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

1049 cases of measles have been reported in England and Wales so far this year, the highest number in 13 years and exceeding the number on 2007, when there were 990 case. Today’s Guardian reports that health officials are seriously concerned about a possible epidemic of measles of between 30,000 – 100,000 cases. Measles has been spreading more easily because of the “relatively low uptake” of the MMR vaccine in the past decade:
The fall in uptake of MMR was triggered by now-discredited research claiming there was a link between the jab and autism.
Health officials in the UK are planning a …read more

Towards the end of a review of Dr. Paul Offit’s book Autism False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure in today’s Washington Times, Malcom A. Kline writes:
This writer recently heard a social worker warn the parents of autistic children to avoid certain doctor’s offices “where 90 percent of the children come out with an autism diagnosis.” What is even less widely known, though, is the degree to which the autism spectrum has expanded on the other end — the more severe cases.
Now what’s going on at those “certain doctor’s offices”? Is it that said doctor …read more

Well, here’s a headline that hasn’t been heard so much of late, it seems:
Immunization rate among children rising (from MSNBC via WTHR TV)
According to a recent CDC survey, 77 percent of children have been fully vaccinated in the schedule of recommended vaccines, while less than 1 percent of children had received no vaccines by age 19 to 35 months. Vaccination rates among children are “at or near record levels, with at least 90 percent coverage for all but one of the individual vaccines in the recommended series for young children.” In Indiana, 94 percent of public schools and 68 percent …read more

Regarding yesterday’s Today show piece on vaccines, autism, and Dr. Paul Offit:
Kudos to Dr. Nancy Synderman, especially at the end of the piece when she made it very clear to Matt Lauer, there’s no controversy about vaccines and autism. Vaccines don’t cause autism. [ABC News has a story on Dr. Offit that emphasizes how "ugly" the discussion about vaccines and autism has become: It's entitled "Death Threats, Hate Mail: Autism Debate Turns Ugly: Vaccine Researchers, Autism Community React to Account of Death Threats and it seems to me that we really ought rather to keep discussion focused on autistic persons.]
When …read more

The Today Show website has posted an excerpt from the beginning of Dr. Paul Offit’s Autism False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.
At the Parengs Bloggers Network, some parents describe a “feeling of betrayal” in regard to the “overwhelming fears and sadness surrounding autism and the still hotly-debated autism-vaccine link” discussed in Dr. Offit’s book. Excerpts from some parents’ reviews of the book are here
And if you’re watching the Today Show in the 8:00 half-hour tomorrow (Thursday, October 30th) morning, there’s a segment on vaccines and autism. I was interviewed for it, and I think …read more

On Newsweek: Three videos with interviews with Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania medical school; Robert Krakow, a New York attorney who’s the father of an autistic son and who is representing more than 75 families who believe a vaccine caused autism in their child; and myself. The videos are below or go here to Newsweek.—— And here’s a profile of Dr. Offit by Claudia Kalb in Newsweek.

“For families struggling with autism finding the latest treatments is a top priority,” begins an October 14th WCBStv story about “a controversial approach” that “is making headlines” (which, of course, has nothing to do with the actual efficacy of said approach). The approach is hyperbaric oxygen therapy and the doctor is Dr. James Neubrander, whose website refers to autism as the “treatable untreatable disorder!.” A hyperbaric chamber will set you back $21,000, WCBStv notes. Dr. Neubrander says that HBOT treats “decreases inflammation” and somehow altars the brain chemistry of autistic children and, while there’s no studies to back it …read more

No, we don’t “got milk” here; my small family all got sick this week; we’ve always got hope.

Got Autism? (asks PETA)
PETA puts up a billboard in Newark NJ and takes it down.
Is That a Tattoo With……Your Mom’s Cell Number?
Of Safety Tats and other ways to keep a child safe.
McCarthy’s, Er, “Autism” Pole
Jenny McCarthy puts a stripper pole in her son’s room.
What! No Hoodies?!!!!?!!!?!
Imagine life without a hoodie for warmth and to block out noise—no thanks.
Beware Jenny McCarthy and Her Angry Mob
She’s got a mob (of “mother warriors,” presumably”—quite an image.
Autism Genes, Math, and Music
The …read more

Three more days to go of the Science Blogs Book Club. Much talk of framing vaccines, framing autism, and more responses from Dr. Offit about his book. And today, I talk about myth, religion, and Jenny McCarthy as a, and perhaps the, false prophet of autism.