This class of mutation, it turns out, is more likely to occur in people who have children late in their 30s and 40s—

This class of mutation, it turns out, is more likely to occur in people who have children late in their 30s and 40s—a segment of the population that has been growing in recent years. Copy number variations and rare de novo mutations may also be a risk factor for schizophrenia.



A Biology of Mental Disorder
By Eric Kandel NEWSWEEK
Published Jun 27, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jul 13, 2009


Understanding the biology of mental illness would be a paradigm shift in our thinking about mind. It would not only inform us about some of the most devastating diseases of humankind but, because these are diseases of thought and feeling, it would also tell us more about who we are and how we function. I naively thought we were on the verge of such a paradigm change in 1983, when James Gusella and Nancy Wexler were tracking down the gene that causes Huntington's disease. I expected that within 10 years we would have found the major genes that contribute to schizophrenia, depression, and autism. Since then, there has been a lot of enthusiasm about genes and mental illness and some false starts, but surprisingly little progress.
In the past few years, however, certain advances in genetics have given us new reasons for optimism. Now that we can look at the whole human genome, there is a logic to it that we could not appreciate when looking at genes in isolation. As a result, there is reason to believe that the next 10 to 20 years will be more fruitful than the past two decades have been.
One major advance has been the discovery that there is much more variability in the genome than had been anticipated, and that this takes the form of copy number variation (CNV). These are duplications or deletions of segments of a chromosome, often involving several or tens of genes, that enhance or depress the actions of specific genes. A well-known example of a CNV is the extra copy of chromosome 21 resulting in Down syndrome. It has recently been discovered that this type of variation is extremely common in everyone's genome.
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A specific type of CNV—called de novo mutations—may be relevant to autism. De novo mutations occur in only one tissue of the body—the sperm or egg—and may crop up relatively late in life (during reproduction), appearing only in the next generation. This fits the pattern of autism, a genetic disease that occasionally emerges in families in which the mother doesn't have autism, the father doesn't have it, and the other sibling doesn't have it. A mother and father could pass this mutation down to one of their children, even though the mutation would not appear in their chromosomes but only in their sperm or eggs. The children would now have the mutation and could pass it on from generation to generation. De novo CNVs may explain the rise in the true incidence of autism in recent years. (Autism cases have also risen in part because of better diagnostic criteria.) This class of mutation, it turns out, is more likely to occur in people who have children late in their 30s and 40s—a segment of the population that has been growing in recent years. Copy number variations and rare de novo mutations may also be a risk factor for schizophrenia.

More Gene Mutations Linked To Autism Risk

More Gene Mutations Linked To Autism Risk


All About: Autism
Submitted by ruzik_tuzik on Jun 26th, 2009
Posted under: Autism
More pieces in the complex autism inheritance puzzle are emerging in the latest study from a research team including geneticists from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and several collaborating institutions. This study identified 27 different genetic regions where rare copy number variations – missing or extra copies of DNA segments – were found in the genes of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), but not in the healthy controls. The complex combination of missing or extra copies of certain genes is thought to interfere with gene function, which can disrupt the production of proteins necessary for normal neurological development.

“We are finding that both inherited and new, or de novo, genetic mutations are scattered throughout the genome and it is becoming clear that different combinations of these variations contribute to autism susceptibility,” said study author Maja Bucan, PhD, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Chair of the Steering committee for Autism Speaks’ Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE). “We are grateful to families of children with autism spectrum disorders for their willingness to participate in genetic studies because family-based studies have many advantages. We have learned a lot both from genetic analyses of children with autism as well as the analyses of their parents and their unaffected siblings.”

Researchers compared genetic samples of 3832 individuals from 912 families with multiple autistic children from the AGRE cohort against genetic samples of 1070 disease free children from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. This study also uncovered two novel genes where variations were found, BZRAP1 and MDGA2 – thought to be important in synaptic function and neurological development, respectively. Interestingly, key variants on these genes were passed down in some, but not all, of the affected individuals in families.

“We focused on changes in the exons of DNA—protein-coding areas in which deletions or duplications are more likely to directly disrupt biological functions,” said study leader Hakon Hakonarson, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and associate professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “We identified additional autism susceptibility genes, many of which, as we previously found, belong to the neuronal cell adhesion molecule family involved in the development of brain circuitry in early childhood.” He added that the team discovered many “private” gene mutations, those found only in one or a few individuals or families—an indication of genetic complexity, in which many different gene changes may contribute to an autism spectrum disorder.

The findings were published in the June 26 edition of the journal PLoS Genetics.

By further refining the genetic landscape of ASDs, the current study expands the findings of two large autism gene studies published in April, led by Hakonarson and Gerard Schellenberg, Ph.D., professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, as well as Bucan and others. One study was the first to report common gene variants in ASDs. The other identified copy number variants that raise the risk of having an ASD. Both studies found gene changes on two biological pathways with crucial roles in early central nervous system development. Hakonarson and Bucan said the latest findings reinforce the view that multiple gene variants, both common and rare, may be interacting to cause the heterogeneous group of disorders included under autism spectrum disorders.

The Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE), a program of Autism Speaks, provided genetic biomaterials and clinical data from families that have more than one family member diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Blood samples donated by children and their families at CHOP were used as healthy controls. AGRE makes data publicly available to qualified researchers worldwide.

Overcome Infertility - Understanding the Male Biological Clock

Overcome Infertility - Understanding the Male Biological Clock
By Kyle J Norton




Infertility is defined as the inability of a couple to conceive after 12 months of unprotected sexual intercourse or the cannot carry the pregnancy full term. It effects over 5 million couples alone in the U. S. and many times more in the world. Because of an unawareness of treatments, only 10% seek help from professional specialists. In fact, about 35% of infertility is caused by the male's inability to fertilize. 35% is caused by the female's inability to conceive, 10% attributes to both, and 10 % is considered a failure with an unknown cause.

Even though the sperm in the male reproductive organ do not change much, the quality and quantity of sperm may be reduced by low levels of testosterone due to ageing. Therefore, you can see why a couple in their late 20's is easier to conceive than a couple with a wife in her 20's and a husband at the age of 40 and more. Study shows that the odds of male fertility rate decreases at an alarming rate of 11% every year and the chance for his partner to conceive declines even further.

According to the study of European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, the rate of miscarriage also increases substantially when the father was over the age of 35.
1. Nearly 17 percent if the father was over 34 years old.
2. Around 20 percent if the father was between the ages of 35 and 39.
3. Over 32 percent if the father was older than 44.

Most couple delay unwanted conception by having the female partner take contraceptive pill or by using condoms, or other methods. Unfortunately, by the time they think that they are ready to have children, they are in their mid thirties and according to the above statistics, the rate of fertility is low and the risk of miscarriage is increased substantially, not counting the risk of giving birth to a child with a defection, including chromosomal abnormalities. Like an old car, no matter how much money which you spend each year to fix it, it will never work like when it was new.

It is wise for a couple to conceive no later then the age of late 20's and early 30's to prevent any unnecessary stress caused by infertility within 12 months after they decide to have a baby.

For the best pregnancy self help program review, please visit http://bestfertility.blogspot.com/
For series of Infertility Articles, please visit http://fertility-infertility.blogspot.com/

All rights reserved. Any reproducing of this article must have the author name and all the links intact.
"Let Take Care Your Health, Your Health Will Take Care You" Kyle J. Norton
I have been studying natural remedies for disease prevention for over 20 years and working as a financial consultant since 1990. Master degree in Mathematics, teaching and tutoring math at colleges and universities before joining insurance industries. Part time Health and entertainment Article Writer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kyle_J_Norton

Depakote Birth Side Effects Need Further Review: FDA Officials

Depakote Birth Side Effects Need Further Review: FDA Officials
June 23rd, 2009 • Filed Under: News • No Comments


FDA researchers are requesting that the agency take a closer look at Depakote side effects for pregnant women, to examine whether there is a link between the anti-seizure medication and developmental delays in children born to mothers who took the drug.

The recommendations come before an FDA advisory panel meeting scheduled for today to review the impact of a number of drugs on children.

For Depakote (divalproex), staff drug reviewers at the FDA identified six cases of children born with delayed development after their mothers took the drug during pregnancy, including several children who developed autism. They indicated that further research is needed to examine whether there is a direct causal relationship and the degree of risk of fetal exposure to the medication.

Depakote was created by Abbott Laboratories and is currently available as generic divalproex from several manufacturers. It was first introduced in 1983 and is approved to treat epilepsy, mania associated with bipolar disorder and migraines.

A “black box” warning has been on the medication’s label since 2006, warning about potential Depakote birth defects associated with use of the drug during pregnancy. A study done that year found that about 20% of babies born to mothers taking Depakote suffered serious problems, as opposed to other drugs which only had rates of between 1% and 10.7.

FDA researchers now indicate that the agency should also investigate the drug for ties to developmental problems such as autism. Although the limitations in the reported problems make it impossible to definitively conclude that there is a connection between Depakote and developmental delay, the staffers called for the FDA to commit more resources to exploring whether such a link exists.

Earlier this year, the American Academy of Neurology and American Epilepsy Society issued guidelines that urged pregnant women to avoid taking epilepsy drugs that include valproates, due to an increased risk of birth defects such as cleft palate and spinal bifida. Depakote becomes valproate once it has entered the body. The guidelines also recommended that women avoid taking more than one epilepsy medication at a time.

Tags: Birth Defect, Depakote, Epilepsy, Epilepsy Drug, Valproate

Older Fathers: Increased risk of having children with autism, schizophrenia

Parenting
Older Fathers: Increased risk of having children with autism, schizophrenia
Older fathers: link to autism, schizophrenia.
By Paul Raeburn on January 28, 2009 - 1:52pm in About Fathers

Just after my two-year-old son, Henry, was born, I was surprised and disturbed to learn that he was at increased risk of autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other ills-because of my age.


My wife, Elizabeth, and I knew about the risks associated with the children of older mothers, with Down syndrome being the most widely recognized. She was tested for whatever was testable while she was pregnant with Henry, and he seemed to be healthy in every respect.

There is, however, no pre-natal test for autism or schizophrenia. And yet the risks are substantial: A 40-year-old man has the same chance of fathering a child with schizophrenia as does a 40-year-old woman of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome.

Why do we know so much about the genetic ailments associated with older mothers, but almost nothing about the diseases associated with older fathers?

In an article I've just written for Scientific American Mind, I note that the number of older fathers is on the rise, meaning the number of children at increased risk for autism and schizophrenia is also on the rise.

Nobody understand why this should be true. A woman's eggs are constructed and stored before she is born. It's reasonable to think that as they age, they might acquire genetic errors that could lead to disease. But sperm are freshly manufactured whenever they're needed; they are not stored. So what could be going on there?

The speculation is that something is going wrong with the so-called spermatogonial cells, the factories that make sperm. It's unclear what is happening, but the situation clearly deserves further research.

And why are older fathers not told of the risks?

That seems wrong to me. Some time ago, I called Charles J. Epstein, past president of the college of medical genetics, and Marilyn C. Jones, the current president, and asked them if they could explain why this don't ask-don't tell policy made sense, especially considering the new findings. "To put it out there every time somebody comes to you for counseling probably engenders more fear than light," Epstein said.

Jones agreed. "Paternal age is usually not addressed in counseling couples of advanced age because there is no simple test to address the risk," she said. "If there is nothing to offer a couple but increasing anxiety, many counselors and physicians do not bring the issue up."

Why then all the fuss about Down syndrome in the children of older women, when the risks for the children of older fathers are about the same? "You bring up Down syndrome, because you get sued if you don't," Epstein said. "And there are options. You can go through prenatal diagnosis, you have the option to terminate."

Epstein points out that the general rate of abnormalities of all kinds in newborns is about 2-4%. So even a 3% risk of schizophrenia in the children of men over 50 is not out of line with other risks. And it sounds less frightening when put this way: A 50-year-old man has a 97% chance of having a child without schizophrenia.

Still, I wish I had known what the risks were before we decided to have children. Would we have gone ahead anyway? That's difficult to say. But at least we would have had all the information we needed to make an intelligent decision.

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny

Date:
Jun 18, 2009 9:38 AM

Subject:
Must-know information about the upcoming pandemic flu shot

Body:
Friends,

I spoke at the Health Freedom Expo in Chicago over the weekend. It was agreed that everyone should make a personal plan (and that plan may be different for each person), for how you will deal with the possiblity of forced, mandatory vaccinations. The US government is planning to vaccinate 100% of the population (I have the documents of the discussions -- dated from 2007 forward). Many of us are working hard behind the scenes to get up to date information and to build a coalition to stop this. The right to decide what will be injected into your body should be yours!

The (swine) flu shot contract has been given to Novartis, meaning that the flu vaccine will most likely be made with PER.C6 cells (cells from retina of aborted fetal tissue) and contain their proprietary MF59, very very toxic and debilitating chemical. In 2006, legislation was passed to give Pharma 100% liability protection for pandemic vaccines, even if they cause disability and death. (Called Division E...on my website)

As we know, all politics is local, so it is important to have local people understand our position. Everyone feels helpless with National politicians and are convinced they are so "bought off" they absolutely do not listen to constituents (any more). People are feeling the need to take things into their own hands to protect themselves and their families.

Here were some of the suggestions and comments that came up in Chicago. I hope that others will contribute to this action plan. In the 10 years I have been involved with this, i have never had such a sense of urgency; not even after 911 when they tried to force smallpox vaccines on everyone. (it was a big failure and many who went along with the Trial Plan are now chronically ill...some died)

Part of my "life mission" is to stop this nonsense. There is now 100% PROOF that vaccines cause microglia activation in the brain -- which translate to chronic inflammation of brain tissue, and this inflammation and degeneration of nerve cells can go on for >40 years. That is from peer reviews PUBLISHED medical literature.

Please stay out of FEAR mode and get into ACTION mode. This is a "plan for the worst, hope for the best" situation. You don't want to be caught making this decision spur of the moment. Please feel free to share with all your friends.

You can't do it all, but you can do something! GET ACTIVE!

Best regards,


Suggestions that came up in Chicago

1. Make list of bullet points to discuss about the problems with the flu shot (i'll be posting this soon on the DrTenpenny.com website)

2. Contact local first responders (EMTs, Paramedics, Fireman, etc). Let them know what is in the shots and that *they* will be the first ones to get it. [NOTE: with Novartis getting the contact, there is a very real possibility that PER.C6 cells and MF59 will be in the "new" shots.]

3. Contact local police and discuss concerns about mandatory vaccination. You go to church and to the grocery store with these folks and their kids play with your kids. They are not "scary" people. (take the coffee and doughnuts to get in the door.... :)

4. Write a small article for LOCAL, community newspapers.

5. Contact local city council members about liberties and constitutional rights to refuse what is inserted/injected into your body.

6. have at least 2 weeks of food and water at your house and be prepared to voluntarily self-quarantine if given no other options.

7. Stock up on Vitamin D (2000IU per person), Vitamin A, Vitamin C, etc and homeopathics for the flu

8. Someone told me if you had to get the shot, *immediately* afterward, rub the area hard and brisk with 1/2 of a freshly cut lemon. I don't know if that will help, but it certainly can't hurt.

Farm for autistic adults gets zoning approval

Farm for autistic adults gets zoning approval

By Josh Sweigart
Staff Writer
5:35 PM Sunday, June 14, 2009
HAMILTON — A sprawling farm with gardens, horseback riding and an activity center will mark a unique home for adults with autism envisioned in Madison Twp.

Butler County Commissioners recently approved a zoning change that will pave the way for the Safe Haven Farm. It will house up to 24 adults in 6 new houses being built on at 60-acre farm on No Mans Road.

The zoning change was needed because the land is currently zoned agricultural. Despite earlier objection from neighbors who feared it would harm the area’s rustic charm and strain services in the area, no one opposed to the project spoke at the Thursday, June 11, commission meeting.

To assuage neighbors’ concerns, planners say most of the land will be either a farm or woodland, with tree buffers shielding the view of houses from other properties.

And when it’s done, it will provide peace of mind for the consortium of local parents of autistic adults who are planning the project, according to Dennis Rogers, one of those parents.

“As our kids age out of school we find a real lack of services for adults with autism,” said Rogers, whose daughter is autistic. “They end up being isolated in their houses watching videos all day long and the quality of life isn’t what it should be.”

Residents at Safe Haven Farms will be able to garden, ride horses, hike through trails and someday maybe swim in an indoor pool. There will be roughly one staff member to help care for every two residents.

Rent will cost the same as current housing for disabled adults with Medicaid waivers, Rogers said. But first they need to raise the money to build it. Now that they’re over the zoning hurdle, they hope to have the money together to break ground in the fall.

One study concluded that children of men who became a father after the age of 40 were 5.75 times more likely to have an autism disorder compared to

One study concluded that children of men who became a father after the age of 40 were 5.75 times more likely to have an autism disorder compared to those whose fathers were younger than 30.

When couples are experiencing difficulties achieving conception, it is equally important to review the health of the male partner as well as the female. Some studies have shown that as much as 68% of infertile couples are due to issues with male reproductive health.

When assessing our man’s reproductive potential, often semen analysis is required to determine viscosity, volume, clumping, sperm concentration, sperm count, sperm motility and sperm morphology. All these semen parameters can be affected by age, poor nutritional status, alcohol and caffeine consumption, cigarette and drug exposure, environmental oxidative damage to the sperm, radiation exposure and testicular varicoceles.

More and more research is concluding that men do indeed have a biological clock. Age does seem to affect the vitality of the sperm which plays a role in the long term health of the resultant fetus. One study concluded that children of men who became a father after the age of 40 were 5.75 times more likely to have an autism disorder compared to those whose fathers were younger than 30.

A study on schizophrenia found that the risk of the illness was doubled among children of fathers in their late 40s when compared with children of fathers under 25 and increased almost threefold in children born to fathers 50 and older.

Sperm are much more vulnerable to damage then the female egg. They are 1/200th the size of the egg and they are produced and stored in the testicles which are essentially located outside the body and thus are that much more exposed to the external environment. As well, sperm require 80 days to mature and therefore the health of those sperm are not only affected by the health and lifestyle choices of the man at the time of examination but also for the 2 1/2 months prior.

Anti-depressants can damage men's sperm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRIAGE by Judith Graham

Originally posted: June 11, 2009

Anti-depressants can damage men's sperm
Add anti-depressants to the list of substances that can damage men’s sperm and potentially impair their fertility.

In a new study, New York researchers report that as many as half of men taking the anti-depressant paroxetine (brand names, Seroxat and Paxil) have higher levels of sperm fragmentation.

The study was published online today by the journal Fertility & Sterility.

“It’s fairly well known that SSRI anti-depressants negatively impact erectile function and ejaculation. This study goes on step further, demonstrating that they can cause a major increase in genetic damage to sperm,” said Dr. Peter Schlegel, the study’s senior author and professor of reproductive medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

“Although this study doesn’t look directly at fertility, we can infer that as many as half of men taking SSRIs have a reduced ability to conceive. These men should talk with their physicians about their treatment options,” he added.

The study followed 35 healthy men who took paroxetine for five weeks. Tests were used to examine DNA fragmentation, which occurs when sperm DNA is missing pieces of the genetic code. The results showed that 50 percent of men had signs of abnormal DNA fragmentation while taking the drug, compared with less than 10 percent at the start of the trial.

The men’s sperm returned to normal after discontinuing the drug.

Dr. Cigdem Tanrikut speculated that the anti-depressant caused mens’ sperm to slow down as it makes its way through the male reproductive tract. Sperm gets “hung up,” she said in a statement, allowing it to age and become damaged.

The amount, concentration and motility of sperm were not significantly changed by the medication.

Though men may not know it, sperm can be damaged by various substances, including smoking, alcohol, heat, anabolic steroids, drug abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and some environmental exposures.

A Man's Shelf Life

A Man's Shelf Life

By: Mark TeichPage 2 of 4


Male versus Female Mutations

Scientists have long known that advanced paternal age (like increased maternal age) played some role in fertility problems and birth defects. Yet because the reports mainly involved children who died before birth or who had extremely rare disorders, no one really rang the alarm. Now, with studies linking the father's age to relatively frequent, serious conditions like autism, schizophrenia, and Down syndrome, the landscape is shifting.

Women have unfairly borne the brunt of the blame for birth defects. When the conditions were familial, passed on through chromosomal lineage, women were somehow widely believed culpable, even though such defects can be traced to either partner. "But what we're finding now is that in humans as well as in other mammals, when there's a new genetic change—called 'de novo or sporadic point mutation'—it almost always happens in the male parent," says Dolores Malaspina, chair of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center. And these de novo mutations increase in frequency with the age of the male parent.

These mutations could reflect the differences in male and female reproduction, notes Jabs. By the time females reach their teen years, their eggs have already been formed—just one new egg matures each month. Men, on the other hand, produce millions of sperm cells every time they ejaculate. After each ejaculation, they must literally replicate those cells, and each replication multiplies the chance for a DNA "copy error"—a genetic chink in the sperm DNA. The more ejaculations a man produces, the greater the chance for chinks to arise, leading to increased point mutation and thus increased infertility and birth defects. While a woman's reproductive capacity halts more or less abruptly after all her eggs have been used up somewhere in their forties or fifties, men experience a longer, more gradual winnowing and disintegration. "We believe that something in men's DNA replication machinery keeps becoming less efficient and less accurate with age, and the problems accumulate," says Jabs.



A Chilling Finding
The biggest news—the father's role in brain disorders—has come to light largely because of research from Israel, where birth records routinely include the age of the male parent. The first unsettling finding linked paternal age and schizophrenia.

"In our first study, looking at every pregnancy in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976, we found that increased age in the father predicted increased cases of schizophrenia in the children," explains Malaspina, who was on the team doing the work. "In our second study we found that when the cases arose from new mutations—not familial inheritance—it almost always could be traced to the genetics of the father. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the cases could be explained only by the age of the father—a threefold risk linked to fathers older than 50 compared with those in their 20s." Studies in Sweden and California produced almost identical results.

The autism findings are even more disturbing: Men 40 and older in the Israeli study were almost six times as likely to have offspring with autism than men under 30. Some researchers believe that older fathers may hold a clue to the vast upsurge in autism cases in the past decade. "With older and older couples having children—in the past two years, for the first time, more babies are being born to women over age 30 than under age 30, and on average, male partners tend to be older than female partners—it's very feasible that paternal age is a major predictor of autism," asserts Fisch.

Immunization in Primates causes Autism

Sunday, June 7, 2009
Immunization in Primates causes Autism


Infant Primates Given Vaccines On U.S. Children's Immunization Schedule Develop Biomedical And Behavioral Symptoms Of Autism

Article Date: 20 May 2008



A primate model for autism using the U.S. children's immunization schedule was unveiled at the International Meeting For Autism Research (IMFAR) this weekend. The research underscores the critical need for studies into vaccine safety and the immune and mitochondrial dysfunction of autistic children. The National Autism Association (NAA) questions why the government hasn't undertaken these vital studies and why researchers have had to depend on private money to perform this critical science that will surely impact the health of millions of children worldwide.

Using infant macaque monkeys, University of Pittsburgh's Dr. Laura Hewitson, Ph.D., described how vaccinated animals, when compared to unvaccinated animals, showed significant neurodevelopmental deficits and "significant associations between specific aberrant social and non-social behaviors, isotope binding, and vaccine exposure."

Researchers also reported, "vaccinated animals exhibited progressively severe chronic active inflammation whereas unexposed animals did not" and found "many significant differences in the GI tissue gene expression profiles between vaccinated and unvaccinated animals." Gastrointestinal issues are a common symptom of children with regressive autism.

NAA calls for the NIH to conduct large scale, non-epidemiological studies into the biomedical symptoms surrounding young children and all vaccines, including those containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal and other additives like aluminum.

This request for further research echoes that of Dr. Bernadine Healy, Former NIH Director in a CBS interview earlier this week. "I think public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as 'irrational,' without sufficient studies of causation...without studying the population that got sick," Healy said. "I have not seen major studies that focus on 300 kids who got autistic symptoms within a period of a few weeks of the vaccines."

Recently the government's vaccine court conceded the case of Hannah Poling, admitting that vaccines triggered her regression into autism by exacerbating mitochondrial dysfunction. "The recent Poling case and this new research provide further evidence that the CDC has fallen down on their job to protect children from harm. The biomedical research to date suggests that parental reports of regression following vaccination is not only plausible, but likely in certain individuals," said Scott Bono, NAA Chairman. "To date, the CDC has conducted no safety testing on the possible harmful effects of simultaneously administering multiple vaccines to infants, and has steadfastly refused to state a preference for mercury-free vaccines to be given to children and pregnant women. It's time for HHS and Congress to step in and take vaccine safety away from the CDC."

On June 4th, parents of vaccine-injured children will rally for toxin-free immunizations in Washington, DC. For more information about the "Green Our Vaccines" rally or the new primate study visit weblink:www.nationalautism.org.

National Autism Association
weblink:www.nationalautism.org
weblink:www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/107994.php

6 Fold Increase in Autism for Offspring of Men Over 40

June 02, 2009
Why Good Parents Believe Myths About Autism and Vaccines
By J.B. Handley