Age of Autism provides daily insights into the autism epidemic. Part of the Autism Age 501c3 non-profit organization. For more than 15 years, AofA has been a lone voice discussing even the most controversial subjects - because THAT'S what journalists do. Freedom of speech is alive and well here. Join us. And please support us with a donation when you can. Thank you.
Every so often, I get a returned Tweet on my Kim Rossi Twitter account from an outraged autist (self-described) telling me that I shouldn't proclaim that all people with autism (my description) are non-verbal. I’ve never said any such thing. I don't use that account much any longer. Our Age of Autism Twitter account has over 36,000 followers - but we get few retweets because Twitter has tamped us down, and as of the last 2 months, slapped a warning label on every Tweet that has a photo or a URL link. But the news was abuzz this week as Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. Can Musk help return open discourse and free speech? He says he will. But will he include "us?"
Elon Musk Offers $43 Billion in Cash to Buy Twitter in Bid to ‘Save Free Speech’
The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, Wednesday offered $43 billion — cash — to buy Twitter so he can “unlock” its “potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” Read the full article at Children's Health Defense.
Note: Many times I have thought about what would have happened to my daughters if they were in hiding in Europe during World War II. I know the answer. They'd have been thrown into the street to die, and the door slammed behind them. I'd have gone with them. Because of their autism, none of my daughters can be quiet. At least not on command and never for a prolonged period of time, except while sleeping. They have an array of stims, scripts, songs, calendar comments, Nick Jr scheduling recitations, vocalizations and more. I call it "joyful noise." It's how we live. LOUD. Volume control is impossible. SHSHSHSH means nothing. Safeminds ran an article about The Brain Foundation's support for Ukraine to help families like mine, and maybe yours. ###
The Brain Foundation is Raising Money to Support Ukrainian Families Unable to Flee War Zone
According to European Disability Forum estimates, there are roughly 260,000 individuals with intellectual disabilities, including autism in Ukraine. Approximately 30,000 of these individuals are in residential care homes. While women and children received priority evacuation from Ukraine at the beginning of the war, individuals with disabilities did not receive that same priority, despite the fact that both Ukraine and Russia ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. For many people with autism or with intellectual disabilities, waiting hours in crowded train stations or coping with a packed train filled with hundreds of people cannot be tolerated. These tragic circumstances have left many in this vulnerable population trapped in Ukraine. Tragically, those left behind are now experiencing shortages of food, hygiene products, and medications. Many living in residential care homes no longer have support staff, as most staffers have already evacuated to safer countries. To help with this incredibly desperate situation, The Brain Foundation has made a heartbreaking video depicting one desperate Ukrainian family’s current situation.
The video was shot in Kyiv and raises awareness of the crisis special needs families are experiencing while spending their days living in bomb shelters and dealing with a completely disrupted routine. However, most importantly, The Brain Foundation is currently collecting funds to be sent to the VGO Coalition, a network of 118 Ukrainian local non-governmental organizations for persons with intellectual disabilities. The coalition represents close to 14,000 Ukrainian families. These funds will be used to obtain food, hygiene supplies, medication, and pay for accessibility supports and personal assistance. The Brain Foundation pledges that 100% of the collected funds will go directly to the VGO Coalition.
Those who sugarcoat history are doomed to repeat it, and children will die. Autism, wandering and drowning are the tragedy of the diagnosis. A diagnosis that has been whitewashed and the public brainwashed into thinking it is something much more benign than the reality. Not every person with autism, or autist, is severely affected or impaired. Not every person with autism, or autistic, is non-speaking and without a natural instinct to return home or a sense of self-preservation. Not every person with autism, or neurodivergent, is riddled with sleep, GI and seizure issues. Not every person with autism, or #actuallyautistic will face a life of rape, beatings, seclusion, restraint and exclusion from society.
Those who have DSM-V autism, diagnosed as a child likely will. God bless this, and every person with autism, who drowns. We are so sorry.
A massive search for a 4-year-old ended in tragedy Tuesday morning when the boy’s body was pulled from a pond behind a DeKalb County apartment building.
DeKalb police asked for the public’s help to locate Kyuss Williams after he wandered away from his family’s home in the East Ponce Village Apartments off Juliette Road around 6:30 p.m. Monday. They called off the search eight hours later when his body was recovered from the community’s retention pond.
My stories from Loss of Brain Trust last week only confirm what we all know, namely that the number of disabled kids will continue to flood schools, both here and abroad, and the people in charge will not ask why it’s happening.
Over and over we’re told that increases are real. No one bothers to promote the tired line of “better diagnosing/greater awareness” that’s been around for the last 20 years. Instead, no explanation is given.
Bangor, ME: A new autism therapy center opens.
Steinburg said the demand for autism treatment services is only growing, and the new clinic meets the needs of Greater Bangor. …
Philadelphia, PA: Autism researcher calls for more and improved services for autistic children.
…That’s because, since the turn of the millennium, the prevalence rate of autism increased by 200%. And Miller pointed out that now, the number of children who need to be evaluated for the disorder is “incredibly high” compared to the number of professionals who have experience with it.
But long waitlists are an issue for patients since a formal diagnosis is key to accessing autism services.
“When autism was rare, a lot of systems were put in place to make sure that the person really had autism before you offered or provided really extensive or expensive interventions,” said Miller.
Regional autism provider addresses a growing need for services, adding treatment facilities in Philadelphia, Bucks County
NeurAbilities Healthcare will open treatment centers in Northeast Philadelphia and Hatboro/ Warminster Township in April, and in Center City Philadelphia in July. The nationally accredited, Voorhees-based practice launched a major expansion in 2020, adding five sites over the past two years. With its latest additions, NeurAbilities will operate a total of 12 facilities: four in New Jersey and eight in Pennsylvania….
“Many children in the Greater Philadelphia region are in need of diagnostic evaluations, treatment or both, and many remain on waiting lists.
Mississippi: 6 counties will be holding free autism screenings on April 25th.
Derbyshire, UK: More funding for “underperforming” school system.
Last week, the Government also released the SEND review green paper, which outlines a need to simplify processes surrounding special educational needs and alternative provision.
Coun Dale said: “What we’re proposing to do is invest more in increasing places at existing special schools in particular with a focus on autism, because that’s where we recognise there isn’t a huge attention at the moment and more and more kids getting a diagnosis.”
I recently added the BRAVE browser to my phone, along with Duck Duck Go and Google.
Brave asked me to share a message that I am a user - and so I shared it to Twitter. Twitter slaps a "SENSITIVE CONTENT" warning on every Tweet that includes a photo or a live link. I've taken to writing a sentence to describe a Tweet and then follow up with the Tweet that has the link. Even our daily Tweets directly from the blog platform are covered by the content warning.
I am hoping that Elon Musk jumping onto the Twitter board will beam a crack in the darkness of censorship. It's Autism Action, Awareness, Acceptance, Agita month, and we should be able to Tweet to our readers without this discrimination.
Oh the irony. We exist as a site because of a social and communication disorder. You can now find us on a site called…. Gab. Follow us at gab.com/ageofautism.
I may not always feel strong enough for a lot of what I’ve had to handle, but God’s timing on my journey here is absolutely perfect. In a moment, especially a frustrating moment, I sometimes may not realize that perfect timing right away. But blessings have a way of finding us. They did years ago when I found this community. They do even now. I never take any of the gifts my family has received, be they spiritual or otherwise, for granted. I found that to be true again when an unexpected blessing came my way last week. An unexpected phone call. That unexpected blessing. Followed by an unexpected wave of emotions. It was something to be thankful for once more.
If I had to describe it, it wasn’t just a blessing. It was also autism action in action.
I’d planned to write about autism action for this weekend already. I wanted to reshare a post I’d written back in 2014. It was inspired by people who’d helped us because they’d heard that the autism we lived wasn’t like what was being portrayed in cheery news stories. The news stories showcased only positive outcomes; they rarely – if ever, shed light on the kids who wouldn’t grow into independent adults. People who knew us knew that my son’s diagnosis paled in comparison to those featured, and they wanted to do something to help me help him. They wanted to help me help my other kids as well. The assistance wasn’t just physical assistance, like shuttling my typical children to their typical activities; it was also spiritual and emotional assistance being offered to me and my entire family.
It’s a very humbling experience to be on the receiving end of that kind of support.
This year, I’m finding that I need more support than previous years. For so long, I’d been able to be the helper for others. As the helpee I have been quick to say yes when someone asks, Hey, Cathy, do you need anything right now? “Ohmygosh, YES! I do,” I’ll say. Friends and those who personally know our story have been so very generous with us, and I don’t mean financially, although those gifts have always been a Godsend. Other gifts are ones that have promoted autism action, like when people checked in to see if Ronan is okay after they’ve heard he’s had a rough day. They check to make sure I am okay, too. They’ve asked if I’m sleeping well, if I need a meal delivered, or if they can drop off some groceries to us. Some still ask if they can pick up my typical kids from their typical activities while I tend to Ronan. He isn’t as busy as he was when he was in all sorts of therapy, but his health is still a concern.
Word is there is/was a new billboard in the middle of the Big Apple. Who could have placed this billboard in Times Square, New York City?
We are in the eye of the Covidcane. Don't think for minute that restrictions, mandates or protocols have gone away. The President announced he'd had his "second" booster at the end of March. That's what they call the 4th dose now. A second booster. He has had 4 doses in 16 months.
I recently looked a new day program in the area. At the top of the list was the Covid vaccine requirement for staff and attendees. The first information provided.
Buy The Real Anthony Fauci for a friend or relative.Slip it into a local Little Free Library. Call it guerilla literacy. The hardcover is only $20 and the Kindle version is just $2.99. It's not free, like the Covid vaccine, but hey....
"As I was walkin' down the street one day...." It's April and precious little has changed, except for words & definitions and interpretations, and while sticks and stones might break out bones, words don't do much good at all.
By Anne Dachel
Is anything going right for kids with disabilities? It seems that special education is a lost cause, especially in schools in Britain.
The proof can be easily seen in the thousands of stories on LossOfBrainTrust.
Over the past five years I’ve compiled evidence of a massive and unrelenting decline in education standards and special needs services in the U.K. Billions of pounds have gone in the system, but it’s never enough.
A “long-awaited” special education reform plan, commissioned in 2019, has just been released, and it was immediately slammed as inadequate, despite appropriating $12B more for high needs students and another $3.4B to add more special needs places in mainstream and special schools.
In addition, the plan will train 5.000 more teachers to do early intervention, and it allocates $13M to train over 200 more educational psychologists starting next year.
A BBC report declared, ‘The system is broken,’ and with never-ending increases in the number of disabled students, it can’t be fixed.
Last year, 1.4 million pupils in England were identified as having special educational needs - the proportion has been growing since 2017.
Local counties are going broke providing for special needs students. Budgets are heavily in the red all over England.
The Evening Standard summed things up this way:
Teachers and parents today made an urgent call for more money to help fix the “broken” special educational needs system, as the government launched its plan for the future of the provision.
In a long-awaited review of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), the government said it will overhaul the system so children receive better help at school from an earlier stage, and includes plans to digitise paperwork.
But school leaders said the pandemic has caused a “staggering” increase in the number of children needing help, and more money is needed to tackle long waiting lists for services such as speech and language therapy and mental health….
Under the new reform plan, school systems are required to mainstream more disabled kids.
Councils would be legally required to set up “local inclusion plans” which would bring education and health services together, and make providers’ responsibilities clearer.
Councils would also have a new national framework to simplify funding for pupils and young people with SEND up to the age of 25.
The paper also proposes that mainstream schools need to become more inclusive and identify SEND needs earlier to improve support.
Local councils will receive funding IF they make significant changes to how they handle special education.
Surrey is a good example of the changes the national government wants to see.
Surrey County Council is to get a £100million government bailout in exchange for reforming its special educational needs provision. The council has overspent on its special educational needs and disabilities (Send) budget by a total of £118.4m [$155M] - higher than expected, with a £34.5 million [$45M] overspend in the year 2020/21 alone….
…the authority must improve the skills and capacity of staff in mainstream schools to support children with Send. The DfE said this was to “reduce the escalation of need and push to move from mainstream to specialist provision". A principle set out in its Send green paper out today (March 29) is that mainstream schools need to become more inclusive.
Councillor Jonathan Essex, who sits on Surrey's children select committee, said the need for a bailout shows "outsourcing is not the way to go". He said the council's deficit came about because the council did not provide maintained specialist places soon enough, instead having to fork out for more expensive private placements and the associated out of county transport.
Meanwhile the stories of neglect continue.
A 4 year old in England has been at home for the past 5 months after being permanently excluded due to violent behavior toward staff and other children. His mother is waiting for an autism diagnosis.
In East Sussex an autistic 7 year old has run away from school 82 times in 15 months, as reported in a piece that painted a dismal picture of handling special education in England
But if a child with SEN requires extra support costing £10,000 [$13,000] or more, an EHCP is required, so it can help identify and support a child’s educational, health and social needs.
For the academic year 2020/21, 325,600 pupils in England had an EHCP – up more than 30,000 from the previous year. But obtaining an EHCP is often easier said than done. I
In January 2021, according to support group Special Needs Jungle, 5,600 children and young people with EHCPs were listed as ‘awaiting provision’, with some waiting months, even years, to get the education that they are entitled to.
One parent summed it up this way: ‘The whole system is rotten.’
In Hampshire County, special ed numbers have more than doubled in six years, and special needs places are in ‘high demand.’
A story from Warwickshire in central England had this to say about how bad things are for kids needing help.
Figures acquired under the Freedom of Information Act show that 2,835 autistic children referrals at Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust have still not had a first appointment an average of 88 weeks after being referred. The longest wait at the time the response was sent in January stood at 251 weeks – nearly five years.
Meanwhile, 1,250 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) referrals at the trust have yet to have a first appointment, having waited an average of 46 weeks – and 195 weeks in the worst case. Berkshire Healthcare NHS Trust has 2,801 autistic children referrals still awaiting their first appointment after 60 weeks on average.
Among the 2,443 children with ADHD referrals – who have waited an average of 87 weeks for a first appointment – the longest wait stands at 193 weeks or nearly four years.
The local government try to assure people things will improve.
A spokesman for Coventry and Warwickshire CCG said: “We acknowledge that our waiting times, particularly for autism and ADHD assessments, are longer than we want. We are investing £5.4m [$7.1M] in additional diagnostic capacity.”…
Despite the unexplained, unstoppable presence of autism in schools across the U.K., members of the media, officials and educators are also calling on the public to “celebrate” “World Autism Acceptance Day” as we’re told in a number of stories.
The message to the public is clear, no matter how often you hear about the cost and increases surrounding autism, it’s really nothing to worry about.
There’s one side note from the U.S. that signaled there might be a problem here. A piece from PBS/NPR covered the fact that there are lots of kids in America who are on waiting lists, just like in Britain, for an autism diagnosis. And we’re further told that even after a diagnosis, a child might wait months or even longer for actual treatment. Medicaid is unreliable and many families don’t have insurance.
This, of course, is the future. Waiting lists and delays because there are just too many kids that no one can reasonably explain.
The consultation closes 11.59pm UK time April 7. Submissions can be made until that time here. These are the substantive points I have made to the inquiry on behalf of Age of Autism on their questionnaire.
Please explain why you think the draft Terms of Reference do not cover all the areas that the Inquiry should address.
Insufficient focus on transparency and openness of decision making, suspension of ordinary human rights, free speech and civil liberties, the creation of an atmosphere of coercion over many matters, cronyism: the apparent wilful destruction of ordinary civil society and its economy
Which issues or topics do you think the Inquiry should look at first?
Why nothing was quite what it seemed
Why we were ill-prepared in terms of hospital capacity, supplies
Why we ignored pandemic protocols apparently already in place
Why we accepted the word of Chinese officials about the genetic sequence of the virus, and why so many vaccine designers/companies were instantly confident of the products they were designing
Why we suppressed evidence - now widely accepted - of escape from the Wuhan lab
Why we gaslighted conventional interventions - disregarding doctors already skilled at treating respiratory viruses - and made a break-neck dash for so called “vaccines” with novel technologies
Why we discouraged healthy lifestyles, side-lined issues such as Vitamin D deficiency which has previously been routinely treated by doctors
Why there was widespread use of midazolam
Why a horrendously expensive drug Remdesivir, without any track record, was preferred to well establish safe products like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin
How the Coronavirus Act legislation comprising hundreds of pages (and similar to legislation in other countries) appeared from nowhere
How cronyism was allowed to proliferate at unprecedented levels in government
Why informed public discussion was restricted on mainstream and social media including many highly qualified voices - why public money was used to promote certain views and suppress others
Why the seriousness of Covid was actually downgraded by the CMOs immediately prior to the first lockdown
Why so many un-evidenced measures restricting freedom of movement and normal behaviour were introduced, heightening fears, while not being taken seriously by government ministers and high-ranking officials
Why people were left to isolate indefinitely and die alone
Why masks were introduced despite there not being “strong evidence” according deputy CMO Jenny Harries
Why normal ethics, the Nuremberg Code, informed consent were abandoned for injections which had limited trial data, less than complete information about ingredients, hidden contracts etc, amid an atmosphere of gaslighting, bullying and restrictions on those who were not compliant - why the issue of vaccine compliance became conflated with the official ID agenda of the United Nation, organisations such as the World Economic Forum (endorsed by the Prince of Wales on a government website), which has never been discussed with the British electorate
TACA's Autism Action Month Conference is an entirely new offering for TACA families. This virtual opportunity will include presentations from experts, followed up with “take action workshops,” to help families implement what they learn. On the TACA Connect platform, families will be able to access resources, download presentation slides, and interact with other families going through the autism journey. Walk away with bite-sized action steps, a plan for your children, and the empowerment to act with confidence.
TACA's Autism Action Month Conference will feature 2 tracks of presentations from an incredible line-up of experts, covering all stages and aspects of the autism journey, including:
Featuring 2 tracks Challening Behaviors IEPs and Advocacy Complex Medical Issues Therapies Legal Planning Research Life After High School Communication & AAC
You’ll come away from the conference with new information, strategies, and resources to help maximize your child’s potential and improve their quality of life. Click HERE to learn much more!
"We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes." Dr. Eric Rubin Member, FDA VRBPAC - one of the guys who decides what vaccines your child needs to participate in life.
Just the way it goes. The way the ball bounces. The way the cookie crumbles. The way the chips fall. La de dah. It's just your children's future.
Imagine if the PARENTS ARE WATCHING PROTECT THE KIDS campaign had existed 20 or more years ago. I might be running a blog on early retirement for the wealthy. Hindsight is 20/20. Foresight is moving with alacrity and action to prevent another kind of severe injury to children. We faced autism. Today's under-informed parents face autism plus a host of insidious complications. Some folks might say, "Hey, let them find out the hard way, like we did." We can not allow that to happen. Better to be deplatformed, banned and censored than to go to sleep at night knowing our neighbors and friends needed help and we stood by with our arms crossing our chests saying "That's just the way it goes."
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From Children's Health Defense
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) wants to grant Emergency Use Authorization to Pfizer’s BioNTech vaccine for babies aged 6 months and children up to 5 years old, despite the lack of safety and efficacy to support its use. The only thing standing in their way are concerned parents, grandparents and citizens. Parents are watching, and it is our duty to protect the children.
Click here to send an email to EVERY decision maker in LESS THAN 60 SECONDS!
How is it even possible that Pfizer is pursuing FDA authorization and approval to inject even more children with this “poison death shot” as Dr. Vladimir Zelenko calls the COVID-19 shots? They are currently planning on injecting babies 6-months through 4-years with this highly experimental technology, for which we have NO long-term safety data and plenty of short-term damage and horror stories, for children that have virtually zero risk of COVID death or disability.
The U.S. has about 73.4 million people from age 0-17. Want to guess how many have died of COVID? CDC reports a total of 1112 as of 3/26/22! While any child death is a tragedy, 1112 children is 0.0015% of our kids—a statistical zero. Multiple researchers report that no healthy kids were among those who died of COVID. Those deaths were children with serious co-morbidities, and some of those deaths may have been WITH COVID rather than FROM it.
The pharmaceutical industry greatly profits by these liability-free, taxpayer-funded vaccines, especially for COVID-19, given their hope to use them repeatedly, and possibly annually, on the entire 7.8 billion population of earth! This appears to explain the aggressive suppression of treatment of any sort, as an emergency use authorization (EUA) cannot legally be granted unless there are no reasonable treatment options.
Dr. Peter McCullough, MD, MPH and has estimated that 85% of COVID deaths could have been prevented had this truthful information been promoted instead of censored by the powers-that-be and their lackies in the media. This attempted pharmaceutical capture of mankind represents the greatest crime against humanity in the entirety of world history.
Dr. Rogers shocks the senses in sharing, “Even though Pfizer’s clinical trials of the genetically modified mRNA shot have already failed twice in this age group, Pfizer is planning to submit another application for Emergency Use Authorization…” WHAT?...you may ask? How is this possible?
I had forgotten about this image that I found in my writing files last week. Made by a good friend several years ago, I hadn't seen it in a long time. I hadn't read the piece that inspired my friend to make the image in a long time either. I'm glad to share it here. I had a few ideas about what to write as we began another month of April, but nothing sounded exactly right for today. That image, as simple as it is, said it all.
Hope Now.
Help Now.
Act Now.
If you've been reading my writing for any length of time, you'll recognize that hoping, helping, and acting are running themes of many of my stories about our personal experiences. Some days I veer from that norm. Even when I share what happened on a really rough day, though, or when I recall a cry-my-eyes-out memory, I try to add an element of hope.
Actor Bruce Willis' daughter announced his retirement due to what reports indicate was a culmination of cognitive decline and now, aphasia. Like many, my first thought was "Oh no, I love Bruce Willis, how awful, I need to know more."
APHASIA: A language disorder that affects a person's ability to communicate.
It can occur suddenly after a stroke or head injury, or develop slowly from a growing brain tumor or disease. Aphasia affects a person's ability to express and understand written and spoken language. Once the underlying cause is treated, the main treatment for aphasia is speech therapy.
I remember the young, fast talking Bruce Willis of Moonlighting, decades ago. I hated to read of his plight. We of all people know about lack of ability to communicate. We know about regression into non-speaking. It's a horror. I also went into territory most Americans don't even consider. Does the Covid vaccine have aphasia listed as an adverse effect? I did a quick Brave search (No more Duck Duck Go or Google) the first hit was a case of a man who developed aphasia after his 2nd dose of an mRNA vaccine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34192245/
Then I went to OpenVaers.com and found 2,646 reports of Covid vaccine adverse events that include Aphasia.
We MUST be able to ask questions. Consumers have a right to know that this side effect exists for this diagnosis they have never heard of. We used to call that "informed" consent" before the Covid vaccine became a badge of honor or the lack of it became a of a mark of shame and societal exclusion. Our President said he was losing patience with the unvaccinated. He said the unvaccinated faced a winter of “severe illness and death.” Harsh words. Dark admonitions. President Zelinsky hasn't been so blunt and cruel to his Ukrainian population. But bombs don't carry the same global health weight as vaccination uptake. Maybe Bruce Willis' terrible situation can help educate people not only on the definition of Aphasia, but one way it can be thrust upon you, beyond an unforeseen stroke or head injury out of the blue. No matter how Willis lost his way into dementia and lack of communication.
Correlation does not mean causation, as we have had jammed down our throats for decades. Still, take note of the wording below regarding adverse effects, "though rare" and yet, "increasingly reported." 2, 646 increasingly reported to date. How can something be "rare" and "increasingly reported?"
Aphasia seven days after second dose of an mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine
Objectives: Though rare, neurological side effects of SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations are increasingly reported. Even if the first dosage goes uncomplicated, the second dose may be complicated by severe adverse reactions as in the following case.
Case report: A 52yo male developed sudden-onset reading difficulty and aphasia 7d after the second dose of an mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. He had a previous history of myocardial infarction, arterial hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and nephrolithiasis. Blood pressure was slightly elevated on admission. Blood tests revealed mildly elevated D-dimer, pre-diabetes and hyperuricemia. Cerebral magnetic resonance imaging revealed an intracerebral bleeding (ICB) in the left temporal lobe. Aphasia resolved almost completely within a few days. Blood pressure values were normal throughout hospitalisation. Whether there was a causal relation between the ICB and the vaccination remains speculative but cannot be definitively excluded.
Conclusions: A second dose of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination may be followed by ICB. Though the pathophysiology of ICB remains unexplained a causal relation between ICB and the vaccination cannot be excluded. Risk factors for ICB should be carefully monitored in patients undergoing SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.
I saw this T shirt in the Men's department at WalMart. Autism Awareness has become a joke of cheap, China made T-shirts that belittle the reality of the diagnosis from the most profound non-speaking person to the guy or gal who can not find a job or a lover or friends. Everyone suffers, even the #ActuallyAutistic "Nothing about us without us" crowd.
Is your loved one dancing to a different beat? Waltz? Samba? Hip Hop? Disco? Which beat does your funky giraffe like best? In my house, my 27 year old likes the Sesame Street beat, circa 1997. My 25 year old likes the Nick Jr beat. And my 21 year old likes the beat that Mardi Gras beads make as she shakes them over and over.
Having seen the world plunged into something a lot like autism in the last two years, my faith in real change from the top is long gone. Autism is so 2010, it's passe. There's a new kid in town. The department of Health and Human Services flew a purplish flag supporting trans teens this week.
Parents are going to have to dig back into the well of creativity and hard work to craft an adult life for our kids. I'd better get busy, I have a lot to do before I dance off to my grave.
April. A token mention of the nifty difference. While families stagger under the responsibility & lack of services & individuals languish, surrounded by Fools.
Have you planned your outfit for the first day of autism denial & cover up month?? Empty platitudes & false cheer makes a lovely ensemble. Hold your nose, here it comes. Like coming home to the smell of a delicious, warm, gooey cinnamon roll - and you find out it’s just a candle. There’s light, but nothing to eat.
In the U.K. stories now repeatedly tell us that April is “Autism Acceptance Month.” I’m sure that will be happening in the U.S. as well. It makes sense since there is no talk about actually addressing why so many children have autism and reducing the rate. We’re continually told that the rate will continue to increase. I suppose there’s nothing else to do but keep on paying and building.
Here are some highlights from the past week news coverage from Loss of Brain Trust.
Hackney:Hackney Council has committed to investing £1 million [$1.3M] into creating nearly 100 new classroom places - including a state-of-the-art new building - for young people with high needs at four potential sites in the borough this year. …
It marks an ongoing period of dedicated local investment in special educational needs and disability (SEND) provision, following a 49% increase over the last five years in the number of children locally identified as needing specialist support.
Northamptonshire:Northamptonshire Police and Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service have released a short series of films to coincide with Neurodiversity Celebration Week which runs from 21-27 March.
Dorchester: School children have been quizzing adults on their experiences with neurological conditions like ADHD and Autism. It's part of Neurodiversity Celebration Week at Prince of Wales First School.
Glastonbury: The council has been seeking a more central base for these services in the Mendip area, arguing the Frome centre can no longer meet pupils’ needs and that Glastonbury represents a better, more central location….
Reprinted with permission from the author, Tony Lyons. The article ran this week as a guest editorial on Dr. Robert Malone's Substack.
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Guest Editorial
The New York Times, a bastion of censorship and corruption, warns the world that “America Has a Free Speech Problem.”
By Tony Lyons, President, Skyhorse Publishing
In a bold but clearly disingenuous statement from its famed Editorial Board, “a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate, and certain longstanding values,” the New York Times issued a cautionary statement:
“For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.”
The Editorial Board pounded the point home:
“People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes, and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through—all without fearing cancellation…Freedom of speech requires not just a commitment to openness and tolerance in the abstract. It demands conscientiousness…We believe it isn’t enough for Americans to just believe in the rights of others to speak freely; they should also find ways to actively support and protect those rights.”
Of course, the New York Times should be teaching by example. In fact, it has not supported free speech, protected the First Amendment, or allowed honest debate. It has not allowed competing perspectives about the most important issues of the day. It has been a mouthpiece for greedy corporations and corrupt government officials.
In support of their interests, and at the expense of those of American citizens, it censored The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in every conceivable way. It ranked the book #7 on its non-fiction bestseller list even though Kennedy’s book outsold any other book in America that week by thousands of copies. Then it refused to allow Skyhorse Publishing to place an advertisement for the book because it’s censorship division, ironically called “Standards Management,” decided that the book itself constituted misinformation, despite their stated policy that “Standards” only looks into whether an ad itself is “non-defamatory and accurate.”
The New York Times followed up with a scathing hit piece targeting Kennedy as “a leading voice in the campaign to discredit coronavirus vaccines and other measures being advanced by the Biden White House to battle a pandemic that was…killing close to 1,900 people a day.” It accused him of circulating “false information,” without indicating what that information is or explaining why it’s false, and of comparing the government pandemic response to the Holocaust, even though he clearly didn’t do that.
Thanks to Laura Hayes for sharing this video featuring Leslie Manookian speaking at the Weston Price Foundation Wise Traditions 2021 event about the state of politics, vaccine passports, medicine, digital id coordination, social credit score and much more. There's a Q&A at the end. Leslie is Founder and President of the Health Freedom Defense fund.
In 2014, Leslie produced a movie called The Greater Good:THE GREATER GOOD is an award winning character-driven documentary that explores the cultural intersections where parenting meets modern medicine and individual rights collide with politics. The film offers parents, doctors and policy makers a safe space to speak openly, actively listen and learn from one another. Mixing verité footage, intimate interviews, 1950s-era government-produced movies and up-to-date TV news reporting, THE GREATER GOOD weaves together the stories of families whose lives have been forever changed by vaccination.
2014 is a lifetime ago for autism. Since then, there is no longer any sense of urgency or worry for the future of the thousands of young adults with severe autism who are or have have aged out of school, or their families. The focus is on acceptance and awareness of the special gifts, the difference. Can you imagine that? Spend a day in the home of many of our readers, and tell me that autism is a difference. We're about to hit April - and the nonsense will be blooming along with the daffodils.
Monday morning science, in the hope of preventing a family from Monday morning quarterbacking a decision.
Although symptoms were transient and most patients appeared to respond to treatment (soley with NSAIDS), we demonstrated persistence of abnormal findings on CMR at follow up in most patients, albeit with improvement in extent of LGE.
The presence of LGE is an indicator of cardiac injury and fibrosis and has been strongly associated with worse prognosis in patients with classical acute myocarditis.
Jenna Schauer, MD Sujatha Buddhe, MD, MS Avanti Gulhane, MD, DNB, FSCMR Sathish Mallenahalli Chikkabyrappa, MD Yuk Law, MD Michael A. Portman, MD Show all authors
“Mrs. Jameson,” a young girl said to me when I approached where she was playing, “When I do this (presses her shoulder), it hurts,” she shared.
“Well, don’t do that, silly goose,” I replied.
A few minutes later, a sinking feeling fell over me. It wasn’t just that her shoulder hurt; it was where she pressed on her shoulder that made me sigh a deep, heavy sigh. I didn’t know this little one too well, so I didn’t ask her why it hurt when she first mentioned it. I did have that opportunity later, though, to get the rest of the story.
“Oh, it’s because I got my flu shot yesterday,” she said.
Flu shot? Now? Why?? I wanted to ask. Since it’s none of my business, and because she was such a young child, I kept those questions to myself. I know the flu virus doesn’t care what time of year it is, but I thought it was rather late in the “flu season” to get the shot. What changed? She was not the only young person I’d recently learned had gotten it, so I tried to recall what I’d heard recently in flu shot news.
I gave up listening to the radio for Lent, so I’ve missed quite a bit of on-air news these last few weeks. I’m in the car a lot, which always provides ample opportunities for me to tune into all sorts of news and music channels. I remembered that right before I turned off the radio for 40 days, I started to hear chatter about the flu shot. “It’s not too late to talk to your doctor about getting the flu vaccine,” one of the talk radio hosts had pushed. I tend to turn the channel when the talking heads start talking about that stuff, so maybe I missed the latest flu shot roll out. Maybe I missed that the pharmaceutical companies were throwing ad dollars to the media hoping to play catch up with lost flu shot revenue. After all, covid had taken center stage and pushed the flu right off its pedestal. The flu all but disappeared last year. With the massive drop in cases being reported last year, maybe the need to promote flu shots also disappeared.
NEW YORK (AP) — February is usually the peak of flu season, with doctors’ offices and hospitals packed with suffering patients. But not this year. Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades.
Gone. Completely. Just like that! Too bad it didn’t last. It was nice to get a break from the constant advertising that happens each flu shot season. I didn’t miss those one-sided ads at all, but I did miss the reporting of how effective the powers that be claimed those shots were earlier this year. They’d be pretty effective! You’d be like a superhero if you got one, too.
As if orchestrated, the flu - and that money-making flu shot, came right back this year. Apparently, TV personalities and TV doctors joined in to do pharma’s bidding early on. It didn’t happen in this segment, but that TV doctor encouraged getting a covid and a flu shot at the same time. I’m not sure why he’d promote that when unbiased, long-term studies on combining those two liability-free products haven’t even had a chance to be done yet. I guess that’s part of the tactic of cheerily rolling out the vaccines hoping the public will roll up those sleeves of theirs. That aligns with the CDC’s claim that they work “…each year to increase the number of people who receive a flu vaccine and eliminate barriers to vaccination.” Like previous years, though, the vaccine effectiveness (VE) is questionable.
Today's post features 3 videos that feature Robert Kennedy Jr's author of the best seller that has never seen the day of light in mainstream channels - The Real Anthony Fauci. The videos are on Rumble - because, as you know, youTube and other media have been brutal in their crack down. The videos are on a program by Steve Bannon. Because, as you know, zero point zero mainstream media would touch this book. If that bothers you, we understand, and hope you'll still dig in to the information. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Covid has taken a back seat in the Trabant. We can't relax and assume the loss of medical choice and all that followed is over and done. It's not. This book is of paramount importance, because the information affects every single American and well, Earthling. You can purchase the book at Amazon or at your favorite book seller. The Kindle Edition is just $2.99 and the Kindle app is free to read on a Smart phone or tablet.
Jennifer Larson of The Holland Center, The Canary Party, and Health Choice has shared that her beloved son Cade has advanced cancer. Cade is 21, he has autism with a severe communication impairment, and has only recently had his world and his relationships open more broadly through the Spell to Communicate method, starting college classes last fall.
It has been a shock to learn that he has testicular non pure seminoma cancer that has advanced into his lungs and kidneys.
Yesterday Cade began recovering from surgery, and will begin chemo and alternative therapies today. Jennifer will be completely focused on him until until he is healed.
For more than a decade Jen has done selfless, intense, and impactful work on behalf of both our affected loved ones, and the entire medical freedom movement. Everything from providing individual treatment to children, to bringing members of Congress into our fold. Most of the work she does is out of the spotlight, and I can attest to the fact that everyone impacted by autism, vaccine injury, and vaccine mandates owe her more thank yous than they will ever know. We can pay her back now with loving, positive, and encouraging support by giving her the two things she has asked for:
Does anyone remember why Age of Autism was launched 15 years ago? Hint, it's in the title of Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill's book The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine and a Manmade Epidemic. Safeminds posted relevant research this week:
New research from Saudi Arabia has investigated the effects of methylmercury chloride (MeHgCl) exposure on BTBR mice. BTBR mice are an inbred mouse strain that exhibit core symptoms of autism-like behaviors. The authors of this new study hypothesized that MeHgCl exposure could be associated with further neurobehavioral and immune dysfunctions in BTBR mice due to their genetic susceptibility of behavioral and immune system abnormalities. To prove their hypothesis, the researchers split the BTBR mice into two groups. The first group served as the exposure group and was administered MeHgCl daily through a saline solution for 28 days. The second group served as the control arm and was given a solution composed of saline only for the same period of time. At the end of the experiment, the researchers observed that the exposed mice had increased stereotypical behaviors (marble burying, self-grooming), imparied social behaviors, as well as locomotor problems. Additionally, the team also found that the exposed rodents had increased the production of CD4+IFN-γ+, CD4+T-bet+, CCR9+T-bet+, CXCR5+IL-9+, CD4+IL-9+, CXCR6+IL-17A+, and CD4+IL-17A+ in the cells of their spleens, which demonstrates immune system imbalances. Furthermore, MeHgCl exposed mice had increased mRNA and protein levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines in their brains and blood serum. The control group mice did not exhibit any of these symptoms or outcomes. The study’s authors believe their findings suggest that MeHgCl exposure further causes neurobehavioral and immune dysfunction in a susceptible host such as the BTBR mice strain. Ultimately, the team feels their results could be used to design better therapies to counteract autism-associated social deficit and immune system dysfunction during MeHgCl exposure.
In refusing to run the advertisement, the New York Times responded, “The Times retains the right to decline an advertisement offered to us. This ad goes against our guidelines and as we cannot accept an ad that is misleading, false, or deceptive.”
The Times took issue with a blurb from Noble laureate, Dr. Luc Montagnier - “Tragically for humanity, there were many, many untruths emanating from Fauci and his minions. RFK junior exposes the decades of lies.”
Tony Lyons detailed the Times’ role in the campaign of suppression and censorship of The Real Anthony Fauci. Despite the campaign, the book which exposed the corrupt world around Fauci, became a nation-wide best seller.
Even in the face of establishment media censorship, the truth got out.
Many who visit the Age of Autism are keenly aware of the on-going censorship and suppression of those who criticize public health officials like Anthony Fauci or who criticize vaccines. The New York Times has been front and center in silencing those who question. For years, the Times has quashed the words of anyone who challenges the public health mantra that “Vaccines are safe and effective.” The Times has labeled those who question vaccines as “anti-science” and “conspiracy theorists.”
Silencing the words of and suppressing writing of a community of people who have the courage to challenge the Vaccinology hegemony pours salt on the wounds of those who have vaccine injured loved ones. It is shocking that a newspaper that was once a bastion of the Free Press now sees fit to engage in the raw censorship of the powerful writing and journalism that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered to the world in the Real Anthony Fauci.
The good news is that many other Americans are now also questioning Big Pharma’s Vaccinology belief system for the simple reason that millions took the COVID vaccines and got sick with COVID. Americans have realized that these vaccines, described as being “96% effective”, simply did not work.
Mandating an ineffective vaccine on millions of people will lead to one nasty public relations problem for the public health establishment and the propaganda apparatchiks who work for them in organizations like the New York Times.
Regarding censorship, Judy Blume once said, “It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship.”
I sincerely hope that people in the U.K. are not going to spend April telling us that we should celebrate and accept autism. From the stories I’m increasingly finding, autism is overwhelming county councils and schools there, and officials can’t keep up with the demand.
Here are just some of the reports on Loss of Brain Trust from the past week:
One opinion piece blamed parents for the special education crisis in Britain. It focused on the struggles parents have getting services, and it cited AUTISM as a big part of the problem.
As readers of my previous columns will be aware, the government has belatedly recognised that the current system is beset with problems. It is adversarial and confrontational and regularly leaves parents facing debilitating David and Goliath battles with their local councils over Education Health & Care Plans (EHCPs) for their children.
These matter. They outline a child or teenager’s educational, health, and social care needs, and set out what is required to meet them up to the age of 25. And they are legally binding – particularly important when some British institutions look for any excuses not to do their jobs.
The number of appeals against local authority decisions with respect to these are rising.
Moreover, parents are winning at an astonishing rate: more than 95 per cent per Ministry of Justice statistics….
You might think that an “independent” report would recognise what is glaringly obvious: losing at that rate demonstrates there is clearly something going badly wrong with local authorities’ decision making.
You might also think that an “independent” report would further recognise that one condition – autism – accounts for close to half of them, and would underline that. You would be wrong.
Here’s what the British government has failed to address:
Sounds like a melodrama from the 50s, yes? No. The New York Times, nicknamed The Old Gray Lady, turned down a full page ad for Skyhorse Publishing's book The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy, Jr. Below is a link to the story straight from the publisher Tony Lyons.
The NYT would not run an ad for a book, here in the United States of America. Let that sink in for a moment. We're sunk. Or are we? We can fight Goliath. And the Gray Lady. We can fight for our freedoms. Here's a quick way to help.
MAKE AND SHARE MEMES DIRECTLY FROM THE BOOK! Amazon creates a nice little ad with just a few taps. Send me your Meme at AutismAges@gmail.com and I'll share them too. You can use the memes as your social media cover page and profile picture to avoid being censored, at least for a while. Just keep changing them back and forth. They'll end up on your wall and people will see them. They're public. We need to keep the pressure up - Fauci is not going to let up on us, pharma is a greedy SOB that must be fed and fed and fed. We are in the eye of the storm. Hang on to your hat and make memes.
Highlight and Create a Meme!
1) Download the free Amazon Kindle App 2) Purchase The Real Anthony Fauci Kindle version for just $2.99 3) Highlight a passage 4) Create a meme from the passage (see photo instructions) 5) Share the meme!
Waving her off, I faked a smile and then quickly turned my head. Capturing the curiosity of a stranger, my heart sank. I'd just encouraged my typical children to go ahead of us into the chapel. Wishing I'd asked one of them to stay with me, Ronan and I were now in a standoff in a parking lot. It's not the first time he'd been there. But he was making every indication that he did not want to go again.
I whispered to Ronan, “Dude, it's just a few more steps. You can do it, I know you can.”
Turning my head back toward the lady who'd come to a complete stop in her car behind us, I politely waved her off. She was still trying to decide if I needed help or not, so I faked another big smile hoping she’d take it that we were okay. At the same time, Ronan took one tiny, willing step forward. Seeing him take that step must have reassured her because she zoomed away. I wish Ronan would've zoomed into the church where his younger sisters were waiting for us. But that one step was all he ended up taking.
Frustrated, I said, “Can you please go?”
Before Ronan could make any sort of response, good or otherwise, an usher left the narthex and walked toward us. Both doors that lead into the back of the church were wide open. He had a front row seat to the struggle I was praying would end. “Hey, can I help with anything?” he very politely asked. Normally, my other son helps walk Ronan in, but he'd gone to an earlier Mass. They effortlessly walk in together. They always make it to the pew. If Ronan shows any sort of hesitation, it’s brief because Willem turns up the encouragement which always results in a happy ending.
I was not the fun sibling though.
In that parking lot, I was the mean ol' mom who only made demands, demands that Ronan had no interest in. If that wasn’t bad enough, I now had a growing audience. I sheepishly smiled at the usher and said, “Well, he doesn't seem to want to go to church today." Nodding, he asked, "What can I do?" As much as I wanted to do this alone, I said, “This is Ronan, and if you could take his hand, maybe we can walk him in together." Without hesitation, the usher did exactly that. We were just a few steps from the doorway when the woman who'd seen us in the parking lot came walking quickly toward us.
"Is he okay? Are you okay??"
I was startled by her questions. I was okay, and my kid was just being stubborn, I wanted to share. I didn't say that, of course. The last thing I wanted to do was make it sound like Ronan was being obstinate. If he was typically developing, I would call his refusal to go in the building an obstinate behavior. But the developmental delays, the communication struggles, and the sensory overload is not obstinate at all.
As we careen toward April and the nonsense of "awareness" month, I wanted to share a tidbit from deep inside the life of those all too well aware. Us. See this Thermos brand straw cup? See that black "yuck" on a Q-Tip? That's the moldy, mildewy grossness that forms inside the straw attachment. I only fill that cup with water. Good old H2O. And yet, it get disgusting. Fast. Simple question number 54,567,579:
The war in Ukraine has overshadowed most else in the media. But yesterday, Dr. Fauci spoke out on the BA.2 variant of Covid and said "we" should be ready and willing to go back into the [dark, scared, distrustful] "mitigation" measures of the lockdown. One of my daughters' therapists works in Birth to Three services. She is overwhelmed with referrals of children who have fallen way behind in their development - even by the looser 2022 standards of pediatric milestones. A friend's child was uncertain about whether or not he wanted to take off his mask in school - it just felt safer to be hidden behind a mask. I've read of girls feeling "too ugly" to remove their masks with confidence. Businesses are barely getting back on their feet. And now inflation and energy prices are pummeling all of us again. And Dr. Fauci says we must be willing to go back to all of that - for.... what?
I want to remind readers that Robert Kennedy's Book The Real Anthony Fauci continues to be important. It has more than 14,000 reviews on Amazon - and 90% are 5 star. But let's face it, it's a DENSE book, jammed with information and not casual reading for most of us. Still, we owe it to our children, our family members, our colleagues and friends to READ IT and then pass it along to someone else. Fortunately, Dr. William Gaunt wrote a 4 part review that breaks down some of the highlights. Here are his summary points, the full review follows.
Review of Part 1
Regulatory agencies have been captured by the pharmaceutical industry they are supposed to regulate. The result is a relationship that greatly benefits Big Pharma and harms the public.
Safe, effective, and inexpensive medicines for early treatment of COVID-19 were and still are aggressively suppressed and made unavailable in the U.S. while several other countries are saving many lives using these same medicines. Why? Because these medicines (HCQ and IVM) would compete with COVID-19 vaccines and favored COVID medicines that generate big profits.
The deadly, expensive, and ineffective drug Remdesivir has been promoted as the favored COVID-19 treatment in hospitals.
VAERS is intentionally ineffective at identifying vaccine injuries and deaths. Efforts to improve VAERS have been blocked.
Fauci has been deeply involved in all of the above. It makes sense when we realize that his first priority is to do whatever is best for Big Pharma. More on this topic in Part 2.
Review of Part 2
Fauci’s NIAID ignores chronic allergic and autoimmune diseases which have greatly increased on his watch. (Vaccine ingredients cause many of these allergic and autoimmune diseases.)
Fauci’s main focus is developing and promoting very profitable drugs. He is Big Pharma’s BFF.
Incontrovertible evidence shows that vaccines were not responsible for the huge drop in mortality from infectious diseases.
Improvements in nutrition and sanitation caused infectious disease mortality rates to fall to near zero BEFORE most vaccines were introduced.
AZT is horrendously toxic, very expensive, and ineffective against AIDS.
Studies of inexpensive and highly effective medicines for AIDS and COVID-19 have been designed to fail. The results of these fraudulent studies are then used as justification for suppressing their use and making them unavailable to doctors and the public. What is a good word for deliberately denying life-saving medicines to sick people? Hint: It starts with an “m”.
These Are My Comments Reviewing Part 3:
Regarding the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, Kennedy wrote on page 178: “From the outset, I want to make clear that I take no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS.” He then covered in detail the scientific controversy surrounding this hypothesis. (I should have included this quote in Part 3.)
The evidence points to AIDS being multifactorial and not a simple matter of HIV being the only cause of AIDS.
Testing toxic drugs on thousands of orphans is morally wrong. Many of these children were seriously injured and some were killed. Dr. Fauci was in charge.
A deplorable part of science being used by Dr. Fauci and his researchers involves blatant cheating in order to get very toxic drugs approved. The trick is to get rid of the control group which gets a harmless placebo and replace it with a “control group” which gets something as toxic as the drug being tested. This will result in close to the same number of injuries and deaths in both groups and the researchers then claim that these injuries and deaths are not caused by the toxic drug being tested.
A major effort was made to discredit the science pointing to COVID-19 being a gain-of-function engineered virus that escaped from the Wuhan lab in China. Scientists who joined Dr. Fauci in this effort were richly rewarded with multi-million-dollar research grants.
It is totally unacceptable for any country to opt out of the COVID-19 vaccines. Several leaders of countries who tried to do this died suddenly and were replaced by new leaders who then welcomed these vaccines. (Important details can be found on page 308.)
This article will cover highlights from the first 100 pages of this 445-page book. Future articles will cover the rest. The plan is to list page numbers so those who have the book can read more about each nugget and look up the references if they want more information. My comments will appear in parenthesis.
An Author’s Take on Kennedy’s Book
Best-selling author James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency and several other books) describes The Real Anthony Fauci as “A massive book about Fauci’s unholy career at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a virtual prosecution manual, meticulously annotated, that will be used in countless lawsuits against Dr. Fauci, his colleagues who outlive him, and the many agencies and NGOs and perhaps in actual criminal trials of these well-known perps.” (Is this derogatory quote justified? Read on.)
Looking over the stories I’ve added in the last week, all I can think about is what I’ve long called “the really big lie about autism,” namely that all the kids on the spectrum are nothing new. They’ve always been here—we just called them something else.
That myth has been in circulation for the last twenty years, and true to the narrative, whenever the folks in Atlanta (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) get around to updating the autism rate, there’s never been a real increase.
“Better diagnosing”/”greater awareness”/”expanded definition” are always the explanations for more and more and more autism.
We once again prepare for April, Autism Awareness Month, and it’s time for the media to remind the public that autism is something we should celebrate. There will be calls for inclusion and acceptance and talk about neurodiversity.
All this flies in the face of reality when you look at the stories from the U.K. Even though officials still routinely tell us that they’re ‘excited’/‘delighted’/‘proud’ of the newest autism school or additional school places, they’ve got to be worried about the increases that never level off.
I would love to see a single reporter somewhere in the world bring up the obvious: When is this going to stop?
Is the rate of one in every 44 among U.S. children finally getting it right?
Or more specifically, what about one in 39 in North Carolina or one 36 in Minnesota or one in 35 in New Jersey or one in 26 in California or one in 22 in New York?
I just have to ask these things because no one else is. I guarantee that when we’re lighting up the world in blue next month, no one will bring up the uncomfortable questions.
One of the reasons I’ve compiled LossOfBrainTrust stories over the last five years is to show what officials and governments have long ignored. Something is terribly wrong with the health of our children, especially with their ability to learn, communicate and socialize.
Here’s a look at some of news over the last week. This will continue until special education takes over the schools.
Donna with Tanner's Dad Tim Welsh at an Autism One Conference
Below is a copy of a letter Ms. Knepple sent to President Biden after his State of the Union address. There are two industries that manufacture and sell products that are unavoidably unsafe, and that are shielded from product liability. Guns and the vaccine divisions of pharmaceutical companies. President Biden was wrong when he said only guns enjoy this shield. Donna's letter should go to every Senator and Congressperson in the United States of America.
###
Donna M. Knepple 6 XYZ Road, Upper XYZ, NY 12345
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL WITH RETURN RECEIPT
President Biden The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Biden:
I watched the State of the Union address and was in utter shock and disbelief when you said, "Look, repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can't be sued”. I would like to remind you that President Ronald Regan signed into law the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34) giving pharmaceutical vaccine manufacturers and doctors who administer vaccines complete legal liability protection from all vaccine injuries including death. The NCVIA’s purpose was to eliminate the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury claims to ensure a stable market supply of vaccines, and to provide cost-effective arbitration for vaccine injury claims as a result that stemmed from all the vaccine injuries and deaths caused by the Swine Flu X53A and DPT vaccines in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Do you not recall voting on this bill when you were in the Senate? Henceforth, the reason why vaccine manufacturers gave Congress an ultimatum for complete indemnification or no more vaccines. Due to this industry’s liability shield since 1986 the following examples depict why it is imperative to hold vaccine manufacturers liable again:
Centers for Disease Control (CDC)Simpsonwood Secret Meeting, June 7-8, 2000, held in Norcross, GA, re: Thimerosal in Vaccines; Dr. William Thompson, CDC Scientist Whistleblower, re: MMR and Autism, Dr. Frank DeStefano, Former Director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office; Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, Mercury and Autism; Dr. Julie Gerberding, Former Director; Dr. Anthony Fauci, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices(ACIP)
National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP)Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, Government Witness showed that VACCINES CAN CAUSE AUTISM as in the Hannah Poling case conceded in 2008; on Sept. 10, 2010 the story was leaked in the first ever VACCINE AUTISM CASE AWARD; Soon thereafter, 5000+ Autism Omnibus petitioners were dismissed with callous disregard.
Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) against U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), Case 1:18-cv-03215(JMF) Document 18, Filed 07/09/18; revealing THERE HAS BEEN NO QUALITY CONTROL OVER VACCINES MANUFACTURED BY PHARMA FOR AT LEAST 32 YEARS
Institute for Autism Science and the ICAN against Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Case 1:2019cv11947-LJL, Document 15, Filed 03/02/20 CDC admits in Federal Court they have NO EVIDENCE that “Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism”
ICAN against United States Food and Drug Administration, Case No. 18-cv-11237-VEC, filed 2/10/19, No clinical trials prior to approving influenza or Tdap vaccine for use in pregnant women as an indicated use.
MERCK’s Measles, Mumps, & Rubella (MMR) live virus vaccine; Gardasil HPV vaccine; and Zostavax live vaccine; CDC Whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, MMR and Autism; The infamous Lancet Paper “Ileal Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia Non-Specific Colitis and Pervasive Developmental Disorder”. 1 in 44 with an autism diagnosis as reported by the CDC reported, surveillance year 2018, birth year 2010. The Gardasil HPV vaccine achieved FDA approval in just 6 months with serious and deadly injuries continuing to date. Zostavax live vaccine used since 2006 was pulled from the market and no longer available in the United States, as of November 18, 2020.
ICAN against United States Food and Drug Administration, results of ICAN lawsuit against FDA reveals that Merck’s Chicken Pox Vaccine, Varivax should never have been licensed.
In case you forgot, while you were Vice President the Obama Administration filed an amicus brief for Wyeth presented in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, 562 U.S. 223 (2011). Did Wyeth’s Tri-Immunol DTP cause Hannah Bruesewitz’s disabilities? The United States Supreme Court case decision stated that vaccine manufacturers could not be sued for design defects in their products dismissing Hannah’s severe vaccine injury to their product. Assume arguendo, was this premeditated to further shield Pharma vaccine manufacturers from liability and denying JUSTICE to the 5000+ Autism Omnibus Petitioners dismissed with callous disregard from the NVICP? I can attest to the consequential frauds and damages, as an Autism Omnibus Petitioner v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, in the United States Court of Federal Claims, Office of Specials Masters, No. 02-1890V, filed for compensation on May 21, 2003, after 9 ½ years of waiting was dismissed on April 27, 2012.
The Obama Administration also granted whistleblower immunity to Dr. William Thompson, CDC Whistleblower, after he exposed all the CDC senior level vaccine and autism staffers who destroyed data which demonstrated a clear link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Whatever happened to Dr. William Thompson’s investigation that was started by Congressman Bill Posey on the floor of the House of Representatives on July 29, 2015?
I saw this graphic on Insta yesterday. Haven't we all used our never ending exhaustion as a badge of autism honor? But how long can we manage before the badge simply weighs too much and we collapse? The Puritan work ethic has always been a American "thing." Autism families have taken it to an extreme.
In Connecticut we have pretty good DDS budgets - assuming your son or daughter with autism has a testable IQ under 70. If 70 or above, you're on decade long wait list for the handful of autism waivers. Other states are far worse than Connecticut. Are you aware of the wait lists in your state, or country, if you're not in the USA?
Having budgets is a blessing. Finding staff is a curse. I have dollars for respite, and I self-hire. this means that either I have to leave my house, or I have to send off my 3 daughters with staff to a hotel - that I have to fund. Respite dollars are only for staff. So we stay home. A LOT. Together.
Tell us how you are planning, hoping, worrying, dreaming of the future for your loved one with autism. I think we'll be exhausted until our last breath. Such is the plight of caregivers, and women in particular.
When Age of Autism launched in 2007, a source of great pride and revenue was that we were Google News Indexed. Our headlines were scooped up and distributed to thousands of potential readers and supporters. This was a good draw for our sponsors and advertisers. Then? Little by little, we were dropped from searches because we discussed vaccine injury. And now? It's nearly impossible to reach anyone except those who click into our site intentionally. And we haven't a single sponsor or advertiser. We DO have amazing, wonderful readers though! I had switched over to Duck Duck Go, and now also use a search engine called BRAVE.
This weekend, The Washington Post ran an article about search engines and platforms are under pressure to take explicit stands against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Messaging and information are always part of war, the good guys use it too. Deplatforming was rife during the height of the Covid pandemic. and now, we have a powder keg in Europe. Propaganda will always be with us, with every government, it has been part and parcel of media and government forever. When “we” do it, it’s education. When “they” do it, it’s propaganda. But now that the public has a platform, the rules are changing. What we saw during Covid, and continue to see, vis a vis vaccines, was Orwellian, to use the overused adjective. No other adjective fits as well. We’ve seen the messaging change for autism too. Acceptance and awareness crept in and took over, treatment and cure were quashed. Here comes April.
Search results should be unbiased. Social media platforms should be neutral. The Internet should be for everyone.
Though they’ve taken beatings over the years, these sorts of cyber-utopian ideals have proven surprisingly durable — in part because tech companies have insisted that they’re true. The Ukraine war, however, is putting them through a wringer.
From Facebook to TikTok to DuckDuckGo, tech companies are facing pressure to take explicit stands against Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. With some exceptions, tech has responded to the call, at the cost of its relationships with Russia.
But there’s another cost to doing what many see as the right thing in Ukraine. It requires the tech companies to acknowledge in a very public way that their products and policies aren’t neutral after all — and it reminds us all of their own unchecked power over the world’s information systems...
We live in a neighborhood with several young active duty military families. Some of the guys will exercise and run through the streets with their military gear on – either wearing their boots, or carrying a rucksack, or while wearing their bullet-proof vest. We saw a young man running with his vest on just last week. I could’ve yelled out a Marine Corps brat OORAH to him, but I said a little prayer for him instead.
That guy may just be some guy who likes to push himself, but he may also be gearing up to go overseas. Wearing the vest, which weighs about 20-25 pounds, while running may help him get ready for the physical rigors he could soon encounter. If he is deploying and if he knows where he’s headed, bravo to him for prepping now. He’ll know what to pack and what to expect wherever he lands. After seeing him, and after watching a re-released documentary last week, I’ve been thinking about how ready – and how not physically ready – I’d be if I’d unexpectedly have to carry some extra weight.
The documentary I just watched is called The Last Days, a film about Hungarian Jews who lived during the Final Solution. Always fascinated by other people’s survival stories, I am so grateful to learn about their past. I’m even more fascinated that some people, who’ve lived through frightening times, are still alive today and continue to talk about what they witnessed. The stories presented in The Last Days had me listening more intently than other documentaries I’ve watched about the war. One of the women shared that they knew trouble would soon be crossing into their homeland. When the troops did make it to her town, she was permitted to grab 25 kilos of personal belongings.
They were told they could take…all your valuables…this after being turned in by neighbors.
They were permitted…25 kilos…and had just 30 minutes to pack up.
What do you take?
What is 25 kilos?
How much is 25 kilos…do you take your plates…dishes…your pillows?
God forbid we ever have to gather our belongings and leave as quickly, and for as long, as these young Jewish families had to. I’ve never thought about having to do that today, but if we ever did, I know what I’d need to bring with us. While I could get by with the bare minimum, Ronan could not. We’d have to bring more than 25 kilos, or 55 pounds, of his items:
The first thing I’d grab is small every-day bag. That weighs 3.5 pounds.
Funny how people come into our lives and the timing. Earlier this week, I wrote about an autism Mom who was facing problems with her daughter's dental hygiene. Well, that Mom has another daughter who opened the amazing Puzzles Bakery and Cafe where she employed people with autism and launched awareness right in Schenectady, New York, near Albany. I visited Puzzles on March 11 back in 2016, and wrote about how fabulous it was then. And will be AGAIN soon, we hope. On a darker note, Sara got blowback because she used the Puzzle theme for autism. The Neurodiversity crowd in action. Imagine causing grief for a young woman trying to help the community over... a symbol? Sara had to close because of Covid, but the hope is that it will reopen. In fact, the local paper featured Puzzles this week.
...What makes Puzzles’ ongoing limbo so distressing is its human toll.
Pratt conceived the restaurant as a place where developmentally disabled adults would work side by side with their neurotypical peers, attaining the meaningful, real-world work experience that too often eludes them.
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Written March 13, 2016 by Kim Rossi
Sometimes dreams come true. Thoughts and ideas on paper spring to life before your eyes. For instance, I'm a big Harry Potter fan. I can recall watching the very first movie in the theatre and marveling at how each scene turned the book into a cinematic reality before my eyes.
When I was a young woman, I joined the Junior League and volunteered at a local Children's Museum. One of their exhibits was "The Great Green Room" from the classic book, Goodnight Moon. I had no kids of my own, but I knew the book, of course. And when I walked into the room for the first time, I was transported into the pages.
As my girls have aged into adulthood, I've been writing the story of their future in my mind's eye. A bakery with an autism theme has been a dream of mine - far fetched - but still, a dream.
On Friday night, I saw firsthand how that dream would look when I had the great honor of speaking at Puzzles Bakery & Cafe,in Schenectady, New York, whose owner, Sara Mae Hickey is an autism sibling. From their website:
In addition to serving delicious food, the bakery-café provides adults with developmental disabilities with an opportunity for personal growth, as well as a source of income, social interaction, and a sense of purpose.
Sara Mae has done everything right. And I mean everything. From the design of the signage, to the soothing, bright cheerful interior (with a community room) to the menu of fun, healthy and delicious foods, Puzzles would be a great bakery and cafe even without the autism theme. But that theme is truly the icing on the cupcake.
I think the autism siblings will change the world for our kids. They are battle tested. Some will become advocates and warriors on behalf of their brothers and sisters. Like Sara Mae Hickey has for her sister.
The intent of NAA’s Give A Voice program is to provide the opportunity for meaningful, effective communication to individuals with autism who are nonspeaking or unreliably speaking, and whose communication challenges put them at increased risk of injury or harm.
We are thrilled to announce that we are now offering access to certified practitioners in S2C (Spelling 2 Communicate) and RPM (Rapid Prompting Method) while continuing to offer our iPad AAC program.
S2C and RPM involve the process of communication through spelling on a letterboard. To learn more about letterboarding and how it works, we recommend visiting i-asc.org as well as reading the recently-released book “Underestimated: An Autism Miracle” by J.B. and Jamie Handley.
Grants for spellers will provide up to 4 sessions with a practitioner of your choice along with a set of letterboards.
NAA’s Give A Voice Program also can provide qualifying individuals with an assistive communication device including:
A 32GB Apple® iPad® (9.7″ – Wi-Fi only) AppleCare+ Protection Plan Avatalker AAC Augmentative and Alternative Communication Software app Protective Case
iPad grant recipients, please use this link for helpful support resources from Apple in both English and Spanish.
We have very limited funding for this program. Every application is carefully reviewed and all information submitted is verified by NAA staff. This program is intended for families who are in dire need of financial assistance and are otherwise unable to attain access to these communication methods.
TACA's Autism Action Month Conference is an entirely new offering for TACA families. This virtual opportunity will include presentations from experts, followed up with “take action workshops,” to help families implement what they learn. On the TACA Connect platform, families will be able to access resources, download presentation slides, and interact with other families going through the autism journey. Walk away with bite-sized action steps, a plan for your children, and the empowerment to act with confidence.
TACA's Autism Action Month Conference will feature 2 tracks of presentations from an incredible line-up of experts, covering all stages and aspects of the autism journey, including:
Featuring 2 tracks Challening Behaviors IEPs and Advocacy Complex Medical Issues Therapies Legal Planning Research Life After High School Communication & AAC
You’ll come away from the conference with new information, strategies, and resources to help maximize your child’s potential and improve their quality of life. Click HERE to learn much more!
Below is a Facebook status from an autism Mom I've known for many years. Her daughter lives in a residential home and her dental health has plummeted. You might have noticed over the years that many adults with special needs are missing teeth. It's easier to let them rot, and then extract them. However, there is no money for dental implants. My own daughter had a tooth extracted during a hospital based routine filling. I wanted to STRANGLE the dentist with unwaxed floss. He was so blase about it. My father was an orthodontist who practiced dentistry early in his 40 year career. (Those are my baby teeth in the photo.) Teeth are important to me - and gum and tooth health is very important to overall health. Adult issues in autism revolve around basic healthcare and necessities. Poorly paid and poorly trained staff can blow off hygiene and no one is accountable. And even professionals, like the hygienist mentioned below can be disconnected from usable strategies. Until we all start demanding BETTER.
My bite is much worse than my bark.
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Feeling very emotional.
Spent several hours this morning advocating for appropriate dental care for my 29 y/o daughter. I know that many of my fellow Warrior Mamas will be able to relate. Had multiple conversations with her dentist, nurse and dental hygienist. Two were very professional and helpful and one was not. She (the hygienist) suggested in a judgmental manner that I drive back and forth to my daughter’s home twice a day every day. Not only is that impractical; but, it would take 14 hours of time per week. I already brush XYZ’s teeth when I see her on Saturdays. She needs a professional cleaning due to severe tartar and plaque buildup along the gum line. The hygienist tried to tell me that this is normal! Part of the problem during the pandemic was a supply chain issue with the ketamine that Emily needs for sedation and the availability of her doctor to administer it. Sadly, there are 50 individuals awaiting this kind of care and the dentist only performs these procedures on Friday afternoons.
By far the stories I’ve been posting on LossOfBrainTrust are from England, not the entirety of the British Isles, and everywhere it seems schools are going broke educating massive numbers of disabled children.
Consider that the United States has four times the population of England which is about 55 million, yet nothing like that is happening here. This is an incredible thing to watch. Most puzzling of all is the fact that there is no end in sight. Over and over officials tell us numbers are going to continue to increase. The country is helpless to stop it. There’s nothing to do but keep on paying.
IF this were happening here in America, I think many advocates would demand to know WHY kids are flooding special ed classrooms and WHY enormous costs never level off.
Here’s what is normal and acceptable in England:
Yorkshire:We are seeking the go-ahead to expand provision at a North Yorkshire school, so it can meet the needs of children and young people with complex needs related to autism.
…The number of children with complex needs, including Autism, is expected to continue to grow over the coming years….
Slough: The cost of “adult social care.”
HISTORIC financial issues have forced Slough Borough Council (SBC) to spike council tax to the maximum allowed as it potentially faces a £479m blackhole.
Family is everywhere, right autism friends? I was on Instagram when a video reel caught my eye. A gorgeous woman helping her beloved daughter out of the house, into a shiny Mercedes and then to a chic boutique where they met up with Dad. As a full time single parent/caregiver to my 3 daughters, who need similar assistance with tasks of daily... everything, the video brought tears to my eyes and I had to learn more. Have you EVER heard of a Burnout Prevention Specialist? No, but man, you sure need one, right? Meet Nakita Nelson. I think we all need to get to know her - and how we can support each other when respite isn't a luxury, but a necessity to function. Do you have any sort of respite? I am fortunate that my daughters have respite budgets, and I have a great team of helpers. Overnights are tougher, to coordinate so many schedules. But I have managed to travel and get a break. It's DEElicious. I suppose my ex-husband is a respite provider, as the girls visit him at his girlfriend's house in New York every 3-4 weeks for a Saturday, Sunday night stay. It's better than a sharp stick in the eye, as my own Dad used to say.
I hope you can see the video below the jump so you can enjoy a few minutes of music and the uplifting prayer of love, acceptance and sacrifice. I don't know if the lengthy embed code from Insta will work here - so here is a link to the video as well. You can find Nakita on Insta @NakitaNelson_
The British government consultation for the revision of the 1998 Human Rights Act grandiosely re-entitled the Bill of Rights closes at 11.59 pm GMT Tuesday 8 March. It is a somewhat elusive document to encompass and after months of indecision I decided on brevity. Unsurprisingly the Johnson government seems more interested in its own rights than the rights of citizens, but it is not always clear where law comes into it. Anyone wishing to comment can write to the email address hrareform@justice.gov.uk
Dear Justice Secretary
Until it can recognise its own failings the government will have no useful contribution to make in the field of human rights, not least because it has itself abandoned humility and common sense.
The government should bear in mind the old legal adage “hard cases make bad law”. In order to remove the inevitable hard cases the danger is that government restricts the public’s access to the courts even further, bearing in mind that for the ordinary citizen justice is prohibitively expensive anyway, and generally unavailable - for a long time and increasingly governments have considered justice for the citizen an expensive luxury while continuing to liberally fund its favoured enterprises from the public purse.
Beyond that one can certainly see that the old Human Rights Act has been woefully inadequate at protecting citizens’ rights, notably in the last two years when it turned out time after time that the government advisors who were limiting our lives over what we were supposed to do or not do mostly got things momentously wrong, whether by design or accident. A stock taking of the last two years would suggest objectively that any protection against the use of arbitrary executive power has largely failed. The government scarcely inhabits the moral high ground in trying to extend its rights over citizens, not least because it has performed so poorly in the recent past, and does not seem to realise it.
The government’s claim to support freedom of speech is particularly moot given its moves in the past two years to swamp mainstream media with cash in pursuit of state health propaganda, while leaning on social media to limit or stop legitimate comment - it is not a desirable position when people may not talk about their health predicaments or criticise government policy in public, being often subject also to foul abuse if they do from government funded sources. It is equally horrifying to see the same machine move into action over Ukraine. The government’s position, both in terms public policy and science, has been the opposite of “open” leading to autocratic behaviour, divisive social policies, economic catastrophe and the compounding of error at human expense. Please allow the public to speak.
I wanted to update readers on your generosity at work. Here’s a photo of some of the supplies we've sent to Dr. Theresa Cianciolo in Vermont for Ukrainian orphans and families with special needs children. Thank you! The Amazon wish list seems to work well, if you ignore the constant emails for other folks' joining and departure activity. You can visit Theresa's website here. ScottandTheresa4UK 1) Click Amazon Ukraine List 2)Sign into the list 3) Add items to cart 4) Check out 5) Ship to SCOTT CIANCIOLO'S GIFT REGISTRY Irasburg VT 6) Pay
Here is an update from Theresa: We need your help. We are making a team to help individuals first of all get to a safe border, help to fill out visas (this is extremely important as we have many children who are medically fragile and have special needs). We need those individuals who have time to one on one get with a parent (most of the time Mom’s as Dads are fighting) and build a relationship, pray with them assist them with paperwork. What a wonderful opportunity to build those relationships. We continue to collect resources and I have so many to be thankful for some I have never met 🙂 future plans are for Scott and I to go out to Poland and Romania within the next 5 weeks (where we are supporting ministries taking children with special needs and their families) bringing those supplies and resources right to them. We also have items that we can get through the border of Poland directly to our ministry leaders who use their gifts to get them to military hospitals and for their communities as their currently are not pharmacies that are stocked.
Let me preface today’s post saying that I am absolutely thrilled that Covid has seemingly been whisked away. Pick the positive adjective - thrilled…ecstatic…grateful…relieved - and that’s me. Really! So why am I hunting and pecking for any and every bit of news about the disappearance of Covid, mask and vaccine mandates? Why am I questioning the statistics that were a constant for two years? Why do I care that restrictions are no longer?
Something doesn’t add up.
And I want to know why.
I guess it comes down to being curious.
The Curious Cat, that’s me. I’m especially curious when those in charge of the official Covid narrative, who shoved their Covid authority down our throats for two very long, arduous, emotionally/psychologically/physically draining years, have turned an about face. Conspiracy theorists – and conspiracy realists – have their own ideas about why that’s happened.
Despite that, schools, government agencies, and local businesses rather quickly changed their tune and lifted restrictions. Could it be because the parents said no more? Could it be because the Canadian truckers took a stand? Could it be because those midterms are looming? Could it be related to the timing of the crisis overseas? Maybe it’s because they’ve changed metrics yet again. I haven’t found a solid reason yet, but all of those, including the people orchestrating some of those events, are worth looking into.
One of my daughters finds great comfort and joy in the TV shows she watched as a toddler and youngster. Every so often, she finds a way to tell me that she wants to find a certain program on YouTube. Yesterday, she was singing a song in her inimitable fashion. It took me a several listens to know what she was singing. From 1992 - 2008, The Learning Channel had early morning children's programming that they called "Ready, Set, Learn." The bumper between shows when my daughter watched was an adorable cartoon about a penguin named Paz and his Mom. Shows included Skinnamarink TV, Jay Jay the Jet Plane (before CGI!) Hip Hop Harry, High 5, Peep and the Big Wide World (before PBS) and Pappyland. Pappyland was a local programming show from Syracuse, that found its way to the big leagues on TLC. Yesterday, my daughter was singing the Pappyland theme song. I found episodes on YouTube, and I only wish I could show you her JOY as she heard the theme song begin. She sang at the top of her lungs, and stimmed, and smiled her beautiful smile.
We all crave certain comforts, nostalgia is soothing. Is this what drives my daughter? Is this when he neurological status fully changed - into autism - and she is stuck there? I don't know. I know that she is very happy. And I will be listening to this song for quite some time. I until I unravel the next mystery for her.
I'm sure some folks would tell me to extinguish this juvenile behavior and bring her forward. I will, just as soon as the Brady Bunch episode is over....XOX
A long-time criticism of IACC is the inadequate representation of people with severe autism. Instead of listening to these voices, Dr. Gordon has created a committee that is almost entirely composed of High Function Autistic (HFA) individuals. Ironically, there is a LOT of talk at IACC about “equity in representation,” “intersectionality” and “the need to hear unheard voices.” Yet when it comes to the talking the talk and walking the walk, Dr. Gordon appoints few if any parents of severely autistic kids. 60% of the spectrum not represented ay IACC.
I have a severely ASD son and I rarely hear ACC members addressing issues that affect him. I hear all about trans & intersectional ASD people, systemic exclusionary practices, lack of transparence in community engagement and ASD people with “high support needs!” That phrase is flat out absurd! It sounds like an architectural term!
Severely, or profoundly affected ASD people make up 60 % of the spectrum and are virtually unrepresented at IACC and in NIH autism research. Ironically, the IACC NIH team do a really nice job making sure our priorities, such as GI problems, SIBs, autoimmune dysfunction are included in Strategic Plan. However, these issues, so central to profound autism, rarely discussed by committee members. If such parents are on the committee, I haven’t heard a word from them. Hence, families like mine are not represented.
During public comments, long time parent advocate and president of Autism Science Foundation, Alison Singer, gave simple and straightforward speech about the lack of representation of on the committee of people like her daughter. Ms Singer’s daughter has profound ASD and is under represented, meanwhile the HFA community is grossly over representation on IACC. Singer also expressed concern that the HFA community is very judgmental of parent advocates and are quick to criticize what they do not understand. That will soon play out!!! Parents of severely affected kids are castigated by the HFA community for “abusing their children” by sending their child for ABA instruction. Another frequent criticism by the HFA community is that parents are cruel and “wanting perfect children, and “not accepting them (the autistic child) for who they are.”
My late Mom grew up in a big, noisy family. She taught me a lot about speaking in order to be heard: “be specific and get to the point!” I would rehearse school presentations with her and she would comment, “Too many ahhhs and umms, start over!” Or “you already said enough about that, cut it…..people’s eyes will glaze over here, too many details!” Tough but valuable lesson in time management and being heard. Ultimately, be mindful of others time.
Dena Gassner identifies as a person with autism She is working on her PhD. Ms. Gassner, routinely, uses up an excessive amount of the committee’s time. Deena presents herself as an expert in ALL that is autism. Gassner, all too frequently, expounds, in minute detail on dozens of behavioral studies no one asked to discuss. Ms. Gassner has college graduate son also on the spectrum AND claims to be able to fully represent children like mine and Alison’s! However, here on planet earth, when it comes to severe autism, I promise you she would not last an hour caring for my son, not because she is not a kind and caring person, but because she has never lived this life.
Dena was “distressed” by Singer’s simple and valid request for more equitable representation on the committee for those with profound ASD. Gassner believes the current committee is covering the subject very well! I find such conceit amazing! I live in the world of severe autism and while I know a lot about autism science in general, I would never condescend to know the needs of HFA than the HFA people themselves!
For a very long time now I’ve been posting stories from Britain on my site Loss of Brain Trust about how they’re continually building special schools and adding autism classrooms to mainstream schools everywhere while telling us about the increase in kids with complex needs and how ‘delighted’ and ‘excited’ everyone feels about it.
I haven’t seen that happening in the U.S. and for a while I wondered about that, but what I discovered is the American alternative: autism therapy centers.
It didn’t take long to see that these places are popping up across the country, and I’m going to strike a balance between news reports from the U.S. and those from the U.K.
In America they’re just as excited about more kids with autism and the coverage shows it.
Paducah, KY: Feb 26, 2022, Paducah Sun: Easterseals announces plans to build autism
Easterseals West Kentucky announced Friday that it would open an autism center in Paducah sometime this fall.
It seems Kentucky now requires insurers to provide autism therapy to residents and that makes it a ‘sustainable program.’
Carroll said that since insurance companies now have to cover that therapy, there is a funding stream available for the Paducah program….
Sarah Smith, a board-certified behavior analyst, is Easterseals’ vice president for autism services. “An ABA center is something that western Kentucky has needed for a long time,” she said. “As the rates of autism continue to increase, this is going to provide opportunities for families to get the services they need.”…
“It’s full-day services that we’ll be able to offer, including meals,” he said. “So, it’s a way that the families who have a child in the spectrum can lead full lives and know that their kids will be taken care of.
Here’s what the doctor associated with the clinic had to say: