Brain Controlled Robots Might Help

Here is an interesting article about how brain controlled robots might be the new wave of helping those with physical disabilities.

World News: Vaccine News

Does the Hep B shot cause MS?

It's been ruled that an adult female had contracted a form of demyelinating disease and MS, and eventually died, after receiving the Hepatitis B vaccine series.

Read the rest of this article at the Age of Autism site:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/02/vaccine-court-hepatitis-b-shot-causes-ms.html#more

Scary news about ADHD drugs

Whether or not to put a child on medication, no matter what the issue or disability. is a personal, painful and serious decision for any parent. Add to the mix the pressure that can come from a school or CST (not just here, but anywhere) to simply medicate before trying anything else and it's a serious stress for everyone involved.

Sometimes children who have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder or another specific learning disability get a recommendation for ADHD medication to help with their behaviors. There are millions of children being medicated with ADHD drugs. Being wrongly prescribed, over prescribed and prescribed for multiple kinds of issues.

Of course there are instances where the drugs are prescribed and help the children involved. I don't want to come off looking anti-drug. There are obviously many children who these drugs work for; who get a better quality of life because of them.

Read the article in it's entirey here.

Here's a recent news story about a study that shows some children taking meds for ADHD have hallucinations. A common hallucination was that of having bugs, worms or snakes crawling on their skin.

Mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup

A new article published in the scientific journal, Environmental Health, found that in tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) nearly 50% of the samples contained mercury. In another study by the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, mercury was found in 1/3 of the 55 popular brand named food and beverages that listed HFCS in the first or second ingredient - including products from Quaker, Hershey's, Kraft and Smucker's.

The increase of HFCS used in food products has hugely increased in the past decade or two. It's a cheap replacement for sugar in many processed foods and can be found in soda, bread, sweetened cereals, processed meats, yogurts, soups, condiments, sweetened juice drinks, cocoa mixes and more.

Studies show that an average American consumes about 12 tsp a day of HFCS. Teenagers average can consume upt o 80% more.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms,” said David Wallinga, M.D., and a co-author in both studies. “Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply."

While the FDA had evidence that commercial HFCS was contaminated with mercury four years ago, the agency did not inform consumers, help change industry practice or conduct additional testing.

To read the Environmental Health article go to: www.ehjournal.net.
To read “Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup,” go to: www.iatp.org or download the report in PDF form here: www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refID=105026

Chromosome linked to epilepsy

Chromosome 15 Region Linked
With Common Form of Epilepsy
. . .And maybe autism.

By Dr Philippa Brice of phgfoundation.org. tiny.pl/vdnq

Epilepsy is a neurological condition where individuals are affected by recurrent seizures that correlate with periods of abnormal brain activity. There are various known causes of epilepsy, such as brain damage or a brain tumour, and these are termed symptomatic epilepsy; however, the majority of cases are termed idiopathic epilepsy, having no known root cause. The idiopathic generalized epilepsies (IGE) account for up to a third of all epilepsies, and epidemiological evidence has suggested that they involve complex genetic contributions. Now a new paper in the journal Nature Genetics reports an association between microdeletions in a region on chromosome 15 and IGE.
Previous research has suggested that the 15q13-q14 region of chromosome 15 may be involved in epilepsy; susceptibility loci for common IGE syndromes have been mapped to the region, and deletions have been associated with various neuropsychiatric conditions, including epilepsy, autism and schizophrenia. The authors of this new study tested the 15q13.3 region in two independent groups of individuals with IGE and matched controls. The research project was part of EPICURE, an international collaborative research project to study the genomics and neurobiology of epilepsy, with a view to developing novel therapeutic interventions Together, more than 1,200 individuals with IGE and over 3,600 matched controls were screened. A total of 12 IGE patients were found to have microdeletions in the 15q13.3 region, but none of the controls. This deletion was calculated to be around around fifty times more frequent in IGE than in the general population, This finding strengthens previous observations of a link between microdeletions in this region of chromosome 15 and idiopathic epilepsy; however, there was not the same association with other neuropsychiatric symptoms previously documented. The phenotype of individuals with the microdeletion varied; a variable degree of intellectual disability was observed in three, but the other nine had neither intellectual disability nor dysmorphic features, and none had any history of psychosis. In addition to identifying the most prevalent genetic risk factor for IGE thus far, the authors also conclude that their findings “imply that shared mechanisms are involved in the pathogenesis of a spectrum of seemingly unrelated neuropsychiatric disorders, and argue for a new framework for understanding complex genetic diseases” [Helbig I et al. (2009) Nat Genet. Jan 11, Epub ahead of print].

New Italian Study about Mercury

Study Adds To Evidence of Safety
of Mercury And Vaccines

By Carla K. Johnson for heraldnet.com. Associated Press tiny.pl/vdbh

A new study from Italy adds to a mountain of evidence that a mercury-based preservative once used in many vaccines doesn't hurt children, offering more reassurance to parents.
In the early 1990s, thousands of healthy Italian babies in a study of whooping cough vaccines got two different amounts of the preservative thimerosal from all their routine shots.
Ten years later, 1,403 of those children took a battery of brain function tests. Researchers found small differences in only two of 24 measurements and those "might be attributable to chance," they wrote in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics, which was being released Monday.
Only one case of autism was found, and that was in the group that got the lower level of thimerosal.
Autism is a complex disorder featuring repetitive behaviors and poor social interaction and communication skills. Scientists generally believe genetics plays a role in causing the disorder; a theory that thimerosal is to blame has been repeatedly discounted in scientific studies.
"Put together with the evidence of all the other studies, this tells us there is no reason to worry about the effect of thimerosal in vaccines," said the new study's lead author, Dr. Alberto Tozzi of Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome.
The debate over thimerosal and autism has been much stronger in the United States than in Italy, Tozzi said. But the researchers recognized a chance to examine the issue by going back to the children who had taken part in the 1990s whooping cough research.
Randomization sets the new study apart. The random assignment of children rules out the chance that factors other than thimerosal, such as education or poverty, caused the results.
Thimerosal, used in some vaccines to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungus, hasn't been in U.S. childhood vaccines since 2001, except for certain flu shots. Italy and other European nations began removing it in 1999. U.S. health officials recommended the removal of thimerosal as a precaution and to reduce the overall exposure of children to mercury.
Safety regulations still require multidose vials of vaccines to contain some type of preservative to prevent the spread of infection from contaminated vials.
The study, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drew praise from outside experts.
"It's yet another well done, peer-reviewed research study that has demonstrated there is no risk of any neurodevelopmental outcomes associated with thimerosal in vaccines," said epidemiologist Jennifer Pinto-Martin of the University of Pennsylvania.
"This becomes the fourth study to look for subtle signs of mercury toxicity and show the answer was 'no,"' said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the author of a book on autism research and the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.
Tozzi said comparing children with no exposure to thimerosal could have improved the study. "However, if thimerosal were a cause of harm, it is likely that this effect would increase with the administered dose," he said.
The children received either 62.5 micrograms or 137.5 micrograms of ethyl mercury from all their shots during their first year of life. Thimerosal breaks down as ethyl mercury in the body. Before the reduction of thimerosal in the United States, the maximum exposure for infants was 187.5 micrograms of ethyl mercury.
The researchers found the children in both groups scored, on average, in the normal range on 11 tests of memory, attention, motor skills and other brain functions.
Those 11 tests included 24 measured outcomes. Small, but statistical differences were found for only two of those areas, and only for girls. The girls with higher exposure scored worse on a finger-tapping test with their dominant hands, and on a vocabulary test in which they were asked to name common objects.
There was no difference in boys on those outcomes or others. Researchers also found no difference in tic disorders. And the one autism case found in the lower-intake group was likely a chance finding, Tozzi said.