Autism Reality Check: Huffington Post Now Misrepresents Autism Disorders

It is 6:40 am (Atlantic) time here in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Conor, my 6 feet tall, 15 year old son with Autistic Disorder, is now relatively quiet after several hours of screaming and crying.  The noise was accompanied by periodic outbursts of head slapping. That is the reality of my son's autism.  For my son autism reality is not, as it is for Elaine Hall and the Huffington Post, a fine line between obsession and genius.

In Autism: Is It An 'Obsession' Or Just A Preferred Interest? Elaine Hall ponders from her perch on the Autism Is Beautiful Page of the Huffington Post what she considers to be the fine line between autism and genius and wonders whether the world would be a better place if all those ignorant, ill informed,  parents of autistic children were as enlightened as she is and would look for and promote their children's strengths instead of trying to force  learning upon them:

"Sometimes I wonder if there is a fine line between autism and certain kinds of genius. Or artistry. Think about it: Anyone who excels at something has to have spent countless hours each day perfecting their craft, art or gift. For instance, if the mother of a young, would-be juggler were to say, "It's inappropriate to toss little balls up and down," no one would ever have the joy of watching an accomplished juggler. Or, think of scientists who spend hours in their laboratories developing cures for all sorts of ills.

How great would it be if every child had mentors who saw a child's strengths as a way toward adult life. This is not a new concept! In "The Republic," Plato urges educators to view a child's early interests and play as serious business that helps prepare a child for adult work. He emphasizes that forced learning cannot remain in the soul. What if parents, educators and therapists saw a child's intense interests in a positive light. Perhaps Joel could become a paleontologist; Marcy could sing in local plays. We homeschool Neal. He is now learning all about bees. In fact, his school curriculum is built around his preferred interests in bees to learn math, science, language, history, etc. His world is expanded by all of us following his intense interests. Perhaps one day he will be a bee keeper or a honey manufacturer. Clearly, the world can benefit from people who are free to explore and enact their obsessions."

For many people with autism disorders living their lives dependent on the care of others, in one form of residential institution or another,  autism is not the "autism" of Elaine Hall and the Huffington Post. Autism Reality for the "vast majority" of those with the original autistic disorder diagnosis includes intellectual disability, it includes serious self injury For some with autistic disorder it includes injury to parents and caregivers who love them dearly.

Two years ago autism for Trudy Steuernagel was the last thing she experienced as she lay dying, soaked in her own blood, killed by her own 18 year old severely autistic son whom she loved dearly and who apparently lacked the mental capacity to understand what he had done to his mother. All autistic persons do not kill their family members or care givers but many have very serious issues, serious inability to function in the real world.  For many, many persons with autism disorders and those family and friends who love them autism disorders are much, much more than a fine line between obsession and genius. They are disorders and they are serious impediments to healthy, positive lives for many who suffer from them and those who care for them.

Arianna Huffington sold the Huffington Post for a huge payday.  The Huffington Post Autism Big News Page is now just another mainstream media page misrepresenting autism, portraying it as a pretty blessing and hiding the realities and challenges of those afflicted with autistic disorder and their families.  Arianna sold  her "Post" and has sold out those with autism disorders and their families. 

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The Huffington Post's Autism Big News Page Ain't What It Used To Be

When the Huffington Post merged with AOL there were some who wondered about the impact of the deal on the Huffington Post's positioning outside the news establishment. Emily Bell explored this concern at the UK's Guardian in AOL + Huffington Post = disaster? :

" Huffington achieved a miracle for web publishing in 2005, by getting high-profile contributors to write for nothing, through a mixture of charm and brand association. One can imagine now, with the money for their labours residing with AOL, that bargain will abruptly come to an end.

Part of Huffington Post's success was its vibrance and its position outside the establishment. It has now not only joined an establishment, but joined one where most people feel about as close to the brand as they do to Walmart.

...

A rather troubling aspect of the whole episode has been the baffling message, repeated by Huffington in an editorial on the site today, that this merger is "1 + 1 = 11". One hopes that this does not mean, for the sake of the HuffPo staff and the AOL shareholders, that the deal is quite literally nonsense."

The Huffington Post has certainly changed with respect to its Autism Big News Page.  One of the most obvious changes is the assertion of content control by the elimination of the autism blogs directory at the bottom of the page.  Even this humble autism blog could be found in that directory on occasion. There was no apparent attempt to control the blogs that were featured in that directory with a variety of blog site perspectives  shown on a perpetually rotating basis. Now, unlike some other Big News Pages at the HP the rotating autism blogs directory is gone.  At the same time the content appears to have changed.  The days when a David Kirby and others could ask questions about  autism and vaccine safety appear to have disappeared.  Featured prominently near the top of the page is the recent IOM rehash of  studies ...  which has purportedly determined for all time that there is not, has never been, and can never be, forever and ever Amen,  any remotely possible association between autism and vaccines, vaccine schedules, vaccine ingredients, vulnerable population subgroups or vaccine ingredients including those those vaccines containing ingredients which cross the placenta and which are given to pregnant women.  Vaccine autism discussion is now officially dead at the Huff.

To its credit the Huff Autism Big News page still contains some articles about increasing autism rates but look for that to change as the AOL-HP managers ultimately realize that real increases in autism, by necessary implication, involve possible environmental factors.  Such factors could include anything in the air, water, or food supply that we consume. They could include toys and jewelry. They could even include ingredients of prescription drugs and ... things injected into pregnant women and young children.  When the realization that commercial interests could be implicated sinks in look for the autism prevalence studies to disappear or morph back into the "its gotta be genetic" mandate that ruled autism research funding over the past decades.

Look too for more "community" blogs with feel good stories about autism. Don't look for stories that describe the harsh realities of severe autistic disorder or the lives of so many persons with actual autistic disorders  spent dependent on the care of others.  Look for another generation of stories about Temple Grandin and the new wave of  DSM5 autistics like the John Elder Robisons, Ari Ne'emans, Alex Planks and other very high functioning persons featured by Autism Speaks and the mainstream media. 

Don't look for autism reality at the Huffington Post Autism Big News page any more. Look for autism nonsense, autism feel good fluff, just like most large media sites.

The Huffington Post Autism Big News Page ain't what it used to be.

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Autism Reporting: Mainstream Media's Incompetent Handling of Autism Issues

One point that has become crystal clear in the recent discussion of the vaccine-autism war. The mainstream media, as a general rule, is not competent in its coverage of autism issues. The New York Times and the Globe & Mail (self promoted as "Canada's National Newspaper") have been brutally one-sided in their misrepresentation of vaccine-autism issues. They have largely abandoned their journalists' hats to promote the views of public health authorities and the vaccine industry.

CNN's Campbell Brown has also weighed in with a largely ignorant, mostly bull and lots of bias, attack on those who express concerns about vaccine safety and autism disorders. Contrary to Brown's ill informed opinion there is evidence in support of a vaccine autism link. Science has not "decided" the issue. The question, according to at least 3 very senior and credible health authorities, doctors Healy, Gerberding and Alexander, is still very much open and should be studied further. On other autism issues Canada's CBC, the New Yorker, and many other major media outlets have pandered to the Neurodiversity movement's misrepresentation of autism and persons with autism.

There have been exceptions. The Vancouver Sun did an excellent series, Faces of Autism, on the diversity of autism spectrum disorders and was not afraid to show and describe the realities of life for a severely autistic girl and her vamily. Faces of Autism, with its balanced, honest portrayl of autism was everything in terms of responsible journalism that the CBC's Positively Autistic series was not. Likewise CBS (and US News and World Report) have done some excellent work on the vaccine-autism war presenting the very learned, well informed views of Dr. Healy that the existing studies are not specific enough to address population subsets that might be more vulnerable to autism exposure.

The reality today is that those actively informed about autism issues and seeking more perspective on autism issues are more likely to find them on the blogosphere. The Huffington Post has featured the autism vaccine issues on its Autism News page. It has provided an outlook for both sides of the debate, with David Kirby and Robert F. Kennedy featured on the same page as vaccine patent holder and industry spokesperson Dr Paul Offit. The Age of Autism is not as balanced as the Huffington Post but is an excellent site for information from the perspective of those who believe that vaccines cause or contribute to autism disorders.

Informed, balanced blogs are now being written by academics and professionals interested in autism issues. One of my favorites is Autism Research Blog: Translating Autism authored by Nestor L. Lopez-Duran Ph.D. a clinical child psychologist and neuroscience researcher working at a large Midwest university-based child psychiatric institute. The Lovaas Institute and the Center for Autism and Related Disorders also have blogs.

There are many fine parent blogs of which this blog is the best (just kidding). Many are listed on the side bar of this blog. There are also blogs by autistic persons, including Jonathan Mitchell's autism's gadfly and a blog by autistic artist Stephanie Lynn Keil.

The Neurodiversity movement with its anti-treatment, anti-cure, social construct model of autism has many blogs including the neurodiversity page at change.org authored by Dora Raymaker and Kristina Chew and Kevin Leitch's LB/RB. The latter site can offer provocative discussion on important issues at times but often degenerates into smears, name calling and insults of those who do not share a neurodiversity perspective. About.com Autism by Lisa Jo Rudy is a corporate blog written by a parent who shares a neurodiversity perspective but tries honestly to present all sides of autism issues objectively and with impeccable courtesy.

The mainstream corporate media really showed its colors with its grossly unbalanced reporting of the Autism Omnibus hearings jumping up and down in the air and declaring that science has spoken and that vaccines do not cause autism. The same media ignored the 2007 decision in Bank v HHS for which compensation was announced recently for a decision in which the Special Master accepted a claim that vaccines led to ADEM in a child which resulted in PDD-NOS, an autism spectrum disorder. The same corporate media, in announcing that vaccines did not cause autism also ignored the Poling case in which government acknowledged that vaccines caused "autism like" symptoms (autism currently is diagnosed by symptoms there being no accepted biological test). As stated above, the mainstream media largely ignored the views of former NIH head Dr. Bernadine Healy, recent CDC head Dr. Julie Gerberding and Dr. Duane Alexander an NIH agency head that more research on vaccine autism issues could and should be done preferring instead to regurgitate pejorative descriptions of parents who describe their own first hand observations of their children's regression after vaccine treatment.

Autism reports in the mainstream media should be taken with a huge grain of salt not because of the existence of a conspiracy, although conspiracies a la Madoff and Enron do exist, but because of the widespread ignorance of many in the media and their increasingly ill informed, imbalanced, and unobjective journalism.

autism

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Vaccine-Autism War: Albert Einstein's Reply To Paul Offit

These outbreaks have not, apparently, been sobering. If anything, the number of parents choosing to delay or withhold or separate vaccines is increasing. So what will it take?


Paul Offit


Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.


Albert Einstein

How rational are public health authorities and health care professionals who express concern over increasing non-vaccination rates of children of parents concerned the vaccines might trigger the onset of autism in their children? A strategy in place, for over 10 years, of demonizing parents and researchers who claim that vaccines cause or might cause or contribute to the onset of autism disorders has failed. Yet public health spokespersons continue the same failed strategy expecting different results.

Research of a possible vaccine-autism connection has been actively discouraged by public health authorities as was noted by researcher Teresa Binstock in 1999. Ms Binstocks observations can be confirmed in public health documents like the 2004 IOM report on autism and vaccines. At the same time authorities and spokespersons simply choose to ignore and not respond to, public statements by such a credible authority as Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the NIH and the American Red Cross who has pointed out the need for research, beyond epidemiological studies, of possible vaccine-autism connections (1)(2).

Teresa Binstock also pointed out in 1999 that parents offering anecdotal evidence of a vaccine-autism connection, and researchers who attempted to study such evidence, would be demonized by spokespersons for public health authorities and what she has predicted has come to pass. Her predictions are reflected in the recent media offensive, led by Dr. Paul Offit and Alison Singer, to promote demeaning views of parents who believe, based on their observations and knowledge of their own children and their development history, that vaccines played a role in their children's autism onset. At the same time very credible critics like Dr. Bernardine Healy, who has made a case for proper research of possible vaccine-autism connections are ignored.

Still the numbers of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are rising, according to Dr. Paul Offit, suggesting that a strategy of marginalizng parents and critics of vaccine programs has failed. The public is continuing to lose confidence in the safety of vaccines as Dr. Offit implicitly acknowledged in his most recent opinion piece, this time on the Huffington Post:

These outbreaks have not, apparently, been sobering. If anything, the number of parents choosing to delay or withhold or separate vaccines is increasing. So what will it take? Certainly, as more and more children contract measles and pertussis, deaths from these diseases will follow. And it's not a leap to believe that we could see other deadly diseases, like polio and diphtheria; both of which still occur commonly in some areas of the world; and both of which are only a plane ride away from causing outbreaks in relatively unvaccinated communities in the United States.

Dr. Offit's question is rhetorical at best and cynical at worst. He is a very intelligent individual, extremely well educated and very well informed. He knows, or should know, the answer to his own question. It will take credible research of possible vaccine-autism connections to restore public confidence in the vaccine programs. The kind of research that the IACC backed in December of 2008 before reversing itself a few very short weeks later on January 14, 2009.

The demonizing of parents as desperate, delusional and dangerous has not worked. Ignoring their anecdotal evidence has not worked. Ignoring credible critics, like Dr. Bernadine Healy, who have presented a strong case for reliable research of vaccine-autism issues has not worked. Refusing to conduct the necessary research while repeating endlessly the discredited mantra that vaccine-autism connections have been dis-proven will not work. It is time to stop the public relations offensive against parents and do proper, credible research into these issues.

Pursuing the same strategy of marginalizing parents, ignoring credible professionals and refusing to do the necessary research will not produce a different result, it will not restore public confidence in the vaccine programs. To expect otherwise is ...... insanity.

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Autism and Lead Poisoning

The focus on a mercury based preservative in some vaccines has taken public attention away from other commonly found toxic substances as possible causes, or contributing factors, in at least some of the increasingly large numbers of autism diagnoses being made today in the Canada, the US, the UK and elsewhere in the world. Yesterday CBC news carried a story Excessive lead found in water of 5 Toronto schools which as the title indicates, reports on five Toronto area schools in which testing showed the water supply exceeded the Ministry of the Environment standard of 10 micrograms of lead per litre. The school district is now supplying staff and students at the 5 schools with bottled water.

The article also notes in conclusion that "Childhood exposure to lead can cause learning problems and reduced intelligence." The CBC article also contains a link to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment web page which notes that, apart from lead pipes and drinking water there are many other sources of lead in our environment including some older lead paints. As we have learned recently lead is still being found in some popular children's toys. With respect to the health effects of drinking lead contaminated water the Ontario Environment Ministry page Lead and Drinking Water - Questions and Answers states that:

How does lead in water affect health?

Young children are more sensitive to the effects of lead because they are still developing and able to absorb ingested lead more easily than adults. Long-term exposure to lead above the standards may increase the risk of subtle impairment of learning capacity and intellectual development. Pregnant women need to limit their lead intake as much as possible to protect the fetus.

In Autism and Autistic Symptoms Associated with Childhood Lead Poisoning , published in the Journal of Applied Research, authors Theodore I. Lidsky, PhD , Department of Psychobiology, New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, Staten Island, New York and Jay S. Schneider, PhD Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania examined two case histories of children who, during periods of severe lead poisoning, developed autism or autistic symptoms.

In the abstract portion of the article the authors noted that "These cases underscore that there are multiple causes of autism and the importance of environmental influences in some cases."
Both of these children emerged from their autism diagnoses (1 autism disorder, 1 PDD-NOS) with the passage of time but with no specialized treatment. Lidsky and Schneider concluded that:

The two case histories presented here, as well as the reports of autistic symptoms in children with disorders that produce brain lesions or encephalopa- thy, indicate that there are multiple causes of autism. Further, the ability of brain infections and lead poisoning to produce such symptoms highlights the importance of environmental factors in the etiology of *autism*.

The ability of *lead* *poisoning* to induce symptoms of *autism* is also relevant to cases of preexisting pervasive developmental disorders irrespective of etiology. Such individuals have a greater propensity to engage in pica and, as a result, are more likely to become *lead* poisoned.

In such cases, *lead* poisoning can be expected not only to negatively impact neurocognitive functioning, but also to potentially exacerbate the preexisting symptoms of *autism*. Indeed, one case report describes a decrease in hyperactivity and stereotypies in an autistic child with a blood *lead* of 42 µg/dL once this level was reduced by chelation with succimer.

In June of 2007 Dan Agin discussed the possibility of lead poisoning as a major environmental factor in autism on the Huffington Post in his article Autism and Our Passion For Simple Causes and Quick Fixes. Mr. Agin's Huffington biography states that he has a Ph.D. in Biological Psychology and thirty years laboratory research in Neurobiology. He's Emeritus Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, and for the past ten years he has been editor-in-chief of the journal ScienceWeek (www.scienceweek.com), a science digest that focuses on explicating new research in the various sciences.

No one can credibly claim that autism is purely genetic or purely environmental. The unified autism theory seems to suggest that both types of factors are involved in the development of genetic mutations giving rise to autism. There is much research to be done, and much being done, on all sides in the search to understand what causes autism. We know there are major toxic substances, including mercury and lead, polluting our environment. It would be foolish to ignore them as possible causes of autism. It would also be foolish to pretend that the research on these issues is complete and that any of these toxic substances can be ruled out as causes of autism.

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