AGE OF AUTISM

DO FINANCIAL TIES AFFECT STUDIES?

Study "Disproving" Mercury-Autism Link Published in Journal with Financial Ties to Vaccine Manufacturers. The Journal is the AMA's Archives of Psychiatry. Read the full post from NewsTarget HERE.

Shouldn't immunologists, toxicologists, gastroenterologists, neurometabolic specialists and other doctors be tackling the myriad questions about autism, mercury, vaccinations, viruses, etc. instead of psychiatrists? The refrigerator theory died over 40 years ago. It's time for the psychiatrists to release their hold on autism and hand it over to the big boys who can do something about it.

1%: FINE FOR MILK, A BIT LOW FOR A BREAKTHROUGH

How's this strike you? "New birth control prevents 1% of pregnancies!"  "Cure for Cancer! New drug offers 1% survival rate." Are you impressed yet?

The media hoopla over the "breakthrough" news that a segment of Chromosome 16 has been officially implicated in 1 percent of autism cases has been received by 99% of parents (at least the savvy ones) as a big fat nothing.

MERCURY, THIMEROSAL and the NATURAL HISTORY OF AUTISM

By Dan Olmsted

Albert Einstein, master not just of the universe but of the simultaneously witty, profound and self-deprecating quote, once had this to say: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

That doesn't make me an Einstein, but it does make me feel better about the fact I've stuck like superglue to a couple of problems that go to the heart of autism. The one I'm writing about today is one I've tackled many times before -- the fact that the earliest cases show a strong association with the commercialization of ethyl mercury.

In the wake of the new study showing that the California autism numbers are continuing to climb, those who think the ethyl  mercury vaccine preservative called thimerosal has been exonerated are having a field day. One of them -- Dr. Paul Offit -- has even written it was a mistake to phase thimerosal out of vaccines starting in 1999 because it signaled concern that mercury in childhood immunizations might really be a problem.

NIH TO HOLD CLOSED AUTISM WORKSHOPS

NOTICES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

National Institutes of Health
National Institute of Mental Health; Notice of Workshops

Monday, January 7, 2008

Notice is hereby given of a series of four scientific workshops organized by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC).

The workshops will be closed to the public with attendance limited to invited participants. The purpose of the scientific workshops is to generate research priorities that will be used to develop the IACC strategic plan for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) research. The next meeting of the IACC when research priorities will be discussed is March 14, 2008.

THE NEW McCARTHY ERA?

By Lisa Ackerman

Sorry for the history lesson – but here you go.

Back in the 50’s every red blooded American was afraid of the Russians and the possibility of a “cold war”. Senator McCarthy was quick to point to hundreds of innocent, different thinking individuals that they were contributing the downfall of America.

Enter Edward R Murrow – considered a pioneer in early TV and famous newscaster of the day. Murrow saw the injustice of the Senators severely public accusations. He then produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the downfall of his theory.

What does this have to do with Autism?  Well a small group of doctors and writers are calling Jenny McCarthy the equivalent to Senator Joseph McCarthy.  The only similarities?  Their last name.

TACA's NEW DIET "HOW TO"

READ THIS.

There. Now you have no excuse for not starting your child on the GFCF diet.

Thank you to our wonderful sponsor (see that logo over to your right?) TACA for using their dollars to help parents today. Now. What a concept.

LOOKING AT THE BRIGHT SIDE

By Cathy Jameson

We’ve had some stellar sunny days lately. The weather that slams the nation around us seems to bypass my rural town as we peel a layer of winter clothing every few weeks. I’m thankful that our winter is mild as I can see my son thriving in the late afternoon sunshine in our backyard.  Ronan still has mountains to climb to be 100% healthy, but these rays of light that shine in his eyes keep my optimistic mind open.  I need this bright sunshine to help turn around some deep-seated feelings I’ve had a hard time letting go.

KATIE WRIGHT ON AUTISM SPEAKS' GRANTS

By Katie Wright

People frequently ask me what I think of Autism Speaks and are surprised by my answer.  I believe the creative team, the administrative staff, the incredibly hard working special event and Walk staffers are amazing. They all could be pursuing more lucrative careers elsewhere but truly want to help autistic kids and their families.

My parents, Bob and Suzanne Wright, are also tireless in their efforts to bring attention to the needs of our families. At a time when it seems as if the whole world, especially in the Middle East, is angry with the United States, my Mom has successfully engaged in a wonderful collaboration with the Sheika of Qatar in order to have the United Nations declare a World Autism Day. This is only the third time the U.N. has recognized a disease in such a way. Autism Speaks has, undoubtedly, lifted the shame and isolation so many families felt by forcing autism into many public forums in the media and government. Their work on insurance re-imbursement is also extremely important to all our cash strapped families.

It is Autism Speaks’ scientific advisors that I find myself at great pains to understand.

HARVARD FUMBLES THE AUTISM STORY

By Anne Dachel

I read the cover story, A Spectrum of Disorders, The urgent search to understand the biological basis of autism, by Ashley Pettus in the current HARVARD MAGAZINE for January - February 2008. I printed out the eight page article and looked through it for details about autism. 

Ashley Pettus writes about the "urgent search to understand" autism, but what we were given in her report hardly indicates that autism is anything to really be concerned about.  Lots of theories are mentioned at length with impressive-sounding terms like "genomics," "spontaneous genetic change," and "cognitive deficit," but if readers picked up the article thinking that they'd learn anything new to explain why autism is now an epidemic, they'd be sadly disappointed.

"TODAY'S MAN" FILM FOLLOWS ASPERGIAN NICKY GOTTLEIB

Check your local listings (right here) for the "Independent Lens" film called "Today's Man." airing on PBS this month.

From the Independent Lens site: TODAY’S MAN tells the story of Nicky Gottlieb, a former child genius who, at age 21, is diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. People with Asperger’s, which is a form of autism, tend to be highly intelligent—often geniuses in certain subjects—but are unable to pick up on social cues. The subtleties of body language, facial expression, tones or gestures are lost to Nicky, and his own behavior can be considered by others to be bizarre and inappropriate.

Best of A of A: NEW FOIA EMAILS SHOW: GRINKER SPEAKS AND THE CDC LISTENS

Here's a Best of A of A. Atrributing the increase in autism to better diagnosis and "acceptance" serves only to deflect attention from the skyrocketing rates of profoundly injured children. Folks at Autism Speaks, CDC, AAP and many major research facilities, like that one with the bulldog mascot up the street from me here in CT, desperately want you to believe that the ever growing rates of autism are due to better diagnosis. Drug 'em, and hug 'em, but don't ask why...  A recent UC Davis study says otherwise (HERE.)  KS

Managing Editor's Note: Make sure you scroll down to click open the PDF of the emails JB is referencing, complete with blacked out sentences.

By J.B. Handley

Meet Roy.

Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology, Human Sciences and International Affairs at the George Washington University. It’s worth noting that his Dad and Grandfather are somewhat famous psychiatrists. He wrote a book about autism called Unstrange Minds. Two things are interesting:

1. The book was written with the help of a $120,000 grant from Autism Speaks. From his own website: “In 2005, he received a grant of $120,000 from the National Alliance for Autism Research/Autism Speaks, to conduct the first ever prevalence study of autism in Korea.”

NO "KRaP" IN WCPO CINCY STORY ON AUTISM CHELATION

By Kim Stagliano

Yes, the headline was a stretch. And if you're under 35 you have no idea what we're talking about. WKRP in Cincinnati was an old TV show... Oh, nevermind.   

Just read an interesting story out of Cincy HERE about chelating a child for LEAD and watching his autism disappear.

"Chelation treatments, used to remove metals from the body, have reduced noah's lead levels and have made a huge impact.

"It was really powerful and amazing for us to watch. It was literally watching a miracle right in front of our eyes," said noah's father, Rob Breakiron.

"We have a child here who is virtually indistinguishable from his peers and that's certainly not what he was a year or two years ago," added Pediatrician David Berger, MD."

MAKING SENSE OF THE CALIFORNIA AUTISM NUMBERS

By Mark Blaxill

It's tricky business to report on scientific events in which you've played a direct role, but there's a new study coming out on Monday about trends in autism rates in California and their connection with falling thimerosal exposure. It's important and timely for me to comment on the findings. But first I need to go back to the beginning of this discussion, since it's one that I started.

On July 16 2001, I gave a brief presentation to a meeting of the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the Institute of Medicine at the Meeting on "Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes" held in Cambridge MA. I won't repeat the entire story, but if you're interested, David Kirby provides an engaging account of this session in his book Evidence of Harm (pages 175-181) and you can find the audio files of the meeting at the following link HERE.

During a fifteen minute time slot I made a number of comments and answered one interesting question. Looking back from today, six and half years later, here's a quick synopsis of what I said.

MERCURY, FISH AND AUTISM: A STARTLING NEW LINK

By Mary Webster

The Sydney Morning Herald reports today on new warnings out of Australia about the dangers mercury poses to small children.   In today's edition, Peter Hawkins and Kate Benson investigate the role mercury played in the medical conditions of three local children.  As a result of these case reports, health officials are now cautioning parents to restrict their young children's consumption of large fish. (Read the article HERE.)

PBS PRESENTS: THE MEDICATED CHILD

PBS's Frontline presents THE MEDICATED CHILD on Tuesday, January 8th at 9:00pm. Check your local PBS listings to confirm the time.  They will examine both sides of the debate over the use of powerful drugs in children.   

We ask, "Why are children being diagnosed with profound mental illness (bi-polar!) at such young ages?" Yes, we need to look at the efficacy and safety of the drugs, that's a given. But who will have the courage to demand WHY are our kids so sick?

In recent years, there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of children being diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders and prescribed medications that are just beginning to be tested in children. The drugs can cause serious side effects, and virtually nothing is known about their long-term impact. “It’s really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in these children of this age,” child psychiatrist Dr. Patrick Bacon tells FRONTLINE. “It’s a gamble. And I tell parents there’s no way to know what’s going to work.”

In The Medicated Child, airing Tuesday, January 8, 2008, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria confronts psychiatrists, researchers and government regulators about the risks and benefits of prescription drugs for troubled children. The biggest current controversy surrounds the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Formerly called manic depression, bipolar disorder was long believed to exist only in adults, but, in the mid-1990s, bipolar in children began to be diagnosed at much higher rates, sometimes in kids as young as 4 years old. “The rates of bipolar diagnoses in children have increased markedly in many communities over the last five to seven years,” says Dr. Steven Hyman, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “I think the real question is, are those diagnoses right? And in truth, I don’t think we yet know the answer.”

DRUGS NO BENEFIT IN CURBING AGGRESSION

The New York Times reported yesterday that Risperdal and Haldol worked no better than placebo drugs among intellectually disabled people. There is a "Concerta'd" effort to push more drugs into people with autism. This trend will skyrocket as the males with autism flourish from adorable boys to full grown men who need to be managed and controlled by their families and ultimately, their caretakers, whoever that may be.

This report will be disheartening to parents who have looked to these drugs to help their loved ones.  Especially as children are taking these drugs from ever younger ages.  (Take a look at the Risperdal Lego's used to promote the drug.)

Doctors have few real treatment options for people with autism. As long as psychiatrists are running the ASylum why should we expect anything other than more drugs and more studies of drugs?

We go back to needing more studies on the causes of autism in order to learn how to treat it.

Here's the full article:

The drugs most widely used to manage aggressive outbursts in intellectually disabled people are no more effective than placebos for most patients and may be less so, researchers report.

The finding, being published Friday, sharply challenges standard medical practice in mental health clinics and nursing homes in the United States and around the world.

In recent years, many doctors have begun to use the so-called antipsychotic drugs, which were developed to treat schizophrenia, as all-purpose tranquilizers to settle threatening behavior — in children with attention-deficit problems, college students with depression, older people with Alzheimer’s disease and intellectually handicapped people.

HOLIDAY SUCCESS

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

I admit that on the night before Christmas I was a Grinch.

I was struggling with a cold, we were trying to adjust our daughter Jacqueline’s seizure medications because she was having drop seizures, and I wondering if all the efforts we’d been making over the past few years were worth it.

But then on Christmas day we went over to my in-laws with Jacqueline and our normally developing son Ben.  Over the past nine years our appearances as an intact family have been few and of limited duration because Jacqueline will inevitably become agitated, start screaming, and we’ll leave.

This time it was completely different.

A of A Q&A: PEDIATRICIAN ON AUTISM, PART 3

By Dan Olmsted

Editor's note: This is the third installment of a three-part interview with Dr. Julie Buckley of Ponte Verdra Beach, Fla., a DAN! doctor with an affected child -- and some important observations on the state of our children's health and how to improve it.

AOA: I've never understood why having a discussion about vaccines is somehow imperiling public health, because it's not ALL vaccines or NO vaccines – that may be some folks' position – but what I hear from people like you is we've got to find a way to manage this and also to reformulate the vaccines so we're not causing problems And to respond, "Well, you're going to kill us all because we're going to bring back infectious diseases" just doesn't make much sense to me. Public policy debate is what happens in a democracy that leads to better outcomes. So I just don't understand why your kind of thinking is seen as so threatening.

Buckley: I think it's threatening for several reasons.

NJ DOC VS. PARENT: COMMENTARY ON VACCINES

By Anne Dachel

Last week, the Courier Post in New Jersey had two commentaries in the opinion section that are a stunning example of what the controversy over vaccines and autism is all about.  One of the pieces was from a physician, Dr. Meg Fisher, and the other was from a mother, Holly Masclans, who is also a member of A-CHAMP (Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning.

With the title, Vaccinations Are Still Needed for Kids, Dr. Fisher gives readers a list of over a dozen diseases that she says have been eliminated by vaccinations.  It seems the doctor's comments were in response to the heated argument that grew out of the mandate for four new vaccines in the childhood schedule in New Jersey. 

A of A Q&A: PEDIATRICIAN ON AUTISM, PART 2

By Dan Olmsted

Editor's note: This is the second of a three-part interview. I first met Dr. Julie Buckley of Ponte Verdra Beach, Fla., at the NAA convention in Atlanta. The formal sessions had ended for the day, but as usual some interesting discussions were going strong at the hotel bar. It was too crowded and noisy to have much of a conversation, but I picked up enough nuggets from Dr. Buckley that I wanted to hear more. So the next day we sat down in an empty conference room and had a proper talk. She touched on many key topics, from the relative health of never-vaccinated kids to the struggles of DAN! doctors helping children with autism recover. Sometimes, those children are their own.

AOA: What possible role could vaccination against deadly illness play in somehow bringing on more illness in kids? What's going on? Do you have a theory?

Buckley: I do. There is no doubt in my mind that the environmental exposures that kids are subjected to play a huge role in triggering off a chronic illness, and when we talk about autism and really when we talk about so many other illnesses – the autoimmune diseases, the allergy, the asthma -- we're talking about a generation of kids who have had something shift. This beautifully delicate balance in the immune system, where it's just tremendously delicately hanging …

This is Bella! She's "prelingual" according to Cigna insurance. But we're not giving up on her, even if Cigna has......

Thanks.

Kim

A of A Q&A: PEDIATRICIAN ON AUTISM, VACCINATION & RECOVERY

By Dan Olmsted

Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part interview. I first met Dr. Julie Buckley of Ponte Verdra Beach, Fla., at the NAA convention in Atlanta. The formal sessions had ended for the day, but as usual some interesting discussions were going strong at the hotel bar. It was too crowded and noisy to have much of a conversation, but I picked up enough nuggets from Dr. Buckley that I wanted to hear more. So the next day we sat down in an empty conference room and had a proper talk. She touched on many key topics, from the relative health of never-vaccinated kids to the struggles of DAN! doctors helping children with autism recover. Sometimes, those children are their own.
--
AOA: How did you get started down this road?

Buckley: I had a very small and growing neurotypical practice when my daughter regressed, and then I figured out what we needed to do for her and then began working with other children and working with kids with autism. And very quickly my autism practice really outstripped my neurotypical practice. But the people who stayed in that neurotypical practice were those who were already very interested in not vaccinating, or who had siblings of children with autism, or parents in the community who for whatever reason didn't want to vaccinate their children, and knew that I was not going to scream at them at the top of my lungs – that if that was their wish, I was going to abide by it.

AOA: That sounds a lot like Homefirst, the medical practice in Chicago that welcomes people who choose not to vaccinate, and says it has seen almost no autism in never-vaccinated kids who were born at home. So what are your observations, given the diversity of kids in your practice? What do you see in terms of health outcomes for vaccinated versus non-vaccinated?

INTRODUCING DIEOXX

By Dan Olmsted

DIEOXX – script for 60 second spot by Smirk & Co.

(Key piano music, languid, soft and sad. It should sound like George Winston without inviting copyright infringement suits. Our in-house counsel are busy enough already.
Cue worried-looking person of indeterminate boomer age, looking directly at camera. Pan to pitiful neglected dog in corner.)

You know something isn't right. You just don't know what it is.

Now there's Dieoxx. For those times when you know you're just not right.

WHO STOLE BOB WRIGHT'S SPINE?

By J.B. Handley

I haven’t seen Bob Wright speak in public in some time. Perhaps he can’t get out of bed what with his missing spine and all…I don’t know.

When I first heard the CEO of NBC had an autistic grandson and was launching a new organization I thought, “Finally, someone with the courage, intellect, and independence to do the right thing!”