Happy 2009!
We’re leaving tonight on the red-eye to go back from the Bay Area to New Jersey so, in the interest of being able to spend more time in the California sunshine with my guys and my parents, and since it is, indeed, 2009, a few more highlights from 2008.
August means one thing in my household—-two weeks at the beach, at the Jersey Shore. Not surprisingly, it was still impossible to avoid talk about vaccines. A new clinical trial of the GFCF diet was announced. While people have strong disagreements about the “right” of parents to vaccinate or not, …read more

If Charlie’d had a younger sibling, would we have decided to participate in studies like this one at the University of Washington, as noted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Autism researchers at the University of Washington are seeking parents who will allow them to do brain scans of their infants.
………….
The UW scientists are looking for 84 six-month-old infants from California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Alaska who have an older sibling who has been diagnosed with autism. They also need 34 infants with typically developing older brothers or sisters.
Each child will be scanned three times over two years.
Certainly I would have …read more

Seems a pity that, on seeing the words “top 10 unfounded health scares,” the first thing I thought about was……….vaccines and autism.
Many speak of a “debate” about an alleged vaccine-autism link and that there’s a “controversy” brewing here, but it’s a false controversy. 2008 saw the publication of more studies refuting a link, and yet there’s been a call for more studies—-among the $1 billion in research initiatives noted in the Strategic Plan of the IACC is an item about the “different health outcomes in vaccinated, unvaccinated and alternatively-vaccinated groups”—so it’s not as if this particular topic is going to …read more

So Denis Leary issues an apology—what if he’d just not said a word about autism in the first place?
And allow me to air a frustration: Leary’s gotten quite a lot of attention (however negative) for his comments and become a subject of discussion in the autism community. But I think I’d prefer to spend the time talking about autistic persons, rather than the ultra-uninformed mouthings of the likes of Leary. ‘Nuff said!

From the October 28th Boston Herald:
“I have nothing but admiration and sympathy for the people I know who are raising children with autism. In fact, they were the inspiration for the chapter I wrote about the subject,” the Worcester native and author of the provocative forthcoming book “Why We Suck” said in a statement to the Herald.
“To them – and to all parents of children with autism – I apologize for any pain the out-of-context quotes from my book may have caused.”
Not a complete recantment—-the Boston Herald notes that Leary still said that “‘“taking one or two sentences out of …read more

Through laboratory experiments with rats, Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Pharmacy is studying how maternal stress during pregnancy can lead to developmental and emotional problems in their offspring. From a press release, which notes that some of the “unfortunate consequences” that children can develop are “slower development, learning and attention difficulties, anxiety and depressive symptoms and possibly even autism.”
Weinstock-Rosin has been able to show through her laboratory experiments that when rat mothers were subject to stressful situations (irritating sounds at alternating times, for example), their offspring were later shown to have impaired learning and …read more

Autism gets mentioned for the first time in a presidential debate on October 15th; here’s more news:

After Many Years, A Diagnosis
Deborah Lipsky was in her 40s when she found out that has autism.
There Goes Another Autism Myth
While out riding his bike, Charlie hears another child crying and…….
Denis Leary Does a Michael Savage
I know Leary’s a comedian but some things just aren’t funny—-alumni from Emerson College don’t think so either.
McCain and Obama Debate: Down Syndrome, Autism, Special Needs
Disability historian Paul Longmore writes about Sarah Palin as “talking about special needs children” and Obama as having substantive plans …read more

Forgotten is the name of a report about autistic adults by Autism Ontario: The report says that the province has a “piecemeal” approach to addressing the issues facing an estimated 50,000 autistic adults and calls on the government to create a framework to assist them.
With this guy making the news about autism somehow I’m not surprised that what we need to talk and do something about gets “forgetten.”
You can read the Autism Ontario report here.

From the New York Post:
In his new book, “Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid,” the joke-slinging “Rescue Me” star writes about the brain disorder:
“There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can’t compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don’t give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you – yer kid is NOT …read more

As advertisers and networks have been dropping Michael Savage’s show in the wake of his infamous comments (here’s a list of 20 audio clips), here’s an email he sent to The Hook (Virginia):
The drug companies are very powerful and have worked very hard to silence any voice critical of the misdiagnosis of our children and the drugging of vulnerable minds. Sad the station manager is such an ignorant man.
Seems Savage is trying to portray himself as the misunderstood defender of so many poor misdiagnosed, “vulnerable [minded]” children and so offers up this defiant attempt parting shot. Guess a simple …read more