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From all of us at Age of Autism, Happy Thanksgiving! We're grateful for your wonderful comments and your daily readership. Can you believe we've run over 1400 posts in the last year and you've provided over 14,000 comments?! We're averaging over 160,000 page views each month, and growing! All thanks to you.
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By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.
A decision in the first three cases of the Autism Omnibus Proceedings, Cedillo, Hazlehurst, and Snyder will be released in either December of this year, or shortly after in January of 2009.
I recently spoke with Gary Golkiewicz, the chief Special Master for the proceedings, who gave me permission to talk with Thomas Powers, the lead attorney for the families who allege a link between vaccines and the development of autism in their children.
According to both Golkiewicz and Powers, the Special Masters are now hard at work preparing their decisions. The decisions will be much longer than the typical vaccine court decision as the court is wrestling with an enormous amount of evidence, including more than 900 scientific articles submitted by both sides. They are hoping to release all three cases at the same time, but if not, then the decisions will closely follow one another.
By Kim Stagliano
Well imagine my surprise! It's 6:37am. There's no school today so my kids slept in until 5:00am. I'm working on my computer, and I have yesterday's Sesame Street playing in the background. I record it every day. For the girls, that's right. (I adore Sesame Street, I confess. I watch it more than they do.)
Well whose voice do I hear but Miss Jenny McCarthy! She's talking about insects (not parasites....) Check her out HERE! There's a 30 second intro before she comes on screen. She does a fine impression of a butterfly!
Don't forget to buy a copy of Jenny's best selling book Mother Warriors for someone on your holiday list! Give hope for the holidays!
By Angela Warner
Dear President Elect Obama,
Congratulations on your election. As the 44th President of the United States of America, and the Leader of our Country, you have a huge job ahead of you. I have always been an optimist. If one has no hope, then what do they have? I am inspired by our country, and I have confidence that your actions will impact our great nation with desperately needed positive change.
A friend of mine, Mark Blaxill, Board Member of SafeMinds and Editor at Large for Age of Autism , wrote to you recently. Mark stated that you are also the First Father of the Autism Generation HERE. Indeed, you are. Mr. President, you are the First Father to a generation of children who are physically sick with autism, and who desperately need your help and immediate action.
Continue reading "President Elect Obama: A Military Autism Mom Reaches Out" »
Thank you to Ginger Taylor of Adventures in Autism for sharing this post with us. God help America if this foray into the middle east turns into an "Autism for Oil" program.
New AAP President Shows Us His Priorities, And It Is Not The Health of American Children
Last month David 'no such thing as vaccine injury' (HERE) Tayloe, was sworn in as the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Naturally, on day one of his new job, he laid out his priorities for his tenure (HERE):
'Tayloe said that he intends to focus on 5 main areas this coming year -- "Medicaid payments, vaccine financing issues, fair payment of pediatricians, retail-based health clinics and funding medical students' education." "
As Anne Dachel notes in her piece, there are no actual children's health issues on his list of priorities. What is important to Tayloe, is getting pediatricians paid.
His priority is money.
Continue reading "Kids, Say Du"Bye" To Your Health: AAP Heads to the Middle East" »
Managing Editor's Note: Welcome Huffington Post readers. David referenced the post below on HuffPo HERE.
By David Kirby
On Saturday, November 15, I attended a daylong forum in Minneapolis on autism in the Somali immigrant community there, where the rate of autism among Somali children in the public schools had been reported at 1 in 28 kids.
At the forum, Dr. Judy Punyko, an epidemiologist for the State Department of Health, was expected to present at least preliminary findings on the prevalence of autism among Somali schoolchildren in Minnesota. The 80 or so Somali parents who attended were disappointed, by all accounts, that Dr. Punyko had no way to tell them if autism among their children was, as they strongly suspect, more common than among non-Somalis the same age.
Dr. Punyko said she had conferred with officials at the CDC on how to best measure the rate of autism in this particular population, but that she was still waiting for data requested from Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), even though she had put together a panel of experts to examine the issue back in August. She said that MPS would get her the data sometime in December, and that a report on the prevalence issue should be ready in March, 2009.
A few days after the forum, I discovered two things.
By Mark F. Blaxill
Amidst the furor over autism in America, some very simple facts are getting lost in the rhetorical fog of medical denial, corporate self-dealing and civic irresponsibility. They’re worth repeating. Autism was once very rare in the United States and required “discovering” by Leo Kanner among a small group of children born in the 1930s. When researchers first measured American autism rates, they were lower than surveys coming from other parts of the developed world, sometimes less than 1 in 10,000. Today, it’s nearly impossible to find an American who doesn’t know a family touched by autism and rates are over 1 in 100 in some areas of the country. It doesn’t take a genius to derive a short list of broad-based environmental exposures that have changed rapidly enough to give us some pretty good ideas about causation.
Meanwhile, the moral cowardice of the American scientific community has been on full display in the midst of the obviousness of this scourge and its likely causes. Scientists, academics and public health officials get this pained expression on their faces when the subject of the autism epidemic comes up, as if someone has passed gas audibly in the middle of a tea party. “Can’t we talk about something more civilized?” their faces seem to say. “There must be an explanation for all these pesky numbers that won’t force me to change my beliefs or behaviors. Why can’t all you autism advocates just go away?” After years of seeing these faces, I’ve learned to recognize the look and have gotten better at managing my own frustration over the incoherence of the denialist impulse. Still, the stark reality of these simple facts needs reinforcing and like any stubborn problem new facts constantly emerge to provide new reinforcement.
1:00PM EST - UPDATE: Dr. Tayloe, who is visiting the Middle East on AAP business, has written to David to thank him for the note and to let him know that the Academy will issue a formal reply soon. Stay tuned here for further developments.
Managing Editor's Note: David Kirby sent this letter to Dr. David Tayloe, new president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
November 22, 2008
David T. Tayloe, Jr., MD, FAAP
President, American Academy of Pediatrics
Dear Dr Tayloe,
It has been seven months since I had the pleasure of meeting you in Los Angeles at the “Larry King Live" studio. Allow me to congratulate you on your inauguration as President of the Academy.
I am writing because I have just received a copy of a letter from Elie Ward (HERE) Co-Chair of the NYS Immunization Coalition, a project of the AAP. The letter was sent to Rep. Carolyn Maloney in regards to the Congressional briefing on vaccines and autism that she sponsored on Capitol Hill in September.
In the letter, Ms. Ward accuses me of presenting “misinformation” as well as “unscientific, irrational proposals” to staff members of more than 90 House and Senate offices, as well as two US Representatives who were in the room.
Continue reading "David Kirby to Dr. David Tayloe, President American Academy of Pediatrics" »
By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.
I’m still trying to get my mind around the 452 page government report recently released on Gulf War illness and its implications for the vaccine/autism controversy.
For those keeping score, two years ago the National Academy of Sciences released a report asserting there was no such thing as Gulf War illness. (“VA-Funded Report Unable to Find Evidence of a Complex of Symptoms”, www.msnbc.com, September 13, 2006).
The congressionally mandated report entitled “Gulf War Illness and the Health of Gulf War Veterans” is devastating in its findings. As reported in the November 17, 2008 of USA Today (“Gulf War Syndrome is a Real Illness, Study Finds”), “The illness resulted from exposure to chemicals and anti-nerve-gas vaccinations received, and no effective treatment has been found. It affects 25% of the 695,000 U.S. Gulf War vets (author’s note - approximately 173,000 service members) and perhaps 55,000 British veterans.”
Continue reading "If You Let the Idiots Talk They’ll Tell You What You Want to Know" »
Meet Child Warrior, Ceydon, so named for Jenny McCarthy's book, Mother Warriors. Wow, someone call GQ, here's another handsome boy!
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