Thank you so much for pulling together all this research and describing it so clearly.
Since autism is a spectrum it may actually be a collection of syndromes with various etiologies, and who knows maybe there are some people who develop those defining characteristics via purely genetic routes, but it seems like the majority of the huge increase over the past 30 years is most likely related to cases involving inflammation of the brain. And maybe that has always been the main cause.
Aluminum induced IL6 may well be the primary cause of this brain inflammation. But mercury also does impact the immune system. For example the paper Autism is a Novel Form of Mercury Poisoning states on p. 465 that mercury has these effects on the immune system:
- Sensitive individuals more likely to have allergies, asthma, autoimmune-like symptoms, especially rheumatoid-like ones (8,11,18,24,28,31,111,113)
- Can produce an immune response in CNS; causes brain/MBP autoantibodies (18,111,165)
- Causes overproduction of Th2 subset; kills/inhibits lymphocytes, T-cells, and monocytes; decreases NK T-cell activity; induces or suppresses IFNg & IL-2 (100,112,117–120,166)
And affects CNS structure:
· Selectively targets brain areas unable to detoxify or reduce Hg-induced oxidative stress (40,56,161)
· Accummulates in amygdala, hippocampus, basal ganglia, cerebral cortex; damages Purkinje and granule cells in cerebellum; brain stem defects in some cases (10,34,40,70–73)
· Causes abnormal neuronal cytoarchitecture; disrupts neuronal migration, microtubules, and cell division; reduces NCAMs (10,28,57–59,161)
And affects Neurochemistry and Neurophysiology.
https://www.safeminds.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Bernard-et-al-2001.pdf
And I remember that paper by Isaac Pessah at UC Davis saying that tiny amounts of thimerosal could disrupt dendritic cell functioning in the immune system. And there was a paper showing higher rates of autism in geographic areas with more mercury in the environment. So I do think mercury plays a role.
It is possible, like you mentioned, that the MMR only causes autism if it follows a number of vaccines containing aluminum that caused there to already be a buildup of aluminum in the brain. But I do wonder if the MMR by itself can cause inflammation of the brain sufficient to cause autism.
Another interesting aspect of this is that microglial cells have been found to play a major role in neural pruning. I‘ve read elsewhere that neural pruning starts earlier, like about age two. The deficits in synaptic pruning may be another reason why head size grows, and may help explain how people with autism and ADHD have trouble organizing perceptions, difficulty focussing on what is most important to a task at hand, instead of being distracted by the hum of a bee or air conditioner. See part 5 of this article:
It seems like aluminum and IL6 are a huge part of autism causation, but maybe not the only cause. Anyways, just food for thought. And thanks again for writing about VP‘s very exciting work and the research behind it.
How ridiculous that vaccine defenders like to accuse our side of “changing the goal posts“. As if science should stagnate, rather than constantly looking for new information and forming new hypotheses based on that information.
