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Mike Fitzpatrick calls Andrew Wakefield’s bluff. Wakefield moves goalposts

17 Apr

As recently noted here at Left Brain/Right Brain, Andrew Wakefield asked to debate someone about the MMR vaccine. In specific, he wrote:

The more light that shone on this subject by way of informed, balanced debate, the better. I am offering to debate any serious challenger on MMR vaccine safety and the role of MMR in autism, live, in public, and televised.

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick wrote in Andrew Wakefield: return of the wicked witch, Wakefield’s MMR-autism nonsense had a baleful influence on public health, but he doesn’t bear sole responsibility for recent measles outbreaks. that he would take Mr. Wakefield’s challenge.

As both a GP and a parent of an autistic son who had followed the destructive consequences of Wakefield’s campaign over the past 15 years, I for one would welcome the opportunity to challenge his baleful influence. Are you ready for a debate now, Andrew Wakefield?

As you might surmise from the wording above, Dr. Fitzpatrick has previously attempted to debate Mr. Wakefield and offered to engage in a full debate:

Wakefield has subsequently restricted his public appearances to conferences of sympathetic parents, anti-vaccination activists and promoters of quack autism therapies. When I asked him a question from the floor at one such conference in Bournemouth in February 2007, he simply refused to answer, deferring to another platform speaker. When I offered to debate with him at a follow-up conference in March 2009, the organisers refused.

How has Mr. Wakefield responded?

What I’m suggesting is a formal scientific debate in public in front of an audience that is televised. And specifically Dr David Salisbury I would like to debate you because I believe you are at the heart of this matter. I believe the decisions taken by you and by your committee, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, lie at the heart of this matter.

Yes, having had his bluff called, Andrew Wakefield moves the goalposts. He won’t take on Mike Fitzpatrick. He won’t take on “any serious challenger”. Only Dr. David Salisbury.

In addition to lacking integrity, Mr. Wakefield now shows that he lacks courage.

Mike Fitzpatrick is a physician. He is an autism parent. He has written two books on autism: MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know and Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion. Hard to find a more “serious challenger”.

Hundreds of children are suffering from measles in the U.K.. This isn’t the time for empty offers of debate. This isn’t the time for publicity stunts. It’s time to own your mistakes and do what you can to fix the problems you helped create. Do you have that courage, Andrew Wakefield?

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By Matt Carey

Andrew Wakefield: Don’t try to blame me for the results of what I said and did

17 Apr

Andrew Wakefield is back in the news. Sadly this is because the predicted outbreaks of measles are again occurring in the U.K.. As Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick points out, Andrew Wakefield is not the only one who helped spread unfounded fear of the MMR, but he is the man most responsible for promoting the idea that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Without Mr. Wakefield, the scare would not have happened.

Now, 15 years after Mr. Wakefield’s heyday, an outbreak of measles has hit south Wales. And the press are reminding us all that Mr. Wakefield’s research reports were wrong and that he acted unethically in the process of creating those reports. And Mr. Wakefield is responding with the blame shifting and goalpost moving that has become his standard. To their shame, a UK newspaper hosted Mr. Wakefield’s response. And he has gone direct to YouTube with a video where he lays out his explanation. And calls for a debate. Yes, a debate. Televised. Because that’s how science is decided, right? TV debates? If there weren’t children suffering and in danger, this would be a bad joke.

Dr. Fitzpatrick also points out that he has offered to debate Mr. Wakefield in the past and Mr. Wakefield refused. Dr. Fitzpatrick has offered to take Mr. Wakefield up on his debate request. So far I don’t see any signs from Mr. Wakefield that he’s going to take Dr. Fitzpatrick up on his offer. Mike Fitzpatrick has been countering Andrew Wakefield’s misinformation since the early days of the MMR scare.

Let’s step back a moment and ask how did we get to this situation where low vaccine uptake has resulted in a major outbreak? Well, 15 years ago Mr. Wakefield’s team at the Royal Free Hospital released a paper which suggested a link between autism and the MMR vaccine. Mr. Wakefield did much more than suggest a link. At the press conference for the paper’s release (note that very few papers have press conferences) Mr. Wakefield called for the suspension of the MMR vaccine in favor of single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. He didn’t really explain why the single vaccine would be more safe in his mind, making it very difficult for parents to accept how the single vaccines were, in his faulty opinion, safe.

Mr. Wakefield’s current logic has it that it is the government’s fault for not allowing the importation of single vaccines. Ignore the unfounded fear that Mr. Wakefield created about measles vaccines, he asks. Blame the government. Sure the government can take some blame (anyone recall when the prime minister refused to answer whether his family used the MMR?). As does the press. But without Andrew Wakefield and his faulty assertions, there would have been no scare.

Mr. Wakefield repeats his claim that his opinions on the MMR were based on a 200 page report on measles vaccines. He didn’t even mention his 200 page report at the time of the Lancet paper and press release. Ignore the research he did (we should have. It was faulty and unethically performed). Instead, let’s look to his report. A report which only now he will release to the public, according to his YouTube video. Yes, no one has seen his report. We were all supposed to take his opinion for the past decade and a half. He didn’t even tell us about his report. We were just supposed to have such confidence in him that we were supposed to have assumed he had some reason.

Now he will finally release his report, he says. That is, if his attorneys give him permission. Yes, he will spend the money to have attorneys read his 200 pages and only then, possibly, make some edits and then let us see how he came to this faulty conclusion.

Keep in mind, in 1998 Andrew Wakefield’s statements were made in the context of an active researcher who claimed he had evidence to support a reason to instill fear about the MMR vaccine (and, let’s face it, fear of the single vaccine. One of the lancet 12 got the single vaccine.) What did he say at the time?

In a video released with the press conference, he is shown stating:

I think if you asked members of the team that have investigated this they would give you different answers. And I have to say that there is sufficient anxiety in my own mind of the safety, the long term safety of the polyvalent, that is the MMR vaccination in combination, that I think that it should be suspended in favour of the single vaccines, that is continued use of the individual measles, mumps and rubella components.

No mention of his report. He gave this in the context of a man who led the team that had just released the 1998 Lancet study.

He further asks us to accept a new revised history, and this is the statement that forced me to write again about this man. In his video he claims, “all I could do as a parent is state what would I do for my child.” He didn’t present his views as “what would I do as a parent”. He presented his mistaken views as a researcher who was actively exploring the question. Don’t take my word for it. Take his. From his testimony before the GMC:

At that stage, having done a good deal of research, I wanted to make it clear to my colleagues, including Professor Zuckerman, that since a press briefing had been recommended and was being organised, that if I were asked, if the question were put to me, then I would have to act in due conscience based upon my researches and I would not be able to continue to recommend the combined measles/mumps/rubella vaccine.

emphasis added. Not his position as a parent. As a researcher.

Many of the children in Wales who are at risk for measles infection are older than those who typically get the MMR. Their parents decided years ago, during the height of the scare, to forgo the MMR vaccine. Even if Mr. Wakefield’s ideas were correct (and multiple studies have shown they are not), these children are not at risk of developing autism by his mechanism. And yet he doesn’t call for parents to vaccinate their children. Instead, he spends his time telling us all about how it isn’t his fault that children are getting infected.

It’s not about the children or their safety. It’s about him.

The idea that Mr. Wakefield’s claims could cause a scare and lead to outbreaks of measles is not new. His own research colleagues warned him of the possibility before their press conference. They asked that they show a public face that was “agnostic” towards the safety of the MMR. Mr. Wakefield refused. And now he asks us to ignore that it was his own actions that have put children at risk.

Mr. Wakefield’s colleague and co-author on the Lancet paper, Dr. Simon Murch, made this statement long ago:

This link is unproven and measles is a killing infection. If this precipitates a scare and immunisation rates go down, as sure as night follows day, measles will return and children will die

Night has followed day. Measles has returned. And we now wait and pray that none die.

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By Matt Carey

Autism reported at 1 in 50, but some parents no longer report their child is autistic. Can we say why?

16 Apr

A recent study reported that 1 in 50 children in the U.S. are autistic. This is based on parent report via a telephone survey, the National Survey of Children’s Health. The recent survey was taken in 2011-12. The last time a NSCH was performed was in 2007, and when those results were released in 2009 as Prevalence of Parent-Reported Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children in the US, 2007, a great deal of attention was focused primarily on two outcomes. First, the estimated parent-reported prevalence of ASD was about 1.1%. Second, about 0.5% of parents reported that they had been told that their child was autistic at some time in the past, but that their child was no longer autistic.

The report that came out recently presented a new parent-reported prevalence estimate: 1 in 50. (Changes in Prevalence of Parent-reported Autism Spectrum Disorder in School-aged U.S. Children: 2007 to 2011–2012). That report did not go into details about those who were no longer reported as autistic by their parents. The question was asked–as were many follow up questions.

The question and some of the responses are:

Does [the child] currently have autism or autism spectrum disorder?

No: 0.36%
yes: 1.70%
Don’t know: 0.08%

So, out of a total of a raw (uncorrected) 2.1% of parents who responded that they were told at some point that their child was autistic at some point, 0.36% said their child was no longer autistic. That’s comparable to the previous report in absolute terms (about 0.4%).

As already noted, they asked follow up questions to those who answered “no”. They asked directly “To the best of your knowledge, did [your child] ever have autism or autism spectrum disorder?”.

Of those 0.36% whose child had “lost” their diagnosis at some point, 0.24% of parents reported “No”. I.e. the parents reported that they were told that their child was autistic in the past, but out of those parents 2/3 reported that their child was never autistic. A further 0.02% said they “don’t know” if their child was ever autistic.

to put another way, in the majority of cases where a parent-reported “ever had” been told their child was autistic, the same parent reported that the child was never autistic or they didn’t know.

If you are looking for evidence of recovery, 0.07% parents said that “Treatment helped the condition go away”. Another way to look at this: that’s 69 reports out of “treatment helped the condition go away” out of 2041 who reported they had ever been told their child was autistic (ASD). That’s about 3.4% of the total “ever had ASD” population.

The survey did not ask what specific therapies parents thought helped their children go from autistic to non-autistic. They did ask if, “The condition seemed to go away on its own.” (37 parents answered yes, about 1/2 of the number who said treatment helped). 81 parents reported “The behaviors or symptoms changed” 46 reported “A doctor or health care provider changed the diagnosis.”

Out of the total 0.36% (343) reports of no to “Does [the child] currently have autism or autism spectrum disorder?”, 102 said that “The diagnosis was given so that [the child] could receive needed services” and 122 said “You disagree with the doctor or other health provider about his or her opinion that [the child] had autism or autism spectrum disorder.”

The National Survey of Children’s Health is not just about autism. Which means they can’t spend all their time on autism questions. This time they have answered some of the questions raised by the idea that a sizable fraction of parents who are ever told their child is autistic later conclude their child is not. That fraction where parents report that treament was part of what “made the condition go away” is nonzero, but at about 3.4%, it is small enough that getting accurate information on what the parents thought was involved will be difficult. And it should be about 3-4 years before we get another NSCH survey report.

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By Matt Carey

California Department of Education sued

11 Apr

A group of parents in Morgan Hill, California (a city south of San Jose) have sued the California Department of Education for failing to insure that special education students within the Morgan Hill Unified School District are given a Free, Approrpriate Public Education (FAPE). The group, Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association, filed suit Dec. 29, 2011. Just last month, the judge denied the CDE’s request to dismiss the case.

The California Concerned Parent Association has a discussion of the case. They also have a FaceBook presence.

Plaintiffs seek to force the CDE to actively fulfill its statutory obligations to ensure the provision of FAPE, rather than passively record the districts’ failures. Among other shortcomings, the Complaint alleges that California school districts are failing to: identify children with disabilities at an early age; properly assess and categorize the children’s disabilities; develop and implement individualized education programs and educate them “to the maximum extent appropriate” in the “least restrictive environment,” that is, in a general education environment with their non-disabled peers.

The organization is alleging that the CDE takes a passive or reactive role than is required by law. The parents are alleging that their district is failing to provide FAPE and that the CDE failed to properly review the district and to enforce laws even in those cases where reviews found the district to be out of compliance.

The CDE asked that the case be dismissed and on March 29th, this motion was denied.

More discussion can be found at the California Concern Parents Association facebook page, their website, and this story: Parents of disabled children sue California DOE.

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By Matt Carey

ASAN Releases Policy Brief on Organ Transplant Discrimination; Meets with Senior HHS Leaders

10 Apr

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) issed a policy brief last month on the subject of organ transplant discrimination. Over the past year a few cases of denial of organ transplants on the basis of disability made the news. Many more did not.

ASAN met with people in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to present their brief and urge an end to discrimination in organ transplants based on disability.

The brief is:

Organ Transplantation and People with I/DD: A Review of Research, Policy and Next StepsAri Ne’eman, Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Steven Kapp, University of California, Los Angeles
Caroline Narby, Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Here is the ASAN statement:

This week, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) released a new policy brief on discrimination against people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in organ transplantation. In the twenty-three years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with disabilities have achieved much progress in securing our rights in a wide variety of settings. Unfortunately, the field of medical decision-making remains too often immune from civil rights law. In few places is this as evident as in the context of organ transplants, where our policy brief outlines widespread discriminatory practice. Many people with I/DD fail to even make it to the evaluation process, and those who do are frequently denied access to transplants on the basis of their disability. Eighteen years after the landmark Sandra Jensen case in California, it is long past time for action on this issue.

On Tuesday, ASAN, the National Disability Rights Network and Not Dead Yet met with senior leadership in the Department of Health and Human Services to urge the federal government to issue new guidance addressing discriminatory practices in organ transplantation. Our brief provides comprehensive documentation on this issue and offers next steps for regulators, legislators, funders and activists. Produced with the generous support of the Special Hope Foundation, this will be the first of several policy briefs produced by ASAN this year examining the issue of access to health care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

We invite you to download a copy of Organ Transplantation and People with I/DD: A Review of Research, Policy and Next Steps on our website by clicking here. Help us spread the word about discrimination in organ transplants – together, we can achieve equal access for all of us.

Produced with support from the Special Hope Foundation

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By Matt Carey

Stephen Bustin: Why There Is no Link Between Measles Virus and Autism

9 Apr

Andrew Wakefield promoted the idea that the MMR vaccine caused autism. While his now-retracted 1997 Lancet paper is most often discussed, the strongest evidence he had actually came in later work where his team reported that they found evidence of the vaccine strain of the measles virus in the intestinal tissues of autistic children. The team used a methodology called Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR amplifies a specific fragment of DNA, allowing one to identify if small amounts of that gene are present in larger samples. PCR tests were performed by John O’Leary in Dublin. As revealed later, Andrew Wakefield had a business stake in this laboratory.

As part of the MMR litigation in the UK, the vaccine manufacturers hired Stephen Bustin to review the methods and results of the O’Leary laboratory. Those results were not made public, but Prof. Bustin later was called in to testify in the U.S. Autism Omnibus Proceeding (the vaccine court). That testimony was discussed here at LeftBrain/RightBrain and elsewhere. Prof. Bustin is one of the world’s experts on PCR.

Prof. Bustin has now written his own account of the history of the measles-virus/autism work by Mr. Wakefield’s team in Why There Is no Link Between Measles Virus and Autism. The full report is free, open access. The report discusses what he already disclosed in his testimony: the multiple failures which resulted in the reporting of a false association of measles virus and autism.

Some of those failures include:

Absence of transparency: the key publication shows no data; hence an expert reader cannot evaluate the reliability of its conclusions

Unreliable techniques and protocols: analysis of the qPCR data was incorrect

Disregard for controls: obvious evidence of extensive contamination was disregarded

Lack of reproducibility: the data could not be duplicated by several independent investigators

One key failure involved skipping key steps in using PCR on measles virus. The measles virus is an RNA virus. PCR is very inefficient at detecting RNA, so a step called reverse transcriptase is used to convert the RNA to DNA before PCR (RT-PCR). The O’Leary lab did not perform this step. This result, and others, show that the samples used by Mr. Wakefield’s team were contaminated. Prof. Bustin goes into detail and covers more important topics, and as the paper is relatively short, it is worth a read for those interested in the science.

Prof. Bustin concludes:

As a result, the conclusions put forward by this [the Wakefield/O’Leary] paper are entirely incorrect and there is no evidence whatever for the presence either of MeV genomic RNA or mRNA in the GI tracts of any of the patients investigated during the course of the studies reported by O’Leary et al. Instead, it is clear that the data support the opposite conclusion: there is no evidence for any MeV being present in the majority of patients’ analysed. Unfortunately, the authors do not report whether any the patients had received the MMR vaccination. However, assuming that a significant proportion had done so, it is also clear that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and the presence of MeV in the intestine of autistic children.

The Wakefield MMR hypothesis is already failed, so this does not really change the conversation. What this report by Prof. Bustin does is document his own observations, measurements and analyses for the historical record so we can see just how bad the science was that promoted the Wakefield hypothesis.

—
By Matt Carey

IACC meeting Agenda for 9 April, 2013

9 Apr

Tomorrow is a meeting of the U.S. Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. Full information is on her IACC website. This includes the agenda.

9:00 AM Welcome and Roll Call    
Thomas Insel, M.D.   
Director, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Chair, IACC   
Susan Daniels, Ph.D.
Acting Director, Office of Autism Research Coordination, NIMH and Executive Secretary, IACC   

9:05  Update from Administration for Children and Families   
Linda Smith
Deputy Assistant Secretary and Inter-Departmental Liaison for Early  Childhood Development Administration for Children and Families (ACF)   

9:15 Changes in Prevalence of Parent-reported Autism Spectrum Disorder in School-aged U.S. Children: 2007 to 2011-2012     
Stephen Blumberg, Ph.D. 
Acting Associate Director for Science Division of Health Interview Statistics National Center for Health Statistics   Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)     
Michael Kogan, Ph.D 
Director, Office of Epidemiology and Research   Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)

9:45  Project SEARCH at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)   
Maureen Gormley, M.P.H., M.A., R.N.  
Chief Operating Officer, NIH Clinical Center 

10:15  Break 

10:30  Panel on Minimally Verbal Children with Autism    

10:30  NIH Autism Centers of Excellence Update 

Alice Kau, Ph.D.
Program Director, Autism Spectrum Disorders Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) 

10:40  NIH Workshop on Nonverbal School-Aged Children with Autism 

Connie Kasari, Ph.D. 
Professor of Psychological Studies in Education and Psychiatry University of California, Los Angeles 
Helen Tager-Flusberg, Ph.D.
Director, Developmental Science Program Boston University 

10:55 Communication Growth in Minimally Verbal Children with Autism 
Connie Kasari, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychological Studies in Education and Psychiatry University of California, Los Angeles  

11:20 Minimally Verbal ASD: From Basic Mechanisms to Innovative Interventions 
Helen Tager-Flusberg, Ph.D.
Director, Developmental Science Program Boston University 

11:45 Q&A with Committee 

12:00  Autism NOW Website 
Katherine Cargill-Willis
Program Specialist Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD) Administration for Community Living (ACL)   

Amy Goodman, Kevin Wenzel, and Karen Wolf-Branigin  
The Arc

12:20 PM Lunch 

1:00  Oral Public Comments Session 

1:30  IACC Member Discussion of Public Comments  

2:00   IACC Business     

2:00 Science Update       
Thomas Insel, M.D.    
Director, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Chair, IACC     

2:10 Introductory Comments and OARC/IACC Update 
Thomas Insel, M.D.    
Director, NIMH and Chair, IACC    
Susan Daniels, Ph.D.   
Acting Director, Office of Autism Research Coordination, NIMH and  Executive Secretary, IACC 

2:25 Update from Subcommittee for Basic and Translational Research  

Question 1 Planning Group 
DSM-5 Planning Group   

2:45 Update from Subcommittee for Services Research and Policy 

3:00 Break 

3:15 Committee Discussion     

5:20  Wrap-Up 

5:30  Adjournment

I am extremely pleased to see this focus on minimally verbal autistics in this meeting. This is a focus area I and others have asked for.

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By Matt Carey

Note: I serve as a public member to the IACC but my comments here and elsewhere are my own.

IACC Recommends Public and Private Insurance Coverage of Early Behavioral Interventions for Children with Autism

8 Apr

The U.S. Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) sent a letter recently to Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services calling for public and private health insurance coverage for behavioral interventions for autistic children. The letter and the press release are below:

IACC Recommends Public and Private Insurance Coverage of Early Behavioral Interventions for Children with Autism (PDF – 79 KB)

Today the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) submitted a letter to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, recommending public and private insurance coverage of early behavioral interventions for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Committee developed the recommendations following discussions in early 2013 concerning the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While the IACC heard about the gains made toward meeting the needs of people with ASD through the first steps of the implementation of the Act, concerns were also voiced by the community about remaining gaps, including the lack of access to insurance coverage for early behavioral interventions.

As a part of the implementation of the ACA, States are in the process of defining “essential health benefits” (EHB) that will be covered by private insurers. The IACC was particularly concerned about the benefit for “mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment.” Under this benefit, the Committee considered it to be critically important that the benchmark plans in all States provide the robust and consistent coverage for behavioral therapy that has been shown to be effective for children with ASD.

Currently, only approximately half of States have decided to offer private insurance plans that provide autism-specific behavioral interventions, while others are still in the process of making decisions. Even less is known about what type of coverage for early behavioral interventions may be available through Medicaid, a publicly-funded insurance program that is the single largest funder of medical care for children with ASD.

In light of increasing evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions, including a recent study funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)1 and a Cochrane analysis,2 the IACC drafted a letter to Secretary Sebelius recommending support for coverage of and broad access to early behavioral interventions for children diagnosed with ASD, including children covered under both private and publicly-funded (Medicaid) health plans. The IACC also recommended a Federal minimum standard of autism coverage through the essential health benefits for all health plans offered in the individual and small group markets and that minimum coverage include early intervention for children with ASD at a level of intensity indicated by the evidence.

The IACC considers access to early behavioral interventions for those with autism to be a critically important issue and hopes that this letter will provide helpful information to Secretary Sebelius as well as to the larger community as they consider the best ways to address the needs of all people with disabilities. The Committee believes that broadening access to evidence-based early behavioral interventions has the potential to improve outcomes and the quality of life for people with autism and their families.

References
1 Maglione MA, Gans D, Das L, Timbie J, Kasari C; Technical Expert Panel; HRSA Autism Intervention Research – Behavioral (AIR-B) Network. Nonmedical interventions for children with ASD: recommended guidelines and further research needs. Pediatrics. 2012 Nov;130 Suppl 2:S169-78. [PMID: 23118248]

2 Reichow B, Barton EE, Boyd BA, Hume K. Early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Oct 17. [PMID: 23076956]

***

The IACC is a Federal advisory committee that was created by Congress in an effort to accelerate progress in ASD research and services. The IACC works to improve coordination and communication across the Federal government and work in partnership with the autism community. The Committee is composed of officials from many different Federal agencies involved in autism research and services, as well as people with ASD, parents, advocates, and other members of the autism community. The documents and recommendations produced by the IACC reflect the views of the Committee as an independent advisory body and the expertise of the members of the Committee, but do not represent the views, official statements, policies or positions of the Federal government. For more information on the IACC, please visit: www.iacc.hhs.gov.

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By Matt Carey

note: I serve as a public representative to the IACC but all comments here and elsewhere are my own.

San Jose Mercury News: Three East Bay parents of autistic kindergarten children file federal civil rights lawsuit claiming teacher abuse

5 Apr

Following on the discussion of Texas allowing video monitoring of special education classrooms, a story from the California San Francisco Bay Area points out why such monitors are needed: Three East Bay parents of autistic kindergarten children file federal civil rights lawsuit claiming teacher abuse. The story begins:

With the filing of a federal lawsuit Wednesday, a horrific child abuse scandal burst into public view in the Antioch school district, involving three autistic students who allegedly were slapped, pinched and verbally abused by a teacher — and school officials who failed to report the accusations to police as the law requires.

The incidents, which bear a sad similarity to others that have come to light around the Bay Area in recent months, have already forced the accused teacher’s resignation and compelled a criminal investigation into the abuse claims. And now the district’s leadership stands accused by the students’ parents of creating a hostile environment that violated the autistic children’s civil rights.

Documents show the Antioch district’s own investigation of the concerns about teacher Theresa Allen-Caulboy ramped up only after this newspaper first reported on a similar abuse situation in Brentwood, where a convicted child abuser was allowed to continue teaching special needs students. A classroom aide to Allen-Caulboy cited the newspaper report as her impetus for reporting the abuse allegations.

More at the Mercury News.

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By Matt Carey

San Francisco Chronicle: Texas Senate passes special education cameras bill

4 Apr

A big question is how does one monitor the status of a special education classroom when the students are unable to communicate effectively? With a non disabled child, or a disabled child who can communicate well, a parent can ask the child what is going on in the classroom and know to some degree of certainty what is going on. A parent can find out if, for example, another child is a bully or if the teacher is not treating students well. But for some classes, this is not the case. The parents must rely on the teacher reports. And changes in behavior for their children.

Such was the case in New Jersey last year when a parent sent his kid to school with a recording device. The child was having more difficuties with time and the father found that staff were verbally abusing the students.

Another state, Texas, has now passed a law requiring video monitoring in specual education classrooms. The San Francisco Chronicle discusses this in: Texas Senate passes special education cameras bill.

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By Matt Carey

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