The Rhetoric of Never: Vaccines & Causation, the “Epidemic” & the Cause of Autism
“We have never seen so many kids like this before.” “This is something that we have never seen before.” These are the kinds of statements that those who argue that there is an “epidemic of autism” regularly use—-yet another example of which can be found in an article entitled A mother’s battle against mercury in the February 3rd Hernando Today (FL). The article opens with an account of the dramatic change in Barbara Lupo’s 15-month-old son, Mikey, after he had received immunizations for measles, mumps, rubella, and Hepatitis B. Mikey was diagnosed with autism and mental retardation three months after his vaccinations and is now ten years old (about the same age as my own son Charlie); while the article notes that Mike is “functioning better than most expected,” his tantrums and physique (”a bulky child who could easily injure anyone”) are specifically noted: This is the awfulness of autism. This is why we need to stop this “epidemic.”
I do not know what kind of educational program Mikey is in, as the Hernando Today article does not mention these. What it does detail is that Lupo and “nearly 5,000 other parents” have filed a federal petition to be heard by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims which “specializes in vaccine-related cases and is commonly known as ‘vaccine court.’” Lupo’s attorney is John Clark, of the Ferrero Law Firm in Miami, which is representing 65 petitioners; a “causation hearing” is scheduled for June.
“The catch is, there has never been any (scientific) connection between vaccines and autism,” Clark admitted.
This is where the “rhetoric of never” comes in: If it can be said that we have “never” seen so many children who are like the autistic children today, perhaps it can be said that there is an “epidemic” of autism.
For example: In a section of the Hernando Today article with the rather loaded subheading of “Holistic physician versus anthropology professor, author,” Dr. David Berger, “a holistic pediatrician out of Tampa who specializes in treatment for autism-related disorders,” is quoted:
“If you have ever spent five seconds with a child, you know he is autistic,” Berger said. “Autism is so obvious. Were these symptoms showing up with the same frequency in kids 10 years ago? Absolutely not.
“There is no way we went one in 10,000 children (with autism) 10 years ago to one in 166 just on better diagnosis,” he continued. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
Dr. Berger’s practice is named Wholistic Pediatricians and notes that he specializes in “pediatric primary care, nutritional and detoxification therapies for autism, ADHD and related disorders (DAN! protocol), asthma and allergies.” The article notes that “Many local parents of autistic children have consulted Berger in spite of their HMOs not covering visits to holistic physicians.”
The Hernando Today article then contasts Dr. Berger’s views with the evidence for why there is no epidemic of autism in Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism by Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University and father of a child with autism.
Dr. Berger’s answer is an answer from the gut,” Grinker said of Berger’s reaction. “It feels like an epidemic. It really does … (but) just because something feels like an epidemic, it doesn’t mean there is one. Science has not found that there is a true increase in autism.”
And, as previously stated in the Hernando Today article by Clark, the attorney for Lupo, “‘The catch is, there has never been any (scientific) connection between vaccines and autism.’” I do not think that Clark is using “never” rhetorically here, as no scientific research studies have shown that a link between vaccines and autism exists. And perhaps we have not heard as much as we need to about these scientific studies because scientists have not spoken out enough about the vaccine/autism issue or about the “epidemic” of autism. As Grinker notes in regard to why the notion of an “epidemic” of autism persists, “‘I think the media are to blame, in part. I also blame scientists for not speaking out enough. They are scared because autism is such a sensitive topic.’” (Indeed, the article notes that he “has received scads of hate mail since his book was published.”)
Causation must be established in order for the Lupos’ case and that of the other families to go forward.
If the special master rules in favor of the defendants, or respondents, then no monetary settlement can be sought by Lupo or any of the other petitioners.
“If that happens, then it’s going to be squashed,” Clark explained. “If there is no way to prove the connection (between vaccines and autism), then we are not eligible for compensation. That won’t stop anyone from filing a civil suit, but the standards are tougher there.
As there is no scientific proof for a connection between vaccines and autism, it will be interesting to see what arguments are used to explain how vaccines cause autism. Life raising an autistic child is often not easy, as I know Grinker knows, as Lupo is described to know, as any parent of an autistic child, myself included, knows. As I noted above, my son is just around the age of Lupo’s Mikey and Charlie too is “’strong as an ox,’” though I have not yet dislocated anything in helping Charlie cope and calm himself in difficult moments (as the Hernando Today article notes that Lupo has). No one is denying the realities of raising an autistic child, and that is precisely why we need real answers and real understanding about autism and what it is and what causes it, not attempts that strain, rhetorically and otherwise, to make connections that just do not exist.
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POSTED IN: Epidemic, Health, Legal Issues, Treatment, Vaccines
18 opinions for The Rhetoric of Never: Vaccines & Causation, the “Epidemic” & the Cause of Autism
Club 166
Feb 4, 2007 at 5:17 pm
I’m not sure if there is an increase in the number of autism cases or not. Certainly autism has always been with us, and not properly recognized. And also better diagnosis has resulted in much greater numbers of people being recognized as having autism.
But even if the number of people with autism has increased somewhat, there is absolutely no proof that mercury is the cause.
And absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be focused much more on helping each person with autism live the richest, fullest, most independent life they can.
Jennifer
Feb 4, 2007 at 6:37 pm
“‘If you have ever spent five seconds with a child, you know he is autistic,’ Berger said. ‘Autism is so obvious. Were these symptoms showing up with the same frequency in kids 10 years ago? Absolutely not.’”
While I don’t have the depth of knowledge necessary to truly debate the prevalence of autism, anecdotally, I can say this…
…when I was a child, I was taken to a speech therapist and to a psychologist for selective mutism (despite being hyperlexic, I spoke to only my parents and a grandmother).
No one even mentioned autism, despite poor social skills, sensory problems, intense/obsessive interest in certain topics, overload issues especially in crowds, and so forth.
Granted, this was 20 years ago, not ten — but at the time, I did not fit the common view of autism. I spoke (though not to everyone), I interacted with people (though not easily), I did not sit in a corner rocking or engaging in (obvious) SIBs.
Whether the increase in autism in general is due to the increase in diagnoses of Aspergers and or HFA, or whether the increase is due to external causes like mercury, I don’t know. But from my own experience, I can say that autism, 10 years ago or 20 years ago, was NOT ’so obvious,’ at least in some of its presentations.
Leila
Feb 4, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Jennifer, you gave us a perfect example. And today, even after receiving an official diagnosis of autism at the MIND Institute, I still have some friends and family that are in denial regarding my son’s autism. It is not obvious at all, in his case, unless you are a specialist, or an experienced school teacher, or someone who knows a lot about autism.
Rochelle
Feb 4, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I don’t know the answer to this question, but when reading Grinker’s book, I wondered whether vaccines are manufactured the same way and with the same ingredients in other countries as they are in the US? Because, I haven’t heard of claims in other countries (although I could be wrong) linking autism to vaccination. Does anybody know about this? Are there attempts to link autism to mercury or the MMR vaccine in other countries besides the US?
Dan Schultz
Feb 5, 2007 at 2:20 am
Before one gets educated enough to begin a reasonable vaccination debate, I believe it helps to come to grips with the fact that the allopathic paradigm has failed us miserably.
It helps because so much of the argument FOR vaccines are predicated upon blind faith. In order to see clearly, one has to intelligently question this profession that admits to being the third leading cause of death (http://www.mercola.com/2000/jul/30/doctors_death.htm) in the United States. Some experts say the leading cause of death (http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/Death%20by%20Medicine%20Nov%2027.doc)
Can we trust a profession that openly says that they just don’t know why all these cases of autism are occurring? Think about it; if they can’t comprehend cause of a problem, they really know nothing about it at all.
The ugly reality of this autism epidemic is that the medical profession will not look at vaccination as a causative factor in autism. They don’t want to. They can’t. They will deny at every opportunity. It’s the sacred cow, the holy grail. They will conjure up smoke screens, resort to illogical arguments (like they’re just getting better at diagnosing) and manipulate statistics because the whole medical (allopathic) paradigm hinges on vaccination theory and, subconsciously, every one them knows it.
Get educated. Look within yourself. The answers are there.
I would like to recommend a site that can help you arrive at certainty; http://www.novaccine.com
Dan Schultz, DC
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 5, 2007 at 2:29 am
Thanks for all the websites, Dan, and your mention of the “allopathic paradigm”—-I know there are numerous other internet sites on which vaccines and autism are more extensively discussed, too.
Kassiane
Feb 5, 2007 at 2:44 am
Can’t believe everything you read on the internet.
To balance out those links:
http://www.chirobase.com
Chiropractors cause strokes. Strokes are worse than autism. So is pertussis. And mumps (had both, can say from experience). Post polio syndrome sure appears to suck, as it is, um, 24/7 intractable pain. To get that you need to get polio. We had polio almost wiped out thanks to…vaccines.
Strokes are a known risk (PROVEN) of manipulating the neck. Some of the other alternative means used by chiropractors can cause other problems. Electric stimulation used wrong in the neck area can cause seizures (been there…and they just told me to DRIVE HOME). Many chiropractors claim to be able to treat conditions that spinal manipulation can’t treat, not just the ones it CAN.
Allopaths make mistakes but they admit it. I have yet to hear a chiropractor admit that they ever do. That’s one reason I won’t let them near me-I’d rather take my chances with people walking on my back.
Caveat emptor.
Lisa/Jedi
Feb 5, 2007 at 6:52 pm
My husband is an internist, so I am fully aware that all doctors are human beings & can be ignorant of some things (that we think they should know), can have a bad “bedside manner”, you name it. There are also some really great physicians out there (I happen to think I’m married to one of them :). Our experience with pediatricians & Brendan has varied considerably. His first doctor never followed-up on any of our concerns about Brendan’s development & was quite surprised by his diagnosis with AS, even though a friend’s child with AS had been in the practise for 8 years before Brendan came along, & both boys had very similar characteristics (& we parents had similar concerns). What was telling for me was that this doctor always said, “It’s ok, my kid does that, too.” when we would voice our concerns, & it has led me to wonder how his kid is doing these days… not to mention how much denial was being projected on us. Due to HMO issues we switched doctors when Brendan was 6 & did our homework ahead of time. We love our doctor & every one of her colleagues that we have encountered in emergency situations have been great with Brendan, too. This is a practise associated with a university hospital & the partners are involved with research as well as day-to-day pediatric care, so I wonder if that isn’t one of the things that makes them more enlightened when it comes to autism. I am definitely of the opinion that better education of pediatricians is an important step toward better futures for autistic kids & their families…
Another Voice
Feb 6, 2007 at 12:49 am
Dan Schultz writes that prior to engaging in a debate regarding vaccine one should “Get educated. Look within yourself. The answers are there.”
I must disagree. Immunology is a difficult and demanding branch of medicine. It is not something that bursts upon your consciousness during meditation. Can we be real about this?
After a student finishes college, successfully completes four years of medical school, survives another four to five years of residency and passes those messy little Board Certification exams, if they are good and would like to work in research, they may get to work with the real researchers in the field. Does he or she have the answers; no. Are they qualified to begin searching for the answers; yes. I do believe he or she will go anywhere the search leads.
We need more men and women like this in the search and joining inter-disciplinary teams already engaged in the research. We have technology today that would have been difficult to imagine ten years ago, we just don’t have enough people applying it to autism research. Let’s not say because they have not found the answers that is some type of twisted proof that they don’t want to find the answers.
Autism Vox » The Vaccine-Autism Urban Myth
Feb 6, 2007 at 5:04 pm
[…] It is the extent of this “disconnect”—-between scientific evidence confuting a vaccine-autism link on the one hand, and a continued “populist” belief that “vaccines caused my child to become autistic“—-that puzzles and yet intrigues me. Can it be that the “establishment” of scientists have sequestered themselves so far away up in the gleaming ivory tower white of their research labs that they simply cannot hear the stories of parents who again and again offer the simple evidence of their eyes: One day my child was normal. The next day, after the vaccine, he was not? […]
Cynthia Whitfield
Feb 6, 2007 at 6:29 pm
We forget that children with autism often have autoimmune disorders within their families. I read an article recently that said, besides not giving shots to sick kids, we should think twice about giving shots to kids with a family history of neurological disorders or autoimmune problems. This makes sense to me. This could explain why studies are failing to see the connection between vaccines and autism many people see. They are just looking at large random groups of kids — what they need to do is look at whether kids with such family histories develop autism at higher rates than families without such histories. At any rate, even the vaccine people themselves admit that some people will have serious adverse reactions to shots, including neurological problems. If we could figure out who those children might be, wouldn’t that be great? I believe my son simply wasn’t able to detox the Hepatitis B shot he got hours after birth — and a difficult birth at that. He has a relative who died on ALS, an autoimmune disorder. There could be connection — at any rate, we have to look at the populations better to see it. Not all populations are affected by the same potentially toxic trigger as others.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 6, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Thanks, Cynthia. I do think it would be good to know about more of the history of health problems in the families of autistic children.
Autism Vox » Cause and Cure: On the disconnect of science and junk science about autism
Feb 28, 2007 at 3:39 am
[…] The past few days have seen some discussion of two topics—-cause and cure—that I have previously referred to as fighting words in discussions about autism. Yesterday’s post on The truth about autism: It’s not toxic led to a discussion about “cause” (which has been discussed here more than a few times; see, for instance, The Cause of the Autism Mother). A post on Amanda Baggs on CNN tonight set several rounds of discussion about “cure” into motion. […]
Autism Vox » Why I Don’t Worry About Causation
Mar 4, 2007 at 4:10 am
[…] This statement is indeed true, as evinced by some recent discussions here regarding environmental toxins and vaccines. When I read accounts of researchers, or of parents, in determined pursuit about what caused their child to become autisitic, to change from a happy and normally developing child overnight, I often feel as if I am reading a tightly paced mystery novel, or the script to a fast-paced suspense movie, in which the protagonist is (like the mother in Lorenzo’s Oil) on a hunt to find the culprit that did this to her child. […]
Autism Vox » The truth about autism: Not toxic and not the enemy
Mar 18, 2007 at 2:42 am
[…] according to these sorts of theories, is actually caused by some kind of external, poisoning agent—by something that truly exists and can be pointed […]
Science, Coincidence, and Mercury: What can you trust?
Jun 1, 2007 at 1:43 am
[…] of “urban myth” to some, there are indeed some 4,800 plus families who think otherwise (this is one example). Again and again, one reads stories about how a child changed overnight from developing normally […]
Stephanie Lane
Jun 12, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Neurosurgeons, neurophysiologists and neurodevelopmentalists have always known that the symptoms of autism are similar to brain-injured patients/stroke victims; behaviors known as sensory-isms, common to those diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, are also seen where there is specific injury or lesions in the brain.
Brain growth and development of the central nervous system develop as the myelin grows over the nerves of the central nervous system; it serves as an insulation so that signals sent along a nerve pathway can complete their trip. When a baby is born, the myelin has grown over the base of the brain stem, known as the medulla – responsible for reflex functions.
Because the growth rate of myelin hasn’t been determined to be influenced by environmental factors, the child cannot reach his developmental peak until it has grown throughout the central nervous system. When the myelin has completed its growth at around eight years of age, it doesn’t guarantee that the child will have reached his peak. That depends on the opportunities which have been given to help him achieve his neurological potential. If anything hinders the process, (which allergens to mercury and other factors have been known to do) such as prenatal brain-injury, seizures or strokes – the development of the pathways that develop sense, processing and response in the auditory, visual or tactile areas can be to immature, hypo or hyper – sensitive. They will no give the brain accurate information, therefore the response we see as a behavior will reflect this.
It is important that every child identify allergies, as well as have the opportunity to do the activities that correspond with each stage of brain development, so that he reaches his neurological potential. Each of the activities has a very specific role in triggering the advent of new function, such as building a house. Unless you lay a solid foundation, you cannot have sound walls and the roof will also be unsound. Each developmental stage of brain-development depends on the one before it.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 12, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Thanks for the information, Ms. Lane. Would it be possible to know what your sources are regarding myelin and autism?
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