Closing Reminder

Don't forget--Our last active day is Monday. I will be in St. Louis all day on Monday. Once I get back, I will take care of any last comments or posts... Then as of Tuesday this blog will be inactive. You can visit, but you can't make comments.

Your View shows Blog Wars

Watch it here

Last Words

Here is a post for final comments....

Closing March 10th

We will be closing the blog March 10th. The blog will still be here, but becomes inactive March 10th. I will also be stepping back from my gmail account.

Closing Blog

We will be closing the blog in about two weeks. I will let you know the date soon.

Try this

Our series site is down. Watch the special here

Special is Up!

The site is now working. You can watch the 7 part show here.
Tell us what you think here or send us a Your View

Site Crashed

Because of our high amount of hits... The video is not working correctly. I will post on the blog once the show is up

Special is Online

The show has aired and you can watch here.
Tell us what you think!
There are seven parts in our hour long special.
the website is going through updates today--So don't be alarmed if you see error messages. The video for the show is working... If you have issues-email me.

READY TO ROLL!

This week every night I ended up leaving the station around 5am. Thursday night, I came into the station around 5pm and didn't leave till 4pm on Friday...The team has worked countless hours for this show.

The Combating Autism From Within show, following the series, is ready for air.
The hour special will feature a look back at the families we featured along with updates. We will also look back into our investigation. Along with reading comments from the series, there is a story on our blog and behind the scenes from the crew that made this series possible.

Once the series is online, I will create a post with a link. We would love to hear from you. You can also send your comments to the station here

Anne Dachel: anti-vaccine activist???

This item was emailed to this blog--AR

I read the comment referring to me as an anti-vaccine activist: "You were introduced to autism last June when you interviewed Dr. Miles. After the story ran, you were deluged with messages from anti-vaccine activists, such as Anne Dachel at Age of Autism. The activists convinced you there was another side to the story that needed to be told, and that's what precipitated the Combating Autism series."

I've never thought of myself of being "anti-vaccine." I'm dedicated to publicizing the epidemic of autism affecting a generation of children, yet which is unrecognized by the medical community and the federal health agencies.

The reference was made to "another side to to the story that needed to be told." Isn't that what legitimate journalism is all about? Isn't the media obligated to investigate and fairly present issues like this? Ashley Reynolds gave us some of the most balanced coverage we've ever seen in the press.

Anne Dachel

Media Editor: AGE OF AUTISM

Member of the board of A-CHAMP

http://www.a-champ.org

Rumor Has It

Word has been buzzing and got to me... A few people have told me they have heard the series is tainted because someone in my family has autism.
This is not the case at all. There is no one in my family that has autism.
In my nine years of working in journalism... I knew very little about the disorder until I started working on the first story last June.
No one in my family has autism.
If anyone has any further questions, you can email me at
AReynolds.autism@gmail.com

In the meantime, I hope to post a video promo of the show in a week or so.

Hopeful Leadership in Treating Autism

This item was emailed to this blog--AR

http://anon.autismri.com.edgesuite.net/anon.autismri/RecoveredChildren/AutismIsTreatableVideo-highband.wmv

Despite the incredibly complex situation as relates to autism, there is hope-I strongly encourage parents and journalists visiting this site to watch the entire video above and pay attention to some of the academic credentials of some of the people involved here.

The function of children on the autistic spectrum can be improved, more and more children are showing such gains after leaving the treatment of establishment physicians. Some card-carrying members of the AAP (such as in my community) are starting to pay attention so that over time this situation will continue to improve despite the attacks on the brave clinicians who are taking on this uphill battle.

The continued improvements in increasingly larger numbers of kids is further evidence that we have neglected one of the most common pediatric problems. The neglect goes back decades to Bernard Rimland, PhD who first debunked the "bad mothering" theory from another PhD of my Alma Mater. This neglect really has huge impacts on our country's GDP down the line and state budgets RIGHT NOW.

The collective neurobehavioral functioning of this society's children needs to climb quickly so that the numerically heavy population needing their work productivity in the next 30 years will actually have a societal safety net. The baby boomers who are so set on denying this are the same people that will reap the rewards of their neglect of this issue, unfortunately a lot of lawyers, farmers, accountants, truck drivers, some teachers and others of that generation's cohorts really don't realize what the MDs of their generation are neglecting here.

Autism is treatable, and its not just behavioral interventions or by the use of a single pharmacologic approach; its complicated and its high time the real geniuses inside academic medicine started paying attention to the people on the video above.

Thanks again to KOMU and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

There are likely few other Journalism Schools in this country (land of the free home of the brave) that would have the guts to face the wrath of academic medicine on their own university quadrangles as relates to the topics you have addressed here. Another sign of the the coercive nature of the health profession that screams across campus at those interested in finding the truth.

Seems rather unhealthy, doesn't it?

Edward F. Fogarty, MD

Chairman of Radiology

University of North Dakota School of Medicine

Still getting emails-update

Wow! The power of the internet blows my mind. I am still getting emails. I'm very behind but doing my best to get back to everyone that is emailing me. Thank you so much for the emails! I can't get over how many people are watching the series.

We are all very busy planning the show. We have about 20 people making this possible.

The team and a few professors are speaking at a seminar on campus about series...still not sure of the date.

If you would like a copy of the series you can contact me at AReynolds.autism@gmail.com There is a fee.

We are still not sure when we will make this blog inactive...but I will be sure to give a heads up before doing so.

Sunday Feb 24th

Our Hour Special will air Feb 24th at 11AM. We will post the entire show with some online extras on our website-www.komu.com

Comment-Scientific Criticisms-KOMU

http://www.safeminds.org/pressroom/pres_releases/Review_Miles_Takahashi_6-20-07.pdf

For those who are students of science, it would seem there are some fair assessments and issues brought to light in the piece above. As relates to the KOMU coverage of this, I would have to think Dr. Miles might want to comment on these criticisms in the February wrap up.

For policy makers in state government in Missouri, this little project has done a great service to our democracy by presenting both sides of a debate. I encourage all to read through all of the many posts, understand we are human and this is of incredible importance to many not just as a medical debate but as relates to the potential for biological imperialism as imposed by state and federal government. Titer documentation not vaccination records should determine public school entrance and exemptions need to be protected. I will vaccinate my fourth child in a quite different manner than the "guidelines" given by the CDC, knowing all that I understand currently and was complete unaware of before having been engaged in this area by the experience of my family.

Evidence based medicine requires evidence of need for boosters after first dose of a vaccine in a series; it is the keep-it-simple-stupid approach that should be openly and honestly discussed between family practice and pediatrics physicians and their patients. Those who open their doors in practice to this idea may see many new patients, parents like me who want to vaccinate their children for the appropriate at-risk epidemic diseases at appropriate ages with the safest of approaches; this would shift revenue to clinical pathologists from vaccine companies selling unneeded boosters and to open-minded clinicians in the care of children. This compromise puts the patient-physician relationship back in the spotlight. The approach also dims the governance-governed relationship of the CDC and public health officials trying to do their best on a societal basis while ignoring the needs of individuals. These policy artists are so willing to overdose vaccines on the assumption that it is the best method to protect a populace that can't make decisions on its own; very unAmerican and unscientific as the idea has never ben approached any other way. A titer check approach to indicate booster need would actually help defuse a growing vaccine availability crisis, ironic isn't it?

For those who ask why a former Husker and Dakotan has so much to say on this blog, it is simple: our water is your water, I live on the banks of the great river that bears the name of your state and what we do up here on these molecules of H2O gets to Missouri eventually.

Protecting our children's environment is getting harder everyday and it is something that requires great effort from the "little" guy. Autism has a major environmental component that is a liability for the many large industries that are polluting our children's bodies; thus, though vaccines are not completely to blame they do reflect the effects of an industry who job it is to protect the environmental health of our children.

Physicians pushing pharmaceuticals to be better than the fossil fuels industry, metals manufacturers and other industrial polluters shouldn't be so hard, but as anyone can see from experience on this blog, the conditioning of MDs leads them to keep their mouths shut on politically contentious issues for fear of many backlashes.

If PHaRMA wants to push back on this issue, maybe they should spend some money on researching the environmental connections here in a productive manner for their industry by supporting the epidemiology of autism near industrial pollution sites instead of just trying to white wash their own role in this , or give Dr. Von Saal of the University of Missouri some grants to research the explosion of reproductive toxins in our food supply. The role of other industries in this internal-environmental crisis affecting the neurological health of the next generation of Americans is probably even worse than the role played by vaccines, but mom's keep blaming vaccines completely when by temporal association there is an event of vaccination and a response of neurological decline that then gets institutionally ignored.

The future will show we are on the course of a growing epigenetic epidemic, our genes and our environments are suffering increasing dysfunction. These kids are Rachel Carson's birds of the 21st century they need better than what society is doing to skirt the issues so as to protect establishment medicine (state of denial), pharmaceuticals (vaccines), big oil (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), manufacturing (heavy metals), agriculture (organophosphates), food processors (bisphenol A, aspartame), and others (including radiologists) who are playing this role in punctuated genomic instability complicated by molecular slowing of toxin handling kinetics in an increasing proportion of an entire generation of children. Sadly, all of this is only going to get much worse (slowly) for a very long time (decades); the chicken little of today will be understood as the sentinel of tomorrow-by then I fear we will not really have the American experiment anymore, being too run down as a middle class populace by these social-environmental issues to fight the good fight anymore.

As for approach to treatment, establishment academic clinicians need to start paying attention to the work and ideas of Martha Herbert, MD, PhD at Harvard, she's doing the right homework on this issue where so many others are afraid to in the ivory towers. People who want the vision to see how to make this debate productive for children need to read Changing the Course of Autism by Bryan Jepson, MD.

Thanks again to the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, you are profiles in courage for our day.

Edward F. Fogarty, III, M.D.

Chairman of Radiology

University of North Dakota School of Medicine

Lifelong resident of the banks of the Missouri.

Out of Town

Leaving town...be back late tomorrow night... I am still behind on many emails. I hope to catch up next week. If you comment on the blog, it won't show up until later this weekend.

Thank You!

Now that the series is behind us...We are making plans to shut down the blog in a few weeks. I will have a set date by Friday. I will post the shut down day on the blog.

We are going to keep the blog online, but make it inactive.

We are in the process of planning an hour long show in February. The show will feature a round table discussion and behind the scenes clips.

We will put the entire show online.
We look forward to your comments.
Thank you for participating in this blog.
We enjoyed sharing the process of the series with you and hope you enjoyed getting a first view of the series.

Thank You!

Your View shows your comments

You can watch Your View here

Reflections

Wow! We wrapped up the series... I don't even know where to start this blog entry.

We continue to get feedback. I have my gmail account, blog, mizzou email, and Your View accounts... Each one has gotten so many comments...hundreds...I am simply in awe of the impact of this series. It is truly "The little series that could."

Each day it continues to spread. I have received emails from all around the world. Letters continue to pour in.

This series has been the last six months of my life. I have put in countless hours. From picking each word when writing scripts to picking each shot when editing. The sleepless nights... stressing out... Learning Who's Who in autism... and my friends putting up with me constantly talking about autism...this has been an experience I will never forget.

I have been touched by every family...every person. Starting with the Everhart's strength in raising two kids on the spectrum. Tim and Dee's drive to help their son. Andy's courage in being a single parent. Jeremy's determination to adapt and improve his social skills. Linda's activism and journey with Adam’s recovery. These families shaped the series.

A women stopped me in public last week amazed that these families were so open and honest...From using alternative treatments, to a single parent's tough times, the families we featured told us their struggles and triumphs. It was our pleasure to share their story.

I'm slowly trying to get back to a somewhat normal life. I started general assignment reporting again this past week. I have to tell you, it is odd to walk out of the building with a camera and not go talk to someone about autism. It has been a challenge to do day turn pieces. I have been “in the zone” for months, having time to prepare questions, write, and edit. Getting back to a normal reporting routine is taking some time...but I am getting there.

I print all the emails I get. I am putting them all in a special folder. So many are heart felt. I have cried several times while reading them. So many people have called us heroes...I am not a hero. I simply tell stories and had the honor of covering this.

Words can't express what each email/letter means. I wish I could find the words to express my gratitude for this wave of feedback. It is rare for a journalist to be at a loss for words...but I stand in awe of the power of this series and the people that told us their story.