Archive by Author

Imaginary Conversations: Part One

16 May

You don’t understand why this project is taking so long? You’re wondering why I’m telling you I’m not going to hit your specified deadline? No, thats not problem. I understand why you need to know these things.

The simple fact of the matter is that I haven’t yet perfected the build of my Time Machine and as such can’t seem to find a way to reclaim the time that your demands have placed on me. You see, when you sign off on a concept design (i.e. after the investigation, after the Personas have been built and tested, after the content has been structured and after the design concept has been finalised and agreed upon by you, I tend to actually get on and start building the pages that make up the site. Consequently, any time after this point is not an ideal time to inform me that the colour scheme and typography doesn’t match the brochure you’ve just this second told me about. Things like that tend to put a bit of a crimp in my day.

Further to that, going back to those halcyon days when we worked out exactly what imagery you wanted to use and we signed off what the textual content was going to be for each page I never envisaged the (count ’em) five subsequent total reworkings of the content or the (so far) three revisions of imagery. Of course, had I known the amusement and untold hours – nay days – that I spent restructuring the information architecture and wireframing the site content again and again no doubt I would have the foresight to apologise to you profusely for failing to hit the deadline you seem to believe it is possible for me to bend the laws of physics for me to hit.

Its a strange thing but I always understood that these laws of physics dictated that time could only flow forwards. Far be it from me to tread on the toes of such giants as Einstien and Hawking but I’m sure that if nothing else I did gain an understanding of the basic fact that time is a contiuum and that once that time is spent it can’t be unspent.

Just an excuse you say? Well, lets look at it from another point of view shall we? Lets say I was a dentist and you were my patient – a scenario amusingly (wistfully) reminiscent of Marathon Man, no? – if you came into my surgery and stated you desired to have your teeth straightened and your overbite corrected I would, like the keen servant I am, rush to your aid. Imagine however my displeasure if, halfway through the proceedure you told me that you didn’t actually fancy it after all. You decided that your overbite was quirky and cute. Should I gladly absolve you of your responsibility to pay me or should I turn my hand to another, slightly more brutal form of dentistry involving your teeth, my fist and the option of a large house brick?

Project: New Issue 3 Released

14 May

After last months hiatus, Project: New is back with a new issue. This one’s a bit less process oriented and more design oriented touching on imagery, fonts, colour as well as great software choices.

On another note I’ve decided that as next month is the last ‘official’ issue of Project: New and I still haven’t talked much about web standards in a practical sense that I’ll be renaming the current project Project: New Part I. The plan is to have a Part II that concentrates much more on practical markup and CSS issues and at some point a Part III which will be a gentle introduction to serverside and database coding for web designers.

These things won’t happen soon – mainly as my wife’s expecting our third child sometime in the next 6 weeks – so they’ll be long term offerings but I hope to have all 3 parts complete in, say, 18 months.

Project: New

PHP Variables Into Flash

13 May

I read a post over at BD4B on getting javascript data into Flash today. A lot of people expressed surprise that this wasn’t common knowledge. It is to some people. It occured to me that if people don’t know you can get client side variables into Flash then they probably don’t know you can get serverside variables in either.

Well you can. Very easily. All you have to do is URLEncode any name/value pairs you wish to pass in and you’re away. Lets take a very small example:

Go to the test page. You should see a page with a SWF in it and thats it. The movie is just a single button. Click the button and hey presto, up pops my name and email address. Those two values were inserted from a PHP script. Here’s how.

First, set up your Flash movie with a button and two dynamic text fields. I called my textfields theName and theEmail respectively.

Turn your attention to your button. This is where I’m placing all the code for this very simple example. In a real life production you’d never do what I’m about to and place all the function code in the button action. This is simple to illustrate whats happening.

OK, so on the button is the following code:

Quite simple really. First we declare a new loadVars() object. We then tell our new loadVars() object (which I called ‘addressVars’) which script to load via the load method. I told it to load the script ‘addressbook.php’.

Lastly, we specify an onLoad function to tell our movie what to do with the loaded data. I told it to put the passed in values from the PHP script into our waiting dynamic textboxes. This function is vital. If you try and just match up the values without the onLoad function then Flash never knows they’ve been successfuly loaded.

Now we turn our attention to our PHP script. We have to make this script prepare our name/value pairs in a format that Flash is able to deal with – we need to URLEncode them. In other words we need to make them appear like so:

theName=Kev&theEmail=kevleitch@gmail.com

Here’s the PHP to do this:

Again, this is very straightfoward as this is a simple example. First we set our values. We then essentially build a querystring to wrap these name/value pairs up and finally we echo them out. A good way of testing to make sure you have this stage right is to run the script by itself – try it now for yourself.

And thats that! Simple. Obviously you can extend the functionality to grab data from databases or pass in arrays to build navigable recordsets within Flash. I’m quite happy to go through these more advanced capabilities if anyone so desires but for now, grab the source files for yourself.

BMJ Weighs In on ‘Evidence of Harm’.

13 May

David Kirbys ‘Evidence of Harm’ in particular and the whole ‘mercury poisoning is autism’ movement in general were roundly denounced today by the BMJ.

Kirby echoes the conviction of parents who believe that vaccines are to blame for an “epidemic of autism.” He endorses their dismissal of the consensus among autism specialists that the most likely explanation for the increasing number of cases is the greater recognition of the condition among parents and professionals and the expansion of diagnostic categories. In response to the numerous epidemiological studies in different countries that have failed to confirm any link between vaccines and autism, Kirby reports the increasingly forlorn attempts of campaigners to discredit these studies and their authors. Disillusioned with epidemiology, campaigners have turned to biochemistry; and Kirby follows them into the laboratories of a handful of researchers, some funded by parent led campaigns, who claim to have shown evidence of a link between vaccines and autism. This evidence was systematically examined—and rejected—by the authoritative US Institute of Medicine last year.

All I can say is ‘well done’ to the BMJ and reviewer Michael Fitzpatrick in particular. Its a great relief to know that the scientific community are watching the quack cure movement closely, ready to point out the logical and factual errors in their beliefs. As parents who love and care for our autistic children what we need are interventions that work, not ‘cures’ that are based on fallacy and innuendo. Hasten the day when those parents (particularly those in North America) can realise that autism isn’t something you can solve by throwing a quick fix of money at it. Its a reality to be experienced and the sooner that parents can accept that and help their kids, the better we’ll see autistic kids grow into successful autistic adults.

Hybrid Layouts

12 May

I don’t kid myself I’m announcing anything new here but after a long fruitless Google (and Yahoo and MSN) and a search of my usual CSS haunts that also remained stubbornly fruit-free I thought that I’d better get on and build something myself.

So I did. And generous soul that I am I thought that one day, others might struggle with this same problem so I’d better document it.

What I wanted was to have a 3 column layout. Easy enough, except I didn’t want all three columns to be fixed width. I wanted 2 columns to be fixed and then a third column to spread to fill the remaining width e.g.


fixed | fixed | sttrrrrreeeetch

I also wanted something that required a minimum of hacks for IE. I guess thats pretty much what we all want all the time but I was keen to see what I could do with just plain vanilla CSS. Before we start let me clarify: its totally untested on any Mac browsers but it works in Firefox (natch), Moz, IE 6, 5.5 and 5 and Opera 7.54.

Lets start with our three columns:

Nothing unusual there apart from my frighteningly unsemantic markup. You get the idea – left and middle should have a fixed width whilst right stretches to fill the remaning width.

Having been born a rigid son-of-a-bitch I love the stability and reassuringly solid feel of a fixed width layout. Doesn’t exactly promote a feeling of adventure or trying new things though so I was determined to learn how to do this – of course it did mean pretty much starting from scratch regarding flexible (liquid, elastic, whatever) layouts.

My big challenge was understanding how to get #right to start to the right of #middle and yet still have it stretch without putting extra pixels on the screen and creating the HSOD (Horizontal Scrollbar Of Death). So, first I did the easy bits – creating the CSS for the two fixed columns:

Easy. Two columns, snug up against each other and both floated left.

Now, to add the third, liquid, column would mean I had to place it in such a way as it lined up against #middle but not actually be 100%. If I declared that element as 100% then I’d get HSOD. Either that or it’d shove the other two out the way.

Now, I could’ve gone and declared everything as position: absolute; but I hate taking elements out of the document flow unless there’s no choice so what I did was this:

The clever bit being the margin-left: 400px; which makes the element shift itself 400 pixels to the right. Nice. Quite straightforward and requiring no hacks to work across Windows browsers. Be nice if you Mac geezers out there would let me know how it works out for you.

So, there we go. Hardly earth shattering but represents a breakthrough for me moving away from fixed layouts. You can view the finished layout here.

This Is What Exhaustion Does

11 May

Call me flighty, call me unsettled but as of next week I’ll be redesigning this blog. Again. Again again. For the third time in a month.

Why? Lots of reasons.

Firstly, I realised that the last 2 incarnations of this blog suffered from something that the previous pink one – which got me nods from CSSVault and CSS Beauty – did not, they were designed by a very tired and approaching burnt out designer.

Truth be told, I never realised until I signed up for the CSSReboot just how much of a physical activity design was. Thats when I realised that being permanantely tired thanks to a daughter that thrives on lack of sleep and being overweight and being in the middle of a major design and content overhaul at my workplace had had an effect on both my ability to be creative and my ability to execute good design.

I don’t hate this design but boy is it drab. Its tired and reflects how I felt designing it. However in the last 4 weeks Megans sleep pattern is more stable, the work website is just about done and I’ve lost nearly a stone and a half in weight and switched to a high fruit/protein diet and feel much better for it.

I’m also totally knocked out by the sheer quality of recent redesigns from various others and want to bring this site up to scratch with a more vibrant design.

So – redesign number 3 will be underway in a little over a week!

Spam: On The Wane?

3 May

Is it just me or has the unremitting flood of spam, um, remitted?

I’m aware that as the proud user of one the worlds leading CMS’ I have a plethora of excellent spam fighting hacks, plug-ins and built in tools at my disposal – from centrally managed blacklists through to advanced comment moderation and server configuration tools but even so, it does seem slightly quiet on the western front.

I’m used to the odd one or two slipping through the net – where a particularly dedicated spammer has visited me in person to negotiate Gatekeeper or they’ve added my Gatekeeper keys to some evil spam database cracking system but its been zip, nada, zlich, zero, bupkis, fuck-all.

Anyone else getting this or am I extremely lucky and yet have obviously just jinxed myself?

More On Mercury/Thimerosal And Generation Rescue

2 May

An intriguing development. Checking my referrer logs (in the awesome Awstats) I came across a reference to Yahoo list server about the David Kirby book, ‘Evidence of Harm’. Interested, I followed it back and came across a thread where this post about Generation: Rescue was being discussed. Of course, when I say discussed I mean slagged off and (as you can see from the comments) my abilities as both a parent and a functional human being called into question because I disagreed with GR that autism is mercury poisoning.

I’m not going to link to the list server as I hate Yahoo lists with a passion (they’re incredibly difficult to navigate – why would anyone use a Yahoo maillist when hosting is so cheap and there are loads of free easy to setup forums?) but it shouldn’t be hard to find if you’re minded to look for it. Just go to yahoo Groups and search for Evidence of Harm. You have to join to read by the way.

Anyway, in amongst the vitriol and petty posturing were some valid points that I felt deserved further explanation. I also got a lot of emails asking me to backup and/or justify my position which is fair enough, no-one can make assertions in a vacuum and expect to be taken seriously and I’d rather do it here in one place than carry on using the dreadful, unintuitive Yahoo interface design.

So, to begin, lets start with the reason that I visited the EoH list in the first place. I made a post that stated that GR were wrong to state that autism was mercury poisoning. Lets clarify that a bit further. GR didn’t say some cases of autism were mercury poisoning. They didn’t say that some cases of mercury poisoning had been misdiagnosed as autism, they said – autism was mercury poisoning. Pure and simple, just that.

Now obviously I disagree. But why? And why does it matter so much?

Well I disagree mainly because mercury poisoning isn’t autism, its mercury poisoning. In order for me to disprove GR’s assertion that autism is solely mercury poisoning, all I have to do is prove there’s more than one basis for autism. Thats easy, researchers are certain there is a genetic component to autism:

Because of the clear evidence that idiopathic autism has a strong genetic basis, many groups are undertaking whole genome screens

Two Studies Point to Genetic Basis of Autism, Open Door to Further Research

The findings indicate that autism is under a high degree of genetic control and suggest the involvement of multiple genetic loci.

While the causes of autism still remain a mystery, it has become clear that genetic factors contribute significantly to the occurrence of the disorder.

So, thats pretty clear. Not conclusive whatsoever taken individually but when taken as a whole, the weight of evidence clearly indicates genetics at least plays a part. This is backed up by my own experience – 3 of my close relatives were on the spectrum and I don’t believe in coincedences on that scale.

But lets not forget that GR claim that autism is mercury poisoning. I’ve shown fairly conclusively that mainstream science disagrees with such a black and white interpretation but lets tackle the issue directly – what actually is autism?

…(a) lifelong developmental disability that occurs by itself or in association with other disorders that affect the function of the brain

brain disorder that begins in early childhood and persists throughout adulthood

autism is a complex developmental disability

The term means a developmental disability

(autism)….is (a) disorder which usually appears within the first three years of life

A chronic developmental disorder usually diagnosed between 18 and 30 months of age

Autism is a disorder of brain function that appears early in life, generally before the age of three

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability

A lifelong, nonprogressive neurological disorder

Autism is a form of pervasive developmental disorder with an unknown origin

a developmental disability that can cause problems with communication, social interaction and routine/repetitive behaviors

Autism is a communication and behaviour disorder

Phew, thats enough copying and pasting. All these definitions were found on Google searching for ‘define: autism’. Seems pretty clear to me. Autism is seen by the medical community as a developmental disorder. Not mercury poisoning.

What about the industry heavyweights? In the UK, the main research body is ARC (Autism Research Centre). the President of this organisation being Professor Simon Baron-Cohen:

What do you feel is the reason for the recent dramatic increase of autistic children in the United States? Do thimerosal
(mercury), environmental toxins and genetics play a role in autism?. I know it is not a very popular view, but it is possible that the dramatic increase of children with autism world-wide is due to better diagnosis, better awareness, changing diagnosis, and the growth of services. When I started in this field 20 years ago, there were only about 3 centres in the whole of the UK where one could go to get one’s child diagnosed with autism, from a specialist. Today, there are many clinics in every town that can provide this service. So, we cannot under-estimate the effect of having a lot more well trained clinicians in front-line public health services looking out for children with these possible diagnoses.

SAR.

To be fair, Professor Baron-Cohen does, as all decent scientists should, say that he maintains an open mind regarding Thimerosal. I completely agree with him. If it was proven in scientifc, peer-reviewed journals that autism was mercury poisoning then I’d be first in the queue. However, as we’ve already seen, autism is not mercury poisoning, its a disorder which is almost certainly at least partly genetic.

So lets give GR the benefit of the doubt. Lets say that what they actually meant when they said that autism was mercury poisoning was that autism is caused by mercury poisoning. I mean, lets not beat around the bush – this is not what they claim but lets be fair and assume they did. Is it true? Does mercury poisoning cause autism?

If it does we need to answer the following questions:

  • Why do only a few people (relatively speaking) ‘get’ autism? If mercury poisoning causes autism we should see a much, much greater prevelance than we do. The vast majority of children in the UK have had vaccines.
  • If mercury poisoning causes autism why, when Thimerosal was removed from US vaccines in 2000, have autism cases not dropped? (http://www.autism-watch.org/general/thio.shtml)
  • Why is there no scientifically valid, peer-reviewed evidence available to support the theory that mercury poisoning causes autism?

Here’s a few extracts from Quackwatch, the science website dedicated to exposing scientific fallacies.

A study published in 2002 of infants who were 6 months of age or younger compared the levels of mercury in the blood, hair, urine, and stool of 40 who received vaccines containing thimerosal and 20 who received vaccines without thimerosal. The study found: Mercury levels in blood and urine were low in all infants studied and in many cases too small to measure. There was no observed dose-dependent relationship between the level of thimerosal received through vaccination and the level of mercury in the body. Mercury levels in blood did not exceed, at any time, the blood levels that correspond to Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for exposure. Mercury levels in the stool of infants receiving vaccines containing thimerosal were relatively high compared to mercury levels in the stool of infants who were not exposed to thimerosal, providing evidence that mercury from thimerosal is eliminated in the stool of infants. The researchers concluded that, “Administration of vaccines containing thiomersal does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants.”

http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/thimerosal.html

As recently as last month (Feb 2005), the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry published a report by UK and Japanese researchers that disproved the thimerosal-autism connection in a study of 30,000 Japanese kids. The website of the Centers for Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) offers several studies that refute any linkage. The CDC’s own Institute of Medicine’s Immunization Safety Review Committee recently concluded that “neither thimerosal-containing vaccines or MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine are associated with autism” and that “the hypotheses regarding a link between autism and MMR vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines lack supporting evidence and are only theoretical.”

http://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2005/03/revisiting-thimerosal-autism.html

More to the point: If there were a link between thimerosal and autism, you would expect to see a sharp decrease in autism, since thimerosal has been absent from all childhood vaccines (except some flu vaccines) for five years now, On the contrary, the documented autism rate has continued to climb, proving there is no relationship between the two whatsoever.

http://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2005/03/revisiting-thimerosal-autism.html

Those who support the idea that mercury causes autism cite a wide range of researchers who’ve conducted research into the connection and found positive evidence to support the link. Particular favourites amongst believers in the link are Dr. Mark Geier, David Geier (who’s not even a Doctor) and Dr Andrew Wakefield.

Dr Mark Geier is in American parlance a ‘professional witness’, meaning one who will perform as an expert witness for you in court cases for money. Here’s an official court order regarding Mark Geier from November 2003.

He is however a professional witness in areas for which he has no training, expertise, and experience. Petitioners must seriously consider whether they want to proceed with a witness whose opinion on neurological diagnosis is unacceptable to the undersigned. When we reach the end of this case and the question of expert fees arises, there will be serious doubt whether Dr. Geier should be compensated for his time devoted to diagnosing an acute encephalopathy where none exists, and discussing (in his first supplemental affidavit) the MMR reactions of acute encephalopathy and encephalitis when neither is relevant in this case because Christopher, who was alert and in no acute distress on the 15th day after his MMR vaccination (when Dr. Geier opines his acute encephalopathy began on the 14th day, less than 24 hours earlier), could not possibly have had a Table acute encephalopathy or encephalitis. Moreover, three days later, he was also alert and in no acute distress.

And further to that,

The IOM report described two studies by Geier (6) which had reported an association between MMR and autism as “characterized by serious methodological flaws and their analytic methods were nontransparent making their results uninterpretable, and therefore non-contributory with respect to causality.” In other words, the studies by Geier could not establish a causal relation between MMR and autism because of their methods—such as using statistical measures incorrectly and omitting facts about their research approach. Similar problems were found in six other studies by Geier (7) and one study by Blaxill (8), which reported findings of an association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. In addition, Geier’s expertise in neurological disorders has been questioned.

And returning to the issue of Dr Geier’s ability as a professional witness:

In other vaccine cases, Dr. Geier’s testimony has similarly been accorded no weight: Thompson v. Secretary of HHS, No. 99-0436, 2003 WL 221439672 (Fed. CI. Spec. Mstr. May 23, 2003); Bruesewitz v. Secretary of HHS, No. 95-0266, 2002 WL 31965744 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Dec. 20, 2002); Raj v. Secretary of HHS, No. 96-0294V, 2001 WL 963984, *12 (Fed. CI. Spec. Mstr. July 31, 2001); Haim v. Secretary of HHS, No. 90-1031V, 1993 WL 346392 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Aug. 27, 1993) (“Dr Geier’s testimony is not reliable, or grounded in scientific methodology and procedure. His testimony is merely subjective belief and unsupported speculation.”); Marascalco v. Secretary of HHS, No. 90-1571V, 1993 WL 277095 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. July 9, 1993) (where the special master described Dr. Geier’s testimony as intellectually dishonest); Einspahr v. Secretary of HHS, No. 90-923V, 1992 WL 336396 (CI. Ct. Spec. Mstr. Oct. 28, 1992), aff’d, 17 F.3d 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1994); Aldridge v. Secretary of HHS, No. 90-2475V, 1992 WL 153770 (CI. Ct. Spec. Mstr. June 11, 1992); Ormechea v. Secretary of HHS, No. 90-1683V, 1992 WL 151816 (Cl. Ct. Spec. Mstr. June 10, 1992) (“Because Dr. Geier has made a profession of testifying in matters to which his professional background (obstetrics, genetics) is unrelated, his testimony is of limited value to the court.”); Daly v. Secretary of HHS, No. 90-590V, 1991 WL 15473 (Cl. Ct. Spec. Mstr. July 26, 1991) (“The court is inclined not to allow Dr. Geier to testify before it on issues of Table injuries. Dr. Geier clearly lacks the expertise to evaluate the symptomatology of the Table injuries and render an opinion thereon.”).

All above quotes taken from Quackfiles blog

And how about Andrew Wakefield? A name more familiar to a UK audience definitely.

Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, accused Dr Andrew Wakefield of peddling “poor science”. He said the 1998 study was flawed and has been criticised by “independent experts around the world”. His comments came as the General Medical Council prepared to open an investigation into the way Dr Wakefield carried out his study.

BBC News

So these are part of the scientific resources the ‘mercury causes autism’ followers have to rely on to provide their science. Not a great validation in my opinion. Not only have we seen how mercury poisoning is not solely responsible for autism, or probably even responsible at all, we’ve also seen that in all valid scientific tests done so far, mercury/thimerosal has been substantially unproven to be linked to autism as a causative. We’ve also seen how their leading researchers are held in very low esteem by their countries legaslative and medical bodies.

So what reason then do people have for promoting a link between mercury/thimerosal and autism? Who gets what out of it?

…(I)n a recent web search on “thimerosal autism”, five of the first ten results link to alarmist informational sites bankrolled by law firms. Not to knock my fellow professionals, but this data point makes it easier to understand why there is still so much press on the alleged thimerosal-autism connection. The agenda of many of these sites is quite clear: to link vaccines to autism and to stimulate lawsuits by aggrieved parents. As for the media’s ongoing interest in autism, sensationalism seems to be the primary motive.

Dr. Michel Cohen.

I’m not saying Generation Rescue are in it for the money but when the evidence that supports their theory that autism is mercury poisoning is so scanty and the evidence that goes against them so strong then a large element of doubt about their authenticity is only to be expected.

And why does all this matter so much to me?

Lots of reasons. Firstly, the treatment that groups like Generation Rescue sell is at best, experimental. Its called ‘Chelation Therapy’, stripping out the mercury (and/or other heavy metals) from the body. Here’s some opinions on it:

The use of chelation therapy to treat autistic children is completely bogus. Three successful lawsuits have been filed by parents who believe they were victimized in this way.

Details of the lawsuits and the subsequent shutting down of the clinic responsible for administering these treatments can be found on Quckwatch.org. Its disturbing reading. Also pretty disturbing are the fraud claims against Chelation therapists as well as the suits filed against Chelation therapists in Australia.

You may also find a visit to Quackwatch’s Chelation page interesting. It has links to two cases of fraud and five cases of Disciplinary action against Chelation therapists as well as details of why American Insurance companies won’t cover the administration of Chelation therapy.

Please note: I’m not claiming Chelation therpay has no medical benefit (although it looks pretty doubtful). I’m claiming that it has no medical benefit when used to treat autism. It also has no medical benefit for a range of other medical issues. Taken from the American Heart Association:

What’s chelation therapy? Chelation therapy has been proposed to treat existing atherosclerosis and to prevent it from forming. After carefully reviewing all the available scientific literature on this subject, the American Heart Association has concluded that the benefits claimed for this form of therapy aren’t scientifically proven. That’s why we don’t recommend this type of treatment.

American Heart Association.

So, in essence, Chelation therapy as a treatment for autism is useless. As a treatment for lots of other conditions its also useless. It does however have one legitimate use:

…(C)helation has legitimate use for treating heavy metal poisoning.

Chelationwatch.

So what does that tell us? Well, to me it quite clearly says that any ‘autistic’ being successfuly treated with Chelation therapy wasn’t autistic – they were metal poisoned.

It matters to me that people are being fooled in their honest attempts to help their autistic children into being treated with this stuff. The more attention rubbish like this gets, the less attention valid interventions such as PECS gets and another generation of autistic kids get treated as experimental guinea pigs by well meaning parents doing their best with the information most readily to hand.

So I generally believe Generation Rescue are evil right? No. I believe they possibly do great work in detoxing kids suffering from metal poisoning and its further true to say that some autistic kids may well have metal poisoning – its not the sole province of non-autisitcs after all – but they should seriously rethink their stance on ‘autism is mercury poisoning’. Its a simplistic error and one thats shamefully calculated to play on the best intentions of parents of autistic kids. It could also have serious health implications on the children being treated. Where are the long term health studies into Chelation therapy? I’ve not seen one. Tht doesn’t mean they don’t exist of course but before I subject my child to any course of medication I want to give that method a serious investigation. It does strike me as ironic that the same parents who rush to condem a vaccine that is proven not to cause autism are happy to submit their kids to a very under-researched area of medicine.

Its also depressingly ironic that we’re now beginning to reap the consequences of our folly as a recent outbreak of Rubella in Canada shows. Rubella, of course, can cause autism.

I believe as a parent that my overriding responsibility is to the health of my children. Thats why we only use interventions that definitely help and don’t use those that are not based on valid science. I further believe that my responsibility to my kids is to raise them to be happy and confident of who they are. We don’t seek a cure as we love Megan for who she is. She’s smart, bright, confident, funny, annoying, noisy, stand-offish, loving, stimming, involved, curious and autistic. There’s nothing I’d want to change about any of that and the things that are a problem like her toileting, her lack of effective communication and sleeplesness are intervened in with varying degrees of success. But we know that our interventions are scientifically valid. They require a hell of a lot fo work and there’s no quick fix but who could possibly not want to spend more time with their kids?

NB: I’m sure people will have a lot to say and thats fine. If you keep it polite and well mannered your comments will stay. I won’t tolerate abusive tone or language and I’d appreciate it if you used the ‘textile’ tool (see link next to comment box) to properly create links if you cite them. Anyone who does lapse into abuse will be reported to their ISP and their IP address will be banned from here. I have 2 (soon to be 3) kids to parent, I don’t have time to parent you too.

“Autism Epidemic” reaches UK

28 Apr

Its with a heavy heart that I note the rhetoric of North America being used in this country to whip up hysteria and fear about autism.

In a recent article in The Scotsman, the news that autisitc schoolchildren now number over 3,000 has been seen as immediate proof of the ‘autism epidemic’.

Bill Welsh, director of Action Against Autism, said: “Despite claims that the increase is due to the widening of diagnostic criteria, recent studies suggest that this would account for less than 25% of the increase and that we have a genuine autism epidemic.”

I’ve never heard of Bill Welsh or AAA but Its rather depressing to see someone who claims to be an autism actioneer in this country using such ridiculous language. Note that he refers to ‘recent studies’ without ever referencing to them. Hell, if this is how campaigners take their arguments forward then I’d like to say that due to ‘recent studies’ I believe that the Earth is indeed flat. There, easy eh?

It does make you wonder why people are so reluctant to quote their sources. Maybe becasue they don’t stand up to scrutiny?

Just to reiterate – there is no autism epidemic. Diagnostic criteria have widened and reporting methods have vastly improved. There may well be an increase in actual case percentage but epidemic? Hardly.

Ruby, Rails – WAMP!

27 Apr

There was a big buzz around Ruby on Rails awhile ago so I thought I’d give it a go. Bearing in mind I’m primarily a design/scripting person I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to learn some object oriented programming. Its touted as being excellent for a web environment so it seemed a good thing for me to learn.

I used the excellent ONLamp tutorials and was up and running in 20 minutes on my Windows XP machine. Within an hour I’d completed the first two tutorials. I won’t pretend to have understood all the concepts but I could see what it was doing even if I wasn’t 100% sure of how it was doing it – and that sort of stuff is easy to pick up via online tutorials/manuals etc.

So, excitidely I contacted my host and asked if they would be so good as to set it up on my web server so I could test it on a live environment. My excellent host agreed and set it up – and thats where the problems started. Trouble is, neither my host nor I really knew what we were doing and from his end it seems to be installed correctly and from my end I can’t make it work at all. In fact I have no idea how to start.

There’s absolutely zero documentation that I can find that tells a host how to set RoR up, integrate it with Apache and make it available for shared hosting clients. There’s lots of links to Textdrive that allow you to purchase a RoR package but not a lot else.

If the creators want this to become as ubiqutous as LAMP or WAMP (Linux/Windows Apache, MySQL, PHP) then they’re going to have to put a bit of effort in. I’m sure its a doddle to make this happen but I don’t know how and I can’t find a way to find out for myself. Seems like RoR is a great package let down by poor support.

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