Age of Autism

November 23, 2009

Liberté pour Tous or Pharma Free-for-All? The CDC Relents on Mandatory HPV Vaccine Requirement for Immigrant Girls and Shingles Vaccine for Immigrants Over 60 But Retains Remaining Mandates

By Adriana Gamondes

As reported by the Alliance for Human Research Protection (HERE), the activist collective of scientists, researchers and reform physicians may have had a hand in influencing the CDC’s decision to back down from the requirement that immigrant girls receive a mandatory HPV vaccine series before being granted citizenship to the US. The CDC announced it was also rescinding the Zoster “shingles” vaccine mandate for immigrants over age 60.

Along with the AHRP’s interventions and the vaccine injury movement’s rallying and injury tallying (as of summer, 2009, 15,000 adverse events from Gardasil, 3,000 injuries and 48 deaths have been reported, (HERE), we can be sure the general public’s recent skepticism over the H1N1 flu vaccine “free-for-all” brought pressure to bear on the CDC as well.
We’ll have to see what happens to both standard and immigrant vaccine requirements if and when the proposed new vaccine for Chlamydia ever becomes a reality (HERE). At least young, female, eventually child-bearing immigrants are being required to get one less this year. All the same, the CDC doesn’t appear to be rethinking the fifteen (and counting) remaining shots, including rotavirus and influenza— and all untested in combination—required for citizenship (HERE).

Guillain–Barré—that’s French, right? I suppose a good cure for homesickness would be if, upon getting their green cards and battery of vaccines, French-speaking immigrants find themselves diagnosed in their own language. New arrivals from Japan might be able to kindle thoughts of the old country if their children develop Kawasaki disease following HepB or Rotateq; those of Greek origin can revisit their mother tongue pronouncing new diagnoses (also Greek!) of epilepsy or encephalitis; Russians might be warmed by the “roulette” aspect of the whole thing. And then Alzheimer’s—with all the aluminum in the mandated shots, German émigrés could eventually feel right at home in their diseased state. Those from Latin-language countries won’t need to feel left out either—there’s always dystonia, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis…and autism.

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Read the complete article and related information at And Liberty for All. Immigrant Gardasil Mandate Dropped.

Age of Autism

October 26, 2009

Managing Editor’s Note: This post includes a follow up to the lawsuit discussed in J.B. Handley’s post titled, Columbia University Press and Dr. Paul Offit Sued for Autism’s False Prophets. Pay special attention to the phone call J.B. made to schedule an appointment for a child with autism with Dr. Offit, author of a book about autism treatments. It seems Dr. Offit does not treat patients with autism. Odd, yes? Grab a cup of coffee and read on.  Don’t get the photo? Click HERE. And, Ringo? Don’t bother.

By J.B. Handley

Paul Offit wrote a book, Autism’s False Prophets, with the overt goal of repudiating the biomedical treatment movement for autism. Of course, the real goal of the book, and how it’s being used today, is to convince parents to keep on vaccinating.

As an inventor of the Rotateq (HERE) vaccine, a man who voted his own vaccine (HERE) onto the childhood schedule, and a multi-millionaire after his vaccine was sold to Merck, Offit has plenty of time on his hands to protect his legacy and the legacy of his peers.

The AAP has done a great job of getting Offit’s book out to their pediatric base, many of whom give the book to parents when they express concerns about vaccination. I have personal friends who have come home from their doctor with a copy of his book in hand.

The book is filled with factual errors and/or completely made-up information about a wide variety of our community’s most important players, including Dr. Andrew Wakefield, David Kirby, RFK JR., and Jenny McCarthy, to name just a few.

For a simple example of the book’s poorly-veiled intentions, consider the inside cover that includes a quote from a parent, Amy Pisani:

“Hearing all the rumors about vaccine side effects made me question the right thing to do. This book makes it clear that vaccines save lives, and they clearly do not cause autism.”

There are so many revealing things about this quote, which is literally the first thing you see on the cover’s inside flap. Firstly, Amy Pisani is the Executive Director of Every Child By Two, a vaccine advocacy organization funded by Wyeth, a vaccine maker. (HERE) The book only describes her as “Amy Pisani, mother.” Not only is Ms. Pisani’s conflict hidden from the reader, but her actually quote is a complete fabrication. Ms. Pisani has been advocating vaccines for children for YEARS, everything in her quote is a lie — she wasn’t questioning the right thing to do when Offit’s book came along. A liar with a conflict of interest — how perfect!

Biomedical doesn’t work?

In advocating for vaccines, Offit uses his book to take a sideswipe at an entire movement of scientists, doctors, and parents who are toiling away to recover children from autism. With roughly 1,000 worldwide doctors and more than 100,000 parents practicing biomedical treatments, it’s one hell of a sideswipe. Not only does he criticize the biomedical movement, he says it isn’t working to help kids:

“Instead of helping, these therapies can hurt those who are most vulnerable, and particularly in the case of autism, they undermine childhood vaccination programs that have saved millions of lives.”

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Read the complete article and related information at Dr. Paul Offit, The Autism Expert. Doesn’t See Patients with Autism?

Age of Autism

August 29, 2009

Rosemary is our commenter of the week on THIS post from Barb Loe Fisher’s blog. Didn’t win but still want a T-shirt? See below.

My 13 year old daughter was injured by Gardasil and completely disabled for the past year. Merck got it right when they used the slogan “One Less” for Gardasil. Because of Gardasil, my daughter was “One Less”. She was “One Less Student”, “One Less Active Child”, “One Less in every aspect of her life”. Take it from a mother who has spent the past year sitting by my child’s beside wondering if she would die in her sleep. INVESTIGATE BEFORE YOU VACCINATE. DO NOT trust your doctor to make this decision. If you want to understand Merck’s role in the medical community, investigate some of their former wonderdrugs such as VIOXX and then marvel at how many people died from it before it was pulled off the market. The CDC AND FDA need to do their job and get this off the market before more children are harmed. The public is not aware of VAERS and the #’s are grossly understated. I have had to tell my child’s doctors about VAERS and make them file reports or she would not be one of the current statistics in VAERS. Even then, her information has not been entered correctly so I know that VAERS is not what it should be.Please do not let this happen to your child.

Taking a page from public television, we’ll happily send you one as our thank you for making a donation to A of A via our PayPal donate button.  You choose the donation amount. OK? Please tell us if you want an adult M, L, XL or 2XL and include your mailing  address in the comments box at PayPal. 

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Read the complete article and related information at One Less for Gardasil- Comment of the Week

Age of Autism

May 28, 2009
By Kent Heckenlively, Esq.

It’s long been the belief among Defeat Autism Now (DAN) practitioners and parents that some combination of toxins and infections are responsible for autism.

While many in the traditional medical community have attacked the plausibility of such a scenario, some early signs from the swine flu investigation are suggesting that this toxin/infection interaction might explain other conditions as well.

Scientists from Dartmouth Medical School and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have found that “the ability to mount an immune response to influenza A (H1N1) infection is significantly compromised by a low level of arsenic exposure that commonly occurs through drinking contaminated well water.”  (“Swine Flu: Influenza A (H1N1) Susceptibility Linked to Common Levels of Arsenic Exposure”, Science Daily, May 21, 2009 (HERE.) The research was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (HERE.)

According to Joshua Hamilton, Chief Academic and Science Officer from the MBL as well as study co-author, “When a normal person or mouse is infected with the flu, they immediately develop an immune response.”  The article went on to note, “However, in mice that had ingested 100 ppb (parts per billion) arsenic in their drinking water for five weeks, the immune response to H1N1 infection was initially feeble, and when a response finally did kick in days later, it was “too robust and too late” . . . There was a massive infiltration of immune cells to the lungs and a massive inflammatory response, which led to bleeding and damage to the lungs . . . Morbidity over the course of the infection was significantly higher for the arsenic-exposed animals than the normal animals.”

The swine flu has killed 83 people in Mexico and 12 in the United States.  Hamilton saw some intriguing parallels to his own research in the pattern of deaths. “One of the things that did strike us, when we heard about the recent H1N1 outbreak, is Mexico has large areas of very high arsenic in their well water, including areas where the flu cropped up.  We don’t know that the Mexicans who got the flu were drinking high levels of arsenic, but it’s an intriguing notion that it may have contributed.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, concentrations of arsenic at the levels of 100 ppb and higher are common in well water, especially in those areas where arsenic is geologically abundant.  A level of 10 ppb is considered “safe.”

Hamilton’s laboratory discovered and first reported in 1998 the broad ways in which arsenic disrupts the working of the body.  “Most chemicals that disrupt hormone pathways target just one, such as the estrogen pathway . . . But arsenic disrupts the pathways of all five steroid hormone receptors (estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, glucocorticoids, and mineralocorticoids), as well as several other hormone pathways.  You can imagine that just this one effect could play a role in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, reproductive and developmental disorders-all the diseases that have a strong hormonal component.”

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Read the complete article and related information at Could Swine Flu Deaths be the Key to Understanding Autism?

Age of Autism

By Jake Crosby

June 8, 2009

On the cover of last week’s Newsweek issue was a photo of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a huge scowl on his face. On his forehead were the words, “EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT IRAN IS WRONG.”

Ahmadinejad received considerable attention for denying the Holocaust. He held a convention inviting well-known Holocaust deniers including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and launched a Holocaust denial cartoon contest. And yet, Oprah Winfrey was not portrayed any better on the cover of Newsweek’s latest issue, showing an outrageous photo of her, the title over her face reading, “CRAZY TALK.”

Newsweek will portray a prominent TV show host as horribly as it did a Holocaust denier, but will take the rather bizarre views of a neurodiversity proponent little known outside the autism community seriously. Two issues ago, the magazine gave coverage to the ND Ari Ne’eman, ignoring requests of other autistics including myself for an interview. I wrote a letter to Newsweek in anticipation of Ari’s’s article asking the magazine to give equal time to a non-ND autistic person, receiving nothing more than an automated response. I then submitted what I sent to the magazine as an open letter to Age of Autism thinking that might pressure Newsweek to at least publicly acknowledge the counterpoint to neurodiversity among autistic people. No such thing happened. Then the Ari Ne’eman piece ran online a week later and then in the May 25th issue, where he professed his anti-cure views while expressing an unfounded fear of the unproven idea that autism can be prevented through eugenics. (HERE)

Now Newsweek’s June 8th issue has solidified my worst fear: that my open letter to them had been written in vain. The cover article was a 9-page hit piece on Oprah Winfrey, of all people. (HERE) I read in Newsweek’s issue prior to the one where the Ari Ne’eman article ran that the magazine is operating in the red. (HERE) Now why would a faltering magazine write a smear issue of a celebrity who owns a net worth of several billion dollars and whose TV show is among the highest ranked in history? A big hint can be found in the subtitle, “Wacky Cures & You.”

Since Oprah has given Jenny McCarthy her own show, I can guess what one of those “Wacky Cures” would be. Sure enough, under the overblown title of the story that is even larger than the one on the cover, was the “wacky cure” I expected: “Eradicate Autism!” Strange the magazine would call this “wacky” after publishing an article two issues ago interviewing Ari, who not only fears an eradication of autism but that it will be done by eugenics, as if that’s anywhere close to being a possibility. And yet, the authors in the latest issue think it is “wacky” that Oprah interviews Jenny McCarthy who says she cured her son of autism with widely used treatments. Perhaps Newsweek takes the neurodiversity line that “autism is not a medical mystery that needs solving.” That would explain this discrepancy, though I tend to doubt it.

More likely, the explanation is that 10 of the 31 pages of ads are for pharma, 5 of them for Wyeth, including an inside-cover triple-page ad. Naturally, a failing magazine is going to want to receive more ad dollars by running more articles pleasing to sponsors. It seems practical and makes sense, though unethical, dishonest, defamatory and morally reprehensible all at the same time.

The first portion of the article slams Oprah for inviting Suzanne Somers on the show for promoting her own “natural” hormone replacement therapy. It involves hormones synthesized from plants rather than the typical horse urine, saying what Somers uses is not actually natural nor FDA-approved. Fair enough, I don’t have an opinion on the benefits or problems with HRT, but perhaps Newsweek can also run an article on the 5000 lawsuits Wyeth is facing for the damages attributed to its own, admittedly unnatural, FDA-approved version. If they did, it would help their case of proving Ms. Somers’ alleged belief wrong, that “the media” is “in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry.” But I guess that’s about as likely as Newsweek interviewing me to balance out their coverage given to Ari Ne’eman.

After criticizing Oprah for interviewing Suzanne Somers came the expected criticism of her interviews with Jenny McCarthy. The very first thing the article makes clear is that she is a former Playboy model, as if having large breasts has to do with anything. I think a J&J manufactured, FDA-approved autism drug, Risperdal, growing milk-producing breasts on boys is more relevant, but that’s just me.

Then Newsweek makes the statement that “researchers” have not found a link between vaccines and autism. This, however, is hardly surprising, especially since Wyeth, a company that gave Newsweek ad money to run this piece was the same company to give grant money to the scientist-for-hire that led the most recent sham study obfuscating the vaccine-autism link published in Pediatrics earlier this year. Presumably, only the researchers who’ve received money from the same source as this magazine count. Hypocritically, the article then lamented that McCarthy’s views went “virtually unchallenged.” Leaving one-sided views “unchallenged” is precisely the problem with this magazine.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end as Newsweek then accused Oprah of doing to CDC officials exactly what it did to me in anticipation of its article for Ari Ne’eman: not inviting someone representing the counterpoint for equal coverage. Only in my case, I requested equal time and was ignored. It is true that Oprah read a CDC statement to offer an alternate viewpoint instead of having a guest from the agency appearing on her show, but blaming her for that is blatantly absurd and ignorant.

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Read the complete article and related information at Newsweek’s Newspeak: Pharma’s Weapon Against Oprah

Natural News

Monday, June 01, 2009
by: David Gutierrez, staff writer

Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) received at least $29 million from his share of royalties for Merck’s Rotateq vaccine after using his position with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that childhood vaccination with the vaccine became compulsory.

According to a report on the Web site “Age of Autism,” a review of CHOP’s royalties schedules reveals that Offit likely received between $29 million and $55 million for his work developing the Rotateq vaccine for rotavirus, which causes diarrhea in infants. Because the vaccine is jointly owned by CHOP and by the Wistar Institute but Offit is the only inventor listed on the patent from CHOP, he received 100 percent of inventor’s rights payments from CHOP.

“Clearly, based on the distribution of income rights outlined in [CHOP's policies], Paul Offit had a greater personal interest in Rotateq’s commercial success than any other single individual in the world,” article authors Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill write. “And more than other individual in the world, he found himself in a position to directly influence that success.”

Between 1998 and 2003, Offit sat on the U.S. government’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). His involvement with development of Rotateq began before and ended after these dates.

While a member of the ACIP, Offit consistently voted in favor of making vaccination against rotavirus part of the compulsory U.S. childhood immunization schedule. He also voted to rescind recommendation of Wyeth’s competing vaccine RotaShield, while aggressively advocating for the idea that other rotavirus vaccines would be less dangerous.

“Unlike most other patented products, the market for mandated childhood vaccines is created not by consumer demand, but by the recommendation of an appointed body called the ACIP,” Olmsted and Blaxill write. “In a single vote, ACIP can create a commercial market for a new vaccine that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in a matter of months.”

In the case of Rotateq, its addition to the vaccine schedule led to an increase in yearly revenue of $655 million over the course of two years.

Sources for this story include: www.ageofautism.com.

Read the complete article and related information at CDC Vaccine Advisor Pockets $29 Million Promoting Vaccines

Posted by: “Sheri Nakken” vaccinedangers@googlemail.com vaccineinfo1234

Thu May 28, 2009 3:59 pm (PDT)

Read the complete article and related information at Sick Monkeys: Research Links Vaccine Load, Autism Signs

Age of Autism

May 23, 2009

By Anne Dachel

I was looking through the recent stories put out by the Chicago Tribune and was amazed at the exposes denouncing Dr. Mayer Eisenstein and Dr. Mark Geier and his son David.

Autism drug Lupron: Father-and-son team’s crusade shows cracks Chicago Tribune May 21, 2009 (HERE).

Autism doctor: Troubling record trails doctor treating autism May 22, 2009 (HERE).

Let me say that I’m not an expert on any of the medical aspects of this; I’m merely an observer.  So here’s what I’m seeing.

One of the issues in the stories is the use of Lupron to treat aggression in autistic children who have high levels of testosterone.  This is a huge controversy.  The treatment is slammed as “unproven and potentially damaging” in the Tribune.

“Experts” are lined up against parents and doctors using Lupron to treat autistic behavior, but the Tribune doesn’t stop there.  We’re also told, “In the absence of definitive answers, unproven treatments have proliferated, including diets that eliminate wheat and dairy, chelation drugs that leach metals out of the body, and treatment in hyperbaric oxygen chambers similar to those used to treat scuba divers with ‘the bends.’ ”

The mainstream medical community doesn’t have answers on autism–what causes it or how to treat it effectively.  They deny it can be cured.  Any parents out there who claim that biomedical treatments and diet have helped are simply being deceived according to Trine Tsouderos in ‘Miracle drug’ called junk science Chicago Tribune May 21, 2009.  “Experts said such beliefs are common among parents who try alternative autism treatments. It’s easy, they say, to attribute normal developmental leaps to whatever treatment is being tried at the time.”

Tom Owley, director of the Neurodevelopmental Pharmacology Clinic at the U. of Chicago is cited. ‘Autistic children, like all children, develop in fits and starts. They have bursts of learning, then plateau. Parents trying numerous treatments on their children will see that natural development and credit whatever therapy they are using at the time.’

I’m thinking right now of a local dad I know.  When his non-verbal autistic daughter was seven he started chelation to get rid of the heavy metals which she had in abundance.  Three weeks later, she said her first word.

(Sorry Tim, the experts have spoken.  Sheryl would have started talking without the treatment.  And why a child has off-the-chart levels of toxins in her body in the first place?  Nobody at the Chicago Tribune is interested in finding out.)

In the Tribune stories, parents are “desperate.”  Alternative treatments are “junk science.”  Recovering children is dismissed as “allegedly” a result.

All this coverage coincides with the big Autism One Conference going on in Chicago.  The message is clear:  All those presenters at Autism One are wrong and dangerous and the parents going to A-One are being deceived.

I had to congratulate myself this morning reading the Age of Autism piece by editor Dan Olmsted, Olmsted on Autism: Welcome to Illinois (HERE).

I was thrilled that I had the same reaction to the Trib stories that Dan did, namely that they were designed to put a spin on the Autism One Conference.  I didn’t know the technical term, ‘precede’ that Dan used, but the message was clear: Beware the so-called experts at A-One.

Being a reader of the news on autism on a daily basis, I can tell you exactly how the Tribune is spinning the spin.  Autism isn’t a problem–junk scientists are.  Lost in the denunciation of biomed practices to treat autism is anything about autism.  There is absolutely no concern over the explosion in the numbers beyond anything imaginable just a few years ago.  The medical community is given a free pass when it comes to knowing anything substantial about autism–except that vaccines don’t cause it and CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) is dangerous and useless.

The Chicago Tribune consistently uses outdated and meaningless statistics on autism telling us that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that one in every 150 children in the U.S. has autism (HERE).  No one at the Tribune is concerned that these numbers come from studies done on eight year olds back in 2000 and 2002.  The agency that gets billions to run health care in the U.S. can’t give us the current autism rate and they still can’t figure out if more kids really have autism or if there are just more doctors who can diagnose it correctly.

All the reporters at the Trib trashing CAM doctors and parents who go to them make no mention of the wave of children with autism in IL schools.

There’s no alarm over the jaw-dropping increase in autism in IL (HERE).  Over nine thousand children in that state are autistic according to the U.S. Dept. of Ed.  Is anyone at the Tribune worried about what that means for the taxpayers?  Not that I can see.

What do all these kids mean for the state of IL?  Try multiplying 9,000 by $3.2 million dollars.  That’s the figure given by Harvard researcher Michael Gantz in 2006 as a result of his study on the cost of lifetime care for ONE INDIVIDUAL WITH AUTISM (HERE).

Back in 2006, I asked Ganz about the figure and he admitted that it’s a conservative estimate.  Others put the cost at between $5 and $10 million per person.

The Tribune defines autism as a disorder “characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and non-verbal communication, and unusual, repetitive behaviors.”  I know lots of parents who love that description of autism.  One dad from Texas says, “It sounds like the kid just can’t get a date.”  I talk to him on the phone a lot and I can usually hear his teenage autistic son screaming in the background.  I guess screaming comes under one of the categories: “impaired social interaction,” “problems with non-verbal communication,”  “unusual, repetitive behaviors.”  I’m just not sure which one.

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Read the complete article and related information at On Media: The Chicago Tribune Fails Children with Autism