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Act now: Autistic Child Charged with Felony

6 Jan

Below is an email I received from Meg Evans of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network on a situation involving a child who is being charged with Felony Assault for resisting restraints in his school. Worse yet is the possibility that the student could end up being sent to a mental hospital pending a competency hearing.

This is another ASAN Update for bloggers in the Autistic and disability rights communities. ASAN has created an Action Alert regarding the case of an 11-year old Autistic boy in Arkansas named Zakhqurey Price, who has been charged with felony assault after a school restraint incident. There were no serious injuries, and the incident occurred under circumstances where the use of restraint would not have been legal if recently introduced federal civil rights legislation to protect children in schools had been in effect. We are asking that you take action by contacting the school principal and superintendent to inform them of your concerns and by reposting the ASAN Action Alert set forth below.

As always, we encourage you to contact us with your comments, and please let us know if you would prefer to receive these announcements at a different address or to be removed from the list.

Best regards,

Meg Evans, Director of Community Liaison
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
mmevans@woh.rr.com

Below is the statement by Ari Ne’eman:

By Ari Ne’eman, ASAN President.

Hello,

In the past, we’ve written to you about advocacy issues relating to the rights of adults and youth on the autism spectrum. Our voices have made a difference on all manner of policy concerns and have sent a clear message that those who seek to deprive Autistic people of any age of their rights will have our community to answer to. Now we’d like to ask you to help us take action to help protect an 11-year old Autistic boy in Arkansas named Zakhqurey Price, currently being charged with felony assault after fighting back when two staff members restrained him in response to behavioral challenges. The school has ignored repeated efforts from Zakh’s grandmother over the course of the last five months to obtain needed IEP supports to improve his educational options and manage his behavioral difficulties.

According to the suspension notice, the restraint was in response to Zakh destroying school property – something beyond the scope of what would be allowed under recently introduced federal civil rights legislation around restraint and seclusion in schools. Disability advocates, including ASAN, are fighting to pass this crucial legislation that would broaden the protections available to students like Zakh as well as those with other disabilities and with no disability at all. We have asked for your help in passing this important legislation, and together we can succeed in bringing proposed civil rights protections into law – but not in time to help Zakh. That is why we need you to take action now. Find out how below:

School Principal:
Pam Siebenmorgan (One of the charging parties in Zakh’s felony hearing – polite but firm calls and e-mails encouraging her to drop the charges would be helpful)
Phone: 479-646-0834
E-mail: psiebenm@fortsmithschools.org

School Superintendent:
Dr. Benny Gooden (The Superintendent runs the entire school district – polite but firm calls and e-mails communicating how this situation is damaging Fort Smith Public Schools’ reputation would be helpful as well)
E-mail: bgooden@fortsmithschools.org
School Board Office: 1-479-785-2501 Ext. 1201

We recommend that you both e-mail and call if you can. If necessary, e-mail is the preferable option. If you would like your e-mails to be passed along to Zakh’s grandmother, please bcc: info@autisticadvocacy.org. Please stress the importance of Fort Smith Public Schools taking the following steps:

-Drop the charges against Zakhqurey Price

-Work with his grandmother to put in place an IEP that will fulfill Zakh’s right for a Free and Appropriate Public Education in the Least Restrictive Environment

-Improve training for school personnel to prevent future such incidents and to ensure that students on the autism spectrum as well as with other disabilities are included, supported and educated in Fort Smith Public Schools.

If Zakh is declared incompetent as part of the hearing scheduled for January 12th, state law requires that he be placed into a mental hospital for at least 30 days. His grandmother fears that, due to the negative repercussions of being taken out of the community and being forced into an institutional setting, Zakh may lose skills in such an environment and not be returned to her indefinitely. That is why we need you to act now. Please distribute and repost this action alert. Thank you for your time and your advocacy, and as always, Nothing About Us, Without Us!

I usually avoid posting names and phone numbers like this. All to often blogs post such information in an attempt to intimidate. Take to heart Mr. Ne’eman’s call to be polite but firm when you call.

Autism people of the decade: special educators

6 Jan

Just in case you didn’t notice, it’s 2010. The first decade of the new millennium is over. After Mike’s recent post, Autism Personality of the Year, I kept thinking about who I would consider stand-out in the autism communities. Yes it is rather presumptuous for me as a non autistic parent whose child wasn’t even born at the turn of the millennium. As you can see, I’m not letting that stop me.

Time Magazine set a good standard with their “Person of the Year” category. “Person of the year” isn’t necessarily an honor, or a statement that the person was a force for good. That opens up a lot of possibilities when considering the past decade, and given that you can probably guess at a number of the people I considered.

A lot of money has been pumped into autism research in the last decade. There are a lot of excellent research teams. There has been a lot of excellent work done, but to my recollection nothing stands out as truly breakthrough. I am quite open to being corrected on that opinion, though.

When I ask myself, who really has made a difference in the quality of life for my autistic kid, it isn’t the researchers, the advocacy groups or the “personalities” in the autism community that I can point to. What has made a difference are the efforts of a group of therapists and teachers who have devoted themselves to low pay and hard work.

Unfortunately, all is far from perfect in special education and it is the bad stories that make the news. Stories about abuse, seclusion and restraint, bullying and the like are the stories that get discussed on blogs like this one. Add to that school administrations that are underfunded to the point of sometimes making some very bad decisions. But those stories reinforce the fact that good placements and good teachers are worth their weight in gold.

How Anti-Vaccine ‘Science’ Holds Back Credible Research

4 Jan

An expert panel says there’s no rigorous evidence that digestive problems are more common in children with autism compared to other children, or that special diets work, contrary to claims by celebrities and vaccine naysayers.

This is a totally non contentious piece of work. The panel examined all _credible_ research into the subject and decided there simply wasn’t anything available to support the idea of a things such as autistic entercolitis – a faux syndrome pushed by the section of autism anti vaxxers who believe Andrew Wakefields fake science.

Take careful note though of what they are saying:

1) That there’s no credible evidence. Parental anecdote is not credible evidence.
2) Thats autistic children may well have gut issues and that if they do they should be treated medically.
3) That special diets show no eficacy in _treating autism_ .

The issue for me therefore is that when autistic kids have gut issues they need to be treated properly by medical staff. This means making appointments that allow for the special needs of autistic people (either first in the day or last in the day to avoid waits, quiet waiting rooms with appropriate distractions and most of all well trained staff who won’t say caustic things to parents).

A TACA representative is quoted as saying:

“I’m filled with hope after reading this report,” said Estepp of the support group Talk About Curing Autism. “I wish this report would have come out 10 years ago when my son was diagnosed.”

Ironically, TACA who support the work of Andrew Wakefield probably _could_ have had a report like this ten years ago if the work of Andrew Wakeild hadn’t been so heavily promoted by groups like TACA.

The new report says the existence of autistic enterocolitis “has not been established.” Buie said researchers and doctors have avoided digestive issues in autism because of their connection with Wakefield’s disputed research, which set off a backlash against vaccines that continues to this day.

Quite understandably, researchers didn’t want to get involved in a field tainted by a person like Wakefield and his demonstrably false and disproven idea that MMR causes or contributes to autism. If they did, when they came out with science that contradicted Wakefield they would be subject to the same sort of hate crimes currently perpetrated against numerous other scientists such as Paul Offit who has recieved death threats. Who would want that?

Quite simply – if people like Wakefield admit their error and then shut up, more science will be done that will reveal more results groups like TACA may well support.

Autism Clusters Found: areas with high incidence of autistic children

1 Jan

Researchers at the U.C. Davis MIND Institute has discovered regions in the state of California that have notably higher autism incidence. But the story is more complicated, and more sad, than one might think at first. Instead of indications of an “autism epidemic”, these clusters point to the fact that minority and poor children are much less likely to receive autism diagnoses.

I don’t have the paper yet (I’m still trying to find the abstract), but articles in the Woodland Daily Democrat and the San Diego Union-Tribune are reporting the story.

The clusters do not appear to point to environmental causes. Instead…well, read for yourself:

Researchers said that in this investigation the clusters probably are not correlated with specific environmental pollutants or other “exposures.” Rather, they correlate to areas where residents are more educated.

Children with autism diagnoses in these clusters are more likely to be White and have parents with high education levels. Again, a quote:

“In the U.S., the children of older, white and highly educated parents are more likely to receive a diagnosis of autism or autism spectrum disorder. For this reason, the clusters we found are probably not a result of a common environmental exposure. Instead, the differences in education, age and ethnicity of parents comparing births in the cluster versus those outside the cluster were striking enough to explain the clusters of autism cases,” said senior author Irva Hertz-Picciotto.

Kids in the “clusters” are about twice a likely to be diagnosed autistic and kids in nearby areas.

Twice as high.

To the many of us armchair epidemiologists who who have looked closely at the California Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) data, this comes as no surprise.

For me, the most memorable discussion of the autism clusters came from Autism Diva, in her post from July 1997, Malibu and Compton: Compare and Contrast.

Here is a graph from that post:

The South Central Regional Center, in a predominantly non-White, poor area of the Los Angeles basin, had an administrative prevalence of 33 per 10,000. Compare that to Westside Regional Center with a prevelance of 84. Westside is a much more affluent are with a higher proportion of White families.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“There is mounting evidence that at least some of this clustering results from the greater access and utilization of services by those with more years of schooling,” the UC Davis researchers wrote.

Yes, there is a certain “I told you so” moment here. This blog, Autism Diva, Autism Natural Variation, Autism Street and others have been pointing out the apparent autism clusters in the raw CDDS data for years. Long before I started blogging. But the real story isn’t the effect such clusters have on the idea of the “autism epidemic”. Rather, this is a clear indication that we are underserving the disabled in our minority and poor communities. This is just plain wrong.

It is long past time for real autism advocacy organizations to work on increasing awareness and access to services in underserved areas. The autism “clusters” are probably not real. From where I sit, what is real are the “anti–clusters” of undiagnosed autistics, minorities, the poor, and, yes, adults.

Older dads contribute to autism

31 Dec

Just a quick one as I haven’t read the whole paper yet but it’ll be of interest to readers of this blog so:

Advancing paternal age is associated with deficits in social and exploratory behaviors in the offspring: a mouse model.

BACKGROUND: Accumulating evidence from epidemiological research has demonstrated an association between advanced paternal age and risk for several psychiatric disorders including autism, schizophrenia and early-onset bipolar disorder. In order to establish causality, this study used an animal model to investigate the effects of advanced paternal age on behavioural deficits in the offspring.

METHODS: C57BL/6J offspring (n = 12 per group) were bred from fathers of two different ages, 2 months (young) and 10 months (old), and mothers aged 2 months (n = 6 breeding pairs per group). Social and exploratory behaviors were examined
in the offspring.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The offspring of older fathers were found to engage in significantly less social (p = 0.02) and exploratory (p = 0.02) behaviors than the offspring of younger fathers. There were no significant differences in measures of motor activity.

CONCLUSIONS: Given the well-controlled nature of this study, this provides the strongest evidence for deleterious effects of advancing paternal age on social and exploratory behavior. De-novo chromosomal changes and/or inherited epigenetic changes are the most plausible explanatory factors.

Special fevers, mitochondria and autism

30 Dec

Thats right, its back.

Ginny Hughes, writing for the Simons Foundation writes about new methods of detecting mitochondrial damages that may lead to autism. Of course, since last year that inextricably calls to mind Hannah Poling.

Just as a quick refresh, Hannah’s case was compensated by US Gvmt who accepted that vaccines caused a fever which triggered an underlying mitochondrial dysfunction which in turn led to ‘autism like symptoms’. This is oppose to ‘vaccines caused her autism’ which you’ll find a lot of people claiming.

The crux of the matter is fever. Mitochodrial dysfunction appears to be largely triggered by fever. Without the fever there’s no dysfunction. Without the dysfunction theres no autism.

Jay Gargus, professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine who’s studied mitochodria for 20 years makes a very telling point in this piece:

“It terrifies me that people will be making arguments [from this work] that further enhance the panic about vaccines,” Gargus adds. “Obviously, getting a vaccination will sometimes give you a fever, but the kid’s going to get a fever sooner or later anyway. It’s not like it’s a special fever.”

All kids get ill. They’re going to get fevers. In fact a lot of the things that vaccines try and prevent cause fevers. Flu for example. What vaccines don’t do is give a child a ‘special’ autism causing fever. Thats because there _is_ no special autism causing fever and no special autism causing vaccines either.

Less evolved creatures

29 Dec

Back in of this year, Wired did a piece called ‘An Epidemic of Fear‘ that exposed some of the anti-vaccine charlatans masquerading as purveyors of science that have infested the autism community in the last 10 years or so.

Amy Wallace’s excellent piece (”An Epidemic of Fear,” issue 17.11) isn’t really even about vaccines. It’s about what Thomas Friedman calls the American “dumb as we wanna be” attitude, which combines stunning intellectual laziness, the erroneous concept that all information is equal, and the Internet to create a witches’ brew that we’re using to commit national suicide.

Sadly not just a national malaise, but an international one, Wallace’s piece provoked outraged indignation from those primarily responsible for stirring the Witches brew. The same people that time and again commit the sin of pride as they tell you that they – a handful of business moguls, big titted starlets and antivax lawyers – know as much about the science of vaccination as well, actual scientists who study vaccination and its side effects. Who can forget Jenny McCarthy’s ego-exhortation: her son *is* her science, a course she passed at Google University.

Wired go on to say:

…We got more mail about our cover story, “An Epidemic of Fear,” than any other piece we’ve published. Dozens of medical professionals commended Amy Wallace’s feature on the fallacies promulgated by the anti-vaccine movement. Meanwhile the anti-vaxers flooded our mailboxes with stories of children injured by vaccinations, chain letters, misogynistic rants, threats, and just plain crazytown (”Sodomite editors should go get AIDS at the Folsom Street Fair,” advised one less-evolved creature).

Less evolved creatues permeate the rank, file and leadership of the autism/antivax community. From the creatures that are proud of the baby eating pieces on Age of Autism to the creatures like Dr Sherri Tenpenny who think its OK for kids to die of the flu:

Study these numbers. We’ve had SARS, Bird flu and Swine flu. On average, approx. 190 children/year die from the flu. Considering there are about 62M kids under the 14 years of age in the US, this is NOT “statistically signficant” and should not even make the radar screen.

In 2010, the less evolved creatures should be given less and less weight. Let them carry on making their noises to themselves and we – the autism community – can carry on talking about things that matter.

Autism Personality of the Year

28 Dec

As the year ends the media indulges in lists that attempt to summarize the past and predict the future. So why not add the Autism Personality Of THe Year or APOTHY award, to be made to those who represent the APOTHEOSIS of our movement?

Here are my nominations.

Autistic Person of the Year. Ari Ne’eman for his work in bringing autistic self advocacy to the attention of the White House.

Organization of the Year. The National Autistic Society for its advocacy work in the UK that was epitomized by the passing into law of the Autism Act.

Blogger of the Year.  Sullivan for keeping LBRB going when Kev needed to take a break.

Novel of the Year. The Way Things Look to Me by Roopa Farooki who wrote a better book than The Curious Incident.

Journalist of the Year. Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan for exposing quackery in a series of well researched articles in the Chicago Tribune.

Researcher of the Year. Mady Hornig  for upsetting her fanbase in the anti-vaccine camp by publishing a paper that showed “no relationship between the timing of MMR vaccine and the onset of either GI complaints or autism.”

Event of the Year. Publication of judgements in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings when the vaccine hypothesis was tried and found wanting in the US Court of Federal Claims.

Baseball Team of the Year. The Philadelphia Phillies for honouring Dr Offit. (He also got an award from the American Association of Paediatrics, the President’s Certificate for Outstanding Service but we know which one really matters.)

Shape of things to come. It has to be Square and you will find it at Asperger Square 8.

And any other nominations or categories that you can think of.

Tags:

Five-percent of nothing

25 Dec

To paraphrase Mark Twain, a phony statistic will travel half way around the world before the truth can get its boots on – and even further when the phony statistic is hitched to the wagon of vaccine denialism.

A case in point: last June, blogger Amy Lutz  launched a broadside against neurodiversity with the following alleged quote:

Dr. (Lee) Wachtel estimates that “less than five percent” of diagnosed autistics have the linguistic and cognitive skills to participate in this movement. “Most are not going to grow up to be Temple Grandin,” she adds, referring to the famous autistic author and doctorate in animal science. On the contrary, Dr. Wachtel believes the average autistic will never go to college or live independently, and instead will struggle his entire life with the communication and social deficits that define the disorder…

Wachtel is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Baltimore’s Kennedy Krieger Center. Lutz didn’t explain what it means to “participate” in neurodiversity, nor did she reflect on the fact that most kids don’t grow up to be Temple Grandin anyway. “This article by Lutz … has the appearance of journalism, and quotes a doctor in support of Lutz’s contention that neurodiversity is a bad thing, overall,” notes autism blogger Kim at CounteringAgeOfAutism, who tracked down the source of Wachtel’s alleged quote. “It doesn’t help that Lutz doesn’t seems to understand what neurodiversity is.”

Lutz’s post raised a few eyebrows. Commenter Jen Niebler wrote ND is not about “marginalizing the ‘real autistics’ – it’s about listening to all autistics and how they wish to be treated.” LBRB founder Kevin Leitch commented “A total misrepresentation of the ND viewpoint who (as I am one, and parent to a severely autistic child I am very aware of this) consider autism a disability AND a difference. Did the author talk to anyone from the ND community before writing this?”

Eventually Wachtel’s quote faded into the ether, only to be resurrected six months later in a comment at about.com, where blogger Lisa Jo Rudy worried that Ari Ne’eman’s recent nomination to the Council on Disability might not sit well with the anti-vaccine crowd. Commenter LoopyLoo wrote:

I’m frustrated and worried. High-functioning, highly verbal people with autism have just about zero in common with my severely impaired, non-verbal child. I’m glad that things have worked out so well for him, but in the general population of people with autism only about five percent will ever be able to participate in a movement like neuro-diversity. Acceptance of/for people who aren’t NT is a fine and lovely goal, but I’d rather have a cure.

When asked to source the “five percent” figure, LoopyLoo pointed to Wachtel. But a query to KK’s media relations office tells the rest of the story:

Regarding Dr. Wachtel’s quote, her comments were pulled from a conversation that she had with a parent. She wasn’t aware that they would appear on a large web site as was the result. Her comments were also made relative to the severely impaired patient population that she sees. The majority of these patients can be described as she did in her comments, but the full context of the discussion would include mention of the fact that advances are happening in the field of early intervention which may change outcomes for toddlers who are being newly diagnosed today at age two or earlier. Also – she does not have a citation or reference for the “less than 5 percent” reference. Again – it was a casual comment made to a parent, and within the context of her patient population.

In a follow up email, KK characterized Wachtel’s words as “casual comments made relative to Dr. Wachtel’s daily frame of reference – her severely affected patient population.” In other words, the five percent figure does not refer to all autism spectrum disorders.

The blogger, Amy Lutz, confirms the quote came from her private conversation with Wachtel, and she stands by it. “I asked Dr. Wachtel to approximate, based on her seven years of work in autism treatment and research, the percentage of diagnosed autistics who could actively participate in a political movement – because, as we all agree, there is (sic) no data in the scientific literature to answer this question,” said Lutz in an email. “Her answer, five percent, is, as I explicitly stated in my essay, an ‘estimate.'”

In a perfect world, a throwaway quote by a careless writer wouldn’t matter. But in our wired, interconnected world, poorly sourced quotes are sustenance for ideologues.

The premise here – that only the highest functioning autistics can “participate” in neurodiveristy –   would be news to many of the pro-ND bloggers who are significantly disabled, notes autism blogger Sullivan. “The fact of the matter is that everyone (autistic/non-autistic, all levels of disability) benefit from neurodiversity.”

As anti-vaccine activists and other line up to oppose Ari Ne’eman’s nomination, we are sure to see more inaccurate and self-serving definitions of neurodiveristy. And it’s a safe bet that the “five-percent” quote will surface yet again.

My “hostile” or “threatening” messages to the Age of Autism editors

23 Dec

I’m critical of the Age of Autism blog and their so called “editors”. That comes as no news to anyone who has read this blog, I’m sure. But I found an odd bit in David N. Brown’s recent piece, Paul Offit’s Mythical Millions (v. 2), when he noted that Mr. Mark Blaxill and Mr. Dan Olmsted wrote in a recent Age of Autism piece:

Most notably, we have received hostile (and in one case threatening) messages from readers who take issue with our estimates

I sent email messages to Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted, pointing out their mistakes. Hostile and threatening were not the way I would characterize the emails, so I emailed Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted with my request for clarification of their comments. They have not responded, which I am taking as confirmation that they considered my communications “hostile” and/or “threatening”. I thought I would let the readers decide whether based on the actual messages below.

As a bit of a backstory, Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Blaxill wrote a piece where they estimated the amount of money Dr. Paul Offit earned from his share of his vaccine patents. In this piece, they made a number of errors. I pointed out some of the errors, errors that were easily confirmed with publicly available information, via email.

I thought I had phrased this in a non “threatening” and non “hostile” manner. Again, I leave it to you, the reader, to decide.

Here is my initial letter to Mark Blaxill and Dan Olmsted, editors at the Age of Autism blog.

Mr. Olmsted, Mr. Blaxill,

I am sure you are interested in accuracy whenever possible in your blog posts. I assume you want to know and want to correct errors.

In a recent post of yours, you estimated the royalty payment for Dr. Paul Offit from CHOP’s sale of it’s rights to the rotavirus vaccine Dr. Offit, Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Clark invented.

Your post makes an estimate that is markedly higher than the real number. This is in large part to two errors you made.

First, the Patent and Intellectual Property Policy you used is incorrect. You rightly note that this is a new policy and that the rotavirus patent was likely covered by a previous policy.

The details of the previous policy are included in this document (http://stokes.chop.edu/forms/btob/Jan07BtoB.pdf) , which can be easily found with the following google search:

Patent and Intellectual Property Policy site:chop.edu

Using the older policy and the $182M reported as the payment CHOP received for their patent, you can calculate an inventors share of $18,550,000.

The second mistake in your estimation is in assuming that Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Clark. did not share in the CHOP inventor share. This is incorrect. Again, a quick google search will demonstrate that Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Clark were, indeed, CHOP faculty. Therefore, the $18,550,000 is divided by 3, resulting in an inventor share of $6,183,333.

The CHOP 2006 annual report (http://stokes.chop.edu/publications/annual_report/pdf/annual_report_2006.pdf page 42) clearly states that Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Plotkin were part of the CHOP team that invented the vaccine. Other pages on the CHOP site note that Doctors Plotkin and Clark were, indeed, faculty there.

I have already emailed Dr. Offit to check that this is an accurate representation of the facts, and he confirmed this.

I look forward to seeing how you make use of these corrections.

Mr. Blaxill reponds:

Dear Sullivan,

Please identify yourself. I do not respond to unsigned communications.

Sincerely,

Mark Blaxill

Sullivan:

Mr. Blaxill,

I realize that this is your policy and I respect that. I apologize for contacting you like this, but I felt it important that you have accurate information in this case. The links I supplied confirm this. That information is independent of whether I sign or do not sign my email.

I believe your mistake to be an honest one. At the same time I believe it was easily avoided as accurate information is readily and publicly available. Note that I made a conservative estimate, using the full $182M of the Royalty Pharma payment, not the $153M you report as net income from CHOP’s sale.

I respect your policy and I was not and am not looking for a response. I do hope that you will act on the information provided.

Mr. Blaxill:

Dear “Sullivan”,

Your information is interesting but equivocal. I have information that goes in the other direction. More to the point, we asked both Offit and CHOP to comment on the story before publication and they declined. The only definitive way to resolve the ambiguity is full disclosure of the amounts Offit received from all sources and he has declined to do so. So we have no plans at the moment to act on this or any other new information, which at the most amounts to a distinction without a difference. The conclusion stands: Rotateq made Offit a millionaire.

In the meantime, you continue to hide behind an anonymous email address. You must understand that discredits you as a source.

Sincerely,

Mark Blaxill

Sullivan

Dr. Offit has publicly stated how much he was paid by CHOP.

http://counteringageofautism.blogspot.com/2009/09/paul-offit-explains-money-side-of.html

A blogger contacted Dr. Offit and Dr. Offit responded. The blogger (David N. Brown) used his real name in reporting the information. No different than had he responded to you and you had included that information in your blog under your name.

Were you both unaware of that blog and that post?

Will you make the correction now?

Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Blaxill did not make the correction. The recently admitted their mistakes, but have yet to make the correction.

Upon reading the comment that they had received “hostile” and “threatening” responses, I decided to inquire as to whether they were referring to the exchange above. Below is my final email in this exchange.

Mr. Olmsted, Mr. Blaxill:

In reading David Brown’s discussion of your recent blog post on Dr Offit, I found this comment: ” Most notably, we have received hostile (and in one case threatening) messages from readers who take issue with our estimates. ”

I would like to know if you include this exchange as either hostile or threatening.

I thank you for your time.

This has remained unanswered. I take this as a strong indication that, yes, they considered my discussion “hostile” or “threatening”.

Frankly, I believe either clarification or an apology are in order from Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted as the above discussion was quite respectful. Do I expect that? No. I don’t expect such behavior from people who would write the passage below:

“The only definitive way to resolve the ambiguity is full disclosure of the amounts Offit received from all sources and he has declined to do so. So we have no plans at the moment to act on this or any other new information, which at the most amounts to a distinction without a difference. “

The message was clear to me: the blog post would remain uncorrected unless Dr. Offit met their demands. The fact that Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Blaxill were clearly mistaken had no bearing on whether the piece would remain. Note that even though they have admitted their mistake, no mention is made in their original post to this day.

I started the above communication with the assumption that Mr. Blaxill and Mr. Olmsted were honorable people who, while we disagree, would put accuracy above smear.

I am willing to admit my mistake.

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