Empirical Data Confirm Autism Symptoms Related to Aluminum and Acetaminophen Exposure

Empirical Data Confirm Autism Symptoms Related to Aluminum and Acetaminophen Exposure

Entropy, November 7, 2012

Stephanie Seneff, Robert M. Davidson and Jingjing Liu

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA,  Internal Medicine Group Practice, PhyNet, Inc., Longview, TX 75604, USA

Abstract: Autism is a condition characterized by impaired cognitive and social skills, associated with compromised immune function. The incidence is alarmingly on the rise, and environmental factors are increasingly suspected to play a role. This paper investigates word frequency patterns in the U.S. CDC Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database. Our results provide strong evidence supporting a link between autism and the aluminum in vaccines. A literature review showing toxicity of aluminum in human physiology offers further support. Mentions of autism in VAERS increased steadily at the end of the last century, during a period when mercury was being phased out, while aluminum adjuvant burden was being increased. Using standard log-likelihood ratio techniques, we identify several signs and symptoms that are significantly more prevalent in vaccine reports after 2000, including cellulitis, seizure, depression, fatigue, pain and death, which are also significantly associated with aluminum-containing vaccines. We propose that children with the autism diagnosis are especially vulnerable to toxic metals such as aluminum and mercury due to insufficient serum sulfate and glutathione. A strong correlation between autism and the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine is also observed, which may be partially explained via an increased sensitivity to acetaminophen administered to control fever.

Mechanisms of Aluminum Adjuvant Toxicity and Autoimmunity in Pediatric Populations

Mechanisms of aluminum adjuvant toxicity and autoimmunity in pediatric populations

Lupus (2012) 21, 223–230.

L Tomljenovic1 and CA Shaw2
1Neural Dynamics Research Group, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC,
Canada and 2Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Experimental Medicine and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Immune challenges during early development, including those vaccine-induced, can lead to
permanent detrimental alterations of the brain and immune function. Experimental evidence
also shows that simultaneous administration of as little as two to three immune adjuvants can
overcome genetic resistance to autoimmunity. In some developed countries, by the time children
are 4 to 6 years old, they will have received a total of 126 antigenic compounds along with
high amounts of aluminum (Al) adjuvants through routine vaccinations. According to the US
Food and Drug Administration, safety assessments for vaccines have often not included
appropriate toxicity studies because vaccines have not been viewed as inherently toxic.
Taken together, these observations raise plausible concerns about the overall safety of current
childhood vaccination programs. When assessing adjuvant toxicity in children, several key
points ought to be considered: (i) infants and children should not be viewed as ‘‘small adults’’
with regard to toxicological risk as their unique physiology makes them much more vulnerable
to toxic insults; (ii) in adult humans Al vaccine adjuvants have been linked to a variety of
serious autoimmune and inflammatory conditions (i.e., ‘‘ASIA’’), yet children are regularly
exposed to much higher amounts of Al from vaccines than adults; (iii) it is often assumed that
peripheral immune responses do not affect brain function. However, it is now clearly established
that there is a bidirectional neuro-immune cross-talk that plays crucial roles in immunoregulation
as well as brain function. In turn, perturbations of the neuro-immune axis have
been demonstrated in many autoimmune diseases encompassed in ‘‘ASIA’’ and are thought to
be driven by a hyperactive immune response; and (iv) the same components of the neuroimmune
axis that play key roles in brain development and immune function are heavily targeted
by Al adjuvants. In summary, research evidence shows that increasing concerns about
current vaccination practices may indeed be warranted. Because children may be most at risk
of vaccine-induced complications, a rigorous evaluation of the vaccine-related adverse health
impacts in the pediatric population is urgently needed.


[ed note: emphasis mine]

J Inorg Biochem. 2011 Nov;105(11):1489-99. Epub 2011 Aug 23.

Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?

Tomljenovic L, Shaw CA.

Source

Neural Dynamics Research Group, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, 828 W. 10th Ave, Vancouver, BC, Canada V5Z 1L8.

Abstract
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are serious multisystem developmental disorders and an urgent global public health concern. Dysfunctional immunity and impaired brain function are core deficits in ASD. Aluminum (Al), the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant, is a demonstrated neurotoxin and a strong immune stimulator. Hence, adjuvant Al has the potential to induce neuroimmune disorders. When assessing adjuvant toxicity in children, two key points ought to be considered: (i) children should not be viewed as "small adults" as their unique physiology makes them much more vulnerable to toxic insults; and (ii) if exposure to Al from only few vaccines can lead to cognitive impairment and autoimmunity in adults, is it unreasonable to question whether the current pediatric schedules, often containing 18 Al adjuvanted vaccines, are safe for children? By applying Hill's criteria for establishing causality between exposure and outcome we investigated whether exposure to Al from vaccines could be contributing to the rise in ASD prevalence in the Western world. Our results show that: (i) children from countries with the highest ASD prevalence appear to have the highest exposure to Al from vaccines; (ii) the increase in exposure to Al adjuvants significantly correlates with the increase in ASD prevalence in the United States observed over the last two decades (Pearson r=0.92, p<0.0001); and (iii) a significant correlation exists between the amounts of Al administered to preschool children and the current prevalence of ASD in seven Western countries, particularly at 3-4months of age (Pearson r=0.89-0.94, p=0.0018-0.0248). The application of the Hill's criteria to these data indicates that the correlation between Al in vaccines and ASD may be causal. Because children represent a fraction of the population most at risk for complications following exposure to Al, a more rigorous evaluation of Al adjuvant safety seems warranted.

Neurotoxic Aluminum Adjuvants, Gulf War Syndrome, ALS, and Alzheimers

Aluminum hydroxide injections lead to motor deficits and motor neuron degeneration

Christopher A. Shaw and Michael S. Petrikc

Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Experimental Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

J Inorg Biochem. 2009 November ; 103(11): 1555. doi:10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2009.05.019.

Abstract
Gulf War Syndrome is a multi-system disorder afflicting many veterans of Western armies in the 1990–1991 Gulf War. A number of those afflicted may show neurological deficits including various cognitive dysfunctions and motor neuron disease, the latter expression virtually indistinguishable from classical amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) except for the age of onset. This ALS “cluster” represents the second such ALS cluster described in the literature to date. Possible causes of GWS include several of the adjuvants in the anthrax vaccine and others. The most likely culprit appears to be aluminum hydroxide. In an initial series of experiments, we examined the potential toxicity of aluminum hydroxide in male, outbred CD-1 mice injected subcutaneously in two equivalent-to human doses. After sacrifice, spinal cord and motor cortex samples were examined by immunohistochemistry. Aluminum-treated mice showed significantly increased apoptosis of motor neurons and increases in reactive astrocytes and microglial proliferation within the spinal cord and cortex. Morin stain detected the presence of aluminum in the cytoplasm of motor neurons with some neurons also testing positive for the presence of hyper-phosphorylated tau protein, a pathological hallmark of various neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. A second series of experiments was conducted on mice injected with six doses of aluminum hydroxide. Behavioural analyses in these mice revealed significant impairments in a number of motor functions as well as diminished spatial memory capacity. The demonstrated neurotoxicity of aluminum hydroxide and its relative ubiquity as an adjuvant suggest that greater scrutiny by the scientific community is warranted.

Keywords: Aluminum hydroxide; Adjuvant; Neurotoxicity; Gulf War Syndrome; Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Full paper here

Aluminum in Vaccines

AOA has a piece on Dr. Sears Mothering article.  He assumed aluminum had been safety tested before putting in vaccines.

Never assume that just because a toxin is being injected into babies at high levels, that it has been safety tested.

It appears that we have removed mercury, an adjuvant that causes autoimmune disorders, mitochondrial disorders and kills brain cells, and we have replaced it with aluminum, an adjuvant that causes autoimmune disorders, mitochondrial disorders and kills brain cells.

I should add that Heath Advocacy in the Public Interest randomly tested vaccines and found that one had 1,117 mcg of aluminum in it. (their site seems to be down right now)

UPDATE:  I stand corrected by Quantumerik and Boyd Haley.  I sent the question to Dr. Haley and this was his response:

"Thimerosal is not an adjuvant, it does not enhance the immune response to an antigen as does aluminum.  It is only added as a preservative.  The pharmaceutical companies and their supporters would like for thimerosal to be an adjuvant, then they could not be sued for adulterating their vaccines and all costs would have to fall on the government programs for vaccine injury.  -boyd"

Potential Alzheimer's Drug Reverses Condition in Minutes

This Daily Mail article exclaims that this drug, that has not yet been the subject of clinical studies in the use of Alzheimer's, may actually be an immediate cure for some. The drug, Enbrel, is injected into the neck and spine and then the patient is tilted so that the drug enters the brain.

What does this have to do with autism? People in the autism community have long speculated that the two conditions may really be the same thing, toxic injury causing neural inflammation, in two different age groups. Aluminum has been linked to the development of Alzheimer's and aluminum is the adjuvant used in vaccines to get the immune system to respond

Researchers found that Aluminum leads to cell death in the brains of mice last year.

The relevance of this drug? It is an anti inflammatory used to treat arthritis, and it blocks the inflammation process in the brain when used on Alzheimer's patients.

The clues just keep coming together.

New hope for Alzheimer's sufferers after new treatment 'restores memory in minutes'
By JENNY HOPE
The Daily Mail
11th April 2008


New therapy could hold out hope for Britain's 400,000 Alzheimer's sufferers
Doctors are calling for a clinical trial of an experimental drug treatment that it is claimed can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease "in minutes".

U.S. researchers say the treatment allowed an 82-year- old sufferer to recognise his wife for the first time in years.

In the UK, specialists believe the claims should be properly tested as only a few patients have been treated so far.

Read more...

The treatment involves injecting a drug called Enbrel - which is normally used to treat arthritis - into the spine at the neck.

Patients are then tilted to encourage blood flow into the brain where the drug is designed to block a chemical responsible for inflammation. At least one Alzheimer's patient had his symptoms reversed "in minutes" while others have shown some continuing improvement in problems such as forgetfulness and confusion after weekly injections.

They needed less help from carers during treatment, which appears to reach a plateau at three months.

Around 50 people are being treated by the Institute of Neurological Research, a private clinic in California, with some having had injections for three years.

In one case, the clinic has video evidence of Marvin Miller, 82, which showed he was unable to answer basic questions by a nurse, or identify-everyday objects like a bracelet and a pencil.

Shortly afterwards he is injected with the drug and it is claimed that five minutes later he could greet his shocked wife, who said he had not recognised her for years.

The experiment follows the discovery that levels of TNF (tumour necrosis factor) can be up to 25 times higher in the fluid surrounding the brain in sufferers of Alzheimer's disease.

Enbrel, a biologic treatment licensed for rheumatoid arthritis, binds to excess TNF in the body and makes it inactivate.

When used by arthritis sufferers, the drug is self-administered by injection and researchers had to develop a way of injecting the drug into the spine in order to get an effect in brain cells.

Enbrel is not approved for treating Alzheimer's in the U.S. or in the UK and is regarded at this stage as a highly experimental therapy.

Professor Edward Tobinick, of the University of California Los Angeles and director of the Institute for Neurological Research, is leading the research.

He said the latest report was an in-depth account of one patient's response to treatment.

He said: "It makes practical changes that are significant and perceptible, making a difference to his ability to do activities of daily living such as getting around, accomplishing things and conversing."

He added: "Some patients have been able to start driving again. They don't come back to normal but the change is good enough for patients to want to continue treatment, and some have been doing so for three years.

"We are working with several universities and larger trials are getting under way."

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "On the surface these results are exciting but we need to treat the study with caution.

"There are large gaps in the research, which only involved a small pilot group and we cannot draw any conclusions until a controlled trial is carried out."

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "It is too early to speak of a miracle cure and we need to do more research into this."

Its Not Just The Mercury: Aluminum Hydroxide In Vaccines

When parents began suspecting that their children's autism was triggered by their vaccines, and those parents in the scientific professions began to look at the plausibility of the vaccine/autism connection, one ingredient jumped out at them as the most likely culprit. Mercury. Excessive mercury. So much mercury in one typical shot (25mg)that according to EPA guidelines a person must weigh 550lbs to safely process the amount of mercury that was being injected into a child. And they often got more than one shot at a time.

After all mercury is the most toxic substance on earth that does not set off a geiger counter.

It has taken more than a decade, but the public and scientific community is finally on the same page on the idea that it does not belong in vaccines. And yet is it still in vaccines. We continue to work on the problem.

But now that the mercury message is out there, it is time for the scientific community to begin to turn their attention to the other three well known dangers that are in vaccines. Aluminum, Monosodium Glutamate, and Formaldehyde.

Today we are going to give Aluminum a look.

Aluminum is known to be associated with degenerative, fatal neurological conditions like Parkinson's, ALS (Lou Gehrig's) and Alzheimer's. And yet according to the CDC, it is in the following vaccines:

Anthrax, DTaP (all brands), DT (all brands), Hib/Hep B (Comvax), Hep A (all brands), Hep B (all brands), HPV (Gardasil), Pneumococcal (Prevnar), Rabies (Biorab), Td (all brands), and Tdap (all brands).

That is most of the vaccines on the CDC's list.

The reason that aluminum is in our vaccines is because it is an adjuvant.

Generally speaking, the way vaccines work is that they contain a virus and substances called ‘adjuvants’ (like mercury and aluminum) that kick the immune system into high gear so that they go on the hunt for the viruses, eat ‘um up, and create antibodies against further infection.

In people with typical immune systems, the body then stands down from high alert. But in some people, it doesn’t, and the immune system begins to behave like early 20th century Germany and attacks what ever is in sight. The result, autoimmune disorders.

A few examples of autoimmune disorders: When the immune system attacks the connective tissue, you get arthritis, when it attacks the mylon sheath around the nerves, you get Guillain-Barré Syndrome (a known side effect of the flu shot that causes paralysis), and when it attacks the pancreas you have Type 1 Diabetes. And on and on.

Because autism was first seen as a psychiatric problem caused by bad parenting, it has taken decades for it to be properly medically investigated, and for the autoimmune features of the disorder (i.e. cytokines in the brain causing swelling leading to cognitive dysfunction) to be recognized. (Which is why even mild anti inflammatory agents like fish oil improve communication skills of so many people with autism, and why parents report that children’s autistic symptoms seem to improve when their kids are sick.)

(When Chandler was diagnosed and we had his immune system tested, viola… hyper drive. I just thought he had rough skin… turns out it was mild eczema. When I started him on fish oil and his rough skin turned back into baby skin and his eye contact and verbal skills improved.)

So the reason that aluminum needs as hard a look as a vaccine component as mercury does, is because we are learning that it also causes cell death. A lot of cell death. In the brain.

Canadian neuroscientist Chris Shaw did not set out to shake confidence in vaccination, but what he and his team found when testing Aluminum Hydroxide, the form used most often in vaccines, really upset them.

"No one in my lab wants to get vaccinated," he said. "This totally creeped us out. We weren't out there to poke holes in vaccines. But all of a sudden, oh my God-we've got neuron death!"

Vaccines Show Sinister Side
By Pieta Woolley
Straight.com
March 23, 2006

If two dozen once-jittery mice at UBC are telling the truth postmortem, the world's governments may soon be facing one hell of a lawsuit. New, so-far-unpublished research led by Vancouver neuroscientist Chris Shaw shows a link between the aluminum hydroxide used in vaccines, and symptoms associated with Parkinson's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), and Alzheimer's.

Shaw is most surprised that the research for his paper hadn't been done before. For 80 years, doctors have injected patients with aluminum hydroxide, he said, an adjuvant that stimulates immune response.

"This is suspicious," he told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview from his lab near Heather Street and West 12th Avenue. "Either this [link] is known by industry and it was never made public, or industry was never made to do these studies by Health Canada. I'm not sure which is scarier."

Similar adjuvants are used in the following vaccines, according to Shaw's paper: hepatitis A and B, and the Pentacel cocktail, which vaccinates against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, and a type of meningitis.

To test the link theory, Shaw and his four-scientist team from UBC and Louisiana State University injected mice with the anthrax vaccine developed for the first Gulf War. Because Gulf War Syndrome looks a lot like ALS, Shaw explained, the neuroscientists had a chance to isolate a possible cause. All deployed troops were vaccinated with an aluminum hydroxide compound. Vaccinated troops who were not deployed to the Gulf developed similar symptoms at a similar rate, according to Shaw.

After 20 weeks studying the mice, the team found statistically significant increases in anxiety (38 percent); memory deficits (41 times the errors as in the sample group); and an allergic skin reaction (20 percent). Tissue samples after the mice were "sacrificed" showed neurological cells were dying. Inside the mice's brains, in a part that controls movement, 35 percent of the cells were destroying themselves.

"No one in my lab wants to get vaccinated," he said. "This totally creeped us out. We weren't out there to poke holes in vaccines. But all of a sudden, oh my God-we've got neuron death!"

At the end of the paper, Shaw warns that "whether the risk of protection from a dreaded disease outweighs the risk of toxicity is a question that demands our urgent attention."

He's not the only one considering that.

The charge that there's a sinister side to magic bullets isn't new. With his pen blazing, celebrity journalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. popularized vaccine scepticism with his article arguing that mercury in vaccines causes autism, which ran in the June 2005 Rolling Stone and on-line at Salon.com. So did last year's vaccines-linked-to- autism bestseller, Evidence of Harm by David Kirby (St. Martin's Press). But there's a potential public-health cost to all the controversy, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

"Vaccines have been a victim of their own success," spokesperson Ian Roe told the Straight in a telephone interview from Ottawa. Diseases such as polio, which killed his father-in-law, are almost eradicated and therefore no longer serve as a warning to parents. But the epidemic threat is still real. "If everyone decided to not get vaccinated, we'd live in a very different world."

Canada's last national immunization conference, in December 2004, heard a report that vaccine coverage is sometimes low. For diphtheria, the Public Health Agency of Canada found that just 75 percent of two-year-olds are immunized; the target is 99 percent. For tetanus, just 66 percent of 17-year-olds are immunized, compared to a target of 97 percent.

Dr. Ronald Gold, the former head of the infectious-disease division at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, told the conference that "we will never be without an anti-vaccine movement," but "in reality, there is no scientific evidence for these myths."

Can I just stop here for a second and point out that in the middle of offering you scientific evidence for the theory that vaccines cause serious and permanent brain damage that I AGAIN have to be faced with someone in medical authority saying, "NO LINK"! How many studies have to find a link before they will stop saying it, "no link"?

There are hundreds of studies, but they don't want to look at them.

I will start writing more about them.

The collective denial is staggering.

Shaw acknowledges that there's a lot of pressure on parents to vaccinate their children. "You're considered to be a really bad parent if you don't vaccinate," he said-and your child can't attend public school. "But I don't think the safety of vaccines is demarcated. How does a parent make a decision based on what's available? You can't make an intelligent decision."

Conservatively, he said, if one percent of vaccinated humans develop ALS from vaccine adjuvants, it would still constitute a health emergency.

It's possible, he said, that there are 10,000 studies that show aluminum hydroxide is safe for injections. But he hasn't been able to find any that look beyond the first few weeks of injection. If anyone has a study that shows something different, he said, please "put it on the table. That's how you do science."

Neuroscience research is difficult, Shaw said, because symptoms can take years to manifest, so it's hard to prove what caused the symptoms.

"To me, that calls for better testing, not blind faith."

He pointed out that George W. Bush passed legislation that opens the door for the USA to order a nationwide anthrax immunization campaign, with the threat of bioterrorism.

Shaw's paper is currently undergoing a peer review.

Despite the fact that Shaw announced his study in March of 2006, only three months ago, Melinda Wharton, Deputy Director of the National Center of Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC, gave an interview to Jaye Watson of WXIA TV in Atlanta and here is what she said about the dangers of aluminum content:

Q. Aluminum is used in vaccines. This is a question I bring with me from attending the conference and seeing a panel of 3 doctors or so talk about aluminum and the amount in vaccines. One said that the aluminum exposures for the vaccine’s recommended of the 2 month visit exceed the suggested safety limits set by the FDA. Has the CDC tested the toxicity of aluminum in vaccines?

A. The vaccines are licensed by the FDA, and the vaccines meet FDA standards, so no, CDC hasn’t looked at that particular issue, but that is handled by the Food and Drug Administration’s part of vaccine licensing.

Q. So, that would almost be counter productive….

A. It wouldn’t be licensed if it was toxic.

Because we all know that the FDA would never license something that was harmful to people. (Thalidomide is currently an FDA approved drug? What the hell?!)

Shaw's study completed peer review, it was published in in 2207 in Neuromolecular Medicine:

Aluminum adjuvant linked to gulf war illness induces motor neuron death in mice.
Neuromolecular Med. 2007;9(1):83-100.
Petrik MS, Wong MC, Tabata RC, Garry RF, Shaw CA.

Department of Ophthalmology and Program in Neuroscience, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Gulf War illness (GWI) affects a significant percentage of veterans of the 1991 conflict, but its origin remains unknown. Associated with some cases of GWI are increased incidences of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurological disorders. Whereas many environmental factors have been linked to GWI, the role of the anthrax vaccine has come under increasing scrutiny. Among the vaccine's potentially toxic components are the adjuvants aluminum hydroxide and squalene. To examine whether these compounds might contribute to neuronal deficits associated with GWI, an animal model for examining the potential neurological impact of aluminum hydroxide, squalene, or aluminum hydroxide combined with squalene was developed. Young, male colony CD-1 mice were injected with the adjuvants at doses equivalent to those given to US military service personnel. All mice were subjected to a battery of motor and cognitive-behavioral tests over a 6-mo period postinjections. Following sacrifice, central nervous system tissues were examined using immunohistochemistry for evidence of inflammation and cell death. Behavioral testing showed motor deficits in the aluminum treatment group that expressed as a progressive decrease in strength measured by the wire-mesh hang test (final deficit at 24 wk; about 50%). Significant cognitive deficits in water-maze learning were observed in the combined aluminum and squalene group (4.3 errors per trial) compared with the controls (0.2 errors per trial) after 20 wk. Apoptotic neurons were identified in aluminum-injected animals that showed significantly increased activated caspase-3 labeling in lumbar spinal cord (255%) and primary motor cortex (192%) compared with the controls. Aluminum-treated groups also showed significant motor neuron loss (35%) and increased numbers of astrocytes (350%) in the lumbar spinal cord. The findings suggest a possible role for the aluminum adjuvant in some neurological features associated with GWI and possibly an additional role for the combination of adjuvants.

(One note on what Apoptosis is. It is basically when a cell self destructs.

Apoptosis is also the process that is taking place, via mitochondrial dysfunction, when Thimerosal is administered, that came to our attention when Dr. Jon Poling discussed the details of his daughter Hannah's case.

Hanna was the first case of an autistic child paid from the US Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund to be made public, although details are coming to light that she is at least the 10th such child. The other families are currently working to make their cases known.)

So here is the questions that parents are currently beginning to ask: as thimerosal has been in the process of removal from vaccines, have manufacturers replaced it with higher doses of aluminum to added to make up for the adjuvant properties lost when mercury was no longer present? How do we know what a safe level of aluminum is for our children? Does the CDC even care?