My family ... OY! I wonder if any other branch of the human family tree has as many paranoid, obsessive compulsive, schizophrenic, bipolar, or depressed individuals as mine does. Mind you - this was one reason I reached outside of the immediate gene pool to have Autumn and Jakob. And what do you know...there is a link between family schizophrenia and autism. Maybe one of my (colorful, to say the least) family members is correct, and schizophrenia is contagious!

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY

Autistic Child, Schizophrenic Parent

Child's autism linked to parents' mental illness

CHICAGO - In another sign pointing to an inherited component to autism, a study released on Monday found that having a schizophrenic parent or a mother with psychiatric problems roughly doubled a child's risk of being autistic.

"Our research shows that mothers and fathers diagnosed with schizophrenia were about twice as likely to have a child diagnosed with autism," said Julie Daniels of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who worked on the study.

"We also saw higher rates of depression and personality disorders among mothers, but not fathers," she said in a statement.

The study of families in Sweden with children born between 1977 and 2003 involved 1,227 children diagnosed with autism. They were compared with families of nearly 31,000 children who did not have autism. Sweden's detailed health registry provides a wealth of data for such studies.

Autism, which is marked by impaired social interaction and communication, or a related disorder like Asperger's syndrome, affects an estimated one out of every 150 U.S. children, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Asperger's is marked by mild social awkwardness.

No one knows what causes autism, but researchers think it is likely that several genes and possibly environmental factors contribute. Some autism advocates believe childhood vaccinations play a role, although most medical experts say it is extremely unlikely.

Which genes lie behind various mental illnesses are also poorly understood, according to the researchers, whose study appeared in the journal Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Earlier studies have shown a higher rate of psychiatric disorders in families of autistic children than in the general population," Daniels said.

The association between a child's autism and mental illness in the parent was strongest with schizophrenia, and was less powerful when the mother suffered from depression or personality disorders. There was little association between autism and parental addiction to alcohol or drugs or some other types of mental illness.

It was not clear if it was significant that having a mother, but not a father, with certain mental illnesses, raised the risk of autism.

"Establishing an association between autism and other psychiatric disorders might enable future investigators to better focus on genetic and environmental factors that might be shared among these disorders," Daniels said.

Here a spot, there a spot, everywhere a spot, spot. Seems like measles are on the increase. No surprise, with so many waving the MMR shot. I am reminded of the tragic tales of Native People exposed to the micro-organisms and disease of western civilization. How far will this go before reason rules?

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY:
Measles on the Increase

U.S. reports biggest measles outbreak since 2001

Thu May 1, 2008 3:55pm EDT

By Will Dunham
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN01435942

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The biggest U.S. outbreak of measles since 2001 is unfolding in 10 states, with at least 72 people ranging from infants to the elderly becoming ill -- most of them unvaccinated, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said said none of those who caught the highly contagious viral illness has died, but at least 14 people have been hospitalized, most with pneumonia triggered by measles.

There were 116 cases in 2001, and the last major U.S. outbreak occurred from 1989 to 1991, when 55,000 people got measles and 123 died.

Anne Schuchat, who heads the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said she expects "many more cases this year than we had in 2001 based on what's going on today."

Public health officials have been stressing the import! ance of immunizing children in the face of increasingly vocal groups who object to vaccines for religious reasons or because they think the shots may cause autism or other problems.

CDC officials said overwhelming scientific evidence points to the safety of the combined measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, shot and other childhood vaccines.

"We are concerned ... about the population of people who are choosing not to be vaccinated, and whether we may be on the verge of facing larger-scale outbreaks in the United States," said Jane Seward of the CDC's division of viral diseases.

The CDC said most of the measles cases can be traced to 10 people who picked up the disease overseas and then traveled back to the United States, where others became infected. The ages of those sickened ranged from 5 months to 71 years.


GLOBAL PROBLEM

"These cases and outbreaks resulted primarily from failure to vaccinate, many! because of personal or religious belief exemption," the agency s aid in a statement.

The CDC said 64 cases were reported from Jan. 1 through April 25 in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Eight more confirmed cases -- all involving unvaccinated children in one family who had attended a church gathering in the Seattle area -- have been reported since then in Washington state, the state department of health said Thursday.

Those spreading measles were infected in Switzerland and Israel, both of which have larger outbreaks, as well as in India, Belgium, Italy and likely China and Japan, the CDC said.

"Transmission has occurred in community and health care settings, including homes, child care centers, schools, hospitals, emergency rooms and physicians' offices," it said.

The disease causes fever, cough, redness and irritation of the eyes and a rash. Serious complications include encephalitis and pneumonia that ca! n be fatal. Measles remains a leading cause of death among children in poor countries, killing about 250,000 people a year globally.

Before a vaccine was introduced in 1963, more than half a million people got measles in the United States and 500 died annually. Thanks to the vaccination program, measles is no longer endemic in the United States, and ongoing transmission of the virus was declared eliminated in 2000.

The annual number of cases since then generally has been in the dozens and caused by someone infected in another country. (Editing by Maggie Fox and Xavier Briand)

Here is an article I can relate to. Six families used the same sperm donor. In those families, four of the children have been diagnosed (or are pending a diagnosis)

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY:
It's In the Genes

Through a Web site called Donor Sibling Registry, Ms. Jackaway, a mother of a child with autism "fathered" by anonymous Donor X. at a sperm bank, reached out to other women who used Donor X. She found six families who had used the same donor.

Two years ago, she visited Theresa Pergola in the New York area; she had given birth to triplets using sperm from Donor X. Just minutes into their meeting, Jackaway noticed Pergola's son, Joseph, 2, exhibiting some of the same behavior as her son.

"He was walking on his toes; he was flapping his hands. There seemed to be eye contact issues," recalled Jackaway, who immediately suggested screening Joseph for autism.

"She told me that she saw characteristics of autism, and it was very upsetting to me at that time," Pergola said. "I didn't know what to expect from that point on. I know I was scared, and she was there to let me know that it was going to be OK."

Pergola says she was afraid because she had an image of autism in her head and believed her son would be "in the corner and rocking and not talking."

She says Jackaway reassured her that wouldn't be the case.

One month later, a test confirmed what Pergola already knew: Joseph was autistic. The diagnosis brought her to tears, and now these two women whose sons share a father were immediately connected by another bond: autism.

"She was terribly upset," Jackaway remembered. "That moment is a terribly frightening moment. You get handed a diagnosis, and you get handed an entirely new future."
Health Library



In six families Jackaway contacted that had used Donor X, three of the children are autistic, and one is showing signs of autism.

But would Jackaway be happier today if there had been a way to screen Donor X for an autism gene?

"I've done a lot of thinking about this, and to say yes to that is to say that I wish Dylan isn't Dylan," Jackaway said. "I love my son and everything about him, and that means loving his autism also. Loving your children means loving everything about them. Our children don't have autism; they are autistic. It's part of who they are."

There is currently no way to screen for autism, and in a statement, the company said in part:

"There is no current genetic test to detect autism. California Cryobank (CCB) employs one of the most thorough and rigorous donor screening processes in the industry, with less than 1% of all applicants actually becoming donors. The standard CCB procedure for screening donors involves extensive physical, genetic and health screening ..."

Since the discovery of autism in some of the families that used Donor X, Cryobank had this to say about his samples:

"... per CCB policy, the donor's samples were removed from the general catalog. These vials may only be sold to a client who has previously used specimens of this donor and is interested in ordering additional specimens. In this case the client is made aware of the new medical information and potential issues ..."
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The families don't blame the sperm bank. In fact, Theresa Pergola says she's still uncertain about an autism screening process, if and when it ever becomes available.

"It can go either way, on the one hand it could be helpful so that people could make choices about what risks they want to take," says Pergola. "On the other hand it's like, what else are they going to screen for, you know? Are they going to screen for certain personality traits? It's hard to say. It's really hard to say."

The University of Oregon is famous for its highly ranked College of Education and Special Education programs. Recently, Project PASS has been added to the college's list of offerings. Students participate in practica and coursework covering curriculum, assessment, emotional/social/communication issues, cultural competency, alternative communication, professional practices, and teaming with parents and professionals. Some students opt for additional participation in research studies in the area of special interests and autism. Students in this program are heavily recruited, and according to the word on the street, all students completing the program have gone on to work in the field.

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY
Project PASS

Program prepares educators for work with Autistic children
As autism rates rise, there is a greater need for teachers who understand the disorder
by Jill Kimball | News Reporter
PUBLISHED ON 4/28/08 IN News


"Mom, what's the American dream?" Mary Ann Winter-Messiers' son Jonathan once asked her.

"People usually see it as the mom, dad, two kids, picket fence, a dog," Winter-Messiers replied.

He said, "Can you still be an American if you have a different dream?"

Jonathan, now 13, has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism.

There's a saying within the community that treats and cares for autistic children: If you've met one child with autism, you've met one child with autism. No two are alike; they vary wildly in passion, paranoia and potential.

Winter-Messiers said her son is proof that children with autism should not be defined by their shortcomings, but by their "astounding insights and questions about life and about people and about God and how people interact. They're brilliant."

April is Autism Awareness Month, but for University professors and graduate students involved in Project PASS (Preparing Autism Specialists for Schools), "every month is autism awareness month," said Winter-Messiers, the program's coordinator.

Autism rates have greatly increased nationwide in recent years. In 2007, the Center for Disease Control's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network found that one in 150 8-year-old children in the U.S. had an Autism Spectrum Disorder - and "Oregon has either the highest or the second highest per capita (prevalence) in the nation," Winter-Messiers said.

In previous decades, studies found that ASD prevalence rates consistently hovered around four or five in every 10,000 children.

Little is known about why prevalence has increased so quickly in the last decade, but the statistics demand the need for more teachers who understand autism and its many facets.

"With ever-growing numbers of children diagnosed with autism in the U.S. and in our state, we must train educators specifically to work with children with autism so that they will be properly equipped and can serve these children with confidence," said Cynthia Herr, an education professor who teaches classes in the Project PASS program. "It is very rewarding to know that we are equipping educators with the skills, tools, and resources they need to serve these wonderful students appropriately."

Autism is a spectrum disorder because every child who lives with the condition behaves differently. However, most children with Asperger's Syndrome have one thing in common: They each have one very specific passion that consumes their entire life. Winter-Messiers and Herr are both involved in a research project involving these passions.

"These children have a highly focused area of passion - elephants, dust, elevators, running shoes, World War II planes, electrical cords, dinosaurs," Winter-Messiers said. "We research how it develops and what these passions look like. We think, 'How can we harness the power in these passions to help motivate them and help them develop career interests?'"

The program's students, which total about 10 each year, take a few classroom courses and two terms of practica, in which they have the opportunity to work with autistic students in schools.

"Our program is critical because children and youth with autism deserve educators who understand them and know how to teach them effectively," Herr said. "We train teachers to be successful with students with autism, so that those students can be successful in school and lead productive, meaningful lives."

Students who complete the 46 credits needed for the special education program and take additional courses through Project PASS will receive a master's degree in special education with a specialization in autism.

These students "are being highly sought after by school districts because school districts are desperate for people who know what they're doing," Winter-Messiers said.

Interest in special education at the University isn't limited to just these 10 students, though. About 45 to 50 students, both graduates and undergraduates, enroll in a general overview course Winter-Messiers teaches each fall.

"It indicates the broad general interest in autism in the community," Winter-Messiers said.

Like Winter-Messiers, many of the students who take courses and practica through Project PASS found their passion through autistic children of their own.

"People tend to be very passionate about it - in a great majority of the time, it's because they have a child, a grandchild, a niece that has autism," Winter-Messiers said.

Her son and her students still keep her enthusiasm and motivation high in her day-to-day work.

"It's very challenging, and it can be very exhausting," Winter-Messiers said, but "there are a lot of surprises in autism in the sense that you can't take things for granted. Things can change quickly. That fuels my energy."

I've been a fan of the Neurodiversity.com website since shortly after the diagnosis of my son. Instead of emotional rhetoric and pleas for therapies that rendered the providers of said therapies wealthier than the rest of us, neurodiversity.com compiled an exhaustive collection of articles covering every possible aspect of autism...but with a difference. Autism wasn't a tragedy. It simply was. A difference? Yes. A scourge? Not at all. This view was the first to lend me reassurance that life with Jakie was going to be good. I'm glad to see that the media is giving Kathleen Seidel her due. She has provided a great and reliable resource of materials for parents of children with autism, as well as a voice for those WITH autism.

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY
Neurodiversity.com

A forceful voice in autism debate
Mother's site battles mercury theories

By Margot Sanger-Katz
Monitor staff
April 27, 2008

Kathleen Seidel is not a doctor. She's not a medical researcher. She's not an educator. She's not a lawyer. But the 52-year old Peterborough woman, armed with a degree in library science and a healthy sense of outrage, has become one of the leading voices in the public debate about a possible link between autism and vaccines.

Seidel's website, neurodiversity.com, is a clearinghouse for autism-related literature, and her attached weblog has become the site of an impassioned and thoroughly researched campaign against a group of scientists and lawyers who promote the theory that childhood vaccines cause the developmental disorder.

For Seidel, who guards her family's privacy but says she has a child with an autism spectrum diagnosis, the scientific evidence disputing their claims is overwhelming. A series of conclusive reports from government scientists have found no connection between autism and a mercury-based preservative once contained in vaccines. And Seidel said that her own family's experience has further cemented her belief that the disorder has a strong genetic component.

But those studies haven't persuaded a significant number of parents who believe that their children were poisoned by vaccines and suspect the U.S. government of denying its culpability. Their views are taken seriously. Nearly 5,000 are involved in a massive legal action to get compensation for their children, and many politicians and medical commentators stand behind the mercury poisoning theory. Among those who believe that mercury might cause autism are Sens. Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama.

Seidel believes that the propagation of the theory causes many harms: It traumatizes parents, who believe their children have been poisoned and must be fixed; it harms children, who are subjected to medically unnecessary treatments designed to remove mercury from their bodies; it discourages vaccination, leaving children vulnerable to deadly diseases; and it distracts autism activists and researchers from the work she feels is most important.
"There's been a lot of energy, a lot of attention that been focused in an area that's not going to help disabled kids," Seidel said.

'1,000 percent'

Seidel describes herself as a "1,000 percent kind of person," who pours herself into her research and writing projects, generally spending about 30 hours a week on her website. That intensity is evident in her blog, where many posts run more than 5,000 words and contain quotations from medical journals, court documents and message groups where parents of children with autism share treatment experiences. She has made Freedom of Information requests for documents and sifted through historic archives on legal databases.

"I inhaled the all the documents. I exhaled all the documents," Seidel said, describing one of her recent posts.

Seidel, who is married and has two teenaged children, has worked as a children's librarian and as an internet entrepreneur. In recent years, she has not had a full-time job, splitting her time between caring for her children, curating her website and taking college courses in paralegal studies. During a recent interview, she wore a floppy black hat over her dark frizzy hair and a T-shirt that said: "What we need more of is science."

Science hasn't settled the question of what causes autism, but it has largely ruled out the possibility that a mercury-based preservative called Thimerosal, used in childhood vaccines until 2001, is to blame. After a series of epidemiological studies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine, and the World Health Organization all agree that the evidence doesn't support the theory.

Recent studies indicate that about one in every 165 children has an autism spectrum diagnosis, meaning that they have problems with social interaction, language and repetitive behaviors. The disorder is described as a spectrum because cases range in severity. Some people with autism are able to succeed in school and live independently as adults. Others have persistent physical and behavioral problems and are never able to speak. Research suggests that the rate of autism diagnoses has not declined since Thimerosal was removed from vaccines.

Seidel's writing has focused on the group of researchers and lawyers who remain wedded to the vaccines-cause-autism theory, and her blog includes accusations of ethical lapses, plagiarism, conflicts of interest and inaccurate citation in their work.

Advocates and fans say her exhaustive research sets her apart and makes her blog a must-read for those who care about the scientific, legal and political swirl surrounding autism.

"She is the Erin Brockovich of autism spectrum disorders," said Irving Gottesman, a psychiatry professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School who studies the causes of autism and is convinced that there is no vaccine link. Gottesman compared Seidel's investigative work to what he'd expect from a research team of several graduate students working under a professor. "Amazing," he said, for an amateur.

But critics are suspicious of Seidel's passion and the volume of her work. In interviews, several advocates raised the possibility that Seidel is being secretly paid by pharmaceutical companies, an allegation Seidel denies.

Those suspicions may have fueled a recent legal attempt to look inside her books. In March, Seidel was subpoenaed and asked to produce all of her business records and communications with sources, as part of a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company. Seidel fought the subpoena and won, but she said that the legal skirmish was an unpleasant reminder that the people she investigates may try to retaliate. Clifford Shoemaker, the lawyer who ordered the subpoena, did not return a phone message.

"When it comes down to it, this is a lawyer in Virginia trying to shut me up because some of what I write doesn't make them look that good," she said.

Latest crusade

Seidel's most recent crusade has been against a group of autism researchers and lawyers who she believes have strong economic motives to promote the vaccine-autism theory.

She began the project after reading a 2006 article in the Monitor, which described the alternative medical treatments that a Concord couple were trying on their autistic child. The story contained a reference to a possible testosterone-blocking therapy. That mention piqued Seidel's interest.

"I read the article, and I just started doing my homework and never stopped," she said.

What she found was that the testosterone treatment involved a drug called Lupron, typically used by oncologists to treat advanced prostate cancer and by prisons to chemically castrate sex offenders. The drug interferes with the body's production of sex hormones, and its manufacturer documents a series of side effects, including injection site injuries, decreased white blood cell counts and osteoporosis.

On parents' message boards, she found an ever-growing number of posters who said they were trying the treatment on their children, both boys and girls. The doctor providing the therapy was Dr. Mark Geier, a Maryland-based geneticist who, with his son, David, has written many of the epidemiological papers most often cited by mercury causation believers. (An Institute of Medicine report disputing the link described the Geiers' work as "uninterpretable.")

According to early published statements by the Geiers, Lupron works in autistic children by preventing a chemical reaction between testosterone and mercury that makes it difficult for them to purge the metal from their bodies. No laboratory science has been done to establish that biochemical phenomenon, but in an interview, Geier said he began testing his theory in patients after a parent begged him to give Lupron to her autistic son.

"We finally decided we're going to try it," Geier said, describing his discussions with the child's doctor. "We were arguing about who was going to give the shot."

As word spread, more parents signed their children up for the treatment, which involves daily injections and frequent blood tests. Geier said he's currently treating about 500 patients with good results. Most of the children have become less violent, more verbal and happier, he said. He and his son have begun documenting those trends in a series of journal articles.

Reading about Lupron made Seidel mad.

"They're talking about experimenting on disabled kids," she said. "Disabled kids are among the most vulnerable people on the planet."

Thus began a series of posts examining the Geiers' research and their backgrounds. Each one outlined a new accusation against the father-son team. In one, she found that one research paper had given David Geier a title he hadn't earned. In another, she examined the review board designed to police the ethics of the Geiers' studies: Its members included Mark and David Geier, Mark Geier's wife, a vaccine injury lawyer, and the mother of the first Lupron patient. One post alleged that the Geiers had mischaracterized other scientists' research cited in their papers. Another suggested that a patent application for the treatment constituted a conflict of interest that the men should have disclosed. One compared passages from the Geier's work to a draft article prepared by CDC scientists and accused them of plagiarism.

For his part, Geier said he wasn't that troubled by Seidel's work, but he described her as "vicious."

"To go after us and call up universities and take every single paper that we write and to write every single editor and say, 'these guys are crooks,' " Geier said. "I don't understand."

Geier answered each of Seidel's charges. The inaccurate title was the result of an editing error. The review board list she saw was a preliminary version, not the actual board. The patent is not designed to make money. The similarities between the papers are not plagiarism.

"I don't know, maybe she's an English teacher," Geier said. "That's done in science. I'm sorry, that's not exactly criminal."

An expert witness?

As she began to examine the Geiers' research, Seidel also looked into their professional history. She said she was surprised by the number of times Mark Geier has testified as an expert witness in vaccine lawsuits.

Geier said he's appeared about 100 times in the special court for vaccine injury cases, a legal venue that he said he helped establish. Unlike most areas of medicine, where injured patients sue for damages in civil court, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has set up a special system for patients harmed by vaccines.

In the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, patients are held to a much weaker standard of proof than the one used in traditional courts. They are judged by "special masters," instead of judges, and the court reimburses the plaintiff's legal fees, whether he wins or loses. The system, which is funded by a 75-cent tax on all vaccines, is designed to make it easy to bring claims and likely that injured patients will get relief. If patients are dissatisfied with the outcome, they can then go to the civil court system.

Seidel said she endorses the system and believes that patients legitimately harmed by vaccines deserve compensation for their injuries. But she also believes that the system has little to dissuade unscrupulous lawyers from recruiting clients with flimsy claims.

"The economic motives for filing vaccine injury claims are extreme, because you don't even have to win," she said.

Geier's frequent testimony led her to Clifford Shoemaker, who has been bringing vaccine injury claims since the beginning of the vaccine court, and is involved in a lawsuit brought by the family of Geier's first Lupron patient. Shoemaker's website is full of articles claiming the mercury-autism link.

"Mercury is probably the second most toxic substance in the world," reads a front-page entry in red letters. "We worry about ingesting it in the fish that we eat. And yet for more than a decade, we injected it into our babies."

Shoemaker had a recent high-profile success, when one of his autistic clients was separated from the thousands that have been aggregated by the court and given an award that was made public in March. The Department of Health and Human Services conceded last fall that vaccines may have harmed 9-year-old Hannah Poling of Athens, Ga., by exacerbating a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder and causing brain damage.

In a recent posting, Seidel combed legal archives for public records on Shoemaker's vaccine cases. She found that between June 2006 and March 2008, he had won 7 cases and lost 15. Overall, he earned more than $580,000. Several cases made mention of Geier's expert testimony, she wrote. The posting concluded, "To be continued."

Seidel received the subpoena two days later.

'It's also their business'

When Seidel looks at the world of autism, she sees disabled children, frustrated parents and marketers eager to make a buck. In this last category, she puts many purveyors of alternative medicine, who promise autism cures through herbs, creams and foil-lined hats; clinicians who often won't accept insurance for providing these unconventional therapies; and lawyers like Shoemaker, who bring lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

"This is their activism. This is their commitment. But it's also their business, some of them," she said.

Seidel said she feels sympathy for many parents who disagree with her, who she understands are struggling with the difficulties of raising disabled children in a world that does not provide sufficient support. For the most part, she views them as victims of opportunistic lawyers and marketers, who have deliberately whipped up an anti-vaccine frenzy to help their businesses.

"Many are as passionate and in some ways as principled as I am," she said, pointing to the extensive campaigns led by parents' groups to eliminate mercury from vaccines, medicines and power plant emissions.

But she also thinks that advocates of mercury causation theories are wrong and finds some of their tactics distasteful. As a parent of an autism spectrum child, she said, she's offended by statements that suggest that autistic people are somehow damaged or less than human.

Her site's name, Neurodiversity, is a nod to a larger way of thinking about autism, as one of several ways that humans can have their brains wired. Seidel wants people to respect autistic individuals for their differences, rather than reject them as contaminated.

She recalls that an early spur to activism came when she heard that Boyd Haley, a chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky who believes mercury causes autism, had described the increase in autism diagnoses as "an epidemic of mad child disease."

"My thought was: How dare you make up a term like that to talk about people," she said. "My second thought was: If you had any confidence in your science, would you feel the need to stoop so low?"

But Seidel's critics often accuse her of the same type of negative hyperbole.

"Kathleen is hurting people. She's not just disagreeing with us, she's going after people," said Amy Carson, the founder of Moms Against Mercury, a group that is trying to eradicate mercury from vaccines. Carson said that her autistic child is sick, and mercury-eliminating treatments have helped him. "She's like a pitbull when she is going after someone. She takes hold of them and doesn't let go."

Seidel didn't stop at examining the Geiers' publishing history on her website; she also began sending letters to journal editors and calling the legal departments of pharmaceutical companies. In those communications, she expressed her view that the Geiers are ethically compromised and asked why the institutions supported their work. According to Wikipedia discussion records, Seidel's husband, Dave, repeatedly revised an entry on Mark Geier in the online encyclopedia.

Mark Geier said that members of his review board have received threatening phone calls from Seidel's readers after she published their names. He also said that he's aware of other autism researchers whose jobs had been threatened by her activism.

The recent subpoena has done little to dim Seidel's enthusiasm for a good story or quash her anger about possible exploitation of children.

"It's geeky and specialty, but at this point, I love it - the joy of a scoop," she said.

Yesterday, she posted her newest entry, a look at a New Mexico-based alternative medicine practitioner who was promoting a veterinary medicine as a possible autism cure.

"If you go to the supper market and buy cat food and eat it yourself, no one is going to stop you from eating cat food. It is not against the law to eat cat food," Dr. Kenneth Stoller wrote in a message board posting she quoted.

But she isn't finished with Shoemaker yet.

"He knows what 'to be continued' means," Seidel said.

This Science Daily report is nearly 9 years old, and promotes the theory that proteins in milk may be linked to schizophrenia and autism. Not sure what has become of this line of reasoning in the last nine years, but suspecting metabolic/digestive issues is certainly an underpinning of the GFCF diet that many families adopt.

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY
University of Florida Researchers Cite Possible Link Between Autism, Schizophrenia And Diet

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 1999) — By Melanie Fridl Ross

GAINESVILLE, Fla.---Findings from two novel animal studies indicate autism and schizophrenia may be linked to an individual’s inability to properly break down a protein found in milk, University of Florida researchers report in this month’s issue of the journal Autism.

The digestive problem might actually lead to the disorders’ symptoms, whose basis has long been debated, said UF physiologist Dr. J. Robert Cade, cautioning that further research must take place before scientists have a definitive answer. When not broken down, the milk protein produces exorphins, morphine-like compounds that are then taken up by areas of the brain known to be involved in autism and schizophrenia, where they cause cells to dysfunction.

The animal findings suggest an intestinal flaw, such as a malfunctioning enzyme, is to blame, says Cade, whose team also is putting the theory to the test in humans. Preliminary findings from that study – which showed 95 percent of 81 autistic and schizophrenic children studied had 100 times the normal levels of the milk protein in their blood and urine – have been presented at two international meetings in the past year but have not yet been published.

When these children were put on a milk-free diet, at least eight out of 10 no longer had symptoms of autism or schizophrenia, says Cade, a professor of medicine and physiology at UF’s College of Medicine and inventor of the Gatorade sports drink. His research team includes research scientist Dr. Zhongjie Sun and research associate R. Malcolm Privette.

“We now have proof positive that these proteins are getting into the blood and proof positive they’re getting into areas of the brain involved with the symptoms of autism and schizophrenia,” Cade said.

More than 500,000 Americans have some form of autism, according to the Autism Society of America. The developmental disability typically appears during the first three years of life and is characterized by problems interacting and communicating with others. Many individuals exhibit repeated body movements such as hand-flapping or rocking and may resist changes in routine. In some cases, they may display aggressive or self-injurious behavior.

Schizophrenia is noted for disturbances in thinking, emotional reaction and behavior and is the most common form of psychotic illness. More than 2 million Americans suffer from it, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. People with schizophrenia often hear internal voices not heard by others, or believe others are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts or plotting to harm them. In addition, their speech and behavior can be so disorganized that they may be incomprehensible or frightening to others.

In the UF studies, researchers injected rats with the protein beta- casomorphin-7, one of the key constituents of milk and the part that coagulates to make cheese. They then observed their behavior and later examined brain tissue to see whether the substances accumulated there.

Beta-casomorphin-7 was taken up by 32 different areas of the brain, Cade said, including sections responsible for vision, hearing and communication.

“This could explain several of the things one sees in autism and schizophrenia, such as hallucinations,” he said. “If part of the brain puts out a false signal because of casomorphin, it could result in the person seeing something that’s not really there; either a visual or auditory hallucination could occur.

“There are a whole number of behaviors that the rat has after beta-casomorphin-7 that are basically the same as one sees in the human with autism or schizophrenia,” he added. “If we ring a bell beside a rat’s cage, it normally looks up to see where the noise is coming from. But the rats after beta-casomorphin-7 didn’t do that – they were completely oblivious to the bell-ringing above them. This struck us as interesting because many mothers of autistic children comment that they seem at times to be totally deaf -- they talk to their children and they just don’t seem to hear them.”

Researchers suspect the process begins in the intestine, where the body absorbs the protein when a person eats foods containing it.

“We think this process is linked to the production of antibodies in the gut when you eat something you’re sensitive to,” Cade said. “Both schizophrenics and autistics have a high incidence of [certain] antibodies, and a high incidence of diarrhea, which points to an intestinal disorder. So we think that with autism and schizophrenia, the basic disorder is in the intestine, and these individuals are absorbing beta-casomorphin-7 that they normally should break down in the body as amino acids, rather than peptide chains up to 12 amino acids long.”

--------------------------------------- Recent UF Health Science Center news releases are available at http://www.health.ufl.edu/hscc/index.html

The UF Health Science Center topic/expert list is available at http://www.health.ufl.edu/hscc/experts.html

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Adapted from materials provided by University of Florida.

25% of all micropreemies show signs of autism. That is an amazing statistic...and one that might account for much of the perceived "epidemic" of autism, as incredible gains have been made in helping the tiniest of infants to survive in the last few decades. Infants that would have died now survive along with the autism their birth circumstances *may* have helped to bring about. While Jakie was a preemie, he was no micropreemie, and weighed a respectable 5 pounds 14 ounces at birth. Given that he was a twin, that is even more respectable. Nonetheless, birth stress once again resurfaces as part of the autism etiology puzzle.

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY:
Very-Low-Birth-Weight Infants More Likely to Show Early Signs of Autism

Marlene Busko Medscape Medical News 2008.
April 4, 2008

A recent study found that, among 91 toddlers who had been born prematurely and weighed from 1 pound to 3.28 pounds (460 to1490 g) at birth, 25% screened positive for early signs of autistic features.

This is the first study to document a high prevalence of early autistic features in survivors of extreme prematurity, the group, led by Catherine Limperopoulos, PhD, from McGill University, in Montreal Quebec, writes.

The toddlers were screened at a mean age of 21.9 ± 4.7 months using the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers. The findings suggest that "routine, systematic screening of very-low-birth-weight infants for early signs of autism is important," Dr. Limperopoulos told Medscape Psychiatry. "It's [also] important to perform formal diagnostic autism testing in those who test positive to confirm whether this initial positive screening does in fact translate into autism spectrum disorders," she said, noting that the team is currently performing these definitive follow-up tests for autism in this cohort.

The study looked at an extremely high-risk subgroup of premature infants with a gestational age range of 23 to 30 weeks (and did not include premature infants having a gestational age of 31 to 37 weeks), she added. The study is published in the April issue of Pediatrics. Advances in neonatal intensive care have dramatically increased the survival of preterm infants, but there is an increasing population of very-low-birth-weight children who experience significant disabilities in socialization, communication, and behavior, the group writes.

The study was prompted in part because the team had clinically observed that some very preterm infants displayed unusual social behaviors at follow-up visits. In addition, validated screening tests to detect early signs of autism have now become available.

Recent studies have demonstrated benefits from intense early interventions, and the American Academy of Pediatrics is endorsing autism screening for all children by age 2 years, Dr. Limperopoulos noted. The team aimed to perform autism screening tests on toddlers who had been born prematurely and had a very low birth weight and to identify risk factors associated with a positive screening result.

They studied 91 consecutive preterm infants with a birth weight of less than 3.3 pounds (1500 g). When the infants were between 18 and 24 months old, adjusted for prematurity, they were tested using the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (a 23-item yes/no parent report checklist to detect early signs of autism at 16 to 30 months).

The children were also tested using the Child Behavior Checklist for ages 1.5 to 5 years (a caregiver questionnaire about behavior and emotional problems in young children) and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (a measure of a child's functional status in a wide range of skills).

One-Quarter Screened Positive A total of 23 of the 91 infants (25%) had a positive score on the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers screening test. Having abnormal scores on this test correlated highly with having internalizing behavioral problems according to the Child Behavior Checklist and having socialization deficits according to the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale.

The infants were more likely to screen positive for early signs of autism if they had the following risk factors: male sex, abnormal MRI studies, lower birth weight, lower gestational age, maternal infection, maternal acute intrapartum hemorrhage, and more severe illness at birth. What Does this Mean?

"Early autistic behaviors seem to be an under recognized feature of very-low-birth-weight infants," the group concludes. "The results from this study suggest that early screening for signs of autism may be warranted in this high-risk population, followed by definitive autism testing in those with positive screening results."

Larger, prospective studies are needed to corroborate these findings and to determine to what extent this initial positive screening test result is a transient or emerging finding during a time of critical development, Dr. Limperopoulos added.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the LifeBridge Fund, the Caroline Levine foundation, the Trust Family Foundation, and the Canada Research Chairs Program.
Pediatrics 2008;121:758-765. Abstract

Outbreaks of once rare childhood diseases are becoming more common as parents choose to exempt their children from vaccination. Perhaps it is time we found a workable compromise - fewer vaccinations at once, more extended schedules for implementing vaccination, older ages at which to vaccinate. One way or another, our children's chances of being harmed are skyrocketing as they are exposed to more and more people available as hosts to these diseases.

AUTISTIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY:
The Flip Side of the Vaccination Issue

March 21, 2008
Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

SAN DIEGO — In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12 children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected, and the other three were too young to receive vaccines.

The parents who objected to their children being inoculated are among a small but growing number of vaccine skeptics in California and other states who take advantage of exemptions to laws requiring vaccinations for school-age children.

The exemptions have been growing since the early 1990s at a rate that many epidemiologists, public health officials and physicians find disturbing.

Children who are not vaccinated are unnecessarily susceptible to serious illnesses, they say, but also present a danger to children who have had their shots — the measles vaccine, for instance, is only 95 percent effective — and to those children too young to receive certain vaccines.

Measles, almost wholly eradicated in the United States through vaccines, can cause pneumonia and brain swelling, which in rare cases can lead to death. The measles outbreak here alarmed public health officials, sickened babies and sent one child to the hospital.

Every state allows medical exemptions, and most permit exemptions based on religious practices. But an increasing number of the vaccine skeptics belong to a different group — those who object to the inoculations because of their personal beliefs, often related to an unproven notion that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders.

Twenty states, including California, Ohio and Texas, allow some kind of personal exemption, according to a tally by the Johns Hopkins University.

“I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak here. The boy is immunized against some diseases but not measles, Ms. Carlson said, while his 3-year-old brother has had just one shot, protecting him against meningitis.

“When I began to read about vaccines and how they work,” she said, “I saw medical studies, not given to use by the mainstream media, connecting them with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology.”

Ms. Carlson said she understood what was at stake. “I cannot deny that my child can put someone else at risk,” she said.

In 1991, less than 1 percent of children in the states with personal-belief exemptions went without vaccines based on the exemption; by 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, the percentage had increased to 2.54 percent, said Saad B. Omer, an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

While nationwide over 90 percent of children old enough to receive vaccines get them, the number of exemptions worries many health officials and experts. They say that vaccines have saved countless lives, and that personal-belief exemptions are potentially dangerous and bad public policy because they are not based on sound science.

“If you have clusters of exemptions, you increase the risk of exposing everyone in the community,” said Dr. Omer, who has extensively studied disease outbreaks and vaccines.

It is the absence, or close to it, of some illnesses in the United States that keep some parents from opting for the shots. Worldwide, 242,000 children a year die from measles, but it used to be near one million. The deaths have dropped because of vaccination, a 68 percent decrease from 2000 to 2006.

“The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles’ heel,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

Dr. Sawyer and the vast majority of pediatricians believe strongly that vaccinations are the cornerstone of sound public health. Many doctors view the so-called exempters as parasites, of a sort, benefiting from the otherwise inoculated majority.

Most children get immunized to measles from a combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, a live virus.

While the picture of an unvaccinated child was once that of the offspring of poor and uneducated parents, “exempters” are often well educated and financially stable, and hold a host of like-minded child-rearing beliefs.

Vaccine skeptics provide differing explanations for their belief that vaccines may cause various illnesses and disorders, including autism.

Recent news that a federal vaccine court agreed to pay the family of an autistic child in Georgia who had an underlying mitochondrial disorder has led some skeptics to speculate that vaccines may worsen such conditions. Again, researchers say there is no evidence to support this thesis.

Alexandra Stewart, director of the Epidemiology of U.S. Immunization Law project at George Washington University, said many of these parents are influenced by misinformation obtained from Web sites that oppose vaccination.

“The autism debate has convinced these parents to refuse vaccines to the detriment of their own children as well as the community,” Ms. Stewart said.

While many parents meet deep resistance and even hostility from pediatricians when they choose to delay, space or reject vaccines, they are often able to find doctors who support their choice.

“I do think vaccines help with the public health and helping prevent the occasional fatality,” said Dr. Bob Sears, the son of the well-known child-care author by the same name, who practices pediatrics in San Clemente. Roughly 20 percent of his patients do not vaccinate, Dr. Sears said, and another 20 percent partially vaccinate.

“I don’t think it is such a critical public health issue that we should force parents into it,” Dr. Sears said. “I don’t lecture the parents or try to change their mind; if they flat out tell me they understand the risks I feel that I should be very respectful of their decision.”

Some parents of unvaccinated children go to great lengths to expose their children to childhood diseases to help them build natural immunities.

In the wake of last month’s outbreak, Linda Palmer considered sending her son to a measles party to contract the virus. Several years ago, the boy, now 12, contracted chicken pox when Ms. Palmer had him attend a gathering of children with that virus.

“It is a very common thing in the natural-health oriented world,” Ms. Palmer said of the parties.

She ultimately decided against the measles party for fear of having her son ostracized if he became ill.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, measles outbreaks in Alaska and California triggered strong enforcement of vaccine mandates by states, and exemption laws followed.

While the laws vary from state to state, most allow children to attend school if their parents agree to keep them home during any outbreak of illnesses prevented by vaccines. The easier it is to get an exemption — some states require barely any paperwork — the more people opt for them, according to Dr. Omer’s research, supported by other vaccine experts.

There are differences within states, too. There tend to be geographic clusters of “exempters” in certain counties or even neighborhoods or schools. According to a 2006 article in The Journal of The American Medical Association, exemption rates of 15 percent to 18 percent have been found in Ashland, Ore., and Vashon, Wash. In California, where the statewide rate is about 1.5 percent, some counties were as high as 10 percent to 19 percent of kindergartners.

In the San Diego measles outbreak, four of the cases, including the first one, came from a single charter school, and 17 children stayed home during the outbreak to avoid contracting the illness.

There is substantial evidence that communities with pools of unvaccinated clusters risk infecting a broad community that includes people who have been inoculated.

For instance, in a 2006 mumps outbreak in Iowa that infected 219 people, the majority of those sickened had been vaccinated. In a 2005 measles outbreak in Indiana, there were 34 cases, including six people who had been vaccinated.

Here in California, six pertussis outbreaks infected 24 people in 2007; only 2 of 24 were documented as having been appropriately immunized.

A surveillance program in the mid ’90s in Canada of infants and preschoolers found that cases of Hib fell to between 8 and 10 cases a year from 550 a year after a vaccine program was begun, and roughly half of those cases were among children whose vaccine failed.

Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Washington.