Dear President Obama, The beer summit was nice, but how about an autism summit?

Look, I appreciate that President Obama had the July Beer Summit at the White House. A white cop (who may or may not have been a model of cultural diversity and understanding) from Cambridge got to drink a Blue Moon, a distinguished African American Harvard Professor got to drink a Sam Adams Light, someone let Joe Biden in, and President Obama modeled for the whole country how to have an adult conversation about race.

But what President Obama really needs to do is to have a White House summit on autism. Autism is an absolute public health catastrophe right now and it appears to be growing. 1 in 91 children now has autism -- up from just 1 in 10,000 in 1970, and autism is estimated to cost the nation $90 billion per year. President Obama needs to bang some heads together (EPA, CDC, NIH, DOD) and ask the really hard questions and demand answers -- What is causing it? What are ALL the steps we can take immediately to respond? If that means closing every coal-fired power plant in the country tomorrow -- great, let's do it. If it means radically revising our vaccine protocols and instituting a global ban on mercury? Fine, done and done.

President Obama needs to marshal the full force of the federal government to respond to this crisis as if it were Hurricane Katrina itself -- because really at the end of the day it's actually a much much bigger disaster than Katrina (over 1 million Americans have been diagnosed with autism). Said differently, President Obama has shown that he can keep his cool and that he's incredibly skilled at measured, deliberative responses to long-term problems. We love that about him and it is a great skill for foreign policy and diplomacy (and even economic strategy too). But it would also be nice to see President Obama respond to an urgent crisis in an urgent manner and to show, perhaps for the first time, that he understands that the size of the federal response needs to match the size of the problem because thus far, the federal government's response to autism has been slow and insufficient.

To learn more, check out these helpful links from Talk About Curing Autism.

Update #1: "U.S. autism cases show 59% increase" Dec. 18, 2009, from the Palm Beach Post, Health Section. Fascinating note by James Lind in the comments portion after the article:

We have seen a 1500% increase in autism since 1990, the year the CDC ramped up its Hepatitis B antigen vaccination campaign, injecting 1 day old infants with this wicked concoction which (if it did work) only fights a disease caused by multiple sex partners, intravenous drug users and those receiving blood transfusions.

Criminal negligence

Continuing our occasional word of the day series here at RFK Action Front... our word of the day is --

Criminal negligence: (law) recklessly acting without reasonable caution and putting another person at risk of injury or death (or failing to do something with the same consequences)

Rachel's Democracy & Health News links to an article from Science Daily, titled, "Autism Risk Linked to Distance from [Coal-Fired] Power Plants, Other Mercury-Releasing Sources." From the article:

A newly published study of Texas school district data and industrial mercury-release data, conducted by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, indeed shows a statistically significant link between pounds of industrial release of mercury and increased autism rates. It also shows—for the first time in scientific literature—a statistically significant association between autism risk and distance from the mercury source...

Dr. Palmer, Stephen Blanchard, Ph.D., of Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio and Robert Wood of the UT Health Science Center found that community autism prevalence is reduced by 1 percent to 2 percent with each 10 miles of distance from the pollution source....

Most exposures were said to come from coal-fired utility plants (33 percent of exposures), municipal/medical waste incinerators (29 percent) and commercial/industrial boilers (18 percent). Cement plants also release mercury.

Okay, so now we know there is a direct link between mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants and autism. And we know that the closer one lives to the source the worse the problem -- as the study says, "autism prevalence diminished 1 to 2 percent for every 10 miles from the source." It's a small but statistically significant effect.

So here's my question: now that we know this information, aren't any legislators who vote in favor of building a new coal-fired power plant guilty of criminal negligence? Not just in the moral sense, but also in a practical sense -- isn't it possible that a criminal prosecutor will at some point bring a case against legislators who voted in favor of coal-fired power plants even though they knew, with statistical certainty, that there is a direct link between coal-fired power and autism? Given that this scientific research in now in the public domain, by definition, isn't any vote in favor of new coal-fired power plants in fact a prosecutable case of criminal negligence?

Now it may be a tough case to prove. Heaven knows big corporations have gone to great lengths to obtain liability protection and some legislatures might even be protected against lawsuits by shield laws. And just like in the court cases against the tobacco industry -- it'll be tough to prove that this particular coal plant was the sole reason that this particular child developed autism -- maybe it was the cement factory down the street or the vaccines given to the child. But still, I gotta figure on a class action basis, given this evidence, some attorney might want to take this on.

So, if you're a legislator such as Bill Otto in Kansas, do you really want to vote for a new coal-fired power plan when in fact you KNOW that it will cause huge adverse health impacts on the residents in your community and you face the possibility that you, personally, will be sued for criminal negligence?

Coal Awareness Week, Part 2: Do Mercury Emissions from Coal-Fired Power Plants Cause Autism?

Here's what we know: There is an autism epidemic in this country right now. 1 in 150 children in the U.S. has autism -- which is an astonishingly high number.

So the question becomes, what's causing it? Increasingly, scientists are focusing on the role of mercury. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin and some of the symptoms of autism and mercury poisoning are similar. Incredibly, pharmaceutical companies used mercury (in the form of thimerosal) as a preservative in vaccines and many parents have reported that their child's autism began after being given vaccine shots. (Even more mind-boggling, even though pharmaceutical companies have removed thimerosal from vaccines, they continue to put it in the common flu shot given to kids and pregnant women). But, scientists haven't been able to determine a direct one-to-one link between mercury in vaccines and autism. Now scientists are speculating that autism may be caused by a combination of environmental factors (largely mercury) and genetic factors that regulate how the body processes mercury:

[University of Kentucky biochemist Boyd] Haley has garnered evidence from hair samples that [shows] autistic children do not clear mercury from their bodies as efficiently as most kids do. They may have a genetic susceptibility that allows more mercury to accumulate in their tissues, he says.

Here's what else we know:

Coal fired power plants are the largest emitters of mercury in the United States, releasing about 48 tons, or 96,000 pounds, into the air each year... Because mercury is a neurotoxin, it is particularly dangerous to the still-forming brains and nervous systems of fetuses and young children. Some studies show that children who are exposed to tiny amounts of mercury in utero have slower reflexes, language deficits, and shortened attention spans. (Big Coal, p. 134)

The problem with mercury is that it is an element that does not break down. Rather, once released into the environment, mercury builds up over time -- in our soil, in fish, in our bodies.

As more and more mercury is released into the environment, it keeps building up. One way to think of coal plants is as giant mercury-excavating machines, taking tons of mercury and other heavy metals that had been safely sequestered underground and recycling them in the air and water. David Krabbenhoft, the leader of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Mercury Project, estimates that the deposition rate of mercury today is three to five times greater than in preindustrial times. (Big Coal, p. 136)

We may in fact, have simply reached the tipping point. As mercury has built up over time in our environment and in our bodies, we may have simply reached the point where mercury levels are now high enough to cause widespread developmental problems, including autism.

In 2004, scientists decided to study the connection between mercury emissions [from coal-fired power plants and other sources] and autism rates in the community. They compared data about autism and special education rates from the Texas Department of Education with pollution emission data available from the Environmental Protection Agency. They found that:

There was a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1000 pounds of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.

Power companies tend to locate their coal-fired power plants in poor and minority communities. Given this data -- that every 1000 pound increase in mercury emissions causes a 61% increase in autism in the community -- you understand that not only are coal-fired power plants committing environmental racism they may, in fact, be committing a very profitable form of genocide.

Pesticide use linked to autism--how long before corporate bioterrorism is stopped?

On July 31, the Los Angeles Times published the following info:

Women who live near California farm fields sprayed with organochlorine pesticides may be more likely to give birth to children with autism, according to a study by state health officials to be published today.

How much more likely? 6 TIMES MORE LIKELY.

So let me ask a question.

Let's say evil foreign terrorists invade
an American school and
take a classroom full of kids hostage.
And let's say that the manical terrorists
are so hell bent on destroying all that is
good and true about America that they
inject 8 of the 28 kids
with a neurotoxin so potent
that it causes permanent brain damage

How long before the SWAT team gets there?

15 minutes?
20 minutes?
Anyone bet 30 minutes?
Is your highest estimate under 1 hour?

Let's go a step further:
Imagine the terrorists start injecting additional kids
with the heinous poison
every ten minutes.
The authorities, through the use of video surveillance,
know this is happening.

How long before the SWAT team storms the building and
kills every single terrorist even at the risk of
losing some of their own members?

1 minute?
5 minutes?
Is your highest estimate under 10 minutes?

Okay, now, new question:
A study by the California Department of Public Health
finds a link between the use of 2 pesticides and autism.
(The 2 pesticides are endosulfan and dicofol which are already banned
in several countries.)

How long before the state of California bans the pesticides?

5 YEARS?
10 YEARS?

How long before the federal government bans these pesticides?

10 years?
20 years?
Never?

Is your lowest realistic estimate under 5 years?

Here we have 2 different scenarios
(terrorists take over a school and
corporate farmers spraying their fields with
endosulfan and dicofol)
with roughly the same outcome for kids
(permanent brain damage)
but 2 radically different responses from government authorities.

When the harm is caused by a brown man with a gun
the reaction is swift, violent, and total.
When the harm is caused by a poison
sold by a nice white guy in a suit who
goes home to his nice suburban house every evening,
too often the responds is years of study
(or no study at all)
blaming of the victims,
and then halting half measure that
'attempt to balance the interests of both sides.'

If you think I'm kidding check out this quote from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation about the link between these pesticides and autism:

Glenn Brank, spokesman for the pesticide agency, said officials there are "very interested" in the new autism data but say that "more work" on the potential link is needed before it can carry much weight in assessments of the chemicals' risks.

Makes you wonder if the terrorists
(the brown ones with the guns)
just need better lobbyists.
Then they could make some vague claims
about creating jobs and the importance of free enterprise.
If terrorists (the brown ones with the guns)
had better lobbyists
it might take the SWAT team years
to arrive at the school
and then they would study the problem of the school children
looking at every possible alternative explanation
before politely asking the terrorists to cut back on
the number of children they are poisoning.

By the way, endosulfan is manufactured by:
Bayer CropScience,
Makhteshim-Agan, and
Drexel Chemical Company.
Dicofol is manufactured by:
Rohm & Haas,
Hindustan Insecticides Ltd,
Lainco, and
Makhteshim-Agan.
Just thought I'd give ya'll a shout out so that the SWAT team
will know where to find you.

Post Script: Dicofol is used on cotton, oranges, beans and walnuts. Endosulfan is used primarily in tomato processing and on lettuce, alfalfa and cotton crops. Even people who are not a farm workers can be exposed to these poisons through food, water, air, and non-organic household cotton products.