Several reports, commissioned over the years by mining companies and Gauteng environmental authorities have highlighted the contaminated state of the Leeuwspruit, which drains the south shaft area of the South Deep mine, and ultimately flows into the Vaal River.

Farmers in Westonaria grow crops, farm fruit, grow flowers and pursue organic farming, run dairies and graze livestock, suing the streams downstream of mines to irrigate their land.

Communities settle along the streams and abstract the water for drinking and domestic purposes and their livestock drink from streams on properties where they graze.

A water management system report concludes the total pollution load of the Leeuwspruit downstream from the South Deep mine is greater than the combined total of the actual point discharges from the mine, indicating diffuse sources, such as the tailings dam, may be contributing to the loads of the pollution.

In general, reports show, the water being discharged from mines like South Deep to the Leeuwspruit and within it do not meet quality guidelines specified uses.

Comparison of the Leeuwspruit water quality upstream and downstream indicates possible contamination from tailings dam seepage, with reports highlighting sulphate, manganese and uranium as the main parameters of concern.

One report, entitled the Impact of South Deep Gold Mine on the Water Quality of the Borehole of Portion 48 of the Farm Kalbasfontein – Piet Rheeder’s farm – shows the discharges from two mines run by South Deep and Firs Uranium Corporation are playing a role in the deteriorated state of these waters.

His borehole water is acidic, with sulphate levels, electrical conductivity, manganese and magnesium levels elevated.

The outcome of a cost apportionment, which was carried out in 2001, determined that South Deep mine contributed 43 percent of the contaminant load to the stream from 1986 to 2001.

The electrical conductivity is an indicator of the total amount of inorganic salts that is dissolved in a water sample.

“It produces negative effects on plumbing and appliances when the water is heated, such as increased corrosion and scaling”, according to the report.

The magnesium concentrations, within the range the borehole water falls, will cause diarrhoea in sensitive users, it says. – Sheree Bega. Saturday Star. October 30, 2010.

• Small particles are carried by the inhaled air stream all the way into the alveoli. Here the particles can remain for periods from weeks up to years depending on their solubility.
• Highly insoluble uranium compounds may remain in the alveoli, whereas soluble uranium compounds may dissolve and pass across the alveolar membranes into the bloodstream, where they may exert systemic toxic effects.
• In some cases, insoluble particles are absorbed into the body from the alveoli byphagocytosis into the associated lymph nodes.
• “Insoluble” particles may reside in the lungs for years, causing chronic radiotoxicity to be expressed in the alveoli.

(Reference: Water Research Commission Report 12/1/1/2006 entitled “An Assessment of Sources,Pathways, Mechanisms and Risks of Current and Potential Future Pollution of Water and Sediments in Gold-Mining Areas of the Wonderfonteinspruit Catchment.” Report, WRC, H Coetzee et al,  Council forGeosience. 2004. Report No 1214/1/06)

Long-Term Effects Of Mining – Environmental and Water Source Degredation

• Even though a large number of the world’s rivers are contaminated by heavy metals released from present day and historic mining operations, relatively little is known about the effects on communities that live beside and rely on these rivers for food and livelihood. One of the complications is that the toxicity of many metals is a function of such conditions as redox, pH and water hardness.
• Elevated salts and metals can also negatively affect the health of animals in many different ways, depending on the species, age, sensitivity, general health and diet of the consumer, among other factors.
• Some metals, when consumed in excess, can affect organs and the central nervous system, cause reproductive failure or birth defects, and act as cofactors in many other diseases.
• Certain receptors may be more sensitive than others, depending upon species, age, sex, season, body mass, metabolic rate, general health, diet, behaviour, etc, with younger animals and children being generally more at risk than adults under the same conditions of exposure (WHO).
• The potential for trans-generational (genetic) impacts of bioaccumulated metals and NORMs (Naturally Occurring Radiactive Materials) on biota exposed above certain thresh-holds.
• The probability that such latent impacts will only be identified and assessed over the next 100 to 500 years.

(Reference: EIA Report and EMP for AngloGold Ashanti’s West Wits Operations. 2009.)

Radioactivity sign at Acid Mine Drainage site on West-Rand

Over the past 6 years I have seen patients in several countries who have been tested for heavy metal toxicity.  A recent study in Punjab, India, revealed excessively high levels of uranium and other toxic metals in children in the Baba Farid Centre for Special Children, in Faridkot, Punjab.  Except for the 100+ children in Punjab whose hair analyses exceeded reference ranges for hair, another 37 patients in 5 other countries yielded test results that exceeded the reference ranges for uranium, for the respective tests. To date the source of the uranium is yet to be determined, but there are strong pointers to the thermal power plants, which produce high amounts of fly-ash, causing acid water to leech into the aquifer, disrupting the earth’s crust in rock formations in the soil of Punjab.

Outside India, the country with the next highest number of individuals exceeding the references ranges for uranium in hair, baseline urine samples and post-DMSA chelation samples was South Africa – showing past and chronic exposure. I counted 17 patients in South Africa with excessive uranium levels, 6 of whom have a diagnosis of autism (i.e. 35%). 4 Neuro-typical adults also had excessive uranium – all four had significant health challenges. 4 Children with severe learning disabilities and 3 with neurological damage (blind, oral apraxia, brain injury due to hypoxia) also had excessive uranium levels.  The source of the high uranium in South Africa is not hard to determine – South Africa has a legacy of unregulated mining dating back 120 years, resulting in high levels of acid mine drainage and radionuclides which are finding their way into the environment at an alarming rate.

In Ireland 6 patients showed excessive uranium – of these 6 individuals, 3 have a diagnosis of autism (50%, one with significant Learning disabilities and 2 are neuro-typical adults with health challenges.  My recent visit to Ireland confronted me with the shocking discovery that Europe’s largest zinc mine can be found in the Midlands of the Republic, Lisheen, and not more than 7 kilometers from Lisheen, is the lead mine of Galmoy.  Both of these mines have disturbed the earth’s crust and leech uranium rich water into the aquifer.  Large parts of  Ireland are plagued with high levels of Radon (Radon is a radioactive gas, the progeny of uranium) exceeding the safety limit by more than 20% (Radiological Protection Unit of Ireland, 2002).

Ireland - Radon map

Map Legend

Estimated percentage of homes above the Reference Level

> 20%  10% – 20%  5% – 10%  1% – 5%  < 1%

Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, had 9 patients which excessive uranium levels. 7 of these have a diagnosis of autism (77%), 2 are neuro-typical adults with health challenges and one is both autistic and has an inborn error of metabolism (genetic abnormality).

In Botswana 2 patients had excessive levels of uranium – one an LD child and one a neuro-typical adult.

In South Korea 3 patients from one family in Daejeon tested high in uranium – one neuro-typical teenager, one neuro-typical adult and one teenager with psychiatric challenges due to Tamiflu medication during a bout of swine flu.

Excessive uranium was most commonly found in mineral hair test results (27 tests  – 55% – some patients were tested repeatedly over several years). The Post DMSA chelation urine test yielded the next highest excessive uranium results (13/49) and the baseline urine samples least often showed excessive uranium (9/49).

It would seem, from my experience with these 137 patients in 6 countries, that hair mineral tests are the most valuable measure to detect past and chronic exposure to excessive uranium. Though DMSA didn’t effectively chelate barium, cadmium, manganese or uranium in the Indian study, it chelated uranium on 13 of the 49 tests done across the population in South Africa, Ireland, Bahrain, Botswana and South Korea (26.5%).

Along with uranium, aluminium, antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, bismuth, cesium, mercury, palladium, platinum, nickel, lead, silver, thallium, tin, titanium, tungsten and zirconium were successfully chelated by means of DMSA. Arsenic, Lead, Mercury, Nickel and Palladium were by far the most successfully chelated toxic metals by means of DMSA across all 47 tests.

The mutagenic effects of uranium and its progeny are firmly documented in scientific literature.

My team and I were the field workers who initiated the study in India and I am the person who has been responsible for both the collection of the hair as well as urine samples from this project over a period of 14 months in the project in Faridkot, Punjab.    I have extensive knowledge about the project where we collected the samples and know the geography of the region fairly well. 

Although a final report on this study is about to be published by Micro Trace Minerals’ Dr. Eleanore Blaurock-Busch (the laboratory who donated their time and effort to analyze the samples) - I wish to comment on some of the points offered as fact in your Journal Vol. 34, No. 2, 2009, 102-5⁽ⁱ⁾, which are incorrect and foster confusion or even apathy with regards to the presence of high levels of uranium found in the damaged children of Faridkot.

What I wish to comment on is that the children’s collective hair samples showed not only high uranium, but also high levels of virtually every other toxic metal as well as significantly disturbed mineral and trace element levels. 

Out of 143 hair samples taken the following trends emerged:

• 109/143 children high in aluminium in hair (implicated in seizure activity, ataxia, speech disorders, neuro-fibrillary tangles)
•   14/143 children high in cadmium in hair (strongly implicated in kidney damage)
•   70/143 children high in lead in hair (implicated in cognitive impairment)
•   80/143 children high manganese in hair (implicated in movement disorders, cardiovascular function as well as gastrointestinal tract, kidney, liver, skin and blood and prostrate)
•   73/143 children high magnesium in hair (disturbed magnesium!)
•   27/143 children high in silver (highly oxidative metal)
•   84/143 children high in strontium in hair (associated with tooth decay in humans and rickets in animals, bone deformity in pigs and posterior paralysis)
•     9/143 children high in tin in hair (associated with growth disturbances, reduced hemoglobin in animals; it influences the metabolism of several other minerals; influence on the cytochrome P450 mediated drug metabolism pathway)
•  113/143 children high in uranium in hair (associated with kidney damage due to chemical toxicity, lung cancer due to radiation by its progeny and affects reproduction and the developing fetus)⁽ⁱⁱ⁾.

Your statement under the heading “High levels of Uranium found in Faridkot children” on page 103-5 reads: ‘Of the 149 children studied, 53 showed more traces of uranium’ is disturbing. 

May I ask:  “More than what?”

This author’s statement suggests that a mere 35% of the children sampled had elevated levels of uranium.  This is not true:   In actual fact a total of 143 samples of hair were taken of children between the ages of 5 and 12 years and of these 143 children, 113 of the children had elevated levels of uranium in their hair. 

The article uses the phrase “more traces”, but in some cases the level of uranium in specific children was more than 44 times higher than the reference range – that can hardly be depicted as a mere “trace” of uranium. 

On average the level was 2 – 8 times higher than the reference range for uranium in hair in the general population.  These levels correspond closely to what Sengupta and Mandal (2005)⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ reported with regards to the contamination of ground water because of thermal plant fly-ash in Kolaghat in West Bengal, when they stated: “The dose, emitted from the ash pond to the surrounding (area) is about three times higher than the world average of 51 nGy-1”.

The number of 113 children with elevated levels of uranium in that one Centre for Disabled Children in Faridkot constitutes no less than 79% of that specific population of very ill, deformed and physically as well as mentally disabled children we sampled.

I am deeply concerned about the under-reporting of these facts. I hereby request that a prestigious journal like yours records the necessary corrections – especially as such reporting on critical facts will have an impact on the lives of children. 

As it is currently reported it leaves much room for governmental departments and industry to skirt around the issue of high uranium in this population of children and rather than spur them to action it has the potential to lull them into a false sense of security.  Some have even denied in the press that the exceptionally high levels of metals found in these children could be a contributing factor to their disabilities.

In this study, 27/113 children, who showed high uranium levels in their hair samples, live in the city of Bathinda, where the Guru Nanak Dev and Lehra Mohabbat Thermal Power Plants are.  These thermal plants produce high quantities of fly-ash from the burning of coal.  31% (almost a third) of the children tested (who are afflicted with the most severe neurological and cognitive conditions) come directly from a radius of less than 15 kms of this power plant.  More than 70% of India’s electricity generation is produced by coal-based thermal power plants^(iv).  The environmental impact of the coal industry and thermal power plants in Punjab can and should not be minimized or under-estimated. 

Mishra^(v) (2004) points out: “the problems for the future are formidable from ecological, radio-ecological and pollution viewpoints.”

 Singh, Kumar and Kumar^(vi) reported on how combustion of coal frees nearly every naturally occurring element, including radio-active isotopes, into the biosphere, mainly because of the high coal-ash load generated during such combustion processes (between 55 – 60%) (Mishra^(vii), 2004).  Singh et al^(viii) (2004) pointed out how the accumulated fly-ash load contaminated ground and surface water. 

Punjab is irrigated by an elaborate network of canals and waterways staring up in Himachal Pradesh in the Himalaya Mountain range at the Bhakra and Nangal Dams which feed the Nangal Hydel Channel.  Each of these has the capacity to carry the element-dense waters from village to village, to towns and cities many kilometers away from a coal-fired power plant. 

In a study done at the Borako Thermal Power Station by Singh et al.^(ix) (2004) it was found that the leaching study of coal ashes over a 300 day period showed that especially Ca, Na, K, Fe, Pb and Cd as well as other dissolved ions leached at significant concentration levels.

Mukherjee & Zevenhoven^(x) quantified the fly-ash load across the Indian subcontinent and stated that as much as 80 – 90 million tons of fly ashes are generated from the 85 existing coal-based thermal plants across India.  Of particular interest is that coal-ash also contains Mercury, which is highly toxic to all life – humans as well as aquatic fauna.  These authors point out that India has become synonymous with being a “dumping ground for mercury”.  Other literature reviews indicate that mercury from fly-ashes is negligible to zero, but that the wet and dry deposition of Hg from the flue gases (i.e. living within the “stack shadow”, is problematic^(xi) ,^(xii).  Hence children and their families who live in and around Bathinda are much more at risk from mercury than those children whose families don’t.

A study of the significant radioactive contamination of soil around coal-fired thermal power plants by Papp et al^(xiii) confirmed that there was significant radioactive contamination of soil around a coal-fired thermal power plant in Hungary.  They pointed out that the contamination was a direct result of fly-ash fallout.  They state: “Inside the town are 4.7 times higher, on average, (235U and 226Ra )… in the top (0-5cm depth) layer of soil in public areas…. Than those in the uncontaminated deeper layers, which means there is about 108Bq kg(-1) surplus activity concentration above the geological background.”

These carefully researched findings are in sharp contrast to the off-the-cuff statements made by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to the media that the children who were deformed in Faridkot and surroundings were such because of genetic reasons and that they were not suffering from birth defects due to uranium toxicity/radiation, after a brief, one-day visit to Faridkot, and the taking of a small number of samples in the Centre. 

 The Tribune News Service^(xiv) reported in an article entitled “Experts reject report on uranium traces” and reiterated that the level of uranium detected in their sampling of water, soil, vegetation and the hair of children “was not alarming”. 

Dr. Surinder Singh^(xv), Professor, Department of Physics, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, emphatically stated that BARC’s comments to the press were deceiving as they never collected samples from across the state and intimating that the water didn’t have high uranium levels, was a direct attempt at subterfuge and even a deliberate lie. 

Several studies done by this university since 2005 have indicated that ground water levels in this region exceed WHO standards of 15 micrograms per litre^(xvi).  Some levels reported were as high as 224 micrograms per litre.  Dr. Singh^(xvii) (2009) further elaborated by saying: “The state government had got samples tested for uranium in Chandigarh too and high levels of uranium were detected.  There are no fixed limits for  uranium in soil and air as these have natural uranium, but high levels in water affects crops too.  I feel the BARC report is an eyewash.”

In addition to these comments, suggesting that it is in the interest of BARC and the Indian government to cover up the extent to which the power plants are causing damage to the bio-sphere and that they have deliberately lied to the public regarding the extent of the contamination, Dr GS Dhillon^(xviii), former Chief Engineer, Irrigation Department and Director, Irrigation Research Institute, Amritsar, for 14 years, stressed that high uranium in water was due to fly ash from the two thermal power plants in Bathinda and Lehra Mohabbat.  “Coal has natural uranium and when burnt it vaporizes and gets deposited on fly ash from thermal plants.  A pond is used to extract uranium from fly ash.  China is doing it.  The two ponds at the thermal plants are not controlled properly, it seems. So uranium concentration here is high”.

Where a similar situation raised concern in Bengal^(xix), with three power plants resulting in high concentrations of uranium in the area, the government of Bengal in East India shut down the three power plants till a way was ultimately found to control uranium levels.

Mandal and Sengupta^(xx) (Department of Geology and GeoPhysics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India), discussed the radionuclide and trace element contamination around Kolaghat Thermal Power Stationin West Bengal and its environmental implications saying: “Trace element analysis reveals that toxic elements (Pb, Cu, Ni, Fe, As) are sufficiently enriched in pond ash than their crustal abundances, and preferably in the lighter size fractions.  Radionuclides (U, Th) also show enrichment of 3 – 5 times in coal ash compared to their crustal average and are much higher than in the pond ashes of other thermal plants in India.” 

Of interest is that chemical analysis of the water sampled from tubewells near the ash ponds corresponded quite closely to those samples taken in the Bathinda district some 4 – 5 years ago^(xxi), and showed high concentrations of trace elements (Al, Li, Ni, Fe, As, Zn, B, Ag, Sb, Co, Si, Mo, Ba, Rb, Se, Ph, V, Cr, Cu, Cd, Mn, Sr) – most of these levels were also elevated in the children from whom we took hair (2008) or baseline urine samples (2009).  Sengupta and Mandal^(xxii) state that the distribution of these elements is mainly controlled by the ash deposited in the area.  Certain elements were specifically elevated in the tubewell water near the ash pond, implying significant imput from the ashpile (Al, Li, As, Zn, Ag, Sb, Si, Mo, Be, Rb, Se and Pb).

A key statement from their report “Research Communications”^(xxiii) (2005) underscores the danger thermal plants pose to natural water sources: “The enrichment of some elements (Al, Fe, As and Mn) above WHO guidelines for drinking water denotes significant contamination of the groundwater from the toxic elements leached from the ash pile”. All ground water in the region around thermal power plants, where the fly-ash ponds are not properly controlled are vulnerable to metal contamination due to waste disposal and leachate percolation^(xxiv);^(xxv).

Sad to say, in Punjab the exact opposite seems to be happening – instead of the Punjabi government acting on the concerns by transparently investigating the suspected sources of contamination and by assisting the overwhelmed community of parents, children and health workers, the government and statutory bodies have closed ranks and the Centre in Faridkot was warned that it did not have a remit to drive such research.  They were threatened with closure if they persisted in speaking to the media – their only recourse.

In addition to this the Indian and regional governments are making no efforts to stop the contamination of the bio-sphere and particularly of vulnerable children and pregnant woman within a radius of 100 km of the Thermal Power Plants Bathinda.  Hence we find higher levels of uranium than in the rest of the population in children from villages, cities and towns surrounding thermal power plants across the region.

Here are some more figures which might be revealing: 

• Faridkot, where 12 of the 113 children are from and were high uranium in hair were sampled,  is a mere 55.0424 km from Bathinda.  Other towns with affected children within a small radius of Bathinda are
• Malaut – 42.8380 km (4 children);
• Kotkapura, where 5 children were sampled is only 42.6095 km from Bathinda;
• Ferozpur (6 children with high uranium) is 84.3920 km away from Bathinda; Abohar (5 children) is 71.2269 km away.
• High levels of uranium in the hair of disabled children were also found in Patiala, Sangrur, Ludhiana, Mandi, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Tarn Taran in Punjab.

Faridkot, where the initial sampling of hair was done in 2008, finds itself in the unenviable position to be sandwiched between no less than 4 thermal plants to the north west of it in Pakistan (less than 100 km away) and a further 3 thermal plants to the south east and east of it (between 50 and 180 km away).

The Malwa-belt that forms the buffer between Pakistan and Punjab is said to have significant increases in cancer in recent years^(xxvi). 

Although experts in Punjab are still debating why there is such a marked increase in the number of cancer cases, Dr. JS Thakur^(xxvii) (WHO’s Non-Communicable Diseases Department) who reported damage to the people of Punjab’s DNA linked to cancer, loosely attributed the rise in cancer to the chemical toxicity of the local waters.

In writing to you I trust that your Journal will help to correct incorrect perceptions pertaining to uranium, as scientific investigation into coal-fired power plants and their detrimental environmental role, is more than clear.  Assisting in the manner is particularly crucial as The Journal of Medical Physics publishes at that crucial junction between medicine and physics. 
Children are failing to thrive in India.  Children have growth defects, are medically ill, epileptic, mentally retarded or their movements and speech are severely disordered.  I firmly believe, based on evidence provided above, that toxicity in the water is playing a critical role in the aetiology of their diseases – clearly not only uranium, but especially  uranium as it was detected in such high quantities in so many of the children randomly sampled. 
Finding high uranium levels in the children has apparently unmasked the key culprit – the thermal power plants.  Your fair and full reporting of this matter can cast a forceful light onto the problem and we trust that as you do, policy makers, politicians and industry will receive a wake-up call.  This affects us all – not just the most vulnerable among us – many of the policy makers in government and CEO’s of industry who run a government or a region’s economy, live in that region too, and they and their families are as much at risk as the sick and deformed children of Faridkot’s Baba Farid Centres for Special Children – uranium is most certainly not a respecter of persons.
Please assist us in ensuring that a correction is published and that this story gains the publicity and peer review it deserves.

References

“We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic and myth.” Oliver Sacks: Awakenings, 1990¹

In preparing to write this article I reflected on what it means to try and find a “cure” for something as debilitating/devastating as a (terminal) disease, Parkinson’s, Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Senile Dementia, Gulf War Syndrome, Autism – the list seems endless. “Cure” in Standard English would mean to heal, treat, make well, restore to health or alleviate. In this article, however, I wish to explore deeper and more profound meanings of the word to cure.

Lexicon

The linguistic root of the word “cure”:

in Latin, meant to cure, or take care of, or to prepare.
In Welsh, the word means a blow or stroke, affliction, to beat, throb, strike, to trouble or vex, to pine or waste away, and
in the French, “curer”, means to cleanse.
In Italian the root means to care, give diligence, to cure, attend, protect (also to value or esteem).
Spanish is very workman-like in its approach to meaning: “cura, curar, curiso” means to cure, a remedy, guardianship, to administer medicines, to salt (as meat), to season (as timber), to bleach thread or linen (implying a chemical process), but it also connects with overtones of psycho-aesthetics – meaning curious, neat, clean, handsome, fine and careful.

What an interesting concoction of meanings the word conjures up! It opened up new vistas as to the role of the physician or therapist, and as to what is implied when one is to cure someone of an affliction, disease or illness.

Noah Webster² sums it up in drastic and panoramic terms: “The radical sense of this word is, to strain, stretch, extend, which gives the sense of healing, that is, making strong, and of care – superintendence. But the Welsh has the sense of driving, a modified application of extending, and this gives a sense of separation and purification.”

Here are the meanings he lists in his dictionary:

CURE: To heal, as a person diseased or a wounded limb, to restore to health, as the body, or to soundness, as a limb.

A healing, the act of healing, restoration to health from disease, and to soundness from a wound. We say medicine can effect a cure.

Remedy for disease, restorative; that which heals.

To subdue, remove, destroy or put to an end to; to heal, as a disease.

To remedy, to remove an evil, and restore to a good state

To dry; to prepare for preservation, as to cure hay, or prepare salt, so as to prevent speedy putrefaction.

Purpose of two-part article

My purpose with the first article is to describe the Basal Ganglia, its neuro-anatomy and physiology and to discover why diseases of this sub-system of the human brain leads to such devastating disease conditions. I wish to focus on both the anatomical and physiological qualities of the Basal Ganglia, on the diseases, which ravage this sub-system of the brains of millions of individuals, I will also show what “cure” might be expected if the root causes are addressed, which may be helpful in preserving its life-sustaining functions. In the second article, I will show, how, having an understanding of its anatomy and physiology and “cortical software re-use”³ principles, one can hope to re-pattern and re-activate the Basal Ganglia by means of Sensory-motor pathway stimulation.

When a person or child is sick and suffering from an extremity, a disease that robs one of self-worth, vitality, communication, independence, sanity and ultimately life itself, the anguish this brings drives carers, parents, professionals and self to seek a cure, something which will restore the lost health, vitality and the former sense of well-being.

In order to understand how damage or impairment of the Basal Ganglia may imprison the sufferer’s consciousness, communication, reason, movement, memory, mood and rhythm of self, I would like to give a brief overview of the neuro-anatomy of this structure as structure always underlies function as it displays such interrelated neurological complexity.

What is the structure of the Basal Ganglia

The Basal Ganglia is made up of a number of sub-cortical structures, that includes the caudate and putamen, segments of the globus pallidum, the pars reticulate, and finally the compacta of the substantia nigra, as well as the sub-thalamic nucleus. The Basal Ganglia, just like the cortices, consists of two parts – a left and a right ganglion.

The Basal Ganglia roughly has two “departments’ – one which receives information and one which dispatches information. The receiving department is the neo-striatum and this area is informed by the entire cortex (“thinking cap”) as well as that which is about to be passed into consciousness by the intra-laminar nuclei of the thalamus (central relay station for all sensations excluding smell and taste).

Structure informs Physiology (Function)

The main dispatching department consists of the globus pallidus and substantia nigra. Interestingly enough, some of these projections from the two named areas go back into the thalamic region [where the information is emotionally charged], before being projected upwards into the cortex of a person or downwards to the brainstem, via the sub-thalamic nuclei. Most of the Basal Ganglia’s activity, however, is structurally streamed in an ever-ascending direction – either directly from the substantia nigra to the neo-striatum, or to the globus pallidum, then to the thalamus, on its way back to the neo-striatum, before emergence in the cerebral cortices.

Sensation governs thought and movement, speech and rhythms of life

What struck me in studying this system is not merely its complexity (loops-within-loops, parallel systems which intertwine and feed-back on themselves in splendid self-modulation) but how all that happens here is strongly informed by sensation – as Barker⁴ states: “Neuro-psychologically, the Basal Ganglia take highly processed sensory information and converts it into some kind of motor programme” (emphasis mine). It is then taken through to higher levels of reasoning, planning, evaluation, decision-making, inhibition, throughout being modulated by a cocktail of neuro-chemicals (glutamine, GABA, dopamine) and finally filtered back into the Basal Ganglia.

Here a motor package is prepared [or a non-motor response is generated (mainly involving visual reasoning / acts)], by which time the action (impulse) has become gloriously multi-dimensional, exactly trimmed, carefully edited, pedantically planned, then poured through an emotional grid, time-stamped, speed-regulated and fine-tuned, so that frame-by-frame “freeze”-shots, are blended into a real-time movie-like flow. The end result is like listening to and watching a symphony being played by a philharmonic orchestra, which blends in exquisite harmony, compounding (emotional) energy and skill and it is regulated by a split-second orchestrated impetus, towards that which is smooth, melodious and proficient, which Luria⁵ termed – a “kinetic melody” – in referring to a person’s signature on paper.

Using music as an exemplar of Basal Ganglia function isn’t arbitrary. The Basal Ganglia is not only activated by, but functions as if by the energy of a musical score. No wonder, Sacks⁶ alludes to the power of music as both the agent of cure and the allegorical “release agent” of movement in the Parkinson’s sufferer, stating: “The power of music (can) integrate and cure,… liberate the Parkinsonian and give him freedom while it lasts (‘You are the music/while the music lasts,’ T.S. Eliot), is quite fundamental…”.

Later he adds in his book Awakenings⁷, speaking of a patient who suffered from encephalitis lethargica and who emerged for a while after being administered L-Dopa, that: Music serves to arouse her own quickness, her living-and-moving identity and will, which is otherwise dormant for so much of the time.” He stressed that a kind of “rhythmic impetus” has to be present, but that this has to be “embedded in melody. Raw overpowering rhythm, which cannot be so embedded, causes pathological jerking; it coerces instead of freeing the patient, and thus has an anti-musical effect”.

Chemical espionage and memory banks inform movement and thought

The Basal Ganglia “reports on itself” as it were – there is a dopaminergic feedback loop from the substantia nigra, which controls the level of activation of the inhibitory output nuclei of the Basal Ganglia to the Thalamus. Nothing happens without the Basal Ganglia being informed by its myriad of chemical messengers, who not only report on function, but keep tabs on how that function is up- or down-regulated by means of inhibitory or excitation processes. Constant checks and balances in this system ensure a smoothness and an updating, a categorizing and re-categorising of memory-content, imprinting repetitive motor plans, firming and smoothing actions and carrying echoes of previous experiences (the brain lives its own past by using existing pathways as tracks upon which future perceptions, thoughts, actions and emotions will be executed)⁸. Thus actions and thoughts bring about newly conceptualised motor acts, imbued with the memories and embellished with practiced skills that went before. “Edelman describes how consciousness and memory (which he sees as dependent on continual ‘re-categorization’ ) are, normally, continually ‘updated’; and how this updating depends, in the first place, on movement, on free and smooth and orderly movement. The basal ganglia are necessary for this – Edelman calls them the “organs of succession”.⁹

“With you I can…”

This is again not something which the Parkinson’s patient or someone with damage to the Basal Ganglia can easily enjoy, as paths seem horribly disrupted – one encephalitis lethargica patient explained her loss of independence in these stark terms: “I can do nothing alone, she said. I can do anything with – with music or people to help me. I cannot initiate, but I can fully share. You ‘normals’ you are full of ‘go’ and when you are with me I can partake of all this. The moment you go away, I am nothing again.”¹⁰

Toxicity factors in Basal Ganglia damage – Gulf-War Syndrome and Autism – a parallel

There are many sufferers who have had insults to the Basal Ganglia: Parkinson’s-, Alzheimer’s-, Encephalitis Lethargica-, old age-, brain injury-, Gulf-War veterans and many other less obvious categories of sufferers. In this article I will focus on one such group that deserves attention – the Gulf-War Veterans and link this group and their dysfunction to the developmental enigma of autism.

I am vicariously reminded of an article on findings published by a UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas study, published in the American Medical Association’s Archives of Neurology¹¹ , which linked brain cell loss in the left basal ganglia of sick Gulf War veterans with out-of-control production of a brain neurotransmitter chemical called dopamine. “With injury to the brain cells that normally control dopamine production, the cells at first go wild, overproducing dopamine,” said Dr. Frederick Petty, a UT Southwestern professor of psychiatry and staff psychiatrist at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He indicated that over time these over-stimulated cells might wear out and die, causing degenerative brain diseases.

The Gulf War Syndrome Veterans can be placed in three distinct categories of dysfunction and these categories have implications when tracking where damage occurs in the neuro-anatomical/-physiological array of the Basal Ganglia structures:

1. The first group were classified as having impaired cognition (thinking, communication and socialisation impaired) – that means that the processes from the Basal Ganglia into the pre-frontal and frontal cortices were affected.
2. The second group were classed as having had confusion-ataxias (movement impaired). This group would have the motor projections of the Basal Ganglia most severely affected.
3. The final group suffered severe, debilitating and prolonged pain (sensation impaired), and it is my understanding that the processes to the thalamus would be most significantly impacted in this group, as thalamic syndrome is a condition where one can’t process pain until it suddenly becomes over-whelming and so intense that it causes extreme trauma.

Of special significance with regards to these physiological markers, there are parallels with other diseases / syndromes, which, like those with Gulf War Syndrome, fall in the categories, determined by unique toxicity issues:

Gulf War Syndrome Veterans – Group 1 – impaired cognition: They wore pesticide-containing flea collars (endocrine disrupters)^12,13.

Group 2 – confusion ataxias: They were exposed to low-level nerve gas and experienced side effects from anti-nerve gas, or pyridostigmine bromide (PB), tablets (suppression of/or destruction of birth-sites for catecholemines such as dopamine).

Group 3 – prolonged pain sensitivity: wore insect repellent with high concentrations of DEET and experienced side effects from the PB tablets (as above – VOC’s destroy nerve cells). My own exploratory observations into the aetiologies of autism, led me to see some interesting parallels. Autistic children are diagnosed by means of a triad of impairment, affecting communication (cognition), movement (apraxias/dyspraxias) and stereotypical behaviours (self-stimulatory – often due to disturbed sensory hungers – sensation impaired).

My own exploratory observations into the aetiologies of autism, led me to see some interesting parallels. Autistic children are diagnosed by means of a triad of impairment, affecting communication (cognition), movement (apraxias/dyspraxias) and stereotypical behaviours (self-stimulatory – often due to disturbed sensory hungers – sensation impaired).

Many autistic individuals (as also seen in Gulf-War Syndrome sufferers – GWSS’s), struggle with severe cognitive issues, have major dyspraxias, dysarthias, apraxias, whilst some are ataxic and there are those who experience all of the above, but have their condition exacerbated by hyper- (or hypo) sensitivity to sound, smell, taste, light, touch, pain, etc.

The connection is clear, at least to me, that system breakdown for both GWSS’s and Autistic individuals may be identical, i.e. I wish to infer that the same elements of damage/dys-regulation which have been detected in Gulf War Syndrome sufferers, may also be wreaking havoc in the brains of autistic individuals. Now that we have explicit proof¹⁴ that there is neuronal loss in the brains of the GWSS’s, can we not infer that autistic individuals may be dys-regulated for the same reason? Whether subtle or explicit damage, I believe that the “cure” of Autistic individuals would lie in the same place where we would find a “cure” for GWSS’s.

Having said that, I propose that toxicity issues drive both conditions. The “disappearance” from normal of an autistic individual one fair day in their first, second or third year of life, may have more to do with a bio-chemical or neuro-immunological insult of the Basal Ganglia, than what it has to do with purported psychological harm done by a frigid parent or pre-birth rejection of the unborn child by a mother faced with an unwanted pregnancy!

Do I have any facts in corroboration of my hypothesis? I certainly do! Since 2000 our Institute, Synapse Africa Brain Dynamics Clinic, has been sending urine samples to the Paediatric Research Institute in Oslo, Norway, to one of the world’s foremost researchers in protein peptide research, Dr. Kalle Reichelt – to date more than 400 samples have been initiated by our Institute.

These urine samples were sent to detect whether children with autism and a variety of other learning disabilities, such as late onset of speech (motor), stuttering (motor), oral dyspraxias (motor), dyslexia (cognitive), visual-motor learning disabilities (motor), sensory integration disorders, such as hyper-acute hearing, touch defensiveness, etc. (sensory), which have taken their toll on emotion, communication, socialisation and cognition, may have any roots in the excess opioid theory of Jaak Panksep, researcher in the late 1970’s who postulated that autistic individuals had raised opiate levels in their brains.

The sample results consistently and conclusively support that virtually every, single autistic child ever tested, plus a large percentage of learning disabled, attention deficit, behaviourally, sensory and cognitively dys-regulated individuals, show remarkably high levels of opioid peptides in their urine (gluta-morphines, caso-morphines and gliadino-morphines) [mal-digested protein due to enzyme deficiencies].

These opioids dys-regulate the normal neuro-chemistry of the brain and particularly in the basal ganglia’s substantia nigra. The opioids have a drug-like effect and are designed to perform neural pruning (excessively zealous pruning when apoptosis – [programmed cell death] should have been concluded, opioids prolong the process of programmed cell death, beyond that which is desirable!).

What is the connection then with toxicity? If one studies the effects of heavy metals on the metabolism of the human body, it soon becomes clear that heavy metals (now strongly implicated in autism)¹⁵ cause major
disruption of almost all detoxification pathways in the human body, as well as on digestion, due to the effect that these toxic elements have on the body’s enzymes that regulate life processes.

Of late (2003 – 2010) our Institute, has also been instrumental in having mineral hair analyses¹⁶ done on the hair of children with autism and those with developmental delays and learning disabilities plus on adults with a variety of psycho-social and emotional problems (also seen in GWSS’s). The results support that the population of autistic, LD, ADD and behaviourally/emotionally dys-regulated individuals consistently show evidence of the presence of potentially toxic elements, lead, aluminium, mercury, cadmium, antimony, nickel, uranium, etc.

My hypothesis that requires further research and scrutiny is that these toxic metals/elements may have a similar effect on the brain, as did the pesticides, the nerve gases and the vaccines that Gulf-War Syndrome sufferers were subjected to during their stint in the Gulf…

Antibiotics, micro-organisms and toxicity issues impacting the Basal Ganglia

The last marker for toxicity in autism, which I offer in corroboration of my hypothesis that there is a distinct parallel between those who suffer with GWS and autistic individuals, can be traced when studying micro-organism organic acids as toxicity producing agents in the human body. Our Institute has carefully looked at the work of Dr. William Shaw¹⁷. He offers evidence that autism and other syndromes, which are present as developmental delays, may be caused by myco-toxins from microbes, such as Candida, and bacteria, such as Clostridia. The former give off organic acids which are both neuro-toxic and muscle toxic (tartaric acid, citramalic); they also seem to be implicated in the formulation of arabinose in the body, a sugar, which only occurs in people who are seriously colonized by colonies of yeasts. Elevated protein-bound arabinose has also been detected in the serum proteins of schizophrenic individuals, in children with behavioural problems, such as conduct disorder and Dr. Shaw¹⁸ believes that arabinose may affect biochemical processes in autism as well as other diseases. Arabinose, for example, causes pentosidines which lead to neuro-fibrillary tangles in the brains of Alzheimer patients.

One of the times when yeasts and fungi proliferate at exponential rates is when the body is subjected to (high/repeated) doses of antibiotics, where good flora is destroyed in the GI tract and toxicity-producing micro-organisms can overgrow unchecked (dys-biosis).

There is once again a parallel between those with Gulf War Syndrome and those with Autism: both show significant cognitive, sensory and motor problems, so debilitating that some actually die. Both show exposure to toxins (whatever those toxins may be) and an auto-immune breakdown reflecting a breech in the body’s immune response to foreign invaders, as well as an inability to detoxify and to maintain vitality. Gulf War Syndrome sufferers were fed a cocktail of several vaccinations and chemical warfare “protective” agents, which some¹⁹ say were intended to be a human experiment. [There is an issue of ethics and a question whether there shouldn't be criminal culpability on the side of the USDoD as these soldiers had not volunteered to be subjected to these chemical insults, but were ordered to submit to procedures that violate the vitality of their persons – not central to this discussion though!].

Dr. Scheibner²⁰ explains that despite very low direct casualties of the war (only 148 men were killed in combat and 467 were injured among the US units), that the indirect casualties of this war were incalculable: She states that: “The compounds given to the Gulf War personnel fulfilled none of the requirements to justify their administration. They made the recipients very ill, some 6000 personnel died from them and they incapacitated tens of thousands more who had to perform while suffering symptoms caused by the compounds.”

Defence Department funded research into the neurological status of these Veterans revealed that the most likely sites for brain injury would be the Basal Ganglia neurons and it took its toll on dopamine production because the symptoms of Gulf War syndrome strongly resemble early symptoms of well-studied degenerative diseases of the basal ganglia like Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, Wilson’s and Fahr’s diseases. Typical symptoms of Gulf War syndrome include chronic fatigue, dizziness and attacks of vertigo, general body pain, attention and concentration problems, personality changes, depression, and tremor²¹.

A final comment on the parallels between Gulf War Syndrome Veterans and autistic individuals is that a routine organic acid screening test run by Dr. Shaw’s laboratory in the USA, frequently shows elevated urine levels of homovanillic acid in autistic children – twice the upper level which constitutes normal. This too could be due to the disruption that micro-organisms, such as Candida and Clostridia, cause in the body’s bio-chemical regulation in autistic individuals. Catecholemine-secreting tumours can be responsible for excessively high levels of HVA, as can a disruption/destruction in the Dopaminergic pathways in the Basal Ganglia due to chemical damage to these pathways. The Gulf War Veterans who showed a 9% destruction of the cells in the Left Basal Ganglia on proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, with significant damage to the dopamine production centre (substantia nigra) in a lateralised pattern, giving rise to elevated levels of HVA (homovanillic acid) – which is used to assess central dopamine activity.

Refferences

¹Sacks, Oliver, 1990: Awakenings.
²Webster, Noah: 1828 – American Dictionary of the English Language, CURE
³Reilly, Ronan, 2001: http://cortex.cs.may.ie/research – 24/04/24 – Cortical Software re-use: A Computational Principle for Cognitive
Development in Robots.
⁴Barker, Roger, (2002) – The Functional Organisation of the Basal Ganglia, p.1
⁵Luria, A. R. (1973). The Working Brain. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-09208-X.
⁶Sacks, Oliver, (1990), p. 60

⁷Sacks, Oliver, (1990), p. 61
⁸Reilly, Ronan, http://cortex.cs.may.ie/research,( 2004) – Cortical Software Re-use.
⁹Sacks, Oliver,(1990), pp. 83/4
¹⁰Sacks, Oliver,(1990), pp.61
¹¹Arch Neurol. 2000 Sep; 57(9):1263.

¹²Thomas, Pat, (2003), p. 9

¹³Thomas, Pat,( 2003) pp. 65/6: Pesticide: “The word ‘esticide’ covers a range of lethal chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides and rodenticides, …Pesticides contain Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) as both active and inactive ingredients. …are harmful to humans …contain a ‘cocktail of chemicals (causing) cancer, foetal damage, liver and nerve damage, skin problems, and irritation to the eyes and respiratory system.’
¹⁴Arch Neurol. 2000 Sep;57(9):1263.
¹⁵Schafer Autism Newsletter – April, 15th, 2010 – Vol. 13, # 36 -http://www.sarnet.org/lib/SARtext14-36.htm
¹⁶Micro Trace Minerals Laboratory – more than 800 samples sent to date – April, 2010
¹⁷Shaw, William, M.D., (2002), Biological Treatments for Autism and PDD, p. 36 – 38.
¹⁸Shaw, William, M.D., (2002), Biological Treatments for Autism and PDD, p. 36 – 38.
¹⁹Scheibner, Viera, PhD, (2000), Behavioural Problems in childhood – The Link to Vaccinations, pp. 96 – 109.
²⁰Scheibner, Viera, PhD, (2000), Behaviouiral Problems in childhood – The Link to Vaccinations, pp. 96 – 109.
²¹Arch Neurol. 2000 Sep;57(9):1280-5.

You tell her that he was such a lovely, lively, normal little guy, inquisitive and energetic, talkative and intelligent… but recently you and your husband have notices that his behavior has changed.  He tends to withdraw, doesn’t come for hugs and cuddles, seems to not look at people – even worse, he tends to astutely avoid eye contact when people address him, and most worrying of all is that his play has stagnated and become quite obsessive.  He sits in a corner, peering at objects out of the corner of his eyes, endlessly amused by spinning objects, the wheels of his little cars, the rotating blades of a ceiling fan, the rotations of the clothes in the washing machine.  He has lost words out of his vocabulary and he relies more and more on body language to communicate what he wants.  He tends to pull you and your husband towards his favourite objects, demands things with tantrums and can’t seem to stop making high-pitched screeching sounds.  He seems fascinated by the colour purple and whenever you take something away which he’s been staring at for hours, he throws a tantrum so large, that your neighbours must be thinking of reporting you to the Child Protection Unit.

What you are describing, even though you might not know it, are the explicit symptoms of late-onset childhood autism. Your son might be one of a number of boys who is inflating the annual statistics of boys being lost to this strange, life-draining syndrome.  “Boys?” you ask. “Yes, boys” – autism occurs much more frequently in boys than in girls – the ratio has been determined to be about 7 boys to every 3 girls, who are diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).

I mentioned above that the condition is growing annually.  In 1985 the number of children being diagnosed with autism was 1 in 15,000 live births.  Then by the early 2000’s the figure suddenly was reported as 1 in 166 children becoming autistic.  Just this past October, 2009, the Maternal & Child Health Bureau of Health Resources and Services Administration (HSSA), US Department of health and Human Services released a study which indicated that the number of children in the USA who currently had a diagnosis of ASD, showed that 1 in 91 children were now autistic (of which 1 in 57 were boys (The Prevalence of Parent-Reported Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder among Children in the United States, 2007, published in Pediatrics – reported by the Autism Research Institute, October 6^th, 20009).  This study surveyed 78,000 U.S. households and queried if their child, aged between 3 and 17 years “currently had autism or any other autism spectrum disorder”.

You seemed surprised to hear this, as Autism appears to still be very much of a “hidden” disease in South Africa, with many paediatricians down-playing the reality of the condition, because they are frequently too scared to be the bearers of bad tidings.  The most common phrase repeated about little boys like your son might be: “Relax Mom, he’s just a little boy, and remember boys are slower than girls.  He will grow out of this cranky period – give him another few months/years and I’m sure it will all come out in the wash!”

Well, sad to say, it doesn’t come out in the wash and the proverbial sexist label, alluding to slower maturation in males, often drives children like your son, way past the opportune window of early intervention, which might have helped him come out of his autistic shell.

I am a Clinical Metal Toxicologist and am often asked why I think that children become autistic. Before I share some thought I have on the matter with you, I wish to first state that the majority of children now affected by this syndrome, were born completely normal – they “disappear” around 9, 18, or 24 months, some as late as 36 months, when skills, formerly exhibited, or milestones achieved, suddenly start fading or regression sets in.   There are, of course, some children who already appear “missing” or distant from birth – this rare, sub-group of boys and girls (mainly boys), has the diagnosis of what is called Kanners Autism.  Those who start with a slow or sudden regression around 9 months or later, are diagnosed with late-onset autism.

Regardless of the label – each condition is equally devastating.

So, back to what I think the causative agents are for this dread condition:  over the almost 20 years of my working with children with learning disabilities, I’ve spend the better part of 15 years studying children with autism.  It truly wasn’t until the late 1990’s that I suddenly understood that these children are metabolically ill.  Before then I bought into the lie that these kids are possibly psychologically ill or damaged (the Bruno Bettleheim theory of refrigeration mothers – The Empty Fortress).

It’s as if a massive train-wreck has occurred in their metabolisms, derailing almost everything – they appear to be more allergic, more cranky; they are more picky eaters, get ill more often, have really bad digestive and gut issues, often can’t sleep, their pooh stinks to high-heavens and they either have shocking diarrhea (many, many nappies per day), or they are so constipated that one wonders how they will survive another day without a proper bowel movement!

Once I understood that these children are ill, from a neuro-immuno-endocrinological point of view, I could take a step back and ask myself:  “What has the capability to devastate and wreck an immune system and metabolism so aggressively that these little ones are living in a crazy soup of sickness and disturbed neuro-chemistry, driving them to distraction?”  The answer was plain: toxins – yes, plain old-fashioned poisons!

When a toxic metal comes into one’s body, it binds to sulfur and hydrogen in proteins.  All enzymes and hormones are proteins.  Hence, if toxic metals attach themselves to enzymes and hormones, the body starts shutting down, as metals disable these catalytic elements randomly or purposely, leaving devastation in their wake.

The most likely poisons to enter our children are direct exposure-environmental toxins.  You see, if you were a smoker in years before you fell pregnant, those toxins landed up in your blood stream, and eventually deposited themselves very neatly and tightly in your bones and bone marrow, where they powerfully displaced crucial minerals, like Calcium and Magnesium. When you are pregnant, the baby requires minerals and trace elements, which are, of course, provided through your diet as mother, but also liberated from your bones.

If you were one of the “good” moms, who never smoked before or during pregnancy, but you grew up as a child in a household where your dad or mom or both smoked, you would fall in that critical category of people, who also have adipose fat, acute bone and bone marrow deposits of lead, arsenic, cadmium and other devastating metals found in cigarettes (over 4000 toxins in chemicals, which can act as rat poison), as you absorbed these as a passive smoker during your childhood!

Now, let’s take the scenario one step further: Let’s say your parents never smoked, you never smoked, your partner (husband) never smoked, and you didn’t work in an office or employment situation where your work colleagues (inconsiderately) smoked around you (even during your pregnancy), you may just be that unfortunate someone who has had some amalgam fillings placed in your teeth at some time during your life.

Mercury amalgams are 50% per weight of the composite of metals put into a filling called an amalgam, and regardless what dentists, who still place deadly mercury fillings in people’s teeth, tell you, the World Health Organisation, claims that a full 79% of all human exposure to mercury comes from mercury amalgam fillings (Smoking Teeth, www.IAOMT.org).

The anecdotal claims of safety by manufacturers and Dental Trade organizations are at variance with the published, peer-reviewed, scientific evidence to the contrary.  The International Association for Oral Medicine and Toxicology, of which I am a member, states: “The precautionary principle requires action, once the possibility of harm exists”.

Then, to thicken the plot, there is the very real presence of mercury in all vaccines, except the Measles, Mumps, Rubella-vaccine, which became so controversial toward the end of the 1990’s, when Dr. Andrew Wakefield and co-authors published their concern about the role vaccines (not mercury) might play in the onset of lymphoid hyperplasia, a serious gut-condition which was diagnosed in many children with autism.  The publication of their study in the prestigious Lancet Medical Journal (recently withdrew, after Dr. Wakefield was found guilty of being an unethical medical practitioner with a “callous disregard for the distress and pain suffered by these children” – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7095145/GMC-brands-Dr-Andrew-Wakefield-dishonest-irresponsible-and-callous.html) caused more than just a storm in a tea-cup.

It sparked world-wide controversy and panic and many hundreds of thousands of parents across the globe reneged on vaccinating their children – even the then Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair refused to say whether or not he and his wife had his son, Leo, receive the jab (MMR) or not.

With vaccine rates plummeting after Dr. Wakefield’s article appeared in this prestigious journal, parent lobbying groups soon stepped up to the plate to say that their sons and daughters were not only harmed by the MMR, [although it appears that in a large number of cases children became ill very shortly after the administration of the MMR], but that they felt that any or all of the vaccines where to blame for the terribly increase in autism (in some cases a 273% increase in the rate of children diagnosed with autism occurred between 1987 and 1998 – a mere 11 years) in the state of California, USA. (www.naturalnews.com/011764.html), for example.

Let’s start to get the story straight:  do vaccines cause harm to infants or don’t they? Many well-funded, solid epidemiological studies world-wide have trashed the notion that vaccines are in any way causative.  However, one needs to carefully read the small print and also see who funded the bulk of these studies.  Pharmaceutical companies, who had the most to lose if thimerosal (49,7% ethylmercury) were to be banned from trillions of doses of vaccines, funded the larger proportion of these studies.  Regardless of how flawed and how biased many of these studies were, there is this one, compelling truth that, regardless of Thimerosal (mercury as preservative) being removed from vaccines, autism rates are still soaring (http://www.blisstree.com/articles/thimerasol-exposure-declines-autism-rates-increase).  It is therefore crystal clear, when one views the latest statistics that thimerosal is not the primary cause of autism.

Kristina Chew, Ph.D. sums it up like this:  “This is the conclusion of a study published in the January Archives of General Psychiatry (Vol. 65, no. 1) by Robert Schechter, MD, MSc, Immunization Branch and California Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Research and Epidemiology, and Judith K. Grether, PhD, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, of the California Department of Public Health, Richmond. Schechter’s and Grether’s article is entitled Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde. By studying time trends in the Archives of General Psychiatry (Vol. 65, no. 1) by Robert Schechter, MD, MSc, Immunization Branch and California Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, Research and Epidemiology, and Judith K. Grether, PhD, Environmental Health Investigations Branch, of the California Department of Public Health, Richmond. Schechter and Grether’s article is entitled Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde. By studying time trends in the prevalence by age and birth cohort of autistic children who were enrolled in the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS) from January 1, 1995 through March 31, 2007, the authors found that
‘the estimated prevalence of autism for children at each year of age from 3 to 12 years increased throughout the study period’ and that
‘the DDS data do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines [emphasis Kristina Chew]’. The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism”.

So, if it’s not cigarette smoke alone, or dental amalgams which spill deadly neuro-toxins into the tiny bodies of unborn fetuses, and if it’s not the mercury in vaccines, or the MMR with its live, attenuated viruses which are thrust into an immature immune system, at the beginning stages of an developing brain with un-forged dendritic connections, and it’s not the mercury in the fish, which pregnant mothers consume [pregnant mothers in Canada were already warned not to consume fish caught in Canadian waters during their pregnancy in 1976, as inland and coastal fish sources had been so contaminated by mercury! – www.jstor.org/stable/4312386;also seewww.doh.wa.gov/ehp/oehas/publications_pdf/whatcomadvisory.pdf, then what on earth is the reason why more and more children are becoming autistic at alarming rates, as if it is a run-away train, that has lost its brakes?

I have one more plausible cause which I want to throw into the mix of worrisome facts, which might serve up our culprit.  Is it this thief that comes one night and robs us of our children leaving behind only a phantom of who they once were –eyes staring blankly and bodies moving robotically, whilst the real life suddenly seems gone….?

In 2008 I had the dubious privilege of being invited to tour Punjab and visit a Centre for Special Children in Punjab.  I call the privilege dubious because the sights that assaulted my tender sensibilities have never stopped haunting me since that fateful visit.

The extreme poverty, the dirt, the suffering of humans and animals and then the extreme suffering of the children…. Oh, the children! They were limp, paralyzed, spastic, some with large heads, bulging or squint eyes, startlingly stiff and others with contorted limbs, protruding tongues, mouths drooling, bodies jerking, small remnants of ones who once appeared to once have been human forms.  Each one of these diseased children were being held by a traumatized, numbed, parent mostly just sitting with resignation and a dead, distant look in their eyes.  That blank look soon turned to a beseeching and pleading stare, as I approached their broken child – the images of those children are forever etched into my mind.

I didn’t only see the curse of disease; it was palpable, as real as touching death, only here, in these sick children, death had not quite completed its work – no doubt these kids were dying, but something of life still lingered…

When I saw their ravaged bodies, I immediately knew that something was horribly wrong.  There were literally hundreds of these children and I was told that daily more and more parents were reporting to the centre daily for help.  The physical symptoms of these children told me they had been poisoned, but by what?

A German Environmental Laboratory, Micro Trace Minerals volunteered to help me test the children for toxic metals.

What we found through tissue sampling (hair) stunned us all: 87% of the children tested showed signs of elevated uranium in their systems.

Allow me to briefly explain why this was such a chilling finding: Uranium is a radio-active metal. It decays into substances equally radio-active and deadly, Thorium, Radium (used for radiating tumors), Radon and Paladium. In addition to this, uranium is nephro-toxic (*meaning it destroys the kidneys*), and there isn’t a physiological system which isn’t altered when uranium is deposited into that system.

As a radio-active metal uranium is highly carcinogenic. No wonder that a mere 40 kms from the Centres where these children found themselves, is an area called the Malwa belt, which is said to have the highest cancer rates in the world.

Radon, the deadly, odorless gas, which is 7,8 times heavier than normal air, is a daughter of uranium. It’s a deadly radioactive gas, which irradiates the lungs and causes a variety of lung diseases, including lethal lung cancer.

The puzzling truth was that there are no uranium mines in the region of Punjab where these children and their families reside. In fact, Punjab is called the Bread-Basket of India and is a mainly agricultural state, not a mining hub.

By what means then did they become so toxic? The answer lies in the coal-fired power plants which tower on the sky-line all over Punjab. Coal-fired power stations generate up to 10 times more radioactive waste than any government regulated nuclear reactor!

The fly-ash from the burnt coal is collected in fly-ash ponds (un-lined in India) and the highly toxic brew percolates down into the aquifer, poisoning all the pristine ground water and rendering it toxic, even deadly!

Unborn babies are affected in the womb, because uranium is mutagenic. New-born babies are affected because uranium is neuro-toxic. Young children are affected because uranium and its daughters mess badly with one’s immune system, as well as one’s ability to produce red blood cells. The less red blood cells there are (i.e. the more anaemic one is) the less capacity the blood has to carry vital oxygen to the brain. Hence babies and young children’s fragile neurological wiring becomes compromised early in life, leading to seizures, mental retardation and overt brain injury.

How on earth do I link this to autism?Coal-fired power stations and mines of any kind world-wide are the largest producer of both radioactive waste and of toxic metals, which are dispersed into the air and water sources, for human and animal consumption (i.e. if a cow drinks from a water source which is contaminated, it’s milk and meat will be radio-active and toxic) and for irrigation (i.e. if crops are watered with radio-active or toxic water, the vegetation and fruit becomes dangerous to consume).

What does this mean within a South African context?South Africa’s largest energy production system relies squarely on coal-fired power stations.  And our national Energy provider, the controversial and rogue utilities company, ESCOM, wishes to loan R4 Billion more from the World Bank to build more coal-fired power stations, Medupi and kkk,  instead of setting up renewable energy projects, like wind farms, which don’t only yield dirty, non-renewable energy sources, but can produce up to 5 times more electricity at the same price.

South Africa’s wealth in mineral resources has made it one of the radiologically dirtiest nations in world, because mining disturbs the earth crust and releases the radioactive elements. South Africa boasts the largest uranium deposits anywhere on the planet.  It’s now largely defunct gold mines, currently spill up to 25 Mega Liters of acid mine drainage (radioactive and highly toxic waste water with a lethal pH of 2.6) per day into once pristine streams, lakes and rivers, which will soon affect more than just our irrigation of crops, it will destroy wild life, poison our livestock, contaminate all our aquatic life and make ever larger areas of our country radioactive hotspots.

The sad legacy of these mines (albeit gold, platinum, uranium, iron, copper or zinc), is a pock-marked earth, impoverished communities and of the highest levels of radioactivity on the planet!

In an area between Roodepoort, where I live and Krugersdorp on the West Rand is an informal settlement, called Tudor Shaft Informal Settlement.  Within a stone’s throw of this settlement, in an open field, where locals walk daily, the levels of radioactivity have been measured and are between 10,000 to 100,000 Becquerels above background radiation limits.  A once pristine spring fed a lake, called Robinson Lake in Randfontein, about 11 kms from my home as the crow flies.  Today that lake is dead, with uranium levels of up to 40,000 times higher than what is considered safe!

How did all this happen?  Silently, greedily and insidiously mining houses raped the earth, never telling anyone who lived within 100 kms of their earth-shattering endeavours how toxic their explorations and operations are.

I grew up in Germiston and Roodepoort and have lived in Roodepoort for most of my adult life.  As a child I played on what was then known as “mine dumps”.  Today I know better. I never knew that the euphemistic term “mine dump” actually means “highly radioactive slimes dam” where radio-active sludge is pumped into, laced with the most toxic of elements on earth, and that all water, air and soil within hundreds of kilometers of such “dumps” become contaminated over a life-time with the particulate matter which makes it way into the air or water ways.

I can almost hear the skeptics say:  “But you are in your 50’s and not autistic – how does this all link to autism?”  The answer is actually quite simple:  I might not have autism, but my father contracted throat cancer when I was only 3.  My mother had uterine cancer in her early 60’s and died of motor-neuron disease (a disease very clearly linked metal toxicity), I contracted breast cancer 2.5 years ago.

Do metals cause autism?  I have no doubt they do.  Do all children become autistic? No, if I understand the words of Dr. Devra Davis, professor in preventative medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York correctly, she said: “Genes give us a loaded gun, but environment pulls the trigger”.  What kind of disease, syndrome or disability you might contract, might well be determined by an intricate sequence of genes handed down to each one of us individually, even within the same family, but the fulfillment of that genetic prophecy comes sooner rather than later for each one of us, who lives within this crazy, increasingly toxic world – and the clock is ticking.

It’s true, at this present time that no-one knows for sure what causes autism, but it is clear that when one takes 3 live viruses and one injects them into a new-born, you have a smoking gun and the vaccines should be considered unsafe, until proven otherwise.

The same holds true for mercury in fillings or thimerosal in vaccines, or exposure to mercury in fish, or lead, arsenic and cadmium in cigarettes – these are all lethal substances and one wonders what the wisdom is in compounding the toxic load in the very young and the very fragile, if for some the genetic code will crack sooner rather than later?

Finally, the issue of living in an environment where one’s unborn child is the at-risk recipient of unimaginably dangerous radio-activity, mines, government and society should be brought to book for a world which is becoming more and more toxic.

Dr. Alan M Goldberg, professor of toxicology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (http://www.care2.com/greenliving/do-toxins-cause-autism.html?&page=2), clearly named the three canaries in the coal-mine – “Breast cancer, prostate cancer and autism are three examples (of diseases with unknown causes that are increasing in the population), he stated.

If we remove the toxins from our mouths, stopped smoking and held national (nuclear) regulators responsible for more stringent environmental protection laws governing radiation, toxic waste and dirty energy production, we’d have nothing to lose and everything to gain. At the very worst, it can’t hurt us if we clean up our act, but, at best, we might save the lives of millions.  I vote for the latter!