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The CDC, Autism, And The Current Dilemma

By Rodger Bailey

A recent report (December 18, 2009) by the US Centers For Disease Control (CDC) states that autism affects 1 out of every 110 American children. The information was published in this weeks "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" (MMWR). Essentially this indicates that one percent of children in America have autism.

The government has been paying for more genetic research with respect to autism. But, in the light of this announcement, parents and advocacy groups immediately called for the US Government to increase dramatically funding for autism research and services with respect to the environmental factors which they think must be the cause of autism.

In recent years there has been a lot of public concern from parents who believe vaccinations and mercury are the causes of autism. But, scientific research has not uncovered such a link and health officials tell us it is not possible for these to cause autism.

In my private practice of working with children who have developmental problems, I have often seen children who were developing normally begin their developmental problems somewhere within 1 to 14 days of receiving a vaccination. Hundreds of thousands of parents tell similar stories. How is it possible that parents can see such obvious evidence of these factors causing their child's developmental problems and science not finding the link between those factors and the developmental problems?

For me it is a paradigm problem. I don't think science is asking the right questions when testing to see of there is a link between autism and those vaccinations or that mercury. They are searching in the wrong direction. At the urging of the families, they are looking "out there" for some environmental factor which is causing autism. From my experience there isn't anything "out there" that is the cause of autism. As long as they are looking outside the child for the cause, they will be frustrated in the search.

It is only a minor paradigm shift. Children do become autistic and it is related to things in their environment to which their immune system reacts by shutting down the developmental process (and from this shutdown we get the symptom set, which we know of as autism). But the focus of investigation should not be to determine if a particular environmental factor is the cause. In our own research there is no list of things which causes autism. There are hundreds of things to which these children are reacting by shutting down the child's developmental process and each of those children has their own menu of things to which they react in this way.

What needs research is this hypersensitive immune response which causes the shutdown of the developmental process. In our experience, when we determine the child's list of environmental factors to which the child is reacting and the parents remove those factors from the child's environment, the child's developmental process re-engages and starts moving forward. This happens every time the families 'clean up' their child's environment.

If the CDC and the research institutes would change the direction of their focus, they might see dramatic changes in research results. If they did this, there might be shifts in the "there is no cure" paradigm for autism.

Rodger Bailey, MS and his wife, Isabel, have been working with children with developmental problems for many years. Their protocols are successful in re-engaging the developmental process for children who have been stuck developmentally and getting them back on track.

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I have seen many forums dedicated to the question of autism in USA.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the higher incidence has much to do with the dictatorial attitudes towards innoculations and the overwhelming power of pharmaceutical companies.
As an outsider I get the distinct impression that the government's concern about the general state of health in the USA is virtually non-existent - especially when you take into account the numbers of people claiming to have been incapacitated by mould (it is always referred to as 'toxic mold' by sufferers).

Molds (also referred to as moulds)may be benign, helpful (such as penicillin), or harmful. I think the reference to 'toxic mold' is related to those molds which have been shown to excrete mycotoxins or shoot off spores to which hypersensitive (this is a state of the immune system) individuals react and have immune problems.

Autism is seen as one of the worst childhood conditions, because it is so debilitating and because medical and psychological professionals are at a loss about it. They neither understand it, nor know what to do about it.

Another great intel Rodger. Hopefully, with the work that you and your wife are doing,the CDC will change their focus and just maybe,be part of the cure rather then part of the problem.
Best of luck,
Frederick

frederick Dec 26, 2009 13:21

I ran into an article today on the Net that gave me pause to think. It may support some of your ideas: http://news.discovery.com/human/autism-clusters-college-education-parents.html -- the correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, as the article cautions, but they found a correlation between how educated parents are and the likelihood of autistic children. So the question is: what are the environmental factors that are more prevalent in homes where the parents have higher levels of education than those that aren't?

It may be complicated. You mentioned environmental factors like chemicals in dryer sheets and laundry detergents in another article. If these things, different for different children, are found and removed from the child's environment, development returns to normal. Do people with higher education spend less time and work at home and use more convenience products, or luxury products like dryer sheets? Versus people with less education and income making do with simpler products? Or is there a difference in home architecture in their neighborhoods? I can see a lot of possibilities.

I have no idea about what the differences might be between how educated the parents are and the likelihood of autism. It would certainly open a bunch of door for possible research topics.

It could be that the educated families might isolate their children more from a natural environment and therefore reduce access to the natural immunities which are derived from playing in the dirt, etc. . . Or it could be that certain physical activities we do with children which forces the developmental process forward (such as walking around while carrying our babies [++] vs walking around with the child in a stroller [--]) might be different in one group.

I have bookmarked that news item in my "autism rates" folder. Thanks Robert for bringing it to my attention.

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