Rates of autism have escalated dramatically.

July 21, 2000 -- Many frustrations go into caring for an autistic child. Chief among them, for parents -- as well as support groups and scientists who study the disorder -- is the frustration of not knowing the cause. Their frustration is compounded by a statistical study, conducted earlier this year, that reported that the incidence of autism has increased at least 20-fold in the last decade.

"[T]he rates of autism have escalated dramatically. ... [W]hat used to be considered a rare disorder has become a near epidemic," Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee said during hearings on the issue in April.

"If we want to find a cure, we must first look to the cause," Burton added. "We must do this before our health and education systems are bankrupted and before more of our nations' children are locked inside themselves with this disease."

Autism is a brain disorder that affects physical, social and language skills. The syndrome usually appears in children before they reach age 3 and is characterized by an inability to socialize and a tendency to engage in constantly repeated actions or comments. It was first diagnosed in 1943 to describe children who appeared to be excessively withdrawn and preoccupied.

One new theory on autism's mysterious cause from Dr. Andrew Wakefield, with the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, is receiving a lot of media attention. In a study he published in the February 1998 issue of the British medical journal Lancet, Wakefield concluded that a common vaccine prescribed to infants by thousands of doctors around the world may be the source of the growing autism problem. According to Wakefield, the MMR vaccine -- for measles, mumps and rubella -- might cause a bowel disease in some infants that in turn causes autism. The new theory has caught on rapidly among parents of autistic children.

But mainstream medical organizations and leaders in the field of immunization argue that there is no convincing evidence to support the theory. "There have not been solid studies," says autism expert Patricia Kurtz, executive director of Princeton University's Child Development Institute. Kurtz is not surprised that so many parents have embraced the new theory and says, "This is what happens when you have a catastrophic disease that we don't know the ideology of. We want to know, but there is no quick cure."

At the House hearing on the issue, parents of autistic children testified that normal development by their children was suddenly halted and reversed immediately after being vaccinated. However, doctors know that banning the vaccine is not a feasible approach.

They note that measles is a serious virus that can lead to death. Measles cases in the United States have dropped 98 percent since the vaccine was introduced in 1963. But between 1989 and 1991, measles saw a slight resurgence and struck 55,622 people, mostly children younger than 5, causing more than 11,000 hospitalizations and 125 deaths.

Wakefield, however, is not anti-vaccine. He testified before the committee saying, "If, following thorough independent scientific investigation, it emerges that autistic enterocolitis and other related disorders are causally related to a compound influence of the component viruses of MMR, whether these viruses have been encountered naturally or in the vaccine, then through judicious use of the vaccines, one may have a means for preventing the disease." Wakefield goes on to suggest spacing the single vaccines over the course of several days instead of applying all three at once may be enough to reduce the risk.

Other medical researchers are exploring different explanations for the various forms of autism. Current research links autism to biological or neurological differences in the brain. In many families there appears to be a pattern of autism or related disabilities -- suggesting a genetic basis to the disorder -- though no gene has been directly linked to autism. Most researchers believe the genetic basis to be very complex, probably involving several genes in combination.

But Dr. Michael Goldberg, a pediatrician on the clinical teaching staff at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and president of the Neuro-Immune Dysfunction Syndromes Research Institute, said in March when announcing the 20-fold increase in autism that the culprit must be more than genetics.

"If autism were purely behavioral or genetic, we would not be witnessing this dramatic rise in the number of cases, particularly those children that experience a period of normal development prior to the emergence of symptoms," he said. "It is scientifically impossible to have an epidemic of a developmental or genetic disorder of any type. Clearly, something is very wrong here."

Still No Evidence for Cause	Vaccine At Fault