Autism + vaccines = tax dollars
By Evelyn Pringle

We are on the verge of a welfare disaster in this country. Eighty percent of autistic children are under the age of 17. In a few short years, the states are going to be forced to provide support for an overwhelming number of disabled autistic adults.
“The costs will be in the trillions,” according to Ann Dachel.
Ann should know. She is a special education teacher, a member of the National Autism Association, and the mother of a boy with autism and a daughter who developed epilepsy after receiving a Hepatitis B vaccine.
Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that for many years was added to childhood vaccines to boost drug company profits. In the 1990s the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) added more and more thimerosal containing vaccines to the mandatory vaccine schedule without adding up the cumulative amounts of mercury that children were receiving from the vaccines.
Finally, in 1999, after watching the dramatic rise of autism and other neurological disorders, officials at the CDC and Food & Drug Administration (FDA) realized that a fully vaccinated infant was receiving up to 125 times what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considered safe for mercury exposure.
Because half the officials involved were on the payrolls of the drug companies they were charged to regulate, they have never ordered the pharmaceutical industry to stop using thimerosal. In fact, the product is still used in some vaccines. Last year's flu vaccine had a mercury content eight times the EPA's safe limit and it was recommended for six-month-old babies and pregnant women.
The generation of children poisoned by vaccines during the 1990s is now reaching puberty and if the Bush administration is successful in blocking lawsuits against the vaccine makers that caused this epidemic of neurological disorders, taxpayers will be left holding the bag and a heavy bag it will be.

On August 18, 2003, Dr Leonard G Horowitz, warned members of the congressional committee at a Government Reform Hearing on Vaccines as a Risk Factor For Autism, "the great and grave likelihood that disease prevention through vaccinations is violently backfiring—dramatically increasing mortality and morbidity especially among America's youngest citizens."
Horowitz cited the dangers of our nation's "most established, generally accepted, public health practice of vaccination, and its links to skyrocketing rates of autism and brain damage in children."
This public health professional by training, and independent investigator with expertise in medical sociology and infectious disease research, told Congress, "I have unfortunately, over the past two decades, grown accustomed to instances of poor decision-making, gross negligence, and downright cover-ups in safety oversight and pharmaceutical industry control in the vaccine arena," Horowitz said.
In 2002, the research team of David and Mark Geier released a study, based on tens of millions of doses of vaccines given to children in the US during the 1990s, that presented the first epidemiologic evidence that associated the increase in thimerosal from vaccines with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Professor Lynn Adams of Radford University, a speech-language pathologist who specializes in autism, says a 1999 study determined that the average child received 33 doses of 10 different vaccines by the age 5. She claims the multiple shots could "flip a genetic switch" in children predisposed to autism.
Lisa Blakemore-Brown, a psychologist in the UK, also maintains that thimerosal is the cause of autism, and suspects it is also the culprit involved in a wide variety of other health problems showing up in children these days.
According to Blakemore, the current autism epidemic did not occur earlier because children "were given single vaccines with single amounts of mercury,” she says, “but with the introduction of triple vaccines the amount of mercury contained within the preservative was multiplied and the cumulative effects are only just now being discovered by the public."

Laura Bono is the mother of an autistic child and she wants the public to consider the latest research pointing to the mercury-vaccine link. For instance, researcher Mady Hornig recently announced the results of a study where mice were given thimerosal at the level of the childhood immunization schedule and began exhibiting autistic behavior.
Laura cites a study where toxicologist Dr Jill James, a former FDA researcher, found a problem with autistic children's methylation which made it difficult for their bodies to rid themselves of mercury. Laura notes the findings of Dr Richard Deth that, once in the body, thimerosal shuts down the detoxifying methylation process.
Laura reveals how her son Jackson experienced a four-month regression beginning days after receiving shots. He received HiB (with 25 mcg. of mercury), DT (with 25 mcg. of mercury), oral polio, and measles-mumps-rubella. All totaled, he received 50 mcg. of mercury, three dead viruses and four live viruses. The 50 mcg. of mercury was on top of the 75 mcg. of mercury he had already received in his first year of life through one DPT and two other DT shots. The 50 mcg. of mercury he received in one day was 44 times the EPA exposure limit. He would need to weigh 550 pounds on that day to process that much mercury. He weighed just 25 lbs. The total amount of mercury from 2 months old to 16 months was 139 times the recommended EPA exposure levels.
"My outgoing, social, verbal child was a shell of his old self," Laura said, "Jackson’s body was still here. But his personality—what made Jackson his smart, loving self—was gone. The sick body replaced the well one. The sleeping child was replaced by one who would awake startled after a few hours and not go back to sleep all night. The one who had a healthy appetite was replaced by one who became picky and whittled his foods down to one or two. The happy child was replaced by an unhappy one. The child who at one time didn’t miss a thing and was the life of the room became distant and preferred to be alone. The one who was developmentally ahead of the crowd began making strange noises and exhibiting odd behaviors. The child God gave us was gone," Laura said.
Andrian Prokofiew of New Jersey has a son who was developing normally until he acquired autism at 17 months after receiving 20 some vaccinations containing thimerasol. Within weeks of the last three vaccinations given in the same visit, "he lost all speech for 3 years, did not even look at me or know who I was. He screamed for two weeks, his ears turned red, his eyes dilated and he began to spin, flap his hands and bang his head," she said.
It took more than three years to find out what happened to him medically. Andrian says she was horrified to find out the pharmaceutical companies gave bonus dollars for each vaccine given.
"Words alone cannot express how devastating this disorder is for the family and child, emotionally as well as financially," she said.
Dr Allen Clark, a licensed physician for 30 years, has a son who developed severe neurodevelopmental symptoms (diagnosed as Asperger’s an autism spectrum disorder) at age 7½ after receiving a routine influenza vaccine containing 25 micrograms of Thimerosal, a dose which the EPA would calculate that would be safe only for a 550-pound adult. The doctor's son weighed only 50 pounds at the time he was vaccinated.
Nancy and Tim Hokkanen are parents of Andy Hokkanen, age 6. Andy was exposed to mercury before birth from his mother's tooth fillings, which are 50 percent mercury, and from RhoGam shots for Rh factor incompatibility. After birth Andy also received thimerosal from the mandated childhood vaccinations.
Tim's health insurance has covered much of the cost of behavioral therapy for Andy, but for about nine months they were on medical assistance, which picked up many co-pays. They estimate that their insurance company was billed about $100,000 for therapy so far.
Linda Weinmaster has a 13-year-old son who also met with mercury poisoning before birth in the form of a mercury-containing RhoGAM shot that Linda received during her 28th week of pregnancy, along with his childhood vaccines. He now suffers from a host of medical problems that require care.
Linda tell how her son's medications cost over $6,500 per month. Right now, insurance covers his meds less deductibles but not his vitamins which run about $300 per month.

Parents pay approximately $53,000 in medical costs for their autistic child per year.
In addition to medical costs, most autistic children cannot be left alone and must be looked after and cared for non-stop every day of the year. Unless these kids and their families get the financial help that they deserve from the vaccine makers, the entire burden will eventually fall to the taxpayers and the cost will reportedly exceed $2 million dollars per child.
Maybe that will make people wake up and listen.

Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption.