Autism: A Growth Industry

In my last blog I talked about how "the planet deserves our best, not our worst". I wonder if we're exampling our worst in the way we are dealing with the issue of 'autism spectrum disorder' (aka ASD).

A little background.

I have been tempted in the last couple of days to marshal my thoughts and make comment on the matter of how our 'thinkers' are looking at the best ways to 'stimulate the economy', in this case for climbing out of the black hole the banking industry created recently for the globalized world all unwittingly to fall into. In all manner of articles I have read on the geo-political scene, the emphasis has been on 'growth' - and how 'we' need to replace the American consumer for the benefit of the Chinese worker, etc etc. And I'm, like: Excuse me? Am I missing something here? Isn't this emphasis, and attention, on growth a bit of the hair of the hound?? Surely 'growth' - and its sibling, planned obsolescence - is part of the modern problem, not part of the solution.

And a part of that problem is the high cost of health care, and 'growing' higher.

What's causing this.

Well, there's technology for one. MRIs and so forth. And there's the cost of litigation, with more and more people suing their doctors, for actual or perceived medical malpractice. -

Wait. Let's deconstruct that one a little. Like, asking: why "more and more"? Are more and more people simply climbing on the litigation bandwagon in order to gouge the insurance companies? Or are there actually more and more people suffering under medical malpractice? Or is there some combination of the two reasons?

I'll leave that particular deconstruction exercise and cut to the main point I want to make here: that it's in actuality a matter of the old adage, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There ARE more and more people getting sicker and sicker, because OF the medical system (not in spite of it). A system that concentrates on treatment, to say health 'maintenance', rather than on prevention, and treating on the causative level.

Case in point. Recent 'National' section headline: 'Dementia cases to double in next 20 years, say researchers'. (And one - at least this one - asks: Why. 'Well; the population is ageing.' Yes, but no, but - why. What's the cause. 'Well. It's...ageing. Innit.' Actually: no.) Another case in point; another 'News' article headline, same date: 'Eye drop treatment could help sight of thousands'. New eyedrop product on the market better than the old drug treatments for glaucoma because the irritating detergent preservative in them has been taken out. Replaced by...the article doesn't say. Just that they're both "for the reduction of elevated fluid pressure in the eye". Question: Why the elevated pressure in the first place? 'Well..these things happen.' Yes, they do. But what's the 'why' about it all. And why aren't we treating there. ("Regular use of the eye drops can keep the condition under control for a patient's life time. Without them, a patient can go blind in five to 10 years." [Oh really? That's ALL that can be done about this condition?? My, my...] "When the disease becomes too advanced the only remedy is surgery, which is risky and may itself result in blindness." Too late. Given that there are none so blind as those who won't see...) Another making-my-case-for-me point, the very next day; 'News' article headed: '8m pound boost for Beatson bid for new cancer drugs'. Subhead: 'Funding to aid research into' - and here it comes: 'treatments'. Which set up the need for more of the same, and more, and more - and for other breakdown conditions - for not getting to underlying causation. I rest my case.

And having made my point, we come around now to the subject of autism, as a prime example of my concern. As a prime example of that, and of what should be society's similar concern. Because what one does in the matter of their own health is their business. But what people do in the matter of their children's health raises the stakes considerably. The stakes, of giving of our best in life, and leaving the world a little better than we found it in our passing through; for our children, and posterity.

And in the matter of autism, we are failing miserably.

Too many people are being put off by the medical - and public health - authorities to look further into this matter; to the extent that someone like myself, who has done some serious research into the matter of ASD, has to write a letter like the one I did today to The Editor; in this case, the Letters Editor of the Guardian national newspaper in the UK:

'Dear Editor,

'Jan Miller simplifies an appalling situation when talking about autism (Letters, 29 September). This is not just a matter of a few people amongst us who are differently abled - "just different variations in the way the brain works". No, it's not "mental illness". But "disorders"? Definitely.

'Yes, there are some 'high functioners' on the autism spectrum. And there are many who live abominably painful lives - twirling endlessly, stimming, biting themselves and others, lashing out in inchoate rage, suffering from oversensitivity to sensory input, incontinent - the list of symptoms goes on; symptoms of brain damage.

'Society doesn't have to have endless debates about the cause or causes of the damage to recognise it for what it is. The cranial nerve systems of those so afflicted are malfunctioning - and thus the spectrum of, yes indeed: disorder. And the sooner we stop pretending it is otherwise, the better we ourselves will start demonstrating characteristics of high functioning.

'Given the level of the social and professional interaction in this matter so far, we have a ways to go yet on that front.

'Yours sincerely,' (etc.)

The medical profession - they of the professional attitude of treatment over prevention - has stonewalled on the causation factor of ASD because it brings up the role of vaccines in the matter, and they don't want to go there; for a couple of, to them, good reasons. One is the threat to the vaccine programme that it would bring (is bringing already). The other is the threat to their financial health - through litigation - and their professional standing. They have been the ones in the white coats; our modern-day priests. They have been asleep at the switch, of vaccines from 'good' to horrid.

I won't go here into all those details. Nor am I saying that vaccines alone account for the monstrous epidemic of autoimmune and neurological conditions like ASD that have been going on for far too long now, and showing no signs of lessening (under a health 'maintenance' system). It would appear that pesticides have a role to play in this modern-day plague of chronic ill-health conditions; and the mercury damage from amalgam fillings to the fetuses of pregnant women, and from fish, and coal-fired power plants; and the enzyme-disrupting effect of the likes of fluoride; and so forth. But vaccines have a major role to play in this scandalous matter. The matter of iatrogenic disease, ie, man-made. More specifically to the point: medical-caused.

And these are the people in charge of our health care?

The ancient expression has never been so apt: Who guards the guards.


P.S. As to the argument that 'the benefits of vaccines far outweigh their risks': that has never been proven. Because the authorities have never run the studies to check this supposition out - and it is just that: a supposition. What they would have to do would be to calculate - fairly - all the adverse effects of vaccines against the estimates of value in the lowering of incidences of the childhood diseases that the vaccines admittedly do accomplish.* And those 'adverse effects' include the likes of: allergies/asthma; arthritis/arthralgia; ADD/ADHD & dyslexia & dyspraxia & the whole range of Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD); CFS/ME; convulsions/seizures/outright epilepsy; type 1 diabetes and MS and other autoimmune conditions...the list goes on, and on, and on. The list of adverse conditions caused by vaccines, fairly to be set against their benefits.

No, we're not talking about 'a little soreness at the site of the injection and a little fever,' doc. We're talking about a major disregard for the full side effects of your medical intervention in people's lives. In contradiction of the very spirit of your profession's oath, to: First, do no harm.

But boy, are you folks making a lot of money, and for a lot of people, drug companies and so forth. A major piece of the economic action, in a system that thrives on the creation OF money. To say, of debt. To the system.

Damn successful, to one way of looking at the matter.

Huh, doc?



* But they also accomplish (a) a lowering of the immune system, thus leaving the child susceptible to other infections in a window of 'opportunistic pathogens' opportunity thus created; and (b) a weakening of the immune system, in not letting it respond in a truly immunized way to the challenge of infectious diseases; thus also conferring lifelong immunity, that the female later on in her life can pass on to her fetus.
It's not as if there aren't other treatments for the childhood diseases, that don't have the damnable side effects to them that the vaccines have. But all of this is material for another time and main focus.