It’s not unfitting that a week in which a new study further disputing the MMR vaccine-autism link appeared would end with the publication of a book with no less a title than Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, and by no less an author than Dr. Paul Offit, chief of Infectious Diseases, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In the words of Orac of Respectful Insolence, Dr. Offit is the “Dark Lord of Vaccination” himself, and the special target, now for some time, of the ire, …read more

The truth, as Mulder and Scully would put it, is out there. I’ll confess to never having watched The X-Files—we did have a TV then (Charlie, and I, had to watch all those videos of Barney, the Teletubbies, and the Wiggles on something)—but the years The X-Files were on (1993-2002) overlapped with the years in which I was writing my dissertation, getting married, getting my first teaching job, and having Charlie, who was diagnosed with autism in 1999.
In those years, I wasn’t thinking too much about truth; I was just trying to figure out how to help Charlie learn to …read more

So I finally got around to reading Michael Savage on the Autism Controversy after grading papers, going swimming with Charlie and explaining to the water aerobics teacher why the boombox was contributing to him looking mighty distressed and since the class was over maybe it could be turned off?, making Charlie’s lunch, overseeing him practice cello, searching for the Leapster (not necessarily in that order). Yes, I know you’ve all read it, blogged it, rolled your eyes over it, read too many websites inveighing over the mean-spiritedness of remarks. Here’s Savage being called the most hated man in America (what …read more