Something Causes Autism: October 2011

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Skyrocketing autism rate, still no search for cause...

According to today's Sydney Morning Herald, the number of students in NSW schools who have been diagnosed with autism is now 4 times what it was 8 years ago. (See link at the bottom of this post.)

Not only that, but rates of diagnosed depression and other mental illness among schoolchildren, according to the article, have almost doubled during the same time.

Mental illness aside, this staggering autism increase must surely be awakening questions in the minds of even the staunchest believer in the 'better diagnosis' myth. Could past medical practitioners really have been so ignorant a mere 8 years ago? Could diagnostic differences really have allowed them to miss 3 out of 4 cases?

Even now in Australia, the possibility that autism has environmental causes is rarely discussed in public, and seldom without massive controversy. The certainty with which people declare that autism is a predominantly genetic ailment, and that questioning environmental toxins like mercury (whether vaccinal or not) is wrong, is astonishing when so little else about autism is fully known.

The suggestion that earlier diagnostic methods failed on such a grand scale remains the most curious aspect of the authorised account. Think about it. In order to defend the present system, authorities are admitting that they have comprehensively failed autism as recently as 2003.

Surely if the medical system failed autism in the past, then the system is not infallible now. But instead of failing diagnostically, it may well be failing even more comprehensively at the level of investigation and research.

I wonder how long the 'better diagnosis' myth will last if the rates keep climbing? Will it still be clinging on when the autism rate hits one in two? Or will a majority have finally worked out what seems inescapable to me: that something causes autism?

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/rise-of-autism-puts-strain-on-public-school-budgets-20111025-1mi5g.html

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

This autism blog is [maybe not--update] moving... Keep a lookout!

I'm able to log in again, so will keep blogging here... for now. :-)

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Hi there. Apologies for this inconvenience, but I'm having trouble logging in at times. Google data-mining requirements may be clashing with my choice of using a pseudonym for certain aspects of the blog.

However I don't like running a blog that might upset a few commercial interests under my real name. I'm sure most people reading this well-intentioned blog will understand why. I'm very, very smalltime, but you never know how badly folks get irritated by alternate points of view, particularly when they clash with profit goals.

For these reasons I'm looking into moving the blog to a different carrier. That will take time, and obviously it could mean that some viewers become lost. Hopefully that won't happen!

If I can still log in to this blog when I set up the new page I'll make sure to put a redirect so you can chase me up at the new address. Hopefully I can transfer all aspects of the blog including back-posts.

If I don't manage to log in to Google again, then I might ask people to do a general search for 'something causes autism' or any post titles or keywords you might recall. You should be able to track down the new blog that way. However I already own the somethingcausesautism.com domain so I plan to use that to redirect to the new blog... When it's ready.

Apologies for these hassles. The web is becoming more and more difficult to use while retaining some measure of privacy. For those with alternate views to giant corporations it's perhaps becoming even harder... But that may just be a fancy of mine, as a tiny little nobody just trying to have my say.

Best wishes to all, and thanks for reading... Fingers crossed for a smooth transition when I set up the new blog.

And happy data mining to Google.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Mainstreaming autism in the news...

http://autisminnb.blogspot.com/2011/10/autism-reality-check-huffington-post.html

This link is about autism, but it's also about The Huffington Post and the way news ideology changes with ownership. Mainstream news still likes to trot out the theory that autism is just the nth degree of humankind's selection for genius. Those with autistic children born to non-autistic parents know this can't be true and that something else has happened to our children's brains. The strange focus on autism's positive aspects is so pervasive that Early Intervention draws some of its treatment plans from Temple Grandin (serious autism's most public success story). Good on you Facing Autism in New Brunswick for not shirking what's real.

Something causes autism.

Milli's story

My girl got a mercury-containing version of the Hep B jab when she was only hours old.

We took her home to an environment we now feel to have been laden with heavy metals and pesticides (the latter from prior inhabitants as I never use sprays). The local suburb had a coal smelter. The childcare centres all had treated pine.

She seemed to develop normally, though with a stiff neck but floppy lower body. However she began to use words at an appropriate time and learned to walk (though her gait was stilted). Progress stagnated and then began to go backward from about 14 months on. She was assessed at around two and found to be autistic; from that point after we switched diets to be gluten/casein free her ability to drink and eat began to collapse, she stopped recognising people and spent most of each day and a lot of each night crying and hitting her hands on walls. Words became scrambled and then completely disappeared. One day I looked into her eyes and there was nobody there.

We'd been seeing plenty of doctors, but had lately heard about a 'biomedical' approach, so took her to see a practitioner. A hair test showed aluminium and other heavy metals among the highest the lab had seen. Alas, before we could begin serious treatment she had 4 days refusing food or liquid, and the situation was suddenly dire. The biomedical paediatrician was a 6 hour drive away. We were on our own.

I decided to try one more thing before taking her to hospital, and that was chelation using alpha lipoic acid following protocols in a book called Children With Starving Brains.

I made sure to give a mineral supplement alongside. The local paediatricians refused to take part or oversee, and told me the hair test was 'fringe dweller stuff', so I followed the book.

In two days she could swallow properly for the first time in close to 18 months. We were syringing her vitamin tonic and she went very still and quiet and swallowed each mouthful normally. (It was only at that point that we realised why she hadn't been eating or drinking for so long.) Two weeks later her lopsided gait had normalised. Around that time I was putting her in the car when she took hold of my head, turned it to face her and laughed, looking into my eyes for the first time in ages.

What helped Milli? Aside from chelation with alpha lipoic acid we saw improvements with the following:

- fish oil
- vitamin B-12 injections
- mineral/vitamin tonic Hi Vita in liquid form
- probiotics

When her hair test had first showed the highest percentile for aluminium, I'd had our 2 water sources (bore and tank) and her rice milk tested. Both waters were within safe limits. The rice milk, according to the technician, appeared to have 'hundreds of times higher' levels of aluminium than the safe level for drinking water. It seems likely to me that Milli's 'leaky' gut was unable to seal out aluminium from that source. Naturally after her hair result and the lab test on water and rice milk I removed all tetra packages from the house.

So what causes autism?

I don't know. But it does seem to me inescapable that heavy metals have a part to play, in which case vaccinal mercury from her newborn Hep B jab must remain on the suspect list.

I've since read that mercury depletes B-12 (which makes gut lining). Other demyelating agents may be involved. Unless we stop looking to blame individuals via their genes, we'll never know the causes.