Today’s WFAA.com reports that 15-year-old Kati Jo Hazlett, who is 5′ tall, has dark blonde hair and blue eyes, was last seen at her McKinney home. Go here to see her photo. And hope she is found and home, soon.

We started our son Charlie on the gluten-free casein-free diet over nine years ago, when he was two years old. After several years of faithfully adhering to it, with the rationalization that “since Charlie can’t say how he feels when eats wheat and dairy, we’d best just keep him off them,” wheat (not dairy—-milk products remain to be avoided) is slowly reappearing in Charlie’s diet and it’s been no big deal. Especially after Jenny McCarthy made claims of seemingly miraculous improvements for her son Evan on the diet, people have been wondering, and debating, its effectiveness. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has begun one of the first double-blind, clinical studies to determine whether the gluten-free casein-free diet indeed plays “a role in autistic behavior as parents have anecdotally claimed.”

For the double-blind study, funded in its initial phase by supplemental funds granted by the Department of Pediatrics, researchers will enroll 38 autistic children ages 3 to 9. They will look at the influence of gluten and milk proteins in the intestinal function. Gluten is a protein in wheat; casein and whey are proteins in milk. Casomorphin, a peptide in milk; and gliadomorphin, a peptide in gluten, are thought to be related to changes in behavior in these children. Children will be taken off gluten and dairy products before the four-week study and then half will be given gluten/milk powder and half will be given a placebo powder.

Researchers will study intestinal permeability (leaky gut) through urine collection and behavior through psychometric testing.

Always good to get more answers.

Anecdotally, the biggest change since reintroducing wheat into Charlie’s diet is that we’re all less stressed about him getting “forbidden” foods into his system, and there is less worry among everybody as we can go to social events without bringing in “special food” that Charlie mostly turned his nose up at. He sees the rest of us eating something else, why not him; why keep excluding him?

But don’t worry, I am still not buying loaves of wonder bread. And, Charlie still has no idea what a Twinkie is.

Around 3am on Wednesday morning—in the midst of a rainstorm—Anthony Musson saw a toddler walking down a street in Danville, Illinois. According to WCIA:

Musson says he talked the child into getting into his truck, until police arrived and says he’s glad he got him out of the rain when he did. ” I got him in the truck and he was so cold he couldn’t talk.”

Police took the child, and later returned him to his parents. Local authorities are investigating. Musson says he hopes all is well, and hopes the boy is safe. He says the whole ordeal makes him think about the little ones he loves.

Musson apparently has yet to see the child and his family and hopes that all is well.

And more good news: An 18-year-old autistic man, Taylor Hartley, was missing overnight on Wednesday near Plano, Texas. According to the Courier-Gazette, he was found in a ravine covered in mud early on Thursday morning.

On more than one email discussion list the I subscribe to, “front door lock” has been a topic of discussion. Charlie seems to understand that he’s to stay inside (unless we tell him) and, at the most, to wait by the car (as we rush down after him). But if I don’t hear his voice or the thump of his feet, I’m off and looking…..

30-year-old Maria (not her real name) has a 6-year-old son who has autism—-and Maria faces deportation to Mexico. At 13, she came from there to the US on a visitor’s visa and attended public schools, got married, got divorced, has two children, and works full-time at a child-care center. The May 4th Austin America-Statesman reports:

Like millions of people in the United States, she is unauthorized to live and work here. A federal immigration officer discovered that secret in the Travis County Jail, where Maria had been booked on a misdemeanor assault charge after she was involved in a dispute with her ex-husband.

They had argued during a custody exchange of their children. Maria said that knowing her ex’s history of domestic violence, she thought it wise to call police. (According to public records, her former spouse has twice been charged with assault/family violence; both cases were dismissed.)

When they arrived, police found “bleeding scratch marks” on her ex-husband’s neck and forearm, according to an arrest affidavit. Maria said she had only blocked his attempt to strike her after she tried to take their 8-year-old daughter from his arms.

Maria spent the night in jail, paid $2,000 bail and signed documents for her release. Then the immigration officer approached. She told Maria she was now in federal custody.

Maria is now out on $11,000 bail. Both of her children were born in the US and are citizens, and Maria’s family is here and “[i]f Maria is deported, the whole family would suffer.” That is clear—but what about Maria’s fate?

A study published in the journal Health and Place makes a correlation between rates of autism and the proximity of schools in Texas to power plants. Under Raymond Palmer, associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center, researchers examined the amount of mercury released from 39 coal-fired power plants and 56 industrial plants around the state along with the autism rates in 1040 Texas school districts. According to the April 23rd My San Antonio,

The team looked at mercury released from 39 coal-fired power plants and 56 industrial plants around the state and examined the autism rates from 1,040 school districts in Texas.

Researchers found that for every 1,000 pounds of mercury released into the environment, there was an overall 2.6 percent increase in autism rates in Texas school districts.

That rate jumped to 3.7 percent when looking at emissions from power plants alone. But it fell by 1 to 2 percent for every 10 miles from the source.

“This is an association we would not expect to see by chance alone,” Palmer said.

Palmer used 1998 mercury emission data from the federal Toxics Release Inventory and 2002 autism rate data from the Texas Education Agency. This would have been roughly the

But note that, from 1994 to 2003—when the rates of autism diagnosis increased—the rates of diagnoses of mental retardation and learning disabilities decreased (as noted in a 2006 study by Washington University professor Paul Shattuck). Also, in 1994, the DSM-IV criteria for “autistic disorder” were revised and broadened—-it’s not, that is, so easy to make a direct correlation between power plants and autism rates.

According to Gary Myers, professor of neurology and environmental medicine at the University of Rochester, said “studies like Palmer’s can’t substantiate any links between environmental pollutants and autism”:

“They are interesting in the sense that they give people ideas, but they don’t prove anything……The thing that is missing here is that you don’t know the actual exposure of any given child. All you know is that mercury was released in the general region.”

And a mere idea can go a long way in discussions about what causes autism.

The New York Times says that Senator John McCain’s statement about there being “‘there’s strong evidence” linking thimerosal for the increase in diagnoses of autism is “good politics”:

…the parent groups raising concerns about the dangers of vaccines have not wavered in their conviction, and if anything have become more skeptical of government pronouncements on the issue over time. Radio hosts, journalists and a new television drama have also taken up the issue. So if his goal was bucking the establishment — and turning a weather eye on the government — Mr. McCain’s remarks made good politics.

Maybe’s McCain’s statement is “good politics,” but it’s still “bad science,” and by an “anti-science sell-out who’s been spending too much time talking to activist moms. Is this the Times trying to compensate for their story about McCain and a certain female lobbyist?

Many in the autism community (as noted here and here), and many scientists (here and here, and here, and also here, for starters), have spoken out about Senator John McCain’s saying that “‘there’s strong evidence” linking thimerosal for the increase in diagnoses of autism in the US—-and political commentators have also been asking, what was the Senator thinking, or not?. (On the other hand, David Kirby writes a letter to McCain commending him for his “courage” and talks about the “Great American Autism Epidemic”—-too much misinformation to unpack right now.)

Here’s CBS’ Kevin Drum on McCain’s junk science:

So what happened here? Why did McCain perpetuate this rubbish without even a smidgen of doubt in his voice? Was he pandering to some constituency or other? Was he just making [s***] up because he didn’t really know anything about the subject? Was he misinformed by own staff about this? Unfortunately, my guess is that the correct answer here is “making [s***] up,” a quality that McCain has shown an unfortunate weakness for in the past. It’s just another indication that when it comes to anything outside of the few pet issues he cares about, McCain really can’t be bothered to take an interest. Not a great quality for the leader of the free world.

Maybe a comment, too, on the sorry state of science education in our country?

Here’s Megan McArdle in today’s Atlantic; also see Matthew Yglesias:

Lots of people are talking about John McCain’s lunatic pronouncement that “there’s strong evidence” for the proposition that thimerosol [sic], a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, causes autism. This is nonsense on stilts. While it might once have been a viable theory, there is now multi-national evidence that removing thimerosol [sic] from vaccines (as the US did in 2001) causes no decline in the rate of autism. Why, people ask wonderingly, is the good senator wandering around claiming otherwise?

I offer two explanations, neither of them mutually exclusive:

1. The desperate parents who believe that thimerosol caused their child’s autism are highly motivated people with a very good chance of voting for anyone who says he believes them. The researchers who study thimerosal probably weren’t going to vote for McCain anyway. No one else votes on the issue.

2. The vast expansion of the state means that we expect our representatives to have opinions on everything from missile defense to flame-retardant pajamas. No one could possibly learn about every subject we expect them to know, even if he were not spending sixteen hours a day doing the grip-and-grin with voters, lobbyists, donors, and other politicians.

Commenters on McArdle’s post have been weighing in about explanation #2. Though it seems to me that, even though “no one could possibly learn about every subject we expect them to know,” all it takes to figure out what’s the truth about the vaccine-autism link (there isn’t one) is to read around a little and see how much evidence there is refuting it. And then, exercising some of one’s own good judgment.

For more: Outside the Beltway wonders if McCain—who has been a frequent guest on Don Imus’ radio show—-has listened too long to Imus “hammering home the mercury-autism link on his program.” Also, Overlawyered, The Carpetbagger Report, the Angry Bear.

So it seems that Senator John McCain has made his entrance into autism politics: At a town meeting in Texas today, McCain said that “‘there’s strong evidence’” that thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative, is responsible for the rising numbers of autistic children in the US. Writes Jake Tapper on Political Punch on ABC News:

McCain was responding to a question from the mother of a boy with autism, who asked about a recent story that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had issued a judgment in favor of an unnamed child whose family claimed regressive encephalopathy and symptoms of autism were caused by thimerosal. [Note: The government's concession in this case does not specify thimerosal as "causing" the child's condition; see below.]

“We’ve been waiting for years for kind of a responsible answer to this question, and are hoping that you can help us out there,” the woman said.

McCain said, per ABC News’ Bret Hovell, that “It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.”

McCain said there’s “divided scientific opinion” on the matter, with “many on the other side that are credible scientists that are saying that’s not the cause of it.”

Tapper then points out that there is no valid scientific evidence linking autism to vaccines or to anything in vaccines and cites the recent study finding a rise in autism diagnoses even after thimerosal was removed from vaccines, as well as referencing the CDC, the AAP, the Institute of Medicine, and others who regularly incur the wrath of organizations who insist that there is a link between vaccines and autism.

Regarding the statement by the mother whose question McCain was responding to: The government’s concession in one of the vaccine injury cases in the Autism Omnibus is a legal, not a scientific judgment, as Orac reminds, and it does not specify thimerosal as causing the child to become autistic. This is the government’s analysis:

In sum, DVIC has concluded that the facts of this case meet the statutory criteria for demonstrating that the vaccinations CHILD received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder.Therefore, respondent recommends that compensation be awarded to petitioners in accordance with 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-11(c)(1)(C)(ii).

DVIC has concluded that CHILD’s complex partial seizure disorder, with an onset of almost six years after her July 19, 2000 vaccinations, is not related to a vaccine-injury.

Let’s hope that Sen. McCain and whoever advises him about scientific issues are fully up to date on their research, and that they read carefully. As anyone who’s gotten into a discussion/exchange/debate/mudslinging fest about vaccines and/or mercury and autism know, there’s a lot of opinions, a lot of dubious science, and a lot of scientific evidence about this topic—-evidence, that is, that there is no link between vaccines or something in vaccines and autism.