jenny mccarthy wants your kid to get measles: autism, vaccines, and stupid idiots

I couldn't make it through much of the piece, but it seems she's essentially saying "I disagree, because my child reacted differently to the diet"?

Yes. And because her child is autistic, while this "panel of experts" merely has PhDs and research experience and peer reviewed studies, she is in a better position to tell everyone what really works as a "cure" for autism.

(I'm scare quoting "cure" because many autistic adults or adults on the autism spectrum don't feel they need to be "cured," thankyouverymuch - http://www.autisticadvocacy.org/)

i can't really make heads or tails of what your friend meant either. i guess after a few readings it looks to me like "this panel of experts shows that it's not diet so it must be vaccination that causes autism" but i'm not sure it really makes sense.

also, good luck getting an autistic kid to eat a totally different diet. autistic kids tend to be a lot more easily overwhelmed by sensory data and often only tolerate a pretty specific range of foods, fabrics, etc., and based on my anecdotal experience (yes now i am an authority too!) you probably should not handle that the same way you make a picky kid sit at the table until he tries the vegetables.

(apparently the "wrong" usage of "refute" is pretty much as old as the "right" one, but still always have to bite tongue against cheap pedantic shots of "well, if they've refuted it then they're clearly right and there's no need to make a fuss, QED")

ps jenny you are totally right about "curing" autism being a questionable goal but i think that if you make choices during childhood that help with social integration (like mainstreaming in the classroom vs. full time separation into special ed) it can make a kid's life easier in the long run. i think of working on "managing" and "adapting" to autism as still worthwhile, hope it is not paternalistic (more than any other parenting choices anyhow) but i do think it is pragmatic.

Maria, I'm far from an expert (neither a doctor nor a scientist nor a social worker nor on the autism spectrum, just involved in the disability rights community as an ally) but what you say makes sense. And I think you can avoid the paternalism if you involve the autistic community or groups like ASAN in the process somehow.

Here's a good blog post about eating and autism: http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=213

Should have added: the comments are where it's at for that blog post.

I feel so bad for her poor kid.

her = J. McC.'s

All having to be told he can't do X and Y because he is a magical crystal indigo child that mommy cured.

Article becomes a bit arsey but I don't really blame him: another anti-vaxxer's attempt to sue to silence:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/index.html#4fisher

on a related note:
--
Politicians and celebrities shamed for science gaffes

* 12:00 05 January 2010 by Andy Coghlan
--

Did you know that when you eat meat, it stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? "That is a fact," according to the model and charity campaigner Heather Mills, one of several celebrities whose statements in the media last year have been scrutinised and where necessary challenged by the British-based charity Sense About Science in its latest "celebrity watch" review.

Since 2007, the charity has published the annual review after receiving alerts of scientifically questionable or incorrect statements by public figures. "We try hard to explain why it was wrong, and why what might appear to be true isn't," says Ellen Raphael, the charity's director.

Other celebs have been pulled up this year for apparently not realising that natural substances such as hormones are chemicals, and that ovulation is suppressed naturally by pregnancy and prolonged breastfeeding. Actress Suzanne Somers, for example, was quoted as saying that the contraceptive pill must be unsafe "because is it safe to take a chemical every day, and how would it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?"

Actor Roger Moore, meanwhile, was taken to task for claiming that foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease, and Sarah Palin for dismissing evolution.

Soccer star Robin van Persie, who plays for London club Arsenal and the Netherlands national team, ended up in the review for publicising a treatment in which horse placental fluid was dripped onto his injury. "We'll be on the lookout for more sporting examples this year in the run-up to the World Cup finals in South Africa this summer and the 2012 Olympics," says Raphael.

Any readers disturbed by Mills's meaty assertions can take comfort from Melita Gordon, a gastroenterologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, quoted by Sense about Science: "Meat proteins, like all other proteins, are digested by enzymes and absorbed in the small bowel before they ever reach the colon. Any remaining indigestible matter is mechanically transited through the whole bowel in a matter of days and expelled in your faeces."

NAME AND SHAME IMO

I want to be famous so I can make up random shit and have everybody believe me over doctors and scientists and people with professional experience in a given field.

Clouds cause schizophrenia!
Mothers wearing high heeled shoes lead to childhood obesity!
Lima beans are poison!

You're right about the last one.

Hey, it might just get you on Oprah

^^^last one is true xps

No way. I love lima beans.

OR MAYBE I AM JUST DEMENTED FROM LIMA BEAN POISONING!!!!

tell me of the clouds of yr youth

I swear on new years eve
in the afternoon
I saw a cloud that looked exactly like a dolphin
the cloud was just hanging over the ocean
I said "that cloud looks just like a dolphin"
and then I said "now it looks like an airplane"
but it was always a dolphin

MTV game show or reality show appearances cause autism! Now that I would buy.

aw, i like that

xp

Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may know me from such educational videos as "Science: The Root of All Evil" and "The Half-Assed Approach to Mental Health Care."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7006525.ece

good. fuck that guy.

No mention of the paper's own enthusiastic and long-lived contribution to the scare, of course.

Good commentary on Wakefield and the anti-vax people, too: http://hoydenabouttown.com/20100129.7207/and-still-they-defend-him/

Vaccine-Autism Study Is Retracted

A major British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.

20 years from now when the international plot to make everyone in the Western world autistic is uncovered, we're all going to feel a little foolish.

WSJ article on studies that looked at higher rates of autism diagnosis in certain LA neighborhoods:

L.A. Confidential: Seeking Reasons for Autism's Rise
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703422904575039351632663996.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

the nuts are out in force over the Lancet's retraction - big editorial on the fucking HuffPo about why the retraction of the study doesn't mean anything

hate these ppl so fucking much I can't see straight

think i hate opportunistic, enabler physicians even more tbh

tho tbf, if a parent just flatly denies vaccination, i'd have a hard time as a pediatrician 'firing' their child as a pt, esp since they didnt have any say in the matter

xpost w/your first post: well no doubt - I mean you have to feel bad for the parents of children about whom there are no good answers - cf. that one episode of law & order with facilitated communicator debunking. but man something about the moon-landing qualities of this only in the sphere of actual medical science, really chafes at me

well, yeah, me too! cf -- peers of mine that either a) deny evolution or b) are hardline pro-lifers, but w/e

(also sometimes i think i'd better understand my world if i actually watched law and order. btw may i suggest "Ellen O." as the title for an ambitious song cycle about one young woman's transit of the american legal system, just sayin)

wait ppl in your program deny evolution?????

i think the article jenny linked has a really good explanation of why while im sympathetic to the parents of these kids there position is both dangerous and cruel

yeah dude. don't think there are any young earthers, but there's definitely a few ID types and/or what i guess i'll call "evolutionary fatalists" who would say that even though anti-biotics and bacterial and viral life-cycles basically ~prove~ brainless evolution it's actually just part of the master plan etc.

have had at least one conversation where the person basically agreed with allllll the major themes w/e of evolution but still refused to go so far as to admit that we, you and i, used to monkeys. like evolution + human exceptionalism

he got a 39 on the MCAT btw

echoing the terrified sentiment re: fellow med students denying evolution O_O

john the huffpost people are anti-vaccine? or did i read you wrong? wtf is going on tbh

I understand the ppl who are like "God created evolution" but I don't understand ppl who say it didn't happen

here's what huffpo ran this a.m.

hxxp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-emlancetem-retraction_b_446749.html

I delinked because we don't need autism/vaccine crazies comin in here, that is a lol-free zone imo

gbx's fellow med students, that is - im sure there's scary ppl like that in my pharm school but tbh I have no desire to find out

Are vaccines the only contributing factors to autism? Of course not. Other pharmaceutical products like thalidomide and valporic acid, as well as live mumps virus, have been associated with increased autism risk in prenatal exposures, so we already know that a variety of drugs and bugs can likely make a child autistic.

1. fuck you; 2. shut up; 3. fuck you.

just criminally irresponsible. anti-science nutjobs, yr best case against the 1st amendment

http://gawker.com/5463290/vaccines-still-dont-cause-autism

Other pharmaceutical products like thalidomide and valporic acid, as well as live mumps virus, have been associated with increased autism risk in prenatal exposures, so we already know that a variety of drugs and bugs can likely make a child autistic.

http://www.lilela.net/wp-content/uploads/ouroboros_lezard_tatou.jpg

I understand the ppl who are like "God created evolution" but I don't understand ppl who say it didn't happen

Pretty much. The people in the former category strike me as a classic case of comfort zone. "My faith can't be wrong! Ergo I will back myself into this corner, cross my fingers and hope for the best."

But, there are now at least six published legal or scientific cases of children regressing into ASD following vaccination - and many more will be revealed in due time.

n=6, ok dude

that being said, what i think is irresponsible isn't an interest in investigating immune rxns that might aggravate underlying genetic issues that may predispose to autism; i'm actually 100% in favor of looking into that! it's science!

what's reprehensible, however, is advising parents to flatly refuse vaccination out of a ~fear~ of autism. autism diagnoses are (likely) on the rise due to both a broadening of the autism spectrum AND an increasing ability/tendency for physicians to diagnose tykes who used to be "weird kids" w/autism or some version of it.

i was kinda surprised that there were so many pro-life ppl in my program (well, 3).

that huffpo article is written in such bad faith and is so fundamentally confused that its kinda ruined my day