Olmsted on Autism: How to Completely Miss the Story

By Dan Olmsted

The New York Times published a piece over the Memorial Day weekend that must have been painful to write – they now realize they had the Watergate scandal handed to them on a silver platter four decades ago and just plain missed it. “The Watergate break-in eventually forced a presidential resignation and turned two Washington Post reporters into pop-culture heroes. But almost 37 years after the break-in, two former New York Times journalists have stepped forward to say that The Times had the scandal nearly in its grasp before The Post did — and let it slip.”

“Robert M. Smith, a former Times reporter, says that two months after the burglary, over lunch at a Washington restaurant, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, L. Patrick Gray, disclosed explosive aspects of the case, including the culpability of the former attorney general, John Mitchell, and hinted at White House involvement.”
 
Exactly how this big fish got up off its silver lunch platter and swam away is worth reading (HERE).
 
But the bottom line is this: If the account is correct, “The Times missed a chance to get the jump on the greatest story in a generation.”
 
You can watch the same thing happen every day now with the greatest story of this generation, and I mean “this generation” very literally – the catastrophic rise of developmental and chronic diseases in this generation of children, the leading edge of which is starting to age into young adulthood. Start anywhere you want – 1 in 10 with asthma, a forty-fold increase in bipolar diagnoses, record levels of juvenile diabetes and, of course, our focus – the rise of autism and ADD and ADHD and sensory integration problems and etc., the neurodevelopmental kitchen sink that is disabling our future.

The article points out that the Times was preoccupied with covering the Republican Convention when it got the big Watergate tip. It just couldn’t get its institutional mind around what it was hearing – it was an anomaly, a Six Sygma event, so large that it didn’t track with the way their minds had been trained. The same kind of benighted small-minded misdirected perseveration is evident in press coverage these days – preoccupied with the deadly scourge of chickenpox, the failure of parents to submit and obey the CDC vaccine schedule starting with mercury-containing flu shots during pregnancy and Hep B at birth; the alleged inadequacies of the Homefirst medical practice in Chicago.

The latter was flung in the face of Autism One attendees last Friday and Saturday by the Chicago Tribune, which decided that roasting Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst’s leader, and the Geiers was the single most important use of “The Midwest’s Largest Reporting Team,” as it proclaims directly under its logo on the front page (a bit defensively, since it used to be the Midwest’s Much Larger Reporting Team until a shopping mall magnate drove it into bankruptcy). And talk about missing the story: Eisenstein “proclaims that he’s seen ‘virtually no autism’ in his patient pool of thousands of unvaccinated kids,” the paper reported. Period, end of discussion. It’s clear from the sneering use of the word “proclaim” (when “says” would do just fine) that the reporter doesn’t believe it, and clear from the rest of the story that discrediting anyone who would say (I’m sorry, PROCLAIM!!!) such a thing is job one.

But hold on a second. No vaccines, no autism? As Mark Benjamin and I used to say to each other back at UPI when the media was in bed with Bush and oblivious to the administration's abuse of soldiers and vets, “There’s your story right there.”
 And indeed, there is your story, right there – a medical doctor in good standing (the Trib grudgingly acknowledges) says there’s virtually no autism among his thousands of unvaccinated patients. 

Of course, journalists should take nothing at face value. So I’ve got an idea – let’s be journalists; let’s realize the importance of that statement, if true, and check it out. As many of you will know, I wrote about this several years ago now, along with similar associations between low-or-no-vaccination and low-or-nonexistent-autism rates, including among the Amish and the homeschooled. The response is always the same – first, it can’t be true (Google Olmsted, Amish, fraud); then, it can’t be determined (Google Olmsted, Gerberding, Amish); then, OK, alright, it’s true but it’s meaningless (Google Olmsted, Wiznitzer, Amish).

By now there would have been plenty of time to not merely dismiss or discredit but actually disprove these anecdotal associations based on careful investigation, not ad hominem attacks, but all that happens is that they continue to hold up. Where are the autistic Amish? Where are the 1 in 150 never-vaccinated autistic homeschooled children? What about Homefirst? Instead, we get theories about how I’m the point person between the Moonies and the Scientologists (yes, you can Google that too) in a conspiracy to destroy the vaccination program, or about what a cad Mayer Eisenstein is.

That’s why it’s important to keep stating what I think the story is, and to repeat it every time a mainstream outlet like The Trib tries to hijack it and turn it into something else. So one more time, this is the story: There appears to be a significantly lower rate of autism in never-vaccinated and less-vaccinated American children. No one in a position of authority seems to want to find out, though they could and should have done so several times over by now, and the failure to do so should be suspicious in the extreme to any reporter with a decent skepticism of government and entrenched interests. (You know there’s a problem when the Trib dismisses vaccine-autism concerns as disproved by “government-sanctioned” studies, as if that is the mark of truth. Good Lord, even the government doesn’t trust itself, which is why The Founders enshrined freedom of the press in Article 1 of the Bill of Rights.) Meanwhile, autism is a problem that demands our urgent attention, and the question of vaccine-preventable diseases and whether Lupron is an effective treatment for autism are separate issues that should not be allowed to silence or subordinate this important conversation.

On Sunday afternoon, I went to Mayer’s talk at Autism One. I don’t know if the Trib reporter was there or not, but I’m sure if she was she was rolling her eyes when Mayer talked, once again, about health outcomes in his practice. You see it’s not just autism – that’s the leading edge, the defining disorder of the Age we’re in. It’s many other things, including juvenile diabetes and asthma, too. And on the latter, you don’t have to take Mayer’s word, even provisionally, for it – the larger HMO group that Homefirst belongs to picked up the virtual absence of asthma in his practice based on computerized records of emergency room visits and overnight hospitalizations of children for respiratory distress. 

No one disputes asthma has dramatically increased. No one disputes one in 10 children has asthma – that one in 10 children sometimes struggle frantically for air, and sometimes die because they can’t get enough, to put a human face on this clinical entity. No one disputes, as far as I know, that few if any children delivered at home by Homefirst doctors, treated by them as children and never vaccinated, have asthma. But no one realizes the credibility that fact gives Eisenstein when he talks about the virtual absence of autism in his practice. And, for sure, no one realizes the implications of that for the nature of autism and how to stop it and treat it – the focus of the allegedly “anti-vaccine,” pro-quackery Autism One Conference.

So, I’m going to give Mayer the last word. Think of him as a whistleblower taking Big Media to lunch and telling them they’re missing the story of their generation – here’s the evidence, here’s where to look, here’s what it means, here’s why it matters. Of course, some journalists are going to go back to the office after being told about Watergate and write about the credentials fight in the Mississippi delegation at the 1972 Republican Convention, and some journalists are going to be told that there is a startling association between no vaccines and no autism, and here’s where to look, and here’s the evidence, and here’s what it means, and here’s why it matters, and they are going to go back to the office and write about what a bad guy Mayer Eisenstein is and about what a bad drug Lupron is. For them, there’s no hope. 

But I’m going to keep putting pen to paper, so to speak, here at our Daily Newspaper of the Autism Epidemic, because first of all, what else can I do? And secondly, I figure that sooner or later somebody is going to decide to pay attention to the implications of a second-rate burglary attempt at the Democratic National Committee when it is handed them on a platter – I mean, to the apparent low incidence of autism in never-vaccinated American children when it is pointed out to them time and time and time again. 

Anyway, here’s Mayer, one more time, and folks, THIS is the story:

“[Our practice] has virtually no autism. I don’t know, there may be cases somewhere, but as you’ve seen this weekend, if you read the paper, Mayer Eisenstein does not have a low profile, and I’ve made this statement for two and a half years now [actually, Mayer, I think it’s 3 and a half years now!]. I got all my partners together; we scoured the records. We looked at ICD codes for neurological disorders, and first of all, we didn’t see it.
 
“But it’s more than just no autism. I’ve had three partners for more than 25 years, they’re closer to me than brothers … and we decided 25 years ago we weren’t going to take care of asthmatics, we weren’t going to take care of insulin-dependent diabetics, and every few years we kept saying, how many people are we referring away [to other practices that specialize in these disorders] because we see hundreds and hundreds of children. We were delivering at one time a hundred babies a year at home, and we’re still delivering hundreds of babies at home.
 
“And it never came up. And I can tell you this would be a nightmare when you have to start referring one person a week, two people a week, three people a week, in a large practice, only because, you know, they would say, ‘But Dr. Eisenstein, I want you to take care of me,’ [and I would have to say] ‘No, there are people who are much better at taking care of asthma than me, there’s people who are much better at diabetes than me.’

“It virtually doesn’t exist. For years I thought it was because [mothers in the practice] had their babies at home, they nursed their babies as much as two years, they gave minimal pharmaceuticals. 
 
“Every year I’d be invited a a conference of the LaLeche League, and every year it was the same. They had 40 or 50 children with severe asthma, and I was supposed to figure out what the problem was. ‘You don’t want to talk about home birth?’ [I would ask]. ‘No, we want to talk about asthma.’
 
“Finally, one of my partners said, ‘Mayer, it’s not the home birth, it’s not the breast-feeding [that’s the key factor in developing or not developing asthma], it’s the vaccines.
 
“There was an interesting little study … done in Australia, and they had four groups – breast-fed and vaccinated, breast-fed and unvaccinated, bottle-fed and vaccinated, and bottle-fed and unvaccinated. [This was not a big and conclusive study] but this was a very strong breast-feeding supporting organization. And they looked at respiratory illnesses. … The lowest instance of respiratory illness … was in what we expected – breast-fed and unvaccinated. What was interesting was what was in 2nd – bottle-fed and unvaccinated. That was shocking. … This said for them that breast-feeding wasn’t as important as not vaccinating your child.”
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

 

Comments

[Jay Gordon]

Nicely said.

Jay

[Judy Converse MPH RD LD]

As a provider and author, now that I'm in the position of being interviewed, I must agree with Anne D's comment earlier about laziness in reporting. It goes like this: A publicist prepares a press kit. She disperses it. Reporters who pick up on it tick through it like a script, asking me questions they've been told to ask. There is no actual thinking going on here.

Who hands the reporters at NYT, Trib, Globe etc a press kit or tip sheet when it comes to autism? Who might be putting up a burst on the McClatchey clip service, for reporters to pick up? Hmmmm I just can't think of who that might be.... A 23 year old new hire, writing copy for Merck's PR firm perhaps?

On the other hand, there are some very passionate and earnest reporters and commentators out there. They just aren't writing for major media outlets (because they'd be promptly fired for angering the pharmaceutical sponsorship). There is, of course, burgeoning web radio and AM radio stuff - my interviews about my book and autism recovery with those outlets have been incredibly energizing, positive, and invigorating.

We ditched our cable subscription nearly 3 years ago. No TV in my house. We don't buy newspapers. Why listen to laundered, watered down, corporate controlled "news" when you can read Dan Olmstead on stuff like A of A's news instead? Parents can wield some clout not just by demanding truth, but by NOT paying for media that is void of truth. Now that's a kidney punch for Big Pharma...nobody seeing their ads - ! Hmm.

[CarolynKylesMom]

You know what? This is anecdotal BUT: I think in some parts of our country the autism rate is 1 in 20. Here is why. For 3 years, my child was in mainstream classes with an aide. The other 4 classrooms also each had their very own ASD child with an aide. There was ALWAYS at least one other child (usually a boy) in the same class who is clearly HFA but on the spectrum, but his parents either don't know it or are trying to 'pass' him through. And the parents of other ASD children in the other classrooms would confide there was always another child in their class too! Now these are classes of 20 children. My son is HFA. The other child that isn't diagnosed yet is HFA. So we are not even COUNTING the child so severe he or she is in special ed who is the same age, so that there are many more ASD children I am not considering. In my story, the rate is 1 in 10. But I"ll give you that it's really 1 in 20 because maybe this is just a fluke ---Is it? All of you who have ASD kids and know it when you see it--how many undiagnosed kids do you see in your child's school? What is the ratio of ASD children YOU see? In this comment, I happen to be talking about children born 2000-2001. Before they took the poison out of Rhogham.

[Amy]

Nancy, that is certainly true. In addition to vaccines, my son's mercury exposure was also, sadly, from prenatal exposure via fish consumption - my ob at the time encouraged me to add large quantities of fish to my vegetarian diet, citing that it was "brain food." About a year after he was born, the FDA warnings not to eat fish while pregnant started coming out. I know of other parents who have children with very high arsenic, lead or other toxic levels, and of course there are the viral triggers, as well. I don't think anyone is suggesting that mercury in vaccines is the *only* trigger, but one of the most common and of course, unlike some other toxic or environmental exposures, ridiculously preventable.

[Benedetta Stilwell]

1:58 or 1:60 in the UK????
1:67 in the USA???
Both articles "The 64 Billion Dollar a Year Question" and "When 1:150 is really 1:67" they are very good, and I needed to review them.
Still the same old stuff is going on in the media, and the doctors that has been going on for the past 30 years.
I use to think some evil foreign government had gotten ahold of our health industry and was trying to undermine us by getting rid of all our engineers. (remember when they use to say families that had jobs in engineering were more affected). Now I am beginning to think it is our government trying to reduce the population like China did(China only allowed one birth per family and all others they would abort, caused girls to be abandon/killed- Now most of the wives of China are from N. Korean)--- I know that is not really what is going on, but it is just as over the top - the stupidity of our government health departments.

[Cynthia Cournoyer]

Isn't it possible that people are genetically pre-disposed to autism? Then a trigger makes it manifest in children? That would explain, 1) the relative low incidence (1 in 10,000) a generation ago, 2) how there could be a slight few who were not vaccinated, and 3) the current epidemic. The trigger in this era, vaccines. Aren't vaccination rates triple of a generation ago? Not a huge leap to suggest vaccines play a significant role in triggering autism.

However, there is a factor much more worthy of our distain than the lack of action by reporters, and this is more pervasive than any one scandal. It is the very nature of our culture.

Journalists are born and raised in our culture. They were taught that doctors are in a class by themselves when it comes to medicine and science, and that without vaccines, we would be still living in a developing, pre industrial country, with most of the population wiped out by disease and pestulance. That would be a hard lesson to wipe clean from their respective memories, which would be necessary to approach this subject with the fresh, unbiased and naturally inquisitive nature required to actually "do the story."
Cynthia Cournoyer
http://www.whataboutimmunizations.com/

[Kathy Blanco]

Nancy
I agree with you. I talked with Bill Walsh of Pfieffer (is he retired, because I think he is?) who remarked to me, that he has also seen autism without vaccines. Typically it's because the child lacks Metallothionein, a protein that binds metals. It also is turned off when you have viruses in utero. So, one has to ask, why? The answer is pretty clear. Much of these children are probably mercury/lead/aluminum poisoned in utero by amalgams and the environment, and or their parents shots have increased levels, and viral loads in them and or they are toxic by fluroide, toxins, MSG and the like. And, mother who has in utero viruses or bacteria, definately get to the placenta...even a simple flu virus in utero, with use of antipyretics especially can increase chances of autism, and changes to the way the brain is layed out or mapped. Lots of research on this with regards to schizophrenia...which is known to be caused by flu viruses. Autoimmunity in mother? Yeppers. And, the MIND institute recently had a report that antibodies from mother were attacking fetal brain tisue. The weighd the proteins involved. The proteins are signiatures of the outer surface proteins of borrelia lyme. So, if syphilis can cause autism in utero, and borrelia lyme is a spirochete bacteria like syphils, then....? (see www.liafoundation.org )

IMHO, autism is the result of an early assault on immature developing brains...and the assault can be viral, bacterial, fungal, toxic, lack of homeostasis of nutrients, methylation blocks, glutathione loss, oxidative stress, thyroid lack of mothers to baby, autoimmune, hypoxia at birth, etc.

Vaccines aren't the only cause of autism, we all know this...but we also know, that in such children with that propensity to injury, they are essentially sitting ducks. For some the sitting ducks are kids who were overwhelemed in utero. Or by ioatragenic hypoxia in a birth setting. I am sure most of these children lack liver detox, or have immature and weakened immune responses, metabolic responses...

So, if someone says to me, autism is genetic, I ask them, what if I told you, that some genetics were involved in autism, but that genetics trace every infection, toxin and incorporate and mutate our DNA. So what really is TRULY genetic? Are we the apples that don't fall far from? You bet..that's why we have autoimmunity in our families, cancers, gut problems, allergies, eye problems, brain disorders, heart problems, mitochondrial issues.

The point that has to be asked is, how much can our population take? Is vaccines the trigger? You bet. ARe vaccines the total problem, no. They are the accumulative, the pinnicle, the straw that breaks the camels back. Since pharma never asks IF YOUR BODY can take it, then why should we submit to PHARMA? Why should we trust that our system, our prescious babies, can take ONE MORE THING? Are we truly the VACCA part of vaccines? AS in COW HERD? Are not some cows weaker than others, and actually die by vaccines? And did those cows get adequate selenium (this would make them feeble at birth), did they get proper nutrients, or corn fed diets which are full of mycotoxins?

This is why no one can say, even the CDC can't say it legally, that vaccines are safe, and or effective.

Stop the lie pharma. You know that you accept the acceptible losses, or the herd sometimes won't respond favorably. We are not all cookie cutter.

[Nancy Naylor]

Overall, I agree with the points made in this article. However, I question a practice with thousands of patients and not one autistic child (even from unvaxinated populations) I have an unvaxed child with autism and it's not virtually unheard of. Check out https://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=923707
Even Generation Rescue's research would seem to indicate that out of thousands of unvaxed kids there is likely to be at least some with autism. According to GR's study vaccinations would increase a boy's chance of having autism by 61% and a girls chance of having autism in no statistically significant way. With these statistics a group of a thousand unvaxed kids would include at least a few cases. So let's check it out. Let's see if there really are virtually no cases in his practice and then find out why.

[Stagmom]

Meanwhile, this "chemical castration" was recommended by an anon behavioral person on a blog yesterday as a TREATMENT for excessive masturbation in a 20 year old autistic man. RECOMMENDED AS A KNOWN AND CONDONED TREATMENT. So I guess it's OK to use Lupron for behavioral problems, just not for physical problems.

[John Stone]

"and find ways of doing it which he cannot ignore."

Legal, of course.