Autism on The Huffington Post

New Law Mandates Coverage For Autism Therapy

2008-11-21T10:48:42Z

Insurance companies would be required to cover autism diagnosis and treatment up to $36,000 a year under legislation sent to the governor Thursday.

The action marks a victory for advocates who say early intervention and therapy is key to helping children with autism gain communication and social skills.

Under the proposal, which Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office said he plans to sign, insurance companies would be required to cover treatment until a patient turns 21. About 4,500 families across the state will qualify for coverage.

Lawmakers said it's needed for families struggling with the emotional and financial tolls of autism.

Read the entire article here.

David Kirby: Tom Daschle: Friend to Many Autism Families

2008-11-19T17:04:54Z

Nearly 60 percent of all autism parents believe that vaccines played a role in their child's illness, according to a recent survey. Still, their views have been met with scorn and ridicule from most of the scientific community, which insists that the vaccine-autism debate is not only a sham, but over.

These critics, of course, ignore the fact that ongoing investigations into mercury, vaccines and autism continue, and will continue, in the vast medical research apparatus contained within the mammoth US Department of Health and Human Services.

By nominating Tom Daschle to head up the Department, President Elect Obama has selected a man who has demonstrated an unflinching willingness to question vaccine safety, and to fight for the rights of those people who believe they have been, or may be, seriously injured by certain vaccinations.

Senator Daschle is not anti-vaccine, but his record shows his determination to question - and even oppose - vaccine makers and big pharmaceutical interests when it comes to protecting the rights of American medical consumers.

It was in November of 2002 (exactly six years ago) when I got my inspiration to write "Evidence of Harm." The House had just passed the Homeland Security Bill, onto which some unidentified Member (it turned out to be Dick Armey) had attached a last-minute rider granting autism liability protection to all drug companies using the mercury-based preservative thimerosal in US childhood vaccines.

As I wrote in my book, many autism parents mobilized to try to stop the undemocratically amended Bill in the Senate. Their chief allies were Joe Lieberman and Tom Daschle, who authored an amendment to the Homeland Security Bill that included this provision:

Childhood Vaccines

The Republican substitute would take complaints (against drug companies) about vaccine additives out of the courts and require them to be made through what's called the Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which handles other vaccine-related claims. This would mean a host of lawsuits could be dismissed, including claims involving the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, which defendants claim causes autism in children.

The Democratic amendment would strike this provision.

For the parents in my book, there was only a few days before the Senate voted on the homeland bill. As I wrote:

Senate Democrats Tom Daschle and Joe Lieberman were offering an amendment to remove the riders, but no one thought it would be easy. For one thing, the House had already adjourned. If the Senate were to tinker with the legislation, House members would have to be recalled en masse to special session to vote on the revamped bill. In the age of Al Qaeda, and with the winds of war rising in Iraq, such a delay for many lawmakers would be untenable

.

But the Democrats were backing the so-called "Mercury Moms" on this one:

"We are heartened that Senators Lieberman and Daschle are offering an amendment to remove extraneous additions like the thimerosal liability shield from the Homeland Security Act," said Sallie (Bernard, of SAFE MINDS) in the statement. "This addition is an example of all that is wrong with a system of using last minute riders to subvert the legislative process."

On November 15, 2002, Daschle spoke on the Senate floor:

Senator Lieberman and I filed an amendment yesterday that deals with all of the egregious special interest provisions. There is a provision, as you may know, that provides liability protection for pharmaceutical companies that actually make mercury-based vaccine preservatives that actually have caused autism in children. It wipes out all of the litigation.

Still, Republicans were narrowly able to defeat the amendment later that afternoon.

But the next day, Daschle returned to the floor, vowing to fight on. "This isn't over," he said. "But even if we are successful, I don't know if you can put the pieces back together for these families." (The thimerosal provision was removed from the Homeland Bill by an act of Congress in January of 2003).

It wasn't the only time that Senator Daschle would stand up publicly to vaccine makers in favor of prudent public safety.

A less publicized provision of the Lieberman-Daschle Homeland Security amendment read as follows:

SAFETY Act

The Republican substitute would give the Secretary of the new Department broad authority to designate certain technologies as so-called "qualified anti-terrorism technologies." This designation would entitle the seller of that technology to broad liability protection from any claim arising out of, relating to, or resulting from an act of terrorism, including complete immunity in many cases, no matter how negligent the seller. It would cap the seller's liability at the limits of its insurance policy.

The Democratic amendment would strike this provision.

Daschle was a vocal skeptic of the safety of the anthrax vaccine. The US was buying millions of doses at the time, especially after spores were sent to the offices of certain U.S. Officials, including Tom Daschle.

According to the website fiercevaccines.com:

Federal officials believe that Senator Tom Daschle's objections to the anthrax vaccine being given to soldiers may have been a prime reason why he was targeted in the 2001 anthrax attacks. Daschle raised concerns that the vaccine would make members of the National Guard ill--a suggestion that anthrax vaccine researcher Bruce Ivins evidently was angry about.

Speculation has been rampant that Ivins, a federal scientist directly engaged in vaccine research, initiated a series of deadly attacks using anthrax in order to boost interest and funding for his work and perhaps profit from a scramble for a new and better vaccine. Ivins committed suicide on August 1 as the FBI was preparing a case against him.

Other reports claim that government documents show that Daschle staff members were pressuring the Department of Defense to abandon Ivins' vaccine, due to safety concerns.

The military has reported that up to 2% of all military service members may have received debilitating injuries from vaccines they were given. That could mean upwards of 48,000 men and women, some of them likely wounded by the same anthrax vaccine that Senator Daschle was trying to kill.

Again, I am sure that Senator Daschle is not anti-vaccine, and I have no idea what his views are on the vaccine-autism debate today.

But I do know that, six years ago, he said that "mercury-based vaccine preservatives actually have caused autism in children." And I know that he tried to stop production of a vaccine that he felt was hurting far too many people.

I can already anticipate the howls of protest from certain sectors of the scientific community. But I hope they will give the next HHS Secretary the respect and support he will need to tackle autism and all the other health problems we face.

For his open mind and willingness to stand up for consumers - civilian and military - alone, I think that Daschle is a choice that many autism families will support.

If nothing else, his views on vaccine safety issues, including autism, are sure to get a fair and ample hearing at the Senate confirmation hearings.

Finally, speaking of the Homeland Security Bill and the thimerosal rider, this is how I opened the first page of the Prologue of "Evidence of Harm":

Lyn Redwood got the call from a lawyer friend only an hour before the (Homeland Security) vote. The prospects were bad, he told her. It was too late to do much about it now.

It turns out that the "lawyer friend" will probably be working as a senior member of the Obama Administration, right alongside Secretary Daschle.

(Many thanks to www.vaccinationnews.com for help with archived articles)

Related:

Daschle Pick Hailed By Health Care Advocates

David Kirby: Somali Autism Mom: "We Thought America Was the Last and Best Stop in this World"

2008-11-18T15:18:58Z

When I first wrote about the large number of Somali children with autism in Minneapolis, back in August, I was contacted by a young mother named Idil, who told me she had been trying for more than a year to get Minnesota officials to pay attention to all the sick kids in the local Somali community.

Idil, like a few other Somali parents in Minnesota, is now "taking off the gloves," as they have put it.

(NOTE TO THE TIM PAWLENTY ADMINISTRATION: These Somali parents are smart, tough, media savvy, and very primed for a fight - I for one would not like to have them as adversaries).

What follows is an exchange of letters between Idil and officials at the Minnesota Department of Health. I asked Idil if they could be published online, and this is what she wrote back to me:

"David - Yes, from now on you can forward anything I write to you to anyone. I am done waiting for them to take us seriously. Please go ahead and post it on the site. I would be honored. Idil"

Here is Idil's letter to MPH Commissioner Dr. Sanne Magnan, and to Judy Punyko and Patricia Adams, also of the state health department, sent on Sunday:

(A report on the Somali autism forum, held Saturday in Minneapolis, can be found here)

Hello Dr Magnan, Judy and Pat.

When I was young and lived in Somalia I used to believe that America was the last bus stop in the world. There was no country better than America and everyone was equal regardless of race, color or religion. This was an image carefully created and exported by the American people to the rest of the world.

No one and no country is perfect however, yesterday I realized that most of what I believed was and is still true.

Was I disappointed that Judy (a state epidemiologist who was expected to present prevalence data) did not have the report that was promised to us by Nov 15th? Of course. I am also hopeful that the truth will prevail, and all three of you will think long and hard how and what you do and what you say affects so many of our children.

Regardless of what that report would have said, my eyes tell me the real numbers. All one has to do is visit any Minneapolis pre-school autism program and see that in every class of 6 kids 2-3 are Somali children. Judy, I know that you said every number there is a family and a story behind it.

I'd like you to think about that every night as you go to sleep. Think about how there is a Somali family that thought America was the last and best stop in this world, yet they are struggling with their child that has autism. They have no idea of what to do and how to help. Chances are they have never heard of autism.

I don't read minds, but if I tried to read your body language yesterday, it seemed to say that you think there is no real problem here and whatever you report will try to put the fire out among the Somali community. Since you said every number represents a face, please visit any pre-school in Minneapolis and tell the parent of that child that you don't think there is a problem here.

We want to trust you (our government officials that is suppose to serve all people) to do the right thing for us. Treat us the way you would want to be treated if you were in our country. Please don't tell us the status quo is fine and to expect different results. Autism is real, it is happening to our people higher than the rest. It will not go away be doing the same things.

We all Somalis believe that children are the best gift god can give a person. Autism is interfering with that precious gift god gave us and we will not watch more and more families' god given gift be destroyed by it. We ask that you validate our concerns not by just telling us everything is fine and don't panic, but opening your minds and souls and take what we say seriously.

I urge you all to start looking into doing a study on Somalis. Perhaps the real cause and cure of autism will be found in one of us. We are not blaming any one thing, but this is real and all areas from low Vitamin D, to our immune system, to etc etc must be looked at a non-bias and objective manner that will benefit all of us.

I would like some response from all of you on how you really, really like to address this. (Insanity is defined by doing the same thing and expecting different results). Please tell us how and what you will do that is different, positive, productive and beneficial to the Somali community.

Finally, I am so grateful to three of you for all that you have done so far. We just would like action towards this, not just polite words. Please help us help you find the cause and cure of autism. I whole-heartedly believe it is in one of us. And what a waste if we did not take advantage of such an opportunity.

Thank you so much and I look forward to hearing from you and what your thoughts are as we move forward.

Idil

And here is the response that Idil got on Monday:

Dear Idil,

Thank you for your e-mail yesterday morning to Commissioner Magnan, Patricia Adams and Judy Punyko. We have had a long conversation about follow-up, both short and long term, and I have been asked to respond on behalf of all three. First, please do not mistake my letter of thanks to the Forum planning committee as any indication that the Minnesota Department of Health feels that our work in this area is done. We know that we still have a long way to go and we are committed to working on this issue until it is resolved.

Please know that we hear your voice and the voices of so many others that are affected. The Minnesota Department of Health is committed to protecting, maintaining, and improving the health of all Minnesotans. We are committed to continue to work with the Somali community on the concerns, doing what we can at MDH, and advocating for further investigation at higher levels.

This is just a preliminary response to your letter to let you know that it has been received. I will continue to be your faithful liaison and to keep you updated on the work that is being done at MDH, and with other agencies as that information is available. Thank you for your courage and your commitment to action on behalf of your community. I am happy to meet with you in person, or on the phone any time.

Warmest regards,

Edie French
Special Populations Coordinator
MDH Communications

And this what Idil sent back to MDH on Tuesday - (In private, she uses much stronger language than this).

Hi Edie,

Thanks for replying the email that I sent to Sanne, Judy and Pat. I understand that you are the person that answers for the dept and that is fine. I will also include Huda in this email because we (the somali community) would really like more substance than empty words. I can not believe that Judy does not have her numbers since August and it will take her another six months. Why so long? the school district already gave her the numbers. Could it be perhaps she saw what we see with our eyes and is in panic mode?

MDH must be honest with us if they truly are the people's agency. No sugar - just straight talk.

If MDH is telling us everything is fine and lets keep doing everything the same way, then they either are lying to us or lying to themselves. either way no one wins. I think everyone at MDH knows there is a huge problem here and we must work together.

What is it that now this department is proposing? We need action now no more empty words. Tell us in plain English what is next?

You know the commissioner is hired by the governor of Minnesota and the governor is hired by the people of Minnesota and the people of Minnesota elect who will address their needs and concerns. The Somali parents of children with autism and the Minnesota parents of children with autism have been extremely polite and politically correct in waiting for this department who is suppose to work for all people of Minnesota to address our needs. As far as I can see that has not happened.

Autism did not exist in Somalia, if it did we would have a word for it. We would have seen Somali adults with autism. I have no idea what is causing this, but I know it is only happening this high in Minnesota.

Therefore, Minnesota dept of health must take action now not later but now. Autism does not wait, so why should MDH?

Thank you!

Idil

I predict that we will be hearing quite a bit more from - and about - these remarkable Somali parents in the weeks and months ahead.

Jim Schumacher and Debbie Bookchin: Italians Are in Love -- with Obama

2008-11-14T19:30:03Z

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's buffoonish reference last week to Barack Obama as "handsome, young and tanned" is probably the only news most Americans have heard about Italy since the U.S. presidential election. Understandably, many Americans were bewildered and offended by Berlusconi's remarks, which could only be described as utterly insensitive, if not downright racist. It hasn't helped that Berlusconi has remained largely unapologetic since - repeatedly insisting that his reference to Obama as "tanned" was a "compliment" and a term of "endearment;" publicly berating a US reporter who questioned him about his remarks at a European Union event in Brussels; and, true to form, dismissing Italian opposition leaders who demanded he apologize as "graduates from a school of dickheads."

It would be unfortunate to think Berlusconi expresses the sentiments most Italians have towards Obama. In fact, if you want to know what most Italians think about Obama, forget about Silvio Berlusconi -whenever he opens his mouth a large portion of Italians react the same way a large portion of Americans have reacted to George W. Bush over the last eight years: They wish they could run away and hide. As two Americans who have lived for some time Italy, we can attest that the election of Obama has been a source of great joy and admiration throughout Italy. Joy, because for most Italians the Bush years have felt like an unwanted eight-year estrangement from a close friend for whom they still feel deep affection; and now this rift may finally be healed. Admiration, because Obama's victory is seen as proof that America still has the capacity to innovate and renew itself, to represent a better future, and to remain a source of inspiration.

To understand both reactions, one has to realize how low our stock had dropped during the last eight years. The dismal Bush/Cheney record: a go-it-alone, bellicose foreign policy, a hideous war, torture, intolerance of dissent, domestic spying, a cavalier disregard for the environmental crisis that Europeans have understood for some time is the planet's number one threat ... mocked a basic faith that Italians have had for more than sixty years in the United States, not only as the country which liberated Italy and all of Europe from fascism, but that also embodied the vibrant, inclusive, open and stable democracy they wished to emulate.

The Obama victory, judging from what we see, has restored that faith. Italians followed the election closely beginning with the Iowa caucuses. Press coverage was nonstop, with Italy's largest newspapers sending their own teams of reporters to cover the campaign directly for the last several months. One friend of ours grumbled that Italians seemed more interested in the U.S. election than their own. Most Italians decided months ago whom they would support and if Italians could have voted, Obama probably would have received more than 75 percent of their vote. As Election Day drew nearer, we were frequently stopped on the street by friends anxiously yearning to know: Did we think Obama was going to do it? And since the election, it has been impossible for us to go anywhere without receiving congratulations from anyone who realizes we are Americans. Indeed the only disappointment we have heard is that most Italians would prefer that Obama become President within the next two weeks, instead of two months.

The phenomenonal reaction to Obama is much more than just relief that the Bush years will finally end. It signifies the clear understanding that the Obama's election was extraordinary, a once-in-a-lifetime event, and that his election has set a new mark to which Italy and the rest of Europe will need to aspire.

Here's a small example of how Obama's election has infiltrated even the smallest corners of Italy: In the small Umbrian city in which we live, the mid-November celebration of our patron saint, St. Florido, is one of the most important holidays of the year. The standing room only Mass, celebrated in the high cathedral, is attended by everyone from the mayor to our local Green Party delegate in the regional assembly in Perugia. Flanked by all the priests from the twenty-odd parish churches in our diocese, the local bishop leads the one-and-a-half hour mass and delivers the homily. Generally his remarks are confined to imploring his flock to rediscover the spirit of St. Florido and our other Umbrian saints, which is to say being more humble and observant servants of the rules of the Church.

But in this year's St. Florido Mass, celebrated on November 13th, about half-way through the homily, just after the usual remarks about the good deeds of St. Florido in the 6th century, the Bishop suddenly marched off in an unanticipated direction. "A few days ago an important politician said these words," he began. And then (in Italian) he quoted a verbatim passage from Obama's victory speech in Grant Park: "The true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope." After a pause, with the mayor and all the leading politicians of our town sitting directly under him in the very front pews, he proceeded to state that our town - and all of Europe - needs to rediscover that same sense of hope, opportunity and renewal. Not content to stop there, he began to list what kinds of actions they needed to take: involving young people in civic and political life, welcoming immigrants, and aiding the poor. In a few short moments he had turned our normally bland town holiday into a call for social justice and action.

Similarly, when Italy's leading left-leaning daily newspaper, La Repubblica, published a special 195-page "atlas" about Obama two days after the election, the tens of thousands of copies distributed to every news stand in Italy sold out before the weekend was through. Our friends implore us for Obama buttons or any other campaign memorabilia we can find, and it seems as if every Italian stranger we've encountered in the last week - bookstore owners, people on the street, waitresses, every one - has been unable to contain themselves with excitement about the election of our 44th president.

Our friends across Europe have similar stories to tell. Everywhere there is a sense of hope and wonder that America, after reaching perhaps an all time low in world opinion, has pulled a rabbit out of its hat and done the unimaginable - elected an inspirational leader with intelligence and honesty, who believes that it is possible to transcend the confines of race and religion that have stalled dialogue throughout the world, and who arrives with an agenda aimed at comforting the afflicted even if that means afflicting the comfortable. For the first time in many years, political coverage of the U.S. by the Italian a press even contains a tinge of envy. All across Italy, and indeed throughout Europe, there is a renewed appreciation of the American possibility. And more profoundly, there are many Europeans who are wondering if Europe too can find an Obama in its midst.

David Kirby: Minneapolis and the Somali Autism Riddle

2008-11-14T17:17:49Z

Tomorrow, a few hundred very concerned citizens of Minnesota will gather to discuss a baffling and heartbreaking riddle: Why is the reported rate of autism among children of Somali refugees so alarmingly high (now an estimated 1-in-28 schoolchildren)?

When I first heard about this phenomenon, which some Somalis call the "Minnesota Disease," my reporter's instinct told me it could be a very big story; that a key piece of the puzzle that is autism might well lie within the bloodstreams of these poor children of the Twin Cities - whose families had already suffered through so much.

If it can be demonstrated that US-born children of Somali refugees are more prone to autism than the other kids of Minneapolis - or Somalia - then it shouldn't take too long to discover what it is about them (their genes) that clashed so terribly with the way they were conceived and raised (their environment).

It won't explain every case of autism, of course, but it might open new doors of understanding and knowledge that can be applied to combating autism worldwide.

The daylong conference on Saturday is a tribute to progressive public health and a responsive local government (plans include Somali translators, Somali food, breaks to allow time for Islamic prayer, and child care). The meeting is sponsored by a variety of Somali, autism and other community groups, as well as several State and City agencies, including the Minnesota Department of Health.

"The Somali community expressed a need for information on autism, and our duty is to respond to that, to provide as much information as possible, and in a cultural context," said state health department spokesman Doug Schultz. "The concern in the community is real, and if they have the perception that there is a high rate, then we need to talk about that."

But is there really a "high rate?" A written survey I conducted with 25 refugee parents of autistic children certainly revealed their strong belief that there is - and nearly all of them suspect the vaccine program of their adoptive country.

In August, the online newspaper MinnPost first reported that 12 percent of kindergarten and pre-school children with autism in Minneapolis speak Somali at home, and more than 17 percent of the kids in the early childhood autism program are Somali speaking.

The Minneapolis Star tribune published other staggering figures: Among Somali students in the district, 3.6 percent had autism - a rate of 360-per-10,000, (or 1 in 28). The paper said this was about twice as high as the already burgeoning district average of some 180-per-100,000 kids (or 1 in 56), and more than five times the national rate of 66-per-10,000 (1 in 150).

Virtually all of the children of Somali refugees were born in the United States, and they appear to be among the most severely affected children with autism in the district: Last year, one-in-four children in the preschool class for the most severe cases was Somali.

Reports of elevated autism rates among children of immigrants are nothing new. A small study this year showed that Swedish-born children of Somali immigrants to that country were far more likely to have autism than the general population, (Somalis there call autism the "Swedish Disease"), and another small study in 1995 found an autism rate of 15% among children in one Swedish town born to mothers from Uganda - 200 times more than the national average.

Higher than normal autism rates among children of immigrants have also been reported in Ireland, the UK and several cities in North America, especially Montreal.

Meanwhile, none of the refugees that I surveyed had ever heard of autism back in Somalia, where there isn't even a name for the disorder. In fact, no one had ever seen nor heard of a single child who displayed any of the common symptoms of autism -- though a few did report knowing kids with speech delay that eventually resolved itself.

Not everyone is convinced that there is a problem, however.

"These reports are interesting and need further review, but you don't just take something off the news as facts," cautioned Judy Punyko, an epidemiologist for the state department of health. "We need to obtain the actual data and analyze it, so I am not sure there is much of a story here at this point."

Punyko has assembled a team of experts to determine if the Somali autism rates are in fact higher than average in Minneapolis, and she was expected to release at least preliminary results at Saturday's meeting.

But on November 12, Dr. Punyko sent me an email saying she is not able to present any results yet, "only study aim, objectives, and progress to date. I am still in the process of gathering existing data and this is taking a lot more time than I had anticipated," she wrote. "These data are tough to work with."

The delay will not be welcome news to any of the Somali parents I spoke with. They know that, without proof that their children are being afflicted more than others, officials will not intervene to investigate.

One mother (who asked not to be identified due to the tremendous stigma of autism among Somalis), first approached state and city officials in April of 2007, beseeching them to look into the apparent problem. It wasn't until local reporters started snooping around, the mother said, that government stepped up to respond.

The parent refugee-activists even secured a teleconference meeting with health staffers in the DC office of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman. They told the Somalis that, if the prevalence was shown to be higher in their community, they would urge the CDC and other Federal agencies to "look under every rock" to find out why - including environmental factors like mercury, thimerosal and vaccines.

Many Somali parents began to suspect vaccines as a possible cause on their own, and well before they encountered any American media or autism groups who could put the idea in their head.

In fact, one of the most obvious "environmental" differences between Minnesota and Somalia is mass vaccination (another is sunlight, but more on that later).

There are an estimated 15,000-40,000 Somalis living in Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population outside of East Africa. Most fled during or after the 1993 phase of the bloody Civil War in that country. Many spent years in often wretched refugee camps in Kenya, waiting for a chance to emigrate to Europe and North America.

A lot of the refugees got their chance in 2000, which is when the majority of Somalis arrived in Minneapolis, hoping to finally build a new life in peace and dignity.

Along the way, vaccines became an almost routine part of their life: They were often given in the camps, they were sometimes given before leaving Africa, and they were almost always given in the first year of arrival in the US (which requires a series of 10 vaccinations for all refugees, including women of child bearing age - many of those vaccines contain thimerosal).

Once they arrived in Minnesota, most refugees were welcomed by a progressive "Blue" state with a good public health infrastructure and a bureaucracy ready and willing to help. Refugees were given about a year or so of free medical and dental care, and special effort was made to ensure full compliance with the childhood vaccine schedule (though many mothers failed to keep well-baby visits, requiring lots of "catch up" vaccinations when they did bring their children in to the pediatrician).

Of the 25 refugee mothers who answered the questionnaire, most were vaccinated in refugee camps, and all but two were fully vaccinated after arriving in the US. About a third reported receiving vaccines while pregnant or shortly before becoming pregnant.

When asked what they thought was causing autism in their community, 22 respondents said that vaccines were at least partly to blame, while two were unsure, and only one said vaccines were uninvolved.

Many parents told me the same story of regression I have heard a thousand times before.

"He met all the normal milestones until he hit 18 months," lamented Abdulkadir Khalif, speaking of his three-year-old son with autism. "He was a beautiful baby, running around, saying a few words, until about the winter of 2006, right when he got his MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) shot. He got sick and we went to the hospital, and he stopped talking immediately around that time."

"Do I know it was the vaccines?" Khalif asks. "All I know is he stopped talking right around the time of those shots."

Neither Khalif nor his wife (who was given a thimerosal-containing flu shot while pregnant, even though the label instructed the doctor to administer the shot during pregnancy, "only when medically necessary"), had ever heard of autism until the day their son was diagnosed.

Khalif says, it is "not possible" that autism could be this common in Somalia. "I've been living with it on a daily basis, with my own child. And I lived in Somalia and Kenya for a long time. If it was this common, we would have had a name for it, and we don't. That tells me it does not exist."

"And these symptoms? I had never seen anything like it before. We have names for mental retardation or Down syndrome. But the mannerisms, the loss of speech, the tantrums and violence and running out of the house that comes with autism - I think we would have noticed those things. But we've never seen them before in Somalia or Kenya."

Hodan Hassan, mother to four children including four-year-old Jenny, who has autism, said she had been "a little lax and lazy" with vaccinating her first two kids, "and the doctors got mad at me." With Jenny, she vowed to get all shots on time (and dutifully got the flu shot while pregnant). But there seemed to be a problem with the record keeping, because Jenny was clearly over-vaccinated (for example, she received five Hepatitis B shots, when only three are required).

Soon after giving birth, Hassan started work at a hospital, where she received several mercury containing vaccines, even while breast feeding Jenny.

Jenny had several terrible, feverish reactions to some of her vaccines, twice requiring visits to the ER, where she was given IV fluids and Tylenol.

On Valentines Day, 2006, Hassan brought Jenny in for her 18-month well baby visit, right on time. "she was saying 'mommy' and 'daddy' and 'juice' and 'go, go let's go!'" Hassan recalls. "She was a very happy and attentive baby. She would look at you when talked to her, she would come when you called.

Then Jenny got five vaccines at once (M-M-R, Prevnar and chicken pox) at the doctor visit. She spiked a fever and returned to the hospital. "She never spoke again," Hassan said. "It was all gone right after those shots. I know the doctors don't believe it. They think we must be crazy. But these are our kids, and we were there when everything happened to them. The doctors were not."

Many of the parents I spoke with said they plan to stand up and speak out at the meeting, where Khalif and Hassan are both scheduled panel members.

"I have gathered information on 149 Somali families in Minneapolis with autistic children, and I plan on asking the experts why it is so much," Hassan said.

But she doesn't expect a ready answer. "I think they will try to cover it up at the meeting, avoid the issue, and say 'It is not what you guys think, you can trust us, this is not what it is,'" she said. "But that is not acceptable. Word of mouth went out and people are panicking, and they don't know who to trust. One American doctor told me he will not vaccinate any of his own kids, but has to vaccinate all the others. You have no idea what kind of message that sends to our community."

Khalif also plans on posing tough questions.

"I am going to make all those education and health officials feel very guilty," he said. "Where did this come from? This is a disease that's been acquired by our kids here. In each and in every case, all the children, with one exception, that have been identified with autism were born in this country. I want them to tell me directly that the vaccines are safe. I want someone to stand up and say that. And then, I want to ask that same person two years down road the same thing, and see what the percentages are like."

Khalif also wants to propose "a rescheduling of the vaccines for our Somali children, because I think there is something in our immune system that cannot handle that number of vaccines at one time. The rate is so high, that something will be found in our genes or systems. Science now has a window to find out the actual cause, and therefore the remedy, for autism."

Some doctors and researchers in Minneapolis that I spoke with were extraordinarily sympathetic toward the Somalis. "Vaccines have to be playing a role," said one very prominent pediatrician and researcher, who is working quietly behind the scenes to change attitudes at the University of Minnesota and elsewhere, and did not want to be named.

"Maybe if we start talking about the individual toxins in vaccines, and not the vaccine program as a whole, others in the medical profession will find it easier to come around," the doctor said.

Another local doctor, who did speak on the record, was willing to speculate on one possible variable that might make Somali kids more prone to autistic regression - with or without vaccines: Vitamin D deficiency.

Dr. Gregory A. Plotnikoff, medical director for the Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, said a colleague had noticed an "exceedingly high" rate of morning sickness among pregnant Somali women in Minneapolis, often requiring hospitalizations.

The doctor began checking Vitamin D levels and found that, on average, they were far below what is considered to be normal and healthy.

Somalis, he said, may start out with naturally low abilities to produce vitamin D from sunlight, (as is the case with many people with Middle Eastern blood in them). That is compounded by the fact that dark-skinned people require far more sunlight to produce vitamin D than light-skinned people and, when Somalis move to areas of higher latitude, with far less sunlight - their vitamin D stores may be virtually depleted, at least for part of the year.

"Vitamin D is crucial for normal brain development, because there are receptors for it throughout the brain," Plotnikoff said. "Vitamin D also plays a role as an anti-inflammatory agent and, besides cutting down on inflammation, it increases concentrations of glutathione, which better supports the brain's capacity to handle heavy metals and oxidative stress."

Glutathione has been found to be low or depleted in many children with autism. A lack of glutathione would make children more vulnerable to the effects of mercury and other heavy metals.

"Another problem is that Tylenol depletes glutathione, and regretfully, most kids who get a shot also get Tylenol," Plotnikoff said. "It's routinely given without considering that it can increase the risk of heavy metals, like mercury, causing oxidative injury in the brain."

"Glutathione has antioxidant properties, and it also chelates, or removes heavy metals in the body. We want a lot of it around. We need it, and we depend upon it," he added.

So, could there be a possible connection between vitamin D deficiency, glutathione depletion, heavy metal accumulation and autism?

"It's a hypothesis that absolutely needs to be tested," Plotnikoff said. "Vitamin D deficiency is crucial to study, because of its many roles in normal brain development -- including the capacity to handle oxidative stress and handle heavy metal loads. The data we have now can't say if this is the case, but it is a compelling hypothesis that deserves national attention."

"My sense is that autism is likely to be a result of a combination of many important factors," he continued. "The gift that the Somali community is giving us is about a significant awareness of the role of low vitamin D levels and other environmental issues, including immunizations and heavy metals, in autism. Severe Vitamin D deficiency could be what is behind all this. And that is what the Somali community did for us: They get no sun in Minnesota, and they have extremely low levels of vitamin D."

Finally, vitamin D deficiency in pregnant animals can lead to "dramatic" defects in mitochondrial function in offspring, according to at least one study. The role of mitochondrial dysfunction and autistic regression is only now beginning to be explored. But some researchers believe that poor mitochondrial health (perhaps exacerbated by vitamin D deficiency?) is a precursor to autistic regression in at least one subgroup of children.

All of this, of course, is speculation. There is no proof that any Somali autism cases were caused by vitamin D deficiency, lack of sunlight, mercury or vaccines. But if you look for major differences between life in Somalia and life in Minnesota, you will find that one has lots of sunlight and very few vaccines -- and the other has less sunlight, but lots of vaccines.

Is it possible that vitamin D deficiency caused glutathione depletion and mitochondrial damage to these Somali children, setting them up for regression into autism after receiving multiple simultaneous vaccines containing heavy metals (as was the case in the famous Hannah Poling Vaccine Court claim)?

No one knows. And sadly, some refugees are not waiting around for US doctors to find out.

"Some autism families have returned to Somalia," said one mother, who did not want to be identified. "They were angry and disgusted with the United States. The nation that offered them refuge was the same nation that made their children so sick," she said.

"They think that, by returning home, maybe they can make their children better."

Steve Clemons: What Barack Obama Should Learn From Dick Cheney

2008-11-12T10:23:27Z

Barack Obama should keep his smile and not adopt the scowl that Vice President Richard Cheney often deployed to tenderize his victims, but he should pay careful attention to the way that Cheney animated hundreds of followers to move the Cheney agenda across the national security bureaucracy.

If one were to score "influence" within the G.W. Bush administration, Cheney would get top prize -- higher than G.W. Bush himself.

No one knows how the incumbent President Bush makes decisions. He's not consistent. He holds his cards close -- and sometimes tilts one way, sometimes another. Swagger is the defining characteristic of Bush's decisions -- not necessarily logic, or at least not a logical line that I can discern.

Condoleezza Rice has a few followers who do understand her approach to problems -- but she never worked to build a significant following.

Colin Powell, who advised caution and a review of every scenario in responding to a serious challenges, tended to matter when he was in the room -- and not, when he wasn't.

But as I have written previously and as Barton Gellman chronicles in his important new book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Cheney succeeded in not only getting people loyal and beholden to him appointed throughout the vast wings of the country's national security and intelligence bureaucracies, he and his close team of David Addington, Scooter Libby and John Hannah conveyed a template for approaching the world and agitating for an expansion of Executive Branch authority in comparison to other branches of government.

Cheneyism is disdainful of international institutions like the UN, viewed Europe and other states essentially as supplicants of American power, pushed hard the "unitary executive" notion of presidential authority, reinstituted the secrecy regime to levels greater than Reagan's CIA chief Bill Casey, promoted taking the gloves off" in American demonstrations of power abroad and in the interrogation room, endorsed torture and viewed the Geneva Accords as rules for the weak, despised regulation of business and industry -- particularly the oil, forestry and steel industries.

There are many other dimensions to Cheneyism, but what is important is that his followers understood how Cheney thought and how he would respond to a problem or policy issues.

Dick Cheney has been the most powerful actor in the Bush administration because Cheney didn't have to tell people hierarchically or by Rumsfeld-style "snow flake memos" what to do or how to think. They knew. And if they didn't, Cheney might call and simply ask a loaded question of a bureaucrat -- even a person very far down the pecking order of an agency or department -- as to why he or she hadn't thought of an alternative way [the Cheney way] of doing something.

Now to think about the new team moving into 1600 Pennsylvania.

According to some reports, Barack Obama seems to think that his intellectual, policy formulation and speechwriting skills are better than those around him -- or so goes that narrative in a recent New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza:

Obama, who is not without an ego, regarded himself as just as gifted as his top strategists in the art and practice of politics. Patrick Gaspard, the campaign's political director, said that when, in early 2007, he interviewed for a job with Obama and Plouffe, Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, "I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director."

Obama may very well be as skilled and confident as this passage suggests -- but if he follows that line of logic too far -- he'll end up hamstrung with a huge bureaucracy that won't necessarily understand the "Obama Way".

Others might emerge in Obama's White House with more power than he does to motivate and animate others because they may be more successful at communicating and telegraphing how to approach complex problems and challenges. Of those who are rumored to possibly be in the first Obama cabinet, potential holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates comes to mind.

At a New America Foundation economic policy event that featured the economic advisers to John McCain, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, Obama's adviser Austan Goolsbee made the seemingly sensible suggestion that when confronting complex trade and economic treaties, Obama would weigh each one on its merits. His basic point was that trade deals -- even deals that seemingly promoted free trade -- were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pages long. They were not all the same and Obama would support some and not others.

On one level, this suggests flexibility. On another, this possible management approach suggests a micro-focus on policy that Obama can't afford. Jimmy Carter was a compulsive micro-manager, and it severely handicapped his presidency. Goolsbee's comment also implies that Obama may not be ready to telegraph to his Cabinet Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, and others the DNA of his generic decisionmaking approach.

To be as successful as Dick Cheney was in influencing action in government, Obama is going to need to telegraph the secrets of "Obama-ism" to his people.

If not, we'll have an ad hoc presidency, a reactive presidency, a micromanaged presidency, or a presidency hijacked by others who slyly follow Cheney's approach.

So keep the smile, President-elect Obama, but begin to think about how you clearly convey to your team criteria for decision-making and a guide for responses to complex, unexpected challenges.

I have learned a lot from watching how the Project for a New American Century became so successful and consequential in a remarkably short period of time.

Barack Obama -- who ran a very large, successful campaign operation that empowered many -- should in governing nonetheless look to Vice President Cheney's example to understand how a pro -- even one who so damaged the interests of the nation -- managed power and purpose while in office.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Dr. Jonny Bowden: Nutrition and the Obama Moment

2008-11-11T14:46:27Z

For the last two years we've been hearing the question "Is America ready for a black president?"

Meanwhile, we've been ignoring the even more important question: "Is America ready for an intellectual president?"

Intellectuals have fallen on hard times in recent years.

It probably started back in the heyday of William F. Buckley (who would probably characteristically roll his eyes if he saw what he had beget a half-century later). Intellectual conservatives began demonizing "the liberal elite"; this morphed into a demonizing of "elites" in general -- "elite" defined as anyone who had more education than you did, typically confused with "elitist" -- and morphed further into a general dumbed down populism and celebration of anti-intellectualism. (How else to explain otherwise intelligent people actually saying positive things about Sarah Palin?)

Add to the mix an emerging culture whose important features include text messaging -- with it's "C u L8tr" vocabulary -- American Idol's celebration of karaoke-level singers, "The Secret", four word sound bytes substituting for political positions (three words in the case of "Drill Baby Drill"), pollsters reducing swirling and complex shades of purple to "Red!" and "Blue!", a general coarsening of the culture and a population-wide lowering of attention span and you've got the perfect storm: complexity is out, simplicity is in. Who's got the time to read "War and Peace" when there's some Asian guitarist on YouTube playing the theme from Deliverance in his dorm room in under 60 seconds?

It doesn't help that intellectuals are often tone deaf to feelings, which hardly makes them more likeable. The kid who's about to lose his puppy because of the arcane rules of his apartment's co-op board doesn't want to hear a treatise on "Democracy in America" or get lectured on civics, community and the theory of the common good. A detailed and nuanced discussion of medical statistics, causality and correlation is no competition for the powerful pull of a heartbroken mother on Oprah who is convinced that the mercury in vaccinations caused her kids autism. (Some -- though not all -- of those mothers are probably right, but that's another column.)

And yes, some intellectuals have been (are, indeed) pin-heads, paralyzed by analysis and all that.

But in a country in which 42% of college graduates believe that flying saucers have visited us, one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the earth, a jaw-dropping 1/3 of the men running for the Republican nomination for president in 2008 do not "believe" in the "theory" of evolution, and about 20 million people listen to Rush Limbaugh (not because they think he's a comedian), there's good reason to think that intellectualism is on the ropes.

Maybe this will change now that we have in the White House a guy who actually understands nuance and complexity.

A guy who actually thinks.

Lord knows, we in the world of nutrition and health could use some of that.

Here's a not-so-theoretical example: Joe the Plumber wants to lower his cholesterol! Obama-man understands that there are about 8 or more subfractions of cholesterol (not just "Good!" and "Bad!"), they act quite differently in the body, and that -- newsflash alert -- lowering cholesterol may not have much to do with lowering the risk for heart disease in the first place. Slapping a "no cholesterol" label on a Twinkie may make you feel better about eating it, but it doesn't make it a health food.

Of course, it's far easier to "lower cholesterol" than it is to understand what goes into lowering your risk for heart disease (hint: lowering cholesterol has little, if anything, to do with it).

It's also easier to define "healthy foods" as being equal to "low in fat", another boneheaded position if there ever was one, and one that is at least as common as the belief in flying saucers and just about as accurate.

And hey, I'm just getting started. For a full catalogue of boneheaded, rote-repetition, non-thinking positions on everything related to diet and supplements, see American Dietetic Association. Or go to MyPyramid.gov.

These nutritional memes are so deeply embedded into health establishment culture that to question them puts you immediately in the company of the tin foil hat crowd -- or at the very least, the 9/11 Truthers.

I'd love to see Obama set the tone for the return of thinking. It's due for a comeback. And we could sure use it when it comes to health and dietary advice.

If only I could be more hopeful that it will actually happen.

Kim Stagliano: A Reminder to Autism Speaks on Vaccine Research Promises

2008-11-11T12:03:22Z

I wrote the post below last year, but it seems appropriate to bring it back because HuffPo contributor David Kirby has a piece running today called, Autism Speaks: Don't Rule Out Vaccines.

It's clear that both Bob and Suzanne Wright, the founders of Autism Speaks, want the same answers many of us in the autism community want regarding vaccination safety and the link to the diagnosis that has devastated so many lives, including their own. The very answers that the AAP, pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the CDC, the mainstream media and surprising to me, most liberal bloggers, do NOT want.

And yet, Autism Speaks has moved at the pace of a gimpy snail to find answers, instead spending millions on genetics studies, social networking sites, glitzy fundraisers, six figure salaries, Park Avenue rent and media blitzes for "awareness." God almighty, we're aware already! When your two year old can't speak, you know "the signs." We need immediate answers for the kids who are here and growing older every day. And we need to stop the epidemic from continuing. Please Mr. and Mrs. Wright. Ask louder. Demand more. Threaten to shut down Autism Speaks unless you get answers.

Here's what I wrote:

On May 1, 2006, Suzanne Wright, founder of Autism Speaks promised me that Autism Speaks would study whether mercury and vaccines are part of the cause of the autism epidemic. Here's the video [Quicktime required].

Mrs. Wright made this promise at the Children Making Strides/Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation event in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she and David Kirby were the keynote speakers. Mr. Kirby is the author of Evidence of Harm, the book that discusses the mercury and autism connection. Both Mrs. Wright and Mr. Kirby were well received. And here's the Autism Speaks webpage showing Mrs. Wright with Doug Flutie.

I'd like to know why, in fifteen months and with tens of millions of research dollars, numerous "Walks" and fundraisers, I can see no progress toward answering my question. I mean Mrs. Wright no ill will. But if you're going to wear the crown of the founder, you have to expect the serfs to pick up a pitch fork every so often when their hunger (in my case, for answers) becomes overwhelming. I have three daughters with autism. Call me crazy, but I'd like some answers for my children.

If you've ever seen Mrs. Wright on Larry King or The Today Show or in person, I think you'll you agree with me that her passion to help her grandson Christian and my girls and the thousands of kids with an autism diagnosis is genuine. As is her grief. If she's acting, someone had better tell Meryl Streep that she's got some serious competition.

I'd like to know who (if anyone) is stopping Suzanne Wright from making good on her word. Is it Alison Singer? Is it Dr. Eric London? Is it pressure from pharmaceutical lobbyists? Is it the pharmaceutical companies themselves who've spent a fortune advertising on Bob Wright's NBC? (I realize he is no longer in that position.) Is it the US government who mandated the vaccines in the first place? What about The American Academy of Pediatrics who have steadfastly denied any link, even as they added a flu vaccine with 25 micrograms of mercury to the childhood schedule?

I suppose that I sound like I'm writing an X-Files episode. Well, it feels that way sometimes. "The truth is out there." was the show's motto after all.

Did Mrs. Wright suddenly change her mind? I don't think so. She is media savvy. She could have easily hemmed and hawed and said just enough to keep me from foaming at the mouth without making the firm promises you'll hear on this clip. I think she spoke from her heart and gut. I'll let you be the judge.

The clip is only two and half minutes long. I'm the shaky voiced gal who asks the second question. You'll hear Mrs. Wright say, "My new friend, Kim." Although that ship might have sailed after this post.

I'd like to thank these folks at Autism Media for providing the technical work for me.

David Kirby: Autism Speaks: Don't Rule Out Vaccines

2008-11-10T22:09:35Z

Is the vaccine-autism debate over? Not according to the co-founder of the largest, most mainstream, most influential autism organization in the world.

In an article published in the Daily Telegraph of the UK, Autism Speaks co-founder Bob Wright, former head of NBC and grandfather to an autistic child, is quoted rather extensively on the vaccine controversy.

Mr. Wright is essentially saying the same thing as I have been saying for quite some time: This debate is not over, and it is incumbent upon our government to study the long-term effects of our national vaccine schedule on (genetically) susceptible individuals.

Here is what he said:

There is no question but that autism is partly genetic and partly environmental, but we don't know whether environmental factors account for 30, 50 or 60 per cent of cases ... we ought to be able to zero in on some of the environmental factors in early childhood. Vaccines are one of the variables.

The last vaccine (my grandson) Christian had before he regressed was MMR - that's why my daughter concentrates on that. I don't know whether his autism is linked: it was certainly coincidental, what we don't know is if it was causal. Nor do we know whether the thimerosal (the mercury-based preservative used in vaccines) is a factor, although mercury is clearly poisonous.

Governments want to run from that issue but they should become more aggressively involved. They have to follow children through to see if there are any effects. When we spend so much money on vaccines, we should be spending money tracking each year group.

Mr. Wright's comments are very much in line with other prominent Americans, including Barack Obama, John McCain and former NIH Director Dr. Bernadine Healy.

Since 2002, I have been researching the potential connection between mercury, vaccines and other possible environmental "triggers" and autism. I believe that the majority of autism cases are caused by a combination of genetic susceptibilities and environmental factors.

In my recent lectures, I lay out evidence to suggest a scientific link between autism and heavy metals and multiple simultaneous vaccinations in at least some subsets of genetically vulnerable children. My main sources are leading studies done at major universities and published in top-flight peer-reviewed and indexed journals, as well as officials, agencies and panels of the United States government.

Research into mercury, vaccines and autism continues today at universities and within the federal system, as well as at large mainstream private organizations such as Autism Speaks.

Autism Speaks recently authorized three studies on thimerosal and autism, and I know for a fact that the foundation is considering funding some more groundbreaking, unprecedented research into the possible links between vaccines and autism.

Some of the most vocal opponents of the autism-vaccine theory have received grants from Autism Speaks for their own research projects - mostly genetic in nature. One might legitimately wonder now if their criticism will remain as harsh and shrill towards Mr. Wright's beliefs as they plan their return to Autism Speaks for more research grants.

They will be in good company. In 2008, the following groups and individuals have all advocated or considered exploring possible links between vaccines and autism:

The Director of the CDC

Chairman of the U.S. House Science Subcommittee on Investigations

HHS Vaccine Safety Working Group

CDC Vaccine Safety Research Agenda Authors

Medical personnel at HHS Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

Strategic Planning Workgroup of the IAC Committee

Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network - CISA

Autism researchers at Johns Hopkins University Medical School

The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation

America's health insurance companies

Autism Speaks

The former head of the NIH and American Red Cross

Both Presidential Candidates

This post was based on a blog originally posted at www.ageofautism.com.

Kim Stagliano: Where's Our Bailout? 3 Kids with Autism. No Job. Again.

2008-11-10T14:00:17Z

Hi, Kim here. By now, you know my husband Mark and I have three girls with autism. Our life is more difficult that I could convey to you in a book the size of the Bible, let alone a short post. One hour ago, my husband lost his job. This is the third job he's lost in seven years.

Isn't that shocking?

Was your first thought, "What a deadbeat!" No, he is not.

Was your second thought, "Is he a lazy-good-for-nothing bum?" No, he most certainly is not.

He's a talented, hard working, college-educated sales professional in the houseware and giftware industry. He's a good husband and a wonderful father to three little girls who will depend on him for the rest of their lives (how's that for pressure?) who works 60 hours a week and is honest to a fault.

And he's out of work.

Again.

Why is he out of work? Because retail sales in America are shot to pieces. He's been on the corporate side of the business and thought that moving to the representative side might mean more job security, with dozens of product lines to sell instead of just one. Not so much. After all, who has any money to shop for pretty house stuff in this economy? After watching gas prices skyrocket to $4.00 and more per gallon, folks are hanging onto every nickel as if it's their last. Most of Mark's accounts stopped writing purchase orders right after the economy's collapse in September, and his company's business went kaput.

He was the last hired, and you know that goes. Adios. That's the thing about losing your job. When you do get hired? You're the last man in -- and the first man out.

I'm watching the reports that AIG is going to get more money from the government. GM is lining up so Uncle Sam can pay them for the mistake of making too many of the wrong vehicles for too long. Wall Street muckety mucks have their hats in their hands for bonus payouts using money Mark and I paid into taxes.

Dammit, we've worked hard to hold our life together. We've never said, "Times are tough, screw you!" to our creditors. We've paid our bills on time. We paid Peter and Paul and robbed no one. We haven't gotten divorced. Our kids are neat and clean and happy and doing the best they can given the crappy deck they were dealt courtesy of the scourge we call autism.

We've cut back, changed our lifestyle, made sacrifices. In 2005, we sold our home so we could pay off our mortgage and avoid bankruptcy. I watched my husband look in the rear view mirror as we drove out of our neighborhood for the last time with tears in his eyes. Not for himself. For us. The family he vowed before God to care for. We headed to my parent's house, 600 miles away. Yes, Mark, Kim and three kids with autism, we all moved into my parent's house. We were like a freaky reality show.

We're now renters. No more American dream of home ownership for us.

Before we sold our house, I had the garage sale from hell. And every Christmas since, I recall all those decorations I sold for pennies on the dollar so we wouldn't have to pay to store them. I miss my stupid Santa wreath from JoAnn's Fabrics. Isn't that silly? I miss my scratched kitchen table where Mark and I sat and dreamt of raising a family and fed our babies dinner and wanted nothing more than a nice, normal life.

What the hell happened?

At that garage sale, I refused to sell the awards (beautiful fine China bowls) that Mark won when he was with Lenox China. One reads, "Rookie of the Year: 1991" and the other reads, "District Manager of the Year: 1992." My husband was the first person to ever win those awards back to back. As often as I remind him that he's still a good salesman and husband, sometimes it's better to look at those bowls. They're more concrete than a wife's words. (Soon we'll be eating bagged cold cereal out of them, I suppose.)

We sold our life out of our driveway so we could remain solvent and honorable. It's how we were raised and how we're raising our girls. "Do the right thing!" Today I ask, "For what? "

At the end of the day, we're saps, aren't we? Mark and Kim Stagliano are total saps. Two idiots who pay their bills on time and give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

There is no bailout for people like Mark and me and millions of Americans who have lost or are about to lose their jobs.

I'd keep writing, but my screen is suddenly blurry. If I can't get a bailout, can I at least have a bail bucket? It's getting inexplicably wet here at my keyboard in Connecticut. Thank God we bought cheap tissue at Costco last week. It had better last us a long while. I fear we'll need it.

Paige Donner: Greening Hollywood: Green Moms at TreeHouse For TotSpot

2008-11-09T23:11:32Z

TotSpot is a new social networking site for parents and their kids to post family pictures and information online. Hollywood moms and dads, including a few familiar faces, turned out with their tikes for its recent launch hosted at TreeHouse Social Club, benefiting Generation Rescue.

Jenny McCarthy and Son

Greening Hollywood: Can you tell us a bit about Generation Rescue?

Jenny McCarthy: Generation Rescue is a parent-run organization that helps and has helped many, many moms and dads these past 10 years recover their children from autism. There are thousands of them through Generation Rescue that are getting their kids better. We basically teach moms and dads about diet, about detox and that's how [their kids] get better.

GH: Did Sarah Palin's youngest child raise some awareness for our nation on autism?

Jenny McCarthy: It raised awareness in that I got to know her better. But she didn't really sell me on things that she'd be able to do. She didn't say, 'Hey, everyone! Autism isn't covered by insurance so I'm going to make that happen.' There weren't any particular points that made me jot them down other than, 'Hey other mom with a special needs kid...' There wasn't enough ammo there.

Generation Rescue is an international movement of scientists, physicians and parent-volunteers researching the causes and treatments for autism and mentoring thousands of families in recovering their children from autism. www.generationrescue.org

McCarthy wrote a book called Mother Warriors that chronicles her experience with her child's autism and the cure she found.

GH: How can you fit being green into a busy "mommy" schedule?

Jenny McCarthy: The one thing you can do is just switch your grocery store. If you went to Whole Foods, 75% of your choices are going to be green, because you're going to be buying organic, you're going to be buying non-toxic cleaning products there which I'm a firm believer of...

People say to me, 'Well, it costs extra. We can't really afford it.' But I say yeah, well, it's amazing how you're able to afford your Starbuck's every day, and all these other extras that if you just managed your budget you would absolutely be able to shop at Whole Foods and become a Green Mom.

GH: Is there room in Hollywood for a Green Mom Coalition?

Jenny McCarthy: There is. The way it will happen and the way it is happening is through our kids becoming ill. Women are much more ready to change the world for their children than they are for themselves. So this generation of Moms who have kids with ADD, ADHD, Autism, Asperger's... have much more of an inkling to be green and make the world a safer place.

I think that Green Moms, let's call it The Green Momfia, is definitely the moms who have suffered with sick kids.

Tori Spelling shares her take on TotSpot

"Being a mother of two, the internet is very important to me. I'm always online doing research, trying to find other moms that I can be friends with and activities for my kids so I think creating something like TotSpot online is a very useful thing for moms and kids.

I know I depend on other moms to tell me the new thing they've found, the new place to go. If we can all exchange information that would be really cool."

Joely Fisher is mother to a 3 year old and a 2 month old and is also part-owner, along with Jeannine Chanin and Tricia Leigh-Fisher, of The TreeHouse Social Club on Robertson Boulevard. Joely enjoys her green lifestyle.

Joely Fisher and Baby

"I had the great pleasure of driving for a month the hydrogen BMW. They're not available now but they could be at a moment's notice if we just realized that there are other fuel sources."

Greening Hollywood: How can you work "green" into a busy mom's schedule? Is it a lot of extra effort?

Joely Fisher: You make habits bad or good. I bought these amazing flashcards made by a company called Eeboo. They teach kids about recycling and turning the lights off and unplugging things... everything you can imagine for the kids to start off on the right path. I'm hyper-conscious of that.

The flashcards are full of pictures, they're very child-like and bright. I think they are age-appropriate for kids as soon as they can formulate a word in their mouth.

GH: Is there room here in Hollywood for a Green Mom's Coalition?

JF:That would be an amazing thing. If you start their little lives off on the good path, then you're going to create amazing humans, so why not?

Adam Katz and Michael Broukhim are the founders of TotSpots, "a social networking site for families to connect and share"

Both entrepreneurs are under 30, are Harvard grads and neither have kids. So how did they end up focusing on tiny tots?

Katz explained, "We're both part of extended families that are a little bit scattered so one of the things that we wanted to do as cousins and uncles is to build something that connected us to our families. It's a vehicle for families to stay in touch with each other and share memories. We realized that within families, the most important things are the kids so that's why we built TotSpot. It's built around the kids about the kids and it's a great way for parents to share memories about their children. It gives all the family members that might be at family events such as birthdays, holidays...who are taking pictures, a way to contribute and share."

Broukhim said,"We created TotSpot.com as a private online scrapbook, TotSpot profiles contain photos, videos, milestones, favorites, and growth charts that can only be seen by invited family and friends."

"The TreeHouse Social Club, which is a great LA organization," chimed in Katz, "put us in touch with Generation Rescue who is the charity we partnered with for our launch party today. It's a place for parents to bring their kids, hang out and engage with them in a bunch of different activities."

Josh Berman, co-founder of MySpace, brought his triplets to the launch and said that Mike and Adam have worked into the site extremely good encryption to ensure privacy and security of the site and any profiles parents may set up for their kids. He said he is not incubating TotSpot per se, but rather still in the investigating stages of the social networking site.

Kim Stagliano: Palin: From Charming to Charmin

2008-11-07T13:31:26Z

I have no love lost for Sarah Palin. None. Nada. Zip. That said, I don't think the national media or the McCain campaign should destroy her now that they have lost the election. Have some class and just move on. McCain has no one to blame but himself and that tall glass of Kool Aid he drank before choosing her as his VP pick.

I believe Governor Palin was pulled out of relative obscurity onto the McCain ticket in large part because she did not abort her special needs son. Governor Palin was "pretty, pretty, proof" that McCain was pro-life.

That's said, will you look at McCain staffers on Fox News (Fox News!) ripping Governor Palin apart? They are gleefully reporting, "She didn't know what countries make up NAFTA! She didn't know Africa is a continent! She spent tens of thousands of dollars more than allotted on clothing for herself and her family!" And my favorite whining dig, "She met with advisors in a towel!" (Probably the best moment of the campaign for them.)

She is exactly who they invited to join their ticket. A woman who attended five colleges to get a four year degree. A woman who could not tell Katie Couric what newspapers she read. An attractive, ambitious and successful politician who went from Mayor of a small town to the Governor's office. McCain chose her to be next in line for the Presidency. He put pandering to a narrow voter bloc over the country's best interest. And then he smelled votes and turned his eyes to my voting bloc, the disability and autism community. (I should point out that McCain himself is actually very up to date on autism and has been a strong advocate for our kids. We hope he'll continue to fight for our kids in the Senate.)

In my opinion, McCain used Governor Palin her to seduce the disability community, including autism parents, saying she "knew more about autism than anyone he knew." That's ludicrous. Palin as an expert on disabilities and autism? Ain't no way. Let me tell you this, six months into my daughter Mia's autism diagnosis, I was no expert. I defy you to find one honest parent of a child with Down Syndrome who will claim she was an expert before the child turned one. If anything, every passing month and milestone buries you deeper in medical, therapy and early intervention questions.

Then there's the issue of Governor Palin's sister Heather Bruce, who has a 13 year old son with autism. She was dragged into the spotlight as the poster Mom for autism. Even my Mother called me to say, "Did you hear Governor Palin has a nephew with autism?" as if that was a game changer. It was interesting. It had potential. But here's what Ms. Bruce said of the Governor in an interview on Autism One radio, "She has a lot to learn." Guess what? My kids' aunts and uncles aren't experts on autism either. Expertise doesn't happen by osmosis or shared DNA.

It seems to me that the McCain campaign set Governor Palin up like one of those bowling pins Obama couldn't knock down. She was charming when she joined their team. And now that they've tanked - she's Charmin being flushed away. They're displaying vicious sexism and they're just plain nasty. They couldn't convince me to vote for their candidate, but they've managed to make me feel a little bit sorry for Governor Palin.

Read more: Mccain, Autism, Loss, Sexism, Sarah Palin, Politics News

Ariane de Bonvoisin: Should Autism Be Treated With Dietary Changes?

2008-11-07T11:29:13Z

In my Change Nation podcast this week, I had the privilege of speaking with Jenny McCarthy, author of Louder than Words and Mother Warriors. The first book speaks to her personal experience with her son Evan's autism diagnosis. The second chronicles the experiences of both McCarthy and other mothers who are trying to change the way autistic children are treated.

During our conversation, McCarthy spoke about the controversy over her argument that autism can be treated with diet and vitamins, and the inspiration she finds in the stories of other families fighting for their children's lives, and her website Generation Rescue.

Whatever you believe about autism and its root causes, you can't help but be moved by McCarthy's voice and passion as a mother. Her work is an inspiration to all who believe that change can begin with just one person.

David Kirby: Rain, Autism, and Mercury

2008-11-03T22:14:05Z

A new study out of Cornell University says that children growing up in the rainiest or snowiest areas of the country seem to have a higher risk for autism than children living in drier climates.

The authors estimated that removing precipitation as a factor in autism would slice the prevalence of the disorder by 33% to 43%.

Among the possible explanations given were: A lack of vitamin D from a sun-deprived life under the clouds, an increased amount of time spent indoors amid toxic household chemicals, or the presence of dangerous neurotoxins in the precipitation itself, which in turn might trigger a genetic predisposition to ASD.

One of the most omnipresent, growing (and obvious) air-borne neurotoxins in the world to consider, of course, is mercury.

For a number of years, I have questioned whether rising levels of mercury from coal-fired power plants and other sources might be contributing to the overall body burden of heavy metals in pregnant women and infants in North America and elsewhere.

This "background" mercury, combined with mercury from maternal seafood consumption, dental amalgams, the vaccine preservative thimerosal, and other sources, might combine and accumulate in the systems of genetically susceptible infants and fetuses, resulting in autism, I have speculated.

It is not clear how mercury fallout onto land and surface water can cause higher levels of inorganic mercury in the bloodstreams of humans. But a recent study of federal data showed that the percentage of Americans with detectable levels of inorganic mercury in their blood increased eightfold between 2000 and 2004.

These are the same years that we see burgeoning levels of mercury being spewed into the atmosphere from industrializing areas of the world, particularly in China and other Asian countries.

The US Government has detected "mercury plumes" that carry the dangerous neurotoxin in great quantities across the Pacific and, within five days, found them hovering just offshore of San Diego, California. (See Map HERE)

At a recent vaccine forum at Hackensack University Medical Center, in New Jersey, I made this observation, and mentioned that the mercury carried aloft through the atmosphere will come down in the form of rain along the west coast or, during drier periods, continue eastward until it finds wetter, rainier parts of the country, where it is washed to the ground. (Mercury deposition maps HERE and HERE)

The evidence to show that rainy weather leads to increased mercury deposition on the ground is ample. In fact, scientists use rainfall as a measure to estimate mercury deposition in the environment.

One study from the University of Central Florida, showed that 80% of the atmospheric mercury fallout in Florida occurs during the rainy season. In fact, the average amount of mercury deposited on the ground per square meter, per week, was three times higher in the wet season (600 nanograms) than the dry season (200 nanograms).

There is likewise evidence to suggest that higher levels of background mercury are linked to a greater risk of autism. Two peer-reviewed studies from the University of Texas have suggested an increased risk of autism associated with physical proximity to mercury-emitting coal-fired powered plants and other industrial facilities.

A third study, funded by the CDC and published in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives, showed that children born in the most polluted tracts of the San Francisco Bay Area (heavy metals like mercury carried the highest risk) were 50% more likely to develop autism.

"Our results suggest a potential association between autism and estimated metal concentrations in ambient air around the birth residence," concluded the government-sponsored study, (which was essentially ignored by the media).

Suddenly, the "Mercury Rain" hypothesis starts to make a little more sense. Not that coal from China could cause autism directly, but prenatal mercury exposures might make children more susceptible to other environmental triggers, including vaccine ingredients.

Richard Lathe, an autism expert from Pieta Research in Edinburgh, Scotland, told the Washington Post that the new study's findings almost certainly implicate rainfall, at the least.

"Statistical correlations do not necessarily imply causality," he said, but added, "the authors demonstrate, with better than 99 percent certainty, that the correlation is not by chance."

Lathe believes the most likely explanation, "is that rain carries chemicals in the atmosphere to the ground." He said that, "Emissions from manufacturing industries, power plants (ie, coal), and from domestic waste incineration generally rise to the troposphere to be diluted into the large volume of the atmosphere. Precipitation can dump this load back on the land, to be absorbed by plants and animals in the food chain."

And, Lathe noted, "There has been a suggestion that maternal exposure to environmental toxins might contribute to autism in children," he said.

I am not the only one to suggest that ALL mercury exposures - both environmental and vaccine-related - must be taken into account when trying to asses the risk of mercury and autism.

In my book, Evidence of Harm, I noted that Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Vaccine Safety Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and a vaccine authority, said in 1999 that, "Mercury accumulated in women is transferred to their children prenatally and in breast milk." Subsequent exposures from other sources, "including biologic products, (ie, vaccines), are presumed to be additive to their baseline body loads."

And in 2006, a special panel of the NIH wrote that background mercury exposures must be taken into account when assessing the risk of autism and thimerosal.

"Panel members expressed a concern that thimerosal dose, administered through a series of vaccinations, may provide a poor surrogate measure of the cumulative exposure of a child to organic mercurials. Exposures through diet or other environmental sources would not be documented reliably," the NIH panel wrote.

Can rain cause autism? Of course not. But could it pull mercury down from the skies - mercury carried aloft from far away countries across the seas - and affect unborn and newborn children to the point of making them more vulnerable to autistic regression? Perhaps.

This new study makes one thing fairly clear to me: Autism is not a purely genetic disorder. Our changing, endangered, dirty environment is playing a role.

Tom Cosgrove: Special Needs Children and This Election

2008-11-03T13:47:24Z

In the past few days there has been a round of press coverage on Sarah Palin and her speech on special needs children.

Kyle's Treehouse was created by Jennifer Westphal the mother of an autistic son. See what she has to say about this electionand Barack Obama.