Our children are experiencing epidemics of ADD/ADHD, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, and autism. So far, our public health authorities have provided no plausible explanation for why so many of our children are sick.
We believe the labels used to describe the neurological disorders (NDs) our children are suffering from serves to obscure the number of affected children and divide the treatment communities. A child suffering from ADHD and a child suffering from autism tend to share many of the same symptoms, with the autistic child presenting more severely, or having more total symptoms than the ADHD child.
The search for a gene to explain the prevalence of all these NDs has been fruitless and wasteful. After tens of millions of dollars spent on genetic research, the researchers are issuing press releases like this one (with our commentary added), effectively conceding that autism is not a genetic condition. (Read an excellent critique from SafeMinds of the Autism Genome Project here.) There are even scientists today who still consider "better diagnosis" the explanation for these epidemics, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
We believe that the published, peer-reviewed evidence that children with NDs are suffering from an environmental illness already exists, and can be reviewed here. These biological studies overwhelmingly point to environmental toxicity as the cause of NDs, and no biological studies exist to refute these conclusions.
The primary reason that treatment-based research is not moving faster is vaccines. Since the mid-1980s, the number of vaccines recommended to children under the age of 5 has grown from 10 to 36. But, no testing has ever been done to evaluate these 36 vaccines in combination for potential delayed onset conditions like autism or ADHD. We believe that the more than-tripling of vaccines is a primary cause of the epidemic of NDs. The mercury, aluminum, live viruses, and other preservatives in the vaccines are neurotoxic for many of our children.
The two entities that could do the most to further research into all these NDs have the most to lose if vaccines have played a role in their explosion. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) creates the national immunization schedule, and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an entity created and funded by those who administer vaccines, pediatricians. (To see how these two groups work together to exonerate vaccines, please read this statement from an AAP member and pediatrician who tried to point out obvious inaccuracies in a published study from Pediatrics.)
Meanwhile, parents are left to fend for themselves, prompting the need for organizations like Generation Rescue to be created. Despite hundreds of parental reports of recovery and thousands of parental reports of improvement, biomedical intervention is not receiving the attention of mainstream health authorities. Today, we think all resources should be devoted to finding the best possible biomedical treatments to help as many children as possible recover. We need studies funded and done that compare treatment modalities, and the most successful treatments must be rolled out as quickly as possible.
The leadership to make all this happen, unfortunately, will not come from the agencies that should be doing it, they have too much to lose. It will come instead from parents like you, making your own child better first and than spreading the word to help others.
Our children deserve better. If you are reading this and in a position to make a difference, please take the time to do so. In the words of Lenny Schafer, "Healing autism - no finer a cause on the planet."
Generation Rescue
May 2007 |
