Archive | 2007

What autism is not

25 Sep

As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently reading Steven Pinker‘s latest, The Stuff of Thought, an interesting (so far) exploration of the role language plays in human nature. In preparing to make an argument at one point, he starts off by saying the following:

To truly understand what something is you must understand what it is not. (His emphasis.)

This, of course, got me thinking about what autism is not. (It seems I can’t read a book, or what a movie or TV show without finding some sort of connection to my thoughts about autism!) Here’s a quick list, I”m sure I’ll come up with more:

What autism is not:

  • Devastation
  • Train Wreck
  • End of the world
  • Caused by mercury poisoning
  • Purely environmental
  • Purely genetic
  • Caused by MMR (or any vaccine)
  • A curse
  • Punishment from God (whichever one may be yours)
  • A disease that can be cured
  • Easy to live with
  • Easy to explain to friends and family
  • Easy to explain to siblings of autistic child
  • Easy to explain to the autistic child
  • A reason to kill your child

I know there are more, many more, but this is what comes to mind tonight as I head off to bed. What do you think autism is not? (And please, if you disagree with one I’ve put here let me know.)

After Jenny and Oprah

23 Sep

And so, this was the week that the anti-vaccine/autism hypothesis got its first real airing in a public arena. Jenny McCarthy went on US TV and told her audience that her son was her science (quite possibly _the_ silliest thing on the show since Tom Cruise’s couch/brain malfunction).

I’m going to level with you here. I don’t really care too much about Jenny McCarthy spouting on about the evils of vaccines. She’s not the first and she won’t be the last. Despite the raptures the anti-vaccination people are having over her appearance she wasn’t on Oprah because of her vaccine ideas.

This is what bothers me: she was on Oprah because she was famous. It scares the _shit_ out of me that we can only apparently have a conversation about something after a celeb has let the light of their countenance shine down upon it.

The UK is just as ridiculous about this whole thing as the US. Its got to a stage whereby the subject under discussion doesn’t even seem to really matter to Joe Public – what seems to matter is that there’s a famous face pontificating on a subject that, in all honesty, they’ve probably only recently begun to get a firm grasp on themselves.

To put it another way, the Oprah show wasn’t about autism. It was about Jenny McCarthy. It was to sell copies of her book. Her appearance on People magazine is to increase book sales. Her upcoming appearance on Larry King is to increase book sales. None of it is about _autism_ . None of this will help the autism community. Even that subsection of the autism community who are anti-vaccine are kidding themselves if they think that after the dust settles on Jenny McCarthy’s book she will be around to lead them in their fight. Until its time for the sequel of course.

Is the autism community really so shallow that we are going into raptures because a celeb is speaking about a subject that vast majority of us could speak much more accurately and eloquently about? It seems some of us are.

In the meantime, whilst Jenny McCarthy is being lucratively controversial on Oprah, the vast majority of autistic kids are still not getting the right kind of educational placement. Whilst Jenny McCarthy’s Media Clean Up Crew are attempting hoover away every mention of her Indigo Children beliefs from the web lest they affect book sales, autistic adults are still struggling to get into appropriate work and living accommodations.

I would urge autism parents to spend the ten quid they were going to spend on Jenny McCarthy’s book on something that might actually help autistic people instead of helping line the pockets of Jenny McCarthy.

Just Singin’

22 Sep
[audio:headandshoulders.mp3]

It Doesn’t Look Like It’s Declining

22 Sep

David Kirby wrote a post titled Is Autism Declining? back in July (that I was reminded of after reading an entry by Sullivan.) I’ll address the primary claim of that post shortly.

For pattern and context, I would like to recap Kirby’s forays into the world of autism epidemiology. They seem to have started in November, 2005, when Citizen Cain explained to him that “new cases” or “intakes” were not a meaningful epidemiological metric, but that instead, he should be looking at the 3-5 caseload to get an indication of a possible drop in autism incidence.

When 2007 came and Kirby’s prediction of a drop in the California DDS 3-5 caseload famously failed, he apparently started to furiously scan various databases for any sign of a drop in “the numbers.” First,  he suggested we might be seeing a drop in speech-language impairment in IDEA. But the drops he was seeing were easily shown to be nothing out of the ordinary. Additionally, I found there were discrepancies between the IDEA data publicly available and the data he presented. Subsequently, David Kirby emailed a message to the EOHarm mailing list announcing he had found 4 states in IDEA with 3-5 caseload drops in autism between 2004 and 2005. Once again it was demonstrated that these drops were not unusual.

David Kirby never addressed these rebuttals. In fact, links to said rebuttals were not even allowed by whoever moderates messages in his blog at Huffington Post. But that is a different matter.

In his latest attempt at finding drops in the numbers, David Kirby tells us that while the California DDS 3-5 caseload is still rising as of Q2 2007, he obtained birth-year-cohort data that allowed him to look at 3 year olds in isolation.

But among the very youngest kids counted, the story was the opposite. At the end of June 2006, there were 688 children born in 2003 with autism diagnoses. This June, the number of kids born in 2004 with autism was 632, a statistically significant drop of 56 children, or 8.1 percent less than last year at this time.

I had sent a request to California DDS for this data, but I did not have to wait for it since a fellow blogger already had a copy. (Thanks.) I should note that I could not verify the 632 caseload number for June 2006, as the copy of the data I was given only ran to March 2006, but I’ll take David Kirby’s word for it.

I naturally decided to put the data in a graph. The following represents the caseload of autistic children in California DDS who should have been 3 years of age by June of each year shown.

cddsbyc22.jpg

You see that drop between 2006 and 2007? That is what David Kirby found which he believes is significant. Let’s be honest here. Does that look like a significant drop between 2006 and 2007, or does the spike between 2005 and 2006 look more significant than that? Caseload growth between 2005 and 2007 is actually pretty steep and in line with the previous trend, isn’t it?

Clearly, that’s a pretty weak finding and it can’t really tell us anything. If caseload drops to 1995 levels or something of the sort, then we’d be discussing something of interest. As things stand, 2007 has seen less autistic 3 year-olds than 2006, but a lot more than 2005. So? 

David Kirby, however, asserts it’s a “statistically significant” change. But I’m really not sure if this assertion is correct. Readers with a statistical background might be able to help with this one. If we assume a sample size of 540,000 (the population of 3 year-olds in California) and we use a simple confidence interval calculator (e.g. this one) the results I get are:

  • 2006: 688 (95% CI 638 – 741)
  • 2007: 632 (95% CI 584 – 683)

The confidence intervals (or error bars) overlap, so it does not appear that the change is statistically significant. But it’s possible David Kirby is using a different method to calculate the confidence intervals.

Conclusion

Data available is not sufficient to assert that the caseload of 3 year-olds served by California DDS might have begun a downward trend or even a leveling-off trend. Furthermore, the claim that the caseload change observed between 2006 and 2007 is statistically significant requires further support and clarification.

What if you could prevent autism?

21 Sep

What if you could prevent autism?  What if there were a way that people could dramatically reduce the number of people born with autism? What if it took a concerted effort on the part of everyone to make it happen?  Should we do it?  Would people complain?

Would we respect the lessons of  the past if it had already happened?

Well, it may have already happened.  “May” as in it requires correlating one set of trends with California DDS numbers on Autism.  We all know how dangerous that can be.  CDDS data are not epidemological.  They don’t tell you how many people in California have autism, they tell you how many people in California are getting services under autism.  People who forgot the importance of that distinction have found themselves promoting an epidemic that didn’t happen. 

With that lesson in mind, let’s look at some CDDS data.  Let’s look at the number of clients with autism by birth year.  Further, let’s look at these data as they looked in 1986.  That is pre “epidemic”.  Pre DSM-IV.  That is before schools added autism as a separate category. 

  CDDS autism clients by birth year as recorded in 1986The data show something I didn’t expect: a drop in the number of autism clients.  Not just the noise that gets those promoting the epidemic to say, “look from one quarter to the next we see a drop”.  Nope, this looks like it could be the real deal, that elusive goal of those claiming an epidemic.  It happened in the 1970’s. 

Keep in mind that these data are from 1986.  So the drop in numbers in the 1980’s is because those people hadn’t been identified yet.  It isn’t “real”.

Also, keep in mind that these are raw numbers.  No attempt to normalize into a rate (individuals with autism per 1,000, say) has been made.  California went through a notable population increase over this time.  So, any drop in rate estimated (from these non-epidemological data) would be even greater.

Given this great amount of limitations, take a look at this graph.  These are the autism clients by birth year as reported in 1986.  The data are noisy, but I see a big plateau for kids born in the 1960s with about 100 clients per birth year followed by a second plateau in the 1970’s at about 75 clients per birth year.

That is an indication that there may have been  a roughly 25% drop from one decade to the next in the number of people with autism.   What happened?

Rubella prevalence in the USWell, since I recently posted about the dangers of only digging deep enough to support your own pet theory (and that is good advice), I’ll put this forward as a “Medical Hypothesis”.  Consider this: the Rubella vaccine was licensed in the U.S.  in 1969.  What happened before that?  There was a Rubella epidemic in the 60’s.  Lot’s of kids were born with CRS, Congentital Rubella Syndrome: a known cause of autism.

What if the Rubella vaccine is reducing the number of kids born with autism?  Wouldn’t that be a good thing that should catch the attention of the “autism community”?  It is a little strange that one would have to use this route. Keeping Rubella at bay results in a lot fewer deaths, including the unborn.  Also, fewer would become deaf, fewer would have congenital heart defects.

From the CDC:

The greatest danger from rubella is to unborn babies. If a woman gets rubella in the early months of her pregnancy, there is an 80% chance that her baby will be born deaf or blind, with a damaged heart or small brain, or mentally retarded. This is called Congenital Rubella Syndrome, or CRS. Miscarriages are also common among women who get rubella while they are pregnant.

I would have thought that would be enough to get the point across: Rubella is something to prevent.  Perhaps the vaccine is a good thing?  Perhaps it is working?  I don’t think there is any “perhaphs” about it.  Overall, preventing Rubella is a great thing.  But some people seem to want to deny that vaccines even work.

Take a very rough estimate.  Assume from these data that 25 people a year in California alone have had autism prevented by the Rubella vaccine.  From 1970 to 2007, that works out to 675 people.  And that is just a secondary benefit.

Maybe by calling the Rubella vaccine “preventing autism” it will catch the eye of those who have somehow forgotton how bad this disease is.

Bedtime.

21 Sep

“If they had separate bedrooms”, I think to myself as I go in to prevent Tom’s headstand on his brother’s bed resulting in Tom landing on his brother’s head, “then I’m sure they’d settle to sleep sooner.”

 To be fair, Jacob – once he has got over the excitement of being two years old and being able to commit such daring deeds as emptying the clothes drawer, flinging various objects down the stairs and flinging himself on his brother, generally tends to fall asleep before too much time has elapsed. The bedtime routine, (bath, pyjamas, nappy change and story) appears to signal to Tom that now is the time for much jumping and spinning and crashing, interspersed with quiet bouts of block building, followed by shouting, singing and more jumping around.

 I enter the room and tell Tom to return to his own bed. He gives me a huge grin and collpases back on Jacob’s bed, giggling as he does so.

 “Get into your own bed!” I tell him, patient- mum rapidly being replaced by not-so-patient-she-devil, since I have had to remove him off his brother’s bed countless times this night. “Jacob is …”

 “AAH JACOB!” he shouts out.

 “Jacob is sleeping”, I inform him, then get him to repeat part of it in the hope he’ll understand.

 “Jacob is …”

 Tom places his palms together to the side of his head.

 “That’s right. Jacob is sleeping. He’s tired. Tom’s bedtime too. Into your bed.”

 Tom dutifully trots over and lies down, for all of three seconds. He stands up and begins jumping.

 “Settle down!” I tell him. He gets down off the bed and goes to his trampoline. I relent, ensuring that I will be forever scorned by SuperNanny but realising that, in the mood he’s in, sleep isn’t about to come anytime soon.

 “Five minutes” I tell him. I don’t know how much he understands about time, but hopefully he knows it means he can only jump for a short while.

 After five minutes are up I go back in and tell him to get back in his bed. He does so and this time lies down.

 “Aha!” I muse happily. “The jumping’s finally tired him out.

 Ten minutes later a small, yet growing steadily louder, voice comes floating up the stairs.

 “YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!”

 This time, when I check to see what is happening, he is grabbing Jacob’s hands (or trying to at any rate) and waving them bout the place. Thankful that Jacob hasn’t woken up yet (he is a light sleeper) I remove Tom and, once more, tell him to get back into his own bed. And again, he dutifully clambers back and lies down.

  Thus a pattern, familiar every night, emerges for the next ninety minutes or so. Every time I check Tom can be found either jumping, shouting, building and making patterns with his blocks or practising for the Olympic Gymnasts Team on either bed. And , every time, I place Tom back in his bed, or tell him to get back and he settles for anything from a few minutes to a few seconds.

 Except now I realise that I’ve not heard anything for at least fifteen minutes. No sound of blocks being shifted around, no songs being sung, no shouting, no movement, just quietness. Realising this could just mean he is busy getting into silent mischief I head down to see what he’s up to.

 At first I can’t spot him, he’s not on the floor and, after a quick check under the quilt on his bed I establish he’s not there either. And then I glance round.

 The pair of them are lying on Jacob’s bed, Tom’s head is nestled next to his brother’s, both pairs of feet touching. Their breathing is calm and easy, their faces soft and gentle as they are carried away by whatever dreams they are floating on.

 Separate bedrooms? They can wait. 

  

Autism and “I”

21 Sep

Earlier this summer I read Douglas Hofstadter‘s new book, I Am a Strange Loop. As Hofstadter mentions early in the book, a more appropriate title would have been “I” is a Strange Loop; the book is about the nature of consciousness, that elusive concept of “I”, and not an autobiographical work as the actual name of the book suggests.

Hofstadter’s works have been among my favorites since I read his first book, Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in high school. The new book is, in fact, an updating of the ideas he first expressed in GEB. I have long hoped that he might address issues of the mind and consciousness in terms of atypical minds (such as autism), but aside from some passing discussion of those minds, I Am a Strange Loop does not provide any real insight into how the concept of “I” fits with autism.

On Monday, I was pleased to find a paper that specifically addresses the question of autism and “I”, Self-Referential Cognition and Empathy in Autism, co-authored by Michael V. Lombardo, Jennifer L. Barnes, Sally J. Wheelwright, and Simon Baron-Cohen. From the paper’s abstract:

Background. Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have profound impairments in the interpersonal social domain, but it is unclear if individuals with ASC also have impairments in the intrapersonal self-referential domain. We aimed to evaluate across several well validated measures in both domains, whether both self-referential cognition and empathy are impaired in ASC and whether these two domains are related to each other.

Conclusions/Significance. We conclude that individuals with ASC have broad impairments in both self-referential cognition and empathy. These two domains are also intrinsically linked and support predictions made by simulation theory. Our results also highlight a specific dysfunction in ASC within cortical midlines structures of the brain such as the medial prefrontal cortex.

Instead of looking at autism as a syndrome of self-focus (the Kanner approach), the paper starts from the concept of “absent-self” put forth by Uta Frith in her book Autism: Explaining the Enigma. I had not heard of Frith before reading this paper, so I can’t really comment on her ideas. But the paper itself seems to make sense. I’m still going through it, trying to understand all that they are studying and what their results mean. (I did learn a new word: alexithymia – difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions.)

My first time through I Am a Strange Loop was to soak in the big concepts. I typically wait a few months before re-reading something like this so I can get into the details, but I think I’ll start again sooner than that. (At the moment, I’m reading Steven Pinker‘s latest book The Stuff of Thought.) Now that I have a bit more information about autism and “I”, I’ll have a better context for processing what I read.

Another interesting note about the paper, it was originally published by the Public Library of Science under a Creative Commons license. The PLoS home page describes it as a “A new way of communicating peer-reviewed science and medicine”, so I will assume the paper has been appropriately peer reviewed. But I think I will do a bit more checking just to be sure. (Of course, any insight from readers here would be greatly appreciated.)

The Wizard Of Oprah

21 Sep

Hey, it’s Thursday evening. Why don’t we stop by and see what the cat dragged in over at Rescue Host. Holy Vaccinations Batman! It’s more autism epidemic gibberish! The current installment comes to us from Kelli Ann Davis, who writes:

I knew the day was coming. With numbers like 1 in 150 children and 1 in 94 boys, “it” was bound to happen.

Her “it” apparently refers to the recent appearances of some fellow believers on daytime television. Davis goes on to share some apparent feelings of vindication:

I must of recited “the-numbers-are-getting-larger-and-our-voices-are-getting-louder” mantra at least a bazillion times over the last 5 years, cuz that’s how many meetings it feels like I’ve been in. but it never seemed to resonate.

There’s a good reason it probably didn’t seem to, for Kelli Ann, and doesn’t resonate in general. It’s because there isn’t any data that shows that “the-numbers” are actually getting larger. There is no question that there are indeed many more people being diagnosed as “on the autism spectrum”. But the thing is, the very definition of what professionals say autism is, changed dramatically in the not too distant past – even the conceptualization of autism as a spectrum of disorders is relatively recent development.

I think there’s a reasonable explanation for many of the “vaccines dunnit” voices getting louder. I’ve noticed a similar phenomenon in my own household, and I’m even guilty of it myself from time to time. Sometimes people craving attention (or just needing to be listened to) get louder and louder. Do four or five little children always calmly discuss who should get to go first in a game? Do they always rationally reason with each other about who should have the biggest piece of cake? What about children competing for the attention of a parent? Do they always stop, raise their hands, and quietly wait their turn? My opinion is that it’s often natural to shout. Shouting doesn’t automatically make one incorrect in their assertions, but it doesn’t make one correct either. It’s just shouting.

The difference here is that while shouting like children may garner attention, it does not change scientific reality. It just doesn’t matter if there are a million voices reciting the mantras of a flat earth, an autism ‘epidemic’, or flying saucers. No quantity of repetitive nonsense will construct any assertion’s truth. Without evidence that it is true, a failed hypothesis is doomed to the clutches of a handful of village idiots – and probably inevitably, a few celebrities too.

What does Kelli Ann have for us to demonstrate that “the-numbers-are-getting- larger”? Will it be daytime TV demagoguery?

Okay. So now “it” has arrived….in full Oprah force…..and I’m anxious to see if the “powers that be” FINALLY get “it.”

Ah, the “Appeal to Oprah”. Extremely similar to a simple appeal to popularity, but garnished with a household name that’s guaranteed to stir emotion and draw both media, and popular attention.

Kelli Ann might as well just write:

“Cuz everyone knows, “if you seen ’em on Oprah, they must be right”.

Should the “powers that be” Kelli Ann refers to, whomever or whatever that means, be worried if they don’t “FINALLY get it”? Only if they pay attention to that TV personality behind the curtain. Let’s hope they aren’t fooled into asking for a brain, heart, courage, or a trip home, and instead, ask to see everyone’s data.

Is it Kirby Season Again?

21 Sep

Well, it’s September, nearly time for the California DDS to put out the latest quarterly reports.  That means it’s nearly Kirby “spin the numbers” season.  What spin, you may ask?  Last time, David Kirby announced that the numbers may be going down.  At the same time, Rick Rollens noted that they were going up.  Even though they were proposing  exactly opposite interpretations, both were claiming it as evidence of an epidemic.

Even though Kirby’s post was last July, some of his comments still stick in my mind.  Why?  In his reach for crutches to support the fake epidemic, he has started pointing fingers at immigrants.

Legal and illegal immigration continues to rise from countries that still use the full amount of mercury in childhood vaccines.

First consider the fact that people like Kirby and others ignored immigration when they spun the supposed increrase seen in the 1990’s it would have been inconvenient for the “epidemic”.  But, what bugs me more is the jingoistic tone. Well, it’s the tone plus the fact that he could have spent the five minutes he should have spent to realize that it isn’t supported by the facts.

Let’s face it, when you are talking about immigration in California, especially illegal immigration, you are talking about Hispanics.  Hispanics make up about 49% of the legal immigrants, and probably most of the illegal immigrants.  Another big chunk of legal immigrants are Asian (about 40%).

Mr. Kirby notes:

But it turns out that a private citizen has paid the state each quarter to analyze the autism numbers according to year of birth, and not just by age group. State law requires that such privately funded analyses be made available to anyone else who asks for it.

That does sound like some interesting data!  I will post on that shortly.  In the meantime,  let’s take a look at the data by age-group, shall we?  Let’s look at the total number of people with autism who are White as a function of time:

Kirby Season Figure 1

Wow, it just goes up and up and up.  Doesn’t stop, doesn’t flatten out.  Doesn’t go down.  Where’s the drop that Mr. Kirby sees?  If immigration is pumping up the overall numbers, I’d have expected to see a drop in the numbers for Whites.  Take a closer look: the curve isn’t precisely straight. Let’s draw a line in through the data before 2006 (data points in red) and another through the data points after 2006 (in blue).  Oh, my, the slope for the 2005 data is 848+7 and the post 2006 data is 1058+25 (in units of individuals with autism per year).

Closeup of Figure 1

The total number of Whites is not only increasing, but the rate of increase is going up too!  I don’t see how one can spin immigration to explain that.

Now, do put any significance in the change in slope?  Yes and no.  Yes, something is going on, it’s small but there is something causing changes in slope from time to time.  The real question is why?  To just say, “Well the numbers are going up, therefore my pet idea is true” is irresponsible.  One should look closer at the numbers and decide why.

That is my basic problem with the Kirby/Geier approach to “research”.  Dig deep enough to support your theory and no farther.

So, let’s look at the Hispanic population and see what is happening.  Well, there is big increase in the number of Hispanic people served by the CDDS under autism in the time period here (mid 2000 to mid 2007) the number went from 2533 to 9212.  Or, in epidemic speak, that’s a 364% increase.  By comparison, the numbers for Whites went up by 234%.

Kirby Season Figure 3

You can easily see how that could be spun into blaming the rising numbers on immigration.  If you didn’t already know about the trends amongst Whites especially.  Still, take the five minutes to look at the data closer.  Take a look at the percentage of Hispanic clients served under autism.

An increase from about 19% to 27% in just 7 years?  The increase must be those immigrants a Kirby would say.  Or, is it?  Consider that Hispanics make up 35% of the California population.  Even with this big increase, they only account for 27% of the total number of CDDS clients under autism?  The problem, Mr. Kirby, is not whether Hispanics are driving up the numbers.  The problem is that the great State of California is probably under-serving one of its largest ethnic groups!

Anyone remember Jurassic Park?  Remember the problem with their computer program that did the census on the dinosaurs?  It counted until it reached the number it expected and then stopped.  Guess what, that’s what people who rely on the CDDS numbers have been doing.  They look until they find the data that supports their theory and they stop.

The extra steps taken here go further than a Kirby or Geier analysis, but they only scratch the surface.  And, yet, I will be bold and say that it is a crime that we are undercounting and underserving our own people.  By ignoring the fact that the CDDS could be undercounting some groups, those promoting the “epidemic” helped the undercounting continue.  This despite the fact that the CDDS is actively reaching out to minority groups.

Mr Kirby ends his post with the statement:

Regardless of one’s position on the mercury-autism contretemps, I hope everyone can agree that an actual drop in the numbers, no matter what the cause, would provide a welcome respite from the endless chorus of grim news we all seem to face these days.

Well, if we had an accurate count of the individuals with autism, we could debate that.  We don’t have an accurate count.  That’s sort of the point, Mr. Kirby.  Your “gold standard” of epedimiology, the CDDS dataset, is woefully inadequate.  Once we have an accurate count of everyone and are providing the appropriate supports for those who need them, we can start talking about whether it would be good if the numbers should go down.  Until then, identifying the uncounted is a good thing.

I would add, there are causes for a drop in autism numbers that would make me very unhappy.

I would welcome an end to the “grim news”.  Any time you want to tone down the rhetoric and start working on the real problems at hand is fine by me, Mr. Kirby.

The New McCarthy-ism

19 Sep

When it comes to autism, those who chafe at vaccine conspiracy theories and “trapped in their own world” stereotypes and the endless biomed cures du jour may have science (not to mention sanity) on their side.

But step aside, people: Jenny McCarthy is armed with Google, and she’s not afraid to use it.

The model and self-styled actress was on Oprah today to talk about her autistic son, and if you’ve caught wind of her thoughts on autism already (or seen how pretty much anything about autism is treated on the Oprah show), you just knew this could not be good.

No joke: McCarthy was cheered lustily by the studio audience for announcing that, after her son was diagnosed, she typed the word “autism” into the Google search engine, launching a courageous and audacious search for the truth. And what came up? Why, story after story about remedies and recoveries and other amazing stuff your pediatrician is paid handsomely by the CDC not to tell you about.

Luckily, Google employs an army of people whose only job is to make sure everything that pops up on the site is totally legit, although I probably should Google that sometime just to make sure it’s true.

McCarthy spoke particularly of clicking on a link “up in the corner” (I believe those are what are known as “advertisements”) and learning about the wonders of biomed.

In the video clips Oprah showed, McCarthy’s son looked healthy and happy (although there wasn’t really much pre-biomed footage to compare with). And i applaud her for being an apparently caring and involved mom — she’s a convenient target for satire, and maybe she deserves the benefit of the doubt. (Although there was something chilling about the way she described getting an employee of a play gym fired for suggesting her son might have a “brain problem.”)

But here’s a TV show with an audience that’s humungous by any standard — many times larger than all the autism blogs put together. And here’s a celebrity announcing that her “real” son had become “trapped inside” this autistic shell, and that she was hell-bent to “get him out.” (More big cheers.)

And here’s Oprah opening the show by quoting McCarthy’s book (yep, she writes, too!) on the different reactions encountered when people learn a child has been diagnosed with cancer vs. diagnosed with autism. Surprising those reactions are so divergent, because as we’ve been conditioned to learn by Autism Speaks and others, autism is at least as terrifying as pending death.

Oprah also cooed approvingly when McCarthy defended biomed by saying, “Well, chemotherapy doesn’t work for everybody either.”

At least McCarthy didn’t talk about train wrecks. Instead, she talked about bus crashes.

Seriously. She offered an analogy about autism that went like this: “If you get hit by a bus, you’re going to recover. But you’re going to have a little booboo.” (She definitely used the word “booboo.” Coming soon to the DSM-V.)

And naturally, vaccines had to come up. McCarthy said she had invoked what she calls her “mommy instinct” to finger the MMR in the case of her son.

Then Oprah read a response she had received from the CDC (at least she took a stab at social responsibility by contacting the agency) that talked about the lack of scientific support for the idea that thimerosal triggers autism.

McCarthy scoffed and said, speaking of her son: “He is my science.”

Well guess what, Prof. McCarthy? MMR doesn’t contain thimerosal. Never has.

She apparently didn’t know that. Oprah also either didn’t know it or didn’t bother to correct it. The studio audience and the vast TV audience were left with yet more misinformation and hysteria and hand-wringing about the horrors of autism, in a forum where so many people could have instead been enlightened about notions like autistic kids who aren’t “broken” and therapies that offer help without taking families for a ride. (A bus ride, if you like. Only one that REALLY crashes.)

Speaking of which: I would have liked to describe the whole show. But about halfway through, I realized my stop had arrived.

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