To the Editor:
The article by Sophie Hagen in Thursday’s Beacon entitled “Enzyme deficiency target of autism study” is excellent and well-researched, there is, however, another side to this story.
The most probable cause of autism, the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, rubella), has been associated with cognitive as well as gastrointestinal problems of children with autism. This is key. Many parents have witnessed their previously healthy children change, have digestive difficulties and become withdrawn following the first dose of the MMR vaccine at around 12-15 months. The damage, for the most part, is irreversible.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British pediatric gastroenterologist, along with Prof. John Walker-Smith were the first to connect the symptoms of bowel disorder with side effects of the MMR vaccine in their own independent studies. They wrote a research paper for the international medical journal, The Lancet, which was published in 1998, and for which they paid dearly in career and reputation. After a farcical review conducted by the British General Medical Council regulatory board, they were prevented from practicing medicine in the UK. Dr. Wakefield’s co-author, Prof. John Walker-Smith has since been exonerated. Dr. Wakefield did not have the financial resources to fight the ruling, but a reasonable person would assume that he is as innocent as Prof. Walker-Smith of any research fraud. He now lives and practices in Texas and where he has filed his own lawsuit against The Lancet.
It should be noted that The Lancet had quite good financial connections with Merck, the maker of the MMR vaccine. Merck had a lot at stake with The Lancet article: it makes over 13 different vaccines for children. It had been a major mistake for The Lancet to have originally published Dr. Wakefield’s and Prof. Walker-Smith’s paper in the first place. Articles later appeared in The Lancet claiming fraud and this is when the troubles began.
In 2014, Dr. William Thompson, a research scientist with the CDC became a whistleblower when he released information in which the CDC had covered up research data linking autism with the MMR vaccine. It should also be noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has become a lap dog for Big Pharma and has lost a great deal of, to put it charitably, credibility.
Since 1989, when Merck Sharp and Dohme was allowed to increase the amount of mercury (a neurotoxin) in the preservative, thimerosal, cases of autism have skyrocketed 120 percent. There is no known cure at this time.
I wish Curemark and their scientists the greatest success in their research trials concerning enzyme deficiencies and in discovering a therapy to help reverse the symptoms of autism. I also encouraged parents to do their own research regarding vaccinations for their children, especially the MMR and HVP vaccinations and to treat with a great degree of skepticism the claims of the pharmaceutical corporations, who it seems these days, have an army of writers, doctors, scientists and others all in their back pocket.

Jim Morgan
Warwick