Minnesota Tracked Down Pig Brain Disease, Ignores Autism?
By Kim Stagliano
Do you recall last winter when a handful of people in Minnesota contracted a rare neurological disease that was tracked to their job blowing pigs' brains out of their skulls at a meat processing plant? State officials couldn't act fast enough to solve the problem. So why is it that Somali parents who've watched their children collapse into autism aren't getting the same rapid fire answers? Racism? Or Autism? We know they are reading Age of Autism - we can see them on our stat counter. Look:
From the NYT article about the pig disease last year: AUSTIN, Minn. — If you have to come down with a strange disease, this town of 23,000 on the wide-open prairie in southeastern Minnesota is a pretty good place to be.
. The Mayo Clinic, famous for diagnosing exotic ailments, owns the local medical center and shares some staff with it. Mayo itself is just 40 miles east in Rochester. And when it comes to investigating mysterious outbreaks, Minnesota has one of the strongest health departments and best-equipped laboratories in the country.
Really? One of the strongest health department's in the country? We've yet to see it in the Somali autism situation. You can read my post about the pigs' brains "call to action" HERE.
By the way, we know they read Age of Autism and we're happy to keep them informed.
gatekeeper.co.hennepin.mn.us (Hennepin County General Services Dept) [Label IP Address]Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States, 0 returning visit
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www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/by-nancy-hokkan.html
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www.ageofautism.com/2008/11/somali-parents.html
Kim Stagliano is Managing Editor of Age of Autism.
20.11.08 Dear Kim, There is a Somali-Canadian researcher at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, who did a study for her Master's thesis on autism in the Toronto Somali community. She found that no children born in Somalia had autism; only children born in Canada had autism. I wonder if the same situation applies in Minnesota? Yours truly, Kathryn Craig
Posted by: Kathryn Craig | November 20, 2008 at 08:11 AM
From "across the pond":-
Louis Conte posted, "I have an idea; go into the schools and count them!"
In 2002 the UK's National Autistic Society carried out an informal survey by sending out questionnaires direct to a number of schools (not through the bureaucrats). They had a good response and duly reported that there was an incidence of, I think, 1:80 children with an ASD in primary schools. I think this is still somewhere in the depths of the NAS's website on www.nas.org.uk.
Do you have a teachers' union or professional association that would be willing to help you with this very worthy project? How would each school's board react to a request for this information? Do you have "child confidentiality" issues in the USA?
Posted by: ElizaCassandra | November 19, 2008 at 04:12 PM
This kind of reminds me of George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
The short novel is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal; however, class and status disparities soon emerge between the different animal species. The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by those in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it.
Posted by: Elucidatus | November 19, 2008 at 03:07 PM
Kim,
THank you for giving these families a voice. Thank you for making us aware. And as alway, thank you for telling it like it is!!
Posted by: Meg N | November 19, 2008 at 07:49 AM
Unreal. The CDC can tell within 48 our if a turkey in China died of bird flu but can't tell us what the autism rate in Minessota is for Somali people. And their State Health Department says it will be months before they get data.
But, don't worry folks because we have nailed down that rare porcine brain disease.
I have an idea; go into the schools and count them! We can take up a collection and mail you guys calculators.
If autism wasn't triggered by vaccines, it would have been figured out years ago. What an outrage this is.
Posted by: Louis Conte | November 18, 2008 at 11:55 PM
Excellent point, Kim. It's so nonsensically out of balance. Not to mention how offensive it is to place pork over people.
Minnesota's coffee-klatch public health bureaucracy is chock full of loyal foot soldiers defending the CDC groupthink. They think that as long as they keep moving in place, the bad things will go away.
Novelist Sinclair Lewis was born here; his 1920 novel "Main Street" still echoes true today. Small thinking has kept children injured, and likely it will take the fresh perspective of educated recent immigrants to shine a light on the autism catastrophe here.
Posted by: nhokkanen | November 18, 2008 at 03:59 PM