SafeMinds will be participating at the Autism One conference in Chicago May 23-27 with board member presentations, a booth, and as the beneficiary of a special fundraising event on Saturday, May 26th.

About Autism One May 2007 marks the fifth annual Autism One Conference. Over the years Autism One has grown and changed to meet your needs and the expanding needs of our community.

Listening to and learning from fellow parents exposes not only the urgent need for change, but provides the impetus as well. The past can no longer serve as a proper prologue of the future.

This year will be a watershed time in the continuing devolution of autism. On all fronts, parental inventiveness has replaced the murky dark outlines of autism with precision and purpose, and in doing so helped reveal many of the causes, environmental contexts and treatments for autism.

We are tremendously pleased, therefore, to bring you Autism One 2007: Roadmap to Recovery. Join us and the increasing number of other families whose children continue to improve on their singular and simultaneously similar paths to recovery.

Autism One 2007 introduces two new initiatives. The first is the Arts Festival, the second is Law Day.

Uplifting and inspiring, art brings out the best in us. The Autism One 2007 Arts Festival serves as a bridge not only to seeing the inner beauty of our children but in reaching out to a wider audience to advance understanding of autism.

The Arts Festival features and celebrates the artistic work of families affected by autism providing the opportunity to rejoice in the creativity of the human spirit. The Festival will showcase works across a variety of artistic mediums from painting to the performing arts.

For more information or to register for the conference, please visit www.autismone.org.

The devastating derangements of autism also show up in the gut and in the immune system. That unexpected discovery is sparking new treatments that target the body in addition to the brain.

"There were days I considered shutting the garage door and letting the car run until I was dead," says Colorado mom Erin Griffin, of the time nine years ago when she learned that both her boys-not just her firstborn-suffered from autism. Brendan, her angular, dark-haired older child, was diagnosed in 1996 at age 4. Kyle, her round-faced, hazel-eyed younger son, was diagnosed in 1998 at age 2½.

But Kyle and Brendan's story does not have a tragic ending. After interventions that included occupational and speech therapy, as well as dietary change and nutritional supplements, both boys improved significantly. Their tale of slow, steady recovery reflects the changing landscape of autism today. The condition, traditionally seen as genetic and originating in the brain, is starting to be viewed in a broader and very different light, as a possible immune and neuroinflammatory disorder. As a result, autism is beginning to look like a condition that can, in some and perhaps many cases, be successfully treated.

That is astonishing news about a disorder that usually makes headlines because it seems to be growing rapidly more widespread. In the United States, the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders has increased about tenfold over the past two decades, and a 2003 report by the Centers for Disease Control suggests that as many as one in every 166 children is now on the autism spectrum, while another one in six suffers from a neurodevelopmental delay. This explosion of cases has raised countless questions: Is the increase real, is it the result of increased awareness and expanding diagnostic categories, is it due to environmental changes, or all of the above? There may be no single answer. But the public concern about autism has caught the ear of federal lawmakers. The Combating Autism Act, approved last December, authorized nearly $1 billion over the next four years for autism-related research and intervention.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines of that confusing discussion, a disparate group-immunologists, naturopaths, neuroscientists, and toxicologists-is turning up clues that are yielding novel strategies to help autistic patients. New studies are examining contributing factors ranging from vaccine reactions to atypical growth in the placenta, abnormal tissue in the gut, inflamed tissue in the brain, food allergies, and disturbed brain wave synchrony. Some clinicians are using genetic test results to recommend unconventional nutritional therapies, and others employ drugs to fight viruses and quell inflammation.

Above all, there is a new emphasis on the interaction between vulnerable genes and environmental triggers, along with a growing sense that low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a major contributing factor to autism and its related disorders. A vivid analogy is that genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. "Like cancer, autism is a very complex disease," says Craig Newschaffer, chairman of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University School of Public Health, "and it's exciting to start asking questions about the interaction between genes and environment. There's really a very rich array of potential exposure variables."

Click here to read the full article.

SafeMinds board member Mark Blaxill provided extensive background information for this article. We would like to thank the author for her incredibly balanced and thorough investigation.

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2007 PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At a press conference Thursday, U.S. Reps. Dave Weldon, M.D. (R-FL) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill that would give responsibility for the nation's vaccine safety to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, removing most vaccine safety research from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Currently, the CDC has responsibility for both vaccine safety and promotion, which is an inherent conflict of interest increasingly garnering public criticism.

"There's an enormous inherent conflict of interest within the CDC, and if we fail to move vaccine safety to a separate independent office, safety issues will remain a low priority and public confidence in vaccines will continue to erode," said Weldon, noting that across the federal government similar conflicts of interests have been remedied, but with regard to mandatory childhood vaccines the conflict continues to persist unchecked. "This bill will provide the independence necessary to ensure that vaccine safety research is robust, unbiased, free from conflict of interest criticism, and broadly accepted by the public at large."

To underscore the bill's importance, Weldon highlighted the fact that a top CDC official urged the journal Pediatrics to publish a Danish study on the link between thimerosal and autism despite the CDC's knowledge that this very same study was previously rejected by the highly acclaimed journals, JAMA and Lancet. The official urged the editor of Pediatrics to give the study, which he characterized as a "powerful epidemiology" study, an "expedited review."

"The public has begun to question whether our government is doing all it can to ensure vaccine safety -- and they are absolutely right to do so," said Congresswoman Maloney. "When we in government require children to be vaccinated, we must make every possible effort to ensure that vaccines are safe. I believe that this legislation will benefit nearly every child in America. I look forward to working with Dr. Weldon and our colleagues in the House to pass this incredibly important bill."

Specifically, the Vaccine Safety and Public Confidence Assurance Act of 2007 would create and equip an independent office to address, investigate, and head off potential vaccine safety problems -- like the use of mercury in vaccines -- in an objective and non-conflicted office whose sole purpose is vaccine safety and evaluation. Additionally, it provides $80 million in funding to conduct vaccine safety research and analysis.

Weldon and Maloney were joined by several groups advocating vaccine safety reform, including the National Autism Association, A-Champs, and SafeMINDS.

Washington, DC - The National Autism Association (NAA) and SafeMinds (Sensible Action for Ending Mercury Induced Neurological Disorders) urged scientists working on autism to focus on environmental factors including vaccines at an April 18-19 Institute of Medicine (IOM) workshop. The workshop, entitled "Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research," was planned by a committee representing government agencies, academic institutions, and autism organizations. Planning committee members included NAA board member Laura Bono and Safe Minds vice president Mark Blaxill. Both are parents of children diagnosed with autism.

In discussing the most promising areas of autism research, past performance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the role of vaccines in the development of autism were addressed. Ms. Bono presented "Perspectives of the Advocacy Community," stating, "We believe the CDC has a performance and credibility problem. Their failure to declare an epidemic beginning with the 1989 birth cohort, to study the time trend data, or to examine the toxic and viral body burdens of children are why we are here today - over 15 years too late."

The two-day meeting concluded with a panel discussion on "Public-Private Partnerships" among scientists and advocates. Panelists included NAA board member Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN and Sallie Bernard, executive director of SafeMinds, who urged federal agencies to allocate significantly more to the environmental side of the "gene-environment" equation and to reach out to parents who are the stakeholders in this disease. "We need the guidance of parents in identifying the most promising areas of investigation to find meaningful ways of improving the lives of those with autism now and to prevent its occurrence in the future," stated Ms. Redwood.

Many attendees, including parents, physicians, and researchers, expressed optimism following the workshop that autism research might now be shifting to more fruitful areas examining toxin and pathogen effects. Sue Swedo of NIH and Irva Hertz-Picciotto of the MIND Institute reported that major autism research databases will incorporate exposure histories including immunization records. David Schwartz, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), suggested that applications for developing exposure and body burden testing methods for autism be made to the NIEHS's Exposure Biology Program, part of its Gene-Environment Initiative. As part of his power point presentation, Dr. Larry Needham of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health listed the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal among five other chemicals linked to autism spectrum disorders.

"I see it as a turning point," said Dr. William Raub, science adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Dr. Raub said the workshop would give "a higher profile" to the possibility that environmental agents are contributing to the development of autism.

SafeMinds has produced a brochure providing information on the flu vaccine that is available to communicate the risks still posed by this thimerosal- containing vaccine. We encourage you to distribute this brochure in your doctor's office and other places you think people will pick up. Please feel free to download the file here or e-mail eksafeminds@gmail.com to receive copies of the brochure in the mail.

This video is from our dear friends at Talk About Curing Autism (TACA), a California-based group lead by Executive Director, Lisa Ackerman - Jeff's Mom.

Please forward this message freely and encourage your family and friends to take a look at this moving message of love and hope!

http://www.tacanow.org/video/hope-video.htm

Click here to learn more about TACA.

New York City area residents: W.W. Norton & Company and Barnes & Noble cordially invite you to celebrate the launch of Tom Bernard's debut novel, WALL AND MEAN. Author Reading & Signing on Wednesday, May 9, 2007 at 6:00-7:00 pm, Citigroup Center Barnes & Noble, 160 East 54th Street (at 3rd Avenue). All of the author's earnings from this book will be donated to SafeMinds (www.safeminds.org) and Autism Speaks (www.autismspeaks.org).

Support SafeMinds today. Every donation makes an impact. Click here to make a donation.

Please join a new Yahoo group called MIA-Mercury Induced Autism. The goal in the formation of this list was to create a resource where parents, grandparents, and anyone whose life has been impacted by mercury induced autism could go to seek information or find support.

To join the discussion please click here.