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Autism

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  • Monsanto Ditching Bovine Growth Hormone Business

    So apparently Americans have decided that they prefer their milk with out puss.

    They were not buying BGH milk so Monsanto is moving on.

    And why were they not buying it?  Because dairys who didn't use it started labeling their product as Non BGH milk, educating the consumer that it was out there.

    And who was the first dairy to do this and to have to face down Monsanto's lawyers for it?  OAKHURST DAIRY OF PORTLAND, MAINE!

    Our little Maine milk makers started labeling their milk, "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones Used."  Monsanto did not like that because it implied that there was something bad about BGH milk.  Oakhurst decided that they had a duty to consumers and kept the labeling, and because they stared down the Mean Monsanto, other Maine dairies followed, and dairies followed nationally.

    So thanks to Oakhurst for looking out for the consumer, and let's hope that no one is interested in buying the looser product, Posilac, and it goes the way of the dinosaur.

    Now can you see why Monsanto is fighting labeling their genetically modified foods as such?  Once people find out what they are eating, they give a damn and won't buy this stuff.

    The FDA needs to require GMO labeling.  
  • Monsanto GMOs: One British Boy's Reaction

    Because GMO foods are not labeled in the US, we have no idea if our kids are reacting to them.

    Apple Mark of Something Beginning with A has the luxury of actually know what his child is eating as a resident of the UK and shares this with us about his autistic son's experience with GMO foods (FYI... in Europe, Soy is called Soya):

    Edward had been on gf cf diet for 6 months had made huge progress. We had also eliminated Soya on the advice of Paul Shattock as most Soya is gm and we have tried to go as organic as possible.

    Interestingly Edward does not appear to have a problem with corn (not sure if gm maize is permitted in the UK)

    Soya was reintroduce into his diet accidentally on the 17th Nov 2006. He slowly slipped back into autism. The effect on Edward was such that he was unteachable at the nursery. They had to devote 1-1 care for him and this is not expected of them as they are not special needs. We were extremely luck to have such a good nursery.

    He started to recover after a week but it was 6 weeks before he was back to pre soya. Not a happy Christmas.

    His nursery had a nativity play and Edward sat through it looking dazed occasionally stimming with his fingers, this is in contrast with the Easter 4 months later.



    Here is his diary entry on the day we realised:

    Saturday 2nd December (Lara)

    "SOYA DAMN IT has made Edward autistic again.

    Everyone has noticed. I stopped his "new dietary needs". All his new food had Soya in it. He has had such a bad reaction to it and has gone backwards. He is not receptive, no eye contact, no concentration, tantrums, not able to speak, "unusual behaviour", on his tiptoes, no poo since Friday [5days].

    I have been stressed tearful and feel really awful. He desperately needs a poo to get rid of the toxins. I gave him lactulose Tuesday and Wednesday."
  • Monsanto GMOs: My Questions about Monsanto’s GMOs and Autism

    Watching The World According to Monsanto, I was struck by the section of the film about Árpád Pusztai’s research that showed that rats fed GMO potatoes developed gut problems and an immune response. The section is as follows:

    Árpád Pusztai, world renowned scientist lost his job when he warned about GE (genetically engineered or genetically modified) foods.

    1998 Aberdeen, Scotland

    Árpád Pusztai worked for the Rowett Institute in Scotland. At the Ministry of Agriculture’s request, he lead a study on genetically modified potatoes with a budget of over two million Euros and a staff of 30 researchers, to prepare the arrival of GMOs in Great Britain.

    "We were all enthusiastic about it… I was enthusiastic about it… The ministry thought that if we did this study, looking at all aspects, then it would be an endorsement of GM and when they introduce it, they will say that the foremost laboratory in Europe… nutritional laboratory… had looked at them and found them all right."

    Árpád Pusztai specializes in lectins, these proteins function as an insecticide protecting plants against aphids. Rowett scientists had created potatoes that were resistant to aphids, and into which they introduced a snowdrop gene which produces the lectin in question. Beforehand they verified that in their naturally occurring state, lectins themselves do not pose a health risk.

    The genetically modified potatoes were tested on rats.

    "It had a twofold effect. First it started to increase a proliferative response in the gut… and that you don’t like… because this is possibly… I am not saying it is cancerous… but what it does… it can have an adjuvant effect on any chemical… any chemically induced tumor.

    The other thing is that the immune system was certainly… got into high gear. And that was… we don’t know whether that is good or bad. But it certainly did recognize the GM potatoes as alien. And we were convinced that this insertion is causing the problem and not the trans gene. As I said, the trans gene when we did it in isolation, even at 800 fold concentration, didn’t do any harm.

    It was a very important point because the American FDA is going on by mutual Technology. And what we did say and what we did publish actually corroborated and confirmed that it was not the trans gene that was the problem, but it was the technology."


    When Pusztai was interviewed by the BBC, with permission from his bosses, he stated:

    "As a scientist actively working on the field, I find that it is very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs."


    The day after the statement was broadcast, Pusztai was fired and the team was dismantled.

    While watching this, I put together a few things:

    1. Dr. Pusztai’s finding, that GM potatoes triggered gut problems and an immune response.
    2. The additional section of the documentary which discussed the migration of trans genes (genes that have been genetically modified and inserted into cells that then become a part of the DNA) from GM corn sold in the US to native corn grown in rural southern Mexico.
    3. A comment that David Kirby made in his column that discussed the March 11th CDC conference call that discussed the Hanna Poling mitochondrial disorder and its link to autism.

    Kirby wrote:

    "Some researchers believe that the modern American diet is largely to blame for an increase in the number of children whose underlying mitochondrial dysfunction is "triggered" into autism by febrile infections.

    The answer, they hypothesize, is corn.

    The American diet has become extraordinarily dependent on corn oil and corn syrup used in processing, these experts contend. They say that corn oil and syrup are inflammatory, whereas fish oil is anti-inflammatory. Could our diet be a factor in making this mutated gene become more pathogenic?"


    In an email conversation with Mr. Kirby while he was researching that conference call, he wrote to me that:

    "One of the top scientists I spoke with today said the increase in autism in America was due to consumption of corn"


    His comments in the article about the theoretical corn/inflammation link to autism were straight from a high level scientist involved with the CDC and on that conference call.

    Putting all these together, my questions are these:

    ||Could not just over exposure to corn be the problem, but exposure to genetically modified corn, presumably that used the same problematic technology as Dr. Pusztai’s believed was to blame for the gut and inflammation in his rats that were eating genetically modified potatoes?||


    ||And what exactly does the CDC believe to be the relationship between the American diet, overconsumption of corn products, inflammation and autism?||


    ||And if they believe, or even suspect, that inflammation is at play in the bodies of children with autism, why have they not stated this publicly and encouraged research and treatment along these lines?||


    ||And if they believe there might be a link, then why are they not investigating and promoting the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that removes corn products?||


    Corn is a problem for many of our kids, because genetically modified food products are not labeled, we have no way of figuring out if our kids are having problems with corn, or GM corn. Or if one causes a bigger problem than the other. In fact we have no way of knowing at all what GM foods might be doing to our children. Chandler drank milk by the truck load before he regressed, it was probably Bovine Growth Hormone milk, which is found to have inflammatory effects on the cows and because of the illness of the cows puss is in the milk, as well as the antibiotics that were given to the cows to counter the infections. To say nothing of the hormone itself which also may be in the milk.

    But bottom line for me, the biggest question I have is:

    ||WHAT THE HELL HAVE I BEEN FEEDING MY CHILDREN FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS???||


    And is the very good response that my own son had to the SCD Diet, which removes processed foods and encourages eating only organic foods, due in part to the fact that he is no longer eating pro-inflammatory genetically modified foods?

    There has not been any discussion that I know of surrounding the potential role of GM foods and autism in our community. It is certainly an important discussion to be had as many of our kids on GFCF diets will continue to eat processed foods with genetically modified ingredients.
  • Monsanto GMOs: The World According to Monsanto

    If you eat food, you need to watch this documentary:

    The World According to Monsanto


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    I have never understood what the big complaints about genetically modified foods were all about. If you can breed a plant to be resistant to bugs or more fruitful, if you can get a cow to give more milk, why would that be a bad thing? People have been cross breeding plans for thousands of years. I assumed that bioengineered foods would be tested like crazy by the FDA, not allowed into the food supply if they were problematic and would be labeled as GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in the grocery store, because in this country we have to have full disclosure in the packaging of our food.

    I figured that when they did come on the market, I would just avoid them for a few years to make sure that there were not problems en mass. You don’t buy a new model car the first year on the market, you don’t take a new vaccine (Gardasil) or medication as soon as it is introduced, and you don’t eat stuff that has ingredients that have not had a safety history of at least a few years, right?

    On March 11th this documentary on Monsanto’s business practices and their introduction of GMOs into the food supply aired on French television. Apparently we have all been eating genetically modified foods for a decade or so. They are not labeled as such, and, as I was with vaccines, apparently I was very naive about the FDA’s regulatory process.

    Instead of testing GMO foods for safety, the FDA decided that they were similar enough to the original food product to just be considered equivalent to the original food product, and GMOs do not even have to go through as stringent a regulatory process as a new food dye or preservative.

    As with vaccines, the FDA does not do any testing of their own, but just reviews the company’s safety studies; but just taking the word of a company that already has a history of very serious abuses of the public, like the PCB poisoning in Anniston, Alabama that Monsanto was responsible for, is monumentally foolish. Internal Monsanto documents showed that the contamination in Anniston was so serious that fish put in the local waters died in THREE AND A HALF MINUTES, but Monsanto decided to continue what they were doing because, "…we can’t afford to loose one dollar".

    Watch the documentary to see what happened to the poor, black population of Aniston. (If this was done in a town full of white people with money, you probably would have heard about it long before now. We tend to draw more attention when we complain that our kids are being poisoned).

    As with vaccines, the Monsanto GMO safety studies turn out to be junk, that actually claim the opposite of what a well designed study might find. (If you don’t want to find a problem, only look where you know you won’t find it!) The parallels to Verstraeten, Denmark and Fombonne and the like are obvious to anyone in our community.

    This is a two hour documentary, so pick a night this week, grab your spouse and watch it. This is really important.

    I lost track of how many whistle blowers, previously highly respected scientists, were fired and had their reputations trashed for reporting that their findings showed that Monsanto’s GMO products were not safe or reported the million dollar bribes that Monsanto was offering to regulators. Researchers found they caused problems in cell division, which is step one in the development of cancer, and that the bodies of animals reacted to the GMO food as a foreign substance to be attacked, stimulating the immune system. (Does this set off any alarms for anyone? More on this in my follow up post.)

    I also lost track of how many cotton farmers in India had committed suicide because of Monsanto’s take over of the industry. Was it 600 last year and then another 600 so far this year? Monsanto sells the seed, which are marketed as growing plants that are resistant to a certain problematic bug, at very high prices, but it apparently doesn’t even protect against the bug, and often take on a blight and dies. Farmers, rather than being faced with the shame of loosing everything, are killing themselves by the hundreds.

    And because Monsanto has flooded the market with their seeds, it is apparently next to impossible for the farmers to get a hold of regular seeds any more.

    Which leads us to the craziest thing about this whole story. That Monsanto had patented seeds (how did the supreme court decide that was legal?), and by flooding the market, gotten rid of other seeds (if they are not being grown and re harvested every year, plant lines die out, and in about a decade, Monsanto has come to own like 90% of the world's seeds. Farmers using these seeds cannot save the Monsanto owned seeds from a previous crop and replant. They have to re buy them every year from Monsanto, and the corporation is suing local farmers suspected of resowing seed. Even when they haven't and can prove they bought the seed. Apparently Monsanto is now the Stalin of the Farm Belt infiltrating local farming communities, showing up incognito at local meetings and encouraging farmers to report on each other.

    If a truck driving by your land accidentally drops a seed and it grows on your property, Monsanto can sue you. And apparently is suing people for seeds that have blown on to their land and taken root. Farmers are giving up fighting these law suits, that drag on for years, because they can't afford protracted legal battles, and just paying Monsanto a settlement.

    Additionally, Monsanto is patenting regular seeds, seeds that have been around forever, so that they can just put them in a vault and not let anyone use them.

    So Monsanto is basically poised to own food. All food. It is like something out of a movie, but apparently Monsanto is more clever than Hollywood, because not even the X-Files came up with a conspiracy plot to own all the food in the world.

    Oh and by the way their food may cause cancer and autoimmune disorders.

    I can’t even explain all the problems that this documentary brings to light in the US, the UK, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and India. Monsanto declined to be interviewed for the documentary and has not commented on it, but their web site assures us that they are working ethically.

    For anyone who criticizes the autism community for their mistrust of the federal regulators, big pharma and the revolving door between the two where one day someone is working for the government on vaccine safety, the next they are a high paid pharma employee and next year they are back in government regulation (or even doing both at the same time), this documentary shows in living color that our mistrust is not only founded, but probably not distrustful enough.

    This story is our story. Replace Merck for Monsanto, replace FDA/CDC for the FDA and replace vaccine for food, and this is what parents like me have been bitching about.

    Our kids are getting sick, and when we look into how the sausage that is being injected into our kids is made, this is the junk we are finding.

    Our sick babies are the canaries in the coal mine of this toxic world. It is long past time for us all to wake up and realize that we might have been wise to listen to those crazy, drama club drop out hippies screaming about FrankenFoods in the 1990’s. They might have been crazy and dramatic, but they might not have been wrong.



    This documentary has brought up a specific question for me that I will address in part 2 of this series: Monsanto GMOs: A Question about Monsanto’s GMOs and Autism

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