Congress Learns that Autism is Environmental

Wow... so I am watching this hearing, and I can't believe I am watching a hearing in the US Congress.

The horse is out of the barn. I don't know how Offit/Orac/Snyderman et. al. are gonna get it back in.

Autism is environmental. You heard it in congress. Barbara Boxer even learned the word "epigenetics".

Senate Hearings on Environmental Causes of Autism Tomorrow

The hearing will be streamed on this page tomorrow.

Senators to review research on autism's enviro causes
Environment and Energy Daily
August 2, 2010
Gayathri Vaidyanathan, E&E reporter

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will meet tomorrow to probe the state of research into the environmental causes of autism and other neurodevelopment disorders.

The Children's Health Subcommittee will hear from U.S. EPA and National Institutes of Health officials on the progress of federally funded work into the causes of autism and other development disorders of the brain.

It is likely that the hearing will be a step toward reauthorizing the 2006 Combating Autism Act, which is set to expire in 2011.

Autism is thought to result from a combination of genetic and environmental factors. While the interaction of genes and mutations is somewhat known by now, little work has been done on potential environmental risk factors. There are likely to be many disparate causes leading to autism.

The incidence of autism spectrum disorders, or ASDs, is increasing in the United States, with one in every 110 children affected. Rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, in children are also rising -- nearly 4.5 million children between 3 and 17 years of age have it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The subpanel will hear from Isaac Pessah, director of the University of California, Davis, Children's Center for Environmental Health and Disease Prevention, which has received $7.5 million from EPA since 2007 for research to investigate possible environmental causes.

UC Davis is working on a project called MARBLES (Markers of Autism Risk in Babies -- Learning Early Signs) to identify early predictors of autism, whether genetic, environmental or immunologic. According to the project proposal submitted to EPA, the project will look at whether autistic children are differently exposed to metals, pesticides, polybrominated diphenylethers and other chemicals.

The work is a corollary to a long-term study called CHARGE in which UC Davis researchers are casting a wide net to catch possible environmental contributors in a group of 2- to 5-year-old autistic children. They are screening for pesticides, metals, flame retardant compounds, viruses and bacteria and pharmaceuticals.

UC Davis and other groups are also receiving money from NIH's National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, and the subcommittee will hear from the program's director, Linda Birnbaum.

NIH is funding a study together with the nonprofit Autism Speaks that is enrolling mothers who already have one autistic child and are again pregnant to study exposures during fetal development.

The annual cost of caring for people with autism is $35 billion, according to Geraldine Dawson, chief scientific officer at Autism Speaks.

NIH has provided nearly $225 million for research, which Dawsom called miniscule. The funding comes from the Combating Autism Act, which authorized $7 billion for autism-related work including screening, education, intervention and research.

"President Obama has listed autism as one of three health concerns to be combated in the United States," Dawson said. "The current act is a step in the right direction, but due to the magnitude of the public health challenge that autism presents, we need a great deal more funding."

The rate of children with the disease has risen by 600 percent in the last decade, a number so dramatic it cannot be explained solely by better diagnosis, Dawson said.

Schedule: The hearing is tomorrow at 10 a.m. in 406 Dirksen.

Witnesses: Paul Anastas, assistant administrator of the Office of Research and Development, U.S. EPA; Linda Birnbaum, NIH's director of the National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program; Isaac Pessah, director of the UC Davis Children's Center for Environmental Health and Disease Prevention; Bruce Lanphear, senior scientist at the Child & Family Research Institute; and Mary Moen, parent.

Call for Congressional Hearings into CDC/HHS/VICP and Vaccine Shenanigans

From the Autism Action Network:

Vaccine “Court” Denies Justice to Vaccine-Injured Children

Take Action!

Mercury-Autism Link Not Found Because of Government Policy, not Science

Click on the Take Action link to send emails to your Representatives calling for Congressional hearings

In a decision released last Friday afternoon, the Autism Action Network, a founding member organization of the Coalition for Vaccine Safety (CVS), believes that the Special Masters of the Court of Federal Claims (the Vaccine Court) wrongly decided that mercury-containing vaccines do not cause autism. The decision was the last of three test cases selected to

"The government is completely inconsistent, we know from the Hannah Poling and the Bailey Banks cases that vaccines can cause autism," said John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network. "It is as if they are saying, 'Vaccines never cause autism, except when they do.'"

The Special Masters appear to have based their decisions on the government policy to protect the vaccine program rather than to fulfill their role to do justice by vaccine-injured children. In these three 'test case' decisions in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding, petitioners William Mead, Jordan King and Colin Dwyer developed normally through the first year of life and then regressed into autism. They presented thousands of pages of scientific documentation and testimony. Their evidence showed that thimerosal, a mercury-laden vaccine preservative, more likely than not contributed to their autism.

"The deck is stacked against families in Vaccine Court. Government attorneys defend a government program, using government-funded science, before government judges. Where's the justice in that?" asked Rebecca Estepp, a CVS steering committee member and mother of a petitioner in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding.

"This has been a huge, but legally necessary, waste of time for the injured kids and their families," said Gilmore, "At least now we will have a chance in a real court where we have the basics rights denied in the Vaccine court."

Mercury is a known neurotoxin and that damages the developing brain and the immune system. All three boys' health improved through medical interventions to reduce mercury toxicity and immune dysfunction. Nonetheless, the Special Masters concluded that petitioners failed to meet their burden of proof, even though Health and Human Services (HHS), the respondent in the proceeding, offered no alternative explanation other than genetic predisposition.

The Coalition for Vaccine Safety (CVS) is an alliance of organizations dedicated to vaccine safety representing over 75,000 families. In recent letters to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of House and Senate Committees charged with oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Coalition called for hearings to investigate HHS, the CDC and other government agencies. Those federal agencies have failed to comply with the terms of the 1986 Vaccine Injury Compensation Act (VICA). Specifically they have failed to provide critical vaccine safety science, including from the taxpayer-funded Vaccine Safety Datalink, on thimerosal, autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Vaccine court decisions and revelations about Dr. Thorsen's actions only strengthen the Coalition's resolve in calling for immediate Congressional action to investigate vaccine safety - an issue that potentially affects every person in the country.

"We are confident that the truth will win out. We hope that Congress will intervene in what is clearly a miscarriage of justice to vaccine-injured children," said Jim Moody, an attorney and CVS steering committee member.

Please join the Autism Action Network and the Coalition for Vaccine Safety in calling for Congressional hearings in to the may failures of the federal vaccine program. To send an email to your Representative in the House and your to Senators please click on the Take Action

Phil and Misty Hiatt: "We Were Compensated Too!"

I have calmed down from the appoplexia that overtook me when learning that Hanna was not the first autistic child to be paid from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund, but at least the tenth, to write about this somewhat coherently.

Since then David Kirby, The Pensacola News Journal, The Schafer Autism Report and the Age of Autism's Dan Olmsted have joined CBS in reporting that there are more families out there who want to go public with their settlement stories.

As you may recall, in reporting on Hannah's story on March 6th, Sharyl Attkisson on The CBS Evening News reported that:

"While the Poling case is the first of its kind to become public, a CBS News investigation uncovered at least nine other cases as far back as 1990, where records show the court ordered the government compensated families whose children developed autism or autistic-like symptoms in children including toddlers who had been called "very smart" and "impressed" doctors with their "intelligence and curiosity" … until their vaccinations.

They were children just like Hannah Poling."

CBS News was apparently a few steps behind David Kirby, who on March 3rd posted on an autism list:

"And next week, I just might drop another bombshell – A BIG one, from another case in VICP.

Turns out that people who settled with the government now want their cases to be known as well. They are seeking me out. You would be AMAZED at what the government has secretly admitted.

It contradicts many things that the Feds, AAP, and SWORN government witnesses have been saying publicly, under oath no less -- at least on this one particular vaccine injury related issue.

I love the smell of perjury charges in the morning.

Stay tuned

Cheers"

CBS was a day ahead of the Pensacola News Journal that wrote about the Hiatt family that got a judgment in 2002:

In 1999, Misty and Phil Hiatt of Pensacola, parents of 10-year-old triplets, were among the first to assert a link between childhood vaccines and autism-like symptoms.

Misty Hiatt said she and her husband, a professional baseball player for 16 years, saw their babies' lives change dramatically after they received routine immunizations at 14 months.

She said daughter Madison began suffering from severe autism-like symptoms. Daughters Morgan and Mackenzie also were affected, though less severely.

In 2002, the Hiatts received a settlement from the National Vaccine Injuries Compensation Program, a fund Congress set up to pay children injured by vaccines and to protect makers from damages as a way to help ensure an adequate vaccine supply. Since the fund started in 1988, it has paid about 950 claims — none for autism but some for autism-like symptoms.

"The government settled with our family and accepted responsibility for the injury the vaccines caused my daughter, Madison," Misty Hiatt said.

I have already discussed the difference between "autism" and "autism-like" symptoms. There is none.

And today the Schafer Autism Report ran a letter they got from the Hiatts saying that when they got their settlement, they had the impression that many other families like theirs had been compensated:

"We Were Compensated, too.

We were also compensated by the Federal Government in 2002. Our child suffered the same diagnosis after her routine immunizations. Encephalopathy with autistic like symptoms. I am not sure why people think this is the first case? Maybe they are just the first to go so public. I wonder how many other families have been compensated for the exact same symptoms? When we settled with the government I did not get the impression that we were that unique; quite the opposite as I spoke to the Special Master (the judge for the compensation program). - Misty Hiatt"

Finally, today Dan Olmsted brings to our attention a passage from an AP story in which Gary Golkiewicz, Chief Special Master for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims who oversees the vaccine court, tells us himself that Hannah's case is not the singular exception that we have been led to believe it is:

'Years ago, actually, I had a case, before we understood or knew the implications of autism, that the vaccine injured the child's brain caused an encephalopathy,' he said. And the symptoms that come with that 'all [fall?] within the broad rubric of autism.'

And there are other somewhat similar cases, Golkiewicz says, that were decided before autism and its symptoms were more clearly defined."

Two thoughts on that: We've known the symptoms of autism since exactly 1943. And since the vaccine court is known to be gruesomely stingy, it's quite some admission to say there were other, earlier cases. Maybe some of our befuddled colleagues in the mainstream media ought to find out more about those cases that, according to the top judge, resulted in brain injury and fall "within the broad rubric of autism."

And yet in the face of all this, Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC said this about the Hannah Poling case setting a precedent for other cases of vaccine induced autism:

"This is a complete mischaracterization of the findings of a very simple situation of one child with an unusual disorder, and it would be completely wrong to say that this has bearing to the vast majority of children with autism,"

Julie Gerberding is telling us that Hannah is a rare exception. We now know that she is not.

Autism parents are going to spend tomorrow calling the White House asking for her resignation.

Either Julie knew about these previous rulings, in which case she is lying to us and should be removed from her post, or she did not know about these previous rulings, in which case she is incompetent and should be removed from her post.

What this means is that for almost 20 years the government has had the evidence that vaccines cause autism and they have buried it and lied to the public. For two decades doctors have been denied the information they needed to make responsible health decisions for their patients. The parent of every child vaccinated since 1990 has been denied "informed consent" in their decision making process on if and how to vaccinate their children. How many hundreds of millions of children is that? Or billions?

What this means to my family is that a full year after paying the Hiatts for their daughter's vaccine induced autism, they were telling me that it was safe to vaccinate Chandler with out fear of having his shots trigger autism, resulting in my son's vaccine induced “Autism-like symptoms”.

In light of all this, I am calling for congressional hearings to find out what the government knew and when they knew it.

I am calling for full disclosure on the part of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to release every case of a child who was paid for their "Autism-like" vaccine injury so we can get to the bottom of the vaccine/autism connection. Because those cases hold vital clues to what has happened to my son, and what treatments might heal him.

If the families involved do not want their details released, the cases can be presented in such a way as to protect their privacy. But if what David Kirby is reporting, that families are coming to him to make their cases known, such privacy measures may not be needed.

I am looking forward to seeing what new information David Kirby and any other journalist that has begun to wake up to this miscarriage of justice can bring us about these other cases.

... and if this pans out the way it looks like it is going to... Kirby is right... some people need to go to jail.