The British Press Does It's Job

Handley reminds the British Press that they are supposed to cover up vaccine problems, not air them out in the open where any member of the proletariat might see and make a decision for themselves.

A taste...

Doesn't Pharma Advertise in Britain?
Jb By J.B. Handley

Its MMR-Autism mayhem in Britain, while American reporters seem to have misplaced their typewriters.

Don’t British reporters know who pays their bills? It seems if I leave “the Google” for a moment, I return to find another article from a British journalist pouring fuel on the fire of the MMR-Autism controversy.

Don’t you reporters understand American-style journalism, or rather A-Merck-ican journalism, where we take care of those who take care of us? Consider the hatchet job CNN apparently did of Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko, which caused Mr. Moore to post a lengthy rebuttal, including this ditty:

“Clearly, no one is keeping you honest, so I guess I'm going to have to do that job, too. $1.5 billion is spent each year by the drug companies on ads on CNN and the other four networks. I'm sure that has nothing to do with any of this. After all, if someone gave me $1.5 billion, I have to admit, I might say a kind word or two about them. Who wouldn't?”...

Go read the rest.

Shame on Naperville District 203 Superintendent Alan Leis

[Bumping to top]

I don't know what is more upsetting, the fact that they tried to coerce the family into an IEP by with holding the communication device, the fact Leis was 'surprised' that the judge scolded him, or that AFTER the judged scolded he tried coerce the family AGAIN by offering the device to them if they would sign a gag order not to talk about the judge's scolding of him.

The moral bankruptcy that must be in place for this kind of behavior to happen... if you don't want to work in the best interests of children, THEN DON'T GO INTO THE EDUCATION FIELD!!!!

Mr. Leis and his staff would do well to read this and repent. Shadur and Wheaton aren't the only Judges angry with them.

What you do unto the least of these...


Update: Turns out Wade is friends with the Killians and has more of the story.

It was worse than I thought. He sent along the transcript of the judge's judgement.

Judge: Dist. 203 'blackmailed' parents
July 15, 2007
BY TIM WALDORF
The Naperville Sun

Two judges have said Naperville School District 203 held an autistic student "hostage" to "blackmail" his parents into agreeing to its plans for his education.

Killian Hynes, a nonverbal, autistic 6-year-old Naperville boy, communicates using a device known as a Tango, which costs $7,000. It's the only such device Killian has been able to relate to, said his father, Kevin Hynes, 43.

Six-year-old Killian Hynes and his mother, Beth, jump Thursday on their neighbor's trampoline in Naperville. Killian, who has autism, is the focus of a debate with District 203 about where he should attend school and the use of a communications device, called the Tango.

Simply put, Kevin said, the Tango is as important to Killian as a wheelchair would be to a child with a physical disability.

And that's why the Hynes family took legal action when Naperville School District 203 withheld their son's communication device.

"I know my rights, and I know my son's rights," said Kevin, who along with his wife, Beth, 44, is a lawyer. "You can get trampled on if you don't know your rights."

Judges who recently ruled on the case had harsh words for District 203. Federal Judge Milton Shadur asked District 203 the same question posed to notorious U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954: "Have you no shame?"

Where to educate

In January, Killian's reading therapist loaned the family a Tango to use while he attended Summit School Early Learning Center in Elgin. The Tango soon became an agreed upon provision in Killian's individual education plan, a curriculum and set of goals designed specifically for a special needs student. District 203 special education teachers and administrators who are part of the team creating Killian's IEP watched Killian work with the device in the spring. They then ordered one for him to use as part of his agreed upon summer IEP, and taught his teacher at Summit how to use it.

However, the IEP team, which includes Killian's parents, could not agree where he would receive his summer schooling.

The 6-year-old was bored and regressing at Summit, Kevin said. The school had grown considerably since they started sending him there in 2005, and they felt Summit's staff hadn't mastered the Tango to the point they could effectively integrate it into his instruction. So they made arrangements to send him to a more expensive but more technologically advanced Carol Stream program that could better incorporate the Tango into Killian's studies. And, Kevin said, they were willing to pay the difference - about $100 a week for nine weeks - despite the provision of laws such as the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Laws such as these require school districts to pay for placement of special needs students like Killian in private, out-of-district facilities if parents, teachers and administrators determine that the student's needs can't be met within the district.

"IDEA isn't supposed to be about how much it costs. It's about if it's appropriate for the kid, he gets it," Hynes said. "Still, I understand everybody has a budget, and we're willing to work within that."

In various e-mails to the Hyneses, District 203 administrators agreed that Killian wasn't getting what he needed at Summit. They indicated interest in the Carol Stream program, but they also expressed concerns regarding its costs.

The matter remained unresolved as of June 11, when Killian's summer IEP was set to begin, and when Kevin dropped by District 203 to pick up the new Tango. When he got there, administrators told him he couldn't have it.

Then, in correspondence with the Hyneses, special education and students' rights attorney Laura Sinars, District 203's legal counsel, indicated the only way District 203 would provide the device would be if the Hyneses agreed to send Killian to one of two programs the district preferred. District 203 either wanted to continue sending him to Summit for the summer, or enroll him in a District 203 program, which Killian's IEP team already had deemed an inappropriate fit for his needs, Kevin said.

But District 203 Superintendent Alan Leis said the district believes it can provide appropriate instruction for Killian within the school system.

"We weren't opposed to the technology at all," he said. "We just wanted it integrated into a longer-term solution."
Irreparable injury
The Hyneses had a different take on the situation than did District 203.

"I'm like, 'That's coercion. My son needs a communication device, and you can't coerce me,'" Kevin said.

Judges agreed with the Hyneses, and severely scolded District 203 administrators for their decision.

Judge Shadur, who heard the case June 27 only because District 203 sought to have it dismissed, said he'd seldom been as troubled by a complaint.

"The undisputed picture here is regrettably one of the defendants holding, I guess, a 6-year-old autistic boy hostage, depriving him of what is without dispute really a promised Tango communication device, something that everyone agrees - even the professionals agree - is essential to his effective functioning," Shadur said. "And to hold that back as what has to be viewed, I regret to say, as blackmail for his parents, seeking to compel them to accept a program that the defendant's own professionals have found not to be in his best interest."

Judge Shadur said the situation was "nothing short of appalling."

"And I regret that the delay, the nondelivery, appears to be as inflicting serious damage on the boy's progress in dealing with his extremely serious developmental difficulties," he said.

Shadur denied District 203's request to dismiss the case, and sent it back to DuPage County Circuit Court for trial June 29. There, Judge Bonnie Wheaton expressed sentiments similar to Shadur's in ruling for the Hyneses.

"I think Judge Shadur's statement that this 6-year-old boy is being held hostage is absolutely four square and right on," Wheaton said. "And I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the district would withhold this communicative device, which has evidently been proved to be a mechanism by which this autistic boy can communicate, merely because his parents have a dispute with the district over the remainder of his IEP."

Wheaton ruled that District 203 was to immediately provide Killian with the Tango.

"He has a right to the services, whether it's piecemeal or as a whole, under an IEP that is formulated by the district and agreed to by his parents," Wheaton said in her ruling. "Clearly, clearly, irreparable injury will occur to him for every day that he is deprived of this assisted communicative device."

Leis said the judges' comments surprised him.

"It wasn't our plan to hold the technology hostage," he said. "We just thought it needed to be part of a plan that integrated it into his instruction."
Going public
Kevin said he hopes Killian will someday attend a "regular school." That's the dream of every parent with an autistic child, he said.

But getting there will take a lot of work, he said. So wasting a summer - or even three weeks - is costly for both Killian and the district, he said, suggesting that the legal bills for Sinars' services had to far exceed the cost of services in the dispute.

The Hyneses could have had the Tango two days before Wheaton's June 29 ruling if they'd agreed to a settlement the district's counsel presented after Judge Shadur's scolding. In that June 27 offer, Sinars said, although the district "vehemently disagrees" with Judge Shadur, it would turn over the Tango if the Hyneses would abide by a confidentiality agreement.

Or, as Kevin said, a gag order.

"You must agree never to disclose, publicize, publish, indicate or in any other manner communicate the comments made today by Milton Shadur or reference in any way today's court appearance, the litigation you initiated against the district in court, the case name or number or the terms of the parties' agreement to or with any other person or entity," the settlement proposal states.

The Hyneses turned down that offer before the June 29 trial, opting to take their case to court and then to the public.

"I said, 'I want people to know what you guys are doing here,'" Kevin said.

Contact Tim Waldorf at twaldorf@scn1.com or 630-416-5270.

Full Disclosure in Correcting My Error In Writing About Other's Errors

Last week David Kirby posted this HuffPo piece. I posted it to my site.

A short time later, Mr. Kirby posted this to the EOH list, outing well known autism author, Roy Richard Grinker, Ph. D., as someone who was posting anonymously in the comments section.

RE: This comment on Huffpost:

“Unfortunately, Mr. Kirby continues to believe that California's DDS enrollment figures constitute epidemiological data. They do not. The author even makes a claim about statistical significance! He also introduces a new term into the discussion -- "full spectrum" -- (which he suggests is equivalent to Autistic Disorder) -- and states that the DDS counts only Autistic Disorder, not PDD-NOS, or Asperger's, or Down's Syndrome children with autism, or any other phenotype. This is absolutely wrong. Not even the best epidemiological studies are particularly good at distinguishing among the subtypes. It is truly disappointing to see the Huffington Post continue to publish phony epidemiology.”

Signed: Mfano

But “backstage” I see that his email is actually rgrink@gwu.edu

If Dr. Grinker would like to debate this subject out in the open, using his real name, I would be more than happy to take part. You would think that someone of his stature would have more pressing things to do with George Washington University’s time and bandwidth than send anonymous, erroneous comments to national political blogs.

I also posted this to my site.

A list member on the Evidence of Harm list noted that Dr. Grinker has a habit of posting anonymously to talk about his own work.

Update: From "celiacdaughter" on the EOH list:
...If you search some of his (Mfano) previous posts you will also note that he enjoys using the third person when discussing himself:

"So Foresam, tell us: how Grinker should look for autistic adults? The woman Grinker and Chew wrote about in the blog wasn't on record anywhere as autistic. Grinker doesn't say, but she probably bit herself and smeared feces too. No one missed her. She was called mentally retarded and given lots of treatment and care. She just wasn't called autistic"...

I also posted this to my site.

Then a little while later, Mr. Kirby announced that he had inadvertently broken the HuffPo privacy policy in making the information public and apologized for the breach.

Dear List members

I have been informed by the editors of the Huffington Post that it is against the rules to reveal the identity of people who post comments on the blog.

I was not aware of that rule.

I apologize to Huffpost and, particularly, to Dr. Grinker, for the violation. Please do not attempt to contact him directly. He made his comment in the full belief that his identity would not be revealed, and we all need to respect that decision.

Again, my apologies to everyone.

David

I did not see the post.

Kristina Chew Ph. D. wrote to me and asked that I remove the information on Dr. Grinker. Dr. Chew is a co-author of Dr. Grinker.

I checked the EOH list and found Mr. Kirby’s apology. And sent her this reply.

Hi Kristina,

I just read all this and am genuinely unsure of what to do here.

Let me think about this.

Ginger

As I was thinking about the ethics involved, an email arrived from Mr. Kirby arrived asking me to remove the information in deference to Dr. Grinker.

I then decided to remove the information in an attempt to “keep the peace”.

Dr. Chew noted that I had forgotten to remove Dr. Grinker's name from the labels, so I did.

I also removed four comments from the post that referred to the deleted information as they only served to pique one's interest in the deleted information.

kristina has left a new comment on your post "The California Numbers: Autism Declining Among Th...":

In your "update," you quote David Kirby's message on the EoH Yahoogroups List in which he revealed Roy Richard Grinker's identity, as well as some additional messages from the EoH Yahoogroups List on this matter. Mr. Kirby's revelation of Prof. Grinker's identity was a violation of the policy of the Huffington Post. It is therefore inappropriate for the EoH messages to still appear on your blog.

Thank you very much.
Kristina Chew
Auitm

Sincerely,
Kristina Chew
http://www.autismvox.com

kristina has left a new comment on your post "The California Numbers: Autism Declining Among Th...":

Thanks very much, Ginger. As you've removed the update, perhaps it might also be possible to remove the tag for Roy Grinker? Best wishes from Kristina Chew

autismvox.com

Posted by kristina to Adventures in Autism at 7:07 PM

Camille has left a new comment on your post "The California Numbers: Autism Declining Among Th...":

Any comment on the way David Kirby outed the commenter he didn't agree with to the EoHarm yahoo! group?

Do you think it's OK that he outed an anonymous commenter? I guess you did because you posted the details of the outing here, approvingly.

Do you think Kirby ought to apologize to Grinker in public? Do you think Arianna needs to apologize for bamboozling her commenters into thinking they were anonymous to the bloggers?

Posted by Camille to Adventures in Autism at 12:17 AM

Ginger has left a new comment on your post "The California Numbers: Autism Declining Among Th...":

Well Camille, commenting on all that would kinda defeat the point of taking it down, now wouldn't it?

Posted by Ginger to Adventures in Autism at 9:11 AM

After reading discussion of the incident today, I realized that I had fallen into the same trap that I accuse main stream media of doing, making editorial decisions based on politics. I have replaced all the information so everything is back on the record.

I should not have taken the information down.

I apologize for doing it.

Today I reposted the information and sent the following email to Kristina Chew, Roy Grinker and David Kirby:

At the request of Dr. Chew and Mr. Kirby (who related Dr. Grinker's wish), the information on Dr. Grinker's anonymous posting on HuffPo was removed from my site. I was very reluctant to do it, but did so to keep the peace and try to honor the requests of those involved.

After seeing the fall out from my decision, it is apparent to me that my choice was a poor one and I have corrected it by reposting the information. I will be following it up with a discussion of the matter in a separate post. All of this information is relevant to the autism debate, Dr. Grinker's deception, Mr. Kirby's breaking of HuffPo rules (unknowingly or not), Mr. Kirby's public apology, Dr. Grinker's lack of any kind of mea culpa (as far as I know), Mr. Kirby's and Dr. Chew's request to have the information taken down, and my poor choice to self-censor after the fact.

One of my central complaints in the autism debate is the strangle hold on information that prevents the public from making informed choices on who to trust and what advice to take. When I removed the information I violated my own policy and took part in something that I have been criticizing for three years.

If any of us are to be of help to those with autism and their families, openness, transparency and integrity are essential. To be as frank as I can be, everyone needs to stop worrying about their bull shit reputations and do the right thing. If you make a mistake, then apologize and clean up your mess as best you can and face the consequences.

Any of us with letters after our name or books on autism don't have the maturity to do that, then we should not be a part of this discussion. Too many people's lives depend on its outcome.

Sincerely,
Ginger Taylor, M.S.

I try to run an honest blog, I have tried to be as open and transparent as I have challenged others to be. I will work harder to maintain that standard in the future.

I am sorry for the lapse in judgment.

Wakefield's Hearing Begins

Today began the Wakefield Trial, I don't know if there will be reporting on it, but I will post it if I come across it.

His supporters have two efforts underway:

This Petition

and

CryShame.co.uk

NAA's press release today:

Parents and advocacy groups call inquiry against Dr. Andrew Wakefield a “witch hunt”

National Autism Association Tells England’s GMC to Instead Ask: Why Are So Many Kids Sick?

Washington, DC - Parents and advocacy groups around the globe are asking England’s General Medical Council (GMC) to cancel the “fitness to practice” inquiry that begins today against Dr. Andy Wakefield, and Professors Walker-Smith and Murch. Advocates say the GMC should instead be asking why so many kids are sick, especially in light of an apparently suppressed analysis showing that autism rates in England are as high as 1 in 58. The medical establishment is being criticized for doing little to find the cause, treat the kids, or prevent new cases.

“The list of charges reveal the utter lack of any case against Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues, who are at risk of losing their licenses,” according to National Autism Association (NAA) board member and parent Scott Bono. The charges, only made known last week, relate primarily to a peer-reviewed case report published in 1998 in the “Early Reports” section of The Lancet, one of England’s leading medical journals: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular-hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive disability disorder in children. This first report of a new syndrome, never refuted or retracted, has since been repeatedly reported and studied by other researchers. Vaccine-strain measles virus has been found and sequenced from gut biopsies and cerebral spinal fluid in autistic children.

The charges originated from internet blogger Brian Deer, who many parents have suggested may be linked to the pharmaceutical industry. “This is nothing more than a witch hunt brought against scientists willing to undertake ground-breaking research challenging the assumption that autism is an inherited untreatable psychiatric disorder that cannot be prevented. Implicating the safety of vaccines such as MMR isn’t acceptable to drug companies or government officials who want to protect the vaccine program itself at the cost of the health of children,” said Mr. Bono.

The evidence will demonstrate that questioned diagnostic studies used by Dr. Wakefield, such as colonoscopies and lumbar punctures, were not only approved by ethics review but were clinically indicated. These have now been accepted as the standard of care by a group of leading pediatric gastroenterologists in the United States.

Other charges concern incomplete disclosures of what the advocacy groups consider irrelevant material that could appear to be a conflict of interest only to vaccine makers and government agencies shielding vaccines from legitimate and appropriate criticism. Dr. Wakefield had consulted with lawyers and families receiving government funding from the Legal Aid Board on an entirely separate study to determine whether measles virus could be identified in the diseased gut tissue, providing vital evidence for a possible class action. The legal aid board subsequently determined that this explanation for autism was more probable than not, but under government pressure dropped funding for the suit.

In the first of 5000 cases to be heard in a special vaccine court in the US last month, evidence presented demonstrated that 12-year old Michelle Cedillo began regressing into autism just a week after her MMR vaccination at 15 months. The plausible cause was a persistent measles infection which took hold through an immune system weakened by mercury in vaccines administered prior to the MMR.

Many have cited the major theme of the Government’s defense in vaccine court was that those who have the temerity to question vaccine safety must be censored and their research stopped rather than risk impairing public confidence in vaccines. According to a growing number of parents, the actual threats involved are:

* companies making vaccines without appropriate safety considerations because they no longer need fear accountability through litigation
* government denials of the autism epidemic that allow an avoidance of funding research into cause and treatment
* a sclerotic medical establishment with its head in the sand as a tsunami of sick children rages overhead.

“The search for truth in autism must be guided by sound science and not be led astray by fear, censorship, and the greed of the pharma-government complex,” commented NAA president Wendy Fournier. “Perhaps the greatest damage done by this GMC hearing, other than a complete waste of time and resources, is the chill wind blown over parents and scientists who dare to ask the hard questions against this and any other medical orthodoxy: why are so many of our kids sick and what can, indeed what must, we do to help them?”

No parents will testify against Wakefield and his colleagues at the GMC hearing. Instead, they have organized a protest coinciding with the start of the hearing. “NAA stands shoulder to shoulder with our British friends in their search for truth, justice, and treatments for their kids,” said Ms. Fournier. “We urge the GMC to stop this persecution and take urgent action in view of a true national health emergency to care for the children afflicted with autism.”

For more information on autism, visit www.nationalautism.org.

Julie Gerberding is Doing an Awsome Job

.. or not.

So we are to trust the CDC to tell us the truth about their vaccine schedule injuring our children when they can't be trusted not to steal stuff from their own offices?

Seriously?

Feds probe missing CDC gear Theft suspected in some cases
By CRAIG SCHNEIDER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/12/07

Federal investigators will look into the disappearance of $22 million worth of scientific equipment, computers and other items from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An audit of procedures and an investigation into allegations of theft at the Atlanta-based agency will be conducted by the Inspector General's office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The inquiry was requested by a congressional oversight committee as a consequence of its "troubling" findings last month.

"A thorough audit will help stop the bleeding of taxpayer-owned property at CDC," said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) in a prepared statement Wednesday. "In cases of theft, it will also tell us what happened to the thieves."

CDC officials said they have accounted for about $9 million of the $22 million in missing goods in recent weeks as a result of efforts to track down lost items and improve accountability.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce specifically raised concerns about a suspected "insider" burglary of $500,000 in new computers, and millions of dollars worth of other items missing or unaccounted for since the last audit of the agency in 1995.

"The scope of property mismanagement and outright theft at CDC is both astonishing and baffling," said Barton, the ranking Republican on the committee.

Inspector General Daniel Levinson wrote Barton on June 25, "As requested, we will audit CDC's controls over property, such as laptops and scientific equipment, and determine whether CDC has adequately implemented the recommendations in the prior report. We will separately investigate the allegations [you] identified."

The inspector general's office declined to comment further on the inquiries.

Between fiscal 2004 and 2006, there were 61 investigations into the theft or disappearance of agency property. No arrests or disciplinary action resulted from those investigations, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner on Wednesday. He said several investigations are ongoing.

Skinner said much of the equipment was discovered missing during a major reorganization in the agency. He said staff are using new computer programs to better track items.

He said the CDC faces tough challenges in managing property as an agency with a nearly $9 billion budget and 15,000 employees. "We look forward to what the inspector general has to say, and ... steps we can take to get better at property inventory and management," he said.

"We take security very seriously."

Support FAIR Autism Media

They are doing a helluva job.

Autism Fundraiser to Benefit F.A.I.R.
Saturday, August 18, 2007

Antipasto Lounge, Addison, IL

Come out and support FAIR at DJ Mario "Makeudance" Barbieri's 2nd Annual Autism Fundraiser! All proceeds will benefit FAIR's educational outreach programs and research funding initiatives. Last year was a blast and everyone had a great time! So call your babysitter and come out for the fun!

Interesting Story About a Vaccine/Autism Book in 2001

Lisa Blakemore-Brown is a British psychologist who wrote about a vaccine link in 2001 and now maintains the blog Thimerosal Thoughts. Her story about what happened when Eli Lilly bought one of the first copies is fascinating:

MMR, Mercury and the Mystery surrounding my book

Tomorrow at the General Medical Council will start the case against Dr Andrew Wakefield and two other Doctors who raised concerns about children they assessed in the nineties, very worried that the problems they found were linked to adverse reactions to the MMR vaccine.

As there has been an almighty reaction by the Pharmaceutical lobby there has been NO public debate on exactly what has been going on.

In my book, Reweaving the Autistic Tapestry, having seen too many children with what I called 'tapestry impairments' many of which developed following the DTP and in fewer cases, the MMR, I suggested there may be a 'tapestry' causal effect with vaccines as one thread.

I mentioned Thimerosal and included some lawyers details here and in the US.

The launch of the book was at a CHADD conference in Anaheim California in October 2001. Eli Lilly were on the next stand and bought a copy of the book.

On my return to the UK there was no contact from the publisher.

Within weeks of my book being published parents were being told by Amazon that it was a 'rare book' and that it would take a year to get and would cost $79 plus post and packing!!!

There were none in the shops.

There were none in the warehouses of the retailers.

There were none in the Distributors.

The UK National Autistic Society carry all the books on Autism - except mine.

Probably nothing to do with my concerns about the vaccine, a small part of the book incidentally, or about my concern about the use of the label Munchausen Syndrome by proxy when children were genuinely ill - many had suffered reactions to vaccines. The fact that during the time my Editor was working on the book he was invited to change jobs and work on the MSBP/Factitious Illness Guidlelines at the RCPCH - Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, I am sure was total coincidence.

Guess I'm just paranoid when it comes to the things done by the powerful vaccine lobby and the need to protect the vaccine programme more than the public...

Prior to the documentary My Family and Autism being aired on the BBC, over a year after the trip to Anaheim, in which I am seen undertaking an assessment, I was able to at least get the book made more accessible.

If just one person is allowed to speak about their concerns without being leapt on from a great height, I might have confidence that the vaccine programme is safe - but I think they have gone too far and protested too much.

We all now want to know WHY???

New French Autism Blog

More signs of things changing... Foreign Biomed Blogs.

Here is are two new ones from Capucine:

http://dansonslacapucine.blogspot.com/

http://dansonslacapucine.blog.lemonde.fr/

Something Has Happened

Two weeks ago I took a break from blogging to spend time with family who came to visit. Last week was a work catch up week, and I have only begun to catch up with all that has happened in the autism world while I was gone.

As I have been reading, I am seeing things that are surprising me. It is freaking me out a little.

Something has changed around the Cedillo Trial.

I have been following autism news for three years and I have never seen the kind of stories/events that are surfacing.

Dave Weldon and Carolyn Maloney have introduced bipartisan legislation, the Mercury Free Vaccines Act of 2007. Autism Speaks has uncharacteristically decided to back it and oppose AB 16 in Sacramento that would mandate that the State of California automatically adopt any vaccine that the CDC puts on the schedule (and pushed the HPV vaccine). They have never taken a stance on vaccines before. AS is also listing mercury research that was funded by CAN before the merger on their web site, but someone who spends a lot of time on the site said they didn't remember every seeing this page there before. (Anyone know if this is new, or remember seeing it in the past?)

AS has also stepped into the insurance coverage legislation in PA and announced legislative efforts on their web site.

The CDC issued a response to Verstraeten/VSD on their web site with lots of references to thimerosal studies. (I haven't had a chance to read it yet), but how long has it been there? It is not dated and David Kirby, who is a guy who keeps track of these things, didn't even know it was there until a few days ago.

The run up to the Wakefield MMR Trial has reignited doubt in the vaccine in the UK and articles like these are coming out:

At Last They Admit It, This Jab CAN Harm Your Child

The Truth About MMR

DANGERS OF MMR JAB 'COVERED UP'

The Autism Research Institute is now being backed by the giant Autism Society of America, which is now teaming up with Easter Seals who will now make Autism their priority.

Over the last three years, my blog has been visited occasionally by CDC and NIH and a few other government agencies. These visits were few and far between, and always interesting to me when they happened. But now, ramping up with increasing frequency since about April, my blog has been regularly visited by The Powers that Be CDC, NIH, FDA, EPA, HHS, the House and the Senate, The Department of Justice (who are the governments "defendants" in the Cedillo Trial), The Department of Veterans Affairs, The US Forestry Service, The Naval Research Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, The US Census Bureau, dozens of foreign, state and local governments, a slew of Canadian government agencies, dozens of medical centers/health organizations/universities/dental schools including CHOP (Paul Offit's hospital), Johns Hopkins, The Cleavland Clinic, our pharma friends at Johnson & Johnson and Glaxo Smith Klein, Immunize.org, media corporations Tribune and Gannett, The World Health Organization and even one visit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Apparently the Department of Justice is curious to know when and if the Evidence of Harm movie will be coming out.



Here is my blog traffic graph for the last three years.



2005 - nice little blog with decent traffic. 2006 - took a break from blogging for most of the year. 2007 - Started to write again. Feb/March stats broke but I didn't notice. April was Autism Awareness Month (Damn that is a lot of awareness). May - residual autism awareness?? June - suddenly I am twice as fascinating as I have ever been on my best month! July - on track to have 8,000 visitors despite the fact that I have been on vacation most of the time.

As much as I would love to believe that it is my brilliance that people are coming for, it is probably a safer bet that more people (and more people in positions of power to do something) are awakening to the reality that autism is preventable and treatable and are taking valuable time out of their day to investigate for themselves.

Last month I said that the tide had turned. I think I might have been righter than I thought I was and that the tide might start moving faster than I had anticipated.

Even if I had 40 hours a week to sort all this stuff out, I don't think I could do a decent job. I am just going to start posting references to stories with out much comment just so I can get as much out as possible.

Draw Your Own Analogies

Johnson & Johnson Clears Their Own Product of Autism Link

Critique of JnJ's Rhogam Study

If you don't want to find something, look where it is isn't.

Hey Kids, Get Vaxed!

Bird Flu Vaccine. Now with TWICE the Mercury!

FDA's newly approved Bird Flu vaccine contains 100mgs of Thimerosal which means 50 of Mercury!

http://www.fda.gov/cber/label/h5n1san041707LB.pdf

Whereas you needed to be 550lbs to safely take the mercury laden flu shot with 25 mikes of merc according to the EPA, now you must weigh 1100 lbs to safely take the bird flu shot. Oh... and you need two doses 28 days apart.

How is this making vaccines safer?

If bird flu comes, just don't go outside.

Update: I seem to remember some bad movie from the 70's where people caught a horrible disease from a bird and locked themselves in a clinic and created an vaccine but in the end the vaccine killed them and everyone else ended up being fine. Does anyone remember this movie?

The California Numbers: Autism Declining Among Three Year Olds

During a presentation Kirby gave in May, he mentioned that someone had paid California to study only the three year olds and that in the first quarter of 2007 their autism rate declined.

This quarter they went down again.

And how sad is it that a private citizen had to pay California to run autism numbers on 3 year olds? If they wanted to know what was going on with the children in that state, they would have run the numbers on their own.

Is Autism Declining?
David Kirby
HuffPo
Posted July 12, 2007 | 02:28 AM (EST)

For quite some time, the American government, health establishment and mainstream media have repeated the mantra that mercury containing vaccines were eliminated "several years ago," yet the number of autism cases continues to climb - the inference being that injecting organic mercury into newborn babies has now been proven to be 100% safe.

The problem, though, is that there is no proof that mercury was eliminated "years ago" and, more importantly, now there are signs that autism rates among the youngest children might actually be falling.

On Wednesday, the California Department of Developmental Services released data from the second quarter of 2007, showing that the number of 3-5 year olds with autism in the state system increased by 169 children over the first quarter of 2007. This is about the same quarterly increase seen in the state over the past several years.

But it turns out that a private citizen has paid the state each quarter to analyze the autism numbers according to year of birth, and not just by age group. State law requires that such privately funded analyses be made available to anyone else who asks for it.

So I asked for it. What I got was rather interesting.

After breaking down the current data among 3-5 year olds by year of birth, you notice that the number of cases among children born in 2002 (who are now roughly five years old) and 2003 (or roughly four years old) continued to go up.

But among those kids born in 2004 (who are now turning three years old) the number of cases has fallen, as compared to kids born in 2003.

For example, at the midpoint of 2006, there were 2,250 children born in 2001 (or roughly, five-year olds) with autism counted in the system. By the same period of 2007, the number of kids with autism born in 2002 had risen to 2,490, an increase of 240 children, or 10.7%.

Among "four year olds," the increase was even more dramatic, with 326 more kids diagnosed with autism midway in 2007 than in 2006, a startling jump of 17%.

But among the very youngest kids counted, the story was the opposite. At the end of June 2006, there were 688 children born in 2003 with autism diagnoses. This June, the number of kids born in 2004 with autism was 632, a statistically significant drop of 56 children, or 8.1% less than last year at this time.

This marks the second drop of its kind among the youngest children in California (which tracks "full spectrum" autism only, and not milder forms of the disorder). It follows the first quarter of this year, when 251 children born in 2004 entered the system, compared with 264 kids born in 2003 who were enrolled in the first quarter of 2006 - a modest decline of 13 students, or 4.9%.

Keep in mind that these drops are being reported despite the fact that:

1) Rates among kids born just one or two years earlier continue to spiral upward

2) California has experienced a recent baby boomlet (the number of 0-4 year olds rose by 9,369 in 2002, according to census estimates; but jumped by 62,393 in 2004).

3) Legal and illegal immigration continues to rise from countries that still use the full amount of mercury in childhood vaccines.

4) Aggressive early intervention campaigns have consistently brought down the average age of autism diagnoses.

Intriguing though the numbers may be, it is far too early to know if this refreshing downward movement will turn into a bona fide trend. The deficit of 56 children could be made up by the end of the year.

But the decline does not come in a vacuum. Minnesota, for example, tracks autism among children as young as two years of age, (though the counting is done through the school system, and is considered less reliable than California's data).

The rate of two-year-olds diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Minnesota peaked in 2003, at 4.45-per-10,000 kids. By 2005, the rate fell to 3.88-per-10,000, and last year it was 3.55-per-10,000, a drop of 20.2% since 2003.

We will have to wait until these kids get a bit older to see if the decline holds true.

Meanwhile, back in California at the massive Kaiser Permanente healthcare, officials reported that, among 5-9 year olds in their system in 2006, the rate of ASD was 93-per-10,000. But among the youngest kids, 2-4 years old, it was 66-per-10,000 - some 40% lower.

One would naturally expect to see fewer 2-4 year olds than 5-9 year olds with an ASD diagnosis. But in 2004, Kaiser began recommending routine ASD screening for all children at 24 months of age. Presumably, the majority of the 2-4 year olds in the system have now been screened for ASD, which must, by definition, appear before age 3 for a diagnosis to be made.

Sadly, more 2-year-olds at Kaiser will end up with ASD, and some stragglers among the 3-and-4-year-olds will also turn up. But whether they can make up the 40% deficit compared with their older siblings remains to be seen.

Are autism rates dropping? I would never say they are for sure. We simply have to wait and see.

But there are tantalizing hints that autism is indeed starting to decline among the very youngest children, born and vaccinated more recently, when mercury was transitioned out of most shots.

Which brings us to the, mercury was removed "several years ago" mantra, whose best retort is probably: "Says who?"

According to the Boston Herald, the last mercury-containing shots given to US children expired back in 1999. The Washington Post, meanwhile, put the date at 2001, the FDA said it was 2002, the Institute of Medicine and the Immunization Action Coalition said 2003, and the Council of State Governments claimed it was "early 2004."

Who's right? We may never know. But we do know that companies were still manufacturing mercury-containing shots for American kids in 2001, and most vaccines have a shelf life of about two years. And we know that 90% of flu shots given to pregnant women and infants still contain the full amount of mercury today.

The number of California kids born in 2004 who have autism is, by any measure, still too high. True, we don't know how many of those 632 children were exposed to mercury in routine vaccines overseas, or flu shots here at home. But with numbers this lofty, it's highly unlikely that thimerosal alone was responsible for the entire autism epidemic.

If mercury is but one cause of autism, there must be other causes as well.

Let's say that autism cases among three-year-olds fall by 10% or so by year's end. Could thimerosal be the cause of 10% of autism cases? That would still mean tens of thousands of Americans injured by mercury in their vaccines. Moreover, identifying the cause in just 10% of cases might help us discover what is causing the other 90%.

But I am writing way ahead of myself here.

Regardless of one's position on the mercury-autism contretemps, I hope everyone can agree that an actual drop in the numbers, no matter what the cause, would provide a welcome respite from the endless chorus of grim news we all seem to face these days.

[At the request of Kristina Chew and David Kirby I had removed the following two updates. I have since thought better of it and replaced them. I thought it was a move to keep the peace, but as no peace has been kept, I will repost it. Censorship, especially after the fact, is rarely a good idea, and I am sorry that I did it. I will be offering a full discussion on the matter in another post.

As I cannot repost the deleted comments from Ms. Chew and Ms. Clark, I invite them to repost them to the comments section if they wish.]

UPDATE: Roy Grinker, epidemic denier at GW, leaves an comment on the HuffPo piece, but doesn't use his real name. Kirby calls him out and offers a public debate.

RE: This comment on Huffpost:

“Unfortunately, Mr. Kirby continues to believe that California's DDS enrollment figures constitute epidemiological data. They do not. The author even makes a claim about statistical significance! He also introduces a new term into the discussion -- "full spectrum" -- (which he suggests is equivalent to Autistic Disorder) -- and states that the DDS counts only Autistic Disorder, not PDD-NOS, or Asperger's, or Down's Syndrome children with autism, or any other phenotype. This is absolutely wrong. Not even the best epidemiological studies are particularly good at distinguishing among the subtypes. It is truly disappointing to see the Huffington Post continue to publish phony epidemiology.”

Signed: Mfano

But “backstage” I see that his email is actually rgrink@gwu.edu

If Dr. Grinker would like to debate this subject out in the open, using his real name, I would be more than happy to take part. You would think that someone of his stature would have more pressing things to do with George Washington University’s time and bandwidth than send anonymous, erroneous comments to national political blogs.

Update: From "celiacdaughter" on the EOH list:

...If you search some of his (Mfano) previous posts you will also note that he enjoys using the third person when discussing himself:

"So Foresam, tell us: how Grinker should look for autistic adults? The woman Grinker and Chew wrote about in the blog wasn't on record anywhere as autistic. Grinker doesn't say, but she probably bit herself and smeared feces too. No one missed her. She was called mentally retarded and given lots of treatment and care. She just wasn't called autistic"...

Update: Back to the original point. A mom in Iowa says Autism rates are dropping there too.

"It seems to me, there is a story in the Iowa stats as well. Iowa being the first state to remove/ban thimerosal, with exception to influenza, and our rates reflect a 20% decrease."

http://www.vaproject.org/statistics/autism-statistics.html

National Autism Prevalence Trends from United States Special Education Data

The following is taken from the official State statistics produced by the Department of Education in the United States, for numbers of children aged 3-5 served by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) who have autism. It compares the increase over five years between 2000-01 and 2005-06:

State	2000-2001	2005-2006	Percentage Increase
Alabama	84	178	112
Alaska	27	X	X
Arizona	94	287	205
Arkansas	95	106	12
California	3,422	7,968	133
Colorado	53	157	196
Connecticut	152	412	171
Delaware	62	101	63
DC	16	39	144
Florida	847	1,598	89
Georgia	272	550	102
Hawaii	88	149	69
Idaho	28	86	207
Illinois	670	1,256	87
Indiana	456	777	70
Iowa	128	102	-20
Kansas	87	172	98
Kentucky	168	270	61
Louisiana	121	294	143
Maine	150	311	107
Maryland	371	641	73
Massachusetts	231	1,370	493
Michigan	631	1,212	92
Minnesota	345	1,159	236
Mississippi	34	69	103
Missouri	134	283	111
Montana	40	44	10
Nebraska	37	154	316
Nevada	89	422	374
New Hampshire	55	112	104
New Jersey	397	734	85
New Mexico	6	96	1,500
New York	2,244	X	X
North Carolina	261	780	199
North Dakota	17	39	129
Ohio	326	397	22
Oklahoma	9	57	533
Oregon	429	782	82
Pennsylvania	594	2,063	247
Puerto Rico	147	116	-21
Rhode Island	48	121	152
South Carolina	121	281	132
South Dakota	35	80	129
Tennessee	153	416	172
Texas	1,108	2,123	92
Utah	58	247	326
Vermont	14	48	243
Virginia	222	548	147
Washington	64	409	539
West Virginia	14	33	136
Wisconsin	410	485	18
Wyoming	21	37	76
Total	15,685	30,171	92

Source: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act data, US Department of Education.
X - Figures not available