AGE OF AUTISM

PAUL OFFIT'S ROTATEQ CAUSES DEATH BY INTUSSUSCEPTION

There is no joy in this report.

Somewhere, a family is grieving the loss of a child. The FDA has announced today that a death by intussusception has been reported by Merck, maker of Dr. Paul Offit's RotoTeq vaccine.  You may recall that the last Rotovirus vaccine was pulled a decade ago for the same reason. The only reports we can find so far are from stock market sites.

OLMSTED ON AUTISM: AMISH. VACCINATED. AUTISTIC.

BY DAN OLMSTED

Lisa Jo Rudy, the New York Times-owned about.com autism guide, wrote late last week that "if you read this blog regularly, you'll know that we've been having a very active conversation about the Amish and autism." No kidding!

I think that was more or less my doing, as I took exception to a piece she wrote – headlined "Do The Amish Vaccinate? Indeed They Do, AND Their Autism Rates May Be Lower."

But forget what Lisa said or what I said about what she said. That's not what this column is about. It's about what the Amish -- and those who know their ways and world -- have to say.

Look at the photo to the left, of a 9-year-old Old Order Amish child and her special ed teacher. This child's parents want people to know their never-vaccinated daughter was taken away from them at age 1, immunized at the Clinic For Special Children (more about them later), and returned a year later with full-syndrome, non-genetic, no-doubt-about-it autism (professionally diagnosed). That's why, contrary to Amish tradition, they let me take her photo. They are mad. They are heartbroken. This is not a study. This is not "a very active discussion about the Amish and autism." This is their child. And they believe vaccinations pushed her over into something they had never seen, something called autism. As people say: Get the picture? I'll show a video of her at Autism One, along with another Amish child whose parents believe she was vaccine damaged, but frankly I'm tired of the crap about how I make stuff up, get things wrong and never even visit the Amish, so the time has come.

MERCURY IS IN THE AIR

By Mark Blaxill

It was March 31, 1981, less than three months into Ronald Reagan's first term. The nation had just learned that a mentally ill gunman had shot the president and the bureaucrats back at the White House were trying to figure out what to say and do next. That was when Alexander Haig, the Secretary of State at the time, decided that the most important thing he could do was to reassure the American people. In a famous press briefing, Haig told reporters "as of now, I am in control here, in the White House." Although he would later run for President himself, Haig's delusion of control was brief. (He was also wrong, constitutionally speaking, but that mattered little). Within a couple of hours the Vice President had landed back in Washington DC and any need that some panicked soul might have felt for reassurance from Secretary Haig had quickly passed.

It's a powerful impulse, the need for a sense of control in our lives. Perhaps the only more powerful impulse is the desire among political leaders like Haig to respond to that need by providing reassurances that, indeed, "everything is under control here in Washington. Don't worry your little heads, you members of the public, that anything is amiss or out of order. Just leave all the important decisions to us."

NVAC ROUND TWO

By Kelli Ann Davis

Approximately two weeks ago, the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) Vaccine Safety Working Group (VSWG) met in DC to discuss CDC’s ISO Scientific Agenda and the federal vaccine safety system. 

Several pieces were written in follow up to the meeting (Lisa Randall; David Kirby DHHS transcript; CDC Doesn't Test Simultaneous Vaccinations) and in my piece (HERE) I asked the community to make calls and send e-mails to the Director of the National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO) in an effort to place Mark Blaxill of Safeminds onto the VSWG.

CONFUSED PARENTS TO BLAME FOR FALLING VAX RATES

From ABC Go, the full article is HERE.

Fewer children in the United States are getting the immunizations they need, putting themselves and others at much greater risk of contracting and spreading vaccine-preventable diseases, new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.

Here's the new spin. You, silly parents, are too confused to know how to create a vaccine schedule.  That's why you're out of compliance. Last I checked, the AAP vaccine schedule is not an a la carte menu.

AUTISM MERCURY EMISSIONS DALLAS PRESS CONFERENCE

From SafeMinds and Autism United:

Texas Study finds Autism Incidence Increased by
Mercury Emissions from Coal Plants and Other Polluters

Lead author from University of Texas to brief media:

WHAT:  Press conference and rally on a newly published study titled “Proximity to point sources of environmental mercury release as a predictor of autism prevalence” appearing in the journal Health & Place (Elsevier).

WHEN:  11 a.m. Central, Wednesday, April 30th

THE "EVER-EXCITABLE" WRITER GETS EXCITED!

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

It’s been said that to know who you really are you need to find out who your enemies are and what they say about you.

With some amusement I recently Googled myself and autism to see what came up.  I found that some claim I’m a “rabid anti-vaccinationist” and one blogger in particular referred to me as “the ever-excitable Kent Heckenlively.”

This particular blogger goes by the screen-name “Hacklehead” and after his nom de guerre has written the following motto, “Crush the liberals, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the hippies.”  I guess he didn’t want people to get him confused with all of those namby-pamby Hackleheads.

WINNER GROWING UP GREEN CONTEST

Tara is the winner of the signed copy of "Growing Up Green" by Deirdre Imus. Tara, please send me an email at Kim Stagliano at gee mail dot com with your mailing address.

Congratulations!

WSJ TACKLES SPECIAL NEEDS COSTS

The Wall Street Journal ran a terrific article on a problem we all face: juggling the costs associated with treating our kids.  Read the full article HERE.

On a recent drive home from a party, my wife, Amy, asked our soon-to-be 5-year-old daughter who she had played with. With tears in her eyes, our little girl responded that no one had played with her, because, as she told Amy, "they don't understand me."

NIH INVITATION TO CALIFORNIA AUTISM ADVOCATES

ATTENTION: CA Parents/Caregivers/Clinicians

YOU ARE INVITED!

NIH wants YOUR opinion on what is needed in autism research!

The NIH Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) cordially invites parents who are affiliated with SafeMinds, the National Autism Association (NAA), the Autism Research Institute and Defeat Autism Now!, the M.I.N.D. Institute, FEAT, TACA, Generation Rescue, Autism Society of America and any other local or national groups chapters to a Town Hall Meeting. The meeting is free and open to the public. Advance registration is not required. 

NASSAU COUNTY NEW YORK VACCINE SAFETY PRESS CONFERENCE

David Kirby has been asked to speak at today's event. Here's the press release:

NASSAU COUNTY TO BECOME FIRST MUNICIPALITY IN THE NATION TO HEAR CONCERNS ABOUT SAFETY OF VACCINES AND ITS LINK TO AUTISM BY PARENTS/ SPECIAL PRESS CONFERENCE MONDAY APRIL 28, 2008

DAVID KIRBY ON HUFFPO: NOT ISOLATED, NOT UNUSUAL

David Kirby has a new post over at HuffPo.  You can read it HERE.

.....Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), rushed to the airwaves, exhorting parents to adhere to the nation's intensive and virtually mandatory immunization schedule, and brushing off their legitimate anxieties by saying: "We've got to set aside this very isolated, unusual situation."

Well, the days of setting aside are over: Hannah Poling is neither isolated nor unusual.

In fact, the boy who was selected to replace Hannah Poling as the first-ever thimerosal "test case" in so-called Vaccine Court, has just been found with many of the same unusual metabolic markers as... you guessed it, Hannah Poling.

CDC DOES NOT TEST SIMULTANEOUS VACCINATION

Think the multiple vaccines your pediatrician injects into your baby have been tested TOGETHER for safety? Think again. The sum of the whole may be far more dangerous than the parts. But the CDC and your doctor will never know, because they do not test vaccines together. The CDC and the AAP are playing Russian roulette with our childrens' health. And all chambers are loaded.

Here's the info from page 33 of THIS CDC document.

Simultaneous vaccination

• Usually simultaneous vaccination is incompletely studied at time of licensure.
• Under current infrastructure, prelicensure studies do not assess safety of two unlicensed vaccines administered simultaneously (e.g., Tdap and MCV4 simultaneous administration was not studied before licensure).
• ACIP recommends simultaneous vaccination, unless contraindications are present (CDC, ACIP General Recommendations, 2006).
• VSD studies try to assess risks of simultaneous vaccination when feasible, as part of the rapid cycle studies.
• CDC’s and DoD’s Vaccine Analytic Unit (VAU) has conducted a study which found no evidence that the receipt of multiple concurrent vaccinations is related to hospitalization risk among DoD personnel.

THE CLEVELAND CLINIC NEEDS YOUR KID TO REMAIN AUTISTIC

A wonderful biomed Mom named Michelle O"Neil wrote the entry below on her own blog. The Cleveland Clinic runs an ABA school for autism. Now you can connect the dots.  The folks at The Cleveland Clinic (and many other major "autism" institutions and schools are ignorant, arrogant, they don't want our kids to get well and they are full of you know what. We know of an autism school New England that asks parents to promise not to use diet or biomedical interventions. And they have a wait list! Don't ask us how.

You can read Michelle's blog HERE. 

I spoke with the grandfather of a young child with autism yesterday. They'd been to the Cleveland Clinic for an evaluation and he said while there, they received a packet warning them of the "unproven" various bio-med therapies they SHOULD NOT try.

The family had no idea there were such things as chelation, methyl-b12, anti-virals, hyperbaric oxygen, etc. They didn't know about the GF/CF diet. They used the guide and googled all the forbidden therapies.

The morning after this child's second MB12 shot, his mother woke him up for school and he rolled over and said, "Good morning Mommy." They were the first words he'd ever spoken, to anyone. * Correction. I spoke to the grandfather again today to make sure I had my story straight. Did I hear that right? Actually, it was the morning after the child's first MB12 shot that he spoke, not his second one.

TRUST MERCK ON VACCINES? READ THIS.

Still think vaccines are exempt from the dangerous vagaries of poppable pills? Think again. While the mainstream press (insert sneezing sound here - New York Times!) wants you to believe that drug manufacturers are scoundrels when it comes to prescription drugs and yet saints when it comes to vaccines, this report from The Philadelphia Inquirer says otherwise. Pretty brave reporting from a newspaper in a state where Pharma rules the day and the tax rolls.

Here's a snip. Read the full article HERE.

Federal inspectors documented unwanted "fibers" on the stoppers of vaccine vials at Merck & Co. Inc.'s vast vaccine plant in Montgomery County.

They also found instances of contaminated children's vaccines and complaints that were not always investigated at the West Point plant.

Inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration spent 30 days at the plant between November and January and cited 49 areas of concern, including a failure to follow good management practices.

THANK GOD YOUR VEINS DON'T COUNT AS "ENVIRONMENT!"

Thank heavens the AAP, FDA, CDC, AMA, OB's-R-US and other people with oversight for your health don't consider your veins part of your environment. Even if the link between mercury in the air and autism is indeed statistically significant, injecting mercury directly into the bloodstream is as safe as a scrubbly-bubbly-bubble-bath with Ivory soap. Right?

Meanwhile, Europe is firing up the old coal burning energy plants (HERE)  as oil prices skyrocket. That will drive up mercury emissions. Soon you'll need DMPS in that bath to get clean.

A newly published study of Texas school district data and industrial mercury-release data, conducted by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, indeed shows a statistically significant link between pounds of industrial release of mercury and increased autism rates. It also shows—for the first time in scientific literature—a statistically significant association between autism risk and distance from the mercury source.

Read the full article HERE.

AUTISM BILLBOARDS. THE POINT?

What do you think, readers? To the point or pointless?

Can you come up with your own slogan for a billboard? I'll bet you can.... Go for it.

HERE's an article about the Greater Akron ASA campaign.

UNDERSTANDING SEMMELWEIS

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

Atul Gawande is one of my favorite medical writers.  His two books, “Complications” and “Better – A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” are practically unrivaled for their combination of compassion, style, and self-examination.

In the essay which opens his second book “Washing Hands” he recounts the story of the Viennese obstetrician Ignac Semmelweis who realized that the doctors who performed both autopsies and deliveries had a far higher rate of mothers dying from infections than did mothers who had their children delivered by midwives.

DAVID KIRBY IN SPECTRUM MAGAZINE

David Kirby has an article in the online issue of Spectrum Magazine.

In February, I leaked news of the Federal government’s admission that vaccines had triggered autism in a little girl named Hannah Poling. The stunning revelation, though still reverberating around the world, was roundly downplayed by US officials, who insisted that Hannah had an extremely rare, genetic case of “aggravated” mitochondrial disorder, with zero bearing on other autism cases.

Read David's full article HERE.

OLMSTED ON AUTISM: LISA JO RUDY CHANNELS BRUNO BETTELHEIM

BY DAN OLMSTED

Over at the New York Times-owned About.com, "guide to autism" (HERE) Lisa Jo Rudy has taken me on over my coverage of the Amish and autism. That's fair game.

But please read these two paragraphs and tell me if you don't think our guide believes parents are making their kids autistic.

She starts by quoting someone she identifies as Rebecca at the Clinic for Special Children in Pennsylvania Dutch Country:

"There's more of an acceptance [among the Amish] of people for
being what they are, as they are. We certainly have children with
difficulty learning - and there are special education facilities for
children who have Downs, MR, and other issues. Most families have many
children, a high rate of communication, no television; and it's
important to be able to read. Communication is very, very important. I
guess I have wondered whether the autism out there is due to lack of
personal attention and communication to that child."

Then Rudy says: "I found Rebecca's insights intriguing.

HUFFINGTON POST ON SPEECH AND AUTISM

By Kim Stagliano

Hi, friends. I really appreciate your response to my piece on speech therapy and insurance coverage yesterday here at Age of Autism. I expanded the piece for a more general audience and ran it at Huffington Post. You can read it HERE. 

As always, I'd appreciate your comments over at HuffPo. Thanks!

Kim

MERCOLA ON JENNY McCARTHY

Dr. Mercola's heart is in the right place, even if the details aren't quite right. Jenny McCarthy's son Evan is not Jim Carrey's biological son, or even step-son.  Still, this article from the www.Mercola.com email newsletter does a terrific job of speading the word that autism is treatable. 

How Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy's Son Recovered From Autism 

In this CNN op-ed piece, actors Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy reflect on their son’s recovery from autism in light of the recent federal court decision which conceded that vaccines could have contributed to another child’s autistic condition.

IS AUTISM PREVALENCE RISING? DEPENDS WHO YOU ASK.

By J.B. Handley

I was struck by a couple of comments Harvey Karp, ostensibly representing the mainstream medical establishment, made on Larry King Live earlier this month.

First:

LARRY KING: What puzzles you the most, Dr. Karp? Is it a disease to you?

HARVEY KARP: Why it's going up. It's something that is terribly affecting families. As I said, there are multiple causes. We look at immunizations as being temporally related. But there's pesticides, fire retardants, other chemicals that kids have never been exposed to before. We need to do the research…

THIS CHILD DOESN'T DESERVE SPEECH THERAPY

By Kim Stagliano

We have new health insurance. It's just like our old health insurance. A lot of money for very little return. Let's see, we've had "Aetna, If you have autism we'll forget ya."  We've had "InHumana." We've had "Useless Healthcare." And now we have "Stigma."

Speech is not covered for my children. Why? Because the insurance companies have already decided that our children, including the beautiful girl you see here, will never catch up in speech. They don't believe Bella or your son or daughter even deserves speech. I spoke about this travesty on Good Morning America (watch here.)  Here's the insurance company's take on our kids.

Speech therapy is generally not appropriate for use in prelingual children when there is no identified underlying medical condition or there is no possibility  of the child reaching an age-appropriate level of speech (e.g., speech therapy for learning disabilities, autism, developmental delay or mental retardation; therapy provided for aversion to food, the inability to construct sentences, stuttering or tongue thrust) (Johnson, 2005; Bressmann, 2005; Kroll, 2005).

Kim Stagliano is Managing Editor of Age of Autism.

EYE ON AUTISM

By Dan Olmsted

Lately I've been trying to make sense of savants. What is the relationship between autism and the extraordinary abilities that, in a small percentage of cases, accompany it? Rain Man put both autism and savant skills on the map and may have created a bias toward believing that they go together a lot more often than they do.

Read the full article in Spectrum Magazine's April/May issue about savants and autism HERE.

THANKS TO OBAMA FOR SUPPORTING VACCINE RESEARCH

David Kirby has a piece running over at Huffington Post today titled, "Obama Climbs on the Vaccine Bandwagon" in which he writes: No matter who wins in Pennsylvania today, the next President of the United States will support research into the growing evidence of some link between vaccines and autism.

Here's Senator Obama's quote:

"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it."

--Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.

IS TYPE II DIABETES IN CHILDREN CAUSED BY VACCINES?

Editor's note: I received the following e-mail earlier this month. I followed up by asking this "autism Mom" if we could use her name with this fascinating research but did not hear back, so we are publishing it without her name. I'd be very interested to hear feedback on this piece.
-- Dan Olmsted

--

Dear Mr. Olmsted,

I am an autism Mom who occasionally dabbles in online medical research (usually spawned by reading one of the great articles on your site and other mostly autism sites as well).  As of late, I happened to be perusing the ingredients list (prescription information or package
insert) of several pediatric vaccinations.

Based solely on the list found HERE, I noted five (5) vaccines that indicated occurrences of (new onset) diabetes mellitis or type II after administering the vaccination.  Those five (5) vaccinations and the link to the prescribing information and corresponding page number are:

MEA CULPA, MEA MAXIMA CULPA

(Thanks to Harry for this piece, most appropriate since The Pope just visited America.)

By Harry Hofherr

In fifth grade I was selected to be an altar boy. In a Catholic parish in the fifties, in Chicago or anywhere for that matter, this was a big deal. It was sort of like NFL draft day on ESPN. The priests and nuns were sizing us up to see if we heard "The Calling".

A major drawback to being selected was memorizing the entire mass in Latin, a living, breathing dead language. I remember having to recite the mass to my father one Saturday before I could go to the movies with my friends. It was cruel and unusual, but I managed to mumble my way through.

MERCURY, TESTOSTERONE AND AUTISM - A REALLY BIG IDEA!

By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University Research Center created a firestorm of controversy a few years ago with his claim that autism was the result of an “extreme male brain”. 

Dr. Mark Geier and his son David believe Baron-Cohen may be exactly right.  I recently spoke with David Geier about these issues.

According to David Geier, the father-son team first became interested in this question after viewing a poster in which Dr. Boyd Haley showed how the addition of even a small amount of testosterone greatly enhanced the destructive power of mercury.

CHILDHOOD PNEUMONIA RISES IN SCOTLAND

The Sunday Post reports:

The number of Scots children rushed to hospital with pneumonia has rocketed by more than 50 per cent in three years. This coincides with the introduction of a new vaccination against the condition in 2006. While a child health expert insists there’s no connection between the two, the Scottish Government has ordered an urgent investigation after we presented the findings to them. Newly released NHS Scotland data shows 2454 children were hospitalised for pneumonia in 2006/07 — compared with 1620 in 2003/04.

Read the complete article HERE.

IACC MEETING LISTEN IN VIA CONFERENCE CALL

TODAY!

Listen in live via conference call. Details below. You might want to re-read JB Handley's piece Grinker's Stinker: His Wife Runs the IACC before you listen in. I assume they're going to have everyone on mute. If they don't? Give our love to Joyce. Ask her if she still believes that there's no autism epidemic like her husband.

There will be a meeting of the Strategic Planning Workgroup formed by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) on Monday, April 21st from 11 am to 6 pm EST.

Workgroup members will review current funding for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research, proposed research initiatives and resources. They will then discuss and make recommendations on prioritization of research initiatives for the IACC strategic plan for ASD research.

The workgroup meeting will be open to the public through a conference call phone number and a web presentation tool on the Internet.

POLIO SURVIVOR ON IMMUNIZATIONS

BY ANNE VAN RENSSELAER

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 species, there are certain individuals best suited to meet particular challenges.

When we started immunizing against smallpox, we set loose a grand and persistent fantasy that we could eradicate diseases, but germs and Mother Nature are busy doing push-ups in the parking lot while we're sitting in the doctor's waiting room with our babies, waiting to be Nature-proofed.

WIN A SIGNED COPY OF DEIRDRE IMUS' GROWING UP GREEN!

By Kim Stagliano

One lucky Age of Autism reader is going to win a signed copy of Deirdre Imus' newest book, Growing Up Green!  Contest details at the end of this post.

I think you'll especially like the chapter on Green pediatrics. (Someone needed to tell the docs that "green" doesn't end with the poop chart we all got in the hospital when we had our babies!) 

We took a family ride down the road to New Canaan, CT to Elm Street Books to meet Deirdre at a signing. As you can see from the photo I snapped, she looked beautiful, with a snazzy new haircut and perfectly green shirt. Her husband Don was there, as was their son Wyatt, a handsome kid. I thanked Don for his work on behalf of kids with autism. After all, he helped put David Kirby's Evidence of Harm on the map three years ago. (Feels like a lifetime, doesn't it?) 

LIFE, LOVE AND LINT

By Nancy Hokkanen

It was evening bath time, and my nine-year-old son was carefully scavenging tiny dark lint balls from the cloudy water and lining them up on the tub rim.

I made a motion to whisk them off to the side, but with urgency he stopped me. “Don’t -- those are my friends!”

I sighed. Another inconvenient autistic obsession. “Sweetie, I don’t anthropomorphize lint. I throw it away.”

He knew what the big word meant, but the other concept took him more than a moment to process.

He sighed even deeper. “I feel like when you throw them away, you’re throwing away pieces of myself.”

DR. JON POLING TALKS AUTISM IN NYT PODCAST

As always, please offer your comments in support of the Polings, both here and especially on the NYT site.

From The New York Times' Tara Parker Pope: Lately, the busiest post on the Well blog is about Hannah Poling, a 9-year-old girl at the center of a new controversy about autism and vaccines.

To learn more about the issue, I invited Hannah’s father, neurologist Dr. John S. Poling of Athens, Ga., to join me for a podcast. The podcast is a new feature of the Well blog, where you can join me each week to learn more about the blog’s most talked-about entries.

Late last year, government lawyers agreed that vaccines may have hurt Hannah, and they reached a settlement with her family for her care. I spoke with Dr. Poling about why he came forward...

LISTEN HERE.

AUTISM COVERAGE AT THE NYT: SINS OF OMISSION

BY ANNE DACHEL

In the April/May issue of SPECTRUM (HERE), a magazine for families and individuals with autism and developmental disabilities, Robert Kennedy Jr. describes what it's like dealing with the New York Times when the subject is autism.   In the article, "RFK, Jr., His crusade
continues," by Sarah Bridges, Ph.D., we hear about a meeting that was supposed to include Kennedy and the editor of the Times to discuss Kennedy's editorial submission on vaccines and autism.

The meeting wasn't what Kennedy expected.  He described it like this:

"I expected a discussion with the editor of the Times, but when I went in to meet, they had assembled a group of science editors that were so hostile and antagonistic, it was like talking to a brick wall."  As far as the Times was concerned, the issue was closed.  Kennedy said, "They were absolutely determined that there would be no public discussion in their paper about mercury and neurological disorders."

This was a striking example of the malaise when the subject is autism.

NVAC INVITES V4V: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

By Kelli Ann Davis

Last Friday, the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) Vaccine Safety Working Group met in Washington DC.  The stated purpose of the meeting was to “review the current federal vaccine safety system and develop a White Paper describing the infrastructure needs for a federal vaccine safety system to fully characterize the safety profile of vaccines in a timely manner, reduce adverse events whenever possible, and maintain and improve public confidence in vaccine safety.”

Two days before this meeting took place, I learned in a private meeting with organizers that Lisa Randall (Voices for Vaccines) had been asked to participate in a segment entitled, “Interacting with the Public.”  At that time, I had no idea who she was or what Voices for Vaccines was all about which made it quite difficult to draw any conclusions about her addition to the panel on the spot.

REVIEWS OF AUTISM YESTERDAY SCREENINGS

Please let the world know about the Autism Yesterday movie screening you hosted or attended in our comments section.  Thank you.

WATCH THE "AUTISM YESTERDAY" TRAILER

This is the trailer for the movie Autism Yesterday. You can purchase a copy of the DVD at Amazon.

"AUTISM YESTERDAY" - A TRIBUTE TO TIRELESS PARENTING

Editor’s Note: This is a repeat post of David Kirby’s review of the film Autism Yesterday, premiering tonight in more than 140 venues around the world. If you aren’t headed to a screening, the film is now available at Amazon..

By David Kirby

At a time when Big Medicine, Big Government and Big Media are trying hard to make the vaccine-autism debate go away, along comes a quiet little film like “Autism Yesterday” to throw a wrench in the establishment’s best laid plans to stifle the pesky vaccine chatter once and for all.

Anyone out there still declaring that this debate is over, that medical science has fully exonerated mercury and vaccines, and that thousands of parents who insist otherwise don’t know what they are talking about, really should watch THIS film before embarrassing themselves further.

OLMSTED ON AUTISM: MADE BY MERCK, STARTS WITH V …

BY DAN OLMSTED

There it is, right next to the photo of the pope and the president, the lead story in USA Today: “Reports: Data on Vioxx misused.” Subhed: “Documents suggest risk was downplayed.”

In brief – USA Today’s specialty – it turns out that Merck “apparently downplayed evidence showing the painkiller tripled the risk of death in Alzheimer’s-prone patients, researchers report today. A separate analysis of court documents revealed that many Vioxx studies were prepared or written by Merck employees or paid consultants, not the doctors named as the studies’ lead authors, researchers say.”

One thing I can tell you from having worked at The Nation’s Newspaper is that it has a very good sense of the zeitgeist. I used to be in meetings where the next day’s lead story was discussed, and it had to be more than yesterday’s – or even today’s – news. It had to help readers understand what was coming next.

FLORIDA AUTISM INSURANCE BILL STALLED. YOU CAN HELP.

By Tracy Stewart

The push for Florida insurance coverage is being stalled, and this next day or two is critical. If you know any registered Florida voters, please ask them to consider sending the simple email provided to the reps below, or sending their own personalized message would be great. We really need help!  You can cut and copy the distribution list for Florida's reps right into your email's "send" line.

LISA RANDALL AND THE VACCINE SAFETY WORKING GROUP

So this is dedicated to Lisa Randall, who fights against mothers and fathers whose children have a serious disease, without any understanding of the basic science behind their appeal for more research, while she takes cash from vaccine manufacturers.

By Tracy Stewart

I attended the vaccine safety working group in DC on Friday, April 11th. Some of the materials distributed by the committee were interesting, such as the observation that those who suffer the “typical” adverse reactions to vaccines such as fever and seizures were often found to have elevated serum levels of cytokines, the immune-system’s chemical signaling molecules. Of course, this is found in autism as well (which should signal the need for some investigation concerning vaccinations just on its own). The group is considering goals and study of some areas that are surprising and dare I say, encouraging, such as:

• Question A-V (their labeling): Is immunization associated with risk for neurological deterioration in children with mitochondrial dysfunction (although I would add can it cause their mitochondrial dysfunction)?

DR. BLAYLOCK ON MITOCHONDRIA AND VACCINES

Thanks (again!) to Ginger at Adventures in Autism for this article.

Blaylock on Mitochondria and Vaccines
Mitochondria and Vaccines
From Russell L. Blaylock M.D.

As the person who first proposed the microglial/excitotoxin hypothesis (JANA 2003;6(4): 21