Comments | midnightranter: Idiots, Savants and Celebrities

midnightranter

Idiots, Savants and Celebrities

Apr 03, 2008 00:00

In what can usually be ascribed to a slow news day, CNN has dramatically increased their coverage of autism. They even made a special section for it. Except that it's not just some random slow news day, today was Autism Awareness Day (which I didn't know until I was writing this blog). For too long, autism was ignored or seen as just a ( Read more... )

morality, parenthood, big government, hollywood, babies, self-righteous, bad technology, stupidity, medicine, anger, corruption

Comments 6

angelari April 3 2008, 05:52:15 UTC

I've been doing a lot of reading and research lately into autism and ADD and the like, and there's a lot of arguing taking place by people who actually have autism-spectrum "disorders" that what this might actually represent is a different style of brain function, outside the "norm" but perfectly acceptable nevertheless. There's also very, very little evidence to the idea that autism is actually caused by anything, including immunizations. A lot of that arguing is being done by parents whose children are autistic, and people whose children are abnormal are always going to look for answers. But if mercury toxicity caused autism, I would imagine that there would be a lot more than 5 in 1000 cases diagnosed. If, on the other hand, autism-spectrum disorders are actually due to a difference in brain wiring rather than some sort of brain damage, the increasing numbers of cases might be due to simple evolutionary drift.

Just a thought.

midnightranter April 3 2008, 17:00:14 UTC

There's little evidence because there's not enough peer reviewed proper testing being done. I'm not offering an answer, just asking questions. It could be that thimerosal or lots immunizations are jut risk factors that can increase a genetic predisposition, but not the sina qua non of autism. Mostly, I don't know and when I brought up the question, I already had one doctor respond. One of the main reason we might be seeing more autism cases is that we have broader definitions of autism.

anonymous April 3 2008, 07:05:48 UTC

I am outraged that a new organization such as CNN allows such misnomers to continue to spread ( ... )

midnightranter April 3 2008, 16:55:46 UTC

Ooh. first of all, cool a real doctor (I'm taking you at your word, as I can't check state boards for "anonymous" :)) looking over my rant, I did come out harder on vaccinations that I meant to, but I think there are questions about the increase in number and lack of testing on combined effects of that many vaccinations. I'm gonna be wary of mercury in my system. While I get that thimerosal has been used since the 1930s as a preservative for vaccines, there is a numbers game to be looked at, or at least not scoffed. Completely ruling options was, from what I was taught in science, a bad thing ( ... )

buaidhnobas April 3 2008, 17:12:35 UTC

I don't think there's a single person reading this that will not question the need to protect children from illness, or for the need to increase funding for medical research, especially for children ( ... )

how_i_lie April 3 2008, 08:14:16 UTC

There's been a huge kerfuffle over this in the UK over the past few years, resulting in many panicky parents refusing all immunisations for their children (the original assertion was that the triple MMR vaccination was responsible) and the doctor who started the whole thing is now up in front of the GMC (equiv of the AMA I believe) on charges. There was a piece in the Guardian the other day on this, I'll be back with a link once I find it.

On the other hand, the sheer volume of injections you outline above sounds frightening. I'd have to check in with a child-rearing friend, but I don't think we have anything like as much.