How Arguing Over the Cause & Cure of Autism has Divided a Community

In the face of adversity people usually come together and offer support. We have seen this with the events of September 11^th and Hurricane Katrina. Granted, both of these events had a nationwide effect that we are still feeling today. What happens though when the adversity is in our homes and not on such a grand scale that everyone can feel? Autism, a neurological spectrum disorder that has reached epidemic proportions, isn't bringing a community together, it is dividing one.

The numbers are incredible. The official count is one in every one hundred and fifty children are have autism. Some experts may believe that a more accurate number is one in every sixty-seven. With so many children affected to some extent by autism, why aren't parents coming together to promote research, awareness and education and find a cure? The simple answer is although we know what autism is, we don't know the cause. That debate is the center of all discourse in the autism community.

Autism is a developmental disorder of the brain that impairs social interaction and communication, and is characterized by repetitive behaviors and a narrow range of focused. It is a spectrum disorder that at its worse is accompanied by mental retardation and total lack of speech. At its best those with autism will eventually fit into mainstream society and be considered nothing more than quirky.

The parents of kids on both ends of the spectrum have the same battles, especially early on. They have to deal with doctors, who often do not know anything about autism besides how to diagnose it, they have to fight for services for their kids, there is the speech therapy, the physical therapy and the occupational therapy, IEP's at school to make sure their kids are getting the proper education and autistic tantrums.

Instead of supporting each other and offering advice on how to get the most out of therapies and how to cope with the stress that having an autistic child places on the entire family, these parents come together to debate the cause of autism.

On one end of the debate are those that believe autism is caused by environmental factors like preservatives in childhood vaccines. The other side believes it's something purely genetic. There are few that believe it's a combination of both. Research has been done on both sides both supporting and disproving all the theories. What studies are you supposed to believe?

No matter how many studies are done that prove or disprove anything, these parents remain set in their beliefs. Many parents have had wonderful in their children using chelation therapy to remove toxic metals from their systems. A lot of times these children have lost their diagnosis of autism. This has always made me wonder how many cases of autism are not autism at all, but cases of mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning looks just like autism, with the same symptoms.

Thimerosal, and organomercury that is 49.6% mercury by weight, has been used since the early 1930s to preserve vaccines. The FDA has issued warnings about eating certain fish because of possible mercury poisoning but the amount of mercury children have previously been exposed to in the past during the first two years of life in the form of life saving vaccines has never been questioned.

Autism aside, mercury is toxic and everyone agrees that it doesn't belong in vaccines. It has been banned from vaccines in every country but the United States since the late 1970's. However, in the United States it is also not used in veterinary vaccines because of it's toxicity. Drug companies have stepped forward with studies showing that thimerosal is not a determining factor in autism. Independent studies have shown it is. Despite what we practice in veterinary medicine, what other countries have decided, and lack of proof that thimerosal does or does not have anything to do with the autism epidemic, The President wants to overturn the current ban on mercury in childhood vaccines. In July he vowed to veto the 2008 HHS-Labor-Education Appropriations Bill because of the cost and "objectionable provisions" such as a measure to ban the use of childhood flu vaccines that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative.

Others in the environmental camp believe that some variation of a gluten free diet will solve the autism problem. Many parents have seen remarkable improvement with their children when placed on a special diet. Maybe they are on to something or maybe their children are just one of the thousands of cases of undiagnosed celiac disease.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that affects the body's ability to process gluten, the protein found in wheat, barley and rye that results in the damage to the villi in the small intestines. In children this causes malabsorption leading to malnutrition and anemia, behavior changes, delayed growth, learning disorders and speech apraxia (a neurological speech disorder). It is believed that 1 in 133 people have celiac disease and many of them are not diagnosed because based on symptoms alone celiac looks like a number of other common aliments such as irritable bowl syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome.

On the other end of the debate are those that believe autism has a genetic cause. Having one autistic child increases your risk of having another. Having things like thyroid disorders, allergies, asthma, lupus and other auto-immune disorders in the family increases the risk of having a child with autism. Those in the genetic camp believe there isn't much that can be done to help outside of the recommended therapies for all autistic kids such as ABA. A lot of times these parents have tried a modified diet or chelation to no avail.

There is no one size fits all cure for autism. What helps one child may not help another. Those on each side of the debate take offensive when someone from the other said reports "That didn't work for my child" and the war starts again.

These arguments are never productive and end up alienate those new to the autism world looking for support and help navigating the new world they have been thrust into. If you don't have a theory as to why your child has autism, you are going to have a hard time finding a group of people who will offer the support and information you are looking for.

Much more research needs to be done to determine what causes autism but with people taking causation sides it's not getting done, at least productively. It would help if true cases of autism were separated from mercury poisoning. We already routinely test children under the age of five for lead exposure, maybe it's time we test for mercury at the same since it is just as prevalent in the environment as lead. Since the prevalence of auto-immune diseases in families of autistic children, when a child is diagnosed with autism has been established, maybe autistic children should automatically have blood tests for a variety of auto-immune disorders to rule out co-existing medical problems that could be clouding the autism issue. At the very least it would add more information to the research pool and might help explain why one intervention works with one group of children and not another. This information might also help to bind together a community that should be fighting the same fight instead of each other.