The Elephant in the Sensory Room

By Aidan McMahon

When my parents were born, the rate was 2 in 10,000 US children. When I was born, the rate was 1 in 110 US children; and in the 20 odd years since then, it has jumped even higher to 1 in around 44 US children. If it’s not yet obvious, the issue that I am talking about is autism.

Despite this immense and unheard of increase in autism rates, the discourse surrounding it only ever seems to center around whether or not this is good, rarely ever touching on the clear elephant in the room, Why is this happening? I think if we look at the earliest stages and years in a modern child’s development, we fairly easily can point out a few major contributors to this spike in autism in America.

If you ask any average person what causes autism in a child, chances are they will say something along the lines of “It’s a hereditary disorder that’s passed through the genes.” And while I don’t inherently disagree with this statement, I feel as though it sidesteps a major part of how genes work: epigenetics and gene expression. Yes, we are governed by our genes and they play a major role in the way we develop and function, however, our genes themselves are affected majorly by our environment and by factors external to our bodies, such as gene expression. For example, a woman could have a genetic predisposition for breast cancer due to inherited genes from her mother but without certain environmental factors, such as diet, radiation, or other mutagens, the genes associated with cancer would never be expressed to cause the cancer.

Similarly, there are genes that are linked to autism that can be inherited, causing a predisposition for a child to have or develop autism. But the environment that modern children are being born into is making it so that there is very little option but for these genes to be expressed and for autism to develop. A lot of this mutagenic bombardment happens while the child is still in the womb; however genes can still be majorly affected post-womb as well. While in the womb, children are being constantly hit with radiation from our phones, microwaves, 5G cell towers, etc, the list is endless in the modern day. The food we eat is poison and contains food dyes such as Red 40 which have known toxic and mutagenic properties, not to mention the long term effects of eating genetically modified Frankenfood, the heavy amounts of pesticides and other toxins on all our produce, or the fact that the people directing Big Ag have traded our foods’ nutritional value in favor of size and efficiency. And all of this is affecting the child’s development well before leaving the womb.

It isn’t until after the child is born and leaves the womb though, that I feel the most harm is being done to the child’s development. Since the 1970s the rates of C-sections in the US have risen, with 32% of births now being cesarean, up from just 5.5% in the 70’s and 16.5% in 1980. I believe this to be of major significance when considering the rise of autism due to the role the gut microbiome plays in autism development. There have been many studies done linking a defunct gut microbiome and a child’s autism, and all throughout development, the bacteria in our gut play a vital role in how our brain is shaped. At certain times we will need certain chemicals and nutrients that our body naturally is not able to create; this is where our gut bacteria come into play as they are able to synthesize what we cannot. If we are missing certain species of bacteria in our gut, we will not have the chemicals our brain needs to develop properly, leading to developmental disorders like autism to manifest. When a child is developing in the womb, it has no microbiome to speak of as any bacteria in the uterine environment would be a serious hindrance to its development. The child’s body gets populated by its new microbiome on the journey out to the world through the vagina at birth. With such a large percent of the population now not traversing this threshold at birth and gaining the necessary bacteria for their microbiome, many children are being born without the tools they need to properly form their brain. I believe that this has had a huge impact on children developing autism post-womb. The sad part about this is that it’s only the first in a myriad of obstacles that modern American children face in their earliest and most important stages of development.

Right after leaving the womb, most babies are picked up and slapped on the ass, in order to “help the babies breathing start”. Are we kidding anyone with thinking that depriving the baby of their mothers touch and immediately assaulting it right out the womb won’t have detrimental effects on the child? Newborns require skin-to-skin contact with their mother for bonding purposes as well as helping with brain development. The more I’ve looked at the “benefits” of immediate skin-to-skin contact with the mother, the more it seems like a necessary part of development that is being framed as optional. It helps the child stop producing cortisol, a stress hormone that is detrimental to development when in excess, it helps the baby to self-regulate its body, as well as learn that the world is safe due to its mothers smell. This contact also plays a role in the child being able to breastfeed properly, something that unfortunately only 62% of children are fed with to start off and only 25% of children still are 6 months later. Breastfeeding plays a vital role in helping seed the baby’s microbiome with the healthy bacteria it needs to develop. Without this extra help (made worse if the baby was birthed through Csection), it’s no wonder that so many children are not developing their brains fully or properly because they’re missing the vital tools needed to build up a healthy brain.

The very next step in a child’s life post-birth is the most controversial yet most important factor in the skyrocketing rates of autism in America: the childhood vaccine schedule. This attack on the fetus is sadly beginning to start even before birth, as pregnant mothers are suggested, even recommended, to receive their flu and pertussis vaccines, and in the post COVID world we all can vividly remember the absolutely insane articles telling pregnant mothers to “Make sure they got their COVID Boosters!” When pregnant, doctors always tell mothers not to smoke or drink as everything she intakes will end up in the baby. The protective barrier that we maintain during our life outside the womb is not in place yet and the baby relies on the mothers to act in its place. So why, during this very important period of fetal development, are mothers recommended to put heavy metal containing foreign material into her body, and subsequently the unborn baby? A conglomerate overview of VAERS reports from pregnant mothers getting the Hep B vaccine between 1990 and 2016 found 57.3% to have reported adverse effects (AE). There was also another recent broad study done by the Canadian Vaccine Safety network that showed an increased risk for a significant health event after 1 or more doses of mRNA gene therapy. We know that giving vaccines to pregnant mothers is not a good idea; they no longer give live-attenuated vaccines because of the blatant danger they posed, so why do we still allow any form of this fetal poisoning to continue?

Why is it that since the passing of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986, the number of vaccines given to our children has skyrocketed from 12 shots to 54 shots, 41 of which are given within the first 10 years and half within the first 1 year of their life? Why has the rate of autism in this country skyrocketed over 200% in this same time period? Why have other first world countries with similar child health standards besides their childhood vaccine schedule not seen this identical exponential rise in autism? “The Experts” love to tell you that there’s nothing to look at there, that any correlation is just that and not causation, they’ll question your morals and say that you hate autistic people; all of this seeks to discredit and dissuade you from coming to a very obvious conclusion, that vaccines are having a direct impact on the autism in America.

Ask an average person on the street why children are vaccinated for a sexually transmitted disease (the Hep B vaccine) the day they are taken out of the womb, chances are they won’t know it’s because of another unnecessary medical intervention given to children that causes more problems than it fixes, circumcision. Look into the Hep B vaccine and you’ll find that for decades there have been reported issues with vaccinating infants, citing links to arthritis, Guillan-Barre syndrome, and transverse myelitis. How many parents do you think ask the doctor what the ingredients are for these “miracle shots” that are being injected into their kid? I assume not many, because

if they knew that their infant child was being jabbed full of aluminum derivatives (such as amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate), used for binding and activating the vaccines, I don’t think they would be as quick to jab their kids. Within the first 10 years of your child’s life, they will be vaccinated with over 40 shots, most of which contain aluminum and the others being linked to a number of adverse effects. In a 2018 study, a number of UK labs took brain tissue samples of people diagnosed with autism and looked at the aluminum content of their brains. The results they got back shocked the researchers as they found some of the highest ever reported levels of aluminum in the brain, from individuals as young as 15 years old. Why would there be such high levels of aluminum found in autistic people brains? Does this have something to do with the absolutely insane number of vaccines we are now giving our children, most of which use some sort of aluminum based compound. Or does it have something to do with the crisscrossing clouds over our heads and rising amounts of aluminum found in farm soil? Over time, this and other heavy metals will build up in the brain and affect the way it functions. In studies done on juvenile rats, raised levels of aluminum in the brain increased permeability across the blood-brain-barrier. This would mean that not only is the aluminum itself dangerous, but that the very presence of the aluminum means that the brain is more likely to absorb any number of harmful things that normally wouldn’t make it through the membrane. The downstream effects of children’s brains having a more permeable membrane can barely be imagined as any number of harmful materials can now be taken and built up in their brain matter, having horribly detrimental influences on development.

These are just a few of the issues I see having an effect on the ever growing rate of autism in America. The children are being bombarded with a number of harmful chemicals and mutagens from every angle from the point of inception; this will of course have a detrimental effect on how they develop and the way their body functions. When there are generations of this bombardment, as children in America are no strangers to heavy metals (lead paint, leaded gas, etc) and harmful chemicals (DDT poisoning), the genetic effects of all this start to build up and manifest more often. This can be seen clearly when towns built next to a factory see higher and higher rates of health disorders with each subsequent generation born there. Generational genetic abuse will build up and cause worse effects with the latest child born; and when children in America have been subject to repeated attacks from their environment for decades, it’s no wonder that as a country we have one of the highest rates of autism in the world, with it still rising each year.

If you like this article and haven’t listened to the Rare Candy episode on autism called “Massagetism” , check it out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts

For more from Aidan, go to his Twitter and listen to him on the first Gain of Fiction Episode on Jurassic Park