Mr. Singh. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I did not realize that I could have shown a couple of
slides as well to make the point much more in layman's
language, but I will try to explain the results of the research
that I am involved in.
It has been nearly 25 years that I have been involved in
so-called childhood diseases, from the immunology side as well
as the pediatric neurology side. I was working at Children's
Hospital in Vancouver, Canada, which is where I began my career
in childhood diseases, and early on, I saw a few examples of
autism mentioned in congenital rubella syndrome. It was a
fascinating observation, because at that time, I was very
excited about the research on virus infections and nervous
system disorders. That really led me to kind of work back and
forth between nervous system disorders and virus infections and
immunology.
So the whole thing here is that we need to consider
combination of these disciplines that we talk about. We are not
going to be able to answer any questions as far as I am
concerned about nervous system diseases simply by studying
psychology or simply by looking at the epidemiology data. We
need to come together as a team to focus histories of nervous
system, immune system, and whatever else comes into the
picture. That is one major focus of attention that at least I
am taking for my future research.
On autism as an immune disorder, I think I am probably one
of the earlier investigators who started working on the
immunity and autism connection. Followed by that was my theory
that autoimmunity is a very important process in autism. That
is partly because I was studying autoimmunity in nervous system
disorders like multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.
Quite frankly, some of my earlier work in Alzheimer's disease
has opened the way, and today, people are actually using
immunology as a platform to design treatment for Alzheimer's
disease.
It was funny to see on the news last night that some doctor
has a new approach; he says he is going to use immunology as a
means of activating the nervous system in order to correct the
Alzheimer's problem. That is a fascinating stuff, at least to
me.
So I started to pay more and more attention to autism, and
the results that I am going to share with you are actually
quite unique to autism. They are part of the nervous system,
but they are being analyzed by the immune system research.
I know there are people, especially who are funded by NIH
or by CDC, who continue to make no mention at all of this so-
called immunology research or autoimmunity research in autism.
I have been invited by the NIH panel; I have made two trips to
NIH panels. I made a visit to the Institute of Medicine and the
National Academy of Sciences about 1\1/2\ or 2 years ago. And
if you hear those people who have been funded by these
agencies, when they go out and present, they do not even
mention anything about autoimmunity in autism. NIH people
prepared a document of that meeting. It was designed for
updating the screening and diagnostic criteria. If you read
that document, there is virtually no mention of this sort of
research. To me, this is simply mind-boggling.
Is it because people out there in the scientific community
do not want to buy the argument, or are they just being naive
about what is already coming out in the way of solid, decent,
experimentally proven research?
Now, having given that background, let me show you some of
the results. First of all, I started looking at autism as an
autoimmune disorder, as I mentioned. And what we have found is
over the last 5 or 6 years of research--and I think now, the
number of cases I have studied is approaching about 400 cases--
very early on, I wanted to study the myelination problem in the
brain. You will ask what is myelination. It is one of the most
critical events in the nervous system development. So when a
child is actually growing, this myelination process is very
important. It is really more or less like a mother will feed a
child and perhaps nurse in such a way that this process has to
be nurtured very, very carefully.
Having said that, what we are finding is auto-antibodies.
Auto-antibodies are the hallmark of the autoimmune process. If
you have an autoimmune process, you are going to have auto-
antibodies, but if you have those antibodies against an organ
which is affected in a disease--in autism, what would that be--
that would be the brain. So we are finding brain auto-
antibodies in autobodies.
What I am trying to illustrate in this chart is that we had
a number of normal children, normal adults, patients with other
disorders, Down syndrome, and none of those seemed to show
these auto-antibodies, but on a rare occasion, 1 or 2 percent
positive in the normal or control population.
Here, we have a scientific observation which anybody can go
out there and repeat. I do not think I need to use any
difficult thing to illustrate that point. It is a consistently
reproducible result, and it is happening now in children all
over the world. I am getting specimens from overseas as well,
not just the nationwide specimens alone. So this is a very
important thing.
Furthermore, I find that particular protein marker is
selective, because I have now studied two additional markers of
the same structure in the brain, and I do not find these auto-
antibodies in autism.
Let me move on to the next issue. What happens is, assuming
there is an autoimmune process, most autoimmune diseases are
triggered by virus infections. So I started to think about
looking at viruses. I was not thinking of the vaccine issue at
all. I was thinking of virus infection. And, quite
surprisingly, when I started to do antibody measurements to
viruses which are out there or temporarily associated, what I
found was that the measles virus stands out as statistically
significant in terms of its antibodies, significantly much
higher in autistic children. So these children have what is so-
called hyperimmune response to the measles virus--not other
viruses. We studied rubella virus, HHV-6 virus,
cytomegalovirus, and none of those three viruses showed this
hyperimmune antibody response.
Furthermore, the important thing is the measles antibodies
which we have now measured by two different methods, and the
result is the same--a statistically significant increase.
The next thing I wanted to see was if anything correlated
between these two parameters. Quite strongly, I found that
brain auto-antibody-positive patients also had measles antibody
levels which were very high. So the higher the antibody level
to measles virus, the higher the chance of brain auto-antibody.
It does not take too much intelligence to make some sense here
now.
Over the years, some of these families have been sending me
written notes or telephone calls and so on, and every time I
was going out to make my presentation, people would tell me
about the vaccine connection with autism.
Early on, I was not sure what was happening. So I tried to
put together their own reports, and the report looks like this
in the pie chart. Nearly 53 percent of the families reported
that their child got autism because of MMR. The remaining 30
percent said it was because of the DPT shot. And about 15
percent--this was a critical category for two reasons--about 7
percent said they were not sure whether it was measles or DPT,
but the remaining 7 percent had no history of vaccination
connection, or at least they did not make the connection. I
wonder if that 7 or 8 percent category is where Dr. Dankner's
child might fit in.
The last point I want to make is that of a very recent
research finding of my own, not yet published, but something
quite important. About which I showed a slide in my
presentation in a meeting last year which was held in Orlando,
FL. This is an observation of antibodies to measles, mumps,
rubella (MMR) itself. I decided to start with measles, mumps,
rubella, because that is the largest population which was
reported to me as being affected by the measles vaccine.
We took the vaccine preparation itself, and we decided to
examine antibodies in these children. Normal children do not
show any antibody to a protein that I will point out in a
second, but in children with autism, nearly 65 percent of them
showed that antibody.
Actually, I can illustrate that point a little more if we
just imagine that I am a molecule, or a preparation of measles,
mumps, rubella. This protein, this antibody that I am detecting
will be something like detecting this coat pin. In other words,
antibodies to this protein which is present in the measles,
mumps, rubella vaccine preparation were found in autistic
children, but not in the normal children. I think this is a
very, very important laboratory-based research evidence. If
anybody wants to make a criticism of that, of course, they are
at liberty to do so. However, I find this is a scientifically
very, very important observation, telling us that perhaps there
is a good connection, there is something happening with this
measles, mumps, rubella vaccine in these children, something is
unusual.
So basically, after having illustrated some of these
points, I want to make a final comment. That is, if you really
look at the literature reported on the vaccine adverse
reactions, I do not think you will need a crystal ball to see
that vaccines have adverse reactions. The literature is full of
those reports. What is not there or is it has never been
reported, or at least, the officials from the CDC continue not
to mention anything about it. What they mention is that
vaccines are good. Every week, you read about it in the
newspaper, and you hear about it on the television. And I do
not dispute that information because I know vaccines are very,
very important. My concern as a researcher now, more so than
ever before, is that we must pay attention to the safety of
these vaccines. It is missing; it has not been disclosed
publicly, and I do not think it exists in the literature, and
therefore, I urge the Government Reform Committee to look into
particular new policies concerning the vaccine safety issue.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Burton. Thank you, Dr. Singh.
Note/Warning:
Autistic people have fought the inclusion of ABA in therapy for us since before Autism Speaks, and other non-Autistic-led autism organizations, started lobbying legislation to get it covered by insurances and Medicaid.
ABA is a myth originally sold to parents that it would keep their Autistic child out of an institution. Today, parents are told that with early intervention therapy their child will either be less Autistic or no longer Autistic by elementary school, and can be mainstreamed in typical education classes. ABA is very expensive to pay out of pocket. Essentially, Autism Speaks has justified the big price tag up front will offset the overall burden on resources for an Autistic’s lifetime. The recommendation for this therapy is 40 hours a week for children and toddlers.
The original study that showed the success rate of ABA to be at 50% has never been replicated. In fact, the study of ABA by United States Department of Defense was denounced as a failure. Not just once, but multiple times. Simply stated: ABA doesn’t work. In study after repeated study: ABA (conversion therapy) doesn’t work.
What more recent studies do show: Autistics who experienced ABA therapy are at high risk to develop PTSD and other lifelong trauma-related conditions. Historically, the autism organizations promoting ABA as a cure or solution have silenced Autistic advocates’ opposition. ABA is also known as gay conversion therapy.
The ‘cure’ for Autistics not born yet is the prevention of birth.
The ‘cure’ is a choice to terminate a pregnancy based on ‘autism risk.’ The cure is abortion. This is the same ‘cure’ society has for Down Syndrome.
This is eugenics 2021. Instead of killing Autistics and disabled children in gas chambers or ‘mercy killings’ like in Aktion T4, it’ll happen at the doctor’s office, quietly, one Autistic baby at a time. Different approaches yes, but still eugenics and the extinction of an entire minority group of people.
Fact: You can’t cure Autistics from being Autistic.
Fact: You can’t recover an Autistic from being Autistic.
Fact: You can groom an Autistic to mask and hide their traits. Somewhat. … however, this comes at the expense of the Autistic child, promotes Autistic Burnout (this should not be confused with typical burnout, Autistic Burnout can kill Autistics), and places the Autistic child at high risk for PTSD and other lifelong trauma-related conditions.
[Note: Autism is NOT a disease, but a neurodevelopmental difference and disability.]
Fact: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism.
International Badass Activists 