Donald K. Allen for President

Top of the Week

Monday, November 26, 2007

The campaign promises are stacking up.  Today I read that one candidate promises $700 million to fund research and education for autistic children.  I didn’t know of any autistic children when I was growing up, but apparently they were out there. The Center for Autism at the University of Pennsylvania began treating this syndrome in 1955.  Unfortunately, during the past 15 years autism has risen over 2,000% in Pennsylvania alone.

We don’t yet know the cause of autism, or Alzheimer’s, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but these problems have become more prominent in my lifetime.  I believe we should be studying the effects long-term exposure and absorption of many of the preservatives, flavorings, scents, compounds, and metals that have been developed in the last century.  For instance, we now know that an aluminum adjuvant (enhancer) in earlier pet vaccines resulted in injection site sarcomas due to repeated vaccination in the same area.  Now some researchers have questioned the leaching of “nano” amounts of various compounds from plastic beverage containers.  I know we only had glass milk containers during my early years and the waxed cardboard milk containers were a real advancement.  Now it’s predominantly plastic.

Our country’s health care program must include adequate funding for mental health issues, too.  Overall cuts to Federal health programs have resulted in the closure of many mental health facilities, and this devastating trend must be reversed. I would pour funding into public health issues and research, and dramatically increase the funding for the Centers for Disease Control while requiring total accountability and oversight on spending. 

As a veterinarian and from my public health experience in the Air Force Reserve, I know the value of prevention over treatment.  Much of our medical orientation is toward treatment of problems, whereas it should be more focused on prevention, including a thorough examination of what we eat and drink.  Comparing the incidences of the three mental disorders above with those in other countries with simpler diets may reveal where the causes may lie.