"A Massive, Toxicological Experiment with Our Children"

[ensho]

http://www.counterpunch.org/higgs03042010.html


The Autism - Environment Link


One of the nation's leading voices on children's environmental health has called for focused and expanded research into the cause-effect relation between industrial chemicals and autism.

"Long and tragic experience that began with studies of lead and methylmercury has documented that toxic chemicals can damage the developing human brain to produce a spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders," Dr. Philip Landrigan from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine wrote in a Jan. 16, 2010, article in the medical journal Current Opinion in Pediatrics.

Today's children, he noted, "are at risk of exposure to 3,000 synthetic chemicals produced in quantities of more than 1 million pounds per year, termed high-production-volume (HPV) chemicals. HPV chemicals are found in a wide array of consumer goods, cosmetics, medications, motor fuels and building materials."

Eight of those 3,000 have been "implicated" in the development of "neurodevelopmental disabilities," Landrigan wrote. And a recent review of the world's literature identified roughly 200 industrial chemicals that have been documented to be neurotoxic in adult humans.

"These are primarily industrial chemicals -- metals, solvents and pesticides -- and nearly half are HPV materials," Landrigan wrote in the paper titled What causes autism? Exploring the environmental contribution. "This search also produced a second list of approximately 1,000 chemicals that have not been examined in humans but that are neurotoxic in experimental models."

The short list of eight identified as human developmental neurotoxicants -- lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), arsenic, manganese, organophosphate insecticides, DDT and ethyl alcohol -- "may be only the currently visible tip of a potentially much larger problem," he wrote.

-long snip-

Landrigan proposed a shift in autism strategy from genetic to environmental and, presumably, preventable causes of autism. He called the potential for breakthrough high.

"There is substantial imbalance between the extensive and highly sophisticated information on the genetics of autism and the scarcity of investigation into potential environmental causes," he wrote in his conclusion. "This situation raises the possibility that unsought environmental exposures contribute to causation of autism.

"To discover the undiscovered environmental causes of autism, an interdisciplinary autism discovery strategy is proposed that combines toxicological screening, neurobiological research and prospective epidemiological study. Likelihood is high that this strategy will identify new environmental causes of autism, causes that can in theory be prevented."
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which means school classes cannot be the same as in the past

which means women haven't a clue what a new born has in its body and brain and it will be revealed sooner rather then later.

[ensho]

1. kicking back to pg. 1

nt

[anonymous171]

2. I thought that this theory had already been debunked?

[ensho]

3. the pharma barons pay a huge amount to lobbyist to block any

talk about their products and autism

[Heidi]

5. The pharma shills, with their BSs in biology, will be here soon enough to set you straight, ensho.

Count on it.

ETA: I always find it interesting that many people who celebrate the scientific method receive honest inquiry as an affront.

[Heidi]

4. Sources, please? (nt)

[anonymous171]

6. I wasn't really making a claim.

I was actually hoping that someone else had a definitive answer to that question.

[Heidi]

8. I'd like to hear, too. But so far: crickets.

:shrug:

[KamaAina]

7. The theory that the vaccine preservative thimerosal is the cause has been largely debunked.

Here, a wide variety of environmental toxins are implicated. This theory would better explain the diversity found along the autism spectrum, from the stereotypical hand-flapping, nonverbal child to a cum laude Yale graduate talking science here at DU. :hi:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Yup

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2206771

[Echo In Light]

9. Thanks for posting

[rocktivity]

11. The best description of the U.S, healthcare crisis I've ever...

oops...well, of course autism and anti-enviornmentalism suck, too...

:blush:
rocktivity