Archive by Author

MMR, David & Goliath

21 Sep

I came across an article today by F. Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP. He’s part of the loose coalition of people who support the MMR/Thiomersal/autism association. The article was mainly about how Thiomersal in Europe is displayed with a skull and crossbones. I may tackle that another time but for now I want to take issue with the following introduction:

In the United Kingdom, the issue of MMR remains in the forefront with a David and Goliath scenario unfolding for the last seven years: On one side, the mighty Government, the Prime-Minister personally, the Health authorities, the Press –some of it very ugly- and large useless epidemiological studies and on the other side, Andrew Wakefield with his study of 12 children and a small group of faithful devoted and informed parents.

There is enough scientific evidence to show that both the MMR vaccine and Thimerosal in other vaccines precipitate autistic regression in genetically-predisposed children, not withstanding the opinions of biased “experts,” a misleading IOM special committee report and obviously the CDC.

Red Flags Weekly.

He also links to a more indepth article apparently but I can’t access it from the link provided.

Lets just tackle these statements as someone who _is_ British and lives in the UK.

The MMR issue is not in the forefront of anything. It remains sporadically in the news due to the efforts of Times journalist Brian Deer. Andrew Wakefield by comparison has fled the country and refuses to be interviewed by Deer. There is indeed a ‘small group’ of press and parents but whilst they are faithful and devoted, they are far from informed.

The facts of the matter are that Andrew Wakefield says he has found an autism related bowel disease in some autistic kids. He may well have, gastric issues are a known comorbidity in some people. There is however, _no link to MMR causing this condition_. No science exists that shows a causative link.

And far from there being just ‘large useless epidemiological studies’ to refute Wakefields claims there are actual ‘hard science’ studies that refute his work.

Firstly is the evidence of his _own lab_.

Even as Andrew Wakefield launched his attack on MMR in 1998, at a press conference and in a video, coinciding with a Lancet paper, he knew that his own laboratory had tested his theory: that the ultimate culprit for the children’s autism was measles virus in the vaccine. Royal Free researcher Nick Chadwick, carrying out sophisticated molecular analysis of samples from the children, using methods agreed by Wakefield, found no trace of measles virus.

Brian Deer.

And lately a new study (which will feature in a BBC documentary) shows that:

Scientists at Guy’s Hospital, in London, have been studying a large group of 100 autistic children. They examined their blood samples, looking for traces of the measles virus in their blood and in that of another group of non-autistic children. The samples were analysed in some of Britain’s leading laboratories, using the most sensitive methods available. The scientists found that 99 per cent of the samples did not contain any trace of the measles virus. Crucially, there was no difference between the autistic and non-autistic children

Awares.

Its also worth noting that *all* of the co-authors of the original Lancet paper have rescinded their position leaving Wakefield standing alone. Next year he will face misconduct charges in the UK from the GMC.

Its further worth noting that at the time he began to criticise the MMR and implicate it in autism causation, Wakefield also claimed he had found another, safer way to vaccinate kids which he duly filed a Patent application for. He later denied this on a website and through his solicitors, however Brain Deer unearthed Wakefield’s Patent application for all to see.

F. Edward Yazbak talks of bias. We have a saying in the UK Sir – ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’.

Unobtrusive, Accessible Collapsible Content

19 Sep

I’m stretching my Javascript legs a bit at the moment and am beginning to really enjoy the freedom that decent DOM support across the major browsers offers.

I recently had occasion to create an ‘events’ page which will be inserted into an upcoming project. As there will be a lot of events being added to this page I wanted to create it as a collapsible unordered list. But as a Javascript ‘workout’ for myself I resolved that I would only use Javascript that was unobtrusive, degraded gracefully and was accessible as possible. that meant no onclick attributes, no ‘#’ in href attributes and code that was valid and clean.

Here’s the markup:

<h1>Events Listing</h1>	
	
<p>Browse the listing for upcoming events</p>
			
<ul class="open">
	
<li>
		
<h2>4th Annual &ndash; Summit</h2>
			
<ul id="ul_item1" class="opensub">
<li id="item1_1">
<h3>22nd September 2005, Main Campus</h3>
<p>blah blah blah....</p>
</li>
</ul>
		
</li>
					
<li>
		
<h2>Managing the Market Or Some Such Bollocks</h2>
			
<ul id="ul_item2" class="opensub">
<li id="item2_1">
<h3>24th November 2005. The Conference Centre</h3>		
<p>etc etc etc...</p>
</li>
</ul>					                             
		
</li>
	
</ul>

Fairly self-explanatory markup. The sublists hold the content but users with Javascript and CSS enabled will get a clickable link (not shown in this markup – patience my precious…) whilst those without will just get this.

I then wrote three fairly simple javascript codeblocks (two functions and one class). Function number one I called ‘toggle’ and thats what it does. When a specific link is clicked, it either shows or hides an element. Like so:

function toggle(id){
var ul = "ul_" + id;
var img = "img_" + id;
var ulElement = document.getElementById(ul);
var imgElement = document.getElementById(img);
if (ulElement){
 if (ulElement.className == "closed"){
  ulElement.className = "opensub";
  imgElement.src = "opened.gif";
  }else{
  ulElement.className = "closed";
  imgElement.src = "closed.gif";
  }
 }
}

So, the function is passed a value referenced as ‘id’ (more on that later). It then appends that passed value onto the end of two elements and applies a class of ‘closed’ or ‘opensub’ as appropriate.

What I wanted to do next was ensure that if the user didn’t have Javascript then the ‘opensub’ CSS class was applied (as we need to present the whole page to them) and if they do have Javascript then we need to apply the ‘closed’ class to the element.

I also wanted to ensure that if the user did have Javascript then he existing markup above was annotated with markup that will make each heading a clickable link and provide a little feedback in the form of an image. Hence:

function initState () {
var lists = document.getElementsByTagName("ul");
for (var j=0; j<lists.length; j++) {
 if(lists[j].className == "opensub") {
  lists[j].className = "closed";
 }
}	
var subHeads = document.getElementsByTagName("h2");
for (var k=0; k<subHeads.length; k++) {
 var arrImg = document.createElement("img");
 arrImg.src="closed.gif";
 arrImg.id="img_item" + [k+1];
 subHeads[k].appendChild(arrImg);
 var holdText = subHeads[k].firstChild.data;
 subHeads[k].firstChild.data = "";
 var placeAnchor = document.createElement("a");
 placeAnchor.href = "test.htm";
 placeAnchor.id = "item" + [k+1];
 placeAnchor.className = "ddown";
 placeAnchor.appendChild(document.createTextNode(holdText));
 subHeads[k].appendChild(placeAnchor);
 }
}

This function has two main parts. The first part (knowing that the user does have javascript installed – we'll see how later) turns all instances of 'opensub' (which displays to the page by default) to 'closed' – meaning a user with Javascript gets the 'rolled up' items. The second part hunts for all h2 elements and creates the markup for both the image and the clickable text in the heading element. These two lines:

var holdText = subHeads[k].firstChild.data;
subHeads[k].firstChild.data = "";

firstly, get the value of the text in the

element, stores it for later use and then gets rid of it – if it didn’t we’d have both the existing text plus the clickable text. Which would be crap.

Once all this is coded we need a way to fire this whole process. I did this in the class below:

window.onload = function() {
  if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return false;
  initState();
  var lnks = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
  for (var i=0; i<lnks.length; i++) {
    if(lnks[i].className == "ddown"){
      lnks[i].onclick = function() {
        toggle(this.getAttribute("id"));
        return false;
      }
    }
  }
}

The crucial line is line 2:

if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return false;

This says that if the browser doesn't support the prerequisite method then the whole things off, the extra markup doesn't get created and everything appears on the page all at once.

This function also passes the 'id' value to the 'toggle' function by getting the id attribute value of the link thats been clicked.

To complete this whole thing we lastly need to create the CSS that will do the actual showing and hiding:

h2 a {
display: inline;
}

.open {
display: block;
}

.closed {
display: none;
}

ul li,
ul {
list-style-type: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

.open li img {
vertical-align: middle;
}

And thats that – job done. See it in action or download the whole thing here.

Amended

I thought it might be nice to see if we could close every other entry when one entry is clicked – this means only one entry is ever displayed which might be preferable for some. All this needs is some minor tweaks to the Javascript.

For the function initState() I added the line:

arrImg.className="ddImg";

Immediately below this one:

arrImg.id="img_item" + [k+1];

So I have a class to hook myself into in the next function – toggle(id).

I’ve added two new if statements here that firstly close up all the ul elements with the class name ‘opensub’ and then closed all the img elements with the (see above) class name ‘ddImg’. What’ll happen later in this function is that the selected id will be passed in exactly the same manner as it was before thus opening the correct list and image. Here’s the annotated code for toggle(id)

var allLists = document.getElementsByTagName("ul");
for (var x=0; x<allLists.length; x++) {
if(allLists[x].className == "opensub") {
 allLists[x].className = "closed";
 }
}
var allListImg = document.getElementsByTagName("img");
 for (var y=0; y<allListImg.length; y++) {
 if(allListImg[y].className == "ddImg") {
  allListImg[y].src = "closed.gif";
 }
}

I put this code right at the very start of the function.

And thats that. Whenever you click on an entry, all other open entries will shut automatically.

The example’s here and the download is here.

Amendement No II

And its only now of course that I remember that screenreader users invariably _do_ have Javascript turned on and that display: none hides things from the screenreader.

One frantic search later, I find the answer in the Off-Left technique. So the code for the closed class now reads:

.closed {
 position: absolute;
 left: -999px;
 width: 990px;
}

Lets Cut Microsoft Some Slack Eh?

19 Sep

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m getting really really bored with the recent upsurge in MS bashing. Its really prevalent in the web design industry as a lot of designers are Mac users.

It comes in many flavours. First their is the odd blog post with a reasonable proposition that turns into an MS (oops, sorry ‘M$’) bashing fest. Or there’s the full on blog attack.

MS (damn, did it again, I need to write ‘M$’ for full ‘kewl’ points right?) have just released their Developer toolbar for IE and yup, you can bet that announcement got its fair share of idiocy too.

Most of the complaints centre around how uninovatory Microsoft are. Well duh. Thats not their strength. You know thats not their strength, they’ve never traded seriously on that being their strength. Stop moaning about it. However, what they _are_ good at is responding to demand. They watched how Konfabulator panned out then launched Gadgets. They watched how Tiger panned out and they’ll soon launch Vista. They watched how Firefox panned out and saw how good some of the extensions were/are and did their own…..um, whats wrong with that?

Here’s one of the things that rankles me: if they _didn’t_ do these things then these same people would be moaning about how Microsoft are sticking with the same old crap that nobody likes. There truly are times when Microsoft cannot win. They appreciate how good something is and implement a similar system/product and get accused of being uninnovative. Stick with what they’ve got and they get accused of not being able to move forward.

Here’s another thing that rankles me: without the Windows PC, the vast majority of those doing the moaning would not be in the line of work they are currently in. Corporate websites require visitors. Next time you wonder who pays your wages (or who funds your clients ability to finance design work) take a look at the OS stats for your clients site visitors.

Windows made the PC easy for the mass market to use and to get on the web with. Whilst Mac dither about for months designing a _mouse_ , the average price of an internet ready Windows PC is still falling. Whilst precocious designers complain about how Gadgets are really Widgets or what ever, Windows users continue to ramp up web sales.

This recent spate of Windows bashing is totally misplaced. So what if Vista uses a ‘plastic’ style interface? So what if Desktop X wasn’t the first to support widgets? So what if the new IE toolbar resembles the Firefox extension? Are any of these things holding back innovation on the web?

Why don’t you redirect some of that moaning into areas that Microsoft really _do_ need a good kicking about? Like full CSS2.1 support. Or why it took nearly half a decade to get an upgrade to their flagship web product?

Oh, and if you really want to know why PC’s (both Win and *nix) sell better than Macs, try changing the memory on a Mac Mini.

A More Accurate Neurodiversity FAQ

17 Sep

*Proviso: I am not a spokesperson for any other person and/or group. The term ‘neurodiversity’ did not originate with me. What follows is my personal opinion and what I believe the concept of neurodiversity represents. I believe I voice opinions common to many in the neurodiversity group but I may well be wrong. Sometimes I refer to ‘we’ and sometimes ‘I’. When I refer to ‘we’ I think I am repeating the consensus of neurodiversitiy opinion but bear in mind I could well be wrong.*

*1) Neurodiversity proponents are anti-parent.*

False. I’m a parent. I’m parent to 3 kids of whom one is NT, one is autistic and one is too young to tell. I’ve never felt anyone in the ‘neurodiversity crowd’ is anti me. Kathleen is a parent. Camille is a parent. Anne is a parent.

*2) AutAdvo makes up the entire population of Neurodiversity proponents.*

False. There are literally hundreds of websites with thousands of participating autistics of all ‘levels’. The vast majority advocate acceptance. There are also a very large number of NT parents who advocate Neurodiversity. The desire to cure autism is heavily weighted towards North America. Look among your own group for evidence of that.

*3) Neurodiversity proponents say we should not treat our kids.*

False. This is one of the biggest points of contention. The issue is one of autism (the main point) versus comorbidities (side points). See the WikiPedia definition of comorbidity. What are some comorbidities? Gastric problems, ADHD, ADD, Depression, migrane. Why would you imagine we don’t want you to treat these things? These things are not autism. They are comorbidities of autism. They cannot be used to illustrate or define autism as they are not common to every autistic.

Don’t take my word for it. Go ask the Doctor who diagnosed your child.

We see your error as the failure to differentiate between the comorbidity and the autism. To us, one is treatable. The other is not. We do not fight for your childs right to have gastric issues.

You see our error as trying to prevent your child being treated. My own daughter receives PECS and Speech Therapy. I would not stand in any parents way who wanted to alleviate the suffering of their kids. Having terrible constipation is suffering. Having a different kind of thought process is not.

_Please note: It is worth reading Amanda’s thoughts on autism/comorbidities as they differ slightly from what I’ve written here. My own understanding of how this process pans out is altering as a result of this exchange with Amanda but I write here what is my most complete belief as of this minute._

*4) Neurodiversity proponents who are autistic are different than my child.*

True. They are mostly adults. Your kids are kids. However I don’t think thats your point. You believe that all autistic Neurodiversity proponents are ‘high functioning’. This is untrue, both now and historically. The facts are that for a lot of the autistic adults in the Neurodiversity movement their diagnosis was ‘low functioning’ when they were kids. But people grow and progress. Autism doesn’t stop progress, it just sets a different timetable for it. These adults are living breathing proof.

*5) Neurodiversity proponents are full of hate and/or racism.*

False. Just like you, we get angry and say stupid things. What Jerry Newport said was not on. Simple as that. It was, in my opinion, unacceptable. I am though totally bewildered how the words of one man apparently speak for everyone else. I’ve seen the posts from the other members of AutAdvo following Jerry Newport’s post. People were angry and disappointed with him. Not one person defended his position.

I was bemused to read posts by newer members of the EoH list (and one founding member) that castigated us for hate speech. Here’s an excerpt from an email I was sent earlier in the year from someone who hid their identity. This person (who had a Bellsouth IP address) had an in-depth knowledge of Evidence of Harm and although they never said so, that they came from EoH is beyond doubt – I received this email to my Yahoo spam account immediately after making a few posts myself on EoH.

Your retard daughter should just be fucking put down – shes no autist. Little bitch.

And racism? A member of Generation Rescue (or so they claimed) told me to:

…sit next to the nearest Arab with a backpack.

Alluding, of course, to the recent London suicide bombings, this person makes racist generalisations about Arabs (one of the ironies being that Rashid Buttar is himself of Arabic descent I understand) as well as wishing death on me.

Generation Rescue Bigwig John Best Jr has said that all parents of autistics who don’t chelate their kids are child abusers. Lujene Clarke of NoMercury told me that I was mentally ill because I said I had autistic relatives. My EoH debut was preceded by EoH list members referring to me as an idiot. I’ve been told I’m in the pay of Pharma companies, that I’m stupid, that I’ll go to Hell, that I’m in denial. My autistic friends have been told they are sociopath, that they have personality disorders, that they aren’t really autistic.

All of you who who rightly condemned Jerry Newport’s words – I urge you to denounce these examples of bigotry and hate too.

*6) Neurodiversity proponents say we don’t love our kids or want whats best for them.*

False. I have no doubt that you all love your kids just as much as I love mine. I’ve not seen any neurodiversity proponent claim you hate your kids.

What we say is that we think your love for your kids has blinded you to the reality that autism itself is not a problem to overcome but a reality to share with your child. We think that in your honest desire to do the best for your child you are desperate to treat the wrong thing. We also feel that some of the things you use to treat your kids are dangerous. Chelation for example. I’m on record as saying that its no-ones place to tell others what they can and cannot do to treat their kids but by that same token, I feel obliged to point the very real dangers to both your children’s health, your own bank balance and the very future of autism treatment research.

I believe the world should change for the good of my child. I don’t believe my child should meekly inherit the mantle of ‘second class citizen’. I see it as part of my job to fight for her right to get the help she needs and at the same time, be who she is.

There are so many better fights than this one you’re on. Better education, better care, better interventions, more rights, more respect. These are the things your child (and mine) will need as they continue to grow.

We’d like you to respect your child’s autism as something unique. We’d like you to treat your child with the medical interventions for their comorbidities that they may need to progress. We’d like you to realise that your children will grow up and if they were autistic then they still will be. We’d like you to think about the strong possibility that one day the autistic adults on AutAdvo might be your kids and another set of parents who believe something passionately will be insulting them by denigrating their worth and their neurology.

You believe thiomersal did your kids harm. You may be right. I doubt it, but you may be. What it definitely didn’t do though is cause autism. This is at the heart of what makes some of us angry in respect of this issue – treat your kids if they are mercury poisoned but please stop propagating so much negative stigma with constant references to autism being mercury poisoning.

*7) So autism is definitely not mercury poisoning?*

Definitely’s a very strong word. The consensus of opinion is that that is very unlikely to be true. In my daughters case, its definitely not true. Autism is a spectrum, its not an ‘either/or’ scenario. I think its likely that some people have a genetic predisposition for autism which may be triggered by an environmental insult and that that trigger may even be mercury in some cases but ‘trigger’ does not equal ’cause’. Even if what I believe is 100% accurate (which is doubtful, who is ever 100% accurate?) that would still mean the vast majority of autistics are autistic for reasons other than mercury.

*8) So why do neurodiversity proponents say they speak for my child?*

The way I see it is like this – I and my wife know our daughter better than anyone else alive. Whilst she is a child, we speak for her in all matters. But the fact is that she is autistic. It therefore is simple common sense that other autistics have thought processes closer to those of my daughter than any NT does. They think in similar ways. Its not a case of speaking *for*, its more like having a shared reality. If one or more of my kids were gay than I would still speak for them in all matters whilst they were children but not being gay I could not share that reality in the same way as other gay people could. By virtue of their shared reality of autism our kids and autistic adults share an area of being that NT parents can never share. Like it or not, that does give them a commonality and communal existence. With that community sometimes comes a voice. Can you really say, as NT parents, that you are closer in thought process to your kids than autistic adults? When it comes to what makes autistics tick can you really say that you as NT’s know better than other autistics?

Compare The Rhetoric

15 Sep

Its no secret. I’m firmly of the opinion that Lenny Schafer is a borderline bigot. He recently wrote an open letter to his Evidence of Harm list mates which I repeat below:

I should like to provide a summary to this encirculing (sic) discussion. The autistics condemnation of those who seek a cure for autism rely on two rhetorical devices to do so. First, is their special, cultural and vague definition of autism. The other is a cynical definition of “cure”. The autistic movement indeed condemns parents who do not agree with their creed. They have joined legal efforts to restrict the funding of ABA programs in Canada and often engage the media to attack parents who seek cures for their children.

Let there be no mistaking it, the “don’t cure autism” rhetoric is little more than a vehicle for parent bashing. This is both irrational and unjust. It may not be Stephen Shore’s intent to condemn anyone, but the movement for which he attempts to apologizes for does; it is not so easy to weasel away one’s personal support of such efforts with platitudes about helping people. This is not just about honest differences of opinion; this is about a creed who intends to interfere with the quest of parents to relieve their children from the misery of clinical autism.

Its the same old stuff from Schafer. Clinical autism. Yeah. Parent bashing. Right. He acts out of fear and a closed mind. By contrast, here’s a recent post from Wade Rankin. Its a long post which needs to be read in full but the last two paragraphs spoke to me:

In the biomedical community, we often throw around the word “cure.” When I use that word, I know what I mean and most other people who practice biomedical know what I mean. We are seeking to alleviate the dysfunctional aspects of ASD in our children. We will never alter the genetic makeup of our children, and to the extent genes make them autistic, they will remain autistic. I can live with that. But I believe that one or more environmental insults has acted in concert with my son’s genetic makeup to create stumbling blocks that keep him from using all of this gifts. I cannot believe I am wrong in trying to reduce the effects of those environmental insults.

On the other hand, when I am confronted with the eloquence of Kathleen Seidel or the extraordinary testimony of an adult with autism who wants no “cure,” I have to realize that the issues surrounding ASD are not easily addressed by one-size-fits-all answers. Could the “cure” we seek help other people who reject biomedical interventions? Perhaps, but that’s not a necessary given. More importantly, that’s not my choice to make.

Wade Rankin.

How refreshing. Someone at least prepared to question and look. I know I’ve thought differently of some of the people involved in the Biomedical camp since encountering Wade online. I don’t agree with his use of the word ‘cure’ and I wonder if he were autistic himself whether or not he would see enough of his behaviour as dysfunctional enough to _require_ a cure but I also believe he acts out of a genuine desire to help his children. I genuinely do not know what desires move a man like Lenny Schafer. All I know that reading what he writes is like feeling a cold wind on one’s spine. He’s become the poster boy for intolerance.

The best thing about Wade is that he is obviously a man who understands the power that words carry. Unlike Schafer who uses his words as a blunt weapon, Wade is often reflective to the point of hesitancy when trying to explain his thoughts. Its so refreshing to hear someone from the Biomed camp describe gettingthetruthout.org as ‘extraordinary’. I shudder to think what Schafer would describe that site as and I genuinely have no desire to hear his thoughts on the matter.

The Evidence of Harm maillist recently ‘outed’ Orac. They published his real name, contact info including tel number on EoH. Various hangers on repeated the information on their own sites. Schafer did nothing to prevent this although he recently become apoplectic when Jerry Newport of AutAdvo apparently did the same to him. maybe he thought it was just revenge.

However, a lot of EoH members protested this stupidity and questioned the motives of the EoH attack dogs like Ashleigh Anderson, who did the ‘outing’. A few people left expressing disgust with what the list had become.

EoH maillist is crumbling. I hope when it does crumble that out of the rubble steps a man like Wade to create a group that is capable of thinking instead of blindly lashing out. He is an honourable man with honourable intent. A lot of people on EoH would benefit from a leader less prone to bigotry and more prone to reflection. I sincerely hope they get it.

Microsoft IE/DOM Naming Conventions

13 Sep

I’ve recently had occasion to get more heavily into DOM and AJAX scripting and I have to say I’m quite enjoying it. I’ve ordered Jermey Keith’s new book on the subject but In true impatient style have got on with it a bit.

The last time I really used Javascript consistently was when we didn’t care how we used onclick attributes or cluttering our markup with frightening amounts of functions in links. It always vaguely annoyed me back then but I didn’t have the Javascript expertise to address my concerns and besides, a lot of the stuff I really wanted to do wasn’t implemented in various browsers or was too haphazard.

Javascript has undergone something of a redemption of late – and why not? As Jeremy keith and others show, its fairly easy to make Javascript unobtrusive, accessible and as an interface enhancement as oppose to something thats just ‘cool’ with no real purpose.

The MagpieRSS/AJAX parser on the home page of this site is not very well coded but it enabled me to get to terms with the basics of doing and at some point I can revisit it and concentrate on doing it well.

But already I’ve run across an amusing throwback to the dear old days of browser sniffing because of a (ahem) certain browser.

Consider the following code:

if(subLinks[i].getAttribute("class") == "ddown")

I know the double equals signs are missing. I have no idea why but they just won’t render.

Its part of a larger object but I’ve taken it out so we can look at it in isolation. Its a fairly easy piece of code. Its saying, if the value of the ‘class’ attribute of the elements I’ve isolated is ‘ddown’….then go on to do something later in the code. Simple eh?

Except life’s never like that with IE is it? Try as I might, this line of code was tripping me up in IE. It worked fine in Moz, FFox and the latest version of Opera but no joy in IE. After a search I turned up this:

When retrieving the CLASS attribute using this method, set the sAttrName to be “className”, which is the corresponding Dynamic HTML (DHTML) property.

MSDN.

So is it? Are MS doing it right and everyone else doing it wrong? This seems highly unlikely.

Anyway, I now had to use a way of setting the right value for the right client. Luckily, because I was using AJAX I already had this:

if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {	  
	 .....
  }else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
      ......
  }

to name my request object,so I modified it slightly to add:

if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {	  
	  var classFix ="class";
  }else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
         var classFix ="className";
  }

And changed the offending line of code to:

if(subLinks[i.]getAttribute(classFix) == "ddown")

Now I’m not enough of an AJAX whiz to know if this is the right or wrong way or if this is a known issue or if I’ve missed something simpler. Please let me know if I have.

Getting The Truth Out

11 Sep

Awhile ago, the Autism Society of America rebadged and relaunched themselves. Their website was overhauled and they launched an accompanying campaign which can be found at http://www.gettingthewordout.org – its very slick, very professional and totally misleading.

By contrast I urge people to visit Getting The Truth Out which is a much more realistic look at autism.

Its a big site and you’ll need at least a spare hour but please – when you go, read it all in one go. Don’t stop halfway through. Lots of people won’t get the message if they stop halfway through. It might be a very different message than the one you were expecting.

In places, for us parents, its not an easy read.

In other places it feels like we as parents have to accept that whilst we know our kids well we don’t know autism as well as autistics.

In still more places, this is a read full of hope and confirmation that difference is not equatable to bad or something that requires curing.

I’ll leave you with the plea to go visit this site whomever you are. Instead of donating money to a charity this week, please invest some of your time in reading this:

The young woman in this picture has autism, a debilitating developmental disorder that affects communication, socialization, and behavior.

The spots where she doesn’t have hair on her head are because she pulled it out so much that it never grew back. Self-injurious behavior is a common symptom. It’s easier to deal with her hair-pulling if her hair is cut very short.

The Autism Society of America (ASA) says that 1 in 166 people are diagnosed as somewhere on the autistic spectrum. They say that there is one autism diagnosis every 20 minutes.

Parents are devastated.

She can’t speak, so this website is speaking for her and many others like her. Our aim is to portray some of the realities of living with autism.

Once more I urge you: please find out the truth about autism.

The Coming Gold Rush

10 Sep

Prometheus publishes an article that I hope he doesn’t object to me reproducing below. The reason I do is due to the extreme importance of Prometheus’ message. Comments are turned off on my post. If you wish to comment follow this link or the one at the bottom of this post and comment on Prometheus’ blog:

From the “Evidence of Harm” Yahoo group:

With the news articles about the possibility of gold helping children with autism I wonder if something like this might help my grandson. I would like to know if anyone has given this to their child with autism.

Which was in response to a story by – who else! – Dan Olmsted, UPI’s senior autism-mercury editor. In his story, Mr. Olmsted has tracked down one of the patients in Leo Kanner’s landmark article on autism, Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact (1943).
This man, identified as Donald T., is now 72 years old and experienced a significant, if not dramatic, improvement in his autistic behaviors at age 14 (or 12 – the story contradicts itself on this point) after receiving injections of gold salts as treatment for life-threatening rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Mr. Olmsted and – since the article – a growing number of parents of autistic children, postulate that the gold injections were the cause of his improvement. Puberty is another event that happened at about the same time, but was discounted.

Mr. Olmsted’s understanding of how gold might help autism is – as you might expect – tied in with the autism-mercury hyposthesis. In his article, Mr. Olmsted explains it thusly, in a quote from JB and Lisa Handley of “Generation Rescue”:

It is no surprise that gold salts improved Donald T.’s ‘autism.’ As gold miners as far back as the Roman Empire would tell you, gold and mercury have a strong binding affinity for each other, and the gold salts likely acted as a rudimentary chelator to help Donald T. detoxify. (Mercury is used in gold mining to separate small particles of gold from sand.)

Yes, mercury was (and still is) used to separate gold from its ore – metallic mercury. The gold dissolves (amalgamates) in the mercury. This reaction can only occur when both the gold and the mercury are in the metallic state.

The gold used to treat Donald T’s RA was a salt – the gold was an ion and not able to amalgamate with metallic mercury. In addition, mercury in animal tissue is also either ionized or chemically bonded with organic groups (e.g. methyl, ethyl, phenyl…) and also not able to form an amalgam.

None of this seems to have stopped the speculation that gold may be either the next “cure” for autism or, at the least, a vindication of the much-battered chelation therapy.

Clearly, the current state of our knowledge of the chemistry of gold and mercury does not support the “chelation hypothesis”. And the prospect of gold becoming the next “cure” for autism is very ominous.

I could go on and on about the potential toxicity of gold treatment, but I think that a 2001 study in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases said it the best:

GST [gold sodium thiomalate] is more toxic than MTX [methotrexate] but it remains an effective alternative in patients in whom MTX may not be tolerated…

Gold sodium thiomalate is injected gold and methotrexate is a cancer chemotherapeutic agent that is often used in more severe autoimmune diseases (of which RA is one).

In the right hands, with proper monitoring and for a disorder in which it is known to work, gold therapy is a useful – if not first line – treatment. However, our only indication that gold might help autism is a single case from the 1940’s.

This rather slim reed of evidence is made even slimmer by the fact that gold therapy has continued in used to the present time. Gold therapy is used in severe cases of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) often enough that at least a few autistic children with JRA must have been treated with gold.

Yet the first we hear of this startling new therapy option is from a case that occurred nearly sixty years ago.

Before embarking on this 21st Century Gold Rush, I hope that someone will bother to look and see if any autistic children receiving gold for JRA or other autoimmune disorders have reported the same sort of improvement.

Lives may be in the balance.

Injectible and oral gold are much more toxic – and have the potential for much longer-lasting toxicity – than almost any of the other therapies currently advocated for autism.

Let’s look before we leap.

Comment on Prometheus’ blog

Back To School For Megan

8 Sep

This is an important year for Megan’s education. Last year was very successful for her and we were very proud of the amount of effort and work she put in to progress as much as she did but still, it was in a very non-academic environment – almost like a very structured Nursery – and this year is the first year of ‘proper’ schooling with teachers expecting significant feedback and measurable targets and all that.

Obviously, there’s been lots of discussion between us and the school about how suitable these things are for Megan and there’s widespread agreement and understanding that she’ll need a lot of latitude in certain situations. She’s also not very familiar with her two new-ish support workers who she only met for about a week before the end of term in July.

Its also unfortunate that she’s going through a period of not sleeping very well. Wake up time is around 2am so she’s pretty tired by the time its time to get ready for school. As are we!

However, as with most things, our wonderfully stoic daughter has taken all this pretty much in her stride (or so it seems. Calm waters can sometimes hide strong currents so we take care to take nothing for granted). Naomi reported that she _ran_ into school on Tuesday and actually had a minor meltdown when it was time to go home. Thats not great obviously but better that than the other way around!

Yesterday, her afternoon support worker said that she was very chatty and communicable – leading her (the support worker) by the hand to the things she wanted or (occasionally) asking outright. I think its fair to say that Meggy loves school.

However, as I said at the start we have to be aware that this is something of a make or break year for Megan. The tight structure could work both ways. It could make her feel more secure and know whats expected of her, or it could add too much pressure to feel she has to conform to (to her) an alien way of thinking. If the latter does happen then we’ll need to think long and hard about where we go next. Our only really viable option in terms of state education is a special school but we’ve already been there for a look around and it wasn’t a good experience.

That leaves private education which we simply cannot afford. The prices for autism specific private education are outrageous. We may be able to get the LEA to either fund or part fund it but this is very very unusual.

Its at times like this that I do get genuinely jealous with the options parents of non special needs kids have. If they don’t like a school, they can swap to another one with very little hassle. If we feel a school isn’t right for Megan, our next choice is usually a school that we feel is even _less_ right for her.

Who Are My Competition And How Do I Compete?

8 Sep

When you’re optimising a site to get a good placement in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), it vital to try and isolate who your _actual_ competition is. This process of course starts with your keyphrases.

Lets say we’re optimising a page for a mortgage brokers. We might be tempted to try and optimise for the word ‘mortgage’. This would be slow suicide. When optimising for very popular and established markets you need to be honest with your client. Don’t tell them you can get a top 30 ranking for a word like ‘mortgage’ as you can’t. Not unless they have an unlimited budget and an expectation of the process taking several years. Instead we need to identify some less popular keyphrases, ensuring of course that they are actually used at all!

Head over to DigitalPoints excellent and free Keyword Suggest tool. This excellent script queries Overture and Wordtrackers keyphrase database to see whatelse is returned for a given word/phrase and how popular each alternate phrase is.

Type ‘mortgage’ in the box and choose UK (if you want to follow my process – feel free to select your own country, the principle remains the same but I’ll be referring to UK numbers here). You’ll have to enter an antispam Catchpa but thats no hardship.

When the results come up, you’ll get two columns, one with Wordtracker results and one with Overture results. The numbers to the right of each result tells you how many searches _per day_ are done on that phrase/word.

Basically, the lower the number, the less competition you have. You can count on a conversion rate of between 2% – 4% so (for example) the phrase ‘100 Mortgage’ (which is searched for 370 times per day) will lead to between 7 and 15 click throughs to the client site a day (assuming I can get somewhere on page 1 or 2 – maybe 3). Bear in mind this isn’t the same as a _conversion_ rate. I have no way of knowing what your clients conversion rate is.

From those lists I would be tempted to have a go at anything under 300 returns per day – don’t go too low as it won’t be worth your time optimising for the return you’ll (not) get. If you feel braver then go higher. If you’re less confident, go lower.

Copy and paste all your desired phrases into a text editor and switch your attention to Google. We’re going to find out who our real competion is in the worlds most popular search engine.

Lets go with ‘online mortgage’ which returns about 100 times per day. Do an ordinary Google search (remember, I’m using google.co.uk so details might differ from your results.

Using that phrase I get 44,800,000 results. Yikes. thats a lot of competition. Except not all of it is. We need to narrow it down to see who we’re really up against.

Google adds weight to keywords/phrases in certain HTML elements – the tag for example. So lets see who uses this phrase in their page titles. Copy and paste the following into the Google search box:

allintitle:online mortgage

This little switch returns a set of results of pages that use the phrase ‘online mortgage’ in the element. Notice how much our competition level has dropped – from 44,800,000 to 334,000. thats a big, big drop. Still, thats quite a formidable number.

Its also well known that Google adds weight to a page if those who link to it use the keyword/phrase that is trying to be optimised. Lets see about that:

allinanchor:"online mortgage"

This returns about 129,000 results for me.

So now we have a more realistic idea of the amount of people who are actively trying to do business on that phrase. What we need to do now is find out how well they are doing. This is easy. Make a note of each distinct domain going back about 3o results and go to each page in turn. If they’re spamming or blackhatting in any way, report them (all’s fair in love and war).

After you’ve checked them out, go back to Google and type in:

www.kevinleitch.co.uk -site:www.kevinleitch.co.uk

Obviously switch my domain for the site you’re researching. This will give you a set of results based on people who are linking to the target site. I know about the ‘link:’ switch before anyone mails me – its just not very accurate. Go through the first 30 results for each of your results and make a note of each unique site. When you’ve done this for each result you should have a substantial list of people who you can now approach to ask about giving you a link – after all they did it for your clients competitors so they’re likely to do it for you too. they might charge you though so be sure to make the terms clear.

This is a long, slow, time consuming process but it will pay off for your client. Not immediately, but by being realistic on the keywords/phrases your client should target from the word go you aren’t going to be stuck optimising for a word or phrase that you’ll never stand a chance of ranking well for.

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