| by Scott Campbell |
| Jul 15, 2008 |
| 1. The Down Syndrome Association of Northern VA will be hosting a day with Sue Buckley of the Down Syndrome Educational Trust on July 19. We have updated our website to include an agenda for the day. Please see www.dsanv.org for the agenda and to download a registration form. Time is fast approaching! Sue Buckley is an internationally respected educator and researcher and we look forward to learning practical tips on addressing communication, social skills, behavior issues and more from birth to the teen years. Registration is open to the public.
2. Commonwealth Autism Service workshop on "You’re Going To Love This Kid": Educating Students with Autism In Inclusive Schools - Paula Kluth, Ph.D. - Workshop Description: Participants will learn practical ways of supporting students with autism spectrum labels & other disabilities within a general education classroom. Topics addressed include defining autism, listening to the voices of those with autism, differentiating instruction in the diverse classroom, encouraging literacy development, making the classroom comfortable for all learners, and supporting behaviors and bodies of students with a range of needs. This interactive presentation will focus on the importance of pushing beyond participation and inclusion to asking schools to understand every student as complex, as capable, and as a learner. Call Commonwealth Autism Service at 1-800-649-8481 for more information or to register. It is on July 22, 2008 from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm at the Sheraton Park South 9901 Midlothian Turnpike, Richmond, VA. Registration: $50 - Continental Breakfast and Lunch Provided. More info at http://www.autismva.org/documents/PaulaKluthBrochure1.pdf. 3. The Loudoun County Autism Summit on Monday, July 28th, 2008 from 6 to 9:30pm at The Potomac Club, Lansdowne on the Potomac, 43459 Riverpoint Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176. To see more details and to RSVP on The Loudoun Project, go to http://theloudounproject.ning.com/events/event/show?id=2180200%3AEvent%3A16&xgi=7SQaqSC. Learn about national, state and local initiatives to help individuals overcome autism from Autism Speaks representatives; Meet our elected representatives and learn about relevant legislative initiatives for the Commonwealth and the County; Hear testimonials from parents, educators and service providers working to overcome the challenges of autism; and Rally support for the passage of VA House Bill 83 to Mandate Health Insurers to cover services for individuals with Autism. Similar legislation passed in South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, Indiana and Arizona. Virginia is next! Parents, Educators, Service Providers, Legislators and others will work together and rally support to get House Bill 83 passed in Virginia! We look forward to meeting you and hearing your thoughts at the Potomac Club on July 28! 4. Young Athletes™ Sports Camp. A Saturday morning Inclusion Sports Camp for young (ages 3-7) special needs children, especially those with intellectual disabilities, and their siblings. Program Goals- Young Athletes introduces children with intellectual disabilities and their families to the world of Special Olympics by pursuing the following goals: • Have fun! • Engage children through developmentally appropriate play activities • Create an environment that accommodates the special needs of the children and allows for a more inclusive environment and a family centered approach to bringing sports into the life of your children • Focus on fundamental skills to create athletes of the future. Some of the sports we will play include: baseball, basketball, soccer, kickball, bowling, and putt-putt. • Prepare Young Athletes™ for Special Olympics Open to special needs children, especially those with intellectual disabilities, ages 3 to 7 and their siblings [Maximum of 20 children: we will accommodate those who cannot make all of the sessions. Athletic ability does not matter. The program is FREE. A parent or guardian must be on site to assist if necessary. Many parents will find that they want to stay to cheer their children on and work the stations and become a part of your child's learning process. OPEN HOUSE: Young Athlete Sign Up and Volunteer Training: Saturday, July 26th from 9 to 11am. CAMP SESSIONS: Saturdays, August 2nd to August 30th from 9 to 11:45am at the Northern Virginia Training Center, 9901 Braddock Road, Fairfax, VA 22032-1941. For More Information, contact Veronica Jennings at vjennings@specialolympicsva.org or 703-359-4301. 5. Parents Of Autistic Children of Northern Virginia (POAC-NoVA) Information and Support Group Meeting on Saturday, 16 August 2008 from 1 to 4:30 pm for our annual "Back to School" meeting for parents of children with autism in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). FCPS special education staff will present on the current status of the programs for our kids in the self-contained, non-categorical and mainstreamed classrooms for all the preschool through secondary grades. There will time to discuss your options for your student with autism. This meeting will be at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, 8900 Little River Turnpike, Fairfax, VA (http://www.jccnv.org). From the Capital Beltway (495), take exit 52A for Little River Turnpike West, also called Route 236 West. The JCCNV is located on the right-hand side, 1.5 miles west on Little River Turnpike, at the intersection of Guinea Road). We hope to see you at this meeting for a discussion on the enhanced autism programs within FCPS for the upcoming school year. 6. The first issue of "Motivations," POAC of Central Maryland's parent bulletin is now available on our website. Just click the Motivations link at http://www.poacofcentralmd.org. We have also added a new resource for families seeking qualified behavioral consultants. A listing of contact information for the consultants practicing on our region is available on the "Learning Resources" page of the site. 7. Below are two research studies that are currently looking for participants. 1. A study looking for adolescents and young adults in the MD/greater Washington, DC area. 2. A study asking parents of children with autism to help by completing an online survey related to child safety. Both sponsoring organizations and the researchers are reputable and supported by OAR. If you are interested, please use the contact information provided. ARE YOU OR DO YOU HAVE A TEEN WITH HIGH FUNCTIONING AUTISM OR ASPERGER SYNDROME? DO YOU WANT HELP PREPARING FOR COLLEGE? What is this project? Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Supporting Transition in Vocation and Education (STRIVE) is an innovative, skill-building resource designed specifically for late adolescents and young adults ages 16 to 21 with Asperger syndrome (AS) or high functioning autism (HFA) as they transition from high school to postsecondary education or work. Three 90-minute STRIVE group sessions are being tested in July and August 2008 to determine the effectiveness and appropriateness of the curriculum and to gather feedback about its format and content. Participants are also being recruited nationally for our control group. What will I have to do? If you participate in this evaluation, you will be asked to do one or both of the following: Attend three 90-minute STRIVE sessions in a group with approximately eight other teens/young adults with HFA/AS, and Complete a few brief surveys about your knowledge about how to make decisions concerning college and how to apply to college. When are the sessions? The three 90-minute sessions will be scheduled in July and August 2008 according to the participants' schedules/preferences. Note: participants in the control group will not attend the sessions. Where will the sessions be held? The STRIVE sessions will be held in Rockville and/or Silver Spring, MD. Who is eligible to participate? Eligible participants include adolescents and young adults ages 16 to 21 with AS/HFA who are considering pursuing postsecondary education (college, university, vocational/trade school, etc.). Will I receive anything for participating? Participants will receive $25 per session attended or $25 for completing two sets of brief questionnaires. All participants (even those not attending sessions) will receive either a printed or electronic workbook to aid in the college application process. How do I sign up? Contact Tina Thomas (240) 645-1121 or tthomas@danya.com 8. UNDERSTANDING CHILD SAFETY AND INJURY RISK STARTS WITH THOSE WHO KNOW CHILDREN BEST. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unintentional injuries are the number one cause of death for children over the age of one in the United States. Safety issues for children are of great concern for schools and families. We are conducting a research study to collect information from parent and teacher perspectives regarding child safety, to increase the understanding of the safety needs of children. The main focus of this study is to examine the information to determine what safety risks are of greatest concern in each setting. The goal of this research project is to improve preventive methods for child safety. If you would like to assist us by participating in our study, please visit our website at http://icd.binghamton.edu. Click on the link for the Child Safety Survey. Further details will be available on the webpage. This project is funded by the Institute for Child Development. 9. A Comparison of Two Types of Video Modeling to Teach Self-Help Skills to Children with Autism. The people responsible for this study are Dr. Laura Stapleton and Anna Burns, M.A., at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The study is conducted during home visits, when your child will watch a video of a person performing self help skills, and then will try to do those skills, while he or she is being videotaped. There is limited information about the best ways to teach children with autism. Purpose- Video modeling has been used successfully to teach a wide variety of skills to people with and without disabilities. The purpose of this study is to see which of two types of video modeling works best to teach self-help skills to children with autism. The intervention will consist of showing your child a video made using one type of video modeling. The video will attempt to teach your child to do a multi- step task. Prompting and positive reinforcement may also be used to help your child learn this new task. There are no known risks associated with video modeling interventions. Participant requirements: 1. The family lives within a 50 mile radius of Baltimore, MD. 2. The child is between 4-16 years old at the beginning of the study. 3. The child must have a written diagnosis of Autistic Disorder made by a professional using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). 4. The child is able to sit still and watch a video or television program for a minimum of 2 consecutive minutes on a regular basis. If you are interested in learning more about this study, please contact Anna Burns, M.A. at phone # (443) 983-4417 or e-mail at burns1@umbc.edu. 10. AUTISM RESEARCH OFFERS HOPE/TISSUE BANK. The Autism Research Institute is working closely with scientists and clinicians throughout the country in an effort to find effective treatments for this devastating disorder. According to these experts, limited availability of tissue from children who suffer with autism is hampering research because without actual tissue it is difficult to determine the basic biological defects responsible for this disorder. In an effort to increase research, the ARI has entered into a partnership with the Brain and Tissue Bank for Developmental Disorders at the University of Maryland in contract to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to support tissue donations. Anyone Can Be a Donor. Anyone, regardless of age is invited to register as a tissue donor. The tissue bank is just as much in need of control tissue as tissue from those with autism. Tissue must be recovered within 24 hours because after this time the tissue has lost most of its usefulness for research purposes. Therefore, advanced registration is especially important in that it enables the intricate process of tissue recovery to occur in a timely manner. Even if a person is not registered in advance, tissue donation may still be possible by calling the toll free number above. The Brain and Tissue Bank will make every attempt within its means to ensure successful tissue recovery. To register, call 1-800-847-1539 or 1-410-706-1755 (from outside the continental U.S.) to request a packet or discuss any questions or concerns relating to tissue donation. 11. The July edition of the Autism Research Institute e-newsletter is at http://www.autism.com/ari/enewsletter/enewsletter_200807.htm. 12. "Love and Asperger's syndrome" dated 6 April 2008 from The Telegraph (UK) at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/04/06/st_aspergers.xml&page=1. "He's gentle, unworldly, highly attentive and charmingly old-fashioned. The catch? The very things that make Keith so attractive to Sarah are symptoms of Asperger's. Anna Moore meets the couples living with this surprisingly common condition. Sarah Hendrickx and Keith Newton sit tilted towards one other, laughing a lot and disappearing down the occasional alley of in-jokes, as couples do when they're still in that early, besotted stage. Keith has just arrived at Sarah's home in Hove and they're clearly delighted by the prospect of the next few days together. As always, Keith has switched off his mobile phone because, as he puts it, 'my time here is with Sarah'. They won't see anyone else - Keith has no friends of his own and doesn't feel comfortable socialising - but plan to eat lots of chocolate, walk and watch television. 'We spend a lot of time feeling smug,' says Sarah, 'because we see other couples who don't look very happy.' In a few days, though, Keith will drive back to Wickham, Hampshire, 50 miles away, where he lives alone and works as a computer programmer. This will always be the case. Despite meeting five years ago, they won't 'progress' as other couples do. They'll neither live together nor have children. Although there's only a year between them, at 39 Keith is so gangly, gawky, boyish and cute that he could be ten years younger than he is. Yet Sarah - who had a child at 19 and has two marriages behind her - is confident that few women could put up with him. 'God, he's so gorgeous he could have anyone - but not for long,' she says, laughing. 'Three or four months max… then, when the conversation turns to homes and babies and bank accounts, he'd be gone!' The two burst into laughter. It wasn't always like this. The couple met through internet dating and the first stage of their relationship was fiery and fraught. To Sarah, Keith was 'a puzzle'. He'd plainly state that their blissful weekends were enough for him, that he'd never live with her or even move nearer. Sarah frequently found him selfish, cold and distant. Keith found Sarah hard work, demanding and 'screechy'. …" 13. "Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder" dated 28 April 2008 by David Kravets from Wired.com at http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/reiser-guilty-o.html. "Jurors found Linux programmer Hans Reiser guilty of first degree murder on Monday, concluding he killed his estranged wife in 2006. The verdict followed a nearly six-month trial and nearly three days of deliberation. The 44-year-old developer of the ReiserFS filesystem, sat quietly as a clerk for Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman read the verdict. Reiser faces a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Wearing the same dark coat he's worn for months, the defendant was immediately removed from the courtroom by one of four bailiffs watching over the courtroom. He asked out loud if he could speak with his attorney. Reiser and his attorney had argued that Nina Reiser was not dead, and had abandoned her children to sneak away to Russia, where the couple met in 1998, after he accused her of embezzling from his software company, Namesys. In a murder case with no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence, the prosecution began the trial last November with a daunting task ahead. By the time prosecutor Paul Hora rested his case February 14, he had called some 60 witnesses, but presented mostly circumstantial evidence demonstrating animus between Reiser and his wife, and suspicious behavior by the defendant following Nina's disappearance in September, 2006. The turning point in the trial came when Reiser took the stand in his own defense March 3. In his 11 days of testimony, Reiser offered lengthy and verbose explanations for every piece of circumstantial evidence. But Reiser's version of events often drew disbelieving head shakes from jurors — and occasional smirks from the trial judge. In a characteristic exchange under cross-examination, Reiser tried to explain why he'd removed and discarded the passenger seat from his two-seater Honda CRX after Nina vanished. His explanation: He'd been sleeping in the vehicle, and wanted the extra room. Asked why he hosed down the inside of the car, leaving an inch of water on the floorboard, he explained that the interior was dirty, and he mistakenly believed the water would drain out. "I just assumed that every car engineer would put a hole in the car," he said. "Don't you remember sleeping on a nice, soft, wet carpet?" Hora went on to ask. Reiser replied, "I don't remember." By the time he was done, Reiser had succeeded only in dispelling the cloud of ambiguity surrounding his actions in the case, replacing it with a storm of very specific explanations that each strained credulity. Jurors had to choose between Reiser's strained version of events and the plain conclusion that he was lying. Nina Reiser, then 31, was last seen September 3, 2006, while dropping off the divorcing couple's two young children to stay with Hans for part of Labor Day weekend. Authorities believe she never left her estranged husband's house in the Oakland hills alive. When Nina's best friend reported the woman missing two days later, the police launched an investigation that quickly focused on the husband. The couple had separated and were in the midst of an acrimonious divorce and custody battle. …" 14. "Anti-Vaccine Activists vs. Gardasil" dated 19 June 2008 by HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN from Time magazine at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1816507,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics&iref=werecommend. "Gardasil has been a shot in the arm for pharmaceutical giant Merck. The company had been reeling from the withdrawal of its anti-arthritis drug Vioxx because of increased risk of heart attacks and resulting lawsuits. Now, however, Merck's new vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV) — aimed at combating cervical cancer — has been deployed worldwide, earning an estimated $1.5 billion in sales. But the drug is coming under increasing fire from anti-vaccine activists. Already very vocal about childhood innoculations, now they are expressing concern about the effects of Merck's drug on young girls, a primary focus of the company's big ad campaign. The movement's efforts and propaganda are particularly viral on the web. One story that has been making the rounds for the past week, starting with a report in the Dallas Morning News, concerns Dallas mother Michelle Kimzey, who said that her 14-year-old daughter Katherine, after receiving her second shot of the three-dose vaccine battery in November, experienced headaches, fainting and stiff joints. A few weeks later, she suffered a seizure and later was diagnosed with epilepsy, according to her mother. Kimzey said that she reviewed 5,000 reports filed by the public on a government database website that monitors vaccine safety and became convinced that her daughter's health problems were related to the Gardasil shot. "When you read everybody's stories, they're too similar not to be related," Kimzey told the News. The story has been picked up by over a hundred mainstream media websites and by blogs and chatrooms like vaccinationnews.com. The government website Kimzey was referring to is VAERS — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — a program run by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). Drug companies are required to report any adverse reactions to VAERS, according to CDC spokesman Curtis Allen, while doctors, patients and parents are encouraged to do so. The CDC regards the VAERS as "an early warning system," Allen said, that allows them to pick up any statistical trend that might indicate a problem. For health professionals, the VAERS system provides some of the best data related to vaccine safety, beyond that provided by the manufacturer, according to Jessica Kahn, M.D., a pediatrician, HPV researcher and teacher at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The danger is that such uninterpreted raw data can also be misused. "It is very important to note," says Dr. Kahn, "that anyone can report a side effect to VAERS, and just because it is reported does not mean it was caused by a vaccine." …" 15. "Project Lifesaver finds lost autistic boy- Device helped authorities find child in 30 minutes" dated 20 June 2008 by ABBEY STIRGWOLT from the Newark Advocate at http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008806200304. "Two weeks after Dustin Blackburn began wearing a wristwatch-like tracking device on his ankle, the Project Lifesaver program lived up to its name. Blackburn, 9, who is autistic, wandered away from his Newark yard and into some nearby woods Wednesday afternoon. His mother, Beth Blackburn, called 911 within seven minutes of his disappearance. In less than 30 minutes from the time the system was activated, Dustin had been found and safely returned home. "I was just so thankful that we put that on him," Beth said. Blackburn applied for a Project Lifesaver device for her son in early June because she was concerned he had been wandering away. Implemented by the Licking County Sheriff's Office about one year ago and gaining popularity across the state and country, Project Lifesaver is a system designed to track people with disorders such as autism or Alzheimer's who might be prone to wander away. Although the Sheriff's Office regularly performs drills to test the devices -- about 15 of which have been distributed in the Licking County area, said Capt. Thomas Lee of the Licking County Sheriff's Office -- Wednesday was the first time the system has been activated for a real-life situation. The system creates peace of mind for both law-enforcement officers and its clients, Lee said. "Look at the manpower and the resources that could have been put into this -- but we were saved because of this tracking device," Lee said. The Project Lifesaver system works through a personalized band on the wrist or ankle that emits a tracking signal on an individually assigned FM radio f frequency. When a person is missing, a caregiver or loved one notifies the local Project Lifesaver agency and a search-and-rescue team responds to the wanderer's area. Average rescue time is about 30 minutes, Lee said. Blackburn called authorities at 4:35 p.m. Wednesday. They arrived at 5 p.m., activated the system and found Dustin at 5:25 p.m. The search was conducted by Licking County Sheriff's Office deputies as well as an Ohio Highway Patrol airplane and officers. Given the wooded terrain near the Blackburns' home, the tracking device was especially useful, Lee said. "We could have been out there all night looking for him," he said. Beth said Dustin was found about a quarter mile away from the home. Although she had been uneasy during the search, knowledge her son was wearing the Project Lifesaver device helped calm her fears, she said. Beth said she would encourage anyone with a loved one with Alzheimer's or other related mental dysfunction who would qualify to take advantage of the device. "(The device) is most definitely recommended, because without that we would have never found him," she said. Lee said the peace of mind Project Lifesaver provides for caregivers of clients makes it well worth the investment. "The well-being and the safety factor that the family would feel just having that on there is something you can't measure," he said." 16. "Thousands of New York City special ed students not receiving needed services, says DiNapoli" dated 27 June 2008 from the Empire State News at http://www.empirestatenews.net/News/20080627-2.html. "The New York City Department of Education must improve the timeliness of its evaluations and placements of special education student applicants, according to a report released by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The report also noted that the number of students who do not receive recommended support services, such as speech or physical therapy, doubled between 2003 and 2007. The DiNapoli report showed that during the 2006-2007 school year, a monthly average of 4,549 students remained in an evaluation process for more than 30 school days, with more than 2,400 remaining for more than 60 days. In addition, a monthly average of 14,479 students were in the placement process for more than 60 school days with more than half of those students remaining in the process for more than 80 days. While the report notes that 55 percent of the cases in the placement process for more than 60 days were either the result of students not attending the program arranged for them or because parents did not respond to an offer of placement, 16 percent of those students remained in the process because the Department of Education never made an offer of services. Under a consent decree issued in 1979, following a court ruling in the Jose P. v. Ambach federal lawsuit, the Department of Education is required to complete each new evaluation within 30 school days of receiving parental consent to evaluate or within 40 school days of receiving a request to evaluate. Under the decree, a student must then be offered appropriate services within 60 school days of receipt of parental consent to evaluate or within 70 school days of the request to evaluate." 17. "The AAP gets tough on vaccine dissenters" dated 27 June 2008 by Julie Deardorff from the Chicago Tribune at http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2008/06/forced-vaccinat.html. "The American Academy of Pediatrics is growing so concerned about the climbing rate of vaccine exemptions--and the possible affect on community health--that it recently formed a group called the "Immunization Alliance" to address the growing refusal of some parents to vaccinate. In a letter sent to members, the AAP identified the following as problems: "Parent-to-parent spread of myths." "A public that does not understand the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases." "Unbalanced Internet and media exposure." "Decreased trust in the government and health care providers." "Slow response to negative news coverage." "Increasing calls for philosophical exemptions." But here's a problem the AAP missed: The sheer number of recommended and mandated vaccines is freaking parents out. And new combo shots that contain a stew of four or five different vaccines aren't going to help matters. In 1982, The Centers for Disease Control recommended 23 doses of 7 vaccines for children up to age 6. Today, the CDC recommends that children get 48 doses of 12 vaccines by age 6. That's a lot. Toss in flu shots for all infants and children and it boosts the number of recommended vaccines for children to 69 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18. The two new combo shots approved yesterday by a federal advisory panel don't change the schedule; they just reduce the number of individual shots. GlaxoSmithKline's four-in-one shot offers protection against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio. Sanofi Pasteur's five-in-one shot is for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio and illness due to Haemophilus influenzae type b, or HiB. But parents who are already asking doctors to unbundle the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine because they want their child to have individual vaccines aren't likely to embrace a five-shot cocktail. The new shots are also likely to raise questions, concerns and storage issues. And how does the AAP plan to handle it? The organization will not talk about choice or informed consent, issues that should be raised with any medical procedure that carries a risk. Instead, the AAP suggests in a sample letter to pediatricians, that physicians tell parents who refuse to vaccinate that they have a "self-centered and unacceptable attitude" since your child is getting protection from others who have chosen to vaccinate. And if you absolutely refuse to vaccinate your child despite your physician's efforts, you could be booted from your pediatrician's practice. The sample letter to doctors from the AAP recommends saying: "We will ask you to find another health care provider who shares your views. We do not keep a list of such providers nor would we recommend any such physician." 18. "Some Calif. Schools Locking Children In Closets" dated 27 June 2008 by Anna Werner from CBS5 News at http://cbs5.com/local/school.quiet.room.2.758380.html. "Locking children in closets doesn't sound like something that could possibly happen in California's school system. But CBS 5 Investigates has uncovered evidence that it is a hidden problem, not reported by schools, and unknown to many parents. A closet in a classroom that brings the memories back for a student we will call Chris. "The door is closed, it's totally dark. There is a little tiny beam of light that comes under the door, but that's it." Chris told CBS 5 Investigates. When he was asked if he was trapped, he responded, "Pretty much." Chris was a 6th grader at Mendenhall Middle School in Livermore. Despite his high IQ, behaviors resulting from a diagnosis of ADHD landed him in a special education class. He quickly discovered that anything considered 'misbehavior', like getting up out of your chair or not completing class assignments meant a trip to the closet. "You really don't understand what it's like until you actually go through it," Chris said. He says he was put in the "Quiet Room" a lot, and there was no getting out. "They would sit on the door so you couldn't get out and then sometimes they would put a chair up against the door," Chris recalled. "I sat in there for a whole school day one time." And once, he tried to resist going in and a teacher got physical. "He twisted my arm up behind my back and then he just pushed me and I hit the wall pretty hard," Chris said. "I felt intimidated kind of, because I mean he is bigger than me and he knows that." How can that happen? Most parents can't imagine it: Their child shut into a room, sometimes as small as a closet. Under California law, it's only supposed to happen if the child is a danger to themselves or others. But advocates tell CBS 5 Investigates it's happening far more frequently than that. Leslie Morrison is an investigator with Protection and Advocacy Inc., a non-profit that works with the disabled. "I think it's an enormous problem," she said. "In all of the cases that we investigated, the underlying incident that triggered restraint and seclusion is non-compliance with staff direction. They didn't do what the teacher asked them to do." For example, there is a fenced area that looks kind of like a dog run at the John F. Kennedy School near Modesto. A U.S. Department of Education investigation found children were left here without access to a toilet, water or food, even some who had medical conditions including diabetes, seizures and asthma. "Seclusion is very psychologically traumatizing, especially for children. Children fear being locked in a closet," Morrison said. And it's not just seclusion. Morrison said teachers also sometimes physically restrain children improperly. Such as a 6-year-old who came home with duct tape on his clothing. It was used to literally tie him into a chair at a school in Southern California. And staff at many schools also engage in so-called "take downs." Morrison said, "The most common one is face down on the floor and then you lean into their back or sides so that they can't breathe." But Morrison said without proper training, "As the child is struggling to breathe the person is holding them down on the floor to stop the struggling. And what happens is you actually stop them breathing." Morrison's group is backing SB 1515, legislation by California State Senator Sheila Kuehl that would limit restraints and ban seclusion. But some who work in the field oppose it. Carroll Schroeder heads the California Alliance of Child and Family Services, a lobbying group for non-profit providers which opposes SB 1515. "If and when the time comes, you need to have at least those two options available to you," Schroeder said. "If those kids don't have that option of that room, either the schools call the police, and the police will pick them up, or they will be suspended from school." But not according to Frank Marone, a recognized behaviorist with B*E*T*A Behavior Education Training Associates. The group works with students with disabilities. "We have been able to illustrate that restraint is not necessary," he said. …" 19. "RECOVERY STORY: JACK" dated 28 June 2008 from Generation Rescue on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/06/recovery-stor-2.html#more. "My son, Jack, was a sweet, typically developing baby. At his 4 month pediatric appointment, Jack was on track developmentally, had great eye contact and social gazing and was babbling in a manner that was complex for a baby his age (per his pediatrician). However, between 4 and 6 months, he stopped babbling and got a "serious" look about him. He did not respond when we called his name, but whipped his head around when he heard the Elmo song. Over the next year his language did not develop. At 15 months he had no words. We sought Early Intervention and by 22 months felt that we were dealing with autism. His language at 17 months was that of a 5-8 month old. Soon our son, Jack, was diagnosed at 23.5 months with ASD - moderate at Vanderbilt University. We immediately began introducing the elements of the DAN! Protocol, along with an intensive home ABA program. We began the GFCF diet and soon our son was no longer spacy or tantrumming. He was beginning to learn how to learn. We saw a HUGE gain when we put him on Nystatin and, at 2.5 yrs old, was able to imitate for the first time in his life. Within 3 months of the diet and supplements he had 65 words, used mostly for labeling and a few for requesting. His social interaction was still quite limited, but we were making progress. We began MB12 injections and in 4 weeks saw remarkable social gains! He was now dragging his grandparents around by the hand to play!! We started chelating with TD DMPS at 2.5 and saw small gains for a year. Then we began IV chelation, supervised by a prominent FL DAN! Doctor and saw amazing gains! By age 5, with 1.5 years of IV treatments, his language has become AGE APPROPRIATE!!! He is social, talks about his school day on the ride home and is a happy boy. He is conversational and enjoying his 5 year pre-k classroom in a typical setting with 12 other typical children. He still maintains a classroom aide, but the teacher often comments that there are many days where the aide's minimal support is not needed. We are thrilled with where we are now! We still battle yeast and bacteria, and are in the final rounds of chelation, we hope. Our son is bright, reading on a 1st grade level and doing math well beyond his age. He is funny, now telling us jokes and delighting in being with family and friends. We know that we still have a few more miles to go in this marathon, but we can see the finish line and we are thrilled for all that has happened to Jack in his recovery! We now know our little boy! We are so grateful to the voices that speak for biomed and for those that have worked so hard to find solutions to this complex biomedical disorder! Thank you to all the professionals and parents that fight so hard on our behalf! We are cheering you from the trenches!" 20. "CDC'S GERBERDING: "MISTAKES WERE MADE" dated 28 June 2008 from Katie Wright on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/06/cdc-mistakes-we.html#more. "Julie Gerderding’s recent admission that much of the CDC’s research exonerating vaccines as a trigger for autism was both shoddily done and politically compromised. It felt like a bittersweet victory. The selection bias errors are numerous and egregious. But I didn’t need Dr. Gerberding to admit the obvious in order to know that the CDC endangered my son and an entire generation of children. Like so many other families, we lived the nightmare after Christian received 7 vaccines in one day, initiating the mental and physical deterioration of my child that became autism. It astounds me that Gerberding has not resigned. But then so much astounds me, such as the AAP’s recent publication on how to “handle” vaccine adverse parents. I had high hopes after speaking with Dr. Louis Cooper from the AAP at the DAN! Conference. Not only did Dr. Cooper show up and listen to parents, he attended numerous lectures and workshops. What happened? The AAP “parent handling” imitative is both condescending and ridiculous. The days when parents unquestionably accepted whatever their pediatrician says are over, especially when they have been wrong about so much and have ignored the needs of our children for decades. Threatening to “fire” families from a practice or telling them that they are endangering other children is not an effective way to go. The fact that the AAP comes out with this guide right as the CDC admits so many of their vaccine safety studies are compromised is bizarre. These are the people we are supposed to trust with our children’s health? Who do they think they are kidding? We need an autism enlightenment movement, which can move this discussion beyond the flat earth, or scorch earthed policies of the CDC and the AAP. We need more AAP doctors, CDC researchers and AS scientist to come to AutismOne, DAN!, the NAA conference and hear from these parents, meet our children and learn from their stories of hope and recovery. I am so tired of hearing the same old autism careerists put forth the same stale information in the safest of safe environments, where their travel and lodging has been paid for by someone else, lecture more careerists about the “autism is genetic” groupthink agenda. And if they only had $10 million more they would be able to find 2 more genes out of the 1,000 thousand that compromise autism. Enough! None of that has helped one child with autism. The CDC was invited to speak at the “Greening the Vaccines” rally and, of course, declined, literally afraid to face the community. They missed amazing day. From the Congressional lawn, as far as the eye could see, all the way down Independence Avenue I saw families with autistic kids marching down the middle of the street. TACA literally stopped traffic. It was a beautiful sight. …" 21. "Experts to Discuss One Puzzling Autism Case, as a Second Case Has Arisen" dated 28 June 2008 by GARDINER HARRIS from The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/health/28vaccine.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin. "Federal health officials on Sunday will call together some of the world’s leading experts on an obscure disease to discuss the controversial case of a 9-year-old girl from Athens, Ga., who became autistic after receiving numerous vaccinations. But the government has so far kept quiet a second case that some say is more disturbing and more relevant to the meeting. On Jan. 11, a 6-year-old girl from Colorado received FluMist, a flu vaccine, and about a week later “became weak with multiple episodes of falling to ground” and “difficulty walking,” according to a case report filed with federal health officials and obtained by The New York Times. The girl grew increasingly weak and feverish and “became more limp, appears sleepy, acts as if drunk,” the report said. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery and was finally withdrawn from life support. She died on April 5, according to the report. Both the 9- and 6-year-olds had mitochondrial disorders, a spectrum of genetic diseases that have received almost no attention from federal health officials. The 9-year-old, Hannah Poling, was 19 months old and developing normally in 2000 when she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Two days later, she developed a fever, cried inconsolably and refused to walk. In the next seven months, she spiraled downward, and in 2001 doctors diagnosed autism. No one knows whether vaccinations had anything to do with the girls’ health problems, and the scientific significance of individual cases is always difficult to assess. But suggestions that mitochondrial disorders could be set off or worsened by vaccinations, and that the disorders might be linked to autism, prompted the meeting on Sunday and has brought the disorders sudden national attention. Those scheduled to present at the meeting who were contacted by The Times said they knew nothing of the Colorado case. “I haven’t heard about this case,” said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the day’s first speaker. Dr. John Iskander, acting director of the immunization safety office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his group had studied the Colorado case closely but did not discuss it with those presenting at the meeting and had no plans to present the case to the conference, although he and members of his group will attend. “Part of the consideration is, what was the best use of that time?” Dr. Iskander said in an interview. “To a large extent, the judgment of the meeting organizers was to have the experts in these conditions — which are not vaccine safety experts — to have most of the agenda.” Dr. Iskander said the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network of the disease agency reviewed the medical records related to the Colorado and Georgia cases, searched for similar reports and asked vaccine manufacturers if they knew of similar cases. A spokeswoman for MedImmune, the maker of FluMist, declined to comment. The team noted that the Colorado child had not experienced any problems with her previous vaccinations and was relatively old at the time of her diagnosis. Dr. Iskander said the group had concluded “that this is another case that points to the need of better data on the risks and benefits of vaccinations in children with these rare disorders.” …" 22. "Boy, 4, found unconscious in outdoor fountain" dated 29 June 2008 from The News & Observer at http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1124485.html. "A young boy is in the hospital after being found unconscious in an outdoor fountain. Clayton Police and EMS was dispatched about 8:50 am today to a location near Charleston Drive in the Riverwood Athletic subdivision. According to police, Derek Casanova-Gonzalez, 4, was with his parents this morning as they worked to clean inside the nearby child development center. A media release from police said the child, who has autism, is believed to have wandered away and left the building. The parents noticed the child missing and first searched the interior of the large facility, then began searching outside where the child was found unresponsive in the fountain pool, the police said. The father began CPR and EMS was called. The boy was transported by ambulance to WakeMed in Raleigh, where he is undergoing treatment. Clayton police identified the parents as Johnston County residents Gil Alonso and Erika Gozalez-Trejo. An investigation into the incident is continuing." 23. "American Academy of Pediatrics Forms Immunization Alliance" dated 29 June 2008 by Heather Hajek from HealthNews.com at http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/child-health/american-academy-pediatrics-forms-immunization-alliance-1306.html. "Immunize your children or not? Parents worried whether they are making the correct decision when choosing to immunize their children will soon have new and easily accessible information: the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the largest medical group representing doctors who treat children, has formed the Immunization Alliance. The Immunization Alliance will work inform parents and communities of the great importance of vaccines. The Alliance—consisting of leaders with several allied organizations—was formed based on the recommendation of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and AAP, in response to the increased number of parents refusing to vaccinate their children. The group recentlly met and has identified several factors that have lead to recent attacks against vaccines, including parents spreading speculation rather than scientifically proven fact, uninformed populations that do not realize the risks of the diseases vaccines are developed to prevent, uneven internet media, and a decrease in trust placed in the government and the health care systems. The group discussed strategies that addressed these situations in the past and agreed to promote the value of vaccines. The group will meet again in July to discuss the message to be presented through news media and doctor's offices. The CDC recommends all children from birth to 18 have a minimum of 16 vaccines, with new combo vaccines being developed that will help reduce this number. There has been a large amount of negative press of late regarding immunizations and their side effects, most notably a specific ingredient in the Measles Mumps Rubella vaccination (MMR) that was linked to autism. At this time, while lawsuits have been filed, this is only speculation creating doubt and concern amongst parents. News reports and internet frenzies set off alarms for some parents who are now refusing or postponing immunizations. Immunizations are important and without them communities may be in jeopardy, but making parents feel confident that they are making the correct decision in regards to their children's health is also important. It is important that parents become well acquainted with each vaccine, what it does to protect your child and community, and make informed decisions based on fact. You can discuss immunization with your pediatrician and visit the AAP website, which has information for parents who may have questions." 24. "Vaccination suspended after children show side effects" dated 29 June 2008 by Nadia Fazlulhaq from The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) at http://www.sundaytimes.lk/080629/News/timesnews0011.html. "The pentavalent vaccine for children, introduced on January 1 this year under the National Immunisation Programme, has been suspended after it was found that children who had received the vaccination had developed side effects. According to Dr. Paba Palihawadane, deputy head of the Epidemiology Unit, Ministry of Health, a “hyper-response” was observed in a number of children who were given the vaccination. “The response was quite different to the side effects seen in children given other vaccines. It’s quite an abnormal situation,” Before the new vaccine was introduced, children would be given a triple vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus (lockjaw) and pertussis (whooping cough), a vaccine for Hepatitis B, and the oral polio vaccine. The pentavalent vaccine includes the triple vaccine, the Hepatitis B vaccine and the newly introduced Hib vaccine.“This was the first time Sri Lanka introduced the Hib vaccine, which protects children from Hib meningitis (Haemophilus influenza). After extensive research, we have found that a number of Sri Lankan children carry the Hib bacteria,” she said. Hib meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord, according to Dr. Palihawadane, and shows the same symptoms as other kinds of bacterial meningitis. The vaccine has been found to be effective in many western countries. “We have temporarily suspended the pentavalent vaccine, but the triple vaccine, Hepatitis B vaccine and the oral polio vaccine will be continued and given separately, she said. A team of Sri Lankan experts will try to ascertain why children who had received the pentavalent vaccine had abnormal reactions." 25. "Stand up for special education in Virginia" dated 30 June 2008 by Brenda Wickard in a letter to the editor of The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star at http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/062008/06302008/390495. "The deadline for public comment on the proposed draft Virginia special-education regulations is today. It is important that concerned parents and self-advocates exercise their right to comment. Virginia Department of Education has proposed sweeping changes to reduce Virginia's regulations to the minimum standards set by the federal government. Do we want to linger at the bottom in how we treat our most vulnerable residents? We must protect parental consent to terminate partial or full services for children in special education. School board attorney Kathy Mehfoud has said: "Parents can handle administrative hearings and court hearings. Many of the parents enjoy engaging in the legal disputes. A lot of them are lawyers." As a parent of child with a disability, and one who is not a lawyer, I strongly disagree. Parents engage in due process as a last resort when they have exhausted all options. When parents do enter due process, they must establish burden of proof. Due process is costly in time and resources, and families often choose to utilize their limited resources to provide their children with services their children require that schools should but do not provide. The cost is financially and emotionally draining to families. Parents, unlike school divisions, do not have the luxury of having an attorney on retainer. I encourage all concerned residents to review the proposed regulations and make comments to ensure that we retain, at the heart of the law, the spirit of collaboration in focusing on the needs of our children. The proposed draft regulations are available online through the Virginia Department of Education Web site." 26. "State weighs limits on school 'timeouts,' restraints" dated 30 June 2008 by STACI HUPP from the Des Moines Register at http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080630/NEWS02/806300323. "Iowa has joined a nationwide push to curb the use of physical force and "timeout" rooms in schools to discipline the most unruly students. A proposal before the state Board of Education would limit how and when teachers can lock up children and would ban risky methods of restraint, including chokeholds. Teachers also would be trained to use "positive" alternatives, such as talking through disputes with children. "Teachers struggle with what's appropriate," said Judy Jeffrey, director of the Iowa Department of Education. "This really provides additional guidance." State law allows school officials to hold down and confine children who are a threat to themselves or others, just as group homes do. But critics say educators overdo it sometimes. In 2006, a Waukee couple complained that their 8-year-old daughter was alone in timeout for more than three hours because she refused to finish a reading assignment. Waukee school officials have said they did nothing wrong, but an administrative law judge disagreed. The district's discipline policy has not changed. "The problem that some of my colleagues have noted is an educationally inappropriate use of seclusion and restraint - 'You were disrespectful; go into the timeout room,' versus 'You were disrespectful; how can we help you be more respectful?' " said Thomas Mayes, an attorney for the education department. Dave Wilkerson, Waukee's superintendent of schools, said he's open to input from state officials but questions that such a specific policy will work. "To try to put a policy in place that's going to fit every situation, I think, is going to be impossible," he said. Other states have reviewed timeout in the face of lawsuits against school districts, researchers say. At the same time, studies have shown teachers confine students for the wrong reasons. A James Madison University survey of teachers at one Minnesota school found that teachers were more likely to lock up children for minor misbehavior. "Without any guidance and policies, they make very poor choices, and kids suffer the consequences of it," said Joseph Ryan, a Clemson University professor who worked on the 2004 survey. How often teachers lock up students in Iowa is difficult to track because the state lacks a clear reporting system. That would change under the state proposal, which calls on educators to keep records of every incident. The proposal would be part of Iowa's corporal punishment law, which has been in place since 1991. The law covers public and private schools and area education agencies. The state proposal also says educators: …" 27. "HECKENLIVELY ON THE OMNIBUS AUTISM PROCEEDING: 5/30- Finding the Answers (Or Not!) – The Omnibus Autism Proceeding – Second Set of Hearings (Thimerosal & Autism) – Day Fourteen (Final Day)" dated 30 June 2008 by Kent Heckenlively, Esq. on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/06/heckenlively--2.html#more. "One of the great injustices perpetrated against the parents of children with autism is the assertion that they just want someone to blame. It is as heinous as the discredited claim that the failure of the mother to maintain eye-contact with her child during breast-feeding causes the psychotic break of autism. The parents of children with autism want to find out what happened to their child, just like the parents of murdered children want to bring their killers to justice. And if we can find out what happened to our children then the hope exists that we can medically intervene to improve their lives. That is what the Autism Omnibus Proceeding is all about. But it costs money to pay for these interventions. The greatest hope of all the parents in this proceeding is not that the money they may receive goes to pay for a lifetime of care, but that it goes toward treatments which remove the need for a lifetime of care. In the testimony today it was clear which side was looking for answers and which side wanted to merely muddy the waters. Direct Examination of Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne (Expert Witness for the Families). In this rebuttal testimony Dr. Kinsbourne first responded to the government’s production of a 30 year-old grievance report from the University of Toronto which had been sealed. Dr. Kinsbourne noted that the charges were investigated and withdrawn and that a protective order was issued. He was not terminated from the University as a result of the investigation, but did resign, and was later offered an opportunity to rejoin, which he declined. Dr. Rutter’s criticisms of Dr. Kinsbourne’s model of autistic over-arousal missed the point of what Dr. Kinsbourne was saying. Dr. Kinsbourne was presenting a biologically plausible mechanism for neuro-inflammation and over-arousal, not saying it had been proven. However, the autistic over-arousal argument is supported by findings from many researchers; including Dr. Asher’s article about glutamate and methylmercury neurotoxicity, the work of Dr. Purcell and others on post-mortem brain abnormalities of the glutamate neurotransmitter system in autism, several funded studies by the National Institute of Health on whether glutamate antagonists can help children with autism, Dr. Casanova’s article on columnar pathology in autism (specifically problems with the brains inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA), and Dr. Courchese’s autism article which states at one point, “glial cells play key roles in brain organization during development as well as in neuro-inflammatory reactions”. MRI findings are also consistent with ongoing neuro-inflammation. …" 28. "HOLLAND ON THE OMNIBUS AUTISM PROCEEDING: 5/30" dated 30 June 2008 by Mary Holland on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/06/holland-on-th-2.html#more. "Rebuttal Testimony of Dr. Kinsbourne (Direct Examination of Dr. Kinsbourne). Q: [Mr. Powers] During cross-examination, you were asked about your employment status at University of Toronto. You were asked about grounds for your termination. What was your response at that point to the document you saw which was a grievance committee report? A: I never saw the report actually; I don’t think it was a formal report. I pointed out that some allegations were made; I filed a grievance; the grievance prevailed; they were investigated and withdrawn, and a protective order was issued. In 30-some years, no one until this time has violated that protective order. Q: Did you find more available information on this? A: Yes. I looked in my files and found the settlement agreement with the University. This is the outcome of grievance proceedings. This settlement made clear that all charges were withdrawn and that I was not terminated. Q: And you stated under cross-examination that you resigned and were offered an opportunity to rejoin? A: Not in this document, but yes, that’s true. Q: We’ll move on to Dr. Rutter’s testimony about you. He critiques your mechanistic model of neuroinflammation and overactivation. He seemed to suggest that your model lacks scientific rigor and scientific certainty. How do you respond? A: I have a high regard for Dr. Rutter’s work. I was not presenting a scientific discovery that I can prove to be the case. That’s not my role in these proceedings. What I’m presenting is a reasonable medical mechanism by which this could have happened. Dr. Rutter didn’t address the actual purpose and role of my proposal. If a scientist offers a conclusion before adequate research, it’s considered speculation. I was not drawing a conclusion; I was offering a possible mechanism. Q: Is that mechanism biologically plausible in your opinion? A: Yes, and it is grounded in contemporary scientific literature, as reflected in my report. Dr. Rutter wasn’t really talking about what I was presenting. He was saying that autistic children are overemotional. The overarousal model had early origins in EEG studies.… Q: Is there more contemporary literature that supports your model of excess glutamate? A: The hyperglutaminergic idea is not my idea; it was in the literature before I proposed it. I can provide the court with more documentation. My role has been to consider the role of glutamate excess and neuroinflammation and put it together with evidence of overarousal. …" 29. "OLMSTED ON AUTISM: BILL GATES AND THE MORAL IMPERATIVE" dated 1 July 2008 by Dan Olmsted on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/olmsted-on-auti.html#more. "You’ve probably seen that Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft to devote full time to the charity he and his wife, Melinda, has created. The foundation has done indisputably good works and – now that Gates pal Warren Buffett has chipped in his entire $50 billion fortune – intends to literally redouble its efforts. One of those efforts is to create and promulgate vaccinations. This post is not about whether vaccinations are a good idea, the best way to fight diseases like malaria, the practicality of continuing to pour millions into the search for an AIDS vaccine – it’s not about any of that. The issue is: Given that the foundation sees mass vaccination as a direct route to better health outcomes for the world’s poor, the foundation (which now means Bill Gates himself) has an affirmative duty – a moral imperative – to make sure those vaccines are as safe as humanly possible. To quote from a Reuters story on Thursday: “The 52-year-old, whose boyish looks seem at odds with his graying hair, will leave behind a life's work developing software to devote energy to finding new vaccines or to micro-finance projects in the developing world.” I don’t need to know what kinds of vaccines they’re talking about – and how many will come in multi-dose vials preserved with thimerosal -- to know where the moral imperative is here: There are now so many questions about the safety of some vaccine and vaccine ingredients – particularly thimerosal, the fancy name for a big dollop of poisonous ethyl mercury – that a group with the power and reach of the Gates Foundation needs to make sure it’s doing no harm in its laudable effort to do good. As recently as three or four months ago, the foundation might have gotten away with simply reciting the mantra that all available studies show no connection between vaccines and autism, vaccines and asthma, vaccines and … whatever. But along came Hannah Poling and the government’s concession that vaccines triggered autistic regression; then came Bernadine Healy, the former head of the NIH, to state that the science simply hasn’t been done to exonerate vaccines; and just last week, David Kirby wrote about the CDC’s Julie Gerberding and her multiple concurrences with the complaint that the CDC’s central vaccine safety study is, well, worthless. At the moment there is NO good science, in other words, to reassure the Gates Foundation that its quest to save the world via vaccination is as safe as it might have thought. Now comes Bill Gates, at an opportune moment indeed, to devote full time to the foundation that bears his name and (along with the PC) will be his legacy. He ought to order a comprehensive look at the risks as well as the benefits of vaccines, and it ought to be his first order of business. Because, you see, it’s a moral imperative. It’s also imperative that Warren Buffett weigh in on this. You can’t give away $50 billion without taking at least some interest in whether it’s doing more harm than good; that, too, is a moral imperative." 30. "In the Autism Wars, she leads with her heart- A living room support group is one of the loudest voices in the debate over autism, vaccines, and treatment. Are they right?" dated 1 July 2008 by SAM MILLER from The Orange County Register at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ackerman-autism-says-2081646-mccarthy-parents. "It was a sweltering June morning in Washington, D.C., and Lisa Ackerman was at the front of a protest march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol building. Behind her, parents filled the road, five or 10 marchers across, as far as she could see. The mother of an autistic son radioed back to the starting point and asked another organizer to tell her when the last marchers had left the monument. She waited and waited, and when she finally reached the Capitol she got word: The end of the line still hadn't left. Ten people across. For 1.5 miles. An army! In eight years, Lisa Ackerman had grown her living room support group in Newport Beach into a national movement involving thousands of parents of children with autism. With the help of a famous friend – Playboy-Playmate-turned-family-author Jenny McCarthy – Ackerman had shoehorned the supposedly "fringe" views of tens of thousands of parents into the mainstream. But she was opposing the federal government, the medical establishment, the New York Times, larger autism groups and, depending on where one falls in this debate, science itself. As research continues, it is, in a sense, not yet clear whether she is the hero or the villain of this story. In 2000, Ackerman posted an invitation on a Yahoo! message board to a support group she was starting. "Are you struggling with gluten-free diets? Managing your school district and your child's behavior? I am too!" Months earlier, her son Jeff had been diagnosed with autism, a brain disorder that, among other things, inhibits communication and relationships. She'd gone to three sessions at a local support group, and found it unsatisfying. "All these women want to do is complain," she says. "I want to problem-solve, get our kids to a better place." Ten parents replied to her Yahoo! post, many also fed up with their local support groups. "We were tired of crying," said Moira Giammatteo, who drove an hour from the San Fernando Valley to go to the meeting in Ackerman's living room. "We had no plan, and that was freaking us out." The parents realized this group could be different. Here, they felt safe to talk about the wheat-free, dairy-free diets that many families put their autistic children on – but that many pediatricians say doesn't work. But it does work.We've seen it! What a relief, to be reassured you aren't crazy. Those families formed TACA – Talk About Curing Autism. By 2005, there were 2,000 members at chapters throughout Southern California. Then Jenny McCarthy called. …" 31. "Is HPV Vaccine to Blame for a Teen's Paralysis?" dated 2 July 2008 by Deborah Kotz from U.S. News & World Report at http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2008/07/02/is-hpv-vaccine-to-blame-for-a-teens-paralysis.html. "About a month after being vaccinated against the cervical cancer-causing HPV virus, 13-year-old Jenny Tetlock missed the lowest hurdle in gym class, the first hint of the degenerative muscle disease that, 15 months later, has left the previously healthy teenager nearly completely paralyzed. Did the vaccine, Gardasil, cause her condition? Her father, Philip Tetlock, a psychology professor at UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business, has embarked on an odyssey to find out whether the vaccine or random coincidence is to blame. As father and scientist, Tetlock has contacted top medical experts, posted pleas on discussion boards looking for other teens who've experienced neurological problems post-vaccination and has been desperately trying to get the government to open an investigation into his daughter's case. "The weakening process is gradual so it may take months for parents to notice what is going on," he writes me in an E-mail. He started a blog a few weeks ago that shows photos of his sweet-faced teen and reveals his anger and frustration in the form of a box counting the days that he has yet to get a response from the government's Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network. As of today, it's 28. He's not the only one to raise an alarm. The conservative public watchdog group Judicial Watch has been periodically obtaining adverse event reports on Gardasil from the Food and Drug Administration. I received the group's latest warning this week: of 10 deaths linked to Gardasil since September 2007 and 140 reports so far this year of serious effects such as miscarriage and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a nervous system disease that causes weakness and tingling in the arms and legs. (But these reports filed by patients or doctors with the government's vaccine adverse event reporting system may or may not reflect true vaccine risks. Some problems may be missed or underreported, while others, including sudden deaths, may have nothing to do with the vaccine itself.) Judicial Watch opposes efforts in many states to make the vaccine mandatory for all girls ages 11 and 12. Those efforts have raised concerns among religious groups that protecting against the sexually transmitted virus will encourage promiscuity among teen girls. The FDA insists there's no medical reason to be worried. "We're monitoring the safety of the HPV vaccine very carefully, and the only adverse event that causes some concern is syncope or fainting after the vaccine," says Robert Ball, director of the FDA's office of biostatistics and division of epidemiology at the center for biologics evaluation and research. Higher rates of Guillain-Barré have been associated with the swine flu vaccine and possibly with the meningitis vaccine Menactra, but it is no more common in those who get Gardasil than in those who don't, says Ball. The same goes for other side effects like spontaneous miscarriage. …" 32. "The Pentagon and autism" dated 2 July 2008 by Karen Driscoll and Michael O'Hanlon in a commentary article in The Washington Times at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/02/the-pentagon-and-autism. "After years of major publicity efforts, Americans are increasingly aware of the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in our country. One in every 150 children, perhaps more, are afflicted by one variant or another of this disability, which challenges children - and in most cases, when they grow up, adults - in the areas of language, social interaction, and life skills needed to survive in this challenging world. Debates continue about what causes autism, but no one who has seen the problems in their own children, as we have, doubts its severity or its consequences. Tragically, very little is done for most children with autism. That is mostly because treatment is so expensive, and so infrequently covered by the nation's health care plans and insurance companies. Less than 10 percent of all affected children get the 25 or more hours per week of therapy determined to be the minimum standard by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other national medical policy organizations. The Defense Department has an opportunity to set a precedent in this area, and Congress faces a golden moment to provide the legislation needed. The Pentagon may not seem the natural leader in health care for special needs children, but given how much are asked of our men and women in uniform and their families these days, it is only appropriate that the U.S. Armed Forces do what they can for their own warriors facing autism in their families. If done properly, the Department of Defense (DoD) will also provide a model for other insurers and health plans to emulate. If at a time of war, the DoD can recognize the importance of funding prescribed autism treatment, it will send a powerful message for others to follow. But first, a few words on what this treatment seeks to accomplish. The core method is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)In some ways it resembles one on one tutoring. But it is specifically attuned to the behavior issues and needs of children on the autism spectrum. ABA effectively develops and improves language and communication skills, social interactions, positive family relationships, daily living skills, and executive functioning. It teaches skills, step by step, that most typical children develop automatically by observing and imitating and interacting with others. Careful analyses including a recent important Wisconsin study show up to half of the children receiving intensive ABA services can recover enough to be mainstreamed into the general education setting. Virtually no children with autism disorders achieve this outcome absent such help. With appropriate levels of intervention, they can often then become productive adults, form friendships, hold jobs and pay taxes - instead of becoming burdens of the state. Even for the more severely afflicted, they can learn many self-help skills through therapy that will greatly improve their quality of life and will reduce the chances they will need institutionalization later. They can develop family relationships; they may even be able to develop some friendships. It is not too much to say that in many ways they can reclaim the very humanness that autism steals from them. These treatment methods aren't perfect. As noted, while as many as half of all kids getting intensive intervention wind up mainstreamed in school, the other half still do not. Just as with cancer treatments and so many other wonders of modern medicine, what works for one child with an autism disorder may not work as well for another. …" 33. "Bill moves on Pa. autism insurance, Blues merger" dated 2 July 2008 by MARTHA RAFFAELE from The Associated Press at http://www.examiner.com/a-1470343~Bill_moves_on_Pa__autism_insurance__Blues_merger.html. "Parents of autistic children would be able to pay for behavioral therapy and related services with private health insurance starting next year, under legislation that strikes a compromise between the insurance industry and advocates for the disabled. The House of Representatives on Tuesday unanimously passed the measure, which also would give the state Insurance Department power to approve the proposed merger of Pennsylvania's two largest insurance companies. The Senate on Wednesday night approved the bill 49-1 to send it to Gov. Ed Rendell, who said he would sign it. "It is a national model, a gold standard" for the coverage of autism-related treatments, Sen. Jane Orie, R-Allegheny, said in a speech on the Senate floor. Autism is a complex developmental disorder that is often not diagnosed in children until after age 3, and can impair a person's ability to communicate and interact with others. Its severity varies from person to person. "It's so critical for these families ... when you live with the tragedy of people rejecting their kids as if they don't have value, because we don't provide the services that are necessary to their developmental achievement," said House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, R-Philadelphia, a longtime advocate for the disabled whose 22-year-old nephew has autism. The bill would require insurers to provide up to $36,000 in coverage initially for autism therapy for people under 21; the state's Medicaid program would pay for any costs that exceed that cap. Businesses with 51 or more employees would have to offer the coverage starting July 1, 2009, while smaller businesses would not have to provide any autism coverage. Nearly two dozen other states have laws mandating some level of autism insurance coverage, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Pennsylvania officials have estimated that more than 21,000 children between the ages of 2 and 20 have autism and related disorders. About 13,800 of them are insured under the state's Medicaid program. But Medicaid coverage has shortcomings because a limited number of treatment providers accept it and the benefit is limited to the most severely disabled children, among other reasons, according to a recent Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council analysis of the legislation. Insurance companies argued that a mandate would be too expensive. But they ultimately accepted a version of the bill that would require coverage for services that either improve children's behavior or help them maintain their developmental progress - something O'Brien said would preserve services for children receiving Medicaid insurance when their coverage switches to a private insurer. "It is a reasonable balance of legitimate, competing concerns," said Sam Marshall, president of the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania. The legislation is expected to save the Medicaid program $13 million in the 2009-10 fiscal year. The health care council estimated that the proposal would cost the average policyholder about $1 a month in premiums. Linda Amity of Monroeville, whose 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter both have autism, said she hoped the expected savings would enable the state to spend more Medicaid dollars on services for adults with autism, such as job training. "That's a critical need, because after high school we are definitely going to need services for them ... so they can live as healthy and as independently as they are able," Amity said. …" 34. "Childhood vaccinations suspended at Genesis pediatric clinics" dated 2 July 2008 by Kia Carter from WQAD News at http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=8613656&nav=1sW7. "Wednesday all Genesis Medical Center Pediatric Clinics suspended their use of childhood vaccines. The decision comes after a baby received routine vaccinations on Tuesday, then died several hours later at home. Genesis Health Group says its suspending pediatric vaccinations merely as a precaution until the cause of the baby's death can be determined. Tuesday morning a 4-month-old baby boy came to the Genesis East Pediatrics Clinic in Silvis for a routine checkup that included several vaccinations. The seemingly healthy baby boy was brought in for a "well baby" visit, that's a check up that includes routine vaccinations like pneumonia, and DPT, which is for diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus. Then Tuesday night his parents found him dead with no obvious cause for his death. Now all childhood vaccinations at Genesis clinics in Silvis, Bettendorf and Davenport have been temporarily suspended. A Genesis spokesman says hospital administration have no reason to believe the vaccines caused the baby's death, but they want to be overly cautious. "They'll be a coroner's examination of the baby and we'll get a report. At that time we'll most likely resume our vaccinations, because we don't think there was a link between them and the child passing," says Craig Cooper, Genesis Health Group spokesman. Genesis has also sent the batch of vaccines the boy received off to the Food and Drug Administration and to the makers of the vaccines for testing. This is the first time Genesis has ever suspended pediatric vaccinations at it's clinics. We'll continue to bring you the latest as Genesis finds answers." 35. "Pennsylvania Tells Autism Speaks to Stop Talking" dated 3 July 2008 by Cindy Waeltermann in a press release from AutismLink at http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20080703/pl_usnw/pennsylvania_tells_autism_speaks_to_stop_talking. "Yesterday in a historical and unprecedented move, the Pennsylvania legislature voted nearly unanimously in the affirmative for House Bill 1150 to mandate commercial insurance companies to cover some services for children with autism. The bill, introduced by House Speaker Dennis M. O'Brien, requires insurance companies to cover up to $36,000 of autism-related treatment for individuals less than 21 years old. In nearly one full week of roller-coaster negotiations with the House Banking and Insurance Committee, headed by Senator Don White, the bill was stripped of all useful language, leaving Pennsylvania children with autism vulnerable to denials of coverage. House Speaker O'Brien, along with Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell and Secretary Estelle Richman of the Department of Public Welfare joined in condemning the gutting of the bill. "The current version of HB 1150 may look like it gives coverage to families affected by autism, but it's an illusion. This version will actually hurt some families who have kids with autism. This risk is unacceptable," said Speaker O'Brien in a statement released on June 29, 2008. Autism Speaks, a national organization that conducts fundraising for research, and their paid lobbyists from Ikon, Inc., made several back-door concessions on the bill without the consent of Speaker O'Brien. In an unparalleled move, the entire Pennsylvania and national autism community stood in unity to support Speaker O'Brien to say "Only the Speaker Speaks for me." Over 62 organizations across Pennsylvania and nationally converged to show support for the Speaker, who has a nephew with autism. "This is an amazing effort on the part of the entire autism community to tell Autism Speaks that the children come first, not politics," said Cindy Waeltermann, President of AutismLink, a statewide Pennsylvania autism advocacy and information organization. "I think it is abundantly clear that Autism Speaks is not speaking for Pennsylvania. I've never seen this type of grassroots activity in all my years in the autism community. This level of unity definitely sends a clear message, but is Autism Speaks listening?" State Senator Jane Clare Orie, head of the Pennsylvania Autism Caucus touted the document as "a gold standard of care" for Pennsylvanians. "Only with Speaker O'Brien's amendments, does HB 1150 become the strongest autism insurance legislation in the nation," said Karen Woodings, former president of the Autism Society of America, Greater Harrisburg Area Chapter. "I find it difficult to comprehend any autism organization not supporting the Speaker's desire to pass the strongest bill possible. I was proud that the Autism Society of America stood firmly behind Speaker O'Brien on a local, state, and national level. The support of Pennsylvanians affected by autism enabled Dennis O'Brien to fight for his bill and leave a legacy that will last far beyond his time as Speaker of the House." 36. "Federal Court Cancels Vaccine-Autism Panel" dated 3 July 2008 by David Kirby on the Huffington Post blog at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/federal-court-cancels-vac_b_110741.html. "It was a great honor indeed to be invited to participate in the annual Judicial Conference of the United States Court of Federal Claims, which will be held this November in Washington, DC, to talk about the vaccine-autism debate in America. The honor was heightened by the facts that the invitation was extended by the Chief Special Master of the Court, (which also oversees the Autism Omnibus Proceedings in so-called "Vaccine Court"), and that I would be appearing with an illustrious group of panelmembers. In his June 10, 2008 "Save the Date" letter, Chief Special Master Gary Golkiewicz wrote: The panel is tentatively titled "Vaccines: Balancing Benefits with Parental Concerns (the autism issue?)." It will be moderated by Sharyl Attkisson, a reporter with CBS Evening News. The panelists will be Arthur Allen, author of "Vaccines"; David Kirby, author of "Evidence of Harm"; Dr. Ed Marcuse, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, who has served as a member and Chair of HHS' National Vaccine Advisory Committee, and as a member of CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices; and, Dr. Bernadine Healy, Health Editor, TJS News and World Report and former Director of the National Institutes of Health. There is no doubt that this discussion will be lively and informative. A second vaccine panel to follow is called, "Vaccine Compensation Under the Act: A Mix of Science and Policy?," and moderated by Senior Judge Loren A. Smith, who was the Chief Judge when the Vaccine Program first began at the court in 1988. The panelists here are Kevin Conway, a family attorney since the Vaccine Court program's inception; Randolph Moss, a partner at WilmerHale, which represents vaccine manufacturers; Dr. Paul Offit, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq; Marguerite Wilner, former Vice-Chair of the CDC's Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines; and Ruth J. Katz, Dean of the School of Public Health at The George Washington University. "I believe wholeheartedly that the Bench and Bar must communicate periodically to improve the system of justice," wrote Chief Special Master Golkiewicz, who added that, "I believe this Conference program - the panel discussions of general vaccine policy issues and of the information underpinning vaccine compensation decisions - can provide that important dialogue." "With these different perspectives," he said, "this promises to be an interesting discussion!" I agree with the Chief Special Master, and thank him for including me in such an important event. But now we learn that the first vaccine panel (though not the second one) has been cancelled, as I was told yesterday by this letter from His Honor: …" 37. "DID GARDINER HARRIS GET IT "ENTIRELY WRONG?" dated 4 July 2008 by David Kirby on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/did-gardiner-ha.html#more. "Gardiner Harris of the New York Times is perhaps the most important journalist covering the debate over autism and vaccines in America today, given the way that paper drives the news cycle in this country. As such, it is surprising that he seems to have decided that the vaccine debate is, for all practical purposes, over. Even more surprising is his lack of curiosity in exploring why some studies show that mitochondrial dysfunction among ASD kids is far more common than anyone ever suspected - including officials at the CDC. In his lead-up article (HERE) to the HHS mitochondrial meeting last Sunday in Indianapolis (which seemed to get little or no media coverage), Mr. Harris quoted one researcher who estimated the number of cases of Americans with mitochondrial "disease" at 30,000 - or just 1-per-10,000 people - making it very rare indeed. But that is the classic, severe form of mitochondrial disorder, which is inherited directly through maternal mitochondrial DNA. There is growing evidence that Hannah Poling and many other ASD kids have the much milder form of mitochondrial disorder, often referred to as mitochondrial "dysfunction." One study in Portugal, which used muscle biopsies to confirm mitochondrial disorders in ASD children, estimated the rate at 7.2% of all cases (though other estimates go higher than that). Now, the rate of ASD among US kids born back in 1994 (the latest CDC data we have, by the way), was 66-per-10,000 - so 7.2% of that would be almost 5 cases of ASD and mitochondrial disorders per 10,000 people. Mr. Harris might also want to speak with some of the participants on an April conference call of the CDC's CISA Network (which includes top vaccine research centers and America's HMO industry), in which investigators at Johns Hopkins University reported that mild mitochondrial dysfunction (as opposed to "disease") might be linked to a nuclear DNA mutation passed down through the father. That mutation, which might also confer intelligence, according to one presenter on the call, could be as common as 1-in-400 to 1-in-50 people (or a stunning 200-per-10,000). …" 38. "RECOVERY STORY: MacKENZIE" dated 5 July 2008 from Generation Rescue on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/recovery-story.html#more. "I don't have to tell another parent the story. We all know the happy baby who begins to suffer recurrent ear infections, horrific diarrhea, and a variety of non-stop illnesses and rashes. "He'll out grow it", we heard the doctors say. Sleep disorder? No, just bad parenting. What about the screaming and fever after vaccinations? "Normal reaction", we're told. And then we watch our children spiral downward, losing skills, losing language, screaming over minor changes in routines. Like you, I knew something was medically wrong with my child, but traditional doctors wouldn't listen. I finally turned to a naturopath who helped my son's immune system. Health and behaviours improved to the point that at age 8 he was labelled with aspergers rather than autism. But many health problems remained, and daily life teetered on the brink of hell. Rejection by school, family, friends and neighbors? Let's not even go there. When my son was 9, I finally had the opportunity to meet a DAN doctor. Within 24 hours, my household was completely gfcf. Yes, the withdrawal period was very difficult, but good things happened. Within 72 hours, the horrible gastrointestinal problems that plagued my son stopped and never returned. Within 72 hours, my son yawned, said he was sleepy, and put himself to bed. Seven years of nightmares began to end. And 13 days into gfcf, my son announced that his brain had "gone quiet", and he smiled. Now I was fired up. I knew, I had proof, that real treatment was possible. It wasn't easy, but I found a doctor willing to consider heavy metal poisoning. My son began chelation with dmsa. At the end of the first month, I realized that he had not experienced a single meltdown (out of the blue tantrum). And amazingly, he was asking when he could have more of the "smart pills". He said his headaches were going away and his brain was working better. Further fired up, I researched everything I could find on biomedical treament not only for "autism" (a misnomer), but also for environmental illness. We switched to safer products and foods, began using a sauna, further supplemented with antioxidents, and everything else we could think of. I say "we" because now my son was actively participating in his recovery. Treament with DMSA and ALA continued for 2 years. Since then, we continue to supplement with nutrients that support natural chelation. Now our focus turned to making up for lost time. For coordination, my son began karate, which he continues 6 years later with a room full of tournament trophies. For education, he switched to a small, private school, where he was accepted in mainstream classes and allowed to test orally to compensate for poor handwriting. Later, he added summer programs in his areas of interest and began weight lifting. He is now 16 and healthy. He has a 3.75 grade average and was elected student assembly vice president. He is popular and dates. He walks with his head high, but always aware of others who need a hand or a kind word. In April 2007, 7 years into biomedical treatment, after 4 sessions of interviews and testing, he formally lost his pdd diagnosis. "Well adjusted." "Articulate." "Intelligent." He does have a dyslexia dx, but we can live with that! This and other stories of recovery can be found on the Testimonials page at Generation Rescue." 39. "Family Says Airline Left Them Stranded At Airport" dated 6 July 2008 from KIRO7 News at http://www.kirotv.com/news/16803334/detail.html. "A woman with two disabled children said her family was left stranded by Southwest Airlines on their way to Seattle. Wendy Slaughter was traveling with her four children and her five-months pregnant sister Friday on a Southwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Seattle. One of Slaughter’s children has autism and she also has a daughter with cerebral palsy. When the family landed in Phoenix they were met at the gate by police officers, detained and told they were too disruptive to get on their connecting flight to Seattle, Slaughter said. Slaughter said they were left stranded at the Phoenix airport with no money and no lodging. This was the first flight for the children. Slaughter admitted the children were loud and kept getting up and walking around the plane. “The children were out of control on the flight you know, they were restless, excited and worked up and they are kids,” said Slaughter. The family said flight attendants asked them to quiet the children twice, but they didn’t expect to be booted off the flight “I am furious about it. I can’t believe they could do something like that and then leave us completely stranded with no money no way to get anywhere,” Slaughter said. Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Christi Day told KIRO-7: "They were being disruptive and unruly on the plane, and for the safety of our customers and the flight crew, we decided to not allow them to travel on to Seattle at that time. Typically if it's a threatening behavior, it's not safe to travel 30,000 feet in the air in a contained environment." The family said police officers bought them food and Motel 6 donated a hotel room for the night. The children’s grandmother said she had to pay $2,000 to book last-minute tickets on Alaska Airlines. They said they didn’t have any problems on that three-hour flight. The family said they want Southwest Airlines to compensate them and give a public apology." 40. "How Much Money Is Enough to Cover Costs of Autism Treatment?" dated 6 July 2008 by Lisa jo Rudy from About.com at http://autism.about.com/b/2008/07/06/how-much-money-is-enough-to-cover-costs-of-autism-treatment.htm. "We are told, over and over again, that the cost of proper treatment for autism can range up to $70,000 a year. At the same time, however, parents of many children with autism have become, in essence, paraprofessional therapists - providing hours of therapeutic play and interaction based on various methods such as Floortime, Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) and SonRise. While there are costs for parents to be trained and supported in these methods, even the highest costs range somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000 per year - and that includes individualized consulting, conferences, and equipment. In fact, the $70,000 a year pricetag is almost always quoted in connection with the cost of 40 hours a week of 1:1 Applied Behavior Analysis provided by a trained professional in a public school, home, or private setting. Added to that cost may also be the price of occupational, physical and speech therapy - but those latter costs are relatively tiny compared to the overwhelming pricetag for ABA. There's no doubt that ABA is a tried-and-true technique for teaching skills to children (and adults) with autism. But are the costs really reasonable and appropriate? Here's the issue as it's laid out in a recent article in the LA Times: The state [of California] spent $320 million last year, up from $50 million a decade earlier. Nationwide, the tab is $90 billion annually, a figure expected to double in a decade. Parents, in growing numbers, say insurers aren't doing their part. Proposed class-action lawsuits -- including one filed in April by Arce against Kaiser and another filed late last month against Anthem Blue Cross -- allege that California's largest health plans are shirking their duties to autistic members. Health plans say they cover medically necessary care. The problem, they say, is that parents ask for treatment that insurers deem experimental, or for basic skills training that has long been provided by state-funded regional centers and schools. "What we're concerned about is we're seeing a shift of the state's responsibilities over to the health plans," said Chris Ohman, president of the California Assn. of Health Plans. "To just say 'We need to have health plans cover all treatments' could have unintended consequences." But Kristin Jacobson of Autism Speaks California contends that the healthcare industry has "washed its hands of autism entirely." Parents of children who don't qualify for public programs "bear the full burden of the treatment costs and pay their premiums," she said. "They aren't asking for a free ride. They are paying premiums." Is there any way to manage these costs? It seems to me that there must be options available that have yet to be explored. Insurance doesn't cover the full cost of any medical procedure; instead they negotiate a standard fee that's well under the cost that an individual would pay without that insurance. Yet the cost of ABA seems to be figured at approximately $35/hour per child (assuming a $70,000 pricetag and 40 solid hours of 1:1 ABA per week for 52 weeks a year per child - surely an absolute ceiling relative to treatment). Even the good folks at the New York State Health Department suggest that 25 hours a week of therapy may be sufficient for some children. And even school districts and agencies that provide ABA on a regular basis provide fewer than 52 weeks per year of solid therapy. After all, even children with autism have to get a little exercise... eat meals... go on vacation... and generally engage in some activities other than behavioral therapy. …" 41. "Who pays for autism treatment?- An explosion in the number of children diagnosed has parents, insurers and state and private institutions battling over coverage. The case of Andrew Arce is a window into the conflict." dated 6 July 2008 by Lisa Girion from the Los Angeles Times at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-autism6-2008jul06,0,1685457.story?page=1. "By the time Andrew Arce was 15 months old, his parents suspected he was autistic. He refused to cuddle, flapped his arms and stared into space a lot. On occasion, he picked at his nose until it drew blood and, with it, smeared the walls of the family's Pasadena town house. It was nearly a year, Guillermo Arce said, before Kaiser Permanente, the family's healthcare provider, confirmed their fears. The diagnosis wasn't much help, though. Kaiser refused to provide most of the treatment that specialists said Andrew needed -- until the state ordered it to in April. Last month, Andrew, now 2 1/2 years old, began getting the disputed treatment -- including individual training in how to eat and play. "He is still young," his father said. "He will always be autistic, but maybe he could be fully functioning." Guillermo Arce's battle is a window on a political and legal struggle playing out across the country amid a surge in diagnoses of autism. Parents, insurers and the government are tussling over who is going to pay for treatment. "It's health plans versus schools versus regional centers," said Diane Anand, executive director of the Lanterman Regional Center in Los Angeles, one of 21 state-funded centers that serve the developmentally disabled. "It's going to take years to sort this out." Autism is a disorder that impairs communication and socialization and is often marked by repetitive behaviors such as rocking and head banging. Although there are many theories, its cause remains unknown. There is no cure. Treatment is mainly behavioral training, teaching such skills as dressing. There is wide agreement that the sooner treatment begins, the more effective it is, and that early intervention pays off in the long run by developing self-reliance. But it costs money -- as much as $70,000 a year per child. The state spent $320 million last year, up from $50 million a decade earlier. Nationwide, the tab is $90 billion annually, a figure expected to double in a decade. Parents, in growing numbers, say insurers aren't doing their part. Proposed class-action lawsuits -- including one filed in April by Arce against Kaiser and another filed late last month against Anthem Blue Cross -- allege that California's largest health plans are shirking their duties to autistic members. Health plans say they cover medically necessary care. The problem, they say, is that parents ask for treatment that insurers deem experimental, or for basic skills training that has long been provided by state-funded regional centers and schools. "What we're concerned about is we're seeing a shift of the state's responsibilities over to the health plans," said Chris Ohman, president of the California Assn. of Health Plans. "To just say 'We need to have health plans cover all treatments' could have unintended consequences." …" 42. "Genesis Halts Vaccinations-UPDATE" dated 7 July 2008 from KWQC TV6 News at http://www.kwqc.com/Global/story.asp?S=8613700. "We know more about a baby who died following a vaccination. Here's what we have learned: The baby received the vaccination Tuesday at the Genesis Medical Office in Silvis. Several hours later, paramedics were called to the baby's home and the child was unresponsive. They were not able to save the child. Autopsy results are in, but they aren't offering many answers. Rock Island County Coroner, Brian Gufstason tells TV-6, "Yesterday afternoon, we did do an autopsy and we found at this time no apparent injuries. It's basically an inconclusive autopsy. In saying that, we do have other things we have to do to complete the autopsy. That could take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months." Gustafson says just because the results are inconclusive, that does not mean parents should be alarmed and stop getting their child vaccinated. "At this time, there is nothing to directly link this death with the vaccinations. In saying that, we just don't know at this point, " according to Gufstason. "Thousand and thousands of kids, including mine, receive these injections every day, but we are looking into it to see how this little fella died." Kids won't be able to get those vaccinations at the Genesis pediatric offices for the time being. The health system has suspended all vaccinations, and they don't know when they will resume. Genesis administrators say they are still waiting for more information on the vaccine, but they are working hard to find out what caused the child's death and their thoughts are with the family. Spokesman Ken Croken says, "We've taken the action strictly as a precaution. There is at this point no indication of a connection between the vaccination and the death. We have notified the FDA. Suspended all other vaccinations until such time as we can remove any question of a link between the two events." A sample of the vaccine and the instruments used to treat the child will be analyzed. Genesis cannot tell us the exact vaccine, but says it's a part of normal childhood immunizations. If you are concerned, you should call your child's doctor." 43. "HPV Vaccine Linked To Teen's Paralysis?- Her Father Thinks Gardasil Might Be; Drug's Maker Denies It" dated 7 July 2008 from CBS News at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/07/earlyshow/health/main4236581.shtml. "Jenny was a healthy 13-year-old living in Northern California -- until 15 months ago when, her parents say, she received the third and final shot of the vaccine designed to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV causes a large percentage of cases of cervical cancer. Soon after getting that third injection, her parents say, Jenny began experiencing the first signs of a degenerative muscle disease. They say she's their daughter is now almost completely paralyzed. Did Gardasil cause Jenny's condition? Her family told CBS News it believes "there may be a link. But, there is no medical consensus on whether this hypothesis is stronger than other possible explanations." Merck, Gardasil's maker, disputes that, saying in a statement, "Based on the facts that we've received, the information does not suggest that this event was causally associated with vaccination." Jenny's father hopes a blog he started will prompt other teens with similar post-vaccination problems to come forward. U.S. News & World report says there have been other possible adverse effects associated with Gardisil, though none has been confirmed. The New York Post also says Gardasil may be causing some medical problems. Cervical cancer is the second most deadly cancer women's cancer. Since the Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil in 2006, some 8 million girls have received at least one of the three shots, with 13 million injections administered in all, the FDA says. On The Early Show Monday, Dr. Holly Phillips of CBS station WCBS-TV in New York told substitute anchor Tracy Smith, "At this point we shouldn't be more worried than we've ever been. I think the biggest concern is -- parents want to know that, when they give the shots to their children, they're protecting them, not putting them in harm's way. "Even though a case like Jenny's is incredibly tragic, we also have to be fair and make it very clear that it has not been linked with Gardasil. We understand the family's hypothesis, but still, the FDA, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) have not linked her case with Gardasil." Putting things in perspective, Phillips said, "It has been tested on thousands and thousands of women before it ever hit the market. And, already, 8 million women have gotten the shot. So, it's really a relatively small number of complaints we're looking at, but they should be taken seriously. Yet, it's not time for parents to pull the plug and say, 'This is too risky for my child.' " Phillips said other reports of possible problems stemming from Gardisil have been received on the CDC and FDA's VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), on which anyone (substantiated or not) can report side affects they feel they are having to a drug or shot. "Anyone with any concerns whatsoever after they've had the vaccine," can report those concerns via VAERS, Phillips sais, "and they could have had the vaccine a year ago or a week ago. It really doesn't matter. Anyone with any concerns can report them to this system. ... That doesn't mean they're necessarily linked with the vaccine. It just means you have a concern and you would like it looked at thoroughly." The feds, says Phillips, take VAERS "very seriously. Every week, they actually sit down and look at these complaints. And what they're looking is not just an individual case, but they're really looking for multiple links where several women had the same effect." 44. "Ad Age’s Garfield: Pharma Must Clean Up Its Act" dated 7 July 2008 by Ed Silverman from Pharmalot.com at http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/ad-ages-garfield-pharma-must-clean-up-its-act. "Pharma, as you know, has an image problem. Those of who us have followed the industry for several years could see it coming, but the generals and many of their troops missed, or perhaps ignored, the warning signs. In a chat with DTC Perspectives, Bob Garfield, Advertising Age columnist and host of National Public Radio’s On The Media, says lack of trust allowed the infamous Bob Jarvik ads for Pfizer’s Lipitor to be come a scandal when, he speculates, it may have amounted to nothing in years past. You can watch by clicking right here. Regarding online social networking: “If you’re scientists, and not just marketers, and you’re in the public health business, you should want those reports (by consumers from online sites)…even if that artificially inflates complaints. It should be in your interest to pay attention to the actual experience of the therapies on the ground…I think if the pharma industry has learned anything its that trying to suppress data is very dangerous and putting your head in the sand isn’t a whole lot safer. I know of one pharma company that’s pulling back from community conversations on line for fear of having to report negative outcomes to the FDA. That’s insane. “The public relations problems pharma has do not come from nothing. It’s not from paranoia or the figment of somebody’s imagination. It’s an industry that has been repeatedly caught red-handed trying to skew results and to bring drugs to the market that, perhaps, should not be there. To the extent this continues to go on, you can Burson Marstellar and give them a $1 billion a year and have them do all the PR you want, but it’s not going to fundmentally change peoples’ view. They don’t like expensive drugs. They don’t like the scandals. And they certainly don’t like reading in The New York Times about deaths there were not reported to the Food and Drug Administration. I would say the biggest thing pharma can do to improve its reputation is to clean up its act." 45. "The 'Autism tsunami'- Treatment, Care & Custody" dated 7 July 2008 by Joel Lashley from PoliceOne.com at http://www.policeone.com/writers/columnists/joel-lashley/articles/1705010-The-Autism-tsunami and http://www.correctionsone.com/writers/columnists/joel-lashley/articles/1704743-How-to-speak-autism-Part-2-The-First-Wave. "Driven by the natural desire to connect with their sons and daughters with autism, parents work tirelessly to communicate, mostly through trial and error. When my autistic son was growing up, this trial and error was just about all we had to rely on. But now things are swiftly approaching a critical mass. Parents of "the first wave" are trying to pass on what we've learned to the next generation of mothers and fathers — as well as the police and corrections officers who will undoubtedly come into contact with autistic people, and for whom mental health and autism training is increasingly critical. By "first wave" I am referring to the massive increase of young adults with autism; a statistical wave created by what appears to be a perfect storm scenario of concurrent contributing factors, including increased diagnoses, increased incidence of autism, over-taxed and drying up community resources and a maturing front-line demographic of individuals with autism. Just last May, I was invited by NEMRT (North East Multi-Regional Training) to attend a police instructor certification training seminar called "Autism Awareness and Roll Call Briefing Trainer" in Chicago. The State of Illinois has wisely joined Indiana and Kentucky in requiring autism awareness and related subject control training for its sworn law enforcement personnel. The conference was well attended by academy instructors and police crisis intervention team members, of the Chicago Police Department and various other police instructors from throughout Illinois. The autism tsunami. The class was led by Dennis Debbaudt, the premier autism and law enforcement issues expert who authored the book, Autism, Advocates, and Law Enforcement Professionals; Recognizing and Reducing Risk Situations for People with Autism Spectrum Disorders. In my opinion, all first responders, parents of children with autism, and persons on the autism spectrum, should read his book. (For more information on classes, please visit Autism Risk & Safety Managment.) Mr. Debbaudt’s co-presenter, Dr. Stephen Shore, is author of the book, Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome, and co-author of the Dummies series book, Understanding Autism for Dummies. (Also visit www.autismasperger.net.) During his presentation, Dr. Shore referred to the first wave phenomenon as the "autism tsunami." He estimates the average age of these autism-boomers at somewhere between 17 and 19 years of age. Consider this: the Center for Disease Control estimates 1 in 150 births currently are on the autism spectrum and possibly still rising. 3 out of 4 are male. Half are nonverbal or profoundly verbally limited. They are seven times more likely to encounter the police and at least three times more likely to be victims of violent and/or sexual crimes. 4 out of 5 police calls will involve unusual or dangerous, not criminal, behaviors that will often be difficult to manage or interpret. Two out of 5 will be prone to seizures, and a good deal of them will be hypotonic (low-muscle-tone), making them prone to positional asphyxia and musculoskeletal injuries. To top it all off, many of them will appear to be oblivious to pain, while others will shrink, as if in pain (perhaps real pain), to your slightest touch. …" 46. "DR. RENEE JENKINS: CHANNELING PAUL OFFIT'S BULLSHIT" dated 7 July 2008 by J.B. Handley on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/dr-renee-jenkin.html#more. "Renee Jenkins, the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, is helping her organization rocket ahead of the CDC in becoming parent enemy number one for our community. In a month when Julie Gerberding conceded that the entire foundation of the CDC's position that vaccines do not cause autism—the Verstraeten Study—had major weaknesses, the AAP seems hell-bent on defending the CDC's Recommended Vaccine Schedule at all costs. Moreover, we are seeing the AAP's new media strategy, forged through the formation of the "Immunization Alliance"--a front group for parties with a vested interest in promoting vaccines—which is likely to not only backfire, but also put the AAP in the middle of the line of fire for parent activism. For those of you who have been enjoying your summer, here's a little background: - In the July 2008 issue of Pediatrics, a trade magazine published by the AAP, the Editor in Chief of the AAP wrote an article detailing the newly formed "Immunization Alliance" and its plans for combating declining immunization rates. Breathtaking in its dismissiveness of parent concerns, it's no surprise to read that Dr. Paul Offit is a key architect of this alliance and that the groups forming it are almost exclusively fronts for the CDC, AAP, or Big Pharma. Here's an excerpt: "Underscoring the need for compelling vaccine messages is the No. 1 ranked resolution from the 2008 Annual Leadership Forum, calling for the Academy to lead a coalition that will develop a media campaign on the value of immunizations that can be marketed to parents, added Dr. Jenkins. The group agreed that communication strategies must appeal to parents who are Internet and media savvy, and go beyond presentation of the science by engaging consumers on an emotional level. There was acknowledgment among attendees that messages from anti-vaccine groups' helped erode public confidence in immunizations through their use of celebrities to deliver heartrending first-hand accounts." …" 47. "Innovative Program Focuses On Improved Care For Children With ADHD" dated 8 July 2008 in a press release from the The Pennsylvania State University at http://live.psu.edu/story/33564. "In Pennsylvania, more than 260,000 students with learning and other disabilities are in public schools, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). Nationally, nearly 7 million schoolchildren have a disability. Between the federal No Child Left Behind Act and PDE mandates, half of these students spend most of their day in a general education classroom. This presents challenges to the teachers responsible for their education, but who often lack adequate specialized preparation. In response to new teacher certification requirements, Penn State has created a teacher training program called Evidence-Based Practices for Inclusive Classrooms and Differentiating Instruction (EPIC) (http://www.outreach.psu.edu/cape/epic/register.html) for current and future teachers. It’s a collaboration between the College of Education’s Special Education program, Penn State Continuing and Professional Education (CAPE) and PDE’s Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network. “EPIC will help teachers find innovative ways to educate every child in every classroom,” said Edward Donovan, director of Health and Education Programs for CAPE, a unit of Penn State Outreach. The EPIC series of courses is offered for credit, and beginning this fall, a noncredit option will be available for professional development and Pennsylvania Act 48. Since course content is delivered via video lectures, with opportunities for online collaboration among participants, the series is available to teachers everywhere. Convenient access to these courses will benefit general classroom teachers and their students with disabilities, said David McNaughton, Penn State associate professor of special education. Keeping students with disabilities in the general education classroom “better prepares them for adult life. These students benefit from being educated with their same-age peers,” added McNaughton, who is lead faculty for the first EPIC course. “Many of the practices that have proven successful for special education needs are powerful for other students and benefit everyone in the classroom.” A new feature for the first course, Foundational Skills for Working with Students with Special Education Needs in General Education Classrooms, which begins Nov. 3, is a case study activity that lets participants “apply the strategies learned in the course to deal with a classroom challenge they face,” McNaughton said. One such challenge is what to do for a student whose academic performance is not where it needs to be. Teachers will learn how to address this challenge by gathering information about the student’s learning abilities, as well as how to communicate their findings to the family, so all are working toward the goal of helping the student improve academically, McNaughton explained. …" 48. "AUTISM IN THE MILITARY" dated 8 July 2008 by Angela Warner from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/autism-in-the-m.html#more. "The time has come for everyone to stop referencing the Center for Disease Control (CDC) statistic which states that 1 in every 150 children has an autism spectrum disorder. Did we really ever believe the numbers the CDC presented to the world? Do we rarely believe anything that comes out of the collective mouth of the CDC? If the CDC wanted to tell the truth, they wouldn’t have had to look far to get to that truth. For far too long it has been we the parents and our national autism organizations who have uncovered and spoken the truth. We are speaking the truth again, and the CDC needs to be confronted. In early October of 2007, Dr. Edward Yazbak and Ray Gallup of the Vaccine Auto-immune Project (VAP) released a report titled: “When 1 in 150 is Really 1 in 67” (HERE). This report which puts the autism prevalence at 1 in every 67 children is based on Department of Education statistics. Keep in mind that Dr. Yazbak and Ray’s report only includes children who qualify for special education services through the autism eligibility category. This excludes potentially thousands of children, including my own. If your child has a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, but qualifies for special education through an Other Health Impaired or Developmental Delay category; your child is not accounted for in the 1 in every 67 children report. Our schools can not keep track of all of our children. A few days ago a fellow military advocate mom sent me a document (HERE) that was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The information in the FOIA document confirms Dr. Yazbak and Ray’s report. The statistics contained in this FOIA document cover a 24 month period of tracking. They only include those children or adults who were seen during this time period by medical personnel who used one of the many diagnosis codes pertaining to ASD. Plain English; if the child or adult was not seen for something relating to their ASD by a provider who accepted Tricare during that time period, they are not included in the stats. Again, this excludes potentially thousands of children due to the limited tracking time. And again, all of our children can not be kept track of; this time by the military and Tricare. The document obtained explains that there are a total of 22,356 people with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder service wide (includes all branches of service); the vast majority are children of active duty or retired active duty dependents with ASD. The vast majority comprise a total of 22,027 military dependent children with autism. Of the 22,027 military dependent children with autism, 13,243 are children of active duty members. According to a 2005 Department of Defense (DoD) publication (HERE) (click on the download feature to view) there are 1,177,190 military dependent children service wide (page 49). This is what the numbers show: 1,177,190 (children service wide) /13243 (active duty (AD) dependent children with autism service wide) = 1 in 88. Due to the limitations of the tracking I think it’s safe to say that a heck of a lot of children were missed. …" 49. "DISPATCH FROM THE FRONT: TODAY'S DAMAGED SCHOOLKIDS" dated 8 July 2008 from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/dispatch-from-t.html#more. "I would be happy to share with you my observations from working as a substitute teacher this past two years in Virginia. First, I will tell you a little bit about myself. I got a master's degree in the early '90s, in Developmental and Child Psychology. Up to and during that time frame, I had worked with kids in different capacities. First, I was a gymnastics teacher, working with kids age 4 and up. I did this on and off for a number of years. I worked with many children over the years. The kids were self-selected (by their parents) and thus could not be said to represent all children. Still, I think I saw a good cross-section of kids during that time frame. All very manageable, generally able to stand in line, sit still, wait their turn, follow directions, etc. During graduate school, I worked in a Behavioral Pediatrics clinic at a hospital in Kansas City. We would see kids who were referred for a variety of problems. Mostly the kids presented with normal child behavioral problems, and we would teach the parents a management program. Ritalin was becoming big during those years, so we did get a fair amount of referrals for kids with suspected ADHD whose parents were looking specifically for a Ritalin script. The docs usually gave the parents what they wanted, even though we rarely saw kids who truly fit the ADHD profile. Mostly, once again, the kids just had normal behavioral problems. During all of that time, right up through the early 90s, I met one child with autism. He was seriously autistic. I had never seen that before. I had never encountered any autistic kids when I was a student myself. Nor had I ever seen any autism in all my years of teaching gymnastics. Quite honestly it frightened me! When I graduated in '93 I ended up moving to New York, and later to Washington, DC, to work as a writer/researcher on a variety of child health and safety-related projects. During that decade, I was working to improve the lives of children through my research and writing, but I had little direct contact with kids. Then last year I moved to Virginia. I was between jobs, so I took a job as a substitute teacher in the public schools. I went all over the county, working mostly 2nd – 5th grade classes. I really couldn't believe my eyes. There were kids all over the county with moderate to severe autism. Every school had them. I subbed in one third-grade inclusion classroom that had FIVE moderately to severely autistic boys. That was just one third-grade classroom, in one school! I also saw other strange things – tics, I guess you would call them. In one classroom I had a third-grade girl who kept raising her hand. I would call on her and she wouldn't say anything. Then she would put her hand down, only to raise it again a few minutes later. Again, I would call on her. Nothing. I realized after this went on for about an hour or so that she wasn't even aware she was raising her hand. It was involuntary. This past year a school in the county hired me to do long-term subbing. They had a number of teachers who went out on leave, for maternity or other reasons. So I had the opportunity to work in four different long-term (one month or longer) positions. This allowed me an opportunity to get to know the kids and do some real teaching. It was then that I become aware of the prevalence not only of autism and tics but also ADD and ADHD, as well as other serious learning disabilities. The school I was in was overwhelmed with these problems. Only a tiny fraction of the children who needed special education services were receiving them. …" 50. "Is your baby autistic? UF researchers' book helps provide answers" dated 8 July 2008 by Linda Shrieves from the Orlando Sentinel at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/lifestyle/orl-autisticbaby08jul08,0,6113718.story. "For years, the parents of some autistic children have said they knew from shortly after their babies were born that there was something different about them. Now two researchers at the University of Florida, who have spent more than a decade studying the movements of autistic babies, say they often learn to crawl and walk differently than normal babies. Parents of autistic kids often must wait until their children are talking for an official diagnosis of autism. But Osnat and Philip Teitelbaum believe that watching a child's movement could serve as an early-warning system -- so parents can get intervention and therapy for their children at earlier ages. To help parents learn what to look for, the Teitelbaums have written a book, Does Your Baby have Autism? "We break it down into very simple movement patterns," says Osnat Teitelbaum, who teaches movement analysis at UF. "The idea behind the book is to give a tool to parents." For the Teitelbaums, it's been a 15-year journey that began with a lecture that Philip, a professor who specializes in physiological psychology, attended. The lecturer compared the walk of autistic schoolchildren to the gait of Parkinson's patients. Teitelbaum speculated that autistic children walked differently and crawled differently even as toddlers. It was a theory that led Osnat to spend five years and thousands of hours reviewing home videos taken by the parents of children who had later been diagnosed as autistic. One by one, she watched the videos of birthday parties and Christmas celebrations and cataloged the babies' movements, using a method she had learned as a researcher in Israel. Even more valuable were lengthy home videos. "Some of the families did a fantastic job," she said. "The mother would open the camera and let it run. It was a daily diary" of a child's development. Osnat and Philip Teitelbaum discovered some unmistakable patterns among autistic children. "I compare it to music," says Philip Teitelbaum. "After you get so many scores, you look at them and you see this pattern happens here and here and here." For instance, one of the most common crawling patterns among autistic children is what the Teitelbaums call "asymmetrical crawling," in which the baby crawls with one leg in the crawling position and other leg in the walking position. The baby can crab around the room fine, but one side of the body isn't doing what the other side is. They also found that many autistic babies showed a preference for one side of their bodies. For example, while normal infants may reach for a toy with both hands -- or they may alternate hands -- autistic babies seem to prefer and use only one hand, even though children don't become right-handed or left-handed until they're 4 or 5 years old. And some autistic children never crawl; they often skip crawling and simply begin walking. While parents may think that's thrilling, it's not a good sign, says Philip Teitelbaum. It signals, he says, that there's something wrong with their neurological development. But while the Teitelbaums' research could signal a breakthrough in diagnosing autistic kids earlier, some doctors worry that parents will overanalyze their child's ability to crawl or walk. "Not every child who crawls late or walks late is necessarily autistic," said Dr. Michael Wasserman, a pediatrician who works for the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans. "People will be alarmed if their child isn't walking by age 1 or isn't sitting by age 6 months. And you have to understand that there is a variation of normal. . . My son first walked at 15 months, and he just graduated from law school. So there is a range of normal in all aspects of medicine." …" 51. "THE STRATEGIC PLAN FOR THE COMBATING AUTISM ACT" dated 8 July 2008 by Jim Moody, Esq. from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/the-strategic-p.html#more. "An “early draft” of the strategic plan for autism research: NO epidemic and NO urgency, NO priority for treatment and environmental triggers, and NO research budget. The requirement in the Combating Autism Act (CAA) for a Strategic Plan (SP) with a budget for autism research gives the community a unique and unprecedented opportunity to influence the conduct of federal autism research. The future of NIH-funded autism research will be decided in the next couple months as the strategic plan nears completion and submission to Congress. The entire autism community must again unite to fight for an effective plan. An “early draft” of the SP has been completed and will be presented Tuesday morning 10 AM - 1 PM EDT at a teleconference meeting of an outside “workgroup” for review (register HERE) and listen here [888-455-2920, code 3857872], and at a public meeting on the NIH campus in Bethesda on July 15 9 AM - 4 PM of the Inter-Agency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), register HERE. The community must act quickly and in unity to ensure that the CAA research money is spent in a way that will be of greatest benefit to families already dealing with ASD and to the prevention of future cases. The autism community worked tirelessly to enact the unprecedented Combating Autism Act (CAA) of 2006, P.L. 109-416. The CAA authorized $640 million over five years to expand and intensify autism basic and clinical research conducted by NIH to “investigate the cause (including possible environmental causes), diagnosis or rule out, early detection, prevention, services, supports, intervention, and treatment of autism spectrum disorder.” Congress directed the IACC to develop, submit, and annually update a comprehensive Strategic Plan (SP) with a budget for the conduct of this research. But appropriations to carry out this plan must be passed by Congress each year, especially reserved for autism, so that the research set forth in the plan doesn’t get ignored amidst the cockfight over the $28 billion or so allocated generally to NIH. The process for development of the SP began at the IACC meeting November 30. See AOA: What’s So Secret About Autism Science? (HERE.) Unfortunately, serious process failures and a cloak of secrecy shrouding the development of the SP violate both the letter and spirit of the CAA. Based on what’s happened so far at IACC this spring, the SP will: be little more than a listing of general research projects (similar to the 2003 roadmap); NOT present a research plan and implementation strategy with any sense of urgency justified by the size and cost of the autism epidemic; NOT contain the research budget that Congress demanded; NOT contain a specific plan for vaccine research, even though mandated by CAA; NOT propose a funding process that is accountable and provides for considerably greater community participation (also required by CAA and used successfully in the tiny but highly regarded autism research program conducted by DoD and separately funded by Congress); and NOT reprioritize research in favor of effective treatments and eliminating environmental triggers (despite suggestions from IOM and a previous evaluation of the “roadmap”). …" 52. "Son's autism tests Iraq refugee's resolve" dated 8 July 2008 by Cal Perry from CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/07/08/autism.refugee.mom/index.html. "Like millions of others, 37-year-old Wafaa al Nuaimi fled Iraq in the hopes of giving her three children a chance at a better life. But what separates her from the sea of humanity fleeing unimaginable violence is her dedication to her 8-year-old son, Mustafa, who has autism. Autism is something that is misunderstood under the best of circumstances, let alone a war zone. Wafaa understood all too well that Baghdad is no place for a child -- let alone a child who has autism. Mustafa can speak, but he repeats himself a lot. He was affectionate with a stranger on a recent visit, but he can easily become overstimulated and withdraw. His mother first tried to get him treatment in Iraq, to no avail; the situation simply was too dangerous. "What is preventing the development of specialized centers in Iraq is the war," she says. "In the end it used to take me five to six hours to get to the center -- most of the roads were blocked. We used to arrive around noon, and my son would miss the whole program because by the time we got there, we would have to return home." She tells how she reacted when she realized her son was disabled. "It's my destiny," she says. "When I had this child -- what was I to do? Sit and cry ... oh my God, no, no, no -- no. I will fight for them. I must do something for them and I succeeded," she says. She brought her children to Syria, but not before being turned back while trying to enter Jordan. The Jordanian authorities stamped her passport with a "five-year restriction" before sending her back. She could not believe it. She looks mystified as she tells the story. "My husband said to them, 'Please, what's the reason you are stamping us? To prevent us from entering the country for five years?' They looked at me and said, 'There is no reason. You are Iraqi.' When I heard this word -- I was shocked." Her husband has remained in Baghdad to continue his work as a doctor to support the family. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees does not have exact statistics on refugees in Syria because they fluctuate so often with people coming into Syria and leaving without notifying the authorities. They can only estimate the number; roughly 1 million Iraqi refugees live inside Syria. Of those, only 210,000 are officially registered with the Syrian government. From those who are registered, one in five say they have been subjected to violence and torture inside Iraq. One in five have a serious medical condition. All of this is a huge strain on the Syrian government. Syria is one of only a few nations in the world that allows Iraqi refugees access to public education and health care, something of which Wafaa is keenly aware. "We are a large number," she says, speaking about Iraqi refugees in Syria. "No country can serve this number. Education, health -- we share with the other citizens. I am embarrassed, because this is not our right." As her son meets with a specialist in a park in Damascus, she says that she learned about autism at first on the Internet. It was shortly after that when she decided to make the dangerous journey for her children. She worries that she is not a good mother -- that she has not done enough for her children. She is wracked with guilt for her two other children, worried that she does not pay enough attention to them. …" 53. "THE CDC TO STUDY VACCINE INDUCED ENCEPHALOPATHY" dated 8 July 2008 by Ginger Taylor from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/the-cdc-to-stud.html#more. "Finally! The CDC's Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network is currently looking for subjects to "evaluate the association between viral vaccines and encephalopathy/encephalitis through a detailed evaluation of children with encephalopathy/encephalitis as well as control children". (HERE) Their message to doctors: "If you have a patient who you think might be eligible for the study, please complete the following two questions and provide your contact information. We thank you for your help in this important study." This is a HUGELY important subject, one we have been waiting for them to examine, and we want to make sure that they have all the subjects they need for this study, so please take a moment to see if your child might be a candidate. Does your child have an encephalopathy? According to HHS's Vaccine Injury Compensation Table (HERE) symptoms are: Loss of eye contact, Seizures, Not responding to external stimuli, and Seems disconnected from the world around them. And the Merck Manual (HERE) notes that these symptoms can be preceded by: Nonspecific Gastrointestinal disorders. If this sounds like your child, because boy howdy it sounds just like mine, call your pediatrician and let him know about the study to see if your child indeed has an encephalopathy and should be enrolled! Oh wait... hold on a second... there are some exclusion criteria... Let me check them out… Ok... so if your child has the above, but DOESN'T have: A history of medical disease, A history of congenital problems, A history of developmental delay, Any immune system dysfunction, Any family history of immune dysfunction, or Fevers and Seizures with in 72 hours; THEN they want to study them to see if their encephalopathy might have anything to do with their vaccines. You know, the HEALTHY kids with encephalitis. So as long as the swelling in your child's brain that was caused by vaccines didn't cause or was not related to any of the above symptoms, CDC wants to get to know your child. But that pretty much counts our all our kids... now doesn't it. Never mind." 54. "PAUL OFFIT KNOWS AUTISM, JUST ASK THE ASSOCIATED PRESS" dated 8 July 2008 by J.B Handley from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/paul-offit-know.html#more. "Dear Carla Johnson: I found your article "Fringe Autism Treatment Could Get Federal Study" today on a potential federal study on chelation treatment for autism to be extremely one-sided and at times quite condescending of parents of children with autism. As a reporter for the Associated Press, we look to you to give us a fair and balanced view of the medical issues we face. As the parent of a child with autism, I was dismayed to consider how your report might be received by parents new to this debate who are drowning in the range of treatment options for their disabled children. It’s worth repeating the first two sentences of your article for some perspective: “Pressured by desperate parents, government researchers are pushing to test an unproven treatment on autistic children, a move some scientists see as an unethical experiment in voodoo medicine. The treatment removes heavy metals from the body and is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism — a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science.” We parents have grown very tired of being referred to as “desperate” by journalists. Do you really think the NIH fund studies because parents are desperate? No, they fund studies because compelling anecdotal evidence leads them to believe that more work should be done to see if the anecdotes can be extrapolated to a broader conclusion to benefit more kids. This is how science progresses. Why do you need to belittle it and call it “voodoo” medicine? Also, how can the “theory never proved” as you say be proven without doing studies? You can’t criticize that no studies have been done while a study is trying to be done! And, who is the “mainstream science” you refer to that has rejected this theory? I have never seen a document from “Mainstream Science” rejecting chelation therapy for autism. Isn’t the NIH about as mainstream as it gets and aren’t they the ones considering funding the study? If your personal bias weren’t obvious enough in the way you wrote your article, I was even more dismayed to read your quote from Paul Offit, the Vaccine Industry’s well-funded spokesperson. Quoting Paul Offit on an article on autism treatment is like quoting the Marlboro Man about a compelling treatment for lung cancer! Not only does Mr. Offit have zero expertise in the area of autism treatment—he has never treated a single child with autism and his specialty is infectious diseases—but also Mr. Offit is a paid spokesperson for Merck, he’s a vaccine patent holder on a vaccine currently in our recommended schedule, and he has been reprimanded by the US Congress for his conflicts when serving on a Vaccine Advisory Committee. Worse, not one of Mr. Offit’s conflicts are mentioned by you in the article. Googling “Paul Offit and Autism” leads to more than 47,000 hits, which leads me to believe you were on deadline and chose the lazy way out to get a quote from the Vaccine Industry’s most reliable quote machine. Unlike Dr. Offit, Dr. Insel of the NIH should be commended for listening to parents and pushing science to move faster. To date, neither the AAP nor the CDC nor Dr. Offit have any explanation for a crippling epidemic that is fast approaching 1 in every 100 children. …" 55. "Fringe autism treatment could get federal study" dated 8 July 2008 by Carla Johnson from The Associated Press at http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j71A7ZN9GaxtikP7Mo0ZmINil4aQD91PT3382. "Pressured by desperate parents, government researchers are pushing to test an unproven treatment on autistic children, a move some scientists see as an unethical experiment in voodoo medicine. The treatment removes heavy metals from the body and is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism — a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science. Mercury hasn't been in childhood vaccines since 2001. But many parents of autistic children are believers, and the head of the National Institute of Mental Health supports testing it on children provided the tests are safe. "So many moms have said, `It's saved my kids,'" institute director Dr. Thomas Insel said. For now, the proposed study, not widely known outside the community of autism research and advocacy groups, has been put on hold because of safety concerns, Insel told The Associated Press. The process, called chelation, is used to treat lead poisoning. Studies of adults have shown it to be ineffective unless there are high levels of metals in the blood. Any study in children would have to exclude those with high levels of lead or mercury, which would require treatment and preclude using a placebo. One of the drugs used for chelation, DMSA, can cause side effects including rashes and low white blood cell count. And there is evidence chelation may redistribute metals in the body, perhaps even into the central nervous system. "I don't really know why we have to do this in helpless children," said Ellen Silbergeld of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was invited to comment on the study to a review board of the national institute. Despite lawsuits and at least one child's death, several thousand autistic children are already believed to be using chelation (pronounced kee-LAY'-shun), their parents not content to wait for a study. Among those parents is Christina Blakey of suburban Chicago, who uses chelation and a variety of other alternative therapies, including sessions in a hyperbaric chamber, on her 8-year-old son, Charlie. Before he started chelation at age 5, Charlie suffered tantrums. When she took him to school, she had to peel him off her body and walk away. But three weeks after he began chelation, his behavior changed, she said. "He lined up with his friends at school. He looked at me and waved and gave me a thumbs-up sign and walked into school," Blakey said. "All the moms who had been watching burst into tears. All of us did." There is no way to prove whether chelation made a difference or whether Charlie simply adjusted to the school routine. Autism is a spectrum of disorders that hamper a person's ability to communicate and interact with others. Most doctors believe there is no cure. Conventional treatments are limited to behavioral therapy and a few medications, such as the schizophrenia drug Risperdal, approved to treat irritability. Frustrated parents use more than 300 alternative treatments, most with little or no scientific evidence backing them up, according to the Interactive Autism Network at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Md. "With a lot of mothers, if they hear about a treatment, they feel like they need to try it," said project director Dr. Paul Law. "Anything that has a chance of benefiting their child, they're willing to give it a shot." More than 2 percent of the children tracked by the project use chelation. If that figure holds for the general population, it would mean more than 3,000 autistic children are on the treatment at any time in the United States. …" 56. "Bay Area autism diagnoses increasing" dated 9 July 2008 by Lyanne Melendez from ABC7 News at http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6255620. "A new report shows the number of Bay Area students diagnosed with autism has been rising every year. The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health compiled the latest numbers given to them by the state Department of Education and the numbers have parents and researchers questioning the causes and the reasons for the continuing increases. Alex Jaeger of Milpitas was diagnosed with autism 14 years ago. "There just weren't many kids out there and now they are everywhere," Jeager's mother Johanna Jaeger said. Between 2005 and 2007, 90 percent of Bay Area schools reported a rise in the number of students with autism. Santa Clara County had the highest number, nearly eight autistic kids per 1,000 students. The lowest was Marin County with five per 1,000. Dr. Antonio Hardan is the director of the autism clinic at Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. He believes the diagnosis is much broader today. "There are definitely kids who are diagnosed with autism that maybe 20 years ago might not have been diagnosed as having autism," Hardan said. Diana Conti is not convinced. She is with PARCA, a group providing programs for people with autism. "It is so exponential that it cannot be explained away by better diagnosis," Conti said. "I think there is something going on we need to look at." Some suggest the environment or genetics have something to do with it. Hardan believes there are some students who are misdiagnosed on purpose. "If you are diagnosed with autism you will get more services from the county from regional centers than if you just have an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or depression," Hardan said. "Parents don't make this stuff up to say, 'oh gosh, I can't wait to get into that system,'" Jaeger said. "You know it's not a club that most parents look forward to joining." Today, the vast majority of kids with autism are being served by the public school system. "And it's put an incredible amount of pressure on the school districts that try to serve them and to try serve them effectively because they are very different kids," Jaeger said. "There are some successes and some that really struggle." Jaeger is more concerned about what will happen to Alex and others as they move into adulthood with the state not fully prepared to deal with them." 57. "EARLIER VACCINATION CAUSES ASTHMA" dated 9 July 2008 by Mark F. Blaxill from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/earlier-vaccina.html#more. "Lost amidst all the furor over the role of vaccines in autism has been the role that vaccine administration plays in causing other chronic childhood diseases like asthma and juvenile diabetes. But the evidence that vaccine administration, especially early administration of DPT vaccine, increases the risk of developing asthma (for the purposes of simplicity, let’s shorten that phrase to causes asthma for what follows) is compelling. If you look at the totality of the published evidence the picture is admittedly somewhat mixed, but for anyone with an open mind and a critical eye, the argument for a strong role for vaccines as a cause of asthma is persuasive. And for any parent trying to figure out whether or t to comply with the aggressive and crowded vaccine schedules, the message from this evidence is simple. Don’t comply. Go slower than they want you to. Take responsibility for your own child’s health. Because recent research shows not simply that vaccines cause asthma, but that the sooner you give your child some vaccines the higher the odds that your child will develop asthma. These are obviously critical and controversial points, so let’s take a some time to review some of this research. In a study published earlier this year, a group of Canadian researchers from the University of Manitoba examined the connection between asthma and vaccines in one of the largest studies ever to address the question. What they found was clear and striking. The earlier children received their DPT shots, the higher their odds of developing asthma by their seventh year of age. To be more precise, among children born in Manitoba in 1995 who received their first shot on time (on or before two months of age), nearly 14% subsequently developed asthma. By comparison, among children who received their first shot late (six months or later), less than 6% developed asthma. That’s a “crude odds ratio” (before statistical adjustments for “confounders” that might bias the result) of 2.6, meaning that a child vaccinated on schedule is over two and half times more likely to develop asthma than a child vaccinated late. I’ve displayed these results from Manitoba visually in the chart below. There are a number of nuances in this display that I want to point out, but the basic message is simple. The sooner families in Manitoba lined up to give their children their first DPT shot (age at administration of the first DPT vaccine is on the horizontal axis), the more they raised their child’s odds of developing asthma (the risk of developing asthma by age 7 is on the vertical axis), odds that by my estimate may rise as much as 3-4 times higher once the full range of vaccination timing is considered. …" 58. "Glaxo Exec Resigns From UK Watchdog Group" dated 9 July 2008 by Ed Silverman from Pharmalot.com at http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/glaxo-exec-resigns-from-uk-watchdog-group/#more-14545. "Paul Blackburn, a Glaxo vp and financial controller, has left the board of Ofsted, the UK’s official education watchdog agency, amid growing controversy that his appointment reflected improper ties between the governing Labor Party and the drugmaker. The news was disclosed on Seroxat Sufferers, a blog devoted to chastising Glaxo over its Paxil antidepressant, which is known as Seroxat in the UK. An Ofsted representative confirmed the change in an e-mail to the site. We have reached out to Ofsted and Glaxo for comment and will update you with any reply. UPDATE: A Glaxo spokeswoman further confirms Blackburn resigned amid “unfounded allegations,” and stresses he left at Ofsted’s request. The resignation comes one month after Blackburn was named to the board, a move that itself occurred shortly after the government awarded an estimated $200 million contract to Glaxo for its Cervarix HPV vaccine for school-age girls 12 years and older, which some parents fear will give a green light to teenage sex. Blackburn’s appointment also came as a growing number of UK families are filing lawsuits against Glaxo over its antidepressent, prompting criticism that the government conferred moral authority on Glaxo and commercially strengthened its position at a time when children are being targeted by pharma with meds for treating ADHD, in particular. Glaxo markets Dexedrine in the US for ADHD. UPDATE: Here is a statement from Blackburn: “At Ofsted’s request, I have resigned. This is very disappointing for me personally and I hope it will not dissuade others currently working in companies to consider roles with public bodies. I wish to make it clear that this decision should in no way give credibility to the spurious allegations which have been reported regarding GlaxoSmithKline. These are entirely without foundation and have been previously addressed by the company. Rather, it is my desire that the work of Ofsted continue unhindered by negative media attention.” …" 59. "Some Vaccines Still Contain Mercury" dated 9 July 2008 by Steve Wilson from WXYZ News at http://www.wxyz.com/content/news/investigators/story.aspx?content_id=599da2da-f75e-4844-952e-1241f33b57fd. "It’s the controversy that won’t go away. Is the skyrocketing rate of Autism in children due in any way to the mercury long contained in childhood vaccines? It’s an issue our chief investigative reporter Steve Wilson has stayed with from the start…and Steve will science ever answer this one? It could happen one day but only if researchers keep looking… and with 1 in 150 children now diagnosed with Autism in this country—more than 100 new, young victims every single day—a lot of skeptical parents and others believe there’s a big incentive for industry and government to cover up the truth. Dr. Renee Jenkins, M.D./Pediatrician: I don’t think anybody is saying you want to inject mercury. (Wilson) Why would I do it? Why would I allow it to happen? (Jenkins) Well, for routine vaccinations, we don’t allow it to happen.” A loving grandmother and president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Renee Jenkins is among those in medicine, in government, in the media, pretty much telling parents this problem’s been solved…there is no mercury in the routine schedule of childhood vaccines anymore, except maybe just “trace” amounts. She’s talking about a mercury-based vaccine preservative called Thimerosal…and the truth is there’s still as much as ever in 11 vaccines including most flu vaccines injected into pregnant women and kids, and some of them younger than 9 get two doses in a season. And also high levels of mercury from Thimerosal in tetanus shots and the boosters routinely injected into 11-year-olds…and also in some meningitis and diphtheria-tetanus formulas, too. Heidi Scheer/Mother of Autistic Child: …and I know for a fact people that have gone to their physician and have been told there was no Thimerosal in their vaccine, then the parents asked to see the package insert and they find it there. Mrs. Michigan joined parents of other autistic children marching on Washington just recently not only to alert new parents but to point out the half-million children already stricken, they believe by the large doses of mercury they got in the increasing number of vaccines the government and their doctors recommended. A congressional committee that studied the matter has already concluded: “Thimerosal…is directly related to the Autism epidemic.” It could have been prevented or curtailed “had the FDA not been asleep at the switch” allowing the untested toxic to be part of the vaccine recipe, something the committee report blamed on “misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry.” Presidential candidate John McCain says now there’s “strong evidence” of a link between skyrocketing Autism and the mercury in vaccines. Boyd Haley is a scientist and pioneer in the study of this issue. Dr. Boyd Haley/Researcher: And I want to talk to a lot of the journalists here because you’re a big part of the problem. Most of you… (crowd cheering) … you’ve allowed the CDC to hijack what’s perceived as the science of Autism. There hasn’t been one publication ever published where Thimerosal was tested against a living cell, a living animal, where it wasn’t found to be severely toxic, psydotoxic and neurotoxic, and yet you can go in there and they’ll tell you ‘Oh we know it’s not connected.’ Why don’t you go read the papers? Some examples of the scientific papers he’s talking about? …" 60. "New vaccines are preventing more diseases" dated 9 July 2008 by Renee R. Jenkins, MD from the AAP in the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0709vplettersbriefs0jul09,0,7261089.story. "The American Academy of Pediatrics is disappointed that a premier newspaper like the Chicago Tribune would publish such a one-sided, fear-mongering report as columnist Julie Deardorff's June 27 blog post, "The AAP gets tough on vaccine dissenters." Deardorff parrots the misleading pseudoscience of the most strident anti-vaccine Web sites and the scare tactics of celebrity-funded ad campaigns. In quoting the number of vaccines children receive today compared to 1982, Deardorff takes the extra step to write the numbers in boldfaced type, suggesting she believes these numbers alone should give parents pause about immunizing their children. The fact is, today's vaccines are safer than any in history. Current vaccines are more refined than older versions, so children receive fewer immune-challenging antigens overall even though they get a larger number of immunizations. It's true that doctors recommend more vaccines for children today than they did two decades ago. The number of vaccines has increased because new vaccines have been developed to prevent more diseases. That is a good thing. That means children will not have to suffer devastating diseases such as Hib meningitis, which once killed 600 children a year and left thousands more with deafness, seizures and mental retardation. The vaccine available today has wiped out 98 percent of these cases. Deardorff is less than fair in her depiction of how the American Academy of Pediatrics is responding to parents with questions about vaccines. Pediatricians spend many hours in their day counseling parents about the safety and importance of immunization and answering their specific questions. Pediatricians want to provide parents with accurate information; our job is made all the harder by misleading reports like this one." 61. "What the AAP can't say about autism" dated 10 July 2008 by Anne Dachel in the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-080710aap_briefs,0,2749379.story. "It's difficult to understand what Dr. Renee Jenkins, head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, hopes to achieve by publicly chastising reporter Julie Deardorff for daring to voice the concerns of parents over vaccine safety and the failure of the medical community to alleviate those fears. Everyday stories are in the news about parents with normally progressing children who suddenly regressed into autism following vaccinations. The former head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Bernadine Healy, appeared on CBS Evening News, May 12, admonishing officials for refusing to investigate a susceptible subgroup of children who are unable to eliminate the toxins in vaccines. Dr. Healy pointed out that the studies on vaccine safety aren't conclusive. Naturally, parents are afraid. They see a once rare disorder is now so common that everyone knows someone with an autistic child. Since 1983, the vaccine schedule has been tripled. Coincidentally, the autism rate exploded from one in 10,000 kids to one in every 150 kids today. All the AAP has been able to do is tell parents that the cause of autism is unknown and that there is no cure. They attribute all the autism to "better diagnosing" by their doctors. In Oct. 2007, at the annual meeting of the AAP, their solution to the autism epidemic was to tell their doctors for look for the signs of autism at well-baby visits." 62. ""IS ALUMINUM THE NEW MERCURY?" dated 10 July 2008 by Anne Dachel from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/is-aluminum-the.html#more. "In all the news reports from around the country about Gardasil, I couldn't find a single reference to the aluminum in this vaccine. All the pleasant sounding commentators who reassured us that it hasn't been proven that the HPV vaccine caused healthy teenage girls to suddenly develop things like paralysis never mentioned it. They had quotes from the CDC/FDA/Merck saying things like, "Based on the facts that we've received, the information does not suggest that this event was causally associated with vaccination." On July 3, U.S. News and World Report published the article, Is HPV Vaccine to Blame for a Teen's Paralysis? (HERE) by Deborah Kotz, one of their senior editors. The story was about a 13 year old girl in Utah who received Gardasil and within a month developed a degenerative muscular disease that has, after a year, left her paralyzed. A spokesperson for Merck, the drug company that makes Gardasil, sees no connection. For years, the media, the medical community, and health officials have told us the same thing about autism and the mercury in vaccines, the second deadliest element on Earth and a known neurotoxin. I suppose if toxic mercury is safe, aluminum--another neurotoxin-- in vaccines must be too. However, in a piece for Mothering Magazine, Is Aluminum the New Thimerosal?, (HERE) author Robert W. Sears, M.D. tells us he's not convinced about the safety of aluminum use. The main reason he's doubtful is because he can't find the any research on aluminum in vaccines. Doctor Sears writes, "As a medical doctor, my first instinct was to worry that these aluminum levels far exceed what may be safe for babies. My second instinct was to assume that the issue had been properly researched, and that studies had been done on healthy infants to determine their ability to rapidly excrete aluminum. My third instinct was to search for these studies. So far, I have found none." In A Shot in the Dark Kimber Pasquali wrote, "Gardasil contains 225 mcg of aluminum and, although aluminum adjuvants have been used in vaccines for decades, they were never tested for safety in clinical trials." CNN reported about nearly 8,000 adverse reactions that have been filed about Gardasil. (HERE) It's clear that when the issue is the aluminum content, the manufacturer, the FDA, the CDC all have a lot of explaining to do." 63. "12 Babies die during vaccine trials in Argentina" dated 10 July 2008 from Trading Markets.com at http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1750553. "At least 12 babies who were part of a clinical study to test the effectiveness of a vaccine against pneumonia have died over the past year in Argentina, the local press reported Thursday. The study was sponsored by global drug giant GlaxoSmithKline and uses children from poor families, who are "pressured and forced into signing consent forms," the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals, or Fesprosa, said. "This occurs without any type of state control" and "does not comply with minimum ethical requirements," Fesprosa said. The vaccine trial is still ongoing despite the denunciations, and those in charge of the study were cited by the Critica newspaper as saying that the procedures are being carried out in a lawful manner. Colombian and Panama were also chosen by GSK as staging grounds for trials of the vaccine against the pneumococcal bacteria. Since 2007, 15,000 children under the age of one from the Argentine provinces of Mendoza, San Juan and Santiago del Estero have been included in the research protocol, a statement of what the study is trying to achieve. "Only 12 have died throughout the country, which is a very low figure if we compare it with the deaths produced by respiratory illnesses caused by the pneumococcal bacteria," pediatrician Enrique Smith, one of the lead investigators, said. In Santiago del Estero, one of the country's poorest provinces, the trials were authorized when Enrique's brother, Juan Carlos Smith, was provincial health minister. According to pediatrician Ana Maria Marchese, who works at the children's hospital in the provincial capital where the studies are being conducted, "because they can't experiment in Europe or the United States, they come to do it in third-world countries." "A lot of people want to leave the protocol but aren't allowed; they force them to continue under the threat that if they leave they won't receive any other vaccine," said Julieta Ovejero, great aunt of one of the six babies who died in Santiago del Estero. Fesprosa's Juan Carlos Palomares said that "in most cases these are underprivileged individuals, many of them unable to read or write, who are pressured into including their children" in the trials. According to Fesprosa, "the laboratory pays $8,000 for each child included in the study, but none (of that money) remains in the province that lends the public facilities and the health personnel for the private research." 64. "Public comment on DMHMRSAS name change by July 31st" dated 11 July 2008 in a press release from the Virginia DMHMRSAS Office at http://www.dmhmrsas.virginia.gov/PressReleases/080711NameChange.htm. "DMHMRSAS has had its current name for more than 20 years. During that time, many states have updated their agencies’ names to reflect current values and perceptions and to address feelings about certain language and biases. Also, during that time, many, many people, including legislators and advocates, have complained about the Department’s name being unwieldy and far too long. Thus, the time for giving this department a new, more current name has arrived. The Department’s partners statewide and general public are invited to review the options below and respond with a preferred choice by July 31, 2008. As you review the options below, please keep in mind the goals of the name change: To shorten the current name and acronym, To consistently use positive terms related to the impact of the Department’s services, rather than listing disabilities or conditions addressed by those services, and To use terms that are more reflective of the Department’s values and mission statement and more inclusive of current programs (versus exclusive ‘silo’ terms) and any future additions to the services the Department provides and the populations served. These choices are listed in no preferential order, only alphabetically: Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services (DBDS) Department of Behavioral Health and Supportive Services (DBHSS) Department of Behavioral and Supportive Services (DBSS) Department of Supportive and Recovery Services (DSRS) Please review the options above and click here to respond with a preferred choice or an alternative by July 31, 2008." 65. "Identifying Autism Loci and Genes by Tracing Recent Shared Ancestry" dated 11 July 2008 by Eric M. Morrow, Seung-Yun Yoo, Steven W. Flavell, Tae-Kyung Kim, Yingxi Lin, Robert Sean Hill, Nahit M. Mukaddes, Soher Balkhy, Generoso Gascon, Asif Hashmi, Samira Al-Saad, Janice Ware, Robert M. Joseph, Rachel Greenblatt, Danielle Gleason, Julia A. Ertelt, Kira A. Apse, Adria Bodell, Jennifer N. Partlow, Brenda Barry, Hui Yao, Kyriacos Markianos, Russell J. Ferland, Michael E. Greenberg, Christopher A. Walsh in Science magazine at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;321/5886/218?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=autism&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT. "Abstract. To find inherited causes of autism-spectrum disorders, we studied families in which parents share ancestors, enhancing the role of inherited factors. We mapped several loci, some containing large, inherited, homozygous deletions that are likely mutations. The largest deletions implicated genes, including PCDH10 (protocadherin 10) and DIA1 (deleted in autism1, or c3orf58), whose level of expression changes in response to neuronal activity, a marker of genes involved in synaptic changes that underlie learning. A subset of genes, including NHE9 (Na+/H+ exchanger 9), showed additional potential mutations in patients with unrelated parents. Our findings highlight the utility of "homozygosity mapping" in heterogeneous disorders like autism but also suggest that defective regulation of gene expression after neural activity may be a mechanism common to seemingly diverse autism mutations." 66. "Gene clues from Mideast suggest autism occurs when brain cannot learn properly from early life" dated 11 July 2008 from The Associated Press at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/10/america/NA-MED-US-Autism-Genes.php. "Harvard University researchers have discovered half a dozen new genes involved in autism that suggest the disorder strikes in a brain that cannot properly form new connections. The findings, based on families in the Middle East, Turkey and Pakistan, also may help explain why intense education programs do help some autistic children: certain genes that respond to experience were not missing but were merely stuck in the "off" position. "The circuits are there, but you have to give it an extra push," said Dr. Gary Goldstein of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which was not involved in the gene hunt but is well-known for its autism behavioral therapy. The genetics suggest that "what we're doing makes sense when we work with these little kids — and work and work and work — and suddenly get through," he said. But the study's bigger message is that autism is too strikingly individual to envision an easy gene test for it. Instead, patients are turning out to have a wide variety, almost a custom set, of gene defects. "Almost every kid with autism has their own particular cause of it," said Dr. Christopher Walsh, chief of genetics at Children's Hospital Boston, who led the research published in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Autism spectrum disorders include a range of poorly understood brain conditions, from the mild Asperger's syndrome to more severe autism characterized by poor social interaction, impaired communication and repetitious behaviors. It is clear that genes play a big role in autism, from studies of twins and families with multiple affected children. But so far, the genetic cause is known for only about 15 percent of autism cases, Walsh said. So Walsh's team took a new tack. They turned to the Middle East, a part of the world with large families and a tendency for cousins to marry, characteristics that increase the odds of finding rare genes. They recruited 88 families with cousin marriages and high incidences of autism, from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. They compared the DNA of family members to search for what are called recessive mutations, where the mother and father can be healthy carriers of a gene defect but a child who inherits that defect from both parents gets sick. In some of the families, they found large chunks of missing DNA regions that followed that recessive rule. The missing regions varied among families, but they affected at least six genes that play a role in autism. Here is why this matters: All the genes seem to be part of a network involved in a basic foundation of learning, how neurons respond to new experiences by forming synapses, or connections between each other. In the first year or two of life, when autism symptoms appear, synapses rapidly form and mature, and unnecessary ones are "pruned" back. In other words, a baby's brain is literally being shaped by its first experiences so that it is structurally able to perform learning and other functions of later life. …" 67. "Empathy Comes Naturally to Children: Study- Small Study Shows That Children Who Witness Painful Experiences" dated 11 July 2008 by Julie Steenhuysen from ABC News at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/wireStory?id=5353623. "When children see others in pain, their brains respond as if it were happening to them, U.S. researchers said on Friday. This response, which also has been shown in adults, suggests that normal school-age children may be naturally prone to empathy, they said. "What it shows us is that we have this inborn capacity to resonate with the pain of others. That's probably a very important step toward empathy," said Jean Decety of the University of Chicago, whose study appears in the journal Neuropsychologia. For the study, the researchers showed 17 children aged 7 to 12 animated images of people experiencing pain while they were undergoing a type of imaging known as functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. The series of images depicted accidents, such as a heavy bowl falling on a pair of hands, and situations in which pain was inflicted on purpose, such as someone slamming a car door on a person's hand. They also were shown images without painful encounters. The study showed that when pain was accidental, brain circuits involved in the processing pain first-hand came into play. Decety said these same areas have been shown to become active in studies in adults and are thought to be part of the empathy response. "We can say children are like adults when they see people in pain," Decety said in a telephone interview. But when the pain was intentionally inflicted, areas involved in social functioning and moral behavior also came into play. These areas are involved in assessing threats, he said. "The children were looking for a reason," Decety said. "If you watch someone being hurt, you want to know why." Decety said many of the children asked whether the situation had been fair. "If you think about looking for a reason, this is more like caring for others," he said. Decety said he hopes to use these results to better understand brain function in children who are aggressive or engage in anti-social behavior, such as bullying. …" 68. "Grassley Probes Psychiatrists Over Ties To Pharma" dated 11 July 2008 by Ed Silverman from Pharmalot.com at http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/grassley-probes-psychiatrists-over-ties-to-pharma. "The investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, where Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican, into the ties between drugmakers and medicine is expanding. After targeting grants issued to academic psychiatrists, Grassley now wants the American Psychiatric Association to open its books for a look-see at pharma funding. Psychiatrists, of course, prescribe antidepressants and antipsychotics, both of which have stirred controversy. And psychiatrists have frequently shown up at the top of lists of doctors receiving pharma money. This week, for instance, Vermont’s Attorney General released its annual report showing that, of the top 100 recipients, psychiatrists received the highest level of payments, and 11 psychiatrists received a total of about $626,000, or approximately 20 percent of the total value of payments. The average amount received by psychiatrists was nearly $57,000. Not coincidentally, the Senate committee’s conflicts-of-interest probe into oversight of grants issued by drugmakers and the NIH has focused on three psychiatrists - Harvard University’s Joe Biederman, Stanford University’s Alan Schatzberg and the University of Cincinnati’s Melissa DelBello. …" 69. "Hepatitis B Vaccine: Good for 'Newborn' Prostitutes and Drug Users, but Who Else?" dated 11 July 2008 by Dr. Gregory Damato, Ph.D. from Natural News.com at http://www.naturalnews.com/023610.html. "The Hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine is considered one of the most controversial vaccines in the pediatric vaccination schedule. Why are we giving it to newborns and what are the adverse reactions associated with such an early vaccination? What is Hep B? Hep B is a very rare disease caused by the Hep B virus which primarily affects the liver and is principally spread through the blood. Hep B may lead to chronic infection and cirrhosis (scarring) which may then progress to liver cancer. Approximately .2% of the population in America currently have Hep B, leaving 99.8% of the population free of this virus. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), approximately .001 percent of all infants under the age of one year will contract Hep B and 95 percent of them will recover on their own and never contract the virus again. In the U.S. in 2005, only five children under the age of five were reported to have been infected with Hep B (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, March 30, 2007). Furthermore, the U.S. continues to have the lowest recorded levels of Hepatitis in the world. According to the October 31, 1997 MMWR published by the CDC, "Hepatitis B continues to decline in most states, primarily because of a decrease in the number of cases among injecting drug users and, to a lesser extent, among both homosexuals and heterosexuals of both sexes." How do you get Hep B? Hep B is transmitted from bodily fluids that are contaminated with the virus. This can be done through unprotected sex, contaminated needles, blood transfusions or vertical transmission from mother to child. What is the Hep B Vaccine? In November of 1991, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC recommended the universal vaccination of Hep B to every newborn in the U.S. There are currently two types of genetically engineered hepatitis B vaccines licensed for use in the U.S.: Merck's Recombivax HB® (each 0.5 mL dose contains 5 mcg of hepatitis B surface antigen with formaldehyde, and .5mg of aluminum (potassium aluminum sulfate)[1] and GlaxoSmithKline's Engerix-B® (each 0.5 mL dose contains 10 mcg of hepatitis B surface antigen adsorbed on 0.25 mg aluminum as aluminum hydroxide, sodium chloride, disodium phosphate dihydrate, and sodium dihydrogen phosphate dihydrate [2]. When is the Hep B Vaccine Given? The Hep B vaccine is the first vaccine given to newborns and is injected within 12 hours of birth. The CDC then recommends a second injection at one to two months of age and a third vaccination between six and 18 months (regardless of manufacturer). Why is the Hep B Vaccine Given? This vaccine is given because of fear, lack of knowledge and corporate greed from the vaccine manufacturers. Merck generates over $1 billion worth of revenue from this vaccine alone. Most hospitals allow for screening of Hep B in mothers prior to birth, but many do not do this. Even if the mother tests positive for Hep B, there is only a 5% probability that the virus will be passed from mother to child. We are ostensibly injecting helpless newborns (nearly 1 million per year in the U.S.) with this vaccine with the false belief that every mother already has Hep B and if they don't, we will be protecting the future generation of promiscuous teens and drug users. The CDC and FDA know that drug users and prostitutes will not get the vaccine themselves and therefore it is better to vaccinate these potential drug users and hookers when they are born. …" 70. "Police Chief Orders Crying Autistic Child And Mother To Leave Restaurant" dated 11 July 2008 by Trey Paul from WIS10 TV News at http://consumerist.com/tag/autism/?i=5024542&t=police-chief-orders-crying-autistic-child-and-mother-to-leave-restaurant. "At first, Gail Martin says she wasn't sure who was yelling at her to leave the Buckhead Café in Jackson. It turned out to be Jackson Police Chief Dennis Rushton, asking Gail and her family to leave. "I didn't know what he was doing," Gail's daughter Lauren said. The family was just about to order when 4-year-old Alyssa began crying; she suffers from autism. Gail says Chief Rushton yelled across the restaurant again. "He said, ‘You need to pick her up and you need to get out of here now,'" Gail said. Lauren is upset with the chief. "That was very mean to say -- just very mean," Lauren said. The embarrassment was too much for Gail and her daughters, who soon left the restaurant. "I wasn't embarrassed of Alyssa's behavior, I was embarrassed of the way it was handled," Gail said. Chief Rushton would not make a statement, but he did say he felt Mrs. Martin's daughter was being extremely loud and bothering other customers. Even though he knew the child was autistic, he said he did ask the Martins to leave. Gail says she feels like Chief Rushton should have been more understanding about what was going on with her autistic daughter. "We can't just lock them up, they have every right to be out in public like everyone else," Gail said. Now Gail hopes her story will bring more awareness about autism. "If it can happen in a small town in Jackson, it can happen anywhere," Gail said. Chief Rushton says he is open to going through training through the South Carolina Autism Society to help him better understand the condition. Rushton also says his police commissioner has invited the Martin family to meet with them at City Hall. The Martins say they are open to meeting with the commissioner. As you can imagine, people have had plenty to say about this story. Viewer Roger said, "The family should have known better than to take an emotionally disturbed child into a restaurant. When customers pay to enjoy a nice meal the last thing they want to endure is an uncontrollable child." Viewer Amanda wrote, "I know what it's like to have one or both of your autistic children start crying for reasons that other people could not possibly understand. I'm not saying children with autism should get a free pass on their behavior. I'm just saying that people should be more understanding because most of these kids can't communicate their needs verbally." 71. "Autism and a Link to Brain Development" dated 11 July 2008 by Nancy Shute from U.S. News & World Report at http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2008/7/11/autism-and-a-link-to-brain-development.html. "It's been an amazing year for discoveries about autism and genes-and it's only July. The latest news: Some genes involved in the disorder may affect the brain's ability to develop in response to experience, a key aspect of learning. That follows the report in January that scientists with the Boston-based Autism Consortium had found a genetic variation on chromosome 16 shared by 1 percent of people with autism. In March, researchers reported that about 15 percent of autism cases result from random spontaneous mutations that are unique to each person, rather than an inherited "disease gene." Now it appears that those random mutations may mess up the wiring at a critical time when experience helps shape the developing brain. This latest bit comes from researchers at Harvard University, who analyzed the genes of 88 Middle Eastern families in which cousins had married. Intermarriage increases the odds that rare mutations will occur and be passed on, making patterns easier to find. The researchers' results, published in Science, are not a slam dunk, but they do provide more evidence that gene-hunting scientists are on the right track. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of neurology at the University of California-Los Angeles who studies the genetic basis of autism, says he's most intrigued by the indication that genes that at first glance appear to have nothing in common might actually be linked by the fact that they are vital to brain development and are turned on and off by the brain's response to experience. It makes sense, since symptoms of autism emerge in early childhood, when the brain is feverishly forming new connections. If the genes are turned off, maybe those connections don't form. It's also when children are learning speech and social interaction, two key abilities often impaired by autism. This may explain why using behavioral therapies as early as possible, in which children practice social interaction and communication, are the best treatment so far for autism. On the treatment front, chelation therapy is also in the news, with the announcement that the National Institutes of Mental Health is moving closer to studying the effectiveness of this controversial treatment for autism. Chelation is designed to treat poisoning by heavy metals, such as lead. Since one theory is that autism can be caused by exposure to mercury, a toxic metal that was used until 2003 as a preservative in early childhood vaccines, it makes sense to think chelation might help. But there is no validated research on its value as an autism treatment. Most doctors say it is ineffective and could be dangerous. On the other hand, some parents of children with autism think chelation has been hugely helpful in reducing symptoms. About 2 percent of children with autism participating in the Interactive Autism Network at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore have had chelation therapy, according to the Associated Press. Since there is no evidence-based medical treatment for autism right now, parents are really on their own in trying to figure out what works best. It's not a pleasant place to be. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that Tom Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, supports testing the effectiveness of chelation therapy on children to see if it can be proved safe and effective. The autism blogosphere lit up, and advocates of chelation therapy were elated. But as with all things concerning autism, alas, the story's not at all simple. …" 72. "STEM CELLS: THE FINAL PIECE OF THE AUTISM PUZZLE?" dated 11 July 2008 by Kent Heckenlively, Esq. from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/stem-cells-the.html#more. "It’s a discussion I’ve often had with my wife Linda over the years. As I share with her the latest findings about how to rid our daughter’s body of heavy metals, and bacterial and viral infections my wife asks the inevitable question that her years of training as a speech therapist compels her to ask: How much damage has been done between the time of injury and the time we addressed these problems? Because she works as a speech therapist in the rehabilitation unit of a major hospital she has seen the damage done to the brain by car accidents, strokes, and cancer. She has seen startling recoveries, understands the value of hope, but also knows that many times the dream of complete recovery goes unfulfilled. It has been with great interest that I’ve been investigating the idea of stem cells as a treatment for autism. In 2007 an article entitled “Stem Cell Therapy for Autism” was published in the Journal of Translational Medicine and I’ve learned that the authors of that paper have treated many children using this approach with in some instances, amazing results. The idea behind how stem cells work is relatively easy to grasp. Simply put, stem cells home in on low oxygen environments, and once in place, start fixing the damage. Whether this is through the release of nerve growth factors or the stem cells merging with the damaged cells and “fixing” them is unclear at this point. One of the most consistently replicated findings in autism is that of low blood flow to those areas of the brain responsible for speech and social interaction. An interesting explanation for this finding is recent research from Ohio State indicating that mercury causes the release of phospholipase-D which constricts blood flow and with it, oxygen. (“Mercury Activates Vascular Endothelial Cell Phospholipase D through Thiols and Oxidative Stress” – International Journal of Toxicology, 2007 Jan.-Feb.) It stands to reason that those areas of the brain in which mercury deposited itself would subsequently find themselves starved of blood and the accompanying oxygen. One can imagine that those areas of the brain which are developing the network necessary for speech and social interaction must be ravenous consumers of oxygen. Cutting off that supply would conceivably lead to a near atrophy of those areas. Could the lack of oxygen at a critical period of development cause autism? The use of CD-34 stem cells has been shown to promote the growth of new blood vessels in damaged areas such as end-stage heart disease and poor blood flow into arms and legs. CD-34 stem cells have been used in various procedures since 1988 and have compiled an excellent safety record. The authors of the original paper on stem cells and autism also believed that the gut problems of these children could be addressed using stem cells. Their theory is that the gastro-intestinal problems experienced are the result of immune disregulation. Mesenchymal stem cells, taken from bone marrow, assist in modulating the immune response. One of the first children to be treated with this combination of CD-34 stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells was Matthew Faiella. I spoke recently with his father Daniel. Readers can go to his web-site www.recoveringmatthew.blogspot.com for more information about his son. …" 73. "AUTISM MOM SHARES HER CHELATION PROGRESS" dated 12 July 2008 by Lisa Brown from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/an-autism-mom-s.html#more. "My son Benjamin Brown is an almost 6 year old boy diagnosed with severe Autism at 20 months of age. I wanted to share a little of his recovery story. The healing process has been long, the behaviors almost impossible to deal with at times, the educational needs immense. For a long time he did the two steps forward, one step back dance all the time. Change is in the wind now, after almost a full year on oral DMPS changes are happening constantly. I wanted to share some good news because Ben has made a huge leap forward this year with his overall development and language skills. The real reason I am posting today is because he is finally toilet trained. His recovery in the past had been slow, progress sometimes seems like it arrived at snails pace however when something as wonderful like using the toilet happens just needed to share it. Toilet training has been an ongoing total failure and I was really just beginning to accept he might never be trained when suddenly about one month ago he decided on his own he was going to do pee in the potty. BM's came a few days later and took some convincing and many hours of me sitting on the floor in the bathroom for 3 days in a row - eventually he pooped in the toilet once and then he seemed to get it and only had a couple of accidents. Its now been almost 3 weeks of constantly using the toilet on his own without any reminders and I am so happy I tear up thinking about how great it is for him. I really did not think potty training would happen without some sort of professional intervention. I have not been working for some time and money is very tight these days but I shop at the cheap super market, hit yard sales and second hand stores and somehow find the money to keep going and am so glad I have. His program is pretty basic because he refuses to take many of the supplements and isn't fooled too often when I mix them in food or drinks. I have kept constant with the chelation medication, mineral supplements, yeast treatment and dietary aids. When I started chelation he was just about three years old and he started with a few months of EDTA suppositories (EDTA totally jump started his language) then over a year of TD-DMPS on which he was showing progress but it was slow. Last year our DAN changed him to oral DMPS. Within 3 months everyone was seeing major changes in behavior, lower outbursts, less aggressiveness, better concentration, much more language, reading skills, and personal control (he can control himself now most of the time). A year after starting oral DMPS the overall changes are outstanding. He is not recovered yet, I don't know if he will ever be completely recovered. In taking him from Severe Autism where we were pretty much locked in the house to a point where he can now communicate and actually function in the world and he gets invited to play dates with other kids and goes out in public and sits in a restaurant -- all the work and sacrifice has been worth it. The changes brought on by chelation are so profound that I have people that I barely know from my sons school and family members asking what I have been doing for Ben and they really want to know which shocks me b/c I am too used to the eye rolling when I start talking about Vaccines, Biomed and DAN. …" 74. "RECOVERY STORY: PETE" dated 12 July 2008 from Generation Rescue on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/recovery-stor-1.html#more. "My name is Hope, mother of Pete. My son's half sister is a nonverbal child affected by autism. Pete was a normal full term baby born in August of 2000. I was concerned about vaccines because Pete’s half sister is a nonverbal child affected by autism. I only allowed single shots even though my doctor was adamantly against this practice. I ended up spreading the vaccines out because he seemed to develop "allergies/sinus" problems for several weeks after most shots. Pete has a continuous runny nose from the time he was about eight months old until food was removed from his diet at about 2.9 months old. The damage was final after the HIB vaccine on March 28, 2003. Pete lost words he had since he was eight months old. He threw fits where he would bang his head and pass out. I sought medical advice because I thought Pete may be having seizures. My once easy going child could no longer go anywhere and neither could I. Pete also suffered from constant constipation. He no longer slept through the night. When he did sleep he was very active and would often flip out of the bed. After making some phone calls, I learned that it would take six months to get an appointment with a neurologist and longer for a speech language pathologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Since I am a teacher at an elementary school, I sought the advice of our speech language pathologist. She recommended Babies Can't Wait. The team came out to my house to evaluate Pete in his natural environment. I knew when they were evaluating Pete he was also affected and it would later be confirmed Autism. One of the evaluators was also a speech therapist and I opted to have her as Pete's therapist. She gave me book Unraveling the Mysteries of Autism and said had not really known anyone that had attempted to recover their child. I read it in one night and began my fight to rescue Pete. I went to Augusta, GA to have the SPECT test completed to rule out seizures. I had a regular allergist do allergy testing and nothing showed up. I found a DAN MD who was also a holistic MD. I learned quickly that he knew very little about recovery and hadn't actually recovered anyone. So, I proceeded on my own as Pete’s mother, researcher, and physician. I had Pete tested for heavy metals, yeast and an IGe work up. Results indicated that Pete had a large amount of yeast in his body. He showed negative for heavy metals. I found Atlanta to be a hostile place for recovery. I received a nasty letter from the traditional allergist and a scolding letter from a gastrointestinal doctor about the diet when I requested Celiac testing. I really took Pete's information and formed a recovery program based largely on school therapy. My child responded well to both diet and therapies and is now typical. His original ATEC score was 144 and was down to 45 after the first eight months. I did not find a really good doctor until he was “recovered”. The political climate for recovery in Atlanta was often unbearable. When the foods were removed I saw a big change. Gluten was my last food removed and he appeared to be having drug withdrawals or a seizure of some sort. This has been more like fighting a war than a journey up until the last year or so. The happy ending for me is reintroducing some foods and helping other families in need." 75. "AN OPEN LETTER TO AUTISM SPEAKS FROM SPEAKER O'BRIEN" dated 12 July 2008 from Speaker Dennis M. O'Brien to Mr. Robert C. Wright on the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/an-open-letter.html#more. "Dear Bob: We have a collective mission to create a world in which persons with autism have every opportunity to participate fully in society, to live meaningful and independent lives, to receive the respect they deserve and to have the supports necessary for them to reach the innate potential we know them to have. It's never been an easy mission, and it doesn't often permit us the luxury of a pause in the action to reflect on success. I think last week's signing ceremony for Pennsylvania's Act 62 of 2008 compels us to pause, ever so briefly, to consider the statute and some of its history. First, Act 62 is good, solid legislation that meets several critical goals for our community. We can all agree with that conclusion and, in many respects, it is the only conclusion that matters. Second, people rarely accomplish important things without struggle, and Act 62 is no exception. When we first announced introduction of HB 1150 in our Capitol's rotunda 15 months ago, we understood that its passage was never assured and that the path would be replete with hurdles. It surely was. But we jumped the hurdles (and, when I refer to "we," I mean the broad coalition that included Pennsylvania families and advocacy groups, Pennsylvania's Public Welfare Secretary Estelle B. Richman, her staff, my staff, our allies in the Pennsylvania General Assembly and national advocacy groups like Autism Speaks). Finally, and most painfully, "we" had some disagreements in the final days of this battle. It would serve no purpose to enumerate or detail those divergent positions here. However, while I had hoped that Governor Rendell's signature on Act 62 would end not only the legislative fight but also the internecine friction, that seems not to be the case. In recent days, I have seen what appears to be an escalating war of words between and among members of Pennsylvania's advocacy community and the staff and volunteers of Autism Speaks. Most recently, Autism Speaks posted on its web site a revisionist account of the history of Act 62 with a comparison of versions of the bill that implicitly suggests that the amendments on which I insisted were immaterial. The posting is offensive, and I could readily point to its inaccuracies and misinterpretations. However, that is not the purpose of this letter. Bob, our collective mission is in no sense complete. We have many more goals to meet, and our efforts will be far more effective if we work together. Our time, resources and energy are not infinite. At every step, we must ask if our efforts are helping children and adults with autism, and we must reject every distraction to that mission. We must not waste time and energy on unproductive and wholly retrospective debates. Therefore, with this letter, I am asking that you instruct the staff of Autism Speaks to refrain from further public discussion about the disagreements of the last several weeks and to remove from the Autism Speaks web site the materials I addressed above. And, by copy of this letter, I am asking that the Pennsylvania autism community similarly refrain from additional public recrimination. It is time for us again to direct all of our passion, energy and love for persons with autism to our shared goals for their well-being. To do otherwise would be to let them down. …" 76. "After PSL autistic boy's case, Attorney General weighing more complaints from parents" dated 12 July 2008 by Colleen Wixon from the TC Palm at http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/jul/12/30gtattorney-general-weighs-more-autism-cases. "Stemming from its investigation into a Port St. Lucie autistic boy voted out of kindergarten, the state Office of the Attorney General is looking at how children with autism are treated in Florida schools. "We want to understand this issue on a more global scale," said Sandi Copes, press secretary for the Office of the Attorney General in Tallahassee. "To see if there is an underlying problem." Since the office's initial investigation into the case of 5-year-old Alex Barton, several people with autistic children have come forward with their own complaints, Copes said. Parents are expressing frustration their complaints haven't been heard, so the Attorney General's office wants to talk with them to see if there's any way to help, she said. Those discussions could take place in the coming weeks, she said. The investigation began after Alex told his mother, Melissa Barton, he was voted out of his kindergarten class by his fellow students. Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo told police she wanted Alex to hear from his peers how his behavior affected others. She then took a poll as to whether Alex should be allowed to return to the classroom, according to reports. Alex lost the vote, 14 to 2. At the time, he was in the process of being tested for Asperger Syndrome, a type of high-functioning autism. He since has been diagnosed with the disorder, Barton said. The St. Lucie County School District continues to investigate the incident. When the Attorney General's office investigated Alex's situation, Barton mentioned other parents who had contacted her regarding the treatment of their autistic children, Copes said. Barton said she is glad parents finally have someone paying attention to them. "Finally, things are getting done," she said. "There is some justice in it." It's no longer just about Alex, she said. "There are other children out there that have been waiting (for help) a very long time," she said. "No one has been listening forever." The Attorney General's office is trying to compile a list of participants to meet and talk about their issues, Copes said. The investigation is statewide and not concentrating on one area in particular, she said. Meanwhile, Barton said parents are trying to mobilize. She said now is the time for parents with complaints to come forward. The Office of the Attorney General is interested in talking with parents of children with autism who have concerns about their child's treatment in schools. Parents with concerns can call the citizen services hotline at (866) 966-7226." 77. "Blagojevich rewrites bill for autism coverage" dated 13 July 2008 from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS at http://www.sj-r.com/breaking/x1743993924/Blagojevich-rewrites-bill-for-autism-coverage. "Governor Rod Blagojevich is rewriting a House bill so autism treatments are covered by insurance. Blagojevich and other proponents wants insurance companies to be required to cover up to $36,000 a year for diagnosis and treatment, including speech therapy and psychiatric services. The bill would require insurance companies to pay for doctor visits until a child is 21. The insurance industry has challenged similar mandates, claiming they lead to rising health insurance costs. Blagojevich announced his bill revisions Sunday in Chicago. The bill now goes to the House. Autism advocate Peter Dicianni says his family has spent about $80,000 on autism treatments for his daughter. The governor's office says about 26,000 Illinois children have autism. The bill is HB4255." 78. "Blagojevich alters bill so insurance companies would have to cover autism therapy- Measure must win lawmakers' approval" dated 13 July 2008 by Monique Garcia from the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-autism-14-jul14,0,6888459.story. "When Brianna Dicianni was diagnosed with autism two years ago, doctors said the girl would never learn to speak. Undeterred, her family sought therapy, only to run into another roadblock: Because their insurance company didn't cover treatment for autism, they would have to pay for the costly sessions out of pocket. Brianna's parents borrowed against their home, dipped into college savings for their three children and—$80,000 later—Brianna, now 5, can talk. On Sunday, Gov. Rod Blagojevich moved to help families like the Diciannis, using his amendatory veto power to alter legislation so insurance companies would be required to cover diagnosis and various therapies for autistic children. "The billion-dollar profits of insurance companies are being put before our children, and it's wrong, it's criminal," said Brianna's father, Peter Dicianni. The legislation would force insurance companies to cover up to $36,000 a year in occupational, physical, speech and behavioral therapies in addition to psychiatric and psychological services. Children would be covered until they turned 21. Proponents of the legislation said early treatment is vital to the development of children with autism. By undergoing therapy early in life, they are more likely to gain the communication and social skills needed to live independent lives. "This is literally about whether a child can grow up and live a good and happy life, or whether a child will grow up and be in his own isolated world, unable to communicate," Blagojevich said at a news conference announcing the legislation. For Peter Dicianni, the governor's action comes after more than a year of lobbying lawmakers and insurance companies to cover autism treatments. But hurdles still remain. Lawmakers in both chambers must approve the governor's changes." 79. "Along autism spectrum, personalities contrast" dated 13 July 2008 by Nanette Asimov from the San Francisco Chronicle at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/12/BAJC11J9AU.DTL. "It happened without warning: a thud, then blood. Arnold, 14, was struggling to read aloud at his Oakland school for students with disabilities last winter when a classmate slipped behind him and cracked a green ceramic bowl on his head. Arnold rose slowly, blood streaming down the right side of his face. "Hurts," he stated. "Hurts." At the same time, at another school over in Kentfield, Davis Finch, 19, had just begun studying political science and meteorology at the College of Marin. "I like classes that are intellectually challenging," he said. The two teenagers are polar opposites, one bright and aiming for a career in the wide world, the other navigating a smaller world of cognitive dysfunction. Yet they are connected in a fundamental way: Both are diagnosed on the autism spectrum, where emotions are often elusive. "They don't know how other people think and feel - and they're not very motivated to try to figure it out," said Bryna Siegel, director of the Autism Clinic at UCSF. "They march to the beat of their own drummer." Siegel doesn't know Arnold or Finch. But she's written authoritative books about autism and spends much of her working life with families affected by the condition. Those with autism may have extensive cognitive problems, like Arnold, or milder learning disabilities that can be tackled with help, like Finch. But autism has less to do with intellectual intelligence than emotional intelligence. "At its core, the autism spectrum is a problem with perceiving feeling, understanding social relations," Siegel said. The word "autism" comes from the Greek word "autos," meaning "self." But although people with autism generally lack the ability to read unspoken cues, such as facial expressions or signs of emotion, the condition doesn't always prevent people from connecting with others in a meaningful way. Andrew Van Etten, 26, knows this well. Growing up in Lafayette and going through the public schools there, Van Etten encountered the usual lunchtime bullies and people who didn't understand him. But he found that joining clubs and participating in activities - from drama and school dances to creating Japanese animation called anime - allowed him to socialize and make friends, even though such skills didn't come naturally. Today, the theology major at St. Mary's College in Moraga practices swing dancing and comedy improv. "They are ways to show myself that I can be beyond this diagnosis," he said. "I can choose a life path that says I've defeated it. Or I'm better than it." 80. "State's schools lack cohesive plan for autism" dated 13 July 2008 by Nanette Asimov from the San Francisco Chronicle at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/12/BAFH103EEM.DTL&tsp=1. "Left to himself, 11-year-old Jonah Kasoff slips easily into what his family calls Jonahworld, an inner sanctum where he can flutter his fingers and utter "whoa! whoa! eh, eh" for as long as he likes. His family would rather that he study math. "Make no mistake - Jonah is clearly severely impacted by his autism," said his grandfather Marv Kasoff of San Francisco. "But it turns out that he is bright and can learn and make progress." Jonah is one of more than 46,000 California schoolchildren diagnosed with the enigmatic condition known as autism. That's more than triple the 14,000 enrolled at the beginning of the decade, making autism the fastest-rising disability in the state - and the most expensive and challenging for schools to address. But the education system has not kept up: State experts acknowledge that California schools lack a coherent education plan for these students, employ far too few qualified teachers, and have to divert regular-education funds to supplement special education budgets. Bluntly put, the problem is "a lack of coherent, universally accepted, effective educational practices" for teaching students with autism in the state's schools, the state Department of Education's Autism Advisory Committee declared last fall in a report. So many "intensive services" are needed, the panel said, that autism "threatens to overwhelm local educational systems." Lest anyone call that hyperbole, the panel added: "This statement is not an exaggeration." It means that thousands of California families are caught in a chasm between what they believe their disabled child needs and what the schools are willing and able to provide. "The dramatic growth in the number of children affected by autism spectrum disorders now constitutes a public health crisis," says another panel of experts, the California Legislative Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism, created in 2005 to figure out how public agencies could meet the escalating needs of families like the Kasoffs. New recognition of condition. In 2000, 2 out of every 1,000 California students was diagnosed with autism. Today, it's 7 out of 1,000. But experts say it's not a new disease taking hold, but a new recognition that kids may have deeper problems and need more services. "If you show me 100 kids with autism, 60 percent would not have been diagnosed that way 10 years ago," said Bryna Siegel, director of the Autism Clinic at UCSF. They would have been "mentally retarded" or "learning disabled," or listed as having a "speech and language" disability, she said. Records show those categories shrinking as autism grows. So educators refer to a "tidal wave of autism" presenting schools with a dilemma nearly as vexing as autism itself: That's the best way to teach children with autism? Where are the qualified teachers? And now that studies show it costs $36,000 annually to teach each student with autism (compared with $8,558 for regular education), how can districts keep pace as enrollment of children with autism rises by an average of 19 percent per year? …" 81. "Loopholes give schools a pass even when scores fall short" dated 13 July 2008 by Lauren Roth from The Virginian-Pilot at http://hamptonroads.com/2008/07/loopholes-give-schools-pass-even-when-scores-fall-short. "Thousands of our schoolchildren are being left behind. Only you wouldn't know it by looking at the test results that will be released next month. Last year, all but 31 of the 214 public schools in South Hampton Roads passed federally mandated standards, making what is called "adequate yearly progress." But in every school that passed AYP, as it's often called, at least one group of scores - such as those belonging to students who are Hispanic, disabled or learning English - was disregarded. A set of rules - some call them loopholes - enables schools to ignore test results for large groups of struggling students or to use bonus points to meet pass rates. Cheryl Poe of Virginia Beach, an advocate for children with disabilities, called it "crazy" and "backwards" that some children aren't being counted. "Anyone should be concerned when they're coming up with loopholes to cover up the fact that groups of children aren't performing the way they should perform. These are the kids who need it the most." If their disabled students had been counted, about 70 percent of South Hampton Roads schools actually would have failed last year in math, reading or both. According to the federal No Child Left Behind act, all groups must pass for a school to meet AYP. Failing schools bear the stigma for an entire year and can be forced to provide tutoring or to allow students to switch schools. The federal law was written to hold schools accountable for the success of all of their students, including minorities and other groups. That's why they are counted separately, said Michael J. Petrilli, who helped implement No Child Left Behind as a senior official in the U.S. Department of Education. "That doesn't necessarily mean they are writing them off," he said. "But important conversations are not happening." All students are still considered in their overall school score and division averages. The scores of special education students on Standards of Learning tests are not counted at the majority of schools in the region and the state, according to data provided by the state Department of Education. And when they are included, Virginia gives bonus points that boost the pass rate. A school also can pass if its scores are high enough if averaged over three years or if the school reduces its failure rate by at least 10 percent. "A lot of these, rightfully so, are viewed by the public as ways of getting out of strict accountability rules," said Pete Goldschmidt of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at UCLA. Virginia is far from alone. Every state uses some exceptions, he said. Most loopholes are not limited to special education. They can apply to any measured group, specifically black, white, Hispanic, low-income and disabled students, plus those learning English. In Virginia, a group can be as large as 49 students and still be excluded …" 82. "ANGER, SADNESS AND THE TRUTH" dated 13 July 2008 by Michele Iallonardi from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/anger-sadness-a.html#more. "I am going through something. I am going through something that has me completely off- I don't feel like myself at all. I am trying very hard to shake it. When my oldest son Jackson was first diagnosed, I took three days to feel sad and then I got to work. A year later, when his twin brothers were both diagnosed, I did not fall apart. I rolled up my sleeves and started moving. The next few years were very hard, but I remained both an optimist and an advocate. The boys have come very far. Luca is completely recovered. Bennett is on his way. Considering how severely affected Jackson was from the start, he is doing very well. My life does not resemble in any way what it was three years ago, when I was a mom with three very young boys who had autism. Things are remarkably better. But lately, I am feeling an incredible sadness about what happened to my children. It started back in November at the NAA conference in Atlanta. The conference was wonderful, and I enjoyed the trip, but one moment from that weekend is frozen in my mind. At the end of Jenny McCarthy's speech, she asked parents to hold up a photo of their child (or children) affected by autism. The room was completely silent, with hundreds of photos- hundreds of innocent faces- just like my boys. If I close my eyes, I could be sitting in that room right now. I came home, motivated to try new things with Jackson but also unable to get that picture out of my head. When I heard about the Green Our Vaccines Rally, I knew I had to go. I went to the Power of Truth Rally a few years ago and I thought the whole experience was very cathartic. I wanted to go, this time with my husband. I knew we had to be there. I tossed around the idea for weeks about whether or not to bring my boys. Originally, I thought I would bring Jackson. He is the real reason that I wanted to be there. I want to fight for him, I want to make change for him. I want him to know that he matters- that what happened to him is not okay. Jackson is truly vaccine injured, with a completely compromised immune system and chronic medical issues. He has had multiple surgeries, he's been hospitalized many times. He is almost 7 years old, yet he is the size of an average 4 year old. His body is so sensitive and so complicated that it breaks my heart. It is because of Jackson, that his brothers were spared the same medical complications. Because of what happened to him, I stopped vaccinating his brothers when they were three months old. Because of Jackson, their immune systems were saved, the damage that was done was able to be (mostly) repaired in the few years that followed. My boys owe their health and their progress and their recovery to their older brother. It was Jackson who saved them. In the end, I decided to bring Bennett and Luca. Life in our house typically revolves around Jackson's needs. I thought this trip might be a nice way to spend some time alone with the twins. I thought the experience would be good- something they could remember for the rest of their lives. I hoped that someday, they would be in school, learning about this day, and they could tell their teachers- "I was there!" …" 83. "Asperger syndrome: 'Bosses say I'm not a team player'" dated 14 July 2008 from The Telegraph (UK) at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/07/14/haspergers114.xml. "Danny Hancock has a brilliant mind but can't hold down a job. Sheryl Moore talks to him and his mother about changing workplace attitudes to Asperger syndrome. Surrounded by a pile of well-thumbed science journals and maths textbooks, Danny Hancock comes alive. The 22-year-old enthuses at length about the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and his French contemporary, Pierre de Fermat. "Fermat's Last Theorem," he muses. "Now that's an interesting one." For a moment he makes eye contact with me - perhaps believing he has found an intellectual sparring partner - and he's off. It's hard to get a word in edgeways as he talks excitedly about his hopes of becoming a mathematician. But ask Danny, who was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS) earlier this year, about getting a job and he becomes subdued: "Employers don't seem to want people with disabilities like mine. They say I'm not a team player and haven't got the right skills for the workplace." Help for children who suffer from autism, whose cause is thought to be a mixture of genetic and environmental factors, and AS has dramatically improved in recent years. Yet once those children grow up, that help often evaporates, according to the National Autistic Society (NAS), despite the fact that one in 100 adults and children in Britain is thought to have some form of autism. Without basic life skills such as knowing how to pay bills or follow office etiquette, the society says large numbers are trapped in their homes feeling hopeless and isolated. Asperger syndrome is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, which ranges from those who live relatively normal lives to those who may not be able to communicate at all. AS sufferers, however, tend to have above-average intelligence. Like all people with autism, they may still find it difficult to communicate with others and process information - for example they may be unable to make eye contact, read facial expressions correctly or understand jokes or sarcasm - but they do not usually have the learning disabilities, such as dyslexia and dyspraxia, which are associated with autism. It was Danny's increasingly alarming behaviour which finally prompted his mother Paula, 44, from Stockport, to seek help last year. "He was having more and more temper tantrums which often resulted in him throwing things," she says. "He was also locking himself in his room and refusing to engage in any form of conversation, but what was really worrying was the fact that he was storming out of the house and going missing." Paula, a single mother to Danny and his 18-year-old brother David, says Danny's problems started at an early age. "By three he could barely say any recognisable words and had almost made up his own language," she says. "As the years progressed, Danny's speech improved and he was regularly seen by a therapist. But he was never invited to birthday parties and didn't have any himself because he had no playmates to invite - it was heartbreaking." By the time he was 13, his school suggested that Danny was evaluated by a psychologist. Paula says the report revealed that Danny was on the 93rd centile for intelligence, but only on the eighth in terms of his social skills. "I was handed the report but didn't really know what it meant," she says. "I wasn't given much explanation apart from the fact that there are only seven per cent of people in the country more intelligent than Danny, and that he was an anti-social child." While most parents would be thrilled to be told their son was intelligent - Paula admits she was "very proud" - she says nobody explained that the low score for his social skills was cause for concern. "I wasn't offered any help or advice," she says. "Danny's school offered to help with exam training, but Danny was being bullied, and didn't want to be singled out." …" 84. "Boy's face 'rubbed in faeces'- A former childcare worked has been charged after she allegedly rubbed a dirty nappy in the face of a mute autistic boy." dated 14 July 2008 from Ninemsn.com (Australia) at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=596749. "The alleged incident happened nearly two years ago at a childcare centre near Ipswich in Queensland, but was only revealed to the child's mother several weeks ago, the Courier Mail reports. Police charged a 28-year-old woman with common assault on the weekend. It’s claimed Connor Hodge, who was four at the time, had a soiled nappy rubbed in his face after the woman became frustrated with him. The alleged incident came to light after a former centre employee spoke to Connor’s mum, Rochelle Hodge. Ms Hodge said the centre, now owned by ABC Learning, tried to cover up the alleged incident as Connor could not talk. "His disabilities mean he essentially cannot communicate verbally and it's clear (the childcare centre) thought there would be no way anyone would find out," Ms Hodge told the Courier Mail. ABC Learning would not comment on the incident as it was before the courts. The accused will appear in Ipswich Magistrates Court later this month." 85. "ANOTHER NATIONAL TRAGEDY: SELF PROTECTION AT THE CDC" dated 14 July 2008 by Tim Kasemodel from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/another-nationa.html#more. "On February 22, 2006, a bi-partisan letter was sent by Congressional leaders in the House and Senate to David Schwartz, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The letter from Senator Joseph Lieberman and others informed Mr. Schwartz of pending legislation that would order a new look at the connection between mercury containing vaccines and autism. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine released a report rejecting a connection between the ethyl mercury in thimerosal containing vaccines and autism. The letter to the NIEHS mentioned that for many others, the issue remains unresolved. The NIEHS has since responded with a report stating it disagrees with the IOM report. So why do so many legislators, parents, physicians and researchers disagree? Consider this comparison between two large government agencies: the Centers for Disease Control and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The CDC and NASA have much in common. Both are large multi layered bureaucratic agencies. They are strong symbols of national pride, and both are well funded by the U.S. taxpayer. The directors of each program are appointed, not elected. They also once shared the enviable position of the oversight of their own safety programs. Both have since been stripped of this self oversight. For a more detailed similarity, let us start with NASA. In the wee hours of darkness the morning of January 28, 1986, NASA officials lobbied hard for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. There had already been several delays of the launch and NASA was concerned public confidence and support for the program was waning. Another delay in the launch would damage public opinion. Other factors included economic considerations, political pressures, and scheduling backlogs. President Reagan also wanted to be able to mention the successful launch of the shuttle in his State of the Union Address that evening. For several hours, engineers at the firm that had designed the o-rings for the solid rocket boosters refused to sign off on the OK to launch, because tests of the boosters had never been performed below 40°F. They believed strongly that the o-rings would crack and fail at the 27°F temperature forecast for lift off, however, they could not prove that it was unsafe to launch at lower temperatures. Rather than being concerned about the proof of safety, NASA officials pressed the upper management of the engineering firm. The data presented to them showed no correlation between temperature and the blow-by gases which had eroded the O-rings in previous missions. According to testimony, the firm’s senior executive finally turned to the Engineering Vice President and said, "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat." The upper management of the engineering firm by-passed the engineers and decided to approve the boosters for launch despite the fact that the predicted launch temperature was outside of their operational specifications. We all know that NASA’s disregard for safety and the engineers’ decision to change hats ended in explosive disaster that day. When causes for this tragedy were looked at, NASA initially tried to hide the fact that the o-rings were a concern. After a lengthy investigation NASA finally came clean, putting the protection of their astronauts first, and protection of their pride last. They were able to take care of the problem and resume further shuttle missions. The CDC has a very similar story to tell. In 1999, the FDA finally added up the mercury burden from the ethyl mercury based preservative thimerosal in the childhood vaccine schedule. They were concerned enough to ask, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, that the CDC recommend the removal of thimerosal from vaccines as soon as possible. Parents were shocked to find that there was mercury in children’s vaccines, with totals averaging 250 micrograms by age two. Soon parents, physicians and researchers began to raise the reasonable concern that the mercury in vaccines may have been responsible for the meteoric rise in the rate of autism and other neurological disorders. The CDC has continued to deny any possible link and declared that there is no proof. The fact is, just as with the o-rings on the space shuttle, proper safety testing was never done on the ethyl mercury in thimerosal. There have been over a thousand studies and reports in the last seventy years indicating the problems with thimerosal, though none were done to determine a safe dose level if injected. …" 86. "Congressional Oversight Committee Presses for Vaccine Research" dated 14 July 2008 by Kelli Ann Davis from the Age of Autism blog at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/07/congressional-o.html#more. "Today, the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Science and Technology Committee sent a letter (click HERE to see the letter) to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt asking for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) to “promote a balanced research portfolio when examining the underlying causes for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). An examination of the FY07 ASD Research Portfolio shows a strong preference to fund genetic-based studies related to autism. There is growing evidence that suggests a wide range of conditions or environmental exposures may play a role in the emergence of ASD.” The letter comes one day before a pivotal meeting of the IACC set to review an early draft of a portion of the Strategic Plan (SP) for autism research. The SP was required as part of the unprecedented Combating Autism Act (CAA) of 2006 in which Congress called for a research agenda that specifically addressed cause (including environmental cause), treatment, and prevention of autism. The CAA listed 13 scientific fields but the only specific research topic mentioned in the legislative history was vaccines and their preservations as a possible cause of autism. The Subcommittee further states in their letter,“Throughout the 1990’s there was a dramatic increase in the number of children diagnosed with ASD. It is unlikely that this increase is entirely attributable to the more accurate and vigilant diagnosis of the disorder.” Along with the recommendations for further research into environmental factors, the letter asks Secretary Leavitt to appoint an Autism Advisory Board (AAB) which “should include voices that can articulate the full range of views and concerns in the ASD-community” and specifically names Generation Rescue, SafeMinds and Autism Research Institute (ARI) as 3 of the 6 “research-oriented organizations” to include on the Board. The Subcommittee has been conducting investigations into several agencies including NASA, DOE and more recently held hearings on CDC’s testing of formaldehyde levels in Hurricane Katrina/Rita FEMA trailers. (Click HERE.) This letter is the result of a year-long, collaborative effort between Generation Rescue, SafeMinds and the Investigation and Oversight Subcommittee. The letter will be presented at tomorrow’s IACC meeting in Bethesda, MD." 87. "Pennsylvania Governor Signs Autism Insurance Coverage Bill" dated 14 July 2008 in a press release from the Pennsylvania Governor's Office at http://www.emaxhealth.com/132/23189.html. "Pennsylvania health insurance providers are now required to provide autism health insurance coverage. The new bill protects children with autism and requires coverage of expenses. Governor of Pennsylvania Edward G. Rendell today signed House Bill 1150 into law, groundbreaking legislation that will provide unprecedented new protections for children and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. By requiring private health insurers to cover medically necessary treatments for individuals with autism up to age 21, the new law will improve access to essential services and treatments by building a stronger provider network for thousands of children and their families. Insurers will be responsible for the cost of treatment up to $36,000 per year. Advocates praise Pennsylvania’s new law as being among the nation’s best. “This is a major victory for Pennsylvania families whose lives are affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder. The number of children diagnosed with autism continues to rise, along with the cost of those services,” said Governor Rendell. “By requiring private health insurers to shoulder their fair share of the cost of treatment, we’re taking steps to address the gap in the private insurance market and reduce reliance on government programs as the primary source of services and funding.” Currently, many private insurance programs restrict coverage for certain services for individuals with autism. In Pennsylvania, the Department of Public Welfare provides health care coverage for children with disabilities through the Medical Assistance program without regard to family income and covers costs that private insurance does not pay. “Five years ago, Public Welfare Secretary Estelle Richman convened the Autism Task Force, bringing families and practitioners together to begin the critical work of ensuring the very unique needs of children and their families living with autism were being met,” Governor Rendell said. “Mandating coverage for families was one of their key recommendations and we’re pleased today to have new laws in place that will bring relief to so many Pennsylvania families.” Under the new law, treatments and services for autism, including psychiatric care, psychological care, rehabilitative care including applied behavioral analysis, therapeutic care and pharmacy care will be covered, as well as those services proven to prevent regression. For more information on services available for children living with autism, visit www.dpw.state.pa.us." 88. "Lawyers: Severely punish NY woman who abused kids" dated 14 July 2008 by LARRY NEUMEISTER from The Associated Press at http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--abuse-adoptedchil0714jul14,0,7259700.story. "Despite a plea deal, a woman who adopted and abused 11 disabled children while pocketing more than $1 million in subsidies should face up to 40 years in prison for inflicting "personal nightmares" on them, lawyers for the children told a judge Monday. Lawyers for nine children outlined the abuses in a submission to U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman, who is scheduled to sentence 63-year-old Judith Leekin on Tuesday. The judge said last week he might go above the 6{ to eight years in prison Leekin and prosecutors agreed to when she pleaded guilty in May to federal mail and wire fraud charges. The plea deal also called for Leekin to forfeit $1.68 million in subsidies collected since she began the adoptions in 1988. Leekin has admitted using false names to adopt the children and sending phony school report cards to qualify for government subsidies. She also admitted restraining the children with plastic ties, preventing them from getting out of bed and not sending them to school. The lawyers for nine of the children, many of whom are now adults, argued that the victims spent their lives "like property, warehoused in basements, garages, bathrooms and other uninhabitable locations." "All were abused constantly," the lawyers said. "All of them lived in fear. All were practically starved and were found in varying stages of malnourishment, some close to death." They said Leekin "spent at least 23 years perpetrating this fraud, and these victims have spent almost the same time in their own personal nightmares." The lawyers said the abuse began with a 5-year-old autistic boy, identified as S.B., who "essentially lived in a bucket where he would eat, sleep, urinate and defecate." They said S.B., now an adult, "spent a lifetime experiencing being hit on the head with an iron, being regularly beaten for any small transgression and tied up at night like a prisoner." The lawyers quoted S.B. as telling them: "Man, I've seen some things you would not believe. I've seen things no one should have to see." The lawyers said the siblings of a profoundly retarded and autistic girl recalled her pulling her decaying teeth out because she lacked dental care. They said another child was left to stare at the sun through a magnifying glass for so long that he lost his vision. Other children were handcuffed or tied to crib rails, were hit with iron rods and electrical cords or had their hands burned on a stove, the lawyers said. …" 89. "Autistic children 'rights abused'- Children with autism in the Western Health Trust are having their human rights breached, a charity has claimed" dated 14 July 2008 from the BBC News (UK) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7506219.stm. "Children there have to wait up to four years to be assessed for the condition and a further five years before receiving treatment. Northern Ireland Autism said these were the longest waiting times in NI. It said children were entitled to speedy treatment, no matter where they lived. Louise Timoney from Castlederg said she had been waiting three years to have her seven-year-old son, Oran, assessed. "It's ridiculous, early intervention is the key when treating autism," she said." 90. "N.D family faces challenge of autism" dated 14 July 2008 by Linda Sailer from The Dickinson Press and The Jamestown Sun at http://www.jamestownsun.com/articles/index.cfm?id=69251§ion=news&freebie_check&CFID=56749332&CFTOKEN=34327726&jsessionid=88307d31bb916082d777. "Nick and Kari Gates have the same hopes and dreams for their sons, Noah, 5, and Benjamin, 3, as every parent. But the Gates’ hopes and dreams are tempered with the reality of autism. The challenge facing Noah is defined as a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, usually starting before a child is 3. “The thing about autism is you can have a normally developing child up to 3 years of age. You have dreams of him playing football, baseball, becoming a scientist, whatever. All of a sudden, some of these kids completely stop talking, they don’t make contact with mom and dad, they sit in the corner and don’t want to play anymore,” Nick said. “Now you have a son who isn’t going to talk because he’s autistic. How do you teach him to do these things?” he said. “I believe the hardest thing is to find these kids and make a diagnosis.” Studies show autism impacts many parts of the brain, but the way it occurs is poorly understood. “I actually worked in group homes in Minnesota. I was quite familiar with autism before I dealt with it with my son. Even when he was showing signs and symptoms, I completely overlooked it,” Nick Gates said. “Looking back, I probably was seeing signs at about 18 months. He was almost 3 when he was diagnosed.” He describes Noah as a very smart little boy. By the time he was 2, he could count in English and Spanish. “He knew his ABC’s, all the colors, animals, shapes, sounds, everything. If he saw it, he remembered it,” Nick said. Noah is very organized. He likes to line up the Match Box cars by color, and certain toys must be in certain places, his father said. “If everything wasn’t exactly the same way as he’d had it last time, he’d get upset,” Nick said. “If we are going to the store, he will say, ‘Not time to go to the store.’ If you put it on the schedule at 7:30 that we’re going to the store, he will check the schedule and run out the door. He needs that structure in his life,” Nick said. Noah also has difficulty filtering street noises. “We filter out the cars and horns, but Noah can’t do that. He can’t shut things off. He can be watching cartoons while you are in the other end of the house. You sneeze and he’ll yell, ‘Bless you!”’ his father said. Noah sucks his thumb when he’s stressed. “It’s a calming thing,” he said. “He wants to be a normal boy, but doesn’t know how to express himself,” Nick said. Noah also has a texture-taste sensory disorder. When he was little, he’d eat anything put in front of him. All of sudden, he started phasing out foods. “He eats only peanut butter and jelly for lunch. He likes applesauce. He doesn’t like meat, no vegetables,” Nick said. “He does grilled cheese sandwiches, pancakes, French toast. Once in a while we eat eggs. But he’s a healthy boy, we’ve checked him out.” …" 91. "Newly-Approved Pentacel Vaccine Uses_Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5" dated 14 July 2008 by Erin Maguire from The Philadelphia Bulletin at http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19849224&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8. "On June 26, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended adding the Pentacel vaccine to the immunization schedule for children. Pentacel is a combination vaccine of Diptheria, Petrussis, Tetanus (DTap), HiB and Polio. It is the first DTaP-based combination vaccine that also includes polio and HiB vaccine components. While similar five-in-one vaccines like Pediarix and Pediacel are also available, controversy has arisen over the use of the Pentacel vaccine, because the polio portion of this vaccine is grown on the MRC-5 cell line - derived from human fetuses. England's J.P Jacobs for the Medical Resource Council created this cell line in 1966. It was derived from the fifth subject of the study: the normal lung tissue of a 14-week-old male fetus who was electively aborted by a 27-year-old woman. It parallels research conducted by Leonard Hayflick, Ph. D., who developed the WI-38 cell line in 1962 at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania Wistar Institute. That cell line came from the 38th research subject - lung tissue taken from an electively aborted fetus of almost three months gestation from Sweden. WI-38 is used to manufacture vaccines for Poliomyelitis, Rubella, Vermicelli, Mumps, Rabies, adenoviruses and Hepatitis A. Vaccines for shingles and the chicken pox also make use of aborted fetal cells. Although the vaccines themselves do not contain cells or tissues, they are grown on cells. For example, Hepatitis B is grown on fungal yeast cells. And the polio vaccine, in addition to being grown on aborted-fetal cells, is grown on monkey kidney cells. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at The Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, said the use of monkey kidney cells in the past to grow the polio vaccine risked exposure to the Simian vacuolating virus 40 (SV40). This virus has the potential to cause tumors and is found in both monkeys and humans. SV40 virus concerns surfaced with the live, oral polio vaccine, which no longer is used in the United States. GlaxoSmithKline makes Pediarix, one alternative to Pentacel, in which the poliovirus is grown on monkey kidney cells. In this case, the three strains of the inactivated poliovirus component of Pediarix are individually grown in VERO cells, a continuous line of monkey kidney cells. Since the poliovirus is inactivated and the vaccine is ministered via shot, the risk of SV40 is eliminated. Pediarix includes the same ingredients that Pentacel has except HiB. Pediarix protects against Hepatitis B, a virus that Pentacel leaves recipients vulnerable to. Consequently, Pentacel recipients need separate shots for Hepatitis B, and Pediarix receivers need separate shots of HiB. Pediarix is a three-dose series with one shot at each of the two, four and six-month immunization visits. Pentacel is a four-dose series to be given at two, four, six and at 15-18 months of age. Donna Cary, spokesperson for Sanofi Pasteur, said Pentacel's advantage is it "provides an optimal fit for the current immunization schedule" and "offers the greatest shot reduction of any combination vaccine on the market." "With Pediarix, an extra shot of Hepatitis B is needed for those infants who have received the birth-dose and, unlike Pentacel, there is no reduction in the number of shots administered in the second year of life because Pediarix is only licensed for a three-dose series at two, four and six months of age," she said. …" 92. "UA adds program for autistic students- Chapel Haven aims to help adults gain independence" dated 14 July 2008 by Renée Schafer Horton from The Arizona Republic at http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2008/07/14/20080714autism0714.html. "Like most young adults her age, 19-year-old Sara Goralnik wants one thing: a life outside the watchful eyes of her parents. "I just want my independence," said Goralnik, a Phoenix native. "My mom and dad have always hovered over me." They've had reason, according to Goralnik's mom, Cynthia: Sara is one of an estimated 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with an autism-spectrum disorder, and the first time she tried to navigate college life, "the independence was overwhelming to her." Thanks to a groundbreaking new residential program in Tucson, however, students such as Goralnik will have better chance of success. Chapel Haven West, a two-year residential program for young adults with autism-spectrum disorders, launched June 30 in partnership with the University of Arizona. The 16 students in the program will be integrated on the campus in a number of ways, but the biggest connection is with the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. Betty McDonald, a speech pathologist and an associate professor at UA, will supervise UA graduate students as they work with Chapel Haven students on social-communication skills. In return, the graduate students will gain data on Chapel Haven's approach for their research. "What's nice about this program is it's affiliated with the university because it will be serving some students who have the potential to come here," said Sue Kroeger, UA's Disability Resource Center director. "But even for those who can't attend the university, they are still getting a higher-education experience by being on campus for their classes. The standard has been a rehabilitation or medical model, but Chapel Haven is about education, integration and inclusiveness." Chapel Haven West is a branch of Connecticut-based Chapel Haven Inc., the country's only combined state-accredited special-education and independent-living facility for adults with cognitive disabilities. Autism is a brain disorder affecting a person's ability to communicate, reason and interact with others. People with autism are socially awkward and miss obvious social cues. For instance, if Mary is talking to John and John looks frequently at his watch, Mary will get the hint that John is either bored or wanting to exit the conversation. People who have autism or Asperger's syndrome, sometimes called high-functioning autism, would either not notice John's behavior or dismiss it and keep talking long after it is appropriate. Because of that, they frequently have difficulty with jobs, friendships and - as was the case with Goralnik, who attended UA last fall - higher education. The Chapel Haven West program centers on helping students develop "social-communicative competence" so they don't miss those cues, said Karin Byrer, director of Chapel Haven. "Social thinking is what people on the autism spectrum don't do," Byrer said. "It is . . . the things we take for granted in communication." Not all Chapel Haven students will take classes at UA during the first year of the program. That will depend on their skill set and their individual goals, but all will take Chapel Haven classes on the UA campus, as well as use the university's facilities. …" 93. "Teen with form of autism found 20 miles from home" dated 14 July 2008 from The Associated Press at http://www.startribune.com/local/25084369.html?location_refer=Local%20+%20Metro. "A Fond du Lac County teenager with a form of autism has been found, after he apparently wandered about 20 miles from home. Deputies say 13-year-old Anthony Kiraly left his home in the Town of Empire about 10 a.m. Saturday. The sheriff's department conducted a full-scale search by ground and helicopter. Authorities say he apparently walked about 20 miles to the outskirts of Plymouth, in Sheboygan County. An elderly couple picked him up, and he used their phone to call an aunt. The aunt took him to his grandparents' house in the rural Plymouth area about 6:30 p.m. Kiraly is described as having Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. The Town of Empire is just outside the city of Fond du Lac." 94. "Possible Autism-Related Breakthrough" dated 14 July 2008 by Alex Garrel from eFluxMedia at http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Possible_Autism_Related_Breakthrough_20329.html. "The results of a recently completed study say that certain autism cases are caused by gene defects which can be activated or deactivated by mental activity; this may very well be a starting point in finding a way to treat the terrible condition. The conclusions have been reached following the gene scan analysis of about one hundred families in the Middle East, in which the condition presents an unusually high level of occurance. The study, presented on Friday in the journal Science, comes to support the previously found data, according to which, autism may be the result of certain brain cell networks’ evolution during the first years after birth. Out of the six genes identified by the new report, three are controlled by neuronal activity, implicitly, by what the person feels, does, thinks and so on; this fact indicates the possibility of changing the evolution of the disease by modifying the experiences of autistic children. Christopher A. Walsh, head of the research team and neurologist and chief of genetics at the Children's Hospital in Boston, said the genes identified by the study interact with the environment and play a certain role in the way the brain processes what it receives from it. He went on to say that once it becomes possible to activate these particular genes by the use of other mechanisms, there is a good chance of helping the children. According to a study of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted last year, 1 out of every 150 children in the US has an "autism spectrum disorder." Baring this in mind, it becomes even clearer just how important such studies are." 95. "Autism study panned by critics- Plan to use chelating agents on children comes under fire" dated 14 July 2008 by Meredith Wadman from Nature News at http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080714/full/454259a.html. "The leading US government funder of autism research is drawing fire over its proposal to run a randomized clinical trial of a treatment widely viewed by experts to be useless and potentially harmful, but that is broadly used for autism. Chelation therapy, in which agents such as dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) are used to bind metal ions in the blood so that they can be excreted easily, is an approved treatment for heavy-metal poisoning. Parents are using such therapy on children with autism because of their belief — which has been scientifically discredited — that mercury from vaccinations caused their children’s condition. In May, investigators at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to use DMSA in a trial of children with autism who are aged four to ten years and have detectable, but not toxic, levels of mercury or lead in their blood. The trial, ‘Mercury Chelation to Treat Autism’, is now under ethics review and has not enrolled any patients. Critics say the trial will put children at risk for what is certain to be no medical gain. The American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that there is no justification for giving children DMSA in the absence of very high levels of heavy-metal exposure, notes epidemiologist Ellen Silbergeld of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. “I don’t know why we have to do this experiment again on children.” Louis Cooper, a vaccine expert and former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, says that despite a growing scientific consensus that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism, many parents still think that it is a problem. He says that a well-designed study of chelation in children with autism would “respond to these parents’ deeply held beliefs in the most careful, ethical way”. Cooper explains that, with informed consent, such a study could ensure that the only families to be enrolled would be those already determined to try chelation. Others argue that the study doesn’t make scientific sense because autism has not been documented as a symptom of high-dose mercury poisoning and that, even if it were, the damage that mercury does to cells is permanent and not reversible; chelation simply prevents additional harm. They say that the NIMH is bowing to political pressure because a growing number of parents with children who have autism use chelation therapy or want to use it. NIMH director Tom Insel denies pandering to families and says that the idea for the study “came up in the first place because we were getting reports that this was a therapy in broad use and there were very substantial questions about both its efficacy and its safety”. Because chelators bind indiscriminately to metal ions, they can deplete the body of essential metals such as copper, zinc, selenium and calcium. In Portersville, Pennsylvania, in 2005, a 5-year-old boy with autism died from cardiac arrest after being injected with a chelation agent. (The proposed study uses an oral agent.) Recruitment for the study, initially proposed in 2006 by Susan Swedo, who heads autism research at the NIMH, was put on hold and additional review undertaken after a report in February 2007 showed that chelating agents could cause cognitive problems in rats (D. Stangle et al. Environ. Health Perspect. 115, 201–209; 2007). Last week Insel said that because the study involves children, carries more than minimal risk and offers no demonstrable benefit to the participants, regulations dictate that it must be referred to a US Department of Health and Human Services panel for ethics approval. Insel says that the study’s in-limbo status shouldn’t be read as its demise. “It hasn’t been killed by any means. There’s certainly a possibility that this project will go forward.” 96. "Further Evidence For Genetic Contribution To Autism" dated 15 July 2008 in a press release from California Institute of Technology at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080715165523.htm. "Some parents of children with autism evaluate facial expressions differently than the rest of us--and in a way that is strikingly similar to autistic patients themselves, according to new research by neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs of the California Institute of Technology and psychiatrist Joe Piven at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology, and his colleague Michael Spezio (now at Scripps College in Claremont, California) collaborated with Piven and autism experts at the University of North Carolina to study 42 parents of children with autism, a complex developmental disability that affects an individual's ability to interact socially and communicate with others. Based on psychological testing, 15 of the parents were classified as being socially aloof. "This manifests as a tendency not to prefer interactions with others, not to enjoy 'small talk' for the sake of the social experience, and to have few close friendships involving sharing and mutual support. This characteristic is really a variation of the normal range of social behavior and not associated with any functional impairment," says Piven, director of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities. The parents participated in an experiment that measured how they make use of the face to judge emotions. The subjects were shown images depicting facial expressions of emotion that were digitally filtered so that only certain regions of the face were discernible--the left eye, for example, or the mouth. The subjects were then asked to decide as quickly as possible if the emotion depicted was "happy" or "fear." The part of the face shown, and the size of the revealed area, randomly varied from trial to trial. An analysis of the subjects' correct responses revealed that "aloof" parents relied much more heavily on the mouth to recognize emotion than they did on the eyes, as compared to nonaloof parents and, to a greater extent, to a group of parents of children without autism. Prior studies by Adolphs and his colleagues have shown that humans normally evaluate emotions by looking at the eyes--but studies by Adolphs and Piven have shown that individuals with autism do not. "We found that some parents who have a child with autism process face information in a subtly, but clearly different way from other parents," says Adolphs. "This is evidence for the hypothesis that the parents with the autistic child have brains that function somewhat differently as well"--an idea that he and other researchers are currently investigating through brain imaging studies. One area of interest is the amygdala, a region located on either side of the brain in the medial temporal lobe that is known to process information about facial emotions and may have abnormal volume in both autistic individuals and their nonautistic siblings. The finding indicates that certain aspects of autism do run in families. Although such a genetic link was noted in the 1940s in the earliest descriptions of autism, "our study adds considerable specific detail to the story," Adolphs says. "Our data strongly suggest that genetic factors make a substantial contribution to autism, but that does not mean that the entire cause of autism is genetic. Together with many other studies, our study argues that genetic factors play a very important role in autism, while leaving open a role for other, environmental factors," he says. "We hope that this research contributes toward a cure for autism, even if only indirectly." "It may lead us to finding genes that are responsible for the face-processing component in autism," Piven adds. "A very important part of our paper," stresses Adolphs, "is that we are not claiming all people with autism, or their parents, are 'impaired.' Instead, our study shows that parents who have children with autism--like the autistic subjects themselves--are different, and do things differently." The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and by the Simons Foundation." 97. "Passive Learning Imprints On The Brain Just Like Active Learning" dated 15 July 2008 in a press release from Dartmouth College at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080714111425.htm. "It's conventional wisdom that practice makes perfect. But if practicing only consists of watching, rather than doing, does that advance proficiency? Yes, according to a study by Dartmouth researchers. They determined that people can acquire motor skills through the "seeing" as well as the "doing" form of learning. "It's been established in previous research that there are correlations in behavioral performance between active and passive learning, but in this study we were surprised by the remarkable similarity in brain activation when our research participants observed dance sequences that were actively or passively experienced," says Emily Cross, the principal investigator and PhD student at Dartmouth. Cross, who earned her degree in June, is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. Cross and her collaborators used a video game where players have to move in a particular sequence to match the position of arrows on the screen, similar to the popular Dance Dance Revolution game. The researchers measured the skill level of participants for sequences that were actively rehearsed daily, and a different set of sequences that were passively observed for an equivalent amount of time. Brain activity when watching both kinds of sequences (as well as a third set of sequences that were entirely unfamiliar) was captured using fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging. The study focused on the Action Observance Network (AON) in the brain, a group of neural regions found mostly in the inferior parietal and premotor cortices of the brain (near the top of the head) responsible for motor skills and some memory functions. "We collected fMRI data before and after five days of both visual and physical training," says Cross, "and there was common AON activity when watching the practiced and observed dance sequences." This research contributes to a growing body of study about how people learn and how best to help people with brain injuries. Cross explains that future studies might consider how such overlap between physical and observational learning at the brain level can improve upon rehabilitation therapies for individuals affected by physical or neurological injury." 98. "Autism — who pays?- Insurers argue they shouldn’t shoulder increased burden for care for autistic children" dated 15 July 2008 in a oped article from the Los Angeles Times at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-lew-tuesday15-2008jul15,0,7860971.htmlstory. "Last Thursday, we ran two letters responding to the Times' coverage of insurance companies' policies autistic kids; both called on insurers to pony up. After the page went to print, we received these letters, which provide another point of view. Business and insurers both argue that the buck, this time, shouldn't stop with them. Wrote Gary Toebben, CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce: This article highlights the need for both a public and legislative consensus on comprehensive health care reform. As the Times reported, the costs of helping children with autism and people with other chronic disabilities are overwhelming. There must be sufficient regulation to assure adequate coverage of legitimate medical needs while at the same time addressing developmental, educational, and employment needs through other mechanisms. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce is a strong advocate for comprehensive health care reform. Our members cite the rising cost of health insurance as a major challenge to providing coverage to their employees. In light of this challenge, it is not appropriate to place the entire financial burden for health care costs onto insurers. This unsustainable approach will reduce access to care and drive up health care costs for everyone. Clearly we need a comprehensive dialogue that includes parents, government, educators, the medical community and business. Otherwise, the answer to: "Who Pays for Autism?" or any other chronic illness will not be acceptable to anyone. Chris Ohman, President and CEO, of the California Association of Health Plans, also wrote that the responsibility should be shared: The Times' article on coverage for autism treatment raises an important public policy question. With rapidly increasing rates of autism, more and more families are frustrated by a disjointed system of care and support. Health plans take seriously our commitment to cover medical interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder, which fits within a system of care that includes education and regional centers. We must all effectively coordinate our responsibilities to children and families. However, private health insurance has not and should not bear the sole responsibility of financing and providing all of the needed and valuable services. Even the Legislative Blue Ribbon Commission noted in Ms. Girion's article noted a lack of clarity about roles and responsibilities for providing various services. We need to have a thoughtful public policy discussion among all the parties involved. …" 99. "Six Genes Identified Affecting Some Autism Cases" dated 15 July 2008 by Piyush Diwan from Top News (India) at http://www.topnews.in/six-genes-identified-affecting-some-autism-cases-252719. "A research has revealed that genes are linked with autism problem in many cases. Autism is a spectrum of disease, which shares three key traits. These traits are patient’s slow speed to develop language, poor social skills, and their stereotyped behaviors over and over again. Autism causes some specific defects that affect a child's ability to learn and remember. Autism was once a rare problem in US but every 150 children are suffered by it at present. It was disclosed in a report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study was conducted by Christopher Walsh, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and at Children's Hospital Boston. Scientists and physicians in the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Kuwait had also contributed in research work. The results of research wok were published on July 12, 2008 in the journal Science. The autism disorder can be caused by variations in a wide variety of genes. All individuals with autism may have different gene mutations. Due to this it is difficult to find the actual cause of genetic disorders in human beings. But researchers have a common opinion that the causes of autism are genetic in 15 to 20 per cent cases. And the remaining 80 per cent cases are still unexplained." 100. "Calm Down or Else- Unable to handle behavior disorders, many schools use forcible restraint. Is it abuse?" dated 15 July 2008 by Benedict Carey from The New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/health/15restraint.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. "The children return from school confused, scared and sometimes with bruises on their wrists, arms or face. Many won’t talk about what happened, or simply can’t, because they are unable to communicate easily, if at all. “What Tim eventually said,” said John Miller, a podiatrist in Allegany, N.Y., about his son, then 12, “was that he didn’t want to go to school because he thought the school was trying to kill him.” Dr. Miller learned that Tim, who has Asperger’s syndrome, was being unusually confrontational in class, and that more than once teachers had held him down on the floor to “calm him down,” according to logs teachers kept to track his behavior; on at least one occasion, adults held Tim prone for 20 minutes until he stopped struggling. The Millers are suing the district, in part for costs of therapy for their son as a result of the restraints. The district did not dispute the logs but denied that teachers behaved improperly. For more than a decade, parents of children with developmental and psychiatric problems have pushed to gain more access to mainstream schools and classrooms for their sons and daughters. One unfortunate result, some experts say, is schools’ increasing use of precisely the sort of practices families hoped to avoid by steering clear of institutionalized settings: takedowns, isolation rooms, restraining chairs with straps, and worse. No one keeps careful track of how often school staff members use such maneuvers. But last year the public system served 600,000 more special education students than it did a decade ago, many at least part time in regular classrooms. Many staff members are not adequately trained to handle severe behavior problems, researchers say. In April, a 9-year-old Montreal boy with autism died of suffocation when a special education teacher wrapped him in a weighted blanket to calm him, according to the coroner’s report. Two Michigan public school students with autism have died while being held on the ground in so-called prone restraint. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have recently tightened regulations governing the use of restraints and seclusion in schools. California, Iowa and New York are among states considering stronger prohibitions, and reports have appeared on blogs and in newspapers across the country, from The Orange County Register to The Wall Street Journal. “Behavior problems in school are way up, and there’s good reason to believe that the use of these procedures is up, too,” said Reece L. Peterson, a professor of special education at the University of Nebraska. “It’s an awful combination, because many parents expect restraints to be used — as long as it’s not their kid.” …" 101. "Runners chasing dreams ... for children- Raising awareness for autism spectrum disorder" dated 15 July 2008 by LUKE HENDRY from THE BELLEVILLE INTELLIGENCER (Canada) at http://www.intelligencer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1113937. "Jonathan Howard isn't chasing a dream: he's running so children can achieve theirs. The 24-year-old from Mississauga man began running March 25 in St. John's to raise funds and awareness for children with autism spectrum disorder. Since then, his Run the Dream campaign has covered more than 2,700 kilometres across five provinces. Howard said he has no direct link to ASD, but during high school and university worked with children who had the disorder. "Kids with autism have dreams too," Howard said. He said he also hopes to make Canadians more aware of ASD, which his campaign says affects one in 165 people in this country. "It's been on the rise," he said. "There's a lot of mystery around it. "We need to get a better understanding publicly." Howard is now running alongside two-time Paralympic wheelchair athlete Terry Robinson; they and their team were greeted Monday afternoon behind city hall by city councillor Pat Culhane, Mayor Neil Ellis, and Prince Edward-Hastings MP Daryl Kramp said. "All I can do is congratulate you," Kramp said. He added Howard will be recognized further when he reaches the point outside Thunder Bay at which Terry Fox was forced to give up his cross-country journey. Fox had begun in St. John's in April 1980 but by September cancer had forced him to stop. Once Howard surpasses that distance, Kramp said, his journey is likely to attract the attention of many more Canadians. "What you're doing deserves far more media ... attention than what it has received," Kramp said." 102. "Autism keeps parents, schools busy" dated 15 July 2008 by VICTOR GARCIA from the Visalia Times-Delta at http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080715/NEWS01/807150312/1002. "Josiah Banks taught himself to read at age 4. But Josiah, a sixth-grader at Tulare's Kohn School, struggles with math. Early in his school career he was constantly in trouble and lacked social skills, going without a best friend until recently, says his mother, Tia Banks. Josiah has Asperger Syndrome, a relatively mild form of autism. Twenty percent of autism cases are genetic, according to a Kaiser Permanente Hospital study. The majority of cases have no known cause, said Amanda Adams, director of the Central California Autism Center at California State University, Fresno. Autism, a brain-development disorder, can be mild or severe. "It's a very confusing disorder," Adams said. A few years ago, one in every 1,000 children was diagnosed with a form of autism. Today the rate has risen dramatically, to one in 150. Adams expects the trend to continue. Often, however, school districts don't give autistic children the specialized services they need, said Lynne Arnold. Arnold is coordinator of Talk About Curing Autism of Visalia. "I hate to hear stories of parents whose children aren't getting the education they are entitled to," Arnold said. "That's what we are trying to eliminate, because that's not right." School services. Josiah is getting what he needs and is doing well in school, his mother said. Recently he won an award for his performance on a standardized test. "His teachers really worked with him," Tia Banks said. It did take the district a while to recognize Josiah's needs, however, she said. School districts are required to provide services to children displaying signs of autism or a learning disability, starting at age 3. Districts do not diagnose the disorder but do have assessments that can determine a child's needs in school. Visalia Unified School District serves 90 autistic students. To do so, it's had to change its approach to special needs, said Katy Ray-Campus, district director of special education. "Every one of these kids are unique," she said. "We have an array of services, and the services are to meet specific children's needs, not to meet an autism need." One challenge: a shortage of speech therapists and occupational therapists in the Valley, Ray-Campus said. Last year the Tulare City School District included 30 students — preschool through eighth grade — identified as autistic. Autism has been a major issue for school districts for the last couple of years, said Steve Stafford, director of special education. "It's becoming more and more prevalent," Stafford said. Even so, he said, there's a lack of intensive training for teachers. "The mandate for service needs to come with the funding required to provide it," Stafford said. "We end up trying to bandage stuff together. It's not fair for anybody involved." …" 103. "Debate over autism home closure- The future of a residential home for autistic children which is earmarked for closure less than a year after it opened is to be discussed later" dated 15 July 2008 from BBC News (UK) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_east/7506238.stm. "The Denbighshire council-run Hyfrydle children's home has been affected by competition from other autism centres in the area, the local authority said. Only two places out of six available have been taken up at the home. But Janet Ryder AM said not enough time had been given to bring in the staff needed to make the centre a success. A union has criticised also the plans after 11 care workers were taken on at the home around a fortnight ago. The home, opened in November for pupils attending Ysgol Plas Brondyffryn in Denbigh, because a need for specialist care and education packages for autistic children was identified, the council said. But this changed with the arrival of two independent providers in the past year. Research carried out across Wales found there were unlikely to be enough autistic children and young people requiring full time residential places and as such the home was not financially viable, added the council. But Susan Fleet, whose 16 year old son, Elliot, is autistic and was due to attend the centre, said it was the last chance her son had for an education and appealed for a reprieve. On hearing the news the centre might close she said: "It was as if I heard somebody had died. I felt myself go cold and I started to shake and I thought it was a sick joke. "I couldn't believe that it could possibly be true, that I had found this place that obviously I thought was wonderful but it was brand new. This building, this facility, is the absolute jewel in the crown of an autism centre." Ms Ryder, Plaid Cymru's North Wales AM, who chairs the Welsh Assembly cross-party autism group, dismissed the claims that there was not enough demand in the area for the facility. "This facility only opened last year," she said. "The county council themselves said when this facility opened it would take a year or two to bring in the staff and to bring in the people there. "The numbers haven't risen partly because the county council themselves haven't put the staffing in there. They only two weeks ago employed new staff to work in this unit." She added that, along with Mrs Fleet's son, she knew of another two children who were due to start at the centre in September." 'Last resort'. Cllr Hugh Evans, leader of the council and cabinet lead member for lifelong learning, said: "This is a very difficult issue for all concerned and I can assure people that we have carefully considered all the options available to us. "The recommendation to close the facility is very much a last resort. "Over the next 12 weeks we will be locating alternative placements for the existing two residents and will be consulting with staff regarding redundancy. Every support possible will be offered to those involved." The parents of the young people at Hyfrydle, staff, unions and the governing body of Ysgol Plas Brondyffryn are being informed of the recommendation and reasons for it, said the council. On Friday, Unison described the council's recent decision to take on staff at the centre as "absolute nonsense". The National Autistic Society Cymru (NAS Cymru) also voiced concerns saying a range of provision should be made available." 104. "Special Education - Are Parents Allowed to Observe Child's Classroom?" by JoAnn Collins from EzineArticles.com at http://ezinearticles.com/?Special-Education---Are-Parents-Allowed-to-Observe-Childs-Classroom?&id=1155187. "Are you the parent of a child with a learning disability or autism who would like to observe their school classroom? Have you been told by special education personnel, that you cannot observe your child's classroom? This article will teach you about what is allowed under law, about school observations. By going to your child's classroom and observing, you can ask for any changes that you believe your child needs. This will help your child receive an appropriate education. School personnel may state that you cannot observe because of the children's confidentiality; this is untrue. The Supreme Court ruled in Owasso Independent School District v. Falvo (534 US 426 2002) that confidentiality of other students can't be used as a reason to deny observation by a parent. They established that, students have no expectation of privacy. Special Education personnel may deny you from observing your child's placement because of FERPA (the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act). FERPA does not prevent observation by parents or their professional representatives. FERPA only protects written records. If your school district states that parent observations violate HIPPA, they are incorrect. HIPPA is for medical records, and in most cases does not apply to school districts. In my opinion, parents do have a right to observe the current and proposed placement of their child. This is because parents have a right to "meaningfully" participate in determining their child's IEP and placement. These rights were up held in 2 court cases (Honig v. Doe 1988, and Burlington School Committee v. Mass Dept. of Education (1985). Parents have unique knowledge of their child, and they should be able to observe in the classroom. If your school district continues to assert, that you have no right to observe your child's current or proposed placement, ask by what authority are they stating this. Also ask for proof in writing, of whatever authority they are using. Take what they send you, and file for a formal state complaint. Parents have the right to be an "equal participant" in their child's education. If you are prevented from observing, then you will be denied your "right" to be an equal participant. Classroom observations are extremely important for parents to do, as often as they are able. Things can be going on that you are not aware of, classroom observations bring these to light. Then you will be able to use the information to fight for educational changes that your child requires." 105. "Acetaminophen (paracetamol) use, measles-mumps-rubella vaccination, and autistic disorder" by Stephen T. Schultz, Hillary S. Klonoff-Cohen, Deborah L. Wingard, Natacha A. Akshoomoff, Caroline A. Macera, and Ming Ji from University of California San Diego or San Diego State University at http://aut.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/3/293. "Abstract. The present study was performed to determine whether acetaminophen (paracetamol) use after the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination could be associated with autistic disorder. This case-control study used the results of an online parental survey conducted from 16 July 2005 to 30 January 2006, consisting of 83 children with autistic disorder and 80 control children. Acetaminophen use after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination was significantly associated with autistic disorder when considering children 5 years of age or less (OR 6.11, 95% CI 1.42—26.3), after limiting cases to children with regression in development (OR 3.97, 95% CI 1.11—14.3), and when considering only children who had post-vaccination sequelae (OR 8.23, 95% CI 1.56—43.3), adjusting for age, gender, mother's ethnicity, and the presence of illness concurrent with measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Ibuprofen use after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination was not associated with autistic disorder. This preliminary study found that acetaminophen use after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination was associated with autistic disorder." |
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