Here's an excellent article touching on Offit's idiocy/hypocricy/moral turpitude/etc.:

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/janak/090115

perfect katie!

Maybe Donnie-boy has a man-crush on Pauly.. Who knew!!

Great article Katie.

While I didn't like the article nor the bias - I however, do see it as progress on the journey. The fact that JB and GR got ANY mention is definitely progress - in the past we got nada zilch. If one parent reads this and then learns about how to help their child, then this is a great thing!

Now we just need to keep working to get more words and better stories. This comes with educating your local reporters (they all start somewhere) in your local markets. Keep talking about the increase in diagnosis and for those with kiddos who have recovered (not mine - yet) please tell your story. Many want to forget the past - but we need your good, true documented stories of recovery in the media, just like we need more from those who recieved vaccine court settlements.

One of the secrets I have learned about the CDC is that they have basically set up a network of intelligent officers, if you want to call it that, who, on closwer examination, are to "spread lies" about the prevelances of diseases, and or "monitor" that the behavior of the public is square on with CDC's OR NOT, and or towards those diseases. Orginally, to monitor infectious outbreaks, yeah right. They do this, by sticking key decision makers into positions like reporters at major news outfits, decision policy makers on boards/hostpial regeants, and are infiltrated even into our politicians and health chairmans at high levels. Dr Offit is an official member-I am VERY sure of this (without proof, but no brainer). I am sure they generate UPI releases for all the masses to hear. THEY ARE CALLED THE EIS. I don't know the "original purpose" of this group, other than to circumvent/hide/nondisclose the truth to the origins/causes/cures of these diseases.

I hope, Katie, that you may find a FOIA document on who those members are, and report/publish that next time, the obvious "go getter do gooders" who claim they are "all concerned" about this "supposed" epidemic, will make that public, and advertise WHO is on that list. I tried to obtain that document, and it isn't easy. They are supposed "silent" members. Yet, attend yearly meetings? Where is the roll call? I want it! Considered "civilians" in the loft or mix of society, so as to not point fingers back at the original thinkers of this paridigm, the CDC. The agency of untruth, lies, and agendas. Apparently, being in this club, is quite prestigious. Apparently, even some writers at NBC/CBC and ABC are still in this club too, and write scary "measles storylines", too.

As you start to obtain this information, as a parent, it does almost feel like it's you against the big boys, and after a while you finally get it...that is...my best "interest at heart" is in fact "diobolicle acts of treason/murderous rampages on my children and yours". This is why I say, I am sooooooo anti vaccine, I cannot tell you, I am sooo anti toxin vaccine or "greening a vaccine", or anti schedule, anti "just make one shot at a time", or what I like to call the "reasonable thinking parent trying not to appear like a cukoo anti vaccine zealot". (actually I would prefer to be called that)..I don't want to give these creeps ONE DIME, ONE NEURON of my child, or my grandchildren and their children and so on and so forth. They will never inject their toxins/genetic changing, oncogenic viruses into my kids, So Help Me God.

I hoped that that would be our large autism battle cry, but alas, I am one of those parents who constantly thinks, you cannot be on the fence, or play with the devils on this, especially when you learn vaccines don't work, are dangerous, and are not the reason for the decline in these diseases. Then you learn what true health is, and that the solid "so called science" of vaccines, is in fact, a disengenous guessing game/experiment of mass proportions, on who can take a vaccine, or not (and they don't care who can't take them). Then you learn they up the antigens, or not tell parents how very bad lots are still given out like candy, and then you realize, you ARE dealing with the devil.

They don't deserve my respect, time or day, nor does the media, which constantly, as Ray has expressed, ignore our constant mails, letters, and faxes. They in fact, CANNOT report our commentaries and ideas/science and research, because, they might "be out of a job" as soon as you can say "vaccines may cause autism"....and on that vein of reference, no pun intended, the DEVIL, delights in people with no choices, and or choose ways in which our choices are made for us. I don't have a choice any more whether or not my child will obtain his full health, or freedoms, or the pursuits of happeiness (even myself). I gave that choice over to people, who had NO THOUGHT, no REFERENCE on science, and, who CONSTANTLY give away poor, weak arguments that these tools of health so called, are important. If they were so great, they wouldn't have to mandate it.

I only hope our world would wake from their blissful slumbers, but as parents who know, that we have become less sheeples, and real thinkers. Our stories are real, our lives our real, our observations, our science, our tests, and even our biomedical reasons, for why OUR children became autistic and are relieved of symptoms of autism. Everyone has a story, some are common, some are unique, but one thing is for sure...we are people READY to have autistic kids, because we did not know as parents, THAT WE WERE TOXIC, INFECTED with multiple pathogenic bacteria and viruses, had MITO PROBLEMS or our KIDS, and or some METHYLATION/GLTUATHIONE block so to speak, so that there were no possibilities of our discovering, gee, maybe my kid is a sititng duck? Does this mean, we have genetic flaws, probably, because we too are INFCTED, toxic, and the like, and because we didn't get multiple vaccines like our kids, are open to the same damages as our kids are....the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

As to timings, yes, you can have an injury to your brain in minutia, and it shows up years later, WHEN DEVELOPMENT comes, or SHOULD COME. And I don't think that autism is always NOT genetic, there are offshoots of autism like symptoms that have very genetic origins (Fragile X, etc)...but again I ask, is that because your genes or bad or that you have been oxidatively stressed as a parents, expoused to toxins, or infections? I also believe in utero infections can cause autism, such as syphilis, such as lyme disease, such as even the flu virus at a key time (especially if mother uses fever reducers).

This is why I say, the next frontier in all this parent appointed and very argumentable autism epidemic, is that we parents have not gotten the education on HOW NOT TO HAVE AN AUTISTIC CHILD...even in our DAN conferences, we are only BEGINNING to scratch this large surface. For in so doing, maybe we could have avoided vaccines, or mothers were amalgam free and chelated, and mineral supplied at KEY TIMES and KEY MOMENTS, antivirals/antibiotics in mothers, and detected of infections numberous, so that we did not pass that down to our kids? Maybe, if they have a saliva test for abnormal proteins indicating autism, may in fect be a large signal to the OB GYN, pump some IV Gluathione/Mb12/Zinc in that tmother pronto? Treat her thyroid, etc?

ONE CAN ONLY HOPE, that his direction is the direction of our major autism organizations, but alas, they too, get caught up in the frey of fundings, and often hire the WRONG researchers into their folds, only to find, they are not doing their original missions of their non profits. I am into prevention of autism, it must be the key to stopping this epidemic. This means avoidance of doctors, pediatricians, vaccines, dentist who put mercury in our teeth, not drinking our municiple fluoride waters, etc etc...it means, for me personally, I don't trust manmade ANYTHING.

Katie,
I agree---Send this piece to the times. I always look forward to your next piece. Thank you!

Can I just say that I BURST out laughing louder than I have in ages when I put a visual in my mind of my husband and I as Elephant parents stampeding into the school of our Elephant child for his IEP - Thank you for that moment of release in an all too stressful life!!!!!

Excellent Katie. Thanks.

Thanks, Katie, for the much-needed laughs, although I'm sorry that your mind had to be plagued by those images thanks to such lousy reporting.

As newspapers find themselves increasingly obsolete, their content looks more and more like public relations for their remaining advertisers. It's become almost counterintuitive to expect a balanced, fair and objective investigation of topics by mainstream media.

By now readers have to be tired of seeing the same short list of vaccine injury defenders in print articles. The silence of so many colleagues is telling.

I have written to the NY Times many times and never once was published. I wrote to The Lancet and was published in July 2000. I also had a section in two books (one a textbook on Language concerning ASD).

No big deal because I could see they would never publish my views or information on vaccines/autism. The reason why I have not bothered these last few years when I could better use my time to get information published on our son (as I have done in the past and will do now). It is better I spend my time getting information published in a book than wasting time on a newspaper who prints "All the news that's UNFIT to print."

Ray Gallup

Welcome to the festival of inertia! (Insert sound of crickets chirping in large, empty field.)

I love this piece, Katie!

Send the letter to NY Times, Katie, and good luck to all of us. As hard as it seems at times, we need to keep up the pressure.

As you point out vaccine induced autism, that inconvenient truth, is generally out of the realm of most mass media. And, as you say, whenever it's reported by the NY Times, NPR and the Washington Post the alternative view to Offit's is severely distorted. It only enters the debate on pure negative terms.

But to fight the fight we need to understand how the journalism machine works. And just this morning I found a very interesting article at the Huffington Post that explains it (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/audience-atomization-over_b_157807.html).

There is nothing new there but it is always good to get the big picture. This article describes "the most useful diagram I've found for understanding the practice of journalism in the United States, and the hidden politics of that practice."

If you keep reading through it you can see where we lie on the diagram, the vaccine-induced-autism camp: outside the legitimate debate area, out there in the "sphere of deviance". Quoting from the article: "views that lie within the sphere of deviance--as defined by journalists--will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition. In the sphere of deviance we find 'political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.' (...) neutrality isn't the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance--as defined by journalists--will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition."

Thanks to you Katie, JB, Olmstead, Kirby, etc., I think there has been an increasing shift moving our views into the "sphere of legitimate controversy". Last year was the tipping point with US News and CBS showing our views with the respect truth deserves. The NY Times is just late to this shift, just as they were late to point out clearly the falsehood behind the claim of WMDs in Irak.

I can't wait to see many of these staples of journalism fall down like Banks in the financial turmoil. Just like those overleveraged banks, they have it coming to them for their biased, false and self serving reporting. And like a Bank in trouble, once you lose the trust of your clients it's difficult to get it back.

Katie,
This is terrific. I certainly hope you sent a letter to the New York Times.
Maurine