OLMSTED ON AUTISM: WHERE THE BOYS AREN'T

BY DAN OLMSTED

Last week I wrote a post about two young teenage boys whose exceptional promise was being weighed down by the kind of problems we hear so much about today – one had a bad case of ADD or ADHD or whatever you call it; the other had recovered from Aspergers but now has Tourette's. Both are taking what I'm sure are strong medicines to try to "control" their disorder – drugs that no doubt have their own problematic impact on their development. And despite what looks to me like clear neurological damage, they're not even part of any recognized "spectrum" that in my opinion starts with severe autism and stretches all the way through these suddenly pervasive developmental disorders.

What is the rate, I wondered, at which this entire generation, and especially boys, is being neurologically damaged? It's a lot higher than 1` in 150, I can tell you that. And why are we so blasé about this damage not only to individual kids -- who deserve the chance to excel and pursue happiness as much as we all did – but about the threat to our nation's ability to compete in the new global economy?

This is a 9/11 for the health of our democracy and it seems we're sitting around wondering about "increased diagnosis" and which drugs work best for which kids. The whole situation is utterly, urgently unacceptable.

To my surprise, that post based on a couple of "anecdotes" (which mainstream medicine reminds us are meaningless) generated a lot of comment – it seems there is a "hidden horde," to adapt Mark Blaxill's phrase, of kids with problems that don't qualify for a CDC-AAP "alarm" but nonetheless are evident just about everywhere you turn. Today I want to follow up on that idea by suggesting there would be even more boys with these kinds of problems except for one simple but truly horrifying fact: The odds are now so stacked against them that they simply aren't being born.

This was brought home to me by an excellent front-page article in the Chicago Tribune on May 25, the Sunday of the Autism One conference.

While Time magazine chose to do a cover story that week on how fears about vaccines are endangering us all -- and Newsweek focused on bipolar kids -- the Trib headlined its story "A puzzle over fewer boy births." Click HERE.

I commend the entire article to you, as just about every word reeks of environmental toxins being directly related to a decline in the number of boys being born relative to girls. Here are the first three paragraphs:

"Once there was a kids hockey team on the reservation of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Canada, just across the border from Michigan. No longer. There aren't enough boys.

This community, surrounded by dozens of pollution-spewing chemical plants, is an especially extreme example of a puzzling phenomenon playing out around the world, in countries as diverse as the United States, Sweden and Japan [I would question how "diverse" that is – it looks like advanced societies with lots of industrial pollution and medical interventions to me].

"Though more boys are being born than girls in most places, their numbers are falling. No one is sure why."

Ah yes, the "no one is sure why" disclaimer. "Is a puzzlement," to quote the king of Siam. Stress might be involved. Timing of conception. Etc. A spokesman for the chemical industry denies any link.

But in a subsection called "Pollution possibility," the reporter, Judith Graham, makes the whole thing seem a lot less puzzling. "A growing body of research indicates that [the cause] could include exposure to pollutants such as pesticides, mercury, lead and dioxin."

And a little bit earlier in the story, she notes, "Late last year, several Arctic communities documented a startling decline in the number of boys being born. Studies have shown changing sex ratios in Italian cities and among fish-eating women in the Great Lakes region."

The Arctic? Don't they eat a lot of fish up there? "Fish-eating women in the Great Lakes region"? Zowie, that's Chicago! Right where this story was published, on the day thousands of people were flocking there to figure out why their children (at a ration of four or five boys to one girl) are afflicted with autism, fewer boys were being born to mothers who eat more fish. And we already know about the organic mercury in fish, the mercury-dumping into Lake Michigan by a major oil company (also extensively covered by the Trib), and the mercury that's in most flu shots now recommended for pregnant women.

Can't anybody here connect a dot to another dot to save their life? I thought we were supposed to have learned from 9/11 that looking for patterns, trying out hypothesis and pursuing them with urgency is crucial to the future of our nation. Yet we keep reading all these touching, disconnected, pointless magazine pieces about the mystery of autism, the puzzlement of bipolar disorder increasing forty-fold in 20 years, the parents-and-society-are-to-blame-for-it explosion of obesity in children (oh, and diabetes), the asthma explosion (which certainly is not over-diagnosis) and now the decline in boys' births.

There's a chart that goes with the article (not available online), showing a decline in the ratio of boys since the post-war1940s (mass vaccination, anyone?), with the lowest point hit in 1991 (the rise of the modern vaccination onslaught?) and 2001 (the full effect?) The ratio started ticking back up slightly in favor of boys in 2002. That could be just a blip, but hope springs eternal.

Here's my hypothesis. Mother Nature has seen enough trouble for boys – enough autism, enough ADD and asthma, enough Tourette's – enough unnecessary suffering. She's decided to take urgent action – since humans won't – to keep them from harm. She's decided they shouldn't be born.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

Comments

[Rachel]

Sitting in church today and listening to the children's choir and then the children's sermon, I was shocked by the glaring absence of the male gender.

Eleven beautiful voices rang out a lovely song but only one was a boy. Of the approximately 30 children assembled for the children's sermon, I counted only 5 that were male!! Definitely made me wonder and I was (soberly) reminded of this article.

[Courtney schalk]

Dan
I see were your coming from. I have a 17 month old daughter she is health she how ever does not have autism. and it is hard riseing a child. But the people with autism childern how do you do it you guys are all super Parents. For you people who have obest childern stop rewarding them with food! Tell you what people who allow there childern to sit out in the living room and eat are NUTS!

[Sandy Waters]

Hi Dan,

My daughter is seven years old with autism and I always say that mercury does not discriminate. Also, I state that I must of won the autism lottery to! My second child is a two year old boy who does not have autism. Maybe, because I did not vaccinate him. Go figure!

[KarenAtlanta]

Don't forget the dang Pharmaceuticals leaching into our drinking water.
One can only imagine the slurry of chemicals in every sip!
Everywhere I go I see toe walking, stimming, hyper, unfocused kids deemed "quirky".
Down right frightening!

[Elucidatus]

How do you tell your wife that you want no more children? As a Husband and a father to an only child I am not sure if I saved my marriage or if I just made it worse. Immediately after our child was diagnosed with Autism I decided that we were no longer going to have anymore children. Somehow I knew that our long journey into recovery would be costly and that to have more children "might" be overwhelming for a mother and father with a child with special needs.

In our group sessions that we have with other parents who have two or more children and some with 2 or more children with Autism have called me selfish. Selfish for not allowing my wife to make that decision. I am not sure if there are any other fathers that have made the same decisions as I have but I know that I am not that strong to take on the task of two children with Autism. I know there are many families who deal with that at this very moment and I am proud of you.

I hope I am not alone in this type of decision making. My wife and I are still married and it will be 8 years going strong. I love my family very much and just the thought of having another with Autism and having to go through what we have gone through would be the end of me. I am tired but not broken and yet strong enough to keep fighting for what I have. Stay strong people.

[Teresa Conrick]

Dan,

Really interesting stuff but scary! It reads like a good sci-fi script. Add in some toxic chemicals causing people to kill themselves...wait, that's at the theatres now......Tagline:We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0949731/

Also, I saw that Trib article when it came out after being at Autism One, and all I kept thinking of was when will "they" get it? These big polluting industries and toxic-making companies (insert PHARM here)need to be put under a microscope by our next administration and all hell needs to break loose. I'll make the popcorn.

[Lawrence]

doodle,

There are many scientific and political mysteries about HHV-6.

The virus has been called a "paradox" because it is supposedly "ubiquitous" and "harmless" but is also capable of doing great harm.

(Has this virus always been ubiquitous, or does it start to become ubiquitous at the beginning of the AIDS era, which coincidentally is also the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and autism epidemic era?)

In reality, it is not quite clear whether HHV-6 is ever really "harmless" and whether in its supposedly latent form it is still doing mild but chronic neuroimmunological damage.

The activated strain of HHV-6A is the one that has been suggested as the cause or one of the causes of the pathology in AIDS, CFS, MS and autism.

The thing about active HHV-6A is that it does quite well on its own. It doesn't need HIV or other factors like stress or environmental toxins to do its dirty work. This insidious, dynamic virus can wreak havoc on its own. But certainly other factors can help make the situation worse. And other factors that pile on can obfuscate HHV-6's central role. An active HHV-6 infection might be all that is needed by the wrong vaccine or vaccine schedule to create autism.

In a complex multifactorial world we live in which is also full of complex, confusing, everything-but-the-kitchen sink multifactorial theories of disease causation, it might be more pragmatic to go the "sine qua non" route on HHV-6.

Is HHV-6 the "sine qua non" of some of the autism spectrum?

Is HHV-6 the "sine qua non" of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Is HHV-6 the "sine qua non" of AIDS?

If HHV-6 is the sine qua non of all these problems, by treating it and controlling it, we might get a better handle on AIDS, CFS, autism and all the other problems for which it is the "sine qua non."

We live in the Age of Autism and the Age of HHV-6. The question is how much they overlap.

There is nothing politically or scientifically simple about a virus that is potentially the sine qua non of so many medical problems.

[Fil Navarra]

Resently there was a program on PBS about the drop out rate among boys in HS and College.
The U. of Laval in Quebec is thinking of starting an affirmitive action system to get more boys into university.
My own experience is that if you look at HS graduation classes, the girls are walking away with all the top prizes.
I wrote a letter to my newspaper here in Montreal to advise them that this was happening......no acknowlegement.
Except a terrible thing is happening.
Since the birth of my autistic grandson, I've noticed that the blame is being diverted to the parents (*genes). I have two other children (boys)that have as yet no children. They are both PhDs.
My oldest boy, will soon be trying to have their first child. I have absolutely no worries about that child when it is born.
Firstly, my son knows about the vaccine problem and secondly....and most importantly....his wife was never.......never....vaccinated.

[Gatogorra]

It pleased me to see your handling of so-called attention deficit disorder as "a bad case of ADD or ADHD or whatever you call it".

Whatever you call it is right. Names matter. The term for the art of naming disease is called "nosology", I think, and ADD has a very troubled, um, nosology, particularly in that when the term first emerged, the condition didn't really exist. Yeah, there must have been some toxic kids in the sixties and seventies when Ritalin first hit the market, but this wasn't the cause indicated by pharmaceutical/tobacco science, which intended for the condition to be thought of as genetic. Still, even when the fake label with the made-up cause caught on, there weren't enough toxic or truly misbehaving kids around back then as would suit pharma, so they sold the label to any child not paying attention in increasingly mill-like classrooms, kids who were, say, traumatized in car accidents or to children living in foster care, etc. Pharma and the APA invented such a thing as a "shadow disorder"-- something which you couldn't see but you just sort of, eh, had to trust the docs and teachers really, really was your kid's problem. So ADD started out as basically an excuse to sell drugs, though this was eventually self-fulfilled by both vaccine manufacturers and industrial polluters as we all know.

But what was once mostly a diagnosis made by exagerating descriptions of a child's bad behaviors in order to make a label signifying "genetic mental illness" has now-- today-- become a euphemism. The kid on the playground with the weird gait, slightly dragging leg, and the unevenly drooping eyes and distorted skull shape smacking of an infantile bout of encephalopathy? "Oh", his parents say, "he has ADHD". ?!?!?!

I guess ADD/ADHD has partly become a way for the average family to hide from themselves the horror of what's being done to all our children. That way, they don't have to feel orphaned by their government and the health profession and they can put off forever the point when they have to take personal risks, stand up and get pissed.

If there were a way to make "iatrogenic" a permanent prefix to "ADD/ADHD" in the case of children injured by vaccines and remove forever the illusion that this "condition" is an actual genetic disease, we might be able to gradually unencumber average Joe and Jane Q. Parents from their comforting delusion. Until then, pharma's created the perfect rose colored glasses to hide all kinds of deformities and horrific injuries in the way that the industry and the American Psychiatric Association has popularized the notion that kids are all a little mentally ill and that this is "normal".

[Garbo]

My ASD/Aspie son is now mostly recovered; my "NT" daughter has had motor coordination and motor-related speech problems since about age 2. We've been through the MRI, PT, Dev. Pediatrician, Osteo, ENT, dev. opthamologist, etc., and nobody could find a root cause. Finally (silly me!) had a workup done by our son's DAN doctor. Gluten intolerant, food allergies, and positive for HSV 1&2 as well as the aforementioned HHV-6.

I think that the number of girls with issues is probably closer to that of boys, but maybe their symptoms do not as often manifest as behavioral so they do not draw the attention of teachers for referrals. My daughter is normal socially, verbal, bright, sweet and well behaved. I worked in my son's kindergarten class last year, and many of the girls had motor issues with cutting and writing, or food allergies and/or eczema. Lots of signs, but nothing that makes it more difficult for the teacher in the classroom.

[More than just HHV-6]

From Lawrence -

"The question for autism researchers is this: Is HHV-6 a "smoldering" central nervous system infection in autism spectrum?"

I am sure there are other viruses in addition to HHV-6 (and as yet undiscovered) that are probably brewing in beleaguered immune systems that have been hit by toxic insults. The challenge lies in getting the immune system strong enough to throw off infections by fixing methylation, sulphation, ridding the body of neurotoxins and other pathogens and getting it to a better state of being.

Its not just about HHV-6 unfortunately, even though I wish it were as simple as that.

[Sonja]

Hi Dan,

Let's not forget about the families that use modern technology to choose the gender of their child. I personally know several families who deliberately, using today's science, chose to have girls to better their odds of having healthy children...how sad is that. Thanks for your work.

[SAM]

Ugh - that picture is killing me. It reminds me so much of a new mom's group I was a member of for the first 2 yrs. of my firstborn's life (1995-96). There were about 8 of us who all had first babies around the same time.

Looking back, the boys just had trouble from the start. One boy was so floppy and didn't walk until 18 mo. old, one had chronic ear infections and was on antibiotics for almost 2 yrs., and one boy was just miserable ALL the time and never slept.

But my boy was ahead of the curve. When all the other babies were still lying around like the ones in the picture, mine was sitting up and crawling around. At about nine months old, he pointed to a ceiling fan and said "round and round" and all the other moms were amazed. No one was surprised when he was the first to walk.

But then, at 14 mo. old after a large series of shots including MMR and loads of thimerosal, he started SCREAMING at play group. He stopped talking. By the time he was 2yo, all the others had surpassed him in pretty much everything and were interacting, while mine (when he wasn't screaming) was by himself playing with Thomas the Tank Engine. We didn't figure out what had happened until years later (drs said he was fine).

I often wonder what happened to those boys from the play group (they would all be 13yo now). I don't think any of them ended up with ASD (except mine), but I am sure they've got "issues". .

Interestingly, just 13 yrs ago, vaccines were not on anybody's radar. We never talked about "should we vaccinate or not". It never crossed our minds, AT ALL. I imagine it's a hot topic in today's 'new mom's groups'.

[doodle]

Lawrence,

The HHV-6 aspect to autism looks interesting. It would make sense on many levels and jibe with much of the apparently conflicting information. So just a rundown of things I picked up.

1. Basically everyone has HHV-6 in their body, but most have inactivated the virus.
2. Something activates the virus in some people so it starts a live infection.
3. For some reason, the immune system cannot fight off the infection and it stays chronic, in the brain.
4. All sorts of nasty psychological symptoms ensue.

So could part 2 could be caused by something like an immune shock (too many vaccines), bad illness, or exposure to pesticides?

And in part 3, could people's poor diet, lack of vitamin D and A, and general weak health from too much TV contribute?

It would make for a nice way to tie together so many studies that appear to conflict, but may actually be linked.

[nhokkanen]

I can just see the Reuters story by Maggie Fox:
"Fewer boys born means
Hugh Hefner lifestyle"

[Lawrence]

Dan,

The fact that more writers and serious investigative journalists aren't looking into this disaster is a testament to the state of writing and journalism. Where is everybody?

As you try to sort all of this out, please keep in mind that millions of people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have been ignored and stonewalled by the CDC for three decades, while they suffered from what is all too clearly a pandemic of neuroimmunological dysfunction.

Please consider integrating this politically concealed pandemic of neuroimmunological dysfunction into your evolving environmental theory about what is going on with autism, ADD, asthma, diabetes etc.

The credibility of those who say we are in the middle of a neuroimmunological dysfunction pandemic got a major boost over the weekend at the HHV-6 conference in Baltimore. Below is a press release about HHV-6 and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from the conference. Kent Heckenlively has written about HHV-6 and autism on this site. The question for autism researchers is this: Is HHV-6 a "smoldering" central nervous system infection in autism spectrum?

And politically, the question for you and your fellow journalists to ask is this: Do we not know more about the epidemic of HHV-6 as manifested in CFS, autism (etc.) because this virus is also the key to AIDS and therefore undermines the CDC/NIH's official HIV paradigm of AIDS?

The Press Release from the HHV-6 Foundation:

BALTIMORE, MD -- 06/23/08 -- A study suggests that a "smoldering" central nervous system (CNS) infection may play a role in conditions that plague millions of Americans. Kazuhiro Kondo, MD, PhD, of the Jikei University Medical School in Tokyo identified a novel human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) protein present in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) patients but not healthy controls that may contribute to psychological symptoms often associated with that and other disorders.

"Causes of many chronic diseases are unknown and chronic viral infection is one of the most suspected candidates," said Dr. Kondo, who spent 20 years trying to identify the latent protein responsible for chronic CNS disease and mood disorders.

Support for Dr. Kondo's claim came from Stanford University's Jose Montoya who announced at the same conference that the antiviral drug Valcyte, shown to be effective against HHV-6, resulted in an improvement in the cognitive functioning of CFS patients, although not a complete resolution of their fatigue. According to Dr. Kondo, drugs like Valcyte combat active replication but can't completely control low-level smoldering. "To cure the diseases, we have to reduce the latently infected virus or prevent its reactivation," he explains.

A Debilitating Disorder

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a debilitating disorder affecting one to four million Americans and causing 25 billion dollars a year in economic losses. The primary symptoms include post-exertional malaise, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, unrefreshing sleep, muscle and joint pain. High rates of depression co-occur with the disease.

Mostly striking, in working-age adults, the disease is often triggered by a flu-like episode. Efforts to find a single pathogen responsible for the disease have, however, failed and the cause of the disorder is unknown.

Novel Herpesvirus Protein is Associated with Altered Nervous System Cell Activity and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Depression

Kondo identified a novel HHV-6 protein associated with latent (non-replicating) HHV-6-infected nervous system and immune cells. Transfecting this new protein, called SITH-1 (Small Intermediate Stage Transcript of HHV-6), into nervous system cells called glial cells, resulted in greatly increased intracellular calcium levels. Increased intracellular calcium levels are believed to play an important role in psychological disorders and can contribute to cell death. Expressing the SITH protein though the use of an adenoviral vector in mouse resulted in manic-like behavior.

A serological study indicated that 71% of CFS patients with psychological symptoms and none of the health controls possessed the antibody against the SITH-1 protein (p < .0001). Further tests indicated that 53% of depression and 76% of bipolar depression patients possessed the antibody.

Traditional Viral Tests May Overlook Important Disease Causing Processes

Researchers have suspected that central nervous system infections could contribute to psychological and central nervous system disorders, and patients with CFS have a much higher than average rate of depression. This virus spreads cell-to-cell instead of releasing viral particles into the bloodstream. This has hampered efforts to demonstrate that the virus plays a role in CNS disease. "This virus persists in the brain and other tissues, but not the blood, which is where investigators have looked," says Kristin Loomis, Executive Director of the HHV-6 Foundation. "Indeed, standard serum PCR DNA for direct evidence of the virus are useless," she added. New ultra-sensitive assays are under development, she reports, "but currently the best way to identify patients with smoldering HHV-6 infection is to look for elevated IgG antibody titers."

Dharam Ablashi, the co-discoverer of the HHV-6 virus, and the HHV-6 Foundation's Scientific Director warns that the test won't be available in the near future. "It may take years to get the assay validated and into commercial production, but will be worth the wait. This assay could identify large numbers of patients with CNS dysfunction who could benefit from antiviral treatment. The HHV-6 Foundation is working hard to help scientists like Dr. Kondo develop better assays," says Ablashi.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

My wife and I have experienced this phenomenon firsthand. In addition to our two kids with autism, Lauren (7) and Daniel (5), we have two older kids less severely effected - Brady (21) has classic ADD, and Rachael (16) has ADD, communication disorder, and depression. We had always thought something was 'wrong' about our older two kids, but we weren't able to connect the dots until full-blown autism invaded our lives. I too marvel at the seeming inability of our nation's leaders to recognize a pattern (or do they?). I'm suspecting willful ignorance, it hurts to say.

[Yep]

For every 100 girls

Tom Mortenson
Postsecondary Education OPPORTUNITY
April 26, 2006
For every 100 girls that are conceived 115 boys are conceived.
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-3840.html

For every 100 girl babies born there are 105 boy babies born.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/vitstat.pdf

K-12 Education
For every 100 girls enrolled in nursery school there are 112 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in kindergarten there are 116 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in elementary grades there are 107 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in ninth grade there are 101 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in tenth grade there are 94 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in eleventh grade there are 109 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in twelfth grade there are 98 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in high school there are 100 boys enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 girls enrolled in gifted and talented programs in public elementary and secondary schools there are 94 boys enrolled.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_055.asp

For every 100 girls who graduate from high school 96 boys graduate
(NCES, unpublished tabulation.)

For every 100 girls suspended from public elementary and secondary schools 250 boys are suspended.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_144.asp

For every 100 girls expelled from public elementary and secondary schools 335 boys are expelled.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_144.asp

Special Education
For every 100 girls diagnosed with a special education disability 217 boys are diagnosed with a special education disability.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with a learning disability 276 boys are diagnosed with a learning disability.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with emotional disturbance 324 boys are diagnosed with emotional disturbance
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with a speech impairment 147 boys are similarly diagnosed.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with mental retardation 138 boys are diagnosed as mentally retarded.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with visual impairment 125 boys are visually impaired.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with hearing impairment 108 boys are diagnosed as hearing impaired.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls diagnosed with deafness 120 boys have deafness.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls with orthopedic impairment 118 boys have orthopedic impairment.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls with other health impairment 127 boys have other health impairment.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls with multiple disabilities 189 boys have multiple disabilities.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

For every 100 girls that are deaf/blind 98 boys are deaf/blind.
http://www.iteachilearn.com/uh/meisgeier/statsgov20gender.htm

Higher Education
For every 100 women enrolled in college there are 77 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women enrolled in the first year of college there are 79 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women enrolled in the second year of college there are 71 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women enrolled in the third year of college there are 75 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women enrolled in the fourth year of college there are 94 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women enrolled in the fifth year of college there are 65 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women enrolled in the sixth year or more of college there are 78 men enrolled.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2004.html

For every 100 women living in college dormitories there are 87 men living in college dorms.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

For every 100 American women who earn an associateís degree from college 67 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_262.asp

For every 100 American women who earn a bachelorís degree from college 73 American men earn a bachelorís degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_262.asp

For every 100 American women who earn a masterís degree from college 62 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_265.asp

For every 100 American women who earn a first-professional degree 107 American men earn a first-professional degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_271.asp

For every 100 American women who earn a doctor's degree from college 92 American men earn the same degree.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_268.asp

Other Indicators
For every 100 females ages 15 to 19 that commit suicide 549 males in the same range kill themselves.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2002.pdf

For every 100 females ages 20 to 24 that commit suicide 624 males of the same age kill themselves.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/LCWK1_2002.pdf

For every 100 girls ages 15 to 17 in correctional facilities there are 837 boys behind bars.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

For every 100 women ages 18 to 21 in correctional facilities there are 1430 men behind bars.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

For every 100 women ages 22 to 24 in correctional facilities there are 1448 men in correctional facilities.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

For every 100 women living in military quarters there are 642 men living in military quarters.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

For every 100 women ages 18 to 24 years living in emergency and transitional shelters there are 86 men living in similar shelters.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

For every 100 women ages 18 to 24 years living in-group homes there are 166 men of the same age living in-group homes.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/phc-t26.html

Tom Mortenson is Higher Education Policy Analyst, Postsecondary Education Opportunity and senior scholar, The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. He first drew public attention to the gender gap in postsecondary education and was the first to point out the need for a Boys Project.