Laboratory Medical Update – Dr. Andrew Cutler Interview
Earlier this year, I did an interview with Andrew Cutler, PhD talking about his thoughts on autism, mercury, and porphyrin testing. You can listen to it on my Let’s Talk Real Health podcast site. Just recently, Michael Ross, did a transcript of the interview that you can download and read for yourself. Thank you Michael for the work.
I just got done with a lecture at the National College of Natural Medicine here is beautiful Portland, Oregon. I’d like to thank Dr. Kristen McElveen, ND and every attendee for allowing me to speak at your Grand Rounds. Even the 7:30 am start time wasn’t as bad as I expected.
Here is the presentation I did in Powerpoint. If you use any of the slides, just tell everyone where you got it.
Mark Schauss – Boulderfest 2008 Presentation
This weekend I had the pleasure and honor to speak at Boulderfest 2008 put on by a company I no longer have anything to do with unfortunately due to unethical management. Here is the PowerPoint presentation I gave this past Thursday, July 17th. Also, to all the attendees, I was energized by all of your care and interest in helping people. It is inspiring!!!
My book, Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World is now available through multiple outlets. It is the story of a child, my daughter, and her battle with a rare type of epilepsy, given little chance of recovery by the medical world, but through it all she has made it through, not perfectly, with the ability to live a normal life.
It also deals with what I believe caused her disorder, environmental toxicity. We are polluting our world at a staggering ratewhich is causing epidemics of diseases unheard of in human history. Big corporations would want you to believe this is not happening but my book shows you the truth.
The scariest part of my research delved into the effect these toxins are having on our most vunerable citizens, our children, and the up coming generations. In the final two parts of the book, I give you real world ideas on how to cope with the toxins and how you can begin the movement toward changing our world before it is too late. The increase in the rate of autism, asthma, epilepsy, ADHD, childhood cancers, cannot be explained by a “genetic epidemic”. We are poisoning ourselves and we can change that.
To order the book, you can go to either Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com or for faster service my publisher – AuthorHouse’s web site . This book represents my 20+ years of research along with the passion that comes with fighting for a daughter’s life. I can guarantee one thing about the book and that is it will move you, both emotionally and physically to help us change the world.
Now with the scandal involving Scheering-Plough and Merck, two pharmaceutical giants becoming the biggest news story of the day I have to comment. Do you really think that the study that Vytorin is not beneficial is an isolated incident? If you do, you are sadly mistaken. When I worked for a company that sold clinical trial software to the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, I was involved in talking to a number of researchers employed by these companies and some of the things I heard made me realize that the focus of these companies was not your health but their profits.
Here are some of the details of the Vytorin story you may not know about.
It is this last issue I have my greatest concerns about. When I taught a class to a medical device company in Cleveland, Ohio, I was asked by one of the primary investigators whether they could change the data once it was entered into the program. I made sure they understood that this would be illegal and immoral as well. Often times, I found out that many researchers (not all) in the pharmaceutical industry manipulate data end points and use other statistical machinations to create findings that are positive instead of properly studying results and reporting good and bad regardless of the financial ramifications.
With the recent research saying that there is no link between autism and thimerasol in mercury it was apparent that the researchers manipulated the end points to come up with a result they wanted to come up with. They claim that there was no relationship because there is no change in autism rates recently since thimerasol was removed from vaccines. Problem is that the number of years since the mercury laden vaccines have been removed are not sufficient to see a change in autism rates. Most autism is diagnosed at 4-5 but the removal of thimerasol was only done 2-3 years ago so how could they see a difference. This is known as changing the end point to create a result you want. It is immoral and dangerous.
It is time the FDA and our government do what they are charged with doing, protecting the citizens from dangerous drugs. The pharmaceutical industries money first attitude needs control and must be stopped. It is time for a major overhaul of the drug research and approval system.
In a not too surprising action today, President Bush, decided to once again break a campaign promise he made in 2004 in order to continue to fatten the wallets of his supporters in big business. His veto of an expansion of the Child Health Insurance Bill wasn’t just about “fiscal responsibility” he and his fellow Republicans who supported his veto claim. It was also about removing mercury from vacines. He claimed it would cost too much. To whom? The pharmaceutical industry with it multi-billion dollar profits? Of course. Who pays for this? The poor and lower middle class.
In 2004, President Bush said:
“I support the removal of Thimerosal from vaccines on the childhood national vaccine schedule. During a second term as President, I will continue to support increased funding to support a wide variety of research initiatives aimed at seeking definitive causes and/or triggers of autism. It is important to note that while there are many possible theories about causes or triggers of autism, no one material has been definitely included or excluded.”
He went back on that campaign promise which will allow the further poisoning of children. You might say that there was a paper published that said that thimerasol used in vaccines was safe wasn’t there? Look down a few articles back and see my comments on that horrendous “study” (they called it a study, I call it drivel).
I am a firm believer in cutting back on a bloated government, but not when it comes to health care for children. It is my hope that Congress overturns this veto and shows that they care about our children. This trend of subsidizing big business on the backs of the poor and middle class needs to stop now.
EDIT: I want to add something here about Bush’s reasoning behind his veto. He claims that it would allow people who make over $83,000 to get coverage for their kids. According to this blog, that’s just a lie.
Welcome to my second attempt at podcasting and hopefully the start of a regular series of shows devoted to disseminating the science of health. Today’s podcast is on autism and the latest research that has just burst on the scene. Enjoy,
At the AutismOne conference back in 2005, I was in room #2 talking about the link of multiple toxins and autism. In room #1 was Dr. Rasheed Buttar who was all about mercury. I told my audience that one day, the multiple toxin theory was going to be in room #1 eventually, maybe not with me in it, but eventually the day would come. One more study, published by the journal Environmental Health Persepectives, has led credence to my theory.
In the October 2007 issue, researchers led by Eric Roberts et al, published a paper called Maternal Residence Near Agricultural Pesticide Applications and Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children in the California Central Valley (click on the link and you get to read the entire paper free of charge). In this paper the authors find that there was an increase in the incidence of autism the closer the pregnant mothers were to certain organophosphate pesticide applications. For years I have said that toxic exposures to the mother can cause fetal developmental disorders depending on the time of the exposure. This is just more data to back up my claims.
My theory has always been than somehow my daughter Tasya was exposed, while in fetal development, to some form of toxin to cause the brain dysfunction that caused her unusual epileptic disorder. I feel that many people with children have had the same issue whether it be autism, epilepsy or even other neurological or health related disorders. Fetuses are very suceptible to the dangers of toxins, more so than anyone else.
One other issue I want to bring up is the preposterous article that gave a clean bill of health to thimerasol by authors publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine. You would be hard pressed find a more poorly done study, misreported by the media, than this. Instead of listing my thoughts on all of the poor study parameters, follow this link to the Adventures in Autism blogsite, run by Ginger Taylor. The one really striking part of her eight part rebutal to this paper is that no autistic children were included in the study. Now that is a convenient way of avoiding finding a link between autism and thimerasol.
Two other very disturbing issues come up as well. First, that around 70% of the participants in the study dropped out. When I worked in the pharmaceutical clinical trial business, it was pretty well known that when you have a drop out rate any where near that level, the study is pretty much worthless. The data cannot be used to make any kind of a judgement. Second real major issue is the huge conflicts of interest among the authors of the study as each one has significant ties to the vaccine manufacturers! Poor judgement on the part of the NEJM to publish this paper, worse than that, for the media to so misrepresent the data.
As you can see from the first part of my post, I do not believe that mercury is the sole cause of autism. It isn’t. Having said that, I believe it is one of the factors in the epidemic of autism.