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Published: Jan. 9, 2007 at 4:43 PM
By DAN OLMSTED
UPI Senior Editor
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- We are all environmentalists now.
At least that's the impression you get from reading the discussion surrounding
the Combating Autism Act that President Bush recently signed into law.
Much attention -- and properly so -- has gone toward what the bill does not do.
It does not, after the House got through amending it, set aside a specific
amount of money to look into environmental causes of autism. And it does not
specifically mention research into whether vaccines are involved in the ten-fold
rise in diagnoses in recent years.
But here's what it does do: It says the director of the
National Institutes of Health
will coordinate research into "the cause (including possible environmental
causes) ... and treatment of autism spectrum disorder."
Those might be the most important parentheses in recent American history. What's
afoot is nothing short of revolutionary -- a fresh attempt to find what's
causing autism without taking anything off the table.
Taking things off the table -- sweeping them under the rug, in the view of many
-- has been tried before. People familiar with this issue know about the 2004
Institute of Medicine report that not only exonerated vaccines as a factor in
autism, but suggested it was time to stop funding research into the possibility.
The question now is whether government researchers will take their cue from
Congress or the Institute of
Medicine, and considering who writes the checks in this town, the former is far
more likely.
Plus, there are the comments by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the man who held up
the bill until it was amended to his liking. Here's what he said in a statement
on the House floor:
"With respect to possible environmental or external causes of autism, some have
suggested a link exists between autism and childhood vaccines. In the past
several years, several major epidemiological studies have been conducted to look
into the question of whether vaccines cause autism.
"Examining the published studies, the non-partisan Institute of Medicine has
concluded that the weight of the available evidence favors rejection of a causal
relationship between vaccines and autism.
"However, I recognize that there is much that we do not know about the
biological pathways and origins of this disorder, and that further investigation
into all possible causes of autism is needed."
That means, Do it.
In the Senate, several members went on record to make the same point.
"I want to be clear that, for the purposes of biomedical research, no research
avenue should be eliminated, including biomedical research examining potential
links between vaccines, vaccine components, and autism spectrum disorder," said
Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
"Thus, I hope that the National
Institutes of Health will
consider broad research avenues into this critical area, within the Autism
Centers of Excellence as well as the Centers of Excellence for Environmental
Health and Autism.
"No stone should remain unturned in trying to learn more about this baffling
disorder, especially given how little we know."
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., followed up with this:
"In our search for the cause of this growing developmental disability, we should
close no doors on promising avenues of research. Through the Combating Autism
Act, all biomedical research opportunities on ASD can be pursued, and they
include environmental research examining potential links between vaccines,
vaccine components and ASD."
So what the Combating Autism Act has already accomplished is pretty impressive:
putting some powerful members of Congress on record that "no research avenue
should be eliminated."
That's part of the new dynamic that I said in my last column makes me think 2007
will be a very good year for the truth. Another reason: An expert panel
requested by Congress and convened by NIH recently raised disturbing questions
about one of those "major epidemiological studies" that found no link between
thimerosal and autism.
"I think there's more work to be done," chairwoman Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a
professor in the Department of Public Health at the
University of California-Davis
School of Medicine, told me last month.
"It's an 'open question' whether anything about vaccines -- timing, dose,
preservative -- is related to the rise in diagnoses," she said.
Believe it or not, this is all that those concerned about an environmental risk
for autism have ever asked -- an open mind. This looks like the year they'll get
it.
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