This page will start a list of excuses used to dismiss vaccines as the cause of problems in our kids.
Here is the first one: Air pollution
Second one: TV!
Third: Bad dreams?
Now, if there is access to information and statistics such as these, how difficult would it be to conduct a study with the rates of SIDS following vax?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/?newsid=8385
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome may be caused by vehicle pollutants
17 May 2004
One in six cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) may caused by pollutants from vehicle exhaust fumes, a new study has found. Research published in the online journal Environmental Health discovered evidence linking unexplained infant deaths in the United States with sooty particles generated by traffic and power stations, known as PM10s. The authors looked at death rates among 700,000 infants in 25 US counties between 1995 and 1997, and compared them with background air pollution levels.
Across the counties, which included 23 metropolitan areas, the average all-cause mortality rate was 236.8 deaths per 100,000 infants. Of these, 14.7 per 100,000 could be attributed to PM10 pollution. In the case of unexplained infant deaths, the figure was 11.7 per 100,000 - 16% of the total.
'In a country where infant mortality rates and air pollution levels are relatively low, ambient air pollution as measured by particulate matter contributes to a substantial fraction of infant death, especially for those due to sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory disease,' say the authors.
Reference: Kaiser R et al (2004) Air Pollution Attributable Postneonatal Infant Mortality in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: A Risk Assessment Study Environmental Health 3:4 (published 5 May 2004)
NT Online Clinical News http://www.nursingtimes.net/nav?page=nt.news.story&resource=912145
April 06, 2004
Does Watching TV Cause ADHD?
A new study, 'Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children', has many people thinking about the effects watching TV may have on our children. Does watching TV cause ADHD?
This new study that appeared in the April issue of Pediatrics suggests that it does. Children followed in this study were more likely to have attentional problems if they watched a lot of TV at age 1 and 3 years.
There were some limitations to the study. For one thing, the children weren't formally diagnosed with ADHD. Instead, their parents were simply asked if they had trouble concentrating, were easily confused, impulsive, restless, or had trouble with obsessions.
And most importantly, just because those children watched more TV, it doesn't mean that was why they had problems paying attention. It may just be that they already had ADHD, got easily distracted by other activities, and simply watched TV more because it is so stimulating.
There are plenty of other reasons not to let your younger kids watch a lot of TV though. Kids who watch too much TV are less likely to read well and more likely to become overweight. If you add in that watching TV may also cause ADHD, it should make it easier for parents to follow the AAP guidelines and: discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years limit children's total media time (with entertainment media) to no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day remove television sets from children's bedrooms. How much TV do your children watch each week?
This next article is so hard to dismiss because after all, two development pediatricians are seeing the same thing and that means something I think....
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3008553&page=2
<http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3008553&page=2>
Controversial New Theory Links Autism to TV
By Studying His Own Son, an Economist Developed a Theory That Links Autism to TV Viewing Habits
April 5, 2007 — As more children are diagnosed with autism than ever before, the disorder largely remains a mystery in the medical community.
Now, Michael Waldman, a Cornell University economics professor, has written a research paper suggesting that scientists study the connection between early childhood television viewing and autism. His basic thesis: Excessive TV viewing by children with a genetic disposition to autism makes them more likely to develop the disorder.
Waldman became aware of the possible link when his son, 2½ at the time, was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. His son's troubles began after the birth of the Waldmans' second child, a daughter. The summer after the baby girl was born, life became hectic at the Waldman home, and the boy began watching more TV. Within a few months, the boy's behavior deteriorated and soon he was diagnosed with autism. "The first thing we did was follow the specialists' directions. There were special classroom settings, a psychologist, etc. I never thought about not following their advice," Waldman said.
Evaluating the Environment
However, his immediate reaction was that the change in his son's behavior must have been triggered by something in his home environment.
"There was a huge change in his life when my daughter was born. He was 2½ when he was diagnosed, and usually the diagnosis comes much earlier. Within four months of my daughter being born, he was diagnosed with severe autism spectrum disorder," Waldman said. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, autism spectrum disorders can often be reliably detected by the age of 3 years, and in some cases as early as 18 months. But it is estimated that only 50 percent of children are diagnosed before kindergarten.
Considering the circumstances of his son's diagnosis, Waldman thought about what had changed since the birth of his daughter. "I realized that he had been watching much more television during that time, because we were so busy with my daughter. So I turned off the TV," he said. "On a day to day basis, we didn't notice a change. But week to week and month to month, the change was dramatic. He was making rapid progress. Within six to eight months, all of his attention and language problems were gone."
Waldman didn't stop there. He continued researching and, and using his skills as an economist, found a statistical connection between "the dramatic increase in autism diagnosis rate … and the simultaneous dramatic increase in early childhood viewing."
Further, he found a statistical connection between high autism rates and areas of the country that experienced bad weather — areas where kids were more likely to be indoors, watching TV.
Unpopular With Parents, Psychologists
Waldman's findings have been less than popular with parents. His son's own psychologist was unmoved by his theory. Members of the medical community have criticized Waldman's study because he's an economist, not a doctor. They also argue that just because two variables are related does not mean someone can claim that one causes the other. But Waldman maintains he's not trying to pin autism on any one source, or make the claim that watching TV at a young age causes the disorder. He believes scientists should look into every possible cause for autism.
"I'm not trying to blame anybody, but one in every 150 children is diagnosed with autism, and I think we should look under ever single, plausible stone," he said. "I don't want to make anyone feel bad, including my wife. But I've found some intriguing evidence, and two development pediatricians are seeing the same thing. I don't think you can turn away from it."
(Try not to laugh at this research!)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=13254199&method=full&siteid=50143
Babies' dreams may cause cot death 10:07, Aug 4 2003
By Clarence Fernandez
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or cot death as it is more commonly known, could occur when babies stop breathing because they dream they are back in the womb, an Australian scientist says.
George Christos, who has studied the way the brain processes information, said babies who dream they are back in the womb, where they did not have to breathe because their mothers gave them oxygen through the blood, could stop breathing.
"I'm saying if you make the environment of the sleeping child womblike, it may encourage foetal
dreams, and that may excite it to revisit foetal breathing pathways," Christos, who teaches at Curtin
University of Technology in Perth, told Reuters .
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is the leading cause of death in babies less than a year old. Most SIDS deaths occur between two and four months and are more prevalent in boys. Christos, who unveiled his SIDS dreaming theory in a recently published book "Memory and Dreams: the Creative Human Mind", said babies' brains are not fully wired up for dreaming until the age of about two months, so they do not run a risk of SIDS in the first month after birth.
His theory was inspired by sleep research experiments at the psychophysiology laboratory at Stanford
University in which people said they had stopped breathing while dreaming of being underwater. Scientists and doctors are baffled as to what causes SIDS.
More than 8,000 infant deaths were blamed on SIDS over the 22 years to 2000, says the National SIDS Council of Australia, or a rate of 0.54 in every 1,000 live births, similar to that in Britain. In the United States, the figure is 2,500 each year.
MANY THEORIES
Studies have shown SIDS could be linked to a variety of factors, ranging from lying the baby down on its stomach and heart irregularities to tobacco use during pregnancy, or using old mattresses that could harbour toxic bacteria. A campaign to educate people about the benefits of placing babies on their backs has cut the SIDS rate in half. Warren Guntheroth, paediatrics professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and one of the world's leading SIDS researchers, said
the dreaming theory was attractive but not without problems.
Guntheroth said SIDS strikes babies aged two or three months, when dreams of the womb should be getting weaker and diagnostic tests show some babies may not dream at all until six months. "My concern is that it is difficult to test his hypothesis," he told Reuters in an e-mail message. "On the other hand it is highly original and attractive."
Guntheroth said experiments with baby monkeys showed they stopped breathing when cold wet cloths were placed on their faces, showing some animals had inadequate internal alarm systems and stopped breathing when they thought they could not breathe. He said babies may react the same. "We concluded that, whether a dream started it or not, that infants lack an adequate internal alarm system and prolonged apnea could be fatal," Guntheroth said. Australian SIDS workers said Christos' dreaming theory was one of probably 50 current theories on the cause of SIDS.
http://www.time.com/time/health/printout/0,8816,1548682,00.html
Friday, Oct. 20, 2006
A Bizarre Study Suggests That Watching TV Causes Autism
Analysis: Childhood vaccines, toxins, genes and now television watching? The alarming rise in autism rates is one of the biggest mysteries of modern medicine, but it's irresponsible to blame one factor without hard scientific proof
By CLAUDIA WALLIS
Strange things happen when you apply the statistical methods of economics to medical science. You might say you get dismal science, but that's a bit glib. You certainly get some strange claims-like the contention of three economists that autism may be caused by watching too much television at a tender age. It gets stranger still when you look at the data upon which this argument is based. The as yet unpublished Cornell University study, which will be presented Friday at a health economics conference in Cambridge, Mass., is constructed from an analysis of reported autism cases, cable TV subscription data and weather reports. Yes, weather reports. And yet, it all makes some kind of sense in the realm of statistics. And it makes sense to author Gregg Easterbrook, who stirred the blogosphere this week with an article about the study on Slate, provocatively (and perhaps irresponsibly) titled "TV Really Might Cause Autism."
The alarming rise in autism rates in the U.S. and some other developed nations is one of the most anguishing mysteries of modern medicine-and source of much desperate speculation by parents. In 1970, its incidence was thought to be just 1 in 2,500; today about 1 in 170 kids born in the U.S. fall somewhere on the autism spectrum (which includes Asperger's Syndrome), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the spike can be reasonably attributed to a new, broader definition of the disorder, better detection, mandatory reporting by schools and greater awareness of autism among doctors, parents and educators. Still, there's a nagging sense among many experts that some mysterious X-factor or factors in the environment tip genetically susceptible kids into autism, though efforts to pin it on childhood vaccines, mercury or other toxins haven't panned out. Genes alone can't explain it; the identicial twin of a child with autism has only a 70% to 90% chance of being similarly afflicted.
Enter Michael Waldman, of Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. He got to thinking that TV watching-already vaguely associated with ADHD-just might be factor X. That there was no medical research to support the idea didn't faze him. "I decided the only way it will get done is if I do it," he says. Waldman and fellow economists Sean Nicholson of Cornell and Nodir Adilov of Indiana University-Purdue, were also undeterred by the fact that there are no reliable large-scale data on the viewing habits of kids ages 1 to 3- the period when symptoms of autism are typically identified. They turned instead to what most scientists would consider wildly indirect measures: cable subscription data (reasoning that as more houses were wired for cable, more young kids were watching) and rainfall patterns (other research has correlated TV viewing with rainy weather).
Lo and behold, Waldman and colleagues found that reported autism cases within certain counties in California and Pennsylvania rose at rates that closely tracked cable subscriptions, rising fastest in counties with fastest growing cable. The same was true of autism and rainfall patterns in California, Pennsylvania and Washington state. Their oddly definitive conclusions: "Approximately 17% of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s was due to the growth of cable television," and "just under 40% of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation."
Result of? Due to? How can these researchers suggest causality when no actual TV watching was ever measured? "The standard interpretation of this type of analysis is that this is cause and effect," Waldman insists, adding that the 67-page study has been read by "half-a-dozen topnotch health economists."
Could there be something to this strange piece of statistical derring- do? It's not impossible, but it would take a lot more research to tease out its true significance. Meanwhile, it's hard to say just what these correlations measure. "You have to be very definitive about what you are looking at," says Vanderbilt University geneticist Pat Levitt. "How do you know, for instance, that it's not mold or mildew in the counties that have a lot of rain?" How do you know, for that matter, that as counties get more cable access, they don't also get more pediatricians scanning for autism? Easterbrook, though intrigued by the study, concedes that it could be indoor air quality rather than television that has a bearing on the development of autism. On a more biological level there's this problem, says Drexel Univeristy epidemiologist Craig Newschaffer: "They ignore the reasonable body of evidence that suggest that the pathologic process behind autism probably starts in utero"-i.e., long before a baby is born.
The week also brought a more definitive, though less splashy finding on the causes of autism, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. A team led by Levitt found that a fairly common gene variation-one that's present in 47% of the population-is associated with an increased risk of autism. People with two copies of the gene have twice the average risk of autism; those with one copy face a slightly increased risk. The gene is intriguing because it codes for a protein that's active not only in the brain-the organ most affected by autism-but also in the immune system and the gastrointestinal tract, two systems that function poorly in many people with autism. Levitt estimates that anywhere from five to 20 genes may underlie the vulnerability to autism. There are probably many routes to the disorder, involving diverse combinations of genes and noxious environmental influences. Could Teletubbies be one of them? Conceivably, but more likely the trouble starts way before TV watching begins.
Report Claims Link Between Autism and Mobile Phones A new report is claiming to have found a link between the rise in autism in the USA, and the rise of the use of wireless technologies, specifically mobile phones. Tamara Mariea, founder of Internal Balance, is releasing findings from more than five years of research on clients with autism, and other membrane sensitivity disorders which claims electromagnetic radiation stress is one of the potentially major root causes of the explosion of autistic cases in the past two decades.
People who visit the Internal Balance clinic are "detoxed" in an electromagnetic radiation clean environment. In simple terms, Mariea explains to parents struggling to help their children that what her research is pointing to is with more cell phone towers being erected, more cell phones in use globally and more WiFi technology utilized, the risk for autism continues to rise. She says that Thimerosal - the mercury containing preservative in scheduled children's vaccines - has for the most part been eliminated from regularly scheduled childhood vaccines, according to public record and that the incidence of autism should be decreasing based on progress made in that area in recent years. But, it is not decreasing, she says. This is where Mariea and Dr. Carlo began to collaborate in the search to find what the larger contributor to the increase in autism is. They say that the epidemiologic curve of autism parallels too closely with the increase usage of wireless devices to not look at it. Mariea's soon to be published paper will include her research which explores electromagnetic radiation as a cohort effect with heavy metals as a strong component of the etiology of autism. We shall have to wait and see if the report has any credible findings when it is published.
_http://www.cellular-news.com/story/23300.php_
(http://www.cellular-news.com/story/23300.php)
Here is the first one: Air pollution
Second one: TV!
Third: Bad dreams?
Now, if there is access to information and statistics such as these, how difficult would it be to conduct a study with the rates of SIDS following vax?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/?newsid=8385
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome may be caused by vehicle pollutants
17 May 2004
One in six cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) may caused by pollutants from vehicle exhaust fumes, a new study has found. Research published in the online journal Environmental Health discovered evidence linking unexplained infant deaths in the United States with sooty particles generated by traffic and power stations, known as PM10s. The authors looked at death rates among 700,000 infants in 25 US counties between 1995 and 1997, and compared them with background air pollution levels.
Across the counties, which included 23 metropolitan areas, the average all-cause mortality rate was 236.8 deaths per 100,000 infants. Of these, 14.7 per 100,000 could be attributed to PM10 pollution. In the case of unexplained infant deaths, the figure was 11.7 per 100,000 - 16% of the total.
'In a country where infant mortality rates and air pollution levels are relatively low, ambient air pollution as measured by particulate matter contributes to a substantial fraction of infant death, especially for those due to sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory disease,' say the authors.
Reference: Kaiser R et al (2004) Air Pollution Attributable Postneonatal Infant Mortality in U.S. Metropolitan Areas: A Risk Assessment Study Environmental Health 3:4 (published 5 May 2004)
NT Online Clinical News http://www.nursingtimes.net/nav?page=nt.news.story&resource=912145
April 06, 2004
Does Watching TV Cause ADHD?
A new study, 'Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children', has many people thinking about the effects watching TV may have on our children. Does watching TV cause ADHD?
This new study that appeared in the April issue of Pediatrics suggests that it does. Children followed in this study were more likely to have attentional problems if they watched a lot of TV at age 1 and 3 years.
There were some limitations to the study. For one thing, the children weren't formally diagnosed with ADHD. Instead, their parents were simply asked if they had trouble concentrating, were easily confused, impulsive, restless, or had trouble with obsessions.
And most importantly, just because those children watched more TV, it doesn't mean that was why they had problems paying attention. It may just be that they already had ADHD, got easily distracted by other activities, and simply watched TV more because it is so stimulating.
There are plenty of other reasons not to let your younger kids watch a lot of TV though. Kids who watch too much TV are less likely to read well and more likely to become overweight. If you add in that watching TV may also cause ADHD, it should make it easier for parents to follow the AAP guidelines and: discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years limit children's total media time (with entertainment media) to no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day remove television sets from children's bedrooms. How much TV do your children watch each week?
This next article is so hard to dismiss because after all, two development pediatricians are seeing the same thing and that means something I think....
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3008553&page=2
<http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3008553&page=2>
Controversial New Theory Links Autism to TV
By Studying His Own Son, an Economist Developed a Theory That Links Autism to TV Viewing Habits
April 5, 2007 — As more children are diagnosed with autism than ever before, the disorder largely remains a mystery in the medical community.
Now, Michael Waldman, a Cornell University economics professor, has written a research paper suggesting that scientists study the connection between early childhood television viewing and autism. His basic thesis: Excessive TV viewing by children with a genetic disposition to autism makes them more likely to develop the disorder.
Waldman became aware of the possible link when his son, 2½ at the time, was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. His son's troubles began after the birth of the Waldmans' second child, a daughter. The summer after the baby girl was born, life became hectic at the Waldman home, and the boy began watching more TV. Within a few months, the boy's behavior deteriorated and soon he was diagnosed with autism. "The first thing we did was follow the specialists' directions. There were special classroom settings, a psychologist, etc. I never thought about not following their advice," Waldman said.
Evaluating the Environment
However, his immediate reaction was that the change in his son's behavior must have been triggered by something in his home environment.
"There was a huge change in his life when my daughter was born. He was 2½ when he was diagnosed, and usually the diagnosis comes much earlier. Within four months of my daughter being born, he was diagnosed with severe autism spectrum disorder," Waldman said. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, autism spectrum disorders can often be reliably detected by the age of 3 years, and in some cases as early as 18 months. But it is estimated that only 50 percent of children are diagnosed before kindergarten.
Considering the circumstances of his son's diagnosis, Waldman thought about what had changed since the birth of his daughter. "I realized that he had been watching much more television during that time, because we were so busy with my daughter. So I turned off the TV," he said. "On a day to day basis, we didn't notice a change. But week to week and month to month, the change was dramatic. He was making rapid progress. Within six to eight months, all of his attention and language problems were gone."
Waldman didn't stop there. He continued researching and, and using his skills as an economist, found a statistical connection between "the dramatic increase in autism diagnosis rate … and the simultaneous dramatic increase in early childhood viewing."
Further, he found a statistical connection between high autism rates and areas of the country that experienced bad weather — areas where kids were more likely to be indoors, watching TV.
Unpopular With Parents, Psychologists
Waldman's findings have been less than popular with parents. His son's own psychologist was unmoved by his theory. Members of the medical community have criticized Waldman's study because he's an economist, not a doctor. They also argue that just because two variables are related does not mean someone can claim that one causes the other. But Waldman maintains he's not trying to pin autism on any one source, or make the claim that watching TV at a young age causes the disorder. He believes scientists should look into every possible cause for autism.
"I'm not trying to blame anybody, but one in every 150 children is diagnosed with autism, and I think we should look under ever single, plausible stone," he said. "I don't want to make anyone feel bad, including my wife. But I've found some intriguing evidence, and two development pediatricians are seeing the same thing. I don't think you can turn away from it."
(Try not to laugh at this research!)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=13254199&method=full&siteid=50143
Babies' dreams may cause cot death 10:07, Aug 4 2003
By Clarence Fernandez
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or cot death as it is more commonly known, could occur when babies stop breathing because they dream they are back in the womb, an Australian scientist says.
George Christos, who has studied the way the brain processes information, said babies who dream they are back in the womb, where they did not have to breathe because their mothers gave them oxygen through the blood, could stop breathing.
"I'm saying if you make the environment of the sleeping child womblike, it may encourage foetal
dreams, and that may excite it to revisit foetal breathing pathways," Christos, who teaches at Curtin
University of Technology in Perth, told Reuters .
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is the leading cause of death in babies less than a year old. Most SIDS deaths occur between two and four months and are more prevalent in boys. Christos, who unveiled his SIDS dreaming theory in a recently published book "Memory and Dreams: the Creative Human Mind", said babies' brains are not fully wired up for dreaming until the age of about two months, so they do not run a risk of SIDS in the first month after birth.
His theory was inspired by sleep research experiments at the psychophysiology laboratory at Stanford
University in which people said they had stopped breathing while dreaming of being underwater. Scientists and doctors are baffled as to what causes SIDS.
More than 8,000 infant deaths were blamed on SIDS over the 22 years to 2000, says the National SIDS Council of Australia, or a rate of 0.54 in every 1,000 live births, similar to that in Britain. In the United States, the figure is 2,500 each year.
MANY THEORIES
Studies have shown SIDS could be linked to a variety of factors, ranging from lying the baby down on its stomach and heart irregularities to tobacco use during pregnancy, or using old mattresses that could harbour toxic bacteria. A campaign to educate people about the benefits of placing babies on their backs has cut the SIDS rate in half. Warren Guntheroth, paediatrics professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and one of the world's leading SIDS researchers, said
the dreaming theory was attractive but not without problems.
Guntheroth said SIDS strikes babies aged two or three months, when dreams of the womb should be getting weaker and diagnostic tests show some babies may not dream at all until six months. "My concern is that it is difficult to test his hypothesis," he told Reuters in an e-mail message. "On the other hand it is highly original and attractive."
Guntheroth said experiments with baby monkeys showed they stopped breathing when cold wet cloths were placed on their faces, showing some animals had inadequate internal alarm systems and stopped breathing when they thought they could not breathe. He said babies may react the same. "We concluded that, whether a dream started it or not, that infants lack an adequate internal alarm system and prolonged apnea could be fatal," Guntheroth said. Australian SIDS workers said Christos' dreaming theory was one of probably 50 current theories on the cause of SIDS.
http://www.time.com/time/health/printout/0,8816,1548682,00.html
Friday, Oct. 20, 2006
A Bizarre Study Suggests That Watching TV Causes Autism
Analysis: Childhood vaccines, toxins, genes and now television watching? The alarming rise in autism rates is one of the biggest mysteries of modern medicine, but it's irresponsible to blame one factor without hard scientific proof
By CLAUDIA WALLIS
Strange things happen when you apply the statistical methods of economics to medical science. You might say you get dismal science, but that's a bit glib. You certainly get some strange claims-like the contention of three economists that autism may be caused by watching too much television at a tender age. It gets stranger still when you look at the data upon which this argument is based. The as yet unpublished Cornell University study, which will be presented Friday at a health economics conference in Cambridge, Mass., is constructed from an analysis of reported autism cases, cable TV subscription data and weather reports. Yes, weather reports. And yet, it all makes some kind of sense in the realm of statistics. And it makes sense to author Gregg Easterbrook, who stirred the blogosphere this week with an article about the study on Slate, provocatively (and perhaps irresponsibly) titled "TV Really Might Cause Autism."
The alarming rise in autism rates in the U.S. and some other developed nations is one of the most anguishing mysteries of modern medicine-and source of much desperate speculation by parents. In 1970, its incidence was thought to be just 1 in 2,500; today about 1 in 170 kids born in the U.S. fall somewhere on the autism spectrum (which includes Asperger's Syndrome), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the spike can be reasonably attributed to a new, broader definition of the disorder, better detection, mandatory reporting by schools and greater awareness of autism among doctors, parents and educators. Still, there's a nagging sense among many experts that some mysterious X-factor or factors in the environment tip genetically susceptible kids into autism, though efforts to pin it on childhood vaccines, mercury or other toxins haven't panned out. Genes alone can't explain it; the identicial twin of a child with autism has only a 70% to 90% chance of being similarly afflicted.
Enter Michael Waldman, of Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. He got to thinking that TV watching-already vaguely associated with ADHD-just might be factor X. That there was no medical research to support the idea didn't faze him. "I decided the only way it will get done is if I do it," he says. Waldman and fellow economists Sean Nicholson of Cornell and Nodir Adilov of Indiana University-Purdue, were also undeterred by the fact that there are no reliable large-scale data on the viewing habits of kids ages 1 to 3- the period when symptoms of autism are typically identified. They turned instead to what most scientists would consider wildly indirect measures: cable subscription data (reasoning that as more houses were wired for cable, more young kids were watching) and rainfall patterns (other research has correlated TV viewing with rainy weather).
Lo and behold, Waldman and colleagues found that reported autism cases within certain counties in California and Pennsylvania rose at rates that closely tracked cable subscriptions, rising fastest in counties with fastest growing cable. The same was true of autism and rainfall patterns in California, Pennsylvania and Washington state. Their oddly definitive conclusions: "Approximately 17% of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s was due to the growth of cable television," and "just under 40% of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation."
Result of? Due to? How can these researchers suggest causality when no actual TV watching was ever measured? "The standard interpretation of this type of analysis is that this is cause and effect," Waldman insists, adding that the 67-page study has been read by "half-a-dozen topnotch health economists."
Could there be something to this strange piece of statistical derring- do? It's not impossible, but it would take a lot more research to tease out its true significance. Meanwhile, it's hard to say just what these correlations measure. "You have to be very definitive about what you are looking at," says Vanderbilt University geneticist Pat Levitt. "How do you know, for instance, that it's not mold or mildew in the counties that have a lot of rain?" How do you know, for that matter, that as counties get more cable access, they don't also get more pediatricians scanning for autism? Easterbrook, though intrigued by the study, concedes that it could be indoor air quality rather than television that has a bearing on the development of autism. On a more biological level there's this problem, says Drexel Univeristy epidemiologist Craig Newschaffer: "They ignore the reasonable body of evidence that suggest that the pathologic process behind autism probably starts in utero"-i.e., long before a baby is born.
The week also brought a more definitive, though less splashy finding on the causes of autism, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. A team led by Levitt found that a fairly common gene variation-one that's present in 47% of the population-is associated with an increased risk of autism. People with two copies of the gene have twice the average risk of autism; those with one copy face a slightly increased risk. The gene is intriguing because it codes for a protein that's active not only in the brain-the organ most affected by autism-but also in the immune system and the gastrointestinal tract, two systems that function poorly in many people with autism. Levitt estimates that anywhere from five to 20 genes may underlie the vulnerability to autism. There are probably many routes to the disorder, involving diverse combinations of genes and noxious environmental influences. Could Teletubbies be one of them? Conceivably, but more likely the trouble starts way before TV watching begins.
Report Claims Link Between Autism and Mobile Phones A new report is claiming to have found a link between the rise in autism in the USA, and the rise of the use of wireless technologies, specifically mobile phones. Tamara Mariea, founder of Internal Balance, is releasing findings from more than five years of research on clients with autism, and other membrane sensitivity disorders which claims electromagnetic radiation stress is one of the potentially major root causes of the explosion of autistic cases in the past two decades.
People who visit the Internal Balance clinic are "detoxed" in an electromagnetic radiation clean environment. In simple terms, Mariea explains to parents struggling to help their children that what her research is pointing to is with more cell phone towers being erected, more cell phones in use globally and more WiFi technology utilized, the risk for autism continues to rise. She says that Thimerosal - the mercury containing preservative in scheduled children's vaccines - has for the most part been eliminated from regularly scheduled childhood vaccines, according to public record and that the incidence of autism should be decreasing based on progress made in that area in recent years. But, it is not decreasing, she says. This is where Mariea and Dr. Carlo began to collaborate in the search to find what the larger contributor to the increase in autism is. They say that the epidemiologic curve of autism parallels too closely with the increase usage of wireless devices to not look at it. Mariea's soon to be published paper will include her research which explores electromagnetic radiation as a cohort effect with heavy metals as a strong component of the etiology of autism. We shall have to wait and see if the report has any credible findings when it is published.
_http://www.cellular-news.com/story/23300.php_
(http://www.cellular-news.com/story/23300.php)
