Posts tagged as:

autism

“Scientifically Unsupportable”

March 16, 2010
Thumbnail image for “Scientifically Unsupportable”

Last Friday, special masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims released their findings on the second phase of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, and found no evidence of a causal link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. (The first phase, decided last year, addressed the claim that the MMR vaccine caused autism. ) Test cases [...]

Read the full article →

Try Reason, Not “Everything”

March 5, 2010
Thumbnail image for Try Reason, Not “Everything”

Last week Time magazine published “The Autism Debate: Who’s Afraid of Jenny McCarthy?” As much as I’d like to rant about her, as I’ve done before, instead I’ll call your attention to this paragraph, buried halfway into the article:
There are dark murmurings from scientists and doctors asking, Was her son ever really autistic? Evan’s [...]

Read the full article →

Irresponsible and Dishonest

February 2, 2010
Thumbnail image for Irresponsible and Dishonest

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about Andrew Wakefield’s falsification of data linking vaccines and autism, calling his behavior “irresponsible and criminal.” Last week the General Medical Council, the British medical licensing body, arrived at the same conclusion:
In reaching its decision, the Panel notes that the project reported in the Lancet paper was [...]

Read the full article →

That’s My Kid Too

June 30, 2009

Michael Goudeau, writer and producer for Penn & Teller: Bullshit! and co-host of PennRadio, has written an excellent article for the James Randi Educational Foundation. That’s My Kid Too is his response to an anti-vaccination documentary that could have been directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
Goudeau, like me, responds the only way we know how:
You see that [...]

Read the full article →

Thinking About Rethinking Autism

June 17, 2009

“Autism. It’s all over the media. The conversation is focused on causation and cure. It’s time to change the conversation toward hope, support, respect and understanding. The facts are not sexy. So, we got someone who is to explain them.”
Using a hot babe to direct attention to autism issues is a stroke of genius. The [...]

Read the full article →

Don’t Listen to Jenny McCarthy

May 15, 2009

Oprah Winfrey (I won’t refer to her by just “Oprah;” one-name status is reserved for Dylan, Miles, Stravinsky, Joyce, and others who will be remembered by history.) has chosen to sign Jenny McCarthy for a talk show deal. It’s not something that anyone should care about — after all, what’s another show in the vast [...]

Read the full article →

Correlation is not causation

February 12, 2009

I can’t say it any better than Kathleen Seidel at Neurodiversity Weblog:
This morning, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims Office of Special Masters released decisions in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) claims, Cedillo v. HHS (Case No. 98-916V), Hazlehurst v. HHS (Case No. 03-654V) and Snyder v. HHS (Case No. 01-162V), the first three [...]

Read the full article →

Irresponsible, criminal behavior

February 9, 2009

I have written previously about the nonexistent link between vaccinations and autism, and the harm that has been caused by the acceptance of this variety of magical thinking.
Yesterday, the Times of London reported the results of an investigation into the data collection and record keeping of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the researcher responsible for publicizing the [...]

Read the full article →

Yesternow

February 6, 2009

Miles came home with his report card today. He’s continuing to make excellent progress,  a trend that started last year.
What changed a year ago was our realization that Miles needed help in dealing with anxiety. He’s a very smart boy (yes, all parents say that, but I have empirical data), but he would get frustrated [...]

Read the full article →

In a silent way

January 26, 2009

Seven years ago Miles was diagnosed as having Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). He had been very slow to learn new words, and was not speaking very much by the time he was 18 months old. Fortunately, our pediatrician was particularly vigilant about possible early signs of autism, and insisted that we have [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries