RE: [ HuffingtonPost.com ] Recommendation: The Next Big Autism Bomb: Are 1 in 50 Kids Potentially At

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Recommendation: The Next Big Autism Bomb: Are 1 in 50 Kids Potentially At

Risk?Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:53:13 -0400

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Kirby: The Next Big Autism Bomb: Are 1 in 50 Kids Potentially At

Risk?Link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-next-big-autism-bomb_b_93627.html

On Tuesday, March 11, a conference call was held between vaccine safety

officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several leading

experts in vaccine safety research, and executives from America's Health

Insurance Plans, (the HMO trade association) to discuss childhood mitochondrial

dysfunction and its potential link to autism and vaccines. It was a sobering

event for all concerned, and it could soon become known as the Conference Call

heard 'round the world. The teleconference was scheduled by a little known CDC

agency called the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Network, a

consortium of six research centers working on 'immunization-associated health

risks,' in conjunction with the CDC's Immunization Safety Office and the health

insurance lobby -- whose companies cover some 200 million Americans. The hot

topic of the day was mitochondria - the little powerhouses within each cell that

convert food and oxygen into energy for use by the bodyRecent news events have

implicated mitochondria in at least one case of regressive autism, following

normal development. Some researchers on the call reported that mitochondrial

dysfunction is probably much more common than the current estimate of 1-in-4,000

peopleThe potential implications for autism, then, are staggering. 'We need to

find out if there is credible evidence, theoretically, to support the idea that

childhood mitochondrial dysfunction might regress into autism,' one of the

callers reportedly told participants. 'THE CLOCK IS TICKING' One person on the

call (those interviewed for this article asked to remain anonymous) told me

that, 'the CDC people were informed, in no uncertain terms, that they need to

look into this issue immediately, and do something about it.' The clock is

ticking, they were told, and if they don't respond, the information will be made

public. Still, the doctor said, he was enormously impressed by the 'seriousness'

with which CDC officials treated the possibility of a link between mitochondria,

autism and possibly vaccines as well. In the recent landmark Hannah Poling case,

filed in Federal 'Vaccine Court,' officials conceded that Hannah's underlying

mitochondrial dysfunction was aggravated by her vaccines, leading to fever and

an 'immune stimulation that exceeded metabolic reserves.' But on March 6, CDC

Director Dr Gerberding claimed that Hannah's case was a rare, virtually

one-of-a-kind incident with little, if any relevance to the other 4,900 autism

claims currently pending in the court -- or to any other case of autism for that

matter.(There were conflicting accounts about whether Gerberding was on the call

or not). Since then, however, Dr ... Read the rest at HuffingtonPost.com

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