Conghaileach
15th July 2005, 14:14
Niagara Falls Reporter
MOUNTAIN VIEWS: EXPLODING AUTISM EPIDEMIC TIED TO GREED OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES
By John Hanchette
OLEAN -- Here's an update on a topic featured in this space before: the alarming exponential increase in young children with autism. You may have missed it, but late in June both houses of the New York State Legislature passed an act that, beginning in mid-2008, would prohibit further sale or use of the mercury compound thimerosal in vaccines for children younger than 3, and for inoculating pregnant women. The office of Gov. George Pataki has said he's still pondering whether to sign the legislation into law.
If he does, it would make New York the fourth state to establish such a law -- California, Iowa and Missouri are the others. Similar legislation -- most of it with quicker effective dates -- has been introduced in Florida, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Tennessee and Rhode Island. A federal bill to ban thimerosal from all childhood vaccines in the United States is sponsored by Rep. David Weldon, a Florida Republican who is also a physician. He says in the 1990s a baby who got all the recommended shots could be exposed to mercury levels significantly higher than those considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Thimerosal, which contains a neurotoxin mercury compound, has been used for more than half a century as a preservative to prevent bacterial contamination in vaccines. Just a decade ago, most Americans would have to be "Jeopardy" champions just to identify the substance, but parents today are more and more aware of it because many medical researchers believe it is linked to the astounding increase in autism. If you're in your 20s, you had a 1 in 10,000 chance of ending up autistic. Today, that chance in the United States is about 1 in 166 births, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The change in these numbers is statistically incredible, and indicates a health problem of epidemic proportions.
As almost every concerned parent now knows, autistic children -- many of them once normal infants and toddlers -- display heartbreaking social withdrawal, loss of speech, reduced eye contact, temper tantrums, repetitive hand-flapping, seizures, constant sleep disturbance, aversion to eye contact, a seemingly weakened immune system, and odd repetitive behaviors such as walking on their toes. The symptoms of infant mercury poisoning are almost exactly the same.
As more and more inoculations became required for infants and toddlers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, big pharmaceutical firms manufacturing vaccines started combining the shots in multi-dose vials.
They were cheaper to produce, easier to store, and kept parents from making too many trips to the doctor. The thimerosal also gave them longer shelf-life. During this period, the number of vaccines containing thimerosal that were added to the immunization schedule almost doubled. Kids sometimes got three such injections in a single day, and usually nine thimerosal-containing shots during their first half-year of life, when the immune system is still developing and vulnerable.
It was during this period the astonishing rate of increase in autistic children started zooming upward.
Full Article (http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette165.html)
MOUNTAIN VIEWS: EXPLODING AUTISM EPIDEMIC TIED TO GREED OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES
By John Hanchette
OLEAN -- Here's an update on a topic featured in this space before: the alarming exponential increase in young children with autism. You may have missed it, but late in June both houses of the New York State Legislature passed an act that, beginning in mid-2008, would prohibit further sale or use of the mercury compound thimerosal in vaccines for children younger than 3, and for inoculating pregnant women. The office of Gov. George Pataki has said he's still pondering whether to sign the legislation into law.
If he does, it would make New York the fourth state to establish such a law -- California, Iowa and Missouri are the others. Similar legislation -- most of it with quicker effective dates -- has been introduced in Florida, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Tennessee and Rhode Island. A federal bill to ban thimerosal from all childhood vaccines in the United States is sponsored by Rep. David Weldon, a Florida Republican who is also a physician. He says in the 1990s a baby who got all the recommended shots could be exposed to mercury levels significantly higher than those considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Thimerosal, which contains a neurotoxin mercury compound, has been used for more than half a century as a preservative to prevent bacterial contamination in vaccines. Just a decade ago, most Americans would have to be "Jeopardy" champions just to identify the substance, but parents today are more and more aware of it because many medical researchers believe it is linked to the astounding increase in autism. If you're in your 20s, you had a 1 in 10,000 chance of ending up autistic. Today, that chance in the United States is about 1 in 166 births, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The change in these numbers is statistically incredible, and indicates a health problem of epidemic proportions.
As almost every concerned parent now knows, autistic children -- many of them once normal infants and toddlers -- display heartbreaking social withdrawal, loss of speech, reduced eye contact, temper tantrums, repetitive hand-flapping, seizures, constant sleep disturbance, aversion to eye contact, a seemingly weakened immune system, and odd repetitive behaviors such as walking on their toes. The symptoms of infant mercury poisoning are almost exactly the same.
As more and more inoculations became required for infants and toddlers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, big pharmaceutical firms manufacturing vaccines started combining the shots in multi-dose vials.
They were cheaper to produce, easier to store, and kept parents from making too many trips to the doctor. The thimerosal also gave them longer shelf-life. During this period, the number of vaccines containing thimerosal that were added to the immunization schedule almost doubled. Kids sometimes got three such injections in a single day, and usually nine thimerosal-containing shots during their first half-year of life, when the immune system is still developing and vulnerable.
It was during this period the astonishing rate of increase in autistic children started zooming upward.
Full Article (http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette165.html)