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By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Feb. 16, 2006 at 1:15 PM

For two countries that share a common heritage and — mostly — a common language, the differences between the United States and Britain can be striking. We drive on different sides of the road; Americans call injections shots, the Brits call them jabs.

And in the debate over whether those jabs can cause autism, the focus in the United States has mostly been on a mercury preservative, while across the Atlantic the issue is the MMR — the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

Now the MMR debate has caught fire again in Britain, despite thoroughgoing efforts by the government and health authorities to stamp it out. The question becomes: Will MMR now face more scrutiny in “the states”?

“A former British government medical officer responsible for deciding whether medicines are safe has accused the government of ‘utterly inexplicable complacency’ over the MMR triple vaccine for children,” the Daily Mail reported last week.

The official, Dr. Peter Fletcher, was chief scientific officer at the Department of Health — not a minor post. He became an expert witness for parents’ lawyers, which of course creates a competing interest that needs to be factored in. But Fletcher said his new role gave him access to documents that deeply concerned him.

“There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves,” he said.

Strong stuff, but not strong enough to shake the certainty of British health officials that the three-in-one live virus shot and every other routine immunization is safe, effective — and essential in its present form.

“Britain’s leading child health experts united this weekend to reassure parents that the use of multiple vaccines for children was safe, calling claims to the contrary ‘irresponsible’”, the Observer reported on Sunday.

“The only previous connection drawn between multiple vaccines and illness was in 1996 when autism was blamed on immunisation for mumps, measles and rubella (MMR). The link was refuted by all subsequent studies.”

In true Fleet Street fashion, the Observer took a swipe at the competition as well as the contrary viewpoint.

“Groups like the anti-vaccine campaign Jabs, backed by several tabloid newspapers, argued that (more vaccines) would put too much strain on children’s immune systems. They said previous combinations of vaccines had triggered serious side-effects in children. The claim was flatly rejected by scientists.”

Well, apparently not by all scientists, considering Fletcher’s comments.

There is a lot of history — one might say, histrionics — in Britain over the MMR, including the departure of the man who first proposed a possible link in 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield. He decamped to the United States, where he and doctors concerned he may be on to something persist — at considerable professional risk — in studying the issue.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended in 1999 that vaccine manufacturers phase out thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative that was in several childhood vaccines. By now, most routine childhood immunizations are reported to be thimerosal-free — with the exception of the flu shot, which the CDC recommends for all pregnant women and for children 6 to 23 months old.

We’ve already questioned the logic of leaving thimerosal in flu shots — even though it can be made without it, and a small supply of that formulation is available. But at least you could say: In response to public fears whether reasonable or not, the public health authorities took action.

Not so on the MMR, on either side of the Atlantic. Wakefield made what seemed like a relatively modest proposal, to separate the three components and space out the immunizations. After all, separate shots are available, and the measles vaccine was originally given that way.

Nothing doing. “Wouldn’t it be better for children to have the vaccines separately?” asks a Q&A; fact sheet from Health Scotland.

“No,” the agency replies to itself. “Giving the vaccines separately would leave children exposed to measles or mumps or rubella for longer. These can be serious or even fatal diseases. It has been said that giving the three vaccines together overloads children’s immune systems. This is not the case.

“Children’s immune systems make excellent responses, naturally protecting them against these diseases. No country in the world recommends MMR be given as three separate vaccines. The World Health Organization advises against using separate vaccines because they would leave children at risk for no benefit.”

Let’s hope the authorities are right about the MMR. If they’re not, the failure to take this relatively simple step will be hard to justify. If it turns out the MMR causes autism, said former chief scientific officer Fletcher, “the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history.”

And not just in Great Britain.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Feb. 14, 2006 at 2:16 PM

The nation’s top two newsweeklies have just weighed in on the problems of boys and the decline in science literacy. Both abjectly failed to address a crucial part of the picture: the impact of environmental toxicity on children’s development — and America’s future.

Newsweek devoted its cover story to “The Boy Crisis” and reported some alarming figures: “By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes.”

And over the past 30 years men have slipped from 58 percent of college undergrads to 44 percent, Newsweek noted.

The suspects in Newsweek’s sights: the way boys’ brains work, the failure of schools to teach and test in a way that reflects that difference, the absence of adult men in their lives …

Everything, in fact, but the notion that something environmental could be holding boys back. Is there an existing model for such an idea? Why yes, there is. It’s called autism, and it affects boys at several times the rate of girls — 1 in 80 boys are somewhere on the “autism spectrum,” astonishingly. A growing number of experts believe an interaction of genetic susceptibility and toxic triggers is involved in the soaring rate of diagnoses over, oddly enough, the past 30 years.

“I think there’s a real concern that there’s been a change in our environment,” Dr. Carol Berkowitz, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told NBC News last year. Ironically, the network did its autism series in conjunction with Newsweek.

“An exposure to some toxins, chemicals, environmental factors — either when a mother is pregnant or after the delivery of the child — that has led to autism,” she summarized the concerns.

Time’s cover was a painting of a boy whose chemistry experiment had blown up in his face. (“Is America Flunking Science?”) Again, here’s a boy who can’t learn, with consequences not just for him but for our country’s future.

But why?

Time’s explanation for this shortfall: the government cutting back on basic research; corporations, their eye on short-term profits, doing the same; ” … the quality of education in math and science in elementary and high schools has plummeted.”

“The years from ‘Baby Einstein’ to AP physics are an increasing source of worry for … colleges and universities, which see a shrinking pipeline of talented U.S. students pursuing the sciences,” Time said.

Well, if they can’t pay attention, they probably can’t do Advanced Placement physics, either. And why can’t they pay attention?

An environmental watchdog outfit claims that one in six infants is born with a blood mercury level above that considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency. They go so far as to assert today’s kids have been exposed to enough mercury to potentially cause learning disabilities.

This “outfit” is the EPA itself.

There’s really nothing controversial about the idea that toxic exposures can affect developing brains, whether in utero or in infancy, whether we’re talking about autism or ADD. That’s why last year the pediatricians joined other public health groups to challenge the EPA’s own power plant mercury rule.

“Many young children exposed to mercury before birth will suffer subtle but irreversible brain damage. Preventing this tragedy, which affects not only families but entire communities, should be a national priority,” said Barbara A. Blakeney, president of the American Nurses Association.

What am I not getting here? Autism is increasing; it mostly affects boys; the nation’s top pediatrician expresses concern about brain damage from a toxic trigger. Learning disabilities are increasing; they mostly affect boys; the EPA expresses concern about brain damage from a toxic trigger. Shouldn’t that loom large in any examination of why Johnny can’t learn and we’re in danger of losing our supremacy in the sciences?

Actually, five years ago U.S. News & World Report — the third newsweekly and, in this case, the most acute — did make this point. The cover story was headlined: “Kids at Risk: Chemicals in the environment come under scrutiny as the number of childhood learning problems soars.”

“Experts have advanced a variety of theories for the increase in disorders, including better diagnostic methods,” the magazine reported. “But a growing body of evidence suggests that compounds called neurotoxicants may be contributing significantly to the problem.”

So for Time and Newsweek to highlight the problems of today’s kids, yet ignore any link to toxic exposures, shows how far we are from solving the problem.

What problem?

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Feb. 9, 2006 at 6:22 PM

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) — As doctors and health authorities fight state bans on mercury in vaccines and keep giving it to kids and pregnant women, one fact stands out: their certainty.

The image of pediatricians and public officials as valiant defenders of mercury takes a bit of getting used to, given their longstanding efforts to keep the toxic element out of our food, our bodies and the environment.

No reasonable person — let alone health professional — would advocate keeping mercury in childhood vaccines unless they were absolutely certain it was an exception to this lethal legacy.

That’s especially so because vaccines can be made without the mercury preservative, called thimerosal. You can take it out and still protect the health of American children through vaccination, and if you had a shred of doubt about its safety, surely you would.

If you keep it in, you had better be right.

But what is the real degree of certainty that thimerosal is safe? Is it absolute? Beyond a reasonable doubt? A preponderance of the evidence — the lesser standard that applies in civil cases but not when someone’s freedom (or life) is at stake?

Here’s the kind of thing that makes doctors — most of whom have no more ability than you or I to investigate the safety of vaccines for themselves — feel so certain. It’s a paper titled “Vaccine Safety Controversies and the Future of Vaccination Programs,” and it appears in the November 2005 issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

The authors are from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends the childhood immunization schedule; the United Nations World Health Organization, which oversees the vaccination of tens of millions of people worldwide every year, and several big universities. The report was supported by “unrestricted grants from GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Sanofi Pasteur MSD, several universities and other institutions.”

“Thimerosal has been used for (more than) 60 years in infant vaccines and in other applications and has not been associated with adverse health effects in the general population, except when persons have been exposed to amounts many orders of magnitude greater than found in vaccines or pharmaceuticals,” the authors write.

That’s a ringing endorsement of safety (whether it’s supported by the data is an issue I’ll address in upcoming columns). But keep reading: “It should also be borne in mind that the risks of thimerosal-containing vaccines to the fetus, premature infant and low-weight infant have insufficiently been studied.”

Whoa. “Insufficiently studied” — after more than 60 years of giving thimerosal to pregnant women and babies of every size and shape? Nonetheless, the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and 6-to-23-months-olds and won’t recommend thimerosal-free versions. As a result, most flu shots still contain mercury.

Another new study is condescendingly titled, “When science is not enough — a risk/benefit profile of thimerosal-containing vaccines,” by Australians C. John Clements and Peter B. McIntyre in the journal Expert Opinion on Drug Safety:

“Thimerosal is safe as a vaccine preservative, and should continue to be used in settings where accessibility and cost require that multi-dose vials of vaccine are available.”

Clements advises the WHO on vaccine policy; McIntyre is director of Australia’s National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases.

“The overwhelming weight of scientific opinion rejects the hypothesis that neurodevelopmental abnormalities are causally related to the use of thimerosal in vaccines,” they point out.

This is the kind of ammunition public health officials and the American Academy of Pediatrics are firing back at proponents of mercury bans –“overwhelming” evidence that thimerosal is safe. In Illinois, the state AAP vigorously opposed the ban.

“Though well intended, these bills do not advance public health and could inadvertently diminish our state’s efforts at fighting influenza,” the AAP said. “Though it is a mercury-containing compound, thimerosal does not pass from the bloodstream into the brain to any significant degree.”

The state legislators listened politely to that dubious assertion — and voted to limit thimerosal in childhood vaccines anyway. But that was not the last word.

As reported by R. L. Nave in the Illinois Times last month: “Citing cost concerns and a potential shortfall for the upcoming flu season, the Illinois Department of Public Health filed for a 12-month exemption to the Mercury-Free Vaccine Act, passed last summer to limit the use of vaccines containing mercury. However, child-health-care advocates who lobbied for the bill’s passage are upset by what they believe was a premeditated attempt by IDPH to circumvent state law.”

This is what you call chutzpah — public health authorities thwarting the express will of the people, certain that flu shots will save humanity and mercury never hurt anybody. Does the governor never fire anyone?

Almost lost in this crossfire is the simple fact that in 1999, these selfsame health authorities — the CDC, the Public Health Service, the pediatricians, the family physicians — urged drug companies to remove thimerosal from childhood immunizations in the United States as soon as possible.

Most childhood vaccines — in the United States, not overseas — are now thimerosal-free. But that’s hardly a blanket reassurance, because most flu shots do contain thimerosal.

Yet the CDC is still studying whether thimerosal causes autism.

“We do agree the preponderance of evidence to date suggests there is no association between thimerosal and autism,” CDC spokesman Glen Nowak told us last month. But he said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding is committed to exploring all possibilities until the cause or causes of the disorder are identified.

“Dr. Gerberding has made it clear the CDC has not ruled out anything as possible causes of autism, including thimerosal,” Nowak said. “Science is a dynamic process. We have continued to fund studies to look at the role, if any, of thimerosal.”

Given these caveats, what would you do? Well, there are two maxims of medicine that might apply. “First, do no harm,” is the obvious one.

The second, related concept is the precautionary principle which, according to wikipedia.org, “is the idea that if the consequences of an action are unknown, but are judged to have some potential for major or irreversible negative consequences, then it is better to avoid that action.”

So: Vaccines don’t need mercury. Even government experts acknowledge some possible risks — to the fetus, for example — are insufficiently studied 60 years on. A link to autism has not been ruled out. They’re continuing to investigate, as they should.

But the doctors and their public and private allies are battling state by state to stop mercury bans, and the CDC won’t recommend a thimerosal-free flu shot for kids and pregnant woman. There’s a phrase for this approach:

Bombs away.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Feb. 2, 2006 at 2:11 PM

A Columbia University scientist plans to test whether gold salts improve the functioning of “autistic mice” — a step toward finding whether they could help children with autism.

Dr. Mady Hornig of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health will give the compound to mice that have been bred to be susceptible to thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in children’s immunizations until recently. Some researchers and parents believe thimerosal is implicated in the explosion of autism diagnoses over the past decade, though federal health authorities say that theory has been discredited.

In previous research, Hornig found that the susceptible mouse breed shows autistic-like behaviors, including self-mutilation, when given thimerosal at doses proportionate to those children received until recently.

Hornig “is developing a treatment protocol using gold salts which she will administer to these genetically susceptible mice to determine if the treatment might improve their behavior and brain function and if there are side effects,” according to an announcement of the project by the National Autism Association.

“Gold tightly binds mercury and there are anecdotal reports of gold salts being effective in improving autism outcomes.”

That is a reference to Age of Autism’s report last year that the first person ever diagnosed with the disorder improved significantly after treatment with gold salts. That child, known as Donald T., was given the compound to treat a life-threatening attack of juvenile arthritis in 1946, when he was 12 years old.

According to Donald’s brother, interviewed in the small Mississippi town where both still live, the treatment cleared up the arthritis — and his autism improved markedly and unexpectedly as well.

“When he was finally released (from the Campbell Clinic in Memphis), the nervous condition he was formerly afflicted with was gone,” his brother said. “The proclivity to excitability and extreme nervousness had all but cleared up.”

Donald became “more social,” the brother said. He went on to graduate from college, where he belonged to a fraternity; worked at a bank; lives on his own; and now, in retirement, travels the world and plays a good game of golf.

That information caught the attention of autism researchers who believe the disorder might result from a toxic exposure in utero or in infancy, possibly the mercury that was used in vaccines as early as 1931 (Donald was born in 1933).

One such scientist, chemistry professor Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky, did a laboratory experiment in December to see if gold salts had any effect on mercury.

They did, reversing the binding of mercury to molecules. “This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts,” Haley said.

Gold salts acting on mercury is not the only way they might theoretically help a person with autism. Some researchers believe autism is an autoimmune condition, in which the immune system begins to attack the body.

Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, the ailment Donald had at age 12, is such a condition; gold salts were used to treat it because they somehow calm the inflammatory autoimmune attack. If the same process is happening in the brains of autistic children, gold salts might ameliorate it in the same way.

Researchers caution that gold salts should not be tried as a treatment for autism because of the risk of severe side effects and lack of data about its effectiveness.

Hornig said she was moved to begin the study by the death of Liz Birt, an advocate for children with autism who died in a car crash in December. Birt was a co-founder of SafeMinds, a group that urges the removal of mercury from all medical products. SafeMinds is sponsoring the study and soliciting donations in Birt’s memory.

Details of the project, called Go for the Gold, can be found at www.nationalautismassociation.org.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Jan. 17, 2006 at 5:18 PM

The head of NBC is donating more than $2 million to a Baltimore research institute to do something innovative: listen and learn from the parents of children who have autism.

Bob and Suzanne Wright’s organization, Autism Speaks, is giving $2.3 million to the Kennedy Krieger Institute to fund the first year of development of an autism database that eventually will connect parents, educators and researchers. The idea: Through an open, interactive process, those participating will be able to share information, be part of ongoing studies and look for clues to causes and treatments for autism spectrum disorders, which now affect 1 in every 166 U.S. children.

The Wrights’ involvement follows the diagnosis of a grandson with autism. Wright, chairman and CEO of NBC Universal and vice chair of General Electric, founded Autism Speaks (www.autismspeaks.org) with his wife last February.

A number of parents’ groups already have made pioneering use of the Internet to trade information on treatments and push for more research into the disorder, so in a sense the Wrights are taking a page from that digital playbook. But many of those same parents have complained that researchers tend to reject their eyewitness experiences because they don’t meet scientific standards.

What’s more, the range of services that children with autism require — from speech therapy to behavioral approaches to special education to medical treatment — is often poorly coordinated.

“I think there are only two people who know what’s going on with these kids, and those are the parents in these families,” Dr. Gary Goldstein, president of Kennedy Krieger, told Age of Autism. The institute is a leading research and treatment center for children with developmental disorders from autism to spinal-cord injuries.

“What we are going to do is have an engaging, interactive Web site that asks you not only for registration information but keeps asking you — symptoms, what you’re doing with the child, what it’s costing you to do this, how hard is it to find these services.”

That will allow parents, for example, to see what other parents are doing for sleep problems that often are part of autism. Researchers could look at the same data to study whether some approaches seem more effective.

“There would be a matching service where you’d be asked, ‘Is it OK for a researcher to contact you by e-mail?’”

Wright’s group pledged to help the effort for the next three years, with Dr. Paul Law of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in charge of the project. Parental and scientific advisory boards will help guide the Web site, which likely will be launched in about a year.

“Our expectation is that, by creating a unique network of research scientists and families, the database will become an unprecedented source of information that will dramatically increase our knowledge and understanding of autism spectrum disorders,” Law said.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Jan. 6, 2006 at 6:15 PM

The CDC is continuing to investigate whether a mercury preservative in childhood immunizations has caused cases of autism — despite the fact a report it paid for said such research should end.

The agency wants to determine whether exposure to the vaccine preservative, called thimerosal, can be linked to autism spectrum disorders, Glen Nowak, director of media relations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Age of Autism on Friday.

The study includes 300 children with ASDs, 200 of whom have full-syndrome autism, as well as a comparison group of children who do not have the disorders.

In 2004 a CDC-funded report by the independent Institute of Medicine concluded there was no evidence of a vaccine-autism link and efforts should go instead to “promising” autism research.

“Further research to find the cause of autism should be directed toward other lines of inquiry,” the immunization review panel said. “It’s really terrifying, the scientific illiteracy that supports these suspicions,” said Dr. Marie McCormick, chairwoman of the IOM panel, in a New York Times article in June.

And the head of the CDC’s immunization program said the same year that only “junk scientists and charlatans” take such a link seriously.

Nevertheless, spokesman Nowak said the CDC — which sets the childhood immunization schedule that states adopt — has not eliminated thimerosal as a suspect.

“We do agree the preponderance of evidence to date suggests there is no association between thimerosal and autism,” said Nowak when asked why the CDC was continuing to pursue the issue. But he said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding is committed to exploring all possibilities until the cause or causes of the disorder are identified.

“Dr. Gerberding has made it clear the CDC has not ruled out anything as possible causes of autism, including thimerosal,” Nowak said. “Science is a dynamic process. We have continued to fund studies to look at the role, if any, of thimerosal.”

The study was designed in 2003 and data collection — which includes evaluation of each child and their immunization history — began last year, Nowak said. A letter dated Nov. 8 and an accompanying brochure were provided by a parent who received them.

“In this study, the CDC wants to find out if children who received vaccines and medicines with Thimerosal as infants are more likely to later have developmental problems such as Asperger’s Syndrome or autism,” says the letter, sent on behalf of the CDC by a research firm and Kaiser Permanente, one of three HMOs involved.

“Your participation in this study may help doctors learn about the possible risks of vaccines and medicines that contained thimerosal.”

The mother who received the letter expressed dismay because most medical experts and federal health authorities have reassured parents thimerosal does not cause autism and is not responsible for the large increase in diagnoses beginning in the 1990s.

In 1999 the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics urged manufacturers to phase out thimerosal from childhood immunizations as soon as possible, based on the concern that the total amount of mercury received by a child could exceed some government guidelines.

But, citing five subsequent epidemiological studies, the CDC and other health authorities now say there is no evidence of an association.

The CDC continues to recommend flu shots — most of which contain thimerosal — for pregnant women and for children 6 to 23 months of age. The agency has declined to express a preference for the thimerosal-free version, citing concern that it might cause some parents to forego immunizing their children against flu if they cannot obtain it.

In addition, tens of millions of children around the world are being injected with thimerosal-containing vaccines, based heavily on the assurances of U.S. health authorities that it is safe and does not cause autism.

Results of the study should be available in September 2007, Nowak said.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Jan. 4, 2006 at 11:59 AM

A number of readers have raised concerns that gold salts — which may have improved the mental functioning of the first child diagnosed with autism — are untested and unproven as a treatment and can be dangerous.

“I think you should be careful about showing too much enthusiasm about gold salts,” wrote Dr. Marvin J. Schissel. “My recollection is that they were used for arthritis about half a century ago, but not since.”

“Don’t rush to the gold salts thing,” wrote James Blanco, who forwarded several cautionary studies, including a 1993 French report, “Neurological complications caused by gold salts.”

“Gold therapy is responsible for many neurological complications,” the study said. And in a September 2005 article in the journal Autoimmunity, researchers from the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University College Cork, Ireland, noted:

“Gold salts have long been used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. However, the basis for their therapeutic immune-modulating properties has never been satisfactorily explained. Furthermore, treatments are often marred by the development of adverse immune reactions such as hypersensitivity and even exacerbation of autoimmunity.”

The issue of gold salts and autism arose after our report in August that the first child diagnosed with the disorder appeared to improve markedly after being treated with gold salts for an attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at age 12. Donald T., as he is known in medical literature, still lives in the small Mississippi town where he grew up and first came to scientific attention in 1938.

The arthritis cleared up, and so did the “extreme nervousness” and excitability that had afflicted him, his brother told us. Donald also became “more social.” He went on to college, where he was invited to join a fraternity; worked as a bank teller; and now, at age 72 and in retirement, pursues his love of golf and travels the world.

One autism researcher — who believes most autism cases were triggered by mercury, and in particular a mercury preservative that was used in childhood immunizations beginning in the early 1930s — tested gold salts in his laboratory following our report. He said last month that the substance can “reverse the binding” of mercury to a chemical compound.

But that scientist, University of Kentucky Chemistry Professor Boyd Haley, cautioned that no one should try gold salts to treat autism before proper studies are done.

“Please note that I am not recommending using gold salts to treat autistics, but it would certainly be worth a project if carefully monitored by a physician in a good clinic,” Haley said.

An article in 2002 in the International Journal of Neuroscience, co-authored by four researchers at the Meridian Institute, made a similar case for testing gold salts as a “nervine” — a treatment to relieve mental conditions — and also noted the risk of side effects.

“The therapeutic and adverse effects of gold in living organisms are varied and paradoxical,” the authors wrote. The primary side effects are dermatological and gastrointestinal, “yet gold-containing drugs have numerous rarer side effects, and can cause or exacerbate the same disorders for which they are effective in therapy.”

For example, they noted “gold-containing drugs have been used in place of steroids in therapy for asthma … but in other cases have been responsible for respiratory disorders and even death.”

As for effects on the brain and nervous system, “Three forms of gold-induced neurological side effects have been recognized: (1) painful neuropathy, sometimes accompanied by insomnia and anxiety, (2) peripheral motor neuropathy, and (3) encephalopathy with symptoms including depression, delirium, and exogenous psychoses.”

The upshot? More scientific and clinical studies. “This research has the potential for re-establishing gold as a significant therapeutic agent in a much wider range of disorders than those for which it is currently used. And it could help in sorting out valid from invalid claims of benefits from supplementation.”

The authors said even the side effects might point to gold as a useful tool in treating neurological conditions if properly administered: “Adverse effects of drugs can be an indicator of related therapeutic effects at lower dosages.”

Clearly, given the serious risks, figuring this out is a job best left to the experts.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Dec. 30, 2005 at 1:31 PM

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) — A published scientific paper suggests gold salts — the treatment that may have prompted improvement in the first child ever diagnosed with autism — can affect mental conditions.

“Although there is very little modern research on these applications for gold, historically one notable use of gold was as a ‘nervine,’ a substance that could revitalize people suffering from nervous conditions, a term we would today call neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as epilepsy and depression,” according to the paper, “Gold and its relationship to neurological/glandular conditions.”

The paper appeared in 2002 in the International Journal of Neuroscience, co-authored by four researchers at the Meridian Institute, a Virginia-based non-profit group. It is online at meridianinstitute.com/ceu/ceu25gol.html.

“Neither the causes of the disorders nor the mechanism of gold is known, yet there are reports pointing to a possible involvement of naturally-occurring gold in the nervous and glandular systems, and evidence from historical sources of a possible efficacy of gold in therapy for neurological disorders,” write authors Douglas G. Richards, David L. McMillin, Eric A. Mein and Carl D. Nelson.

The paper, which we’ve alluded to before, is getting renewed attention among activists who believe that most cases of autism are caused by a mercury preservative used in childhood immunizations. While medical groups and federal health authorities discount any link, these researchers and parents say a huge rise in autism diagnoses beginning in the 1990s can be tied to the increasing number of vaccines containing the preservative, called thimerosal, which is about 50 percent ethyl mercury by weight.

The earliest year for which we could find evidence of thimerosal being used in vaccines was 1931. In August, Age of Autism reported that the first child ever diagnosed with autism — Donald T., who was born in 1933 in Mississippi — was treated with gold salts for an acute attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at age 12. His autism symptoms also showed significant improvement following the two-to-three-month gold-salts treatment at a clinic in Memphis, according to his brother, who we interviewed in the small Mississippi town where both still live.

That caught the attention of Boyd Haley, a chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky and a leading proponent of the mercury-autism theory. In our last column we reported the results of a test he conducted to see whether gold salts would pull mercury off a chemical compound.

It did. Gold salts “can reverse the binding” of mercury to molecules, Haley said, adding, “This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts.”

The article by the Meridian Institute authors does not discuss whether gold might improve neurological conditions triggered by a toxic exposure such as mercury, and it does not mention autism. But it does provide a context for understanding why the compound might improve mental functioning and alleviate neurological disorders.

Intriguingly, the authors write that 19th-century scientists realized gold could help them explore the nervous system.

“The affinity of gold for the nervous system and the implications of this for the treatment of nervous disorders was remarked by (Dr. Leslie E.) Keeley (1897): ‘The use of gold … to develop microscopical nerves may, perhaps, be said to indicate that nerve fiber has a peculiar affinity for that metal. The application of it in solutions brings out nerves which otherwise would be invisible.

“‘The development of lifeless microscopic nerves by a solution of gold may be in part owing to some of the recondite forces which cause the gold, taken into circulation, to reconstruct living ones.’”

Haley’s hypothesis 108 years later sounds oddly similar: Gold, he thinks, might pull mercury “off the enzyme it’s inhibiting and reactivate that enzyme.”

If the idea that an element found in nature could affect mental functioning sounds bizarre, remember that it has already happened. The authors note that another element on the periodic table — lithium — has been used to treat bipolar disorder.

All this leaves proponents of the mercury-autism theory eager to see whether gold salts might be beneficial to any of the 250,000 Americans with autism, many of whom have not responded well to treatment. But they are equally concerned that a “gold rush,” so to speak, could raise false hopes or — far worse — endanger children.

“Don’t jump on this. Be careful. You can hurt kids,” Haley told us before he began his test of gold salts. Even after it reversed the binding of mercury to molecules, Haley cautioned:

“The last thing the autism associations need is a bad experience on treating an autistic child. Extreme caution should be used with gold salts; just because the gold or thiolmalate (part of the gold salts) binds mercury in a test tube doesn’t mean the gold salts will not be harmful to a young infant.

“Remember, the successful treatment was on a 12-year-old child if indeed the gold salts were the cause of his autism remission. Let’s be exceptionally careful here and include every possible safety factor before we start any major clinical study.”

One relatively simple test was suggested by a parent: Try gold salts — which are still available by prescription — on someone who has both rheumatoid arthritis, for which its effectiveness has been established, and autism, for which it has not.

The Meridian Institute authors made a similar suggestion. They proposed “attending to the side effects of gold medications where there is comorbidity of rheumatoid arthritis and a neurological, psychiatric, or glandular disorder. …

“One could ask, do patients with epilepsy, depression, or adrenal insufficiency who may be receiving gold salts for arthritis show any improvement in neurological/glandular symptoms? Although neurological adverse effects are rare, beneficial side effects might be found.”

As the calendar turns to 2006, the day may be coming when their question is answered.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Dec. 23, 2005 at 1:50 PM

In a striking follow-up to our reporting on the first child diagnosed with autism — and his improvement after treatment with gold salts — a chemistry professor says lab tests show the compound can “reverse the binding” of mercury to molecules.

“This does lend support to the possible removal of mercury from biological proteins in individuals treated with gold salts,” Boyd Haley, professor and former chemistry department chair at the University of Kentucky, said Thursday.

The potential significance: Donald T. — Case 1 among children diagnosed with autism in the 1930s — showed marked improvement in his autistic symptoms after being treated with gold salts for an attack of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. That’s according to his brother, who we interviewed earlier this year in the small Mississippi town where he and Donald, now 72, still live.

One theory of autism — strongly dismissed by federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups — is that the disorder is primarily caused by a mercury preservative called thimerosal that was used in vaccines beginning in the 1930s. Some parents and researchers who believe autism is, in essence, mercury poisoning are using treatments designed to remove mercury from the body or offset its neurological effects.

Haley is among a minority of scientists who holds this view, and after reading about Donald’s improvement he set out to test whether gold salts have any effect on mercury. “You follow your nose in research, and when I saw that I thought, yes, this is a possibility,” said Haley.

Haley’s experiment was quite simple: He began with a colored thiol-containing compound. Thiols are the class of molecules that contain a sulfhydryl group (a sulfur and hydrogen atom bound together) and, because of the affinity of mercury for sulfur, these molecules bind tightly to mercury. Thiols are found in most enzymes, and when mercury binds to them, these enzymes lose their biological activity, which is needed to maintain healthy cells, he said.

Haley performed two tests involving inorganic mercury — the type of mercury thimerosal breaks down to in the brain, he said.

Haley’s compound was designed to turn colorless when mercury binds to it. In the first test, he added the mercury, and the “optical density” measurement went from 0.23 units down to 0.11 units immediately, and down to 0.03 units in half an hour — a clear sign that the mercury had bound to the thiol.

In the second test he premixed the mercury with gold salts for two minutes, then added it to the same solution. This time the optical density dropped to 0.11 but then slowly increased back up to 0.23 within about 30 minutes — “totally the opposite of the situation with mercury alone,” Haley said. “The only way this could happen would be for the gold salts to remove mercury from the thiol-containing compound.”

The advocacy group SafeMinds — which opposes the use of mercury in medicines and provided Haley with the $142 prescription of gold salts to test — called the results potentially significant but cautioned against premature use of the compound to treat autistic people.

“Clinicians have shown that some autistic children show strong recovery from their symptoms after biomedical treatment,” said SafeMinds’ Mark Blaxill. “So any time we discover a treatment that works in a child, we need to take it seriously.

“According to his brother’s unprompted report, Donald T. recovered from autism after treatment with gold salts. We should be all over that, especially after Boyd’s work. But we need to proceed with care to make sure that this is a safe treatment.”

Haley made the same point. “Please note that I am not recommending using gold salts to treat autistics, but it would certainly be worth a project if carefully monitored by a physician in a good clinic.”

In August Donald’s brother described to us his “miraculous response” to gold-salts treatment for a life-threatening attack of juvenile arthritis. Donald was given injections of the salts over a two- to three-month period at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis at age 12 in 1947.

The arthritis cleared up, and so did the “extreme nervousness” and excitability that had afflicted him, his brother said. Donald also became “more social.” He went on to college, where he was invited to join a fraternity; worked as a bank teller; and now, in retirement, pursues his love of golf and travels the world. Most of those early patients — and thousands since — were institutionalized when they got older or lived in extremely sheltered circumstances, according to follow-up reports. (Donald did not respond to our request for an interview, and we are not identifying him at this time beyond information in the original case study and follow-up.)

Before Haley tested the gold salts, he told us why he thought it was worth investigating.

“Nothing has a higher affinity for mercury than elemental gold. They form bonds that are very tight,” Haley said. Devices designed to detect and filter out mercury routinely use gold, he noted — and they obviously would employ a less expensive element if gold weren’t so effective. Mercury was also used to extract gold from ore in mining operations.

In the body, Haley said, gold likely is “attracted to the same places as mercury. They would probably make it to the same spot in the body. It (gold) would probably cross the blood-brain barrier like mercury. There are reasons to think that if you put it in, it would chase mercury down because they’re very similar in their chemistry.

“So you might be able to displace it with the gold. The chemistry gets complicated here, but gold does not do as much oxidative stress as does mercury. The gold isn’t nearly as toxic as the mercury. … It could take it off the enzyme it’s inhibiting and reactivate that enzyme.”

Haley said he was intrigued that the treatment may have benefited Donald when he was 12 — old for such a positive response, according to proponents of biomedical therapies. The most controversial such treatment is chelation, which uses drugs in an attempt to pull toxic metals — mercury in particular — from the body.

“It doesn’t seem to work with the older kids,” Haley said. “These older kids are just lost.” But, Haley emphasized: “Don’t jump on this. Be careful. You can hurt kids.”

That concern was underscored when a 5-year-old autistic child died this year while undergoing chelation in Pennsylvania. Federal officials say it is not a responsible practice, although one advocacy group says more than 10,000 families have tried it, with significant benefit.

By DAN OLMSTED, UPI Senior Editor   |   Dec. 19, 2005 at 1:16 PM

In this — the second of three parts recounting our reporting on autism since the start of the year — we revisit the first child ever diagnosed with the disorder.

On a sweltering late August morning we climbed the stairs to a second-floor law office in a small town in Mississippi. We introduced ourselves to the brother of Donald T., the first person ever diagnosed with autism.

Donald was born in 1933; he came to the attention of the medical world in 1938, when his parents took him to see the renowned child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Over the next four years Kanner saw 10 more children exhibiting the same unique behavior syndrome, and in 1943 he introduced the disorder in an article titled, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.”

While Kanner did not identify Donald by his full name, we were able to determine his identity and learned he was still alive at age 71. That’s what brought us to his brother’s office — looking for clues to the roots and rise of a devastating disorder that seemed rare when Donald was born, but now affects 1 in every 166 U.S. children.

Donald, his brother told us, was out of town. But speaking in a courtly, deliberate manner and without any prompting on our part, he told a remarkable story: At age 12 Donald had been living with a nearby farm couple. “One February day, I think it was, they came to (town) with Don. He had a bad fever and was obviously sick.” His joints were swollen and stiff, his brother said.

“My father and mother took him to all various places for examination — they went to Mayo Clinic, brought him back. He lost his appetite and was terribly emaciated. But anyway, my father was talking to a doctor (in a nearby town) he happened to run into and said, ‘It looks like Don is getting ready to die.’”

The doctor said, “What you’re describing sounds like a rare case of juvenile arthritis.” Diagnosis in hand, his parents took Donald to the eminent Campbell Clinic in Memphis, where he was treated with the then-standard remedy, gold salts. “He just had a miraculous response to the medicine,” Donald’s brother said. “The pain in his joints went away.”

And here’s the kicker: “When he was finally released the nervous condition he was formerly afflicted with was gone. The proclivity toward excitability and extreme nervousness had all but cleared up.” He also became “more social.”

In other words, Donald got a lot better. He went on to college, joined a fraternity, worked at a bank, owns a house, drives a car, belongs to the Kiwanis and the Presbyterian Church and plays a good game of golf despite one fused knuckle left over from the arthritis attack.

And now, in retirement, he travels the world. That explained why he wasn’t in town — he was off having a good time. Last stop: Italy. Favorite city: Istanbul. Because Donald did not respond to a request for an interview made through his brother, we are not identifying him at this time.

Most of the rest of the first 11 children identified by Leo Kanner depended for the rest of their lives on the kindnesses of strangers: They lived in back wards or, if they were lucky, group homes or other sheltered arrangements.

Donald’s brother told us Johns Hopkins researchers have been in touch every decade to check on Donald, but we’re not aware of any published accounts of Donald’s improvement following the gold-salts treatment — something his brother volunteered to us in a half hour of conversation.

Regardless, the fate of the first child ever diagnosed with the disorder seems more relevant today than ever before. One reason: Some parents, under the guidance of several hundred doctors who have broken away from the medical mainstream, are trying a variety of medical interventions to treat their autistic children.

These range from restrictive diets to cod-liver oil to methyl B-12 shots to the most controversial technique, called chelation (key-LAY-shun). This involves giving a child a drug — orally, via creams or in some cases, intravenously — that is designed to pull heavy metals, in particular mercury, from the body. The process carries risks: Earlier this year a 5-year-old autistic child died while undergoing intravenous chelation in Pennsylvania.

The theory behind it — rejected by federal health authorities and most scientists — is that in most cases autism is actually a form of mercury poisoning. The mercury in question came from some childhood immunizations, which beginning around 1930 contained an ethyl-mercury preservative called thimerosal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other experts say that concern is unfounded, but they recommended in 1999 that it be phased out of childhood vaccines in the United States as a precaution.

The questions raised by Donald’s improvement are both simple and potentially significant: Did the gold-salts treatment alleviate his autistic symptoms, and if so, why?

Did the juvenile arthritis — an autoimmune condition — and the autism improve markedly at the same time because both were responses to a toxic exposure? Did the gold salts help pull mercury from Donald’s body, and/or reduce an inflammatory immune response in his brain? Or is it all coincidence, or a memory blurred by the passage of 59 years?

Such questions, or course, are speculative, and some readers have criticized us for even asking them, given the assurances of the CDC and medical groups and the importance of immunizations in preventing infectious disease.

Wrote one reader over the weekend: “I can’t morally just stand by and watch you exacerbate a situation where children are dying because fearful mothers didn’t vaccinate. … It is doubly sad when you consider that instead of your causing the deaths of children, you could have used your bully pulpit to do something good for autistic children.”

But something good did seem to happen to one autistic child who was about to die: Donald T. All we’re interested in is, why?

In the new year we’ll look more closely at whether chelation and other treatments appear effective. First, though, we’ll wrap up this review by recounting our efforts to find autism in U.S. children who have never been vaccinated.