EXAMINER ON LYNN REDWOOD AND AUTISM

[Guest guest]

http://www.examiner.com/x-43538-DC-Autism-Examiner~y2010m4d26-Autism-advocate-Ly\

n-Redwood-discusses-mercury-vaccine-controversy-chelation-treatment-and-recovery

*First in a three-part series.*

Autism is a treatable biochemical medical condition rather than an incurable

psychological disorder, says Lyn Redwood, whose son recovered from autism

after having mercury removed from his body. Redwood’s son Will is one of a

growing number of children who have recovered from

autism<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30262936#30262936>or

made excellent progress from behavioral therapies and/or biomedical

treatments.

I interviewed Redwood during the Autism Research Institute, Defeat Autism

Now! <http://www.autism.com/> semi-annual conference in Baltimore April 10,

which she was coordinating. ARI conducts and fosters biomedical scientific

research designed to improve the methods of diagnosing, treating, and

preventing autism.

*Scroll to the bottom of the page for the text of the interview.*

*Autism*

Autism is a developmental disorder that results in delays or deficits in

communication and social skills, and restricted or repetitive behaviors and

interests. People with autism often also have poor motor skills and

coordination. It is generally accepted that autism stems from a genetic

susceptibility followed by environmental triggers.

However, there is no consensus on what exactly triggers autism. Recent

research shows that children with autism may be more vulnerable to

environmental toxicants than neurotypical children. Many experts believe

these toxicants could include heavy metals, pesticides, or chemicals. Recent

research indicates there are different subtypes of autism and multiple

causes of the disorder.

The incidence of autism has risen for 35

years<http://www.autismvotes.org/atf/cf/%7B2A179B73-96E2-44C3-8816-1B1C0BE5334B%\

7D/AS-%20Prevalence%20Graph%2012_18.pdf>and

now affects 1 in 110 children, according to the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention.

A 2009 study by the UC MIND Institute (Medical Investigation of

Neurodevelopmental

Disorders)<http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20090218_autism_environ\

ment/index.html>determined

that the increase in autism cannot be explained by how autism is

diagnosed.

Some children develop a regressive form of autism in which they develop

typically and then lose skills such as speech and eye contact, while

acquiring other characteristics of autism.

*Autism Advocacy*

Redwood, a nurse practitioner in pediatrics and women’s health, believes the

medical establishment should conduct more research on the environmental

causes of autism as well as the possible link between autism and vaccines.

She says children with autism may be susceptible to environmental triggers

of autism, and often have additional medical problems that can offer clues

as to the causes and possible treatments of autism.

Redwood is the co-founder of two autism advocacy organizations, the Coalition

for SafeMinds <http://www.safeminds.org/> and the National Autism

Association <http://www.nationalautismassociation.org/>. She is also a

member of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee<http://iacc.hhs.gov/>,

which coordinates autism research within the Department of Health and Human

Services and meets quarterly in Bethesda, MD or Washington, D.C.

In 2001, Redwood was one of the first medical professionals to hypothesize a

potential link between vaccines and autism when she co-authored *Autism, a

Novel Form of Mercury

Poisoning<http://www.safeminds.org/research/library/Bernard-et-al-2001.pdf>

*. She also testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Government

Reform Committee in 2004 about the potential risks of mercury in vaccines.

*The Vaccine Debate*

In 2004, the Institute of Medicine, an independent organization based in

Washington, D.C. that advises the nation on health, released its Immunization

Safety Review: Vaccines and

Autism<http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2004/Immunization-Safety-Review-Vaccines-and-A\

utism.aspx>report

that stated that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and

thimerosal-containing vaccines were not causally associated with autism.

However, the controversy continues six years later and shows no signs of

ending. Many researchers and parents of children with autism have maintained

that a link exists between vaccines and autism. They cite the fact that

symptoms of mercury poisoning mimic the symptoms of autism, dramatic

behavioral and medical changes sometimes occur directly after the

administration of vaccines, and the rise in autism has coincided with

increases in the vaccine schedule. The CDC rapidly expanded the U.S.

vaccination schedule in

1988<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00038256.htm>

..

According to a joint statement issued in 1999 by the American Academy of

Pediatrics, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the American Academy of

Family Physicians <http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4826a3.htm>,

there was “no evidence of harm” resulting from exposure to thimerosal in

vaccines. The statement also said that as a precaution,

“thimerosal-containing vaccines should be removed as soon as possible.” By

2003, thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, had been removed from most

childhood vaccines.

Mercury is a known potent neurotoxicant that can damage the human nervous

system. However, the Food and Drug Administration (based in Silver Spring,

MD) states that ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, is safe in

low doses, and is less toxic and excreted more quickly than methylmercury,

the form found in fish and pollutants.

Research by Dr. Jill and others shows that children with autism have

oxidative stress because of low levels of

glutathione<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15527868>,

an antioxidant that detoxifies the body against heavy metals.

A second aspect of the debate centers around the MMR vaccine, which does not

contain thimerosal. However, vaccine critics have theorized that infants

with susceptible immune systems may have adverse reactions to the MMR

vaccine, which contains multiple live viruses, or that mercury from other

vaccines may affect the way the body responds to the MMR vaccine.

According to the U.S. government, the pharmaceutical companies that

manufacture and distribute vaccines, and multiple studies, neither

thimerosal nor the MMR vaccines pose any health risks related to autism.

Still, some physicians have called for more research on whether or not there

may be a subset of children who are susceptible to reactions from some of

the contents of vaccines. In 2008, CBS News interviewed former National

Institutes of Health Director Bernadine Healy, a Harvard-educated physician

(see the

video<http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4088138n & tag=related;photovideo>)

and Florida Congressman Dave Weldon, also a medical doctor, on the questions

surrounding vaccines and autism (see the

video<http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3915840n & tag=mncol;lst;1>).

Indiana Congressman Dan Burton <http://burton.house.gov/issues/autism> has

also called for more research on the topic.

*Ethylmercury and Methylmercury*

According to the U.S. government, the amount of ethylmercury that was in

most vaccines posed no health risk to children. The government also states

that ethylmercury is eliminated by the body faster than methylmercury, the

more harmful form of the element, and cites a 2005-NIH-funded study on

infant primates <http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2005/7712/7712.html>.

However, the study also showed that ethylmercury converted to inorganic

mercury faster than methylmercury in the brains of the primates. In

addition, at least twice as much inorganic mercury was retained in the

brains of the animals injected with ethylmercury than in those that ingested

methylmercury.

Prior research into the effects of methylmercury in adult primates documents

that inorganic mercury may become trapped in the brain after the organic

form of the heavy metal is excreted. The research shows that inorganic

mercury can contribute to brain cell dysfunction and inflammation, which has

been found in patients with autism.

According to the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease

Registry<http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts46.html#bookmark05>,

“The nervous system is very sensitive to all forms of mercury… Exposure to

high levels of metallic, inorganic, or organic mercury can permanently

damage the brain, kidneys, and developing fetus.”

*Mercury and Pregnancy*

The FDA states on its

website<http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/QuestionsaboutVaccine\

s/ucm070430.htm>,

“FDA is continuing its efforts toward reducing or removing thimerosal from

all existing vaccines.” However, thimerosal is still used in some vaccines,

including most flu shots <http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm>.

FDA states, “Vaccination with thimerosal-preservative containing influenza

vaccine and thimerosal-reduced influenza vaccine is encouraged when feasible

in children, including those that are 6-23 months of age.” Thimerosal is

also used in H1N1 vaccines.

CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant

women<http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/preg-guide.htm#flu1>.

The recommendation was recently expanded to all people over six months of

age.

In addition, the FDA warns that pregnant women should not eat certain types

of fish because of their high methylmercury

content<http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/Seafood/F\

oodbornePathogensContaminants/Methylmercury/ucm115662.htm>.

Much of the methylmercury in fish originates from coal mining emissions and

other pollution.

CDC states <http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts46.html#bookmark07>, “Mercury's

harmful effects that may be passed from the mother to the fetus include

brain damage, mental retardation, incoordination, blindness, seizures, and

inability to speak.”

In 2004 the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that one in every six

infants born in the U.S. could be at risk for neurological injury from

mercury, mainly from fish eaten by the mother while pregnant. Scientists

believe the global rate of atmospheric mercury deposition is increasing.

*Regression and Recovery*

Redwood’s son Will was given 62.5 mcg of mercury in his vaccines at the age

of two months, which was 125 times the EPA’s allowable daily amount of

mercury exposure of 0.1 mcg per kilogram. By six months of age, Will had

received 187.5 mcg of mercury in his vaccines.

Redwood kept a lock of hair from her son’s first haircut, at 20 months of

age, which she tested in 1999 when Will was five years old after she

suspected mercury poisoning. The hair sample had 4.8 parts per million (PPM)

mercury and 40.2 PPM aluminum, which exceeded the EPA’s action levels for

mercury and aluminum by more than four times.

Will developed normally up until the age of one. He was a happy, healthy,

energetic baby. Then he lost language and eye contact. He developed strep

throat, which is very unusual in infants, and had digestive issues and other

puzzling medical problems.

Will didn’t begin to speak again until after Redwood and her husband Tom, a

physician, decided to use the chelating agent DMSA, (Dimercaptosuccinic

acid) to remove the mercury from their son’s system. After chelation Will

gradually regained speech and eye contact, and his general health improved.

The Redwoods started Will’s chelation treatments when he was five and a

half. By age seven, he took the Iowa Test of Basic skills, a national

standardized test, and scored in just the third percentile. At age 9, he

took the Iowa test and scored in the 51st percentile for children his age.

The Redwoods believe that those chelation treatments, combined with various

supplements and behavioral therapies, led to their son’s recovery from

Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), one of

the autism spectrum disorders.

Their son is now a successful high school student who has excellent

communication, social, and academic skills and has recovered from PDD-NOS.

Lyn and Will Redwood.

Spectrum Magazine Photo/Shane Durrance

*Interview with Lyn Redwood, Vice-President of the Coalition for SafeMinds

at the Autism Research Institute’s semi-annual conference in April 2010.*

*Mike Frandsen: Can you talk about what changes your son Will’s went through

after his first birthday?*

*Lyn Redwood*: He stopped talking and interacting and started to regress. He

lost speech and eye contact and at first I thought it was just because he

had been so sick. Because he couldn’t communicate with me he would get very

frustrated. You can imagine wanting something and not being able to tell

somebody what you wanted or that your belly hurt or that your head hurt. It

was as though he were in his own little world. It was like there was nobody

home. He was a shell of the boy he had been before that had been energetic

and had personality. It was like the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

He was gone. He was literally gone from us.

Will also was sick all the time. He had been on multiple antibiotics his

first year of life and had infections that were really unheard of in

children under the age of two like strep throat. He had a really severe

upper respiratory infection where he ended up being hospitalized on IV

antibiotics, steroids and oxygen. Initially the doctors thought he had

pneumonia but his chest x-rays were all negative. It was during this period

of time when he seemed to have back to back to back illnesses that he also

stopped eating. He had been completely weaned off the bottle and was eating

regular table foods and he stopped eating table foods. He would actually gag

himself and vomit. I had to start him back on the bottle to get any

nutrition in him.

*Mike Frandsen: What did you think was wrong?*

*Lyn Redwood*: Our first thoughts were that he might have a brain tumor or

something like that. We were somewhat relieved that they didn’t find a brain

tumor or any other abnormalities but that raised more questions as to what

was really wrong with him. And I think that people knew he had autism but it

was such a life sentence diagnosis that nobody wanted to tell us. One doctor

said Will might not ever be able to talk. He said we should look into moving

to another county that could provide better services.

*Mike Frandsen: Besides the mercury Will had from his vaccines (125 times

the EPA’s allowable amount at two months of age), what other sources of

mercury did Will have?*

*Lyn Redwood*: When I was pregnant my blood type was RH-negative. I received

a drug called Gamulin during the pregnancy which was to protect me from

developing antibodies to Will’s blood and that was also preserved with

mercury. So I received 130 mcg of thimerosal at 14 weeks gestation and 20

weeks. So Will had a lot of exposure to mercury both while I was pregnant

(in addition to the Gamulin) – I ate tuna fish, I had dental amalgams – and

postnatally through the vaccines he received. Georgia Power also had several

old coal burning power plants in our state. In retrospect, he received a

tremendous amount of exposure, well above what would be allowed by our

federal agencies.

*Mike Frandsen: So it’s not possible to pinpoint where the mercury came

from?*

*Lyn Redwood*: It is possible to pinpoint when something is injected into

you in a known quantity measured by the FDA like ethylmercury from

thimerosal. But in terms of how much you get from seafood and dental

amalgams and breathing the air we’re just not certain.

*Mike Frandsen: How did you find out that Will had been exposed to so much

mercury?*

*Lyn Redwood*: We didn’t even find out that Will had been exposed to these

high levels of mercury until 1999 when he was five, when the FDA, the

American Academy of Pediatrics, and the U.S. Public Health Service came out

with a joint

statement<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4826a3.htm>that

they were bouncing back the Hepatitis B vaccine from birth to six

months of age because of concerns about mercury.

I started reading about mercury and I was just awestruck that the symptoms

of mercury toxicity were so similar to what the symptoms of autism were. And

that’s when I got Will’s medical records and looked up the vaccines because

not all the vaccines used mercury as a preservative, but just by the luck of

the draw, all the manufacturers of the vaccines that Will had received were

using mercury.

So I was able to add up the mercury. In the announcement they said the

mercury exposure was very small, that there was no evidence of harm, and

there was no need for testing. So when I added up Will’s exposure, on one

day at two months of age, looked at his weight, and applied the EPA

guidelines, it was 125 times what they allowed for daily exposure.

The FDA averaged the amount of mercury over a six-month period of time. So

they took that daily amount times 180 days. I asked toxicologists if that’s

an allowable way to look at it. It’s not. As an example, somebody can take

two Tylenols a day for a month and it’s no problem. If someone takes 60 in

one day, it’s a lethal dose.

Another analogy would be like drinking a fifth of whiskey and getting pulled

over and telling the policeman, “I can’t possibly be drunk because this is

the only drink I’ve had for a month.” You cannot legitimately average these

exposures the way they did.

*Mike Frandsen: How did you know that the mercury stayed in his system?*

*Lyn Redwood*: The federal government did not release the report regarding

the amount of mercury in vaccines until July 1999 which was a requirement of

the FDA Modernization Act, so that's when I found out he had been exposed to

mercury in his infant vaccines back in 1994.

I had Will's hair tested from 20 months of age and also at the time that I

found out he had been exposed to mercury far in excess of federal safety

guidelines when he was about five. The first test showed high levels of

mercury and aluminum, both of which were in his infant vaccines and

deficient in several minerals like calcium and zinc which is a very common

finding in our children with autism following heavy metal exposure. And this

test was not reflective of Will’s exposure the first six months of age

because he had lost all his baby hair by six months. So really, his levels

were much higher than what the test reflected.

The one years later did not have any elevations of metals (remember the hair

follicle picks up what is circulating in the blood at the time it is growing

and incorporates into the shaft of the hair). So this means he had not had

any recent exposure to metals.

*Mike Frandsen: How did you decide to use DMSA chelation as a treatment for

Will?*

*Lyn Redwood*: My husband and I had attended a DAN! (Defeat Autism Now)

conference (in 1999 when Will was five). During one of the Q & A’s, I shared

about Will’s hair analysis and exposure levels. One of the physicians on the

panel suggested DMSA. My husband Tom is a physician and we prescribed the

drug ourselves. We used what the FDA recommends for dosage. It’s an

FDA-approved oral chelating drug. We did it on and off for about six months.

Even today we still chelate Will during the summer. Some of the studies show

that giving the DMSA improves the glutathione status, which is the body’s

natural chemical to detoxify environmental toxicants.

Our kids with autism have a lot of underlying medical problems and because

they don’t oftentimes have language, can’t tell you that their tummies hurt,

that they have a headache, and many of these things go completely

undetected. Unless you actively go looking for them, you’re not going to

pick them up. One of the things we found out with Will is he wasn’t

digesting his food. We did a comprehensive digestive stool analysis and he

had a lot of undigested food and fat. So we started him on prescription

digestive enzymes to break down the fat, and within one year he gained 14

pounds. His cholesterol levels, which had always been abnormally low, also

normalized. Cholesterol is very important in brain function too. As Will’s

health improved so did his behavior and cognition.

*Mike Frandsen: Are certain children more susceptible to mercury and other

toxicants or do they all tolerate and process them the same?*

*Lyn Redwood*: People are different in terms of how well their bodies can

excrete environmental toxicants like mercury. The research literature in

autism is finding that our children have low levels of glutathione. Whether

or not that is an acquired problem after birth or if it is something they

were born with we really don’t know. It’s research we really need to know so

that we can identify whether or not children with low levels of glutathione

are more vulnerable to developing learning disabilities and autism. We

should also make sure that those children are not exposed to metals like

mercury and aluminum in vaccines.

*Mike Frandsen: The government says the fact that the autism rate continued

to increase after thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines shows that

thimerosal could not have caused autism. *

*Lyn Redwood*: Unfortunately, thimerosal was never completely removed from

vaccines. The flu vaccine, which continues to be preserved with mercury, was

recommended for all pregnant women by CDC’s Advisory Committee for

Immunization Practices in 2001 which was right when we were starting to see

a reduction in exposure to thimerosal and the numbers of children diagnosed

with autism in California.

So it was actually exposing them to mercury at an even earlier age of

development. The fetus accumulates mercury anywhere from 30 to something

like 200 percent more than the mother. There’s also animal research that

supports the concern that when you give a pregnant woman a vaccine it

stimulates her immune system and that immune response creates cytokines and

those cytokines can cross into the brain of the fetus causing an immune

response in the brain which can lead to neurological injury.

In the 2009-2010 flu season pregnant women were recommended to receive two

flu vaccines, for both seasonal and H1N1 and then infants start with flu

vaccines at six months, repeated at seven months and annually thereafter. So

in reality we are still exposing infants unnecessarily to mercury far in

excess of federal safety guidelines.

Flu vaccine is a Category C drug but it has never been tested for

reproductive toxicity. We do not have any adequate safety studies on giving

flu vaccine to pregnant women and the long term developmental outcome on the

child. A Category C drug means it should only be done when the benefit far

outweighs the risk and we just don’t have the safety data to support this

blanket policy.

The government has warnings out to pregnant women that you shouldn’t eat

shark and tuna because of high levels of

mercury<http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/Seafood/F\

oodbornePathogensContaminants/Methylmercury/ucm115662.htm>so

it doesn’t make sense that they would turn around and inject a

pregnant

woman with mercury in excess of their own federal safety guidelines. It

doesn’t make any sense at all.

*Mike Frandsen: Is it possible the MMR vaccine played a role in Will's

medical problems?*

Tom, Will, and Lyn Redwood.

Lyn Redwood: Will had already started to regress before the MMR vaccine,

which had been delayed because he was so sick. But after he had his MMR he

started having gastrointestinal problems, episodes of bloody diarrhea that

was culture negative. But when Will received his MMR vaccine he also on the

same day received his DT (Diphtheria and Tentanus) vaccine with mercury and

his hib (Haemophilus influenzae) vaccine with mercury. So he was receiving

mercury in other vaccines in this leg and then he also received his MMR and

Chicken Pox vaccines in the other leg, so they’re being given into same body

at same time.

Mercury is known to cause injury to the immune system, and mercury shifts

the immune system from being able to fight off viruses and bacteria toward

autoimmunity. When that happens, one of the hypotheses is that these viruses

they’re exposed to can become chronic active infections because the body

isn’t capable of adequately clearing the virus (from the MMR vaccine). Dr.

Ellen Silbergeld of s Hopkins has come out with research documenting the

effects of mercury on the immune

system<http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:do\

i/10.1289/ehp.0900855>

..

*Mike Frandsen: In its 2001 report the Institute of Medicine said more

research needed to be done into vaccines and autism. In its 2004 report it

basically said the case was closed. Does more research need to be conducted?

*

Absolutely. We know for a fact from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

and Vaccine Adverse Event Reports that some infants are harmed by vaccines.

Why would you not want to find out why? If you know, that a certain subset

of the population is not going to tolerate a vaccine and they’re going to be

injured, would you not want to find out why and change the way you give

vaccines or make vaccines so they’re safe for everybody? I get labeled as

being anti-vaccine. I’m not anti-vaccine. I want safe vaccines. And I don’t

think children should have life threatening vaccine preventable diseases,

but I don’t think children should have vaccine injury. Neither of those

should be acceptable.

*Mike Frandsen: What do you credit with your son’s recovery besides the

chelation?*

It was a combination of things we did – chelation therapy, addressing his

underlying medical problems, and supplements, in concert that helped our

son. We first tried traditional speech and behavioral therapy with little

success and then moved on to chelation, enzymes, supplements, and vitamins

to treat his medical and digestive problems. Will had a functional B-12

deficiency. He also had evidence of oxidative stress, which has been

documented by Dr. Jill and

others<http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/80/6/1611>.

And some of the things known to cause oxidative stress are environmental

toxicants such as mercury.

Oxidative stress is associated with a whole lot of diseases such as cancer

and Alzheimer’s disease. Children with autism also have mitochondrial

disorders, body burdens of heavy metals, and environmental toxicants, and

that science is emerging.

*Mike Frandsen: How does the knowledge that biomedical issues are important

in autism change the way it should be studied and treated?*

*Lyn Redwood*: We really need to study autism as a biochemical medical

diagnosis verses a psychiatric diagnosis. Because these medical problems

result in aberrant behaviors it’s been given a psychiatric diagnosis and I

think that’s really wrong.

An example is research done at NIH (in Bethesda, MD) called PANDAS, which

stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with

Streptococcal Infections <http://intramural.nimh.nih.gov/pdn/web.htm>. With

strep throat infections, the bacteria causes an endotoxin and the children

develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. So it’s an example of a medical

problem that causes a behavioral manifestation.

And I think it’s the same with autism. Unfortunately, the prevailing thought

for so long has been that autism is a genetically based psychiatric

disorder, and when you look at it that way, it’s not preventable and not

treatable. Whereas if you look at it as being a medical problem, then it is

treatable. When you look at it as being a genetic susceptibility where you

need an environmental trigger, then it’s also preventable, and it’s

treatable.

When you combine the behavioral therapies, the speech therapies, the

occupational therapies, at the same time you’re helping to heal these

children, medically you get the best response. Think about it – if you’re

having constant pain and diarrhea 10 times a day, you’re not going to want

to sit and learn and do speech therapy or behavioral therapies. So once

their tummies are feeling better they’re able to attend more.

It’s like fixing your computer. If your computer crashes and you keep

loading it software it’s not going to work. You’ve got to fix the hard drive

and then load the software. So in autism fixing the hard drive is healing

their bodies. The software is putting in all the therapies to get them

caught back up from what they’ve missed when they were so sick.

*Mike Frandsen: Do you see more acceptance by the medical community as time

goes on that there are biomedical causes and treatments for autism and that

kids can get better?*

*Lyn Redwood*: Yes, I think the medical establishment is finally starting to

listen to parents. First they didn’t believe in regressive autism. So now

they’ve had studies that have come out that have said there is regressive

autism. They also said that you can’t recover from autism. At first it was

like, “No they can’t have recovered from autism, they must have been

misdiagnosed.” If you have a genetically based disorder, how can you have

recovery? But then you take these same kids back to the same doctor who is

the developmental pediatrician that diagnosed them and they see the change.

And research now shows that kids can

recover<http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=100210>

..

*Mike Frandsen: After all you’ve seen, what do you think causes autism and

what direction should research go toward?*

I don’t think it’s just mercury that causes autism although I do think it

plays a significant role in some children like my son. I don’t think it’s

just vaccines that cause autism but they are the trigger in some children.

There are multiple environmental toxicants that our children are exposed to

every day. And a lot of them compete for these same excretory pathways so

it’s a cumulative toxicity and it’s obviously being driven by environmental

factors and we really need to focus research on what those are and how this

injury can be prevented. The federal government has never done a study where

they’ve tested kids with autism to see what’s in their bodies. I think we

really have to focus so much more on environmental toxicants.

I sit on the IACC and I’ve tried so hard to get them to focus more on

treatment looking at medical conditions but still, genetics is sexy and when

you have research that’s investigator-driven, the scientists are driving

what research they’re going to do – they submit what they’re going to study,

we keep getting the same old genetic studies. What we need to do is put out

requests for applications where we say we want a specific application for

somebody to look at, say, the gluten-free, casein-free diet. We want to see

whether or not children with autism have B-12 deficiencies and if they do,

what happens once the problem is addressed. We want a specific application

to determine the extent of gut pathology in autism and they’re not doing

that, so they keep getting the same old science and it’s not really helping

our children or addressing this epidemic.

NIH needs to set up some type of program where we’re able to get the need to

know science and not the nice to know science because, let’s face it, we’re

facing a tremendous epidemic with 1 of 110 children affected, 1 of 70 boys

affected. Can you imagine if tomorrow morning we woke up and suddenly one

out of every 70 of our school age boys were kidnapped? It would be a crisis.

That’s what’s happened in the last decade. And no one is paying attention to

this.

It’s very frustrating. We can have a hypothetical epidemic with H1N1 and our

government throws billions of dollars to providing a vaccine for the entire

country. And we have an epidemic going on right now and they ignore it.

*Mike Frandsen: Does it bother you when people disrespect your position but

don’t bother to look into the issues for themselves?*

*Lyn Redwood*: It saddens me a lot that they haven’t taken the time to

actually do the research. I myself with vaccines assumed that they were

safe. And effective. I researched the safest car to drive, the safest car

seat to put my son in and I didn’t research his vaccines. I had no idea

mercury was even in vaccines. So I’m angry at myself that I didn’t do the

due diligence that I needed to do. But I had been told that it was fine and

that vaccine reactions were very, very rare. It frustrates me when there’s

really bad science that’s done, and there are a lot of conflicts of interest

and it doesn’t get recognized.

If this had not happened to my son, I probably wouldn’t have ever believed

it were true. And I would probably be one of those people still saying

there’s no link between vaccines and autism. But when it happened to my

child and I started digging and doing the research myself, it’s there. And I

think that’s why the families who have also looked into this issue are so

mad.

I get calls from parents all the time saying, “My child was completely fine.

I took them in, they got seven vaccines in one day. They had a high fever,

they had a seizure, and they were never the same.”

Holly Peete’s son <http://www.hollyrod.org/> was completely fine.

He got a whole series of vaccines in one day. He was screaming and they took

him to the ER, and it was the last time he ever said, “Mommy” for a long

time.

When that happens over and over and over again to families you can’t deny

that and they are. We don’t know what the net effect is on the immune system

of giving all these vaccines at once. And they still contain very high

amounts of aluminum. Nobody’s looking at aluminum, another heavy metal.

*Mike Frandsen: How is your son doing now at 16?*

*Lyn Redwood*: He’s doing great. It was a very slow two-steps forward, one

step back process. He still has some medical problems. Developmentally, he

does grade level work. He goes to a regular school. But he has scattered

skills. There are things that he really struggles with and in other areas

he’s gifted. Socially he’s doing fairly well. He has several good friends.

He’s in 10th grade.

*Mike Frandsen: Is the outlook better for kids with autism today than

before? *

*Lyn Redwood*: Parents are doing things much earlier on. We know a lot more

now thanks to the Autism Research Institute (ARI) and brave doctors that

will treat our kids medically but there’s a group of older children who did

not have the benefit of the information we have now who have not made the

progress that my son has achieved.

*Mike Frandsen: Now that your son is recovered, do you ever think that

you’ve done enough? *

Lyn Redwood: I could never give up. The injustice is too much. I’m trying to

get medical care and services for these kids. To get to a point where we can

restore health to all those with autism and completely stop this epidemic.

See the Foundation for Autism Information and Research (FAIR) Autism

interview of Lyn and Will Redwood when Will was 11.

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