FIRST REPORT FROM DAN! ON AAP PARTICIPATION

Adventures in Autism blogger Ginger Taylor has written a report from last week's DAN! conference. We reported last week (HERE) that the AAP sent out a press release saying they were going to work with DAN!. Then Dr. Karp and Tayloe appeared on Larry King Live and many of us thought, "It's just business as usual at AAP." Perhaps not?

If you attended DAN! and have an opinion be sure to comment.

The Defeat Autism Now! Conference was last weekend and the big news was not that Jenny McCarthy showed up, but that the American Academy of Pediatrics showed up.

After years of inaction and obfuscation, this was action number two taken by the AAP in just one week.

AAP not only showed up, from what I can put together, they really listened. They saw that the doctors presenting were their doctors and that the families in the audience were their patients. They got that the research and the interventions had a solid base and that medical approach to treating what is currently diagnosed as 'autism' has already begun with out them. They got that it is time for them to begin investing in what we have started.

I hear that they understand the multisystem failure that is going on in our kids and the multi system approach that is needed to address it.

Read the full post by Ginger at Adventures in Autism HERE. Thank you, Ginger.

Comments

[Grammar]

In response to Misinformation?'s comments: It never hurts to stand as far back as possible, to take the longest, largest view of a premise: let's consider pathogens, which I'll call "germs" here, and our attempts to control them. Mother Nature cleverly designs any gene pool to include pioneers, renegades, warriors and stay-at-homes, whether she's working on animal forms, germs, or algae. So in any pool of a specimen, there are certain individuals best suited to meet particular challenges.
When we started immunizing against The Pox, we set loose a grand and persistent fantasy that we could eradicate disease, but germs and Mother Nature are doing push-ups in the parking lot while we're sitting in the doctor's waiting room with our babies. Have you noticed how often you read about "a new strain" of measles or mumps? Many are probably responses to our medical glory-mongering, our laboratory buccaneers. We can't keep up fast enough, and our efforts only drive the changes on.
When I had polio, 1 in 4,000 kids in America did; a tiny percentage of them were paralyzed. Humanity has jumped too hard too fast on the vaccine bandwagon, and we just haven't noticed yet that as we hopped on board to save one in 4,000 we were shoving one in 150 of our babies out to fall by the roadside.
So when conservative medical opinion scratches its beard and mouths "herd immunity," I find myself muttering, "yeah, right. Merck may plan, but Ma Nature laughs." At best we can accomplish an apparent herd immunity, a momentary herd immunity, but there is no such stasis.
So, as you see the glorious bandwagon of "medical progress" come trundling by, step back a few paces and take a longer larger view, and see if there might be a wake of little bodies, blighted lives, behind the great vehicle. You might even be able to catch some as they fall, mid-air, and take them to a safe place.
P.S. If someone knows how to let Bill and Melinda Gates in on this little insight on who's in charge (them or Nature), the future might be better.

[Misinformation?]

Immunizationinfo.org would be a good place for Dr. Cooper to begin to apply what he learned at DAN.

Louis Z. Cooper, MD
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/about/steeringcommittee_detail.cfv?id=3

Since 1964, Dr. Cooper has been extensively involved in vaccine research. At Bellevue Hospital in New York, Dr. Cooper created the Rubella Project, a vaccine research program, which evolved into a multidisciplinary team dedicated to defining and resolving the rubella problem.

Misinformation (false or misleading information) 
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/immunization_issues_detail.cfv?id=52

The timing and widespread use of vaccines make them easy scapegoats to be blamed for all sorts of serious illnesses. Of course not all vaccine safety concerns are misinformation—only those that persist despite the evidence against them. Even when the concern stops being an issue for most in the scientific community, it may remain an issue for many others with vested interests—whether politicians, lawyers, journalists or the group that concerns health professionals the most: well intentioned but misinformed parents trying to understand and alleviate their child’s afflictions. Many media stories use faulty reports and parental concerns to depict a “controversy” about vaccines, failing to mention that the scientific community does not feel that a controversy exists.

In spite of the substantial evidence now available that allows rejection of the hypotheses that vaccines cause autism, there are some who continue to state that there is a causal association. These claims, once based on missing information, now fall into the category of misinformation.

Unfortunately, the misinformed person with a fixed opinion about vaccines has many sophisticated tools to disseminate misinformation, creating confusion about vaccine safety. Misinformation comes in many packages and may be widely publicized by the media and others causing lowered immunization levels and disease risk.

[Terri Lewis]

Katie Wright,

Thank you for all that you are doing; thank you for being such a presence at AOA.

>

Yes! Have you suggested this? We can all join in with that little suggestion. I'm looking into it. Is there any more direct contact info. that you might be able to share--so we can all put a push on? Maybe a little push from a couple hundred parents or so?. . .

Terri Lewis

[Angela Warner]

Katie,
While I was not able to be at the conference I second everything you said. The AAP still has much to prove and as I said in so many words to A-A-CHAMP members today - endorsing the letter I drafted to Secretary Gates regarding our military dependent children with autism would be a good start. Especially as the AAP has as a feature on their site that April is "The Month of the Military Child"... it's also Autism Awareness Month. Let's sign that endorsement??? I also said that I'll be following up tomorrow and if they stonewall me again I'll go straight to the top. Want to help with that?

My younger son with ASD, asked me another question last night that I can not ignore... made my head spin and will be one of the focus points of my follow up piece to this all... "Mom, is the moon really made of cheese?". More to come :) I think that tops "Mom, What comes after us?".

Yep - AAP follow-up coming :-) Oh yeh babeee!

[katie wright]

It was great that the AAP finally showed to a DAN! conference. Jenny McCarthy had to shame them into it, but it is good they came. Dr. Cooper did not just walk in and out he sat through several presentations over three days. I told Dr. Cooper that the AAP needs to get up to speed- NOW. There is no time to waste, they need to send TEAMS of physicians to DAN! and Autism One. If they want to start earning the respect, rather than the ire of the parent community, the AAP should start booking those hotel rooms in Chicago now. They can also make inexpnsive and easy changes by updating the website so their autism information can reflect 2008, not 1998. The AAP has much to prove to our families, let's hope they take on this challenge.

[biomedmama7]

Has the AAP attended DAN! conferences before? If the answer is yes, color me skeptical, not impressed, etc. Thanks very much for the information and all your hard work, Ginger.

[Dan, tx]

The AAP needs to force the CDC to completely overhaul the vaccine safety systems:

1. The AAP needs to put pressure on the CDC to completely open up the VSD to the general public. The data interface can be normalized to remove protected health information.

2. Redesign VAERS. A vaccine safety system that only reports 1 out of 100 vaccine reactions and of those reported contains 20% errors is a national joke.

The CDC and AAP should be embarrassed by the state of our vaccine safety systems. These two items make the CDC and AAP look quilty as sin.

[Angela Warner]

OMG!!! Ginger!!! That is the best!!! I am crying, I am shaking, I am screaming YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! Thank you! I do hope you sent this in to the AAP!