Weekly Wrap: How To Connect the Dots
By Dan Olmsted
Last week this column looked at How To Not Connect the Dots, focusing on a New York Times report about problems boys have with school titled "A Link Between Fidgety Boys And a Sputtering Economy." The Times piece came very close to the core issue -- what's the matter with kids today?, and especially, what's the matter with boys? Things have gotten so dire, and the implications so large, that even a mainstream mouthpiece like The Times has no hesitation linking boys' problems to the overall economic fate of the country.
"If the United States is going to build a better-functioning economy than the one we've had over the last 15 years, we're going to have to solve our boy problems," the article declared, adding that if only girls are considered, there's no problem at all. But the solutions on offer in the piece, and in the research paper it was based on, and among the "experts" in general, amount to evidence-free bromides -- better schools, more understanding of the ways boys learn, more support for families because boys suffer more when fathers are absent. To quote the Beatles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Missing was any sense that environmental factors, and specifically toxins, which have been repeatedly linked to problems like ADHD ("fidgetiness") and other neurodevelopmental disorders, which affect 1 in 6 children, and several times more boys than girls, could be playing a role.
This week, NYT readers weighed in with letters to the editor under the title, "The Different Ways Boys Learn," yet another assumption masquerading as wisdom. Here we went again. Sample: "The achievement gap between boys and girls is not quite the mystery your article describes. 'Educational reforms' pushed by wealthy donors like the Gates Foundation, testing corporations and both Democrats and Republicans have cut recess, gym and the arts to focus on testing."
Ah yes, no recess, no fingerpainting, too many tests! How will we ever survive as a nation? And another: "Your article doesn’t mention an important ingredient of the problem. The rise in boys’ troubles coincides exactly with the push by schools to ramp up literacy demands in the earliest grades — a time when boys are least able to cope with reading and writing."
Ah yes, teaching boys to read and write -- that's why America is in decline. That letter was by Richard Whitmire, author of the book "Why Boys Fail," a former and very capable colleague of mine. Nonetheless, he completely misses the biological point.
And another: "Multiple studies document the academically and personally damaging effects of too much recreational 'screen time,' particularly for youths on the lower socioeconomic rungs." TV and video games, the ruination of many a young man. A capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for ... pixilated peril! (Man, did I ever have a lot of "screen time" as a kid -- to my childhood mind, the greatest show in town was Huckleyberry Hound.)
Come on, people. Boys are being damaged in a much more fundamental and durable way, which damages our country, and hence all of us, and the damage is not that hard to figure out. Autism is one heck of a clue, because it is the neurodevelopmental and learning and socialization disorder sine qua non, because it's new, because it vastly selects boys over girls, and because it's got to be environmental. That is why we call this the age of autism -- autism is telling us the nature of our problem.
So, having described last week how to not connect the dots, let me try to connect them with as few strokes as possible, kind of like one of these brain teasers where you have to link all the dots with straight lines without lifting your pencil, and can only do it when you literally think outside the box you mistakenly believe you are in.
I think you need just three dots to triangulate autism, and hence the rest of the neurodevelopmental issues affecting boys -- and children, and society, and the world -- that have so perplexed the experts.
One dot is mercury. Mercury, the organic kind used in vaccines and pesticides, clearly links the first cases of autism reported in 1943. None of the people who call us cranks or "anti-vaccine" ever bother, or perhaps the word is dare, to look at this pattern, which Mark Blaxill and I outlined in our book, The Age of Autism -- Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-made Epidemic. (See the 10-minute video version on our home page, How Mercury Triggered the Age of Autism..) The first use of ethyl mercury in commercial products in the 1930s stands out in those autism case histories like blood under Luminol at a crime scene.
And mercury implicates both vaccines and pesticides, the products in which it was first used. Vaccines were just a vector -- the way the mercury got into infants and sometimes their pregnant mothers. We can't help that fact; we -- who are trying in good faith to figure out autism -- didn't make the lunatic mistake of putting it in there and leaving it in there, we just showed it was there, implicated in the roots and rise of autism. We didn't put it in pesticides, either, nor are we anti-pesticide. We're anti-autism epidemic. (The government had the good sense to ban organic mercury in pesticides in the 1970s but kept adding it to vaccines for several more decades and still, inexcusably, allows it in flu shots.)
So autism causation is trapped, surrounded, cornered by those three dots. Arguably, other dots could be added to where you get a square, a pentagon, a hexagon, and ultimately the smooth curve of a circle. Genetic inability to get rid of toxins; mito disorders; autoimmune issues in the family; being sick on the day the shots are given; taking antibiotics or pain relievers at the same time. Dental work during pregnancy. Other toxins, like successor chemicals in pesticides (organophosphates) and in vaccines (aluminum and immune dysregulators) that create the same mayhem. And so on.
But three dots are enough to trap the bloody thing -- enough to establish the problem and make an end of it. Inside that triangle is not just autism -- although it is the Big One, the clue to everything else that's affecting our kids, and most especially our boys, and our country, and our world. The drawing I did at the top is crude -- I know, I misspelled pesticides. I didn't even bother to redo it. Because the point is that any cartoon-addled idiot can sketch out on the back of an envelope. It doesn't take a whole industry to keep itself busy with gene studies and older dads and much-needed education reforms and other folderal while our country goes down the crapper.
Those aren't dots. They're distractions.
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
Steve,
What Nofallacy said. Why do you think the parents of the first autistic cohort transported them across the country in some cases to ask the opinion of the Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. Leo Kanner on their children's strange behavior, losing their language or never developing it normally, toe walking, hand flapping, spinning, pronoun reversal, echolalia, no interest in social interaction: all symptoms new at the time, and, as Dr. Kanner said, never before seen anywhere, if it was just all ho-hum, yeah, some kids do that, always have, too bad. Dr. Kanner said that if they had existed before, someone would have described them, but NO ONE ever had. He and his colleagues compiled a volume of descriptions of EVERY childhood mental condition ever seen as of 1935, Childhood Psychiatry, and NOTHING even resembling autism was described there, because it was new at that time. (A few children reacted to the smallpox vaccine with vaccine encephalitis, and were deposited in Bedlam Asylum, and one of Kanner's cohort did too, the rest were autistic from mercury in the diphtheria vaccine or from the new fungicides).
Posted by: cia parker | May 14, 2014 at 01:33 PM
Aw, geez, tribesmen in Borneo.
Posted by: Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB | May 14, 2014 at 07:33 AM
Steve
In the opening words of Kanner's original paper:
"SINCE 1938, there have come to our attention a number of children whose condition differs so markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far, that each case merits—and, I hope, will eventually receive—a detailed consideration of its fascinating peculiarities."
Posted by: No fallacy | May 14, 2014 at 04:11 AM
Re Steve,
What the hell was that?
Posted by: Linda | May 13, 2014 at 10:24 PM
And Steve;
You Mr. Perfect have never had a typo or mis spelled -- Yeah right!
Posted by: Benedetta | May 13, 2014 at 07:43 PM
Steven;
I have been kicked off two websites for just saying I had a healthy children, I took them in to get a vaccine - and the reacted with heart murmurs which lead to X rays, that showed a swollen left Ventricle, with Kawasakis, with passing out- and rapid breathing, and stroke like episode and seizures.
So - who is the evil monkey here:
If that does not satisfy you then I will explain further why the evil monkeys watching over bearing cruel trolls -- won't let them post -- -if you can explain to me how my college professor who was teaching an infectious disease class, and at the same time moon lighting as head man of a lab franchise of Merck - gave all us students a rather cute little speech about how parents are mistaken about a vaccine reaction - and that kids usually have neurological problems about that time (meaning I suppose 0 to 5) and what is also given at that time -- vaccines -- so vaccines are blamed when something goes wrong. There was also a --cute little Volks Wagon analogy in there some where which I didn't really see how it fit in then or now --
However;
10 years later - in a town 2 hours away from the university; My son's pediatrician after my son's three vaccine reactions and my daughter 2 vaccine reactions -- while we had been in the office two hours trying to hold my son down to get some blood drawn -- to make sure he is levels of seizure medicie phenol barbitol were okay -- Gave me word for word -- the same *&^# speech - complet with Volks Wagon analogy.
My guess is Merck taught them both everything they knew or wanted them to know.
Aids
Show me the research and proof on that one.
And I will show you some equally convincing historical notes about the guy in African in a race with Sabin to make the polio vaccine -- pretty good strong evidence that he might have used chimps and not African Greens -- on the town's people in Africa -- in the same area where Aids was first reported.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 13, 2014 at 07:38 PM
Linda,
I've read that Homefirst sees thousands of Amish patients, which would give you a super-healthy, natural base right there. No vaccines, no pesticides, no wireless, home births, no autism, no allergies, no asthma...
Posted by: cia parker | May 13, 2014 at 07:06 PM
And, I'd like to know why you evil monkeys moderate your comments? I mean, you and your tolls spam any science blog hither and thither, but here you suppress alternate points of view.
Got a problem with this? Then email me: [email protected].
Posted by: Steve | May 13, 2014 at 06:38 PM
Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Autism wasn't even a clinical term until it was coined by two scientists in the 40s, and that's why there were no 'documented cases' before then. How could there be a documented case of a condition that wasn't even clinically identified? Of course, the argument that there was no autism before the 1940s is like saying there was no AIDs before the 1980s, though now scientific evidence (much as you may despise it) now shows that the disease probably originated in Borneo among tribesmen as early as 1908.
And, you might win more people over to your side if you could even spell the word 'pesticide.'
Posted by: Steve | May 13, 2014 at 06:37 PM
Taximom5 and Birgit, I completely agree with your points as to some other environmental offenders like pesticides and too much screen time being harmful for childrens development. Dr. Humphries certainly mentions pesticides role in the polio.
Interestingly, yesterday they mentioned polio resurgence and I was interested to hear them allow that only in a very small percentage of cases is there a paralysis. Of course nothing was mentioned as to vaccines distinctions- oral vs injected vaccines or the role of clean water etc.
I was listening to some common core criticism the other day (its in the news a lot lately) and I cant help but think how, when even a reporter refers to the educational industrial complex (that should be in quotes) there really is a problem with distrust amongst the people. I have to wonder if the feeling of mistrust that is building is spreading to all areas. People may be figuring that if you canèt trust the health governance sector, then you cant trust many others. I don't know that I necessarily disagree with common core but I think its interesting that people seem to not have the stomach for money making enterprises where education is concerned and obviously a lot of people don't like Gates.
Whatever curriculum is in place I certainly think that physed is important. In fact longer recesses are associated with higher achievement (sorry I don't have the research but I have seen this reported).
Posted by: Jen | May 12, 2014 at 11:23 AM
Cia - you may want to look further into whether root canals are really a good long-term medical decision. Recently mercola.com had an article about root canals and how they continue to harbor harmful microbes, their toxins still having direct access to the blood. It's one of those topics he likes to address periodically. It linked to two samples of root canal bacterial counts/breakdowns and the samples had some seriously harmful bacteria in them. It appears root canals can become a serious repository of toxic exposure. Just something to look into . . .
Posted by: Jenny | May 12, 2014 at 08:57 AM
Taximom, re soul-sucking, I bet I can make you smile. Philip Allott has just given this assertive speech at Wolfson College, Cambridge:
“The true function of education is to help human beings to become better human beings. Education is socially organised personal development contributing to the well-being of the human individual and the well-being of human society….
Average experience of education [now]. Primary: literacy to read advertisements (H.G. Wells, 1926) some self-discipline; some social skills; social consciousness mostly from outside (mass media). Secondary: testing skills; peer-group social skills; no life-long knowledge; social consciousness mostly from outside. University: testing skills; some professional skills; … disillusionment with the life of the mind; stifling of individuality, originality, creativity, mental energy, enthusiasm.”
He quotes:
“ ‘…I may add my very decided opinion that no system of education which is governed entirely, or even mainly, by examinations…can ever be otherwise than a bad discipline. Intellectual education requires that the mind should be habitually employed in the acquisition of knowledge, with a certain considerable degree of clear insight and independent activity. This is universally provoked by …interest that the mutual action of various minds produces; it is not greatly promoted by the prospect of an examination.’
W. Whewell, written evidence to the Royal Commission on Cambridge University (1852).”
Posted by: Mary W Maxwell, PhD, LLB | May 12, 2014 at 08:24 AM
It certainly looks pretty simple now, though I had to be in quite a lot of discomfort to just be moved to look and start connecting I guess, and much hard work has been done by others than myself (many here) to find historical and collective and scientific connections that make the picture clearer.
I think more are getting at least some of the environmental connections to our problems too, but the majority don't want to give as much credence and scrutiny as they need to IMO to the dots that suggest vaccination is a particularly potentiating way of introducing pollution into the body.
I know it's not just vaccines either, especially with my personal health, but why has that "vaccine" part been so hard to look at, even for those not potentially liable? I've seen a few say of course they see a likely problem when they're shown the drastic changes in the vaccine schedule, but just getting that much scrutiny has been hard. Does the "vaccine" dot rest in a zone of unthinkable institutional fallibility for too many?
And those potentially liable seem all too capable of not seeing so much more than just autism. If the CDC for instance wrote a letter to the NYT editor (likely only under circumstances of wider vaccine suspicion), would they say that the perceived "boy problem" is likely due in great part to shifting and expanding performance expectations and improved "awareness" of boy than we were in the past (we're so much better at teaching now that we're seeing that boys can't learn so much?), staying well entrenched in vaccine program protection mode, never mind potential societal suicide?
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | May 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM
Just this week the results of the math and reading proficiency tests came out and only one third of kids in New York were proficient in math and reading. Some of it may have been the test or preparation for it, but still it is a drastic drop. I am not sure how we can have any sort of future as a country with one-third proficiency in math and literacy. Really alarming actually.
Posted by: Jessica | May 11, 2014 at 07:58 PM
Fidgety boys are a national security issue. We need to level the playing field. But how can the U.S. remain competitive internationally if others won’t adhere to our vaccine schedule? [Wink]
Posted by: Dan Burns | May 11, 2014 at 05:38 PM
Interesting Cia. My daughter had terribly twisted permanent teeth too. I chalked it up to SAD infant formula plus homemade baby food that I microwaved, which I think kills beneficial enzymes and decreases nutrient value. Plus I was on a SAD low fat, processed food, GMO diet myself back then and had difficulties producing enough milk to feed her on my own. So to add to the dots here: SAD diet in mothers - contributes to gut issues with offspring - Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride's work has some relevance here. Then SAD/GMO diet, vax/hg containing vax/gmo vax in first years of life plus pesticide exposures...it's the perfect storm on kids in the US today. I like how Robyn O'Brien puts things, it is the most patriotic thing you can do in America these days to opt out of the mainstream food system (and I would extend that to opting out of all toxic exposures - like don't use Round-up on your yard, switch to less toxic pesticides when the Orkin man comes, use natural lawn care services versus the chemical laden options, etc.) If more people will do this, we'll have healthier people and a healthier planet.
Posted by: Beth | May 11, 2014 at 05:09 PM
Cia,
I'm sorry to hear that your daughter has to go through all that dental work. I wonder if vaccine induced changes in her flora could have played a role?
Dettwyler says that the natural age of weaning is anywhere from 2-1/2 - 7 years (which should, of course, be child led).
So you actually weaned early.
(kidding :o)
From 1997, Dettwyler explains how she came up with that weaning age here: http://www.kathydettwyler.org/commentaries/weaning.html
There is an interesting article on Huffington Post (sorry) looks like reprinted from Scientific American, which starts with "My son will be three-years-old next month and is still breastfeeding. In other words, he is a typical primate." I noticed in the article that Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow (the one who went to the home and did an informal evaluation and write-up of Justina Pelletier's family, reported in AOA in April) is quoted as saying that long-term breastfeeding is “a prescription for psychological disaster".
So much for the validity of his opinion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/time-breast-feeding-weaning-primates_n_1521831.html
Posted by: Linda | May 11, 2014 at 11:20 AM
Barry,
Isn't Homefirst a practice where there are a lot of home births? I'm not sure, but I suspect that Homefirst's patients would have a high percentage that would not consider using pesticides and chemical fertilizers in and around the home, who would opt for organic foods, and who would steer clear of all but the most necessary pharmaceutical and medical interventions (not just vaccines). And, giving birth at home would probably exclude the practice of too early cord clamping, and definitely would exclude anesthesia and pitocin. Another significant difference is that those who opt for a home birth are usually committed to exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months with long-term breastfeeding after that. I'm also willing to bet that you won't find a lot of pregnant women taking anything, including antidepressants and narcotics, reported to be widely prescribed to pregnant women these days.
I wish someone would look into all, not just vaccines, that Homefirst's clientele is doing right.
Posted by: Linda | May 11, 2014 at 10:19 AM
I've been an AoA reader for many years and had a child react very badly to her shots - wicked encephaletic scream that went unabated for many hours starting right after her shots and then off and on for weeks. Purely horrendous. Unforgetable, and yes, vaccines and pesticides and mercury belong on the chart of connected dots.
******************
If we look at the 35,000 or so unvaccinated Homefirst children, we see zero cases of autism. And since they live in the same society that our children do, I'm pretty sure that complete avoidance of vaccines is the only difference between those children and ours.
How do the pesticide, non-vaccine mercury and SAD dots connect for those children?
Posted by: Barry | May 11, 2014 at 07:21 AM
The "pesticide" dot is a really important one that is underplayed by the mainstream _____ fill in the blank. It is often forgotten that the current allowable limit measurements for mercury were derived from organic mercury poisonings (Dr. Jane Hightower, "Diagnosis Mercury; Mercury Contamination in Fish") that occurred in Iraq during the early 1970s when thousands of Iraqis were poisoned by seed-grain that had been sent to Iraq by Western! nations to a starving population. When this seed grain arrived in Iraq it was October, much too late for planting. The seeds were dyed red, and scull and cross-bones had been printed on the sacks to alert people that this grain should not be eaten. The Iraqis were so hungry that they decided to try and see whether the grain couldn't be eaten anyway. They even fed it to some chickens to see if they would die. When the chickens hadn't died after six weeks, they believed that the grain was edible, and they baked pink bread with it and they fed the bread and the chickens to the children and the elderly first. Many people died from mercury poisoning then.
It is a fact that mercury doesn't kill overnight. A lethal dose can take up to a year to kill. Mercury toxicity is insidious and can be very slow.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | May 11, 2014 at 01:36 AM
They have finally admitted that US is a dying country with young generations so neurologically impaired, that they are unteachable. But they still don't want to admit that it is the corrupt US federal and state politicians collaborating with criminal pharma mafias, who have poisoned most American children with toxic vaccines. Girls have been also poisoned, but they are somewhat more resilient. US regime has sacrificed the whole nation for profits of few criminals. And this is the main reason, why the US is loosing global competition on all fronts.
Posted by: no-vac | May 11, 2014 at 12:09 AM
@Cia: I think it's more likely that nutritional deficiencies resulting from vaccine-induced intestinal problems are to blame for dental problems. Genetics probably play a role as well. My vaccine-injured soon has perfect teeth - - but we were lucky, having learned of celiac and nutritional deficiencies quite early in the journey. .
Posted by: Taximom5 | May 10, 2014 at 09:47 PM
Oops. *were (not "aware")
*see (not" even")
Sorry, typing on cell phone.
Posted by: Taximom5 | May 10, 2014 at 09:21 PM
While I completely agree that vaccines and diet play a huge role in the inability of kids (especially boys) to focus, I think it's terribly misguided, even destructive, to brush off the combination of too much screen time and the changes in our educational system.
In raising both neurotypical and autistic (and vaccine - damaged) children, some of our biggest struggles aware against the mental effects of 6 1/2 hours of test - taking skills, with no exercise of body or mind , because gym, art, music, and recess had been cut.
You might be shocked to learn what happens to even a neurotypical kid's social skills when you combine a soul-sucking schedule like that with a few hours of mindless video games.
It doesn't do our side any good to dismiss valid factors in the destruction of our children. These ARE major problems that need to be addressed, and we should be prepared to admit it--but continue to share proof of the even more desperate need to address the damage done by vaccines.
More and more people are starting to listen to us. Let's not lose them by denying or dismissing the things they know to be true. Otherwise, we are no better than those who deny vaccine damage because they didn't even it in their kids.
Posted by: Taximom5 | May 10, 2014 at 09:15 PM
Beth,
My daughter reacted to the hep-B vax at birth with four days and nights of inconsolable encephalitic screaming, later diagnosed with autism. I nursed her until she self-weaned, which was at five and a half. (A pediatrician who went to La Leche League in the same years I did later told me her daughter finally weaned at five and a half too, it may be the natural age for many.) Her baby teeth were perfect and beautiful. Her permanent teeth came in very mishapen: several pairs of fused teeth, extra teeth, missing teeth, rotated teeth, and teeth pushed over. I'm certain that the vaccine encephalitis screwed up the DNA instructions for the teeth scheduled to come in five years later, while those for the baby teeth had already been finalized. One dentist said they were the most mishapen she had ever seen, and got an extremely bad rating of the Salzman scale. It's costing thousands of dollars to improve their appearance. Two years of braces, and now we're going in Tuesday for cosmetic work on one pair, and another pair will have to have a root canal done and the extra tooth plastered on top drilled away once the nerve is killed. Some we'll just have to live with. I've wondered how common this syndrome is in vaccine-damaged children.
Posted by: cia parker | May 10, 2014 at 08:15 PM
Thank you Mary Maxwell for your comment (on my comment) on last week’s weekly wrap. Clamping the umbilical cord is a horrific medical error. No health benefit can be claimed for this procedure. Immediate clamping of the cord became a protocol in the mid 1980s, at about the same time the vaccine schedule was ramped up. The reason for clamping the cord was to obtain information about oxygen and carbon dioxide (acid/base) levels, and they didn’t even get that right.
Blood pumped back to the placenta (in the umbilical arteries) is oxygen deficient, and blood from the placenta (in the umbilical vein) is rich in oxygen, which is needed to support the baby’s metabolism until the lungs are fully functional. Some of the oxygen deficient blood goes into the pulmonary artery to fill the capillaries surrounding the alveoli. Carbon dioxide is then released into the alveoli, which is exhaled and stimulates the “first gasp.” Thank you Mary for the quote from Maxwell’s 1977 textbook. Textbooks at that time still taught that the umbilical cord should not be tied or clamped until pulsations of the cord ceased.
Pulsations of the cord are from blood pumped through the fetal valves in the heart, which fully close after the lungs have taken over the all important task of respiration. It is a transition that cannot be forced. Transition from placental to pulmonary respiration is an essential dot that is connected to early postnatal health.
Nuclei in the auditory pathway are especially vulnerable to oxygen deficiency. The blood-brain barrier is the first to go. Bilirubin is the best-known substance that damages areas where the blood-brain barrier has broken down. Injected vaccine components are also likely to get past a damaged blood-brain barrier.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | May 10, 2014 at 07:59 PM
Then what about Japan their boys have decided to not marry because they want to stay in their rooms and play video games.
I don't know about their diet, but - well my husband did go over there some for buissness and he said that they ate very little sugar - mostly fish, sea vegatables, vegatables, and rice.
Most of the allerigies over there are rice.
I think that all this problem with food in America - is that they have put everything we eat into a vaccine from eggs, to MSGs, to the whooping cough toxin that has the same structure as gluten in wheat. Is that really true - does anyone know -- does the whooping cough toxin resemble wheat gluten and is the same protein also part of our thyroid gland?
Posted by: Benedetta | May 10, 2014 at 07:43 PM
Beth,
Breastfeeding would have been responsible for the correct shape of the mouth and teeth as it requires the infant and toddler to use all the muscles of the mouth, jaw and tongue. Dr. Brian Palmer presented on this in 1998:http://www.brianpalmerdds.com/bfeed_oralcavity.htm
Bottlefeeding results in different oral and dental development and the formula itself is cariogenic. Of course, Dr. Weston was correct that later foods in the SAD destroy health too. I'm not familiar with his philosophy. I wonder if he took early feedings into consideration. It is interesting too that cultural anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler once wrote that societies that wean early tend to be more violent and warlike. The US definitely qualifies as an early weaning society.
Posted by: Linda | May 10, 2014 at 06:41 PM
I've been an AoA reader for many years and had a child react very badly to her shots - wicked encephaletic scream that went unabated for many hours starting right after her shots and then off and on for weeks. Purely horrendous. Unforgetable, and yes, vaccines and pesticides and mercury belong on the chart of connected dots.
One more dot that hasn't had any solid scrutiny that I'm aware of is the SAD (Standard American Diet). Dr. Weston Price a dentist in the 1930s was very concerned about deviant behavior...what made boys and men do bad things, steal, lie, cheat, commit robbery, forgery, arson, etc.
After touring the world and documenting the diets of people all over the globe he found that societies that still ate traditional diets of nutrient-dense foods had peoples with beautiful teeth, exceptional and upstanding personality traits. When he documented diets in societies that had accepted Western diets (denatured foods - white flour, white sugar, etc) he saw terrible crowding of teeth and the jaw of a person in his view could predict behavior. The worse (non-nutrient-dense) the diet, the more crooked the teeth and the the more socially deviant the behavior.
Having read from and especially viewed the pictures of the people in "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Price I believe extremely poor nutrition may be another dot to add to the "what's wrong with boys" puzzle.
The US has been infatuated with low-fat diets for some time, and let's face it the processed food industry (abysmally poor in nutrients) feeds the nation.
So, imo, this should definitely be added to the list of contributors...in addition to all those Dan lists.
Posted by: Beth | May 10, 2014 at 05:45 PM
There are only two dots that need to be connected; the first one is vaccines, and the second one is vaccine damage.
It really is that simple. And trying to somehow connect it all to pesticides, is just diluting a message that doesn't need to be complicated.
Posted by: Barry | May 10, 2014 at 02:21 PM
Fox and Friends all this week about 9:00 Steve Doocy, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Brian Kilmeade, and other regular contributing co-hosts have discussed what is wrong with the young men this day and age ----this entire week.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck is sitting there with celiacs - has she read that it takes and environmental something - along with our own zonulin and gluten (3 things) to make you that way?
I do appreciate her high lighting this problem though.
They sure had a lot of theories and half baked ideas. One co host said, "Let's face it there is a lot of young men out there that are just losers." but since it was a week long topic - there was a lot of other off the wall things too.
-- that men were still low tech creatures in a high tech world.
---- that they would not take responsibilities serious and were into high tech games instead.
The irony there--space of the library of Congress--could not hold what could be written about that.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 10, 2014 at 11:50 AM
"To quote the Beatles "Yeah, yeah, yeah!""
Dan,
I love it.
Of course, we need to address the problem why are boys suddenly unteachable when historically they were teachable.
But it should be obvious that many have sustained neurological impairment. In fact it is in the government statistics if I mistake not.
One question is why are NYT editorial writers unteachable. Is it because they've been paid to look the other way?
John
Posted by: John Stone | May 10, 2014 at 07:58 AM