An Essay on the Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism and the link to Vaccines By Dr. Mark Allan Sircus, Ac., OMD, DM (P)
Director International Medical Veritas Association
Doctor of Oriental and Pastoral Medicine
For years I wrote about vaccines and many other issues surrounding pediatric care and most of
this is evident in my new I wrote an essay about the Multiple Cause of
Autism Spectrum disorders quite a few years ago and it seems that medical science is beginning
to understand how our civilization has contributed to this major epidemic.
Thereported that a new study of twins suggests that environmental factors,
including conditions in the womb, may be at least as important as genes in causing autism.
Mathematical modeling suggested that only 38 percent of the cases in the study could be
attributed to genetic factors, whereas environmental factors appeared to be at work in 58 percent of the cases.
Experts are saying that this new research will mark an important shift in thinking about the
causes of autism, which is now thought to affect at least one percent of the population in the
developed world. In some places in the United States and in South Korea, for example, the
numbers are considerably more terrifying.
The Times said, “As recently as a few decades ago, psychiatrists thought autism was caused by a
lack of maternal warmth. And while that notion has been discarded in favor of genetic
explanations, there has been growing acceptance that genes do not tell the whole story, in part
because autism rates appear to have increased far faster than our genes can evolve. “I think we
now understand that both genetic and environmental factors have to be taken seriously,” said Dr.
Medical scientists have been more than a little bit closed-minded on the autism issue and are now
just discovering what many of the rest of us have known for years. Researchers are finally
waking up but have little or nothing to say about which environmental influences might be at
But another recent study found an elevated risk of autism in children whose mothers took a
popular type of antidepressant during the year before delivery. Drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa
and Lexapro increase the risk of autism in children whose mothers used them in the year before
When researchers tell us that environmental factors are playing a significant role in the cause of
autism they are talking principally about poisons in the environment including poisons to which
fetuses are exposed from existing contamination of the mother that comes through the umbilical
They are talking about chemicals, thousands of them. They are talking about heavy metals like
mercury, and one day they will talk about how radiation contamination from internally-absorbed
particles also cause severe neurological problems in the young.
The conclusions coming from this most recent study are not new. A 2009 study[1] advocated a
nationwide shift in autism research to focus on environmental factors such as pesticides, viruses
and chemicals in household products. Throughout the U.S., the numbers of autistic children have
increased dramatically over the past 15 years. More than 3,000 new cases of autism were
reported in California in 2006, compared with 205 in 1990.
Autism is upon us because it’s the outcome of the 50-year experiment of dousing every living being with an overload of toxic substances, including vaccines.
The official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics[2] disagrees adamantly with Dr.
Ellis but sooner or later they will have to get off their high horses and begin the process of
learning how to understand the price the human race is paying for exposing pregnant woman,
their fetuses and their young infants to intolerable levels of chemicals, heavy metals and now
According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), 60,000 American children are born
every year with neurological problems caused by prenatal exposure to methyl mercury
compounds from fossil fuel and industrial air pollution.[3] The World Health Organization
(WHO) estimates that air pollution kills approximately 3 million people annually.[4] Air
pollutants are known to produce arterial constriction and reduce blood flow and oxygen supply to
the heart and thus to the brain. Importantly, the chemical pollutants found in the air have no safe
level; they damage humans even at very low levels.[5]
The field of pediatrics and the medical media with it are hopelessly lost when it comes to pinning
down the cause of anything that is happening to the children. It is as if they are totally deaf and
blind to the toxic threat that they themselves promote with their vaccines, antibiotics, radiological
testing, and with chemo and radiation treatments.
Children with autism disorders in the San Francisco Bay Area were recently found to be 50%
more likely to be born in neighborhoods with high amounts of several toxic air contaminants,
particularly mercury, according to a first-of-its-kind study by the California Department of
Health Services. The new findings, which surprised the researchers, suggest that a mother’s
exposure to industrial air pollutants while pregnant might increase her child’s risk of autism.[6]
(See IMVA document “It Matters Where You Live.”)[7]
“Clearly this suggests that there may be correlations between autism onset and environmental
exposures, especially as it relates to metal exposures,” said Dr. Isaac Pessah, a toxicologist who
heads UC Davis’ Center for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention. Pessah, is
a researcher at the university’s MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders)
According to Dr. Garry Gordon, one of the founders of chelation therapy, “There are children
getting autism who did not receive injectable mercury.” Dr. Raymond Palmer, of the University
of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, has studied the contribution of the huge tonnage
of mercury being put into the atmosphere and found, in studying school districts in Texas, that,
“On average, for each 1,000 pounds of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43 percent
increase in the rate of special education services and a 61 percent increase in the rate of autism.”
Sustaining all of this research is a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by
an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists. The Harvard study concluded
that mercury controls, similar to those the EPA proposed, could save nearly $5 billion a year
through reduced neurological and cardiac harm to the general population.[8] Here we have one of
the most reputable medical centers in the world quantifying the damage from mercury in the air.
We have just reached the crisis level on mercury. Now, we’re finding it in our food, our water, our soil, our babies, everywhere.
Sounds like Steinwachs is talking about the radiation from Fukushima for it too is finding its way
into our food, our water, our soil, our babies, everywhere.
Mercury alters biological systems because of its affinity for sulfhydryl groups, which are functional parts of most enzymes and hormones. It induces a change in cell structure while disrupting critical electron transfer reactions leading to cells being perceived as foreign by the body’s immune defense and repair system.
What stands out in severe cases of autism is its similarity to symptoms found with mercury
poisoning. “Thousands of parents have seen the regression of skills in their children following
thimerosal-containing vaccines,” says Jo Pike, President of the National Autism Association.
“Many of these same children are progressing rapidly with biomedical interventions addressing
mercury poisoning.”[9] Dr. Sidney Baker, author of six medical books, treats hundreds of autistic
patients each year from around the country. He suspects that about half of the children he sees
have been affected by thimerosal from their vaccines.[10]
The statement indicating “mercury has been phased out of most childhood vaccines” is a gross distortion of the truth. The flu vaccine contains mercury and the number of flu shots given to children has increased dramatically since 2004. Vaccine Damages in the News
The vaccine question remains key sticking point as everyone who is paying attention to the news
knows. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann was the target of harsh criticism last week after she
asserted that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine could cause mental retardation.
Bachmann made her remarks immediately following Monday’s (Sept. 12, 2011) CNN/tea party
debate. She had dogged Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the issue of the vaccine during the debate
because she disagreed with Perry’s past attempts at mandating it for public school children.
“The problem is, it comes with some very significant consequences,” Bachmann said of the
vaccine on FOX News following the debate. “There’s a woman who came up crying to me
tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter
suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences.
It’s not good enough to take, quote, ‘a Mulligan’ or you want a do-over. Not when you have little
children’s lives at risk.” On Tuesday morning Bachmann repeated the same story on the Today
Show, alleging that the vaccine can have “very dangerous side effects” and that “people have to
There happens to be a lot of parents crying for what pediatricians’ vaccines have done to their
children. But vaccines are the holy grail of these doctors and they will defend themselves and
their sometimes-lethal vaccines to their last dying breath.
Dr. O. Marion Burton, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement
criticizing Bachmann’s statements. “The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct
false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous
and can cause mental retardation,” Burton said. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this
statement. Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been
administered, and it has an excellent safety record.”
No matter how many children are harmed by a vaccine, they will say they have an excellent
safety record. Vaccines are one among many toxic insults children must face. Those who
administer them and speak in favor of them need to be seen as terrorists who specialize in
attacking children. Even as civilization is threatened with collapse they keep up their relentless
attack and the cries are heard in heaven. My first vaccine book was called Cry of the Heart and
my second, which is available as a free download, is entitled The Terror of Pediatric Medicine.
I have written many vaccine essays since the publication of this vaccine book and someday I will
update it. The basic reasons to be against vaccines have not changed and neither has the nature of
the people who promote them. Every parent should study the issue and decide for themselves.
Doctors and medical officials though are not comfortable with informed choice on the vaccine
question and would rather have them mandated even at the point of a gun. Medical fascism is
alive and well, carrying on a tradition that will be remembered in the far future as the dark ages
Dr. Mark Allan Sircus, Ac., OMD, DM (P) Director International Medical Veritas Association Doctor of Oriental and Pastoral Medicine
INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON NON‐IONIZING RADIATION PROTECTION ICNIRP STATEMENT ON HEALTH ISSUES OF ULTRAVIOLET TANNING APPLIANCES USED FOR COSMETIC PURPOSES PUBLISHED IN: HEALTH PHYSICS 84(1):119‐127; 2003 ICNIRP PUBLICATION – 2003 HEALTH ISSUES OF ULTRAVIOLET TANNING APPLIANCES USED FOR COSMETIC PURPOSE
Current Health Care System Policy for Vulnerability Reduction in the United States of America: A Personal Perspective Edward J. Eckenfels Rush Medical College, Chicago, Ill, USA Aim. To raise questions about how the United States of America – which spends 1.3 trillion dollars on health care, con- ducts cutting-edge biomedical research, has the most advanced medical technology, and tr