Gabor Szendi:
Autism

Autism is considered to be a lifelong brain development disorder with leading symptoms including deficits in socio-emotional reciprocity, non-verbal communication (for example lack of eye contact), repetitive, stereotyped behaviors, attachment to constancy, etcetera. Autism does not necessarily lead to reduced intelligence, and is considered a spectrum disease, meaning that many variants are categorized according to their leading symptoms.

 

 

Autism was still a psychiatric diagnostic issue in the 1940s and has now become a political issue for many reasons. It is a matter of concern for current health governance because of the frightening rise in autism in developed countries, and a matter of concern for many people because of the spread of autism being linked to compulsory vaccination. If vaccines are the cause of autism, then every parent with an autistic child may feel that they and their child are victims of public health vaccine ideology, and should receive substantial compensation for this.

Whether there is an autism epidemic, is denied by many people, who say that increased attention, and ever more precise diagnostic criteria have simply led to higher recognition rates. However this only explains 12% of the growth (Shaw, 2013). At the time of the first description of autism, in 1943, of every 10,000 children, 4-5 were estimated to have autism. Between 1970 and 2001 the number of new cases in the US increased tenfold, and reached 40 in 10,000. Epidemiological studies do not measure the incidence of autism, but the prevalence of autism in the population. These figures also indicate a growing number of new cases. The incidence of autistic children in South Korea is 1/38 (Shaw, 2013), in England 1/64-84 (Ratajczak, 2011), and in the US 1/59 (CDC, 2018).

The case of the ex-physician Andrew Wakefield casts a threatening shadow on autism research. Along with 13 co-authors, he argued that gastrointestinal disturbances in autists may be related to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination. Two(!) years later, paid, or blackmailed scientists, destroyed Wakefield's reputation, his medical practice rights were withdrawn, and he was expelled by the British General Medical Council (Szendi, 2018). This prompted many vaccine and autism researchers to be cautious, and hammered a new nail into the coffin of independent science.

One thing is for sure: many things can cause a brain disorder, and focusing on one cause is a mistake. It is also clear that multiple factors must coexist for autism to develop.

Those who blamed the MMR vaccine pointed out that with the introduction of the new MMR vaccine (no longer containing mercury) introduced in 1983, the number of autists had multiplied by 1990, and a further hike to the rate of rise happened with the introduction of the second booster MMR vaccine in 1988 (Ratajczak, 2011). In 2004 the American Public Health (CDC) study confirmed that MMR vaccination does not cause autism (DeStefano et al., 2004). However 11 years later, William Thompson, a leading researcher in the investigation of autism, admitted that the data had been falsified due to 'higher instructions', and the re-analyzed data showed that the risk of autism in African American children was actually 3.36 times higher (Hooker, 2014).

Other researchers have found that the spread of paracetamol use closely parallels the spread of the autism epidemic. The use of paracetamol to relieve post-vaccine fever and pain became particularly common after 1980, when it was discovered that aspirin could cause Reye's syndrome (Shaw, 2013). (Since then, it has been denied that aspirin causes Reye's syndrome / Good , 2009; Shaw, 2013/). According to a study on the role of paracetamol in 2008, children who were later diagnosed with autism were 8 times more likely to get a fever after MMR vaccination and were 6 times more likely to receive paracetamol (Schultz et al., 2008). Subsequently, numerous studies have shown that paracetamol, even taken during pregnancy, causes developmental delays (Vlenterie et al., 2016), and prolonged use during pregnancy doubles the risk of autism (Liew et al., 2016). Paracetamol has recently been shown to reduce empathy and dull emotions while taking it (Tully and Petrinovic, 2017). Lack of empathy and a lack of understanding of the other person's state of mind is a typical autistic symptom.

Many other things can cause autism. The mercury compound (thimerosal) present in vaccines until 2000 and which then reappeared in influenza vaccines after 2002, causes symptoms of mercury poisoning which are very similar to those of autism (Nevison, 2014). Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill found seven of the eleven autistic people first diagnosed by Leo Kanner in 1943, and in each of them the fetal mercury effect was proven (Olmsted and Blaxill, 2010). Numerous studies have found an increased risk of autism caused by mercury-containing vaccines (Kennedy, 2015). In 2017, a pooled analysis of 44 studies demonstrated that autistic patients have significantly higher levels of mercury in their blood, red blood cells and brains than healthy controls (Jafari et al., 2017). Another meta-analysis concluded that the risk of autism is increased by environmental mercury (fish consumption during pregnancy, air pollution, etcetera) (Yoshimasu et al., 2014).

Another nerve poison, aluminum, has also emerged as a causal factor, as vaccines given to infants and toddlers often contain aluminum hydroxide and sulphate as adjuvants (boosters). Aluminum nanoparticles enter the brain, accumulate there, and damage nerve cells through repeated inoculations. Aluminum-containing vaccines are linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases (autism, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, lupus) (Tomljenovic and Shaw, 2015). According to an analysis, the number of autists and their growth are very closely linked to the steady increase in the numbers of aluminum-containing vaccines in a given country (Tomljenovic and Shaw, 2011). The general counter-argument is that we consume much more aluminum per day than the vaccines contain. However only 0.25% of the aluminum is excreted from the gut, and 100% of the vaccine.

Since only a fraction of children develop autism, it is logical that there should be some predisposing factors that exist in one child and not in another. Remarkably, the result of an- originaly fake- MMR study found that African-American children were at extremely high risk of autism (Hooker, 2014). Although the entire Western world is constantly suffering from vitamin D deficiency, it is particularly severe among African Americans because of their skin color, so African-American children naturally have much less vitamin D in their fetal and postnatal lives. Vitamin D is actually a steroid hormone that plays a major role in brain development and in protecting the brain from damage (Cannell, 2008). Mothers with the lowest levels of vitamin D during pregnancy become 4 times more likely to have autistic children than those with the highest levels (Chen et al., 2016). Most autistic children are born in late winter or early spring when vitamin D levels are lowest in pregnant mothers (Mazahery et al., 2016). 26% of Egyptian children with rickets were proved to be autistic (Zaky et al., 2018). By giving 5,000 IU of vitamin D daily to mothers already with autistic children during their next pregnancy, then giving the born baby 1,000 IU of vitamin D daily, the risk of autism was reduced by about a quarter (Stubbs et al., 2016). In children with autism, giving 300 IU (up to 5,000 IU) per body weight kilogram resulted in a significant improvement in the leading symptoms of autism (Saad et al., 2018).

The theories presented are not contradictory, but complementary, and can be well integrated. Vitamin D deficiency is the background factor in which various neurotoxins and brain-damaging effects lead to pathological consequences. The lesson learned is that good levels of vitamin D during pregnancy and infancy, and avoidance of paracetamol, are two of the tools that seem to prevent autism.

 

References

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CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html

Chen J, Xin K, Wei J, Zhang K, Xiao H. Lower maternal serum 25(OH) D in first trimester associated with higher autism risk in Chinese offspring. J Psychosom Res. 2016 Oct;89:98-101.

DeStefano, F. et al. 2004. Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: A population-based study in metropolitan Atlanta, Pediatrics, 113:259-266.

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