Review Birth brain injury: etiology and prevention— Part III: Concealed and clandestine trauma

Hypoxia and hypovolemia produced by experimental birth asphyxia in primates can affect memory ability and development of the adult brain; in humans, hypovolemia produced by ICC and the resultant infant anemia is strongly correlated with behavioral and learning disorders in children, the degree of anemia being proportional to the degree of mental deficiency. Autism comprises a major portion of these disabilities and is epidemic. Autism occurs more frequently after complicated or difficult births that indicate the use of ICC. The clinical features of autism indicate lesions of the auditory, speech and language areas of the brain to be fundamental. Hypoxic-ischemic birth injury to the inferior colliculi (part of the auditory circuit) could account for the later development of autism. Mercury toxicity from vaccines as a cause of autism is controversial and is still under investigation; mercury accumulation in brain nuclei already damaged by hypoxia-ischemia (in the same manner that bilirubin accumulates in dead tissue but does not stain living tissue) may have led researchers to attribute the damage to an incidental finding and miss the real cause. There is considerable evidence that the autism epidemic will end when the current custom of clamping functioning umbilical cords ends.