Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
Impassable roads have left the New Republic cut off from the outside world.
Senior representatives from the United Nations are calling for the United Kingdom to be indicted on charges of Genocide after the entire population of Canada died laughing after viewing a CBC News report on the chaos 2 inches of snow wrought on a first world nation.
A lonely hound wails for his master – lost, presumed
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
Updated post here (hopefully with a functioning comments form)
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
A typical Fenland road
Fenland roads are typically straight, level and go on for miles without a break. Usually they’re confined by dykes and "drains" either side – the result of hundreds of years of work reclaiming the vast marshlands. Drain is a Fenland euphemism for death trap.
Drain is a Fenland euphemism
Unfortunately, the more efficient removal of water gave rise to a rapid shrinking
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
Welcome to the New Republic’s That Was The Week That Was In Autism – Part 6Warning: Socrates is angry. If you’ve a problem with coprolalia or indeed literary descriptions of what happens when you have an Autistic child in close proximity to their own poo – fuck off now and don’t ever come back: Autism advocacy isn’t for you.______________________________________Martyrdom Mummy Pisses On Ari
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
News and entertainment media coverage of autism and vaccines in 2009 will be remembered best for some outstanding works of investigative journalism. The Chicago Tribune schooled the moribund newspaper industry with two blockbuster exposés on autism quackery and child abuse. In May the paper introduced America to two physicians who rake in big bucks by chemically castrating autistic children. In November the dynamic reporting duo of Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan exposed the junk science behind chelation therapy and other quack treatments for autism.
In October, Wired Magazine showed us what science writing looks like when stripped of false balance. In Epidemic of Fear, veteran writer Amy Wallace showed readers how the “controversy” over vaccines exists solely in fluff news articles and on fringe, conspiracy-oriented websites. She couldn’t be more right.
But 2009 also had its share of poorly sourced, regurgitated press releases disguised as journalism, the raison d’être for our Ashley Award for Credulity in Science Journalism. The eponymous award is named after the hapless producer of Combating Autism from Within, a multi-part series aired on KOMU-TV in late 2007, noted for its daring combination of pseudoscientific claptrap, cheap voyeurism, cheesy production values, and nauseating self-congratulation.
The envelopes please.
Fox News is synonymous with bad journalism, and it is with no little shame that we reach for its low hanging fruit for the Worst Medical Reporting Ever Award. But we have to agree with Orac at Respectful Insolence who called this Fox 5 segment on the Desiree Jenning’s case hoax “the single worst example of medical reporting for 2009,” and possibly “the single worst example of medical reporting of the decade.”
Jennings was the Washington Redskins cheerleader who claimed that the H1N1 vaccine made her walk backwards. Since that claim by itself wasn’t absurd enough, she also claims she was cured by Dr. Rashid Buttar, a North Carolina alternative medical practitioner reviled by his profession, who allegedly removed the vaccine’s toxins from her body. The Fox News anchors reported the story with a straight face, and practically sneered at the skeptics who pointed out how unlikely it was that Jennings was vaccine injured. The case quickly became a cause celibré for vaccine rejectionist groups, and celebrity vectors Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey lent their support with promises of medical treatment for the disambulatory Miss Jennings. There was even a website where Jennings gave her fans updates on her miraculous recovery.
What Fox News didn’t tell us:
Bonus points:
* * *
Two television stations share the Bungled Business Reporting Award for their uncritical interviews with an autism treatment clinic owner who was later raided and shut down for suspected insurance fraud. Austin’s Fox News affiliate KVET invited CARE Clinic founder, Kazuko Grace Curtin, onto its morning show for what sounds like an infomercial for quack medicine. At one point Curtin defines autism as “a multi-factorial bio-medical disorder with psychiatric symptoms,” a claim that went unchallenged. Tampa’s WTSP also fell for Curtin’s spiel, as the station focused on “a new business in the bay area that puts treatment, research and services for autistic children under one roof.” A phone call to a qualified physician or researcher would likely have revealed that CARE Clinics treatments are not evidence-based, that the research is questionable and most likely aimed at producing a desired result, and that the services included unreliable and unnecessary lab tests.
What they didn’t tell us:
Bonus Points:
* * *
Fox News is shaping up to be the Meryl Streep of bad reporting award winners, netting this year’s When Bad Things Happen to Good Sentences Award, for publishing the following line:
“. ..the rate of increase of autism disorders in children is 4 to 5 percent higher in boys than it is in girls.”
The reporter, Marrecca Fiore, should have written that the autism rate for boys is 4.5 times higher than it is for girls, but obviously became confused with she heard the phrase “rate of increase” used in an entirely different context. The result is a sciency-sounding mash up of words, much like the verbiage that causes reporters to assume scientists are at odds over whether vaccines cause autism, when in fact the matter has been settled for years.
What they didn’t tell us
Bonus points
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
Friday’s long-awaited release of the CDC’s autism prevalence report revealed a long-ignored, disturbing trend: our news and entertainment media still don’t get it.
”Autism affects about 1 in every 110 American children, a 57 percent increase over the last estimate in 2002,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“The new data represent a 50% increase from two years ago, when the agency estimated the prevalence of the disorder at about 1 in 150 children,” says Thomas H. Maugh II at the LA Times blog.
”Autism rates have soared among Maricopa County children in the past five years, increasing 95 percent from 2002 to 2006, according to federal data released Friday,” says the Arizona Republic.
But there is nothing new and shocking about the fact that 1% of children have an autism spectrum disorder. In 1998, UK researchers Lorna Wing and David Potter wrote:
”Because we concentrated on the children with learning disabilities (IQ under 70) we saw very few with the pattern described by Asperger. We had to wait for the study by Christopher Gillberg in Gothenberg to find out how many children with IQ of 70 and above were also in the autistic spectrum. …combining the results of these two studies gave an overall prevalence rate for the whole autistic spectrum, including those with the most subtle manifestations, of 91 per 10,000 – nearly 1% of the general population.”
Got that? It’s been more than 10 years since two leading epidemiologists told the academic world that 1% children show symptoms of autism. So why is this news?
Part of the blame lies with the CDC’s press office, which told reporters in a Friday conference call that autism is an “urgent public health concern.” That’s like waving a doughnut in front of Homer Simpson. Anything that comes after is background noise to journalists angling for a narrative hook. Throw in the fact that most news outlets can’t afford real science writers, and you get reports like this:
”The rate of increase of autism disorders in children is 4 to 5 percent higher in boys than it is in girls.” *
That same Fox News report quoted a vaccine rejectionist at length, who shared his unique version of autism epidemiology:
(Mark) Blaxill said the CDC and National Institutes of Health need to develop a plan of action and work harder to find out why autism spectrum disorders are increasing at such a rapid rate.
”Autism was first identified in the 1940s,” said Blaxill, who has a 14-year-old daughter with autism. “Back then, 1 in 10,000 children were believed to have it and now 1 percent of our children have autism. And it’s not only improvements in the way we diagnose autism. … We’re outraged and we want more research.”
“We’re not anti-vaccination,” Blaxill said. “I support vaccines. … But we see what’s happened with the concern over Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus and the overuse of antibiotics. One thing that’s changed dramatically over the years is the number of vaccinations we’re pumping into our kids. What we’re saying is, let’s investigate our vaccine program. Let’s evaluate safety.”
A real science writer would have caught Blaxill’s spin. First, there are no studies from the 1940s showing a 1:10,000 rate for autism. Second, comparing over-use of antibiotics to vaccines reveals a weak grasp of the science from a from the man who founded a group called SAFEMINDS, but we do appreciate the irony.
In fairness, counting and reporting cases of autism is tricky business, and the story does not easily lend itself to 300 words and a quotebar. There are three main difficulties with counting autism, according to researchers Wing and Potter, the prescient UK epidemiologists:
There is no medical test that can determine whether or not a person has autism. Diagnostic criteria are in terms of descriptions of behaviour. The earliest criteria, suggested by Leo Kanner, were very narrow. The current standard classification systems (ICD-10 and DSM-IV) are much wider, even for the sub-group of ‘childhood autism’ (or ‘autistic disorder’ in DSM-IV). Professionals differ in the way they apply the criteria, even if they are, theoretically, using one of the standard systems. Diagnoses may be recorded in different ways in case notes and centralised data collections.
Diagnostic terms tend to be used in different ways. Sometimes the term ‘autism’ is used to mean Kanner’s original group, sometimes it refers to the wider group called ‘childhood autism’ in ICD 10 and sometimes the whole autistic spectrum, including the individuals described by Asperger. In any case, there is a very great deal of overlap among all the sub-groups named in ICD-10 and DSM-IV and many individuals fit more than one diagnosis within the spectrum.
In epidemiological studies of prevalence, case finding methods vary. Those that involve seeing, assessing and diagnosing every individual in the sample to be examined will tend to find higher numbers than studies that rely on using case notes of individuals who have already been given the diagnosis in local clinics.
In short, any method that relies on medical and administrative records is bound to under-count, unless awareness is extremely good. As awareness improves, the under-reporting diminishes. The biennial CDC count relies on doctors and schools to identify children with autism. As awareness of the disorder grows, and more services become available, more children receive diagnoses, and the rate climbs.
Sullivan at LeftBrainRightBrain reports that a significant number of children categorized as autistic in the study hadn’t been given that diagnosis prior to the study.
”That’s worth repeating—about 23% of 8 year olds identified as autistic were mislabeled as non-autistic by their schools, parents and doctors,” says Sullivan. “That’s an interesting fact for those who claim that autism is easily identified.”
This is not a gloom and doom story, and without firm data that the autism rate are truly rising, there is little cause for alarm. Increased diagnoses means children who were previously ignored are being screened, diagnosed, and, one would hope, accommodated.
* Fox News speak. In reality, the rate of autism is 4.5 times higher in boys than in girls.
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
The American Academy of Pediatric’s new on-line resource is designed to counter the internet’s bewildering crush of unfiltered and questionable health advice. HealthyChildren.org offers credible, up-to-the-minute health advice and guidance for parents and caregivers, along with interactive tools and personalized content.
“Parents have hundreds of questions about their children’s health, and they want detailed answers,” said Jennifer Shu, MD, FAAP, a practicing pediatrician and medical editor of HealthyChildren.org. “HealthyChildren.org empowers parents to be proactive about their children’s health, whether it’s learning about the vaccines their infant needs, the developmental milestones to watch for in their toddler, or how to stay connected with their teenager.”
As the premier web site for child health information, HealthyChildren.org provides support, resources and a host of features to enable parents to quickly find the critical, relevant information they’re looking for.
Parents can learn about seasonal health issues or read about the latest scientific research and AAP policies. By registering with the site, parents can customize the information based on their children’s ages and health topics. The “Ask the Pediatrician” tool allows parents to browse a list of frequently asked questions, or pose their own questions. And a pediatrician finder makes it easy for both first-time and experienced parents to find an AAP-member pediatrician in their area.
Most importantly, all content is developed and reviewed by leading child health experts and reflects the latest scientific research. Whether they’re seeking general information about children’s health, or specific answers to a pediatric issue, parents can be confident in the information they find on HealthyChildren.org.
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Michael Specter | ||||
| www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
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Add Michale Specter’s name to the anti-vaccination movement’s enemies list. The New Yorker magazine columnist and science writer is promoting his book, Denialism, where he gives vaccine rejectionism a deserved whack upside the head.
“Fear is the virus we need to worry about,” Specter told John Stewart Thursday night, noting that half of Americans say they won’t vaccinate themselves against the H1N1 flu, which has already killed thousands. “Sixty-two million people have been given (the H1N1 vaccine), and zero people have been killed or seriously injured by it… It doesn’t seem like a difficult calculus to do.”
Stewart played devil’s advocate, asking why we vaccinate against diseases that don’t threaten us.
“We vaccinate for diseases that we don’t remember are real,” answered Specter. “Measles killed 200,000 people last year, but none of them were in the United States. So measles doesn’t seem like a big deal.” But measles, polio, and other killers are only a plane ride away.
Watch the whole video.
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
America’s shady autism cure industry has been flying under the nation’s media radar for years. Not any more.
Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan at the Chicago Tribune introduce us to the quacks and charlatans who prey on parents in a Pulitzer-worthy series that you can read here and here. The stories follow last May’s blockbuster Trib investigation of autism quackery, including Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David, who chemically castrate disabled children.
Two common criticisms of the investigation, coming from radical anti-vaccine groups such as Generation Rescue, are that the paper dismissed hundreds of medical citations that support alternative bio-medical treatments for autism, and that the Trib missed a bigger, more important story.
Kent Heckenlively, a California grade school science teacher and GR acolyte quoted in the story, lists 32 articles that he sent to the Tribune reporters that he says were ignored. Only 11 are actual medical studies; the rest are news articles, blog posts (including one by Heckenlively himself), a chapter from a textbook, a press release, and a letter from a German physician. The studies are either irrelevant, debunked long ago, or published in low-impact journals. Kudos to Ms. Tsouderos and Ms. Callahan for not falling for Heckenlively’s data dump.
The Defeat Autism Now network, which has much to answer for, responded harshly by telling the reporters to look elsewhere for a story. Executive Director Jane Johnson wrote:
“The painful part of this story is that the Tribune had the opportunity to cover one of the greatest tragedies of the last twenty years: there is no approved treatment for the core symptoms of autistic disorder (there are two FDA-approved medications for irritability associated with autism, Risperdal and Abilify; both are known for unpleasant and sometimes serious side effects). How is it possible that so little progress has been made? Why do medical organizations and government agencies feel no urgency to alleviate the suffering of these children? That’s the real story, and the Tribune has failed to cover it.
Shorter version: There is a dearth of knowledge of how to treat autism, so we will go on pretending like we have the answers.
Which is precisely the point of this well researched and thoughtful series: That the near absence of legitimate treatments for autism has given rise to a cottage industry of unproven and potentially dangerous treatments.
“The Tribune obviously took a lot of time to prepare these articles. They cite the experts in the field,” notes Sullivan at LeftBrainRightBrain, “Let’s face it, the supposed experts in the alternative medical “treatment” of autism are clearly misunderstanding or misrepresenting the research they rely upon. The Tribune did the work, talked to the experts and clearly showed this.”
It’s called journalism, Ms. Johnson. Get used to it. Expect more in the coming months as the news and entertainment media’s narrative switches from “alternative medicine produces miracles” to “science is being highjacked to fool parents”.
Posted in Autism on 02. Jan, 2010
James Rainey of the LA Times examines the abuse hurled at Amy Wallace for her excellent coverage of vaccine rejectionism, and laments the rise of the Google scholar. “Readers who brush up against expertise believe they have become experts,” he writes. “The common man rebels against the notion that anyone — not professionals, not the government and certainly not the media — speaks with special authority.”
Without the internet, America’s anti-vaccine movement would be kept in check, with periodic flare ups related to political climate and disease outbreaks. The rise of computer literacy, high-speed Internet connections, blogging and social networks, says Rainey:
“has emboldened the common man to tell his own story and, sometimes, to disdain trappings like a university degree, professional training or corporate affiliation. The citizen activists often frame themselves as truth tellers fighting against an establishment that is hopelessly venal. No matter that the corruption, routinely claimed, is seldom supported by more than innuendo.”
In our brave new an age of instant information, when virtual communities of like-minded individuals can coalesce and plot in real time, the expert is seen more and more as the middle man who stands in the way of wish fulfillment and easy answers. Why listen to the experts, ask vaccine rejectionists, when you can buy direct from the factory? And thus we have D-list comediennes dispensing medical advice, and talk show hosts inviting crackpot religious figures and celebrity wives to talk about the H1N1 vaccine. We have become, as Thomas Friedman says, as dumb as we want to be.
