• Because thimerosal isn’t an “inevitable” ingredient in vaccines, the Georgia Supreme court says parents can sue vaccine manufacturers in state court, rather than having to go to the federal vaccine court:

The Georgia high court broke ranks with New York, Pennsylvania, and two federal courts to find that the Act does not preempt suits alleging that childhood vaccines are defectively designed because they contain the preservative Thimerosal.

• Jenny McCarthy bought the property next door to her home and plans to build an autism center, she told Access Hollywood.  Also, she escalates the McCarthy/Amanda Peet feud in an interview in Modern Mom magazine:

(Peet) has a lot of balls to come forward and be on that side, because there is an angry mob on my side, and I like the fact that I can say she’s completely wrong.

• PETA’s anti-milk ad makes some people angry, who ask “What autism-dairy connection?” [UPDATE: The billboards have apparently been taken down.]

• And a New York state senate candidate has the most direct autism-related political ad I’ve seen this campaign season.:

Chantal Sicile-Kira mines the experiences and writings of a number of autistic adults for her new book, “Autism Life Skills,” published by Penguin Books and out this week.

Sicile-Kira is a former Orange County resident and the mother of an autistic teenager. Her first encounters with autism, though, were at Fairview State Hospital (now Fairview Developmental Center) in Costa Mesa, where two decades ago she taught self-help skills to teens and young adults who were going to be deinstitutionalized into group homes.

She is a columnist and marketing director for Autism File U.S.A., and a host on Autism One Radio, both of which advocate for biomedical interventions to treat autism. This is her third book. She also wrote “Autism Spectrum Disorders” and “Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum.”

“It’s written for parents, but also for professionals,” she says of “Autism Life Skills.” “It’s important for people who are working with kids on the spectrum to have an idea what adults who have lived through the spectrum say about it.”

Q: In Chapter One, you write about the way autism affects sensory processing: the girl who sets an alarm to remind herself to use the restroom; the physical pain of teeth-brushing; the way clothing tags can cause such irritation. It was eye-opening to read in such detail about how differently each person processes the world. I found myself really loving autistic kids in general a lot more. Did you have the same experience when you were interviewing people for the book?

A: I’ve always had an affinity for children and people with autism ever since I worked for Fairview State Hospital. Interviewing people on the spectrum for my book helped me have more insight and understanding of how much sensory challenges play an important part of their lives. I hadn’t realized that people on the more able end of the spectrum have many of the same challenges, but are able to compensate.

The interviews made me understand more about what my son might be feeling and why he did certain things as a child or does things now. For example, he  always looks down at the ground while he is walking (he has “red-neck” tan on the back of his neck) and I never really understood why. Then I interviewed, Brian King,  a licensed clinical social worker who has Asperger’s and is a writer as well (he has an article in this month’s  Autism File magazine) and found out that when he walks, he looks at the ground because otherwise he would lose his sense of balance. He attributes this to the fact that the part of his brain that determines where his body is in space (proprioception) does not communicate with his vision.    Read the rest of this entry »

As you can see above, we changed the blog topper to remove “epidemic” from the title. (It used to say “Our culture and the autism epidemic.”) This blog has always striven to be very conservative about what we claim as fact, and there is no need for me to claim consensus exists where it does not.

Removing it does not mean that I don’t believe there is an epidemic. And the previous sentence does not mean I believe there is. It means I’ll continue to search on this page for what the evidence shows, and how it affects the public.

Yale researchers last week said studying eye contact in babies can not only help identify autism early, but can help predict the severity of social disability later in life. The Age of Autism blog, which promotes the vaccine-autism connection and biomedical treatments, dismissed the study as a waste of time — as did the majority of its commenters. Steven Novella at the Neurologica blog had a much different reaction, noting, among other things, that such studies can confirm that autism is present and detectable shortly after birth.

Last week’s poll: More than 80 percent of the 1,100 votes said autism is an epidemic. More on that controversy here.

More polls here.

(I’ll be reviewing “Autism’s False Prophets” by Paul Offit as I go, and this is the third entry. Click here to see my comments on chapter one and on chapters two and three. If you think this is too much attention for Offit, rest assured I plan to do this with other significant releases, including Jenny McCarthy’s new book, also out recently.)

First, I have a question. Many of the people I talk to support both the MMR-vaccine hypothesis and the mercury-vaccine hypothesis. I can see how one would accept the logic of one or the other, but what is the connection that would lead someone to believe both? Don’t they contradict each other? These are not rhetorical questions and I’m not trying to make a persusasive argument here; I’m simply unclear. So if you have some insight, email me at sammiller@ocregister.com, or post in the comments if you want to start a conversation.

This comes up because chapters 4-7 of “Autism’s False Prophets” are all about thimerosal: How it was initially suspected, how it scared the CDC into removing it from vaccines, how a lot of studies later seemed to vindicate thimerosal and how blogger Kathleen Seidel went after investigated those who promoted the connection.

As he does with the MMR chapters, Offit spends considerable time making his opponents’ argument for them, to the point that the reader almost starts to wonder which side Offit is on. He quotes reliable scientists who had fears about thimerosal, including the CDC’s AAP’s Neal Halsey. “Few vaccine experts are more respected, more knowledgeable, or more dedicated than Neal Halsey. If he was concerned about something, people listen.”

He writes from the perspective of the moment, very credulously: “The evidence against thimerosal continued to mount.”         Read the rest of this entry »

• This summer’s hot accessory continues. PETA is running anti-milk billboards linking dairy and autism.

• Measuring eye contact really does seem to be the key to early diagnosis, researchers reported. Not just whether a baby has autism, but how bad the child’s social disability will be:

Looking at the eyes of others was significantly decreased in 2-year-old children with autism (P < .001), while looking at mouths was increased (P < .01) in comparison with both control groups. The 2 control groups were not distinguishable on the basis of fixation patterns. In addition, fixation on eyes by the children with autism correlated with their level of social disability; less fixation on eyes predicted greater social disability (r = – 0.669, P < .01).

• ScienceBlogs book club is discussing Paul Offit’s “False Prophets,” and Offit is joining them.

• Michael Phelps joins the list of celebrities getting involved with autism. The swimmer, who is attending a benefit this month, famously has ADHD, which shares some characteristics with spectrum disorders.

Lend 4 Health, the micro-lending Web site I wrote about a bunch in August, is trying to win $10,000 in an online contest. You can vote for them at the Ideablob contest page.

(It’s sponsored by the banking company Advanta, and you do have to register with a valid email address.)

And, as an update, dozens of lenders on Lend 4 Health have now fully funded nine 11 loans to help families pay for biomedical interventions. Adam looks like he’ll be the next request to be funded; so far users have contributed 44 separate loans for nearly $1,000, and he needs just $250 more. [UPDATE: Adam is fully funded.]

Previous posts:

• Lend 4 Health funds controversial treatments
• The mystery lender
• The first borrower

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent veto spree included nixing state Senate Bill 1563, which would have established a work group on health insurance issues related to autism and other developmental disabilities.

Schwarzenegger wrote:

Governor’s SB 1563 Veto Message

To the Members of the California State Senate:

I am returning Senate Bill 1563 without my signature.

The provisions of this bill are currently being accomplished administratively through the Department of Managed Health Care. Therefore, this bill is unnecessary and duplicative of existing work. For this reason, I am unable to support this bill.

The California Legislative Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism recommended the bill.

“We were disappointed in the Governor’s veto of both this bill and AB1825 by Assemblyman Jim Beall, which would have streamlined the dispute resolution process between Regional Centers and other state-funded programs such as schools as they work to support children with autism and their families,” said Bill Bowman, chief executive officer of the Regional Center of Orange County.

“We have no insight into the ‘why’ of his decision, as both bills would have helped clear away bureaucracy and challenge, and might have even saved some critically needed funds for services.”

• Autism Speaks, the Ad Council and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are distributing a tool kit to help teachers spot autism early — and to encourage them to speak to the child’s parents if they suspect autism. School district bean-counters will love this, of course.

• A Harvard researcher says he and his colleagues have located a gene in mice “that may keep neural activity in check — and may one day be manipulated to prevent or reverse neurological problems.” That could include autism, which some speculate occurs because of overactive, “jumpy” nerve cells.

• A school in Scottsdale wants autistic kids to engage with their neurotypical peers at recess.

Schools often use recess time to group autistic children in quiet spaces, where they can play games and learn the art of conversation or send them to the playground to drift.

Karen Donmoyer wanted a better option.

The Phoenix-based Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center worked with her to create something better for the entire school.

The center’s coaches organize the favorite activities of the students with autism, such as a board game or a game of tag, on the playground. With a little encouragement, the games attract a variety of students. Coaches use the games to teach kids with autism and their classmates the skills they need to play together.

The program has been successful enough that parents are trying to enroll their autistic kids in the school.

• And the world’s First Ladies don’t like autism.

Tony Attwood, the English psychologist and prominent author on Asperger’s syndrome, wrote with some more context on the lack of male role models for boys on the spectrum. (I wrote about this as it relates to bathroom etiquette last week.) He says boys with spectrum disorders spend so much time around females that they take on feminine characteristics:

“Sometimes, the person with Aspreger’s syndrom may develop feminine characteristics due to the fact that boys often refuse to play with a boy with’s Asperger’s syndrome, and may torment and tease them. But girls may incorporate the boy with Asperger’s syndrome into their play, as they feel concerned about the boy’s loneliness and isolation.

“The boy with Asperger’s syndrome may then imitate some of the girl’s mannerisms, play and interests, because that is the peer group that accepts the boy with Asperger’s syndrome. This may lead to boys with Asperger’s syndrom creating further alienation, and (teasing) that the boy with Asperger’s syndrome is gay.

“This is not necessarily an indication of sexual preference, but can lead the person with Asperger’s syndrome to consider this as a possibility.”

Attwood is the author, most recently, of “The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome.”