Rick Rollens

Rick Rollens (b. 1950) is a lobbyist with ARCA, political consultant and internationally known advocate for autism research. His specific focus in terms of research and advocacy is for those individuals with "full syndrome" autism. Prior to his son Russell's autism diagnosis, Rollens was the secretary of the California State Senate. Rollens resides in Granite Bay, California where he runs a consulting business.

Rollens has assisted in raising over $70 million dollars to fund research efforts aimed at finding the causes and treatments for autism spectrum disorders. Rollens was instrumental in the founding of Families for Early Autism Treatment (FEAT) and the University of California, Davis M.I.N.D. Institute (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders). Rollens is also a former board member of the Autism Society of America.

Education
Rollens graduated from California State University, Northridge.

Political career
During a 23-year career working within the California State Legislature, Rollens has served as a senator's chief of staff, as the chief consultant to the Senate Rules Committee, and as the director and creator of the state's Office of Senate Floor Analyses.

Russell Rollens
Rollens suspects vaccines induced his son Russell's autism: "He had a physical reaction to those vaccines, including a high-pitched scream and days of high pitched crying and listlessness." After Russell's diagnosis in 1996, Rollens' life changed completely: his 23-year tenure with the Senate came to an end and he began to devote his working hours to the investigation of vaccine injuries and autism. In 2000, Russell's picture graced the cover of Time magazine. Russell and his parents were also featured in a Newsweek cover story on autism that year.

According to Rollens, Russell began life as a healthy, robust child, meeting all age appropriate milestones. But at seven months, after a series of vaccinations, Russell slowly began to slip into the world of autism. Within hours, he began a nonstop 10-day period of high-pitched screaming, fevers and listlessness. Within days after his first MMR vaccination, Russell began losing most of his remaining skills, and developed severe sleep disruptions, chronic gastrointestinal problems, autoimmune problems, and suffered excruciating pain.

Since the MMR vaccine was added to the mandated childhood immunization schedule in 1980, according to Rollens (who is a lobbyist and therefore has a serious conflict of interest as he is paid to get money for the Calfiornia Department of Developmental Services independent regional centers), California has experienced an increasing epidemic of autism. The M.I.N.D. Institute, the California Department of Developmental Services, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services do not refer to the increase of autism cases as an epidemic, and there is a large body of research challenging any thimerosal-autism link.

Months of medical investigation of Russell's condition followed his initial diagnosis, including brain scans, hundreds of tests and immunological and neurological work-ups. The upshot, from Rollens' perspective: Russell's brain dysfunction had very likely occurred as a result of some form of encephalitis, resulting in brain swelling and bilateral hypometabolism in the temporal lobes.

Prompted by his son's condition, Rollens testified before the California Legislature, "The system is a sham. When it comes to examining the question of the link between autism and vaccines, this same conflict ridden group continues to produce junk science [...] studies produced not to seek the truth, but to contain damage control over the growing concern that vaccines may in fact be causing autism.  Even our own Department of Health Services, Immunization Branch is guilty of this deception."

M.I.N.D. Institute
Rollens is a co-founder of the M.I.N.D. Institute, founded in 1998. The center is a collaboration—between the parents of children with autism spectrum disorders and UC Davis researchers—who have united in a quest to find the causes of autism and treatment for neurodevelopmental disorders.

In explaining the need for alternatives to mainstream autism research, Rollens points to the fact that vaccines contain numerous potent and neurotoxic agents, ranging from live, attenuated viruses cultured in animal tissues, genetically engineered bacterial agents, to preservatives and adjuvants made from neurotoxic chemicals such as aluminum, formaldehyde, and ethylmercury.

Rollens says just pouring money into traditional autism research would not get them very far, "If we were going to wait for mainstream medicine to get around to finding a cure for our kids, we would all be old and gray and our kids would outlive us in their condition." Rollens also says the mass vaccine system is "riddled with conflicts of interest, and driven by profits" and medical arrogance, rather than research that will ever find what has caused the epidemic of autism diagnoses.