Tuesday, September 23, 2008
प्स्य्चोसेस अस पिफनिएस गोने बाद
मानी प्स्य्चिअत्रिस्ट्स टुडे अरे आवारे ठाट स्पिरितुअल एक्ष्पेरिएन्केस ऑफ़ थे इन्तेंसे कंद कैन लीड तो प्स्य्चोसेस । थे के तो हेल्पिंग थे प्स्य्चोटिक इस लेत्तिंग थेम क्नोव यू उन्देर्स्तंद ठाट थे हवे हद अ वलीद स्पिरितुअल एक्सपेरिएंस एंड अरे नोट बिओलोगिकाल्ली अब्नोर्मल। आफ्टर गैनिंग ठिर ट्रस्ट, यू कैन सुग्गेस्ट वायस फॉर थेम तो थिंक एंड बेहवे दिफ्फेरेंत्ली। रिलेशनशिप एंड ट्रस्ट अरे थे केय्स तो सुच्सस ! बे कंद !
Monday, September 15, 2008
Toxic Soup--Toxic Metals, Factory-Farmed Animals, and the Politics of Autismf
On Sept. 3, CNN, and CBS reported that a new study had shown that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine—long declared by some parents of autistic children to be responsible for their children’s autism--does NOT cause autism, that it is safe. I had to scoff at the report. As a pregnant woman 8 or 9 years ago, after learning some parents thought they weren’t safe I had decided not to vaccinate my children, but finally started the process earlier this year after learning from the Department of Public Health that thimerosal had been removed from most vaccines. What the obviously government-generated news report failed to mention to the general public about the MMR vaccines was that of course vaccinations are safe NOW--all the thimerosal (known as thiomeral in England) has been removed—a fact that the national news report neglected to mention.
With the controversy raging about autism and vaccines right now due to test cases about the subject finally being heard in federal court, I wondered about the reasons such a misleading report would be coming out. It was a perfect subject for me to write about, especially as it seemed my past—working in psychiatric clients’ rights advocacy, in vegan education and more recently as a special education teacher—might give me a different perspective on autism. (I also have a psychology degree, pre-medical requirements met, from The University of California at Berkeley).
Four years ago, I felt led to work with special education children. I had many questions about autism as I began . Was it true what anti-vaccine groups had been saying—that vaccines or the mercury-containing thimerosal within them causes autism? Was autism really “childhood schizophrenia” as many thought? What did consumption of dairy have to do with it?? What could anyone do to help these unfortunate children and their families?
After I began working with autistic children, I made some disturbing discoveries. Autistic children are routinely being given anti-psychotic medication whose safety and efficacy is extremely controversial in adult mental health. I felt I needed to take a stand, which Is one major topic of this article.
Other distressing information about autism came to light. I discovered that Eli Lilly executives, working with Bush Jr.’s White House, been able to secretly put an “immunity” clause into the Homeland Security Act, absolving them of any future liability in lawsuits filed by parents who felt their children were damaged by vaccines. Then I discovered that the Food and Drug Administration, the regulator of pharmaceuticals, as well as upper management at Merke and Eli Lilly manufacters had for years ignored evidence that vaccines were related to autism, even though major players in the pharmaceutical industry knew it before 1991. Why is the government is taking the blame for mistakes made in vaccine production, rather than big pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, and Mercke??
Other propelling questions came up: How safe are vaccinations now, truly, as only 60% of thimerosal had been removed by 2003 (some is still used in “processing”), but only as a supposed “precautionary measure”? And why are autistics’ parents’ group still protesting? I had begun vaccinating my children this past year—should I continue?
I also discovered that under The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (of 1986), as of May 2008, over 5,000 lawsuits are currently lined up against the FDA on behalf of Eli Lilly and other big pharmaceutical companies (also known as Big Pharma) with much convincing evidence that the medical-industrial complex was responsible for the development of autism in children who had vaccines containing thimerosal. What would happen to the autistics and their families involved in the test cases being heard this year in a probably brutal Federal Court? Dutifully, I began my investigation for this report.
I became a bit alarmed at what I found: the medical establishment had begun learning of the dangers of thimerosal in 1991, yet the removal of thimerosal from the vaccines is said to have actually been completed in the U.S. and Europe by only 2003! Furthermore, all the cases which had been lined up in state courts prior to 2002, were ordered shut down by the Federal government after passage of the Homeland Security Act, and half of them were never allowed in court again!
FDA Politics, Vaccines and Autism: Some Information Please
More shockingly, countries of the Third World are still being shipped the original thimerosal -containing vaccines, because the government and pharmaceutical companies feel it would be too expensive to get the vaccines there without it. Is this ethical U.S.foreign policy? Who in our country might be similar victims of the pharmaceutical lust for profits over vaccine safety?
Although encouraging the American public to continue to have confidence in the vaccination process, which could conceivably be considered noble, the CNN report did nothing to further public understanding of the complicated science and politics behind autism research. It also failed to mention that some vaccines, like the flu vaccine, still contain large doses of Thimerosal, or that top pharmaceutical company executives and the administration of both Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. presidencies have behaved in an illegal and unethical way in approaching the critical issue of autism and the safety of vaccinations.
Questions about the political issues involved are important, but my true interests are with the victims of autism and it seems that my investigation into the dairy question is leading somewhere. After doing my own research into the possible causes of autism, I discovered a possible link in the autism debate, which might help explain both the reasons that having vaccinations alone does not account for all of the cases of autism, as well as the reason that removing dairy (and meats, etc.) from the diet can sometimes be helpful to the autistic child. I outline it below (and I hope that someone takes it to heart).
First, some background information . I know through my work with mental health politics that doctors, pharmaceutical executives and the Food and Drug Administation sometimes work together to promote “treatments” and practices which are not scientifically and morally sound, often with good intentions but with a lack of ability to look objectively at their work in the face of criticism. The general public views their word as Gods. They are known to critics as the “medical-industrial complex”, or what I have called the “medical establishment”, responsible for such horrors as the widespread use of lobotomies to control mental patients in the fifties and sixties (depicted in the famous film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and the 20th century advocacy (still going on today) of animal products such as beef and dairy as nutritious foods in the face of massive evidence to the contrary (of their causing heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer).
Furthermore, like chess players—and going totally against the spirit of the founding of the FDA--various profit-making industries and pharmaceutical companies have their “chessmen” put in place on FDA boards (sometimes innocently, but) so that their interests are promoted, and thus the “regulators” become part of the problem. Concerned industries also fund much research supporting their causes, which the FDA swallows whole, such as the dairy industry’s robust funding of research into the causes of cancer during the past 20 years, which “proves” that genetics are the primary factor.
Eli Lilly, the primary producer of thimerosal, employed many FDA board members, and had politician and Ex-CIA director George Bush, Sr. on their board of directors in the seventies and eighties which he failed to disclose when he ran for vice-president. One of several other “Lillygates” which have happened in recent years, Eli Lilly also donated $1.6 million dollars to the Bush campaign of 2000, and then had their own Mitch Daniels appointed as his Budget Director.
Bruce Levine discusses various other “Lillygates” in his article published on the ISPPC website, including that Lilly in recent years was the financier of the million dollar nationwide campaigns by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (a supposedly non-profit family support group) on behalf of Zyprexa, an expensive ineffective drug marketed as an anti-psychotic but controversial for its links to diabetes and draining Medicaid funds . I would not be surprised if they have been much of the funding for research trying to prove that genetics are the primary cause for autism (More on Lilly and anti-psychotic drugs later.)
The Etiology of Autism in Relation to Thimerosal, and Medical Responsibility
What is thimerosal and how does it cause autism? Most responsible scientists today see an important connection between thimerosal and vaccinations, although it does not explain autism in its entirety. The pharmaceutical companies and the FDA spent many precious years denying and covering up any connection—and they are still confusing the issue. Some basic details: prior to 2003, many vaccines contained an outrageously high amount of the toxic metal, mercury, in the form of a preservative called thimerosal. Thus for sixty or seventy years, doses of large/multi-dose vial (versus small /individual vial dose) vaccine given during vaccination “Well Baby Visits”, contained enough mercury to have been the primary cause of autism in many infants and young children.
One main reason Thimerosal was theorized to be linked to autism so initially is that the results of severe mercury poisoning are the same as the symptoms of “classic”, or “severe”, autism: low I.Q., mental retardation, stereotyped behavior, failure to develop speech, speech comprehension deficits, sound and light sensitivities, severe social withdrawal and maladaptive behavior. (Those who have “high functioning” autism—which has different symptoms and is thought by many to be a separate disorder—may have a different cause.)
Having worked with these children, I can truly say that their plight is heartbreaking, for their parents as well as for the rest of us. We all need to take an honest look at what our responsibilies are in relation to the autistic. Physicians and the rest of the medical establishment in particular need to take more responsibility to help those with classic autism and their families.
The medical establishment has been reluctant to take responsibility for autism for many reasons, but one major one is that the scientific evidence until about 18 years ago has been confusing. For one thing, if thimerosal is so dangerous, why don’t all children given vaccinations develop autism? The generally accepted theory among responsible scientists now is that autism most likely occurs in various intensity, versus not at all, in conjunction with vaccinations, depending on the amount of the developing child’s (or pregnant woman’s ) exposure to the vaccine’s mercury in combination with the amount of exposure to other toxic metals in the environment and diet. That is:
[High dosage of Mercury + Exposure to Other Toxic Metals]= Autism
The high dosage of mercury which seems most suspect is the dosage from Thimerosal. Examples of “other toxic metals” which seem to play some role, include many of the “heavy metals” and some metalloids, such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, and antimony. Also, exposure to a different kind of mercury, methyl mercury, can take the place of either addend in the equation. The stress on the immune system following multiple vaccinations could possibly partially explain the lack of ability to handle a high amount of mercury, other toxic metals or other disease-causing agents. (This last is thought to be involved with the complex autism following the MMR vaccination, which is often administered in conjunction with thimerosal in other vaccinations, as the measles virus can thus survive often shows up in the child’s body).
The child’s inherited ability to cope with toxic metals is also thought to play a small role; some people are born with a lower tolerance for mercury, partially due to a lowered immunity to mercury exposure which is passed on to a child from its mother.
However, to truly understand the causes of autism, one must turn to the important research of pioneer Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky in the mid-nineties who found that thimerosal damaged the brain and central nervous system (Mothering Magazine published Haley’s research in 2002). It later became known that the human body can generally only handle certain amounts of mercury and other toxic metals by themselves; in combination, the effects from mercury and other toxic metals is multiplied exponentially.
Haley in his 2002 study showing that (thimerosal’s) ethyl-mercury combines synergistically with methyl-mercury (from fish or other sources) reveals how vaccine mercury is thought to interact with an environmental source of mercury exponentially (“synergistically “) to produce autism . He had also found in earlier studies that toxic metals in general can react synergistically with mercury . Dr. Haley called ethyl-mercury and methyl-mercury “oink and oink-oink”. (More on synergistic effects later.)
[Jill James did important work showing that autistics had a lower level of glutathione (an immune response to toxic metals) than normal, which may indicate a large number of free radicals in the body . Mitochondrial damage (which comes into play in the recent, landmark Poling autism case) and lower glutathione production could also be based on genetic variables. Destruction of, or damage to, glutathion by a toxin like mercury or other toxic metal could also play a role. Hence, any live virus’ in the body—such as those from a vaccine such as the MMR--might not be able to be dealt with by the damaged immune system, adding insult to injury in the most severe cases of autism.]
One tragic and ironic element of this nightmare is that toxic me tals in the environment have been steadily increasing in our environment since the industrial age, so that many in the general public are becoming alarmed. Primary sources of toxic metals in our air, soil, food and water are from metal purification plants (“smelters”), coal-producing plants, and uranium processing plants, not to mention chemical manufacturers and those who produce pesticides.
Thus, ironically, we are now dealing with a disease caused in part by vaccines and mandated vaccination programs which were created and grew in response the rapidly growing cities and concurrent diseases of the early Industrial Age. The fact that both vaccine and pollutant sources of mercury and other toxic metals have been growing since the advent of vaccines is also another indication of the validity of linking mercury (in combination with other toxic metal exposure) with autism.
We must keep in mind too, that not all cases of autism can be traced back to mercury in the vaccinations. At least some parents of autistic children claim that their own child’s autism had nothing to do with vaccinations. Could it be that vaccinations are only one primary source of mercury which could appear in a fetus’ or growing child’s environment, but that other sources of mercury in the environment, such as dietary ones, might also be another primary source in action?
A NEW VARIABLE: The Meat/Poultry, Fish and Dairy Connection
So reputable scientists generally concur now that thimerasol (and possibly merthiolate, another vaccine preservative) can be the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, for children who also had either high levels of mercury and/or toxic metal in their diet/ environment and/or low inherited or genetic tolerance to mercury/toxic metals. More like the “bale of straw that broke the camel’s back” for some, as it was finally discovered by FDA scientists and Neal Halsey, M.D. of the University of Wisconsin, a famous international vaccinologist. These scientists finally “did the math” on thimerosal in 1999 and found that a single vaccination visit a child might receive 85-87 times the FDA standard for mercury, depending on how many “large vial” thimerosal doses that they were receiving)! It may be possible, again, that this kind of dose of mercury can also be found in other environmental sources.
The FDA mercury standard was based on the fact that mercury is found in large amounts in fish, and the FDA had seen a need to regulate fish intake during the eighties because the levels of mercury in fish have been rising quickly. Warnings had begun to be issued particularly for pregnant women, whose fetuses were known to be at risk for development of severe mercury poisoning . Halsey toyed with this theory of the ethylmercury/vaccine + methylmercuy/fish = autism connection in 1999: American fish of the past hundred years contain higher and higher levels of mercury and other toxic metals because the water they live in is routinely contaminated with them. This pollution’s sources are everything from smelter smoke deposits and pollution from various industries to water run-off from factory farms.
How does mercury pollution happen in the food chain? As many of us know, mercury doesn’t just pass through an animal’s body easily; all of the mercury in a small fish that a bigger fish eats is passed on to that fish, along with the mercury that THAT fish has eaten, and then an even larger fish eats the smaller fish and picks up all ITS mercury PLUS its own, and so on. When a mammal (including human) eats fish, or otherwise absorbs mercury, they too cannot digest the mercury well, and end up storing it in their bodies, primarily in their fat, or in the case of females, in their fat and mammary glands.
If there exists a preexisting inability to process it, or if the dose of mercury is too high for the immune or secretion systems of the body to handle it, the mercury can also enter the blood stream, ” floating around” and wreaking havoc on the brain and central nervous system, the endocrine system and the digestive system, so that theoretically the human eating the “wrong bite” at the top of the food chain could be ingesting a huge dose of mercury. Halsey’s initial theory concerning autism was that ethyl mercury in vaccinations combines with the methyl mercury in fish synergistically so that an overload of toxicity is presented to the fetus’ or small child’s developing nervous system, leading to the encephalopathy (brain and central nervous system disorder) of autism.
One of the major bombshells for me in doing this investigation was the realization--through John Robbin’s Pulitzer-prize-winning works on the dangers of animal product consumption—that mercury-contaminated fishmeal became, as meat production became industrialized and geared towards profits, a primary source of food for farm animals. In fact, the main component of ninety-percent (90%) of the food fed to chickens on factory farms, and half of all of the feed fed to factory-farmed animals in general!
Studies such as those published in 1979 by the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Defense Fund document clearly how DDT, and other toxic chemicals like mercury have been found in our food supply through ending up in our waterways and soils and will contaminate our food for many generations due to lack of effectiveness of government regulators. Food inspectors from the Department of Agriculture are notorious for “looking the other way” when it comes to inspecting animal products for toxins, according to food-crusader John Robbins. Additionally, shockingly, according to Food and Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org, 2008) the fishmeal which is used to feed farm animals (and other fish) routinely has been found by independent researchers to have an average of 51ppb (ranging from 7 to 91 ppb) of mercury—when FDA regulators are supposed to declare it unsafe at 20 ppb.. If even a few inspectors actually are letting mercury-poisoned fishmeal through to be fed to factory-farmed fish,chickens and other factory-farmed animals, and a few meat inspectors “look the other way” when inspecting food meant for humans, mercury and other toxins could be present in high levels in our factory-farmed animals, waiting for their next poisoning victim.
That is, it is plausible that high concentrations of mercury could be ingested by cows, and other farm animals, especially chickens, and then passed on to those of us who eat animal products (by animals products, I refer to meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy and other animal-derived food) –even to our very susceptible fetuses or young children!
Factory-farmed animals are well-known to be the worst sources of meat as far as toxicity is concerned: they are pumped full of antibiotics, vaccines, and growth hormones on top of whatever pesticide or fish-mercury residues they contain from the food they are fed. Specifically, sources of toxic metals that may be found in factory-farmed meat are:
· Arsenic—found in some ground water the animals may drink, as well as the pesticides that are on the corn and other plant food the animals eat
· Mercury—found in fishmeal as well as in anti-bacterial (anti-biotic)medicines and vaccinations the animals are given, and any mercury-contaminated water they are given
· Lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium—if present in the water that the cows drink or in air-borne deposits on the corn or other food the animals are given that arrive from the air
· Cu—found in fishmeal
One fact we need to take very seriously here is that dairy is known to exacerbate, and sometimes even seems to cause, the symptoms of autism.
(Something which John Robbin’s non-profit organization Earthsave has taught many of us—see “The Milk Letter” by Robert Kradijian, M.D.on the Earthsave website(www.earthsave.org)—is that any lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk. For example, bovine growth hormones--which can cause birth defects and developmental catastrophes in growing children—is well know to be present in cow’s milk, sometimes with devastating consequences to humans. All mammals work in this way; our (the female’s) mammary glands are reservoirs of whatever toxins our bodies take in. Hence, it seems that when we women ingest toxic metals from water, or from meat, dairy and eggs, we not only hurt ourselves; we hurt our unborn and nursing children as well. )
I know of many parents of autistic children who do not allow their children to eat dairy because it seems to increase their children’s autistic symptoms. Several reports from the parents, of autistics, such as those by Karen Seroussi and Dr. Peter Noseworthy, actually claim that they were able to CURE their sons’ autism (diagnosed at before age 3) through eliminating dairy products from their diet! (Noseworthy also used a combination of this, herbs, and behavioral therapies to cure his mildly autistic son.) The implications are obvious, although complicated by the fact that the autistic has trouble breaking down some milk proteins, which causes them to have an opiate-like substance in their bodies.
Distressingly, I was unable to find much information in the FDA or Food Safety and Inspection Service (the FSIS which is responsible for testing meat products) website about the presence or lack of presence of toxic metals in meats, except for fish. Yet the European Union routinely tests for these metals in their animal products, and even has their results published on the Internet! Unfortunately, it is unclear if the United States FDA feels that these toxins in animal products may be a problem--or if they even test for them.
( I came up with several possibilities for this apparent lack of oversight. One is that the FDA do not do this testing at all, which would seem ludicrous, given the odds that high toxic metal concentrations are present in our meat and dairy products. Perhaps since such toxins have probably only become a potential hazard since factory farming has become the norm, FDA scientists and factory farm owners haven’t realized that they should test for these metals. Secondly, they are aware of the problem but simply do not want people to know about it for fear of agricultural profit loss. Given my knowledge of the politics of food, I would guess that, sadly, the latter is the case.)
In any case, more government honesty and true research by the medical establishment is certainly called for in this matter, particularly in relationship to helping find ways of preventing and curing autism. Also, if done with care, and sound dietary information, a vegan diet could have many benefits, and do no harm, to an autistic child.
The Synergistic Effect and Exposure to Other Heavy Metals
Currently, a huge lawsuit is going through the courts in New York City. Families have discovered that lead paint in old tenement houses had caused lead poisoning in their children. Old lead water pipes buried in New England towns, such as Washington, D.C. have led to toxic levels of lead in their water. Many New England towns were built on top of lead pipes, a fact which could explain—in combination perhaps with the effects of a high dose of mercury in a vaccination or from a food source like fish—the high rate of autism in New England. Halsey and Haley have not been the only scientists to point to multiple exposures to multiple sources of toxic metals (including vaccinations) as being part of the etiology of autism. It seems apparent from recent findings of chelation therapies that lead (exposure)—in combination with mercury (exposure)—can lead to autism. (see next section)
It would be interesting to see whether the incidence of autism is also correlated to proximity to coal- and nuclear- processing plants and smelters, another big source of toxic metals and chemicals. A cursory look at the maps that David Kirby shows us in his ground-breaking, recent book Evidence of Harm tells us that there is. Further, evidence from some studies indicate that children born near large farms where a lot of substances contain toxic metals which may leak into the water supply, such as animal waste, pesticides and fertilizers , showed a much higher incidence of autism than other places. More research is needed on the incidence of autism as it relates to these and other potential sources of high levels of toxic metals.
AVAILABLE TREATMENTS FOR AUTISM
Dr. Katherine Clemens, naturopathic doctor and founder of Aurora Therapeutics in Sarasota, Florida, believes that various exposures to toxic metals and other toxic chemicals in the post-industrial environment, in combination with variations in gene expression, are what determines the development of autism:
“Two hundred years ago, we did not have all of the toxins in our environments that we do today. Every day people are exposed to 800 different modern chemicals and high levels of toxic metals. Cleaning up the environment of the autistic child is one of the best things we can do for them.”
Dr. Noseworthy, a board-certified chiropractic-neurologist, agrees, and notes that: “different children with autism need different kinds of treatments….”Treatment of autistic children should also involve using the various occupational, educational, and speech therapies in order to stimulate portions of the autistic brain that could possibly be helped to heal somewhat through their use.”
The implication of the little-written-about idea about food-source causation described in the section above as well as the general theory accepted about autism now is that getting an autistic child away from toxins in their environment and in their diet would be a good idea to give them the best possible health under the circumstances of their autism. Other, therapeutically-based means to improve behavior include therapies such as Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Music Therapy and Applied Behavioral Analysis, often used effectively in schools to help improve the behavior of autistic children.
However, the routine treatments and therapies for autism touted by the medical establishment generally address symptoms, not underlying causes. Mayo lists the administration of anti-psychotic drugs on autistic individuals as an “acceptable and available therapy” to control symptoms, along with behavior therapies, while they disparage chelation therapy (more on this later). Nothing else is listed for helping the autistic, a fact which I find extremely disturbing.
Research done by scientists Haley, Geier and Geier (and published in The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health in 2007) along with James Adams recent work from the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Arizona (see below), among many other noteworthy studies, indicates toxic metals in the etiology of autism and suggested chelation therapy as an effective treatment for autism. Chelation therapy is a method used to remove some heavy metals, particularily lead, antimony and even some mercury, from victims of toxic metal or nuclear accident poisoning; it has shown promise in alleviating some of the symptoms of autism. This fact has helped indicate that, indeed, toxic metal poisoning is the cause of autism . (See www.healing-arts.org , and www.defeatautismnow.com for more information on chelation.) However, it is true that chelation therapy could be dangerous if done incorrectly, that it was not designed for treatment of mercury-poisoning or autism, and that better kinds of toxin-removing chelating agents (besides DMSA) need to be tried.
CHELATION THERAPY
DMSA chelation (or simply “chelation”, although other binding agents besides DMSA are possible) is a process by which toxic metals are bound by DMSA and excreted. DMSA is often used successfully by conventional medical doctors to remove lead, antimony and mercury from the body (although DMSA is known not bind to mercury very well). Professor James Adams of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine did a major DMSA chelation treatment study in October, 2007 to determine if toxic metals are connected to autism, and if chelation therapy helped improve symptoms of autism. (The announcement of the results of this study are on the website www.Defeat Autism Now.com ) Dr. Adams concluded that lead and antimony may be the main toxic metals involved, in addition to mercury, for the development of much classic/severe autism. Other researchers feel that there are various toxic metal and toxin combinations related to vaccines and/or the environment that can lead to classic/severe autism.
Dr. James Adams and others have reported regularily over the past eight years that chelation therapy can provide moderate or great improvement in the symptoms of autism for most of the 0 to 8 year olds who receive it. (Above this age it may not be effective.) It seems cruel that the government has “smeared” its use as for some young autistic children today this seems be the only medical treatment that might be able help improve their behavior.
ANTI-PSYCHOTIC MEDICATION FOR AUTISTIC CHILDREN?
The Mayo Clinic lists several treatments for autism. One is psychological/educational therapies such as speech and occupational therapy and ABA. Another is chelation therapy, which is portrayed on their site as an experimental and possibly dangerous therapy, even though several studies done this past year indicate its great effectiveness. So one would think there would be some other conventional safe medical intervention which would improve the symptoms of autism.
After all, the medical community has known about autism for years (the Autism Research Institute, ARI was founded in 1967, and vaccines were talked about as the possible cause of autism early in the debate on causation in the seventies). However, what has the medical community come up with as the only “acceptable” medical treatment for autism? Psychiatric drugs. Powerful anti-psychotic drugs like Thorazine, Haldol, Prolixin, and Mellaril, among other major tranquilizers and mood stabilizers.
These drugs are known to cause severe nerve and central nervous system damage (‘tardive dyskinesia”) if used over a long period of time (and are extremely uncomfortable for one to be on at high dosages)—why are they being given to autistic children who already have nerve and CNS damage??? Mental health activists such as the mental health professionsals of the prestigious International Center for the Study of Psychology and Psychiatry (ICSSP) and the psychiatric-survivor/family-group MindFreedom International (MFI) have fought for many years to stop the use of these drugs on psychotic adults because of the dangers associated with them. Dangers associated with these drugs actually include not only tardive dyskinesia but also the fatal “Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome”. How could they possibly be good for autistic children?
The ICSSP’s official position on the major tranquilizers, as well as Ritalin, is that they are associated with many dangers and are not appropriate for children in general, and certainly not for developing children, particularly because of risks to their developing bodies. Last year the main focus of their conference was children’s mental health, and the use of alternative school settings and non-biological therapies, rather than medications for children’s behavioral problems. (See www.ICSPP.org for more information.) Parent surveys completed by thousands of families of autistics generally listed psychiatric drugs as ineffective in controlling symptoms (except for those which control seizures).
The psychiatric community, and the medical establishment in general, should be ashamed of themselves.
Why Wasn’t Anything Done Until Now?
Didn’t the FDA or pharmaceutical companies or anybody suspect the dangers of thimerosal, a mercury-containing drug, when it was put on the market almost 80 years ago? Unfortunately a look back into vaccine history reveals that little initial study was done on thimerosal , used as an anti-fungal, anti-bacterial preservative. Starting around the time of the Civil War, or earlier, mercury had been used in various products, such as teething powders and topical antibiotics, and simply wasn’t suspected to be very dangerous when a questionable study showed its safety in 1929. Without going into too much further detail, since the beginning of the history of the use of thimerosal, vaccinations and the study of autism numerable scientific , technological and political errors have been made which have led us to the autism epidemic.
REMOVING THIMEROSAL--IS THE RATE OF AUTISM GOING UP?
It may seem that because thimerosal has been removed from vaccines, that we should see a lower incidence of autism. Numbers on this issue seem to be difficult to come by. I have been able to find statistics on government sites which certainly indicate that the incidence of autism is going down. The numbers say that 21,129 kids born in 1999 were struck down by autism in the U.S., while only 7,538 of those born in 2003 were. However, there is still that troubling growing number of children with autism statistic to deal with. Could it be that the remaining mercury (40% is said to be still left in the mercury and used in processing) would account for the continued incidence of autism? Or could it be that other similarly toxic amounts of mercury or other toxic metals are found in other common things in our environment, such as our polluted soil, water, and animal products (as I have suggested earlier), ?
It seems plausible that the mercury left in the vaccinations might have something to do with it. Also, if the vaccinations in the nineties contained potentially 87 times the mercury than was a safe level, but now they only contain potentially 35 times the safe dose of mercury, would you give your child these vaccinations? Apparently, toxicity levels of the current vaccination should be another area for more research by the medical establishment, if they can be trusted at this point.
However, another theory presented by some, is that the numbers of those labeled “autistic” are inflated due to the more elastic definitions of autism, as well as more funding for diagnosing it. I personally have found , as a teacher working with young autistic children over the past 4 years that: 1) An incomprehensibly large range of kinds of children are labeled “autistic”; children with classic autism are severely disabled, but children with other kinds of spectrum disorders, while benefiting greatly from the Special Education Environment, I would not say are permanently disabled as the severe cases of autism; 2) the numbers of young children coming into our local preschools with classic autism has gone down significantly over the past 4 years; and 3) doctors seem to label many children today as autistic who meet little of the criteria for classic autism. Projections from large studies on prevalence done in 1995 compared to 2000 studies show that diagnoses of autism may be three-fold what it otherwise would have been, simply due to DSM-III expansion of the term “autism” to include such things as Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD). Some urgent work on terminology is required, so that the rates of true autism can be better understood.
I hate to be the one to shout that the emperor is wearing no clothes, but with my background in mental health I have seen many a doctor sling around labels carelessly. That no one complains about the apparent lack of objective criteria for diagnosing autism, in general , may very well be because parents and schools have too much blind faith in the power of the medical establishment, and have the feeling that they do not have all of the “evidence” that doctors might have.
Final Questions
After reading some of the dialogue in one of the first federal court cases I was appalled: why were the lawyers defending the FDA (and pharmaceutical) companies so vicious in their approach towards the unfortunate victims of autism and their families? The medical establishment’s desire to protect their assets is at play, of course. Neither the pharmaceutical companies nor the FDA have ever had the decency to admit to the public that they were responsible for the development of autism in any direct way, despite the noble work of autism activists and Senator Dan Burton (whose grandchild became autistic after receiving a vaccination) to create an open dialogue about the issue .
Also, that the government has shut down the process of litigation for many of the victims of vaccinations is an unforgivable tragedy. In truth, the government, and all of us, should be taking much more care to help alleviate the suffering of all of the autistic victims. Their dealings with the autistic and their family should be full of caring concern.
The only way the members of the medical establishment can make reparations for their mistakes would be by dedicating more of their vast money and research science skills toward finding cures and alleviating symptoms painlessly. Apparently the reason for most of the Lillygates surrounding the autism issue, including placement of an Eli Lilly exective as Bush’s Budget Director, was that Eli Lilly and Bush, Jr., want to protect the medical establishment’s assets. They apparently think that the American public should pay for the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA’s , and doctors, mistakes.
This next few years will be very interesting for those who care about what happens to autistics and their families in the United States. We also should care about what is happening to our counterparts in the Third World, who may not realize that Eli Lilly and other vaccine manufacturers are continuing to send them vaccines containing an extremely high dose of thimerosal, which could cause autism in their young children.
Reportedly, one of the reasons that the link between thimerosal and autism was never made in government research laboratories was that there was a cult-like worship of the goodness and efficacy of the vaccines. Every time someone in the lab found a possible flaw in a vaccine or anytime an outsider criticized the vaccine, their views were reportedly dismissed or squelched. One reason for this was the fear the that the public would stop vaccinating if they found out that something might be wrong with the vaccines.
Blaming people’s genes without recognizing the proven connections between vaccinations or other environmental risk factors and autism is reductionist and simply not responsible medicine.
Instead of trying to cover up the relationship between thimerosal and autism so that the public will not be scared away from vaccinating their children (or for other, more selfish, reasons) the medical establishment should take responsibility for the situation and identifying publically both the dangers of thimerosal and the environmental risk factors for autism. This should include risk factors like those posed by toxic metal exposure from technology, as well as that from dairy, and fish--and possibly from other animal products, as I suggested earlier in this article.
For those of us in the general public, PERHAPS WE NEED TO TRUST, NOT DOCTORS, BUT OUR COMMON SENSE WHEN IT COMES TO VACCINATIONS AND THE MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Some may not want to vaccinate their children or to only choose some of the vaccinations. I would probably vaccinate my children only if I felt it was absolutely necessary to prevent a disease which might be a real threat, and at an age at which they are not so developmentally fragile. But that does not mean that I will stop you from doing it. And I certainly wouldn’t try to coerce or force you to accept vaccinations for diseases that are often archaic or of lesser harm than something as horrendous as autism.
Some questions about the medical-industrial complex that have opened up for me are these: If the pharmaceutical companies were able to make as big a blunder as they have with vaccines, what else might they missing in drug dispensation which could be potentially toxic? These years, people are taking more and more medication—one mental health client I knew recently was on 18 different kinds of medication for various maladies, mental and physical. As a mental health rights proponent, this worries me greatly. I remember with pain that my sister and my first husband (7 years after we split up) both died in their thirties on high dosages of medication (should I be questioning, again, the wisdom of various psychiatric and neurological doctors deciding to put my alcoholic sister on 9 different kinds of prescriptions at the same time, or the fact that my schizophrenic husband was on extremely high dosages of several different psychotropic medication when he died? ) Can we trust Big Pharma companies to thoroughly investigate the interactions of different drugs with the environment and with each other? And to report them to doctors? And for doctors to heed their advice?
At the very least, pharmaceutical companies and doctors as well as the FDA should have—as one of their highest concerns--investigating, and being responsible about reporting to their clients, the possible drug-to-drug and drug-to-genetics interactions of their medications, as well as the drug-to-environment and dietary interactions. Also, respect and tolerance for those who choose not to vaccinate should be mandatory.
Obviously, there would be an inherent political problem with attempting to reduce the toxic metals in our environment in general: toxic metal is tied to “Big Money” . However, I would think that federal regulators and the CEOs and management of major toxic metal-producing businesses--such as coal-producing plants, uranium-processing plants, smelters, pesticide-makers and factory farms--should take the lesson that autism teaches us to heart. The governments of areas which have high levels of toxic metals in their environment must take more responsibility for their removal, even if it means further government regulation. Can we trust them to do this?
Honestly, in truth I believe it is time for us to drop our heart-breaking, capitalistic, techno- centered Western way of life, and begin to look to a way of life more in harmony with Mother Nature and the healthy/happy world God meant us to live in. If this means revolution and upheaval , so be it—I hope the revolution can be a peaceful one.
As a responsible public citizen, a mother who is trying to decide whether or not to continue vaccinating my children, and a victim of pharmaceutical blundering, I would propose that, at this point, and at the very least, the medical-industrial complex has already broken the trust of the American public. If the medical establishment truly wants that trust back, then some honest self-analysis of the faults of our current medical system and appropriate changes in public policy is called for urgently. A public explanation of what has happened and what is happening concerning thimerosal, along with appropriate evidence of trustworthiness--rather than sending out misleading news reports or trying to suppress the truth--are what will most likely bring public confidence for our public health service--and for vaccinations--back.
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With the controversy raging about autism and vaccines right now due to test cases about the subject finally being heard in federal court, I wondered about the reasons such a misleading report would be coming out. It was a perfect subject for me to write about, especially as it seemed my past—working in psychiatric clients’ rights advocacy, in vegan education and more recently as a special education teacher—might give me a different perspective on autism. (I also have a psychology degree, pre-medical requirements met, from The University of California at Berkeley).
Four years ago, I felt led to work with special education children. I had many questions about autism as I began . Was it true what anti-vaccine groups had been saying—that vaccines or the mercury-containing thimerosal within them causes autism? Was autism really “childhood schizophrenia” as many thought? What did consumption of dairy have to do with it?? What could anyone do to help these unfortunate children and their families?
After I began working with autistic children, I made some disturbing discoveries. Autistic children are routinely being given anti-psychotic medication whose safety and efficacy is extremely controversial in adult mental health. I felt I needed to take a stand, which Is one major topic of this article.
Other distressing information about autism came to light. I discovered that Eli Lilly executives, working with Bush Jr.’s White House, been able to secretly put an “immunity” clause into the Homeland Security Act, absolving them of any future liability in lawsuits filed by parents who felt their children were damaged by vaccines. Then I discovered that the Food and Drug Administration, the regulator of pharmaceuticals, as well as upper management at Merke and Eli Lilly manufacters had for years ignored evidence that vaccines were related to autism, even though major players in the pharmaceutical industry knew it before 1991. Why is the government is taking the blame for mistakes made in vaccine production, rather than big pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, and Mercke??
Other propelling questions came up: How safe are vaccinations now, truly, as only 60% of thimerosal had been removed by 2003 (some is still used in “processing”), but only as a supposed “precautionary measure”? And why are autistics’ parents’ group still protesting? I had begun vaccinating my children this past year—should I continue?
I also discovered that under The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (of 1986), as of May 2008, over 5,000 lawsuits are currently lined up against the FDA on behalf of Eli Lilly and other big pharmaceutical companies (also known as Big Pharma) with much convincing evidence that the medical-industrial complex was responsible for the development of autism in children who had vaccines containing thimerosal. What would happen to the autistics and their families involved in the test cases being heard this year in a probably brutal Federal Court? Dutifully, I began my investigation for this report.
I became a bit alarmed at what I found: the medical establishment had begun learning of the dangers of thimerosal in 1991, yet the removal of thimerosal from the vaccines is said to have actually been completed in the U.S. and Europe by only 2003! Furthermore, all the cases which had been lined up in state courts prior to 2002, were ordered shut down by the Federal government after passage of the Homeland Security Act, and half of them were never allowed in court again!
FDA Politics, Vaccines and Autism: Some Information Please
More shockingly, countries of the Third World are still being shipped the original thimerosal -containing vaccines, because the government and pharmaceutical companies feel it would be too expensive to get the vaccines there without it. Is this ethical U.S.foreign policy? Who in our country might be similar victims of the pharmaceutical lust for profits over vaccine safety?
Although encouraging the American public to continue to have confidence in the vaccination process, which could conceivably be considered noble, the CNN report did nothing to further public understanding of the complicated science and politics behind autism research. It also failed to mention that some vaccines, like the flu vaccine, still contain large doses of Thimerosal, or that top pharmaceutical company executives and the administration of both Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. presidencies have behaved in an illegal and unethical way in approaching the critical issue of autism and the safety of vaccinations.
Questions about the political issues involved are important, but my true interests are with the victims of autism and it seems that my investigation into the dairy question is leading somewhere. After doing my own research into the possible causes of autism, I discovered a possible link in the autism debate, which might help explain both the reasons that having vaccinations alone does not account for all of the cases of autism, as well as the reason that removing dairy (and meats, etc.) from the diet can sometimes be helpful to the autistic child. I outline it below (and I hope that someone takes it to heart).
First, some background information . I know through my work with mental health politics that doctors, pharmaceutical executives and the Food and Drug Administation sometimes work together to promote “treatments” and practices which are not scientifically and morally sound, often with good intentions but with a lack of ability to look objectively at their work in the face of criticism. The general public views their word as Gods. They are known to critics as the “medical-industrial complex”, or what I have called the “medical establishment”, responsible for such horrors as the widespread use of lobotomies to control mental patients in the fifties and sixties (depicted in the famous film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and the 20th century advocacy (still going on today) of animal products such as beef and dairy as nutritious foods in the face of massive evidence to the contrary (of their causing heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer).
Furthermore, like chess players—and going totally against the spirit of the founding of the FDA--various profit-making industries and pharmaceutical companies have their “chessmen” put in place on FDA boards (sometimes innocently, but) so that their interests are promoted, and thus the “regulators” become part of the problem. Concerned industries also fund much research supporting their causes, which the FDA swallows whole, such as the dairy industry’s robust funding of research into the causes of cancer during the past 20 years, which “proves” that genetics are the primary factor.
Eli Lilly, the primary producer of thimerosal, employed many FDA board members, and had politician and Ex-CIA director George Bush, Sr. on their board of directors in the seventies and eighties which he failed to disclose when he ran for vice-president. One of several other “Lillygates” which have happened in recent years, Eli Lilly also donated $1.6 million dollars to the Bush campaign of 2000, and then had their own Mitch Daniels appointed as his Budget Director.
Bruce Levine discusses various other “Lillygates” in his article published on the ISPPC website, including that Lilly in recent years was the financier of the million dollar nationwide campaigns by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (a supposedly non-profit family support group) on behalf of Zyprexa, an expensive ineffective drug marketed as an anti-psychotic but controversial for its links to diabetes and draining Medicaid funds . I would not be surprised if they have been much of the funding for research trying to prove that genetics are the primary cause for autism (More on Lilly and anti-psychotic drugs later.)
The Etiology of Autism in Relation to Thimerosal, and Medical Responsibility
What is thimerosal and how does it cause autism? Most responsible scientists today see an important connection between thimerosal and vaccinations, although it does not explain autism in its entirety. The pharmaceutical companies and the FDA spent many precious years denying and covering up any connection—and they are still confusing the issue. Some basic details: prior to 2003, many vaccines contained an outrageously high amount of the toxic metal, mercury, in the form of a preservative called thimerosal. Thus for sixty or seventy years, doses of large/multi-dose vial (versus small /individual vial dose) vaccine given during vaccination “Well Baby Visits”, contained enough mercury to have been the primary cause of autism in many infants and young children.
One main reason Thimerosal was theorized to be linked to autism so initially is that the results of severe mercury poisoning are the same as the symptoms of “classic”, or “severe”, autism: low I.Q., mental retardation, stereotyped behavior, failure to develop speech, speech comprehension deficits, sound and light sensitivities, severe social withdrawal and maladaptive behavior. (Those who have “high functioning” autism—which has different symptoms and is thought by many to be a separate disorder—may have a different cause.)
Having worked with these children, I can truly say that their plight is heartbreaking, for their parents as well as for the rest of us. We all need to take an honest look at what our responsibilies are in relation to the autistic. Physicians and the rest of the medical establishment in particular need to take more responsibility to help those with classic autism and their families.
The medical establishment has been reluctant to take responsibility for autism for many reasons, but one major one is that the scientific evidence until about 18 years ago has been confusing. For one thing, if thimerosal is so dangerous, why don’t all children given vaccinations develop autism? The generally accepted theory among responsible scientists now is that autism most likely occurs in various intensity, versus not at all, in conjunction with vaccinations, depending on the amount of the developing child’s (or pregnant woman’s ) exposure to the vaccine’s mercury in combination with the amount of exposure to other toxic metals in the environment and diet. That is:
[High dosage of Mercury + Exposure to Other Toxic Metals]= Autism
The high dosage of mercury which seems most suspect is the dosage from Thimerosal. Examples of “other toxic metals” which seem to play some role, include many of the “heavy metals” and some metalloids, such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, and antimony. Also, exposure to a different kind of mercury, methyl mercury, can take the place of either addend in the equation. The stress on the immune system following multiple vaccinations could possibly partially explain the lack of ability to handle a high amount of mercury, other toxic metals or other disease-causing agents. (This last is thought to be involved with the complex autism following the MMR vaccination, which is often administered in conjunction with thimerosal in other vaccinations, as the measles virus can thus survive often shows up in the child’s body).
The child’s inherited ability to cope with toxic metals is also thought to play a small role; some people are born with a lower tolerance for mercury, partially due to a lowered immunity to mercury exposure which is passed on to a child from its mother.
However, to truly understand the causes of autism, one must turn to the important research of pioneer Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky in the mid-nineties who found that thimerosal damaged the brain and central nervous system (Mothering Magazine published Haley’s research in 2002). It later became known that the human body can generally only handle certain amounts of mercury and other toxic metals by themselves; in combination, the effects from mercury and other toxic metals is multiplied exponentially.
Haley in his 2002 study showing that (thimerosal’s) ethyl-mercury combines synergistically with methyl-mercury (from fish or other sources) reveals how vaccine mercury is thought to interact with an environmental source of mercury exponentially (“synergistically “) to produce autism . He had also found in earlier studies that toxic metals in general can react synergistically with mercury . Dr. Haley called ethyl-mercury and methyl-mercury “oink and oink-oink”. (More on synergistic effects later.)
[Jill James did important work showing that autistics had a lower level of glutathione (an immune response to toxic metals) than normal, which may indicate a large number of free radicals in the body . Mitochondrial damage (which comes into play in the recent, landmark Poling autism case) and lower glutathione production could also be based on genetic variables. Destruction of, or damage to, glutathion by a toxin like mercury or other toxic metal could also play a role. Hence, any live virus’ in the body—such as those from a vaccine such as the MMR--might not be able to be dealt with by the damaged immune system, adding insult to injury in the most severe cases of autism.]
One tragic and ironic element of this nightmare is that toxic me tals in the environment have been steadily increasing in our environment since the industrial age, so that many in the general public are becoming alarmed. Primary sources of toxic metals in our air, soil, food and water are from metal purification plants (“smelters”), coal-producing plants, and uranium processing plants, not to mention chemical manufacturers and those who produce pesticides.
Thus, ironically, we are now dealing with a disease caused in part by vaccines and mandated vaccination programs which were created and grew in response the rapidly growing cities and concurrent diseases of the early Industrial Age. The fact that both vaccine and pollutant sources of mercury and other toxic metals have been growing since the advent of vaccines is also another indication of the validity of linking mercury (in combination with other toxic metal exposure) with autism.
We must keep in mind too, that not all cases of autism can be traced back to mercury in the vaccinations. At least some parents of autistic children claim that their own child’s autism had nothing to do with vaccinations. Could it be that vaccinations are only one primary source of mercury which could appear in a fetus’ or growing child’s environment, but that other sources of mercury in the environment, such as dietary ones, might also be another primary source in action?
A NEW VARIABLE: The Meat/Poultry, Fish and Dairy Connection
So reputable scientists generally concur now that thimerasol (and possibly merthiolate, another vaccine preservative) can be the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, for children who also had either high levels of mercury and/or toxic metal in their diet/ environment and/or low inherited or genetic tolerance to mercury/toxic metals. More like the “bale of straw that broke the camel’s back” for some, as it was finally discovered by FDA scientists and Neal Halsey, M.D. of the University of Wisconsin, a famous international vaccinologist. These scientists finally “did the math” on thimerosal in 1999 and found that a single vaccination visit a child might receive 85-87 times the FDA standard for mercury, depending on how many “large vial” thimerosal doses that they were receiving)! It may be possible, again, that this kind of dose of mercury can also be found in other environmental sources.
The FDA mercury standard was based on the fact that mercury is found in large amounts in fish, and the FDA had seen a need to regulate fish intake during the eighties because the levels of mercury in fish have been rising quickly. Warnings had begun to be issued particularly for pregnant women, whose fetuses were known to be at risk for development of severe mercury poisoning . Halsey toyed with this theory of the ethylmercury/vaccine + methylmercuy/fish = autism connection in 1999: American fish of the past hundred years contain higher and higher levels of mercury and other toxic metals because the water they live in is routinely contaminated with them. This pollution’s sources are everything from smelter smoke deposits and pollution from various industries to water run-off from factory farms.
How does mercury pollution happen in the food chain? As many of us know, mercury doesn’t just pass through an animal’s body easily; all of the mercury in a small fish that a bigger fish eats is passed on to that fish, along with the mercury that THAT fish has eaten, and then an even larger fish eats the smaller fish and picks up all ITS mercury PLUS its own, and so on. When a mammal (including human) eats fish, or otherwise absorbs mercury, they too cannot digest the mercury well, and end up storing it in their bodies, primarily in their fat, or in the case of females, in their fat and mammary glands.
If there exists a preexisting inability to process it, or if the dose of mercury is too high for the immune or secretion systems of the body to handle it, the mercury can also enter the blood stream, ” floating around” and wreaking havoc on the brain and central nervous system, the endocrine system and the digestive system, so that theoretically the human eating the “wrong bite” at the top of the food chain could be ingesting a huge dose of mercury. Halsey’s initial theory concerning autism was that ethyl mercury in vaccinations combines with the methyl mercury in fish synergistically so that an overload of toxicity is presented to the fetus’ or small child’s developing nervous system, leading to the encephalopathy (brain and central nervous system disorder) of autism.
One of the major bombshells for me in doing this investigation was the realization--through John Robbin’s Pulitzer-prize-winning works on the dangers of animal product consumption—that mercury-contaminated fishmeal became, as meat production became industrialized and geared towards profits, a primary source of food for farm animals. In fact, the main component of ninety-percent (90%) of the food fed to chickens on factory farms, and half of all of the feed fed to factory-farmed animals in general!
Studies such as those published in 1979 by the Council on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Defense Fund document clearly how DDT, and other toxic chemicals like mercury have been found in our food supply through ending up in our waterways and soils and will contaminate our food for many generations due to lack of effectiveness of government regulators. Food inspectors from the Department of Agriculture are notorious for “looking the other way” when it comes to inspecting animal products for toxins, according to food-crusader John Robbins. Additionally, shockingly, according to Food and Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org, 2008) the fishmeal which is used to feed farm animals (and other fish) routinely has been found by independent researchers to have an average of 51ppb (ranging from 7 to 91 ppb) of mercury—when FDA regulators are supposed to declare it unsafe at 20 ppb.. If even a few inspectors actually are letting mercury-poisoned fishmeal through to be fed to factory-farmed fish,chickens and other factory-farmed animals, and a few meat inspectors “look the other way” when inspecting food meant for humans, mercury and other toxins could be present in high levels in our factory-farmed animals, waiting for their next poisoning victim.
That is, it is plausible that high concentrations of mercury could be ingested by cows, and other farm animals, especially chickens, and then passed on to those of us who eat animal products (by animals products, I refer to meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy and other animal-derived food) –even to our very susceptible fetuses or young children!
Factory-farmed animals are well-known to be the worst sources of meat as far as toxicity is concerned: they are pumped full of antibiotics, vaccines, and growth hormones on top of whatever pesticide or fish-mercury residues they contain from the food they are fed. Specifically, sources of toxic metals that may be found in factory-farmed meat are:
· Arsenic—found in some ground water the animals may drink, as well as the pesticides that are on the corn and other plant food the animals eat
· Mercury—found in fishmeal as well as in anti-bacterial (anti-biotic)medicines and vaccinations the animals are given, and any mercury-contaminated water they are given
· Lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium—if present in the water that the cows drink or in air-borne deposits on the corn or other food the animals are given that arrive from the air
· Cu—found in fishmeal
One fact we need to take very seriously here is that dairy is known to exacerbate, and sometimes even seems to cause, the symptoms of autism.
(Something which John Robbin’s non-profit organization Earthsave has taught many of us—see “The Milk Letter” by Robert Kradijian, M.D.on the Earthsave website(www.earthsave.org)—is that any lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk. For example, bovine growth hormones--which can cause birth defects and developmental catastrophes in growing children—is well know to be present in cow’s milk, sometimes with devastating consequences to humans. All mammals work in this way; our (the female’s) mammary glands are reservoirs of whatever toxins our bodies take in. Hence, it seems that when we women ingest toxic metals from water, or from meat, dairy and eggs, we not only hurt ourselves; we hurt our unborn and nursing children as well. )
I know of many parents of autistic children who do not allow their children to eat dairy because it seems to increase their children’s autistic symptoms. Several reports from the parents, of autistics, such as those by Karen Seroussi and Dr. Peter Noseworthy, actually claim that they were able to CURE their sons’ autism (diagnosed at before age 3) through eliminating dairy products from their diet! (Noseworthy also used a combination of this, herbs, and behavioral therapies to cure his mildly autistic son.) The implications are obvious, although complicated by the fact that the autistic has trouble breaking down some milk proteins, which causes them to have an opiate-like substance in their bodies.
Distressingly, I was unable to find much information in the FDA or Food Safety and Inspection Service (the FSIS which is responsible for testing meat products) website about the presence or lack of presence of toxic metals in meats, except for fish. Yet the European Union routinely tests for these metals in their animal products, and even has their results published on the Internet! Unfortunately, it is unclear if the United States FDA feels that these toxins in animal products may be a problem--or if they even test for them.
( I came up with several possibilities for this apparent lack of oversight. One is that the FDA do not do this testing at all, which would seem ludicrous, given the odds that high toxic metal concentrations are present in our meat and dairy products. Perhaps since such toxins have probably only become a potential hazard since factory farming has become the norm, FDA scientists and factory farm owners haven’t realized that they should test for these metals. Secondly, they are aware of the problem but simply do not want people to know about it for fear of agricultural profit loss. Given my knowledge of the politics of food, I would guess that, sadly, the latter is the case.)
In any case, more government honesty and true research by the medical establishment is certainly called for in this matter, particularly in relationship to helping find ways of preventing and curing autism. Also, if done with care, and sound dietary information, a vegan diet could have many benefits, and do no harm, to an autistic child.
The Synergistic Effect and Exposure to Other Heavy Metals
Currently, a huge lawsuit is going through the courts in New York City. Families have discovered that lead paint in old tenement houses had caused lead poisoning in their children. Old lead water pipes buried in New England towns, such as Washington, D.C. have led to toxic levels of lead in their water. Many New England towns were built on top of lead pipes, a fact which could explain—in combination perhaps with the effects of a high dose of mercury in a vaccination or from a food source like fish—the high rate of autism in New England. Halsey and Haley have not been the only scientists to point to multiple exposures to multiple sources of toxic metals (including vaccinations) as being part of the etiology of autism. It seems apparent from recent findings of chelation therapies that lead (exposure)—in combination with mercury (exposure)—can lead to autism. (see next section)
It would be interesting to see whether the incidence of autism is also correlated to proximity to coal- and nuclear- processing plants and smelters, another big source of toxic metals and chemicals. A cursory look at the maps that David Kirby shows us in his ground-breaking, recent book Evidence of Harm tells us that there is. Further, evidence from some studies indicate that children born near large farms where a lot of substances contain toxic metals which may leak into the water supply, such as animal waste, pesticides and fertilizers , showed a much higher incidence of autism than other places. More research is needed on the incidence of autism as it relates to these and other potential sources of high levels of toxic metals.
AVAILABLE TREATMENTS FOR AUTISM
Dr. Katherine Clemens, naturopathic doctor and founder of Aurora Therapeutics in Sarasota, Florida, believes that various exposures to toxic metals and other toxic chemicals in the post-industrial environment, in combination with variations in gene expression, are what determines the development of autism:
“Two hundred years ago, we did not have all of the toxins in our environments that we do today. Every day people are exposed to 800 different modern chemicals and high levels of toxic metals. Cleaning up the environment of the autistic child is one of the best things we can do for them.”
Dr. Noseworthy, a board-certified chiropractic-neurologist, agrees, and notes that: “different children with autism need different kinds of treatments….”Treatment of autistic children should also involve using the various occupational, educational, and speech therapies in order to stimulate portions of the autistic brain that could possibly be helped to heal somewhat through their use.”
The implication of the little-written-about idea about food-source causation described in the section above as well as the general theory accepted about autism now is that getting an autistic child away from toxins in their environment and in their diet would be a good idea to give them the best possible health under the circumstances of their autism. Other, therapeutically-based means to improve behavior include therapies such as Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Music Therapy and Applied Behavioral Analysis, often used effectively in schools to help improve the behavior of autistic children.
However, the routine treatments and therapies for autism touted by the medical establishment generally address symptoms, not underlying causes. Mayo lists the administration of anti-psychotic drugs on autistic individuals as an “acceptable and available therapy” to control symptoms, along with behavior therapies, while they disparage chelation therapy (more on this later). Nothing else is listed for helping the autistic, a fact which I find extremely disturbing.
Research done by scientists Haley, Geier and Geier (and published in The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health in 2007) along with James Adams recent work from the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Arizona (see below), among many other noteworthy studies, indicates toxic metals in the etiology of autism and suggested chelation therapy as an effective treatment for autism. Chelation therapy is a method used to remove some heavy metals, particularily lead, antimony and even some mercury, from victims of toxic metal or nuclear accident poisoning; it has shown promise in alleviating some of the symptoms of autism. This fact has helped indicate that, indeed, toxic metal poisoning is the cause of autism . (See www.healing-arts.org , and www.defeatautismnow.com for more information on chelation.) However, it is true that chelation therapy could be dangerous if done incorrectly, that it was not designed for treatment of mercury-poisoning or autism, and that better kinds of toxin-removing chelating agents (besides DMSA) need to be tried.
CHELATION THERAPY
DMSA chelation (or simply “chelation”, although other binding agents besides DMSA are possible) is a process by which toxic metals are bound by DMSA and excreted. DMSA is often used successfully by conventional medical doctors to remove lead, antimony and mercury from the body (although DMSA is known not bind to mercury very well). Professor James Adams of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine did a major DMSA chelation treatment study in October, 2007 to determine if toxic metals are connected to autism, and if chelation therapy helped improve symptoms of autism. (The announcement of the results of this study are on the website www.Defeat Autism Now.com ) Dr. Adams concluded that lead and antimony may be the main toxic metals involved, in addition to mercury, for the development of much classic/severe autism. Other researchers feel that there are various toxic metal and toxin combinations related to vaccines and/or the environment that can lead to classic/severe autism.
Dr. James Adams and others have reported regularily over the past eight years that chelation therapy can provide moderate or great improvement in the symptoms of autism for most of the 0 to 8 year olds who receive it. (Above this age it may not be effective.) It seems cruel that the government has “smeared” its use as for some young autistic children today this seems be the only medical treatment that might be able help improve their behavior.
ANTI-PSYCHOTIC MEDICATION FOR AUTISTIC CHILDREN?
The Mayo Clinic lists several treatments for autism. One is psychological/educational therapies such as speech and occupational therapy and ABA. Another is chelation therapy, which is portrayed on their site as an experimental and possibly dangerous therapy, even though several studies done this past year indicate its great effectiveness. So one would think there would be some other conventional safe medical intervention which would improve the symptoms of autism.
After all, the medical community has known about autism for years (the Autism Research Institute, ARI was founded in 1967, and vaccines were talked about as the possible cause of autism early in the debate on causation in the seventies). However, what has the medical community come up with as the only “acceptable” medical treatment for autism? Psychiatric drugs. Powerful anti-psychotic drugs like Thorazine, Haldol, Prolixin, and Mellaril, among other major tranquilizers and mood stabilizers.
These drugs are known to cause severe nerve and central nervous system damage (‘tardive dyskinesia”) if used over a long period of time (and are extremely uncomfortable for one to be on at high dosages)—why are they being given to autistic children who already have nerve and CNS damage??? Mental health activists such as the mental health professionsals of the prestigious International Center for the Study of Psychology and Psychiatry (ICSSP) and the psychiatric-survivor/family-group MindFreedom International (MFI) have fought for many years to stop the use of these drugs on psychotic adults because of the dangers associated with them. Dangers associated with these drugs actually include not only tardive dyskinesia but also the fatal “Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome”. How could they possibly be good for autistic children?
The ICSSP’s official position on the major tranquilizers, as well as Ritalin, is that they are associated with many dangers and are not appropriate for children in general, and certainly not for developing children, particularly because of risks to their developing bodies. Last year the main focus of their conference was children’s mental health, and the use of alternative school settings and non-biological therapies, rather than medications for children’s behavioral problems. (See www.ICSPP.org for more information.) Parent surveys completed by thousands of families of autistics generally listed psychiatric drugs as ineffective in controlling symptoms (except for those which control seizures).
The psychiatric community, and the medical establishment in general, should be ashamed of themselves.
Why Wasn’t Anything Done Until Now?
Didn’t the FDA or pharmaceutical companies or anybody suspect the dangers of thimerosal, a mercury-containing drug, when it was put on the market almost 80 years ago? Unfortunately a look back into vaccine history reveals that little initial study was done on thimerosal , used as an anti-fungal, anti-bacterial preservative. Starting around the time of the Civil War, or earlier, mercury had been used in various products, such as teething powders and topical antibiotics, and simply wasn’t suspected to be very dangerous when a questionable study showed its safety in 1929. Without going into too much further detail, since the beginning of the history of the use of thimerosal, vaccinations and the study of autism numerable scientific , technological and political errors have been made which have led us to the autism epidemic.
REMOVING THIMEROSAL--IS THE RATE OF AUTISM GOING UP?
It may seem that because thimerosal has been removed from vaccines, that we should see a lower incidence of autism. Numbers on this issue seem to be difficult to come by. I have been able to find statistics on government sites which certainly indicate that the incidence of autism is going down. The numbers say that 21,129 kids born in 1999 were struck down by autism in the U.S., while only 7,538 of those born in 2003 were. However, there is still that troubling growing number of children with autism statistic to deal with. Could it be that the remaining mercury (40% is said to be still left in the mercury and used in processing) would account for the continued incidence of autism? Or could it be that other similarly toxic amounts of mercury or other toxic metals are found in other common things in our environment, such as our polluted soil, water, and animal products (as I have suggested earlier), ?
It seems plausible that the mercury left in the vaccinations might have something to do with it. Also, if the vaccinations in the nineties contained potentially 87 times the mercury than was a safe level, but now they only contain potentially 35 times the safe dose of mercury, would you give your child these vaccinations? Apparently, toxicity levels of the current vaccination should be another area for more research by the medical establishment, if they can be trusted at this point.
However, another theory presented by some, is that the numbers of those labeled “autistic” are inflated due to the more elastic definitions of autism, as well as more funding for diagnosing it. I personally have found , as a teacher working with young autistic children over the past 4 years that: 1) An incomprehensibly large range of kinds of children are labeled “autistic”; children with classic autism are severely disabled, but children with other kinds of spectrum disorders, while benefiting greatly from the Special Education Environment, I would not say are permanently disabled as the severe cases of autism; 2) the numbers of young children coming into our local preschools with classic autism has gone down significantly over the past 4 years; and 3) doctors seem to label many children today as autistic who meet little of the criteria for classic autism. Projections from large studies on prevalence done in 1995 compared to 2000 studies show that diagnoses of autism may be three-fold what it otherwise would have been, simply due to DSM-III expansion of the term “autism” to include such things as Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD). Some urgent work on terminology is required, so that the rates of true autism can be better understood.
I hate to be the one to shout that the emperor is wearing no clothes, but with my background in mental health I have seen many a doctor sling around labels carelessly. That no one complains about the apparent lack of objective criteria for diagnosing autism, in general , may very well be because parents and schools have too much blind faith in the power of the medical establishment, and have the feeling that they do not have all of the “evidence” that doctors might have.
Final Questions
After reading some of the dialogue in one of the first federal court cases I was appalled: why were the lawyers defending the FDA (and pharmaceutical) companies so vicious in their approach towards the unfortunate victims of autism and their families? The medical establishment’s desire to protect their assets is at play, of course. Neither the pharmaceutical companies nor the FDA have ever had the decency to admit to the public that they were responsible for the development of autism in any direct way, despite the noble work of autism activists and Senator Dan Burton (whose grandchild became autistic after receiving a vaccination) to create an open dialogue about the issue .
Also, that the government has shut down the process of litigation for many of the victims of vaccinations is an unforgivable tragedy. In truth, the government, and all of us, should be taking much more care to help alleviate the suffering of all of the autistic victims. Their dealings with the autistic and their family should be full of caring concern.
The only way the members of the medical establishment can make reparations for their mistakes would be by dedicating more of their vast money and research science skills toward finding cures and alleviating symptoms painlessly. Apparently the reason for most of the Lillygates surrounding the autism issue, including placement of an Eli Lilly exective as Bush’s Budget Director, was that Eli Lilly and Bush, Jr., want to protect the medical establishment’s assets. They apparently think that the American public should pay for the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA’s , and doctors, mistakes.
This next few years will be very interesting for those who care about what happens to autistics and their families in the United States. We also should care about what is happening to our counterparts in the Third World, who may not realize that Eli Lilly and other vaccine manufacturers are continuing to send them vaccines containing an extremely high dose of thimerosal, which could cause autism in their young children.
Reportedly, one of the reasons that the link between thimerosal and autism was never made in government research laboratories was that there was a cult-like worship of the goodness and efficacy of the vaccines. Every time someone in the lab found a possible flaw in a vaccine or anytime an outsider criticized the vaccine, their views were reportedly dismissed or squelched. One reason for this was the fear the that the public would stop vaccinating if they found out that something might be wrong with the vaccines.
Blaming people’s genes without recognizing the proven connections between vaccinations or other environmental risk factors and autism is reductionist and simply not responsible medicine.
Instead of trying to cover up the relationship between thimerosal and autism so that the public will not be scared away from vaccinating their children (or for other, more selfish, reasons) the medical establishment should take responsibility for the situation and identifying publically both the dangers of thimerosal and the environmental risk factors for autism. This should include risk factors like those posed by toxic metal exposure from technology, as well as that from dairy, and fish--and possibly from other animal products, as I suggested earlier in this article.
For those of us in the general public, PERHAPS WE NEED TO TRUST, NOT DOCTORS, BUT OUR COMMON SENSE WHEN IT COMES TO VACCINATIONS AND THE MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Some may not want to vaccinate their children or to only choose some of the vaccinations. I would probably vaccinate my children only if I felt it was absolutely necessary to prevent a disease which might be a real threat, and at an age at which they are not so developmentally fragile. But that does not mean that I will stop you from doing it. And I certainly wouldn’t try to coerce or force you to accept vaccinations for diseases that are often archaic or of lesser harm than something as horrendous as autism.
Some questions about the medical-industrial complex that have opened up for me are these: If the pharmaceutical companies were able to make as big a blunder as they have with vaccines, what else might they missing in drug dispensation which could be potentially toxic? These years, people are taking more and more medication—one mental health client I knew recently was on 18 different kinds of medication for various maladies, mental and physical. As a mental health rights proponent, this worries me greatly. I remember with pain that my sister and my first husband (7 years after we split up) both died in their thirties on high dosages of medication (should I be questioning, again, the wisdom of various psychiatric and neurological doctors deciding to put my alcoholic sister on 9 different kinds of prescriptions at the same time, or the fact that my schizophrenic husband was on extremely high dosages of several different psychotropic medication when he died? ) Can we trust Big Pharma companies to thoroughly investigate the interactions of different drugs with the environment and with each other? And to report them to doctors? And for doctors to heed their advice?
At the very least, pharmaceutical companies and doctors as well as the FDA should have—as one of their highest concerns--investigating, and being responsible about reporting to their clients, the possible drug-to-drug and drug-to-genetics interactions of their medications, as well as the drug-to-environment and dietary interactions. Also, respect and tolerance for those who choose not to vaccinate should be mandatory.
Obviously, there would be an inherent political problem with attempting to reduce the toxic metals in our environment in general: toxic metal is tied to “Big Money” . However, I would think that federal regulators and the CEOs and management of major toxic metal-producing businesses--such as coal-producing plants, uranium-processing plants, smelters, pesticide-makers and factory farms--should take the lesson that autism teaches us to heart. The governments of areas which have high levels of toxic metals in their environment must take more responsibility for their removal, even if it means further government regulation. Can we trust them to do this?
Honestly, in truth I believe it is time for us to drop our heart-breaking, capitalistic, techno- centered Western way of life, and begin to look to a way of life more in harmony with Mother Nature and the healthy/happy world God meant us to live in. If this means revolution and upheaval , so be it—I hope the revolution can be a peaceful one.
As a responsible public citizen, a mother who is trying to decide whether or not to continue vaccinating my children, and a victim of pharmaceutical blundering, I would propose that, at this point, and at the very least, the medical-industrial complex has already broken the trust of the American public. If the medical establishment truly wants that trust back, then some honest self-analysis of the faults of our current medical system and appropriate changes in public policy is called for urgently. A public explanation of what has happened and what is happening concerning thimerosal, along with appropriate evidence of trustworthiness--rather than sending out misleading news reports or trying to suppress the truth--are what will most likely bring public confidence for our public health service--and for vaccinations--back.
.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Autism--Best Approaches Do NOT Include Psychotropic Drugs
This past few years, besides working on a volunteer basis with adult mental health clients, I have also been working with autistic children as a teacher, part-time. I noticed with surprise (from a clinical point of view) that an extraordinary range of behaviors constituted a diagnoses of autism: everything from behavior which was a bit unfocused to serious rocking back and forth, self-stimulation, no words or eye contact (all symptoms of severe/classic autism).
Because I had heard that these children were suffering from "childhood schizophrenia" and was curious and wanted to help, I had decided to try working with autistic children, in part to investigate. I was struck by how these children, at first glance, appeared so normal. Perhaps they were suffering from a purely non-biological, psychological dysfunction that could be cured through purely psychosocial means (such as I believe is the case with adult mental health problems).
However, after investigating every psychosocial means I could to "reach" these children, I realized that there was, indeed, an underlying biochemical problem of some kind. My first thought, due to my training in psychology (I have a bachelors in clinical psychology from U.C.B.)was some kind of brain injury which affected speech centers. I concluded after reading a few articles on the subject in local alternative health magazines that the mercury contained in vaccinations, a nerve cell toxin, might very well be responsible. These children are certainly suffering from brain and central nervous system damage, which must have come from some sort of toxin. I am not big on the genetic theories of illnesses, as I believe that these theories are reductionist and ignore real problems such as those which might be present in the diet and environment which need to be addressed.
I was alarmed when I heard that autistic children were being administered psychiatric medication, as I am quite familiar with all of the controversy surrounding their safety for adults. I decided to do my own investigation of the literature, to see what was out there on the subject.
I ended up going on a marathon two week information chase which turned everything that I thought I knew about autism upside down. Some, but not all, parents found their children starting showing signs of autism after vaccinations. Others felt it stemmed from birth or from some other variable which occured during the early developmental years.
I found that it has become fairly well established that toxic metals, including extra-high doses of thimerosal (the mercury-containing preservative which was found in excessive amounts in vaccinations prior to 2003), were the environmental toxin in question. It was in trying to find possible sources of toxins that I made my important discovery.
Sources of high amounts of toxic metals in the U.S. include coal- and uranium-processing plants, lead from old lead pipes, run-off from large farms and factory-farms (due to animal waste, pesticide and fertilizer run-off) and fish. Not only do fish in the U.S. now contain very high amounts of mercury, but this contaminated fish comprises the feed grain for 50% of all factory-farmed animals and 90% of all chickenfeed! And because t is well-known among food activists that FDA and Dept. of Agriculture testing for contaminated meat and dairy is poor I hypothesized that food sources of mercury could also contribute to the development of autism. This fact should be researched further.
In any event, I remain concerned about the use of psychotropic medication to control the symptoms of autism. These powerful drugs act upon the body primarily through the nervous system, and could affect development so their use with nerve-damaged children is horrendous.
Because I had heard that these children were suffering from "childhood schizophrenia" and was curious and wanted to help, I had decided to try working with autistic children, in part to investigate. I was struck by how these children, at first glance, appeared so normal. Perhaps they were suffering from a purely non-biological, psychological dysfunction that could be cured through purely psychosocial means (such as I believe is the case with adult mental health problems).
However, after investigating every psychosocial means I could to "reach" these children, I realized that there was, indeed, an underlying biochemical problem of some kind. My first thought, due to my training in psychology (I have a bachelors in clinical psychology from U.C.B.)was some kind of brain injury which affected speech centers. I concluded after reading a few articles on the subject in local alternative health magazines that the mercury contained in vaccinations, a nerve cell toxin, might very well be responsible. These children are certainly suffering from brain and central nervous system damage, which must have come from some sort of toxin. I am not big on the genetic theories of illnesses, as I believe that these theories are reductionist and ignore real problems such as those which might be present in the diet and environment which need to be addressed.
I was alarmed when I heard that autistic children were being administered psychiatric medication, as I am quite familiar with all of the controversy surrounding their safety for adults. I decided to do my own investigation of the literature, to see what was out there on the subject.
I ended up going on a marathon two week information chase which turned everything that I thought I knew about autism upside down. Some, but not all, parents found their children starting showing signs of autism after vaccinations. Others felt it stemmed from birth or from some other variable which occured during the early developmental years.
I found that it has become fairly well established that toxic metals, including extra-high doses of thimerosal (the mercury-containing preservative which was found in excessive amounts in vaccinations prior to 2003), were the environmental toxin in question. It was in trying to find possible sources of toxins that I made my important discovery.
Sources of high amounts of toxic metals in the U.S. include coal- and uranium-processing plants, lead from old lead pipes, run-off from large farms and factory-farms (due to animal waste, pesticide and fertilizer run-off) and fish. Not only do fish in the U.S. now contain very high amounts of mercury, but this contaminated fish comprises the feed grain for 50% of all factory-farmed animals and 90% of all chickenfeed! And because t is well-known among food activists that FDA and Dept. of Agriculture testing for contaminated meat and dairy is poor I hypothesized that food sources of mercury could also contribute to the development of autism. This fact should be researched further.
In any event, I remain concerned about the use of psychotropic medication to control the symptoms of autism. These powerful drugs act upon the body primarily through the nervous system, and could affect development so their use with nerve-damaged children is horrendous.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Radical Psychiatry/Mental Health is Alive and Well
For over forty years radical psychiatrists have been coming out with books refuting the "medical model", i.e. the idea that a biochemical dysfunction in the body is the cause of unhappiness, anxiety, depression or psychoses. Athough many doctors and others (such as the investigative reporter who wrote Crazy)will tell you that it has been "proven" that some or all of these problems are biochemically-caused, they are misguided. William Glasser's recent book Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health (Harper-Collins, 2003) is a good example of the work of aware psychiatrists. Other psychiatrists with similar books, to name a few, are Peter Breggin (founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology), Joseph Glenmullen, Terry Lynch, Thomas Szasz and John W. Perry.
Self-help groups (e.g. the California Network of Mental Health Clients), political and social action groups (spearheaded by MindFreedom International) and others have also been calling out for a mental "health" revolution for years. These groups as well as radical psychiatrists comprise the radical mental health movement. They call for dropping the medical model and replacing it with a model providing psychosocial explanations and solutions. These would primarily be psychosocial counseling, self-help/focus groups, to help people having psychological trouble due to psychosocial problems (e.g, spiritual, financial and relationship crises). For those having crises causing them to be unable to take care of themselves, or harmful to themselves or others many radical activists agree that confined residential monitoring may be necessary, but not in a hospital setting or with forced long-term medication.
The time has come to drop the medical model and all the harm it has done to people by stigmatizing them and forcing them to take medications with harmful side-effects. What ideas can our society come up with to proceed with this revolution in mental health ?
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GOING THROUGH A MENTAL CRISES, AT THIS TIME YOU BASICALLY HAVE ONLY TWO ALTERNATIVES. YOU CAN EITHER ORGANIZE YOUR RADICAL FRIENDS TO MONITOR THIS PERSON 24/7 UNTIL THEY GET THROUGH THE CRISES, OR YOU CAN TAKE THEM TO A PSYCHIATRIC PROGRAM. UNFORTUNATELY, IF A PERSON IS IN SUCH A DIFFICULT STATE THAT THEY NEED CONSTANT MONITORING, HOSPITALS ARE THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE PROFESSIONAL CARE WHICH IS LEGAL AND AVAILABLE. PLEASE WRITE WITH ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE.
Please post to this site if you can.
Self-help groups (e.g. the California Network of Mental Health Clients), political and social action groups (spearheaded by MindFreedom International) and others have also been calling out for a mental "health" revolution for years. These groups as well as radical psychiatrists comprise the radical mental health movement. They call for dropping the medical model and replacing it with a model providing psychosocial explanations and solutions. These would primarily be psychosocial counseling, self-help/focus groups, to help people having psychological trouble due to psychosocial problems (e.g, spiritual, financial and relationship crises). For those having crises causing them to be unable to take care of themselves, or harmful to themselves or others many radical activists agree that confined residential monitoring may be necessary, but not in a hospital setting or with forced long-term medication.
The time has come to drop the medical model and all the harm it has done to people by stigmatizing them and forcing them to take medications with harmful side-effects. What ideas can our society come up with to proceed with this revolution in mental health ?
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GOING THROUGH A MENTAL CRISES, AT THIS TIME YOU BASICALLY HAVE ONLY TWO ALTERNATIVES. YOU CAN EITHER ORGANIZE YOUR RADICAL FRIENDS TO MONITOR THIS PERSON 24/7 UNTIL THEY GET THROUGH THE CRISES, OR YOU CAN TAKE THEM TO A PSYCHIATRIC PROGRAM. UNFORTUNATELY, IF A PERSON IS IN SUCH A DIFFICULT STATE THAT THEY NEED CONSTANT MONITORING, HOSPITALS ARE THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE PROFESSIONAL CARE WHICH IS LEGAL AND AVAILABLE. PLEASE WRITE WITH ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE.
Please post to this site if you can.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Mental Health Alternatives Thinkspot
Okay, we've finally started this blog. Let's talk about the current dismal state of our mental health system, how we feel about it, what we've done about it, and what we can do about it.
My name is K.C. and when I went through the mental health system about twenty years ago, I became outraged by the lack of truth and fairness in psychiatric thought and practice. I organized for years. So have many others--both ex-patients and mental health professionals. The funny (or not so funny) thing is that it seems that the mental health system has not changed too much in the last fifteen years or so. Do others share my opinion?
William Glasser, M.D, is a psychiatrist who believes that psychiatry is a pseudo-science based on a false presumption of brain disorder in those who are emotionally/mentally "off", and that medication is the wrong way to treat mental crises, even those such as schizophrenia and depression. He states that it is the medical/pharmaceutical complex' drive for dollars and their multi-million dollar media blitzing which keeps the misguided and dangerous psychiatric establishment in place. What do you think?
My name is K.C. and when I went through the mental health system about twenty years ago, I became outraged by the lack of truth and fairness in psychiatric thought and practice. I organized for years. So have many others--both ex-patients and mental health professionals. The funny (or not so funny) thing is that it seems that the mental health system has not changed too much in the last fifteen years or so. Do others share my opinion?
William Glasser, M.D, is a psychiatrist who believes that psychiatry is a pseudo-science based on a false presumption of brain disorder in those who are emotionally/mentally "off", and that medication is the wrong way to treat mental crises, even those such as schizophrenia and depression. He states that it is the medical/pharmaceutical complex' drive for dollars and their multi-million dollar media blitzing which keeps the misguided and dangerous psychiatric establishment in place. What do you think?
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