ATLANTA, GA -Findings released today showed that infant monkeys given vaccines officially recommended by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) exhibited autism-like symptoms. Lead investigator Laura Hewitson of the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues presented study results at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in London. Safety studies of medicines are typically conducted in monkeys prior to use in humans, yet such basic research on the current childhood vaccination regimen has never before been done.

The abstracts presented at IMFAR, the world's top autism science conference, describe biological changes and altered behavior in vaccinated macaques that are similar to those observed in children with autism. Unvaccinated animals showed no such adverse outcomes. The vaccines given were those recommended for U.S. infants in the 1990s, including several with the mercury preservative thimerosal and the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine. Rates of autism spectrum disorder among children born in the 1990s surged dramatically, from about 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 150 children.

"This research underscores the critical need for more investigation into immunizations, mercury, and the alterations seen in autistic children," stated Lyn Redwood, director of SafeMinds. "SafeMinds calls for large scale, unbiased studies that look at autism medical conditions and the effects of vaccines given as a regimen."

The group's request for research echoes that of Dr. Bernadine Healy, Former NIH Director, in a CBS interview earlier this week. She asserted that public health officials have been too quick to dismiss an autism-vaccine connection when the research has been insufficient. The government recently conceded a federal vaccine court case which agreed that a child regressed into autism as a result of 9 vaccines given on one day.

"The full implications of this primate study await publication of the research in a scientific journal," noted Theresa Wrangham, president of SafeMinds. "But we can say that it demonstrates how the CDC evaded their responsibility to investigate vaccine safety questions. Vaccine safety oversight should be removed from the CDC and given to an independent agency."

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Since its inception, SafeMinds has advocated for the removal of mercury from vaccines and other medical products. Research sponsored by SafeMinds -has increased the scientific knowledge on the link between mercury and neurological disorders and raise public awareness of the dangers of mercury. The direct injection of mercury-containing vaccines into children has been shown to readily accumulate mercury in the brain, and the elimination of mercury from vaccines continues to be a primary objective of SafeMinds.

In recent years, there has been extensive evidence that the mercury levels in the USA population has been increasing. Evidence indicates that there are likelhy multiple sources of this mercury including mercury-containing vaccines, coal-burning power plants, cement kilns, fluorescent light bulbs, chlorine manufacturing plants, and other sources. Since SafeMinds already has committees which focus on mercury-containing vaccines, a new SafeMinds Environmental Committee was formed in December 2007 to focus on mercury from environmental sources. It is SafeMinds goal to end the tragedy of mercury-induced neurological disorders. Without lessening our focus on mercury removal from vaccines, we plan to apply our knowledge, energy, and skills into raising awareness of environmental mercury and advocate for the reduction and eventual elimination of environmental sources of mercury caused by human activity.

The SafeMinds Environmental Committee applauds this effort by the Sierra Club to reduce mercury emissions from coal plants:

The Sierra Club announced this week that it's sending formal notices of intent to sue to about 30 new coal plants across the country in an effort to force them to better control emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants. The states where the targeted plants are located include Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

"We want to give moms across the country some peace of mind this Mother's Day," says Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign. "That's why we're taking action today to ensure that these coal plants make every effort to keep their toxic mercury pollution out of our communities."

A recent study from the University of Texas found that children's risk of developing autism, a brain disorder that impairs communication and social interaction, increases with proximity to coal-fired power plants. According to the researchers, a child living 10 miles from a coal-burning power plant has a 2 percent higher risk of developing autism than a child living 20 miles away.

Coal-fired power plants are the single largest man-made source of mercury pollution in the United States. When the plants release mercury into the air, it rains down into lakes, rivers and streams and builds up in the bodies of fish -- and the people who eat the fish.

In February of this year, a federal appeals court struck down the Bush administration's mercury regulations for coal-fired power plants, saying they failed to adequately protect public health. The Sierra Club is asking the coal plant developers to come up with new plans to control mercury and other toxic pollution before the facilities are built.

"There are affordable technologies widely available today that can substantially reduce mercury and other toxic pollution," says Pat Gallagher, director of the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program. "In their rush to build new coal plants, developers have turned a blind eye to these technologies, and correspondingly the health of children everywhere."

For a map that shows all of the planned coal plants in the United States and their current status, click here.

In an exclusive interview, former NIH Director Dr. Bernadine Healy tells CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson that the question of a link between vaccines and autism is still open for debate.

CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson wrote this story for cbsnews.com:

Today, a second round of autism test cases begins in federal vaccine court. Tonight on the CBS Evening News, we'll have exclusive interviews with the two families who are bringing the cases: two of nearly 5,000 autism cases that have been filed in this special court. The government and many scientists have consistently maintained for more than a decade that there is no link between vaccines and autism. The Institute of Medicine issued a report in 2004 that was intended to put the controversy to rest, saying that the weight of the body of scientific evidence does not show a causal link between vaccines and autism. However, other scientists and parents disagree.

For our report, we interviewed Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the National Institutes of Health and a member of the Institute of Medicine who breaks with her colleagues in this exclusive CBS News interview: Dr. Healy says the government has been too quick to dismiss the possibility of a vaccine-autism link, and that it should be explored with renewed vigor.

CBS News Video Link

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/12/cbsnews_investigates/main4086809.shtml

Dr. Debold's testimony was as follows:

Good Afternoon. My name is Dr. Vicky Debold and I represent SafeMinds, a private charitable nonprofit organization founded to investigate and raise awareness of the risks to infants and children of exposure to mercury from the environment and medical products, including thimerosal in vaccines.

We appreciate the opportunity to provide recommendations to the IACC on its strategic plan for autism spectrum disorders research. To that end, eight recommendations are offered (more detailed rationale is provided in our written testimony).

1. Acknowledge Autism As A National Emergency and Epidemic.

With at least 1 out of every 150 children in the United States affected, we respectfully request that the NIH respond to autism as a national emergency and appropriately allocate the critical resources necessary to respond to this pervasive epidemic before it affects and even greater proportion of the nation's children. Specific recognition of autism as an epidemic is needed to both highlight the preventable environmental cause and the urgency of needed governmental action. To that end, we recommend that NIH immediately direct resources and launch calls for proposals for environmental studies that will find answers to specific urgent questions.

2. Allocate Sufficient Resources To Fund Autism Research.

The IACC strategic plan must make a case that sufficient funds need to be spent on autism research, whether derived from Congress or as part of the overall NIH funding allocation. A sufficient funding level is justified due to rapidly increasing direct and indirect autism costs incurred by families, schools, insurers and other payers.

3. Shift The Research Focus From Genetics To The Environment.

Acknowledging the epidemic demands that the research focus shift away from an exclusively genetic model to one that investigates the role of environmental factors combined with a genetic vulnerability as a potential culprit behind this otherwise unexplained epidemic. The role of the environment has been widely recognized as understudied and the absence of a well-developed environmental research agenda impedes the discovery of etiologic factors and effective treatment strategies.

To that end, the IACC's strategic research plan must include a special emphasis on vaccines and their components as a possible cause of autism. This topic is the only specific research priority mentioned in the Combating Autism Act legislative history. To meet this requirement, the research plan should include specific extramural funding for a rigorous and prospectively conducted and randomized trial that will establish differences in health outcomes, including autism spectrum disorders, among vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

4. Develop A Leveraged Research Agenda.

The NIH should develop a leveraged research agenda focused on prevention and treatment that will benefit the greatest number of lives and families as quickly as possible. It should incorporate translational research protocols that involve clinicians who care for children with autism.

It should be understood that research on cause and prevention does not disrespect autistic persons or cultures any more than does research to eliminate the causes of deafness or blindness interfere with the dignity and worth of these individuals and cultures. Congress identified the strategic plan goals for research and stipulated that they be directed at cause, prevention, and treatment. Those who seek answers related to treatment and prevention are not the enemy of those who are autistic.

5. Regard Autism As A Dynamic Disease Process That Is Amenable To Treatment.

Currently, funded research perpetuates a belief system that autism is fixed pre-natally and immutable post-natally, rather than as a condition that arises from preventable pre- or post-natal exposures and is amenable to treatment after birth. Continuing to support this belief impedes research initiatives to identifying effective treatments. Typical treatment strategies are targeted at ameliorating symptoms rather than understanding the underlying biology and pathologies responsible for symptom manifestations. Such an approach does little to reduce the morbidity associated with autism.

6. Reclassify Autism As A Multi-Organ Disease.

Numerous co-morbid disease states exist in children with autism including abnormal gastrointestinal function and inflammatory bowel disease, evidence of increased oxidative stress, severely disordered serum chemistries, methylation disturbances, increased body burdens of metals and microglial activation in the brain. Research must be initiated that identifies co-morbid disease states because some biomedical imbalances are amenable to medical and nutritional interventions and may serve as useful diagnostic and treatment biomarkers.

7. Establish An NIH-Driven Research Agenda That Is Not Driven By Researchers.

The current research agenda appears to be driven by investigators seeking continuing funding rather than by the NIH to achieve specific research goals which, in turn, are the basis for funding allocations. Specifically, NIH should:

(a) include NIH goals as items to be scored when reviewing grant proposals;

(b) announce NIH goals as program project grants; and

(c) require Autism Centers of Excellence to address NIH goals as part of their center designation and to consider such project proposals when scoring center proposals.

The strategic planning process must embrace a re-engineered funding process to ensure that the best and most focused science is performed and accountability is increased and should be performed by the Autism Advisory Board, which has specific recognition in legislative history.

8. Create A Formal Mechanism For Ongoing Public-Private Research Agenda.

Throughout the draft matrix, reference is made to a public/private partnership regarding autism research activities. The overall research budgets for private autism research funders are equivalent to or surpass that of our federal agencies. To enhance the potential for improving knowledge, prevent undue repetition in research activities and fill in research gaps, a formal mechanism needs to be established to coordinate and benefit from collaborative public/private efforts. Establishing strategic and specific research agendas as well as funding decisions must have direct consumer input on both science and relevance, similar to the process used by the Department of Defense to carry out the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program on Autism.

That's right, go ahead and buy something for yourself -- a new CD, the latest bestseller, everyday essentials like pet food or vitamins, even a computer. But first join www.iGive.com/SafeMinds.

Every time you shop at one of the over 680 name-brand stores in the iGive.com Mall, we'll receive a donation of up to 26% of each purchase you make, at no cost to you.

Remember, donating to SafeMinds won't cost you a thing. But we'll miss out on a lot of extra dough, if you don't join. So visit www.iGive.com/SafeMinds now. Membership is free and your privacy is guaranteed.

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The Age of Autism is the nation's first daily Web newspaper for the environmental-biomedical community - those who believe autism is an environmentally induced illness, that it is treatable, and that children can recover. For the most part, the major media in the United States aren't interested in that point of view, they won't investigate the causes and possible biomedical treatments of autism independently, and they don't listen to the most important voices - those of the parents. Visit the website at www.ageofautism.com.