Q. What is your definition of autism?

A. It's a serious developmental disorder in which a child normal way.

Q. What is your definition of a vaccine?

A. A vaccine is a material derived from some pathogen—either a live pathogen or a portion of the dead pathogen or antigens from it—that is meant to mimic the immune response to the disease, thus providing protective immunity without causing sickness.

Q. Have there been any studies on autism rates in countries that do not require vaccinations?

A. I don't know of any. I don't even know if there have been any good studies on what the trends in autism have been in this country. I have a feeling there is a tremendous increase between 1960 and now, but there is a real dearth in data going back before 1980.

Q. Is it possible that doctors are just recognizing autism more now?

A. I guess that possibility is always raised, but autism is such terribly disabling condition that it couldn't go without being recognized. It had to be called something. I think it was a classified as a form of childhood schizophrenia, but it was really quite rare.

Q. An article by Dr. Harold Buttram stated that vaccines actually weaken a child's mucosal immune system. Could you comment on that?

A. I thought that what he meant to say was that the antigens were presented to the patient in a different way from the normal one—they're injected instead of being transmitted across the mucus membranes—so the type of immunity that is induced may be different. The mucosal immunity is like an IgA [immunoglobulin A] molecule instead of an IgM or IgG at least at one stage. So the immunity may be less robust and somewhat of a different type.

Q. There has been a significant increase in the amount of cases of ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] in children. Could that be related to immunizations or just a case of doctors recognizing the signs more?

A. Well, you can argue that it is very diagnosed and there are a lot of economic incentives for diagnosing it. You get more money for your school district for special education. Also, people get a pass on their bad behavior if they diagnose it. It's a very subjective diagnosis, and it's just one spectrum of normal behavior. If a kid is more twitchy than kids normally are, you can call it ADHD. I think that whether it's a behavior manifestation of the chaotic atmosphere at the school, whether it's caused by too many excitotoxins in the diet, whether it really exists, or whether it's just overdiagnosed, there probably is a neurological substrain, at least for some cases, and whether that's exacerbated by vaccines is a question we haven't really addressed with the proper studies.

Q. Will there be any studies of that nature?

A. Not that I know of.

Q. What is the mechanism by which the vaccines might trigger problems such as autism and ADHD?

A. Well, if they did, the mechanism might be called molecular mimicry, in which one of the antigens in the vaccine mimics an antigen that normally exists in your body; you thus trigger an immune response against your own body. If that's a critical a part of your brain, then you might have a neurological disorder as a result.

Q. Could there be any other reasons for the increased rate of autism today besides the increase in immunizations?

A. Assuming that it has increased, you have to ask what else has changed. Some people say that autism has a genetic basis, and probably a disposition to it is genetic; however, the incidence of genetic diseases does not increase dramatically over a couple of decades. So I don't think that genetics can be the cause of the increase.

Frankly, I can't think of anything that has been so pervasive throughout society as mandated immunizations against a whole range of children. Maybe the childhood diseases themselves had a protective effect, I don't know. Autism develops before most kids get sick with the diseases and about the same time that they get the vaccines. I mean that vaccines are a plausible candidate, and I would be interested in any other factors that have changed about the same time.

Q. Do you envision any problems trying to convince the public of the dangers of vaccines?

A. People tend to believe the reassurances by their doctors and the Public Health Department. Doctors have not been willing to question these, partly because it could be disastrous to their career if they did so. I think that people are very open to the idea if you can get their attention. In fact, the complaint by vaccine proponents is that people are getting too much information over the Internet and reacting to it in a hysterical way.

I don't know whether vaccines cause autism, but I think that it is such a devastating condition that we should be vigorously trying to find out what does cause it. I don't know why we don't do controlled covert studies of kids who are immunized (with the MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine, which seems to be the prime candidate) and kids who are not and put the question to rest one way or the other.

Dr. Jane Orient is Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and Director of Continuing Medical Education at Carondelet St. Joseph's Hospital in Tucson, Arizona. She has written more than 100 articles published in scientific journals and popular publications.

This Article has been submitted by the Jeremy's Prophecy Dot Com team for informational and educational purposes. Jeremy's Prophecy Dot Com is a website dedicated to telling the story of Jeremy Jacobs, a character in the novel, Jeremy's Prophecy Dot Com.