AIM Academy Presents Adult Autism Living Weekend for Investors, Stakeholders
Canary Party Video Highlights US Vax Injury Compensation Program Failures

Dachel Media Review: Leonard Lopate Show, Flu Shots, Autism Speaks

Online newsBy Anne Dachel

Read Anne's comments after the jump.

 

Sept 11, 2013, WTVM Columbus GA: New flu vaccines available, doctors explain the big picture

Sept 11, 2013, WNYC Radio: The Leonard Lopate Show:The State of Psychiatry


Sept 10, 2013, AutismSpeaks.org: Autism Speaks Sponsors World Health Organization Conference on ASD
 
 


 
 WTVM Columbus GA

"'A lot of people are afraid, there's a lot of misinformation online, mercury toxicity, is this going to cause my child autism, am I going to get the actual flu- none of that has been shown to have any basis in fact. Every bit of that has been debunked,' said Dr. Julie Roberts of North Columbus Family Medicine."

 I posted lots of comments. It would be nice if the shot promoting doc cared a wit about autism.
 
WNYC Radio New York 
 
Psychological therapist James Davies talked about his book, Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry.
Davies examined the current state of psychiatry and argues that the reliance on pharmaceuticals has compromised patients' wellbeing. He explained the background of the DSM.
 
He doesn't "find the categories particularly useful."
 
Davies talked about ADHD being introduced in the DSM IV and causing a false epidemic. He believes that the DSM has caused the soaring rates of mental disorders. "Psychiatry, through the DSM, has renamed more and more of our normal and natural experiences ... as indicating psychiatric conditions."
 
During the last 10 minutes of the show, Davies talked about autism:
 
Q: "Let's take a situation like autism, where 20, 30 years ago, it would be... one in 10,000 people ...might be diagnosed as autistic. And now, we're in the one in 180 range. People argue over whether there's an epidemic or whether we're just diagnosing it better, or perhaps we're over-diagnosing it."
 
Davies: "Well, I think there's truth to all of those interpretations. ...We're lowering the threshold for what constitutes warranting that diagnosis. ...More and more people can potentially be diagnosed with a particular condition.
 
"Autism is slightly different. ...We understand the neurobiology of autism better than most disorders. Autism is real. It needs to be managed and I wouldn't deny the fact that people are suffering from this very real condition. The question is whether or not all people who've been diagnosed warrant those diagnoses."
 
On the DSM IV in 1994:
 
Allen Frances introduced new diagnoses, "eight brand new mental disorders." But Frances expanded the definition of a number of conditions.

Davies: "He expanded the DSM from around 280 to around 370."
On the DSM 5:
Davies: "I think the DSM 5 is just compounding the problem. It's expanding the definition of mental illness to include more and more of what we would customarily regard as 'normal.' "
 
He went on to name the organizations that oppose the latest DSM.
 
Regarding the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the DSM, Davies said that psychiatrists get more pharma money than any other branch of medicine. He pointed out that a large majority of those on the DSM planning committee had financial ties to the drug industry.
 
On the DSM 5, "Out of the 29 people who put that manual together, a full 21 have had strong financial ties to the industry, including the chair and the vice-chair."
I don't give James Davies a high grade in this discussion, except for the fact that he knows how corrupt things are and how many people are being bought off by pharma.  When talking about autism, he failed to mention that this disorder overwhelmingly AFFECTS CHILDREN and that it has no place in the DSM in the first place.
 
AutismSpeaks.org
 
"The World Health Organization (WHO) is holding a three-day conference to identify priorities for action on autism and other developmental disorders. Taking place September 16-18 in Geneva, the meeting will bring together autism advocates with national and international policy makers and experts. It is being made possible with support from Autism Speaks."

I can't wait to hear about this meeting. More lighting things up in blue?
More pretend attention to the mystery of autism?
More calls for AWARENESS?
More money raised for well-salaried administrators?
So is WHO going to promote the myth that all we need is recognition and services?
Will anyone discuss Issy Stapleton or Alex Spourdalakis and teens like them?
Will they be interested on the failure of researchers to tell us anything significant about autism?
"The Global Agenda"....for a worldwide disaster

Comments

Benedetta

On the Kawasaki disease website, A parent in Ireland wrote asking if any of us thought that vaccines caused it.

Most responded in the usual way that makes us all here gag.

And then I responded.

She said thanks, because she knew darn well a Hep B had caused her daughter's kawasakis and there would be no more vaccines for her baby.

SO it does look like Ireland is giving vaccines big time bad over there too.

And as for WHO
There is no cholera vaccine given to people living in areas know to have cholera, it is not given to travelers going to areas endemic to cholera.

Because it causes celiacs

But when an earthquake hit Haiti, and WHO workers and some soldiers brought it in-- WHO was reached for the vaccines faster than they reached for clean water bottles and lysol and such.
Shame on them. Bad, bad thing they did.

John Stone

PS Details of the Irish vaccine programme - not so light:

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?con=377

John Stone

Vicki

My letter in BMJ Rapid Responses last year may be of interest. As if skating over the real causes of autism was not bad enough the further exploitation of our children by the drug industry through Autism Speaks should also be borne in mind: they are just going to be "pharmed". I don't know anything reassuring about these people:-


http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e3502/rr/588110

When autism becomes good news 5 June 2012

A particular concern is population screening projects for autism as a potential target group for newly developed psychiatric drugs.

A Time Magazine article last year [1] publicised a pilot screening project for autism, funded by US charity Autism Speaks, that had taken place in the Korean city of Goyang and apparently discovered an incidence among school children of 1 in 38. Lead author Dr Young Shin Kim was apparently not perturbed by the numbers:

“Kim stresses that the results of her study shouldn't alarm parents into thinking that autism has suddenly exploded in schools. "It doesn't mean there is an increase in new cases," she says. "We just didn't know how to find them and diagnose them. Now we know there are kids with social problems who are not being treated, and we know how to help them."”

Time reported:

“The researchers say they would expect to see similarly high rates of autism emerge in the U.S. and elsewhere if the same data collection strategy were used. "The kids picked up in Korea, many had never been recognized in medical records as having autism," says Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for Autism Speaks. "That's what needs to be done, that kind of broad screening."”

However, the magazine did not report was that 67% of the screened-positive children seem to have pulled out before the study was completed [2]:

"For the 1,214 sampled screen-positive students, 869 parents (72%) consented to participate in the full assessment. Of these, 286 (33%) completed full assessments. Of those who completed the assessment, 201 (70%) were confirmed to have ASDs (autistic disorder, N=101; other ASDs, N=100), yielding a crude prevalence for any ASD of 0.36% (autistic disorder, 0.18%; other ASDs, 0.18%)."

What the report also did not disclose was that appointment that very same week of Robert H Ring to Autism Speaks:

"Robert H. Ring, previously a Pfizer senior director, will join Autism Speaks in Princeton, N.J., on June 1 in the newly created position of vice president of translational research. His focus will be on helping move drug experimentation from laboratories to clinical trials, "with the goal of improving outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorders," according to the nonprofit organization." [3]

While still at Pfizer Ring stated:

“This is a real opportunity to really make a difference for a huge unmet need using expertise we’ve acquired over a number of years. In fact we’re working right now to build a pre-competitive consortium amongst our competitors, including Lilly, Roche, Novartis, Janssen, and trying to agree that this is an important population to be developing medicines for…” [4]

This led to an announcement of a partnership between Autism Speaks, Roche and King's College, London earlier this year [5].

[1] Alice Park, 'South Korean Study Suggests Rate of Autism May Be Underestimated' http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/09/korean-study-suggests-rate-of-autism-may-be-underestimated/

[2] Kim YS, Leventhal BL, Koh YJ, Fombonne E, Laska E, Lim EC, Cheon KA, Kim SJ, Kim YK, Lee H, Song DH, Grinker RR., 'Prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in a total population sample.' Am J Psychiatry. 2011 Sep;168(9):904-12. Epub 2011 May 9.

[3] Lee Howard, 'Past Pfizer autism unit chief to join major advocacy group
By Lee Howard' 12 May 2011, http://www.theday.com/article/20110512/BIZ02/305129344/-1/BIZ

[4] Pfizer News, 'Autism research unit at Pfizer to address autism spectrum disorders'

[5] 'Unprecedented Academic-Industry Collaboration Seeks New Drugs and Novel Treatments for Autism',http://www.autismspeaks.org/about-us/press-releases/research-academic-industry-drug-discovery

Competing interests: Autistic son
****
Finally Ring, the Pfizer man, took over as Chief Scientific Officer of Autism Speaks in June 2013.


Cherry Sperlin Misra

To Vicki Hill, I will give you an example of how this works: We had a meeting for autism in New Delhi, sponsored by Autism Speaks. The introduction to the glossy brochure, no doubt paid for by Autism Speaks, used the phrase "Autism, a highly heritable disorder", no less than twice. This was before the research from California proved conclusively that environment is far more important to autism than genetics . When I tried to hand out my own material at this meeting, I was spotted and thrown out in about 5 minutes. So that gives you an idea of how much free and frank discussion these people want to take place, even when folks are just standing around eating snacks.
We all know that WHO now wants no discussion of mercury in third world or American vaccines, because they have recently pushed through the UN treaty leaving vaccine mercury out, so that they can continue using it where ever they choose. The Autism Speaks apparently wants this too- so great- They are on the same page ! The result is that they will ensure that there are long speeches on other topics and as far as possible they will leave out the delegates who might want to talk about what is causing the epidemic of autism. You see, there is a great deal that one can say about autism, without talking about why it is occuring so frequently now, but was one in ten thousand earlier. I can tell you right now that most of the delegates will be young and will have careers and families to look after. No one in that position is going to swim against the tide. Most of them wont even think to do so, because they have already swallowed the false data given them about autism incidence/mercury/MMR/vaccines, etc. Decades hence, these young people may regret that they were so gullible, but that is for history to see- not for us today.
Above all I can tell you that no PhD, chemistry - expert in mercury toxicology will be invited to the meeting.
To return to our autism conference in New Delhi, the ending is amusing: Turned out when Autism Speaks hired the rooms, they did not hire the foyer, and people had to cross the foyer to reach the bathroom! So I simply stood in the foyer and handed out my envelopes.
I now believe that one of the best things we can do is to keep getting information out to people in any small way that we can. I tell the parents in my school- Just keep asking the doctors about mercury in the vaccines. Doesnt matter what the doctor says. by simply asking him you are sending the message that parents are now concerned about vaccine ingredients, and the doctor may be moved to make some changes in his vaccines. I guess I should add that this is in India, where there are still plenty of vaccines of all varieties , some with high mercury, going around. You never really know what any individual doctor has in his fridge. But in the US, people could ask about mercury in flu vaccines or tetanus toxoids, meningococcal.
One of my alltime favorites was the autism mom , standing in the grocery line, with her difficult child, suddenly announcing: "My son is like this because I vaccinated him to hell and back". I do believe that the tide is slowly turning, with so many new parents asking for no mercury in the vaccines or asking to change the schedule.

Vicki Hill

I'm not sure I follow your thinking on the WHO meeting. Would you prefer that international policy makers and experts NOT meet and speak to one another? Is your complain that their expenses are being footed by Autism Speaks?

To me, this seems one of the more practical things that a large organization like Autism Speaks can do. Only in coming together can experts from different countries notice any differences - in frequency of autism, in treatment for autism, in services for autism - and resolve to do something about that. For example, I would love for an American expert (with 36 vaccines before the age of 6) to speak with an Irish expert (with 11 vaccines before the age of 6). Is there a difference in prevalence? Is there a difference in severity? I'm an optimist; this could prove to be a useful meeting.

Linda

Re the WHO meeting...
Would it be beneficial for folks to write to the organizing committee to express concerns, questions and needs?

jen

We get the big picture!

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