An Ill Wind Blows into a Child's Life
Bioaccumulation of heavy metals in autistic children
By James Ottar Grundvig
Special to The Epoch Times
Most Americans remember with clarity where they were when they first heard the news of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Life-defining moments like 9/11 are those rare events that reshape society and culture, forever changing how people take stock of their lives. This holds especially true for those who witnessed the tragedy firsthand.
For me, a rooftop witness to the fire and smoke that poured out of the Twin Towers, the day after 9/11 has lingered in my mind with equal brilliance and anxiety. Confined at home with work closed, my son and I appeared safe in the shutdown city with Navy jets flying over the empty skyline. And why shouldn't I have felt that way? We lived Uptown at 94th Street and Third Avenue on the opposite end of the island, six miles away from the smoldering ruins of the collapsed buildings that made up the World Trade Center complex.
Yet what happened that morning unnerved me. With our 14th floor living room window ajar, I began to smell an acrid, burning smoke that I had never smelled before. I raced around the apartment looking for the source of the fire. I found nothing. Watching my son, Fridrik, play by the open window, wondering where the pungent odor was coming from, I had a delayed reaction. The smoke that I saw drift east to Brooklyn on 9/11, blew north as the wind changed direction the next day. I closed the window. But my gut feeling told me it was too late.
A Child Sickens
By the next morning, Fridrik began to cough. It was a dry, hacker's cough as if he had smoked cigarettes for twenty years. Within a week, he developed an acute ear infection—the only one of his life. On the 25th of September, my wife and I took Fridrik to see his pediatrician. This was the same doctor who told us one year before that an infant's lungs develop over the first three years. So when we inquired about taking him swimming the only restriction the doctor emphasized was "no dunking." With the cough still persisting weeks after the insult, the pediatrician gave Fridrik his only prescription of penicillin in his life. It wasn't for the cough, but the ear infection. Although the cough dissipated over time, the thought about what toxic chemicals had invaded my son's lungs never left me.
If pool water is bad for an infant, then how much worse would be the scorched air emanating out of Ground Zero? The answer came more than three years later, and almost two years after Fridrik had been diagnosed with autism.
On Valentine's Day, we decided to forego the ritual romantic dinner and took Fridrik to see a doctor. The results were in for his red blood cell analysis test, which profile the metal makeup of a person's body—from essential (good) metals, like zinc and iron, to heavy metals that can be harmful. When we learned that our son was carrying high amounts of mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic in him, we were at a loss. How did he become so "dirty" at such a young age? Having done extensive research into the vaccine-thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines), we knew we would find mercury in him, but not the other three neurotoxins.
The Danger of Ground Zero
It took only the subway ride home from the doctor's office for the burnt smell of 9/12 to come racing back. We began to research and interview people, including several New York journalists, to see if those heavy metals in Fridrik were present in the World Trade Center. In short, we discovered that computers carry high amounts of mercury; cadmium can be found in light fixtures; and arsenic and lead in the steel. The World Trade Center, which comprised a small city of 60, 000 people, with computers on every desk and light fixtures in every room and corridor, became the focus for the secondary source of heavy metal poisoning.
We learned that the EPA air monitoring stations were setup at the northern-most limit of 14th Street—a good eighty blocks from where we lived—but a poor location to get a true sampling of what was airborne. More research brought home a frightening fact. The intense fires, which appeared to vaporize everything in their path, released the superheated heavy metals into the air. And when the particles of lead and arsenic cooled off, far from the source of the heat, they shrank in size and collected on the dust and drifted, in Fridrik's case, uptown into our home and in his lungs.
I was never concerned about asbestos or other PCB, cancer-causing chemicals harming him. His exposure was limited in time. But after learning that mercury from the baby vaccines had shutdown Fridrik's glutathione, or his ability to filter out neurotoxins, I knew that he had more than enough exposure to ingest the bad stuff—something far worse than being dunked in a pool.
The Metals Around Us
What parents of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) children need to know is that heavy metals, which come from the earth's crust, cannot be destroyed, incinerated, or broken down any further. Once inside an ASD kid, mercury and the rest can stay there for up to a third of his or her life if not treated.
Fridrik wasn't the only child on the spectrum, a "human" magnet collecting heavy metals in the city when 9/11 occurred. And the Upper East Side wasn't the only area in the city to be hit by the poisonous air that cooked for more than a month after the towers collapsed. There are other children who were insulted, adding to the "bioaccumulation" problem that impacts their speech, amplifies their senses, and zaps their nervous system.
Finally, there are other 9/11-like events that put ASD children in harm's way: the fires in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; the cities that burned in the riots that plague France. There are also more innocuous sources, from the water we drink to the air tainted by industrial plants.
For children like Fridrik, the struggle has not only been treating him for toxins that have made a home in his body and brain, but trying to prevent primary (vaccines) and secondary sources of heavy metals from leeching again into his body and not out.
James Ottar Grundvig lives and works in New York City. He is the father of an autistic child.
Please also read Autism's Razor: Epidemic's Cause Found, and How Can a Child Forget a Parent's Face?.
Source: aboutautism.blogspot.com
Heidegger's Explication of Religious Phenomena in the Letters of Saint Paul
In his very early work, Heidegger was already fascinated by the problem of time, which became more and more radicalized in his thinking. The experience of time, and its connection to the status of philosophical concepts, forms the background of Heidegger’s reading of Paul in his 1920-21 lecture course, 'Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion.' In discussing the peculiarity of philosophical concepts, Heidegger points out that their uncertainty is by no means accidental, but is in fact endemic to them. This amounts to a definitive step away from the Platonic, Cartesian and Hegelian tradition and its ideal of certainty. In this article the author begins by presenting Heidegger’s description of the phenomenon of time. Then he presents his reformulation of the status of philosophical concepts, and he ends by showing how this is present in Heidegger’s analysis of the letters of Saint Paul. Especially in Heidegger’s interpretation of the letters to the Thessalonians, he shows how the actualization of factical life is understood on the basis of the ‘parousia, ’ the second coming of Christ. An essential moment of the orientation of factical life appears in the articulation of the actualization of the lived life; this is historicality. The meaning of human existence appears in existence as historicality. The way in which factical life lives time is the actualization of historicality.
Source: poj.peeters-leuven.be
Saint Paul of the Philosophers
In the introductory article the author puts the main reasons for the current importance of the writings of Saint Paul for political philosophy. First an analysis of the relation to the experience of present time. Second, the political problem of the relationship between the universal and the singular. Third, the return of religion in the political debate.
Source: poj.peeters-leuven.be
The Time of Truth
Alain Badiou’s philosophy is an attempt to re-establish truth in (post)modern thought. The main – and indeed sole – criterion for truth is universality, he argues in all of his works, including the one on Saint Paul on which this essay focuses. In this book, Badiou argues that most of Saint Paul’s doctrinal topics can be related to the main concerns of his own thought. Thus Paul’s belief in Christ’s resurrection illustrates his own theory of the ‘event’; Paul’s characterization of the church is linked with his own theory of the subject; and, finally, Paul’s entire intervention can be seen as one of the first affirmations in history of truth’s main criterion: universality. This article demonstrates how an unarticulated assumption secretly sustains Badiou’s entire theoretical framework: his belief in universal truth is supported by a belief in being’s inherent goodness. Badiou’s ‘ontology’ thus appears not so exclusively formal as he claims. Through a confrontation between Badiou’s interpretation of Paul and a reading of chapter eleven in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, the essay shows how the universality that Paul’s text claims contains an important element that Badiou’s reading – and his entire philosophy – neglects. This element involves a distorted dialectics that has resonances with both the Derridean concept of the ‘originary supplement’ and Lacan’s notion of ‘objet petit a’. The essay closes with some critical reflections on the way Badiou connects truth with time.
Source: poj.peeters-leuven.be
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A New Ultra-Secret Government Agency
Source: OMB Watch
Legislation is moving in the Senate to create a new government agency to combat bioterrorism that will operate, unlike any other agency before it, under blanket secrecy protection.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) has introduced the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005, S1873, that would create a new agency in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to research and develop strategies to combat bioterrorism and natural diseases. While Congress has created several agencies recently in response to homeland security concerns, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, Burr proposes for the first time ever to completely exempt this new agency from all open government laws. The legislation has already passed out of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and is now before the full Senate.
The Act creates the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) to work on countering bioterrorism and natural diseases. Apparently in an attempt to protect any and all sensitive information on U.S. counter-bioterrorism efforts or vulnerabilities to biological threats, Burrs has included in the legislation the first-ever blanket exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation states that, "Information that relates to the activities, working groups, and advisory boards of the BARDA shall not be subject to disclosure" under FOIA "unless the Secretary [of HHS] or Director [of BARDA] determines that such disclosure would pose no threat to national security."
Neither the CIA nor the Defense Department has such an exemption. Burr’s spokesperson argues that the exemption is necessary to protect national security claiming that "there will be times where for national security reasons certain information would have to be withheld." For instance, the BARDA should not, according to the spokesperson, be required to publicly disclose information pertaining to a deadly virus.
FOIA, however, already includes an exemption for national security information, as well as eight other exemptions ranging from privacy issues to confidential business information and law enforcement investigations. If the public disclosure of information would threaten national security, then the government may withhold the requested information. "The well-established and time-tested FOIA provisions already address Burr's concerns, " explains Sean Moulton, OMB Watch senior policy analyst, "thereby making the blanket exemption for BARDA unnecessary and unwise."
Congress established and strengthened FOIA over the years to create a reasonable, consistent level of accountability among government agencies. Under FOIA, when the public requests agency records, the agency is compelled to collect and review the requested information. The only decision for the agency is whether specific records can or can not be released under the law based on the exemptions from disclosure written into the law. However, the Burr legislation reverses the process: it does not require BARDA to collect or review the requests for disclosure. Instead, the agency can automatically reject requests. Still more troubling, the law prohibits any challenges of determinations by the Director of BARDA or Secretary of HHS, stating that the determination of the Director or Secretary with regards to the decision to withhold information "shall not be subject to judicial review."
Mark Tapscott at the Heritage Foundation writes that "BARDA will essentially be accountable to nobody and can operate without having to worry about troublesome interference from courts or private citizens like you and me."
This move to restrict the reach of FOIA appears in stark contrast to the recent Senate vote to strengthen open government. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) co-sponsored FOIA reform legislation, passed by the Senate in June, that "will bring additional sunshine to the federal legislative process, and was another step toward strengthening the Freedom of Information Act."
The Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act also exempts BARDA from important parts of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires public disclosure of advice given to the executive branch by advisory committees, task forces, boards and commissions.
Other provisions of the bill compound the troubling secrecy provisions. They include:
- Giving BARDA the authority to sign exclusive contracts with drug manufacturers and forbidding the agency from purchasing generic versions of these drugs or vaccines.
- Authorizing BARDA to issue grants and rebates for drug companies to produce vaccines.
- Providing liability protection to drug manufacturers for drugs and vaccines not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, by requiring the secretary of HHS find that a drug company willfully caused injury.
"It is essential that open government safeguards remain in place for all agencies, " Moulton continues. "It is extremely important to ensure that the nation is protected against pandemics and bioterrorist attacks, but such efforts must not be excluded from open government. By providing the mechanisms for government accountability, these safeguards ensure that the government meets its responsibility to protect the public. In the end, an accountable government is a stronger government which acts to effectively meet all threats, including pandemics and bioterrorism."
Burr is still in the process of revising the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act, and, with the Senate's incredibly tight schedule, the timing of the bill's introduction on the floor remains uncertain. In the meantime, supporters are rumored to be seeking out a Democratic cosponsor to give it momentum.
Source: aboutautism.blogspot.com
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The Care for the Present
According to Giorgio Agamben, the messianic thinking of Saint Paul opens a new way of understanding our human existence. Paul’s ho nyn kairos or ‘the time of the now’ is a specific experience of time in which new possibilities of conceiving human lifeare unfolded. Agamben furthermore argues that we should not interpret the Pauline letters as testimonies of the past, but rather as texts that point to a radical contemporary experience. In this article, this radical actualisation of the Pauline heritage is analyzed. It is argued that Agamben infuses Pauline thinking in his own understanding of contemporary political life. By applying a methodology of (messianic) displacement to both the contemporary experience of human political life and the past messianic experience of Pauline community, a new interpretation of the human form of life is introduced by Agamben. This new form of life testifies of a non-representable human residue beyond every possible political representational act. This human residue is according to Agamben the true ‘subject’ of a new political ethos. In his philosophical thinking, Paul’s ‘time of the now’ thereby becomes a messianic possibility of our own ‘present’ or our own current historical moment.
Source: poj.peeters-leuven.be
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