New Autism Cure - breakthrough treatments and cures for autism

In the past few weeks, there have been a couple of reports about Vitamin D in “Scientific American” magazine which both have bearings on autism.

Vitamin D Deficiency Affects the US

The first report was about how Vitamin D deficiency is soaring in the US, according to a study published in the “Archives of Internal Medicine”. The study claimed that a whopping three quarters of US teens and adults have a deficiency of vitamin D - that’s quite an incredible figure and makes you wonder why.

The study’s author, Adit Ginde, from the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, puts this vitamin D deficiency down to skin cancer prevention measures such as wearing long sleeves and using sunscreen ( sun protection of just factor 15 can cut the skin’s ability to manufacture vitamin D by 99%) and points out that there are actually very few dietary sources of vitamin D. Vitamin D is known as the “sunshine vitamin” because the skin produces vitamin D when it is exposed to the sun. By protecting ourselves from sun exposure, to reduce our risk of melanoma, we are cutting our levels of vitamin D.

Is There a Link between Lack of Sun and Autism?

But what has all this got to do with autism? Doesn’t a vitamin D deficiency lead to bone problems, such as rickets, osteoporosis and arthritis, not autism?

Well, yes, but experts are now wondering if a growth in vitamin D deficiencies has got something to do with the growth in autism. This theory is the result of two preliminary studies in Minnesota and Sweden, and the findings of these studies are discussed in the second article in “Scientific American” magazine.

Both Sweden and Minnesota have large Somali immigrant communities who seem to be overrepresented in the total number of children with autism in each area. In Minnesota, Somali families began arriving in 1993 and the number of children with autism in their community has jumped from 0 out of 1,773 in 1993, to 43 out of 2,029 in 2007. In Sweden, records of Somali children born in Stockholm between 1988 and 1998 have been studied and researchers concluded that Somali children in Stockholm were 3-4 times more likely to suffer with autism than non-Somali children in the city.

The Somali communities in both cities just can’t understand it. In Stockholm, the Somali people call autism “The Swedish Disease” because they had never seen it in Somalia, and Huda Fara, a Somali molecular biologist working in Minnesota, says “We never saw such a disease in Somalia. We do not even have a word for it.”

So why is autism hitting the Somali community so badly?

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On February 24th, on The Huffington Post site, Robert F. Kennedy Junior and David Kirby reported a ground-breaking court ruling concerning the MMR vaccine and autism.

Although the Washington federal Vaccine Court has recently ruled against three families who were claiming a link between the MMR vaccine, thimerosal and autism, the Court ruled differently in the case of Bailey Banks back in 2007, a case which has only just come to light.

The Bailey Banks Case

Back in June 2007, Special Master Richard Abell ruled that the parents of Bailey Banks, aged 10, had sufficiently demonstrated to the Vaccine Court that “the MMR vaccine at issue actually caused the conditions from which Bailey suffered and continues to suffer.”

The Vaccine Court awarded the Bailey family over $810,000 as a lump sum and between $30,000 and $40,000 per year for Bailey’s care, as compensation.

The Court ruled that the MMR vaccine had in fact caused the “acute brain damage” that was responsible for Bailey’s ASD. Special Master Abell ruled that the family had proven that the vaccine caused acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), a brain inflammation illness, and that this led to PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified).

On hearing all of the facts of the case, the Court agreed that Bailey’s ADEM was caused by the MMR vaccine and this his ADEM was serious enough to cause permanent brain damage and developmental delays which are classed as PDD-NOS.

In Robert F. Kennedy’s words:

“The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of causation was… a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.”

Kennedy also points out that this is not an isolated ruling and that a CBS News investigation has found that 1,322 families have been awarded compensation by the Vaccine Court for brain damage caused by vaccines, since 1988.

But where does that leave families who are worried about the US vaccine program?

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