Fire Tom Insel

Chandler woke up at 3am and cried because it was not 6am.  After I finally got him back to sleep, all I could do was lay in bed and stew about what a corrupt and horrible man Tom Insel is for working so hard to keep our kids trapped in autism land, and to fill our ranks with new families that have their children poisoned every day, that I had to get out of bed and get the bad thoughts out of my brain.

So this.

Kim Stagliano Sues The Bus Company That Allowed The Abuse Of Her Bella

Mother sues bus company over daughter's treatment

This story is so hard for me.  Because of who Kim is and because who Bella is.

First they are my friends, and I am horrified that this happened to them.

Second Kim is a nationally known autism activist and author, and if someone feels bold enough to abuse her daughter, then none of our children are safe.

Lastly, and most importantly, if you have ever met Bella, you know she is a complete angel.  She is so interested in people, and wants to engage them, but can only say, "Hello" and "Momma" and is just... well a total angel.  When she met Chandler, she was taken by him, but silly boy apparently not at the point where he noticed cute girls yet.

When someone can be so monstrous to do this to a little girl as sweet and precious as Bella, for literally no reason, even taunting her mother after she leaves the bus... to say that this is a difficult story for me is an understatement.

Once upon a time I thought, "gosh... if people would just work out their differences and stop suing each other...."  Now I understand that when it comes to protecting our vulnerable kids, they are necessary.  I understand that on many occasions the only reason that my son is being treated appropriately is because those that came before me sued the pants off of (insert entity here) and forced them to take the rights of disabled children seriously.

Go get 'um Kim.  So that for years providers will point to this case and say to their employees, "Yes I know reviewing hours of video tape is boring, but if we miss something and a child is being hurt, we could loose our shirts and have to shut down."  Because for too many people, the idea of loosing lots of money will motivate is a way that the thought of an abused child on their watch never will.

BRIDGEPORT -- The mother of a 9-year-old Trumbull girl with autism, who police said was abused by an aide on her school bus while the aide's mother was busy texting while driving the bus, is suing the bus company.

Kimberly Stagliano claims, in her lawsuit filed Thursday in Superior Court, that First Student Inc. breached its responsibility to provide her daughter, Isabella, with safe transportation to and from school.

"As a direct result of the conduct of First Student Inc. and its employees, the minor child suffered permanent personal injuries and damages," said Stagliano's lawyer, Michael Meehan. "In particular, the conduct of First Student Inc.'s employee has had an emotional and educational impact on Miss Stagliano."

Officials of First Student, of Cincinnati, did not immediately return calls for comment.

Last April, 24-year-old Jennifer Davila, a school bus aide for First Student, was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree reckless endangerment based on allegations that she abused the girl. Her mother, Evelyn Guzman, a school bus driver, received accelerated rehabilitation, a program for first-time nonviolent offenders.

According to police, on at least three occasions in April and May 2010, Davila, a monitor on a bus for special needs children for First Student, abused the little girl. Police said there could have been more incidents but only three were captured on the bus's video surveillance camera.

Police said the girl's parents were trying to figure out how their nonverbal daughter kept getting bruises and sprained fingers on her right hand when on May 19 they received a call from the nurse at Frenchtown Elementary School that their daughter had arrived at school that morning crying hysterically. The parents then demanded to see the video from their daughter's school bus.

That video, which also had audio, showed Davila grabbing the girl's hands and the girl then crying out in pain.

Police said they then obtained DVD copies of the bus videos for April 27, April 29 and May 19, 2010. On April 27 and May 19, the driver of the bus is Davila's mother.

Police said the April 27 video shows Davila putting her hands in the area of the girl's hands during the bus ride from the school to the girl's home. With each movement, the girl's cries get louder.

On the April 29 video, Davila is heard telling a substitute driver to stop at the girl's home first after they leave the school. "Because she (the girl) will (obscenity) her pants," she explains. Within minutes of leaving the school, the video shows Davila again reaching toward the girl's hands, and the girl is heard crying.

On May 19, the girl is seen on the video boarding the bus with her mother, who assists her to her seat. When the mother leaves the bus, Davila is heard saying, "Goodbye mom." She then touches the girl's head twice and then grabs the girl's right hand and begins to manipulate it as the girl whimpers.

Police said Guzman had been captured on the bus's video camera texting more than 1,000 times as she drove a bus load of special needs children between April and May 2010.

dtepfer@ctpost.com; 203-330-6308; http:// twitter.com/dantepfer

Hepatitis B Vaccine Causes Mitochondrial Disorders and Cell Death

Apoptosis. 2012 Jan 17. [Epub ahead of print]

Hepatitis B vaccine induces apoptotic death in Hepa1-6 cells.

Hamza H, Cao J, Li X, Li C, Zhu M, Zhao S.

Source

Key Lab of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding, and Reproduction of Ministry of Education, College of Animal Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, People's Republic of China, Heyam68_hamza@yahoo.com.

Abstract

Vaccines can have adverse side-effects, and these are predominantly associated with the inclusion of chemical additives such as aluminum hydroxide adjuvant. The objective of this study was to establish an in vitro model system amenable to mechanistic investigations of cytotoxicity induced by hepatitis B vaccine, and to investigate the mechanisms of vaccine-induced cell death. The mouse liver hepatoma cell line Hepa1-6 was treated with two doses of adjuvanted (aluminium hydroxide) hepatitis B vaccine (0.5 and 1 μg protein per ml) and cell integrity was measured after 24, 48 and 72 h. Hepatitis B vaccine exposure increased cell apoptosis as detected by flow cytometry and TUNEL assay. Vaccine exposure was accompanied by significant increases in the levels of activated caspase 3, a key effector caspase in the apoptosis cascade. Early transcriptional events were detected by qRT-PCR. We report that hepatitis B vaccine exposure resulted in significant upregulation of the key genes encoding caspase 7, caspase 9, Inhibitor caspase-activated DNase (ICAD), Rho-associated coiled-coil containing protein kinase 1 (ROCK-1), and Apoptotic protease activating factor 1 (Apaf-1). Upregulation of cleaved caspase 3,7 were detected by western blot in addition to Apaf-1 and caspase 9 expressions argues that cell death takes place via the intrinsic apoptotic pathway in which release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria triggers the assembly of a caspase activation complex. We conclude that exposure of Hepa1-6 cells to a low dose of adjuvanted hepatitis B vaccine leads to loss of mitochondrial integrity, apoptosis induction, and cell death, apoptosis effect was observed also in C2C12 mouse myoblast cell line after treated with low dose of vaccine (0.3, 0.1, 0.05 μg/ml). In addition In vivo apoptotic effect of hepatitis B vaccine was observed in mouse liver.

Tom Insel's Lame Attempt to Save His Job

Monday our community called for the unceremonious firing of The man who has spent the last six years perpetuating the autism epidemic by sabotaging the natural progress of research and inquiry.  IACC chief Tom Insel (brother to a  vaccine maker) has directed research from this environmentally caused epidemic to genetics... wasting millions of dollars and lives.

So about ten minutes ago, Insel sends out a link to a new blog he has written entitled:

The New Genetics of Autism – Why Environment Matters

So my immediate thought is... "Well apparently we have gotten his attention, and he is going to now have to tip his had to environmental causes to stay in the game.  Let's see what he has to say."

Well he certainly starts out asking the right questions:

Increasing prevalence suggests environmental factors like chemicals and microbes changing over the past decade, whereas genes change over generations. Why is anyone looking for genetic causes when there is such a rapid increase in prevalence? Shouldn’t every research dollar be invested in finding the environmental culprit rather than searching for rare gene variants?

Imagine my shock when he then fails to answer those burning questions and, who would have guessed it, he spent the whole piece promoting GENETICS!  The thing actually should have been entitled, "The New Genetics of Autism - Why Genes Matter - Seriously They Do - Please Don't Fire Me - I'm Really Smart."

Un-freaking-believable!

He flat out says that at most 20% of cases are "genetic," and that seems to be his justification for not answering "Hell, YES!" to that last question on shouldn't research dollars be going to environmental causes!

He does say of course the obligatory, "environment plays a role," but even freely admits that genetic research will NOT find environmental causes!  But hey... lets keep pouring our time, money and children down that bottomless pit called 'Genetic Research on Autism.'

This what I see when I read this horrid essay:

Hi.  I'm Tom Insel.

I have been entrusted with finding the causes and cures of autism for the last six years, but instead, autism rates have more than doubled on my watch.  I freely admit that more than 80% of autism is environmental, and less than 20% can be attributed to genetic causes, but I have decided to ignore the environmental factors in autism that could, if found and quickly addressed to prevent exposures, could end the autism epidemic in the next two or three birth cohorts.

Instead, I am going to continue to pour hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars into genetic studies that have not yet prevented one case of autism, nor lead to one medical treatment for autism, into this dead end, just in case we find something really cool that might help us call some kinds of autism one thing and some kinds of autism something else.  They still won't tell us what we can do to prevent autism in kids of parents who have these genes, and it might even be that the genes are not even the parents genes, but genes that get broken in the sperm cells cause they are poisoned or microwaved or whatever in daddy's drawers before conception, but still... how cool is it to find different genes and stuff!

My earnest hope has been that you wouldn't notice that I have already wasted 700 million dollars doing nothing and issuing reports that say nothing except, "send me more money to figure this out, I am totally gonna fix this, I swear... but it is just so hard!", but as a hundred thousand or so of you in the autism community have just called for me to be fired, I am guessing that is out the door.  So now I am really just hoping that I can get away with using the word "environmental" in a title on my blog and you will be fooled into thinking I am taking the autism epidemic seriously.

Failing that, I can only hope that you have decided that I am an ineffectual douchbag who does not have the competence to figure this out, because if that does not fly, it will be super apparent to anyone to takes a hard look at me that I am a corrupt bastard trying to preserve my brother Dick's interest and those of the Administrations big donors.   Also HHS... please don't notice that we are actually a vaccine maker too, and get cash payments from the people you THINK are making the vaccines, like Merck, cause we hold patents on the shots that we recommend you buy from them.   (Have you heard about my brother Dick? Yyou see he brought a vaccine to market, sold the company to Wyeth, then went to work trying to cure diabetes.  See what he did there... make a product that causes autoimmune disorders, then make a bundle treating autoimmune disorders!  Money coming and going... genius really.  He is the smarter brother, I will give him that.)

Also about HHS... please don't notice that we are actually a vaccine maker too, and get cash payments from the people you THINK are making the vaccines, like Merck, cause we hold patents on the shots that we recommend you buy from them. Yes I work for NIH and yes NIH holds the Gardasil patent, and yes NIH gets a check for every Gardasil shot you buy, and no we never disclose that, but I swear... vaccines are not a problem. It genes. Really.

In closing, please notice what a pleasant smile I have.  Autism parents are good people.

Full text of the blog piece:

Director’s Blog
April 04, 2012

The New Genetics of Autism – Why Environment Matters

Thomas Insel

Last week’s autism news was about prevalence. The CDC reported a 78 percent increase in autism prevalence since 2002. This week’s autism news is about genetics—three papers in Nature describe new genes associated with autism. For many people, these two stories seem contradictory or, at best, unrelated. Increasing prevalence suggests environmental factors like chemicals and microbes changing over the past decade, whereas genes change over generations. Why is anyone looking for genetic causes when there is such a rapid increase in prevalence? Shouldn’t every research dollar be invested in finding the environmental culprit rather than searching for rare gene variants?

The simple answer is that some autism is genetic. Autism, like schizophrenia and mood disorders, includes many syndromes. Indeed, we should probably speak of the “autisms.” Some of these autisms are single gene disorders, such as Fragile X, tuberous sclerosis, and Rett syndrome. While these rare genetic disorders account for less than 5 percent of children within the autism spectrum, children with any of these disorders are at high risk for autism, roughly a 30-fold higher risk than the general population and higher than any of the other known risk factors. Recent genomics research has discovered that many children diagnosed within the autism spectrum have other genetic mutations that have not yet been designated as named syndromes. Each of these mutations is rare, but in aggregate they may account for 10 - 20 percent or more of what we have been calling the autisms.¹

The new papers published today in Nature use an approach called whole exome sequencing, mapping every base of DNA across the exome—the 1.5 percent of the genome known to code for protein. The three research groups are members of the Autism Sequencing Consortium (ASC), an international team of autism genetics researchers. All three look for de novo or spontaneous mutations, changes in DNA sequence that are not found in either parent. Recent sequencing studies in the general population have demonstrated that each of us diverges genomically from our parents — the process of reproduction introduces variation even beyond the random mixture of the genomes we inherit from mom and dad. People with autism and schizophrenia are far more likely to have large de novo copy number variants, sometimes a million bases of DNA that are abnormally duplicated or deleted and not found in either parent.

These new papers go beyond the previous discovery of de novo copy number variants to identify de novo single base changes associated with autism. This is tough sailing because there are so many of these changes in all of us and most of these single base changes have no impact. These studies tried to improve the odds of success by focusing on individuals from families with no one else affected (these are called “simplex” families), and sometimes comparing the individual with autism to a sibling without autism. The results are intriguing.

There is no breakthrough or single gene that is a major new cause of autism. But the role of genetics becomes even more evident when these single base changes are considered. For instance, an individual with autism is nearly 6-fold more likely to have a functional variant in genes expressed in the brain. Sanders et al. estimate as many as 14 percent of affected individuals have such a risk variant.² This 14 percent is in addition to the 10–20 percent with a large copy number variant or identified genetic syndrome. O’Roak et al. find that 39 percent of these variants are related to a specific biochemical pathway, important for brain signaling.³ And Neale et al., while cautioning that the net effect of all of these changes still leave much of the risk for autism unexplained, note the roles of a few specific genes as genuine risk factors.⁴

Stepping back from this flood of genomic information, what is most important? First, these reports along with previous publications confirm that genetic risk is both complex and substantial. While individual genes appear to confer limited risk, the aggregate effect of spontaneous coding mutations across the genome is now estimated to increase the risk of autism by 5–20-fold.⁴ Complex genetics does not mean modest effects.

Second, the kinds of small and large genetic changes associated with autism are common in everyone. Risk is conferred not by the size of the mutation or the number of mutations (we all have many) but by the location. Increasingly, we see that interference with the genes involved in development of synapses confer risk; a similar change upstream or downstream does not.

A third point takes us back to the questions we started with. It is important to understand that de novo mutations may represent environmental effects. In other words, environmental factors can cause changes in our DNA that can raise the risk for autism and other disorders. One of these papers reports that spontaneous changes are four times more likely to show up in paternally inherited DNA and are correlated with paternal age.² The father’s germline, his sperm cells, turn over throughout the lifespan. Presumably, with advancing paternal age, there are a greater number of spontaneous mutations and a greater likelihood that some of these will affect risk genes. Environmental factors and exposures can cause sperm cells to develop mutations that are not found in the father’s somatic, or body cell, DNA, but these new, spontaneous mutations can be passed to the next generation, raising the risk for developing autism. In the initial report of the relationship between autism and paternal age, boys with autism were 6-fold more likely to have a father in his 40s vs his 20s. In girls with autism, this difference went up to 17-fold.⁵ Paternal age has, of course, increased in the past few decades. This does not explain the increasing prevalence of autism, but it may contribute.

Is autism genetic or environmental? These new studies suggest it can be both. Genetics will not identify the environmental factors, but it may reveal some of the many syndromes within the autism spectrum (as in other neurodevelopmental disorders), it can define risk (as in other medical disorders), and it should yield clues to the biology of autism (revealing potential targets for new treatments). These three new papers on spontaneous mutations are an important milestone in a long journey. In parallel we need to find environmental factors, recognizing that there will be many causes for the autisms and many roads to find them.

Finally, an unavoidable insight from these new papers is that autism even when genetic may be spontaneous and not inherited in the sense that one or both parents carry some reduced form of the syndrome. Perhaps this insight will finally reduce the “blame the parents” legacy perpetuated for too long in the absence of scientific evidence.

References

 ¹Geschwind DH. Genetics of autism spectrum disorders. Trends Cogn Sci. 2011 Sep;15(9):409-16. Epub 2011 Aug 18. PubMed PMID: 21855394.1
²Sanders SJ, Murtha MT, Gupta AR, Murdoch JD, Raubeson MJ, Willsey AJ, Ercan-Sencicek AG, DiLullo NM, Parikshak NN, Stein JL, Walker MF, Ober GT, Teran NA, Song Y, El-Fishawy P, Murtha RC, Choi M, Overton JD, Bjornson RD, Carriero NJ, Meyer KA, Bilguvar K, Mane SM, Sestan N, Lifton RP, Günel M, Roeder K, Geschwind DH, Devlin B, State MW. De novo mutations revealed by whole-exome sequencing are strongly associated with autism. April 5, 2012. Nature.
³O’Roak BJ, Vives L, Girirajan S, Karakoc E, Krumm N, Coe BP, Levy R, Ko A, Lee C, Smith JD, Turner EH, Stanaway IB, Vernot B, Malig M, Baker C, Reilly B, Akey JM, Borenstein E, Rieder MJ, Nickerson DA, Bernier R, Shendure J, Eichler EE. Sporadic autism exomes reveal a highly interconnected protein network of de novo mutations. Nature. April 5, 2012.
⁴Neale BM, Kou Y, Liu L, Ma’ayan A, Samocha KE, Sabo A, Lin CF, Stevens C, Wang LS, Makarov V, Polak P, Yoon S, Maguire J, Crawford EL, Campbell NG, Geller ET, Valladares O, Schafer C, Liu H, Zhao T, Cai G, Lihm J, Dannenfelser R, Jabado O, Peralta Z, Nagaswamy U, Muzny D, Reid JG, Newsham I, Wu Y, Lewis L, Han Y, Voight BF, Lim E, Rossin E, Kirby A, Flannick J, Fromer M, Shair K, Fennell T, Garimella K, Banks E, Poplin R, Gabriel S, DePristo M, Wimbish JR, Boone BE, Levy SE, Betancur C, Sunyaev S, Boerwinkle E, Buxbaum JD, Cook EH, Devlin B, Gibbs RA, Roeder K, Schellenberg GD, Sutcliffe JS, Daly MJ. Patterns and rates of exonic de novo mutations in autism spectrum disorders. Nature. April 5, 2012.
⁵Reichenberg A, Gross R, Weiser M, Bresnahan M, Silverman J, Harlap S, Rabinowitz J, Shulman C, Malaspina D, Lubin G, Knobler HY, Davidson M, Susser E. Advancing paternal age and autism. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006 Sep;63(9):1026-32. PubMed PMID: 16953005.

Learn more about: Autism, Children and Adolescents, Genetics. View all posts about: Autism, Children and Adolescents,Genetics.

Dr. Walter Zahorodny Believes Vaccines Cause Autism. And Geri Dawson???

From a Radio Listener in NYC:

I was listening this AM to WNYC – Kurt Andersen, of all hostile people, did a segment on the ADDM numbers with Walter Zahorodny, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. Zahorodny was the lead researcher on the New Jersey portion of the study.

Kurt Andersen (Seth Mnookin's friend): “I guess we know what they (the causes of autism) aren’t, for instance childhood vaccines. Right?”

Dr. Zahorodny: “Vaccines don’t play a significant role in autism increasing. Some small number of children probably do have autism because of an adverse vaccine reaction, but they don’t make for the overall rise.”

D'oh!

What's that you say Dr. Z?  Vaccines don't cause most autism, but they do cause some autism??  You don't say?!

When the brainwashed "science media" can't even get those involved in the research to hold the "vaccines do not cause autism" line any more... we can be assured that the Hungry Lie is falling apart in earnest and the end of the vaccine age is near.

If anyone can confirm or has audio, would love to hear it.

UPDATE:

Confirmation.  Starts at 13:20:



It is CRAZY how blase he is about this.  Like he is reporting a light rain moving in from the west in the late afternoon.  Drops a bomb and strolls on by.

Worth listening to the whole interview as it counters many of the media talking points.

His thoughts are that:

• NJ high rate is because they have a better reporting system and they looked at both educational and medical records, where other states only looked at medical records, so other states are likely as high as NJ
• The increase is real
• The NJ 2002 rate and this number is a real increase because the reporting system was designed to measure that exactly
• Fluctuations due to 1994 DSM4 changes would have been settled in the first years and would not impact rates now
• Most cases they found were serious autism, not a load of high functioning cases that would have been mised before
• DSM5 will "muddy the waters" on autism tracking

UPDATE:

So is Geri Dawson joining Dr. Zahorodny?  Looks that way to me!

Only a year ago, Autism Speaks science director Geri Dawson said we are not allowed to talk about vaccines any more.  But now she says this...

Tom Ashbrook interviewed her on NPR:

Ashbrook:  "Dr. Dawson, here's a question online from Melrose, has the link between MMR vaccine and autism been completely discredited. I notice that the word 'vaccine' has not even come up so far in this hour. Is that...for some years that had a lot of attention, is that off the table now, Dr. Dawson?"

Dr. Dawson:  "There is no evidence that the increase in prevalence that we're seeing in Autism Spectrum Disorder is linked to the MMR vaccine. You know, if vaccines play a role, and there has not been any evidence thus far to show that it has, it would be a very small minority of individuals who have an underlying medical condition where the vaccine may have triggered an onset of symptoms for an already existing condition or vulnerability. So we do not believe that vaccines are an explanation of the increase and we strongly encourage parents to get their children vaccinated."

So again... thrown the softball and didn't take it!  

Ashbrook, like Andersen, took the initiative of bringing the vaccine question into the interview, and in both cases it was merely an invitation to declare the vaccine hypothesis DOA.  And neither Zahorodny or Dawson took the opportunity to do so!  

They BOTH could have said, "Correct." And just moved on.  But they didn't!

They both contradicted their interviewers presumptive statements, and said a version of, "Incorrect, vaccines do cause autism in some children, and it is a smaller number of cases than people think, but I don't see that vaccine induced autism could be playing a major factor in the increase."

IMHO... no way in h-e-double hockey sticks that these two didn't know exactly what they were doing.  They had every chance to run from vaccine causation and they didn't.  They confirmed it.  Then they minimized it.

We have just witnessed the very quiet pushing of the envelope.  Dr. Geri Dawson and Dr. Walter Zahorodny have just joined you and me and all our friends in taking our position that vaccines cause some cases of autism, just not all the cases of autism.  Now we are only separated by the degree in which we believe the vaccine induced autism is a factor in the skyrocketing autism numbers.

Geri said something very interesting... and true...

"You know, if vaccines play a role [in rising autism prevalence], and there has not been any evidence thus far to show that it has."

...if by "evidence" of course, she means "scientific research" because there is plenty of data to show that vaccines cause autism, but none that I know of to show how often vaccines cause autism.  Remember... we are all still pretending that it doesn't happen at all.  So can you imagine the research funding proposal that would read, "It has been established that vaccines are one of the causes of autism, this team endeavors to discover how much of the rise in autism cases are due to vaccine induced autism."  HA!  Betcha Autism Speaks and CDC would just THROW money at that ask!

Which brings us back to the statement that David Bowman of HRSA issued three years ago:

"The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures.

Some children who have been compensated for vaccine injuries may have shown signs of autism before the decision to compensate, or may ultimately end up with autism or autistic symptoms, but we do not track cases on this basis."

Not even the government keeps track of their own cases of vaccine induced autism!

So do vaccines cause autism?  YES!  Now we just need to know how often that happens!

I Want To Punch Autism Celebration Day In The Damn Throat

Light it up blue!

So how * many years are we going to do this?

Hey America!  1 in 88 of your children is disabled for life (up 23% from two years ago, but no worries, just better diagnosing!)... they will cost a few million each to raise and care for, few will marry or have fulfilling careers, they will be bullied by peers, neglected by school systems, abused by caregivers and sexually assaulted by predators when you turn your back.  Many will die from seizures, anaphylaxis, drownings, accidents, negligent homicides and be murdered long before their time, and at best, they still won't be able to fully communicate with you, the parent, who longs to have a close relationship with your baby.

They will struggle every day in ways I never will.

Most of this is, of course, entirely preventable, as CDC, AAP, HHS, AS et. al. knows * full well that this is an environmentally caused epidemic, as autism didn't even exist in the medical literature before the 1940s, but instead of actually facing that there is a society altering problem... a course of history altering problem...

Lets  * Celebrate * Autism Day And Make Things * Blue!  

('Cause Autism Speaks needs some more cash for their * Park Avenue offices... the economy has been rough on them you know... Geri Dawson had her * salary cut from $640,000 to $435,000 for her super intense job of looking very busy and important while NOT * curing autism.)

So * sick of this garbage.  Off to celebrate this * day at a * IEP.  Pretty sure that everyone in the room will be wearing party hats and telling me how thrilled they are that my child has autism, what with autism being something to celebrate and all...

* feel free to mentally reinsert the curse words that I removed before publishing.  I am angry.

Just reposing my column from last year:

World Autism Awareness Day: Autism Exists, Let's Celebrate? Even Though It's Killing our Children?

April 2, 2011

My regular readers already know how I feel about Autism Awarness Day/Month. Everyone is aware already, how about actually doing something about it? No... instead let's just wear blue and do nothing. Except, of course, give money to Autism Speaks. Their party budget is getting low and Geri Dawson has horses to feed.*

Anne Dachel makes the case yet again this year:

I have a hard time each year with AUTISM AWARENESS DAY/MONTH. This is the Fourth Annual International Autism Awareness Day. How long are we going to pretend that all this autism is normal and acceptable? Seriously, how bad do the numbers have to get?

A number of stories out in the news calling for the public to "celebrate" the day. Today is World Autism Awareness Day by Kristina Chew "Today, April 2, is the fourth annual World Autism Awareness Day, during which 'autism organizations around the world celebrate the day with unique fundraising and awareness-raising events.' "

Pueblo Chieftain: Blue balloons raise autism awareness, "The baby blue balloons that Jonah and his classmates at Beulah Heights Elementary School released were to celebrate the beginning of National Autism Awareness Month. The event is celebrated each April, while the World Autism Awareness Day is today."

Sioux Falls Argus Leader: 5 questions: Shedding light on autism, "The falls will be colored blue by lights in support of the Autism Speaks' global Light It Up Blue campaign to celebrate World Autism Awareness Day and Autism Awareness Month."

Lufkin Daily News: Peavy students working to raise autism awareness, "Because of the prominence of the disorder in boys, blue is the official color for autism awareness and the reason the entire Peavy campus was encouraged to don the color Friday to celebrate Autism Awareness Month."

Berkshires.com: Diversity Takes Center Stage in the Berkshires, "'We have so many people supporting this committee right now,' said MaryLee Daniels, director of the Berkshire office of the Department of Developmental Services, and committee member.

"BFAIR, BCArc, the list goes on as to how many organizations support this initiative. We especially want people to join us in celebrating three different months of diversity. Of course, last month was Black History month. This month is Developmental Disabilities month and next month is Autism Awareness month. We have so much to celebrate here."

What is there to celebrate?

Lots of stories are about lighting things up in blue for autism awareness. Lots of them talk about autism being a developmental disorder affecting one percent of children whose cause is unknown. This is done without any alarm or demand for answers. We have been conditioned to accept autism as the perpetual mystery.

As the parent of a son in his 20’s with autism, I’ve had several decades of experts knowing nothing about this disorder. Is this to be the epidemic without a cause?

Looming in the background is the reality of what autism is doing to us. As I listen to the dire predictions about the hard economic times we're in and the need for austerity, I have to ask how in the world we're going to address the needs of the generation of children with autism about to descend on America as adults.

Dr. Thomas Insel is the wet blanket in all this celebration, acceptance, and awareness of autism.

He's the head of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee created by Congress to deal with with the disorder and he says that 80 percent of Americans with autism are under the age of 18. He's warned us we have to prepare for a million dependent adults "who may be in need of significant services." The IACC now calls autism "a national health emergency."

Maybe a better name for April 2 is World Autism Emergency Day.

Anne Dachel
Media editor: Age of Autism

Anne is right. And I gotta wonder, exactly how long this PR BS is going to continue.

And the biomed community isn't even being remotely polite about this any more. These are the two images that are being passed around on facebook today:





Last year I began a new blog. Lives Lost to Autism. I got more than a little bit sick of the blatant fear mongering of death by diseases that are NOT killing Americans, like measles, while the deaths of our children caused by their autism go unlamented and ignored by health authorities.

Last year 10 children died of Pertussis and the response was a national campaign to get people vaccinated (both adults and children), new state vaccine mandates are being pushed through, and the press on it has been everywhere. Last year at least 27 children and adults died as a direct result of autism, and unless you are in the autism community, or one of these deaths happened in your town, you probably never knew it. Even then, it is always an isolated incident, yes? (There were 41 reported deaths following the pertussis vaccine last year, but that is a whole other story.)

And those 27 autism deaths are only the ones who came across my google alerts for "autism deaths" or "autism died" or "autism drowning." The test I use on how to include them is basically, "would this have happened to this this person was neurotypical?" Who knows how many more went unreported or didn't get picked up by google. I would love to quote an actual statistic on how often autism kills, or how their incidence of premature death compares to the general population, but no public health agency cares enough to track this.

But insurance companies, whose bottom lines are effected by deaths and actually need to know if autism is deadly, won't sell life insurance policies on children with autism younger than 10, because it is not a good risk for them. See the problem there?

Our precious ones drowned, were murdered by caretakers and loved ones, were shot by police, suffocated while being restrained, were hit by cars, burned to death in fires, died from neglect and were killed by seizures. A few of them even killed others during their own melt downs.

Bryan Nevins, age 20, died because, on a hot day, he could not simply open the door of a van and get out. His institutional caretaker was on her cell phone and forgot about him for five hours. She is in jail now.

Autism kills and our government could not give less of a damn.

Autism Speaks doesn't seem to want to make that point that autism kills more than whooping cough, because then the public might actually begin to see this as a public health emergency and demand results... and then were would AS be? The party financing would dry up. Better for them to let autism linger and keep sucking up cash from suckers as they pretend to do something about it. Autism Speaks has found quite the cash cow.

(Speaking of... Guidestar finally posted AS's 2009 tax returns... they took in 45.5 million, and less than a quarter of it went to grants to do what the purported purpose of the org is, "Autism Speaks (AS) funds research into the causes, prevention, treatment and cure for autism. AS raises public awareness about autism and its effects on individuals, families, and society. AS aims to bring the autism community together to urge government and the provate sector to take action to address this urgent global health crisis." Of the whole list, "autism awareness" is the only thing that I think they actually have accomplished since their inception.)

And HHS's admissions that yes, vaccines CAN AND DO CAUSE AUTISM would mean that HHS has been able to do something about this FOR YEARS and has not done it. It means that those vaccine cases can be avoided by screening for mitochondrial disorders, autoimmunity and toxicity, and treated early on if doctors were actually taught that "vaccine induced encephalopathy" exists and if recognized and treated immediately that it may minimize or even prevent many cases of autism from developing.

And that might also mean that the people who have been sitting on this information for years, and decades, might suffer some consequences.

But AS has decided to ignore HHS's own claims of vaccine autism causation and openly declared that everyone should stop talking about the vaccine autism link.

Better that we just "wear blue" because dealing with all that ugliness would just be too ugly.

This is my post on "Autism Awareness" from 2008 entitled, "Insensitive Jerk Makes a Good Point". Nick sees all the signs that tell him that Autism is everywhere, but tells him nothing about what to do about it. And this was three years ago. I should try to track Nick down and see if he has figured out what he can do about it yet.

HAPPY PHONY, BS, ARCHAIC, DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIORS DIAGNOSIS THAT TELLS US NOTHING ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON MEDICALLY SO WE CAN KEEP IGNORING THE TOXIC CAUSES OF WHATEVER THE HELL IT REALLY IS WHILE IT CONTINUES TO KILL PEOPLE CELEBRATION DAY!

Make sure you wear blue, write a check to AS, vaccinate your baby, give him a dose of Tylenol, feed him GMO's and then go back to sleep. They experts are handling it for you.


Insensitive Jerk Makes a Good Point
By Ginger Taylor, Adventures In Autism
APRIL 13, 2008

Last week Nick Jameson, college smart ass, wrote a piece on his reaction to the autism awareness campaign currently under way. One currently struggling with autism might be put off by his callousness until one remembers that he is only 22 and that we were all pretty much insensitive smart asses at 22.

I would encourage all to allow Nick a chance to grow and check back with him in 10 years or so when he is expecting his first child and see if maturity has tempered his stance.

But what is useful from Nick, random college punk, is this reaction:

For example, what is the purpose of putting up a billboard that is telling me a child is born with autism every 20 minutes? What can I possibly do other than sit in my car and mutter to myself, “Well that sucks.” Maybe if there was a cure or even ways to help prevent autism, it might make more sense to have a billboard. Then it would reinforce concepts in people’s head that they could apply later like “only you could prevent forest fires” or “don’t eat cheese before noon.” But frankly, all this billboard is really saying is, “Beware, autistic people are everywhere,” and I’m sure that isn’t the message they want to get across. We already know autism exists; give us something we can work with. If the autism front wants to put us through a year of sappy ads and TV specials, than at least make it worth the time and money and headache. Teach us something. I was on my way to New York City this weekend and every toll booth was littered with autism propaganda. Did I learn anything? No. There are more intelligent ways to get out a message to the public.

Does Nick know that there are successful treatments available? Does Nick know that there are some kids who are completely recover from autism? Does Nick know that there are things that he can do to prevent his own children (should he ever become soft hearted enough for a woman to agree to marry and/or procreate with him) from slipping in to autism?

Apparently not. And that is the fault of the media who won't report the whole story.

So our young Nick has made a great point. One that parents like me have been trying to make for years now. "Autism Exists" is a message that everyone got a few years back now. But the important message, "Autism is Treatable and Preventable" is one that the media will not share with him.

What is it going to take for them to tell the whole story?

In ten years, when Nick is expecting, will he have heard this message from the media? Or, like us, will he hear it from another parent on the playground after Nick Jr. is diagnosed with autism?

Addendum: Autism Speaks had a huge chance this month to get the treatment message out and yet again, they are screwing children by with holding the important message. They certainly have the cash to do it.

/End 2008 article

*Ok... I actually have no idea if Geri Dawson has horses, but I do know she lives on a ranch or a farm or something, so horses... not out of the question really.