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When will we finally figure out what the true autism rate is?
On April 16th Robert Kennedy, Jr made his position on autism clear to the American people. He said the “relentless increases” have made autism an epidemic, and that epidemic is caused by toxins in the environment.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is declaring a war on autism — claiming the neurodevelopmental condition is an epidemic that’s far worse than the deadly COVID-19 outbreak.
No, that's not the title of a cutesie Rock Hudson Doris Day Rom Com. It's the 2 day tally of a hospital stay to investigate whether a migraine was behind a long, painful self injurious rage for a man with autism. $29,000. This doesn't include the previous ER visits. And probably not the ambulance required to get him back to the hospital where he was INTUBATED & ultimately chemically paralyzed to get a CAT scan and MRI. Each of which came back as (say it with us) normal.
For those angry that anyone would want answers, YOU are a $29,000,000,000 headache. Which is just slightly under what autism is going to cost this nation unless we have radical change.
Bucks County Unit 22. I'll never forget that name. This was the Bucks County, PA Early Intervention unit that first saw my Mia, now 30. I wept with gratitude at our initial IFSP meeting. I'm still sitting in "I" meetings, 28 years later. In 1997, I knew nothing about vaccine safety or side effects. It never crossed my mind. Seems almost a third of Pennsylvanians are well ahead of where I was with my first child, and that's a good thing. Kim
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By Anne Dachel
More Pennsylvanians believe in link between autism and vaccines: Study
Almost one in three
There was a surprising bit of news out of Pennsylvania this week. It seems that the general population isn’t buying the claim of no link between vaccines and a child developing autism.
About under 1 in 3 agreeing either strongly or partially agreeing that the chances of a child getting autism are increased if they receive the recommended childhood immunizations.
Almost one in three Pennsylvanians believe there is a link between childhood immunizations and autism, according to a new statewide survey.
Respondents may not be overwhelming behind Robert Kennedy, Jr, as the poll indicates, but a large percentage don’t believe the decades of denial from mainstream medicine and federal health officials.
A growing share of Pennsylvanians believe that the recommended childhood immunizations increase a child’s chance of developing autism, Muhlenberg College’s 2025 Pennsylvania Health Poll shows.
Muhlenberg’s recent report shows the results of the college’s recent telephone survey of 521 adult Pennsylvanians. The survey let respondents voice their opinions on issues such as health care quality, belief in the link between childhood immunizations and autism, trust in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., legalization of marijuana, mental health and sources of stress.
The survey results for 2025 showed a notable gain in the percentage of Pennsylvanians who believe there is a link between childhood immunizations and autism, with about under 1 in 3 agreeing either strongly or partially agreeing that the chances of a child getting autism are increased if they receive the recommended childhood immunizations.However, more than half said they disagreed with the statement. The overwhelming body of scientific research shows that there is no causal or correlative link between vaccines and autism. . . .
ALLENTOWN, Pa. —Almost one in three Pennsylvanians believe there is a link between childhood immunizations and autism, according to a new statewide survey.
Thirty-one percent agree “strongly” or “somewhat” in the unproven link that the chances of getting autism are increased if they receive the recommended childhood vaccines — the highest level in the 13 years the survey has been conducted. . . .
The telephone survey of 521 adult Pennsylvanians between March 10 and March 26 has a margin of error of 5.5%. . . .
Fewer than 4 in 10 Pennsylvanians (36%) expressed trust (“a lot” or “some”) in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to handle health care issues as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, said earlier this month the department will undertake a “massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism.
Political party plays a role in shaping viewpoints on the relative safety of immunizations, with Republicans nearly twice as likely (41% to 21%) as Democrats to agree “strongly” or “somewhat” that the chances of a child getting autism are increased if they receive the recommended childhood immunizations. . . .
The very fact that they asked the question means that the controversy is alive and well. Maybe it’s the “relentless” increases in the autism rate that never show signs of leveling off; maybe it’s the moronic claim that every single increase is never a real increase. Whatever it is, the public hasn’t been lulled into thinking that autism is something to celebrate as just neurodiversity, despite the pageantry of April, Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month.
Then there’s the future
Three years ago, a pediatrician predicted that there will be a million young adults with autism in the U.S. aging out of school over the next decade.
Over the next decade, an estimated 707,000 to 1,116,000 teens will enter adulthood and age out of school-based autism services. And they will need ongoing medical care and support in their daily lives.
During his press conference on April 16th Robert Kennedytalked about what this population of disabled adults will cost taxpayers.
There’s a recent study by Blaxill et al. and a team of other researchers that said that the cost of treating autism in this country by 2035, so within 10 years, will be a trillion dollars a year. This is added to already astronomical healthcare costs, and then there is an individual injury.
The clock is ticking for all those who are adamant that we’ve always had autism at whatever the current rate is in America.
Note that the autism rate comes from studies of eight year olds, not eighty year olds, and when we’re all paying for the cost of lifetime care and support, we’ll be desperate to stop the epidemic.
More and more autism isn’t something to celebrate as “greater awareness.” It’s an existential threat to our country.
Note: Cathy's words never fail. But music speaks to her.
By Cathy Jameson
Even before the month started, some were on edge. April is when we usually get the updated autism numbers.
1 in 31.
That’s not alright.
Then we saw Sec. Kennedy attacked again for speaking up for a number of affected children in our community.
That’s not alright either.
Years ago, I looked forward to April. Not just because I get to celebrate a birthday but because I loved making my fun, little autism action month playlist. No longer does the music move me, though. I spend more time in silence than dancing in my kitchen. That’s because celebrating a diagnosis doesn’t make sense and because as Ronan grew, so did the struggles. Let me be clear – he is not the source of the struggles; managing finances, dealing with side effects from medications, and jumping through hoops while receiving inadequate care are the source of many of the struggles. They come in waves, and now so does the desire to listen to music.
Lately, instead of a full playlist, it’s been one song that captivated my heart, my mind, and my soul when I reflected on April and what it’s brought. This year I so badly wanted Three Birds to be my one song, because I know that eventually, everything’s going to be alright.
But this year, with everything we’ve learned, dealt with and will deal with, my one song is from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My favorite thing about this one, besides that it is so very good, is that one of my kids has it on their playlist. When the kids are all home, almost as soon as they’re all pig piled into the house, the music goes on. They crank it to a respectable level, and we sing. Sometimes, when the music moves us, we dance.
When the kids are home is the one time I crave hearing music, even if the theme of the song is that your head that’s about to roll.
The month of April ends this week. I hope and pray that more vaccine atrocities are revealed as this year goes by. To do that, we need to see more information shared publicly, and we need to deal with the fallout from it. Seeing the truth being revealed finally, it’s happening! Some of us need to heal and go through all the emotions that come with that – including rage.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
I saw this post by a young man named Jackson Chandler on Facebook yesterday, with permission to share. The number of women swooning with the vapors following Robert Kennedy Jr. promise to HELP autism families is mind blowing. Women I know who have struggles at home. Women whose kids and future grandkids (if there are siblings) will only benefit. Speaking of siblings, let's talk about the responsibility they face having a sister or brother with autism. Better yet? Let's listen to one.
By Jackson Chandler
I don’t talk about this much. Honestly, I don’t even know how to. But lately, autism has been everywhere — headlines, arguments, debates about RFK Jr.’s comments, Trump’s involvement, and whether or not autism “destroys families.” And I’ve sat with it quietly, watching people who’ve never lived this life give their opinions.
I’ve heard the argument — that autism is a gift, that these kids are just socially different, that it’s offensive to suggest we should ever want a cure. But that’s not the world I grew up in. That’s not my reality.
My little brother Bryson was diagnosed with severe autism when he was 2. I don’t remember the day it happened. I remember what came after. The silence. The confusion. The way our lives slowly started to orbit around him. I was 10 — just old enough to know things weren’t “normal” anymore, and just young enough to not know what to do about it.
I also remember how fast the world began to turn its back on us. Schools didn’t know how to handle Bryson. People stared in public. We got left out. Friends stopped coming over. My parents were treated like they’d done something wrong. And I felt it, deeply — that quiet rejection that seeps in when you realize you’re the family people pity or avoid.
Later came the behaviors. Bryson didn’t talk. He stimmed constantly — spinning, pacing, making loud noises. He’d wander off if you looked away for even a second. At first, we thought it was just his personality. But eventually, we knew. This was going to change everything.
And it did.
I watched my parents slowly become different people. The stress of constant doctor visits, school meetings, and unknowns wore them down. I watched my mom cry after appointments where nothing improved. I watched my dad work endlessly to keep us afloat. We sold our home and moved to a different city — not for a fresh start, but for a better school system. That’s the kind of choice families like mine have to make.
And while I’m grateful for everything we were able to do — the truth is, everything came with sacrifice. Especially for us siblings.
To be fair, this says, Autistic adults who are able to self-advocate. But why should non speakers be excluded? It bothered me. Especially this week, when the world that has ignored and spackled autism away is suddenly up in arms that something, ANYthing of value might be done for families, and God forbid, maybe even some answers. Kim
And for those with profound autism? As of January 1, 2024, individuals like many of our readers' adult children who are eligible for Supplemental Security Income got a raise too. How much? To $943 a month. Effective January 1, 2024 the Federal benefit rate is $943 for an individual. That's an $11,316 income annually. The average rent in the USA is over $1700 per month. Here in the Northeast, that wouldn't buy a refrigerator box (mother not included.) And to qualify, your assets must remain under $2000. To rent an apartment, you need at least three months of rent up front. Not even CDC math can make that work.
Now, after age 22, we can apply for SNAP benefits. That's what used to be called food stamps. This adds $292 maximum monthly benefit or an average of $9.70 per day for food. Dig in!
Once we retire (stop laughing) and start taking our Social Security benefits, our children must migrate from SSI into the SSDI program. For many, this will mean a lot of relief. SSDI pays more than SSI (unless you exceed the family maximum like my daughters do, in fact they are penalized) and in 2 years, you are eligible for MEDICARE, then Medicaid becomes your back up. This expands the medical facilities and practitioners you can see as an adult greatly. And you can have assets that exceed $2000.
So while Paul and Anthony and those who have not had to abondon their careers to stay at home and care for their children rant and rave that "OUR KIDS WORK! THEY PAY TAXES! THEY'LL GET MARRIED!" and generally foam at the mouth to erase our families' plight, we present, reality.
Note: This post is from 2020 but relevant. We believe in compassion, not competition between levels of autism. What I wrote about my three daughters stands out today. No, they do not work. They do not pay taxes. But they have VALUE. And not just to me, their Mom. We have NEVER denied our community's value or our great purpose, responsibility and respect for our shared journey. Nor has Robert Kennedy, Jr. To say otherwise is to inflict intentional pain. Kim
2020 has been a year of impossible things. Is it too far fetched to wonder about a campaign to quietly decrease populations who.... do not contribute? Like my three adult daughters. Before you pillory me - I do not think for one moment that my beautiful children are non-productive. They employ many people tangentially. They bring joy to many. They are teachers - they teach humility, gratitude, fortitude. My daughters are valuable members of society. They also cost the government a whole lot of money. Oh dear. As the autism epidemic Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill and the rest of us at Age of Autism have been clamoring about for going on two decades ages out, the burden is shifting from Mommy and Daddy to the states, here in the USA. 18 means adulthood and an application for Supplemental Security Income. That's about $800 a month at the top level. Add SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, dollars to the tune of a high end of $195 for a sole head of household, and let's say you're looking at $1000 a month per adult with autism as a minimum. Then add those who have the "luxury" of state DDS programs, budgets for day programs or residential care, each of which can run into six figures. Our kids are precious indeed. Perhaps "someones" have noticed the crushing burden that's coming. Perhaps "someones" have noticed that our "typical" children, boys and girls alike, are riddled with anxiety and mental illness, have lower IQs than their grandparents and are overwhelmed with college debt that hobbles them into their thirties and beyond? Less coming up. And the elderly living longer and longer "thanks" to the miracle of modern medicine. Living expensively in congregate care, not with their adult children as in past generations. Spending down to make Medicaid,. Turning Medicare on its head.
I think we have cause to worry. I'm reminded of the song Silver and Gold that Yukon Cornelius sings in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer: "How do you measure it's worth? Just by the pleasure it brings us on earth?"
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...mainstream media has had little, if anything, to say about the role of the vaccine developers’ private company – Vaccitech – in the Oxford-AstraZeneca partnership, a company whose main investors include former top Deutsche Bank executives, Silicon Valley behemoth Google and the UK government. All of them stand to profit from the vaccine alongside the vaccine’s two developers, Adrian Hill and Sarah Gilbert, who retain an estimated 10% stake in the company. Another overlooked point is the plan to dramatically alter the current sales model for the vaccine following the initial wave of its administration, which would see profits soar, especially if the now obvious push to make COVID-19 vaccination an annual affair for the foreseeable future is made reality.
Yet, arguably most troubling of all is the direct link of the vaccine’s lead developers to the Wellcome Trust and, in the case of Adrian Hill, the Galton Institute, two groups with longstanding ties to the UK Eugenics movement. The latter organization, named for the “father of eugenics” Francis Galton, is the re-named UK Eugenics Society, a group notorious for its promotion of racist pseudoscience and efforts to “improve racial stock” by reducing the population of those deemed inferior for over a century.
The ties of Adrian Hill to the Galton Institute should raise obvious concerns given the push to make the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine he developed with Gilbert the vaccine of choice for the developing world, particularly countries in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia and Africa, the very areas where the Galton Institute’s past members have called for reducing population growth.... READ MORE HERE
After the HHS press conference last week, social media has been on fire with the gassiest gaslighting in the history of gaslighting. The cruelty and dismissal has sent many of us reeling. Not in disbelief. We've watched some of our own friends and organizations pivot and drift into the awareness, "aren't we lucky to love someone with autism" lane. Feel good do little memedom.
I've been on X mostly, sharing autism reality. One reality is what I am now dubbing, "The Mayors and the Stayers." These two groups are the more compliant and sociable and the wheelchair bound immobile individuals that day programs want. They are easier for staff. And that's the hard truth.
And just like we have to explain out loud that "We love our children with autism!" I'll explain that I am not denigrating or discounting the hardships faced by any family that needs a day program.
The photo is from a day program here in Connecticut. Take a look at the red circle, NO REQUIREMENT FOR BEHAVIORAL SERVICES OR SUPPORT. Well, there goes profound autism. It's very hard to find a program that offers behavioral services and accepts individuals like so many of our children. Schools have been required by IDEA Federal law - once age 22 comes? There are no protections.
Day program funding comes from DDS, and is based on testable IQ under 70. I say testable because most of our children are bright and intellectually capable, even if they are untestable using standard psychometric tools. How individuals are organized and their funding is based on LEVEL OF NEED or LON. The higher the LON, the bigger the budget. 1:1 staff, 3:1 staff, 5:1 staff or even large group, 9 individuals to 1 staff. Except autism's LON is often due to behavior, and that's where programs discriminate - which they are allowed to do because they are private. I experienced this firsthand. After my youngest aged out, we found a small day program that accepted her. During my tour, I saw many individuals in power wheelchairs, fully physically dependent on staff for care. I had my doubts. They "exited" her, sent me a DEAR JOHN letter via email after just 8 days. EIGHT DAYS. And they HAVE a behavior team! They also have the word Disability in their name. I'm happy to tell you that my three daughters are part of an excellent non-profit that welcomes all levels of need. They are determined to honor their mission.
We need to keep screaming "WE ARE HERE!!" on behalf of our children. Much of the world wants to shove them into a dark closet, unacknowledged. We will not let this happen.
On my first day off in weeks, I found myself driving toward the mountains. It was an unexpected trip, but with everything going on, it was the best day for me to go. My daughter is recovering from a second surgery after an injury that happened mid-March. She left campus that day with just a backpack. Hoping she’d be back taking classes there, she’s been online keeping up with school from a distance. A vehicle, a dorm room full of clothes, school supplies, and more, we just haven’t had time to retrieve anything. The hope that she’d return to school also kept us from rushing to pack things up, too. With just a little over two weeks left of this semester, we thought it wise to begin the pack out. Hoping to go with me, it was better for the kids to stay home so I could get in and get out of the dorm room as fast as possible. With the help of Ronan’s younger brother who lives close by, that’s exactly what I was able to do.
I gave up a few things for Lent when it began, but I keep a constant fasting of not listening to the radio while I drive. I started that practice a few Lents ago, and I’ve stuck with it now for a few years. If you know me, you know I’m an 80s girl who loves her music, especially while driving! But that quiet time in the car gives me extra time to think, reflect, and pray. While driving through the mountains on Holy Thursday, after a terrible night of sleep, I needed something to keep my mind going. So, I turned on the radio. I don’t know the stations too well, but I knew I could find some Christian music and some pretty bad heavy metal music stations in the last 45 minutes of my trip. I turned the dial until I found one with the least amount of static and was greeted by a familiar voice.
Chuck Swindoll, a pastor who my Mom used to listen to back in the early 1990s, had a very timely message. That morning message, like some I remembered, was spot on. Reflecting on Matthew’s gospel, Swindoll spoke of the Resurrection. So, so timely! Reading from the Bible, he recounted Easter morning:
Suddenly, as the women approached the tomb, they felt an earthquake.
An angel, whose face shone like lightning, appeared at the tomb.
The stone was rolled away.
The guards shook with fear and fell into a dead faint.
The angel spoke to the women saying, “Don't be afraid! I know you were looking for Jesus. He isn't here; He has risen from the dead, just as he said would happen.”
“Come, see,” the angel told the women, “See where his body lie.”
Then the angel said to go quickly and tell the disciples, “Tell them that He is going ahead of you, to Galilee.”
“…and He will see you there.”
The women went, and when the guards woke up, they went into the city.
Meeting with the leading priest who then met with the elders, the guards were given a bribe.
The elders said, “You must say Jesus' disciples came during the night while we were sleeping, and they stole his body. If the governor hears about it, we will stand up for you, so you won't get in trouble.”
The guards accepted the bribe and were given a script. Their story spread widely among the Jews…
…and they still tell it today.
More believed that lie than believed the truth.
More believed the words of critics and skeptics than of the women who were living that day and never before or after lied to us...but somehow lied to us about the Resurrection.
The witnesses were silenced, but they were grateful to live by the truth and to die for it.
Before my drive to and from the mountains late last week, I knew that I’d missed a lot of news. I missed the updated autism rate announcement, and I missed Secretary Kennedy’s https://www.ageofautism.com/2025/04/secretary-of-hhs-says-autism-epidemic-is-real.html announcement. When I had a minute to look at the internet before I got in the car, I gleaned from headlines, and from facebook posts, that something was off. In giving up the radio, I also gave up listening to talk radio. Easily I could’ve caught up on what the media thinks I need to know on my drive, but I randomly stumbled upon a radio station with a beloved pastor from days gone by with a message that was not just so perfectly timed for the holiest of weeks. I thought it was perfectly timed for our time.
I’ve heard that Gospel story since I was a child, but not until this week did I think to compare it to a current situation – finally, our community of parents was heard! But in sharing the message again, that for some children some vaccines cause some very serious health and development problems – parents were attacked again. Parents who witnessed what happened to their child were silenced again. Leaders in the health and media communities were quickly again providing scripts that don’t reveal the truth but that cover up wicked ways. And the threat to the loss of power and money again seems to be at the core of the cover up.
The resurrection is one of the greatest acts. It's the fulfillment of God's promise, that the gates of Heaven will be open to us. Live by His word, and we will gain eternal reward. It’s a lifelong goal for many. Life here on earth, though, can be full of trials, some created by non-believers. It’s only their own gain that they live and breathe. They care not who gets hurt by their actions and inactions. Those parents who were silenced for speaking out decades ago are being silenced again by the non-believers. They must persevere! I have no doubt that they will, because a higher power has called us to always live by the truth.
To those who continue to witness, who continue to speak up despite the skeptics and the critics…thank you. You, your work, your children, and most especially your faith, does not go unnoticed.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
A wave of grief, relief and sadness washed over me during this press conference. Not joy or "We told you so!" The loss of birth life is staggering. The shunting onto an unknown path into a forest we parents have had to hack away with little more than butter knives has been traumatic. Yet? This is what many Americans voted for in November. Some with confidence. Some waving flags. Others holding their noses. A declaration that honors our families, and a promise to stop the epidemic. Now we push to make sure vaccinations are the crux of the environmental equation.
Here it is on Rumble, which will remain after C-SPAN deletes it.
Rebecca Estepp summed up the CDC graphic on the report issued yesterday featuring a "thumbs up" smiling boy (pg 17) who looks like he just won a national spelling bee. This is how CDC is telling Americans that autism continues to rise. Download CDC ADDM-Community-Report-SY2022-FINAL
This graphic is more than tone deaf. It's a Madison Avenue sales pitch meant to cover up the problem. There was another with a darling boy surrounded by bubbles. The push to normalize autism is getting worse. Cui bono?
From Estepp:
Many of you have probably seen today’s announcement from the CDC: autism rates in the U.S. continue to skyrocket—with no signs of slowing down.
The latest numbers? Autism now affects 1 in 31 children, or 3.2% of all 8-year-olds born in 2014. This is the highest rate ever recorded. Among boys, the numbers are even more alarming: 1 in 20 nationwide, and in California, an astonishing 1 in 12.5.
But perhaps the most disturbing finding in this report: in five CDC study regions, including California, autism rates are already higher in 4-year-olds than in 8-year-olds. That’s not normal. Rates in 4-year-olds are usually lower because many haven’t been diagnosed yet. This suggests the trend is still climbing.
And yet, somehow, the CDC decided this was the moment to post a graphic that looked more like a celebration than a warning. As my friend Lynne put it, it’s as if they’re saying, “Yay! Boys are winning at autism!”
Tone-deaf doesn’t even begin to cover it.
As always, it's possible to love our children deeply and still be frustrated by the very real challenges autism has brought into our lives. I wish the CDC understood that.
"Autism now affects 1 in every 31 children in the U.S. That’s over 3% of 8-year-olds born in 2014. For boys, the number is even more alarming: 1 in 20 nationally, and 1 in 12.5 in California."
By Rebecca Estepp
A health crisis has been unfolding in America, and the prevailing strategy of explaining it away is not working.
The latest autism numbers just came out from the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network—and they’re staggering. Autism now affects 1 in every 31 children in the U.S. That’s over 3% of 8-year-olds born in 2014. For boys, the number is even more alarming: 1 in 20 nationally, and 1 in 12.5 in California.
Let that sink in. A typical elementary school classroom may now have at least one child with autism, often one who needs extensive support to succeed.
JB Handley takes you on a deep dive into the absurdity of the Hepatitis B vaccine, given to children at birth or shortly thereafter. Today, the "new" autism rate will be available after 1:00pm. Is this the year we finally get more than lip service?
WASHINGTON, District of Columbia—It’s my personal opinion that the addition of the Hepatitis B vaccine in 1991 to the CDC’s immunization schedule is the single biggest contributor to the autism epidemic given the vaccine’s high aluminum content, toxicity, and the fact that it’s often given on Day 1 of life. To make things worse, it’s a nearly useless vaccine, unless you are in the tiny minority of babies who have a mother with Hepatitis B.
When I say that “safety studies don’t exist” for the vaccine, what I really mean is that the safety studies that were done for the two different brands of Hepatitis B vaccine—Engerix-B and Recombivax HB—were so pathetic in terms of the duration of post-injection safety review as to render them utterly useless. Most people don’t believe me when I explain this to them, which is why I’m going to share the package inserts with the two vaccines with you right now.
We're barely halfway through April and the news is as grim as ever. National Autism Association reports that SIX children have wandered and drowned in two weeks. S-I-X. And then there's this horror story. Victor Perez was assumed to be armed and dangerous by Pocatello Idaho police. He was armed. He also had autism AND cerebral palsy, which would have been clear to anyone because of his gait, would it not? Death by wandering and drowning. Death by police who do not understand, are not trained and can not assess the situation they are facing. Perez was carrying a large knife. Yes, it's a weapon. but he was no threat to the police from their cars, behind a fence. He was not carrying a gun. did they think he was going to throw the knife at them like a circus performer?
These are the stories of autism. They should make us weep. Gnash our teeth. And BEG for answers. Tomorrow, we'll learn the new autism prevalence rate. It will be worse than ever. And the band plays on.
BOISE, Idaho -- An autistic, nonverbal teenage boy who was shot repeatedly by Idaho police from the other side of a chain-link fence while he was holding a knife died Saturday after being removed from life support, his family said.
Victor Perez, 17, who also had cerebral palsy, had been in a coma since the April 5 shooting, and tests Friday showed that he had no brain activity, his aunt, Ana Vazquez, told The Associated Press. He had undergone several surgeries, with doctors removing nine bullets and amputating his leg.
Police in the southeast Idaho city of Pocatello responded to a 911 call reporting that an apparently intoxicated man with a knife was chasing someone in a yard. It turned out to be Perez, who was not intoxicated but walked with a staggered gait due to his disabilities, Vazquez said. His family members had been trying to get the large kitchen knife away from him.
Video taken by a neighbor showed that Perez was lying in the yard after falling over when four officers arrived and rushed to the fence at the edge of the yard. They immediately ordered Perez to drop the knife, but instead he stood and began stumbling toward them.
Officers opened fire within about 12 seconds of getting out of their patrol cars and made no apparent effort to de-escalate the situation.
"Everybody was trying to tell the police, no, no," Vazquez said. "Those four officers didn't care. They didn't ask what was happening, what was the situation."
"How's he going to jump the fence when he can barely walk?" she said.
The shooting outraged Perez's family and Pocatello residents, and about 200 people attended a vigil Saturday morning outside the Pocatello hospital where he was treated. Another crowd of protesters gathered outside the Pocatello City Hall building, which also houses the police department, on Saturday afternoon. Police snipers were stationed on a nearby rooftop during the protest, though no violence was reported. Many of the protesters held signs with phrases like, "Do better, PPD" and "Justice for Victor," and passing cars honked in acknowledgment.
…I declare a meme war. Silly, right? But a worthwhile pastime for some.
Every now and then one of my kids and my sister send each other some of the funniest memes or gifs. It’s so fun to watch my child bust up laughing while searching for the perfect one. It’s even funnier when they receive a more hilarious response from their aunt. I was thinking about that back-and-forth exchange earlier in the week when I started brainstorming for this post. I looked back at some of the images I’d saved the last few weeks, but nothing made me laugh out loud like the kids’ images do. Instead, I found screenshots I’d saved of some really good messages. Then I went looking for more. So today, as we make it the half-way point of April, I thought I’d share them here.
1, 2, 3, 4, I declare a meme war…
This one was perfect for April.
This next one is a strong reminder why some parents are vocal and continuously speak up – because their children can’t.
And why we cannot and will not celebrate a diagnosis…
Thankfully, some people are using their platform to call it what it is. And others are filling their feed with facts.
They do this because the mainstream media prefers to side with big pharma. The media and big pharma would probably want us to live in Clown Earth all of the time. Thank goodness we don’t, and thank goodness for rabbit holes! It’s what got a lot of us to start thinking beyond what we were being told.
Parents who do the work, who read, and who begin to ask questions understand that something isn’t adding up.adding up.
Insane, right? Even the dog owners are cluing in.
It’s crazy what we’re told to believe and that we just need to trust our doctor, trust the science, and
trust that it’s not the vaccines causing problems. It’s exhausting. All of this. But will soon, I hear, (click for an early Easter egg!) be a little bit rewarding.
So, cheers to those who’ve made it this far advocating for something better. If not for our children, for other people’s children – may they be spared what so many of ours were not.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
Horrifying story out of Texas. Imagine three WOMEN in a special education classroom acting so viciously. These are the scum of the earth "educators" that need immediate removal. Any school that has a crime within its walls in special education should lose every red cent across the board. THAT will make administrators who are WELL AWARE of marginal, deficient, lazy, cruel staff like this pay much more attention. It might also bring in wall-to-wall cameras, badly needed.
A Texas special education teacher and two paraprofessionals were thrown behind bars for allegedly taping up the hands of a student with Down syndrome and forcing the youngster to walk in circles for more than four hours while being cursed at, according to police and reports.
Krystina Rena Haas, 35; Prisicilla Gutierrez, 22; and June Tryon, 57, were arrested Friday after police obtained surveillance footage of the alleged heinous abuse inside the Tyler High School classroom on March 12, according to court records obtained by CBS 19.
The disturbing incident lasted about four hours and 15 minutes, police said.
“It’s not going to hurt them to stand for four hours or to walk,” Haas, the special education teacher, said during an interview with police the day before her arrest, court documents showed.
“They’re not precious babies, they’re 14 or 15-year-old teenage kids.”
14 years ago, I went to court to protect my youngest daughter, who had been abused on the school bus several times by a 23 year old bus aide named Jennifer Davila whose mother Evelyn Guzman drove the bus while texting and laughing at my daughter. I heard her on surveillance tape, "Better get this one home first before she sh*ts herself." (My daughter never had an accident on the bus.) I dragged the two of them the mud they made with every breath I took. CNN? Covered it. MSNBC? All over it. Local media? Check. Huffington Post? Heck yes. Today Show? Why not? I had a petition with 4,000 signatures from around the world in my hands in 72 hours before Guzman's court date. Even the folks we sparred with daily about autism got in touch with me to defend my daughter and express their horror. It was a rare moment of teamwork in our community.
The court expunged Guzman's record claiming first offense. Her daughter Jennifer Davila has a felony record that will follow her for life.
Constant vigilance. Never ending worry. That's autism for most of us. Not the chirpy nonsense blanketing social media. Remember that. Thank you.
(Note) We need no double dog dare, as Carol has offered. Have we failed? Been curtailed? Taken 100 wrong turns at Albuquerque? Followed the leader du jour hoping for the cure du jour? I offer no answers. Just a similar exhaustion. Occasional exasperation, freely admitted. We exist. That's dare enough. KIM
By Carol Fruscella
"Secrecy is the enemy of the truth"... Oliver Stone. He said that to the Congress within the past week. He and others asked that after 60 years that the JFK assassination hearings should be reopened.
In a few hours it will be the 25th anniversary of the first rally in DC for Autism Awareness. "Hear Their Silence". Much like Mr. Stone... I am still waiting for the truth.
Over a decade ago a man by the name of William Thompson came forward and reported that "Documents had been shredded."
(insert crickets)
For two decades I have struggled with not making MORE of an impact. I was young and naive. I was soooooo naive. The autism community was on a path then... a treatment... maybe even... a cure... for autism IF autism would be detected soon enough.
(insert crickets)
For years I had a front row seat... then a side row seat... and a far theater backrow seat to the circus... maybe better said... to the powers that be, in DC. It mattered not who held the office of President. Neither a Democrat nor a Republican could overstep Anthony Fauci. Tony testified before Congress that vaccines had no links to autism. I watched the hearings. I watched many hearings. I have watched IACC do nothing.
Millions upon millions... upon millions... of dollars spent. No "markers" found. Not one genetic link... and vaccines have not caused one in every 10 African American children to now be DX with... autism. Maybe... maybe not. NO ONE KNOWS!
If a child has a reaction to penicillin... that drug is never administered again. If a child reacts to a vaccine... "nothing to see here... let's double down and give the same vax again and for the luck of it all... let's add a few more."
Lunacy... I have watched and witnessed lunacy.
Hey... how has the BLUE lightbulb event that Autism Speaks started change anything?
I have attended more IEP's and ETR's and back in the day... MFE's before they were ETR's... than I have children that I personally gave birth to. I have been on boards. I have served a community while trying to save my own children. I did my job... as unpaid and unpromoted as it was. I have been mocked and misquoted.
Should I be honored that an autism web page showed homage to something I wrote a few decades ago that was paraphrased and re-written and co-authored a decade later. No... I am frankly horrified.
As a mom... and I was always a mom first... that met the next mom... I am ashamed. I am embarrassed. Frankly more horrified that maybe... just maybe... IF nothing was said and no rallies or events ever happened... MAYBE... we might be more on the winning side of treatments, insurance costs, housing, care plans, day habs, and total community involvement than where we are now.
On the eve of the 25th anniversary of going to DC... to originally tell and show DC something that I knew they did not realize... the realization that some activists were always paid. Sadly, several parents along this journey figured out how to be paid or supported spokes people and STILL we as a cause and community are now in worse shape as a community than EVER.
The saddest realization for me happened over a decade ago. One of my children had a classroom aide because my local school never had a child like that before to serve. That child was treated as a king in a small local school district that could find no other placement for him. If that child would have been born 15 to 20 years later... there is no classroom, better said full inclusion with so called typical peers. There are now classrooms to support that with limited or no inclusion. Today he never would have been mainstreamed. I am literally living beside the evidence of that. At age 19, the young man can hardly read or write. "We" just accept it. The autism Dx is now passed from grade to grade... because that child cannot learn due to his or her autism.
Oh yes, we tried back then... a quarter of a century ago... each in our own ways. Sadly, many parents for... "Oh, look at just how impacted my child is." Hello... every child Dx has issues! This was never a race to win of who had the most impacted child... or now... 25 years later... impacted adult.
How does one file for a full and proper divorce from a community?
I double dog dare the "Age of Autism" to share this 25-year reflection.
I am ashamed and embarrassed. I am horrified to the cost of all the children Dx in doctors' offices currently as my thoughts were read.
I entered this community as One out of every 500 children born. I exit... stage right... To one out of every 10 in any subset. In 25 more years, who will be left to reflect on this post?
Secrecy has always been the enemy of truth... lies... partial truths... and out right tall tales... that have never undermined any other cause as much as in the case of autism... Carol J. Fruscella... April 7th, 2025.
Note: Did you know there's a public relations tactic for those who speak about vaccine injury and autism? Yup. It's called "Nuts and Sluts." (We might have coined that term at Age of Autism.) The men, like Andy Wakefield are nuts. The women, like Jenny McCarthy, are sluts. Such a simple distillation to try to remove the power from their stories. It never works. Because men like Andy and women like Jenny use the slings and barbs like delicious food. And we're happy to set the table.
Jenny talks about the vicious PR campaign to discredit and destroy her in an interview with Maria Menounos below.
Jenny wrote her first book Mother Warriors way back in 2009. And it was her second book about autism, a follow up to 2008's Louder Than Words. Many celebrities wrote books and talked about their children's autism and even their vaccine injury back in the day. Few have stuck by our kids like Jenny. When she had a show on Sirius XM, she invited me every year to guest co-host. She is kind. Gorgeous. Funny as all get out and just what a Mother Warrior should be - FIERCE. I am so happy for her continued success, her marriage to Donny Wahlberg (whom I saw sit for HOURS and talk to families at a conference) and the progress her son has made.
###
By Anne Dachel
Jenny McCarthy: Overcoming Cancel Culture & The Gut-Brain Connection That Helped Her Son
Jenny McCarthy reveals how the government tried to silence her
'Parents are waking up, finding their voices, and feeling empowered'
Someone we have not heard from in a while, Jenny McCarthy, is making her voice heard once again.
March 25th Jenny was interviewed by Maria Menounos about her son’s autism and how she worked to heal him.
What Jenny revealed should scare everyone. It shows how powerful the medical—pharmaceutical complex is when it comes to anyone who speaks out against their narrative, and it’s obvious our government agencies are under their control.
A high-level insider confessed he was hired to smear her—and explained why he couldn’t go through with it
Jenny McCarthy is once again speaking out about the emotional and professional toll she endured after her son was diagnosed with autism—and why sharing her story, she says, came with serious consequences.
.This time, she pulled back the curtain on a private conversation so disturbing, it changed the way she saw everything.
Appearing on Maria Menounos’s podcast, McCarthy revisited the painful journey that changed her life forever—a horrifying health crisis involving her 2½-year-old son.
Before Evan, her son, was diagnosed with autism, McCarthy said the signs started with something far more terrifying—seizures that came out of nowhere and escalated fast. . . .
McCarthy is convinced the vaccine triggered encephalitis, a type of brain inflammation, which she notes has been “clinically in published science” linked to autism. “And my son was one of them,” she said. “Because it was after his MMR, when his encephalitis… leads to autism.”
She first shared her story publicly on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007 during the release of her book, Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism.
“That’s when I really outed myself,” she said. Oprah had long been pressed by parents to cover the link between vaccines and autism. “So, so many… were pounding Oprah to do a story on the association.”
Though the network initially resisted, Oprah eventually gave Jenny a live platform, insisting that recording it in advance would risk censorship. “She told me I had to go on live… so we had to go live.” Even then, Oprah had to read what Jenny called a “giant long page disclaimer.”
But despite the warning label, McCarthy said her message got through. “People heard me… parents heard me.”
In the beginning, Jenny McCarthy said she was flooded with appreciation. Parents from all over reached out, thanking her for speaking up and helping them feel less alone. “I had about six months of just enormous amounts of parents going, ‘Thank you. I’m looked at as not crazy now.’”
But that support didn’t last.
Public praise quickly turned into public backlash. Rumors swirled, critics piled on, and soon, people began calling her crazy. Then something even more sinister happened: Someone showed up at her organization, Generation Rescue, with a private warning that stopped her in her tracks.
“I had someone come to my organization… and say to me, ‘Listen, I was approached by, let’s just say a government agency to be hired.’”
The man said his job was to craft PR campaigns designed to discredit voices like hers. “What I do is I set up PR campaigns to go against the narrative. And I’m telling you privately because I turned them down, but I wanted to give you forewarning that it’s happening because they’re going to hire someone else.”
He told her the only reason he said no was because his own child had experienced the same thing—and he couldn’t be part of silencing someone who was just trying to tell the truth.
McCarthy was floored. “Hold on, hold on, hold on. I have chills all over my body. I need you to tell me that whole thing all over again,” she said. “Because the shock almost didn’t let everything sink in.”
The man confirmed it once more. “I basically am a PR agency, a very high echelon one, and I was approached by a government agency to create a narrative against you, and it’s going to be called you’re anti-vaccine.”
McCarthy remembered asking how they could go after her when she’d made her position clear in every interview. But the man said, “doesn’t matter… they’re going to come after you with everything they’ve got. And they’ve got the media on their side.”
The attacks eventually hit her where it hurt—her ability to make a living. “It didn’t really hurt me until it started taking jobs away from me,” she said. “I was a single mother still trying to heal my son.”
Companies pulled McCarthy from campaigns. Opportunities vanished. And this backlash came before the term “cancel culture” even existed. “I was the beginning of that cancel culture,” McCarthy said. “Cancel culture wasn’t even a phrase yet.”
Despite everything, she didn’t back down. “I just heavily relied on still writing my books and not giving up,” she said. “You can try to cancel me, but I’m still going to be here.”
“And now looking back,” McCarthy said, “my son is 22 years old and I’m still here.”
In 2009, Jenny McCarthy appeared on Larry King Live alongside actor Jim Carrey to speak out about the potential link between vaccines and autism. At the time, they were among the most high-profile people to take such a controversial stance on national television.
McCarthy never backed down from that position. Carrey, on the other hand, has since quieted down—likely a result of the intense backlash and career consequences that often come with challenging the medical consensus.
Jenny’s story echoes what many parents have quietly said for years: healthy kids change after shots. But instead of being heard, parents are silenced, mocked, and ignored by the media and experts—leaving many too afraid to speak out.
But that silence is starting to break. More and more, what once sounded like fringe “conspiracy theory” is now being recognized as something plausible.
Parents are waking up, finding their voices, and feeling empowered to make the choices they believe are best for their children—no matter how unpopular those choices may be.
Here’s a one minute clip just on the threat from the “government agency.”
Jenny McCarthy: The Truth Behind The Headlines.
I had someone come to my organization, Generation Rescue, and say to me, “Listen, I was approached by a government agency to be hired. And what I do is, I set up PR campaigns to go against the narrative, and it’s going to be called, ‘You’re anti-vaccine.’
“They’re going to come after you and hard.”
I said, “How are they going to do that when I’ve clearly said in every interview, I’m not anti-vaccine. I’m just telling the story of my child, of what happened and how I’m getting him better.”
They said, “It doesn’t matter. They’re going to come after you with everything they’ve got, and they’ve the media on their side.”
And I didn’t believe them. I was like, there’s no way because I preface it in my book. I’ve prefaced it everywhere.
I didn’t get scared. It didn’t really hurt me until they started taking jobs away from me.
I was a single mother, still trying to heal my son, pay for speech therapy, ABA.
In the end, it’s really about the power and control of the pharmaceutical industry. that we’re up against, but Jenny McCarthy was right. We are finding our voices.
Thanks to Cathy for a post about autism ACTION during a month that makes many of us want to log off every device we own. Send them to those who need a nudge to do the right thing, too, which is to use better data to provide better care for our beautiful children.
By Cathy Jameson
Better data for better care
To bring the community together
Data solutions drive better data for better care.
That’s my non-technical and very basic synopsis of an incredible, well thought out solution that the Autism Knowledge Gateway aims to provide.
I got to meet founders and supporters of Autism Knowledge Gateway (AKG) several months ago. In attendance were doctors, civic leaders, medical providers, therapists, and other parents like me. Humbling is the adjective I’d use to describe how it felt to sit at the table with some of these community leaders. All came to support the AKG’s mission.
The evening began with a mixer and ended with gracious hope. I took notes during the presentation and during the speeches given by the panel. The goals were laid out for those new to the mission with the promise to help advance autism care, which is something that has been lacking in certain areas of the medical field. Personal stories from parents who have adult-aged children, like my son, as well as doctor’s recounting their observations from the field, peppered the night. One story I share, from around 2008 about running into problems getting proper medical help, still leaves me dumbfounded. Struggling again with bouts of constipation, I booked an appointment with a gastroenterologist who was well known in our area. If anyone knew more about the intestinal tract and poop it was a good GI doc. Right? I was shocked when this one could not give me one tip, one remedy, or one logical reason why Ronan was dealing with chronic constipation.
After examining Rone, after listening to my timeline of recent medical events, and after hearing me ask for his expertise, the doctor walked over the sink in the exam room. Turning the water on, he literally washed his hands of us while saying, “You need to ask the autism doctor about this.”
Stunned, I blurted out, “But you’re the…the poop doctor. You can’t help us with a basic constipation issue?”
Drying his hands, he repeated, “Ask the autism doctor.”
It was a new low. Of all the specialists on our growing team of providers who I thought could help us, the GI doctor then walked away from us. “The nurse will see you out.” Needless to say, we never went back to his practice.
Some providers are willing to dig in and look for root causes to help their patience attain the care they need. For those that do, AKG is something they may want to use.
Listen to what other parents, and those behind the production of this tool, have to say about the motivation to create a database. The best part is that it’s not just for medical providers but for anyone.
What roadblocks have you run into when taking your child to a doctor? Were the problems your child was facing common to autism symptoms or something different? The latest one for us isn’t about getting a doctor to treat a co-morbid issue but about the ongoing battle to get timely dental care.
Ronan needs some dental work that would’ve had a typical patient in and out of a typical clinic within a few short weeks. It’s taken us several long months to schedule the same kind of procedure. We’ve expressed our incredible disappointment and great concern with the specialty clinic, but they tell us their hands are tied. We might’ve gotten an appointment a bit sooner had one of their schedulers not screwed up the entire schedule. Unfortunately, the only one paying the price for that mistake is Ronan. In September, his appointment was originally scheduled for December. It then got pushed to January. It’s now not going to happen until the last week of May. Like before, when we had a similar delay with a different specialty dental clinic, an autism diagnosis didn’t make anyone move faster; it was other massive delay after another and one more awful excuse after another that we experienced.
Moving forward, maybe a tool like the Autism Knowledge Gateway will open the door for more providers. Maybe it will help them understand and respect that our children need not just specialized care but also priority treatment. Maybe then we will see conditions that are associated with autism being taken seriously. If it’s up to us to help providers know that that information exists, please share the links above with those you trust. Send them to those who need a nudge to do the right thing, too, which is to use better data to provide better care for our beautiful children.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
It was no April Fool's Day joke on Tuesday, when Facebook deleted Michelle Guppy's post using her From Hell to Hopeism blog dated April 1, 2013. That's 15 years ago. Autism has been shunted off into the land of candy canes and unicorn farts, buried somewhere under the LGBTQRSTUnoVforvaccine rainbow.
Defeat Autism Now? Gone. Cure Autism Now? Gone. Talk About Curing Autism? Renamed to be less offensive. National Autism Association? Focuses solely on wandering (important) and awareness (not so much) after being one of the most toughest organizations to support our kids with vaccine injury. Generation Recuse? I mean Rescue? Disappeared like the ending of my Dad's favorite poem The Day is Done by Longfellow, "...fold their tents, like the Arabs, and silently steal away."
Our day is NOT DONE. It will never be done. And we will never stop being badass. We write what we need to write - and yes it has cost us dearly in dollars, donors and influence. Just not as much as our kids. Here you go Michelle, your blog entry for all to see.
By Michelle Guppy and Carol Fruscella – original idea - Carol J. Fruscella
April 8, 2000
It is a bright…. Clear…… spring day. There is a gentle breeze in the air….. As you walk toward the mall area in Washington, D.C., you see the Cherry Trees in Bloom……………………you stop and pick a flower……..and it reminds you why you are there…
For the day that your child would be freed from the limitations of Autism – to be able to
Touch……. Smell……… Explore ………
For the day that his black and white world………. would have color………
The birds are singing, and the sunshine feels so good on your skin. The preparation for this day has been trying and hard. It was a long and cold winter in many ways…………. Many times there was doubt that this day would happen…….. This day is a Miracle in so many ways. A day where all of our efforts have come full circle. A sense of achievement overwhelms you……….
As you enter the mall area…………. your breath is taken away by the sight of thousands of pictures. You stand still at the power of what they say……..each child’s face silently telling their story………. each one waiting, deserving of only the best.
You see Grandma and Grandpa scanning the boards, trying to find their Angel’s picture. You hear a small voice go “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE… .” You see another child point, “Daddy, that’s ME!”
The Autism Awareness Quilt is on display……………..but it’s so huge – you will never find your child’s square! “Cure Autism Now,” one says – “ Save my brother,” says another…. .Oh, there it is over there, your child’s colorful scribbles on fabric that bring tears of joy and pride………
In the background, you hear speakers, telling the Nation of the need to help these children – and for the first time in a long time…….. you have Hope that this is the event that will make it so.
That there would be unity and awareness…..
That there would be a cure…..There are so many people………….who have traveled so far for this rally……..so many new friends……..so many stories to share………………we lean on each other for support………knowing that this is just the beginning…… of a journey that will continue on…….. to raise Awareness……….to get answers……………..to get the help and support we all need. Close your eyes…….. imagine being there…………Hearing the silence of those who can’t speak………Hearing the voices of those who can…………
Dusk came over Washington, D.C. …………..
A dropped Awareness Ribbon is all that is left of that day…...
Now open your eyes………..
Be there to make history and help keep the dream alive.
April 2014:
The title of that poem was "A Dream Come True" -- I think now, on the verge of April 8, 2014 -- it seems like it would be best titled, "The Nightmare Continues."
It breaks my heart to think that.
To write that.
Never, ever, back in the 1 in 500 rookie autism parent days would we have ever fathomed numbers of today, 1 in 68. Never would we have fathomed we would be veteran parents. No, not us, our children would be cured by then.
Not ever would I have fathomed reading blogs from folks sharing things as if for the first time when we veterans experienced them over a decade ago. New revelations that are actually old news for us. Same ol', same ol'. New autism organizations formed to take yet more money from the established ones who need the money to be even more effective.
People hindering instead of helping.
The things that are new in terms of treatments and opportunities are still not accessible to those without the means to obtain them.
It's hard to bear at times.
For that rally, for those Congressional Hearings, we worked so hard. We gave everything, and more. And we have continued to do just that. I hear so often people sprinting out of the starting blocks with new ideas and new goals, only to peter out in the name of having to take a break to focus on their own children. All the while, us veteran parents have had no choice but to do both. Find a way to do more, sacrifice more. Heal our own children while saving the world from autism. No break. Who would then pick up the slack?
I sit here still stunned by the sheer numbers now vs then. But I can't help but smile too. I don't feel we failed, I feel we just haven't won yet, and so must keep fighting. No, the only ones who failed, are those doctors and agencies who we have reached out to for help, but who have instead turned their backs. They must live with the realization that they could have stopped this epidemic, but didn't.
We who forged paths when there were none haven't failed. We worked. We followed the truth no matter where it lead because we had nothing to lose. We didn't merely light things up blue and think we were actually changing anything. We listened to the truth, and we acted on it. And we did it from our own homes, with no pay. No one in a fancy office receiving a salary has even come close to those achievements.
No, we haven't failed. Not us who were there from the beginning on the message boards late at night, all night. Not us who called, faxed, rallied, wrote, and researched. Not us who endured scorn, humiliation, threats. Not us who spoke truth in an ocean of lies.
Not us who saved pennies to be at rallies and Congressional hearings because it was that important.
Not us who made history by standing up and speaking out.
Not us who will NEVER QUIT in helping to keep that dream of so long ago, alive.
In that poem above it speaks of thousands of pictures. That's what it was then.
Today, it would be 1.2 million pictures on those boards.
I have the dream now that I did then.
When will anyone hear that silence?
This picture below... This mom represents my thoughts today.
No Way.
No way this epidemic of autism can be worse now than when we began our fight.
No Way.
No way those agencies designed to protect our children's health are still turning a blind eye to researching the obvious, vaccinations, toxins, etc.
No way there's not an appropriate, community-based program in place to care for my son long after I'm gone.
There's just.....no way this amount of devastation could be real.
Note: Anne Dachel transcribed Dr. Humphries groundbreaking interview on The Joe Rogan podcast - she reached millions of people. The cat is not going back into the bag.
Mar 28, 2025, Joe Rogan interviews Dr. Suzanne Humphries
Joe Rogan brought up Dr. Humphries’ book Dissolving Illusions, and they began by talking about natural remedies that are often dismissed by mainstream medicine.
Joe asked if giving pharma immunity from lawsuits over vaccine damage had an impact.
Suzanne:Well, we certainly saw an explosion of their creativity since 1986.
You’re referring to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that was passed in 1986, but before 1986, we had 1976 which the swine flu vaccine fiasco.
That was a situation where there was so much injury that the vaccine producing c
ompanies were no longer able to get insurance. So they went to the government, and they said, we need you to indemnify us. And they did. So the government absorbed all the lawsuit cases that happened.
So that kind of set a precedent for 1986.
There’s so many lawsuits happening because of the diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus vaccine, that again the vaccine companies couldn’t continue to go on the way they were because they were being sued so much.
So then this horrible act was passed.
We’re going to make you this promise. Yes, yes, yes, we’re going to cover all the lawsuits now out of taxes, but it’s going to be okay because we’re going to pay out these lawsuits, and you’re going to be fine if your kid takes one for the team.
After they get their foot in the door, they narrow down—they basically have a kangaroo court that decides if you’re eligible. The qualification tables got narrowed down because in the beginning they were paying out so much of this.
So not only did it make the vaccine companies very, very wealthy and indemnified, but. . . the creativity of the vaccine companies expanded.
After that they could add different, what we call adjuvants, things that stimulate the immune system so the vaccine works better.
Suzanne went on to explain that IF there wasn’t indemnification, there would never have been the mRNA vaccines.
As far as vaccine trials are concerned, she said,
Vaccine trials have always been a joke, but they’re even more of a joke today than they were in the beginning.
We’ve never seen a vaccinated, unvaccinated study that is accepted by the powers that be as good enough.
Suzanne noted that the vaccinated/unvaccinated studies that they have merely substitute a vaccine for another vaccine, like testing a flu shot against a hepatitis A vaccine.
There’s no saline placebo because the few studies that exist with saline placebos show how bad the vaccine actually is, and how it makes you not only not respond to the disease when it comes around, but more susceptible to it in many cases. . . .
In 2011, Ginger Taylor started a blog called Lives Lost To Autism. She catalogued the deaths - mostly by drowning - of each child she could find. I assisted her with the grim task. We stopped back in 2013. Twelve years ago. But the deaths continue. This month, April, I thought I would honor those whom we covered. Not by name, because I don't think their families need to see any reminders of their loss in an Internet search. But to show respect and to honor the sacrifice.
Ginger now writes on Substack, the new "Blogger." In Many Words
When you click the news report link, the stories are mostly long gone. Like the young lives. We need this to STOP.
###
August 2013 - this young lady would have turned 18 this year.
SWAINSBORO, Ga. -- Emanuel County sheriff's officials say a 6-year-old girl with autism has drowned in a pond.
Sheriff Tyson Stephens said Thursday that foul play is not suspected in the death of XXXXXXX. Investigators say her parents reported her missing Thursday morning and they told authorities they believed she walked away from their home in Swainsboro.
Officials found the girl unconscious in a nearby pond and were unable to revive her. (Associated Press)
We're pleased to share Ginger Taylor's Substack In Many Words today. There's no replacing the OG autism parent knowledge, education, perspective and hard earned experience. Our thoughts have particular context today as MAHA and general (and specific) health topics are not as verboten as in the past (November 4, 2024.) There was once a Yahoo group called Tough nuts and old timers. We weren't even 50 back then. It used to be only the sperm in autism was old. Ha ha. So now? We're original gangsta autism Moms.
Tomorrow starts the silly season of Autism Awareness, Adoration, Acceptance, Accolades, Appreciation, ACTION month. Fasten your seat belts for the nonsense.
According to data from the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network collected in 2020, approximately 1 in 36 children in the United States has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), this translates to about 2.8% of children aged 8 years old at the time of the study. If we apply that percentage to the roughly 73 million individuals under 18, that’s around 2 million children with ASD.
A 2017 CDC study estimated that around 2.21% of adults in the U.S. have ASD, there are approximately 272 million adults in the US so, using the 2.21% prevalence rate, that’s about 6 million adults.
Adding these two groups together means that there may be approximately 8 million people in the United States may have been diagnosed with some form of autism.
For various reasons, this number may be elevated, so am am going to round down to be safe, and assume that there are only 5 million Americans with ASD.
There are two papers that attempt to determine what percentage of autism cases are vaccine induced. One concludes that it is likely 80% and another concludes that it is likely 88%. If I take the lower of those two numbers and assume that 80% of autism cases are vaccine induced that leaves me with 4 million cases of vaccine induced autism in the United States. (Just a quick reminder that not all cases of autism are vaccine induced, and that there are unvaccinated children with autism.)
The vaccine industry and the medical cartel that dominates this narrative would have you assume that there are ZERO cases of vaccine induced autism in the United States. But we know that the US government has paid Hannah polling and Bailey banks for their vaccine injury claims with an autism diagnosis. So that is at least 2 cases we can point to. And we have another approximately 1500 cases with autism that have been compensated from the vaccine injury compensation program under the injury of vaccine induced brain encephalopathy, the symptoms of which are identical to an autistic regression. Read more and subscribe HERE.
We ran this post from Cathy Jameson last April. As we approach the Month of Blue April, we will remind you over and over that we see you. Every one of you. And we always will. Cathy has today off.
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April 21, 2024
Note: You must share this poignant slice of all of our lives with others. That's your homework today. And grab a tissue. You'll need it. XOX
By Cathy Jameson
We had a busy weekend last weekend with the kids in different directions. We couldn’t all be at a friend’s celebration on Saturday afternoon but would finally meet up later around dinner time. Having spent most of the day out of the house, I was tired and didn’t want to go home and make dinner. I had Ronan with me, and he didn’t want to go home yet either. He knew we’d be driving by one of his favorite restaurants, so I called my husband and asked if he and the girls could meet us. They could.
We had to wait about 20 minutes to be seated, so we spent that time browsing in the restaurant’s store. Always a treat to see the ‘old timey’ games and candies, Ronan was so patient as we reminisced. I was getting hungrier by the minute, and I imagined he was also. Just as I thought I might need to grab a snack from his bag, the host called us to a table. We are usually seated by one of the large windows toward the middle of the restaurant when we eat there. This time the place was busy and got seated at the very first table customers have to walk by as they enter the dining room. It wouldn’t bother any of us because we were so hungry and would not care that we were next to a busy area.
I was glad we got the table when we did. While the kids started to look at the menu, I noticed that other parties were soon standing at the host’s station asking how long it would be to get seated.
Our server was quick to help and clued in that Ronan was not going to order for himself. She watched us sign to him and watched him respond with signs back to us. Ready to help, she got his drink order right away. While we waited some more, because the restaurant was still very busy, we chatted, we looked at pictures, and we made sure Ronan was happy. He was. I gave my attention back to the girls, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw that someone else was watching them, too.
The few minutes before, my daughters were taking pictures of Ronan and posting them in our family chat. Laughing at the edits they made and carrying on like the best of friends, we were getting a little silly in our little corner. Maybe that’s what caught this older fellow’s attention. I glanced toward his general direction, not staring directly at him yet. Ready to pounce, if needed, I slowly turned and faced him. The girls with their backs turned, were oblivious. My husband, though, who was seated next to me at our round table also realized that we had an audience. Then we noticed that this guy was not alone.
Another man was with him.
I wasn’t nervous. Other places in that area would’ve had me scoop up my kids and run. But we were in a safe place with tons of people, mostly families, enjoying an evening out. The older man didn’t look out of place. Neither did the younger man behind him. Looking past the older man at the younger man now, I saw something familiar. His stance, his low tone, his expression…
It all looked a little like Ronan.
Trying to not make it obvious, my gaze immediately moved back to the older man. He was much older, more like a grandfather. He was tall but his back was hunched, almost like he was carrying a large weight. The young man, who had telltale signs of developmental delays the more I observed him,was thin and much, much younger. If I had to guess, I would’ve said he was in his teens.
He was actually in his late 20s.
I know that because the older fellow approached us. I could tell that he wanted to say something almost as soon as I saw him staring at us. It was a few long minutes of silent watching, and never a creepy kind of watching. He looked at Ronan, I mean really looked at him. Then he looked at Ronan’s sisters. He turned his head and looked at both me and my husband, then back to Ronan.
During that, the girls were engaging in their own conversation for the most part, but they would try to get Ronan to respond. It’s typical behavior that they always do, but I think it took the man by surprise. It took him by surprise, but it also made him smile. That’s when he came over to our table.
Hunched over, with arthritic fingers, and a slow gait, it was just a few steps he had to take, but it made a huge impact.
He thanked us, and he encouraged us to please continue to treat Ronan like we had been doing. Walking to Ronan, he put his hand on his shoulder, patted it gently and with so much compassion. “He’s 27,” the fellow said as he pointed to the young man behind him. “He’s 27…his name is Max*, he’s non-verbal, but he’s more like a 7-year-old.” *name changed
I choked up. Ronan’s sister, Izzy choked up, too. Wiping tears from our eyes, we were filled with emotions we didn’t expect. He and my husband spoke for a minute, but I remained speechless. I thought we were going to get breakfast for dinner and then scurry home.
We got so much more than that.
As the older man had started to stare at my family, I had begun to stare at the young man. Assuming it was a grandson, I thought how amazing that he took him out to eat. Going out takes a lot of work. It takes guts, too, for some people. Sometimes it’s easier to just stay home. But for us, we always want to try to do things together as a family. Even though this was one of Ronan’s favorite places, anything could set him off. Thankfully, nothing did. If anything, this night out set something else in motion.
We were seen and made an immediate connection. Very quickly, Ronan’s little sister wanted to do something about it. The older man motioned for the younger to follow him as their table was called. As they walked away, Izzy wiped her eyes and asked, “Can we pay for their meal?” Trying really hard now not to burst into tears as I answered her, I said, “Oh, honey. That’s exactly what I was thinking we should do!”
So, we did.
Izzy excused herself from our table, scooted back to the store and purchased a gift card. Once we were finished eating, she took the gift card and walked over to the men who befriended us. “I know how hard it is to take of someone like Max, so we wanted to show our kindness and give you one less thing to worry about. It’s not much, but we wanted to give you this for your dinner.”
The older fellow balked, “It was nothing, no, no, you don’t need to…”
But Izzy insisted.
Normally I would never let my teenage daughter cut off an adult, but this time, she managed to do that while being incredibly respectful, compassionate, and kind. Trying not to tear up again, she said, “We know you can pay for it, but please, we really appreciate you. We want you two to enjoy your dinner here like we got to.” She gave him the gift card and caught up with us as we were heading to the door.
“I’m really proud of you. I’m glad you got to represent us in that moment, too,” I said to her. We hugged, and then like usual, we split up and went in different directions—the girls off to see friends and the rest of us back to the house.
Heading home, I was thankful for how well Ronan did. It was a really long day for him, and he handled all of it very well. I was also thankful for a good dinner out with my silly family. I was thankful for connections we made and for compassion shared. Special needs families aren’t always treated with respect. Tonight, we were, and my children quickly offered that to another family. I know they’ll be stronger because of all they witnessed that night.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
A long-discredited researcher and vaccine skeptic will conduct a government study on whether vaccines cause autism.
We'd like to remind readers that The Geiers were using LUPRON to lower testosterone levels in autistic children in an effort to lower aggression and remove excess mercury. Today doctors use Lupron and newer versions of hormone treatment for trans children/teens to halt puberty. So when hormone suppression was an autism treatment, it was demonized.
But critics say the treatment is irresponsible. They warn Lupron can disrupt childhood development, interfering with puberty and jeopardizing kids' heart and bones.
It was only in 2008 that the Endocrine Society approved puberty suppressors as a treatment for transgender adolescents as young as 12 years old. The Society, with members in more than 100 countries, has since declared that the intervention appears to be safe and effective.
We are not supporting this treatment for any condition. Nor making a political statement about trans. Simply pointing out the fact the when autism is involved, when vaccinations are involved there is a swift cancel culture.
"Isn't it peculiar, Charlie Brown, how some traditions just slowly fade away?"
Not us. Nor you, readers. We will not slowly fade away while children are endangered, families torn to shreds, futures decimated. We'll keep you posted on our new CDC nominee Susan Monarez. Secretary Kennedy is enthusiastic about her, as he wrote on X yesterday, as you can see. We remain cautiously vigilant.
Note: Please read and share James Lyons-Weilers's most recent Substack article from Popular Rationalism. If what we're hearing is true about the new CDC Chief nominee Susan Monarez, MAHA is becoming MA HA HA HA and the joke is on us. We launched MAHA. You. All of us in the autism vaccine injury community. Lyons-Weiler tackles the latest cover up from Johns Hopkins:
Major medical institutions just are not getting the message. The science is not only not settled: The question is the most important neglected question in medical science - ever.
“The science is settled” is a phrase invoked not to convey certainty but to halt inquiry. This rhetorical flourish has been used repeatedly in public health communications, particularly regarding the long-standing controversy over a potential link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A recent example of this can be found in the March 19, 2025 article from Johns Hopkins Public Health, titled “Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism. Why Do Some People Think They Do?”
In the article, Dr. Daniel Salmon, a vaccinologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Vaccine Safety, discusses the origins of the vaccine-autism debate, attributing it mainly to the 1998 case series published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and colleagues. The article, which claims that 16 studies exist that definitively answer the question of vaccines and autism, argues that Wakefield's now-retracted paper initiated a cascade of misinformation that public health authorities have spent decades refuting. It claims that a wealth of rigorous studies has “settled the science” and that the persistence of public doubt stems from cognitive biases and unfortunate timing rather than legitimate scientific controversy.
This narrative is both misleading and incomplete. It fails to acknowledge a substantial body of peer-reviewed evidence across disciplines—epidemiology, immunology, toxicology, molecular biology, and clinical medicine—that supports concern over vaccine-related neurodevelopmental outcomes. It omits biological plausibility, disregards whistleblower disclosures and court-admitted vaccine injuries, and relies on an artificially narrow scope of reference. It also ignores the history of the CDC sharing 27 studies, 22 of which where rejected by the National Academy of Science’s Institutes of Medicine, leaving 5; four of these were underpowered, leaving one study. That history will be part of future article.
The purpose of this rebuttal is not to assert that vaccines do cause autism in all cases, but to make the case—based on published literature and verifiable findings—that the issue remains scientifically unresolved, and prematurely declaring it “settled” is a disservice to science, to public trust, and to families seeking answers, and that the Johns Hopkins article blissfully ignores peer-reviewed studies worth considering that show their conclusion is recklessly irresponsible.
The Johns Hopkins article frames the entire vaccine-autism controversy as a consequence of a single discredited case series—Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper in The Lancet. While that paper did draw international attention, it was a pilot study that never concluded that vaccines cause autism. It was also not the first nor the most substantial source of information on the topic raising concerns about vaccine safety. Reducing decades of inquiry to one retracted article is both historically and scientifically false.
CDC’s Own Early Findings: The Verstraeten Signal
In 1999, CDC epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten presented findings at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) conference based on internal analyses of the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). The results showed a relative risk (RR) of 7.6 (95% CI: 1.8–31.5) for autism in children receiving more than 25 μg of mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) in the first month of life compared to those with no exposure (Verstraeten et al., Simpsonwood VSD communication). The degree of institutional suppression found in the minutes of the meeting is massive. Notably, this finding was never published in its original form. Instead, subsequent iterations of the dataset were revised over four years, after discussion by participants:
"The number of dose related relationships [between mercury and autism] are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant." - Dr. William Weil, American Academy of Pediatrics. Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000
"The issue is that it is impossible, unethical to leave kids unimmunized, so you will never, ever resolve that issue [regarding the impact of mercury]." - Dr. Robert Chen, Chief of Vaccine Safety and Development, Centers For Disease Control, Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000
Note: I was on X defending Andy Wakefield for having sacrificed all for sick children when the onslaught of UK haters descended. Keithy Weithy was particularly venomous. I managed to let him down with my sharp, American flair and you can see his ultimate response to me. Charming lad. You can follow the scrum at https://x.com/AgeofAutism This happens almost every Spring. The attacks on Andy Wakefield. We have an entire category devoted to him - https://www.ageofautism.com/dr-andrew-wakefield/.
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By Anne Dachel
A story on March 19th from Johns Hopkins got my attention.
How a retracted study from the 1990s undermined trust in vaccines and led to a persistent myth.
I immediately knew where this was going even before I looked at the article. It would blame a British gastroenterologist, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, for linking vaccines to autism. We’d be told once again that Wakefield was wrong, and he lost his medical license because of it. There are lots of studies show no link between vaccines and autism.
It’s so predictable.
Actually this article was the text of an interview between two doctors, Daniel Salmon, PhD and Josh Sharfstein, MD. As expected, they began by attacking Dr. Wakefield.
Dr. Salmon runs the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins, and he has an extensive 30 year background in vaccine science.
Salmon claimed that Wakefield said his study showed a causal link between vaccines and autism.
Salmon:
But once that paper was published, Wakefield got a lot of press and told people that he had shown vaccines had caused autism, which again, that study couldn’t even do.
NOT TRUE
In Wakefield’s own words:
In a six minute interview segment talking with CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson on Oct 7, 2009, Dr. Wakefield described how he became involved in this controversy.
Take a look at the names of presenters. Robert Kennedy, Jr. and dear David Kirby among them. We've come a long way, Baby. And we have miles to go before we sleep. Pardon the 70s ad jargon meets Robert Frost.
We're at a juncture today. Will CDC be able to follow the road less taken?
It’s unsettling to see your child’s phone number pop up but you don’t hear your kids voice on the line. Your heart sinks a bit when a friend of theirs starts out with a cautious, “Hey…Mrs. Jameson?” You know right away that something is wrong. Tuesday afternoon, one of Ronan’s little sisters suffered an ankle injury from a fall. Fielding phone calls from Ronan’s brother, who was on campus when his sister got hurt, and from my husband, we set a plan into motion. While doing that, we also talked vaccines, because we knew they were going to be one of the first questions asked during triage.
They were.
Knowing a little bit about which ones we thought would be discussed, I shared what I could remember about the tetanus vaccine. If offered, I said that would be a hard no.
Instead, “Ask for the TiG, and clean that wound well!!”
Tonight, my daughter fell and busted up her elbow while playing basketball. She immediately cried out in pain. Pain and swelling in her arm increased, so we jetted over to urgent care to have things checked out. Looking over my shoulder as we checked in, I could feel Izzy grip my arm as I answered some questions. The "Does the patient need a flu shot and/or a pneumonia shot?" question on the intake form immediately made her skeptical.
"Mommy,” she whispered to me, “…a flu shot??"
--
This time again, armed with useful information that we knew would be more effective and logical, the TiG, not a Tdap vaccine like one medical person suggested, was requested. The TiG was administered with no pushback, and the wound was ‘irrigated with copious irrigation’. With that part taken care of, we concentrated on what else was needed – immediate surgery. It would be hours before one of us could arrive, but the surgery wouldn’t wait. We are so grateful that it was successful and are now praying for a quick recovery, full healing, and for my kiddo to be back up on both feet soon.
My kids are determined, resilient folk. They are active, adventurous young people who every now and then like to sit down and chill out. To see one of them forced to sit things out is hard – so hard for them, and so hard for me and my husband to witness. With things in a holding pattern until after a follow-up surgery is discussed, schedule and completed, we wait, and we hope.
It’s never an easy thing when you’re miles and miles away from your college-aged kid when they get hurt. But with an amazing amount of strength, that kid is already in the next phase – of healing, of managing changes, of reworking plans to get things back on track while resting and recovering here at home. The road ahead won’t be easy, but with us working together, I’m confident that Ronan’s incredibly athletic and talented sister is going to get back up again and shine brightly like always.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo is the first state surgeon general to speak out against CDC recommendations.
“A vaccine associated with rapidly declining effectiveness against infection, an evolving safety profile including possible subclinical myocarditis, and no high-quality evidence proving a clinical benefit to healthy children should not be added to the routine vaccine schedule.
“It is an insult to the scientific process and shows that current leadership at the CDC and other parts of the federal government prioritize politics over common sense. Americans deserve better, more honest leadership in public health.”
In Dr. Ladapo’s book Transcend Fear: A Blueprint for Mindful Leadership in Public Health published on August 23, 2022, he describes his views on public health restrictions, early home treatment, and COVID-19 vaccines, along with how Florida officials made public health decisions that set Florida apart from other states—and nations. Based on this experience, Dr. Ladapo explains how states can make better public health decisions in the future—particularly during a crisis.
Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD is the surgeon general of Florida and professor at University of Florida College of Medicine. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Ladapo worked as an associate professor of general internal medicine and a health policy researcher at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife and children.
Yesterday, my Facebook memories brought up our Founding Editor Dan Olmsted. He's been gone for 8 years. It's hard to believe. Join me in remembering him, please. Kim
March 18, 2017
This is Dan Olmsted in 2007. This is when we launched Age of Autism at the National Autism Assn conference. He was a Yale trained journalist with an illustrious career. He spent the last ten years of his life covering autism, vaccine injury and the travesty of the epidemic. And he tapped ME - ME? I was writing for Huffington Post at the time. I was a tired, broke Mom of 3 kids w autism. He asked me to help him run Age of Autism. I've worked for almost 10 years every single day. Posting. Writing. Moderating comments. We have a team of angels - writers, helpers, donors.
Dan died in January - today was his memorial. I was unable to attend. I'll tell you that story one day. Trust me.
Daniel J. Olmsted, I miss you. You called me KIMBO. You always had a kind word and an even keel for me, even when my boat was in a tempest. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.
Love to his husband, his family and friends. And our entire AofA community.
If you would like to donate to AofA in Dan's name here's a link.
Note: When Dr. Dave Weldon's CDC appointment was pulled last week, many of us wanted to jump out a basement window. I did too, for a short moment, then I had a Ted Lasso thought. Remember Bobby. When the Democratic Party and media machine stopped Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s Presidential bid, excommunicated him from their not-so-good graces and even his family turned on him, they did us the biggest favor ever. He's the head of HHS! It's almost too sublime to be true. Like finding out the guy who you cut off and flashed the bird at you on your way to work is your 9:00am interviewee. That's 100,000,000,000 times better for us than his being President because he can focus OUR areas of dire need. Dr. Weldon's removal as our next CDC Chief might just lead us to another huge win.
By Anne Dachel
In a surprising move, Dr. Dave Weldon’s nomination to head the Centers for Disease Control was withdrawn.
In a statement obtained by CBS News, Weldon said that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was "very upset" at his nomination being pulled. Weldon said he had received a call from the White House 12 hours before the scheduled hearing, informing him that the nomination would be withdrawn.
"Bobby Kennedy is a good man who really is passionate about improving the health of the American people," Weldon said. "President Trump did a good thing in making him secretary of HHS. Hopefully they can find someone for CDC who can survive the confirmation process and get past pharma and find some answers."
Weldon said that Maine Sen. Susan Collins had told Kennedy she had reservations about his nomination, and said the Republican senator's staff had been "very hostile" in a meeting with him.
Collins' staff repeatedly accused him of being against vaccines, Weldon said, "even though I reminded them that I actually give hundreds of vaccines every year in my medical practice." . . .
He said that over 20 years ago, while in Congress, he raised concerns about childhood vaccine safety, and "for some reason Collins staff suddenly couldn't get over that."
Weldon also said that another senator, Louisiana Republican Dr. Bill Cassidy, had also said he was anti-vaccine and had once asked for his nomination to be withdrawn. . . .
After a meeting with Sen. Patty Murray last month, the Washington Democrat said she was "deeply disturbed to hear Dr. Weldon repeat debunked claims about vaccines."
What was in Weldon’s past that could make him a threat to the vaccine industry and the claim of no link between vaccines and autism?
Hannah Poling
Seventeen years ago. . .
In 2008, we learned about Hannah Poling, the beautiful red-haired daughter of Jon and Terry Poling. Hannah did something no other child up until that time had been able to do. When her story broke in 2008, she put a face on the autism-vaccine controversy.
Hannah’s history included normal development until an immediate and dramatic regression at 18 months following vaccination. Hannah was typical of so many children in the autism community, but the difference in her case was that the government recognized it, and in March, 2008 her story was in the news.
(It should be noted that the government conceded Hannah’s case in November, 2007, but the public didn’t learn about it until four months later.)
In the introduction ABC said, “In an unprecedented settlement, the government says there may be a possible link” between vaccines and autism—in the case of Hannah Poling.”
The news anchor on GMA, Chris Cuomo, said,
Some doctors say the vaccinations may have aggravated a pre-existing disease in Hannah’s brain called mitochondrial disease. Once that happened, Hannah’s father, a neurologist, believes it triggered her autism.”
Hannah’s the first case of its kind in which the federal government allowed that, in Hannah’s case, because of the pre-existing condition, there’s likely a connection between her vaccinations and her autism symptoms.
Hannah and both of Hannah’s parents, Jon and Terry Poling, along with their attorney were featured in the interview.
The discussion then focused on the question of how many other children have been affected just like Hannah.
Jon Poling said,
As other parents hear her story, I think her case is echoed among thousands of other similar cases.
And I know a lot of other medical experts are going to get out there and say this is a very unusual, odd-ball case, and we don’t really think it is at all.
We just very thoroughly investigated the biomedical issues going on with our daughter. We followed every single medical lead. We didn’t just take autism as a diagnosis and stop there. We did every type of medical testing you can imagine and eventually came up with this mitochondrial issue. How it’s related to her autism is a huge question because mitochondrial disorders are seen in relatively high frequency in children who have autism. I
In fact, one study shows that maybe it’s up to seven percent. In our study with Dr. Zimmerman, we showed 38 percent had certain markers of abnormality which means this really needs a lot of further study and a lot of research dollars poured into it because mitochondrial disease is potentially treatable. There are certain things we can do.
U.S. Rep Dave Weldon on Hannah Poling
Also covering the Hannah Poling storywas CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson. Attkisson interviewed then Congressman Dave Weldon, MD, about the concession
March 6, 2008, CBS News: CBS Evening News Vaccine Case: An Exception Or A Precedent?
Attkisson:
When you learned about the Poling case, the concession the government made, the government didn’t even have to be ordered to pay. The government conceded that the child’s resulting illnesses were because of vaccines, and part of the resulting illnesses include autism or autistic symptoms.
What goes through your mind when you hear about that case?
Weldon:“
Well, as a physician and a biomedical professional, I looked at the pathophysiology of what this child had.
Is there a vulnerable subset of children?
One of the things I’ve wondered about for years is why do most kids have absolutely no problem with their vaccinations, and why are all these parents of autistic kids saying, my kid got the shot, and then my kid deteriorated.
Is there a correlation there, and specifically, do these children have some sort of underlying problem or feature of their metabolism that causes them to be predisposed to having his kind of bad reaction? And that case really caught my attention because it could be kind of a missing piece of information to explain why at least some of these children who appear to have autism develop after their shots. Why it may be happening.
Attkisson:
What does it say to you that the government has now affirmatively conceded a case in which autism was the result—even though they’re not saying vaccines caused autism, they’re saying vaccines caused an illness in which one result was autism.
The government has been telling the public for over a decade that there’s absolutely no reason to be concerned about any link.
Weldon:
Well, I have a lot of concerns about that. Obviously the biggest one is just public health, the welfare of our children. . . .
But we had Secretary Levett of HHS in front of the committee, and I said to him and the chairman of the committee, Mr. Obey, that there are some huge issues associated with this.
Obviously one of them is we need to maintain public confidence in our vaccine program. . . .
If it is ever shown scientifically that these kids were getting this terrible condition because of these shots, that the federal government would be liable in court to provide for the health care and in some cases, if they’re really badly disabled, the support of these children for their lifetimes. So this is a very huge issue, not just on a humanitarian level, but as well on a financial level.
Sharyl Attkisson asked Weldon if the government should continue to say there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Weldon:
I wouldn’t recommend they say something like that in light of the Poling case and the admission on the part of the government.
Rep. Weldon called for more research. He said NIH was putting more money into autism research, but they’re not getting any answers.
Weldon:
We haven’t had the good, rigorous independent research that we need, and until we have that, the federal government is going to engender erosion of confidence on the part of the American people.
Attkisson then asked the pivotal question.
Attkisson:
Is there any way to figure out which children might suffer a side effect from vaccines and help make it safer for them?”
Weldon:
That has always been my hope, that there would be some kind of test to determine if a child is prone to a vaccine side effect.
The Poling case is a very interesting one in that regard. There are measurable abnormalities in her metabolism that have been decided in a court of law that played a role in her developing autism in response to the vaccine.
So we may have a simple test that we can do on all newborns and make a determination as to whether they can be safely vaccinated.
Weldon speculated on possibly inventing new vaccines that children prone to vaccine side effects could safely take.
On Jun 19, 2008, Sharyl Attkisson reported on the real significance of the Hannah Poling story in this astonishing article.
After a decade of denying any possible association between vaccines and autism, the government quietly settled a vaccine-autism case last fall. When news of the case leaked out to the public months later, government officials labeled the case of Hannah Poling an ‘anomaly.’
The truth is, nobody is in a position to know whether Hannah's case is an exception. Government officials have told CBS News that they have not tracked vaccine-autism claims to see how many of them might involve children with the same undetected mitochondrial disorder Hannah had... one that may have made her susceptible to side effects from vaccines, triggering her autism.
So what should have happened following the news about Hannah Poling? Certainly this story would shake parents’ confidence in the vaccine program. It should follow that money and effort would be put into robust studies to determine if Hannah’s situation were truly rare, after all, this affects the health outcomes of millions of children receiving routine vaccines.
At the time of Hannah’s concession, it seemed like the medical community and health officials were going to look into the issue of mitochondrial disease. This was the topic at a meeting held on Sunday, June 29, 2008 in Indianapolis.
Attendees included scientists from the FDA, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders, the National Institute of Mental Health, the CDC and HHS.
The article said,
At the heart of the issue for many specialists and concerned parents is whether vaccines -- suspected by some people as being a cause of autism -- might trigger mitochondrial disorders, which lead to autism.
That was a riveting question. What if vaccines themselves caused the mitochondrial disorder? This should have been a major concern for anyone working in the vaccine program.
Dr. Jon Poling was quoted in the story saying,
I guess I kind of feel like it's Christmas Eve. Tomorrow is Christmas morning and, hopefully, those presents will be grants in the form of serious federal monies to look into autism and its relationship to mitochondrial disorders.
The tone of the rest of the ABC story was much different from the sentiments expressed by Dr. Poling. It seemed that a number of people went to the meeting intending to deny that mitochondrial disorder/autism was linked to vaccination.
Experts lined up against the possibility that vaccines played a role here.
Dr. Douglas Wallace, director of the Center for Molecular and Mitochondrial Medicine and Genetics at the University of California-Irvine, was quoted in the piece.
Parents have observed a time association between when their child got vaccinated and when they had a worsening of their clinical state, but just because two things occur at the same time, it doesn't mean that one caused the other.
Dr. Bruce Cohen, a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic, sounded worried about the fallout from even talking about a link between vaccines and autism.
I think there is some potential of causing undue concern when one hears about situations such as the Hannah Poling case.
Cohen made it sound that even if there is a link, the greater good is served by vaccines.
But when we look at all the benefits of the vaccine program in preventing horrible diseases and horrible deaths, I think you have to take it all into consideration.
At the same time experts were meeting to talk about the Hannah Poling case, evidence was mounting that she wasn’t an isolated case. What Harris revealed showed, once again, the government was also concerned with damage control.
Federal health officials on Sunday will call together some of the world’s leading experts on an obscure disease to discuss the controversial case of a 9-year-old girl from Athens, Ga., who became autistic after receiving numerous vaccinations.
A second case
But the government has so far kept quiet a second case that some say is more disturbing and more relevant to the meeting.
On Jan. 11, a 6-year-old girl from Colorado received FluMist, a flu vaccine, and about a week later “became weak with multiple episodes of falling to ground” and ‘difficulty walking,’ according to a case report filed with federal health officials and obtained by The New York Times.
The girl grew increasingly weak and feverish and ‘became more limp, appears sleepy, acts as if drunk,’ the report said. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery and was finally withdrawn from life support. She died on April 5, according to the report.
Both the 9- and 6-year-olds had mitochondrial disorders, a spectrum of genetic diseases that have received almost no attention from federal health officials. The 9-year-old, Hannah Poling, was 19 months old and developing normally in 2000 when she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Two days later, she developed a fever, cried inconsolably and refused to walk. In the next seven months, she spiraled downward, and in 2001 doctors diagnosed autism.
No one knows whether vaccinations had anything to do with the girls’ health problems, and the scientific significance of individual cases is always difficult to assess. But suggestions that mitochondrial disorders could be set off or worsened by vaccinations, and that the disorders might be linked to autism, prompted the meeting on Sunday and has brought the disorders sudden national attention.
Immediately there was a massive effort to make this all go away.
Gerberding clearly indicated she wasn’t interested in investigating the Poling case. She talked about “autism-like symptoms,” and she admitted that she hadn’t had time to review the case, although the concession was made in November, 2007 and it was now March 2008.
Gerberding was definite:
What we can say, absolutely for sure, is that we don’t really understand the causes of autism. We’ve got a long way to go before we get to the bottom of this, but there have been a least 15 very good scientific studies and the Institutes of Medicine who have searched this out, and they have concluded that there is really no association between vaccines and autism.
So Hannah Poling’s vaccinations caused her autism, but no one else’s.
Gerberding:
I think we have to have an open mind about this. We know that there’s very little chance something related to a vaccine is going to cause a serious problem for a child.
The message to the public was clear: No one wants to look at vaccines.
She went on to criticize all the focus on vaccines and autism and not other potential causes, referring to autism as “a huge challenge.” Once again, no one at the CDC has ever used the world “crisis” when speaking about autism.
(Two years later Dr. Gerberding moved on to be the head of the vaccine division at Merck.)
In the end, no one would do anything about the link between vaccines and mitochondrial disorders. The story died quickly never to be heard about again in the mainstream press.
It needs to be noted that at the time of the Hannah Poling case in 2008, the official autism rate in the U.S. was one in every 150children, one in 92 boys. In the following years that statistic would keep making huge leaps upward until we’re at today’s rate of one in 36 children, one in 22 boys.
And over the past 17 years, with each increase, officials at the CDC still have no idea what’s causing autism OR if there has ever been a true increase in the number of children affected.
Dr. Weldon’s nomination hearing would have been a perfect opportunity to bring up the Hannah Poling case and the fact that the government conceded her autism was vaccine-induced. Now however, we’ll never get to hear about it.
It’s an awkward title, but I knew I was going to borrow those words when I heard them midweek last week. After leaving the small postal place in the little strip mall, I thought about my next three errands. I still needed to stop at the pharmacy, the bank, and the store. I’d been able to get to work earlier than usual morning, stay later than usual that afternoon, and also run more errands than usual. That’s all thanks to my college-aged kids who were home last week on their spring break. Ronan saves all of his smiles for the siblings, and they beam when he shows them just how happy he is to see them. They smile right back and carve out time for him on their trips back home.
It wasn’t the most exciting week for the siblings, but they got to see some friends from high school, and they also got to rest. It filled my heart having them home. When they are here, the house is more alive. It’s louder, but I don’t mind the extra silliness and busy-ness that comes with all five at home. As heartwarming as it is, when they want to just hang out at the house and when they offer to help Ronan, I take full advantage and run out the door away from everyone. I got to do that a few times last week, and I got so many more things done that I typically get done!
We have an amazing caregiver with Ronan weekdays, which allows me to get to work, but she can’t stay much past when I am done at work. When the kids are back on campus, weekends are when I jet all over town trying to get all my errands done. It can be exhausting to have to do that, so I felt blessed with how much extra time I had last week, especially on the day I was doing multiple errands in one afternoon. I knew that I had the luxury to be out of the house, but I didn’t want to stay out longer than necessary. I really wanted to go home and hang out with the kids. But something pulled me to be social when I walked out of the postal place.
My eyes were drawn to a woman who I could tell had watched me walk out of the postal place. Instead of going toward the right where my car was, I walked straight to her. “Hi,” I said. She was standing next to her car, but as I got closer I could see that was actually leaning on the car. It looked like she was doing that because she needed some support to stand up. An older woman, who had what looked like swelling in her lower legs, smiled at me.
Today is one of those days when I am particularly proud of our content. Thank you to Dr. Richard Moskowitz for his many years of contributions. Neither our contributors nor our readers are monolithic, nor do we we require them to be. His recommendations to our new HHS Secretary are below. Dr. M has written several books, including Vaccines A Reappraisal and his newest is Conscientious Objector Why I Became a Homeopath. He is a Harvard trained MD who discovered that "VERITAS" is not always what it seems.
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By Dr. Richard Moskowitz
RFK Jr. was a hero of mine for a long time, because of his ground-breaking work exposing corruption and pseudoscience in the drug industry, and by the vaccine makers in particular. I was horrified when he threw the considerable support for his Presidential campaign to Trump, comprising millions of votes that were undeniably a major if not decisive contribution to his election victory.
It is certainly true that the Democratic Party wanted no part of him; that its leaders still share the widespread public consensus that vaccines are among the greatest achievements of modern medicine; and that Trump and the GOP were alert enough to seize upon the issue, and won over all those votes with no political or moral commitment to reining in the drug industry.
At any rate, with the new MAGA administration in office, Mr. Kennedy as Secretary of HHS has the authority to formulate new policies for our health care system, which is in such dire need of them. Whether he has the political power to bring them about is another question. But it still seems appropriate to consider the changes that are most necessary and desirable in our vaccine policy.
Repeal the National Child Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
The first that comes to mind calls for an Act of Congress, which HHS does not control; but RFK Jr.'s advocacy will be a crucial if not decisive step in securing its enactment. Its purpose should be to repeal the 1986 law that excused the vaccine manufacturers from all moral and financial liability for the deaths and injuries resulting from their products, and created two Federal agencies to supervise and adjudicate such claims at taxpayer expense, namely, VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and VICP, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The law came about because of widespread public outrage over a large number of successful damage suits on behalf of children suffering encephalopathy or brain damage from the DPT vaccine, which generated an outcry to investigate and uncover the true extent of vaccine injuries in the population as a whole, and to provide prompt and adequate compensation for them. It was supposed to be "a no-fault program under which awards can be made to the vaccine-injured quickly, easily, and with certainty and generosity," to substitute for the expensive, prolonged, and adversarial litigation process.
At the last minute, the industry threatened to stop making vaccines altogether unless they were excused from all liability, an ultimatum to which the Congress abjectly agreed, amounting to a free ride granted to no other industry, and later upheld by the Supreme Court on the grounds that vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe," and therefore always in need of such protection!
Sharyl Attkisson interviewed Dr. Stephen Krahling on Sunday, March 10. He is a virologist and whistleblower who described how Merck covered up data on the MMR vaccine 25 years ago.
We begin today with an incredible story that spans 25 years so far.
It involves the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella given to most American babies in two doses, yet you probably never heard of this controversy.
It’s brought to us by a scientist named Stephen Krahling, who worked on a project at Merck called Protocol 7 and was uniquely positioned to blow the whistle on what he learned.
In a bigger sense, his account raises questions about what can go on unknown to most of us about products injected into nearly all children.
Stephen Krahling was a published cancer researcher when vaccine maker Merck brought him onboard as a virologist in 1999.
That’s when he says he found himself embroiled in an all hands on deck, corporate emergency.
Krahling: So when I showed up to start work at Merck, they were dealing a potential product recall, and it wasn’t something that was just casually discussed. It was a sky is falling level event.
Attkisson: The crisis surrounded Merck’s blockbuster selling MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, and worries that it might be defective.
Krahling: It was the end of the world for them. Can you imagine, if they have to recall that? They have to go to the millions of parents whose kids got out of specification vaccine, let them know. They have to take the MMR vaccine off the shelves.
They didn’t have a solution. So they would have had to stop selling it, stop distributing it.
Attkisson: To understand Krahling’s part in this scandal, it helps to know something about how the vaccine is designed to work.
So the MMR vaccine is one of the vaccines that contains live virus. Not all vaccines do, but this functions, if I’m stating this correctly, with some live virus, and it triggers an immune response.
Krahling: All three viruses are live viruses.
Attkisson: And there’s a limit on both ends of how much has to be in there, but no more than whatever for it to be safe and effective.
Krahling: It’s that upper limit, the maximum amount of virus, live virus that might be in it, has to be safe, and the lowest amount has to be efficacious.
But within those parameters is where the product has to fall.
So you can’t have a lower amount of live virus, and you can’t have a higher amount of live virus.
Attkisson: Though MMR was widely given in the 1970s, the 1980s saw measles, mumps and rubella outbreaks among many vaccinated children and young adults.
For example, in 1985, 69 measles cases at an Illinois high school with a 99.7 vaccination rate. Ultimately the CDC recommended all children get a second dose of MMR.
But the tricky part for Merck came in the mid-90s when the FDA began a review of vaccines and found the potency of MMR wore off as it sat on shelves.
So the FDA instructed Merck to start putting more virus into the vaccine up front. That’s called over-filling, so it would stay potent for its two year shelf life.
Merck started doing that in early 2000, and told us it’s still doing that today.
Krahling: So the problem was that these viruses degrade over time, and Merck had to calculate backward and say, we need to had more virus so the stuff doesn’t degrade because the FDA was adamant, you cannot keep distributing that vaccine if it’s out of specification.
They had to do this thing called an overfill which is the same as if you take a glass of water, pour a lot into it until it overfills.
They added more virus, vaccine virus to the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.
Attkisson: So that when it degraded over time on the shelf, it would still meet the lowest threshold it had to meet?
Krahling: Exactly.
Attkisson: But what if someone got that vaccine one week into it being on the shelf, before it degraded?
Krahling: They’re getting a very high amount of vaccine virus.
Attkisson: It there is too much live virus in a shot, what are the sorts of problems that could occur? That’s a potential safety risk?
Krahling: Of course.
The FDA gave Merck “warnings” for failing to report that the 23 million doses of the MMR that were on the market might not be potent.
Merck began research to show that the mumps virus didn’t lose its effectiveness. This was Protocol 7, and Krahing was a researcher. He said they could not find any proof that the MMR didn’t degrade.
Krahling said that researchers were told to falsify data to show that all the millions of MMR vaccines on doctors’ shelves were still effective,
In 2001, Krahling reported to the FDA that Merck was destroying data, and he was threatened by Merck with jail.
Krahling and another Merck scientist filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Merck in 2010, alleging that Merck misled the CDC, the largest purchaser of vaccines, and defrauded taxpayers.
14 years later, in 2024, the case was dismissed. The court said that the “CDC knew about allegations of fraud and potency, but bought the vaccine anyway.”
“. . . CDC was aware, through its own studies, that the vaccine proved less effective in the real world than the in the clinical trials, yet the CDC continued to purchase the recommend it.”
Merck denied any fraud with the MMR.
Krahling said that there have been no trials on the increased amount of virus in the MMR. There is no way to have informed consent since no one knows how much virus is in any given vaccine.
Every so often, I run a post that I aim directly at"us" like a ballistic missile. Today's the day. Take a look at the photo. At first glance, it's a jumble of pink sweater and not much else. But look harder. Do you see the hanger loop? You know, the loop you use to hang a sweater up without distorting the shoulders. When I helped helped my daughter put on her sweater, her hand went through the loop and it wrapped tightly around her arm, causing her pain when I pulled the sweater down. I caught it when she pushed back, and apologized to her. Then I got scissors and cut the loops out of the sweater.
What I prevented was a terrible day for her and her day program staff. Behaviors would skyrocket. She'd be miserable. And everyone would say, "It's just autism." IT IS NOT. We have to be aware of every pitfall, real and imagined, because the imagined ones often come true.
Social media is full of folks declaring they would choose autism over measles. We've heard that for decades. There isn't a thread of truth in it for most of us. I've been writing about autism versus measles on X, comments responding have been typically nasty, "You should have stayed awake in high school biology." (I aced AP bio in a top New England Prep school and we learned EXACTLY as much about vaccines as a Harvard trained MD. Nuttin'.)
Those who never bothered to listen to history, and those who covered it up, are.... doomed. We ran this post almost five years ago. Today, the measles bogeyman is back in the news. Josh's death following almost three decades of MMR injury did not make the global news. We remember you, Josh.
Josh Edwards: December 13, 1992 - June 20, 2020
Photos published with family permission.
We are gutted to write of the death of Josh Edwards. Josh suffered all of his life following injury from his MMR vaccination. From the healthy, bouncy baby boy you see, to the man who lost an eye to infection just this past January. But his soul remained pure and intact. Earlier today, Josh's soul left his ravaged body and is free.
Today, we honor his life and his sacrifice. Josh was one of the patients seen so many years ago by a young British gastroenterologist who looked at Josh's condition and asked, "How? Why?" That Doctor was named Andrew. J. Wakefield. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and all affected by his death. The only thing worse than mourning your child once, must be mourning him... twice. Rest in Peace, Josh.
An infection in January of 2020 cost Josh his eye.
I am Josh. I was born on the day I was due, December 13, 1992 - and a little bruiser I was, said the nurses. I was a robust 8 pounds 11 ounces, chunky and muscular. I breastfed well and thrived.
After 6 weeks, I went on the bottle. I was such a happy baby, always smiling and very content, says Mum. I played peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake with Brother. Everybody gave me cuddles and I gave them back. I sat at 6 months old. I walked at 11 months old and weighed 25 pounds. I could say “Mama,”“Dada,”“ta” [thank you], “gone,”“juice,” and “bye.” I love bath time! I splash and play with my brother and the bath toys. I am a strapping lad! |
Remember this beautiful boy
It’s January 1994; I’m 13 months old. Off to the doctor for my MMR! Tonight I have a high fever. I don’t feel so well in the morning, with severe diarrhea leaking through my clothes and onto my bedding. My stool is bright yellow, runny, and then like oxtail soup. Can you imagine? This went on for 5 days, and then I stopped “going” so much . . . Mum says “constipated.” I used to poop every day before the MMR, sometimes twice a day. I’m so sorry, Mum, I don’t know what is happening. I am miserable and upset.
This post from Cathy originally ran in February of 2009 with the title, "Freedom to Think." And today, it's TIME.
Freedom consists not in doing what we like but having the right to do what we ought. ~ Saint John Paul the Great
by Cathy Jameson
This was originally posted on another platform several years ago. I hadn’t thought of it in a long time, but the topic of ‘refusing’ vaccines came up in conversation with a few friends last week. I edited the post a tad for our readers. It’s a creative writing piece I wrote, but it’s based on actual events…ones I’d guess several of you have encountered before.
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A young mother sits in the pediatrician’s waiting room. She looks around at other young parents. Are they as nervous as she is? Are they going through a list of questions for the doctor, too? Do they even know they should be asking questions? Her child’s name is called, and she strolls back to the small exam room ready for his checkup. She’s ready to listen but is also armed with confidence.
The nurse checks the baby’s height, weight and head circumference. A quick review of any changes in his development and recent illnesses is documented. The young mother prepares herself for the pointed statement that comes next, “And, he’s due for his four-month shots. Here’s something to read while you wait for the doctor.” Without even glancing at the Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) papers, the young parent looks into the steely eyes of the nurse and says, “Oh, no thank you. We’re not doing those.” Stunned, the nurse tightens the grip around her pen. A few seconds go by, and the nurse replies, “Well, the chart says you skipped shots at the last check up, so we can catch him up today. Read the papers, okay? The doctor will be in shortly.”
This is the text of my submission to the current Parliamentary Education Committee Inquiry into the UK’s special educational needs (which evidently they do not intend to publish). Weep…
Solving the SEND crisis (submission House of Commons, Education Committee)
John Stone (Age of Autism)
I am UK editor of the US based web journal Age of Autism [1] and have also received payment for various inputs from Children’s Health Defense, a charity founded by Robert F Kennedy Jr [2]. I have corresponded with various UK public bodies, notably the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for at least a quarter of century including the Department of Education, the Science and Technology Committee, the Treasury and the Office of Budgetary Responsibility: the DCMS and Health and Social committees have published my submissions to inquiries.
It has to be said that if there is more disability in our schools than in say the 1980s - the sort that costs reluctant local authorities piles of money - then the DHSC and the politicians that failed to hold them to account are to blame. In truth no one wants to know what they are doing wrong, meanwhile our public officials maintain the practices outlined by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit 170 years ago only on industrial scale he never dreamt of - doing everything wrong and blocking all investigation: conceding as little as possible late as possible. Almost invariably politicians watching their own backs defer to them or hide behind them.
I note that when I first wrote to the Department of Health (as it was in those days) perhaps early in 2000 they were hyper-defensive about Andrew Wakefield and vaccination although I had not mentioned either, but even then they sent me a paper by Dr Wakefield’s prominent opponent Prof Brent Taylor which showed a steeply rising autism trend (albeit not apparently associated with MMR) [3]
Whilst this was somehow supposed to reassure me it simply confirmed my concerns, and the DH itself seemed to be engaged in Orwellian “doublethink”: providing they were “off the hook” with MMR nothing else apparently mattered.
I have a very long history questioning the official response to these issues but to cut to the chase I will fast forward to my attempt to engage Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies in 2018-19. At the time I summarised my conclusions entirely compiled from official data (only stopping to note that six years on the position is already as I predicted radically worse) [4]:
- ASD in schools is at least 15 times the level of 25 years ago
- 1.74% of all schoolchildren in the recent Northern Ireland census (the most complete data we have at the present time) had a severe/complex level of ASD disablement (education Stage 5)
- The overall rate is 2.9% for the province but 4.7% for Belfast
- Epidemiologists trying to explain the rise in ASD at the beginning of the millennium were still only talking about a rate of 0.2%
- 1999 National Statistics for schools’ mental health showed a rate of 0.2% for ASD/PDD for those born between 1984 and 88 but by of the 2004 survey the overall rate was 1%
- The rate appears to have risen 5 times during the years following the introduction of MMR and 3 times since, and the majority of cases are not fringe diagnoses
- There is still no robust or adequate evidence of a large ASD population over the age of 35 and Dame Sally was unable to cite any
- Our schools, and their finances, are breaking down under the burden of disablement, with ASD being frequently mentioned as the major cause
- The social cost of ASD, once almost invisible, is set to outstrip old-age in the near future and is only likely to keep rising
- There is no robust or adequate evidence base for MMR safety: the six studies in the single review cited by Dame Sally were flawed and inadequate
- The first of these studies was only published 14 years after the products were introduced in the UK, and Dame Sally failed to cite any pre-marketing data, so the question also arises what the evidence base was for safety before they were introduced?
- The MHRA yellow card scheme would be incapableof picking up long term neurological effects of vaccination
- The government has no coherent or convincing explanation of these events which are set to engulf everybody
That was six years ago: presently, we live with huge and growing population damage, and we cannot make it go away even with the most carefully crafted government rhetoric - like Merlin I feel I have been living backwards to this time. In order to ameliorate the crisis we have like Robert Kennedy Jr in the US to look at all the things that our public servants and our medical profession have avoided for generations. In all probability there are few people left who would believe them anyway.
[3] B Taylor , E Miller, C P Farrington, M C Petropoulos, I Favot-Mayaud, J Li, P A Waight, ‘Autism and measles, mumps and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association’, Lancet 1999 Jun 12;353(9169):2026-9. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(99)01239-8
“Not long ago, and you can’t even believe these numbers, one in 10,000 children have autism. One in 10,000. And now it’s one in 36. There’s something wrong." President Trump, Address to Joint Session of Congress, March 4, 2025
Don't punish progress. Even when you know far more than your average bear. Even when you've had to bear far more than your average parent. Vaccine policy is like a giant cruise ship. It takes a long time to turn around, degree by degree. We can (and should) shout and share our differences and disagreements with every government agency, including Kennedy's HHS. Still, "don't punish progress" has served me well over the years. K
From Melissa Floyd, circulating on social media.
Dear Medical Freedom community:
Stop freaking out over RFK Jr's article. Truthfully, I'm already tired of reading the narrow-minded whining sessions on my FB feed. 📷
You have to stop expecting expansive, radical change in just a few weeks. ***It is the job of any good leader to read the room and meet people where they are.*** This includes speaking to a large portion of the country who still opts in to the mainstream vaccine program.
Take a breath, zoom out, and think. You want progress, and he's already giving Americans progress -- you're just too distracted by the wrong things to even notice it. Here's what you're missing in his article 📷:
1. For possibly the first time ever, a head of HHS said "the decision to vaccinate was a personal one." Our battle has always been about supporting CHOICE -- it's never been about convincing others to change their personal beliefs or to force one particular viewpoint, and he is publicly validating your right to choose.
2. He stated vaccines "should be available...for all who want them". This highlights a few things: that as we support choice, it includes those who choose them, AND he's making space for and normalizing individuals who DON'T. There is as much significance in the subtext of these words, and this inclusion of those who opt out is groundbreaking for a HHS secretary in today's pharmaceutically-bought climate.
3. Bobby acknowledged that measles fatalities declined significantly prior to the introduction of the vaccine due to improvements in sanitation measures and nutrition. FINALLY, someone with a captive audience says what we've been talking about for years -- vaccines aren't the one thing that saved the world from certain demise, health outcomes from all diseases were already improving significantly as we made big societal shifts toward modern life.
4. Perhaps most impressive, he mentioned a few NATURAL things we can do to help protect ourselves from illness: improve nutrition and support Vitamin A levels. What a novel concept....PRO-active solutions that support the immune system instead of just more and more RE-active medical interventions. I don't think I've EVER read this from a person working within/for any of the corporate health agencies, even though it should be the first defense always.
5. He also showed how he values the integrity of statistics by separating the unvaccinated cases from cases with unknown vaccine status -- something that has not been done on a single media network or department of public health, including the CDC.
Just as important, let's not forget what he did NOT do:
1. He did NOT point fingers and blame this outbreak on "vaccine hesitant parents" or "antivaxxers."
2. He did not quote international mortality numbers for measles while trying to state its risk in the U.S. (Yes, this happens almost exclusively in MSM).
3. He did not credit the vaccine for the "eradication of measles in 2000" and scare Americans into believing it's "coming back". (Spoiler alert: it was never gone).
4. He did not say we needed tighter legislation to force parents to comply, threatening jobs or education if they did not.
5. And he did not say the MMR vaccine was proven to be undeniably "safe and effective."
To be blunt, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if, in order to get the above more transparent and honest sentiments included, he was pressured to add a few of the canned statements you are all up in arms over. You take the wins when you can get them, and sometimes (usually) that means making concessions.
RFK Jr, didn't betray the medical freedom movement, he isn't "selling out", and he's not controlled opposition. He's working within a complicated environment and he is trying to be fair to all sides - something we haven't seen in medical leadership in decades.
Unfortunately, I think some of you simply can't see the forest for the trees....
By Anne Dachel - You can read more from Anne at her SUBSTACK. For now, it appears that the VAXXED series of movies about vaccine injury will have as many sequels as Friday the 13th.
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The package insert 'was absolutely blank on both sides'
Imagine yourself to be a parent who has faithfully vaccinated their children, never questioning the safety of the childhood schedule. What would this conversation do your trust in vaccinations?
On Daystar TV Polly and Brian talked about their personal stories, each having a vaccine injured child and about Vaxxed 3, the documentary that revealed how the COVID 19 vaccine unleased untold injury and death here in the U.S. and around the world.
Brian Hooker, Polly Tommey on Joni Table Talk
The host, Joni Lamb, opened the discussion with a question:
From the COVID pandemic to cover-up, what’s the truth behind vaccines?
Today’s guests join us to share tragic stories of individuals and families that were impacted by vaccine injuries, and they going to expose the shocking realities the mainstream media will never tell you.
Joni introduced her guests, Dr. Brian Hooker and Polly Tommey.
Joni described this as “one of the most controversial topics of our time, vaccines.”
Joni showed the trailer forVaxxed 3which had multiple examples of people who were injured by the COVID vaccine.
Dr. Hooker recounted the vaccine injury his son suffered as a child 25 years ago. His son was 15 months old and thriving, and after the three vaccines he received during a doctor visit, he had a fever and high pitch screaming. His fever lasted two weeks and afterwards he lost his 15 word vocabulary, couldn’t make eye contact, and suffered from severe bowel disease.
Brian began investigating vaccines back in 2001 and 2002 and discovered “the CDC was actively covering up the relationship between vaccines and autism.”
At that time he embarked on a twofold mission: to recover his son and warn others.
Note: No one can sue Pfizer or Moderna for a Covid vaccine injury. The companies are protected under an epidemic emergency use clause. You have to sue Uncle Sam in a special court called CICP. Just one letter off from CCCP and about as reasonable. Wayne Rohde explains some recent awards. Few and far between, not much of a retirement plan, and the cost is steep to the "winner."
The Counter Measures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) just released new data and statistics for the period ending Feb 1, 2025.
An eye popping damage award was included. $2.5 million for an injury as filed back in Sept 2023 claiming thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome.
There were 6 awards from the time period Dec 2, 2024 thru Feb 1, 2025. The other 5 damage awards fit the profile of past compensation for medical expenses incurred by the person which their medical insurance did not cover.
Let’s explore the award for TTS.
What is Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome?
According to MedSafe, “Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) is a new health condition. It was discovered after the start of COVID-19 immunization programs worldwide. TTS is different from the other blood clotting disorders described above. In TTS, blood clots and low platelet levels happen at the same time. The condition can be life threatening.”
A case report in NIH National Library of Medicine. Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), including vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), is an extremely rare adverse effect, mostly seen after initial vaccination with the viral vector-based AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine. It is characterized by mild to severe thrombocytopenia and venous or arterial thrombosis.
It appears from reading case reports, publications from several health organizations around the world, TTS is associated with COVID vaccines, namely AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine and Janssen COVID-19 vaccines (J&J). It is unclear if Pfizer (Comirnaty) or Moderna (SpikeVax) vaccines have not been associated with TTS.
The CICP only compensates for unreimbursed medical expenses or repayment of medical liens, lost wages capped at $50K per year or the a death benefit as determined by the PSOB. If the petition was filed in Sept 2023 and the death benefit would have been capped at $422,035 for any death occurrences in FY 2023 or $389,825 for FY 2022.
No pain and suffering compensation.
I believe it is safe to assume that this award, the majority of it or its entirety is for some form of medical expense reimbursement.
I’m taking a course on classroom management for a certification I’m working on. Most of the course content is information that I already know. It’s pretty self-explanatory, too. If a student’s behavior interferes with their studies, then they might not readily gain knowledge they need to advance in their studies. One concept was new to me, though, and that was it’s not just the student who could fuel the negative actions in a classroom; a teacher’s behavior can create a discipline problem, too.
When reading case studies about educators who negatively contributed to their classrooms with behaviors that turned into misbehaviors, I could immediately think of a few real examples from my time in the classroom. Instead of creating a warm, welcoming, safe environment where students learn and grow, these teachers created a mismanaged, unwelcoming environment. Learning didn’t happen well because their students were more rambunctious and easily directed. That made redirecting them to stay on task more difficult. It’s not a new concept, but I just hadn’t read about it in a textbook before.
Something else I knew already that one of my lessons covered was that a teacher, especially those who teach the youngest learners, must be present with their students for their students. Distractions happen, but in order to teach well, a teacher must be alert at all times. That means teachers need to leave their emotions at the door and put children’s needs first. That means following an appropriate routine, and also following through with consequences, with as much fidelity as possible.
Basically, if the teacher does a good job, then the students can do a good job, too.
I had another post about the measles started for this weekend until I recalled that concept. I didn’t want my post to be a repeat of what we’ve written about back in 2015 when measles news was making the rounds. But then, when I sat down to continue what I’d started, I didn’t want to write so much about the parents and the children who are being subjected to classic fear mongering that comes with news stories like we’re currently reading. So, I asked myself what angle could I use this time? Well, if the news and if doctors would tell the whole story, and not cherry-pick the scary parts, then the public wouldn’t need to be alarmed as much as they are.
If this, then that. If I applied it to the latest measles news, like I do with students’ behavior, I might say something like…
Isaiah Trammell, a 19-year-old with autism spectrum disorder spent 10 harrowing hours in an Ohio jail before he died. His mother, tells his story. From The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus Ohio.
Inside the Montgomery County Jail, guards taunted, belittled and threatened Isaiah Trammell, a 19-year-old who had autism spectrum disorder.
Deputies on the overnight shift told Trammell he was "ridiculous," "embarrassing" and "acting like an ass," surveillance video shows. Officers strapped Trammell into a restraint chair two separate times and threatened more time in the chair if he didn’t calm down.
Activists call for investigation of Montgomery County Jail after newspapers' special report on death of Isaiah Trammell
Trammell couldn’t calm himself. He banged his head on the cell door, howled and repeatedly screamed “Let me out!”
Head-banging or other self-injury behaviors are more prevalent among people with autism. For Trammell, it was a dangerous coping mechanism that he continued during his brief time in jail.
“You remember how that restraint chair felt? Remember what the sergeant said? You're gonna go in for 10 hours next time you go in there. You want to do that?" one officer told Trammell, hours after he had been released from the chair the first time.
During the 15 minute clip, Kennedy outlined his vision for HHS.
Laura asked him why he talked about prayer at his swearing in ceremony in the Oval Office.
Kennedy;
We’re not just in a health crisis, but we’re in a spiritual crisis. And those things are connected.
Kennedy said Americans have feelings of being alienated and dispossessed. He called this an “existential crisis” for young people.
Seventy-seven percent of our kids can’t qualify for military service. There’s a purposelessness in their lives and no sense of usefulness or effectiveness or connectedness to their communities.
And that drives also the chronic disease epidemic and the epidemic we’re seeing of depression, of suicide, of alcoholism, of drug addiction. I think we have to address all of those things at the same time.
Kennedy called for a change in outlook.
We need to get up in the morning and not think about, what am I going to do to make myself happy today? We have to get up and say, what am I going to do to make myself useful today? . . .
And that paradoxically is ultimately the path to happiness, that connectedness from doing good things, from being of service to others.
Kennedy talked about his experience with addiction and recovery and the need for a spiritual component in life.
Better than staying quiet in the face of discrimination. I don't care if Barney the Dinosaur shows up at my front door singing his theme. If he uses the R word, I will call him out.
Ask Kat Von D. Back in 2013, I raised holy hell about a Sephora lipstick from her makeup line called "Celebutard." The lipstick was pulled from the shelves. (I was an early adopter of cancel culture.) Most of my contributions to HuffPost are long gone - because they mentioned vaccines. But this gem remains.