Jenny, Jenny, Jenny...

Oh Jenny McCarthy, I know you mean well. I know your heart is in the right place....but.

And it's a big but. I would hazard to guess that 95% of US parents, when told their child has Autism, heads straight for Google. I know we did - we researched and read and researched and read until we couldn't read any more. We wore out keyboards, I kid you not. We wanted to know, WHAT, HOW, WHO caused our beautiful little boy to have this terrible affliction.

We heard lots of theories about Autism, but the two that seemed to keep coming up over and over were that Autism is caused by Thimerosal, a mercury (50%) based compound that was once used as a stabilizer in vaccines (and many other products), and/or was caused by or exasperated by Gluten.

I've always lived my life by the "everything happens for a reason" perspective, so it was during all of this researching and reading that I finally understood something about myself that I hadn't been able to figure out - why I had spent 4.5 years in college studying Molecular Biology and another 3 years working in research before I finally called it quits and went into business for myself. I mean I enjoyed research, and I did some good work while I was still in that life, but the fact was it was not my passion, and I had always known that. I could never really figure out what drove me to learn it - it's not exactly the easiest subject to learn - but when I found myself submersed in research abstracts and science periodicals studying Thimerosal and the effect of Gluten on the human body, I had one of those AHA moments! This was something I knew something about, and I was really anxious to discover how so many parents had come to the conclusion that vaccines were the culprit. Bring on the science!

Well, I hate to tell you this Jenny (and all the other band wagoners) but as of today, there is absolutely no factual scientific evidence to support that vaccines in any way contribute to Autism. And here's another one especially for you Jenny: your son is around the same age as mine. Jake was born in 2001 and had the "suspect" vaccines in 2002. But you you know what? They had already started to discontinued the use of the mercury compound Thimerosal in 1997 as part of the FDA Modernization act of 1997. Most vaccinations today do not contain Thimerosal at all, and the ones that do have such ridiculously low amounts (micro grams and lower) that my fillings would be doing more damage then these vaccines. (They've pretty much phased out mercury in fillings as well, but I've still got some real old ones in there!)

As for Gluten, there are some correlations showing that some autistic children when put on a gluten free diet show some signs of improvement, NOT CURE, but improvement - but as we all know, correlation does not equal causation. My son has gone through some amazing changes over the past five years, and during that time he's also started wearing under pants. AHA! Under pants cure Autism! Well...not so much.

I, as well as anyone, understand the intense desire to find out what causes our children's ailments, and I personally have been caught up in that all consuming desire to find someone, ANYONE to "blame" for Jake's Autism. But the fact is that while it may bring a sense of relief to point a finger and say AHA! Thimerosal! and AHA! Gluten!, the really hard truth is - and I'm sorry, because I know it's painful to hear - but the fact of the matter is that all of those claims are based pretty much solely on junk science and personal anecdotes.

I am thrilled for Jenny MacCarthy that her son showed great improvement after a change in his diet. Unfortunately for my son - and thousands of other kids with Autism - becoming gluten free had absolutely no effect what so ever, and the process the family and the child has to go through to become gluten free is painful and arduous. (Although I can imagine it would have been much easier for us if we had an in-house dietitian and gourmet cook on staff!)

Jake, for example, is very food taste/texture intolerant. He cannot eat a vegetable or most fruits. He will gag as soon as they go in his mouth and he will then immediatly throw up. His main diet staples are corn dogs, toast, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and plain cheese burgers, with the occasional grilled cheese or quessadila thrown in (oh, and he loves brownies). He is so sensitive to taste, that if you give him a different brand of corn dog, he cannot eat it. (And yes, we're sure he's not just seeing that the box is different. I was a research scientist, I know how to do a blind test) So as you can see, just about every thing that he eats has gluten in it, and making the change to gluten free products (they really do have gluten free corn dogs! And waffles!) was more than a little painful.

So to Jenny MacCarthy - thank you so much for doing your part to bring Autism back into the minds of the general public, you've just made it a lot easier for researchers to raise funds - but I wish you would have done a little more research before you labeled a "cause" to this disorder.

And to all of my wonderful, loving, caring friends and family who I couldn't do any of this without - you can stop sending me links to Jenny's interviews and articles and book now. I've done my homework, and I have a little different reading list. :-)