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Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: The Autism Book You’ve Been Waiting For

20 Dec

I’ve already written about the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism book. In reading the other discussions of it I found the press release, which I copy below:

Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: The Autism Book You’ve Been Waiting For.

Redwood City, CA December 19, 2011 — “Refreshingly free of dogma, disinformation, and heavy-handed agendas, Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is an oasis of sanity, compassion, and hope for people on the spectrum and those who love them.” — Steve Silberman, senior writer for Wired magazine and autism/neurodiversity blogger for the Public Library of Science

Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is the book we wish we’d had when autism first became part of our lives: a one-stop resource for carefully curated, evidence-based information from autism parents, autistics, and autism professionals.

About the Editors

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism editors are Shannon Des Roches Rosa, Jennifer Byde Myers, Liz Ditz, Emily Willingham, and Carol Greenburg. Each woman writes, educates, and advocates within the autism communities. This project has its foundation in their collective parenting, science, education, and self-advocacy experience.

For more information or review copies of THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM, please visit www.thinkingautismguide.com/p/press.html or contact our media relations department at 650.260.8742 or thinkingautism@gmail.com.

Publication information:
Available: on Amazon http://is.gd/TPGAonAMAZON and at Createspace.com http://is.gd/BUYTPGA
Paperback: 370 pages

Publisher: Deadwood City Publishing (2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0692010556
ISBN-13: 978-0692010556

and, some advance praise:

“BOOK OF THE YEAR”
“Refreshingly free of dogma, disinformation, and heavy-handed agendas, Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is an oasis of sanity, compassion, and hope for people on the spectrum and those who love them.” — Steve Silberman, senior writer for Wired magazine and autism/neurodiversity blogger for the Public Library of Science

“…what’s so valuable about the voices collected on TPGA. I think it’s the power of personal experience combined with hard-headedness about information. It’s the combination of warmth and realism: you feel the love the writers have for their kids (and other people’s kids) even while (or exactly while) they are telling the truth about how difficult it is be to be a parent to those kids, and how imperfect we all are at it.” — Caroline Miller, Child Mind Institute

“One of the best sites on the web for information about autism from parents, professionals, and autistic people themselves… this book is a must-have.” —Jean Winegardner, Washington Times

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: The Book

19 Dec

I was fortunate to attend IMFAR (the International Meeting For Autism Research) this year. One big part of what made that experience valuable to me was the opportunity to spend time with Shannon Des Roches Rosa. Shannon’s writing can be found many places including online at Squdalicious and Blogher, and in print in the book My Baby Rides the Short Bus (a great interview about the book can be found on the KQED website).

At one point at IMFAR I posed a problem I saw in much of the online discussion I often am involved in: that while we can and do effectively counter much of the misinformation that permeates the autism-parent discussion, we don’t have much to offer people. She paused for a second, just long enough for me to realize that “we” didn’t mean her, and told me that this was the reason for The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism and that the book was in the works.

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism has been a very successful website with excellent discussion for some time now, and now the book is available. You can buy it on Amazon. From CreateSpace you can read the short blurb:

Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA) is the resource we wish we’d had when autism first became part of our lives: a one-stop source for carefully curated, evidence-based information from autistics, autism parents, and autism professionals

Having read the first two chapters I agree with the statement above. It is a resource I wish I had when my kid was diagnosed. Sure, I’d have loved to have read this book before and been better prepared.

The book doesn’t pull punches. From the experiences of the adult autistics who wrote many essays to those of the parents,

From the introduction:

The Goal of The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is to help you fast-forward past society’s rampant autism fabrications and negativity by providing clear, thoughtfully presented, balanced, and referenced information

the essays form a guide. They are not telling people what to do, but providing good information to help one make decisions.

In the past Left Brain/Right Brain has reviewed some books in detail, chapter by chapter. I plan to do this with TTPGTA (The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism).

Tags:

ASF Founding Board Member Dr. Paul Offit Elected to the Institute of Medicine

19 Oct

Dr. Paul Offit, founding board member of the Autism Science Foundation, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine.

From the Autism Science Foundation Blog:

Autism Science Foundation Founding Board Member Dr. Paul Offit has been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the Academy of Natural Sciences. For three decades, Dr. Offit has been a leading researcher in the fields of virology and immunology, and a well-respected and outspoken voice on the science, safety and value of childhood vaccinations. He is also one of the most public faces of the scientific consensus that vaccines have no association with autism.

The IOM is part of the National Academies:

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public.

Established in 1970, the IOM is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which was chartered under President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Nearly 150 years later, the National Academy of Sciences has expanded into what is collectively known as the National Academies, which comprises the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Research Council, and the IOM.

Also elected this year is autism researcher Dr. Daniel Geshwind:

Daniel H. Geschwind, M.D., Ph.D., Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Professor, departments of neurology, psychiatry, and human genetics, and director, program in neurogenetics and Center for Autism Research and Treatment, Semel Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

PaulOffit.com, a tempest in a teapot

28 May

A month or so back, I stepped forward to state that I, Matt Carey, have been posting as Sullivan here on Left Brain/Right Brain. Mr. J.B. Handley of the Age of Autism blog and Generation Rescue had made a commitment to transfer the domain pauloffit.com and to stop commenting on Dr. Offit should it be demonstrated that Sullivan was not Bonnie Offit, wife of Paul Offit.

The domain was not transferred until yesterday. In the time that has transpired, tempers have raised. The last comment in the string below should be taken as a sign of the frustration level and not as an opening for critique, in my opinion. I considered leaving it out for that reason.

I generally do not like to post emails. However, as Mr. Handley has already posted some of these exchanges, I feel that it is appropriate to post the full exchange at this time. Here are the emails which I have found in my inbox. If any are missing, I feel sure that will be brought to my attention and I will add them. I do not have access to the emails or other communications between Mr. Handley or his agent and the domain registration company register.com. I can’t tell if the request to email Dr. Offit was made or not. I can’t tell if register.com bungled the communication. I just don’t have that data.

At one place on the web (at least) I commented that Mr. Handley emailed me first. That he did not do. He made the offer to complete the deal on his blog.

April 29:

Matt:I’ll take care of it early next week, thanks for the guidance.

On a separate note, I wanted to ask you to submit to an interview via email for publication at AoA. I will generate the questions, you answer them, and I publish them in totality without editorializing. The topics will exclusively cover the science of autism, known and unknown, and include prevalence, vaccines, and medical issues.

My reason for asking is that you are really the first well-educated parent (although Harvey Mudd is no Stanford 🙂 I have encountered on the other side of this topic who doesn’t seem to be a nut job (Kevin Leitch, Autism Diva, etc.).

I honestly do not understand how you have looked at the same published research I have looked at and concluded that vaccines have been exonerated from causing a majority of today’s autism. I really, truly do believe that the large-scale epidemiological studies that are constantly cited as “proof” are garbage, have yet to ask the right questions, and are typically managed to produce a previously determined outcome. I believe Allison ISnger and Paul Offit consistently and knowingly misrepresent what has been studied in public statements, and it really drives me nuts.

As a Ph.D. scientist, I think your answers will be thought-provoking. I’d like to ask you pointed questions and let you answer them. Your writing has shown me you aren’t a spin doctor and will answer things like a scientist, not a partisan. Despite my delight in provoking people I consider to be idiots (Orac), I actually do enjoy debating this issue, because my only genuine interest in all this is helping my son. If it really wasn’t the antibiotics and vaccines that got him, I’m wasting a hell of a lot of time and money treating the wrong things.

My request for the interview has nothing to do with Offit’s website, so no conditions here, I just hope you’ll consider the interview for its own sake. There are a lot of extremely smart parents on our side of the table, and I’d like to see the different reactions a thorough and measured interview with an “opposition figure” brings.

Ball is in your court,

JB Handley

On Apr 29, 2011, at 2:36 PM, Matt Carey wrote:Mr. Handley,

A few people have forwarded your piece to me today. I appreciate what you have said and I have offered a public apology on LeftBrainRightBrain for questioning your integrity in honoring your commitments.

As far as the domain pauloffit.com, you can transfer that directly to the Offits. I believe you have his contact information. If not, it can be found on his website: http://www.paul-offit.com/

Matt Carey

May 2nd:

Are you going to take 5 months to respond again?JB Handley

May 5th:

Just an fyi that pauloffit.com was unlocked and an email sent to Dr. Offit making it available to him was sent Tuesday afternoon this week. Case closed. The offer stands for an interview to be posted at AoA, thanks, JBJB Handley

May 13th: I added this comment to the blog post:

He replied that he would “take care of it early next week”That was April 29th. He never contacted Dr. Offit, and the site has been merely redesigned.

The apology was premature.

May 13th:

Matt:The site was offered to Paul Offit. It was also unlocked. After 3 days, apparently no one had claimed it, at which point anyone could. I can’t make Offit take it, maybe he didn’t so you guys could say I re-traded. Whatever, I did my part. Offit could confirm he received an email offering it to him. Don’t bother writing back, I have conceded I was wrong, and honored my end of the deal, JB

My email to owner of domain:

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:23 PM, JB Handley <[redacted]> wrote:

Hey

– Give the site back to Paul Offit, or at least give him the right to register the domain name. Can you do that?Please email the right to the domain to: offit@email.chop.edu

It’s a long story, but basically I lost a bet. JB

From: [redacted]
To: JB Handley <[redacted]>
Subject: Re: Do you have anytime in the next few days?
Date: May 3, 2011 9:32:08 AM PDT
Hi JB -Step 1 of 3 is done:

The http://www.pauloffit.com site has been updated.

The domain is unlocked and anyone can request a transfer. Once that request is submitted, you’ll get an email at “[redacted]” to confirm that transfer. Additionally, I used Register.com’s transfer process, using the “chop.edu” email address below that you gave me.

– [redacted]

JB Handley

May 14th (comment posted on a few blogs, including here)

Todd:Dr. Offit is lying, as usual. On may 3rd, Dr. Offit received an email from register.com offering the transfer of the site to him. After 72 hours, Dr. Offit had not claimed it and the site was available to anyone to register. The email where the register.com transfer was sent was provided to me by Matt Carey, who directed me here to find it:

I even sent Mr. Carey a note on May 6th advising him of that and offering to interview him for AoA, in the spirit of closing the gap between us, to which he has never responded, here’s the contents of that email:

Just an fyi that pauloffit.com was unlocked and an email sent to Dr. Offit making it available to him was sent Tuesday afternoon this week. Case closed. The offer stands for an interview to be posted at AoA, thanks, JB

Someone is lying to you, JB Handley

May 15th:

Matt:Below is completed transfer. I sent Offit first notice on May 3rd, 12 days ago – FUCK YOU for publicly saying I didn’t!!

“After Mr. Handley emailed me I replied that he could transfer the domain directly to the Offits. He never contacted them.”

When I say I am going to do something, I do it.

And, you don’t even have the courtesy to respond to my emails or interview request. Man up,

JB Handley

Begin forwarded message:From: “J.B. Handley” <[redacted]>
Date: May 15, 2011 6:02:29 PM PDT
To: “’[redacted]’” <[redacted]>
Subject: FW: Register.com – Transfer of Registrant is completed

J.B. Handley
——-Original Message——-
From: support@register.com [mailto:support@register.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2011 1:01 PM
To: J.B. Handley
Subject: Register.com – Transfer of Registrant is completed

Dear Valued Customer,

This email serves as a notification that the Transfer of Registrant for pauloffit.com from JB Handley to Paul Offit has been confirmed and processed successfully. Please note that the services associated with the domain are not transferable when a Transfer of Registrant takes place, any service previously in place for the domain must be repurchased if you wish for it to be reinstated.

If you have any further questions about this process and wish to consult with a Customer Service Representative you can contact us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by submitting a request online at http://help.register.com/cgi-bin/register_help.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php or by contacting one of the numbers below.

Thank you for choosing Register.com.

Note that this last email was sent just yesterday. The previous one was sent Friday. I was at IMFAR then, and have been either at the conference, traveling, or getting caught up at work since.

I can be pedantic and stand by my statement on May 13th: Did Mr. Handley contact Dr. Offit in early May? No. Are there other inconsistencies in the above set of exchanges? Yes. Is there value in stressing that point? No.

Mr. Handley chose a third person, who chose register.com to contact Dr. Offit. Is it possible that Mr. Handley and whoever was running pauloffit.com are not aware of that “unlocked” doesn’t have to mean “available for anyone to register”? There should be a key to effect the transfer. There’s a lot of chance there for the ball to be dropped. Neither Mr. Handley nor myself has access to Paul Offit’s email to confirm what did or did not get through. We can say that Dr. Offit has commented that he was not contacted. Given his interest in obtaining this domain, I don’t see the need to question that he would have acted on an email if it came.

I think many people, myself included, thought that a third person had grabbed the domain and that it was lost. At one point I did try to check on the registration status of the site, and I found that it was not available. If it did stay in Mr. Handley’s (or his agent’s) possession this whole time, it strikes me odd (to say the least) that the site was redesigned given the commitment that Mr. Handley made to stop commenting about Dr. Offit.

Earlier today I participated in a chat session with someone at register.com. I was still a bit confused about everything, so I would ask better questions if I had another opportunity. For one thing, I was under the impression that the site had been transferred to someone other than Mr. Handley (or his agent) and Dr. Offit. Here is that exchange:

Rob A.: Hi, my name is Rob A.. How may I help you?
Matt Carey: I’m looking for information about how register.com transfers domains
Matt Carey: I was involved in a recent transfer. The original owner of the domain set up the transfer by email with your team, who contacted the person to receive the domain. When no response was received by register, the domain was unlocked and someone else took the domain.
Matt Carey: Is this standard practice with Domain? It seems odd that the domain would be just unlocked
Rob A.: Could I get the dom,ain name in question pelase?
Matt Carey: Here is what I was told: the recipient “…received an email from register.com offering the transfer of the site to him. After 72 hours, [the recipient] had not claimed it and the site was available to anyone to register. ”
Matt Carey: pauloffit.com
Rob A.: Thank you
Matt Carey: The domain is now, finally, been transferred to the correct person. But originally, we were told that the domain had been unlocked and transferred to a third party.
Rob A.: I see that the transfer was successful from one account to the other
Rob A.: That may have been send in error as I do not see that in our system
Rob A.: Sorry
Matt Carey: Is it the policy of Register.com to simply unlock a domain after 72 hours?
Rob A.: no.
Matt Carey: Is it possible to tell me if a third party did posses the domain for a short period? Someone other than Mr. Handley (the original owner) and Dr. Offit, the current owner?
Rob A.: Not according to our system
Rob A.: It went from one account to the other
Matt Carey: Thank you very much for your time.
Rob A.: Thank you for visiting Register.com – Don’t just make a website – Make an Impact!
Rob A. has disconnected.

Are Mr. Handley’s statements accurate? No. For one thing, the site was not left open for anyone to register. Is that a lie? Not in my book. Let’s just say that Mr. Handley and his agent didn’t understand how domain registration transfers work. I certainly didn’t a few days ago.

Mr Handley stated on his blog: “I kept a screen shot of the confirmation of emails sent from register.com.” He has not shared those with me.

Mr. Handley is correct that I should have responded to his request for an interview. For that, I do apologize. I could brush it off as being due to Mr. Handley’s demeanor which, frankly, I do not care for. However, that would be blameshifting. Crafting a response was not straightforward as it may seem. I try to keep the exchanges respectful, if sometimes critical. Given that this is overdue, let me post my response here:

Mr. Handley,I appreciate your offer of an interview with your blog. I believe that in my many posts I have made my positions quite clear. It is very difficult to craft a response that would not come across as a slam. Suffice it to say, I would not willingly add my name to the Age of Autism blog. If at some point in the future, the focus of the Age of Autism were to shift to one which actually advances the needs of children like mine, and the adults whom I see as allies, I would be happy to consent to an interview. Until that time, I consider this matter closed.

Matt Carey

To respond to the obvious criticism: I have still not responded to Mr. Handley by email. I leave it up to you, the reader, to tell me if you would respond to the emails of the tone above. I feel quite comfortable with my decision.

This response by Mr. Handley puts a major damper on the optimism I felt coming from IMFAR. I spent a lot of time with people, a few of whom are on “the other side of the fence”. It was very refreshing to sit down with people, disagree and still feel kinship for those people. There was at least one person whom I wish I had approached and spoken to, if only to express the fact that I hold that person in high regard, even though we have disagreed. But, on the whole, I came away with something I didn’t expect: a sense of hope. It isn’t about people agreeing. It’s about people of differing opinions working as allies. It is also about accepting the science. Accepting the facts as they come in. It’s also about not causing harm to the autism communities and to public health.

Note: this article originally ran on May 17th. In our transition to a new hosting service, the post was lost. I’ve copied it over from the Google Cache version.

Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in a Total Population Sample

9 May

A long-awaited study of autism prevalence in Korea came out today in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Most of the information we have about autism prevalence comes from the US, the UK and Europe, so many were looking at this as the “Korean Study”. It is that, and very much more.

The title of the study is Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in a Total Population Sample. I expect the study will be gathering quite a lot of press as the results are quite remarkable. For one thing, the autism prevalence is estimated at 2.64%. That’s right, over double the current estimates in the United States and the U.K.. For another thing, most of the prevalence is for autistic students who were previously unidentified and unsupported.

Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain permission to review the article pre-embargo for discussion here on the Left Brain/Right Brain blog. Instead, I wrote about this for the Autism Science Foundation as Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in a Total Population Sample. There you will find a more thorough review of the paper, complete with questions and answers with team member Roy Richard Grinker of George Washington University. The study was led by Dr. Young Shin Kim of Yale, and includes an international team:

Young Shin Kim, M.D., Ph.D., Bennett L. Leventhal, M.D., Yun-Joo Koh, Ph.D. , Eric Fombonne, M.D. Eugene Laska, Ph.D., Eun-Chung Lim, M.A., Keun-Ah Cheon, M.D., Ph.D. ,Soo-Jeong Kim, M.D., Young-Key Kim, M.D., HyunKyung Lee, M.A., Dong-Ho Song, M.D., Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D.

Again, the full post can be found at the Autism Science Foundation blog.

Sullivan outs himself

27 Apr

Back in 2010, Age of Autism’s Inspector Clouseau, summed up the following about Sullivan:

1) Female
2) American
3) A doctor or scientist
4) Not the parent of an autistic child.
5) Is actually Paul Offit’s wife Bonnie.

And followed up with this promise:

If you can produce a dad with a child with autism with a remarkable grasp of the medical and scientific literature who blogs under the name Sullivan, a man who has an inordinate grasp of the details of your husband’s patents, lawsuits, published studies, and web habits, I will make sure that the pauloffit.com website is given to you and your husband for good.

In fact, if you can produce this father, I promise to never, ever publicly write about or utter the name “Paul Offit” again.

As blogged by Sullivan, he will be attending IMFAR as a contributor:

I have written in the past that I will be attending IMFAR, the International Meeting For Autism Research. I will be supported by a stakeholder travel grant from the Autism Science Foundation, for which I am very grateful. What I haven’t mentioned before is that I was planning to attend IMFAR even before applying for the stakeholder grant. I’ve been planning on attending since I submitted an abstract: Parent Reported Status and Expectations for Their Autistic Student Children: An Analysis of the 2007 National Household Education Survey.

The abstract in question is:

Parent Reported Status and Expectations for Their Autistic Student Children: An Analysis of the 2007 National Household Education Survey. M. J. Carey

M.J. Carey, of course being LB/RB’s own Matt Carey.

So, now we turn back to JB Handley – are you ready to both hand over both the domain and your word to never mention in word or speech the name Paul Offit again JB?

People can’t change?

22 Apr

Today, JB Handley, founder of Generation Rescue became the latest person at Age of Autism to abuse a man with a psychiatric disorder.

Shouldn’t we celebrate that Mr. Mnookin claims to be sober? Sure we should. Beating a heroin addiction is a laudable outcome. That being said, I sure wouldn’t hire Mr. Mnookin in one of my companies, let him watch my kids, or go to him for parenting advice. He was a garden-variety junkie who stole money from friends and family, sorry.

Give with one hand, take with the other.

I don;t ever seem to recall such vitriol for another former heroin addict. In fact, for _this_ former heroin addict, JB Handley said:

I wept when I read RFK Jr’s piece yesterday on the Huffington Post…

As far as I can tell, the only difference between Mnookin and Kennedy is that Mnookin is man enough to discuss his addiction up front and personal.

JB Handley and his ilk idolise Kennedy because he’s on their side. If Seth Mnookin had written a very different book, you can bet that his former addiction wouldn’t count for a damn thing. I wonder if JB would hire Kennedy, let him watch his kids or go to him for parenting advice? Because according to JB’s standards, Kennedy is just another garden variety junkie.

I believe both Mnookin and Kennedy deserve credit for fighting a fight that JB Handley can neither envisage nor learn from. What neither of these two men deserve is to be judged on their past. I look forward to reading an AoA article on Seth that describes what is wrong with his writings rather than what he used to do as a young man.

Researchers track down autism rates across the globe

8 Apr

The Simons Foundation blog, SFARI, has always had a good quality of articles. Lately it appears to me that the frequency of articles has increased. One recent article hits a subject that has been a focus of mine for some time: prevalence estimates and how they vary by culture and geography. In Researchers track down autism rates across the globe Virginia Hughes talks to a number of researchers working on expanding autism prevalence studies to more countries. Outside of the US and the UK, autism prevalence studies are somewhat rare. Until fairly recently, prevalence estimates outside of the US and Europe were basically nonexistent.

Ms. Hughes starts with this introduction:

In urban areas of South Korea, some families of children with developmental delays will go to great lengths to avoid a diagnosis of chapae, or autism. They think of it as a genetic mark of shame on the entire family, and a major obstacle to all of their children’s chances of finding suitable spouses.

The stigma is so intense that many Korean clinicians intentionally misdiagnose these children with aechak changae, or reactive detachment disorder — social withdrawal that is caused by extreme parental abuse or neglect.

This won’t come as a surprise for those who have read Roy Richard Grinker’s Unstrange Minds, where Prof. Grinker explores how autism is viewed in various parts of the world, including South Korea.

Prof. Grinker is interviewed, as is his collaborator Dr. Young Shin Kim, and Dr. Eric Fombonne.

Autism prevelance work has been performed or is ongoing in Mexico, South Korea, Brazil, India, South Africa and Oman. Since autism isn’t diagnosed through a biological test, variations in culture can have a significant impact on the test methods.

Ms. Hughes notes:

Language and culture may also affect the way this research is carried out. For instance, the Korean language uses an extensive array of suffixes that denote the relationship between the speaker and the subject. South Korean children with autism have trouble using these social markers, but the Western-based standard tests of autism, such as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), don’t test for this.

Similarly, Grinker points out, healthy children from non-Western cultures may display a trait that ADOS counts as a symptom of autism. In South Korea, for example, making eye contact with an adult is not socially appropriate.

“This is why it’s pretty useful to have [anthropologists] who can translate diagnostic instruments that were designed in one culture and used in another,” Grinker says.

Rather than cut and paste the entire article I will point you back to SFARI for the full piece. It is well worth reading.

Jake Crosby abuses man with psychiatric disorder

21 Mar

Today at Age of Autism Jake Crosby – man who has a psychiatric disorder himself – took it upon himself to disparage a man who also has a psychiatric disorder and encourage the Age of Autism readers to do the same:

Seth Mnookin – a former drug dealer and burglar who bit a police officer…

Geez oh Peet! Offit picks the lousiest spokespeople, doesn’t he? First Amanda “don’t listen to me” Peet and now this former heroin addict.

Starting on Page 191, the DSM IV diagnoses Substance-Related Disorders:

The Substance-Related Disorders include disorders related to the taking of a drug of abuse (including alcohol), to the side effects of a medication, and to toxin exposure. In this manual, the term substance can refer to a drug of abuse, a medication, or a toxin. The substances discussed in this section are grouped into 11 classes: alcohol; amphetamine or similarly acting sympathomimetics; caffeine; cannabis; cocaine; hallucinogens; inhalants; nicotine; opioids; p hencyclidine (PCP) or similarly acting arylcyclohexylamines; and sedatives, hypnotics, or anxiolytics. Although these 11 classes appear in alphabetical order, the follow ing classes share similar features: alcohol shares features with the sedatives, hypnotics, and anxiolytics; and cocaine shares features with amphetamines or similarly acting sympathomimetics. Also included in this section are Polysubstance Dependence and Other or Unknown Substance-Related Disorders (which include most disorders related to medications or toxins).

What Crosby has done is no different than someone coming up to him and abusing him based on his autism. Its shameful and deeply offensive. This is the 21st Century and Crosby has taken it upon himself to ridicule and abuse a man who has the strength of character to overcome his personal demons and carve out a successful career for himself as an exemplary investigative journalist. If Age of Autism need proof of the calibre of his work they should take a look at the reviews The Panic Virus garnered and compare them to the calibre of the 5 reviews Dan Olmsted could round up for Age of Autism – The Book.

Age of Autism has revealed its truly nasty and shallow depths by abusing a man with a psychiatric disorder. Maybe they should think twice before attacking someone based solely or partly on their disorders in order to whip up negativity in their cult members and start to realise the consequences of their actions. I would wish shame on them but they’ve proven time and time again that shame and self-reflection is an alien emotion to them.

The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won’t Go Away

11 Feb

Who said it was? Backstory: “The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won’t Go Away” is a recent blog post by David Kirby at the Huffington Post. Yes, he’s come back to talk about autism and vaccines.

I say again: who says the debate is going away? The scientific debate on the main issues: thimerosal and the MMR is over. That scientific debate has been over for some time. The rising autism “rate” wasn’t caused by mercury. It wasn’t caused by MMR. Autism isn’t a “novel” form of mercury poisoning. These facts don’t stop activist groups and online discussions, or the debate elsewhere for that matter.

The debate isn’t going away, but is is morphing. From the piece by David Kirby:

There is clearly no single cause of autism, and we are not going to find answers looking only at genes, or for that matter, only at thimerosal or MMR.

David Kirby’s main contribution to the discussion was his book: Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. Mr. Kirby has been a major proponent of the mercury hypothesis since he started on that book, fed by research garnered by SafeMinds founder Lyn Redwood. The book wasn’t about “vaccines” and the autism epidemic, or “environmental causes of an autism epidemic”, it was about “mercury in vaccines and the autism epidemic”.

The debate isn’t going away, but it is getting weaker. And it’s just moving a few goalposts: Let’s play down mercury. Let’s play down MMR. It’s the “Autism-vaccine” debate, not “Mercury in vaccines and the autism epidemic”.

Mr. Kirby does in this blog post what he has done so well for the past few years. He puts the current talking points out there, nicely packaged. Here’s a good example, where he even manages to include a plug for the latest pseudo-research. It’s amazing, really:

That’s because evidence of a vaccine-autism link did not come to them via a 12-year-old study published in a British medical journal, nor from Hollywood celebrities: Not very many had heard of Wakefield until recently.

Some of these parents actually keep up with the science, including a new review of autism studies in the Journal of Immunotoxicology which concludes: “Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis following vaccination.”

Simply amazing. People haven’t heard of Wakefield, but they know about a paper that just came out yesterday in a relatively obscure medical journal? It’s product placement. Very slick. Mr. Kirby plugs this paper as though it is as natural as all the judges on “American Idol” drinking from great big red Coca Cola cups.

He also gets in the “the discussion isn’t all about Wakefield” theme that is in the current responses to the disclosure of fraud in Mr. Wakefield’s research. “Not many people had heard of Wakefield until recently.” As a side note, the obscure Mr. Wakefield appears on 30 pages of Mr. Kirby’s book, Evidence of Harm.

Let’s check whether people have heard about Mr. Wakefield. According to a recent Harris poll (one that Mr. Kirby cites, by the way):

In the new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll, 69 percent of respondents said they had heard about the autism-vaccination theory — but only half (47 percent) knew that the original Lancet study had been retracted, and that some of that research is now alleged to be fraudulent.

The question “Are you aware that the medical journal that published the paper linking vaccines to autism has now withdrawn the paper, and a published account describes the research as fraudulent?” 47% of people asked said yes.

That’s a pretty big number of people who not only (a) knew about Mr. Wakefield’s paper but also (b) knew it had been retracted and described as fraudulent. What other research paper would the public know about in such great numbers, 12 years after publication?

To state the obvious, yes, Mr. Wakefield and his research was known. Well known. It has been a big piece of the vaccines-cause-autism debate.

Here’s the table from that Harris poll question, showing that 47% of people had heard about the retraction and fraud. Even more important, take note of the fact that people who are informed about the retraction and the fraud are much less likely to believe that vaccines cause autism (click image to make big):

Yep, 65% of people who have heard about the retraction and fraud say that the vaccines-cause-autism idea is “not true”. Mr. Wakefield’s work was known and important to the vaccines-cause-autism cause.

Mr. Kirby then goes into the standard talking points of the day: only two vaccines (MMR) and one ingredient (thimerosal) have been explored for relationship to autism, followed closely by a denial that any of those studies were of any value because they are performed by people who have a “vested interest”.

Of course, “vested interests” in those promoting the vaccine hypothesis, both professional and financial (of which Andrew Wakefield is only the most prominent example) are ignored. As we quickly see as Mr. Kirby warns us that the expected SafeMinds response is on the way to the recent paper showing no link between thimerosal exposure and autism.

Mr. Kirby finishes with “The CDC estimates that there are about 760,000 Americans under 21 with an ASD. Even if just 1 percent of those cases was linked to vaccines (though I believe it is higher), that would mean 7,600 young Americans with a vaccine-associated ASD. ”

Yes, Mr. Kirby is adapting. Adapting in much the way that I have said the vaccine-causation community needs to adapt in order to stay alive. They need to abandon the “epidemic” rhetoric. Claim that if there are people with vaccine-induced autism, the number is very small, too small to be picked up by epidemiology.

Rather than really adapt, Mr. Kirby wants to play both sides of this. He wants to say, “what if the number is really small” and say that the data available show that the rise in autism prevalence is correlated with vaccines.

At the risk of being accused of “product placement” myself, I can’t help but bring up an incident discussed in the book “The Panic Virus“. I don’t have the book handy, so I apologize if I get this not 100% accurate. Seth Mnookin tells of talking to Dr. Jon Poling, father of Hannah Poling, during an AutismOne conference. While Dr. Poling is telling Mr. Mnookin that, yes, the concession in the vaccine court isn’t about causation, David Kirby is giving his talk saying exactly the opposite.

One question I know I will face soon is: why do I bring up David Kirby again? Why not move on from the vaccine debate. In the end it is because of statements like this:

In my opinion, many children with autism are toxic.

After over five years as a self-described member of the autism community, David Kirby still uses damaging language. Children are not “toxic”. Even children who have demonstrated heavy metal poisoning (which autism is not) are not “toxic”. If you touch them, you don’t get poisoned. They are “intoxicated”. But, that doesn’t read well, does it? I’ll say it again, autism is not a form of mercury poisoning. I really don’t need my kid labeled “toxic”.

I don’t know if David Kirby is “anti vaccine” or not. If you notice, I rarely use the term. I don’t care if David Kirby is anti vaccine. It isn’t the label “anti-vaccine” that matters. David Kirby is intellectually dishonest and his actions are irresponsible. On a more personal note, he puts forth an image of autism that is damaging to my kid.

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