Best of AofA: Autism From a Flu Shot? The Ominous Clue From Kanner's Autism Case #7
By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill http://www.ageofautism.com
Seventy-three years ago, Elizabeth
Peabody Trevett, a pediatrician and pioneer in promoting mass
vaccination for infants, gave birth to a boy named John who became
the seventh child ever diagnosed with autism. She presumably
vaccinated her baby, and perhaps herself while pregnant, with the
same shots she administered to her own patients. One of those shots,
the newly developed diphtheria toxoid, was the first to contain the
ethyl mercury preservative, thimerosal.
Today, pediatricians and public health officials scoff at concerns
that thimerosal, still used today in most flu shots recommended for
all pregnant women and infants older than 6 months, could cause
autism. But after researching our new book, "The Age of Autism:
Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic," we are
concerned about such an outcome.
Our conclusion: The facts of Case 7 fit with a common familial
background exposure in the first cases to newly commercialized ethyl
mercury compounds in agriculture and vaccines. They suggest
children, then as now, are at risk from the dangerous and
indefensible practice of injecting them with mercury for the stated
purpose of protecting their health.
--
Elizabeth Peabody Trevett graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical
School and won a fellowship to Harvard where she was one of seven
pediatricians who pioneered the well-baby visit – at which vaccines
are routinely administered. Her son John was born in November 1937.
She subsequently divorced her husband, psychiatrist Laurence Trevett,
and resumed using her maiden name, Peabody.
A few years later, back in Maryland, she was quoted about the
importance of vaccination in an Annapolis newspaper article: “Too
many parents, said Dr. Peabody, have the proper shots given and then
relax, forgetting that booster shots are needed and that
immunization does wear off. Speaking specifically of some of the
most prevalent ailments, she stated that a child cannot be
vaccinated against smallpox too often and it should be done for the
first time when a baby is between three months and one year of age.
In the case of diphtheria, booster shots are extremely important.”
Diphtheria was the first mass vaccine to contain thimerosal,
starting in the 1930s just as the first autism cases were
identified. It would have been widely available at a teaching
hospital like Harvard at the time John was born.
Following her passion for public health, Elizabeth Peabody later set
up a well-baby clinic in Iraq, again emphasizing the importance of
vaccinating thousands of babies, and then joined the Public Health
Service in Atlanta as a regional administrator for children’s health
programs.
As flu season kicks into high gear this year in the United States,
infants, pregnant women and nursing mothers are among the millions
of Americans whom public health officials are urging with
unprecedented fervor to get a flu shot. Because most flu shots
contain mercury, and because the CDC has declined to express a
preference for giving these groups a mercury-free version, this
means millions of the most vulnerable among us are getting a
significant dose of the dangerous neurotoxin – some at grocery
stores and airports and retailers, some without even having to get
out of their car. Tracking short-term, localized and mild adverse
reactions would seem difficult, and following up on any associations
with the onset of chronic or delayed outcomes like autism all but
impossible.
--
This situation is plagued with illogic and bad judgment. The very same Public Health Service Peabody worked for -- which now includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – along with the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged manufacturers not to put mercury in childhood vaccines. This was in July 1999, and over the next several years mercury was phased out of those vaccines – except, inexplicably, for flu shots. The government in fact greatly expanded flu shot coverage recommendations so that now all pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants over six months old are targeted for the shots. This earlier exposure to mercury has the effect of offsetting the removal from other vaccines; in fact, it moves the timing of the shots forward to a much more vulnerable point in the development of the infant brain and the immune system. Adjusted for weight, fetuses and infants are still getting a substantial portion of the mercury dose that first caused concern.
The government originally acted to remove mercury because a Congressionally ordered review found that as more and more shots were added to the infant vaccine schedule during the 1990s, the amount of mercury to which a child could be exposed exceeded the EPA guideline for maximum safe mercury exposure. And because mercury is so dangerous to humans and especially infants – it is the second-deadliest element on Earth – and has caused terrible poisonings all around the world, the idea was a sound one based on the precautionary principle and the well-known medical admonition to "First, do no harm."
Precaution has not exactly been in the watchword in the medical industry’s use of mercury. Our book traces its reckless use in medicine and manufacturing for half-a-millennium; doctors treated the skin ravages of syphilis with mercury ointment and vapors after Columbus brought the disease back from the New World in 1494; eventually a much more toxic mercury compound, mercuric chloride, was ingested and injected to try to “cure” syphilis (only the advent of penicillin the 1940s did that). We found a strong pattern of evidence that suggests mercuric chloride interacted with the disease to create the deadliest form of syphilis, called general paralysis of the insane. Doctors never noticed.
So it has gone for centuries. Our research strongly suggests that the first cases of autism among children born in the 1930s were connected with exposure to three newly commercialized ethyl mercury compounds: a seed disinfectant, a lumber treatment, and the vaccine preservative thimerosal. (All three were invented and patented by one man, University of Chicago chemist Morris Kharasch, one of the leaders in the development of organic chemistry.)
What leads us to this conclusion? We were able to identify seven of the 11 children described in Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Leo Kanner’s landmark 1943 report (John Trevett, disguised as "Herbert B., was Case 7 in this series); Kanner, the dean of child psychiatrists who wrote the first child psychiatry textbook eight years earlier with no mention of autism, said these children’s behavior differed “markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far.” In his report, he used first names and last initials to mask the children’s identities, but we used clues in the detailed family descriptions to find them. The results clearly point to an environmental trigger in these first cases – specifically, ethyl mercury.
-- Case 2 was the son of a plant pathologist working with fungicides at the federal government’s Beltsville Agriculture Research Center in Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital. His extensive archive shows him working with mercury compounds from the beginning of his career, and contains a pamphlet for the ethyl mercury seed disinfectant Ceresan, a dust that could easily have gotten on his clothes and exposed his pregnant wife or newborn infant. (She had kidney trouble during pregnancy, which can be a sign of mercury poisoning.) The father’s resume shows him working with Ceresan when his son was born.
-- Case 3 was the son of a forestry professor whose research places him in a laboratory where early tests on wood preservation were being conducted with Lignasan, also an ethyl mercury compound.
-- And Case 7, as we have described, was the pediatrician and vaccine advocate for the Public Health Service. Several others in the first 11 had medical backgrounds that could put them at risk of medicinal mercury exposure.
Today John Trevett lives in a group home in Maryland, where we visited him as we prepared our book. He does not speak, but he appears to understand what is said. He is no trouble and seems well-cared for, but it a sad and eerie end for someone whose parents were both doctors and whose mother was a medical pioneer.
In our book, we describe this ongoing tragedy of overlooked mercury poisoning in depth and detail. Here, it is important to say that the Public Health Service may be just the latest in a parade of distinguished “experts” and esteemed organizations to miss the clues – even a clue that comes at a terrible price from one of their own pioneering pediatricians.
--
Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill are co-authors of “The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic,” published in September 2010 by Thomas Dunne Books.
One example is when emulsifying agents (for example polysorbates) are present in vaccines (for example in H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine Pandemrix). They render the blood-brain barrier more permeable thus facilitating passage of mercury into the brain tissue where it remains and accumulates.
(Emulsifying agents are used in injections in connection with drug targeting when it is desirable that for example chemo and psychiatric drugs gain contact with the brain tissue).
In other words, in addition to the specific amounts of toxic substances in vaccines, potential interactions should always be considered.
Posted by: Sandy | September 07, 2012 at 04:03 AM
It's worth reiterating the healthy result of actually avoiding flu shots for infants/children: In Australia, April/May 2010, flu shots for young children were urgently cancelled after hundreds of convulsing kids were rushed to hospitals, with at least one death, and one more child in a permanent coma. Three months later in their mid-Winter Australian officials again promoted a newly made flu vaccine, but virtually no parents dared to participate after the initial April-May autumn season.
The result: After the initial carnage, and with public mass rejection of the newly offered shots, there were ZERO flu-associated child deaths in 2010 in Australia and also very low numbers of flu-associated hospitalizations. It's all there in their public health records.
thanks again Dan and Mark,
David Burd
Posted by: david burd | September 06, 2012 at 06:24 AM
You are doing a tremendous job keeping everyone informed.
Elizabeth Gillespie
Posted by: AussieMum | September 05, 2012 at 11:23 PM
Posted by: Grannyblue | September 05, 2012 at 05:50 PM
Thanks great article
Angus
Posted by: Angus Files | September 05, 2012 at 12:35 PM