If there has been a more harmful urban legend circulating in our society than the vaccine-autism link, it is hard to know what it might be. Writes Arthur Caplan, Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he co-directs the Ethics and Vaccines Project, in an op-ed in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Despite no scientific proof to the contrary"-”thimerosal has been removed from vaccines in this and other countries for many years, with no obvious impact on the incidence of autism“"it seems that a connection between vaccines and autism has become entrenched in the public consciousness; has become the stuff of urban myth. Caplan cites more than a few examples of how anti-vaccine advocates have had an impact on public health, and not necessarily for the better: When one of my students recently conducted a pilot study of attitudes about the new cervical-cancer vaccine, fears about autism were prominent among the reasons many respondents gave for being wary of the vaccine. Friends of mine continue to tell me of parents in Lafayette Hill, Voorhees, Greenville and Downingtown who won’t have their children vaccinated because of the risk of autism. States continue to allow parents to opt out of vaccines on “philosophical” grounds - perhaps the only arena in American public life where “secular philosophy” is given legal standing in public policy. And even some young health-care workers report that they don’t get important vaccines that would protect them, their families and their vulnerable patients against death because of worries about autism and vaccines. Not science, but distrust"of “medicine, science, government and experts, a distrust that has little to do with scientific studies or expert opinions”"fuels anti-vaccine fervor. A just-published study by Stanford researchers highlights the disconnect between what science journalists report about autism (environmental causes for autism comprise 48% of their reporting) and what scientists actually study (brain and behavior research accounts for 41% of their research). It is the extent of this “disconnect”"-between scientific evidence confuting a vaccine-autism link on the one hand, and a continued “populist” belief that “vaccines caused my child to become autistic“"-that puzzles and yet intrigues me. Can it be that the “establishment” of scientists have sequestered themselves so far away up in the gleaming ivory tower white of their research labs that they simply cannot hear the stories of parents who again and again offer the simple evidence of their eyes: One day my child was normal. The next day, after the vaccine, he was not. That said, I will offer up a bit of my own experience which is, I know a vaccine did not cause my son Charlie to be “become” autistic. Indeed, I think he was as he is from the time he was conceived: Charlie has always been Charlie. Just as Charlie was being diagnosed with autism in July of 1999, Jim and I started to read website after website about a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. We wracked our memories, I checked the journal I have kept from the time I was expecting Charlie, we went over and over the medical records: No. And yet, when Charlie turned five, we decided not to have him vaccinated. (Despite Jim’s too-obvious statement: “It can’t make him autistic. He always it.”) For an hour I held a sweaty, miserable, screaming, writing Charlie in my lap as a nurse tried to draw enough blood out of him to have his titres checked. After exchanging some emails messages with other parents, Jim and I wrote a letter seeking a religious exemption against having Charlie vaccinated and even today as I recall the wording of that letter, the lines from the Bible quoted, I know I signed without believing what was on that letter. “Vaccine” and “autism” had become for me"have become in the public psyche"not merely linked. These two words, which have nothing intrinisically to do with each other, have become equated, and because of coincidence, of a correlation that seems to contain a clue to causation: An 18-month-old child receives her or his immunizations. An 18-month-old child is noticed to not be playing in varied ways, or interacting, or speaking. The parent knows they have “done everything” to ensure their child’s health and development, has followed the advice of the pediatrician exactingly, and then some, so it must be some external agent, some mysterious force, that has caused this terrible change in a child. And"-because so much seemed to go wrong when the doctor’s advice and instructions were first followed"the parent, now with not only a “diseased” child but one with hard-to-control behaviors, turns away from traditional medicine and seeks answers elsewhere. I think, that is, it is possible to understand why so many parents believe in a vaccine-autism link. What I am trying still to understand, is how to dispute such a link; as Professor Caplan’s op-ed suggests, appeals to the evidence of science have yet to be effective. When I was enrolling Charlie in the school district in the town we now live in back in May, I discovered that a letter stating our “religious grounds” for objecting to his being vaccinated was not going to be accepted without having to take things much farther. We were desperate, not because we have an autistic child, but because we needed to make sure that Charlie was in a school placement, as his old school was closing, and the fear he underwent when we kept him out of school in November of 2005 seemed to us much worse than any threated from a vaccine. Late last spring, Charlie received the shots he had not had at the age of 5. He looked at the nurse sticking the needle in his arm, maybe winced a bit. There was no crying and we walked out to the car, and that was that. Perhaps if more stories of how “a vaccine didn’t cause my child’s autism” were heard, we could start to tease apart the vaccine-autism link and show what strange bedfellows these two have been all along. ASD, Aspergers, autism, autism spectrum disorder, children, health, MMR, parenting, PDD NOS, science, vaccine

Raising Kids - Hi. This is the first time that i have posted a question, but i was wondering if any other parents out there could help. Son 1 is 6 1/2 and is currently going through the Autisem and Diagnostic clinic. I have been told that this is basically a Toddler burns bottom on hot slide Stuff - The boy was flown to Palmerston North hospital at midday yesterday from Ngaruru Station, a remote farming settlement northeast of Marton. Square Trust rescue helicopter pilot Dave Fielding said the accident had happened at the boy’s home, and his Toddler’s death from cold ruled a homicidePittsburgh Post-Gazette - The death of 23-month-old Nyia Page, whose body was discovered Sunday in a wooded area of Rankin, has been ruled a homicide, but authorities were releasing little other information yesterday. The Allegheny County medical examiner’s office said the Body of toddler found in wooded area outside PittsburghPhiladelphia Inquirer - PITTSBURGH - The body of a young girl was found in a wooded area outside Pittsburgh on Sunday, just blocks from where a 23-month-old girl was reported missing a day earlier. Rankin Mayor Nicholas Glova said investigators found the body of a girl Dad Allegedly Uses Stun Gun On ToddlerChannel 6000 - ALBANY, Ore. - An 18-month-old baby is in protective custody after his father allegedly shocked him with a stun gun. An Albany woman brought her son to the police department Saturday to report the abuse. Rian James Whittman, 23, is accused of using a

A certain red spot of paint on the wooden stairs of a St. Paul play structure. Red socks, toddler-size, from the Gap. When Charlie was two years old, he used to stop on the stairs and stare and stare and stare at that red spot, and when we tried to get him to move away, was he enraged. Around the same time, he began only to wear red socks because those were the only pair he pulled out. How Do We See Red? Count the Ways in today’s New York Times says of the color red: Red is the premier signaling color in the natural world, variously showcasing a fruitful bounty, warning of a fatal poison or boasting of a sturdy constitution and the genes to match…….. “Our visual system was shaped by colors already in use among many plants and animals, and red in particular stands out against the green backdrop of nature,” said Dr. Nicholas Humphrey, a philosopher at the London School of Economics and the author of Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness “If you want to make a point, you make it in red.” Because humans have more of the “two cone types set to red and yellow wavelengths than … those sensitive to short, blue-tinged light,” we are able to distinguish more different varieties of red than of the color blue and hence are (according to the New York Times article) more drawn to red. Though I have to wonder. We slowly taught Charlie to move on past the red spot and up the play structure and down the slide; we rotated the colors of the socks in his drawer. And then there are Charlie’s current favorite color choices, for his blue blanket and his green squishy ball: It is that all he used to see was red, and now he prefers the less-varied hues of blue? ASD, Aspergers, autism, autism spectrum disorder, Brain, children, color, eye, science, vision

Barli the Goat On a farm in this part of Oregon we spend more time trying to get things NOT to grow than the other way around. In my typical obsessive fashion I laid awake trying to figure out what to do about the blackberry briars that threatened to overtake us. Sure, weed killers are somewhat effective, but that sort of defeats the whole, “organic” farm thing. Suddenly it came to me. “A goat! That’s what I need: a goat.” And I knew just where to get it. My friend from England, Naomi, raises and sells goats on the hoof, by the pound. She has two signs at the end of her driveway"one in English, the other in Spanish. Apparently goat meat is in hot demand (something I never would have suspected frankly.)Once I’ve made up my mind about something I wouldn’t let a simple thing like, oh say, mentioning it to my HUSBAND hinder me. I “patiently” (translation: barely could sleep and was up before dawn with anticipation) waited to call Naomi the next morning. “I have a goat question.” I said. “A goat question? Do you have a goat?” She replied. (Remember the English accent). “That’s my question, I need a goat. Do you have one for me?” “I’ve got just the one!” she said with cheer. I paid Naomi with my egg money and some fresh honey, and by 1:00 that afternoon I was on my way back home with my three children…and a bawling goat in the back of my station wagon. I felt pretty happy. The goat, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. I quickly learned why they call them “kids”, they cry like children. He’d only stop crying if I sat in his pen and held him. As soon as he’d quiet down I’d try sneaking out like when I’m putting my children down for a nap, but he’d have none of that. Unfortunately, just when I had to run to the house for a moment, my husband, Nobuo, drove in to the wailing sound. You should have seen his face. It was a look that said, “Oh no, she’s done it again.” This is a man who has the patience of Job. He didn’t say a word about the baby ducks (loves them), the chickens (he hates them, but likes the eggs) and he only shook his head and sighed deeply when he saw the beehives. By the looks of him, he wasn’t too thrilled by the goat. The children helped name him Barli, but I must say I influenced the vote. We chose it from one of our favorite books, Heidi. It was preferable to “Shneehopli”, which was their first choice. Much to my dismay however, it didn’t take long for them to adopt their father’s name for him, “Stupid Goat!” as he got into a fair amount of mischief. In retrospect, we might have named him Houdini because he made quite a number of surprising escapes. Barli cried for 2 days until he lost his voice and could only whisper, “meh” when greeting me. I began to understand why goats have their reputation for trouble. I put him on a ring tether in ground (in the vicinity of the blackberries) and he persistently jerked on it until he was free. Our first fencing attempts didn’t hold him, his separation anxiety and longing for me meant sooner or later he’d be at the front door butting his head against it to let me know he was waiting to have his ears scratched. My husband muttered under his breath and I began formulating my apology as I questioned my judgment despite how adorable Barli was. Barli stopped his bawling once he roomed at night with the chickens and ducks, nibbling on their strawbale house, but he’d still drop everything in a heartbeat and ditch his new friends for me. The children and I quickly grew to love him. His eyes were so soft, his floppy ears so endearing! But, he was, in equal measure: cute and ineffective in the area of brush control at first. Oh, he liked blackberry bushes, but he also enjoyed raspberry, blueberry and the tender young leaves of my fruit trees. “At least we won’t have much pruning to do this year.” I quipped cheerfully to my husband. His response was simply a sigh and a shaking of the head. “They’ll grow back…” I muttered to myself. I trained him on a leash and he’d go everywhere with us, happy just to be our companion. Eventually when we’d let him out for walks we didn’t even need the leash as he ambled along agreeably with us. We found however, that it was preferable to let him trail behind or alongside, and not to follow in his footsteps unless we stepped lightly. Barli especially liked to walk to the neighbor’s blackberry patch (the grass is always greener and all that I suppose). In any case, Barli did eventually take to OUR blackberry bushes and started earning his keep for more than just being adorable. I decided to pretend I’d never had any doubts after all about the newest member of our family. (Shhhh, don’t tell!) One day he indisputably earned his keep once and for all. I’d spent 3 hours making an acorn wreath decoration with my children for Mighty Oaks Children’s Therapy Center. When I finished I realized I’d been bent in an awkward position; my spine felt locked up between my shoulder blades. After trying to stretch it for a couple of days to no avail, I realized that a trip to the chiropractor might be in order. I hated to think of spending the money, we were on a tight budget. Plus, I had things to do, such as pulling out my corn stalks, and conveniently they would be used at the above mentioned Mighty Oaks to decorate with an autumnal theme. Despite my light scolding, Barli and my daughter were leaping around and generally getting in my way having a grand time of it. Suddenly in a great burst of enthusiasm, Barli giddily ran pell mell around the house, came up around the other side and caught me off guard as he playfully butted me from the raised bed and knocked me to the ground. HARD. I heard a cracking sound and felt a popping up and down my spine. As I lay there somberly flat on my back. I had two thoughts: “Uh oh, this cannot be good.” And, “Oh no, Nobuo is not going to be happy when I tell him this.” (Anything but the Big Sigh!) But as I got up I realized not only was I NOT injured, the goat had readjusted my spine to its full and upright position. No need to go to the chiropractor! Barli may not have understood my sudden gratitude as I wrapped my arms around him and gave him a big kiss on the nose, but his shining eyes said, “I love you too!” followed by affectionately nibbling my ear.   When I told Nobuo this story, he still sighed, but I felt not a little smug. Barli saved me a $35 chiropractor visit"more than I paid for him. In order to always remember this, or more likely so I can remind my husband that at least once in awhile I’m not totally off my rocker, I put it all down on paper. Later I read this story to my children. They smiled, laughed in recognition, and then offered enthusiastically, “Don’t forget to tell the part about the day Barli came in the house!” I said, “Um…what?!” (That explained the suspicious muddy footprints, er, hoofprints).They suddenly looked guilty. “Nevermind!” they said as they waved their hands in an erasing motion as if this will help me forget what they just said. “Just don’t mention it to your father.” I whispered. -kristi sakai 2004 All rights reserved

Kids seem to have the ability to embarrass their parents with pin-point precision, but ours see especially adept. Perhaps that is one of hidden joys of having three children with Asperger Syndrome, you develop the skill to thrive on embarrassment.   Embarrassing Things my Children Have Shared   In regards to a gift, “My mom gave it to Goodwill, Grandma, she didn’t like it.”  “Our babysitter calls my mom “The Crazy Cat Lady” because we have 15 cats.” “The goat came in the house once, don’t tell my dad. Mama says that won’t make him very happy at all.”  “I threw up RIGHT THERE” (pointing at carpet while guests eat dinner)  “Mama yelled at Papa because he was sleeping instead of paying attention.” To the Schwann’s man, “My mom says you’re cute!”  “I haven’t weaned yet.” (This was in fact, just wishful thinking.)  “Mama wears Sponge Bob underpants. And she has Hello Kitty underpants too! Just like mine. See?” (Holds up example for guest to examine.)  -kristi sakai 2005, all rights reserved Reprinted from the Autism Asperger Publishing Company’s newsletter: AAPC Community of Support for Parents, Professionals and People on the Spectrum 2006 www.asperger.net    

What I Got for Christmas From my husband:    “All I want for Christmas, Nobuo, is for you to take a shovel to the roadkill in front of the mailbox.” Roadkill disappears. Note to self: the secret to getting things done, turn the Santa list into a Honey-Do list. Next year I’m going to ask for the hole in the kitchen floor to disappear!   From my children:

1. The most fabulous assortment of glitter-encrusted construction paper stars, gingerbread men, Christmas trees and ornaments strung from one end of the house to the other.
2. Double pink eye. And they weren’t just generous with me" they “shared” with each other too!

What I gave my husband for our anniversary (December 27th):   I also learned to share. “Happy Anniversary, honey, have you ever had pink-eye before?”   What my husband gave me for our anniversary:   Nobuo, “Sorry, Kristi, your cat died. But I’ll bury him” (In the pouring rain.) Now THAT is true love.   The gifts that best express love and commitment are not things at all, but small gestures and occasionally, shared discomforts. These are innumerable and often go unnoticed because of their mundane nature. The things that are not asked for, but somehow get done anyhow such as how the garbage suddenly disappears from the kitchen or the dirty clothes that miraculously appear in the drawer freshly laundered. And the small tender offerings: “I ran the tub for you”, “Here is your toast”, “Brr, you’re freezing! Put your feet on mine and I’ll warm you up”, “You’re tired, why don’t you go to bed, I’ll take care of the kids”. You can’t buy these things, but if you are especially lucky you have many opportunities to return them. The gifts our children give us are generous beyond measure and utterly priceless: “Mama! Guess what? I made this for you!”, as I wonder what it is and take note that the last of my printer paper has been used up in the project “He got hurt, but I hugged him and he felt better” little sister informs parents of big brother’s injury as she retrieves a band-aide for him. “I cooked it by myself!” as big brother proudly ladles out ramen for himself and his siblings.  “Mama, I’m glad you’re fat because your lap is soft!” my daughter exclaims as she dives onto me. “Papa, can we go do “man stuff” outside now?” our son asks, his eyes lit up with expectation.  “Mama!” I dug up the potatoes!” as my son tracks in dirt and offers up quarter-size spuds that are barely a mouthful “Just exactly what I needed! Thank you!” I say with a hug. “Don’t worry”, our boy reassures his parents, “The eye drops don’t hurt very much.”   To write these things almost diminishes their significance, which is more than words can express. These are the moments that bring us security and a sense of belonging. These are the things that make a family.   In the New Year I wish each of you the ability to recognize the beauty in the mundane and to find joy in the small offerings from those who love you.  -kristi

Hi, It’s been a while since I have written.  Life gets so busy that I find it hard to get everything done.  School is in full swing and the office is really busy….which I love.  I am seeing two new academic coaching students this semester and things are going really well.  Last semester 4 of the 5 did well academically and the 5th one remains on probation.  Academic coaching is not really my passion, but it seems to be working for the students and for the school.  I talked with a parent today;  Her son has Aspergers and I am sure he will benefit from our services.  I hope he will call.  Since we are a counseling center we do not make the initial call, but once a relationship has been established we can follow-up.  I heard of a fun website today called gogratitude.org.  I think!!! I will check.  Until later.  AT

Joanna writes: I’m reading G.K. Chesterton’s slim volume on Saint Francis of Assisi.In it, he makes a great little point about the historical setting for said Saint that totally resonates with how I feel about libertarians who hate religion - or i guess any religious atheists for that matter: To write history and hate Rome, both pagan and papal, [referring to H.G. Wells’ Outline of History] is practically to hate nearly everything that has happened. It comes very near to hating humanity on purely humanitarian grounds. To dislike both the priest and the soldier, both the laurels of the warrior and the lilies of the saint, is to suffer a division from the mass of mankind for which not all the dexterities of the finest and most flexible of modern intelligences can compensate. A much wider sympathy is needed for the historical setting of St. Francis, himself both a soldier and a saint. If religion doesn’t work so well for you and the concept of spirituality is totally baffling, that’s fine. But becoming hateful or crusading about it seems as ridiculous to me as it would be for Asperger-types to rail against the need for empathy and social skills. You’re obviously just missing some hard-wiring, so leave it alone. From my vantage point, the temptation to impute great explanatory power to superstitions and conjectures where observable effects would otherwise have no known explanation is hardly "baffling." It's an essential part of the human pattern-seeking brain. And in this, science and religion share the same root source. Where they part is whether those intutions evolve into testable hypotheses or calcify into immutable dogmas. Thus are we "hard-wired" for many things that may have both positive and negative manifestations. We are social creatures, inclined toward cooperative behavior with fellow members of the pack. One can celebrate how this inclination has yielded nurturing families and the division of labor, while also loathing the tendency of the accompanying "pack loyalty" to stoke the fires of war and prejudice. Speaking of the pack, we also are hard-wired to establish and respect hierarchies within the pack, a tendency whose evolutionary necessity cannot be denied, but which doesn't withstand even a first blush of moral scrutiny. Even still, one can delineate those manifestations of this hard-wiring that are essentially harmless (children's roughhousing, sporting contests) from those that are clearly vile and disgusting (prison rapes, running for political office.) One can look to Rome -- to church and to state -- and see extraordinary examples of human potential, but certainly, examples of human fault, folly and flagitiousness also abound. Are we simply to accept it all as the result of "hard-wiring," above or beyond critical analysis because the bad was so thoroughly intermingled with the good? If so, then why ever make any value judgments about anything? So, yes, I can appreciate the human urge to try to make sense of the senseless and to fish for meaning in the abyss. I revere the majesty of our pattern-seeking brain, and am in awe of all the happy accidents it has bestowed upon us, singularly among the mammals. After all, beavers can build houses, but they can't construct metaphors. Dogs can recognize faces, but they can't spot archetypes. Hyenas can cackle, but they don't appreciate irony. One can drink in the joy of all of this and more.....and still find religion to be not only a crock of shit, but one whose continuing prevalence in human affairs, at best, stymies progress, and at worst, gives comfort to the worst -- the most base and vile instincts -- that remain hard-wired in the circuitry of mankind.

BLOGS La farándula joligudense no da pie con bola -UPDATED '07- -Scarlett Johansson no sabe quién es Josh Hartnett. -La cantante teen-pop Hilary Duff y su novio Joel Madden, cantante de Good Charlotte, se separaron pero en buenas relaciones (?). -Drew Barrymore se separó de Fabrizio Moretti … Sometimes I Feel Like My Only Friend Hartnett’s statement was read by School Administrative District 52 Superintendent Thomas J. Hanson during Thursday night’s regularly … “Both baby and mother are doing fine,” Piazza’s rep, Josh Goldberg, said in a statement to PEOPLE. … let's move north, shall we? We’re watching Here on Earth with Josh Hartnett and that one girl… anyways, it’s kind of good, but at the same time… it’s kind of corny. And my title comes from the movie. It’s complicated, but the guy (not Josh) started witht the … Justin Timberlake Up For Laughs, Josh Hartnett Tries Music: Sundance Justin Timberlake Up For Laughs, Josh Hartnett Tries Music: Sundance Musicwire - The ongoing story is between a professor and Julianne Nicholson , his teacher’s assistant, and interspersed throughout the movie are these interviews she’s … goddamn abc family silly leelee sobieski, josh hartnett is so much hotter than chris klein. i’m totally renting “o” this weekend. GIRLS BB: Balanced field at Twin Lakes Josh Hartnett: my focus is acting, not money and girls Fametastic - Some actors go along for the ride to make a lot of money and meet a lot of girls, but that s never been my focus. He recently has played a man with Asperger s Syndrome … Feeling Old Josh Hartnett Aston Kutcher Kevin Federline This list is of course, not exhaustive. It’s enough to make me feel v small, and if I were to move further, looking at celebrities just within 3 years younger than me.. the list gets even … GOOGLE NEWS MILLER MOVING TO LA? - PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung) MILLER MOVING TO LA?PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung), Austria - 6 hours agoBritish actress SIENNA MILLER is rumoured to be plotting a move to Los Angeles after making friends with Hollywood stars JOSH HARTNETT and LINDSAY LOHAN. … YAHOO NEWS Josh Hartnett isn’t interested in making money and meeting girls (ANI via Yahoo! India News) London, Jan 31(ANI): Actor Josh Hartnett claims he’s not interested in being part of Hollywood blockbusters that make actors “big matinee name” overnight, but instead prefers the kind of movies that he hopes people will love in years to come. The Black Dahlia hunk feels that such films put actors on the fast track to achieving success, making money and impressing women, but rob them of their … Josh Hartnett Opens Up About ‘Painful’ Scarlett Johansson Split (Hollywood.com) Josh Hartnett struggled to cope following his “really painful” split from Scarlett Johansson. Josh blames work for Scarlet break-up (Stuff) Josh Hartnett has blamed work pressures for ruining his romance with Scarlett Johansson.

I found this quote/post intersting:To write history and hate Rome, both pagan and papal, [referring to H.G. Wells’ Outline of History] is practically to hate nearly everything that has happened. It comes very near to hating humanity on purely humanitarian grounds. To dislike both the priest and the soldier, both the laurels of the warrior and the lilies of the saint, is to suffer a division from the mass of mankind for which not all the dexterities of the finest and most flexible of modern intelligences can compensate. A much wider sympathy is needed for the historical setting of St. Francis, himself both a soldier and a saint.If religion doesn’t work so well for you and the concept of spirituality is totally baffling, that’s fine. But becoming hateful or crusading about it seems as ridiculous to me as it would be for Asperger-types to rail against the need for empathy and social skills. You’reobviously just missing some hard-wiring, so leave it alone (Link).