A constant theme in 2008 was the rebranding of autism, as Orac at Respectful Insolence referred to how the likes of David Kirby have been constantly saying that “autism isn’t autism”—-it’s “mercury poisoning,” “vaccine-aggravated mitochondrial disorder,” “mercury-induced neurological disorder,” etc., etc.
(April being Autism Awareness Month—-does your child know about this—let’s not get into what such “rebranding” would do to the month…….)
The notorious Judge Rotenburg Center in Canton, Massachusetts uses electroshock “treatment” on some its residents, some of whom are autistic. In April, one of its staff was charged with rape, assault, and battery of another staff member—-more about the very, …read more

Never in my life have I entertained thoughts of being a lawyer: A doctor, yes, at one time, and some other much-less-lucrative pursuits. The closest I got to law school was a summer job when I was in grad school; the law schools career development director hired me to read stacks of surveys from alumni/ae and write up a summary report. “Litigation” was the specialty most frequently checked: Double no thanks, I thought, as I entered data into the computer.
Time passes, one stops working odd and temp jobs, one gets married, has a baby, gets a full-time job, the child …read more

Today’s Concord Monitor profiles Kathleen Seidel, who maintains the Neurodiversity.com website and who recently quashed a subpoena delivered to her by vaccine litigation lawyer Clifford Shoemaker. According to the article (and these are my sentiments exactly):

What causes autism is a question to be answered by science, or so one would think rather than by, for instance, any legal decisions or court cases. Just in the past year, there have been more and more studies refuting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism and also between thimerosal and rising autism rates. More and more studies are being done that point to a complex web of genetic factors in autism. Nonetheless, legal decisions in cases involving an autistic child and claims of injury by a vaccine, as in the cases of Michelle Cedillo (whose case was …read more