(VK Singh, a respected Indian physician and professor of organic chemistry, has been studying autoimmune disorders and autism and vaccines for the better part of 20 years. Byron Richards is a founding member of the American and International Associations of Clinical Nutritionists and director of Wellness Resources, Inc. This article draws heavily on the work of both.)
Many people have been shouting that the connection between autism and vaccines is patently false ever since Democratic candidates brought up the subject this US election cycle. The reasoning is simple: The best theory most people can come up with for the connection is the presence of thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, in many vaccine formulations. Everyone knows that mercury is toxic and it makes sense that there is a causal relationship. But with a little more digging, everyone learns that the FDA and CDC required vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal from most vaccines (but not the flu shot!) in 2002, and autism rates continue to rise.
However, there is another, much more subtle connection between autism and vaccines. According to Byron Richards: “The rate of autism is directly related over time to the increase in vaccines given to our babies.” This should lead us to the conclusion that if there is a connection, it is between autism and the number, not the presence, of vaccines given to babies. The number of vaccines given to babies under 15 months of age has tripled in the last 15 years, from 7 to 21.
Point?
So what about getting more injections could cause this increase in autism? Regardless, Richards and Dr. VK Singh proposed strikingly similar hypotheses.
According to Singh, autism shows many striking similarities to an autoimmune disease. The same types of tests that record autoimmune diseases also record autism; autism occurs four times more often in boys than in girls (similar to the pathology of several common autoimmune disorders; girls may be genetically more resistant to this phenomenon due to the autoimmune dangers of having a child); autistic patients respond well to treatments for autoimmune diseases.
Singh said: “The link between vaccines and neurological disorders occurs through the promotion of an autoimmune process, triggered by the virus present in the vaccine together with the adjuvant used to sensitize the body to this virus.” Simplified, this means that the adjuvants that are put into almost all vaccines trigger autoimmune reactions that can cause neurological disorders.
An adjuvant is a substance added to a vaccine to enhance the body’s immune response to the main ingredient in the vaccine. According to Richards, this “initiates an inflammatory reaction (the first step in any immune response). The idea is to rev up the immune system so it can see the weakened disease and learn what it looks like, so if you ever see it again you’ll be more ready to fight it.” Therefore, adjuvants cause inflammation (which helps your body find and build immunity against the virus in the vaccine) and also trigger autoimmune neurological disorders.
A side note
Singh also hypothesizes, rather narrowly in this author’s opinion, that “an autoimmune response induced by the measles virus was a causal factor in autism…[which] it may also explain why some children show autistic regression after measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) immunization. source for Dr. Singh’s focus on this particular vaccine).
Citing the work of another physician, Singh notes: “In several cases, electron microscopy has revealed live measles viruses in the intestinal lining of children with gastrointestinal abnormalities common in children with autism.” Translation: a significant number of children have live measles in their guts, and a statistically significant number of those children have autism. If Singh’s measles-induced autism theory is correct, it means that many more children were almost autistic, but avoided that fate through some unrecognized mechanism.
brain swelling
Richards, in an article on naturalnews.com, said: “It is clear that people with autism have an excessively swollen brain…Multiple inflammatory insults from the adjuvant in vaccines, at a rate of 1 in 150 cases, fix the brain” . on fire’ and causes autism. In addition, and to a lesser extent (but just as important for society), a minor ‘forest fire’ causes ADHD and impaired intelligence.”
The brain has many so-called ‘glial’ cells, which are cells that provide nutrition and create myelin, which forms the outer layer of our neurons and prevents them from short-circuiting. These glial cells serve a secondary anti-inflammatory function for the brain. A weak glial anti-inflammatory barrier could be the reason why 1 in 150 people falls victim to vaccine adjuvant-induced autism.
I don’t want my son to be left unvaccinated. What I can do?
Fully developed children (over 2 years of age) have much more time to develop a glial barrier than infants, whose nervous systems are still developing. Also, the glial barrier regenerates over time, so vaccinating babies more slowly is safer (although not perfectly safe, of course).
Note that, according to Singh, “a small…proportion of children develop autism as a result of prenatal or postnatal infections, for example, with rubella, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex, HIV, etc.” There is no absolute guarantee that by avoiding vaccines altogether your child will also avoid autism, but when you compare the rate of autism today (1 in 150) to the rate of autism 20 years ago (1 in 500), you can reduce the chance that your child will have autism by more than two-thirds.
Having done the math myself, as a new parent, I can tell you that my son is not being vaccinated against anything until he’s a year old, and after that, I’m going to insist that he go at least a month between injections. (As a bonus, there is a chance, however small, that this will blow up in the face of the pharmaceutical companies in the meantime, and they will be forced to reformulate vaccines with less dangerous ingredients before I have to vaccinate my son .) That will still give him plenty of time to get the necessary immunizations in time for him to go to school, and keep all this worry about autism and immunizations to a minimum.
