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"Autism the Musical" You Can Watch for Free Through March 30th
2008-03-29 02:34:00
Adventures in Autism : Autism: The Musical #links HBO
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What’s perfectly clear, however, is that monozygotic twins aren’t perfe
2008-03-28 23:25:00
From the Simons Foundation blogUn-identical twins28 Mar 2008 2:33 PM The first indication that autism has genetic origins came from twin studies. Ditto for schizophrenia and many other diseases.The idea that monozygotic twins – born after a single zygote divides into two embryos – are genetically identical has been the defining feature of thousands of studies, including ones that have tried to tease out the different influences of genes and environment.Apparently, they were all a bit off.According to a study in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, monozygotic twins aren’t exactly identical.It turns out that these twins have different copy number variations – in which large pieces of DNA are either missing or are present in multiple copies. As we’ve been learning with increasing frequency over the past two years, these copy number variations may be important in diseases such as autism and schizophrenia. Of the 19 pairs in this study, for example,...
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Another person involved in controversial research linking the MMR vaccine w
2008-03-28 22:23:00
WOODFORD GREEN: Doctor defends MMR jab researchBy Daniel BinnsA DOCTOR involved in controversial research linking the MMR vaccine with autism has defended his work at a medical tribunal.Professor John Walker-Smith, of Monkhams Drive in Woodford Green, along with colleagues Prof Simon Murch of Tooting and Dr Andrew Wakefield, who now lives in the USA, all deny serious professional misconduct.The General Medical Council tribunal heard how the men carried out "invasive" procedures on young children - spinal taps' and colonoscopy procedures - while investigating their theory that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) could be linked with a rise in cases of autism in the UK.The hearing was told of previous cases when some doctors had rejected such painful methods as unnecessary.Taking the stand, Prof Walker-Smith said: "None of the tests would have been conducted if they were not considered necessary."I was fascinated by the possibility that something might be done to unearth wha...
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"This certainly shows why we should treat patients as individuals,"
2008-03-28 07:23:00
UW study finds surprising genetic causes of schizophreniaErrors in DNA don't seem to follow patternBy TOM PAULSONP-I REPORTERAs if the science of how genetics leads to disease isn't already complex enough, researchers in Seattle and Long Island, N.Y., say individuals appear to develop schizophrenia from a varying smorgasbord of bad genes rather than common genetic flaws.Scientists at the University of Washington and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report in Friday's edition of the magazine Science that multiple errors or deletions in a person's genetic code, or DNA, can lead to schizophrenia -- a psychiatric illness characterized by delusions and disordered thinking that today affects one of every 100 people. The finding that multiple genes are involved is, by itself, not surprising, since other diseases or disorders are, or strongly appear to be, the result of many flaws rather than just a single bad gene. That fits nicely within the standard dogma of genetics.What is surprising,...
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A diversity of associated medical conditions was documented in 20%, with an
2008-03-28 06:30:00
Thursday, March 27, 2008 Last night we learned from David Kirby that the CDC is actually waking up to the vaccine/autism connection because of the recent revelation of previously missing middle man Mr. Mitochondria.Here is the study that was the slap in the fact that has been so badly needed for so long:Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder in Portugal: prevalence, clinical characterization, and medical conditionsAdventures in Autism: The Study That FINALLY Got The CDC to Pay Attention#links
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Restless sleep marks autism disorders
2008-03-28 06:08:00
Restless sleep marks autism disordersVirginia Gewin 27 Mar 2008 2:46 PM Clock wise: There may be molecular linksbetween circadian rhythms and synaptic activity.For parents of children with autism, bedtime can be a boondoggle.Some children with autism replay cartoons in their head or talk incessantly during the three to five hours it can take them to wind down and go to sleep1. In fact, up to 83% of parents report some type of sleep disruption among their autistic children — notably difficulty falling asleep or frequently waking in the middle of the night2.Although the biological underpinnings of these sleep disorders are unknown, some studies — including ones on the growing number of animal models — indicate that the disruptions may hold molecular clues to the interconnected pathways involved in autism.The best evidence for a biological link between sleep disruptions and autism comes from animal models of fragile X syndrome, a related disorder resulting from a single mutation...
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It’s possible that different combinations of these alterations produce di
2008-03-28 06:05:00
From the Simons Foundation blog editor:Cumulative effects27 Mar 2008 4:33 PM It’s been clear for decades that there is no one gene that causes schizophrenia. Rather than being result of any one mutation, it turns out that schizophrenia is the unfortunate outcome of many different deletions and duplications that cause the developing brain to go awry.This is most likely what’s going on in autism as well. In fact, as I wrote here a few weeks ago, the same deletions have been seen in both schizophrenia and autism.As they are in people with autism, copy number variations — in which chunks of DNA are deleted or duplicated — are generally more common in those with schizophrenia, according to the report, published today in Science.And variations that disrupt brain development are even more common: they’re seen in 15 percent of adult-onset schizophrenia and 20 percent of child- and adolescent-onset, compared with 5 percent of controls.These variations are individually rare, and fe...
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The work also offers evidence that autism shares some genetic roots with sc
2008-03-28 04:26:00
Schizophrenia Linked to Rare, Often Unique Genetic Glitches By Rick WeissWashington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 28, 2008; Page A05 Friday, March 28, 2008; Page A05 Patients with schizophrenia are three to four times as likely as healthy people to harbor large mutations in genes that control brain development, and many of those glitches are unique to each patient, researchers reported yesterday. The findings are forcing scientists to rethink the reigning model of how genes and environment conspire to cause the debilitating disease, which affects about 1 percent of the population worldwide. In part, scientists said, the new view is daunting because it suggests that many people with schizophrenia have their own particular genetic underpinnings. At the same time, the study shows that new screening techniques can find and differentiate among those various mutations. In the long run that could help doctors choose the best medications for individual schizophrenics and speed the develo...
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Multiple genetic glitches disrupt pathways critical for brain development
2008-03-27 21:56:00
Contact: Jules AsherNIMHpress@mail.nih.gov301-443-4536NI H/National Institute of Mental Health Rates of rare mutations soar 3 to 4 times higher in schizophreniaMultiple genetic glitches disrupt pathways critical for brain developmentPeople with schizophrenia have high rates of rare genetic deletions and duplications that likely disrupt the developing brain, according to studies funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. These tiny anomalies were found in 15 percent of adult onset schizophrenia patients and 20 percent of child and adolescent onset patients, compared with only 5 percent of healthy participants. Collectively, the mutations carried by patients were significantly more likely than those in healthy participants to disrupt genes involved in brain development -- potentially implicating hundreds of genes in the illness, which affects about 1 percent of adults. “This is an important new finding in the genetics of schizophrenia,� said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel,...
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MMR-autism link doctor Andrew Wakefield defends conduct at GMC hearing
2008-03-27 21:27:00
MMR-autism link doctor Andrew Wakefield defends conduct at GMC hearingBy Nick AllenLast Updated: 7:48pm GMT 27/03/2008The doctor at the centre of the controversy over the MMR vaccine has denied committing serious professional misconduct, saying it had been his "duty as a physician and a human being" to investigate potential links between the jab and autism in children. Dr Andrew Wakefield, the doctor at the heart of the MMR controversy In a passionate defence of his research Dr Andrew Wakefield told a disciplinary hearing at the General Medical Council in London that he had responded to the "plight" of mothers with sick children. Dr Wakefield faces being struck off the medical register after he and two colleagues published findings in the respected medical journal The Lancet in 1998 suggesting a link between the triple jab for measles, mumps and rubella and inflammatory bowel disease and autism. It led to a dramatic fall in the number of children being given the MMR jab. The scie...
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More Info on CDC and Their Foisting of Vaccines From Adventures in Autism
2008-03-27 19:09:00
Adventures in Autism : CDC Offers Another Non Response on Autism and Vaccines in the AJC This is what science is. No wavering from the CDC's point of view.
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Another surprise came when one researcher announced an "inheritance pattern
2008-03-27 04:43:00
The Next Big Autism Bomb: Are 1 in 50 Kids Potentially At Risk?Posted March 26, 2008 | 09:30 PM (EST) On Tuesday, March 11, a conference call was held between vaccine safety officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several leading experts in vaccine safety research, and executives from America's Health Insurance Plans, (the HMO trade association) to discuss childhood mitochondrial dysfunction and its potential link to autism and vaccines.It was a sobering event for all concerned, and it could soon become known as the Conference Call heard 'round the world.Researchers explained on the call that some data show that mitochondrial dysfunction can convert into autism "in numbers that make it not a rare occurrence," one participant told me. They explained this as "a distinct syndrome; not a mixed bag at all. Every kid had mild mitochondria dysfunction and autistic regression."Another surprise came when one researcher announced an "inheritance pattern" that linked ...
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Paxil, Birth Defects and Autism
2008-03-27 00:00:00
Paxil, Birth Defects and Autism May 11, 2007. By Jane Mundy RSS Del.icio.us Seed Newsvine Facebook Over the past few years, LawyersandSettlements.com has interviewed dozens of women who took Paxil during their pregnancy and whose babies were born with birth defects. During these interviews, many women told us that their children -- usually about age three and upwards -- were also diagnosed with autism. Mothers reported that some children are high-functioning with mild autism (HFA), while others have been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (AS, also known as Asperger Disorder), which is very similar to HFA. AS can exhibit a variety of characteristics and the disorder can range from mild to severe.Haltom City, Texas: In the case of Sue Brown's daughter Alice, AS is severe. Sue took Paxil throughout her entire pregnancy; Alice was also born with a hole in her heart. "My daughter had two heart surgeries and I thought we were out of the woods. But around three months of age she s...
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Yup Can't Find the Article but he or she is Right!
2008-03-26 17:39:00
Enough about vaccines; more about fathersArizona Daily Star, AZ - Mar 5, 2008Interestingly, the children with autism who were born to these older fathers were evenly split by gender. In others words, while there are generally three ...
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Virginia Tech Offering Settlement of $100,000
2008-03-25 17:42:00
Was father's Age a Factor in Va. Tech Shootings? JournalNow.com: Fathers After 40 Daddy GWednesday, April 25, 2007Was father's age a factor in Va. Tech shootings? I've struggled this week about just how to write this. Several news outlets have reported that the father of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui is 61. The shooter was 23, which would mean the father was in his late 30s when his son was born. Not old by the standards around here, but it does bring home the seriousness of what the decision to delay childbearing can mean. It's unclear to me what exactly Cho was diagnosed with in the past, but two things I have seen have been schizophrenia and autism.The link between advanced paternal age and schizophrenia has been recognized for a long time now. And just what is advanced paternal age in this case? Late last year, a French researcher concluded that while "no threshold can be precisely defined," there did seem to be a difference in risks for those younger than 35 and those ...
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From the Simons Foundation Blog on Autism Unraveling mitochondria’s myste
2008-03-25 03:03:00
Unraveling mitochondria’s mysterious link to autismVirginia Hughes 24 Mar 2008 9:00 AM Unexplained origins: Some researchers say there is a realassociation between autism and mitochondria.In the past two weeks, autism researchers and advocacy groups have been agog with news that autism could be linked to an extremely rare group of metabolic diseases.The controversy began when leaked court documents suggested that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims had ruled that when triggered by a vaccination, defects of the mitochondria — the ‘power plants’ of every cell that turn food into energy — could cause autism.In November 2007, the court heard a case alleging that routine vaccinations caused severe neurological damage to a nine-year-old girl named Hannah Poling. Poling’s doctors testified that the five vaccinations she received at age 19 months aggravated a preexisting ‘mitochondrial respiratory chain disorder’ and led to degenerative brain disease with “features consisten...
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What DOES the CDC and Julie Geberding Really KNOW about "AUTISM" Jenny McCa
2008-03-24 23:17:00
http://www.mothering.com/interactive/moth ering-media/mothering-media.html From Mothering.com on is the CDC acting in the interest of US citizens or the pharmaceutical industry? Paul Offit,etc.
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Is There Hanky-Panky Behind Mandatory Vaccines? by: Phyllis Schlafly
2008-03-24 06:44:00
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/schalfly2.ht ml Is There Hanky-Panky Behind Mandatory Vaccines ? by: Phyllis SchlaflyAugust 25, 1999 After parents whose children had been severely damaged fromvaccines attended a couple of congressional hearings, we might havethought Bill Clinton's response would have been, "I feel your pain."Not on your life. The Clinton Administration instead floated plans togut the federal trust fund that compensates the families of childrenwho are injured or killed by reactions to vaccines.Surgeon General David Satcher told a House committee this monththat Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala mightrecommend that a large portion of the National Vaccine InjuryCompensation Program's $1.4 billion trust be turned over to vaccineresearch. That would be a cruel betrayal of the parents who financedthis trust fund by a 75 cents per dose assessment on vaccines andwere promised compensation from it in exchange for virtuallyeliminating the pharmaceutical companie...
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Fathers over 40 'much more likely to have autistic children'
2008-03-23 21:29:00
Also rate high in fathers over 30 compared to younger men.05/09/2006Fathers over 40 'much more likely to have autistic children'LONDON, UK: Children with fathers over the age of 40 have a significantly increased risk of having autism, a study has concluded. The team of British and American US experts said that children born to men older than 40 had a six times higher risk than those born to men under 30. They said the study, published in the September 2006 edition of the Archives of General Psychiatry, was further proof that men also had "biological clocks." One British expert said the study could be important in understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying autism. Autism and related conditions, known as autism spectrum disorders, have become increasingly common, affecting 50 in every 10,000 children as compared with five in 10,000 two decades ago. Increased awareness and changes in the way the disorders are diagnosed are thought to play a major role in the increase, but the re...

Notably, however, we found extensive and heritable variation among both mal
2008-03-23 01:09:00
Science. 2008 Mar 7;319(5868):1395-8. Epub 2008 Jan 31. LinksHigh-resolution mapping of crossovers reveals extensive variation in fine-scale recombination patterns among humans.Coop G, Wen X, Ober C, Pritchard JK, Przeworski M.Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, 920 East 58th Street, Cummings Life Science Center, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. gcoop@uchicago.eduRecombination plays a crucial role in meiosis, ensuring the proper segregation of chromosomes. Recent linkage disequilibrium (LD) and sperm-typing studies suggest that recombination rates vary tremendously across the human genome, with most events occurring in narrow "hotspots." To examine variation in fine-scale recombination patterns among individuals, we used dense, genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism data collected in nuclear families to localize crossovers with high spatial resolution. This analysis revealed that overall recombination hotspot usage is similar in males and females, with individual hotspot...

US Govt. Admits, Child Vaccines Significantly Aggravated And Caused Autisti
2008-03-22 21:23:00
US Govt . Admits, Child Vaccines Significantly Aggravated And Caused Autistic SymptomsMarch 22, 2008 Please Share This Article: For some unknown reason the most vocal and seemingly best protectors of our health are most often branded as “alternative health� practitioners, “health nuts� and so on. The advocates for Americans and other citizens of the world like Dr. Mercola (see his article below), Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, Mike Adams, Jon and Kristin Barron, Jenny Thompson at HSI Baltimore and a host others, are here to report the real goings on with the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, vitamin/herbal supplements, “organic� foods, food additives, healthy lifestyles, etc. The aforementioned small group of “alternative� health “nuts� are today’s true mainstream medical heroes and reporters of truth with a smattering of opinion thrown in for good measure. As the title above indicates, the long held belief that, “thimerosal, a preservative that i...

Ginger reporting on an article by Melanie Phillips in "THE SPECTATOR" about
2008-03-22 19:28:00
Saturday, March 22, 2008The Spectator : Another Piece in the Jigsaw They are catching on to Hannah's story in the UK.Another piece in the jigsaw?22 March 2008Melanie Phillips The SpectatorA propos the Wakefield affair discussed in my post below, a recent case in America should not pass without comment. In a landmark ruling, the US Court of Federal Claims, Office of the Special Master, under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Programme, conceded a vaccine injury to a child from Georgia who, having been developing normally until she received multiple vaccinations, subsequently developed serious brain and body disorders.Nine year-old Hannah Poling, who at 18 months was recorded by paediatricians as meeting all her developmental milestones, was then given no fewer than five vaccinations in one day — DTaP, Hib, MMR, Varivax, and IPV. Id — following which she suffered a catastrophic breakdown in brain and bodily functions, regressing in language and social development and with pe...
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More From Ginger Serious Concerns Over Hepatitis B Vaccine
2008-03-22 07:28:00
Adventures in Autism: Serious Concerns Over Hepatitis B Vaccine
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What is Going On With Andrew Wakefield from Ginger's Blog "Adventures in Au
2008-03-22 07:12:00
Adventures in Autism: The Wakefield Witch-Hunt: "Friday, March 21, 2008The Wakefield Witch-Hunt The Wakefield witch-huntFriday, 21st March 2008
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From Ask Men. Com
2008-03-21 16:25:00
2- Men have their own biological clock By Ross BonanderEntertainment Correspondent - Every Wednesday PAGES: 1 | 2 | We do indeed have a biological clock of sorts, although instead of one that stops, ours becomes increasingly unreliable over time.As men age they lose approximately 1% of testosterone every year. The consequence of this deficit is that sperm production decreases, and those that are produced are of a lower quality. For this reason, the older we get the greater the chances that the children we spawn suffer from conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and Down syndrome, to name a few.To explain why, fertility experts point to cell division: About every 16 days the cells that create sperm and determine their genetic code go through the process of dividing. By the age of 50 that division has happened hundreds and hundreds of times, and each time it did the genetic code was vulnerable to changes that can augment genetic deterioration, making birth defects increasingly ...

All donors are between 18 and 35 NW Andrology and Cryobank Standards Sperm
2008-03-21 05:54:00
Donor Standards Our donors are recruited from the school campuses of western Montana and eastern Washington. Most of our donors are either currently involved with, or have finished their higher education at the time of their participation in our donor program. All donors are between 18 and 35 years of age in order to minimize genetic abnormalities.All donors are frozen in very limited quantities, in order to guarantee that the number of pregnancies created from any one donor are limited. Although all donor histories are reviewed to provide you with donors that should give you a great chance of concieving a healthy and normal baby, there is of course no way to guarantee such an outcome. As all donor family histories will present with their own unique positive and negative attributes, we encourage all clients to review donor information thoroughly prior to purchase and use of specimens. Our donor screening meets or exceeds the standards setforth by the AATB, ASRM, and CFAS. (Amer...
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signaling pathway involving the D4 subtype of dopamine receptor that is lin
2008-03-21 04:08:00
Thursday, March 20, 2008Richard Deth, PhD - Methionine Synthase A Methyl B12-Dependent Redox Sensor in Neuronal Cells There is a connection between autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease"Dr. Richard Deth is a molecular neuropharmacologist and Professor of Pharmacology and at Northeastern University in Boston. His research interests are directed toward elucidating the molecular events that cause neuropsychiatric disorders in which impaired attention is a prominent feature.Dr. Deth�s laboratory has discovered a new signaling pathway involving the D4 subtype of dopamine receptor that is linked to the risk of ADHD, autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer�s disease. A key aspect of his work is the role of folate-dependent methylation reactions, including their regulation by dopamine and growth factors and their inhibition by neurodevelopmental toxins. Dr. Deth is the author of a recently published book entitled: "Molecular Origins of Human Attention: The Dopamine-Folate Connectio...
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-"de novo mutations and chromosomal structural aberrations transmitted pred
2008-03-21 02:57:00
: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Nov 6;104(45):17725-9. Epub 2007 Oct 31. LinksDisruption of maternal DNA repair increases sperm-derived chromosomal aberrations.Marchetti F, Essers J, Kanaar R, Wyrobek AJ.Biosciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA. fmarchetti@lbl.govMale and female germ cells can transmit genetic defects that lead to pregnancy loss, infant mortality, birth defects, and genetic diseases in offspring; however, the parental origins of transmitted defects are not random, with de novo mutations and chromosomal structural aberrations transmitted predominantly by sperm. We tested the hypotheses that paternal mutagenic exposure during late spermatogenesis can induce damage that persists in the fertilizing sperm and that the risk of embryos with paternally transmitted chromosomal aberrations depends on the efficiency of maternal DNA repair during the first cycle after fertilization. We show that female mice with defective DNA do...
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They were all inherited from fathers without a history of autism, which can
2008-03-19 16:46:00
Gene for brain connections linked with autismBy Maggie Fox,Reuters Posted: 2008-03-18 15:02:04WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gene that helps the brain make connections may underlie a significant number of autism cases, researchers in the United States reported on Tuesday.Disruptions in the gene, called contactin 4, stop the gene from working properly and appear to stop the brain from making proper networks, the researchers reported in the Journal of Medical Genetics.These disruptions, in which the child has either three copies of the gene or just one copy when two copies is normal, could account for up to 2.5 percent of autism cases, said Dr. Eli Hatchwell of Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York, who led the study."That is a significant number," said Hatchwell."Generally the mistake that people make is they are looking for one unifying cause for autism, and there is no such thing and there never will be," Hatchwell said in a telephone interview.He said his finding adds to the...
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“Such sporadic mutations may be behind a large fraction of autism cases,â
2008-03-19 03:38:00
(parents) having children later in life.Rutgers to Create Autism DNA Repository to Study Sporadic Germ-Line Mutations By a GenomeWeb staff reporter NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Rutgers University’s Cell and DNA Repository will use a $7.8 million grant from a private foundation to establish a new collection of DNA samples to help autism researchers study sporadic germ-line mutations linked to the disease, Rutgers said today. The Simons Foundation hired RUCDR through its Autism Research Initiative to establish the Simons Simplex Collection, which will house samples from 2,000 families who have a single autistic child. The 2-year program will obtain blood samples from 8,000 participating family members from 11 different centers in the US and in Canada and send them to Rutgers where they will be processed into DNA and cell lines and stored. The collection “will constitute the core resource for a new and different line of research into the genetics of autism,� said Jay Tischfie...
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