Toxins and Autism

I came across an article called “Do Toxins Cause Autism?” by Nicholas D. Kristof, an OP-ED columnist for the NY Times since 2001. Mr. Kristof’s is a journalist widely known for bringing to light the human rights. Mr. Kristof’s article is intended to create consciousness about the amount of toxins that are in the environment and their possible consequences. He’s also trying to bring to light how neglectful the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been. Mr. Kristof points out how there is over 80,000 chemicals registered and how the EPA had only required safety testing in approximately 200 of them. He emphasize that the increasing amount of cases of children with autism, now almost 1 percent of all children (according with a report from the CDC), could be related to toxins in the environment. He also commented that the theme of Autism, “despite their financial and human cost, is something that presumably won’t be discussed much at Thursday’s White House summit on health care.” After reading Mr. Kristof’s article, I mostly agree with it. My daughter has autism and many of the chemicals in the food and the environment affects her in different behavioral ways. We had to go to almost 100% with organics and natural producst in an attempt to provide my daughter with a cleaner and healthier home environment. The reason why autism is not a subject that many people will use during the health care summit is because is all about politics. Politically speaking Autism means more money spent in rehabilitation, so that means not many people will vote for it. Politicians don’t care about the children with autism and the possibility of rehabilitation. They don’t like to spent money in anything that does not affect them directly. All what they care about is how they can get more votes to be re-elected. Also Mr. Kristof mentioned that the theory of vaccines causing autism had caused “catastrophic consequences in lowering vaccination rates in America.” I believed that vaccines have something to do with my daughter’s autism. My daughter was reaching all her milestones on time. When she was vaccinated at twelve months old, was then when our lives changed and autism became part of our lives.