autism- what's the story?

For years people have been battling over whether or not childhood vaccines cause autism. It's hard to think of a better example of opposing views fueled by (understandable) passion, each bolstered by statistics which- like all statistics- lend themselves to multiple interpretations depending on whose side you're on. It has the usual cast of characters - activists (usually parents) feeling betrayed and ignored and lied to, apologists maintaining steadfastly that the protesters are delusional and the science doesn't support their views.

Sound familiar? Hint: silicone breast implants.

Now this week for the first time, the case is going to court. Sort of. A special court will pit scientists against activists in the debate over whether vaccines cause autism. There's a test case involving a 12 year old Michelle Cedillo of Arizona and more than 4,800 cases are pending, filed by parents who believe the vaccines caused their kids autism. They're seeking payment under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The US Court of Federal Claims has set up an omnibus hearing in Washington and the first case is expected to last three weeks.

The nay-sayers say the issue is settled and that vaccines are not linked to the disorder. And there's good science- meaning statistical correlations- to support their case.

Now hold that thought for a moment.

Recently there was a terrific study done on diet and weight loss out of Children's Hospital in Boston (I'll blog about it in more detail this week). They wanted to test whether low-glycemic diets do better than standard low-calorie diets for weight loss, blood lipids, all the usual stuff. They divided everyone into two groups, gave one group the low-cal diet, one group the low-glycemic diet.

No difference.

But wait, there's more.

The researchers tested everyone in the study with a glucose tolerance test. This basically shows how your body responds to sugar- some people secrete a ton of insulin, some.. not so much. Then, with this info in hand, they re-analyzed the data. And found that when you looked at the sub-group of people who were "high insulin secretors", there was indeed a huge, significant difference in how the two diets worked. High insulin secretors lost way more weight and did much better in general on the low-glycemic diet. But in the larger picture, this sub-group was "lost" in the general statistics, and there was no significant difference between the two overall groups.

Back to autism.

I'm absolutely, unequivocably convinced that there is a subgroup of kids who can't detox the mercury in vaccines. This subgroup is "lost" in the overall statistics allowing apologists to say, "hey, vaccines don't cause autism". But if you were to somehow isolate this subgroup and analyze the stats on them, you'd find a big correlation between the vaccine and the onset of autism. I can't prove this but I'm sure of it.

Think about it. Our liver puts out enzymes called the cytochrome P-450 enzymes, that are involved in two distinct phases of detoxifcation. It's a complex process. Among individuals there are huge variations in the amount of these enzymes, their effectiveness, their activity. It's no doubt true that when you look at the statistics on autism and vaccination on millions of people, a correlation doesn't show up, much like it didn't on the low-glycemic and low-calorie diet study. But if you were to somehow identify a sub-population who had less than optimal cytochrome P-450 enzyme activity, and then analyzed just that population, I'm pretty sure you'd see the mercury- autism connection boldly and clearly. It's just masked when this subgroup is folded into the overall population.

Television and Autism: What do they tell us about food?

Michael Waldman s 2 year old son David was identified as having Autistic Spectrum Disorder back in 2003.

So he did what many parents would do and have done. He looked for things he could do to make things better.

Of course, he did all the recommended therapies, but he also did something else.

He had noticed that his kid had started watching an awful lot of television right after his baby sister was born, coincidentally in the summer before he was diagnosed.

Coincidentally?

Michael Waldman didn t know. But in the absence of any randomized controlled studies on autism and television watching (more on that in a minute), he made an educated guess of the cant hurt might help variety. He curtailed the kids TV watching.

And he says, according to the Wall Street Journal, which chronicled this story today, that his son improved within six months and is fully recovered today.

Michael Waldman also happens to be a renown professor of economics.

So he decided to investigate the association between television watching and autism using traditional economic research tools, something that is considered a bit of a stretch in research circles, but seems to be coming more prevalent ever since the phenomenal success of Freakonomics by the brilliant rogue economist Steven Levitt, who used his economist s research tool-box on such things as the behavior of real estate agents.

Now understand that you cant really do a study where you take a group of kids who are susceptible to autism and divide them in half and expose on half to a ton of television and the other half to none and see which ones do better. For one thing it s unethical and for another even if it weren t unethical its impossible. So Waldman used other statistical methods of data analysis to arrive at his conclusion, which was this: Kids who watch a lot more television have higher rates of autism.

Now just hold on, I can hear you saying. Thats a real stretch. For one thing, even if there is a correlation, how do we know that kids with autism arent more drawn to television? Problem with any correlation study is that it works both ways- the TV watching could cause autism, but autistic kids could also be more prone to watch in the first place. Also, if television caused autism, every kid in America would have the disorder.

But Waldman isnt saying television causes autism.

What he is suggesting- as a future topic of research- is that perhaps, in susceptible individuals, excessive television watching could act as a trigger for a disorder.

Ive been thinking about this a lot as I work on my new book (The REAL Natural Cures Book, due in Jan. 2008). Why, you ask? Because in at least a half dozen disorders that Ive investigated so far, food and environmental stimuli can trigger severe symptoms of a disorder. In some cases, they could be said to actually cause it; in most they could be said to aggrevate it. In many, when you remove the triggers, the symptoms clear up.

Not in all cases, to be sure. But in many. And in others, even if there isn't total remission, theres major improvement.

But its fiendishly difficult to say the trigger “ causes ” the illness, which is why conventional docs, who tend to think in terms of black and white evidence- dismiss all of us who use diet and supplements as a treatment modality as nuts.

But heres the thing.

In a big subset of asthma sufferers, trigger foods will bring on symptoms. Same with IBS. And of ADHD, Dr. Daniel Amen told me that he estimates that fully 30 percent of kids diagnosed with ADHD could be literally cured with diet and lifestyle changes. And Ive long suspected that the great difficulty in finding proof of a connection between mercury vaccines and autism is because there is a subset of kids who cant detox the mercury and its those kids that are susceptible. Not all kids. Just those kids. Not enough to prove a perfect cause, but pretty significant if you happen to be the parent of one of those susceptible kids.

So heres the deal. Nature doesn t compete with nurture to produce behaviors or illness- they work together. What happens in the environment- food, supplements, lifestyle, stress, you name it- is always important, but in certain susceptible people its even more important. So some kids have the necessary liver enzymes to detox a small amount of mercury in a vaccine, but maybe some kids just dont. Not having that enzyme won t change the quality of their life one bit- unless they re exposed to mercury. Same deal applies- on a smaller level perhaps- to wheat, dairy, food dyes, stress, you name it and a host of conditions ranging from asthma to ADHD to IBS.

So Waldmans work on television and autism is of more than passing interest.

But the take-home isn’t that television causes autism. (It doesn't. At least not in the traditional sense of cause.)

The take-home is that nature and nurture interact in a ton of varied and complicated ways and the result- whether it be asthma or autism- is rarely if ever just genetic or just environmental.

And while we’re waiting for studies- some of which will probably never be done- we should never stop looking.

And observing.

And learning from both.