What Experts Say

There are many qualified people presenting information to the public about Autism. I recently went to a presentation at the public library. The speaker was Kenneth F. Reeve PhD, BCBA, who is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Caldwell College. He is a certified behavior analyst who specializes in studying the behavior of Autistic children. He said that the MMR vaccine did not cause autism. He did say, "Dozens of studies have proven that there is no link between the vaccine and autism. I feel more strongly that certain diets can cause autism." Mary L. Hediger, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist in the National Institutes of Health and Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center's Division of Epidemiology, Statistics and Prevention Research agrees with Dr. Reeve. She says, "Parents of [Autistic children] may wish to include a dietitian in their children't health care team, to ensure that they receive a balanced diet." There have been other known discoveries of causes and have dismissed the vaccine cause. Pesticides in California farm fields have recently been linked to an increase in autistic children. Susan Kegley, senior scienties of Pesticide Action Netweork North America said, "This is one of the first papers that links the use of pesticides to incidence of [autism] and the findings are very strong. There aren't too many studies that have findings such as this." The risks are much higher for these Californian residents. Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health stated, "The good news is we've used a new research technology to generate hypotheses and possible associations, so we are making progress in the battle to get more information about the cause of autism." Andrew Zimmerman the director of medical research at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders in Baltimore found that certain genes have been noticed in children with autism. He said, "This finding [that children with autism share a variation on chromosome 16] really nails it." He stated that researchers triple-checked their work and also found the same genetic anomalyh in people checked in hospitals in Boston and even Iceland. Eric Fombonne, an autism researcher who is the head of the department of psychiatry at Montreal Children's Hospital hopes the new evidence will enrcourage all parents to get their children vaccinated. He says, "I think the situation will change dramatically in the next few years, as we discover more genes." There are tons of experienced officials doing research to find answers to this complex illness.