TACA holds monthly meetings in many locations throughout the United States that feature educational speakers on important topics and allow family members to connect with one another and stay on top of the latest information in the autism world. Each TACA group maintains a resource library of the latest autism books and tapes that can be checked out by members at no charge.

Check out our group listings: each contains information on TACA meetings and special events as well as a contact form.

Are you wondering what happens at a TACA meeting? Watch our video.

Reporter: Leigh Mills

Watch video: Hyperbaric Chamber

"Gracin was born on March the 8th, 2005," recalls her mother, Stacey Davidson, "She had what they call dysmorphic features, a weak cry, and rocker bottom feet.

"They [doctors] came in and said that she is a chromosomal baby, and that they don't know what chromosome or how long she's going to live."

It was the beginning of what would become the battle of her life.

Gracin started having seizures, she couldn't eat and at 15 days old she went into congestive heart failure.

"The pediatrician told me that God makes some babies angels and that my baby was an angel and that she was not going to live to six months old and probably wouldn't live until three months old," remembers Davidson, "That was the hardest part."

But Gracin survived and was eventually diagnosed with a genetic disorder called 1p36 deletion syndrome.

"It means that there's a piece missing in her chromosome," Davidson explains, "Had the 1p36.3 that is missing attached to like the 15th chromosome, she would be a typical child."

Gracin began standard therapy as her parents hoped to minimize her developmental delays.

Three years later, Gracin progresses slowly. She can't walk or talk or even crawl.

Stacey began looking for alternatives and came across a magazine article on a little Wisconsin girl, who underwent an experimental therapy with great success.

Grace Kenitz is 9 years old. She suffers from a mitochondrial disorder called mitochondrial cytochrome c reductase deficiency.

They have similar names and similar stories.

"Grace was being kept alive by her feeding tube," recalls Grace's mother, Shannon Kenitz.

Grace spent the first three years of her life in the hospital, with her mother by her side.

"Her life was basically just being in a hospital hooked up to machines. She was on over 42 different medications," says Kenitz, "During those first few years of Grace's life, she had absolutely no idea that I was her mom. I mean, she didn't look at me because she was blind, she didn't know that we loved her because she didn't comprehend anything."

Grace's diagnosis was a shock to Kenitz.

"It was a diagnosis of a terminal illness and at that time only four other kids had ever been cited with that type of mitochondrial disorder," recalls Kenitz, "And so the physicians told us to take Grace home and spend time with her as a family and to let her go."

But Kenitz couldn't do it.

It was her fear of Grace dying that pushed her into the world of alternative medicine.

"I needed to know that I did everything in my life to help Grace," she says as tears stream down her face, "Because if I had that comfort of knowing that I did everything, then it may have been easier for me to let her die."

Kenitz and her daughter traveled to Florida to try hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

"My daughter completely changed in that first year of doing hyperbarics," she says with a smile.

The therapy, also known as H-BOT, is still considered experimental.

Here's how it works: patients sit in a pressurized chamber for about an hour. They wear a mask and breathe in 100% oxygen.

"You're getting increased oxygenation into the blood and you're getting increased oxygenation out into other areas of the brain that might not be seeing enough oxygen flow," explains Doctor Kyle VanDyke, "You're also having decreased inflammation in the brain."

VanDyke was a skeptic himself until a family member participated in a pilot study.

"My personal experience is with my son, who was nonverbal before hyperbarics [and] had horrendous GI [gastrointestinal] problems with his autism," says VanDyke, "He had tremendous improvements when we did hyperbarics and that's why got me involved in it initially."

Studies are ongoing, but VanDyke says the therapy may be helpful in treating a number of neurologic conditions Including autism, stroke, cerebral palsy, mitochondrial disorders, multiple sclerosis and parkinson's, as well as chronic fatigue and injuries.

But it's not cheap. Most insurance companies won't cover it because it's an alternative therapy.

In Grace's case, Kenitz began to fundraise furiously.

"I would literally go to Florida, treat Grace, come back, raise more money, go to Florida, treat her, come back," she says.

Meanwhile, Grace's story gained national attention, including an appearance on The Montel Williams Show.

Families sent Kenitz hundreds of letters a month asking for advice, so she decided to do something about it.

One year later, she opened A Place of Grace in Fitchburg as an integrative hyperbaric center.

"As moms we were running from hyperbarics to PT to OT to speech to vision to doctors appointments, some of us marriage counseling," Kenitz explains, "I wanted everything in one building."

Grace continued to improve. We began following her story in late 2004, the year she started kindergarten.

"My dream was fulfilled last Tuesday when Grace came to school and had her own desk and cubbie with her name on it," said Kenitz in an interview in December of 2004.

One year later she surprised her mom and took her first steps at the Dane County Regional Airport, as Kenitz returned home from a two week business trip.

Today, Grace is a fourth grader. She works daily with lifestyle and speech therapists. And she continues H-BOT in their home and at the center.

A country song now bears her name, and they've sold the movie rights to Grace's story.

"In the last two years our lives have changed so much that I do know that Grace was given to me for the mere fact that I wasn't going to take no for an answer," says Kenitz as she begins to tear up, "People look at Grace and they see where she was and they see where she is now and I want that so much for every family that walks through that door."

Families like the Davidsons, who raised $9,000 dollars and traveled here from Tennessee to give H-BOT a try.

Davidson says, "The first day when we walked in and did our second treatment and Grace had just gotten out of her chamber and walked past and said, 'Hi!' I mean, it gave me chills."

Remember, Gracin couldn't even sit up when they arrived at the center.

"She is three," says Davidson, "Just Monday after we did the two hours of physical therapy, she sat for about a minute alone."

Gracin spends an hour in the chamber twice a day and does ten hours of physical therapy a week.

"I want to catch her up to where she's supposed to be," says Davidson, "She has so much to give and offer and so much life to live and I think this is going to help her quality of life."

After four weeks, they hit a milestone.

"She can sit anywhere from three to seven minutes," says Davidson triumphantly, "We've been on the verge of sitting for two years and for her to actually have the strength to sit up, it's just been a wonderful experience all around for us.

"I've never heard her say, 'Mommy, I love you.' She's never walked to me. That will make all of this worth it."
--------------------------------------------------------
The Davidsons are already fundraising for another trip to Wisconsin next spring.

Meanwhile, a study is pending publication that could give more credibility to the therapy in the medical community.

It's a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, which VanDyke says is the gold standard in medicine.

As for the movie based on Grace's life, there's no word on when that will be completed.

by Barbara Loe Fisher

On Nov. 14, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 into law, instituting first-time vaccine safety reforms in the U.S. vaccination system and creating the first no-fault federal vaccine injury compensation program alternative to a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers and pediatricians. Twenty-two years later, on Nov. 18, 2008,I made a statement (Statement — Barbara Loe Fisher, Nov 18, 2008 — Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines) to the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) and questioned whether the compensation program is fatally flawed and so broken that it should be repealed. Many parents are wondering whether it would be better to return to civil court without restrictions to sue vaccine manufacturers and doctors for injuries and deaths their children suffered after receiving federally recommended vaccines.

During its two-decade history, two out of three individuals applying for federal vaccine injury compensation have been turned away empty-handed even though to date $1.8B has been awarded to more than 2,200 plaintiff's out of some 12,000 who have applied. Today, nearly 5,000 vaccine injury claims are sitting in limbo because they represent children, who suffered brain and immune system dysfunction after vaccination but have been diagnosed with regressive autism, which is not recognized by the program as a compensable event. There is $2.7B sitting in the Trust Fund which could have been awarded to vaccine victims.

At the time of the law's creation in 1986, Congress said they were committed to setting up a fair, expedited, non-adversarial, less traumatic, less expensive no-fault compensation mechanism alternative to civil litigation. But Congress also acknowledged that any legislation providing liability protection must also be equally committed to preventing vaccine harm. The Act contains strong safety provisions, including first-time mandates for doctors to record and report serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths after vaccination and give parents written benefit and risk information before a child is vaccinated.

But few of the safety provisions have been enforced and, as I testified in Congress in 1999 and again at the Nov. 18 ACCV meeting, there has been a betrayal of the promise that was made to parents about how the compensation program would be implemented. Obtaining compensation has become a highly adversarial, time-consuming, traumatic and expensive process for families of vaccine injured children and far too many vaccine victims have been denied compensation while vaccine makers and doctors have enjoyed liability protection and dozens of doses of nine new vaccines have been added to the childhood vaccine schedule.

I pointed out that federal court judges are beginning to look back at the legislative history of the Act, which so clearly affirms the intent of Congress when creating it. In recent court decisions, judges have agreed with parents and their attorneys that the compensation program has become far too difficult for plaintiffs. A recent state Supreme Court ruling also reiterated that Congress never intended to shield vaccine manufacturers from ALL liability for vaccine injuries and deaths when it could be demonstrated that a safer product could have been marketed.

In a Supreme Court of Georgia ruling on October 6, 2008 in American Home Products v. Ferrari, the justices unanimously held that the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act does not give a vaccine manufacturer blanket immunity from vaccine injury lawsuits if it can be proven that the company could have made a safer vaccine. Georgia Supreme Court Justice George Carley wrote that the 1986 law and "the congressional intent behind it shows that the Vaccine Act does not pre-empt all design defect claims." He added that Congress did not "use language which indicates that use of the compensation system is mandatory" but only "an appealing alternative" to the courts.

Justice Carley wrote that there is no evidence that "FDA approval alone renders a vaccine unavoidably safe" and said "We hesitate to hold that a manufacturer is excused from making changes it knows will improve its product merely because an older, more dangerous version received FDA approval," adding that to do so would have "the perverse effect" of granting complete immunity from liability to an entire industry and he concluded that "in the absence of any clear and manifest congressional purpose to achieve that result, we must reject such a far-reaching interpretation."

During the ACCV meeting, longtime plaintiff's attorney Sherry Drew gave a moving description of the suffering that families with vaccine injured children endure and, during public comment at the end of the meeting, Jim Moody, of SafeMinds, and Vicky Debold, RN, PhD joined me in urging the Committee to recommend to the new Secretary of DHHS that more vaccine injured children be compensated. This was echoed by outgoing parent ACCV member Tawny Buck, of Alaska, who has a DPT vaccine injured daughter and new ACCV parent member Sarah Hoiberg, of Florida, who has a DTaP vaccine injured daughter.

In the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act, the Institute of Medicine was directed to review the medical literature for scientific evidence that vaccines can cause injury and death, which resulted in landmark reports to Congress in 1991 and 1994 providing that evidence. IOM announced at the ACCV meeting that it has recently been contracted by the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) to assemble a Committee of scientific experts to review of the medical literature for evidence regarding the biological mechanisms for injury and death in association with varicella zoster (chicken pox), hepatitis B, meningococcal and HPV vaccine. There will be several public workshops during the Committee's two- year study.

NVIC has been calling for basic science research into the biological mechanisms of vaccine injury and death for more than two decades. Without understanding how and why vaccines can cause brain and immune system dysfunction, there will be no way to develop pathological profiles to help scientifically confirm whether or not an individual has been injured or died from vaccination.

The truth about vaccine risks lies in the science, properly designed and conducted. The upcoming IOM review may be hampered by a lack of biological mechanism studies published in the medical literature but the review is also an opportunity to point the way to fill in those gaps in knowledge and the need for additional research that could become part of a national vaccine safety research agenda.

In the absence of scientific certainty, all children who regress into poor health after vaccination should be given a fair hearing in the federal vaccine injury compensation program and generously compensated when no other plausible cause can be found for what happened to them after vaccination. Congress intended the vaccine injury compensation program to be non-adversarial, fair, generous and humane. If it cannot function the way it was intended to function, then parents have every right to call for its repeal and a return to unrestricted lawsuits.


Click (Statement — Barbara Loe Fisher, Nov 18, 2008 — Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines) to read my entire ACCV statement with live links to the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act, U.S. Court of Appeals decisions, congressional testimony and other original sources.

Click(HRSA - National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program) for ACCV meeting minutes and dates for upcoming meetings, which can be accessed via tele-conference call by the public who cannot attend the Rockville, Maryland meetings in person.

National Vaccine Information Center
NVIC E-News is a free service of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center and is supported through donations (DonateNow).

NVIC is funded through the financial support of its members and does not receive any government subsidies. Barbara Loe Fisher, President and Co-founder.

Learn more about vaccines, diseases and how to protect your informed consent rights National Vaccine Information Center

A prominent infectious disease specialist's accounts of death threats he received from vaccine opponents exposes a kind of harassment in connection to fears of a link between vaccinations and autism, vaccine researchers say.

Some vocal proponents of childhood vaccinations say they have received hate mail and even death threats from anti-vaccine activists.

Dr. Paul Offit, medical director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a vaccination proponent, recounted his experiences to Dr. Nancy Snyderman Thursday morning on NBC's "Today" show.

Snyderman said on the program that the threats Offit received included a "phone call from an unidentified man who mentioned specific and private details" about Offit's family.

"And then he hung up," Offit said. "But the implication was clear -- he knew where my children went to school."

Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a vocal proponent of universal flu vaccination, says he is no stranger to such harassment.

"Among the most egregious things -- I got a letter once railing against my involvement in vaccines and hoping that something serious would happen to me and hoping that something serious would happen to one of my children," he said. "I had people come to the door of my home and harass my wife and kids, so I no longer have my address listed in the phone book."

And at one point, Poland said, someone broke into his lab and attempted to hack into his computers. As a result, Poland's lab is now locked down for security purposes.

But some people connected to groups that believe a vaccine-autism link exists say that they, too, have been the targets of hateful speech.

"I've been called a baby killer," says Rebecca Estepp, national manager of the autism support group Talk About Curing Autism. "One woman got into my face this summer and told me I was going to cause millions of children to die. Emotions are running high because this involves the health of our children.

"Nancy Snyderman and Paul Offit are carrying on about it, but it happens to us, too. I have sympathy because I know exactly how it feels."

While researchers note that the overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence exonerates vaccines as a cause of autism, some groups still believe that the shots children receive when young are somehow tied to the condition.

But if the vitriol on both sides has proven one thing, it is that the issue is no longer about the science alone.

Michael John Carley, author and executive director of the Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership Inc. (GRASP), has himself been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum. In his upcoming manuscript entitled "Cures, Vaccines, Research, and the Promise of Alarmist Rhetoric: Autism Politics 101," Carley notes that for some, the fears about unvaccinated children or widespread autism have taken secondary importance.

"[W]hat has dwarfed these doomsday scenarios is the vitriolic nature in which the argument has descended," he wrote. "The shameful tactics, hurtful statements and outright mismanagement conducted by both sides has made the 'cure' debate look like a friendly disagreement by comparison."

Carley, too, has experienced backlash from some of this anger for his view that no link exists between vaccines and autism. He says that he has personally received "tons of hate mail," although he has not yet received a death threat.

Threats Emerge From a Minority
Estepp, the autism support group manager whose husband is in law enforcement, said everyone with whom she is involved would condemn the harassment that Offit has endured.

"No one should ever receive death threats," she said. "No one should ever know where his children are. That's horrible, and I'm sorry to hear that is happening."

Estepp said she believes that those who engage in such threats represent only a small portion of the overall community, a point with which the pro-vaccination Offit agreed.

"In any movement you have some fringe people who are very passionate and make some wrong choices," Estepp said, adding that reports of such threats against vaccine proponents are damaging to groups such as hers.

They unfairly paint those on her side of the debate as irrational and potentially violent, she said.

And Offit said the anger that some parents experience is understandable. "For parents of children with autism, it's really hard," he says. "It's emotionally hard, it's financially hard.

"When there's the notion that there's something to blame, you can see where the anger would come from."

But even if the threats are emerging from a small section of those who oppose recommended vaccine schedules, those in the field say that they have a definite impact on the work they do.

"Does it stop me from speaking what I think is the truth? No," Poland said.

But, he notes, "I know of colleagues who have decided to write something slightly different or say something slightly different because they are afraid of inciting anti-vaccine groups."

Dr. William Schaffner, professor and chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., said, "The threats certainly -- as well as the anticipation of heated 'feedback' -- clearly has inhibited colleagues from engaging in the public discussion of contentious issues regarding vaccines, Lyme disease, etc."

Schaffner said he has never received such threats. But, he added, "as to myself, this unpleasantness makes me very wary; we are a society that is prone to violence."

Poland said he believes legislation should be considered to offer special protection to those in the field of vaccine research.

"Since this affects not only a person and his or her family, but indeed the public health, special provisions should be considered in terms of legal consequences," he said. "This was done, for example, in the case of abortion protesters."

What Should Be Done?
But are such steps necessary? Thus far, no one has followed through with threats made against those in the field of vaccine research; likewise, there has been no report of any violence being visited on those in the autism community for their views.

Still, all involved say something should be done to help defuse the personal side of the debate.

Dr. Peter Hotez, immunologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and father of a daughter with autism, said he believes that federal public health agencies, including the surgeon general's office and the National Institutes of Health, must take a more active role in dissuading the link between vaccines and autism.

"[These organizations] have to be willing to speak out and make strong statements that vaccines do not cause autism," he said. "These organizations have been conspicuous by their silence."

"These things, they bother you because the nature of violence is that it's unpredictable," he said. "Does it take a personal injury, a death or property damage before something is done?"

Kirk Fernandes and Audrey Grayson contributed to this report.

MASS vaccination of Scottish schoolgirls against cervical cancer should have been delayed because not enough is known about possible side effects, a leading researcher claimed last night.

Dr Diane Harper, one of the world's leading experts in the field, said safety trials of the Cervarix vaccine should have been conducted for at least four more years before the decision was taken to give the jabs to thousands of girls in schools.

Harper concedes that Cervarix is effective against the HPV virus that causes many cases of cervical cancer and admits there is no evidence so far of any serious side effects. Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline says rigorous tests have been conducted over six years.

But Harper believes the safety tests for side effects should have been conducted for at least a decade and doses given to millions of individuals around the world before any mass vaccination began. She described the cervical cancer vaccination scheme in Scotland as an "experiment".

Last night, UK regulators and leading medics insisted Cervarix was safe and that it could save hundreds of lives by preventing many cases of cervical cancer.

Two months ago the Scottish Government launched its £64m Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination programme in schools, aimed at vaccinating around 30,000 girls aged 12-13 every year. Around the country thousands of girls are currently being vaccinated every week.

The vaccine was approved by the European Medicines Agency in September 2007.

Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at Dartmouth Medical Centre in the US, was herself paid by Glaxo to help conduct safety trials. She told Scotland on Sunday: "We can't tell you it's 100% safe because we don't know that. I think we would have been better waiting.

"In five years it will be pretty clear how safe it is because 70% of adverse events occur within five years and almost all of them, 97%, within 10 years. That way you have a good sense of comfort and you can reassure your population."

Harper said she would encourage women to use the vaccine, but on a voluntary basis. Under the Scottish programme, girls are receiving the vaccine unless they decide not to. She said: "I think there's a lot of room for discussion about making it voluntary so that girls are not put under pressure to get it."

A total of 344 cases of suspected adverse reactions among girls receiving Cervarix have so far been reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The most common include pain and rashes, dizziness, headaches and vomiting.

Cervarix is currently undergoing evaluation by the US Food and Drug Administration and is expected to be approved next year. A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline said: "Cervarix had to undergo rigorous testing with large numbers of people in numerous clinical studies. In clinical studies, Cervarix was found to be generally well tolerated."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Both HPV vaccines have gone through very thorough testing as part of the licensing process. In properly conducted long-term safety studies, where HPV vaccines have been compared with a placebo, there were no differences in reported serious adverse events between the two groups.

"In the absence of any scientific evidence that points to safety concerns, it would be irresponsible to raise inappropriate fears over HPV vaccine safety."

Dr Stuart Scott, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association's Scottish GP Committee, said: "This cancer kills a number of women every year and, although there are no large population studies, it has been used for a number of years."

'Seize the opportunity to get protected'

HAZEL NUNN, health information manager for Cancer Research UK, writes: The introduction of the cervical cancer vaccine for teenage girls in Scotland began this September. It's an exciting step in the fight against a disease which still affects nearly 300 Scots women each year.

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers in women under 35. But from now, all girls aged 12 and 13 will be offered the vaccine. Over the next few years this will be extended to include women and girls up to the age of 18. And research suggests that the vaccine will prevent 70% of cervical cancers.

Earlier research has shown that cervical cancer is linked to some strains of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). The vaccine has been developed to give protection against two of these strains of HPV. It's exciting that research into the basic causes of cervical cancer has led to a new way of preventing the disease, and that it's now freely available to girls in Scotland.

It's vital to remember that the vaccine will not completely wipe out cervical cancer because it does not protect against every type of HPV. Now and for the foreseeable future, it is vital that women go for cervical screening (the smear test) when they're invited. In Scotland, cervical screening is available every three years for women aged 20 to 60.

"Screening can prevent cervical cancer by detecting unusual changes in the cervix before cancer develops, and it saves around 5,000 lives in the UK each year. Our message is to take up the opportunity to get vaccinated."

Dr. David Tayloe, left, is inducted as president of the American Academy of Pediatrics by Dr. Renee Jenkins, outgoing president. Ceremonies were held recently in Boston.

Now that Dr. David Tayloe has been officially inducted as president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, he plans to take his experience and passion into the federal arena.

The upcoming year will be a whirlwind, he said during a brief visit to Goldsboro this past week and will include speaking engagements, administrative duties and, after the election, lobbying legislators and Congress.

Tayloe has taken a leave of absence from Goldsboro Pediatrics, which he helped found in 1977 and went on to expand to locations in Mount Olive, Princeton and LaGrange. He has long been an advocate for school health issues, child abuse prevention and adolescent pregnancy prevention.

The national presidency brings with it a salary and essentially a three-year commitment -- one year each as president-elect, president and then immediate past president.

Tayloe's induction marks the first time in five years a community pediatrician has been in the leadership role. The last few presidents have worked at teaching hospitals, he said.

Once elected, he set up five areas of concentration for the coming year -- Medicaid payments, vaccine financing issues, fair payment of pediatricians, retail-based health clinics and funding medical students' education.

"I think Congress probably assumes that if children are eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program, a federal program that provides funding for each state), they assume they're all getting services," Tayloe said. "In North Carolina, we have been very fortunate because we have had the government, legislators, governors and then administration who have to take budgets and make children eligible and assure the kids actually have access to services."

The state already has a system in place that has proven effective, he said. But it's not perfect.

"There are provider shortages and kids don't have services for a variety of reasons. We have a lot of work to do," he said. "But by and large because the state of North Carolina appears to value their children, it's giving them access to physicians and now across the country ... I think Congress needs to probably increase the amount of money they're sending to the state for Medicaid."

Tayloe also favors keeping insurance companies out of Medicaid programs and instead ensuring that children receive health care.

"This will be something (where) we have to find that person inside the beltline in Washington who's got some power and convince them that Congress should assist the states in paying the Medicare rate," he said. "What Congress needs to own up to is that Medicaid was flawed from the beginning. ... You have got 50 different states setting up 50 different programs and paying providers 50 different ways, and a lot of children do not have services they're entitled to, and Congress needs to fix that."

While the AAP office is in Chicago, there is also one in Washington, D.C., a resource Tayloe plans to utilize after the election.

"The staff in Washington will arrange for me and other pediatricians to talk with officials in the new administration and with members of Congress and the staff to do whatever we can to increase the number of children who have access to medical services," he said.

It will be a full-time commitment, Tayloe said.

Another area of interest is providing preventive care for children, Tayloe said.

"The U.S. spends probably less than 5 percent on preventive care. It's a sick care system," he said. "Nowhere do we need more preventive care than with children."

Immunizations have also been a hot topic of late, specifically in the area of autism. On one occasion, Tayloe was included on a panel on TV's "Larry King Live" that featured a heated debate with celebrity mom Jenny McCarthy, who attributed her son's diagnosis to vaccinations received.

Tayloe maintains the AAP's position that immunizations are necessary.

"We have absolutely got to convince the government to educate the public that vaccines are good," he said. "Vaccines do not cause autism and we're not afraid of the truth -- if something's wrong with a vaccine, we would pull it. It's ridiculous to argue with a bunch of Hollywood actors about this."

For at least the next year, Tayloe's schedule is not his own.

His itinerary in the coming weeks includes trips to Chicago for leadership meetings, attending an American Medication Association meeting in Florida to discuss crossover issues, a trip to Egypt to speak to pediatricians from Arabic countries and a visit to Dubai, where pediatricians are seeking to establish the group's first international chapter.

	Download PDF of maps

A new study out of Cornell University says that children growing up in the rainiest or snowiest areas of the country seem to have a higher risk for autism than children living in drier climates.

The authors estimated that removing precipitation as a factor in autism would slice the prevalence of the disorder by 33% to 43%.

Among the possible explanations given were: A lack of vitamin D from a sun-deprived life under the clouds, an increased amount of time spent indoors amid toxic household chemicals, or the presence of dangerous neurotoxins in the precipitation itself, which in turn might trigger a genetic predisposition to ASD.

One of the most omnipresent, growing (and obvious) air-borne neurotoxins in the world to consider, of course, is mercury.

For a number of years, I have questioned whether rising levels of mercury from coal-fired power plants and other sources might be contributing to the overall body burden of heavy metals in pregnant women and infants in North America and elsewhere.

This "background" mercury, combined with mercury from maternal seafood consumption, dental amalgams, the vaccine preservative thimerosal, and other sources, might combine and accumulate in the systems of genetically susceptible infants and fetuses, resulting in autism, I have speculated.

It is not clear how mercury fallout onto land and surface water can cause higher levels of inorganic mercury in the bloodstreams of humans. But a recent study of federal data showed that the percentage of Americans with detectable levels of inorganic mercury in their blood increased eightfold between 2000 and 2004.

These are the same years that we see burgeoning levels of mercury being spewed into the atmosphere from industrializing areas of the world, particularly in China and other Asian countries.

The US Government has detected "mercury plumes" that carry the dangerous neurotoxin in great quantities across the Pacific and, within five days, found them hovering just offshore of San Diego, California.

At a recent vaccine forum at Hackensack University Medical Center, in New Jersey, I made this observation, and mentioned that the mercury carried aloft through the atmosphere will come down in the form of rain along the west coast or, during drier periods, continue eastward until it finds wetter, rainier parts of the country, where it is washed to the ground.

The evidence to show that rainy weather leads to increased mercury deposition on the ground is ample. In fact, scientists use rainfall as a measure to estimate mercury deposition in the environment.

One study from the University of Central Florida, showed that 80% of the atmospheric mercury fallout in Florida occurs during the rainy season. In fact, the average amount of mercury deposited on the ground per square meter, per week, was three times higher in the wet season (600 nanograms) than the dry season (200 nanograms).

There is likewise evidence to suggest that higher levels of background mercury are linked to a greater risk of autism. Two peer-reviewed studies from the University of Texas have suggested an increased risk of autism associated with physical proximity to mercury-emitting coal-fired powered plants and other industrial facilities.

A third study, funded by the CDC and published in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives, showed that children born in the most polluted tracts of the San Francisco Bay Area (heavy metals like mercury carried the highest risk) were 50% more likely to develop autism.

"Our results suggest a potential association between autism and estimated metal concentrations in ambient air around the birth residence," concluded the government-sponsored study, (which was essentially ignored by the media).

Suddenly, the "Mercury Rain" hypothesis starts to make a little more sense. Not that coal from China could cause autism directly, but prenatal mercury exposures might make children more susceptible to other environmental triggers, including vaccine ingredients.

Richard Lathe, an autism expert from Pieta Research in Edinburgh, Scotland, told the Washington Post that the new study's findings almost certainly implicate rainfall, at the least.

"Statistical correlations do not necessarily imply causality," he said, but added, "the authors demonstrate, with better than 99 percent certainty, that the correlation is not by chance."

Lathe believes the most likely explanation, "is that rain carries chemicals in the atmosphere to the ground." He said that, "Emissions from manufacturing industries, power plants (ie, coal), and from domestic waste incineration generally rise to the troposphere to be diluted into the large volume of the atmosphere. Precipitation can dump this load back on the land, to be absorbed by plants and animals in the food chain."

And, Lathe noted, "There has been a suggestion that maternal exposure to environmental toxins might contribute to autism in children," he said.

I am not the only one to suggest that ALL mercury exposures - both environmental and vaccine-related - must be taken into account when trying to asses the risk of mercury and autism.

In my book, Evidence of Harm, I noted that Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Vaccine Safety Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a vaccine authority, said in 1999 that, "Mercury accumulated in women is transferred to their children prenatally and in breast milk." Subsequent exposures from other sources, "including biologic products, (ie, vaccines), are presumed to be additive to their baseline body loads."

And in 2006, a special panel of the NIH wrote that background mercury exposures must be taken into account when assessing the risk of autism and thimerosal.

"Panel members expressed a concern that thimerosal dose, administered through a series of vaccinations, may provide a poor surrogate measure of the cumulative exposure of a child to organic mercurials. Exposures through diet or other environmental sources would not be documented reliably," the NIH panel wrote.

Can rain cause autism? Of course not. But could it pull mercury down from the skies - mercury carried aloft from far away countries across the seas - and affect unborn and newborn children to the point of making them more vulnerable to autistic regression?

This new study makes one thing fairly clear to me: Autism is not a purely genetic disorder. Our changing, endangered, dirty environment is playing a role.

By Katie Wright

Sometimes I think about what a shallow and silly person I used to be before I had autism in my life. I am sure parents reading this can look back with me and remember when we thought we had “real problems.”

So I watched, with great amusement, Dr. Nancy Synderman’s recent tour de force of histrionic self-pity during her on air profile of pal, Dr. Paul Offit. We heard, breathlessly, of poor Dr. Offit’s struggles with angry parents. I know, I know, it is a broken record already. Every Offit interview is the same: man/scientist bravely battling forces of evil and ignorance as he selflessly yearns to save the world from disease!

Dr. Offit complains how hard this is on his wife and family! How his children suffer! How they just bought a new security system! I mean, the suffering of this man is endless, how he stands it we will never know. At least the Offit family has the comfort of those million dollar checks coming in from the rota vaccine to soften the blows.

Dr. Synderman also angrily recounted how she too has been “verbally and physically” assaulted by angry parents. I was more worried about Matt Lauer in that moment! Poor Matt looked like he was the one being assaulted by the end of that segment. Dr. Synderman’s face was clenched, her eyes glaring, her fist shaking as she described her victimhood. “Autism and vaccines are not controversial Matt!!” Dr. Synderman yelled over and over again. I swear, she seemed nuttier than Tom Cruise, I was just waiting for the “you’re glib, Matt, you’re glib” comment.

Of course, we all condemn violence of any kind. Violence has no place in our community and no role in this discussion. Period. End of story, no ifs, and or buts. I just do not think the “Today Show” or the media in general are the best places for Synderman and Offit to get the assistance or help they are apparently seeking. I would encourage them to deal with the threats via the police instead.

My Dad was the president of NBC for 20 years. A lot of crazy things happened to our family over the course of his tenure. When lay-offs happened there were angry picketers screaming at us in front of our house for days. We needed police to get in and out of the driveway. We got mail from seriously furious and disturbed people. When NBC aired a TV movie about “Roe vs. Wade” our family got death threats and had to hire security experts to guard us. We repeatedly got phone threats about “blowing up our house.” We just hung up on them. And you know what, life went on. My parents gave us good advice. They said, yes there are crazy people in every walk of life, just deal quietly with it, be smart and most importantly, stop complaining! TV gave us a nice lifestyle and this was a small price to pay. Are you listening Dr. Synderman because I am sure my Dad would give you the same advice if he were still your boss.

What IS a big deal is the terrible suffering of the millions of Americans with autism. They are the ones truly suffering. They are the people who need our attention and compassion. Children and adults with autism need better medical interventions, insurance coverage, a decent education and their families need money to pay for all of it. No one should ever threaten Nancy Snyderman or Paul Offit but I think they can take care of themselves. Let’s encourage the media to put the focus back on the real victims of the autism epidemic, our kids.

Katie Wright has two young boys. Her oldest son, Christian, is severely affected by autism. He developed normally; smiling, talking, walking; only to lose every skill and every word by the age of 2 and a half. Upon the advice of medical professionals Katie and her husband were advised to pursue only high quality behavioral therapy, speech and OT for Christian. It had no meaningful impact on Christian until his parents sought help from DAN! doctors who treated the underlying causes of Christian's descent into autism. Christian has improved but still has far to go. He has Inflammatory Bowel Disease, the measles virus in his gut and an immune system akin to a late stage AIDS patient. Christian does not have a psychiatric disorder. Before autism, Katie Wright was the Clinical Director of Sexual Assault Crisis Center in Stamford Connecticut. Katie is proud to serve on the Boards of NAA and SafeMinds.

Reuters – Kuwaiti citizens walk south along the Basra highway heading back to Kuwait following the end of the Gulf …

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A report released on Monday concluded that Gulf War syndrome is a legitimate illness suffered by more than 175,000 U.S. war veterans who were exposed to chemical toxins in the 1991 Gulf War.

The congressionally mandated report could help veterans who have battled the government for treatment of a wide range of unexplained neurological illnesses, from brain cancer to multiple sclerosis.

The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses concluded that Gulf War illness is a physical condition distinct from the mental "shell shock" suffered by veterans in other wars. Some earlier studies had concluded it was not a distinct illness.

"Scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans," said the committee, which has been looking into the problem since 2002.

The committee, composed of independent scientists and veterans, said Congress should boost funding for research on Gulf War veterans' health to at least $60 million per year.

"This is a national obligation, made especially urgent by the many years that Gulf War veterans have waited for answers and assistance," the committee said.

Gulf War illness affects at least one-fourth of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, or between 175,000 and 210,000 veterans in all, the report found. Few have seen their symptoms improve over the past 17 years, the report said.

Symptoms include persistent headaches, widespread pain, cognitive difficulties, unexplained fatigue, skin rashes, chronic diarrhea and digestive and respiratory problems.

'DARK CHAPTER'

Many Gulf War veterans suffering these symptoms say they were met with skepticism when seeking treatment.

"Today's report brings to a close one of the darkest chapters of the 1991 Gulf War, and that is the legacy of Gulf War illness. For those who ever doubted that Gulf War veterans are ill, this report is definitive and exhaustive," said Anthony Hardie, a Gulf War veteran from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hardie was a 23-year-old sergeant at the time of the conflict. Today he works in Wisconsin's Veterans Affairs Department and suffers a host of ailments, including respiratory problems, fatigue and chronic widespread pain.

"The truth will prevail," said Adrian Atizado, assistant legislative director of the Disabled American Veterans, an advocacy group that represents 1.4 million veterans from the various conflicts in which the United States has fought.

"One can argue with merit that the federal government did hold back progress in allowing Gulf War veterans to seek health care and financial benefits," he said. "We hope now there will be a greater emphasis on finding effective treatments."

The panel found two possible causes: a drug given to troops to protect against nerve gas, known as pyridostigmine bromide, and pesticides that were used heavily during the war.

The panel said other possible causes could not be ruled out, including extensive exposure to smoke from oil-well fires and low-level exposure to sarin gas when captured Iraqi stocks were destroyed.

The U.S. government has spent roughly $440 million on Gulf War health research since 1994, but spending has declined in recent years and often is not focused on improving veterans' health, the committee said.