This Is What Happens When Kim Posts While Drinking Homemade Wine
Vaccines: Life Saving or Life Changing?

Weekly Wrap: Crunch Time For Our Matching Fund Drive

AofA Red Logo Ayumi YamadaBy Dan Olmsted

Age of Autism started nine years ago this month, a combined effort with Generation Rescue. So it’s fair to say we’re starting our tenth anniversary year. And that is really saying something in this day of rocky media ventures that are born, die, pop up in different forms and then mutate into disappearing photographs (this is my limited understanding of Snapchat). There is even secret writing on my IPhone message system, I found out this week.

We try to keep up, but we also aim to keep our mission focused, as the faded newspaper font of our logo suggests, on traditional bedrock reporting. We have an archive of thousands of articles, images and videos, and just about all of them have held up as accurate, important, useful, funny, controversial, newsy – take your pick. We are advocates for vaccine safety and the community of people who have been drawn into it; we aim to be part of the movement to help sick kids and find the truth about autism. But within that advocacy and aim we play it straight. I’ve called us the pirate radio station of the autism epidemic, in that we try to remain a reliable and widely available source of news and inspiration to like-minded individuals battling the Death Star in so many different ways. But we also reach well beyond ourselves, because we are listed on Google News (and give vaccine injury deniers fodder for what seems like more than half their content!). As I’ve said before, if you Google vaccines and autism you get the usual blarney from the CDC at the top, and there is us, whaling on the flu vaccine.

Lasting this long requires hard work and dedication and different skills contributed by a lot of people. Donate to AofAIt also requires luck – Kim, Mark and I work well together, each doing our thing but coming together when big topics are at hand. We pretty much operate on consensus – if any of us is adamantly opposed to something, I can’t recall ever going ahead with it without major revisions at the least. You would be surprised at the number of things we do NOT run, including at least a couple of overheated columns of mine in recent months.

Kim, John, Teresa and I are an ad hoc comment-moderating crew, and again I think readers might be surprised by the lively conversations we have about whether a comment is unfair, irrelevant, out of bounds, etcetera. We end up running most but we don't apologize for looking at them carefully in order to create a thoughtful response to the articles and not the flame fests you sometimes see on Web sites..

Of course we have our flubs and frustrations, but to be part of this movement in this way has been incredibly gratifying to all of us. And having so many wonderful Contributing Edtiors, frequent writers and smart and passionate commentators continues to amaze me.

All of which is a long windup for a quick pitch – we keep going based on contributions, and we went to a nonprofit model last year to reflect the changing base of those contributions: fewer organizations, more individuals.

It turned out to be a good choice (though don’t talk to me about paperwork and taxes for a 501(c) 3). By little and little we cobble together enough to keep doing this at what I believe is a pretty high level.

For the past three years we’ve had Anonymous Reader, as this person (no gender clues here) prefers to be known, put up $5,000 in November as a matching grant. If our readers contribute in kind, she donates it, doubling your money. The first two years we exceeded the match, even though it wasn’t tax-deductible the first time around.

This year we have raised a goodly amount, around $3,000 from dozens of donations ranging from $10 to $250, but if memory serves we are a bit behind previous years coming up on the last part of the month, when distractions start to multiply.

I always feel more than a little uncomfortable asking for money from families dealing with autism and its relentless financial burden, but I’ve been persuaded that a), some people do want to contribute and b) this is the biggest bang for their buck – deductible and matched. So $100 (just to pick a nice round figure) would get you a tax deduction – let’s say 20 percent – and be doubled. So I’m thinking $80 from you nets $200 for Age of Autism. But for a short time only! Donate now! (There, I’ve done my carnival barker bit.)

In keeping with the season, let me invoke the gods of thanks and giving and renew our request to make a tax-deductible donation either with the PayPal button (www.paypal.me/AutismAge) or sending a check to Autism Age (our corporate name) to

Dan Olmsted

102 Whittier Circle

Falls Church VA 22046.

Finally, please know – professional fund-raisers, cover your ears – that whether you ever give a dime, you’re the heart of the AOA community which, unlike self-perpetuating shape-shifting quislings like Autism Speaks, has one goal in mind: Put an end to the Age of Autism.

--

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

Comments

Vicki Hill

Dan, just wanted to let you know that your "Donate $50 Now" button on the right-hand side of the page is not working.

However, the others are...and I am going there right now to contribute!

Benedetta

Thanks Betty

Betty Bona

Thank you for what you do! I learn so much from reading this site and all the comments! I always read the articles and try to read the comments. Sometimes life gets too busy to keep up with all of it, and then I know I miss out. Perhaps the lower level of donations this year has to do with the weather. It felt like summer where I am until just a couple of days ago! It's hard to realize that Thanksgiving is upon us with summer-like weather!

This week there is a free, seven-part documentary series on autoimmune diseases. They release one segment of an hour to an hour and a half each day. Each segment will be available for only 24 hours, but they have extended the first three until tonight at 6:00 PST. You can sign up at www.betrayalseries.com if you want to watch. The first episode was an overview of the issues for autoimmune sufferers in the modern medical model (treating symptoms rather than root cause). The second episode was about the association of leaky gut to autoimmune disease and the importance of Vitamin D. The third episode was about the microbiome and autoimmune disease. There were 220,000 people signed up to watch it as of yesterday! I've been researching about leaky gut, the microbiome, and autoimmune issues for years, but I still find helpful information in these episodes. My sister-in-law who has Crohn's disease said it was a bit dramatic for her taste, but she is watching and learning as she has grown tired of the treatment modern medicine has offered her for her condition. I highly recommend the series for people with autism in the family!

Janet

So thankful for your site. Blessings to you all!!!

Laura Hayes

Thank you for this fundraising update, Dan. I hope last year's fundraising record will be shattered this year! AoA is such an important and needed forum, and I hope readers will financially support it as best they can :)

I wanted to share a few links with AoA readers:

1. Sally Fallon Morell wrote an excellent letter to President-Elect Donald Trump. Hope he receives and acts on it!

http://nourishingtraditions.com/open-letter-donald-trump/

And don't miss the video link included in her first point. Fantastic, too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmoG7usFxas&=&index=8&=&list=PLh_Mo9_9KQEKCib155Pm_mj8eUgRwg6Wy

2. Josh Coleman made a powerful, and heart-wrenching, 5-minute video for the Vaxxed Team's Homecoming event in Austin this week. Grab a Kleenex before watching. And thank you Vaxxed Team for being on the road so many months of this past year! What an impact you are having!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y09WNx4njY&feature=youtu.be&ct=t%28%29

3. Jon Rappaport wrote an article on scientific fraud in the medical literature. The ethical backbone in science...not to mention in medicine, government, and media...is gone. The public must wake up to this deplorable fact, and soon.

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/the-illusion-called-medical-journalism-the-deep-secret/

Happy Thanksgiving to AoA's wonderful editors, contributors, commenters, and readers!

Patience (Eileen Nicole) Simon

AoA promotes concerns of grief-stricken parents, while current mainstream "authorities" continue to suppress our ideas. Vaccines were no better tested for safety than other drugs. I am trying to contribute as often as possible on President-elect Trump's website, https://www.greatagain.gov. Following is what I submitted this morning:
Autism, addictions, and Alzheimer's could have been understood decades ago.
Brainstem damage from toxic substances was described 135 years ago, Wernicke's encephalopathy. Diminished brainstem function affects the cerebral cortex, and leads to Korsakoff syndrome. Brain changes in Alzheimer's syndrome should be compared with those in Korsakoff syndrome, and in Parkinson's disorder.
Side effects of prescription drugs should have been better researched before approved for use as medications for blood pressure, pain, diabetes, cholesterol, and more.
Autism is a lifespan tragedy for every family affected. This was to have been addressed by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), the Children's Health Act (2000), and Combating Autism Act (2006). The Combating Autism Act was replaced by a watered down "Autism CARES" act in 2014.
Autism is a serious neurological disorder. Legislation must be revised to reflect this, and the IACC must be required to be more responsive to questions raised by parents of people afflicted with autism in early childhood.
...Eileen Nicole Simon, PhD (biochemistry), RN

Bob Moffit

God bless all .. AoA .. Contributing Editors, frequent writers and smart and passionate commentators .. your passionate pursuit of "justice" .. for our wounded community and families .. makes ANY modest donation .. money well spent!

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