prevent the Maine delegation from being seated in Tampa.
Little ole' Maine is now the tipping point on the new guard/old guard fight. What the RNC does next is going to make or break the Republican party. They can either come to terms with the fact that The Ron Paul movement (because this is not completely about Paul or Romney) is growing exponentially and is now breaking through the barriers that the establishment politicos and media have constructed, and welcome them into the fold as equal members and partners, or the party will have to go to war with itself.
If they do the former, it WILL engender good faith and engender trust in the Republican party. It will tell the American people that they are ready do deal with the ugly and messy problems that they had a hand in creating.
If they do the latter, they will decimate the party.
Your move RNC.
UPDATE:
I have received requests for more videos on this. I have two other pieces that are support items for this story. I was going to put them in the initial video, but was trying to keep it short and get it uploaded quickly. Testimony from two other delegates to what was happening on Saturday afternoon:
Took a closer look at this slate. Turns out it looked like a Paul slate, but had Romney's nominees on it.
Update: Confirmation that it was David Sorensen that nominated the fake slate. From Chris Dixon:
David Sorensen, a Policy Aide for the Maine House of Representatives, is confirmed as one of the Romney operatives. He took the floor to push a false delegate slate of Paul supporters in effort to divide our vote.
Two Paul supporters pressed Mr. Sorensen at different times. The first one did so outside of a County Convention room and asked him why he was pushing the slate. The response was that it was a tactic to divide the Ron Paul vote and that our people did it, too. This is false. A Paul slate was introduced to kick off nominations and that was the ONLY peep out of Paul supporters on the floor next to refusing nominations that Sorensen made. When this point was made, Sorensen kept repeating this point.
Mr. Sorensen then, upon being pressed, confessed to the division tactic, as well as the tactic to stall the convention to waste time.
Another Paul supporter had pressed David Sorensen on it, asking if he had created the false delegate slates. He denied it.
Mr. Sorensen is a Policy Aide with the Maine House Republican Office, thus having a direct connection to the Maine Republican Party. Because these two discussions happened one-on-one, there is no conclusive way to prove these words. But the proof is on the books, before the entire convention, that Mr. Sorensen did advance the slates forth.
The issue was raised by State GOP chairman Charlie Webster on the second day that if we run over 6pm, the party will be on the hook for $10,000 per hour. In the end, we were there until after 8pm.
As 6pm rolled around, it became clear that we wouldn't make it. District 2 convention was still in progress and the votes from District 1, which had run all day, were still in progress. The day was also behind schedule because GOP Platform and National Committeepeople votes were scheduled to happen on the first day, but was prevented because of multiple recounts on Convention Secretary and a highly-contested Convention Chair seat.
Representative Aaron Libby promptly took the floor and urged Paul supporters to donate money on behalf to cover the fees. Because he was a different district, he was correctly asked to leave the floor. Representative Jeff Timberlake then took over and made urged people to donate a little each.
The fact still remains however:
There is question that an individual, directly associated with the Maine Republican Party, deliberately engaged in stall tactics that not only propelled the convention into chaos, but put the Republican Party on the hook for $20,000.
...but Ron Paul people are the bad guys? You be the judge.
Update:
Got an email from someone who Sorensen falsely nominated, that talked to him on the floor of the convention.
"I introduced myself to him, shook his hand, and inquired if he
knew me from someplace. He said he did not. That being established, I
asked him why he put my name into nomination on the floor for national
delegate if he did not know me. He said, "it was a tactic to divide
your vote". He then began throwing around insults..."Ron Paul will
never win, because his supporters are black helicopter conspiracy
theorists". He said we should get out of the party because we are
"ruining it". Instead of argue in this manner, I politely inquired as
to why his admitted vote dividing "tactics" were necessary if he knew we
would never "win". He then accused us of doing the same thing. I
asked him to provide examples of us nominating fake slates; he could not
provide any.
An hour or so before I approached him, our delegation
chair... asked him why he nominated people from the fake slate.
He denied doing it and told our delegation chair to "fuck off".
Update (Tuesday morning):
Got a note this morning with more info on Charlie. He does work for the Mitt Romney campaign according to Conor O'Brian, who lives only one town over from me:
Ginger I have posted regarding your video with the fake slate guy that
indeed 'Charlie' was a Romney person. I was a volunteer Ron Paul vote
counter from Bath and that dude was one of the Romney observers. I was
in the counting room on every count as was he. On the last recount I
(Conor O'Brien is my name), sat across from a Ron Paul observer named
John Hawk Cry (or something like that) and to my left was Charlie. By
this time I knew he was a fiend but wanted to dig a little bit for
info. He was originally from California but now lives in the Boston
area.
Update (Wed afternoon):
Apparently the RNC Parliamentarian that was working with Brent Tweed to run the meeting said that everything was done by the book, which makes the Romney challenge to seating the Maine Delegation at the RNC a bit more difficult. And as that particular parliamentarian was an editor on the book on Roberts Rules, I am guessing he has some street cred on that issue.
I just googled Benjamin Ginsberg, Romney's lawyer....I was one of a few counters left at the end of the day on Sunday. Mr. Ginsberg came over and said goodbye to our friend Charlie and even commented on him getting back to Boston. This all took place with in two feet of me. The cheating is being orchestrated by Romney's/Bush's top lawyer. Beware states yet to hold your convention, the sore losers will be coming to a theatre near you!
Chandler woke up at 3am and cried because it was not 6am. After I finally got him back to sleep, all I could do was lay in bed and stew about what a corrupt and horrible man Tom Insel is for working so hard to keep our kids trapped in autism land, and to fill our ranks with new families that have their children poisoned every day, that I had to get out of bed and get the bad thoughts out of my brain.
This story is so hard for me. Because of who Kim is and because who Bella is.
First they are my friends, and I am horrified that this happened to them.
Second Kim is a nationally known autism activist and author, and if someone feels bold enough to abuse her daughter, then none of our children are safe.
Lastly, and most importantly, if you have ever met Bella, you know she is a complete angel. She is so interested in people, and wants to engage them, but can only say, "Hello" and "Momma" and is just... well a total angel. When she met Chandler, she was taken by him, but silly boy apparently not at the point where he noticed cute girls yet.
When someone can be so monstrous to do this to a little girl as sweet and precious as Bella, for literally no reason, even taunting her mother after she leaves the bus... to say that this is a difficult story for me is an understatement.
Once upon a time I thought, "gosh... if people would just work out their differences and stop suing each other...." Now I understand that when it comes to protecting our vulnerable kids, they are necessary. I understand that on many occasions the only reason that my son is being treated appropriately is because those that came before me sued the pants off of (insert entity here) and forced them to take the rights of disabled children seriously.
Go get 'um Kim. So that for years providers will point to this case and say to their employees, "Yes I know reviewing hours of video tape is boring, but if we miss something and a child is being hurt, we could loose our shirts and have to shut down." Because for too many people, the idea of loosing lots of money will motivate is a way that the thought of an abused child on their watch never will.
BRIDGEPORT -- The mother of a 9-year-old Trumbull girl with autism, who police said was abused by an aide on her school bus while the aide's mother was busy texting while driving the bus, is suing the bus company.
Kimberly Stagliano claims, in her lawsuit filed Thursday in Superior Court, that First Student Inc. breached its responsibility to provide her daughter, Isabella, with safe transportation to and from school.
"As a direct result of the conduct of First Student Inc. and its employees, the minor child suffered permanent personal injuries and damages," said Stagliano's lawyer, Michael Meehan. "In particular, the conduct of First Student Inc.'s employee has had an emotional and educational impact on Miss Stagliano."
Officials of First Student, of Cincinnati, did not immediately return calls for comment.
Last April, 24-year-old Jennifer Davila, a school bus aide for First Student, was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree reckless endangerment based on allegations that she abused the girl. Her mother, Evelyn Guzman, a school bus driver, received accelerated rehabilitation, a program for first-time nonviolent offenders.
According to police, on at least three occasions in April and May 2010, Davila, a monitor on a bus for special needs children for First Student, abused the little girl. Police said there could have been more incidents but only three were captured on the bus's video surveillance camera.
Police said the girl's parents were trying to figure out how their nonverbal daughter kept getting bruises and sprained fingers on her right hand when on May 19 they received a call from the nurse at Frenchtown Elementary School that their daughter had arrived at school that morning crying hysterically. The parents then demanded to see the video from their daughter's school bus.
That video, which also had audio, showed Davila grabbing the girl's hands and the girl then crying out in pain.
Police said they then obtained DVD copies of the bus videos for April 27, April 29 and May 19, 2010. On April 27 and May 19, the driver of the bus is Davila's mother.
Police said the April 27 video shows Davila putting her hands in the area of the girl's hands during the bus ride from the school to the girl's home. With each movement, the girl's cries get louder.
On the April 29 video, Davila is heard telling a substitute driver to stop at the girl's home first after they leave the school. "Because she (the girl) will (obscenity) her pants," she explains. Within minutes of leaving the school, the video shows Davila again reaching toward the girl's hands, and the girl is heard crying.
On May 19, the girl is seen on the video boarding the bus with her mother, who assists her to her seat. When the mother leaves the bus, Davila is heard saying, "Goodbye mom." She then touches the girl's head twice and then grabs the girl's right hand and begins to manipulate it as the girl whimpers.
Police said Guzman had been captured on the bus's video camera texting more than 1,000 times as she drove a bus load of special needs children between April and May 2010.
Key Lab of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction of Ministry of Education, College of Animal Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, People's Republic of China, Heyam68_hamza@yahoo.com.
Abstract
Vaccines can have adverse side-effects, and these are predominantly associated with the inclusion of chemical additives such as aluminum hydroxide adjuvant. The objective of this study was to establish an in vitro model system amenable to mechanistic investigations of cytotoxicity induced by hepatitis B vaccine, and to investigate the mechanisms of vaccine-induced cell death. The mouse liver hepatoma cell line Hepa1-6 was treated with two doses of adjuvanted (aluminium hydroxide) hepatitis B vaccine (0.5 and 1 μg protein per ml) and cell integrity was measured after 24, 48 and 72 h. Hepatitis B vaccine exposure increased cell apoptosis as detected by flow cytometry and TUNEL assay. Vaccine exposure was accompanied by significant increases in the levels of activated caspase 3, a key effector caspase in the apoptosis cascade. Early transcriptional events were detected by qRT-PCR. We report that hepatitis B vaccine exposure resulted in significant upregulation of the key genes encoding caspase 7, caspase 9, Inhibitor caspase-activated DNase (ICAD), Rho-associated coiled-coil containing protein kinase 1 (ROCK-1), and Apoptotic protease activating factor 1 (Apaf-1). Upregulation of cleaved caspase 3,7 were detected by western blot in addition to Apaf-1 and caspase 9 expressions argues that cell death takes place via the intrinsic apoptotic pathway in which release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria triggers the assembly of a caspase activation complex. We conclude that exposure of Hepa1-6 cells to a low dose of adjuvanted hepatitis B vaccine leads to loss of mitochondrial integrity, apoptosis induction, and cell death, apoptosis effect was observed also in C2C12 mouse myoblast cell line after treated with low dose of vaccine (0.3, 0.1, 0.05 μg/ml). In addition In vivo apoptotic effect of hepatitis B vaccine was observed in mouse liver.
Monday our community called for the unceremonious firing of The man who has spent the last six years perpetuating the autism epidemic by sabotaging the natural progress of research and inquiry. IACC chief Tom Insel (brother to a vaccine maker) has directed research from this environmentally caused epidemic to genetics... wasting millions of dollars and lives.
So about ten minutes ago, Insel sends out a link to a new blog he has written entitled:
So my immediate thought is... "Well apparently we have gotten his attention, and he is going to now have to tip his had to environmental causes to stay in the game. Let's see what he has to say."
Well he certainly starts out asking the right questions:
Increasing prevalence suggests environmental factors like chemicals and microbes changing over the past decade, whereas genes change over generations. Why is anyone looking for genetic causes when there is such a rapid increase in prevalence? Shouldn’t every research dollar be invested in finding the environmental culprit rather than searching for rare gene variants?
Imagine my shock when he then fails to answer those burning questions and, who would have guessed it, he spent the whole piece promoting GENETICS! The thing actually should have been entitled, "The New Genetics of Autism - Why Genes Matter - Seriously They Do - Please Don't Fire Me - I'm Really Smart."
Un-freaking-believable!
He flat out says that at most 20% of cases are "genetic," and that seems to be his justification for not answering "Hell, YES!" to that last question on shouldn't research dollars be going to environmental causes!
He does say of course the obligatory, "environment plays a role," but even freely admits that genetic research will NOT find environmental causes! But hey... lets keep pouring our time, money and children down that bottomless pit called 'Genetic Research on Autism.'
This what I see when I read this horrid essay:
Hi. I'm Tom Insel.
I have been entrusted with finding the causes and cures of autism for the last six years, but instead, autism rates have more than doubled on my watch. I freely admit that more than 80% of autism is environmental, and less than 20% can be attributed to genetic causes, but I have decided to ignore the environmental factors in autism that could, if found and quickly addressed to prevent exposures, could end the autism epidemic in the next two or three birth cohorts.
Instead, I am going to continue to pour hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars into genetic studies that have not yet prevented one case of autism, nor lead to one medical treatment for autism, into this dead end, just in case we find something really cool that might help us call some kinds of autism one thing and some kinds of autism something else. They still won't tell us what we can do to prevent autism in kids of parents who have these genes, and it might even be that the genes are not even the parents genes, but genes that get broken in the sperm cells cause they are poisoned or microwaved or whatever in daddy's drawers before conception, but still... how cool is it to find different genes and stuff!
My earnest hope has been that you wouldn't notice that I have already wasted 700 million dollars doing nothing and issuing reports that say nothing except, "send me more money to figure this out, I am totally gonna fix this, I swear... but it is just so hard!", but as a hundred thousand or so of you in the autism community have just called for me to be fired, I am guessing that is out the door. So now I am really just hoping that I can get away with using the word "environmental" in a title on my blog and you will be fooled into thinking I am taking the autism epidemic seriously.
Failing that, I can only hope that you have decided that I am an ineffectual douchbag who does not have the competence to figure this out, because if that does not fly, it will be super apparent to anyone to takes a hard look at me that I am a corrupt bastard trying to preserve my brother Dick's interest and those of the Administrations big donors.
Also HHS... please don't notice that we are actually a vaccine maker too, and get cash payments from the people you THINK are making the vaccines, like Merck, cause we hold patents on the shots that we recommend you buy from them. (Have you heard about my brother Dick? Yyou see he brought a vaccine to market, sold the company to Wyeth, then went to work trying to cure diabetes. See what he did there... make a product that causes autoimmune disorders, then make a bundle treating autoimmune disorders! Money coming and going... genius really. He is the smarter brother, I will give him that.)
Also about HHS... please don't notice that we are actually a vaccine maker too, and get cash payments from the people you THINK are making the vaccines, like Merck, cause we hold patents on the shots that we recommend you buy from them. Yes I work for NIH and yes NIH holds the Gardasil patent, and yes NIH gets a check for every Gardasil shot you buy, and no we never disclose that, but I swear... vaccines are not a problem. It genes. Really.
In closing, please notice what a pleasant smile I have. Autism parents are good people.
Last week’s autism news was about prevalence. The CDC reported a 78 percent increase in autism prevalence since 2002. This week’s autism news is about genetics—three papers in Nature describe new genes associated with autism. For many people, these two stories seem contradictory or, at best, unrelated. Increasing prevalence suggests environmental factors like chemicals and microbes changing over the past decade, whereas genes change over generations. Why is anyone looking for genetic causes when there is such a rapid increase in prevalence? Shouldn’t every research dollar be invested in finding the environmental culprit rather than searching for rare gene variants?
The simple answer is that some autism is genetic. Autism, like schizophrenia and mooddisorders, includes many syndromes. Indeed, we should probably speak of the “autisms.” Some of these autisms are single gene disorders, such as Fragile X, tuberous sclerosis, and Rett syndrome. While these rare genetic disorders account for less than 5 percent of children within the autism spectrum, children with any of these disorders are at high risk for autism, roughly a 30-fold higher risk than the general population and higher than any of the other known risk factors. Recent genomics research has discovered that many children diagnosed within the autism spectrum have other genetic mutations that have not yet been designated as named syndromes. Each of these mutations is rare, but in aggregate they may account for 10 - 20 percent or more of what we have been calling the autisms.1
The new papers published today in Nature use an approach called whole exome sequencing, mapping every base of DNA across the exome—the 1.5 percent of the genome known to code for protein. The three research groups are members of the Autism Sequencing Consortium (ASC), an international team of autism genetics researchers. All three look for de novo or spontaneous mutations, changes in DNA sequence that are not found in either parent. Recent sequencing studies in the general population have demonstrated that each of us diverges genomically from our parents — the process of reproduction introduces variation even beyond the random mixture of the genomes we inherit from mom and dad. People with autism and schizophrenia are far more likely to have large de novo copy number variants, sometimes a million bases of DNA that are abnormally duplicated or deleted and not found in either parent.
These new papers go beyond the previous discovery of de novo copy number variants to identify de novo single base changes associated with autism. This is tough sailing because there are so many of these changes in all of us and most of these single base changes have no impact. These studies tried to improve the odds of success by focusing on individuals from families with no one else affected (these are called “simplex” families), and sometimes comparing the individual with autism to a sibling without autism. The results are intriguing.
There is no breakthrough or single gene that is a major new cause of autism. But the role of genetics becomes even more evident when these single base changes are considered. For instance, an individual with autism is nearly 6-fold more likely to have a functional variant in genes expressed in the brain. Sanders et al. estimate as many as 14 percent of affected individuals have such a risk variant.2 This 14 percent is in addition to the 10–20 percent with a large copy number variant or identified genetic syndrome. O’Roak et al. find that 39 percent of these variants are related to a specific biochemical pathway, important for brain signaling.3 And Neale et al., while cautioning that the net effect of all of these changes still leave much of the risk for autism unexplained, note the roles of a few specific genes as genuine risk factors.4
Stepping back from this flood of genomic information, what is most important? First, these reports along with previous publications confirm that genetic risk is both complex and substantial. While individual genes appear to confer limited risk, the aggregate effect of spontaneous coding mutations across the genome is now estimated to increase the risk of autism by 5–20-fold.4 Complex genetics does not mean modest effects.
Second, the kinds of small and large genetic changes associated with autism are common in everyone. Risk is conferred not by the size of the mutation or the number of mutations (we all have many) but by the location. Increasingly, we see that interference with the genes involved in development of synapses confer risk; a similar change upstream or downstream does not.
A third point takes us back to the questions we started with. It is important to understand that de novo mutations may represent environmental effects. In other words, environmental factors can cause changes in our DNA that can raise the risk for autism and other disorders. One of these papers reports that spontaneous changes are four times more likely to show up in paternally inherited DNA and are correlated with paternal age.2 The father’s germline, his sperm cells, turn over throughout the lifespan. Presumably, with advancing paternal age, there are a greater number of spontaneous mutations and a greater likelihood that some of these will affect risk genes. Environmental factors and exposures can cause sperm cells to develop mutations that are not found in the father’s somatic, or body cell, DNA, but these new, spontaneous mutations can be passed to the next generation, raising the risk for developing autism. In the initial report of the relationship between autism and paternal age, boys with autism were 6-fold more likely to have a father in his 40s vs his 20s. In girls with autism, this difference went up to 17-fold.5 Paternal age has, of course, increased in the past few decades. This does not explain the increasing prevalence of autism, but it may contribute.
Is autism genetic or environmental? These new studies suggest it can be both. Genetics will not identify the environmental factors, but it may reveal some of the many syndromes within the autism spectrum (as in other neurodevelopmental disorders), it can define risk (as in other medical disorders), and it should yield clues to the biology of autism (revealing potential targets for new treatments). These three new papers on spontaneous mutations are an important milestone in a long journey. In parallel we need to find environmental factors, recognizing that there will be many causes for the autisms and many roads to find them.
Finally, an unavoidable insight from these new papers is that autism even when genetic may be spontaneous and not inherited in the sense that one or both parents carry some reduced form of the syndrome. Perhaps this insight will finally reduce the “blame the parents” legacy perpetuated for too long in the absence of scientific evidence.
References
1Geschwind DH. Genetics of autism spectrum disorders. Trends Cogn Sci. 2011 Sep;15(9):409-16. Epub 2011 Aug 18. PubMed PMID: 21855394.1 2Sanders SJ, Murtha MT, Gupta AR, Murdoch JD, Raubeson MJ, Willsey AJ, Ercan-Sencicek AG, DiLullo NM, Parikshak NN, Stein JL, Walker MF, Ober GT, Teran NA, Song Y, El-Fishawy P, Murtha RC, Choi M, Overton JD, Bjornson RD, Carriero NJ, Meyer KA, Bilguvar K, Mane SM, Sestan N, Lifton RP, Günel M, Roeder K, Geschwind DH, Devlin B, State MW. De novo mutations revealed by whole-exome sequencing are strongly associated with autism. April 5, 2012. Nature. 3O’Roak BJ, Vives L, Girirajan S, Karakoc E, Krumm N, Coe BP, Levy R, Ko A, Lee C, Smith JD, Turner EH, Stanaway IB, Vernot B, Malig M, Baker C, Reilly B, Akey JM, Borenstein E, Rieder MJ, Nickerson DA, Bernier R, Shendure J, Eichler EE. Sporadic autism exomes reveal a highly interconnected protein network of de novo mutations. Nature. April 5, 2012. 4Neale BM, Kou Y, Liu L, Ma’ayan A, Samocha KE, Sabo A, Lin CF, Stevens C, Wang LS, Makarov V, Polak P, Yoon S, Maguire J, Crawford EL, Campbell NG, Geller ET, Valladares O, Schafer C, Liu H, Zhao T, Cai G, Lihm J, Dannenfelser R, Jabado O, Peralta Z, Nagaswamy U, Muzny D, Reid JG, Newsham I, Wu Y, Lewis L, Han Y, Voight BF, Lim E, Rossin E, Kirby A, Flannick J, Fromer M, Shair K, Fennell T, Garimella K, Banks E, Poplin R, Gabriel S, DePristo M, Wimbish JR, Boone BE, Levy SE, Betancur C, Sunyaev S, Boerwinkle E, Buxbaum JD, Cook EH, Devlin B, Gibbs RA, Roeder K, Schellenberg GD, Sutcliffe JS, Daly MJ. Patterns and rates of exonic de novo mutations in autism spectrum disorders. Nature. April 5, 2012. 5Reichenberg A, Gross R, Weiser M, Bresnahan M, Silverman J, Harlap S, Rabinowitz J, Shulman C, Malaspina D, Lubin G, Knobler HY, Davidson M, Susser E. Advancing paternal age and autism. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006 Sep;63(9):1026-32. PubMed PMID: 16953005.
