While we take comfort that Janie Gill did not murder her grandson Guy who has severe autism, the fact that she was compelled to abandon him at a rest stop is enraging. According to the article, she is raising the severely autistic teen because his parents died of drug abuse. Wow. Tragedy all around.  I fear that we these stories will grow in the coming years as cute boys (and girls) with 24/7/365 soup to nuts needs for all tasks of daily living grow into full sized adults. Dirty secret? Our kids are exhausting. My girls, whom I adore, are exhausting. When I am with them, my time is not my own. I am on call, sleeping with one eye open, circling the house like security guard, never, ever at full rest. Not everyone can handle this level of work. I'm not sure how any of us does it. There are few services for severely autistic teens and fewer for adults. Programs are for kids, under 13 is the norm. Yes, I blame Janie Gill for not taking her grandson to a hospital or police station. I also am grateful she did not murder him. That's a hell of a tradeoff. And this is the legacy of autism denialism, as written about by our own Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill. Autism can be a severe, debilitating weight on a family.

ROGERS COUNTY, Oklahoma -  A Rogers County grandmother is in jail, accused of dumping her 17-year-old autistic grandson at a Kansas rest stop and leaving him there alone.

Here's the nutshell version: A NC Mom uninvited a child to a birthday party because the child is not vaccinated assuming she could sicken another party guest who has a compromised immune system due to cancer treatments. Mad ensued on both sides. How is a healthy child a threat to a child with a compromised immune system? There may have been children who were shedding flu or chicken pox vaccines at the party. Or an adult who had gotten the shingles vaccine.  Were temps taken at the door? Rapid strep tests? Who is the "threat" and why are children being considered "weaponized" because they do NOT have a vaccine? It's part of the troubling trend to demonize vaccine choice. I can't think of one Mom I know who would jeopardize another child willingly. But all children live in a germ and virus filled world. I'd be more afraid of a grocery cart handle or the bathroom stall door at school for my child, than a healthy friend attending a party. Fear breeds hate. Hate breeds violence.

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A North Carolina mother says that another mom lost her cool after her daughter was uninvited to the first daughter's birthday party — due to some very serious health concerns.

A 35-year-old Redditor, who goes by dankmoms on the site, was hosting a birthday party for her seven-year-old daughter when she learned that one of the little girls who'd been invited was not vaccinated.

Unfortunately, her daughter's best friend is a cancer survivor and has a compromised immune system, so getting sick could kill her — leading dankmoms to feel compelled to uninvite the unvaccinated child, sparking the fury of that child's mother. Read more here.

Note: "Universal vaccination" as a goal? Let's hope the authors read The HPV Vaccine On Trial.

BMJ 2018; 363 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k4602 (Published 07 December 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;363:k4602

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4602

Saidatul Buang and colleagues report on collaborative efforts to introduce HPV vaccination in Malaysia and increase coverage

Human papillomavirus immunisation of adolescent girls: improving coverage through multisectoral collaboration in Malaysia

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women globally.1 Human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18 collectively cause 70% of cervical cancers and precancerous cervical lesions.1 The UN joint global programme on cervical cancer prevention and control includes HPV immunisation for girls as one of its three priorities at country level, together with screening and treatment for cervical pre-cancer, and diagnosis and treatment of invasive cervical cancer.2 In Malaysia, the age standardised cervical cancer rate is 7.8 per 100 000 females, making it the third most common cancer in women, with 4352 new cases reported for 2007-11.3 Malaysia’s HPV immunisation programme was introduced in 2010, within a healthcare system that has a credible track record (box 1, table 1). We present a case study of this programme and explore the role of multisectoral collaboration in achieving near universal immunisation of an estimated annual cohort of 250 000 13 year old girls.

Note: For decades, politicians who have seen first hand the trauma of vaccine induced autism have abandoned us. Remember Representative Elijah Cummings at the hearings so many year ago - appalled, angry and then... apathetic? Once pharma turns the screws, most politicians fold like cheap lawn chairs.  As you read the article, you may, like me, be at odds with his stances on other topics. Big time.

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A soon-to-be congressman from Tennessee told constituents Tuesday he believed vaccines may be causing autism, questioning data from the Centers for Disease Control and other institutions disproving such a theory.

Not only did Republican Mark Green, a Congressman-elect from Clarksville who is also a medical doctor, express hesitation about the CDC's stance on vaccines, he also said he believed the federal health agency has "fraudulently managed" the data.

His remarks came in response to an audience question at a town hall meeting in Franklin from a woman identifying herself as the parent of a young adult with autism. The woman was concerned about possible cuts to Medicaid funding.

"Let me say this about autism," Green said. "I have committed to people in my community, up in Montgomery County, to stand on the CDC’s desk and get the real data on vaccines. Because there is some concern that the rise in autism is the result of the preservatives that are in our vaccines

"As a physician, I can make that argument and I can look at it academically and make the argument against the CDC, if they really want to engage me on it," Green said.

Despite calls by the anti-vaccination movement for parents not to vaccinate their children against a number of diseases, CDC data disproves the movement's findings.

Note: You can smell the irony in this story like a horse farm behind a pig farm next to a cow farm on a hot Texas day. New Jersey has one of the highest autism rates in the nation. The cute kids everyone buys blue light bulbs for in April in a do nothing feel good effort are going to grow into adulthood. The ones who aren't killed by a restraint or murdered by a distraught parent or drowned as a result of wandering, that is.  For those who grow into adulthood the questions never end for families: Where will they live? What will they do all day? How will they survive financially? Who will care for them now and when we die? The stress and anxiety is crippling in so many ways.

So imagine the revulsion we feel toward people who would be so against a community of people with autism that they would defile the property bought to create a loving, safe home. A home for people like  your sons, daughters and my daughters.  I picture a bunch of Hunter booted women in $100 yoga pants creeping across the property to wreak havoc late at night in a last ditch effort to chase away the...autistic.  In some states, group homes for autism are also including SEX OFFENDERS. Can you imagine a more dangerous "roommate" for our loved ones?

In 2019, we are launching a new member of the Autism Age non-profit family called Autism Ages. We'll be a community of diverse voices sharing ideas, helping each other learn how to navigate the future for our loved ones and I hope, learning from adults on the spectrum who will join us. Stay tuned. If you want to be an early participant, email me at AutismAges@gmail.com. We also have sponsorship opportunities.

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Neighbors debased farm for autistic adults with graffiti and horse manure: lawsuit

MIDDLETOWN - When a charitable organization tried to buy a farm on Middletown’s affluent Navesink River Road to use as a home for adults with autism, neighbors went to great lengths to block the sale and even tried to bribe the seller to back out of the deal, court papers allege.

When that didn’t work, and the sale went through, neighbors embarked on a pattern of harassment that included debasing the property with menacing graffiti and dumping hundreds of pounds of horse manure on the grounds, the court papers said.

Superior Court Judge Dennis R. O’Brien, sitting in Monmouth County, last year dismissed a lawsuit brought by Oasis Therapeutic Life Centers Inc. against its neighbors, saying the charitable organization failed to set forth a valid claim under the state’s Law Against Discrimination.

But a panel of appellate judges on Monday reinstated the lawsuit, saying the overarching goal of the Law Against Discrimination “is nothing less than the eradication of the cancer of discrimination."  Read more at NJ's App.com.

Note: How is it that even when vaccine injury is a apparent as an elephant in the room, the push continues to paint vaccines as always safe?  Parents are rightly afraid of the risk, especially in India where so many children were harmed, even killed. It's almost impossible to fathom. For those reading the complete report a "crore" is an Indian unit of 10m and the reference to "41 crore" is to India's 410m children between 1 and 15.

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By Jyoti Pandey, DownToEarth.org

After Gujarat and Punjab, now Uttar Pradesh has lost two children to Measles-Rubella vaccination and several other schoolchildren have fallen sick in Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur districts.

School administrations are now so scared to organise such drives that the government has sought help from the Indian Medical Association to spread awareness among people.

The vaccination drive was launched in UP on January 26 and the same day several cases of children falling sick were reported from various parts of the state. While Kanpur saw admission of 100 school-going children in hospitals, Shahjahanpur reported 30 such cases, Lakhimpur Kheri 22, Mainpuri 12, Unnao 29, Firozabad four and Mahoba and Tundla reported eight cases each.

After both Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur lost one kid each, the health department went into a tizzy. Zainab, 12, a resident of Chandoi village in Pilibhit, fell sick the day after she got vaccinated. She was admitted to a hospital right after she started puking, but she died.

Similarly, Shahjahanpur's Chandpur village saw eight-year-old Prince fall ill two and a half hours after he got the vaccine. He also started puking and the same night he was declared dead, says his father Sudhir Dikshit.

Earlier, Punjab had also witnessed a girl die and several other fall sick. After the death in Bhatinda, the vaccination drive was halted. Even in Gujarat, the kin of the two schoolchildren who died blamed the vaccine for the deaths. The protests forced the state government to launch an investigation.  Read more here.

Note: We are surprised yet pleased to see a mainstream site (NewsOK from Oklahoma) allowing this book review/editorial. I laughed when the ad that popped up was for flu shots at Yale New Haven. Good grief. The Bots sure are smart!  So is Dr. Steven Lantier. Let's hope he doesn't lose his job over writing this editorial.

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Dr. Steven Lantier
Published 12/10/18, NewsOK.com

Read more here.

by John Stone

The term "smart power" was new to me when I encountered it recently in a British Medical Journal blog as part of the new-speak vocabulary of J Stephen Morrison 'senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of its Global Health Policy Center".  Morrison's article is interesting both because it discloses explicitly how 9/11 was made an opportunity  to draw health into the global security agenda of the United States while failing to understand how such a move might result in the shattering of "consensus" and the post war "Western post-war liberal order": "smart power" even if it is smart is not "liberal" and will not lead to consensus. But it also spells out that the global vaccine program has become a covert instrument of US power. If Morrison by any chance laments the passing of the centre-left government in Italy, then perhaps the White House putting Italy and its health minister, Beatrice Lorenzin, in charge of global vaccine strategy was an error.  

Morrison thinks it is a paradox but it is scarcely so if a government is seen to pursue coercive health measures over its citizens at the behest of a foreign power - even those who favor vaccination could be concerned at the state's new found powers over their bodies (which might also be indefinitely extended). If that was not so smart a political move perhaps the technology is not so smart either - as I remarked  to Steven Salzberg a few years ago: "The unwelcome news is that the “cruise missiles and drone helicopters” of the war on disease often hit the wrong target, and the more cruise missiles and drone helicopters you unleash the greater the risk".

Frankly, no one knows what they are going to be injected with next. Smart bombs become too easily the agents of international chaos and mistrust: just so the smart bombs of the war on disease, both for what they can do to your body and what they can do the political landscape, including destabilizing friendly governments. “Smart power” is also duplicitous: Italy is just the surrogate of the US. Why could the citizens of the world not have it directly from the mouth of Obama saying in effect your bodies are not your own and we inject into them what we like?

To make measles a key issue in global security is an unforgivable distortion of policy. It really is not clear why we are at more risk from disease now (apart from by the sinister development of viral technology) than at any time since the end of the Second World War, we are simply being gripped by a new manipulative rhetoric. Nor could we be further from the consensus that gave rise to the Nuremberg Code 70 years ago. Everything we have learnt has been stood on its head.

*            *            *

Below is a letter I recently wrote to British Medical Journal (unfortunately not so far published):

"Smart power": reasons for disaffection in Italy, and the destruction of the post-war liberal order and consensus

Owen Dyer presents a rather incomplete background to recent political events in Italy [1]. The is is not to say that I have any insight into what Giulia Grillo - the Italian Health Minister - intends, but there are  some gaps in the narrative regarding the defeat earlier this year of the  governing centre-left coalition, in which Grillo's predecessor - Beatrice Lorenzin - was a key player over several years. This is to say that there are reasons for discontent which apart from anything else fall well short of outright rejection of vaccination.

In the first place we seldom if ever hear mention in mainstream reports of the appointment of Lorenzin, and Italy, to head global vaccine strategy by the Obama administration in September 2014. An Italian government press release states [2]:

"Washington, 29 September 2014 - Italy will lead vaccination strategies and campaigns in the world over the next five years. This was decided by the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) held last Friday at the White House. Our country, represented by the Minister of Health Beatrice Lorenzin, accompanied by the President of the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) prof. Sergio Pecorelli, has been commissioned by the Summit of 40 Countries, at which also spoke US President Barack Obama...."

Equally, demonstrators against mandated vaccinations in Summer 2017 will likely have been aware of the statement by GSK's Italian administrator - Daniele Finocchiaro in 2015 [3]:

 "Recently I accompanied our global CEO, Andrew Witty, to Matteo Renzi. The premier told us clearly that he considers - and rightly so - the pharmaceutical sector as strategic for Italy. Further, he said that the pharmaceutical is precisely the future of our country ... I then met also Minister Lorenzin and other members of the government who reiterated the sensitivity of the government to those who invest, create jobs and opportunities for young people. So we started on the right foot. To find such sensitivity in Roman palaces is not to be discounted. As for us, Andrew Witty asked few things: certain rules and stability in the face of very strong investments in advanced research and production equipment. We understood each other."

Citizens may also have been sceptical of Lorenzin's claim that 270 children had died in a recent outbreak of measles in London [3,4], and they may have wondered why ten vaccines had to be mandated to protect against one disease.

It is interesting in this light to view the complaint of  J Stephen Morrison (senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of its Global Health Policy Center) in BMJ Opinion that post-war consensus has broken down [5]:

"Global health is a product of the Western postwar liberal international order—an order that is today besieged, says Stephen Morrison"

"In the past two decades, we have witnessed an expansion of investments into global health that have been rooted in humanitarianism, the rule of law, and democracy. Underlying this action have been the principles of multilateralism, alliances, and partnerships. It has been consistently argued that investments outside home borders will not only save and improve lives but also promote economic growth and the stability of communities.

"In surprising and unforeseen ways, global health also benefited enormously from the post 9/11 counter terror doctrine that came to dominate the security strategies of the major Western powers. That doctrine aggressively advanced the argument that uncontrolled infectious diseases pose major transnational threats. It put a spotlight on smaller countries beset by weaker governance and fragile infrastructure, where grave health challenges can fuel armed, internal violence. Counter terror gave rise to the belief that focused investments—“smart power”—would achieve concrete results in improving lives while also winning hearts and minds in a global struggle."

But there is a paradox here that "smart power" is necessarily what everyone wants, or that the consensus is any longer "liberal". The Italian people were in effect being told that they must cede rights over their bodies and those of their children to the state because of the demands of global security strategy (starting apparently in the White House). Even if they accepted ten vaccines where would this end in principle? Could it be that the global strategists are themselves smashing the consensus, by  arrogating extraordinary rights over ordinary people? Morrison assumes this is a benefit of 9/11, but if so it was not one that the citizens of the world were consulted about, it was something which happened within US and global hierarchies and we were all just supposed to do as we were told.

[1] Owen Dyer, 'Italy’s health minister fires country’s top health board', BMJ 2018; 363 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k5158 (Published 05 December 2018)

[2] John Stone, 'Re: MEPs devise strategy to tackle vaccine hesitancy among public -Echoes of WMD', 26 March 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1378/rr

[3] John Stone, 'Re: Too many vaccine mandates subvert measles vaccine update', 24 August 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3596/rr-6

[4] John Stone, 'Re: Compulsory vaccination and growing measles threat - Prof Melegaro's response', 21 October 2017, https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3429/rr-7

[5] J Stephen Morrison,  'Global health disruptors: Decay of the postwar multilateral Western order', BMJ Opinion 29 November 2018, https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/11/29/stephen-morrison-decay-of-the-postwar-multilateral-western-order/

John Stone is UK and European editor of Age of Autism

By Cathy Jameson

Ronan needs full assistance for many of his daily living skills.  It makes for a lot of work on my part, but I do love that he understands more prompts this year compared to last year.  Baby step by baby step, these skills can help lead to more independence.  The latest one we have been working on, “Time to get your shower.”  He did it!  I just need to be one step ahead of him next time to help with his pajamas because, boy, was he ready for his shower right after he got up this morning.  Go, Ronan! 

I shared that picture and that note above on one of my social media accounts last week.  I posted it not just because it was a pretty cool photo if I do say so myself, but because it was so perfectly us.  If I had a file for photos such as that one, I’d name the file This Is Autism. 

Thinking about that photo and why I took it – because, in our house, that really is autism, I remembered a few more images that also fall into that category.  They include the siblings, the work it takes to keep Ronan safe, loads of emotions and a brief story about why I wanted to freeze that moment in time.  The severity of autism that Ronan displays is so often downplayed in the news and on feel-good TV shows.  Because of the misrepresentation and limited exposure of non-verbal regressive autism, people don’t realize how difficult life can be for the child with that diagnosis.  Whey won’t ever understand just how draining it can be on the caretaker either.  It is tiring.  It is frustrating.  It is why some parents are afraid to die.  With the autism rate at 1 in 40 and rising, who will be left to take care of our child as well as we have?  Who??

The autism we live may not be what the media or the public believes autism to be, but it’s our story, our reality, our truth.  Care to see what that looks like and how much more complicated it can be?  Continue reading.  If you do continue to read, please keep in mind that as I share these images, they are posted in the hopes of educating others.  Life with autism has ups.  It has downs.  It can be frustrating and loud and confusing.  Thankfully, those living life with autism bring moments that are also rewarding.  No matter what has happened as a result of autism, I always remember afterward to find the joy.  The main subject of my photos reminds me to do that daily.

Note: Davide is an Age of Autism reader and vaccine safety advocate in Italy. We welcome his contribution to AofA!  Grazie!

By Davide Suraci

From Italy, December 6, 2018.

Here is what the mainstream media write about the Italian situation: “Italian health minister Giulia Grillo is expelling many members of the Higher Health Council. The Italian government of no-vax is restoring the freedom of choice for vaccination and to eliminate the obligation of the 10 vaccinations”.

It is not true. In fact, the government elected after the votes of March 4, 2018 and consisting of the "5 Star Movement" and the "Northern League" - mistakenly considered populist parties - have maintained the mandatory vaccination and many unvaccinated children have been excluded from our public and private schools also through the use of police forces.

In these days the law number 770 is being approved, with which the decisions of the previous government would be reconfirmed and made harsher. Mass vaccinations are also planned for medical personnel and teachers. Doctors remain silent and do not want to get vaccinated (only 15% of them are vaccinated). Vaccinations are also foreseen for the renewal of driving licenses and to be able to access the school classes of every order and degree.

The police forces, on the orders of the judiciary, have checked the authenticity of the vaccine certificates delivered by the parents to the schools in order to obtain the right of access for the children to the school.

Many parents have filed complaints to the judiciary for vaccines polluted by metal nanoparticles (discovered by our researchers in nanotechnology materials already 15 years ago in vaccines). An inquiry was opened by the judiciary but seems to have been shelved.

As if this were not enough, we have been activated, also thanks to the Italian association CORVELVA and the National Order of Biologists (ONB), to analyze (from international qualified laboratories) many vaccines from the metagenomic, biological and chemical point of view and we have discovered, for example, in the measles vaccine, the presence of six viruses variant derived from mutations; an entire human genome; in some vaccines the antigens declared on the factsheets and on the datasheets have not been found. In recent chemical analyzes, presences of antiepileptic drugs, Viagra, herbicides and other substances absolutely incompatible with human biology have been identified.

As sheriff's detectives investigate the incident, they say that there appears to be no evidence of foul play or criminal intent at this time. 

AT. THIS. TIME.

This boy was 13 years old. Perhaps he was prescribed Risperdal, an anti-psychotic drug given to people with autism to "help" with behavior. One side effect is severe weight gain. The boy was tall, but 280 pounds is more than just a tall kid. Restraint is difficult. If you train in martial arts, you might call a restraint a "submission."  Rhonda Rousey used to break arms with hers. You can break bones. Suffocate. It's called "choking out" when you apply pressure to the throat, neck or temple.  A restraint is a weapon.  I call this aggravated assault, not a school safety technique.

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From ABC10.

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. -- A 13-year-old student died after being restrained at an El Dorado Hills school.

The student was described by officials as being six feet tall, 280 pounds, and diagnosed with “severe autism.”

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office responded to Guiding Hands School in El Dorado Hills on November 28. According to the sheriff's office, the boy had become violent and was restrained by school staff to prevent injuries to other staff and students.

While being restrained, the student became unresponsive and a teacher provided CPR until medical aid came. The student was taken to Mercy Folsom in critical condition and would later be transported to UC Davis.

The sheriff’s office was notified of his passing on November 30. As sheriff’s detectives investigate the incident, they say that there appears to be no evidence of foul play or criminal intent at this time.

This is a developing story.

Note: This article discusses a change in Quebec, Canada which will substitute the GlaxoSmithKline HPV vax in place of the Merck vax in an effort to save money for the province. I can't help but wonder if a GSK Rep got to a Quebecois politician to convince him or her that the money savings was wise. In fact, it's a money loser for Merck and a win for GSK.  I won't even combine Eveready and Duracell batteries in a toy - here we have students being experimented upon with two separate brands and formulations of a vaccine that is meant to be given in multiple doses.  HPV vaccination will topple the myth of vaccine safety - croyez nous.  And bonne chance to these poor students.

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Students in Quebec are the first in Canada to be vaccinated in a program that uses two different vaccines to protect against the human papillomavirus, a change that has divided experts.

Under the new program, which started this fall, students receive one shot of Gardasil 9, which protects against nine strains of HPV, including 16 and 18, the two that cause the majority of cervical, anal and other HPV-related cancers. Early next year, students will receive a shot of Cervarix, which protects against HPV 16 and 18 only.

The new schedule is expected to save the Quebec government $3-million a year.

Several experts and organizations call the change a risky experiment that puts savings over health. None of the experts dispute the safety of Cervarix. The concern is that students who do not get two doses of Gardasil 9 will not build sufficient immunity to seven of the nine strains. Cervarix, produced by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), costs about $110 per dose, while Gardasil 9, made by Merck, costs about $190.

“[The change] took a lot of us by surprise,” said Nancy Durand, a gynecologist at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “It’s a living experiment."

But members of Quebec’s immunization committee say clinical evidence shows the amended vaccine program will protect young people. Committee member Vladimir Gilca says much of the backlash originates from Merck, which stands to lose if provinces reduce use of its vaccine. School-based HPV vaccination programs in every other province use two doses of Gardasil 9.

“It’s nothing new to change a vaccination program. The most of these changes pass without a lot of attention,” said Dr. Gilca, a scientific adviser for the National Public Health Institute of Quebec.

Some of the opposition is because Cervarix has been approved for use only in girls and women in Canada. That does not mean it is unsafe for boys, but it is unusual for policy-makers to use vaccines in this off-label way, said Marc Steben, who works in the unit for sexually transmitted infections of the National Public Health Institute of Quebec.

Some experts fear one dose of Gardasil 9 could leave students vulnerable to genital warts and other less common forms of cancer not covered by Cervarix.

“This is based on pretty skimpy evidence, particularly in terms of long-term outcomes,” said Zeev Rosberger, a psychologist who studies HPV prevention and is on the board of advocacy group HPV Awareness.  Read more at The Globe and Mail.

Yesterday, our nation buried President George H.W. Bush, a World War II hero. Tom Brokaw wrote a book called The Greatest Generation about men like Bush, who served in what my Dad, a WWII Navy vet called "the great 'waah' in his Boston accent.  These men and woman catapulted America into the post-war boom years. My father was born in 1922. His granddaughters are part of the sickest generation, their lives shot down by autism.  I teach Karate to students beginning at age four. Last week, three kids, 8 years old or so, had a chat about epipens and how to use them. When I was 8 I talked about riding my bike after school and eating Hostess Big Wheels. Today's children face active shooter drills and constant medical interventions for chronic illness. Below, Children's Health Defense discusses the plight of the sickest generation.

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From Robert Kennedy's Children's Health Defense

Too Many Sick Children

More than 54% of American children are suffering from one or more chronic illnesses, with the late 1980s and early 1990s viewed as the gateway period that launched the decline. Autism, ADHD, asthma and allergies have doubled since that time, with autism now one in 34 children in some regions. Pediatric autoimmune conditions are also on the rise, and the proportion of public school children using special education services is estimated at 13% to 25% of school populations. Mounting evidence indicates environmental toxins such as heavy metals, pesticides and herbicides as the principal culprits, while studies link vaccines and toxic vaccine ingredients to a wide range of adverse health outcomes, including seizures, neurodevelopmental disorders, and infant death. As the medical, public health, and government circles remain silent on the social and economic fallout from these toxic exposures, American children have never been so sick.

Our comprehensive white paper, The Sickest Generation: The Facts Behind the Children’s Health Crisis and Why it Needs to End covers these chronic illness and more, along with the causes and the steps you need to take to protect your children now.

Read more here and share your own stories of what you see in children around you.

Those of us of a certain age recall Animal House with great fondness. The boys of Delta House tormented Dean Wormer and the entire Faber University at every torn. Today? Animal House is a reality in Eugene Oregon, where the movie was filmed almost 40 years ago.  The boys of Animal House were indeed naughty and puckish. But even John Belushi's Bluto was endearing, not enraging.   Today's school children are more reminiscent of another movie - Chuckie.  And I say that without meaning to belittle or shame. Behavior is out of control and not because our children are evil. Something(s) has happened to the young brain that is affecting their ability to function and cope. Screen time, forced academics far too early, changes to infant development, video games, chemicals masquerading as food, plastic in place of glass from cradle to grave, over vaccination in a a vast experiment on the human immune system and bolus doses of mercury before birth in the maternal flu vaccine. Violence and aggression are traits of mercury toxicity. This ties in with the overwhelming number of mass shootings in America. Unbridled, unchecked aggression and violence. The world is "easier" than ever to navigate. Children don't need to memorize a phone number, learn how to use an encyclopedia, read a map, make change for a $20 bill after a purchase - Siri and Alexa and iThisThatandEverything take care of thinking in so many ways. And yet they are tanking. There's no other word for it.

Shannon was referring to increased violent and disruptive student behaviors in Eugene-area schools that he said are pushing teachers and other school staff to the brink of quitting.

Meg Carnagey, a first-grade teacher at Adams, said students are becoming more aggressive.

“Kids are hitting, choking, tackling, biting and kicking,” she said. “They’re leaving bruises, red marks and bite marks.”

The teachers who spoke Wednesday are not alone in their observations, and nearly every educator or education advocate in the area agrees that the issue is growing.

In the last three years, Bethel, Eugene and Springfield school districts — along with their counterparts across the state — have seen the frequency and intensity of violent, threatening or disruptive behaviors steadily increase, especially at the elementary level, district officials said in a Register-Guard report that published earlier this month.

Eugene schools face ‘behavioral crisis,’ board told

Congressional Hearings Needed Before Reauthorization of Autism CARES Act

Baltimore, MD., November 28, 2018 – The Federal advisory committee charged with coordinating all U.S. Government efforts on autism is failing to meet the needs of individuals and families affected by the disorder, according to a survey released today by several autism advocacy groups. The survey, primarily of parents and caregivers of individuals with autism, found that the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, or IACC, has failed to make a difference in the lives of people with autism. The autism advocacy groups are asking Congress to replace the IACC with a more effective Office of National Autism Policy Coordination when it considers reauthorizing the Autism CARES Act next year.

The 2018 Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) Stakeholder Satisfaction Survey collected responses from 1,405 autism community members through an online questionnaire. The Reform Autism CARES Coalition (RACC) released the findings to inform Congress of the deficiencies in the Federal response to the autism crisis. The RACC is comprised of national autism advocacy groups Autism Action Network, SafeMinds, and the Thinking Mom’s Revolution (TMR).

According to its website, the IACC “is a Federal advisory committee that coordinates Federal efforts and provides advice to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues related to autism spectrum disorder (ASD).” The IACC was originally established under the Children’s Health Act of 2000. The current Committee was reauthorized through the Autism CARES Act of 2014. Operating the IACC costs American taxpayers $1.38 million per year.

Since the Committee’s creation in 2000, the number of American children with autism has increased 120 percent, from 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 59 in 2014, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The age of diagnosis has barely budged, and no new treatments have been identified. Autism is on track to cost up to $1 trillion by 2025 in medical, nonmedical and productivity losses, according to a University of California, Davis study.

By Ted Kuntz

After reviewing the vaccine literature for more than 30 years (my son was severely injured by the DPT vaccine in 1984), I’ve come to the realization that the artificial stimulation of the immune system (vaccination) is a fraud. A scam. A massive and pervasive delusion.

I know this is not an easy message to hear. The idea that a medical product is both safe and effective is reassuring. Every parent, out of love and concern for the wellbeing of their children, would want to participate in a medical practice that assures the health of their children. We want to believe in the safety and effectiveness of vaccination. We want to believe that a simple injection of substances will protect our children for life. Unfortunately, vaccine immunity and safety is a myth. A story. A carefully manufactured deception.

What the vaccine literature reveals is that vaccination is not evidence-based medicine. There is an appalling lack of evidence of vaccine safety and effectiveness. We do not know the true extent of harm caused by vaccines because the studies have not been done as required. It is impossible to evaluate the risk-benefit of vaccination with any degree of confidence. Assuming that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks is not science, it is conjecture. This fact is made obvious when one recognizes that we don’t measure health when evaluating vaccination. We measure compliance.

Vaccines are not marketed using facts and scientifically based evidence. Rather, vaccines are marketed using fear and coercion. This is intentional. The activation of fear impacts our ability to see the issues clearly and evaluate the merits of this product logically. The vaccine paradigm is then reinforced using shame and ridicule. The medical industry has traded facts for fear and science for shame.

Click over to the Bangor (Maine) Daily News to read this article and take the POLL asking whether you believe parents should have the right to Philosophical vaccination exemptions.  This is not the New England I was born in decades ago - we believe in freedom, even if it means a fight. Ginger Taylor is working hard in Maine to head off this Californication....

###

Some Mainers are gearing up for a fight over the future of the state’s philosophical exemption for childhood vaccinations, a battle that is expected to play out during the upcoming legislative session.

That’s because many Maine families are choosing against vaccinating their children, and some lawmakers would like to change that. Nationally, nearly 2 percent of parents chose not to immunize their kindergartners for non-medical reasons last year. In Maine, 5 percent of parents of public and private school children decided against immunization, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rep. Ralph Tucker (D-Brunswick) is among the Maine lawmakers, public health advocates, medical professionals and others who want that number to start trending downward. He’s planning to introduce a bill in the next legislative session that would eliminate the non-medical exemption for vaccines, including exemptions for both religious and philosophical reasons, thereby improving the state’s vaccination rate.

by John Stone

The BBC was at it again on Friday running a report hinting that 50,000 people had died from flu in the England and Wales during the the 2017-18 season based on newly published data from the Office for National Statistics:

"There were around 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017-18 - the highest since the winter of 1975-76, figures from the Office for National Statistics show...The increase is thought to be down to the flu, the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine in older people and spells of very cold weather last winter."

One fundamental problem with this is that the government had already published the influenza death toll for the season in May - it was indeed an exceptionally  bad year but it still only meant 320 deaths in England and 372 in the United Kingdom as a whole (which includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland):

"Through the USISS mandatory scheme, a total of 3,454 ICU/HDU admissions of
confirmed influenza were reported across the UK from week 40 2017 to week 15 2018,
including 372 deaths, based on combined data from England, Scotland and Northern
Ireland. In England, the total number of influenza confirmed admissions to ICU/HDU
was 3,175 (rate of 0.22 per 100, 000 population) and 320 deaths during the same
period...

"The cumulative number of cases and deaths were higher compared to the 2016 to 2017
season (992 cases (rate of 0.06) and 112 deaths) and to the 2015 to 2016 season
(2,173 cases (rate of 0.14 per 100, 000) and 166 deaths) in England. This season
represents the highest number and rate observed since the beginning of the scheme
..."

Public Health England, 'Surveillance of influenza and other respiratory viruses in the UK:Winter 2017 to 2018' p. 21

It is also interesting to note that the issue of high mortality for the period came to light early on and was even reported in some national newspapers. In the British Medical Journal Hiam and Dorling wrote in March:

"Within the first seven weeks of 2018, some 93 990 people died in England and Wales.1 Over the same weeks in the previous five years, an average of 83 615 people died..This rise of 12.4%, or 10 375 additional deaths, was not due to the ageing of the population. Ageing is a slow process and leads to slow, not sudden, rises in mortality...An additional person died every seven minutes during the first 49 days of 2018 compared with what had been usual in the previous five years. Why?

By Cathy Jameson

I was at a physical therapy clinic with one of the kids last week.  While my daughter was getting settled in with her exercises, I scanned the room and saw a handful of staff and patients.  Everyone was engaged in whatever activity or job they were assigned to do.  Even as busy as they were, there were several conversations going on.  With how open the room was, I couldn’t help but hear bits and pieces of the chatter going on.  No one seemed to mind which is why one of the PTs had us all laughing when she wisely and loudly told the young twentysomething male PT assistant, “Just you wait!  When you hit 40, it’s all downhill from there.  Mark my words… enjoy yourself – and your body - now while you can.”  A few of us fortysomethings nodded our heads in agreement.  Then the entire room erupted in laughter, including the other PT assistants who enjoyed the ribbing their co-worker had gotten. 

Life after 40.  You’ve probably heard the jokes:

Forty is when your body…

Gives your brain a list of things it’s not going to do anymore!

It’s a cruel irony that when you get to be two times the age of a 20-year-old…

You only have half the metabolism!

40 is when you finally get your head together…

And your body has other ideas.

After you turn 40…

Every time you suck in your gut, your ankles swell!

It’s all fun and games turning 40, unless you’re talking the autism numbers…

1 in 40.

On Friday, this story was circulating on Facebook. A man, (young man) who appeared to have autism was found alone at a Kansas rest stop.  He could not speak. He "seemed lost." This could describe my Bella. Or even Mia, although she has speech. She is rarely able to answer a question without prompting that few in the world know how to offer her. Even my beautiful Gianna, who is as chatty as a magpie, would be hard pressed to provide answers about herself. She could tell you the date!

In 2019, I'm expanding the Autism Age family to launch a wholly new interactive platform called "AutismAges.org." Friends, we're going to have to build our kids' future brick by brick, just as we did with schooling. Because time makes you bolder, even children get older and I'm getting older too. So are you. Email me if you'd like to learn how to be a flagship participant sharing knowledge, ideas, solutions and asking 1000 questions about adult life with autism.

Individuals and organizations are welcome to become category leaders and participants  including adults with autism.   AutismAges@gmail.com

###

From KAKE Kansas:

THE UPDATE:

The child located in our county earlier today has been identified. We are in the process of attempting to contact family members or a guardian. Thank you for all the information that has been provided by the community. There is no more need to call at this time.

(CHILD? He's 6 feet tall and approximately 220 pounds.)

ORIGINAL STORY:

By John Stone

AoA revisits UK and European Editor, John Stone's, exposé from last November of the bogus European Health Parliament, an industry lobby organization supported by POLITICO. POLITICO's credentials for attacking vaccine critics for spreading FAKE NEWS in France are rendered farcical by their sponsorship of this FAKE POLITICAL INSTITUTION.

The European Health Parliament: Bogus Institution Is Industry Front

Our elected politicians may not be a class I collectively respect, but at least they bother to get themselves elected. Recently our friends at the British based journal and group The Informed Parent received a letter announcing:

“My name is Alice Pignacca, Member of the European Vaccine Committee of the European Health Parliament, a platform of 55 young professionals and students with the goal of shaping the future of healthcare in Europe. We work in 5 committees around various topics. Specifically, our committee intends to provide recommendations on vaccination plans, taking into account the reasons for not trusting vaccines.”

What Ms Pignacca – who is requesting information -  does not mention is that the European Health Parliament (which no one had heard of before) but which sounds vaguely plausible, is no more a parliament than you or I are a parliament. It does not have representatives elected by citizens, and it is not an institution of the European Union: it is an unelected body affiliated to Johnson and Johnson, Google, POLITICO, the College of Europe, the European Patients Forum (a group which receives significant funding from most of the major pharmaceutical manufacturers)and Euro40 (a group of Euro MPs under the age of 40). The letter is copied to Matteo Pedralli, who like Pignacca seems to be a student at the 'the College of Europe', an independent educational institution situated in Brussels (one of the two homes of the real European Parliament) and to Chiara Danelli, who works for Johnson and Johnson .

NOTE: Many of us know or know of Dr. Ayoub. Take a look at how is he branded as "anti-vaxxer" in the headline - as an instant denigration. The trend to discredit continues.  This article is rife with all of the red herrings, unrelated to Dr. Ayoub's work in defending those accused of child abuse - a topic about which we are unschooled. And while we never, ever want to see a child abuser set free, this is a fascinating article.

###

An Anti-Vaxxer’s New Crusade Dr. David Ayoub used to be active in the anti-vaccination movement. Now he’s challenging mainstream science again — as an expert witness for accused child abusers.

This story is a collaboration between ProPublica and The New Yorker.

On the morning of April 19, 2016, Melanie Lilliston received an urgent call from the Little Dreamers day care center, in Rockville, Maryland. Her 6-month-old daughter, Millie, was being rushed to the hospital. Doctors there found that Millie had fractured ribs, facial bruises and a severe brain injury. Melanie watched as her daughter was loaded onto a helicopter for emergency transport to Children’s National Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., where doctors discovered more injuries: a fractured leg and arm, as well as bleeding in her eyes. Millie died three days later.

The day care operator, Kia Divband, told police that Millie had started choking while drinking a bottle of milk and lost consciousness. The Montgomery County medical examiner, however, determined that her injuries were caused by blunt force. Investigators discovered, on Divband’s phone and computer, internet searches for “broken bones in children” and “why are bone fractures in children sometimes hard to detect.” A former employer of Divband’s told them that the day before Millie was hospitalized, Divband had called to inquire about a job, and a baby could be heard wailing in the background. Divband told him the baby wouldn’t stop crying and that “he just couldn’t take it anymore,” the former boss recalled. Divband was arrested and charged with fatally abusing Millie.

Interesting. Yesterday, commenter Shelly Tzorfas asked "what if autism were contagious?," and I remembered a post I wrote in 2008 for Huffington Post. This was back when HuffPo had contributing writers who controlled their own work. I was able to log into the blog backstage with a password and publish my work. There was no pay, but the platform was really important for me to build my "brand" and prepare to launch my memoir. And I was passionate (still am) about telling my family's story in order to help others. Even when it earned me ridicule and online scorn instead of a paycheck.

After one of their sales to another media company, HuffPo stopped allowing writers to publish their own work. I could still go into the site, write and post my work, but I had to wait for a staff member to approve and publish the post.  After a while, they stopped publishing my posts at all.  I wasn't too happy about that. I had a huge following and my work generated comments and controversy - the lifeblood of a blog.

Today, HuffPo has removed their contributor platform entirely.  When I went to find my old post, I found this disclaimer, "This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email." 

And so, without further ado, here is my old, possibly abusive post. Wink!

What if Autism Were Contagious?

Tell me why our doctors and national institutions and even charities have abandoned children with autism, instead of setting out to conquer this neurological crippler.

By John Stone

In my letter to the British government's leading medical adviser, Dame Sally Davies, published in these columns two days ago I commented:

"When the DHSC last surveyed this problem in 2004-5 the overall ASD rate among school children was ~1% which was 5 times higher than the rate for those young people born between 1984-8 mostly before MMR was introduced, as reported in the equivalent 1999 survey. Since then your department has neglected to look at the issue (apart from a couple of failed adult autism surveys) as everything manifestly got worse, year on year."

By a strange coincidence the government published its first survey of child and adolescent mental health (including autism) in 13 years the day after my letter to Davies was dispatched, placing the overall prevalence of autism in English schools at 1.2%, completely out of line with the situation engulfing our schools. My criticisms of the new data have now been published in British Medical Journal Rapid Responses:-

Scepticism regarding the NHS survey 'Mental Health of Children and Young People, 2017' and ASD/PDD

Calm down.  One in every 40 kids with autism is nothing to worry about.

Once again the officialdom in Atlanta [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has announced that the autism rate is higher than previously believed, and once again, we’re told that IT DOESN’T MEAN MORE CHILDREN ACTUALLY HAVE AUTISM.

I’ve been writing on this phenomenon over the last couple of decades.

EACH AND EVERY TIME an update in the numbers came out, there was ALWAYS the caveat added by some expert and featured by all in the mainstream media that assured the public that the new rate was nothing to worry about—no real change.

When the news broke on the latest findings, I could predict that every major news outlet covering it would ONCE AGAIN deny any real increase and would ONCE AGAIN attribute the numbers to better counting and greater awareness. And this time we’re told it’s also due to different methods of gathering data.

The message to the American people ONCE AGAIN is: AUTISM IS NOT, NOR WILL IT EVER BE, A CRISIS.  

Remember back to last April when the rate of one in 59 U.S. children was announced?

THE NEW JERSEY RATE CITED AT THAT TIME WAS ONE IN EVERY 34 CHIDREN (one in every 22 boys).  You’d think people would have been in a panic to explain the NJ numbers—why the big difference?  (Or why there is NEVER a comparable rate of autism found among ADULTS.)

Note: My Lord...  we just keep getting better and better at counting in America. We can find a piece of poop covered romaine in 5 seconds but can't count autism?

###

How many American children have autism? The U.S. government answers that question at least three different ways and says the latest estimate — 1 in 40 kids — doesn't necessarily mean the numbers are rising.

The new number, published Monday in Pediatrics , is from one of three periodic surveys the government uses to assess autism rates. It's higher than a different survey's estimate published earlier this year, but the surveys use different methods and measure different populations of kids so the results aren't really comparable.

Because there's no medical test, "autism spectrum disorder is a particularly challenging condition to track," government researchers wrote in the Pediatrics report.

Read more at ABC News.

By John Stone

I recently wrote to Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer of England and to the British government, asking her for the basis of her statement to the BBC regarding MMR: "It's a safe vaccination - we know that", and was a lucky enough to receive a reply (letter of 12 November, from which I extract):

Specifically in relation to whether MMR vaccines may be a cause of autism, a substantial body of population-based research has found no evidence to suggest a causal association. This evidence (not just for MMR, but other types of vaccine) is available for review in the published medical literature, and was summarised in a meta-analysis in 2014 which is free to download (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X14006367?via%3Dihub).

In relation to vaccine safety monitoring more generally, I can assure you that systems are in place to keep safety under review. This includes continual review of suspected adverse reaction reports (such as those submitted through the Yellow Card Scheme), evaluation of GP and hospital-based health records linked to immunisations, review of worldwide data and close collaboration with international health authorities.

It is noteworthy that the "meta-analysis" by Luke E Taylor is identical to the one cited by Thomas Insel to a US Congressional committee in 2014, but it constitutes no more than a bureaucratic fig-leaf. Dame Sally - who is the UK's leading government adviser on medical matters - ought to be able to do a lot better than this if every child is to be subjected to these products. It is, if anything, a rather naive response citing a shallow collection of studies which were published under political pressure decades after the policy was introduced. I have since attempted a conscientious and detailed reply:

21 November 2018

Dear Dame Sally,

Thank you for your letter of 12 November. I would point out that though you are quite right I am concerned about the rise in autism I specifically asked about the evidence base for MMR safety. That said it is reasonable to point out autism for a whole host of reasons is a much more serious problem in modern Britain (and elsewhere) than measles. When the DHSC last surveyed this problem in 2004-5 the overall ASD rate among school children was ~1% which was 5 times higher than the rate for those young people born between 1984-8 mostly before MMR was introduced, as reported in the equivalent 1999 survey. Since then your department has neglected to look at the issue (apart from a couple of failed adult autism surveys) as everything manifestly got worse, year on year [1,2].

As it is, a recent survey carried out by the Department of Health in Northern Ireland showed that the rate had risen from 1.2% in 2009 to 2.9%, while in Belfast it was as high as 4.7%. Moreover, 60% are educational Stage 5 [3], ie the most severe level of disability, so these are not cases that could previously have been missed because somehow subliminal. Educational data from across the nation and reports of collapse in educational services in the media testify that Northern Ireland is not an isolated case, but just better documented [4].

Regarding the meta-review by Taylor 'Vaccines are not associated with autism' [5] which you cited I note that there are just six MMR related studies included all of which have major problems. Three of the studies show apparent protective effect of MMR vaccines against autism (Madsen 8% [6], Smeeth 14% or 22% [7] and Mrozek-Budzyn 83%!!! [8]) which suggests bias. Of the Madsen paper Cochrane 2005 warned [9]:

"The follow up of diagnostic records ends one year (31 Dec 1999) after the last day of admission to the cohort. Because of the length of time from birth to diagnosis, it becomes increasingly unlikely that those born later in the cohort could have a diagnosis"

It remains troubling that as with a number of studies from this Danish group the co-ordinator on behalf of US Centers for Diseases Control, Poul Thorsen, is wanted for financial fraud from the CDC, though not extradited to the US now after nearly 8 years [10].

Of the De Stefano paper Cochrane commented [9]:

“The conclusion, however, implied bias in the enrollment of cases which may not be representative of the rest of the autistic population of the city of Atlanta, USA where the study was set.”

And indeed in 2014 the paper was repudiated by one of the leading authors, William Thompson [11]:

“I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”

The study by Smeeth [7] is compromised by its patchy data source, the General Practice Research Database where the autism rate represented is perhaps only one tenth of cases diagnosed [12]. Cochrane commented [9]:

“In the GPRD - based studies (Black 2003; Smeeth 2004) the precise nature of controlled unexposed to MMR and their generalisability was impossible to determine…”

It remains problematic whether the unvaccinated in this study were genuinely unvaccinated.

Of the Uchiyama study [13] Cochrane commented [14]:

“The cohort study of Uchiyama 2007 was potentially affected by a different type of bias, considering that the participants were from a private clinic and that definitions of applied Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) diagnosis and of methods used for ASD regression ascertainment were not clearly reported.”

And the Uno study [15] will suffer from similar issues since the cases came from the same clinic. Moreover, in both instances the studies were far too small (904 persons and 413) to necessarily provide any clear result even if they had been better controlled.

Nor can the Taylor meta-analysis [5] cover up the entire absence of pre-marketing studies. In 1988-9 when the British government was persuaded to introduce Pluserix, MMR2 and Imravax there were no safety studies at all, and successive governments have been forced into the defence of a policy which they had embarked on without safety evidence.

As to the robustness of the yellow card reporting system I note the recent correspondence in the columns of BMJ On-Line regarding monitoring of Pandemrix vaccine from Wendy E Stephen and Clifford G Miller [16], which has serious implications for how the MHRA monitor all products. The MHRA has, of course, the ultimate conflict of being entirely funded by the manufacturers. It may be mentioned that in 1992 the Pluserix and Imravax vaccines were withdrawn not apparently by the British Government concerned about patient safety but by the manufacturers catching the government on the hop [17].

We are confronting a catastrophic situation among our young people with chronic illness replacing infectious illness as the main issue and cost to the state, and laying the emphasis on infectious diseases (with endless hate campaigns in the media against critics labelled “anti-vaxxers”) is a distraction, and a distortion of policy. It would be unfortunate if ministers were being advised about the safety of the programme on such a threadbare and inadequate basis. Re-examining the policy is both essential and urgent.

[1] John Stone,  ‘Response to David Oliver I (The Indisputable Rise in Autism)’, BMJ Rapid Responses 28 August 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3596/rr-12

[2] John Stone, ‘What about autism?’ BMJ Rapid Responses, 21 August 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3596/rr-0

[3] Information Analysis Directorate 'The Prevalence of Autism (including Asperger Syndrome) in School Age Children in Northern Ireland 2018', published 10 May 2018, https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/health/asd-children-ni-2018.pdf

[4] Responses to Viner RM, 'NHS must prioritise health of children and young people', https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1116/rapid-responses

[5] Luke E Taylor et al, ‘Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies’, Vaccine 2014, https://autismoevaccini.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/vaccines-are-not-associated-with-autism.pdf

[6] Madsen et al, ‘A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism’, NEMJ 2002, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134

[7] Smeeth et al, ‘MMR vaccination and pervasive developmental disorders: a case-control study.’ Lance 2004, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15364187

[8] Mrozek-Budzyn et al, ‘Lack of association between measles-mumps-rubella vaccination and autism in children: a case-control study.’ Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal 2010, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19952979

[9] Demicheli et al, ‘Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children.’, Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2005 Oct 19;(4):CD004407.

[10]  Office of Inspector General, US Department of Health and Human Services, Fugitive Profiles, https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/fugitives/profiles.asp

[11] https://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents/2016/WorkGroups/House%20Health%20Care/Bills/H.98/Witness%20Testimony/H.98~Jennifer%20Stella~William%20Thompson%20Statement~5-6-2015.pdf

[12] John Stone, ‘An old story: the GPRD does not provide credible autism data’ 11 February 2014 https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/10/e003219.responses

[13] Uchiyama et al, ‘MMR-vaccine and regression in autism spectrum disorders: negative results presented from Japan.’ J Autism Dev Disord. 2007 Feb;37(2):210-7.

[14] Demicheli et al, ‘Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children.’, Cochrane Systematic Review - Intervention Version published: 15 February 2012, https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004407.pub3/full

[15] Uno et al, ‘The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and the total number of vaccines are not associated with development of autism spectrum disorder: the first case-control study in Asia’, Vaccine. 2012 Jun 13;30(28):4292-8. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.01.093. Epub 2012 Apr 20.

[16] Responses to Godlee, ‘A tale of two vaccines’ BMJ 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4152/rapid-responses

[17] Report, BMJ 26 September 1992, https://www.bmj.com/content/305/6856/777

When your government, the BBC or the mainstream media tell you that MMR is safe,  this the best that the British government can do. After three decades of pure bluster they need to go back to the drawing board.

By Kim Rossi (formerly Stagliano)

Yo Ho Ho and a vial of poison, dead children TELL NO TALES! But their parents do. Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean screenwriter Terry Rossio Tweeted the LOGICAL thought that I have had on many occasions and is now having to walk the media plank.  By coincidence, I watched his Pirates movie on Saturday night.

He compared calling a person an anti-vaxxer to calling a person the N word.  (Insert horror scream here.)

He's right. There's no way around it. Anti-vaxxer is an EPITHET - a word used to denigrate.  I would have Tweeted "N word" and not spelled the word out. But I'm a middle aged white woman in Connecticut.  This in no way compares the history of treatment of African Americans to the treatment of the vaccine safety community. Not for a second. I and I believe Mr. Rossio, are talking about the USAGE of the word - the intent by which it is written on the page.  The intent in the media and by politicians and public health officials is to brand, literally and figuratively, anyone who speaks about vaccination safety concerns a heretic.

The reports will focus on the word he used, not the fact that a successful Hollywood screenwriter sees through the draconian crackdown on ANYONE who questions vaccine safety. I'll assume he lives in California where vaccine rights are being stomped upon by the like of Senator King Pan.  The reporter glibly writes off vax safety concerns as the result of "talking too long to Jenny McCarthy." Ah a new twist on an old talking point for the Pharmedia.

Decide for yourself what you think about this.  But remember, young men go to WAR and kill when they perceive their neighbors, brothers and sisters as ENEMIES. It's the seed warlords plant to foment rage and hatred. And I see it happening right here in America for those of us who choose not to follow the CDC schedule for our children and who speak out loudly. Calls for punishment. A restaurant that will not serve the undervaccinated. A gym that wants to see... "pediatric papers please."  This is a very real trend to violence. 

You may not know the name Terry Rossio, but you definitely know his work. He’s one of Hollywood’s most prolific screenwriters, his name often buried in large writer clumps on many-tentacled blockbusters like Shrek, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Disney’s original Aladdin, Déjà Vu, Antz, Small Soldiers, The Legend of Zorro, Little Monsters, and so on in that fashion. He’s also, apparently, what they call “anti-vax,” spreading the gospel that vaccinating kids is bad because of some stuff he read on Google or because he talked too long to Jenny McCarthy.

By Teresa Conrick

I recently came upon an article from the UK that had me wondering. I have always thought of PDA to mean “public display of affection,” a cutesy term for kissing or showing affection in public, but this article is showing a way different meaning -- I can’t do this anymore’ says mum of autistic boy as she films violent outburst

Kate, from Suffolk, has had to spend nearly £10,000 getting a private consultation after a long wait to get a diagnosis for son Jamie. Jamie was just three years old when he started becoming violent. Now seven, he is prone to kicking, punching and spitting at his mother during his frequent ‘meltdowns’.

He had been diagnosed with pathological demand avoidance (PDA), a rare form of autism that can lead to excessive mood swings, anxiety and, in his case, violent behaviour. The behaviour is not the fault of the children with PDA, as it is the condition that prompts them to behave this way.  In some cases, they do not know what they are doing.

That sounded a bit like PANDAS and PANS, something we are familiar with here in the states.  I looked some more and found these:

Health Secretary to probe council ‘gagging order’ on father of autistic teenager   The Health Secretary has vowed to investigate the care of a severely autistic teenager whose father was gagged by council after speaking out…...The 50-year-old former college lecturer launched a social media campaign after growing frustrated at his daughter's plight. His complaints attracted the attention of Walsall Council, who tried to silence him by slapping a gagging order.

However, the determined dad is now free to speak out after winning an extraordinary High Court battle….Bethany has been locked in a secure unit in Northampton for nearly two years, where her father has been forced to kneel down and talk to her through a metal hatch.

By Cathy Jameson

Chicken pox was in the news again.  Quite a few children from a school in North Carolina have come down with it.  Local media quickly picked up the story.  National and international media outlets copy/pasted that story and turned it into a major headline.  When my kids caught the chicken pox, it wasn’t front-page news.  But that was way back then.  Today, things are different.  I noticed how different with each news story I read over the last two weeks. 

It wasn’t so much that children caught a childhood illness that was being reported.  More focus was on the parents of these children.  Making sure to point out that the kids were at school with a religious vaccine exemption, as they have every right to be, the parents were made out to be irresponsible.  What a world of difference life is for today’s parents whose children get sick with chicken pox compared to those depicted years ago.  Name calling was non-existent.  Judging a parent and their beliefs was unheard of.  As was the case when my kids came down with it, chicken pox and the temporary inconvenience it’s known to bring, was simply part of life.  I was reminded of that after seeing two television show reruns about two months ago that included characters coming down with chicken pox.  After seeing those shows, which were quite popular when they originally aired, curiosity got the best of me.  How many other shows used this illness in their stories?  I had to find out. 

The more titles I searched, the more shows I found that included chicken pox!  What was interesting to note was the media never swooped in to badger any of these characters.  Why would they?  As Arthur’s father states matter-of-factly in the kid’s show Arthur, the media would never be involved in the storyline because, “It’s chicken pox.  It’s just a normal childhood illness.  I had it…your mom had it…”  (Season 1, Episode 18; 1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__aSJkgOyrc No big whoop, right?  Same goes for Caillou.  He’s also told by his mother just the facts, “You won’t be sick very long.  You’ll see.”  And how right she was!  He really would be outside playing in the garden soon enough.  (Season 1, Episode 52; 1997)

Since it is a contagious disease, other shows were sure to feature multiple characters being sick.  Several family members from Full House dealt with the disease together in A Pox in Our House (Season 1, Episode 15; 1988).    I don’t usually read YouTube comments, but I started to while looking at this clip.  If you read through them, you’ll see that most are positive and about the cuteness of the events in the episode.  Seemingly out of the blue, one person chimed in stating that a chicken pox vaccine was not around when this show aired.  While one was not licensed here in the States until 1995, a live attenuated virus vaccine had been in production in Japan as early as the 1970s.  It wasn’t until 1988 that a chicken pox vaccine was released in Japan and also in Korea. 

Vaccine availability or not, shows that aired beyond the year 1995 continued to include chicken pox-themed content.  Writers of children’s and family shows, as well as prime time sitcoms, continued to add humor to these scenes as well.  That was apparent when Chuckie, from Rugrats, was convinced by his pals that the chicken pox was going to turn him into a real chicken in the Chicken Pops story. (Season 4, Episode 4; 1997).  That’s just a short clip.  The full episode can be seen here but requires payment. 

Note: Here in the USA, vaccination is nudging out abortion as a medical/political football.  Jabber? Meet Wocky. Upside? Meet Down.   You can abort your baby, but if born, you no longer have the right to make medical choices that carry serious risk.

The women's empowerment movement, which is all about choice and protecting one's own body, has thrown mothers, daughters, sisters, nieces under the bus when it comes to vaccination.  Should we really trust "experts" Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician, technically a medical "expert" is at the heml as in California? By encouraging doctors to run for office and funding their campaigns, pharma has the perfect combination weapon to impose the purchase, sale and use of its goods - vaccines.   Perhaps politicians could think for themselves, not just with the lobbyist whispering in their ears and lining their coffers whether an MD or not.

###

Medical experts, not politicians, should decide whether vaccination should be mandatory or not, EU health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis told reporters on Thursday (21 November), adding that the only relevant objective is to reach maximum coverage.

Andriukaitis was speaking at the launch of the Health at a Glance report, which compares the performance of national health systems across Europe.

Vaccination stole the show at the event, which saw the Commissioner pressed by reporters to answer questions about the ongoing debate in Italy.

According to Andriukaitis, whether to opt for voluntary or mandatory vaccination is an artificial discussion that is “absolutely useless”, repeating his earlier claim that the only relevant issue is how to reach a maximum level of vaccination coverage.

The Lithuanian Commissioner cited the example of the Netherlands, which guarantees a very high level of coverage using a fully voluntary method.

“We can use different or even a combination of schemes,” he said, adding that it is up to epidemiologists, medical doctors, scientists and immunologists to suggest which instrument is more effective.  Read more at EurActive.

Hi, friends. If you're shopping at Amazon today, I'm inviting you to select AGE OF AUTISM as your Amazon Smile non-profit. I am proud to say my account says I have generated $.73 for us. LOL! I am not much of a shopper, but EVERY penny adds up fast.

Amazon Smile for Age of Autism

I'm working on someone very NEW for January - to ADD to our current Age of Autism that you know. Stay tuned. Now go shop til you drop!

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Age of Autism.

My girls have been watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special for several weeks now. It's not the best of the Charlie Brown bunch, that's for sure. But I take away a message that resonates for me as a divorced Mom to three adult women with autism (yes, Miss B turned 18 in September.)

Sometimes a meal of buttered toast, pretzel sticks, popcorn, jelly beans, and an ice cream sundae is far more delicious than an organic turkey with all the trimmings.  You all know I would erase the girls' autism in a heartbeat if I could, peeling back the layers of anxiety, apraxia, perseveration, to reveal their bright, loving selves. At the same time, I have to say thank you to the path that helped me find Dan Olmsted. Mark Blaxill. JB Handley and so  many others. And all of our contributing editors, my readers and the warrior parents who became my tribe.

I have very little of the "things" one would expect of a woman my age, with my education and location, etc. And yet, I've never felt more grateful and satisfied with my life than I do right now. Funny, isn't it?

I feel a bit like Woodstock, flying upside down and bumping my beak here and there as I land. And then laughing. If I had a pumpkin patch in my backyard, I hope you know, it would be VERY sincere.

Enjoy your day.  With love and gratitude.

Kim

Tomorrow we celebrate Thanksgiving in America.  Many of us have had to radically alter family traditions to help our kids with autism navigate holidays. Food is the focus, and a traditional dinner is loaded with gluten, casein and other behavior triggers. I remember one holiday when my sister put butter on the green beans and I went ballistic. It wasn't a pretty as a picture Holiday moment. Below is an article with some basic ideas to help make a holiday easier for a child with special needs. For us old timers, it's rather basic, but good reminders that we must  make each holiday fit our family, no matter where we may be.  Let us know your tricks that make the holiday a treat.

From MetroKids:

Thanksgiving is a time to gather with family and friends and to give thanks for the many gifts we experience in our lives every day. While it’s a wonderful and meaningful tradition, it can be an emotional obstacle course for families of children and adolescents with special needs. Here are a few tips from Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health in Villanova, PA on how to transform the holiday season into something special, exciting and supportive for everyone.

1. Prepare: Before making a trip to celebrate with family, or having family at your house, take time to prepare your child for the upcoming journey or family gathering. Using short, descriptive sentences. Pictures from prior years can be a big help.

2. Maintain routine as much as possible: It can be difficult to maintain a routine during family gatherings, but upholding some elements of your child’s routine can be helpful for everyone. Eat dinner at your usual time. And bring activities, games and devices that will bring your child comfort.

Note: Despite tomorrow being America's super food consumption day.....

Vinu Arumugham. (2018, October 16). Role of NMDA receptor autoimmunity induced by food protein containing vaccines, in the etiology of autism, type 1 diabetes, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1463601

Role of NMDA receptor autoimmunity induced by food protein containing vaccines, in the etiology of autism, type 1 diabetes, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders

By Vinu Arumugham

Vaccines contain numerous animal and plant proteins (soy, peanut, sesame, maize, wheat, etc.). Vaccine excipients are derived from plant or animal sources. The mechanism of animal protein induced autoimmunity was previously described. Following a report associating maternal gluten intake to type 1 diabetes in the offspring, plant proteins were investigated.

The Pandemrix vaccine induced narcolepsy due to molecular mimicry between a H1N1 nucleoprotein peptide in the vaccine and the human hypocretin receptor 2. The BLASTP match score for this peptide was used as a baseline. BLASTP showed strong sequence alignment between gliadin, a wheat protein, and the human ionotropic N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR).

Analyzing further, strong sequence alignment was found between soy, peanut, sesame, maize, wheat and human glutamate receptors (GR), both ionotropic and metabotropic. There are reports of boosted wheat allergy and de novo synthesis of NMDAR antibodies following immunization. Once immunized with plant derived antigens, antibody levels will be increased by dietary exposure to these antigens.

By Kevin Barry, President
First Freedoms, Inc.

November 19, 2018

Part 2 of a 6 part series
Support this series via PayPal:

Introduction

The “Spanish Flu” killed an estimated 50-100 million people during a pandemic 1918-19. What if the story  we have been told about this pandemic isn’t true? What if, instead, the killer infection was neither the flu nor Spanish in origin? Newly analyzed documents reveal that the “Spanish Flu” may have been a military vaccine experiment gone awry. In looking back on the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, we need to delve deeper to solve this mystery.

Summary from Part 1 (1):

• More soldiers died from disease than bullets during WWI.
• The Spanish Flu was neither Spanish, nor Flu. According to a 2008 study by the U.S. National Institute of Health, the “predominant” killer in 1918-19 was bacterial pneumonia, and the first cases were not in Spain.
• Initial outbreaks can be traced to U.S. military bases.  A bacterial vaccine experiment on soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas is one of the military epicenters of the epidemic.
• The serums. Anti-toxins and vaccines used on soldiers were made in horses at the Rockefeller Institute in New York (and in NJ). The same horses were used “in the preparation of diphtheria, tetanus antitoxin and antimeningococcus serum.”  Same horses, multiple pathogens.
• When WW1 ended on November 11, 1918, soldiers returned to their home countries and colonial outposts, spreading the killer bacterial pneumonia worldwide.
• During WW1, the Rockefeller Institute also sent similar batches of the antimeningococcic serum used at Fort Riley to England, France, Belgium, Italy and other countries.
• Vaccine experiments like the WWI experiments on soldiers in WW1 are not a thing of the past.  Watch as Dr. Stanley Plotkin,(2) the Godfather of the US vaccine program, describes his vaccine experiments on the mentally handicapped, orphans, children of mothers in prison.  Dr. Plotkin expresses a preference for experimenting “on children and adults who are human in form but not in social potential.” The deposition was taken in January 2018.

In Part 1, I asked if medical products made in horses may have played a role in the new disease which killed millions worldwide in the pandemic of 1918-19.

Note: Thank you to Teresa for keeping readers up to date on important research into the microbiome - your gut health.

By Teresa Conrick

Thank you to fellow Microbiome hunters in researching and getting published, Do gut microbiota mediate adverse vaccine reaction?   Keith Bell (Microbiome Vaccine Safety Project, thegutclub.org USA) has been involved in this research for years and is looking for answers.  When vaccination is mentioned, there can be a knee-jerk reaction to deny any negatives but as we see the numbers increasing in immune, neurological, and neuropsychiatric diseases and disorders, the connections must be pursued.  My appreciation for all of their efforts.  From their study:

Gut microbiota are known to affect vaccine response as several studies have now demonstrated [1-6]. Imbalanced flora is associated with systemic inflammation and blunted immune response to vaccination [7-8]. Poor sanitation is associated with vaccine failure in the developing world due to imbalanced flora, also associated with rampant child growth stunting which includes cognitive deficits [9]. Probiotic vaccine adjuvants are in development. Moreover, evidence of the reciprocal relationship between microbiota and host immune system is perhaps the most exciting area of scientific research today. Indeed, this area of science is said to hold potential to change the face of modern medicine.

There are currently no published studies about how microbiota may also be associated with adverse reactions to vaccination. Our central hypothesis is that gut microbiota have a significant effect on host response to vaccination where a reduced or absent population of commensal flora coupled with an overgrowth of pathogenic strains may become a microbial predisposition to adverse vaccine reaction…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice

November 19, 2018 Mail@MaineVaxChoice.org, 207-200-8469

Rep. Ralph Tucker Introduces Bill to Violate Mainers Right to Informed Consent in Vaccination, and Deprive Some Maine Children of their Right to an Education

Brunswick, Maine - Representative Ralph Tucker (D-Brunswick) has announced the submission of his bill to the Maine Legislature to restrict and remove the rights of parents to exercise their religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions for school entry in Maine. The bill will bar some children from Maine schools, denying their right to a public education. He expects significant support from the now Democratic majority in the House, Senate and from Governor-elect Janet Mills.

Tucker said concerning the as of yet unreleased bill that, “eliminating or limiting non-medical exemptions for school-required vaccines will be one of his top priorities with Mills in office.”

“I’ve already submitted a bill,” Tucker said. “I think vaccines are very important, and I’m going to push this issue as hard as I can.”

Mills said she agrees with Tucker and others but is not completely familiar with the legislation he is proposing. ”

As it did when these attempts were made in 2015, The Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice (MCVC) is organizing at the grassroots level to maintain the 1^st Amendment rights of families to practice their religion, the rights of children to an education, the rights of families to adhere to their conscience without coercion, and the internationally established human right to informed consent in medicine.

MCVC consists of over 1200 Maine families for whom choice in what goes into their bodies is important, and health care professionals such as nurses, physicians, and pharmacists who are vaccine risk aware. Many members have children who have suffered a serious adverse vaccine reaction that was either denied or left untreated by their health care provider.

“For years parents, lead by mothers, have attempted to address the serious safety concerns and policy problems in the Maine Immunization Program, including the lack of education that Maine pediatricians receive on federal guidelines for vaccine safety and vaccine injury. Unfortunately efforts have been met repeatedly with stonewalling by the Maine DHHS and the Maine medical industry, who offer only bad faith responses ranging from apathy to contempt, if they respond at all,” said Ginger Taylor, M.S., the Coalition's Director. “Mothers educated on Vaccine Manufacturer and Federal DHHS information on vaccine injury, that their own doctors have never seen, are tired of being treated by their pediatricians as if they are stupid and crazy. Why should such women want to do business with an industry that engages in the gaslighting of women as a matter of policy? It appears that this paternalistic effort will again be to throw their children out of school, rather than fixing the broken vaccine program, or even holding ONE public meeting to hear and address parental concerns.”

Please join the Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice today, and register for our mailing list, to be informed on how you can work to improve vaccine safety policy in Maine, to protect your right to bodily integrity, to choose the medical products that you and your children will take, and to end the bullying of parents that is taking place in Maine pediatricians offices.

END

My oldest daughter is about to turn 24. My baby is 18. My head is spinning with questions about how they will live. Where they live. With whom will they live. Social security assists them - but would never support them here in Connecticut.  I'm not thinking about when I die - there's too  much to do right now to build a life for them. A safe, fun, meaningful life they can enjoy.

It's time for a new conversation. The experts are few and far between. This autism epidemic is bursting into adulthood and systems are not in place. We'll have to build them.  You know that. I know that.

What are your most pressing concerns for your child today? In 1 year. 5 years. I can't think much past 5 years right now.  We need to talk about this. It doesn't matter how you think your child became autistic.  The fact is, all of our kids will need support, whether going to college and then employment or a day program and every stage in between.

Let's start.   Kim

NOTE: This story seems...  well, queer, in the Alice in Wonderland old fashioned meaning of the word.  How is it that moderate to severe children with autism make up a third of patients at a gender identity clinic?  My girls could be considered to have moderate to severe autism - and never be able to explain to me or a doctor that they feel they are the wrong gender. The puberty blocking drug mentioned - is it LUPRON the highly controversial drug that halts precocious puberty and was presented as an autism treatment for children with high mercury levels almost two decades ago? The story mentions a transgender agenda.  Does any such thing exist and why? Perhaps children born into a phalate and glyphosate filled world with hormone laden dairy and meat and poultry and an immune system catapulted by numerous vaccinations are truly being gender changed. Really not sure what to make of this story. Would value your thoughts.  Kim

###

School has SEVENTEEN children changing gender as teacher says vulnerable pupils are being 'tricked' into believing they are the wrong sex.|

An astonishing 17 pupils at a single British school are in the process of changing gender, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Most of the youngsters undergoing the transformation are autistic, according to a teacher there, who said vulnerable children with mental health problems were being ‘tricked’ into believing they are the wrong sex.

The whistleblower says few of the transgender children are suffering from gender dysphoria – the medical term for someone who feels they were born in the wrong body – but are just easily influenced, latching on to the mistaken belief they are the wrong sex as a way of coping with the problems caused by autism.

Earlier this year, The Mail on Sunday revealed that a third of youngsters referred to the NHS’s only gender identity clinic for children showed ‘moderate to severe autistic traits’.  Read more at Daily Mail.

By Cathy Jameson

Until another person walks in our shoes, they may never truly grasp how challenging life can be for those with autism and vaccine injury as well as for those who care for them.  That said, I think it’s important to share our stories whenever and wherever we can.  Not that we have to prove to anyone that our sacrifices are real.  Those sacrifices are as real as the vaccine injury that changed life as we knew it. 

That thought has run through my head several times over the last few months.  Since late August and up until last week, Ronan's siblings were participating in team sports.  Multiple times a week, I was dropping off or picking kids up from late afternoon practices and evening games.  Some days, friends blessed me and took over carpool duties.  As much as I could, when three kids were in three different directions at three different sport venues, I still tried to get to their games.  With Ronan and my youngest in tow, getting to everyone wasn't easy.  Just getting out of the house took effort on Ronan's part. 

When he was successful in getting himself to the car without incident, any time I buckled Ronan in, I hoped and prayed that he'd be accommodating to what was next on the schedule.  After traveling, he’d be tasked with sitting for at least one hour on the sidelines while I cheered loudly for whomever was on the court or the field that day.  When we could, we’d even try to get to two events which meant twice as much sitting and twice as much cheering.  Sitting and listening to me cheer for his siblings is not Ronan’s favorite thing to do.  Regardless, I prayed that he would be patient and engaged in the items I'd brought for him so that we could stay until the final whistle blew.  Happily, Ronan did a great job no matter on which stands, home or away, we sat. 

As we left the final event for my oldest daughter recently, one of the staff at the high school recognized and greeted me.  I'd met this woman last school year after an unfortunate parking lot incident.  Not one to complain unnecessarily, I'd kept quiet about what I’d seen previously in the parking lots.  But this time, when another driver's attitude was just so rude, I knew I had to speak up.  Even though we were only a few weeks into the school year, I'd seen one too many cars parking or blocking the handicapped parking spots on school grounds.  Besides the fact that it's illegal to take these spots unless you've got a handicap placard, it was royally screwing up Ronan's chance for success.  Once he gets in the car, we pray earnestly that he'll want to get out of the car when we reach our destination.  This rude driver didn't care about Ronan, or the fact that they were breaking the law, and offered some unkind words in my direction after I’d asked them to move and park in one of the many open regular spots just a few feet away. 

It doesn’t matter what your title is, how rich or poor you are, or where you grew up.  What matters is if you have compassion toward others, especially toward those who struggle. 

Hi, friends. Kim here. Our November matching gift program is well underway - and a huge thank you to everyone who has donated.

We rarely go full PBS/Eyes of an angel look a hungry puppy on you when it's time to ask for support. This year feels different - I'm worried. Worried about the tone and tenor of so many media outlets where "anti-vaxxers" is becoming code word for "people it's OK to bully and possibly harm."   Social media is cracking down on posts about medical freedom and safety.

Blogs were out paced by the rapid response of "like" and "retweet" on social media. But I think we are more important than ever. 

The fact that we discuss vaccine safety hurts our ability to raise funds, despite being a non-profit that does damn good work - and that's no lie.  Every organization that has attempted it has had its hands slapped, mouth taped, wrists tied.  If we disappear, Dan's legacy of a gathering place dedicated to exposing life inside the autism epidemic was for not.  We can not disappear.  I can't fathom that. 

This community raised $25,000 in 4 days in a GoFundMe following the loss of a home in the California fires for a family we all know and appreciate.  I hope you'll show your appreciation for AofA.  And you can always send comments, suggestions and ideas to me at KimRossi1111@gmail.com!

Stay tuned for an announcement in 2019 as well. AofA is going to add another "product," that I think you will love.

This month, all tax-deductible donations go toward a generous anonymous patron's $5,000 matching gift. You can use our DONATE button online through Bank of America Merchant Services - safe and secure. Or send a check to Autism Age, PO Box 110546, Trumbull, CT 06611.  Thank you. Kim

Do you remember the old acronym, FOB, "Friend of Bill," meaning President Clinton? We'd like to bring it back except today, it's Friend of Bob. Dr. Bob Sears. Please check out his podcast series on vaccination at Apple iTunes. We're often reviled and ridiculed when we discuss vaccine injury, safety, etc., because we are not doctors. Except some of us are, like Dr. Sears. Tune in.

Listen here: The Vaccine Conversation with Melissa and Dr. Bob Sears

When a topic as complex as vaccines becomes socially taboo, where do you go to talk about it? Join pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears and Melissa, mother and health freedom educator, on this informative journey where we will discuss everything from disease outbreaks to vaccine risks and side effects, the vaccine schedule, media hype, vaccine laws and controversies, and everything in between. Learn more at our non-profit website ImmunityEducationGroup.org

By Ginger Taylor, MS

There is an error that is often made when we talk about the "Unavoidably Unsafe" status of FDA approved vaccines.  It may seem like a small point, but it is important to be accurate.

Someone, somewhere, sometime, long, long ago and far away, said that, "The US Supreme Court has ruled that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe," referencing the use of the term in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth.  And it has been repeated over and over.  But it is not accurate.

Congress placed vaccines in that category, and SCOTUS was merely referencing the already established status of the products.

It is correct to say that "US Law regards vaccines as unavoidably unsafe."

But Congress itself did that, not the Supreme Court.  

Feel free to remind a member of Congress of that fact if he makes the false claim that, "Vaccines Are Safe."

From Mary Holland JD, Director of the Graduate Legal studies program at NYU Law School:

"The key language about “unavoidable” side effects comes from the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, 42 USC 300aa-22, re manufacturer responsibility (see highlighted text below).

That language was based on language from the Second Restatement of Torts (a legal treatise by tort scholars), adopted by most state courts in the mid-1960’s, that considered all vaccines as “unavoidably unsafe” products. The Restatement opined that such products, “properly prepared, and accompanied by proper directions and warnings, is not defective, nor is it unreasonably dangerous.”

The Bruesewitz v. Wyeth case interpreted the highlighted text below from the National Vaccine Injury Act to find that it did not permit design defect litigation – that issue had been unclear since 1986, and different state high courts and federal circuits had decided the issue differently. So, [it] is correct that the US Supreme Court never decided that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” directly, but it acknowledged that Congress considers them to be so.

Sec. 300aa-22. Standards of responsibility

Note: We would like to acknowledge the suffering in California is reaching many friends and families of AofA, including Del Bigtree, who lost his home to the blaze. We are very sorry.  Below John's introduction are the complaint by Professor Exley and the response from Newsnight.  The language used to vilify those who question vaccine safety is becoming more chilling by the moment, as civility and discourse seems to have diminished on both sides of the pond.

By John Stone

Only the other day Del Bigtree* was commenting on HighWire that the United States had become country with news services that the populace could not take seriously like China or Iran: the same is undoubtedly true of the United Kingdom and particularly its increasingly embarrassing BBC news service. This was highlighted in a recent exchange of letters between Prof Chris Exley and BBC complaints director Colin Tregear, following a toe-curling Newsnight presentation about measles and vaccine safety. Exley complained about bias in the presentation and simply pointed out that the claim that vaccines were safe was unfounded. The manufacturers acknowledged significant levels of serious adverse effects, the scientific literature does not support safety, the problems are real. It is simply not telling the truth to say vaccines are safe.

The tenor of Tregear’s reply was essentially that the BBC only has to listen to health officials, the WHO etc.: in other words they have bureaucratic concept of truth.  He defends the reporter who declared the doubts expressed in social media as being a "virus". Fundamentally this is hate talk. It is not to be condoned if people who have different experiences want to talk about it, if people - many of them well educated - want to read and comment: these people are themselves apparently a disease to be eradicated.

Professor Exley's Letter:

BBC Newsnight Comments

The clear and unambiguous message that Newsnight appears to wish to put across in this piece is that all vaccines are 100% safe and only ill-informed individuals think otherwise. The view that not all vaccines are 100% safe is portrayed as only being held by individuals who are not sufficiently educated to know otherwise. They are somehow slaves to internet scare stories. The message is given that doctors are aware of ‘facts’ which demonstrate that all vaccines are 100% safe. No ‘facts’ of any sort are given or discussed. The three chosen experts have no background in either science or vaccine safety. The two in the studio are charged in their everyday lives (jobs) with the responsibility of assuring individuals that vaccines are 100% safe. The third guest appears to have no relevant expertise in vaccine safety beyond the opinion that vaccines are safe and only individuals that believe in conspiracy theories think otherwise. The only other individual interviewed (by Grossman) is the discredited ‘journalist’ Brian Dear.

This piece of reporting is clearly stating the message that all vaccines are 100% safe and that anyone who might question this is at best ‘uninformed’ and at worst a dangerous anti-vaxxer.

The case of Dr Andrew Wakefield is yet again brought to the fore as if all research on vaccine safety in the 20 years following this episode can and should be discounted.

I am the world’s leading expert on human exposure to aluminium. I have been working in this field since 1984. The majority of vaccines include an aluminium salt as an adjuvant. We have been researching the mechanism of action of aluminium adjuvants for about 10 years. Our research along with that of many other reputable scientists across the world has highlighted the toxicity of aluminium in vaccines and its role in many of the serious adverse events reported in individuals following vaccination. The frequency of such adverse events (data from the vaccine manufacturers) is acknowledged to be as high as 2.5% which for vaccines which are given to millions of individuals equates to 25000 well people per 1 million recipients becoming ill following vaccination. Fears about vaccines are well-founded. They are not fabrications of the so-called anti-vax movement, they are medical facts based upon hard science. We who are working to improve the safety and efficacy of vaccines are doing what we can to reduce collateral damage from vaccines and we very much resent the suggestion by your programme, its presenter, reporter and guests that we are somehow ill-informed conspiracy theorists who are trying to scare individuals into refusing vaccines.

The facts about vaccine safety are what are influencing individual’s decisions about vaccination and not scare stories being spread ‘like a virus’ through the internet.

Displays of lies or at best ignorance as occurred throughout this Newsnight piece are not what is needed to improve the safety and success of vital vaccines.

I have noted a few specific points of contention in the piece below using the timing from the video.

00:39

876 cases of measles. How many of these new cases were in individuals who had been vaccinated against measles? This number was given as a ‘fact’ in support of a decline in the number of individuals being vaccinated against measles. Give the full information underlying this number and then allow individuals to decide if such could be a factor or not. 

By J.B. Handley

In 2015, Oregon’s Health Authority (the state version of the CDC) published a table for school-required vaccinations that included detail about the “crude herd immunity threshold” that the published science showed was required for each vaccine in order for “the herd” (in this case, children in school) to be protected. Mumps and Rubella? 85%. Diphtheria? 85%. Polio? 50%. That’s not a typo, the threshold for polio is a 50% vaccination rate. What about Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B? They have no threshold, there’s just a little asterisk in the table next to each of them. And, why no threshold? Because the communicability for Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B is so low there is no percentage required or known, a child is more than welcome to attend school with an active Hepatitis B infection. The singular disease with a threshold over 90%? Measles.

An Op-Ed yesterday in the L.A. Times compelled me to respond. Mostly, I ignore the L.A. Times. Today, the newspaper is owned by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire who made his money in the pharmaceutical industry. The separation of Pharma and media has never been less honored than at the L.A. Times, and their articles about “anti-vaxxers” consistently reveal an extreme bias. The newspaper happens to be based in one of three states that don’t allow schoolchildren vaccine exemptions to attend school, the other two being Mississippi and West Virginia (draw your own conclusions). There’s a new drumbeat in California, no doubt anticipating new legislation: California’s doctors aren’t responsible enough to be entrusted with writing medical exemptions for children, the state needs to take over this duty. The slippery slope of freedoms lost continues.

The only thing I know about Patrice Apodaca is that she used to be an LA Times staff writer. Her Op-Ed, titled, “Medical exemptions threatening herd immunity,” is a wonderful example of what happens when you combine extreme hysteria with wanton ignorance. Well-meaning parents turn on well-meaning parents. Ms. Apodaca is scared that the world is about to fall apart. She writes, “Even with that law now established [making vaccines mandatory in California], we see how fragile remains the effort to keep herd immunity intact.” Legislators pass useless laws. Children get sicker.

Ms. Apodaca tells us that California’s vaccination rates had dropped to a “dangerous” level of 90.4% in the 2014-15 school year, right before SB277 was passed to make vaccines mandatory in California. Of course, the number 90.4% by itself is meaningless. If we’re talking about Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, Polio, Diphtheria, Mumps, or Rubella, that vaccination rate is more than adequate to keep those infectious diseases at bay, at least according to the Oregon Health Authority, who got their information from our national health authority, the CDC.

Most parents are shocked to learn that as late as 1986 we only had three licensed vaccines in the United States: MMR, Polio, and DTP. What were the vaccination rates for those three vaccines that year (1986)? 61%, 53%, and 63%, respectively. Just let that sink in for a moment. Were children dying in the streets in 1986? Did we “return to the dark ages” as many vaccine marketers tell us we will if parents exempt their children from any vaccines? I think you know the answer. Today, we have eleven licensed vaccines given 36 times to children before their fifth birthday. Many vaccines required for school aren’t even given to children in other first world countries—the U.K doesn’t give chicken pox, Denmark doesn’t give Hepatitis B, most don’t give the flu vaccine, the list is very long—but why let the facts confuse?