The Age of Autism Week In a Number: 1938
1938
Editor's Note: Mark Blaxill and I appreciate the Journal of Autism and
Developmental Disorders -- the leading peer-reviewed autism medical journal --
running our commentary in the issue published this week.
Leo Kanner's Mention of 1938 in His Report on Autism Refers to His First
Patient.
Here is the abstract: "Leo Kanner begins his landmark 1943 case series on autistic children by stating the condition was first brought to his attention in 1938. Recent letters to JADD have described this reference as 'mysterious' and speculated it refers to papers published that year by Despert or Asperger. In fact, as Kanner goes on to state, 1938 is when he examined the first child in his case series. An exchange of letters with Despert and later writing by Kanner also point to the originality of his observations."
--
The matter at hand is both seemingly arcane and ultimately overarching -- what did Leo Kanner mean when he said he became aware of autism in 1938? (He first named and wrote about it in 1943.) Commenters in the Journal have speculated it was a reference to earlier papers by other psychiatrists, which would mean autism was not a new entity, just one that Kanner codified by describing more precisely through a case series. Based on a decade of research with primary documents and personal interviews, we argued -- and, I think, we demonstrated -- that 1938 was a reference to the year the first patient was seen at his clinic at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. That patient, Case 1 Donald T., was the first of 11 who displayed the same novel syndrome "markedly and uniquely different from anything reported so far," as Kanner wrote in that landmark 1943 report. As Ginger Taylor (who first called our attention to the recent discussion in the Journal) aptly wrote on Facebook this week: "Olmsted and Blaxill (again) show that Autism had a start date, and it was after Eli Lilly invented and began selling a water soluble form of mercury in fungicide and vaccine preservation." So thanks to Ginger, and to Teresa Conrick, our fellow AOA editor who has made invaluable contributions to this ongoing work of identifying those original cases (we are up to 8 of 11!) and finding patterns that point to causation. You can read all about it in our book The Age of Autism, in our subsequent blog posts here, and now in the prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal. And you can count on more to come. We ended our commentary by writing: "This timing remains the essential clue to the disorder. Something happened to bring a new condition to the attention of child psychiatry." That component can be seen from the beginning -- 1938 -- and it can be seen today, in the damage mercury-laced vaccines, and other vaccine toxins, continue to do to children in the United States and around the world. We feel privileged to have wandered onto this amazingly fruitful pathway, and we intend to keep going until its full implications are recognized and the truth about the condition first observed in 1938 is fully and finally addressed. As Einstein said, "It's not that I'm smarter than anyone else, it's just that I stick with problems longer." Ditto.
Posted by Age of Autism at August 08, 2015 at 5:45 AM in Dan Olmsted, Dan Olmsted | Permalink | Comments (13)
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To Lisa- You are correct - There are many points of overlap between autism
and schizophrenia and you will notice that nearly every year another similarity
is found in scientific research. But I feel that the best similarity of all is
this: Chris Shade PhD, well known mercury toxicologist, has stated that there is
an institute for schizophrenic people in Canada that sends him samples for
mercury testing and in fact he has never tested a sample from a schizophrenic
person that was not "off the charts" for mercury levels.
The time has come to be sceptical of all labels . For instance, does someone
have "schizophrenia" or do they in reality have low dose chronic mercury
toxicity.
I would also point out that "schizophrenia" , like autism is something new. When
I was a teenager, in the 60's people were first talking about it and confusing
it with multiple personality disorders. by the time I was in my twenties,
psychologists were disputing if such a thing really existed as a mental illness
or was just an effect of bizarre parenting. Now, of course, as with autism, the
medical fraternity want us to believe that schizophrenia was always around and
is genetic.
Posted by: Cherry Misra | August 09, 2015 at 03:32 PM
Dan and Mark, congratulation! It is important for ideas of intelligent lay people to be brought up for discussion. I am glad to see JADD recognizing this.
Vaccine injury must be discussed. Efforts to silence and ignore parental concerns are malicious.
Autism has many causes. I will continue to insist that how the brain is affected must be the focus of scientific investigation. But now even some well-educated autism researchers are being conned by neurodiversity proponents, who have zero knowledge or interest in neurological disorders.
Lisa, schizophrenia and autism may well result from injury to the same
circuits of the brain:
(1) Auditory system dysfunction is evident in both conditions, hyperacusis and
disrupted language development in autism, auditory noise and "hallucinations" in
schizophrenia.
(2) Impaired level of consciousness (LOC) is prominent in both disorders.
Schizophrenia develops after a period of normal brain maturation and normal language development. Schizophrenia should also be compared with neurological problems that develop from problems like alcohol addiction or drug abuse.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | August 09, 2015 at 10:42 AM
Thanks Dan for the concise explanations, sorry I cant add to that in any constructive way, it seems a done deal.
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | August 09, 2015 at 06:29 AM
Good to hear of this publication of your research!
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | August 08, 2015 at 09:35 PM
Oh, I see; she did some work and wrote a paper in 1948 - on hallucinations -- most probably childhood schizo.
Posted by: Benedetta | August 08, 2015 at 09:34 PM
@ Mark and Dan,
As to your quoting Einstein: "As Einstein said, "It's not that I'm smarter than anyone else, it's just that I stick with problems longer." Ditto."
I would add that it was critical Einstein was 'open-minded' and not under the spell of current beliefs of his time. And, his thinking and espousing his theories did not stem from Government grants.
The vital difference between Einstein's era and today is the IMMENSE spending by both Pharma and Federal Govt (via tax dollars) to con the public and reinforce their own dogma; including gigantic spending via Mainstream Media to mislead and lie to a naive Public, on virtually every medical topic, including vaccines.
For instance: Every radio station I listen to now has countless 'public service blurbs' from the "Ad Council" - promoting every bullcrap thing in the world, particularly such as vaccines, etc. - another $billion or two of taxpayer money every year promoting Gov't bullcrap and control.
Einstein was peerless, but we never would have heard of him if he had worked at such as NIH or CDC - the most regimented Nazi-like Agencies that have ever existed in our modern world.
Posted by: david m burd | August 08, 2015 at 09:18 PM
Thank You Dan for explaining that further,never arcane; I have had so many answers or at least good theories to life long questions that I have sought and wondered about This is an almost Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole.
Thank you Researcher for the full name. I am going to go look her up. I wonder what she thought autism was?
Posted by: Benedetta | August 08, 2015 at 09:15 PM
Lets not forget the American Journal of Hygiene article reference in the Summary Judgement Motion in the Texas case, Counter v. Abbot Laboratory, See Exhibit 10 (Exhibit ELI-505) (emphasis added).
"By 1935, Lilly was selling merthiolate for topical antiseptic use, but significant efforts were ongoing to find other ways to sell the product, and by so doing to enhance Lilly’s profits. In fact, by the 1930’s, merthiolate had quickly become one of Lilly’s most important products. However, Lilly researchers remained under constant pressure to develop new products, or to expand markets for established products such as merthiolate.
While publicly adopting the "non-toxic" conclusions from the Jamieson and Powell 1930 publication, within the company it was recognized and understood that thimerosal/merthiolate remained a toxic substance that could have potentially harmful effects. However, promoting the product as "non-toxic by injection" was critical for promoting merthiolate use in vaccines as a preservative.
In 1935, Lilly received another article published in the American Journal of Hygiene entitled "The Bactericidal and Antiseptic Action of Preservatives Frequently Used in Biological Products, and the Effect of These Preservatives on the Potency of the Products." Exhibit 11 (Exhibit ELI-392S). The article noted Jamieson and Powell’s conclusions regarding non-toxicity, and commented that Jamieson and Powell had specifically promoted merthiolate as an efficient preservative in diphtheria toxoid vaccinations:
[Thimerosal] had been used on [Jamieson and Powell’s] recommendation, in this laboratory since 1931, in a dilution of 1-10,000 in diphtheria toxoid preparations. These preparations were found to be sterile when tested in bulk. The question therefore arose as to whether this preservative could be used with equal success in other types of biological products.
Exhibit 5 (Exhibit ELI-392S), at page 261.
Jamieson and Powell clearly recommended the use of merthiolate/thimerosal as a vaccine preservative. This was undoubtedly a way of expanding the market for merthiolate into a new arena, i.e. vaccines. This was done despite the knowledge that the product was toxic and despite knowledge that the Smithburn experimental studies were fatally (albeit secretly) flawed."
Posted by: Leslie Bradley | August 08, 2015 at 07:12 PM
Hi Benedetta, this quickly gets arcane, as i said, but the bottom line is there is no evidence that kanner was aware of anything that looked like autism before he saw donald t. in 1938 -- and no one else was, either. i didn't see any correspondence or even mention of asperger in kanner's files. as for despert, she was a freudian who in a series of letters after he published his paper in 1943 tried to get kanner to agree that he was describing children similar to ones she had already identified. he politely but firmly said no, he was describing a new syndrome. the claim that people with the syndrome kanner described were around before kanner saw donald t. just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. and that's an important observation which opens the way to making autism a new, environmentally triggered illness.
Posted by: Dan Olmsted | August 08, 2015 at 05:46 PM
Benedetta, it's Louise Despert: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25652602
Posted by: Researcher | August 08, 2015 at 05:09 PM
I have been doing a lot of my own reading lately that is as intriguing as it is confusing. My brother has schizophrenia, which he developed in his teens. After a couple of doctors later mistakenly diagnosed him with Aspergers, I became interested in the overlap between schizophrenia and autism. There is a lot of overlap. I also learned that children who exhibited autistic symptoms used to be diagnosed with childhood schizphrenia, but that at some point, the two were separated and seen as different disorders. I can only assume that this is what Kanner actually did -- he separated autism from childhood schizophrenia. Is that correct? If so, what is interesting now is that the research in the past decade genetic as well as physiological -- is now seen by some as beginning to merge the two disorders once again -- suggesting that the different presentations are simply a manifestation of when the disease strikes -- early childhood vs. adolescence or adulthood, and how much the brain has developed when it strikes. If this is the case -- that the two diseases are actually one and the same -- the implications would be far-reaching. Among the most intriguing questions in my mind is whether the children who are today's autistics would actually have been tomorrow's adolescent and adult schizophrenics -- whether the vaccines are merely bringing out the underlying illness much earlier. If this is the case, then the number of diagnosed schizophrenics could begin to go down as the number of diagnosed autistics go up. It also has huge implications for treatment of both disorders, with the most effective treatments being potential applicable to both Already the latest research suggests that to be the case. Both diseases respond well, generally, to GFCF diets. Both diseases appear to benefit from Naltrexone and NAC. Both diseases involve problems with methylation. Both diseases appear to begin in the gut.
Posted by: Lisa | August 08, 2015 at 12:35 PM
Congratulations making it onto pubmed and in a prestigious magazine -- Finally -- every drop of truth that gets through -- helps
Posted by: Benedetta | August 08, 2015 at 10:21 AM
Okay; Let me make sure I understand? Kanner had written letters back and forth to Han Asperger - who published his work in ? after WWII 1944 and Desert --
But who is Desert? Please give his full name,
so I can look him up --I have never heard of him?
Posted by: Benedetta | August 08, 2015 at 10:09 AM