Deeper into Heckenlively, AoA, and Anti-Vaccination Stances

Firstly: whale.to. If you haven't been there, go. Look. Use the google search and type in some of the AoAers.

Vaccines and informed consent: Is that what AoA is all about?


I wrote a piece on Heckenlively, concluding that it was an admission that AoA is anti-vaccine. Having been taken to task on that by a friend who concluded that Heckenlively was about informed consent, I argued my disagreement with that and promised to offer corroborating quotes that Heckenlively, and by extension, AoA, ain’t about the informed consent.

 So, what is informed consent and do we have to give informed consent before vaccinations? Well, the CDC writes regarding informed consent: “Have a recipient or their parent or legal representative sign a separate “informed consent” form if it is required by your state. There is no Federal requirement for written informed consent for vaccinations, and VISs are not informed consent forms, but some states have such requirements.”

While we no longer have to sign off in most states, we do get the vaccine information statement, and in some places, like when we got our flu shots, we did sign informed consent. According to the CDC, “By Federal law, all vaccine providers must give patients, or their parents or legal representatives, the appropriate Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) whenever a vaccination is  given” (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/VIS/vis-facts.htm). So, every parent is given typically an orange paper, usually with text on both sides. The CDC states: “A VIS must be provided for any vaccine that is covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (i.e., appears on the Vaccine Injury Table). As of June 2009, VISs that must be used are: DTaP, Td, MMR, Polio, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hib, Varicella, Influenza, and Pneumococcal Conjugate.”

You can download these statements here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis/default.htm.

Since every parent or vaccine recipient is given this by law before each vaccination, the idea that parents have not participated in an informed decision and consented to the vaccination is an inaccurate assertion. Perhaps my friend mean Heckenlively just wants folks to be aware of the potential risks. The VIS do that, though. Surely people read the informational packets they get when they get medications, and therefore do the same when they’re about to get vaccinated? Okay, we know many do not. However, that is not the medical establishment nor the government’s fault that people don’t read the information provided them that would let them make informed decisions.

And I would argue rather strongly that this is not what AoA or its editors are doing. They’re not advocating for greater medical and health education and responsible decision making. They delight in people not getting vaccinated. They denigrate as sheoples and trolls those that do.

I promised specifics on Heckenlively, so let’s dig in.

Heckenlively’s article is entitled, “Are We Becoming a Majority?” Let’s examine what he means by we, becoming, and majority.

We: people who doubt the safety and need for vaccines. He’s writing this at AoA to a participating commentatorship that frequently denounces the need for vaccines, asserts that the vaccines are worse than the diseases, and calls people who get vaccinated sheoples and trolls.

Becoming: more folks becoming falsely convinced of the inherent and overwhelming danger of vaccines, or at the very least, the need for vaccines to protect against diseases these people in their lack of experience with said diseases have said are no big deal.

Majority: over 51% of the populace.

I would argue, having waded through Age of Autism’s comments far too often that, no, based on the quote Heckenlively uses, AoA believers are not becoming the majority: most of those Californians considered the vaccine safe. It is patently obvious that the AoA believers do not believe vaccines safe because they contain thimerosal, alum, formaldehyde, fetal cells, monkey virus, etc.

Heckenlively, proving he doesn’t understand how vaccines are produced: “The multiple hormonal pathways which are disrupted by arsenic are an example of how poorly we understand the effects of so many of these toxins in a biological organism. What about the aluminum, or the mercury that’s still used in the process of making the vaccines and in many flu shots? What about the formaldehyde, the lead, the cadmium, the monkey and dog kidney, as well as various animal and supposedly inactivated human viruses? Add to that the level of multi-system complexity and vulnerability of a young child and it’s difficult to see the current vaccination schedule as anything other than a vast, uncontrolled experiment on our children” (http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/05/could-swine-flu-deaths-be-the-key-to-understanding-autism.html#more). Really screams out Heckenlively’s support for vaccination, doesn’t it?

And, no, contrary to my friend’s opinion on this, Heckenlively is not for vaccination (or for facts, either, since any potential linking of aluminum and Alzheimer’s was debunked, and I can only assume that his fear over the flu shot deals with aluminum salts): “my aged father who is still getting his yearly flu shots so that I can worry about Alzheimer's as one of the joys of his remaining years” (Heckenlively).

You don’t lose friends over concerns that vaccines, like medications, ought to be as safe as possible. You don’t. You lose friends, you alienate people, when you believe things to be true which are patently false, and you lose them because of the vociferousness with which you hold the false belief.

Heckenlively ended his piece with the idea that the new majority is one that just wants to hear more. So, I’ll concede that if this all you know of Heckenlively, you might not construe it as confirmation that AoA itself is anti-vaccination; well, you could miss it. Until you catch the piece with the Alzheimer’s and flu vaccines, the belief that vaccination itself causes autism (not an immediate adverse event with brain injury resulting, just getting vaccinated), and the whole losing friends thing.

Heckenlively’s ultimate (unstated) conclusion is that if you know more, you won’t vaccinate, and it completely leaves out the risks of the diseases vaccines prevent against.


But, let’s not just rest on this one Heckenlively piece to make the assertion that AoA is anti-vaccination.

How about this gem: “Usually I have to explain that adjuvants are substances used in vaccines, like aluminum, designed to provoke an immune response from the body. But since our kids seem be suffering from an auto-immune disorder in which the immune response is all screwed up, it’s reasonable to ask whether those adjuvants have over-stimulated their systems” (http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/10/the-new-science-teacher.html#more).

Except there’s no scientific evidence to support the contention that autism is an auto-immune disorder. And no reason to believe that the trace amounts of aluminum would have any impact. This is more shades of the aluminum-Alzheimer’s debunked theory. Of course, there are anti-vaccination folks out there in the autism community who believe that autism and Alzheimer’s are the same thing. I don’t know how they make this leap that it’s aluminum in both, while not noticing they’ve left behind the mercury connection. And a simple gander over at whale.to finds Heckenlively: http://www.whale.to/vaccine/aluminium_a.html. You know how many articles Heckenlively has at whale.to? 17. You got it. So, he’s got 17 articles on a site that also promotes holocaust denial, mind control, and the idea that vaccines are a racket and hoax (http://www.whale.to/b/hoax1.html).

So what does the CDC say about aluminum? You can download a pamphlet at http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/additives.htm. In this pamphlet, the question as to whether aluminum in some vaccines causes harm is answered:

“No. The quantity of aluminum in vaccines is tiny compared

with the quantity required to cause harm. Here’s another way

to think about this: All babies are either breast-fed or bottlefed.

Because both breast milk and infant formula contain

aluminum, all babies have small quantities of aluminum in

their bloodstreams all the time. The amount is very small:

about 5 nanograms (billionths of a gram) per milliliter of

blood (about one-fifth of a teaspoon). Indeed, the quantity of

aluminum in vaccines is so small that even after an injection

of vaccines, the amount of aluminum in a baby’s blood does

not detectably change. In contrast, the amount of aluminum

in the bloodstreams of people who suffer health problems from

aluminum is at least 100 times greater than the

amount found in the bloodstreams of healthy people.”

As to why we should seriously consider the accuracy of Heckenlively’s claims (since he gets it really wrong on aluminum), examine this quote: “That would go along with a lot of parental observations about what happened to their children as well as the finding by Dr. Wakefield of the measles virus persisting in the guts of children with autism.” ( http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/09/scientists-find-people-vary-widely-in-their-ability-to-eliminate-arsenic-implications-for-autism.html#more)

Wakefield’s findings were refuted, not just in mainstream science, but during the Cedillo case heard in front of the vaccine court. But Heckenlively obviously follows down that line.

So, Heckenlively thinks aluminum causes Alzheimer’s and autism.

Heckelively thinks autism is an autoimmune disorder despite no evidence by mainstream science.

Heckenlively also thinks Wakefield’s science is right, even though it’s been thoroughly discredited.

Here’s what Heckenlively writes: “Now I can’t tell you if autism is just a heavy metals problem. I think it’s probably also viral, possibly bacterial, there’s got to be some genetic contribution and from that point on I don’t know exactly what is going wrong in the body to allow this condition to continue.” http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/08/dr-house-on-chelation.html#more

Okay, so, it’s auto-immune, a heavy metals problem (from the vaccines? Cuz there’s not enough metals there to give you heavy metal toxicity, which goes to show chemistry isn’t this man’s field, nor biochemistry), but it’s also viral, and a whole bunch of other stuff thrown in.

Wait, not done, not by a long shot. Heckenlively writes: “And the truth is that in the vast majority of cases the vaccines have led directly to autism. Now I can’t tell you the exact path. I don’t know if it’s a methylation problem, an amino acid disorder, abnormal lipids, genetic vulnerabilities, mitochondrial abnormalities, neuro-inflammation, viruses, opportunistic bacteria, or a mold, or fungus, but I do know what started the whole damned thing.” (http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/08/rebranding-.html#more)

Again, Heckenlively is saying vaccines in and of themselves cause autism, no adverse reaction needed. Don’t need to explain it, either, he just knows that’s it.

And finally, sticky blood.

Heckenlively is not the worst of the anti-vaccine people at AoA, but it cannot be said that he is anything but anti-vaccination.

And some final interesting statistics:

How many hits did Stagliano have on whale.to? 6 Olmsted? 96. Handley? 65.

The editors and writers of Age of Autism are aligned with whale.to. Whale.to is out front in its belief that vaccines are unsafe (see any of its vaccination page, or this one: http://www.whale.to/vaccine/why_vaccination_continues.html or this one: http://www.whale.to/b/hoax1.html).

This was not a pleasant post to write. I dislike the sliminess of whale.to. And any decent, reasonable person really should. And should really question not only the ethics and morality of the people who have anything to do with that site, they should question the accuracy of the information these people are providing elsewhere. After all, if you think mind control is possible, that the holocaust didn’t happen and that vaccines are a hoax, well, you’re wrong. So, what else are you wrong about?

Heckenlively admits that AoA is anti-vaccination ***Updated***

Well, go read his post about them becoming the majority and see if it doesn't show clearly that this isn't about safe vaccination; it's about no vaccination.

Now, tell me that doesn't mean pro-infectious disease out of a misguided, inaccurate fear of any vaccines at any age causing autism?

Seriously. It's one thing to make sure parents know and understand the relative risks and make informed decisions based on accurate evidence (and that included medications like CHELATION and treatments like HBOT); it's completely another to do what AoA is doing.

Supporting AoA's agenda means supporting a return to increased childhood mortality. Period.

***The comments over there confirm this is about reducing the number of vaccinated people. Not so much out of a fear that everyone who gets one will get autism, but because getting vaccinated appears to mean you've bought into some governmental/pharma conspiracy.

In other words, where the whale.to connection used to be quieter, more hidden, where the crazy was ensconsed elsewhere for plausible deniability, they've brought it front and center and wear it proudly.

I'm going to say it again in case any one missed my point: supporting AoA's apparently now open agenda to reduce vaccination is to support increased childhood mortality. It isn't about the autism any more, folks, it isn't about reducing autism. It isn't about helping people with autism or autistic children. It's about ending vaccination.

And I'm invoking Thelma. Anyone who wants to eliminate vaccination and see a return to the previous mortality rates we had in the 40s and 50s and earlier, anyone who wants more children to suffer with preventable illnesses, is a dumbass. I don't do that with malice. I don't say that with any sort of derision or scorn. These people are dangerous and they are wrong. And I do believe I'd begin to distance myself from their dangerous nonsense that will see children and others die because of their arrogant ignorance.

Age of Autism, Factual Information, and Decency

I have a series of quibbles this morning about Age of Autism, but first I'll begin with a point of agreement.

Olmsted reprimanding the writer of Denialism on plagiarism: I'll start out with noting he is technically correct, in that the passage appears to be plagiarized. If those two passages are in fact word for word as they appear, then intentional or not, it was taken from Offit with very little adjustment and would have meant a failing grade if I had caught it (as a college English instructor, I've already dealt with four incidences of plagiarism this semester and take it beyond serious). Doesn't matter if it was unintentional, so it's nice the author took accountability and will fix it. The problem I have with both paragraphs, incidentally, is a lack of sources. I know that both are written for lay audiences, and it may be the publisher's preference, but when I read factual information or information sourced elsewhere, the English and psychology instructors in me want attribution for the information. These books aren't throwaway comments, they are arguments to believe information and conclusions. They need to provide a trail right back along the path to how they drew these conclusions.

So, there, I start out with a common agreement with Olmsted that plagiarism, unintentional or not, is not a good thing.

***From Liz Ditz in the comment section below (quotes added to Specter's blog quote)***

Liz Ditz said...


From Michael Specter

http://www.michaelspecter.com/2009/11/my-mistake-and-an-apology-to-paul-offit/#respond

"My Mistake and an Apology to Paul Offit

November 8th, 2009 Posted in Blog

There is nothing more important to me than accuracy, and there is no place in my book, Denialism, where I tried harder to avoid careless mistakes than in the chapter called "Vaccines and the Great Denial." I didn't succeed, though, and I want to make sure readers are aware of that. In a section describing the origin and workings of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program I quote extensively from an article in The New England Journal of Medicine written by Dr. Paul Offit, the well-known vaccine researcher. At one point in my narrative (which begins on page 88 of the book) however, I stopped quoting Dr. Offit in order to explain, in my own words, the meaning of some of the medical terminology he had employed. I then returned to Dr. Offit's description of why the court was created and how it works, and should have gone back to quoting from the NEJM article, but did not. It was an accidental oversight which I will correct as soon as new copies of the book are printed. I told Dr. Offit about the mistake as soon as I realized I had made it, and, as always, he was gracious. But I also wanted to make readers aware of the error, which I regret."


While technically plagiarism, to me, this is a copyediting or formatting error.

Note the date of Specter's acknowlegement & apology -- before the AoA article.

(Thanks, Liz!)

Now, irony, here: Olmsted, seriously, maybe you haven't committed the cardinal sin of plagiarizing, but you have far worse to anwer for. After all, your shoddy reporting is the backbone to the provenly false conclusions that the Amish don't vaccinate and don't have autism. So, maybe you could turn that critical eye of yours to your own faults. And I can't help but notice that you didn't denounce Spector for calling AoA anti-vaccine. I do believe I'll take that as confirmatory: Age of Autism is anti-vaccine.

For an excellent deconstruction of how badly Olmsted got it wrong: see David Brown's page for a series of articles: http://evilpossum.weebly.com/olmsted.html.

We move onto another quibble. Olmsted writes that the folks at AoA are "smart, well-informed and decent people whose grasp of the truth is much stronger and harder-won than yours."

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/11/olmsted-on-autism-michael-specter-plagiarizes-paul-offit-massacres-facts-in-denialism.html#more

Decent?

Well, let's take a stroll, shall we?

I believe I have at least a couple posts throughout Countering demonstrating that decency. Sheoples, trolls.
http://counteringageofautism.blogspot.com/2009/10/trolls-sheoples-and-arrogant-hostility.html
http://counteringageofautism.blogspot.com/2009/09/vaccines-and-autism-what-can-parents-do.html


Oh, and then there's Handley and his intellectual rape bit.  http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/10/the_anti-vaccine_movement_strikes_back_u.php


There's Kathy Blanco actually having the bad taste to suggest that infectious diseases are good for culling the herd, or words to that effect (and Jen who should be embarassed for explicitly stating it over at LBRB and seeing no wrong with it). --it got to where I quit naming her when I ran quotes from her; they were just that bad and I was trying to be gentle as her comments got further from reality Hard won, strong grasp of the truth, anyone? Swear I had a blog on this last week, as well, and that it was a comment of hers. http://counteringageofautism.blogspot.com/2009/10/it-seems-to-be-week-for-anti-vaxxers-to.html


And just last week, rileysmom got herself quoted on Orac for her decency.  http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/an_age_of_autism_commenter_destroys_yet.php

I have no doubt many of AoA's folks are intelligent. I completely quibble with the contention that they are well-informed, unless we mean well-informed of woo and bunk, because that they absolutely are and they hold tight to it with a religious that nothing will touch.

Perhaps they are decent people in some areas of their lives. Perhaps. See, to my way of thinking, the kind of things they right, the uliness and venom they spew relatively anonymously on the web belies that completely and speaks to their character far more than what they do in the real world where people can see them. And those who do it with their names full out in the open, who show such ugliness, who demonize those who disagree with them, well, no I don't consider them decent people, not on balance, not overall.

As to Olmted's last bit of that line: "grasp of the truth is much stronger and harder-won than yours." No. Olmsted wrote that AoA was going to follow the truth wherever it led. I believe I have demonstrated quite well over the last several months that this is not at all true.

And having autistic children doesn't make your truth harder-won. For frak sake, that's like saying your child is your science. It demonstrates your ignorance of the truth, of scientific evidence, of psychological fallacies. You keep making the same errors over and over. You spiral into a cesspool of nastiness and hold yourselves up as morally superior and smarter because you see the truth. You are becoming a cult.

No, I quibble completely with the idea that you are "smart, well-informed and decent people whose grasp of the truth is much stronger and harder-won than yours." You are angry, hostile parents who are hurting. You believe with a fervor bordering on fanatical that you have the answers of autism. You are so close to being just like John Best Jr, on the whole, that soon no one other than your most zealous followers will afford you any weight.

Again, whale.to and holocaust denial. That's who you people are. You aren't in it for the truth. You aren't in it to make the world a better place for your children. You aren't in it for your children, despite what you think, or you'd treat autistic adults a damn sight better and you wouldn't engage in bullying.

And I grow weary that the smart, decent people amongst you do not stand against the lies and abuse. Ideology drives this, not the pursuit for truth.

Autism as a Plague We Created by staying indoors and then vaccinating: Woo to You

My friend Thelma was kind enough to pass on this bit of outrageous woo she found when she was writing a post on Mercola, http://evendumbasseshavefeelings.blogspot.com/2009/11/pagin-doctor-quackaloon.html. She found a site that has some connection to Mercola called the Vitamin D Council.

The Vitamin D Council has some theories on vitamin D that are interesting to say the least, but haven't, near as I can tell, gotten a lot of play; there are a couple dozen hits over at Age of Autism, but they appear to be in the comments section, and the Council's attempt to get some play for their theories and perhaps to sell their test kits.

Thelma used this quote in her piece from the Council and its theory that if pregnant mothers had just gotten enough vitamin D and then made sure their children had adequate vitamin D after birth, their child wouldn't be autistic: "The theory that vitamin D deficiency, during pregnancy or childhood, causes autism is just a theory. However, the theory has a plausible mechanism of action, explains all the unexplained facts about autism, subsumes several other theories, implies simple prevention, and is easily disprovable—all components of a useful theory."

Cannell, the executive director, writes in his conclusion to the vitamin D causes autism theory: "If the vitamin D theory of autism is correct, then to the extent it is correct, the current plague of autism is an iatrogenic disease, caused by modern sun-avoidance and the organizations that promulgated it."

Great, our children are a plague or are carrying it. Now if his hairbrained, alternative refrigerator-mom theory of autism hadn't offended you, let that idea of autism being a plague roll around in your head for a moment. By the way, what's the definition of plague? Oh yes, here it is: "Plague is a severe and potentially deadly bacterial infection" (google.com/health).



Oh, and if you thought he didn't have anything to offer the mercury militia, think again. He's made his vitamin D theory work with the mercury poisoning gambit of thimerosal in vaccines: "That is, the mercury in Thiomerosol vaccines may have injured vitamin D deficient children while normal children would have easily bound the mercury and excreted it." There you go, you let your children be deficient in vitamin D and then you vaccinated them.

He keeps digging the hole deeper, too: "Can autistic children get better? We don't know although most do not. However, if vitamin D is involved in autism then young autistic children, whose brains have not been irreparably damaged, may improve if they move to sunnier latitudes, increase their sun exposure, or start consuming more vitamin D in their diet."


Most autistic kids don't get better? Right. Bull. It's a developmental delay. They improve, they grow, they learn. So, I suppose, it's a Clintonian is. What do we mean by better? No longer autistic? Or make developmental progress?
His comment over at AoA reveals his angle in this: you need to test your kids often, and he's got a test kit for 65 dollars. So, every couple months, plunk down 65 bucks to him to test your kid's vitamin D level. Think about it. If he can get all 20,000 or so parents ( I know, a complete guestimate on my part based on the autism-mercury and environment of harm yahoo groups' memberships then doubled, and a couple thousand more thrown in)  who think mercury did this, get them to think that vitamin D deficiency keeps it going, you can see he's got a profit motive ( http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/an-open-letter.html).

Here's one of his plugs in the comment section from the above link:

"One thousand IU of vitamin D per day is not enough for most autistic children. The Vitamin D Council's protocol for diagnosing and treating vitamin D deficiency in autistic children is below. Remember, the worst thing that can happen is that children will have stronger bones and fewer influenza infections:


http://www.virologyj.com/content/5/1/29

1. Advise parents to stop giving children all preformed vitamin A, such as cod liver oil, and all vitamins or supplements containing retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate. Preformed vitamin A antagonizes the action of vitamin D, probably at the vitamin D receptor site. Beta carotene does not have this same effect but children only need extra beta carotene if their diet is poor in colorful fruits and vegetables, dairy products, or fortified breakfast cereals.

2. Order a 25-hydroxy-vitamin D [25(OH)D] blood test. Do not order a 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D as it is often elevated in vitamin D deficiency and will mislead you. A home test kit for vitamin D is now available for children. It uses a heel or finger stick, does not require a doctor's visit and results are returned directly to the parents in a few days:

http://www.zrtlab.com/Page.aspx?nid=12&action=view&category=14&partner=VitaminD%20Council

3. If the 25(OH)D level is less than 70 ng/ml, the mid range of American references labs (30 - 100 ng/ml), give your child vitamin D3 supplements, available at any pharmacy. Generally children require 1,000 IU per 25 pounds of body weight per day. However, great individual variation exists and autistic children need to be retested and the dose adjusted about every month until levels are at least 70 ng/ml in any child with autism.

4. Test for 25(OH)D every few months and treat with enough vitamin D until 25(OH)D levels are stable. Some children will require 2,000 - 3,000 IU per 25 pounds of body weight, but frequent 25(OH)D testing will assure proper dosage. Vitamin D toxicity has never been reported, in adults or children, with 25(OH)D levels below 200 ng/ml.

Again, the worse that can happen is the children will have stronger bones and fewer colds and flu.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/

We believe the key to preventing autism is diagnosing and treating vitamin D deficiency in early pregnancy. Pregnant women can follow the above protocol, as can anyone who no longer wants to be vitamin D deficient.

John Cannell, MD

The Vitamin D Council

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org

Posted by: John Cannell, MD
November 19, 2008 at 10:42 AM "

And his website further makes clear what he's advocating and selling:

"So until we know for sure, pregnant women, infants, children, everyone—especially autistic children—should receive sensible sun exposure daily: around noon or 1:00 p.m., expose as much skin as possible, 10–30 minutes duration, depending on how easily one sunburns. In the winter, use a suntan parlor once a week, with the same precautions—or better yet, purchase an ultraviolet vitamin D lamp for home use.


I prefer to avoid sunlight, what should I do? You and your child should have a vitamin D blood test, called a 25-hydroxyvitamin D."

Note: I recognize the vital importance of vitamin D, I supplement my family's vitamin D, and it should be frikking obvious from the garden pictures that we get ample time in the sun. And, my kids aren't more autistic in the winter and less in the summer. Not that an anecdote science makes, but since this guy took a bit of science and mangled it to sell his kits and refer back to Mercola to sell his tanning  beds, I figure my anecdote is even more convincing than his crap. Especially since I'm not trying to sell you anything.
 
The danger that these people who prey on parents of autistic children, offering them products to cure autism, is enhanced because they use scientific language, they couch their language in certitude, and then they offer to fix the problem for you. Note, it's never a permanent cure; you have to keep buying their products.
 
Now, isn't it interesting that those in the mainstream, those who blog about the science that shows no link, aren't selling you anything? No product recommendations? No sponsors? (I know Orac's site has ads, but they're on the blogging platform and not something he's profitting from) But these sites that promote the vaccination link, who provide the woo out the wazoo, they all have lots and lots of sponsors selling you products? These doctors claiming to have figured it out, they're selling you stuff, too, profitting directly from convincing you that autism is all sorts of things that mainstream research does not confirm.  They're growing rich off of you, and because their cure isn't permanent, parents spend a fortune out of pocket that never ends.
 
And the desperation never ends, either, because the autism doesn't go away. You're on a treadmill, going nowhere. There are better ways, but it means giving up certainty and answers. It means recognizing that autism is a lifelong neurological condition/difference. It means pushing up your sleeves, realistically examining the issues your child has, how these issues impact their daily functioning, and working on how to address these issues, not with the idea of some magic bullet, but with science, reason, patience, and acceptance behind it.
 
If your child has physiological symptoms like intestinal distress, you absolutely address it.You look for possible allergens, absolutely.  Not feeling well makes a person irritable, no doubt about it, and that irritability should reduce when distressing physical symptoms are treated. You make sure your child has the right diet for him or her, as healthy and balanced a diet as possible, with adequate fiber. It's amazing what the right amount of fiber can do to help intestinal issues. There now, I may not have gone fully into the poo, as McCarthy or our pal Roger, but I addressed the patently false contention that many on the anti-ND side put out that folks who (blah, blah, blah) don't want to treat autistic children for their medical issues.
 
So, what's my angle? I'm not selling products. I suppose I'm trying to convince you I'm right, but about what, exactly?
 
Adaptive coping beats the hell out of maladaptive coping. Acceptance isn't not doing anything. It's accepting where you are regardless of how you got there. As long as you're stuck on the whys, you aren't focused on the what-nows.
 
For a discussion of a recent journal article dealing with resolution, "Resolution of the Diagnosis Among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Associations with Child and Parent Characteristics," see
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=2730.
 
Sullivan sums it up lovely: "Resolution is not giving up. Resolution is accepting the reality of you and your child’s situation. Resolution does not mean one doesn’t fight to improve your own life or that of your child."




Read more: http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=2730#ixzz0WBtdJ7dv

Pushing up our sleeves and telling our stories **Updated***

***Updated 11/09****
There's a blogpost down there where it got kind of heated. Ah, what's new, you say? Well, we did a post with what we love about our children. It felt good.

I was commenting in that heated thread to Craig that we didn't have his story, his son's story, without the overlay of rhetoric. I've pasted the relevant portion here. It's a call to all readers to share their stories about their children and autism. Without AoA talking points. Without rhetoric or ideology. Just the story. The details. Well, here ya'll can read what  I wrote:

Now, seriously. Craig, what's your story look like without the rhetoric from AoA, some of it I've conclusively demonstrated to be inaccurate information? Just your family's story. No theories as to causation. No AoA talking points. No hate, no rage. Just the story. The whole story.


How long has it been since you've separated the details from the narrative you've overlaid on it?

How long since you've just told the story without the goal of convincing someone about the vaccines, without going into the story half-cocked and ready for rejection?

Tell me your story, Craig. Tell me your son's story. What was he like? What was that night, after the vaccination, when he started running fever? What were the next months like? What happened? How did you feel? The story, Craig, and then I bet you, not just me, but others, like Kathleen, will be willing to share our stories, stories that don't deal with causes, but deal with the events. Let's see what we have in common without rhetoric and ideology getting in the way.

I'm going to start a new blog post for this. I encourage all readers to share their stories in this. If you need more space because the comment limit gets in your way, email me your story at wombles@sbcglobal.net and I'll put it in the main blog.

Let's do some work, folks, work that matters, that makes a difference, instead of the same old stuff.

(I recognize that the personal experiences, especially vaccine injury, cannot be separated from the details of the story, so if my request for the stories to not involve rhetoric or ideology was confusing, I apologize. If your child had an adverse reaction to a vaccination as Craig's did, it should be included --just note that adverse reactions happen within 24 hours generally, and most are immediate or within six hours, not this months later I remember my child got vaccinated and now he's been diagnosed.)

Craig's story:

Kim, honestly, that is a difficult thing to do considering that the injury was such a large and significant event in his life, indeed, in all of my family’s lives, that it is nearly impossible to separate it. I keep saying that the only way that people like Offit would acknowledge injuries like my son’s would be if the needle was still stuck in the arm when the reaction happened. Well, my son’s needle was pretty much stuck in the arm when the reaction happened. That’s how close the events were.


I’ll start with what he was like before. He was a little prankster. He used to steal the remote control from on top of the TV, turn on the TV, then hide the remote. While I would look for his new hiding place for the remote, I would hear him giggling. I have a fantastic picture taken a few days before his injury of him on our couch, remote in hand, big grin on his face. The little imp.

Every morning, we’d wake up to hear him calling bright and cheery from his crib, “Hi!! Want Out!” He’d run to the kitchen, chubby little butt waving, and holler “Eat, please!” We’d get him his breakfast, and he would cheerily say, “Thank you!” (though, it would come out sounding like, “Tank Tooooooo!”). He loved going bye bye! He’d get a big smile on his face as we’d strap him in his car seat, whispering, “Go Bye Bye” as we’d get his sister into the car. And then, he’d just chatter away a million miles an hour the entire time we were in the car, talking in his babbling little baby language, mixed with real words, telling us about everything he was seeing. He was so smart, so cheerful, so bright.

His last words to me before his doctor visit in March of 2003 were “Go Bye Bye” as I strapped him into his carseat. On the way home, he had fallen asleep, so my wife brought him in and laid him down. He woke up a few hours later and fussed a little, but my wife went in and changed him, and he went right back to sleep.

I didn’t really think anything of it. I knew that some babies felt a little off right after a vaccination, so I just went about my business. About 6 hours after he got home, he woke up and started screaming. Now, I’ve never heard anything like this before. It was terrifying; horrible screams that I can only describe as what it sounds like when a cat is tortured. I ran into his room, and he was writhing on the bed, his head back as far as it would go, his little back arched (I’m tearing up as I write this), fists clenched as he screamed and screamed. I picked him up, and he was hot. Burning up. My wife grabbed the thermometer. 104.2. Holy shit!!! We got a cool bath ready and tried to bring down his temperature, but that wasn’t working, and it was obvious that it was causing him severe discomfort.

So, we called his pediatrician. My wife was holding my son, rocking him, doing whatever she could to console him. Nothing was working. He would cry for a while, then start that terrible screaming again, arching his back. I was on the phone with his pediatrician, and it was so loud that I could barely hear him. I told him what was happening, how high his fever was, and he proceeded to tell me, “Oh, this is normal. Just give him some Tylenol and a cool bath.” WTF??????

This had been going on for over an hour, and my wife and I were frayed and shell-shocked. His voice was growing hoarse from all of the screaming. We checked his fever again. 105! Hospital time.

As I was getting things together, getting his older sister up and dressed, my wife started screaming. I ran into the living room, and she was holding him down on the couch. He had finally stopped screaming, but he was convulsing, his arms and legs flopping uncontrollably. He did this for a few minutes and finally stopped. At that moment, I didn’t care if people weren’t fully dressed or we didn’t have everything…we were going to the ER NOW!

On the way there, he had a second seizure. The whole trip was chaotic; a blur. We had to pull over to make sure he was breathing. Somehow, his silence was a thousand times worse than the screaming. We got to the hospital, and I remember running inside, this burning hot chubby little child in my arms. I honestly don’t remember the exact conversation with the Triage nurse, but I do remember that as I was getting them to take his temp, he had a third seizure. The only time I’ve ever been more terrified was when my wife’s heart stopped back in May.

My wife and I took turns. One of us would go out to the waiting room with my oldest daughter while the other one went in with my son. They gave him another cool bath and several medications to bring down his temp. They did a CT scan and saw the neuroinflamation. We spent the night at the hospital, neither my wife nor I sleeping.

The next day, his fever was down, and he slept. In his waking moments, he was listless and glassy-eyed. He didn’t want to eat or drink anything, so they had to give him intravenous fluids. He had to stay in the hospital for 2 days, and he remained listless.

When we got him home, we immediately knew something was wrong. The chattering was gone. His face was expressionless; no smile when he’d see us, no recognition. He wouldn’t pull up on anything or try to walk; he’d belly crawl to where ever it was he wanted to go. He’d lie in the middle of the floor on his back, staring up at the ceiling fan. He refused to eat anything unless it was really crunchy or really soft and smooth (pudding and yogurt). He lost weight. He would lay on the floor or sit with his back against a wall and just bang the back of his head over and over again on the floor or wall; so much so that there is now a permanent flat spot on the back of his head. Yes, my son went “Bye Bye.”


He stopped walking for almost a year. When he was 26 months old, he was diagnosed with Autistic Disorder. The doctors in Mississippi (where I was living at the time) didn’t really have much in the way of advice, only telling us to talk to other parents of autistic children. Soon after, he had gotten into the bathroom and crawled up into the bathroom sink. I walked in a few minutes later, and there he was, splashing away in scalding hot water. His legs were beet red, but he didn’t feel anything at all. Didn’t cry out, nothing. When he was 3, he burned his arm on the stove. Again, he didn’t even seem to feel it.

We brought him to numerous doctors and specialists, at great cost to us. The company I worked for wouldn’t cover any of his treatments because autism is a pre-existing condition. We tried going through the public school system in Mississippi. Ha!!! The final straw for me was when they told me that they wouldn’t help him anymore and that we needed to put him in an institution.

About this time, which was a little over 3 years ago, I started getting onto the online autism sites. Well, you know part of that story. I’d ask at doctor’s websites and science-based sites, saying that my son had a severe reaction to a vaccination and that I needed information and help. I won’t go into their responses, but let’s just way that they weren’t very nice. My son had been growing more and more violent; biting, hitting, scratching himself, pulling his hair out in clumps. One very nice lady on one of the newsgroups I was asking around on suggested Dallas, which had decent programs for children like my son. I had friends there, and well, none of the Doctors in Mississippi or Memphis were worth a shit, so I left a very lucrative job with the Casinos down there, and I moved to the Dallas area. I’ve been here since, and I don’t regret a day of it.

About 2 years ago, his violent fits got so bad that we had to put him in a mental hospital. I will tell you that it is one of the worst feelings in the world to have to hold your son down while they strap him to a gurney to prevent him from hurting himself. They suggested medicating him even more. Once, after he had gotten out of the hospital (that time), he had such a violent fit that I had to take him down onto the floor, his arms spread wide while I pushed his knees against his chest and rest my weight on them, holding him down so he wouldn’t hurt himself or anyone else until his rage passed. I am 6’4”, 230 lbs and built like a football player. He was maybe 50 lbs at the time. He lifted me off the floor!

We didn’t know what to do. He was in extreme pain from his GI issues. His stools were either really hard and brick-like, or he had constant diarrhea. There was no in-between. We took him to one doctor and they did several allergy tests. He was allergic to wheat, dairy, and sesame seeds (wheat and dairy being about the only thing he would eat). One person on AoA suggested that I meet up with Dr. Kotsanis in Dallas. We set up an appointment, and he suggested a change in diet. We went on the GFCF diet, then what Dr. Kotsanis jokingly calls the “Caveman Diet” (just meat and veggies, some fruit).

Within a week, the change was noticeable. His violent fits would wind down faster. He wouldn’t lean over a chair or the couch and grunt from the pain. Not long after that, my wife and I had gone out for dinner. When we returned, Nate saw me enter the door, gave a great, big smile (which were extremely rare for 4 years) and said, “Daddy!” (it came out sounding like “Da-eee!”, but we knew what he was saying). I melted; a great big puddle on the floor. I have no qualms about saying that I bawled like a little girl, hugging my little boy tightly to my chest. I was his 1st word in 4 years.

We’re starting to see my son coming back. Slowly and surely. He still has some fits, but they are nothing like they used to be. He smiles way more often now. He laughs all the time now, and his laughter is so sweet and pure that you can’t help but laugh with him. We can even see an echo of his former self; when we say that we’re going Bye Bye, he gets up from what he’s doing and heads straight for the door… it doesn’t matter if he’s dressed or not. He says more words now, but still not like he used to.
Anyway, that’s about it.

I hope that others will follow suit and share their experiences. I will share mine this weekend when I have some spare time. Much of it, at least regarding my bright boy, has been told in several posts over at Detritus. There's a list of hyperlinks on the right side of Detritus's page covering the personal posts.

Please remember that I'd like this to be supportive on this thread. Questions should be welcomed, if you want clarification on something. But this isn't about tearing people down; it's about finding the commonalities in our stories.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and hopefully to share. It isn't just about parents, either. If you are an autistic individual, you know I welcome your stories any time. How did you find out about your diagnosis? How does autism impact you? How does society's reaction to your autism affect you?


Corina's story:

oh dear, Kim, you're asking a writer to tell her story? I'll have to keep it to the cole's notes version then :D According to what I know:




I was born, perfectly healthy, a few days earlier than expected, and so was delivered via emergency C-section (I also share a birthday with Johnny Depp, something I just learned this year). I was colicky and had something wrong with my stomach flap. Not a lot of the medicines worked.

I know that when I was a baby, my parents took my brother and I to Mexico. We traveled quite a bit. My mother and father are third-culture children, and so believe that early learning of different cultures encourages more mutual understanding and sense of tolerance.



I didn't speak until I was 2 1/2. My first words heard by my mother were on the behalf of another child and were "the baby wants milk."



My brother had violent rages, and was capable of throwing solid wood dressers across the room. Locks were put on our doors and I was taught to hide in my room with a book. I refused to read in the presence of my brother, who didn't learn how to read until grade 6.


When my brother was tested and diagnosed with ADHD and "gifted" Learning Disability, my mother tried to get me assessed as well. I was casually tested and diagnosed with ADD.



Physically, I was under-developed, but kept up with my age group.


My school tried to hold me back in Kindergarten because I was not socializing properly with the other students, had difficulty with transitions, was easily startled, and would curl up in the corner with a book rather than participate in group lessons. My mother refused to hold me back, pointing out that was no reason to keep me from my age group, since my schoolwork was definitely passing.

From grades 1 to grade 3, teachers noticed different concerns over socializing, transitions, and schoolwork. One teacher mentioned I laughed at the more mature jokes she and the assistant teacher told each other. Another seemed determined to have me labeled as a behavioural problem, and tried on a few accounts to use me as a scapegoat in the classroom.



I also had headaches that seemed to get worse and better throughout the day. It was generally considered that the headaches were stress-inflicted. I didn't have the words to describe how they would get marginally better, and then suddenly get worse. I knew words, but didn't know how to use them to explain.


I went to speech therapy for "slushy and immature speech", but in junior high stopped because I refused to go.

Because I wanted to learn the violin, my mother had me take piano lessons so that I knew the basics.

Throughout school, I was noted for high reading skills, creative writing and art. The other subjects... fluctuated.


Due to bullying in the public school, I was transferred to a private school, where I still felt like an outsider, stumbled over social rules, and was generally considered "quiet", "shy", "likes to read", and "nice". I still friended other outsiders, some of which were from troubled backgrounds which I tried to help beyond my limitations.



There was also an interesting scenario where the mother of one of my friends, at the science fair where we were working together, told me not to speak to her daughter, and even attempted to get the school to keep us apart. To this day, I have no clue what exactly offended her or caused her to do so.


I began to learn the flute, and was taught by a professor at Queen's University. I played with her university students.

In 1997, my grandfather died. This sparked the beginnings of the depression, full out anxiety and panic attacks that arose in high school.

About this time is when I heard about my brother and my diagnosis, and the fact that the doctors who assessed us had told my parents that my brother would not finish school, would not learn how to read, and would be practically institutionalised for his entire life, I thought "if that is what they expect of him, the 'gifted' one, then how little did they expect of me?" I then became determined to show "them" wrong, that I was not "lazy" or had anything "wrong" with me.

In high school, seeing it as a fresh start, I attempted to "fit in" for about one term. Being unable to keep up with the changing loyalties of the "in" crowd, I detached myself from that crowd, and once again found friends and acceptance in the "outsiders group", those who really didn't fit in anywhere or was predominately "in" a group.



I changed churches, and found a better faith community that allowed me to start getting over the grief from my grandpa's death. It helped me to pull out of suicidal depression.



In the summer between grade 9-10, I was re-assessed and diagnosed with ADD and Learning Disabilities. Mom had this done so that the high school would give me an IEP. After being without one for so long, it took me to grade 12 to be able to feel somewhat comfortable with using my accommodations, due to the stubborn fact that I was determined to prove that the doctors who originally assessed my brother and I were wrong (never mind that my brother is doing a perfect good job doing that by himself. Honor Roll, Ontario Scholar, two undergrad degrees and currently working on his Master's. Didn't read till grade 6).



I had half-believed the claims that I just needed to work harder, alternating between "nothing wrong, just lazy" and "defective".

In Grade 10, two things happened. One, I suffered from disabling headaches, rapid loss of appetite, and was extremely weak. After a weakening and extremely painful headache during March break, my blood was tested and I was diagnosed with Chronic Iron Anemia.


Two, the worse of my panic attacks started to occur, having grown worse over the years and fueled by sensory overload and social demands.



Other than the bright moments in friendship, a The Tea Party concert, high school was, in short, hell.

After a more severe panic attack, I was referred to a psychiatrist, who tentatively diagnosed me with Aspergers in 2002. Things started to click into place. I highlighted blocks of text in books and presented them with a note "this is me". Accommodations were then adjusted to fit better. In 2003, the diagnosis was made official. Despite recommendations that I remain in high school for another year to "mature", I graduated from high school on the Honor Roll, as an Ontario Scholar in 2003, and recieved the Online Outstanding Student award.



In the summer of 2003, I went to a transitional program that was online, run by a university and a college. There was two weekend camp-classes on campus. During the first, the school's psychologist/counsellor (?) tried to convince me that I was not autistic, that I was missing social cues due to ADD. She didn't address the other issues that make up an ASD diagnosis. I went home disturbed, and told my mom. We pulled me out of the program, and with the special needs teacher at my high school, I went to a different transitional program in Ottawa, staying there for a month, making friends with other special needs students (whom we had much in common) and refining my accommodation needs.



That summer I also started posting webcomics online. That fall I started blogging on LiveJournal.




After six years of struggle, over-doses of medications, panic attacks, meeting new people, 3 years of living in dorm, 3 years of living in an apartment, fulfilling duties as Media Coordinator for the on-campus Sci-Fi and Fantasy club, and the rest of the fun of university, I graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University with a Bachelor of Arts in English, on Halloween 2008.



After a four month stint working in a call-center, and close to eight months in a department store, I decided not to pursue my Honor's degree or my Master's, and chose to move back home to take college courses online.



So far, that's the brief story of my life.


--


~Corina/Neko no Baka


No Stereotypes Here


http://nostereotypeshere.blogspot.com

Making a Joyful Noise: What we love about our children (and ourselves)

Wednesday: a day of truce, a day to celebrate and find joy. Deal?

And not just to celebrate our children. If you are an adult on the spectrum, what about yourself brings you joy? Don't be bashful!

My bright boy, have I told you how much I love him? How just thinking of him brings tears to my eyes? He feels keenly, deeply. He doesn't always understand it, but he feels it and he keeps feeling it, years later. He hates injustice, deeply, at the bone level, you know?

My Lily, she's a lot like me. She wants to do her best. She came home with an 88 on a paper and had two separate crying jags because she had missed six things. Just the previous week, there I was deeply disappointed with my 86 on a chem test and an 87 on the A & P. Perfectionism, the need to do better, know more, my Lily has that. And she is intensely curious. My heart breaks with love for her

Oh Rosie, a sweeter little garden girlie with issues, you've never met. She has big blue eyes that melt your heart. She crinkles her nose when she's thinking, which is always. She was upset the other night that the letters on the keyboard weren't in alphabetical order. Who'd have thought my heart would keep expanding, growing? Putty, my children make me complete putty. Mushy putty. :-)

Our children are our lives. They are our breath. We live for them We would die for them. We celebrate them for who they are, where they are, as they are. They are our souls.

Celebrate your children here today. Revel in them, just as they are, for who they are.

And go beyond that. Relish who you are. What do you celebrate about yourself?

I celebrate my intensity. I fully invest in what I do (good, bad or otherwise, I like my perseveration, even if it drives some folks crazy).

No meanness here today. Got it? One nice day. A day off. A break. Spread the word around, and come celebrate.

Fighting the Right Fight at the Right Time: Calling out Misinformation

"We didn't start the fire

It was always burning

Since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire

No we didn't light it

But we tried to fight it"

Billy Joel, "We Didn't Start the Fire"

I call it. You use the censure gambit, you better be able to back it up with proof. I'm going to show in this blog why it's wrong. Maybe you were relying on what others you trusted had told you. But I'm saying now, showing here, it's bunk. I've spent the last several months showing where AoA gets it wrong. I wasn't here first, though. Others have been fighting this much longer. Fighting woo. Fighting pseudoscience. Fighting ignorance. Fighting paranoia. And fighting back against bullies.

It can be hard to stand, hard to fight. But ignorance and paranoia have been around since the beginning and the anti-vaxxing thing is based on just those two precepts. It is. This idea that vaccines are worse than the diseases they protect against is bunk. And it's enough. Woo sells and it sells big. I don't get it, but I get that it needs to be stood up to. So, here I am. Doing my part. Yes, it gets me out of studying the muscular system, so I'm biased. I need a break from homework. And I do so love tilting at windmills.

One of the things that the anti-vaxxers and those unfortunate people who get hoodwinked by the AoA/GenRes/whale.to organizations trot out on a regular basis is the allegation that Dr. Paul Offit was censured or reprimanded by Congress. They do their flat-out best to make it appear that both houses of Congress got together and cast a vote to censure Offit for various conflicts of interest.

This is most assuredly not the case. They tout: “In August 2000, the Committee on Government Reform of the US Congress issued a highly critical document called Conflict of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making. Dr. Offit was reprimanded by Congress and his actions were a primary focus of the report” (http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/05/dr-paul-offit-q.html).

They don’t link to the report and they offer no evidence that Offit was in fact reprimanded by Congress. Digging through the interwebz finds plenty of anti-vaxxer sites, and oh gag me the conspiracy theory-holocaust-denial mecca, whale.to, are all over this mega-major report (whale-to has a copy—can’t find it anywhere else, though).

So, it’s there, right, when you go the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s website and go through their 2000 archives? I mean, it was highly critical, it was a big deal, right? Some guy named Berger even quotes it over at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/03/rising-vaccine.html. Nope. Not there.

I love that if you google Conflict of Interest in Vaccine Policy Making that the number one hit is whale.to. They’ve got this all important document, but the actual government committee that supposedly sponsored it doesn’t have it? At all? You go all over that website and its archives and this is what you find: http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=763. This all important report that the anti-vaxxers trip over themselves to prove that Offit is tainted isn’t there, wasn’t issued by the committee.

And what’s even worse is that if you actually read the document on whale.to, it isn’t damning to Offit. He isn’t censured in it. He isn’t reprimanded. Seriously. His name comes up nine times.

Here they are in order:

“b. Dr. Paul Offit (Exhibits 38-41)

Dr. Offit shares the patent on the Rotavirus vaccine in development by Merck and lists a $350,000 grant from Merck for Rotavirus vaccine development. Also, he lists that he is a consultant to Merck.

Dr. Offit began his tenure on ACIP in October of 1998. Out of four votes pertaining to the ACIP’s rotavirus statement he voted “yes” three times, including, voting for the inclusion of the rotavirus vaccine in the VFC program.

Dr. Offit abstained from voting on the ACIP’s rescission of the recommendation of the rotavirus vaccine for routine use. He stated at the meeting, “I’m not conflicted with Wyeth, but because I consult with Merck on the development of rotavirus vaccine, I would still prefer to abstain because it creates a perception of conflict.”[lxvii]”

“C. Timeline for Vaccine Approval and Universal Use Recommendation


Date

Individual or Organization

Action

August 1, 1987

Wyeth Lederle

Filed Investigational New Drug (IND) Application to the FDA

December 9, 1994

Fred Clark, Paul Offit, Stanley Plotkin (Inventors); Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology and Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania (Assignees)

Filed U.S. Patent for Rotavirus reassortant vaccine. Application number 353547

June 1, 1995

Fred Clark, Paul Offit, Stanley Plotkin (Inventors); Wistar Institute of Anatomy & Biology and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (Assignees)

Filed U.S. Patent for rotavirus reassortant vaccine. Application number 456906

May 6, 1997

Fred Clark, Paul Offit, Stanley Plotkin (Inventors); Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology and Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania (Assignees)

Awarded U.S. Patent # 5,626,851 for Rotavirus Reassortant vaccine.

December 12, 1997”



“c. Dr. Paul Offit

Dr. Offit lists that he is a consultant to Merck on an attachment to his OGE 450, but does not disclose whether or not he received any remuneration for his services. (Exhibit 39)”

That is the extent of Offit’s mention in this supposedly damning document that censures or reprimands him. That’s it. Seriously.


And from Anne in the comments section:

Dr. Offit wasn't reprimanded by Congress. What happened was that the Committee on Government Reform held a hearing on June 15, 2000, on "Conflicts of Interest and Vaccine Development." Congressman Dan Burton showed up with a report prepared by his staff, and that is the report that whale.to has on its site. The report was not made a part of the public record of the hearing. The only one who was reprimanded was Dan Burton, at the hearing, when Congressman Henry Waxman censured Burton for making unsubstantiated allegations and smearing people's reputations. You can read the transcript of the hearing here: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgidbname=106_house_hearings&docid=f:73042.pdf

So, you’ll forgive me if I don’t take anti-vaxxers’ bitching about Offit seriously. One, they get their talking points and accept them blindly, without even actually reading the supposedly damning documents. Two, whale.to. Seriously. How many times do I have to say you lose any and all credibility if you think that site is anything other than a wackaloonfest. Three, get over Offit. You’re pissed because someone has the balls to stand up to a small but nasty group of people who think it is appropriate to threaten the lives of the people who stand up to the small but nasty group and dismiss, based on the scientific evidence at hand that, the idea that thimerosal or MMR are implicated in autism. Plus, you appear to think acceptable writing that women reporters who report on the danger the anti-vaxxers pose society must have been raped or drunk the kool-aid by the bucketful.

Age of Autism is run by bullies, by people who think intimidation and threats are the way to push people into, what exactly was their goal, again? That’s right, Olmsted wrote that it was to “follow the truth wherever it leads” (http://www.ageofautism.com/a-welcome-from-dan-olmste.html). Maybe their original goal was noble. Maybe. I wasn’t reading when they started it back in the summer of 2007. I guarantee you, though, that since March of 2009 when I started reading it, it’s slipped further into the muck and mud. Sheoples, trolls, sticky blood, monkey virus, lyme disease, hep B, Dtap, adjuvants, squalene, viruses as false pandemics, and anything they can find that looks like they can blame on vaccines. Fake dystonia, anyone? Oh, and the new age of martyr parents and can I get an MB12 Pop, please?

**Please note that the you is a generic you and not specifically addressed to one individual.**

Kitchen sink time: Speaking Truth to a Friend over Truth, Lies, and Bullies *** Updated***

Please note update at the bottom of the post: Craig's email to Amy Wallace is added.

Amy Wallace's Wired piece has taken on a life of its own, as has her twitter feed dealing with the letters she's received. I read one yesterday, as it wended its way through the 140 character hell of twitter and wondered if it was my friend Craig's story. I was catching up at AoA today and saw his post that it was indeed his story, only she hadn't dealt with the main point of his email.

By taking all the emails she receives and (I'm not saying she's doing this, who really knows?) and placing them into two piles: anti-vaxxers and not, she's not doing anything to address the very real fact that vaccine injuries do happen. Granted, that isn't the thrust of her article, which is that irrational fear of vaccines is putting all of us at risk (and it frakking is). The closest she comes to dealing with vaccine injuries is this: "Nobody in the pro-vaccine camp asserts that vaccines are risk-free, but the risks are minute in comparison to the alternative."

Yes, the risks are small in comparison, but they are real and being dismissive of that to the commenters who email her isn't the smartest way to handle it. It isn't. It alienates people when it really didn't have to. We need to acknowledge that there are those who get vaccinated and have a reaction, just like we need to do a better job of acknowledging the adverse events from medications. And we need to take seriously what we put into our bodies. We need to get vaccinated, aware of the small but real risk of an adverse event so that we can act quickly and proactively. We also need to be aware when we give our children medication that Stevens-Johnson Syndrome is a very real, very dangerous syndrome ( http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stevens-johnson-syndrome/DS00940).

We don't need to panic, though. We don't need to do our imitation of Chicken Little. But we do need to be informed consumers. We need to be rational. We need to be just as wary of easy cures as we are of drawing conclusions about causation where all we have is correlation. Just because two events are temporally connected does not mean that one caused the other.

We should avoid absolutist language. Scientists use it as a shorthand but know that they aren't speaking of 100% absolutes; most keep that wiggle room in the back of their minds that is open to conflicting data and do so when listening to other scientists. This confuses the shit out of those who don't have that concept in mind, and they take the absolutist short hand as  hard-core no-wiggle-room truth.

And when there are documented cases of children having vaccine injury and being diagnosed with autism, rather than being dismissive, we ought to look more closely. The scientific method needs data. Would the children who have documented vaccine injury have been diagnosed with autism regardless? Just to mention a couple cases: in the Cedillo case, it appears clear that the answer is yes; professionals testified that video footage prior to the vaccination that supposedly was at the heart of the Cedillo's case shows the child to be clearly autistic. It should be noted the Cedillo child has far more medical issues than just autism, as well. As does Polling.

Back to Craig. Craig's story is worth reading. And his points worth being truly listened to. He is not anti-vaccination. He doesn't go around inflating the risks, misinforming about the ingredients, or in general fear-mongering. He keeps some crappy company, though, so it ends up looking like he's anti-vax by asociation. Truly, unlike most at AoA, he is advocating more research into vaccine safety. He may do it with the swagger of a bully at times, and while I think the company he keeps is not the best, where's he more likely to find acceptance? Up until now, it's been at AoA.

However, Craig, having come across your comments at Orac's tonight (written predominantly Sunday night and tweaked this morning) while writing this, man, bud, you got a bee in your bonnet over Orac that doesn't let you see the hypocrisy of your response to him. The jackass whose first Wallace article involved intellectual rape gets a pass because you like him, but Orac doesn't because you don't? Yet the last time you commented to me here, it was to berate me for what you perceived to be hypocrisy? Seriously. Orac has never engaged in the overt nastiness your bud has time and time again. Admiring and emulating a bully, not good. It's important to stand up, stand against wrongs. That is so resoundingly not what this person does at all. To admire him is to want to be a member of the group not getting bullied. I have no respect for people who rally around a bully and cheer him on as he goes about terrorizing others. And you shouldn't either.

However, I digressed from what I was getting around to: Craig, if you read this, would you post your story here, your email to Amy Wallace, as well? Or give me permission to place it in the body of this post?

 Reasoned debate and civil discourse means really listening to the people who offer their perspectives.


Much as I stand up and call out the woo, the misinformation, and the truly awful at AoA, I have never divided this into a black and white debate. There are very real cases of vaccine injuries and coinciding autism diagnoses. I support the science that resoundingly says these are coincidences, but I do not dismiss the individuals, like Craig, who have gone through the horrendous experience of having a child vaccinated and then hours later having their world upended because of an adverse event. And while it is always theoretically possible that something other than the vaccine caused the adverse event that Craig's son experienced, it is reasonable to assume, within several hours of the shot, with the conclusions the doctors drew, that this was a result from the vaccine. Don't know about the autism. Don't know whether his son would have been diagnosed as autistic had there not been an adverse event. Just like I don't have any way to distinguish my son's stroke damage from his autism and how different he'd be if he hadn't had the stroke.

Somehow there has to be a way to engage these individuals who have suffered from vaccine injurie with respect for their experiences, conduct research to identify likely triggers, and thereby be able to screen children before vaccination so that this doesn't happen to other families. If we blithely throw out individuals with experiences like Craig, leave them no place but the woo-hole and hate-fest that AoA is, then we are, at the very least, alienating the parents of the children we were trying to protect in the first place: those who cannot be safely vaccinated.

Does it mean not calling out the incredible stupid when I find it? Oh hell to the no. It just means trying very hard not to demonize those who say or believe something I find based on the evidence to be steeped, dipped, battered, fried in woo.

On a closing thought, Craig, that anger of yours impedes dealing with things. Gets in the way of communicating effectively to people you disagree with, but who might actually listen to you if you didn't go in both barrels blazing all the time. Louise had an excellent idea, write a blog, channel your emotions into communicating your story. I guarantee that if you stay over at the woo-fest and get that negativism reinforced, saunter over to Orac's to spew some more, and then head back to AoA, all you're going to do is keep dialing up the mad. And I'd like to think you're smarter than that.

You always have a soft spot to come post over here. You've got my ear, and we won't do any fear-mongering or hate-mongering. And we'll leave the damn monkey virus and demonization someplace else.



Craig's email to Amy Wallace:

"It took me a while to formulate this email because I don't want to come across as hostile. To say that I am disappointed in your article is a bit of an understatement, but I'm willing to engage you diplomatically in the hopes that you will understand where many parents like myself are coming from.

The reason why there is so much anger from parents who share my views is that we are tired of being ignored. Vaccine injuries do happen, and quite probably much more often than the CDC and Offit admit. Only 10% of all doctors report to VAERS, and most of the CDC's prevalence data about how often reactions occur are gleaned from VAERS. Scientists like Offit and many others like to paint parents like me as desperate. I've been called ignorant, stupid, liar, and all manner of horrible names because of my views. I'm a long way from being an idiot. But more of that later, because it ties into a later point.


Here's my story. My son was born in 2001. By the time he was 18 months old, he was bright, happy, funny. He could walk, spoke about 30 words, and was exceeding all developmental milestones. His final words to me were, "Go Bye Bye!" on the day of his 18 month checkup. That day, he received the MMR and DTaP vaccines. That night, he began running a very high fever, was screaming these horrible, agonizing screams that raised the hair on my neck, arched his back and was completely unconsolable. My wife and I called his pediatrician, who proceeded to tell us that my son's reaction was "perfectly normal." Really?!?! Perfectly normal MY ASS!!! We brought him to the ER soon after. They performed numerous tests and, after doing a CT scan of my son's head, they were able to determine that he had neuroinflamation, or an encepalopathy.


The next day, he was listless. He hasn't spoken but maybe 5 words since. He lost the ability to walk until he was almost 3 years old. He was diagnosed with Autistic Disorder at 26 months. He is 8 years old now and still in diapers. We have to lock the doors, and I have to sleep in front of the front door in case he gets up and tries to leave (he loves to wander). His rages are sometimes so violent that we have to force his sisters to leave the room in case he tries to attack them. His rages can be so violent that he can, in the throes of his anger, lift his 6'4", 230 lb father off of the floor. This is what parents like me have to deal with EVERY DAY!! This is what our life is like. There is no other explaination for his brain damage. But, doctors and Offit and, apparently, journalists like you, try to pawn it off as coincidence. They say that I confuse correlation with causation. Coincidence can't happen so often. So many parents cannot be wrong about seeing their children spiral into illness and neurological dysfunction so soon after a vaccine. But, to Offit and others, the only way they would say that it is a causal factor is if it were to happen when the needle was still in the arm of the child.


The reason I am disappointed in your article is that you spoke with so-called "experts" concerning this condition without looking at their background. Offit is biased; he was reprimanded by congress for his conflicts of interest in vaccine policy making. Here is someone who says that a newborn baby can handle 100,000 vaccines at once. The scientists you spoke to are biased. To them, my son does not exist. To them, children like Hannah Poling and Bailey Banks (2 children who were awarded by the government for iatrogenic autism) do not exist. How can anyone trust them at face value? These are people who's livelihoods rest on the success of the vaccination program. That is known as a Conflict of Interest. A truly objective journalist would have done what they could to address all sides of the problem and investigate who they were talking to.

Now, on to the threats. Everyone, on all sides of the issue, have received threats. I've had CPS called on me, because, apparently, I haven't vaccinated my children. Someone called the school that my youngest daughter goes to and asked them to investigate her vaccine status. Out of 400 children, only she was singled out because she had not received the MMR (I didn't feel it was necessary...she got both measles and the mumps as a baby, and I had her vaccinated for rubella). Painting Offit as a saint for speaking out against us dangerous and unhinged parents is a bit hypocritical considering that he and people like him do the same thing to people like us.

Please don't take it that I am angry at you; I'm not. I'm angry at the situation. I'm angry that doctors, instead of listening to their patients and asking, "what can I do to help?" paint parents with vaccine injured children as crazy, dangerous, ignorant and desperate sociopaths who are endangering everyone else around them. I have vaccinated my children. I encourage others to vaccinate. But when I question vaccine safety, or rather the lack thereof, I'm called "anti-vax" by people like you.


Tell me, how am I anti-vaccine? How am I endangering other people by encouraging them to read up on vaccine injuries. How am I endangering them by giving them as much information as possible in the hopes that their children will not have the same reaction as my son?



The true dangers to society are the individuals who put profit above the health and well-being of those they are sworn to help. All you have to do is look at the track record of companies like Merck, GSK, Bayer, or any of the Pharmaceutical companies, to see that my statement is true. My hope is that you further investigate, go further down the rabbit-hole, and see what you find.


Please be a responsible journalist.

Sincerely,


Craig Willoughby"

It should be noted that Offit was not in fact censured by Congress. This appears to be a serious mis-statement of fact by the anti-vaxxing sites. Dan Burton complaining is not the same thing as a congressional censure. While I think Wallace's treatment of your email was dismissive, it has to be noted using a known anti-vaxxing falsehood in your talking points placed you in a camp you really don't belong in.

I know you get a lot of high-fiving over there and they are great at amping up the rage. What do you get in the way of adaptive coping? In working out the anger, in grounding yourself? In making your life better? Do you walk away from that calmer, easier, with practical ideas for how to move forward?

At some point, at least some of these angry, disappointed, and hurting parents over there are going to wake up and take stock, take stock of the wave after wave of lies told over there, the militant anti-vaccination tone now taken, and sponsor after sponsor promising unrealistic and unfounded cures. We'll be here when these parents do. We won't promise false cures. We won't stoke anger. We'll promote acceptance, adaptive coping, and scientifically sound options. And we won't make a penny off of sponsors while doing it.

David Brown's Fools in the Courts of Prester John: AoA Goes to Australia

Fools in the Courts of Prester John: AoA Goes to Australia


By David N. Brown

This is a PUBLIC DOMAIN document (dated 11/01/09). It may be copied, forwarded, cited,


circulated or posted elsewhere. The author requests only that it not be altered from its current


form.

On October 27, while I was concentrating on writing a fictional story in Australia, AoA and specifically David Burd published their own fictional work about Australia, unfortunately under the pretense of fact. Titled “Without Vaccine, Australia Shrugs Off Swine Flu”, this is quite possibly the most blatant piece of fraudulent disinformation I have encountered from AoA. I find it more interesting as another
possible example of an “urban legend” associated with vaccination.

A consideration which should automatically raise a folklorist's feelers is that it represents a report of events geographically and culturally far removed from the reporter. Folklorists have referred to this  type of tale as “exoteric” lore, meaning that it is told by one group about another. Unsurprisingly, such lore often bears little or no resemblance to the subject group's actual beliefs, practices and selfperception.

Egregious examples crop up even when mutual isolation is minimal. Jews were demonized by their Christian neighbors as cannibals who drank human blood, even though documents accepted as Scripture by both communities clearly forbade drinking even animal blood. (Still more preposterous was a Renaissance tale that Jews had horns!) Far more recently, rumors, media flaps and actual legal actions have claimed that thousands of murders are committed by Satanists as human sacrifices, despite not only an absence of evidence of such a practice but unequivocal statements from leading self-identified Satanists that they do not actually believe in Satan's literal existence, and so presumably have no reason to commit crimes to satisfy Him. The potential for grotesque disinformation is obviously even greater when the source and the subject are separated by thousands of miles.

Looked at in these terms, AoA does not disappoint. What they report, compared to actual information from Australia, is like a dispatch from an alternate universe. Compare just the opening statements by Burd with those from a wikipedia entry on the same subject.

AoA: “With no vaccine available for H1N1 flu, Australia recently ended its 2009 `Flu Season' (their Winter in our Summer), with 186 flu-associated fatalities of 36,991 Aussies confirmed having H1N1. “

wiki: “As of 21 October 2009, Australia has 36,991 confirmed cases of H1N1 Influenza 09, and 186 confirmed deaths due to the disease. The actual numbers are much larger, as only serious cases are being tested and treated. Suspected cases have not been reported by the Department of Health and Ageing since 18 May 2009 because they are changing too quickly to report.”

This means that AoA has managed to repeat accurate figures but grossly misinterpret their significance.

The cases and deaths which have been reported, in the words of the Australians who produced them, are minimum figures. I would add that it is not improbable that deaths in particular have been intentionally underreported. This practice is ubiquitously documented in the military: By failing to report casualties, commanders turn supplies intended for dead soldiers into a reserve for the rest to use.

There is no reason to doubt that this occurs to some extent in hospitals. (Several episodes of Scrubs involve such a scenario, which I suspect is based on anecdotes from the show's medical consultants. )

Given that the Australian government is currently rationing its reserve of anti-viral drugs to those with “more than mild symptoms or a high risk of dying “ (wiki again!), medical professionals undoubtedly have an unusually strong incentive to use underreporting to create personal stockpiles.

Contradictions of verifiable reality continue to pile up with regard to further details and statements:

AoA: “(Australia has) no vaccine available for H1N1 flu...”

wiki: “The first one litre batch of vaccine was announced to be ready on 29 June 2009 by the
University of Queensland, but would not be available for use until it was registered as safe with the regulatory authority. “

AoA: “A logical review of these results strongly suggests next year Australia should initiate a `flu vaccination holiday', promote vitamin D supplements, long known to be effective for preventing Wintertime flu disease, and then compare the outcomes ”

wiki: “A large scale immunization effort against swine flu started on Monday 28 September 2009.”

AoA: “In light of Australia clearly showing the pussycat nature of H1N1, can somebody explain why America's media willfully ignores the news from Australia?”

wiki: “Information accurate as of 1200 EST on 21 October 2009 ...” (Mentioned as an indication that Australian authorities are still collecting new reports. Indeed, an official report dated 26 October raised
the number of cases to 37,039, but, perhaps suspiciously, reported no new deaths.)

All this may simply be lead-in for the following passage: “However, despite the derelict media, I would think U.S. Health Generals would certainly be up on Flu news from Down Under, and certainly from
Canada right next door... Canadian front page news on flu vaccinations has transfixed Canada health authorities, prompting official suspension of regular flu vaccination programs until further notice. This
comes from a sweeping study of Canada by research Doctors Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre of Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University in Quebec concluding Canadians receiving flu vaccinations have twice the risk of coming down with the flu, compared to those who do not take the shot... (On Oct. 4) U.S. doctors offered the opinion that the Canadian doctors' flu vaccination study was certainly wrong and must have used flawed study parameters, though (they)
admittedly could not identify anything specific.”

As best I can figure, the study Burd refers to is (or was as of ca. Oct. 1) unpublished. A single, unpublished study- the “anti-vaxers'” favorite resource! (Except, it comes from a credentialed and wellrespected authority.) This is what Michael Smith (a medical journalist living in Canada) had to say about it in a post for Medpage: “The Canadian data appear to suggest that people who had been vaccinated against last year's seasonal flu were about twice as likely as others to catch the pandemic strain when it appeared this spring. But the CDC said U.S. data do not show a similar risk...(C)oauthor Danuta Skowronski, MD, of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver, told the Canadian Press she wanted to get expert scrutiny from the peer-review system... Skowronski said the findings could be real, due to chance, or arise from some sort of bias or confounding factor.

Meanwhile, at least one Canadian province is changing its flu vaccination strategy in the wake of the report. Arlene King, MD, the chief medical officer of health for Ontario, said people over 65 -- those at
least risk for the pandemic flu strain -- will be offered (only?) the seasonal flu vaccine as usual in October. ”

In summary:

1. The study is not about a possible risk of the H1N1 vaccine(s), as one might easily suppose from Burd's remarks.

2. The events whose relationship is studied- receiving a “seasonal flu” vaccine and being infected with H1N1- occurred one year apart.

3. Far from being unable to “identify anything specific” wrong with the study, US authorities had already proved that its results were at best irreproducible with available US data.

4. The study's own authors said their data was not conclusive.

5. There was not an “official suspension of regular flu vaccination programs” in Canada, only a decision by authorities of one province of Canada to give some people one vaccine instead of two.

So, what are we to make of this? It is easy to reverse Burd's rhetorical gambit on himself: It would be understandable if he were not “up on Flu news from Down Under”, but entirely incredible that he would be ignorant of events in “Canada right next door” (especially since he has written for Canadian blogs!). It is thus quite difficult to regard his story to AoA as anything but a purposeful hoax. But I see room for a backhanded benefit of a doubt: that his account is mainly an “urban legend”.

It can be said, at the first, that the lack of mutual understanding between Canada and the US is a rather notorious problem. It can be added that the Canadians undoubtedly have their own “urban legends”,which might be accepted even more credulously outside Canada. The clearly false claim that Canada has suspended flu vaccination can be accounted for, in these terms, as a Canadian counterpart to “government legends” told in the US about our own government. A frequent theme in such legends is changes in government benefits, as in the “Veterans' insurance dividend”, described by Harold Jan Brunvand as “more like a hoax or a rumor than a true legend”. Such tales serve to create variously hope, panic or outrage among the audience. In the present case, a legend to the effect that the government has or soon will withdraw a vaccine would predictably be greeted with premature celebration among vaccine critics and unwarranted alarm among those concerned with being immunized against a disease.

On a more general level, I see parallels to two Medieval legends. One, quite obvious, is the belief that Jews did not suffer the bubonic plague, which at the time served to fuel violence against Jews as the
supposed source of the plague. Burd's indefensible contention that Australia is somehow unaffected by H1N1 fits the same archetypal mold. By using such a doubtful claim to argue against vaccination and
for nutrition (plus sanitation, alternative medicine, etc.) as a sufficient alternative, Burd and other vaccine critics also repeat a more subtle path of error in scholarship about the plague. It has been
seriously contended that Jews may in fact have had lower mortality in the plagues (until the Christians killed them, of course) because they practiced better hygiene and sanitation. But, one would be hardpressed
to prove the theory from contemporary Jewish records, which show losses to the plague to be horrific by any standard. Likewise, even if Australia can be proved less affected by H1N1 (I am not prepared to comment on that one way or the other), no one in his right mind would claim that country's experience as proof of “ the pussycat nature of H1N1”.

The other legend is that of King Prester John, the fabled king of an equally fabled Christian kingdom somewhere in Asia. (This was a source in Europe of hope in the wars with the Turks and Arabs, and a cause for rude surprise when the Mongols came through.) This myth represents a notable historical example of the utopian ideal, which at that time could still be imagined to be fulfilled in some real but far-off land. It also shows a human tendency, when trying to imagine the foreign and unfamiliar, to set what is pictured all too firmly in the terms of one's own culture and ideals. That, I have no doubt, is what Burd and AoA really seek in Australia: a place where their own idea of good health policy is not only taken seriously but proved in practice. But, like countless far more eloquent and noble visions of utopia before it, at close approach it either vanishes or turns very ugly indeed.



David N. Brown is a semipro author, diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome as an adult. Previous works include the novels The Worlds of Naughtenny Moore, Walking Dead and Aliens Vs Exotroopers, and the nonfiction ebook The Urban Legend of Vaccine-Caused Autism. This and other articles related to autism are available free of charge at evilpossum.weebly.com.

A Response to Stagliano on Gordon's Huff Post

Any odds on whether it makes it on the thread?

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/10/good-clean-fun.html



You give the unmistakingly clear impression that people who choose to vaccinate and who argue with evidence behind them that thimerosal is not implicated in autism are trolls. You've called them that on Huff many times. Where are the trolls, you ask, with no doubt about who you mean, when Kirby has a post up that gets ignored.



You allow obvious falsehoods on your site.



You maintain those falsehoods despite being made aware of them.



Seems to belie your willingness to engage in thoughtful debate about the need for vaccines. In fact, your tendency to call anyone who disagrees with your position about vaccines trolls belies a reasoned position on vaccines in general.



Your website's promoting of unsubstantiated vaccine injuries, as well as a general dismissal of H1N1 deaths and serious significant complications belies a willingness to engage in thoughtful debate.



I could go on with additional examples, but I believe I've made my point.

About Swine Flu

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Big surpise, this did not make it on. :-)

It seems to be the week for anti-vaxxers to applaud actors and musicians for speaking out on vaccines.

At least the worst of Brent Spiner's comments was that he liked Jay Gordon and folks should educate themselves. Yes, I think that Gordon is a physician who panders to his celebrity clientele, who wants his name out there, and who isn't the brightest bulb. But, for goodness sake, now musicians have decided they need to put out their two cents of heeping ignorance, and AoA leaps right onto it like it's manna from heaven. Well, no frikkin wonder, explains so much. And AoA's resident wackaloon thinks this proves, hell I don't know, that she's not a wackaloon. Hello, monkey virus, anyone? Umm, lime disease? Umm, I don't know what it is, but it's all bad and it's all to blame for autism and the ending of the world.

Now, I've been trying a more nuanced approach lately, I have. And I thought, gosh, let this pile of stupid go? And I considered it. I mean, I'm leaving out the other two comments piled high with ignorance that she's made today, so ain't that something? Doesn't that show restraint?

Oh, by the way,  I still feel like crap, and I caught two students plagiarizing today so I'm extremely irritated at that, so there is some slight potential that I am choosing to vent on this particular stupid-ass comment:

"And so it goes...all vaccines create NEW DISEASES and NEW EPIDEMICS...that's why I hate them so...and as such, we should too...the tide is changing...maybe we anti vaccine nuts and loons are not so crazy after all?"

Then again, this is such a seriously stupid comment that I could have been all lightness and sunshine today and still been annoyed with it. But, seriously, come on, even Craig can't think this anything other than dumb? Right, Craig? Tell me you don't think that this beyond ignorance?

You know, you take me to task for not condemning Orac for engaging in tactics I berate AoA bullies for engaging in, so just for you I wrote my Data piece, right? So, for me, Craig, can you be honest here and back me up? This is stupid. This is a problem. When we don't stand up and at least gently note the fallacy here, we're condoning that sentiment, right? Unless you no longer align yourself with them? This person admits she's anti-vaccine repeatedly. She admits she thinks vaccines are worse than the diseases. You know that ain't right. So, how come no one ever says to her, you know I think you're a bit off here? How come her stuff always seems to get on? Since it's heavily moderated and my stuff, even if it's a kudos, doesn't get on, then how can you take this allowing on of craziness while censoring most dissent as anything other than AoA's endorsement of these views?

You know?


And now, for a slightly different topic and the closest this person is going to get to acknowledgment from me:

Oh, and for my reader who doesn't get the point: I censor 2 people here (potentially 3, still on the fence there). The people banned will get no play here. Ever. Period. Unless, I suppose, they ceased harassing people, inducing people to kill those they disagree with, apologized for all their past harm and then shut the hell up. Barring that, buddies (although one of you has been smart enough to move on), I'll delete every comment like it never existed. And I won't feel a bit bad about it. They're  bullies and I don't have to deal with them And neither do my readers. I hope everyone who disagrees with their rhetoric freezes them out. Oh, and I didn't get the idea for that; I'm just following the lead of T and K. They have a wise position on the whole thing. If I could do the automatic text generator on blogger and just alter the comment to complete nonsense and leave their name and profile picture, I'd do that. Because that's frikking hilarious.

 And I hope that those few people who still agree with them and support what they're doing get frozen out from other people's blogs as well. It's called zero tolerance. And it's part of changing the world one dumbass and one bully at a time. See, kick-ass kumbaya.

So, how many knickers just got in a knot? It's the new poll of the day over to the right.

H1N1 Kills half the children the flu usually kills in a season in ONE week

I'm going to beat this into the dirt. Seriously. As the troubled woman with psychogenic distonia continues to make her anti-vax rounds, and the anti-vax sites continue to dismiss the seriousness of H1N1 and to blow smoke up their readers' asses regarding vaccine ingredients, children continue to die. 22 children died last week in the US from H1N1.

Some links worth looking at:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#MS
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#EIPNVSN

2009-2010 Influenza Season Week 42 ending October 24, 2009



All data are preliminary and may change as more reports are received.


Synopsis:


During week 42 (October 18-24, 2009), influenza activity increased in the U.S.






•8,268 (42.1%) specimens tested by U.S. World Health Organization (WHO) and National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS) collaborating laboratories and reported to CDC/Influenza Division were positive for influenza.


•All subtyped influenza A viruses being reported to CDC were 2009 influenza A (H1N1) viruses.


•The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) was above the epidemic threshold.


•Twenty-two influenza-associated pediatric deaths were reported. Nineteen of these deaths were associated with 2009 influenza A (H1N1) virus infection and three were associated with an influenza A virus for which the subtype was undetermined.


•The proportion of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) was above the national baseline. All 10 regions reported ILI above region-specific baseline levels.


•Forty-eight states reported geographically widespread influenza activity, Guam and two states reported regional influenza activity, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico reported local influenza activity, and the U.S. Virgin Islands did not report.

Windmills, Tilting at them, and Bully Pulpits

I've been thinking about tilting at windmills. You know? About how one finds the fortitude to stand and do the right thing. I've been thinking about how people see themselves, the meta-narrative of their lives, the role they put themselves in. Of course, good, bad, or otherwise, we put ourselves in the center role; it's our life. So, we are all heroes, and anyone who opposes us is the villain. Who casts themselves in the villain role? Have you ever seen a bad guy think he's the bad guy? That what he does is wrong? No, he's the hero in his piece, and all of his actions are justified. Self-reflection is not big on the bad guy's list of things to do.

It's not that easy, though, or shouldn't be, to assign bad guy status, or to reduce people into simply two groups, with each group seeing itself as the good guys and the others as the bad guys. There are several problems here, not the least of which is the dehumanization of the other group, and the fact that getting along, finding consensus and problem solving ain't happening with a group you see as less than human and worthy of derision.

And it's come to that, in many ways, in what can be argued to be the autism-vaccine skirmishes (if not outright war). Now, I have very little doubt that those parents who are militantly anti-vaccine, who blame vaccines wholesale for everything that's gone wrong in their lives, want it to be a war of sorts. I've already written this week of their scorched earth policy.

It's enough. Using your bully pulpit to intimidate people, to harass people, threatening to sue people who disagree with you, it's enough. It's enough to begin to change the mainstream's opinion of  your role. You're not the underdogs who've been dealt a blow by a big government-industrial collusion to damage children. This isn't Erin Brocavich. You know? You're not the little guy. You're not David. And I don't think even you would cast yourselves as Don Quixote. But perhaps you do; perhaps we all do. Isn't that the ultimate testimate to how we view ourselves? That we stood, and we stood firm.

I'd argue that it ought to be possible to stand firm to ideals that we will not dehumanize those who do not agree with us. Autism shouldn't be about ideology. It should be about science. But, in the autism-vaccine skirmishes, it is becoming just that: ideologically driven. One side believes vaccines did this. One side believes there is an autism epidemic. That the big pharma wants to turn our children autistic. Still stupid. Sorry. It is. Gonna stay stupid.

One side in the autism-vaccine skirmish needs someone or something to blame for their or their child's autism. Alcabes writes in Dread,

The Black Death is also our model for the central role of public reaction in defining an epidemic. Until there is a public response, there is no epidemic. Autism became an epidemic only once policy guidelines in the United States required that public schools make accomodations for autistic children.

Later on, Alcabes notes,

An epidemic must be attributable to people who are disliked or activities that are disdained.

According to Alcabes,

Latter-day epidemics with elusive causes allow people to lay blame.

This is what is happening here. A small division of parents (sorry, internet yelling doesn't mean there's a lot of you), perhaps around 10,000 or so, although I'll double it and say 20,000, based on the various membership numbers of yahoo groups related to the autism-vaccine mythology, have laid the blame at pharmaceutical companies, the AAP, the federal government, Offit and Nancy Snyderman, and anyone on the IACC who has the temerity to not agree with their idea of causation.

So, how do people who think that autism is not vaccine damage, and do so based on the preponderance of evidence *back away from the exchange with the anti-vaxxers ** and not engage in the same scorched earth policy?

Well, for starters, we keep uppermost in our minds that desperate need for answers they are feeling.

We remember the need for feeling in control that is driving some of this.

We remember that sick feeling in our stomach when we know something is wrong and we don't know how to fix it. That's where they are, some of them.

And then, we remember that some of these people aren't nice people. They aren't interested in kumbaya, even if it's kick-ass. They don't want to make the world a better place. They just want it to be better for them. These are the people who bully. Who intimidate. Who threaten.

We don't have to demonize them; we need to feel compassion for them. We also need to remember that some of them are not to be trusted, are there not out of desperation, but to take advantage of that desperation. To use their bully pulpits.

And we stand. Maybe with a little bit of the Don Quixote in us, maybe with a lot of him. Tilting at windmills. Well. It's all the rage, you know. What these parents do, what these organizations do, the disinformation they spread, the fearmongering they engage in, the ugliness of spirit they show as they ravage and feed on each other's ugliness (go read what they write on Offit); all these things are actively hurting our children and adults on the spectrum. They're hurting us as parents of autistic children. If their portrayal of parents with autistic children wins as the dominant mainstream impression of what autism is all about, what parents are, well, holy shit, you really want any part of that? You want to be thought of as woo-loving, deranged-mineral-transport-believing, for Christ sake, RNA-melting on your tongue and draining-your-wallet gullible, desperate parents who think nicotine patches, HBOT, chelation, IGIV, and now pot are the way to recover your children?

I don't. So, I'll do a little tilting, if you don't mind. A little kick-as kumbaya.

For an excellent and absolutely important read that, well, tilts a little at windmills and stands, stands tall and proud and impressively, go read David Brown's "Sore Winner" at http://evilpossum.weebly.com/vaccines.html.

*(don't quote me the 14 studies; it just proves my point) --see http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10997 for the IOM's 214 page book on Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism that can be downloaded for free --

**(sorry, that's the label they get when they no longer spend their time advocating for research, for increased safety through testing for risk factors and instead spread the woo far and wide and call people who do vaccinate sheople and then go and write for and support sites like whale.to)

A mega Star Trek geek speaks

I love Star Trek. I recorded all the series, watched all the eps numerous times, have well over 200 hundred Star Trek related novels. Have the toys. Have a Star Trek Xmas tree. I live and breathe science fiction. Seriously.

And I've got to do this, got to take a stand and say that sometimes overzealousness is found on both sides of the vaccine issue. This week, an AoA writer directed people to essentially harass Amy Wallace if they didn't like her piece on Wired. I said this was wrong. It's wrong to tell people to send hateful mail, wrong to harass someone just because you disagree with them. It would be just as wrong to attack Brent Spiner over his Gordon comment and his hedging on vaccination, even though the request to tweet him was not phrased with a hostile intent nor advocating hostility or attacks. It just smacks of trying to sway people to believe a certain way based on how much peer pressure you can apply. And I frakking hate peer pressure. It is not a correlate of critical thinking; it's critical mass instead.

Apparently Brent Spiner likes Jay Gordon. I could quibble with that, certainly, and it's clear that Gordon tries to straddle a fence that ought to have his private area in some level of pain. And I think Gordon makes his decisions based on his best financial interests, not on science. But, Brent Spiner, in saying he think folks should educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions in and of itself, unless he's directing them to whale.to and other nutjob sites, hasn't committed a cardinal sin, and it is a free country. He's not said something demonstrably false as Jenny McCarthy has. And damnit, people ought to read the reputable information before putting something into their body. Reputable information. Seriously. People need to make informed decisions. And some people shouldn't vaccinate. Don't you want them to read the information provided by the CDC, work in conjunction with their doctor, and make the safe choice for them? Blasting Spiner because he's said essentially the same thing that I just did because he did it in conjunction with an appreciation for Dr. Jay Gordon, I don't know that it serves any good. Unless you want to blast me, too. On the face of it, leaving Gordon out, Spiner's position isn't horrendous. It's political. It's popularity based. It's like Lisa Jo saying she doesn't have a position either way on the whole vaccine-autism thing. It's disingenuous.

You know, it's a difficult world to navigate out there. Who do you trust? Your doctor? Well, okay. Except some doctors are quacks. Come on, seriously, they are, and Orac acknowledges this. You cannot say listen to the authority figures, the doctors, and then say, oooh, not these, because they're the quacks on your say-so alone (not something Orac has done, by the way; gads, he's provided plenty of corroborating information to support his contentions). Because you know them quacks are saying the same thing. What the hell are the masses to do? It's not like their education was primo and they're stellar critical thinkers. You know? So, bully pulpits, wherever they are found, are inefficient as hell at getting folks to think critically. I think some people are  so into the woo that nothing's going to drag them out. So, you essentially write those off and cease to engage them, and you focus on putting out accurate information for those who are still on the fence. It's a hard line to walk, to provide that information, that just right amount of insolence. And those of us engaged in the dialogue often find ourselves tottering on that line. How far to go, how far back of the line, where to stop. It's a judgment call.

Personally, Data weeps, well, he would. Reason, logic, critical thinking, looking at the evidence rather than relying on emotion. All things Data the character represented.

Orac suggests that those who tweet do so to "gently try to educate Spiner regarding the error of his ways." This is drastically different from AoA's call to action. However, I don't think it would do a damn bit of good to tweet Spiner. Even though it doesn't have the hostility that AoA's post did early this week, it doesn't feel a whole lot different in principle. Bother him until he agrees with us. Not likely.

Tweet him or not, I don't think it will do anything other than polarize Spiner completely against your position, and affording the fictional character greater weight than the actor, well, that's just bound to piss the actor off. Or have we forgotten Nimoy and Shatner's work where they repudiate their Star Trek roles (I know, then they turned around and embraced them again--remember, I've got the books!).

Now, Craig, I'm writing this post for you, because I saw your post on AoA, and I think we're probably in some fair agreement that tweeting Spiner, who I'm having a really hard time not just calling Data, isn't the way to go. And I'm going to say it, the name calling and the disdain put you at a level that I think is less than where you should operate at. Name calling Orac gets you where? I know, there you are thinking, "but you've called people dumbasses." Yes, I have, and chickenshits as well. And I've always explained the reasons. And I'd argue that isn't dehumanizing or disdainful. More descriptive, you know, and I hope that it's been clear, that like Thelma would, I'd give em a big old hug while pointing out they are dumbasses, you know?

Spiner, as long as he doesn't go around saying there's antifreeze, fetal cells, etc, in the vaccines and that vaccines will kill or make everyone autistic, is safe from my rants. I'll note that he likes Gordon, think he's a bit woo-sie, remember he's not Data, and move on, a bit disappointed. :-) And I am an uber Trek geek.

By the way, #38 over at Orac's is an excellent, reasoned comment directed towards Spiner.

No vanilla for me, Another one bites the dust, and Insomnia

Bobby, standing in the rear, with the sweatshirt and mask

Yesterday my husband I and attended our son's halloween concert at the day center he attends. He did an awesome skit to "Another One Bites the Dust," a song which will now NOT get the frak out of my head. He pretended to fight a friend, and it was a sight to see, he and his friend bobbing and weaving. I laughed the whole way through in absolute delight. The whole concert was one that had me laughing and tearing up.

It was awesome. It really was. They were energetic performers who were thrilled to be up there in front of family and friends. It was a heart-filling experience. He is well-liked there, as well, and we were inundated with friends wanting to meet us and shake our hands (many we've known for years).

It's a good fit for him. He's liked, he's happy, and he's of help there. He's accepted and cared for. It is a wonderful program.  It does have some low-key drama, but it's low key.

As I watched this diverse group of individuals ranging from teenagers to the elderly, all with disabilities in common, I thought about cures. About neurodiversity. About what it means when we say we want to cure someone of what we perceive to be a disability. And it seems to me that a lot of the disability labeling remains a social construct. It is a way of defining ingroups and outgroups, the haves and the havenots, the worthwhile and the waste-of-times. Of course, the mainstream dominant group gets to do the labeling.

And the folks who tout the idea of curing the disabilities that create a subgroup of mentally challenged and physically challenged might just be a wee bit uncomfortable with people who are different. I'm not talking about ignoring real needs, offering care, compassion, acceptance, supports, whatever the disabled need to be successfully integrated into society. I'm just saying that a lot of it ought to be society adapting, not the disabled.

Also, there's an element of moral superiority in assigning disability status, an absolute sense that the non-disabled is superior. And I think that's wrong. I do. So, I looked at these sixty plus individuals who attend the center with my son, whom he has known for six years now, who care about him and accept him as he is, and I thought about those people who would push for cures for each of them as if who they were was inadequate, insuffient, insignificant. And I thought of those who would look at these interesting, animated individuals and see them as lacking, as less than, and I was irritated. I think that, when the support is adequate, when the acceptance and appreciation is there, these people who are unable to care independently for themselves can have very good, extremely satisfying lives. Where the support sucks, where the appreciation and respect are not there, I think their lives can by an abysmal hell.

I think that rests squarely on society's shoulders. And I think that organizations that promote the idea of vaccines as the culprit for autism damage their children's future and mine when they engage in their bullying and fear mongering tactics. I think they don't speak for me, for my children, for many of us and it's more than time to make sure that if people in mainstream society hear someone calling themselves a warrior or an autism parent and they aren't in the military and aren't autistic themselves, the mainstream will have a real clue as to the belief structure of the person they are dealing with. These parents haven't put child-centered language first in their advocacy; they've placed themselves first. It's about them. About recovering their American dream of a cushy, easy life in which their children outshine others.

To look at someone with a disability and feel sorry for them is to demean them and their inherent value. It presumes you have an elevated status above them. To look at them and feel empathy for their challenges and respect for how they persevere is to see them as fully human. To work to assist them in creating what they consider meaningful, valuable lives while working to reduce any suffering, to heal illnesses is not noble. It's the right thing to do. And too many people in our society are narcissistic, selfish, what's-in-it-for-me jerks who want to feel better  about themselves at the expense of others.

I'll take your facts, thank you very much, and use them to distort***

Yes, because it's just that easy, you know, when you've got pre-set ideas and you filter everything you read through that prism. So magically, the flu season is over in Australia and all cases of flu have stopped because the season's over, right? Oh wait, it's not that easy? The flu continues in Australia, just abated? Ah. I see. Oh, and the people dying over there, less than 200 people, big deal, right? Because those four pregnant women, no biggie. Oh, and that overall, those dying from the flu are younger? Get out of town. Nearly 5000 people hospitalized in a country of 22 million and some change. Again, why get bent out of shape? It's just an itty bitty virus causing most people just moderate amounts of misery. I mean, what's the hoopla? So, some die. Even more spend weeks in ICU. Even more spend a week or more really miserable in the hospital. Everybody else has a week or two where they just want to curl up in a ball and make it all go away. Why would you want to do something to prevent that? Really?

All of these things just prove the H1N1 is no big deal. None at all. And applies universally. No worries. It's not you, after all, who's losing people to the virus. What do you care?

Those vaccines, they're full of toxic chemicals, don't you know that? Now, give me my cookware that's aluminum, my baking soda that's aluminum, my canned goods, my sodas, and my botox injection. And some viagra, too, because some of those chemicals, even if they can kill you, are worth the ride out. Frak, and give me a tuna salad to go. Wait, I think I'll light up a cig, no harm there. What? You can put nicotine patches on your kids and maybe they'll be calmer, have less tics that bother you? Holy shit, pot? I can give them pot, too? Mellow them right out? Well, hell's bells, why didn't you say so? It'll make it easier when they get H1N1.

***Extreme sarcasm has been engaged in.

Some light reading from http://www.flu.gov/professional/global/southhemisphere.html from August 24th:

Epidemiology


The overall number of illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths attributed to 2009 H1N1 virus is difficult to ascertain based on the information available. The clinical characteristics and basic epidemiology of 2009 H1N1 virus in the selected countries in the Southern Hemisphere during their fall/winter influenza season are, so far, similar to the 2009 H1N1 disease experienced in the U.S. in the spring/summer.

Most mild cases occurred in children older than 5 years of age and adults younger than 65. Overall, rates of severe illness, hospitalizations and death attributed to 2009 H1N1 virus are similar to those observed in the U.S. Both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, age distribution of cases differs from what is usually observed during seasonal influenza epidemics, when hospitalizations rates are highest among persons younger than two years and persons 65 years and older. Of note, Argentina and Chile reported that among the hospitalized cases of acute respiratory syndrome, children up to 4 years of age are the most affected. However, both countries report that only a low percentage of cases (less than 20-30%) in this age group represent 2009 H1N1 infection, whereas more than 70-80% represent Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV).

Like the U.S., where 71% of the reported deaths have occurred in persons 25-64 yrs old, countries in the Southern hemisphere have also observed the highest number of deaths in adults.

A high proportion of cases (47%-60% in different countries) had known risk factors for severe influenza complications, such as chronic lung or cardiovascular disease. Similarly, most countries confirm an increased risk of complications in pregnant women infected with the 2009 H1N1 virus. In Australia and New Zealand, indigenous populations also seemed to be at greater risk of severe complications than non-indigenous persons.

Closing the book and making allegations regarding the minimal effect that H1N1 will ultimately have when there is no sign that the virus is petering out is, well, presumptuous at best. Hey, though, if it skews it to your view of reality, it's all good. Why let truth stand in your way?


Addendum: genocide: killing whole races of people. Crap. Autism is not a manmade genocide.  However, scaring the shit out of people and making them think vaccines will kill them might be a start at it. Of course, thinking vaccines are causing autism, which you've defined as a manmade genocide, just might make you a.....wait for it.... what is that, Thelma and Louise, again? The word escapes me. Hmmm. Anyone?


Note: I notice a tendency when I am ill or dealing with sick children to get really pissy about this kind of thing. Huh. And I tend not to feel bad about being pissy. Thankfully, I have been swabbed for the flu and my current misery is a wicked sinus and ear infection. Antiobiotics have been prescribed. Perhaps I will be in a more kumbaya mood soon. Perhaps not. :-) At this point you may picture a stuffy nosed, open-mouthed, wicked grin and evil cackle. Or not.


***Addendum: I gotta. Truth could walk up and smack some of these folks in the forehead and they still woundn't know it. And the misinformation being spewed over there boggles the mind. It really does. Oh, and I'm being really, really nice to call it that. Because while some of those folks are just repeating what they've read without critically examining it, some of them are spreading known falsehoods. And to add to that would could be taken as threats to Offit, well, seriously. I repeat: not good people. Not nice people. Bullies.

Vilifying the Other Side: Does it help you win?

The internet was out here all day yesterday and until less than two hours ago. It was quite a break from the autism-related blogs. Truthfully, I don't look at AoA more than a couple times a week now, so there are articles I completely miss, don't even know about. That's probably a good thing. There are very few positive pieces there. I don't know if that's always been the case, but it seems to me that since I have been looking at AoA since March or so of this year, the site has gotten uglier and more hostile to those who don't agree with them down the line. And the leaders of AoA get uglier to people in general who stand up to the vaccines-cause-autism rhetoric. I've written posts on this, about the trolls and sheoples comments, about how AoA followers and its editors actively try to dissuade vaccination in general with a smug contempt for anyone who avails themselves of disease prevention. And how dare you try to comment on Huff, if you don't agree, but of course, if you don't comment, how dare the trolls for not being out. There's no winning, here. Many of these people have adopted a scorched earth policy towards anyone not walking their line.

It can wear a person out to read them. Attack after attack on Offit, with smug superiority, and yet disinformation and obvious, pointed-out-to-them misinformation. Cuz the scorched earth policy feels so good. I have no idea, now, what AoA's endgame is, what they want to change. It doesn't seem to be autism awareness. It doesn't seem to be fostering or promoting tolerance of disabilities. It doesn't appear to be a support system for parents of children with autism or for autistic adults. Nope. Sure doesn't.

It appears to be the destruction of people who disagree with them. It appears to be about ending vaccines, not about making them safer. It appears to be about selling products that will "recover" your child. It appears to be about being martyrs and victims who have been damaged by big government and big industry (umm, your sponsors are big industry, aren't they?) who stand up to the trolls and sheoples and somehow comeout victors. I haven't figured out how or where their children figure into this, but I guess the kids will be recovered, at least, and if not, it's because the pharma conglomerate wants whole generations of autistic individuals (you know this makes not a bit of sense, right?) and the AoAers just woke up to the whole vaccines, lyme disease, SV-40 thing too late. But that's okay, because Blaylock, Wakefield, the Geiers, Deth, etc., they can fix it.

You know, I don't think the parents who disagree with the vaccine as a cause of autism forget that these people are that, people with feelings. I know I don't. I've written many times that I'm aware that these parents are hurting. They are angry, and they want answers. Uncertainty doesn't sit well or easily on them. And they often have a religious fervor to their conviction that they have the answers and the unfortunate zeal of the converter that they will either make the disbelievers converts or destroy them. I think that these parents are in the minority. I think most people find a way to cope adaptively. I don't think what AoA's writers or the vast majority of commenters are doing is adaptive coping. I think it's malicious and ugly. I understand the tremendous rush it gives them, the sense of vengeance playing out for them. It doesn't make it right, though.

It's a damn shame. It's worth remembering that not everybody is a nice person. Not everybody is a decent person, and bullies exist in every group. When one group systematically sets out to dehumanize those it perceives as belonging to the outgroup, you've got a problem as a society. It seems to me that those who uphold the values of neurodiversity, that each individual has dignity and worth, stand against this kind of vilification and dehumanization.

H1N1 Still Killing and AoA Still Acting Like it's No Big Deal and the Vaccine Bad

Last week's stats (according to NBC News, Friday Oct 23rd):

2500 plus people hospitalized in the US for H1N1.
90 died, 11 of them children.

More detailed stats available: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm

AoA still playing the same games and dismissing the seriousness of the virus and the benefit of the vaccine:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/10/governor-paterson-of-ny-reverses-h1n1-vaccine-mandate.html#comments

If you put your fingers in your ears and go na-na-na-na long enough, you really look foolish.

Fired Up Ready to Go, or an examination of comments at AoA: Proof Positive

"Before vaccines, everyone came down with measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox etc. If vaccines work, how could 1% to 6% opt-out rates result in pre-vaccine numbers of people getting these illnesses?"

http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/10/wired-magazine-and-amy-wallace-drink-paul-offits-kool-aid.html#comments

There's a study out on assessing competency in oneself that I've made reference to before. It applies here nicely. The above statement is so grossly inaccurate and yet the individual making it has no idea, and having read a fair amount of this person's comments over the last six months, this person routinely demonstrates a lack of awareness on how inaccurate the statements she makes are. That's okay; she's in fine company over there. Facts, they don't need 'em. Their intuitive understanding, their beliefs, and their utter convictions prevail.
 
This is an article (Dunning et al.) that anyone interested in making sure he or she is armed with the self-knowledge that it takes to have a better chance to assess whether we really are competent should read. Absolute convictions are risky things. We fool ourselves in a variety of ways and if we aren't aware of that principle in general, it bites us in the ass on a fairly regular basis. The problem is that we are so sure we're right, we don't feel those nibbles. And we may even go so far as to use any nibbles at our ass that we do feel as proof we must be right. Persecution complex, anyone?
 
I think what's going on with people in the anti-vaccination  movement is incredibly complex and I'm not suggesting I understand all the nuances of what is motivating each individual person who proscribes to the belief that vaccines are deadly and worse than the disease. But I'm pretty clear on a few things:
 
These parents are hurting and casting about for answers and for cures.
They're angry.
They think they've been hoodwinked.
There are charlatans and crooks attempting to peddle them easy answers and buy-my-product cures.
They think they have the answers now and that anyone who can't see the light as they have is the enemy.
They hold these beliefs with a religious fervor that procludes skepticism.
They consistently overinflate their level of competence.
 
This last is precisely what happened when the person wrote the above comment quoted. It displays an ignorance of infection rates, an ignorance of percentage rates, and an ignorance of her competency to assess the validity of the statistics and what they mean.
 
We all make mistakes. Turns out that competent individuals are more able to assess where they might be wrong. They estimate their competence more accurately and do not overinflate it.
 
 
An article on this study:
 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL
 
 
The citation for the article:
Dunning, David; Kerri Johnson, Joyce Ehrlinger and Justin Kruger (2003). "Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence". Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (3): 83–87. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01235
 
Can be downloaded here:
 
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:HqdMpBN_k0MJ:www.psy.fsu.edu/~ehrlinger/Self_%26_Social_Judgment/DunJohnEhr%26Krug.pdf+Why+people+fail+to+recognize+their+own+incompetence&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgk6aEo7SxwCteyDeSpdHlW8zH18fBkXHSygJ9QHLswvdrsRDqU7WESIBX7ut9DRhteiuYd1ysGYfbo-9azSFdVmRdZ11VylOzqnCQSowDKgjWxqu9UeiqGNObb7tLdyt8YtNKI&sig=AFQjCNH6j1ezqFgbaH3KRyiCGp9WZc35qA
 
 
***I know it says comments, but I'm out of writing time. Ya'll feel free to pick some and examine them here. Be nice, though.

Doing Something Right: Conniptions at AoA

"An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All" by Amy Wallace
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience

The powers that be just aren't having a good week over at AoA. First Jon Stewart. Now this Wired article. Irony is so thick over there in reading the Handley piece covering Wallace's article, well, it was a fine wake-up read, you know? Laughed my ass off.  And then got to the end and saw Handley encouraging angry, harassing (sorry, corrective, unhappy--right!) emails to Wallace.

So, what did I immediately do? I emailed Amy Wallace and told her I appreciated her willingness to stand (okay, I actually said I appreciated her balls to take on the subject). I encourage readers to do the same. AoA and similar organizations have apparently decided that hostility and harassment of people who disagree with them is the way to go. Harassment and intimidation are the name of the game. In short, they are bullies of the worst kind. And they need to be stood up to. People they are bullying should be rallied around and supported.

You know, if the data isn't working to support your crackpot theories, thinking that strongarm tactics and bullying will win the day is a chickenshit way to go about it.

Reasonable people debate. They discuss. They don't threaten. They don't harass. They don't bully. They don't intimidate. They don't cast the "other side" as trolls and sheople. People only do that when the debate's been lost. People only do that in cults. Seriously.

Other sites covering the Wired article are Orac at Respectful Insolence and LBRB. Feel free to add your link here if you've covered it as well. And remember, let's show Amy some support.

National Stim Day Anyone?

An idea is born: National Stim Day. So many autistic individuals have stims that cause them to be stared at or mistreated by strangers and non-strangers. Truth be told, we all have stims, odd little self-comforting gestures or behaviors to soothe ourselves. Let's make the world an easier place for everyone. Wear your stim with pride. Ooooh, buttons! To stim or not to stim.



Kathleen wrote a wonderful post that touched on stimming and how to make the world a more accepting place for our children (and ourselves, in all honesty) and their stimming behavior. http://autismherd.blogspot.com/2009/10/to-eeee-or-not-to-eeee.html

And from that post, the idea of a National Stim Day is born.

I think buttons. Really.

"I Stim"

"Good Stim to you"

"What's it stim you?"

"It's all stims to me"

We all have quirks. We all have issues. Some of us have a bit more. People and society need to bend a little and deal with it a little better. It is our infinite diversity that makes us interesting, exciting, fascinating people. And we all are that: interesting and fascinating people.

Why should it only be the beauty pageant winners who get to hand flap with acceptance? Seriously? They hand flap. And that's fine. In that context. They frikkin practice handflapping.

It's time for a change. Time for more acceptance. Time to quit hiding our own stims. :-)

Trolls, Sheoples, and Arrogant Hostility

Kirby has a new post on Huff/Age of Autism on Landis's resignation from the IACC. In it he assumes an innocent position of surprise on many fronts, and professes regret that she's resigned. On the other hand, folks over at AoA are in the midst of a rather vindictive and hostile happy dance over the resignation. Anyone who disagrees with them, anyone, is fed to the sharks.

The hostility seems to grow exponentially, as well. I understand that it's not a lot of fun to have people disagree with you, but this hostility that these particular parents feel towards anyone who isn't with them totally is unreasonable. And it's directly fostered and encouraged by Age of Autism's managing editor.

She comments at Kirby's article at Huff, and in doing so explains readily the hit pieces on Offit: "As long as Alison Singer is on the IACC, Dr. Paul Offit is on the IACC. You can take it from there."

She then sees the need, and I have no idea why she does, to post this, in short seemingly making the claim that if you post on there and disagree with them, you're a troll:

"David, did you omit the keywords that open the troll floodgates on this post? Is this post too much about human beings and not enough about vaccinations for them? Did the dog eat their talking points? Perhaps it's a just a busy Warcraft day." 

Of course, the most loyal of AoAers who also Huff comment weighed in, showing off their various layers of hostility. So where are the folks who typically post on the Huff stuff by AoAers and the other autism articles? For example, why don't I post over there as often as I used to? First, I have a blog, and I know that if I write it here, it's going up. No censorship here.  Huff moderation is a pain in the ass. It's not as bad as AoA, where I know it's not going on. Second, well, I swear I have a law over there somewhere about arguing with people who have demonstrated a lack of connection to reality. 

Debate, reasoned argument, discussion can only occur where there is some level of consensus on the basic facts. Increasingly, there are fewer and fewer points of facts that can be agreed on. It's not nearly as polarized as AoAers would have people believe; there aren't extremists on the vaccines-are-better-than-dying side that don't aknowledge the reality of adverse effects from vaccination. For example, I absolutely acknowledge that adverse reactions occur in an unfortunate minority. I think continuous research on making vaccines as safe as possible and identifying individuals at risk are necessary things.

I do not believe in the validity of claims made of adverse reactions weeks and months after a vaccine. Everything I can find on vaccine adverse reactions suggests that adverse reactions happen either immediately or within several hours, not days, weeks, and months later. The whole GBS fearmongering, for example, my friend Thelma was able to find out, is distorted beyond reality. The flu vaccine does not and can not cause a viral infection. It may reactivate it.

AoAers claim to have a special hold on reality. They know what autism is and us sheoples and trolls have it all wrong. They know the danger and evil that vaccines are and any science we have to offer to counter their knowledge is met with arrogance and hostility, as well as accusations of being paid to argue against their outright ludicrous positions. And if we fail to give them the attention, that's just as bad.

What Katie Wright and AoA did with Landis's notes was in poor taste. They aren't interested, apparently, in ethical behavior or in anything other than controlling the whole show and in foisting their view of reality of everyone else. Sounds like a cult to me.

AoA isn't about finding the truth about autism, wherever that truth is. It isn't about support or adaptive coping. It's about right-fighting, bullying and intimidation. That's what they did to Landis and Landis capitulated. Who needs that kind of continuous villification? I don't have a problem with her notes, over all. of course the anti-vaccination AoAers did. And you don't get to say you are for safer vaccines and repeatedly put the anti-vaccination propoganda and misinformation on your site and have anyone take you seriously. You don't. People who are for safe vaccination say that first, confirm and verify their stories of adverse reactions, and get the science right. AoA does none of that. NONE.

Kirby's conciliatory piece is an attempt to soften up what they did. It's damage control. Maybe not for AoA itself, but for Kirby.

For comments by Stagliano, see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/nih-agency-head-backs-vac_b_325221.html?show_comment_id=33042662#comment_33042662

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/nih-agency-head-backs-vac_b_325221.html?show_comment_id=33041475#comment_33041475

Friday Morning Links and Happy Thoughts

Here's to everyone having a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. The girlies are well and in full girlie form, which means lots of attitude by my biggest flower. These kiddies of mine have one volume: LOUD! And when the garden girlies couple it with attitude, it wakes you right up. It also makes studying for tests challenging. But their daddy is taking them to school in 40 minutes and it will just be me and bright boy in the house until he leaves for the center. Somehow he manages to be even louder, but he seems delighted to have me alone for an hour once a week. It's a nice way, even with little girl atttitudes, to end a week. And even with a test in a few hours!

I thought I'd share some more friends' sites this morning.

Marc Rosen writes for Examiner.com; you can start with this article of his: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-21742-Long-Island-Autism-Examiner~y2009m10d5-Two-new-studies-and-the-weirdness-gets-weirder. If you click on Long Island Examiner, you can see the rest of his pieces.

Nightstorm the AspieWolf has her site at http://prismsong.blogspot.com/.

Corina is at http://nostereotypeshere.blogspot.com/.

Kathleen is at http://autismherd.blogspot.com/.

Just a reminder that many more wonderful writers are on the blogroll down and to the right. :-)


I hope everyone has a good weekend, that you are all well and well-rested. I had a pretty good week, my children and husband did as well, and for that I am grateful. :-)

David Brown's "An Assault on the H1N1 vaccines?"

From David this week is this article on the H1N1 vaccine. Here are the last three paragraphs of his piece, which can be found in its entirety at:
http://evilpossum.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/2/2/2622709/h1n1.pdf.

Like last month’s Wakefield/NAA “press release” on Offit, this is a grossly misleading and partisan text. It is also, returning to the “Fortean” angle, very much like an urban legend, blending together with a broader mythology of dubious claims of less certain provenance. The allegations against squalene can easily be classified as a “legend”, particularly in that it centers on the unverified report of its use in the early 1990s.

Another issue worth watching for is what I call “phantom quotes”, unverifiable statements attributed to perceived authorities that seem to emerge full grown and untraceable, like the Loch Ness monster rising briefly to the surface. Such appocryphal or anonymous statements are well-known to folklorists, particularly as a typical component of bogus warnings and as a whole genre involving alleged inappropriate behavior by celebrities on television. (The “P&G/Satanism” legend, woven around an interview that never happened between an unnamed P&G executive and one of any number of talk show hosts, can be considered a representative of both.) This is a problem that has come to the attention of debunkers, for example in a dubious "quote" attributed to an unnamed employee of the Health Department of Oregon by J.B. Handley last month. There is no doubt in my mind that the “phantom quote” phenomenon is playing a major role in stories about health care workers refusing to take the H1N1 vaccine(s).

A particular instance I have investigated is coverage of a study titled, “Willingness of Hong Kong healthcare workers to accept pre-pandemic influenza vaccination at different WHO alert levels: two questionnaire surveys”,widely quoted by online and other secondary sources as finding that “half of health care workers refuse H1N1 vaccination”. But what the paper itself states is that, out of a reported “2255 healthcare workers (who) completed the questionnaires in the two studies”, only 389 responded to the one questionnaire which included questions about H1N1, and that 47.6% of them responded in the negative. This means that, strictly speaking, 10% of all those who responded indicated they would accept the H1N1 vaccine, another 10% indicated they would not, and 80% were given no reason or opportunity to comment. Thus, saying that half were against the vaccine(s) is clearly an oversimplification at best. Secondary sources may distort the paper further, for example by claiming that 8,500 were surveyed. This probably means nothing more or less than that the story in popular imagination has become detached from the actual study, hence departing from the realm of science (good or bad) into that of folklore, to join whatever real, imagined or self-created monsters haunt the minds of men..

Oh you, with the missing the point and pretense to innocence and martyrdom

Twitter / From Age of Autism: If you don't want a cure o ...: "If you don't want a cure or treatment for your/your child's autism, why does it bother you that I do? How is it your business?"

Every busy gal needs a break from studying and grading essays. It dawned on me that I hadn't looked at Age of Autism in a while. Above is one of their latest tweets.

So many problems with this, and it had me thinking on the thread that will not die over at LBRB by Guest Blogger.

First problem: the misconception that people standing up to AoA/GenRes/Safeminds/et al. are against treatment for behaviors that are interfering with successful functioning for the autistic individual. I don't know of any one who isn't for intervention. It's less than honest to suggest that the differences between anti-vaccinists/pro-chelation etc. and those who are for evidence-based practices regarding vaccines and autism can be reduced to anti-vaxxers being pro-treatment and everyone else being anti-treatment.

Second problem: the way this is worded has (I'm guessing it's) Kim Stagliano saying she wants a cure or treatment for me/my child. That would make it my business. I know, nitpicky. She (or whomever) had 140 characters to get it done. Probably not what she meant exactly.

It's my business and society's business in general if your desire to cure your child's autism involves abuse. To pick back up on the post by Guest Blogger at LBRB, nicotine patches slapped furtively on a child in a place where teachers or other caregiver are unlikely to see it, well, that lets me know you know it's wrong. That list of "treatments" that Guest Blogger details at LBRB is abusive. It matters. Your child is not your possession and you do not have the right to indiscriminately experiment on the child with every quack "medicine" that comes along because you have decided your child is defective or "sick." You don't. And any doctor who colludes in the mistreatment and abuse of children by imposing medications and treatments that involve the potential for significant harm to the child with no demonstrated medical necessity is guilty, at the very least, of betraying his Hippocratic Oath.

This really shouldn't be so hard to understand. It should be a no-brainer. You don't get to experiment on your child because you've decided your child's condition is a significant auto-immune disorder or mercury poisoning despite evidence to the contrary. Oh, I know, you can find a quack lab and a quack doc to feed your needs and to "treat" your child. And you can find online communities to support your habits and feed them, as well. It still doesn't make it right.

All children deserve respect, compassion and a safe, caring environment. You fail as parents to do that when you engage in the kind of behavior that it appears many are engaging in, based on the posts in these online support groups for people who believe their children have vaccine-induced autism.

Not all parents who have autistic children and believe them to be autistic due to adverse reactions from vaccines go down these extreme "treatment" trails. Some, perhaps even many, appear to cope adaptively and positively. They aren't stuck; they aren't desperate; they don't think their child is defective. They love their children positively and celebrate their children. What's going on here with this subset who engage in the serious woo and quackery and downright abusive behaviors?

Why are some of us insistent that these parents (who do as this mother that Guest Blogger describes appears to have done) really love their children? What does that mean? Their behaviors are excused because they are doing it out of love? You know, I think it's perfectly acceptable to say this is not the behavior of a loving parent. I think society gets to define what being a good parent is, and we can collectively say that if you do x,y, and z you don't get to claim moral superiority and that you are a loving parent. If your actions traumatize or injure your child, either physically or psychologically, then you're not a good parent. I don't care if you think you have the best of intentions if the result is traumatic. I don't.

Loving your children means looking forward to the adults they will become and being able to look them in the eye as you are held accountable for your actions towards them and for them. Did you treat your child, his personhood, with respect? Did you accord him the dignity he deserves? Did you make your decisions based on what was best for him and not what was convenient for you? Were you logical, reasonable and rational in your decision making regarding your child or did you let fear and other emotions control your decisions? How much of your behavior towards your child is about you? How much of your reaction to your child's autism is about you? Really? Is about making things easier for you?

We've become a lazy nation. We wear our children as our accessories. They are not. My child's social status does not reflect on my social status. If you think yours does, then you're not being a good parent.

Read This! Shameless Plugs of Friends' Work and your chance to plug :-)

Good Monday morning! My girlies are on the mend, so worries and sleep deprivation have been eased. It's amazing what that will do for one's mood. :-) Still, I feel strongly on the prevention of that kind of worry and exhaustion on the parents' front and that kind of misery for your children. Just saying. I'll beat a dead horse into the ground, perseveration and all.

So, as I start my week out, with an Anatomy and Physiology lab midterm this afternoon (groan, but yippy -halfway there) and the prospect of grading essays this evening (same parenthetical applies), I thought I would share some reading suggestions.

David Brown has a new piece up at his site, http://evilpossum.weebly.com/vaccines.html. Look specifically at his latest article: "Vaccine madness! Do psychiatric disorders feed “anti-vax” belief?" It's an interesting and provocative read.


Turner & Kowalski always have interesting posts up. The latest, http://turnerandkowalski.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/40-hours-a-week/, provides the interesting dilemma that if it's not okay for adults to work 40 hour work weeks, why would 40 hours of ABA be appropriate. I think that Americans will probably shake their heads some, as so many of us actually work well more than 40 hours, but I'd agree that 40 hours of  repetitive therapy using aversives to get a child to do discrete, often seemingly pointless tasks is not something I'm for. Never have been.

Last one I'll plug this morning, since I really need to study for the midterm is my friend Clay at http://cometscorner-clay.blogspot.com/.  He writes some very poignant, thought provoking pieces.



I know my blog roll is buried down there some on the right, but it's worth the scroll down to see some really brilliant writers.

Ya'll feel free to plug your blogs here in the comments section. :-) And think of me frantically memorizing bones and bits.

H1N1 Kills. And it kills children. 76 dead. Color AoA and anti-vaxxers dumbasses

"A total of 76 laboratory confirmed 2009 H1N1 pediatric deaths have been reported to CDC since April."
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm


Both my daughters have confirmed cases of the flu right now. We had our regular flu vaccinations two weeks ago, and the doctor who saw my daughters said they will not need the H1N1 flu vaccine when it comes out, as they have H1N1 now.

Age of Autism and other anti-vaxxer bloggers, and for God's sake, Rush Limbaugh, who AoA had to immediately claim (and welcome to him you are ), have been near hysteria over the H1N1 vaccine. Their regular commenters and other anti-vaxxers elsewhere have posited that disease is a way to cull the herd (unless it's their kid, I'm sure). They spew venom and spit out lies, distortions, and mistruths regarding vaccines and the dangers of the diseases they protect against.

76 children in the United States have died of this virus that both my daughters now have. 76 since April of this year. 76. 16 of those deaths were THIS week.

And yet, AoA and like-minded folks spew their hysteria over the vaccine. Not over the virus that is killing children. Nope. Not a word for those families. Not a thought for those children, those parents. Instead, the rage over thimerosal, aluminum and calcium chloride continues.

My friend Thelma wrote about the AP poll that showed a third of American parents polled weren't going to get their children vaccinated against H1N1. A third of them. 76 kids are dead in less than six months from this virus and a third of American parents aren't going to protect their children because of the hysteria created by organizations like AoA, Gen Res, Safe Minds, and people like Wakefield, Kirby, and the ever bustful and poop-concerned Jenny McCarthy.

My daughters and thousands of children like them are sick now with a virus that will be preventable with the vaccine that is slowly making its way to communities around the United States. Some of these children are going to die. 16 did this past week. 16.

Let me echo Nancy Snyderman, who the AoAers like to deride, and say to parents, get the damn shot. Get it for you and get it for your children. Don't stay up all night watching over your children, keeping track of the fever, wondering and worrying if your child will be one of the unfortunate children who dies from this virus. Don't be the parent of the child who transmits it to other children at school, forced to worry and wonder if a child who dies from the virus got it from your child because you were too scared to vaccinate your child.

To echo Thelma, who often calls it bluntly, don't be a dumbass.

The New Epidemic: Woo and pseudoscience -- by hook or by crook

In Dread, Alcabes discusses the faux-autism epidemic and the anti-vaccinists' false assertions regarding autism, epidemics and causal factors. This would, no doubt, have the AoA loyalists and their compatriots at Safe Minds and Generation Rescue in a frenzied tizzy. It's not been a good week for those who are convinced that vaccines spell doom and the end of the world. They're mad that mainstream media dismisses their claims concerning autism and vaccines in general. The evening news makes non-vaccinating people sound like idiots.  They do. I'm not saying they're right to do so, or balanced, but they are making it clear that people who don't get vaccinated against swine flu are not the brightest and are risking public health. The AoAers, no doubt, believe them all to be pharma shills. Or worse. Nuance is not something any of the news stations do well.

As usual, I will offer my normal disclaimers: some people shouldn't get vaccinated. That is clear. That said, it's beyond ridiculous to not vaccinate out of a misguided fear that thimerosal will cause autism. It goes beyond a paranoid fear of thimerosal and measles now;  now it's sodium chloride and other salts (I kid you not, see Orac's deconstruction of an anti-vaxxer's post or the actual lunacy on display here: http://vactruth.com/2009/10/02/fda-approved-h1n1-vaccines-contain-ingredients-known-to-cause-cancer-and-death/). Actually looking at this site led me to another post "Sheeple Dying to Take Shot – Daymare Insanity Begins 10/15" which is the same garbage, only it's all black so you have to highlight it to see any text.

Between vaccines and the H1N1 flu to get folks all good and riled, the anti-vaxxers didn't really need any new material, but they got it and got into a bigger tizzy: a survey from Britain revealed 1 in 100 adults are autistic, and "new"" information over here revealed that it's 1 in 100 or so here, for kids. These numbers are not a big surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. Now, the AoAers hate the numbers for adults and one of their resident woobies decried the whole thing and spewed his venom wherever he could on the matter. Does anyone, outside of the AoA loyalists, take AoA writers/editors seriously? Left Brain Right Brain has a good article covering it at 1 in 100 adults are autistic. It also has the new US numbers, so I won't duplicate their good work on both subjects. But the AoAers are practically swooning over the CDC's change. Dismiss the idea that there's a large, fairly well functioning population of autistic adults in the community and focus on the revised numbers, and you've got yourself confirmation of your autism epidemic and fuel for your fire to argue that you are parents to very sick kids.

Never mind that there is no evidence to support the contention that autistic children are ill. They do have epilepsy at higher rates than non-autistics, but that's not what the anti-vaxxers are promoting. They promote a view of a child who is overgrown with yeast, who suffers intense intestinal distress. Never mind that neither of these things appears to be in fact the case. I'll leave the yeast alone and touch on the gastrointestinal issues that anti-vaxxers insist are uniform in autistic children. Research shows that autistic children are no more likely to have this problem than the general population. A shitload of folks out there, me included as is the pun, have gastrointestinal issues. I don't have leaky gut, and chances are real frakkin strong neither do your kids. Woo to you. My immune system ain't out of whack either (at least not gastrointestinally), and chances are neither are your autistic children's. Autism is not a health related disorder. It is a neurological condition that is not progressive, that is not neurodegenerative. The disease process was over by birth. If your child has health issues, they are not autism. And reading Boyd Haley, the Geiers, Wakefield and Deth isn't going to make you right or even knowledgeable.

After all, you're the ones who keep arguing about antifreeze, formaldehyde, aborted fetal cells, aluminum salts, and now table salt as being in vaccines and causing them to be dangerous.


I may be discouraged by your lack of critical thinking skills, your inability to assess your relative competency, your willingness to buy into woo and pseudoscience by hook or crook, and I may even occasionally call one of you (or two) a dumbass, but I have never displayed the sheer contempt that your insistence that anyone who disagrees with you is a sheeple does. I don't despise you, hold you beneath contempt, or think you have sold your soul to big nutraceuticals.

Why We Worry about Vaccines (Huff post comment to the article)

There seem to be some fairly sweeping generalizations by the author regarding fear levels among the citizenry regarding flu vaccines. Are most people worried about adverse effects, about being rendered suddenly autistic?



New studies regarding autistic adults show that, just as there 1 in 100 kids who are autistic, there are 1 in 100 adults who are autistic. Hardly seems validating for the vaccines cause autism charge, unless we will now shift the argument to incorporate previous generations into that causation formulation.



If you're concerned about vaccines, try reading reputable information, and by all means, be as cautious regarding your medication usage as well as your CAM usage. At least the FDA regulates medications. Not so for your vitamins and homepathics. Oh, and there's nothing to stop wackaloon doctors from profiteering off of desperate parents and peddling them the idea of deranged mineral transport and ALA as a chelator or the idea of RNA supplements that are, if they actually contained any RNA, destroyed instantly by saliva.



If some people would have as much skepticism of the woo as they did of mainstream medicine, well, some quacks might be out of business.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Disconnect: Dead rat, ominous cleansing, and the devil

A man with a dead rat on a tray walks past me; I see the man, but miss the rat on the tray.

"Autism is the devil. I realize it is a part of who my child is..."

"I feel a sense of ominous cleansing."

I've been mulling some things over in my mind, trying to understand the reactions people have to adversity. Some despair, give up, are like Droopy Dog. Learned helplessness is a very real state of being, and there are a couple bloggers/commenters for whom the world will never be a better place, who do not see that their actions play a large role in their existence, who instead blame their autism for all that has gone wrong with their lives, while at the very same time, denying that autism is a part of them. It takes some serious wrangling to make that illogical assertion, but they do it time and again. And I think of Erikson's stages of development, which are often a good conceptual  tool while not a hard fast law, especially his stage of identity versus role confusion.

If you are taught that autism is a bad thing, the devil, as one parent in the quote at the top asserts, not just in one place, but in two places, with the link back to the blog (think way-back machine: even if some day you remove your stuff on your blog, your child will still be able to find these words where you have said autism is the devil and a part of your child), then you absorb that message into your identity: autism is bad, autism is a part of you, therefore you are bad. Preserving the ego requires the disconnect of somehow trying to separate that and keep it away from the core of who you are. In some, that becomes the above often tortuous logic that autism is to blame for everything bad in their life but it isn't them. Hard to make your life better then, isn't it, if you can't see where your actions are causing your problems? Impossible to make change.

Many parents out there, enough to make a strong woman cringe (one mercury related group has over 8000 members), have made the connection between autism and mercury poisoning, never mind that it isn't based on evidence. They know what they know and what others have told them, and that's good enough for them. Hey, I know I walked by a man on Friday and there was nothing in his hands either, but the other two people walking with me saw that he had a dead rat on a tray. I know what I know, though, right?

Fortunately not, because I know how faulty perception can be, that I in fact do not "see" everything going on around me, and that a fair proportion of what I do "see" is a construction of my brain based on past seeing. I was focused on weaving my way through the crowd to get to the classroom, my mind on the test ahead. I noted the man as I passed him, but I did not look directly at him. Now, did the two young women actually see a rat? Maybe. To really know for sure, we'd have had to backtrack, find the man and check. Why? After all, two people saw it and agreed. Because they saw it for a split second, and as soon as the first did an eek, well, even if she were right, suggestibility plays a large role in our perceptions. Doublechecking is key.

Perhaps if more people were aware of just how faulty memory is, of  just how easily tricked perception is, of just how many shortcuts are hardwired into our brains, leading to often good decision-making, but sometimes horrendously poor decisions, as well, well, maybe folks would be more willing to wonder if they really know what they know they know. And they wouldn't be quite so certain there's a "sense of ominous cleansing" on the horizon just because it's flu season and flu shots will be given. Maybe they'd consider for a moment that there is something inherently frakked up when you write, not once but twice, that autism is the devil but is a part of your child.  And maybe, they'd even allow for the possibility that a dead rat on a tray could walk right past them and they wouldn't even notice.


Quotes taken from:

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2009/09/25/autism-speaks-video/5541/



http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/09/confessions-of-a-believer.html?cid=6a00d8357f3f2969e20120a58492cd970b