The low point of last week’s Green Our Vaccines rally in Washington, DC, came early in the day, before the 2,000 or so anti-vaccine parents began their one-mile walk down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol grounds.
Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey had just spoken with the media, then walked down the line of marchers, stopping to say a few words. McCarthy gave a brief, energetic pep talk, thanking everyone for coming, then handed the loudspeaker to her boyfriend. Carrey, appearing uncomfortable, told the crowd “You are a shining example of unconditional love.”
“Thank you, Jim!” shouted someone unfamiliar with the word “irony”.
Vaccines are the greatest medical discovery of the last 200 years. They have saved millions of lives around the world, and have flushed smallpox down the memory hole. The case against vaccines is based on a shared mass delusion whose moment in the sun cannot end too soon.
The eventual demise of the anti-vaccine movement will not end well for Mr. Carrey, whose physical comedy translates wonderfully into any language. McCarthy, whose toxic D-list soft-porn comedienne shtick has made her immune to disgrace, will mutate into a less virulent form of celebrity, attaching herself to mall openings in Fargo. Carrey’s fall will be much, much harder.
But Jim Carrey and the anti-vaccine movement are safe as long as the news media remain willfully blind to the science that McCarthy has claimed as her own. On the Capitol grounds, she claimed that scientists once assured us that cigarettes are good for us, “proof” that she knows more about immunology, toxicology, neurology and epidemiology than those pesky, E-list scientists.
Reporters yawned. Diane Sawyer gushed. A tiny-minority of parents cheered their hero and cursed a medical miracle.
Arrogance, it is said, is a kingdom without a crown. McCarthy and her acolytes, drunk on imaginary power, challenged reporters to investigate the “autism epidemic”, and to expose a purported decades-long conspiracy to hide the deliberate poisoning of a millions. One of these days a reputable journalist will take McCarthy up on her challenge. And that reporter will learn that vaccines do not contain anti-freeze or aborted fetal tissue, as McCarthy and her minions claim. The reporter will learn that “dose makes the poison”; that vaccines are not toxic; and that although thimerosal has been gone from scheduled pediatric vaccines since 2002, the rate of autism among today’s three to five year olds has not declined.
And if we’re really, really lucky, the reporter will write that D-list Hollywood celebrities are not a reliable source for medical advice.
The UK’s Daily Mail goes where no major American media outlet has dared to go:The Great Autism Rip-Off … How a Huge Industry Feeds on Parents Desperate to Cure Their Children.
There is little hope given to parents of children with autism. Mainstream medicine offers no explanation for the cause of this life-long learning disability, thought to affect one in 100, and there are no effective treatments.
Perhaps the most cruel characteristic of the condition, which impairs communication development and ability to relate to others, is that children often develop normally until about two years of age, when they suddenly ‘regress’, becoming mute, withdrawn, refusing to make eye contact and prone to tantrums.
Many never take part in mainstream education and some require full-time care, even as adults.
In the absence of solutions, desperate parents are increasingly turning to the world of alternative medicine in their search for a cure.
In this burgeoning market, private doctors and clinics have sprung up across the UK claiming they can treat or even ‘reverse’ the disorder.
Recent research published in the Journal Of Developmental And Behavioural Paediatrics found that a third of parents of autistic children have tried unproven ‘alternative’ treatments.
Worryingly, the study claims one in ten has used what the experts class as ‘a potentially harmful approach’
The annual AutismOne conference is part trade fair, part revival meeting. This year’s event featured comedienne and Autism mom Jenny McCarthy, and dozens of autism “researchers” whose words are apparently digested salt free by the 2,000 parents who gathered at the Westin O’Hare Hotel in Chicago. Dozens of vendors filled one large meeting room and lined the carpeted hallways. Dietary supplements, gluten free snacks, hyperbaric chambers, homeopathic clinics, testing labs. One vendor’s display read “No More Guilty Parenting”, which could have doubled as the convention’s theme. Guilt is like oxygen to the alt-med autism cure culture; it hangs in the air like an invisible draft from Bruno Bettelheim’s refrigerator. You could feel the chill in every corner of the Westin O’Hare’s spacious convention facility. Guilt, and hope that the most widely accepted science on autism is wrong, that autism can be reversed, that recovery from autism happens all the time, and it can happen for you.
A panel discussion on Autism and the Media drew one of two invited Chicago Tribune reporters, Julie Deardorff; along with Peoria new anchor Jen Christensen; and Ashley Reynolds, a journalism student from KOMU-TV in Columbia, MO. Three editors from AgeOfAutism.com, a fringe anti-vaccine website hosted the discussion. Here’s a portion:
I also attended a Q&A with Dr. Jon Poling, MD, PhD, and his wife, Terry. The Polings have been on a media blitzkrieg since March when they were identified as test case petitioners in the Vaccine Omnibus hearings. The details of the case are shrouded in speculation, since the Polings have not publicly released their daughter’s relevant medical records. I asked the Polings if they plan to release those records soon. Terry Poling said she and her husband would not discuss their daughter’s case as long as there was ongoing litigation.
Soon after I asked my question, a hotel security official asked me to turn off my video camera. At the conclusion of the Q&A, 15 minutes later, I was surrounded by hotel security and escorted out of the building. I had registered six weeks earlier as media, and received a confirming email. I was handed a press pass and told to fill it out myself at the registration desk Friday morning, after being told the computer system was down and my name could not be pulled up. But the conference organizers were having none of it, although by now Westin security no doubt realizes I was totally truthful and cooperative, even turning over my driver’s license for photocopying.
But I had committed an unpardonable sin in AutismCureLand. I asked a question that could be answered. The case against vaccines is made in the shadows, in restricted venues such as AutismOne and on fringe websites and internet chatrooms. Anti-vaccine activists speak in generalities, relying on the conditional and subjunctive tense to avoid confronting what modern man has known for centuries: that we’re better off listening to best available evidence rather than dogma and fear. I was asking for evidence. Shame on me.
On my way out, an AutismOne organizer told me “This is supposed to be a positive thing, and you’re making it negative.” It was his parting shot as I was led out the door, into the parking lot, where the air was warm.
Two Chicago Tribune reporters, Rex Huppke and Julie Deardorff, are listed as panelists at the AutismOne conference this Saturday. Huppke wrote The Story of Jamie, a heartbreaking and moving profile of an autistic man who excels at powerlifting:
During his first lift at the Illinois State Games in June, Jamie had lost his composure when the judges’ lights turned out to be white instead of the familiar green. It ruined the rest of his performance. If he failed this first lift, a similar meltdown could follow.
Jamie approached the rack, fixed his shoulders under the bar and assumed the starting position. On command, he bent his knees and began to squat, head up, eyes focused forward. He flexed his legs at the next command, driving himself to an upright position, then dropped the bar back onto the rack with a clang.
The three judges illuminated two white lights and one red. Two out of three meant a good lift.
Jamie’s hands shot up in the air. This time he had been coached to understand that there would be no green lights, that white meant good.
He knew he had done it.
His second squat was flawless, so was the third.
Each time Jamie came to the stage, his confidence seemed higher. He steamrolled through three sets of bench press, pumping his fist harder after each good lift.
The crowd loved him. After each round he turned to them, put his hands flat together in front of his chest and bowed like a warrior.
The final competition was the dead lift. The bar rested on the ground—260 pounds awaited.
Standing upright, Jamie spread his feet wide. He squatted down, back at a 45-degree angle to the floor, butt thrust out, long fingers wrapped tight around the shiny silver bar.
His eyes moved past the crowd in front of him and on to a green Special Olympics logo on the wall at the front of the gym.
A judge said, “Lift!”
Jamie’s mouth opened in a near-perfect circle as he slowly pulled the bar up. He scowled like one of the pro wrestlers he idolized.
As his hips straightened and the bar moved past his knees, he released a guttural RAHHHHHHH!
You really need to read the whole piece. Jamie is an antidote to the fear and prejudice peddled by anti-vaccine activists. Huppke’s profile teaches us how accommodation and understanding have helped Jamie to find a place in the world. It’s a story of hope, and renewal, and recovery from the low expectations that have been foisted on the Jamies of the world by the autism cure industry.
So I called the Tribune reporters last week, and spoke briefly with Rex Huppke, to get an idea of what he might talk about. He said he hadn’t had time to prepare for panel, and asked me when it was being held. Here’s the abstract, time, and list of panelists from AutismOne.com.
Saturday, May 24, 9:00 am – 11:00 am
Autism and the Media
As the gravest health story of our time plays out parents are puzzled at the lack of investigative reporting. This expert panel has provided groundbreaking coverage of autism and will help bring into focus the process which has allowed them to excel in their coverage. The panel will also look at the changing landscape of media and its importance in breaking and reporting news stories.
Mark Blaxill - Age of Autism
Jen Christensen - News Anchor Mom
Julie Deardorff - Chicago Tribune
Rex Huppke - Chicago Tribune
Dan Olmsted - Age of Autism
Ashley Reynolds - KOMU / Missouri School of Journalism
Kim Stagliano - Age of Autism
__________________________________________
Here’ s my message to the two Chicago Tribune reporters who are, apparently, obligated to explain themselves to the editor of Age of Autism.
I feel the need to give you a friendly heads up about AutismOne and some of your fellow panelists. The meeting abstract tells us that autism is “the gravest health story of our time”. If you ask why, Blaxill, Olmsted, and Stagliano will tell you that we are in the middle of an autism epidemic. Be very skeptical. True, diagnoses of autism have been climbing for 20 years, and public awareness has grown, but that is hardly evidence for an epidemic. The diagnostic manual that doctors use to identify autism has been revised three times in 20 years, and each time the criteria for autism has broadened. Asperger’s Syndrome is currently listed as an autism spectrum disorder, but was not included 20 years ago. Comedian Dan Ackroyd, who has Asperger’s, did not receive an autism spectrum diagnosis until he was well into adulthood. Similarly, children once diagnosed with mental retardation are called autistic these days. Diagnoses are also driven by greater public awareness, increased social services, and doctors who are just plain getting better at recognizing the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders.
If the definition for “legally blind” was changed from 20/200 vision to 20/100, the number of blind Americans who skyrocket, but that would hardly constitute an epidemic.
Calling for more investigative reporting into an epidemic that doesn’t exist is probably not the wisest message for the anti-vaccine panelists. It is precisely because of a lack of investigation, and public exposure, that the vaccine-autism urban myth has enjoyed such a long life. Of course, what the panelists mean by “investigative reporting” is credulous parroting of anti-vaccine talking points. You will he hearing plenty of these Saturday. Here are just a few:
The explosion in autism exactly mirrors the explosion in the number of required childhood vaccines
Most of the diseases that vaccines supposedly protect us from are harmless, or extinct (measles, chicken pox, polio, mumps)
The FDA, CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, drug makers, and major media outlets have conspired for years to hide from the public the real truth about the cause of autism.
The dozens of peer-reviewed studies that fail to show a link between vaccines and autism can’t be trusted because the scientists have been bought off by vaccine makers who use their money and influence to suppress the truth.
The Amish don’t vaccinate, and autism is rare in that community, yet the federal government refuses to study the reasons, or to compare the autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
And finally an introduction to some of your fellow panelists:
Mark Blaxill is a board member of Safe Minds, a fringe anti-vaccine group that still insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the mercury-based preservative once used in scheduled childhood vaccines causes autism. You can read his thoughts at AgeOfAutism.com . Last week, he criticized a health clinic in Lancaster County, PA, for increasing the vaccination rates among Amish and Mennonite children. Blaxill is not a doctor, but is quoted as saying that he is smarter than any medical doctor when it comes to vaccinations and autism.
Dan Olmsted is a former UPI reporter who wrote, in the fall of 2005, that autism is rare among the Amish of Lancaster County, PA, and that they vaccinate at rates far below the general population. But Olmsted failed to check in with with Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg. The clinic treats dozens of Amish and Mennonite children who display symptoms of autism, and it holds a weekly vaccination clinic.
Ashley Reynolds is an undergraduate journalism student at the University of Missouri Columbia School of Journalism. Last December she produced a 14-part television news series, Combating Autism from Within, that was so biased and misinformed that it prompted a protest from medical doctors at the medical college. One of Reynold’s on-air “experts” was a radiologist who has claimed that the World Health Organization relies on vaccines to sterilize women in Third World Countries, as part of a conspiracy with Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation to depopulate the world. Reynold’s failed to disclose her “expert’s” unusual viewpoint in her story, even though she was informed of it a month before.
All three of these “experts” have one thing in common: they start with what they think they already know, then work backwards from there, cherry picking evidence, quote mining, and ignoring data that doesn’t fit. It’s the opposite of how an investigative journalist works, and it’s the exact opposite of how scientists think.
The Director of Greek Life at George Washington University was only trying to help when he recently sent this email to GWU students. Short version: it’s time we set aside our hard-earned critical thinking skills and get jiggy with Jenny!
Dear Friends,
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to meet with Jenny McCarthy to talk about her interest in autism awareness and plans for her rally at the Capitol on June 4th. Contrary to her public persona, she is actually a very loving and concerned mother, who has had to deal with a very challenging situation where her son, Evan, was diagnosed as autistic. Through her first hand experiences, she has learned a lot, and met many other families with autistic children.
Jenny’s experience with Evan resulted in adapting many natural remedies to relieve him of most of his symptoms of autism. She attributes his autism to a genetic issue that was triggered by external toxins, and stresses placed on him by an aggressive vaccine schedule. While her approach is controversial, her experiences show a potential effect.
In her message to you below, Jenny is asking for your help to represent families with autistic children at a rally on June 4th at the Capitol. While her primary focus is on vaccines, she is also pushing for additional research on autism and alternative treatments, as well as raising the cause for families with financial issues related to insurance coverage.
If you would like to help, please register through the website listed in her message below. In addition, I am looking for one or two students to serve as coordinators for these volunteers. These coordinators would work with Jenny’s staff to distribute the pictures of the children and keep the volunteers organized. There is also an opportunity to meet Jenny and Jim following the rally.
Please let me know if you have any questions, or if you are interested in being a volunteer coordinator.
Thanks,
Dean Harwood
Director of Greek Life/
Assistant Director of the Student Activities Center
The George Washington University
800 21st Street, NW, Suite 436
Washington, DC 20052
Here is Jenny McMeasles McCarthy’s message to the Greeks:
On June 4th, 2008, Jim Carrey and I are organizing a march/rally in Washington DC to raise Autism awareness. Our mission is to get rid of environmental toxins that have gotten way out of hand. We are rallying because the toxins need to be taken out of vaccines. We are marching for a change in the vaccine schedule, and we are giving thousands of families living with and treating autistic children a chance to be heard!
Families with autistic children bear a great financial and emotional strain. Unfortunately, due to the lack of compensation from insurance companies and the high costs of special foods (GF/CF), medicines, supplements, hospital visits, etc. many families cannot afford to travel to DC to represent their child. We need your help in gathering students, fraternities, sororities and other organizations to march on behalf of the families that cannot be there to represent their child.
We are going to have those that do participate, hold pictures of the child whose family could not attend.
One of the sponsoring organizations, Talk About Curing Autism (TACA), provides information, resources, and support to families affected by autism. For families who have just received the autism diagnosis, TACA aims to speed up the cycle time from the autism diagnosis to effective treatments.
Go to www.tacanow.org and register for FREE to attend the rally!
Please, spread the word and help the defenseless children who are the future of America.
- Jenny McCarthy
Mr. Harwood’s call to action couldn’t be more irresponsible. Jenny McCarthy, armed with her celebrity and a Google PhD, will be telling Americans once again that vaccines cause autism, which is as good as saying “don’t vaccinate your kids.” She’s also pushes special diets as a cure for autism, another baseless claim. Given the destructive nature of McCarthy’s mission, Harwood’s email couldn’t be more misguided if he was inviting students to Walk For Hamas.
There is another problem with McCarthy, and Harwood isn’t the only one who doesn’t see it. The entire autism cure industry, with its focus on conspiracy and blame and false hope, is an unfortunate distraction at a time when families urgently need services, and researchers need funding and clear direction. Going ga-ga over celebrities and hitting the send button is easy. Doing the real work is hard. Here’s hoping Mr. Harwood retracts his crush email, and soon.
There is no credible evidence that mercury causes autism. It doesn’t matter if the mercury comes for vaccines, coal fired power plants, forest fires, or UFO tailpipe exhaust. What mercury can cause is mercury poisoning, which is nasty and horrible, but the symptoms are distinct from autism and not easily confused. Unless you’re an anti-vaccine activist who wants to pull a fast one on deadline-stressed reporters.
So if you’re a news editor or reporter in the Lone Star State, beware of a much publicized epidemiological study of coal-fired power plants and autism. Some parents of autistic children gathered in front of the Dallas federal court house last week to call attention to the study led by Raymond Palmer, PhD, associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Palmer reports that community autism prevalence is reduced by 1 percent to 2 percent with each 10 miles of distance from the pollution source. Unfortunately, Palmer’s study is yet one more example of a biased researcher cherry picking data to “prove” a hypothesis. An honest scientist looks for data to “test” the hypothesis.
This was Palmer’s second bite at the apple - his 2006 study on the same topic was widely criticized for failing to control for confounds such as urbanicity. His second attempt fell short, and you can read why here and here.
But junk science is to some people what bloated carrion is to a jackal, and fringe websites, and at least one law firm, are slavering over Palmer’s population study.
Epidemiological studies have not been kind to the anti-vaccine movement. Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, has been absent from scheduled childhood vaccines long enough that today’s 3-5 years old should be autism free, if a certain hypothesis was valid. Other epidemiological studies in Europe and elsewhere have failed to confirm a link between vaccines and autism.
But no matter. Vaccine hysteria pays fealty to science, but its true master is public relations. Websites such as AgeOfAutism.com regularly exhort its readers to bombard media outlets with spurious studies and unverifiable anecdotes, all aimed at getting journalists on their side. Sometimes it works. The latest call to action is aimed at four Texas media outlets who ran their own stories on reaction to the Palmer study: the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, WFAA-TV, KVTV, and KDAF.
The media needs to hear from parents! If all these news sources receive emails from parents living everywhere in the U.S. and beyond telling them about the heavy metal levels in children with autism, pointing out the changes that occur after chelation and other bio-medical treatment, they may write more. We need to make it clear that something terrible is happening to our children but that there is hope. We can stop the exposure to toxins and we can recover these kids.
There is no credible evidence that children with autism have more heavy metals than their neurotypical peers. There are no peer reviewed studies that show chelation is an effective treatment for autism, and no good reason to suppose it would be.
By all means keep writing about autism. Tell the world about these children, their challenges, and the wonderful gifts they bring. And when reporting on the science, call a pediatric neurologist at the nearest medical college, or an immunologist, or the American Academy of Pediatrics. And when readers tell you they cured their kids with a special diet or a swim with the dolphins, show some skepticism. Purity of motive does not confer accuracy - dirt shows up on the cleanest cotton.
Something terrible happens to children with autism each time a credulous reporter repeats unverifiable and deliberately misleading stories about these kids. There is hope, but it has nothing to do with quack medical treatments and improbable conspiracy theories. Because when you get down to it, kids are kids, even ones with autism. And the best hope for any child with a disability is accommodation and acceptance.
This is encouraging. Slate Senior Editor Emily Bazelon interviews Dr. Sydney Spiesel. Here’s part of the exchange:
Bazelon: “One of the reasons people cite for opting out is the fear of autism. Is there any evidence that is a legitimate concern?”
Spiesel: There are actually two concerns. One is thimerosal, and the other is measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The MMR vaccine concerns were based on what turned out to be very bad research. And there’s a lot of evidence that neither the MMR vaccine, nor thimerosal, nor the number of vaccines a children receives at one time has any role to play in autism. In fact there are some good immunological reasons that most people don’t know about that bunching some vaccines together increases the response.”
What motivates and sustains the anti-vaccine movement? Science rejects a link between vaccines and autism, and the persistence in illogical beliefs doesn’t advance the cause of austic people one iota.
Dr. Amy Tuteur, MD, says “vaccines rejectionism” is about how parents see themselves, and that it has little to do with children or vaccines. She recently shared her devastating critique of organized opposition to vaccines in the comments on a New York Times site, which I am publishing with Dr. Tuteur’s permission.
Vaccine rejectionism has been around for more than 200 years, almost as long as vaccines themselves. Over those two hundred years not one of the myriad claims of vaccine rejectionists have turned out to be true. Despite the fact that vaccine rejectionists have been 100% wrong in their understanding of vaccines, statistics, risks and claims of specific dangers, they still have a following. In large measure that is because the cultural claims of vaccine rejectionists resonate with prevailing cultural assumptions. Vaccine rejection is based on social constructs that have little if anything to do with objective reality or science.These constructs are explored in a fascinating article, ‘Trusting blindly can be the biggest risk of all’: organised resistance to childhood vaccination in the UK (Hobson-West, Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 29 No. 2 2007, pp. 198–215).
The fact that vaccine rejectionism is based on false premises is sidestepped by ignoring the scientific data and focusing instead on whether parents agree with health professionals. Agreement with doctors is constructed as a negative and refusal to trust is constructed as a positive cultural attribute:
… Non-vaccinators or those who question aspects of vaccination policy are ‘free thinkers’ who have escaped from the disempowerment that is seen to characterise vaccination…
… [vaccine rejectionists] construct trust in others as passive and the easy option. Rather than trust in experts, the alternative scenario is of a parent who becomes the expert themselves, through a difficult process of personal education and empowerment…”
The ultimate goal is to become “empowered”:
“… the moral imperative to become informed is part of a broader shift, evident in the new public health, for which some kind of empowerment, personal responsibility and participation are expressed in highly positive terms.”
Vaccine rejectionism is about the parents and how they would like to see themselves, not about vaccines and not about children. In the socially constructed world of vaccine rejectionists, risks can never be quantified and are always “unknown”. Parents are divided into those (inferior) people who are passive and blindly trust authority figures and (superior) rejectionists who are “educated” and “empowered” by taking “personal responsibility”.
This view depends on a deliberate re-definition of all the relevant terms, however, and that re-definition is unjustified and self aggrandizing. The risks of vaccines are not unknown. Believing that vaccines save millions of lives is not a matter of “trust”, it is reality. Questioning authority is not the same as being “educated”; indeed, it isn’t even related. Lacking even basic knowledge of immunology and rejecting medical facts is not a sign of education, independent thinking or taking personal responsibility. It is a sign of lack of education and understanding.
There’s a reason the public holds attorneys in only slightly higher esteem than arms smugglers and crack whores, and his name is Clifford Shoemaker.
Where most people view autism as a developmental delay, Shoemaker sees boat payments. For 20 years, he’s been gaming vaccine court, and making the big bucks, according to an investigation by Kathleen Seidel at Neurodiversity.com:
Mr. Shoemaker was one of the first attorneys to specialize in prosecuting claims filed in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Since 1990, he has represented petitioners in 577 cases (282 closed and 295 pending). In many of these cases, Poling v. HHS included, Dr. Geier has served as an expert witness or litigation consultant.
Shoemaker, who is currently representing Rev. and Mr. Lisa Sykes in a vaccine-related action against Bayer, is apparently unhappy with Seidel’s sleuthing, so he subpoenaed her work product, financial records, and even inquired about her religious beliefs.
Reaction from the blogosphere has been swift. “So move over, Bloggers Choice Awards and ABA Top 100 Blawgs. The real badge of honor out here in the blogosphere isn’t some a contrived award - it’s a subpoena!” says Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch.
Surgeon/scientist Orac says Shoemaker’s subpoena ” is clearly nothing more than a fishing expedition designed to intimidate (Seidel) into silence.” Orac has also challenged junk science apologists David Kirby and Dan Olmsted to tell Shoemaker to back off:
Given that this subpoena is clearly an obvious attempt to silence Kathleen or, at the very least, punish her for her criticisms of Clifford Shoemaker and his activities, I am appealing to both of you to use your influence and position in the autism biomedical movement to protest this shameless action by Mr. Shoemaker. I am urging you to speak out against legal intimidation and thuggery and for the First Amendment right of the media, including bloggers, of freedom of speech.
So far only silence from Kirby and Olmsted. Olmsted is editor of AgeOfAutism.com, an online water cooler where dim-witted sociopaths and shrieking Chicken Little’s compare conspiracy theories and cheer on declining vaccination rates. Without First Amendment protections, these fools would have have been lined up and shot around the time thimerosal disappeared from scheduled childhood vaccines, or roughly six years ago.
In addition to raising awareness of the world’s most famous development disability, World Autism Awareness Day also exposes some of the more enduring misconceptions that reporters still hold about autism. While more and more major media outlets are presenting evidence-based approaches to this intriguing story, many smaller outlets have yet to pass their earliest developmental milestones.
It’s apparent that much coverage suffers from the rush to produce an autism story for no reason other than it’s World Autism Awareness Day. As I read some of these stories, I can almost hear an editor yell “Who can find me an autistic kid?” Barbara Grijalva, a news anchor at Tucson’s KOLD News 13, answers the call with stiff prose and loose attribution:
Autism is epidemic in our country. Ask a parent or a pediatrician, and you’ll find not much is being done about it.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says one in every 150 children is born with autism in the U.S.
There’s a spectrum of symptoms, including communication and behavior problems.
There’s no cure. No one knows what causes it. Parents mostly are left to fend for themselves.
Research has shown that early intervention with behavioral therapy and special education can improve a child’s life, but insurance won’t pay for treatments.
There is very little government money being directed at finding a cure for autism.
It’s a situation that stresses out families. Keri Barber is the mother of a young autistic son. She says, “You go to bed at night thinking about autism. You wake up thinking about autism, and you feel like you’re running full speed but in place.”
The divorce rate for parents of autistic children is estimated to be 85%.
Wednesday was the first “World Autism Day” (sic) to bring attention to, what the experts say, is an epidemic that is going largely unnoticed, and under funded.
If this story has a theme, it’s that a virtual avalanche of spinning, flapping kids is bearing down on our sleepy global village, and the only ones noticing are frazzled parents and our cryogenic news anchor. That there is no clear evidence of an epidemic totally escapes her. Instead of information we can use, we get drowsy stream of consciousness from someone who couldn’t care less.
From WLOX in Beloxi, Mississippi, reporter Don Culpepper brings us news of a WAAD miracle:
Like most mothers of autistic children Dawn Felton doubles as his doctor and therapist.”The avenues I would have to go through was the internet and then I would read about all of these programs that I had no money for,” said Dawn.
One thing she could afford to do was change Justin’s diet to eliminate wheat and dairy products.
But recently she found an organic detoxifying product that she says worked miracles.
“Recently I organically detoxified Justin. One week after that detoxification, Justin began reading books orally for the first time ever. He reads books in front of the entire library at Bel Aire Elementary School,” said Dawn.
I asked Culpepper if WLOX could confirm any of Felton’s claims.
“Unless I had access to Justin’s medical records how could I?” he responded by email. “Since we did a story on them five years earlier, I took her and her family’s word that Justin was improving. And I tried to limit exposing her claims of how and why the treatment worked for them. It was simply a story of hope to promote Autism Awareness Month.”
Ah yes, hope - the only bee that makes honey without flowers.*
Finally, from WRDW in Augusta, Georgia, we have the story of a medical mystery that pits science against D-list actress Jenny McCarthy. To be resolved: Do vaccines cause autism? Fortunately, Health Team 12 is on the case:
Whether vaccines cause or contribute to autism is a hotly debated topic in the medical community and for parents.The Morris family did some research, and they say they are holding out.
“”I would rather take the risk of my child developing measles and curing them, then her develop autism and live in this box the rest of her life,” says mom Mary Wingate. She and her fiance, Joseph Morris Junior, have decided to wait a little while longer before vaccinating their six month old daughter, Georgia Alison any further.
And what was the source of the Morris family’s research?
A late night with Georgia was the wake-up call mom didn’t even know she was looking for. She stumbled across a TV show with Jenny McCarthy as the guest.Something Jenny said — brought her here to a website she runs, www.generationrescue.com
“I was like wow she really is passionate about this and wants people to know more about this,” says Wingate.
McCarthey (sic) has an autistic child and like so many others, she believes vaccines caused her son’s disorder.
What would we do without Health Team 12?
_____________________________
* Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899), noted American orator and agnostic
