I watched Prof Frith in this programme. I have a strong gut feeling that she deliberately avoided the issue of the MMR vaccine. She was concentrating on what it 'feels' like to be autistic. And on how to explain the condition to the general public. Other than a genetic predisposition to autism she did not venture into the medically 'controversial' hypothesis that there could be and indeed have been proven to be, other triggers, such as vaccines.
I would advocate that someone more equipped to do so than myself should write directly to her on this issue, via the BBC, I would be interested in hearing her response.

TaxiMom5

"500,000". That sounds like the bogus projections made for the entire UK in 1998 to smother the real rise which was about to occur.

Chris;
Your link:
"s a jolly, smiling, retired, naturalised UK dwelling, German, Psychologist/Neuroscientist, married to similarly trained Englishman. She forty years ago came over and embarked on a career investigating Dislexia and, later, autism. She thinks both are inbuilt, innate conditions and resolves that, using our modern neuroscientific imaging and other modern skills we can in future identify unfortunate people developing these characteristics and run them through especially devised educational routines and they’ll all be happy ever after. End of story. Amen. Close the book."

Closed in my book too. Idiot she be.

Angus loved your radio interview. Good deep voice just like Mark Blaxill.

I managed to get onto a radio programme in the UK/Scotland frothing Firth if you read this have a listen to the real people living with autism shame on you...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yr3w5
- 02/04/2014

Morning Call, BBC Radio Scotland

Availability:
7 days left to listen

Duration:
1 hour, 40 minutes

First broadcast:
Wednesday 02 April 2014

It is World Autism Awareness and, with 58,000 people touched by autism in
Scotland, Louise asks why it is still difficult for people with autism to be

accepted in society? Call 0500 92 95 00. Text 80295.

34 minutes 20 seconds to 41 minutes - Peter Howson

52 minutes in - phone in on autism

1 hour 18 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes 50 seconds - Angus Files

1 hour 25 minutes 15 seconds to 1 hour 26 minutes - Hunter Watson

1 hour 26 minutes 40 seconds to 1 hour 27 minutes 23 seconds Robert McBean's
reponse - ignorant

1 hour 36 minutes to 37 minutes - Fiona Sinclair from Autism Rights

MMR RIP

People like this woman are medical fraudsters & belong behind bars...

And look at the increase in bunions! That damn Wizard of Oz and those red shoes!! Everyone just had to have them. While we're at it...look at all the cases of IBS. It's all because of those tight corsets from Gone With the Wind!!

And yes Autism is also caused by older parents and toxins from traffic and eating to much fish and everything else except no one is willing to look at the damage that is caused by vaccines

Jim, excellent point with the parallel of the thalidomide situation. As to John's point about the older disabled population and any displacement theory on their part, I can tell you, as someone who visited many institutions (for a PASS week long course) and worked in a large institution in an urban centre in /85 that, the vast majority of people in them had: Down syndrome, cerebral palsey, hydrocephalus and various known or some unknown syndromes- some children were there even as a result of child abuse. There were very few for whom the etiology of their problems was unknown but there were a FEW.

This illogical hypothesis by Uta Frith, that autism rates have gone up merely due to increased awareness, raises an important logical question about statistical evidence. Is an association observed merely a coincidence?

Put another way, what are the odds that an observation is only a chance association (such as the association between the increase in autism and an increase in vaccine rates) with nothing to do with the actual cause? Of course statistics is usually supported either by statistical evidence pointing to the underlying mechanisms or an actual understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

But not always.

Look at Thalidomide. In the late 1950's and early 1960’s children were born with malformations, including missing limbs. There was a statistical association observed between the sales of Thalidomide type and malformations of the Thalidomide type. See “Thalidomide and the Power of the Drug Companies by Sjostrom and Nilsson (1972), graph on page 156.

One argument put forward by the thalidomide manufacturers was that since the “detailed mechanism of the action of thalidomide” is unknown then it impossible to prove that thalidomide caused the malformations. But look how Sjostrom and Nilsson explain away this argument as logically false.

“The detailed mechanism of the action of thalidomide is unknown and hence it cannot be proved that thalidomide caused these malformations. This point of view was advanced by Professor Erich Blechschmidt of the University of Gottingen [Wikipedia “The University of Göttingen is one of the highest-ranked universities in Germany. It is associated with 45 Nobel laureates.”] when testifying as one of the expert witnesses called by Chemie Griinenthal [Thalidomide drug company] during the Alsdorf trial [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19701219&id=x-pWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k-0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7307,1222064].

This argument is logically false. To establish the relationship between cause and effect it is not necessary to know the exact pathway by which the cause finally gives the observable effect. None of the pharmaceutical industries selling the drug seem to have doubted that thalidomide was indeed a good sleeping pill although the mechanism of the sleep-inducing action of thalidomide is unknown. With most drugs the detailed mechanism of their action is still unknown, but no physician will doubt their effect in clinical use because of this.” Sjostrom and Nilsson, page 62.

Decades after over thousands of children were born with malformations; the detailed mechanism of the action of thalidomide was understood. But it was banned in the United States in time to prevent malformations in this country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Oldham_Kelsey without that understanding-- simply because an individual in the FDA, Frances Oldham Kelsey, decided to follow the principle of First Do No Harm.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case with the FDA today. We cannot afford to wait for concrete proof of the detailed mechanism of the action of vaccines and their preservatives in autism. There are apparently no individuals in the FDA or CDC that follow Frances Oldham Kelsey’s role model. The principle followed today is “first protect the vaccine manufacturers.”
While most medical professionals today lack the will to address the risk, the reality, and the consequence of vaccine injury--our elected representatives in Washington, DC bear as much blame here in the United States because they allow the drug companies immunity from liability for vaccine injury. We must demand they change that law.

Exactly, Twyla. The problem here is that Prof Uta Frith's own understanding and 'knowledge' of autism is at the level of 'those who have seen the movie Rainman'.

Prof Frith 'knows' autism only from a psychosocial academic viewpoint, which exists in a parallel universe to the real autism here on planet Earth. She doesn't live autism, she reads about it in books and papers written by academics who are completely immersed in the fairy world they created, with autism being a 'different way of thinking' and due to 'miswired brain' caused by whatever 'genetic cause' might be the flavour of the day. There is zero on medical pathology of autism in that world.

She is an equivalent of wild animal 'expert' who has gained her 'expertise' solely through a couple of short visits to the local zoo and through reading lots of books written by other 'experts' who also have only ever read books and visited a couple of zoos here and there.

Thanks Twyla,great comment.I do not understand that parents can think so clearly and why is Dr. Frith froth with all her education is so confused.Maybe that is the game they are playing, just keep the lies going and keep the population confused with all their different ideas.

Thank you John for writing this.

I only wish that when such "experts" make these flippant comments they would realize the damage this does for us trying to ensure our children are provided the services and supports they need daily.

As a parent of a now twenty-one year old son living with autism, I say one thing to those that discuss such comments. Show me where there was a decline in other catagories of disability where autism is now picking that up. There would have to be, we couldn't have individuals not diagnosed and getting services in another catagory now could we? There has been no decline. There have been increases too in other catagories however.

I'm tired of all of this really. Move on from trying to disprove what is the 800 lb elephant in the room and work toward meeting the needs of individuals with autism....please.

Thank you again.

It is surely not credible that Frith's near half century of autism research has had a secret eugenicist agenda - there really is no hint of that - but it does not mean that present fairy story isn't based on a simple failure to account for what happened, or what she and so many others did while it was happening. It often happens when people can't tell the truth that they talk pure nonsense, and sometimes they tell themselves this nonsense because the truth would be too intolerable.

People like Frith are not dumb but they assume we are. They expect us to buy into whatever red herring explanation they put put out for the autism increase. That way they can cover up the truth that the autism epidemic is really driven by population control and eugenics. People like Frith are master deceivers. This deception is on a global scale. They need the world to buy into their lies so they can carry out their work.

This Frith froth doesn't surprise me in the least. Every other inane explanation has been attempted. Why not the Rain Man effect? How perfect that the film came out in 1988 - the first year of the autism epidemic.

This is brilliant. A stock reply to "better diagnosing" should be "how many cases did you miss?".

This was probably waiting in the wings to be pulled out if they were desperate to get the vaccine argument to go away. This would not have been possible if Dr. Rimland were still alive. The only way to further the argument that autism is a normal part of childhood would be to try to figure out why we missed it before.

Frith either incredibly dumb or thinks the public is. I tend to believe the latter. I think people like Frith are eugenicists. They'll throw any absurd arguments just to keep the spotlight off their work. More and more research is revealing an autoimmune connection to autism -that our kids have hidden genetic variants that are linked to auto immune diseases.

Massive genetics study reveals autism-linked variants
http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/2012/massive-genetics-study-reveals-autism-linked-variants/news_view

Jack Klugman died a little before Christmas.

Jack Klugman did a show called "Quincy"
And three of the episodes I still remember.

A little boy was smart enough to escape out of a locked door, but could not speak- -He called it artistic? Oh no autistic - but I had years to figure out there was an U not an R in it. As I slowly made the connection--all on my own that the label the schools gave him PDD-NOS was autism.
THen of course there was Jack Klugman the Quincy on the Orphan Drugs about tourettes. The kid kept yelling out curse words in a theater and they killed him. When a team of psychs and doctors under a developmental group dignosied my son with tourettes -- I said no way-- he does not yell out curse words -- he has allergies that is why he snuffs-- and you didn't find any epilepsy? I am sure there is seizures? No? What is this PDD-NOS the schools are talking about? Just what it says? Well what does that mean?

Did you know the psychs can talk for 30 minutes and never really say anything?

Well of course not they were more psychs (Oh, silly me).

The school had long since found out he had autism, but no one was putting the words autism and PDD-NOS together in 1990 or 1996.

That would come later with the internet and free information flow.

It is the internet!

P.S
Jack Klugman also did a episode were little kids on an island was dying from a vaccine that America had given and Quincy had to find out what was causing all the little kids to die. I don't remember what was the cause -- only it was not the vaccine. And of course this is all in the late 70s and early 80s so I believed them. Just one more evidence there was not harm when it came to vaccines.

Prof Frith shows what a fool she is, she should be embarrassed by her ignorance, yet she dares to open her mouth and sputter such nonsense that only a so called autism expert with absolutely no clue to what is happening with the autism epidemic.She needs to be removed from her position since she is not benefiting the autism community with her ignorance, she makes me sick.

Ah yes John. Others associated with the biggest medical scandal in our history who gained Professorships and Knighthoods come readily to mind - Professor Sir Roy Meadow bagging both!!! Still I suppose that fits - he now only sat in meetings discussing how to spin out adverse reactions to vaccinations but jumped in with both feet to create myths in which innocent parents were accusing of causing the adverse reactions - some now in their graves thanks to the shocking collusion of these people and the State.

It is impossible for a Psychologist specialising in Autism during the eighties and nineties to not realise we had an increasing incidence of autism amongst the very young, particularly regressive autism suddenly emerging after a period of normal development, the likes of which we had never seen before. As you say John, the myth here is one being created by Uta Frith assisted by the BBC.

When I developed an interest in autism in the seventies it was a very rare condition and fascinating to me partly because it was so rare. When I mentioned my interest to others they thought I was saying "artistic" not "autistic" so unusual was the condition that most people had not heard of it. Now everyone knows someone who has it and our society is increasingly burdened with paying huge sums of money to help children and adults with autism which they never had to do before because they didn't exist.

As a child I was taken to see the film "The piano delivery" starring Laurel and Hardy. I have never learned to play the piano.
Thanks to Uta Frith I now know why!
Perhaps if, when I attended university, I had written a dissertation on the connection between Laurel and Hardy movies and limited childhood development I would now be a Professor collecting fancy sums of money for talking baloney!
Importantly I too (like Uta Frith) could have taught Simon Baron Cohen how to maximise and expand on the 'talking baloney' principle.
Seriously, is it any wonder that our children are being failed when you come across these incompetents who have inhabited the pseudo intellectual world of autism for far too long.
Time for a clear out.
Bill

Silly season started early I thought it was March when the hares started..eh! should the film not be banned then ?and have a government health warning.

WATCHING THIS FILM CAUSES AUTISM..

Of course,of course..zilch to do with vaccines