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COPYRIGHT 2002 Mothering Magazine
Mothering has covered vaccinations as a freedom-of-conscience issue since 1979. Early on, our coverage raised questions about vaccines because we wanted parents to have true informed consent. In the last ten years, however, the stakes have changed. Parallel to the rise in the number and combinations of required infant vaccines has also been a rise not only in prescriptions for Ritalin but also in the number of cases of regressive autism. Between new and combination vaccines, an infant could receive nine vaccines at one visit.
Autism is part of a spectrum of disorders, of which it is the most severe. Other disorders of this spectrum include ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, Asperger's syndrome, hyperlaxia, and PDD. Speech and learning delays can be part of this spectrum and are often its first signal. Autism has exploded during the last ten years. Previously found in 1 out of every 10,000 children, it's now found in 1 in 250 children in the US and 1 in 86 in the UK. In California the autism rate has increased 273 percent since 1987. Many consider these rates to be epidemic.
On June 19 of this year, Amy Morrison of our staff and I attended a congressional hearing on "The Status of Research into Vaccine Safety and Autism." Since 1999, the Government Reform Committee has held ten hearings on vaccine safety and vaccine policy. The June hearing took testimony from five scientists and five representatives of the Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The scientists have done research related to the toxicity of metals as well as the possible association between vaccines and autism. One theory holds that there is a relationship between the MMR vaccine, which does not contain thimerosal, and autistic enterocolitis. Another suggests a possible link between the use of mercury-containing thimerosal in multiple vaccines and late-onset autism.
Vera Stejskal, PhD, associate professor of immunology at the University of Stockholm, has worked with mercury toxicity for 20 years. Her research shows that thimerosal is a strong allergen. Worldwide, it is more allergenic than nickel. In fact, it is the number-one childhood allergen. About 10 to 30 percent of children are allergic to it.
Andrew Wakefield, MD, and three other physicians at the hearing presented evidence for a correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism. Wakefield's research has been confirmed by nearly a dozen controlled trials worldwide. In 1997 he and several other researchers published a paper, in the British medical journal The Lancet, on a possible link between Crohn's disease and the measles vaccine. After its publication, parents began asking Wakefield to examine their autistic children. To their surprise, he and his colleagues found measles in the guts...
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