If you're gonna vote in the poll, please read the quote in the body of the diary, it's worth it.
Let's get this straight: I believe in Global Warming, ok?
I also believe that there are politics in science about what gets studied and published and then only those things become part of what becomes the medical canon.
Now, I realize that there is a large contingency here who believes that anyone who considers the slightest possibility that science may at some point demonstrate a connection between vaccinations and Autism is entirely off her rocker - so be it. I've been called crazy before, and I will be again (my grandmother told me I was mean enough and ugly enough to not be bothered by name-calling).
Some of you know I have some very strange diseases which have caused some pretty difficult neurological situations with dizziness and confusion. Some of you know that after 5 years of ruling out numerous other health situations, the 24th doctor I saw recognized signs of Lyme disease and I had a test result which meets the CDC definition of having the disease (and I'll just leave all those politics aside for the time being). I got a Chronic Fatigue (CFS) diagnosis along the way and learned that I have high counts of HHV-6 and Epstein Barr Virus.
Now comes an announcement of a 'new' virus which may be found in the mix of folks like me. My first news of XMRV virus this week came from friends who share some of the issues I've got.
The spectrum of neuro-immune diseases including: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), Atypical MS, Fibromyalgia and Gulf War Syndrome, share common abnormalities in the innate immune response inc, which result in chronic immune activation and immune deficiency.
We have detected the retroviral infection XMRV is greater than 95% of the more than 200 ME/CFS, Fibromylagia, Atypical MS patients tested. The current working hypothesis is that XMRV infection of B, T, NK and other cells of the innate immune response causes the chronic inflammation and immune deficiency resulting in an inability to mount an effective immune response to opportunistic infections. (See XMRV paper in Science Magazine published this week.)
This discovery opens an entire new avenue of Neuro-Immune Disease related research and our discovery has brought to this field world-renown immunologists and retrovirologists building our team of collaborators to translate our discoveries into new treatments as soon as possible.
Because retroviruses are known to cause inflammatory diseases, neurological disease immune deficiency and cancer the discovery of XMRV has far reaching implications for the prevention and treatment of not only lymphoma, one of the potentially devastating complications of ME/CFS but prostate cancer and perhaps many others.
Neon Vincent seems to be the only Kossack who has diaried about it on dKos so far: Overnight News Digest
So, we've established that I'm crazy and sick or whatever. Now I'm gonna piss some folks off, so hold your hat. This was quoted on HuffPo: Is Autism Associated with A Viral Infection?
According to Dr. Mikovits, XMRV (which admittedly sounds like a satellite radio system for your Winnebago) can lie dormant in people, until it is "turned on or off" by other factors, such as stress hormones like cortisol, or in response to the presence of inflammatory "cytokines," protein molecules secreted by immune cells to help regulate the immune system.
And then Dr. Mikovits dropped a bombshell that is sure to spark controversy.
"On that note, if I might speculate a little bit," she said, "This might even explain why vaccines would lead to autism in some children, because these viruses live and divide and grow in lymphocytes -- the immune response cells, the B and the T cells. So when you give a vaccine, you send your B and T cells in your immune system into overdrive. That's its job. Well, if you are harboring one virus, and you replicate it a whole bunch, you've now broken the balance between the immune response and the virus. So you have had the underlying virus, and then amplified it with that vaccine, and then set off the disease, such that your immune system could no longer control other infections, and created an immune deficiency."
So there you have it - a possible explanation of regressive autism in a significant number of cases associated with immune system deregulation triggered by vaccination.
Ok, guys, flame away - I need to go make dinner. Emphasis is mine in both cases above. Think whatever you want - I just want to know how to get tested and to get my insurance company to cough up dough for HIV drugs to treat this thing if I've got it because I'd like my freakin' life back, please.