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Books are old friends, new friends, guides, comfort, sustenance. Some are easier to read than others. We're sharing books from experts whose work is sometimes shrouded in controversy and recently, censored. Once published, a book lives as long as it sits on a shelf, ready for the next reader. Click through the covers to read more & choose your format . Your purchase helps support our mission. Thank you.
Financial planning for a lifetime of care is a burden few understand outside our community. We don't get a roadmap of how to help and support our loved ones. Rich, poor or in between, we'll have to make decisions. CTFSN is a Connecticut-based special needs organization. The seminar is from a Northwestern Mutual special needs financial planner, and the info will be applicable across the country. There are so many questions and pitfalls regarding finances before and after our children turn 18. Kim
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Special Needs Trusts or Able Accounts?
Financial Planning Workshop
Hosted by CTFSN
October 12th, 2022 | 12 :30 PM
Via Zoom
Financial Planning for the future of your child. Stephen Ehrens, CPA and Wealth Advisor from Northwestern Mutual will discuss, Estate planning considerations, Special Needs Trusts, Wills, Benefits, i.e. SSI and Medicaid, Insurance and Investments. Also, how an “ABLE Account”, will provide a tax-sheltered vehicle for your child.
Featured Speaker:
Stephen Ehrens CPA, Wealth Management Advisor for Northwestern Mutual. Specializes in financial planning for
families with children with special needs and disabilities. To learn more about Stephen, please visit:
www.stephen.ehrens.com
Please email Eric.Goldsmith@nm.com for the Zoom Link and for materials after the webinar.
To do list: Buy fresh fruit and toilet paper. Schedule oil change. Plan the next 60 years of life for Mia, Gianna and Isabella.
No sweat.
I saw this online workshop from Empowering Ability on Facebook, and thought it's worth sharing. As ever, I think that the autism community will find some (maybe a good deal) of planning for special needs will not work for us. Rather than be a complete Debbie Downer, I'm trying to look forward with hope and confidence that my adult daughters will have a fulfilling life.
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Click Hear to Learn More from Empowering Ability
What you’ll discover in this (free) 'Life Plan Workshop':
1) Understand the REAL reasons why you're feeling stuck so that... you can move past the fears that are stopping your loved one from living their own adult life.
2) Discover "Awesome Ordinary" life possibilities so that... your loved one can have more opportunities to build more relationships, contribute in the community, gain employment, and create a home of their own.
3) Learn the 7-step proven planning pathway so that... you have clarity on the exact steps to take to support your loved one to get off the "Special Needs" path and live an "Awesome Ordinary" adult life!
**You will get this live training, plus bonus tools and resources! You'll also get access to the live training replays.
Children's Health Defense was deplatformed from Facebook and Instagram, a blow to their ability to communicate with readers around the globe. Please sign up for The Defender daily email so that you keep abreast of their work. President Biden declared that the Pandemic is over on 60 Minutes this week. He also declared a long winter of sickness and death for the unvaccinated last year, in a grim prediction that fizzled. CHD covers the story:
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Biden Declares ‘Pandemic Is Over,’ Prompting Calls for End to ‘Absurd’ Vaccine Mandates, Federal Health Emergency
President Joe Biden’s Sept. 18 statement that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over” prompted questions about why his administration hasn’t ended the federal public health emergency and how the government or employers can continue to mandate Emergency Use Authorized vaccines.
In an interview aired Sept. 18 on “60 Minutes,” President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 “pandemic is over,” in the first such statement by a prominent political figure in the U.S.
Biden made the comment from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which is being held for the first time since 2019... Read more at The Defender.
In his remarks, Biden, using the auto show as a point of reference, stated:
“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it … but the pandemic is over.
“If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”
Sponsored Content:
The Wuhan Cover-Up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19 (Children’s Health Defense) Available for pre-order now.
We're on Insta, for now. Please follow us. We're there with the Autism Ages name and a different profile pic. You can surmise why. Our Twitter has over 30,000 followers, but we've been placed in "sensitive content" mode, so our Tweets come with a warning label. We'll be promoting new books, old books we love and more on Insta. As well as excerpting and linking over to this, the flagship AofA. Social media, mobile devices have changed how and where we read. Add a bolus dose of censorship and it's a challenge to find and keep friends and readers near. Thanks. Kim
https://www.instagram.com/autismages/
We're used to being told that autism has no treatments or cures. We've taken beatings for decades regarding therapies and medical interventions, and guess what? Despite these beatings, our morale ALWAYS improves, because we never give up and rarely listen to so called "experts" like the nudniks at the American Speech Language and Hearing Association (ASHA.) Experts in the case of "evidence based" science are often folks who have hit the jackpot known as Insurance Reimbursements for offering the therapies that universities have been paid to study and rubber stamp by industry. My daughters had school based speech therapy from age 3 through 22. Their therapists were lovely women ( we did not have a single male speech therapist in 57 cumulative school years.) They meant well. They imparted what they were taught. They were kind. They tried. They made ZERO headway. I mean zero. Nothing the school SLPs did boosted my girls' ability to communicate or to make their needs known. Not even the exalted iPad - with the $300 apps one friend described as dropping 100 flashcards on the floor and expecting a sentence. Even worse with school based Occupational Therapy. Or as I call it, "The Pencil Holding Guild." Not until we had a private therapist using reflex integration did we see benefits from OT. Work she could NOT do in a school
based setting.
JB Handley will tell you more about how the ASHA which is the organization that is supposed to champion communication, shuts it down. His book, cowritten with his son Jamie, is our AofA Book Club book of the day. We're featuring books on our Instagram, and in our sidebar, which nobody sees any longer because we all read on mobile devices.
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Excerpted from JB's blog, click to read the full post with video and much more ASHA tells 50 million nonspeakers, “you aren’t capable.”
September 17, 2022
PORTLAND, Oregon—We’re finishing up the filming for our new documentary, SPELLERS, a movie inspired by the book my son Jamie and I wrote in 2021 titled 
Today, the miracle with Jamie continues unabated. Jamie no longer needs anyone to hold the keyboard for him. As you can see in the picture at the top of this post, Jamie is able to spell his thoughts and feelings independently, even with two cameramen filming his every move (well, you can’t actually see it yet, but trust me you will soon, that scene is in the movie!). At home, without the Hollywood klieg lights on, it gets even better: Jamie is now typing with two hands on a flat keyboard, communicating the way most of us do.
I’m guessing half the people reading this article don’t know what the ASHA acronym stands for (thanks for sticking with me!) so here you go: American Speech Language Hearing Association. Basically, it’s a trade group that represents more than 200,000 speech language pathologists, is based in Rockville, MD, and is run by a woman named Vicki Deal-Williams.
For those of you not in the autism world, Speech Language Pathologists (we call them “SLPs”) are a big deal. They work with our kids. They try to help them talk. Some of them are great, amazing people. And, those who call themselves SLPs only do so for one reason: they have received the accreditation of ASHA. These credentials allow them to refer to themselves as SLPs, and these hard-earned credentials are everything to them. Therefore, what ASHA says carries huge weight with them, and they sure don’t want their credential pulled by not marching to their tune.
And, in 2018, ASHA did something with their weight that has had a giant impact on the roughly 50 million nonspeakers in the world: they issued a proclamation stating that what my son was doing on a keyboard was a magic trick, was not coming from him, and that SLPs should run, not walk, away from ever using a letterboard and should actively discourage parents from trying S2C, too.... Read more here.
By Cathy Jameson
I had the radio on as I drove into town by myself the other day. Catching up on some morning news, I was quite pleased to hear the radio announcer share that, “Most Americans have turned the page on the COVID pandemic...” I wanted to high five someone after hearing that. Another tidbit from the poll was also encouraging. “The public’s perception of personal risk also is a low point, and people are starting to pick and choose more where they deem it necessary to take precautions like masking.”
Good for them, I thought.
People, lots of people, dropped the masks many months ago. I know a few who still, maybe out of an abundance of caution, have kept theirs on. Last week, when an issue popped up that needed medical attention, I made an appointment with our doctor’s office and was sternly reminded to, ‘Bring your mask!! It’s required to wear one!’ I had bought several washable, fabric-styled ones during the lockdown but could not honestly remember where I’d put them. I put them away so long ago. The only time we’ve been asked to wear one lately has been at a doctor’s office.
Thankfully, we haven’t had the need to go to the doctor too many times.
The radio announcer continued to another segment after reporting on the Axios. The weather forecast would be next. Once on the air, the meteorologist bellowed, “Across the arena, we’ll see some clear skies and lower temperatures!”
Across the arena.
Arena? I’d never heard that term used to describe where I live. But with that recent poll, and with the ever-constant news of the ever-available boosters, it did feel like I was in some sort of game. It’s not like the Game of Life I was in, but more like The Hunger Games.
I love the Game of Life and always look forward to when the kids want to play it. I don’t love The Hunger Games so much. When the series came out, I shied away from it. My fifth child was born the year the first book was released. I was too busy to read it or get caught up in the hype. Years later, when the movies came out, I decided to watch them. I had limited knowledge of the storyline still but knew that it was a sort of survival story.
Wow, it was more than that.
Humans were forced to fight. They had to fight other humans. To the death. With how intense the games were, alliances quickly formed. They fought each other, but they also fought the power. Several lost, meaning they died, because the power was just so powerful. But heroes emerged. And while watching them fight to survive, you wanted the bad guys to be completely obliterated by the heroes.
There, across that arena, was destruction and death.
Here, across the arena of life, has also been destruction and death. The result of the lockdown destroyed businesses. It severely interrupted continuity of care for those with special needs and with chronic medical conditions. It killed some kids’ motivation to learn, and it also killed people’s desire to work.
What a wild few years it’s been.
The poll that I’d heard on the radio reminded me of how wild life really has been. One more statement made clear that we, like some of those characters in The Hunger Games movies, were never ‘all in this together’:
“The public also continues to grapple with what the pandemic has meant on an individual and broader societal level.”
I never grappled with the pandemic. I knew that it would have awful outcomes. I knew that it would turn people on each other. I despise the pandemic and what it did to us – us as a family, us as a community, and us as a nation. I will always believe that the initial efforts were intended to be helpful, but to keep humans away from humans was one of the worst things that could’ve happened. So was forcing liability-free, fast tracked vaccines on the population. Repercussions from that decision could be dire, not just for people’s health, but for the workforce also.
I’m curious, what does life look like across your arena? Are you ‘back to normal’ yet? Is your local community as back to normal as well? Or are you still facing tough situations with regard to lingering covid requirements? I have a handful of friends who never played the games the government told them to. No masks, no social distancing, no contact tracing, no rushing to get a vaccine. They adapted and continued to live their lives the way they needed to. My hat goes off to them for being able to that. I know not everyone was as fortunate, and they’re dealing with undesirable outcomes because of their own situation. It’s been so hard to see the changes they’ve been forced into. “88% say COVID has changed American’s lives forever.” I don’t usually put too much thought into polls, especially polls about COVID, but I absolutely believe that statistic to be true. Do you?
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
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A video circulated on Twitter this week, said to be the home of a 12 year old boy, destroyed in an outburst, purportedly because his mother took away his phone. One would surmise that taking away the phone was a consequence of some other action. When I read the comments, I was heartsick. Most blamed MOM for not having control of her son. The leap to blaming Mom made me Tweet a show of empathy for her. Additional comments refute the story, and a screen shot shows the Mom saying her son is 15, mentally ill, and off his medications, 6' tall and 200 lbs. The pre-pubescent Hulk. Holy cow. No matter the final facts, as Anne Dachel catalogs in her site Loss of Brain Trust, the American boy is is real trouble.
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home). Anne Dachel Loss of Brain Trust.com
Addressing mental health needs is as overtaking academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories on Loss of Brain Trust are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Raging children are a daily occurrence for many in the autism community. My daughters do not rage and destroy large swaths of the house. For this, I am grateful. I have many friends whose homes had holes in the walls, bedrooms with nothing but a mattress on the floor, and broken windows. We need training to protect ourselves from our own kids, and that's a rotten thing to have to say, but the truth.
How can "the village" short circuit this youngster's rage so that he does not worsen as he enters manhood? My main thought was that this is a school shooter developing. That's how we have to think in the USA these days. "
I hope the boy gets real help, not just medication. I wish Mom a clear path forward and gentle hands to guide her. She must be well and truly exhausted. From this we know.
Sponsored Content:
The Wuhan Cover-Up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19 (Children’s Health Defense) Available for pre-order now.
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Welcome to the AofA Book Club. Your purchase supports AofA. Thank you.
The Wuhan Cover-Up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19 (Children’s Health Defense) Available for pre-order now. Additional books below the jump.
Note: Everyone in the disabilities community needs to ask friends, family, teachers, providers to send an urgent message to STOP USING ELECTRIC SHOCK on humans, often children with autism. We've written about The Rotenberg Center many times over the years. Talk about a small world, my father played golf with Judge Ernie in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Word on the course was that he, like Judge Smails from Caddyshack, favored "the foot wedge." (Golf talk for cheated.) Kids and adults with severe autism should never have to suffer this old, barbaric "treatment."
From The ARC:
Legislation is moving through Congress RIGHT NOW that could stop the abuse and torture of people with disabilities through electro-shock devices. This bill must pass by September 30—and your messages to Congress can help end this barbaric and inhumane practice.
TAKE ACTION NOW!
Alongside experts and other disability rights organizations, The Arc has advocated to prevent people with disabilities from being tortured by shock devices at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), an institution in Massachusetts for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
JRC is the only place in the country where staff members administer shocks to people with disabilities for perceived misbehavior, despite a well-established body of evidence proving that there are alternative methods for behavioral supports that do not include excessive force, pain, and fear.
This practice is painful and traumatizing to residents, and The Arc has been fighting for decades to stop it.
Take action now to help end this abuse once and for all, because people with disabilities deserve to live free from torture and fear!
Sponsored Content:
The Wuhan Cover-Up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19 (Children’s Health Defense) Available for pre-order now.
Paper! Paper! Paper! Files! Reports! Forms! Applications! Re-applications! Lost Paper! More Paper! Many years ago, someone I used to know said I was lazy and not contributing because I didn't have a real job. AofA is certainly real. And the paperwork required and generated by my three daughters with autism could choke a herd of hungry goats. It's bad during the school years as IEPs and interim meetings and reports pile to the ceiling. If you think it ends upon graduation, I hate to give you a paper cut, but nope, it just changes. If your child receives state or Federal programming, the paperwork accelerates. Mountains of medical records, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the Medicaid Waiver, Day program paperwork, Guardianship reports, Able account management, employment assistance, every aspect of life makes paper! And emails.
Miss a deadline? Not good. Your loved one can be dropped from an important program without your even knowing it. And no one tells you how to navigate the system. NO ONE. I know families who have every IEP in neat binders through the schools years. Scanning digital files has made record keeping a bit easier. Just don't let your hard drive crash. Do you have a system?
Just in case you didn't have enough to worry about, this report shared by Safeminds.org hammers home our fears. Fears that are very much founded in reality. We half joke that we can never die. If only we could find a miraculous way to live just one day longer than our children in their golden years. Maybe holograms will be affordable.
Grief Symptoms Are Often Prolonged and Onset of Symptoms Delayed in Those with ID
Losing a loved one is one of the most painful and distressing experiences that people encounter. Most individuals experience a typical bereavement period where they face feelings of sorrow, numbness, and anger. Gradually, these emotions fade. However, for some individuals, these feelings of loss are debilitating, long-lasting, and do not improve over time. This agonizing condition is known as complicated grief (CG). A new systematic literature review has investigated how this phenomenon affects individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID). The review’s key finding indicates that CG is prevalent in people with ID and is even more frequent in these individuals compared to the general population (33% vs. 9.8%). The review’s authors highlight that CG is a clinically significant condition within the ID population and suggest that doctors should be aware of the diagnosis. The study also discovered that grief symptoms for those with ID are often prolonged, and the onset of symptoms can be delayed. Consequently, due to these factors, CG is likely to be missed or misdiagnosed. Additionally, the review discovered that people with ID experience both traumatic grief and separation distress symptoms. However, separation distress symptoms are more frequent, highlighting possible vulnerabilities to attachment difficulties. Ultimately, the review calls for the development of valid and reliable CG assessment/screening tools for people with ID. These tools will allow for the accurate identification of CG cases and are crucial for developing appropriate treatment in this particular population.
Anne Dachel transcribed a chilling report from California on the perils adults with disabilities and their families face. Competing interests are everywhere. Control of budgets, often well into 6 figures, comes into play. If you have applied for Guardianship or Conservatorship, you know the agony of the process. This story delves into how wrong the process can go.
California state agency failing people with disabilities | abc10.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeRWe863oOs
ABC 10 Sacramento
Andie Judson Deborah Findley Tom Coleman
Aug 31, 2022,
Deborah Findley’s son, Andrew, grew up with serious health problems, including autism, Lyme disease, and other conditions. Now 21, he is severely disabled and requires 24-hour care.
When he turned 18, his mother was advised to seek a conservatorship for him. That’s a way for someone to assume legal guardianship over an adult incapable of caring for themselves. Being his conservator would allow her to make medical decisions on his behalf, along with other choices regarding his care.
But when she and her husband petitioned the court to become Andrew’s conservators, they got a nasty surprise.
California’s Department of Developmental Services filed a competing petition. The department said that DDS should be Andrew’s conservator because of alleged abuse by his parents. The judge followed the agency’s recommendation and Andrew’s parents were shut out of his care.
As a result, they have been unable to visit Andrew in person for over three years, sometimes not even knowing where he was located.
There appears to be no legal avenue to challenge the court’s decision. Deborah says she has spent over $300,000 in legal fees fighting the state’s court-ordered conservatorship, trying to get access to her son. So far, she’s had no luck.
The issue of conservatorship is a complex one. You may remember news reports about pop star Brittany Spears and her years-long fight to regain control of her finances and personal life. A judge finally ended her 13-year conservatorship in 2021.
Investigative reporter Andie Judson, of ABC10 TV in Sacramento, examines Andrew’s case in a multi-part news series on conservatorship called “The Price of Care.” It is a complicated story with chilling implications.
San Diego ABC10
Andie Judson: The state of California won’t let Deborah Findley see her son, Andrew, in person. …She has spent over $300,000 in legal fees fighting the state order conservatorship….
Deborah Findley: …The calls now are restricted to twice a week, 30 minutes.
Judson: She says she has to follow visitation guidelines. Questions like how he’s feeling are called “triggering” and put her future visits in jeopardy.
Findley: Over the past three years, I’ve only been allowed less than a hundred hours of contact with him.
Judson: Instead of asking him questions, she shows him his favorite things, like his presents. …Christmas is just a few weeks away, but Andrew is not allowed to come home for the holiday. …She’s also not allowed to record visits, so we filmed her side, redacting her son’s face and voice.
…Andrew, now 21, was hard to understand, losing focus often. She says he’s on many medications that she’s opposed to.
Because of the conservatorship, Deborah has no say.
Findley: He used to be fully conversational, and he’s just a shell of a human being right now.
Judson: This was not what she was expecting when she sought conservatorship nearly four years ago.
Findley: You’re told, you know, when your special needs child turns 18, you need to get conservatorship.
Judson: Experts we spoke with said there’s a pipeline that leads to conservatorship starting through school, doctors or regional centers.
Findley: The regional centers kind of pound that into parents too.
Judson: Andrew has autism as well as other health conditions requiring that he has around the clock care.
Findley: Court records show he had some challenges, but you know we have the best therapists in northern California, the best of everything.
Judson: They thought they could continue this care with the conservatorship. She says they were blindsided.
Findley: It was pretty much a done deal.
Judson: In reality, the court was in control.
Findley: We had no idea that something like this could happen.
Judson: What the court received, along with Deborah’s petition for conservatorship, was a competing one from the [California] Department of Developmental Services, which is known as DDS, saying that they should be conservator because Andrew’s were allegedly abusive.
DDS has continued to say that throughout Andrew’s life, his parents have interfered with his health, safety and welfare; that they couldn’t handle his growing aggression and weren’t providing proper care.
Deborah says she was never asked about this.
Findley: A court appointed investigator never interviewed us—still hasn’t in three years.
Judson: The court listened to DDS, granting them temporary conservatorship over Andrew in September, 2019.
Findley: We become legal strangers to my son, and he was treated like an orphan.
Judson: Since the conservator process began, Deborah says for periods of time she hasn’t been told where her son is.
Findley: It was a lot of nights of crying myself to sleep, going, “Where’s my son? Is he alive? Is he dead?” I don’t know. Nobody would tell us.
Judson: Seeing people like his mother may cause regression, DDS told the court and that the court should not be swayed by impassioned pleas from family.
Findley: It’s inhumane, just absolutely inhumane.
Judson: Information about her son is impossible to get.
Findley: I’m like, did he get my card? Oh, you have to ask the conservator.
Judson: Which is a multi-billion dollar state agency. You have to ask them if your son got his Christmas card?
Deborah says Andrew wants to come home. DDS says this is truly what’s best for him.
Now, unlike part one of our investigation, not all of the confidential court documents were accessible for this very complex case, but it gives us a window into a broken system keeping families apart.
We wondered how is it that a massive state agency can even serve as conservator over a single person with very specific needs.
We asked attorney Tom Coleman who founded the Spectrum Institute, a human rights nonprofit organization.
Tom Coleman: The law permits the director of the Department of Developmental Services to be appointed as a conservator.
This is ridiculous.
Someone who’s running a billion dollar department with hundreds, if not thousands of employees, that person is going to be conservator of an individual and look after their needs and care for them?
It is a farce.
Judson: DDS often becomes conservator by way of their regional centers.
Findley: Tri-county’s regional center nominated DDS to be conservator.
Judson: Deborah believes this is a conflict of interest because when a regional center nominates DDS as conservator and it’s granted, the responsibilities of conservator as returned to the regional center, funded by DDS.
Findley: DDS is the funding agent. They have full control over how that money is spent.
Judson: What’s also funded by DDS are the care facilities where 86 percent of those conserved by DDS live as of July 2022, like Andrew, as well as Garth who we introduced in part one of our investigation.
This is the facility in Lompoc, California where Andrew lives, Deborah says.
While she now knows where he is, she’s not allowed to visit.
Findley: Prisoners, they get visitors. My child’s not allowed any of that.
Judson: These conservatees care homes as well as care giving expenses as all paid for by taxpayers, yet a June 2022 audit found these facilities are not being properly monitored by DDS or regional centers as state law requires, including medication wasn’t being properly distributed in some—a life threatening issue.
This care is all part of the 12 billion dollar budget DDS has, including the ongoing legal battles to keep conservatorships in place.
Findley: The attorney general represents DDS. So there’s the attorney, there’s DDS’s lawyers, there’s tri-county’s regional center’s lawyers.
Judson: One of those is Andrew’s own court appointed attorney.
The court approved he be paid over $13,000 by taxpayers for about 20 days of work, and he’s just one of the many attorneys involved. Others came from the California attorney general’s office.
Findley: The assistant attorney general, the two of them. Talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Judson: As a state agency in a court of law, the Department of Developmental Services is represented by California’s attorney general.
Findley: It was daunting to be in court with the attorney general.
Judson: In cases like Deborah’s, they represent DDS to defend the conservatorship. Coleman finds this hugely problematic.
Coleman: Because the attorney general of California is the chief law enforcement officer of the state, including civil rights laws.
The State Department of Justice has a civil rights protection division.
Judson: Protecting and promoting the civil rights of all people in California is this division’s job, their website says.
Coleman: So the attorney general can intervene when the civil rights of people are being violated.
What if the violator is a state entity, like the Department of Developmental Services?
Then the attorney general has a choice. You can’t a prosecutor and a defense attorney at the same time, right? It’s a conflict of interest.
Judson: We reached out to the attorney general’s office. They said they won’t go against state agencies they represent, one being the Department of Developmental Services.
To fight a conservatorship, besides spending thousands of dollars for your own attorney, where can you go for help if you’re in a position like Deborah?
Well, under federal law, Disability Rights California is required to protect the rights of those with disabilities.
Findley: Every time I’ve reached out to them, I’ve just been told that they only will communicate with the client, and that my son has to call them and ask them for help.
Judson: It’s an organization that represents people with disabilities, and people with disabilities often can’t communicate the same way that you and I are, and they’re saying he has to call?
Findley: Yeah.
Judson: Disability Rights California has a branch called OCRA, standing for Office of Clients' Rights Advocacy.
Coleman: This agency is supposed to protect the civil rights of Regional Center clients.
Judson: But Coleman says OCRA is not helping those conserved.
Coleman: As soon as they hear there’s a conservatorship involved, they’re nowhere to be found.
Judson: And guess who OCRA is funded by? The Department of Developmental services.
Coleman: I’ve reviewed their funding; I’ve reviewed their contracts with DDS. They have the authority, they have the funding; they have a moral duty.
Judson: So we asked Disability Rights, OCRA manager about this.
Shannon Cogan, OCRA manager: I think it’s really easy to criticize who are doing hard work, instead of collaborating with them.
Judson: She said with conservatorships, they mainly provide alternatives. Their policy is not to help people obtain a conservatorship.
Cogan: We don’t have a mandate to file lawsuits or administrative complaints about anything related to conservatorship. We do a lot of good work for people who might be impacted by conservatorship.
Coleman: They nibble around the edges.
You are a law firm. You are a civil rights enforcement legal entity.
Judson: OCRA’s own website says that they provide legal advice and representation to clients of Regional Centers, where conservatorships often begin.
So we asked if they take on cases to fight conservatorships.
Cogan: Not OCRA. That’s one of the other branches of the tree.
Judson: For months we asked OCRA for specifics on how many conservatorship cases this other disability rights branch represented.
They never gave us that data.
As for getting involved after a conservatorship happens, Cogan validated Deborah’s experience:
A client must give consent, so Andrew, rather than his mother. But a parent calling could spark action.
Cogan: Certainly if it’s an issue of extreme rights deprivation, health or safety, we send our employees to that person to interact with them.
Judson: Tom and Deborah say it’s not enough.
Coleman: I’ve had so many people say I’ve gone to Disability Rights California; they won’t do anything, they won’t do anything.
Judson: Specifically for Deborah, it seems like a never-ending loop of conflicts of interest.
The Regional Center, funded by DDS, recommended DDS be the conservator. They Regional Center then got conservatorship duties and placed her son with a care facility, funded by DDS.
She then went to OCRA of Disability Rights California to ask for help, an agency also funded by DDS.
But Disability Right California says their funding would not stop them from representing someone conserved by DDS, like Andrew.
Cogan: We have clients who are conserved by DDS. There’s no inherent conflict, and we do it.
Judson: Before our investigation aired we sent DDS this: a three page letter outlining our investigation’s findings with 15 specific questions, including about conflicts of interest.
Now they didn’t answer any of our questions, but they did send us a written statement as well as a video of their director, Nancy Bargmann, reading that statement.
Bargmann video clip: We are constantly looking to improve how we serve the whole person.
Judson: We decided not to air it in full as they did not allow us to interview them or ask our own questions.
We took our questions about DDS’s budget to Amy Wessling, the executive director of the Association of Regional Center Agencies.
Amy Wessling: We are the association that represents all 21 of the state’s Regional Centers.
Judson: She knows DDS’s multi-billion dollar budget in and out.
Wessling: And then this tells you where the money comes from.
Judson: In addition to fully understanding the budget, we were curious if DDS has an incentive financially to conserve people. Amy doesn’t believe so.
Wessling: DDS doesn’t get additional funds from conserving people.
Judson: But no matter how you look at it, taxpayers are funding DDS conserving people. …Parents like Deborah continue to lose hope.
Findley: Every time I have a call or a visit, I’m scared it’s the last one, that I won’t ever see my son again. It’s just not a way to live.
Judson: Since our interview, Deborah’s virtual visitation time has been “paused.” Her long legal fight with the Department of Developmental Services will continue in October when the court will determine if DDS’s conservatorship becomes permanent.
Deborah has no idea if she’ll see her son again.
But the Department of Developmental Services isn’t just responsible for the 414 people they’re conservator to. This 12 billion dollar agency’s main duty, by law, is to help ensure 400,000 plus Californians with disabilities have equal rights.
But there’s concern and evidence that they’re not doing their job.
CLIP: DDS and their Regional Centers aren’t really doing a good job of monitoring the quality of those services.
Judson: Even from California’s in-house watchdog
CLIP: We’re finding that they’re just not doing a very good job.
Judson: That’s next on The Price of Care.
Those who never get to learn history are doomed to re-live it. Robert Kennedy's bold, new book takes the reader to Wuhan. You can pre-order it. We'll update you regularly between now and the December publication date.
The Wuhan Cover-Up: How US Health Officials Conspired with the Chinese Military to Hide the Origins of COVID-19 (Children’s Health Defense)
In my daughters’ Day Service Program, this is DSP Appreciation Week. A DSP is a Day Service Provider, akin to a paraprofessional at school. They are the 1:1 staff who are with our adult children at their programs. Those who have a program. Their work is hard. Their pay is low. Here in expensive Fairfield County Connecticut, the rate is $17.53 an hour. Hiring is extremely difficult. as you can imagine. Many programs are turning down the severely behavioral individuals because they are A) difficult to staff and B) not profitable. They are autistic. Once a student ages out of school at age 22, there is NO LEGAL MANDATE to provide any services or supports. No IDEA. No FAPE. I'm bringing breakfast for the staff on Thursday. I wish I could do more. I need every one of them. Today, tomorrow and long after I'm gone.
Below is my comment on Facebook in response to the post by their post. I hope I made my point to “everyone” who reads it. Looks up at corner office…
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Dr. Tom Frieden urged Americans to get their bivalent Covid vaccine and booster yesterday on Twitter. I kindly let him and his followers know about Wayne Rohde's 15 week class starting this week through IPAK-EDU on the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. This is the program that absolves corporations whose products harm Americans during a Pandemic. You can take the course both live and in a recorded version.
IPAK-EDU on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program used for emergency authorized biologics.
In this course, students will learn the structure, function and defects of the programs in the US created by Congress to award compensation to adults and children potentially and actually harmed or killed by vaccines. We will review a variety of important topics, review case histories. This course is for parents and lawyers new to US vaccine injury compensation programs.
Read the course description and register here.
Taught by Wayne Rohde, author of Vaccine Court, this class is available through The Online private University, IPAK-EDU. Many of us KNOW what these programs are - but we don't know the details of their inception and execution. The knowledge can boost your conversations with, trolls, BOTS, family and friends - just THINK of the Thanksgiving table arguments you can start! You might just get the whole pumpkin pie to yourself. XOX
###
Read More and Register HERE.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program & Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program
15-week, 1 hour course, both live and on demand
Email: wrohde@comcast.net
Course Objectives
Week 1 – General Overview of the NVICP, the purpose and what did the Act establish. Brief review of why Congress passed the NCVIA.
Week 2 – Components of the Program. Who is the defendant? Who administers the Program? What is a Special Master? Are you really suing anyone?
Week 3 – The PREP Act, The CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program and adding COVID-19 vaccine injuries to a compensation program.
Week 4 – The CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program - continued
Week 5 - VAERS, (Dr. Jessica Rose)
Week 6 – Filing a petition in NVICP, the pathway thru the Program and the adjudication of each case to final decision including appeals (Robert Krakow)
Week 7 – The Trust Fund, the failure to publicize the Program
Week 8 – Vaccine Injury Table and how it is revised, Year 1995 & 1997 and the fallout of Sec’y of HHS actions
Week 9 – Omnibus Autism Proceedings and other omnibus rulings
Week 10 – Rolf Hazlehurst, father of Yates. 2nd petition in OAP & Nick Kottenstette, father to child who was compensated in NVICP.
Week 11 – Medical experts in the NVICP (Dr. Theresa Deisher)
Week 12 – US Supreme Court rulings (Mary Holland)
Week 13 – Why SIDS, POI, Epilepsy, POTS and other medical conditions are not compensated
Week 14 – The effort to remove SIRVA and Sec 17 from the Program. Reforms Needed. To repeal the Act or to reform.
Week 15 – Review of the NVICP and the CICP
By Cathy Jameson
I’d just had a short conversation with a young girl who’s in grade school. A typically happy child, I was sad to see that her usual smile had been replaced. She’d shared that she’d been disappointed about something and then looked up at me.
“Mrs. Jameson?” she quietly paused. “Everything changed. Why did it have to change?”
Compared to last year, things had changed. I thought for the better. In her young mind, though, there’d been too many changes and in a short amount of time. It was too much for her. It confused her, it saddened her, and I could see a physical change in her because of it.
For many districts last year, when the 2021 school year began, students were social distancing, sneeze guards were being used in classrooms, and masks were required by all. Students and faculty tippy toed into that school year, trying not to breathe too big a sigh of relief. But for many, it was progress just being in the building. And full-time, too! Some teachers were still limited in what materials they could use to teach lessons (i.e., math manipulatives, science lab equipment, shared art supplies), but they, being naturally creative, made things work.
Other places were not so fortunate.
Some schools remain closed. Or were only open part-time. Or were only open for small groups of students at a time. Or had kept the intense restrictions that other localities had long removed. Children, including the ones not affected by those latter protocols, were understandably confused. The adults were making decisions that didn’t make sense. My own children have expressed how awful that time was for them.
“One week we did things a new way, the next week we had to do something else. They’d tell us to hang on, only one more month, maybe, and then we’d be back to normal. But that month would go by, and we’d still be waiting for things to go back to normal…or at least to get better.
It never felt like it would ever get better.”
The longer we were home, their more their grades took a hit. Their outlook on life dimmed. Their motivation dwindled. After being forced into an all-virtual learning environment the year before, I welcomed being able to send my own children back to school last fall. My kids enjoyed being home for part of that initial lockdown that happened in 2020. But they’re hands on learners. They’re the types of kids that need to be with friends. They’re kids who enjoy being out of the house. They’re kids who hate waking up early but who thrive when they have a good routine. We love each other dearly, but sometimes it’s okay for us to love each other from a distance.
It was time to get back to school.
I’ve asked several students who also experienced the school changes in 2020 about what they thought of the lockdown. All said they’re grateful that restrictions have been completely lifted. All said they’re glad that in-school learning is back. All said they’d never want to use Zoom or Google Meet for school ever again. “It was awful. I hated it. It took away my motivation to learn.” Teachers knew that lockdowns, quarantines and the changes from the pandemic could have a negative impact on education. They knew it, and they’re now seeing the results of it. Students knew the lockdown would eventually be a bad idea, too. Fauci doesn’t think what they went through was that bad. In one respect, he’s right. It’s not bad. It’s worse than that.
What happened to the children during the lockdown is criminal.
Countless districts are now left to bridge the gap while teachers continue to face enormous strains, ones they’ve never experienced before. It isn’t just the younger students having to manage life under new difficulties; it’s college students also.
Sadly, it’s not just the academic interruptions that’ll likely affect them for some time. The mental and emotional strain from the last two years will as well. As a parent, and also an educator, it pains me to witness these outcomes. Our nation’s children. My own children. Their world fell apart.
The adults they trusted fell apart with them.
Fauci dismissed what so many went through. He dismissed the fact that students faced unfavorable results from something he helped orchestrate. Livelihoods and childhoods were destroyed by the suggestions he promoted. He may have moved on since then, but it may take years for students, like that young girl I know, to recover. What’s been done to her, to her education, and to her future is inexcusable. Some people in positions of power don’t see or don’t grasp the ramifications of that, but I do.
I was having a really good day when that little girl and I got to talk. I thought it was a random conversation, but I could tell that she’d been wanting to speak to me for a while. As heart wrenching as it was to see how devastated she was, what a gift to be the grown up she reached out to. I walked away a little sad after we spoke, but I knew there would be opportunities for me to cross her path again. Knowing that, I have made a promise to help bring her smile back. I will help her find some joy in life again, because she deserves a chance to believe in good things. Every child does.
Mine.
Yours.
All of them. They deserve more than what the Faucis of the world gave them. So much more.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhrCc8VCHns
"All people with autism are smart and deserve respect even if they cannot communicate." Charles Mury
Many individuals with autism are using a letterboard to communicate with heart swelling success. This story from Australia profiles the meteoric success of using a keyboard for a young man who was "assumed" to have the intellect of a Kindergartener. The professionals in Speech, Occupation Therapy and Behavior could be doing so much more - work that would change the course of a life. We MUST press schools to presume competence. Charles is quoted: All people with autism are smart and deserve respect even if they cannot communicate". Parents can not do everything. We are only human. But we never give up. Congratulations to Charles Mury and his diligent Mom.
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A New South Wales student who was once unable to communicate has earned a prestigious education award.
Charles Mury was among an elite group of 40 selected to receive a minister's award for excellence, open to students across the state's public education system.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said Charles was the first ever recipient on the autism spectrum.
He was diagnosed with autism before he turned three and years of therapy followed.
At 16, Charles he was regarded as having the academic ability of a kindergarten student.
"The level of communication was highly limited, only some gestures of what he wanted and what he needed," father Chris Mury said.
Charles' mother, Melanie, said process had been "glacial" before her son had a breakthrough 18 months ago, which experts said was triggered by the emotion of his grandmother's funeral.
"We had a very long meltdown and in desperation I said to him 'help us help you'," Melanie said.
"(I gave him) pen, paper, and we had our very first conversation."
From that point on, Charles' words and ideas have flowed and flourished, with the help of his teachers at Metford's Hunter River Community School.
Now at the age of 18, Charles has finally found his voice with the help of a computer.
"Communication has changed my life for the best. It has saved my life," he told NBN News.
"All people with autism are smart and deserve respect even if they cannot communicate."
Read the full news report & watch the video here.
By John Stone
“Prayers for Elizabeth and her family and all concerned. Lets pray for wisdom and divine intelligence in the transition underway.” (Catherine Austin Fitts)
This is from a letter I wrote to BMJ on-line concerning informed consent in October 2020:
…I have viewed with concern the idea floated in The Times by Heidi Larson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that the Queen could be called on to boost trust in coronavirus vaccine … Would such a promotional exercise really be an appropriate place to start in accepting any of the new products, either for her or for us?
Surely it is imperative that any individual choices are made on the basis of fully informed consent and not collective or political pressure, and this tolerance of individual autonomy is recognised for all vaccines. The recent Cumberlege review has recognised in principle where such pressures could lead… and it is hard to see why vaccines should be exempt. Nor should anyone be labelled an “anti-vaxxer”, least of all by the Prime Minister, because they do not jump into line…
Sadly, less than two years later with both the Queen and her consort - who were generally held to be devotees of homeopathy - are no longer with us, we can safely say we have witnessed one of the ugliest, most inappropriate and manipulative episodes in the history of humanity. In fact, nobody could ever have given informed consent because not only had the products not been adequately trialled, no one really knew what was in them.
Much concern must now focus on her successor King Charles: the United Kingdom is supposed to be a constitutional monarchy and the monarch above politics yet Charles has been a proponent of World Economic Forum policy and prominently helped launch the so-called Great Reset. This engages with policies which have never been democratically discussed or openly spoken about - which pose a threat to the life, liberty and wealth of ordinary people - and even if they had been they ought to lie outside a constitutional monarch’s remit. Notably, it involves the transference of wealth from ordinary people to a super-class encapsulated in the statement “You’ll own nothing and be happy”. Much of this transference has already happened with Covid lockdowns.
When neither mainstream politicians or media will talk about these matters it is time for the public at large to ask questions.
Anne Dachel has covered the skyrocketing rates of students in special education for more than a decade. On her site Loss of Brain Trust she's catalogs thousands of articles from around the world. Age of Autism was founded by Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill as a blog to explore the autism epidemic in a then new way, as a man-made epidemic. Fifteen years later, the numbers have not abated. Children are chronically ill and the normal milestones of childhood development have been left behind. Pediatrics has presided over a new normal of sickness and delayed (if ever accomplished) development. Perhaps you see this change in your work, among your friends children, and of course, many of us see it in our own homes.
Children's Health Defense has launched a publishing arm that will print and e-publish books mainstream publishers have shunned for more than twenty years. We invite you to download and share The Sickest Generation: The Facts Behind the Children’s Health Crisis and Why It Needs to End
Children are the key to a successful future and a prosperous nation, yet American children have never been sicker with a vast array of chronic illnesses.
In 2011 54% of children had at least one of 20 chronic health conditions;
Life expectancy is falling and infant mortality is rising. U.S. children are 76% more likely to die before their first birthday than infants in other wealthy countries;
A study conducted from 2001-2004 found that half of U.S. youth (ages 13-18) had been diagnosed with at least one mental, emotional, and/or behavioral disorder;
Top military leaders report seven in ten young Americans aged 17-24 are unfit to serve in the U.S. military because of obesity, asthma, hearing and eyesight problems and mental illness.
This is a heck of an article at Safeminds. How many of us begged, borrowed and bankrupted ourselves to get the EVIDENCE BASED ABA therapy that Pediatricians recommended. 20 hours a week. 30 hours a week. School services. It should come as no surprise that the GOLD standard is actually made of gold. Disgusting as ever. Jaded? You betcha.
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Some Claim the Pressure of Billing Hours is Degrading the Quality of ABA Services
The role of private equity companies is to invest money for wealthy individuals, university endowments, and pension funds. These firms intend to make more money for their clients through private investments than what could be made by investing in the stock market. In 2015, private investments in behavioral health totaled $120 million. According to industry analysis, five years later, that amount had grown to $1.2 billion.
Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) has long been considered the gold standard for autism treatment. The therapy is considered such a staple that every state mandates its coverage. In the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in private equity firms investing in ABA providers. With 1 in 44 children on the spectrum and the promise of state-mandated insurance reimbursement, ABA therapy has become a lucrative market for these investors.
However, many question whether this infusion of private equity funds is good for ABA. Since big business has become involved with ABA, families and clinicians are starting to be disillusioned with the therapy and the industry supporting it. Both parties point to financial investors’ fixation on profit and say it has degraded the quality of services that many children receive. Parents complain that ABA, which should be tailored to each child, has become “cookie cutter.” This one-size-fits-all approach allows bigger providers to save money on time-intensive assessments by using treatment plans that were simply copied from other clients. But that reuse goes against the highly individualized treatment plans that ABA is supposed to deliver. One clinician said that time-saving practices made her feel like a “billing machine, trying to make as much money for private equity as possible.” A former ABA provider employee shed more light on this practice and said that private-equity-owned companies would set billing quotas, reward top billers with bonuses, and question any holes in their schedules.
Allegations of overbilling for ABA by these companies are now surfacing across the country. These claims involve both providers with private equity backing and those without. For instance, in Nevada, 1000 individual clinicians sent bills to the Medicaid program suggesting they delivered 24 hours of therapy in a single day. In one outrageous case, one clinician billed 65 hours in just one day. Florida ABA providers have also been singled out for billing Medicaid for more than 40 hours of therapy in a week. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the federal government is stepping in. The Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Inspector General is working on a sweeping audit of Medicaid claims for ABA. The report should be released later this year.
In the meantime, ABA providers are also unhappy. They complain of staff shortages, employee turnover, high inflation, and receiving reimbursement payments from health insurers.
Subsequently, parents who are trying to juggle physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and special education day classes are now questioning if ABA is worth their child’s time. Many decide it is not. Some parents are viewing ABA as useless and even harmful. They see it as a practice that masks the traits that make their child unique and view ABA as an attempt to force their child into having behaviors that fit neurotypical norms. Read more at Safeminds.
About 9 months ago, the President of the United States issued a stark, morose message to Americans, casting us into two groups. Not Democrat and Republican, as one might expect. But vaccinated and unvaccinated.
“For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death… for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm,” Biden continued. “But there’s good news. If you’re vaccinated, and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death, period.”
In the Age of Autism Community, we believe in medical freedom and choice for readers and for your children. We have readers who were compelled to take the Covid vaccine, and readers who will never take one. All welcome. We know that President Biden's words did not come true, neither the praise nor the punishment.
Today, in the colder climates, we are looking at a Winter of severe prices and struggle. Autism families are not exempt from the vagaries of the economy, in fact, I think we are hit harder than most. Autistic adults who rely on Supplemental Security Income live below the poverty line unless someone (raise your hand with me) subsidizes them. Inflation is catastrophic for the autistic.
AofA is "Headquartered" (yes, you may chortle) in Connecticut. We're in the region called New England, and our weather has cold, snowy and icy winters. We're also one of the oldest regions in the country; our homes are ancient by standards in most other areas of the country and converting to natural gas is often expensive and impossible. According to Massachusetts statistics, 48% of residents heat their homes with fuel oil, electricity, propane and wood, with fuel oil having the largest share behind natural gas. I decided to look at the price of fuel oil in my area. The last time we saw such high prices was in 2014. A fuel oil tank holds 275 gallons. A full tank fill this week will cost $1262.25. Usage averages 10 gallons a DAY in the dead of winter. That's less than a month of fuel. One thousand two hundred and sixty two dollars a month. The average Social Security benefit for the elderly is just over $1500. The highest SSI benefit is just over $800.
Heating cost is just one home economics line item skyrocketing. Food. Auto fuel. Electricity. Water. All of our basic necessities are under pressure. If you need help, there are programs through your supplier. Your electric company can run a low or no cost energy audit, help with insulation and other ways to save money.
I'm worried. For the elderly, the low income, families already stretched to their limit. Far more than I was worried on December 17, 2021 when our President gave his warning.
We need you to know about this 15 week University level course beginning on September 13 from IPAK-EDU on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program used for emergency authorized biologics.
In this course, students will learn the structure, function and defects of the programs in the US created by Congress to award compensation to adults and children potentially and actually harmed or killed by vaccines. We will review a variety of important topics, review case histories. This course is for parents and lawyers new to US vaccine injury compensation programs.
Read the course description and register here.
Taught by Wayne Rohde, author of Vaccine Court, this class is available through The Online private University, IPAK-EDU. Many of us KNOW what these programs are - but we don't know the details of their inception and execution. The knowledge can boost your conversations with, trolls, BOTS, family and friends - just THINK of the Thanksgiving table arguments you can start! You might just get the whole pumpkin pie to yourself. XOX
###
Read More and Register HERE.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program & Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program
15-week, 1 hour course, both live and on demand
Email: wrohde@comcast.net
Course Objectives
Week 1 – General Overview of the NVICP, the purpose and what did the Act establish. Brief review of why Congress passed the NCVIA.
Week 2 – Components of the Program. Who is the defendant? Who administers the Program? What is a Special Master? Are you really suing anyone?
Week 3 – The PREP Act, The CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program and adding COVID-19 vaccine injuries to a compensation program.
Week 4 – The CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program - continued
Week 5 - VAERS, (Dr. Jessica Rose)
Week 6 – Filing a petition in NVICP, the pathway thru the Program and the adjudication of each case to final decision including appeals (Robert Krakow)
Week 7 – The Trust Fund, the failure to publicize the Program
Week 8 – Vaccine Injury Table and how it is revised, Year 1995 & 1997 and the fallout of Sec’y of HHS actions
Week 9 – Omnibus Autism Proceedings and other omnibus rulings
Week 10 – Rolf Hazlehurst, father of Yates. 2nd petition in OAP & Nick Kottenstette, father to child who was compensated in NVICP.
Week 11 – Medical experts in the NVICP (Dr. Theresa Deisher)
Week 12 – US Supreme Court rulings (Mary Holland)
Week 13 – Why SIDS, POI, Epilepsy, POTS and other medical conditions are not compensated
Week 14 – The effort to remove SIRVA and Sec 17 from the Program. Reforms Needed. To repeal the Act or to reform.
Week 15 – Review of the NVICP and the CICP
We are not alone in the autismn community. Millions of fellow citizens are wide awake to the grossly diminished stage called childhood. These folks are our friends, even if most are not directly involved with autism. Please join Millions Against Medical Mandates for a plethora of information and support.
Dear MAMM Community,
Why has the physical and mental health of our children continued to worsen? Why, for instance, were only 12% of our kids experiencing chronic illnesses in the 1980s and now well over half of them are suffering from one or more of these conditions including asthma, obesity, cancer, heart disease, autism, type 2 diabetes, and autoimmune illnesses? The idea that this is the “new normal” is a total “cop out” and blaming it on genetics is way too simplistic.
In our feature article written by MAMM's Collaborative Communication Committee, Nate Doromal, he explores some areas steeped in science and common sense to find real answers to this critical question.
We know that pHARMa (at best) only provides band-aid approaches to health problems. Manufacturers of toxic chemicals could not care less about the damage they are causing to us and our children by permeating our air, food, and water with their poisons, and, unfortunately (as we saw with the COVID response), our public health system lacks depth of understanding and commitment to getting to the root cause and finding common sense solutions to address health issues. The truth is, we (all of us) must face the task at hand. Our children’s health and their future are up to us!
Speaking of solutions, make sure to watch The Toxic Truth About Food and What You can Do About It as well as Dr. Northrup's epic new video interview.
MAMM is dedicated to educating, equipping and empowering MILLIONS so together we can create a saner, freer and healthier future!
Cathy has the long weekend off with her family.
By Cathy Jameson
My jaw dropped as I listened to a phone message that came in over a week ago. It was from a woman who works at an agency that helps us secure services for Ronan.
“Hi, Mrs. Jameson. I’m So-and-So from the agency. In reviewing Ronan’s renewal paperwork, I think I see an error. I really need you to call me back as soon as you are able so I can go over it with you. On the form, it looks like you indicated that Ronan was not living full-time in your home. Instead, it looks like you indicated that he is living in prison. We cannot continue services if he really is in prison…so, you really need to call me right away because we need to terminate services if his residency has changed.”
Stunned, I hung up the phone.
Prison? Are you kidding me?! Here’s right here next to me! What the heck did I check off on that form??
I’ve made mistakes before, but not one as bad as this one. Looking at the clock, I realized it was too late to return the call and speak to Ms. So-and-So. The office was already closed for the day. I would be able to leave a message, though, and quickly did that.
Hi, this is Cathy Jameson. I just heard your message and can assure you that Ronan lives at home. He has never been in nor has he ever lived in prison. He lives full-time in our house and is right here next to me. I’m not sure which box was checked off indicating otherwise, so please, please call me back as soon as you are able. If I do not answer the home phone, please, please, please try my mobile phone…thank you.
After hanging up, I racked my brain trying to remember when it was that I filled out that paperwork. It would’ve been months ago. Think. Think. Think! After a few minutes, I remembered. I’d received a packet from their office back in the spring and recalled that it was pages and pages long. I try to keep a copy of every form that we’re required to fill out, so went to my office to hunt down that copy. Looking through the files, I thought, Wait a minute…I didn’t fill out that paperwork. I called that information in!
I had the option to either fill it out and mail it in or call the agency with the information. Opting to call it in, I waited until all the kids were out of the house. That way, I wouldn’t be interrupted while I was on the phone. I remembered that I spoke to a young representative who went section by section with me – together, we updated Ronan’s stats, to include that he lived full-time at home with his family! If someone on their end messed up my son’s benefits, I would be more livid than I already was. I could do nothing more about it until I got a call back, so I tried to focus on what I needed to do next – pack for an end-of-the-summer quick trip to the beach.
Friday morning while driving to Surfers' Healing (which is always one of the best weekends ever for our little family!) we had lots of time to talk in the car. I told the kids about the phone call and how shocked I was to hear that they thought Ronan was a jailbird. Can you imagine… Ronan behind bars! We had a good laugh, but then things got a little bit serious.
“Will he really lose his benefits, Mom?” one of the kids asked.
“I’m not sure,” I answered. “I have to talk to the lady who left the message. I left her a message last night asking her to call me right away. It could be as easy as unchecking the wrong box and checking the right one. She’ll have to do that for me, and I’ll have to trust that she does it correctly.”
“Well, she better call you back,” Ronan’s younger sister said sternly.
“I pray that she does,” I replied.
After enjoying our fun day in the sun, the kids and I pig-piled back in the car for the drive home. Riding that Surfers Healing high, we reflected on how amazing the experience was for all of us. When they are there on the beach, my kids get so excited. They know that it takes a lot of people a lot of time to make the magic happen. The siblings love that Ronan, and tons of other kids like Ronan, are on the receiving end of so much love and attention.
We talked about everything we saw and about everybody we got to talk to. After sharing some stories about the volunteers who blessed us with their presence I said, “I bet a lot of them don’t even have kids with autism. I bet they see how wonderful the organization is and decide to give up their time for us. They work all day in the hot, hot sun to make sure our families are surrounded by nothing but love.”
The kids all agreed.
Later on Willem said, “I wonder what it’s like for families who don’t have a child with autism. I bet their houses are quieter, less hectic, and not so busy.” I agreed with him, “Our house can be SO loud, SO hectic and our schedule SO very busy.” And then I laughed, “But some the crazy is you guys, too, you know, and not just because of Ronan.”
“Yeah, right, Mom,” Willem said with a twinkle in his eye.
I little while later, Willem said, “I wonder if Ronan knows he can’t do as much stuff as we do…that he’s a little bit different. I wonder what he knows what autism is since he hears that word so much around him.” One of the other sibs offered, “He hears everything but he doesn’t show it. It’s like he’s stuck and can’t get things to work in his body."
You’ve got that right, I thought.
We’ve had so many tests done over the years: hearing tests, speech evaluations, MRIs, bloodwork. Even though many of the results come back “normal” or “within normal limits” he and the medical problems that plague him are far from what others would call normal.
“You guys are so in tune with your brother, and I love it,” I started. “You help with the simple things and the really complicated things. Take his speech for example. You want him so badly to talk again. We know that his mouth works, his tongue works, and his voice box works. He could speak at one point in his life, but now…nothing. All the parts are there. He just cannot talk like you are able to. His body looks just like your bodies, but his doesn’t work as well as yours do.”
Ronan’s little sister began, “Yeah, that part of him not being able to talk is hard. Sometimes, it’s like he’s locked in prison or something…,” and then her voice trailed off.
Locked in a prison.
“I sometimes think that, too,” I told her.
Despite that, Ronan continues to thrive and make progress. He’s started to play appropriately with toys again. He’s been able to do some small household chores with the kids. He’s typing a bit more, too. All of that keeps us hopeful. But the disability, and many of the struggles he faces daily because of it, still exists which is why maintaining his services is imperative. We try to do as much as we can for Ronan on our own, but we know that sometimes we need help to get done what needs to be done.
Help comes in many forms and is delivered in a number of ways – through the generosity of family and friends, through therapy, through some financial assistance, and by being able to access the services that Ms. So-and-So seems ready to cut off. I’ve called her back several times, but she has not found time to return my call. I’d love to tell her that Ronan’s been able to break free from the silence and from being trapped in his body, but that miracle has yet to occur. He still needs help. We still need help, too. I’ll keep calling and leaving messages because until full healing happens, my job is to keep fighting for my child. That includes making sure that services are not terminated. It also includes making sure that we, his family, keep Ronan healthy, safe, and happy right here in our sometimes loud, sometimes hectic, sometimes busy, but always loving home.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
I have been a Ray Bradbury devotee since I read my first short story in high school. Bradbury was the prolific science fiction author whose work captured the soul of humanity in every story. You might know him as the author of Something Wicked This Way Comes and Farenheit 451 (the temperature at which books burn) and other famous novels. In today's divisive political climate, both "sides" are claiming to be the Guy Montag, the rescuer of content. Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. ...the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The lead character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings. (Source, Wiki)
Tomorrow's Child is about a couple who use the newest science available to birth their baby. A machine that takes the atoms of the baby in utero, scrambles them out, and reassembles them without mother having to go through the hardship of labor and delivery. Except..... the machine, the trusted science of Dr. OBGYN, goes badly wrong, and Peter and Polly's baby is born as if in another dimension. Their son is a bright blue pyramid with squiggly tentacles. The doctor explains the mishap in sterile, quiet tones. SCIENCE is God today, but whose science? And what has technology done for and to our children?
The story was brought to life in Ray Bradbury Theatre in a rather stilted, odd version of Bradbury's beautifully written prose. I recall reading the short story when I was about 20 years old. I suppose I thought it was fanciful and dreadful, imagine having a blue pryamid instead of a flesh and blood human baby! Life has a sense of humor. My own daughters, beautiful humans, are like blue pyramids. Round pegs in a world of square holes.
No one looks out for our kids' (young and old) safety like NAA>
The National Autism Association’s Big Red Safety Teacher Toolkit® is a free-of-charge safety toolkit for educators in need of wandering-prevention tools.
Please review all of the information below before submitting your application.
To apply for an NAA Big Red Safety Teacher Toolkit®, you must:
The 1st days of school photos are taking over Facebook. For autism families, this is a tough time of seeing the differences. We do not think our kids are less. Still, it stings to watch the preschool gap grow into a chasm year after year. And we are allowed to admit our truth. I see you, autism family. All of you.
Twitter asks with such earnest intent, "Do YOU know how to spot misinformation?" They want to help enable free expression and dialogue. That's why EVERY Tweet we send out from this site has a SENSITIVE CONTENT brown paper envelope warning on it. We can tweet a photo of puppies cavorting in a field of daisies while pink clouds rain M&MS down to the cotton candy grass - SENSITIVE CONTENT! We only remove content if it's harmful... And that's the problem. Information about autism from A to Z is important to our readers. That includes information about vaccination choice, we're one of the LAST autism organizations that still actively discusses the topics on social media. And the organizations that want to discuss vaccine injury often avoid talking about autism. We're a liability. Makes me hanker for a plate of worms.... Nobody loves us... It's also a risk to me personally. AofA is my passion and my small living.
So what is "harmful" info? Back in the 1980s, we had the best answer you'll ever find: "...Potter Stewart, Associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1958 to 1981, is frequently remembered for his famous nondefinition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”
We know what's harmful. We know it because we LIVE it. Follow us on Twitter - ReTweet us Share us. Thanks.
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We need you to know about this 15 week University level course beginning on September 13 from IPAK-EDU on the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program used for emergency authorized biologics.
In this course, students will learn the structure, function and defects of the programs in the US created by Congress to award compensation to adults and children potentially and actually harmed or killed by vaccines. We will review a variety of important topics, review case histories. This course is for parents and lawyers new to US vaccine injury compensation programs.
Read the course description and register here.
Taught by Wayne Rohde, author of Vaccine Court, this class is available through The Online private University, IPAK-EDU. Many of us KNOW what these programs are - but we don't know the details of their inception and execution. The knowledge can boost your conversations with, trolls, BOTS, family and friends - just THINK of the Thanksgiving table arguments you can start! You might just get the whole pumpkin pie to yourself. XOX
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Read More and Register HERE.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program & Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program
15-week, 1 hour course, both live and on demand
Email: wrohde@comcast.net
Course Objectives
Week 1 – General Overview of the NVICP, the purpose and what did the Act establish. Brief review of why Congress passed the NCVIA.
Week 2 – Components of the Program. Who is the defendant? Who administers the Program? What is a Special Master? Are you really suing anyone?
Week 3 – The PREP Act, The CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program and adding COVID-19 vaccine injuries to a compensation program.
Week 4 – The CounterMeasures Injury Compensation Program - continued
Week 5 - VAERS, (Dr. Jessica Rose)
Week 6 – Filing a petition in NVICP, the pathway thru the Program and the adjudication of each case to final decision including appeals (Robert Krakow)
Week 7 – The Trust Fund, the failure to publicize the Program
Week 8 – Vaccine Injury Table and how it is revised, Year 1995 & 1997 and the fallout of Sec’y of HHS actions
Week 9 – Omnibus Autism Proceedings and other omnibus rulings
Week 10 – Rolf Hazlehurst, father of Yates. 2nd petition in OAP & Nick Kottenstette, father to child who was compensated in NVICP.
Week 11 – Medical experts in the NVICP (Dr. Theresa Deisher)
Week 12 – US Supreme Court rulings (Mary Holland)
Week 13 – Why SIDS, POI, Epilepsy, POTS and other medical conditions are not compensated
Week 14 – The effort to remove SIRVA and Sec 17 from the Program. Reforms Needed. To repeal the Act or to reform.
Week 15 – Review of the NVICP and the CICP
Note: Operation Warp speed was President Trump's pride and joy. All that was missing was a Superzero cape that had Pfizer, Moderna and J&J on the back. The President-elect who was going to appoint Bobby Kennedy to a Vaccine Safety Committee and drain the swamp, flooded the swamp for pharma. President Biden happily took the baton and has kept the program going and going and going and..... Everything is politicized today. You can't flip a coin without one side complaining about the other. Anne Dachel shares the transcript from Tucker Carlson's program. Blame blame bo bame banana fana fo fame fee fi mo mame blame.
Aug 25, 2022, Fox News:
TUCKER CARLSON: Democrats are trying to shift blame about the COVID-19 vaccine to Trump
Tucker Carlson exposes the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine - and how Democrats are now blaming Trump
Well, they finally got Big Orange. You were starting to think it could never happen. How could it happen? Once you accused a man of racism, fascism, sexism, embezzlement, perjury, sex crimes, mental illness, treason (The last of which, by the way, is a death penalty offense, let us remind you) and then you impeach him twice on related grounds and after that, you send the FBI to his home to seize a handwritten welcome letter from Barack Obama, which turns out to be a state secret possession of which is a serious felony.
After you do all of that and they have, you wouldn't think there'd be a lot left to accuse the guy of. You'd think they'd have run out of sins, but no, it turns out there's one left and it's the big one.
The crime of all crimes, an offense so diabolical, so morally repugnant, so contrary to the laws of God and nature that once revealed to the public, Donald Trump is done forever. He will never again darken the door of American democracy. He will slink back in shame to his lair off the fifth tee to prepare for his well-deserved punishment. We won't see him again until sentencing. That's how bad this is. What, ladies and gentlemen, did Donald Trump do? We can now tell you. Donald Trump created the COVID vaccine. He did that himself and on purpose, with malice aforethought.
The vaccine is Donald Trump's doing. We learned that this week from Democrats in Congress. They announced that shocking news. An investigation by the Coronavirus Subcommittee found, as Politico put it, that the Trump administration pressured the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the first COVID-19 vaccines on an accelerated timeline. Following this?
An accelerated timeline. They didn't even fully test the stuff. That's not science. Donald Trump doesn't do science. So, they just handed this stuff out to people, citizens, recklessly. In the words of South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, Donald Trump "assaulted" our nation's public health institutions with this poison, the so-called vaccine, and in doing so "undermined our nation's coronavirus response." That's what Trump did and here's the worst part. No one knew Trump was doing it.
They trusted Donald Trump. He was the president of the United States. People believed him when he said the vaccine worked, especially older people. They knew they were at risk and they wanted to believe that a shot would keep them safe. So, they took Donald Trump's word and then they took the vax, and then a lot of them got covered anyway. It's horrifying when you think about it. Here is one of Donald Trump's elderly victims. …
Now that we can blame Donald Trump for the vaccine, we can finally tell the truth about the vaccine without being fired or attacked or thrown off the Internet. We really should have thought of this earlier because it feels good, the freedom of this. So, let's take a moment to talk about Donald Trump's vaccine and why it seems to be, among other things, dramatically raising death rates among young people.
According to data from New Zealand, the government there, for example, children who were vaccinated between the ages of 10 and 19, were more likely (not less likely) more likely to die within a month of vaccination than those who didn't take the vaccine in the same age group and it's not just the New Zealand government that has found this. This summer, a Dutch researcher called André Redert published a paper entitled "COVID-19 Vaccinations and all-cause mortality."
The research analyzed hundreds of cities and towns. What did it find? "We could not observe a mortality reducing effect of vaccination in Dutch municipalities after vaccination booster campaigns. We did find a 4-sigma significant mortality enhancing effect during the two periods of high unexplained excess mortality."
Oh, so the data suggests, don't prove, but suggests the vaccine may be killing people. Unexplained mortality is also on the rise in many other countries—Australia, England, Wales. So why is Donald Trump's vaccine doing all of this in other countries? Well, we can't be sure, but as Alex Berenson reported on his Substack recently, the Canadian government is seeing a similar problem at huge scale.
As of this summer, people who took Donald Trump's vaccine in the Canadian province of Manitoba are roughly 50% more likely than the unvaccinated to be hospitalized or die from COVID. Again, to pause, how bad is Donald Trump's vaccine? So bad that people who take it are more likely to die of COVID. Hmm. Now we have data from more Canadian provinces, but they seem to be hiding it now. On July 28, the province of British Columbia announced it would stop reporting the number of deaths that occurred in people who have taken the COVID booster. Wow. Why is that? Don't ask. You're not allowed to. Oh, we are now because it's a Trump crime.
The charts are also missing somehow from the Internet archive, which is widely known, of course, as a front for Russian operatives working on behalf of who? Donald Trump, but we do have the most recent available data. What do those show? Well, they show that 70% of all deaths in that province occurred in people who are boosted, even though boosted individuals make up just half the province's population. Do the math on that for a minute.
Well, your first reaction might be, "Oh, well, vaccinated and boosted people tend to be older, so of course, they're dying at a greater rate. It has nothing to do with the shot," but then you look deeper. You read, for example, the Lancet article entitled "Risk of Infection, Hospitalization and Death up to nine months after a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine" and that piece shows that people over the age of 80 have worse outcomes and by worse, we mean more hospitalizations, more deaths when they're vaccinated than when they are unvaccinated.
So, it turns out when Donald Trump told you, as he did hundreds of times, certainly you must remember this, that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it turned out to be exactly the opposite and we're seeing this in a lot of different places, in a lot of different data sets. In fact, as Kenji Yamamoto wrote in the Journal of Virology, "The Lancet study showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals eight months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was lower than that among unvaccinated individuals."
That sounds like it's hurting people's immune system in a profound way. As the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology put it after an independent study, "Vaccination introduces a profound impairment in type one interferon signaling which has diverse adverse consequences to human health." That doesn't sound good. What consequences could they be talking about?
Well, in July, the German government put out a Tweet stating that at least one out of every 5,000 COVID shots causes "serious side effects." One in 5,000. Really? This is a shot that was taken by hundreds of millions of people, including in this country. What effects are they actually talking about? Well, those would include decreased sperm counts. The journal Andrology reported in June that there was a 22% average drop in total sperm count in samples taken 3 to 5 months after the second Pfizer dose of the vaccine, Donald Trump's vax.
On top of that, there is heart inflammation, myocarditis, which is now suddenly famous in neighborhoods across the country because everyone seems to know someone else's son who has it. In December of last year, researchers at Oxford found that, "myocarditis risk was increased during 1 to 28 days following a third dose of the vaccine. Associations were strongest in males younger than 40 years for all vaccine types," but you knew that because you're seeing it among people you know and no one's talking about it.
We're not allowed to talk about it, but now we can because Trump did it. Researchers in Israel, meanwhile, found that vaccination increased the 42-day risk of myocarditis by a factor of three. It's a very serious heart condition, not a small finding. Now, you may have also noticed the rise in young athletes dying of heart attacks in recent months, something you're not allowed to notice, but you probably can't help yourself.
For example, a 37-year-old cycling champion in Scotland called Rab Wardell just died of a heart attack two days after winning a national mountain biking championship. Can't say he was out of shape. Maybe it wasn't vax related. Have you seen that a lot before? Hmm and then there are those five doctors you may have read about in Toronto who died in the same month in July. Now, of that group of five dead physicians, there was a 27-year-old triathlete who died after a swimming competition and a 50-year-old Olympian who died after a run. So, these are not people who are sitting on the couch smoking weed and eating Doritos.
Now, we can't know why all of this happened, but the point is we're allowed to notice now, and that's significant, especially since some places are still forcing children to take the vaccine and that would include most colleges in the United States. They just announced that boosters are mandatory. In the District of Columbia, which is falling apart, the mayor has decided, she declared this today, that unvaccinated students will not be allowed in school.
They won't even get virtual learning unless they take a vaccine, Donald Trump's vaccine, that appears to be hurting a lot of people, but unless they take it, they will get no education whatsoever. Hmm. Who knew that Muriel Bowser, the resolutely partisan Democrat who runs Washington, D.C., was actually working for Donald Trump, but she appears to be. At least you know who to blame.
By Cathy Jameson
In the beginning, Pfizer advertised that Science Will Win. Back in 2020, it sounded like all of Science would work together to overcome the pandemic. Fast forward to last week.
It looks like Science doesn’t want to play in the same sandbox anymore.
Moderna is going after Pfizer, suing them for vaccine patent infringement. When I heard that news, I immediately thought of two bullies on a playground. Bullies think they can do whatever they want. Sometimes they get what they want by force. Sometimes others assist them in their goal. Moderna and Pfizer, with the help from the US government, gained billions in a short amount of time. Countless mandates, encouraged by the government, helped those two companies stay ‘leader of the pack’ even today.
Pfizer’s Comirnaty brought in more than $36 billion in sales globally last year, and analysts expect it to bring in nearly $33 billion this year, according to FactSet.
Moderna Inc. booked $17.6 billion in revenue from its vaccine last year. Analysts project more than $21 billion in 2022.
Using similar tactics as last year, the government predicted “a pretty sizeable wave of infections” again this fall and winter. It would not be surprising if both of those pharmaceutical companies’ profits increased. That’ll happen when updated covid booster get approved.
The U.S. has a contract to buy 105 million of the Pfizer doses and 66 million Moderna ones, assuming FDA gives the green light.
Even though other manufacturers joined the warpseed-race to create and sell their own liability-free products, like the less popular Jansen and the now-available Novavax, the now-at-odds pharma giants garnered all the attention.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines deliver genetic instructions for the body to make copies of the spike protein. The lesser-used Johnson & Johnson option uses a cold virus to deliver those instructions.
When the Covid Era began, anytime vaccines were mentioned in the news, it seemed that Moderna and Pfizer were deemed the best, and only, choices.
They still are.
Constant promotion of their products, even before they were made available, has kept the vaccine conversation going. Radio ads remain vague, as to exact ingredients used in the formula, but the message has always been clear – get the shot.
Get it now, and again, and again.
And now get it one more time. With a new formula. Which probably can help. But we’re not exactly sure yet.
“A bivalent vaccine will have some benefit for almost everybody who gets it,” Rishi Goel, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. “How much benefit that is, we’re still not exactly sure.”
That uncertainty, to me, is a red flag. So has been the getting around of what had been standard safety testing. The drive, though, to get vaccinated and boosted continues.
It’s all just been a bit odd to me. The massive push for fast-tracked vaccines. The belittling of those who chose not to get them. The ever-shady tactics. The constant moving of the goalposts. And the complete lack of logic.
I know this hasn’t been easy for a lot of people, including for my own family and friends. But I haven’t fallen for it. If you haven’t fallen for any of this either, stay the course. Bullies may be strong. It would be awesome if we can stay stronger.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
From the "Like we NEED any reminders that WE and our kids are growing older" files."
I was profiled yesterday at the dollarish store called 5 Below. I bought tickets to Sesame Street live last Spring and Meta (Mark Ickerberg et al) must know that we are a Sesame Street family because of it. I refer, of course, to CLASSIC and VINTAGE Sesame Street, back when they taught ABCs, 123s, kindness, sharing, respect for all people and that it was perfectly OK to eat nothing but cookies. We call that the good old days. Anyhoo..... 5 Below kept showing me ads for a terrific Have a Happy Day T on my Insta feed. Today, I stopped into a brick and mortar store (look it up kids!) to buy the shirt for my daughter's birthday in a couple of weeks. Here comes the triggered moment! Grab a hankie. Lock and load your outrage. Start melting, oldflakes!
I found a row of T-shirts (not Sesame Street) and picked one up to take a peek at the graphic. A clerk who was unloading boxes next to me hopped up and said, "Those Are Cropped Shirts!" Really, Missy? Are you saying that I am too old for cropped T-shirts?? (Narrator: She IS too old for crop tops.) I smiled and said, "I'm looking for my young, thin daughter." I laughed out loud as I shopped. Miss B ages out at 22 on her birthday. That's the biggest reminder out there that the years are flying by and that my life is indeed growing cropped.
XOX
Kim
These are my girls’ school photos the year Age of Autism was launched. We debuted in November of 2007, and announced AofA at the National Autism Association conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Dan Olmsted won an award for his work on behalf of the vaccine injury community.
Yesterday was my youngest’s last first day of school. She turns 22 next month. I don’t agree that time flies. It seems to have gone on and on and on forever in a blur of work, struggle, conquest, tears, laughter, work, struggle, laughter, tears, hopes, dreams, disappointments, change and more change all topped off with a never ending dollop of worry. I rather agree with my older daughters' facial expression assessment during their photo shoot. "Hmmm, not too sure about this."
I had conversation last week with a friend whose son turns 18 on the same day that B turns 22. She is struggling with yet another milestone that is so different for many of our kids, compared to their typical peers. From this we know. I hope I was able to tell her that it's OK to grieve and mourn what we thought our kids' paths would be, all while still adoring and accepting them exactly where they are today. And that every milestone can be painful, from diagnosis, to leaving for Early Intervention, to Kindergarten, Middle School, High School, Transition and then into adult services. It's tough. It hurts like hell. And that's OK. That's our journey. We travel together, here at Age of Autism.
Thank you to Leslie Manookian for her work on behalf of medical freedom.
Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF) is supporting a Disney television employee in suing the company, detailing severe discrimination and harassment tied to her decision not to get the COVID-19 vaccine as required by a company mandate. The lawsuit details an intolerable workplace environment, including anti-religious and political bias, tied solely to the worker’s declination of the vaccine.
Pamela Petroff, an employee at 20th Television Animation, a unit of Disney Television Studios in Burbank, CA, alleges in her suit that her conscience-based decision to decline the COVID-19 vaccine triggered a series of illegal and discriminatory actions. The suit also details the publicly stated bias of her supervisor, Disney producer Kara Vallow, against Christians, Republicans, and those who choose not to be vaccinated against COVID.
“Disney has never required that individuals get a shot to work for it,” Scott Street, an attorney for Ms. Petroff, stated. “It never even required such medical information before the COVID pandemic, recognizing that California law prohibits employers from conditioning employment on medical conformity.”
Among other things, Disney has threatened Ms. Petroff with termination and denied her work opportunities, including remote work, that it makes available to others. She was also subject to escalating personal harassment and ordered to remove the American flag from a flyer because “the flag could offend people.”
This harassment began only after Petroff, a Christian, cited her religious beliefs, along with bona fide personal medical information, as her reasons for declining the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Although the CDC and other public health officials have changed their tune about COVID, companies like Disney are still enforcing their unprecedented mandatory vaccination policies, especially against people who have religious and medical reasons for declining the shots,” HFDF president Leslie Manookian said. “Nobody should be forced to violate her conscience to keep her job.”
Petroff’s complaint also highlights the significant personal bias that Ms. Vallow has against Republicans, Christians, and the unvaccinated.
For example, following a sentence in a post littered with f-words telling people to “…GET THE F__ING VACCINE YOU F___ING F__KS,” she adds, “As for the unvaccinated: Unfriend them, don’t talk to them, don’t hire them. The woods is where they live now.”
The lawsuit seeks to overturn Disney’s mandatory vaccination policy and prevent Disney from firing Petroff, plus compensatory and punitive damages.
The case, Petroff vs Vallow, Disney Television Studios Inc. and The Walt Disney Company was filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County.
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I saw this cartoon and had to share it with readers. As the epidemic that began in the early 1990s ages into adulthood, the trajectory of media coverage has yet to catch up. Indeed, it was thwarted by the rise of the form of neurodiversity that whitewashes away the negative aspects of autism. Has your child aged out into adulthood and what's the current life and future like? It's a mountain of work - again - for most of us. And what about adults with autism? For the severely affected, there's a bleak outlook. For those who differently affected, including those who can work - there's challenge after challenge. There is no "easy" version, just different flavors of worry. Where to begin?
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Thank you, Vera. And God bless.
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I came to Nuremberg to provide historical context to the current global threat confronting our civilization. These past 2 1⁄2 years have been especially stressful— as painful memories were rekindled.
In 1941, I was 31⁄2 when my family was forced from our home in Romania & deported to Ukraine.
We were herded into a concentration camp – essentially left to starve. Death was ever-present. My father died of typhus when I was five.
In 1944, as the Final Solution was being aggressively implemented, Romania retreated from its alliance with Nazi Germany. The government permitted several hundred Jewish orphans under the age of 12 to return to Romania. I was not an orphan; my mother lied to save my life.
I boarded a cattle car train – the same train that continued to transport Jews to the death camps – even as Germany was losing the war.
Four years elapsed before I was reunited with my mother.
———————
The Holocaust serves as the archetypal symbol of unmitigated evil
– Moral norms & human values were systematically obliterated.
– The Nazi system destroyed the social conscience.
– Millions of people were worked to death as Slave laborers.
– Others were abused
as experimental human guinea pigs.
The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
The Holocaust was preceded by 9 years of incremental restrictions on personal freedom, & the suspension of legal rights and civil rights.
The stage was set by fear-mongering & hate-mongering propaganda.
A series of humiliating discriminatory government edicts demonized Jews as “spreaders of disease.” We were compared to lice.
———————
The real viral disease that infected Nazi Germany is Eugenics— Eugenics is the elitist ideology at the root of all genocides.
– Eugenics is cloaked in a mantle of pseudo- science.
– It was embraced by the academic & medical establishment as well as the judiciary — in Germany and the United States.
– Eugenicists justify social & economic inequality.
They legitimize discrimination, apartheid, sterilization, euthanasia, and genocide. The Nazis called it “ethnic cleansing” — for the protection of the gene pool.
Medicine was perverted from its healing mission & was weaponized.
First, it was to control reproduction through forced sterilization; then it was to eliminate those deemed to be “sub-human” —Untermenschen. The first victims of medical murder were 1,000
German disabled infants and toddlers. This murderous operation was expanded to an estimated 10,000 children up to age 17.
The next victims were the mentally ill; they were followed by the elderly in nursing homes. All of these human beings were condemned as “worthless eaters”.
Under Operation T-4, designated hospitals became killing stations where various extermination methods were tested – including Zyclon B — the gas that was used in the death camps.
———————
The objective of the Nazi Final Solution was to annihilate the entire 11 million Jewish Population of Europe as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The Nazis enacted discriminatory laws; they utilized modern technology; low-cost industrial methods; an efficient transportation system; & a highly trained bureaucracy that coordinated the industrial genocidal process. The objective was high speed, maximum efficiency at lowest cost.
The human casualties of this unprecedented genocide were 6 million Jews & 9 million other people whom the Nazis dehumanized as Untermenschen.
The purpose of Holocaust memorials is to warn and inform future generations about how an enlightened, civilized society can be transformed into a genocidal universe ruled by absolute moral depravity.
If we are to avert another Holocaust, we must identify ominous current parallels before they poison the fabric of society.
Since the Nazi era, the study of history & most of the humanities—including philosophy, religion, and ethics — have been overshadowed by an emphasis on utilitarian science & technology.
As a result, few people recognize foreboding similarities between current policies & those under the Nazi regime.
By declaring a state of emergency—in 1933 & in 2020, constitutionally protected personal freedom, legal rights, and civil rights were swept aside. Repressive, discriminatory decrees followed.
In 1933, the primary target for discrimination were Jews; today, the target is people who refuse to be injected with experimental, genetically engineered vaccines. Then and now, government dictates were crafted to eliminate segments of the population.
In 2020, government dictates forbade hospitals from treating the elderly in nursing homes. The result was mass murder.
Government decrees continue to forbid doctors to prescribe life-saving, FDA approved medicines; government-dictated protocols continue to kill.
The media is silent – as it was then.
The media broadcasts a single, government-dictated narrative – just as it had under the Nazis. Strict censorship silences opposing views.
In Nazi Germany few individuals objected; those who did were imprisoned in concentration camps.
Today, doctors & scientists who challenge the approved narrative are maligned; their reputations trashed. They risk losing their license to practice as well as having their homes & workplace raided by SWAT teams.
———————
The moral significance of the Nuremberg Code cannot be overstated:
The Nuremberg Code is the most authoritative, internationally recognized document in the history of medical ethics.
This landmark document was formulated in response to the evidence of medical atrocities committed by Nazi physicians and scientists.
The Code sets forth moral boundaries for research involving human beings.
The Nuremberg Code rejects the ideology of Eugenics & unequivocally asserts the primacy & dignity of the individual human being – as opposed to “the greater good of society.”
American jurists who formulated the Nuremberg Code incorporated the official 1931 German “Guidelines for Human Experimentation” authored by Dr. Julius Moses. Those Guidelines remained legally in force until 1945. The Nazis violated them in their entirety. Dr. Moses, who was Jewish, was deported to Theresienstadt where he died.
———————
The Nuremberg Code defined foundational, universal moral and legal standards; affirming fundamental human rights.
These human rights apply to every human being.
– The Code sets limits on the parameters of permissible medical experiments.
– Equally important, the Nuremberg Code holds doctors and research investigators personally responsible to ensure the human subjects’ safety & to ensure that the person freely gave his voluntary, fully informed consent. The standards of the Nuremberg Code are incorporated in the International Criminal Code. They are legally applicable today in peacetime & during war.
The objective of the Nuremberg Code is to ensure that medicine, never again deviates from the precautionary ethical principle, “First, do no harm.”
The Nuremberg Code has served as a blueprint for subsequent national and international codes of human rights – to ensure that:
– the rights & dignity of human beings are upheld;
– & to ensure that medical doctors never again engage in morally abhorrent experiments.
– Like the 10 Commandments, not a word of the Code may ever be changed.
The first of 10 ethical principles lays down the foremost ethical requirement – which is spelled out in great detail:
“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential”.
“This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force… constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge & comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This… requires that before the acceptance… of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject… [he] should be [informed of] the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences & hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty & responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.”
———————
The genocidal culture that permeated the Nazi regime did not end in 1945. It metastasized in the United States.
At the end of the war, US government agents helped 1,600 high ranking Nazi scientists, doctors, & engineers to evade justice at Nuremberg.
These Nazi technocrats facilitated the murderous Nazi operations. They were Hitler’s partners in crimes against humanity. They were secretly smuggled into the US under Operation Paperclip. This was in violation of explicit orders by President Harry Truman. These Nazi criminals were placed in high-level positions at major American scientific & medical institutions where they continued their work.
What’s more, these Nazi technocrats trained a generation of American scientists, doctors, & engineers.
This is how Nazi methods, & the immoral disregard for human values were entrenched in America.
In 1961, in his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the increasing dominance of “the military-industrial complex” whose “total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt [everywhere]”
Eisenhower warned: “we must be alert to the danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
In 1979, a report to the President, by the US Commission on the Holocaust, chaired by Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel warned:
“…the inclination to duplicate the Nazi option and once again to exterminate millions of people remains a hideous threat.”
Those who declare that Holocaust analogies are “off limits”—are betraying the victims of the Holocaust by denying the relevance of the Holocaust.
The Nuremberg Code has served as the foundation for ethical clinical research since its publication 75 years ago.
The Covid pandemic is being exploited as an opportunity to overturn the moral and legal parameters laid down by the Nuremberg Code.
The Nuremberg Code is our defense against abusive experimentation.
———————
Humanity is currently under siege by the global heirs of the Nazis.
A posse of ruthless, interconnected, global billionaires have gained control over national & international policy-setting institutions.
They have embarked on implementing a diabolical agenda:
– Overthrow democracy & Western civilization;
– Depopulate the global population;
– Eliminate nation-states & establish One World Government;
– Eliminate cash & establish one digital currency;
– Inject digital IDs & artificial intelligence capabilities into every Human being. If these objectives become a reality, we will be digitally surveilled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In May 2022, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Klaus Schwab, the architect of the dystopian Great Reset declared:
“Let’s be clear, the future is not just happening; the future is built by us, a powerful community here in this room. We have the means to impose the state of the world.”
The ultimate goal of these megalomaniacs is to gain total control of the worlds’ natural resources, financial resources and to replace humans with Transhuman robots.
[1] Transhumanism is a bio-tech- enhanced caste system – the New Eugenics.
Klaus Schwab’s lead advisor is Yuval Noah Harari, an Oxford University trained, Israeli. Harari is a proponent of the New Eugenics & Transhumanism.
Harari refers to humans as “hackable animals” He declared: “We have the technology to hack humans on a massive scale…”
Harari despises the very concept of God.
Transhumanists despise human values, & deny the existence of a human soul. Harari declares that there are too many “useless people.” The Nazi term was “worthless eaters”
This is the New Eugenics.
It is embraced by the most powerful global billionaire technocrats who gather at Davos: Big Tech, Big Pharma, the financial oligarchs, academics, government leaders & the military industrial complex. These megalomaniacs have paved the road to another Holocaust.
This time, the threat of genocide is Global in scale.
This time instead of Zyklon B gas, the weapons of mass destruction are genetically engineered injectable bioweapons masquerading as vaccines.
This time, there will be no rescuers. Unless All of Us Resist, Never Again is Now.
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Early "Monday" publication for UK. As ever, thank you to John Stone.
By John Stone
In March 2020 the British Government decided to impose lockdown on the determination of the WHO against the advice of its own medical experts including Sir Chris Whitty - the experts then followed the policy, subordinating their judgment to the outside agency. These events anticipated the WHO’s recent and continuing attempts to formalise global supremacy in health, and demonstrates the arbitrariness and chaos which will inevitably follow
I am trying to understand the events of March 2020 in the light of an answer to a recent Freedom of Information Request. Why and how was it that four days before lockdown was imposed on March 23 the four Chief Medical Officers of the United Kingdom posted a notice on-line announcing that COVID-19 had been downgraded from the status of High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID).
This peculiar event has not gone entirely un-noticed but has never really been explained. Before this point the disease named in the document as COVID-19 (rather than identified as virus SARS-CoV-2) - was a “high consequence infectious disease”, while almost at the very instant our lives, and everyone’s, were to be irrevocably pitched into turmoil with the denial of civil liberties and most basic human rights, untold economic destruction and chaos, it was no longer so designated.
If the disease was no longer “high consequence” there could be absolutely no reason for this high level and prolonged disruption, and yet it was at this precise moment that the inevitability of lockdown started to be promoted, only to be confirmed four days later. But according to the CMOs’ reckoning at no point in the past two and a quarter years, whatever actions they took to restrict our lives or coerce us to accept injections of novel products, has the disease been “high consequence”.
This anomaly cannot I believe be stressed enough: my FOI request produced no new documents but the Department of Health and Social Care drew my attention to a Parliamentary answer by Jo Churchill on November 6, 2020 to Conservative MP John Redwood (submitted fully 5 and a half weeks before on September 28):
The four nations public health high consequence infectious disease (HCID) group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID, based on the information that was available during the very early stages of the outbreak.
Once more was known about COVID-19, United Kingdom public health bodies reviewed the available information against the HCID criteria and noted certain changes. These changes included the increase in information available about mortality rates, which are low overall amongst the general population; greater clinical awareness; and the availability of a specific and sensitive laboratory test for the virus.
COVID-19 has not been considered a HCID in the UK since 19 March 2020, but this reclassification has not affected the Government’s response to COVID-19, which remains a comprehensive national effort.
So, the junior minister, Jo Churchill, confirmed that decision was made with due consideration and not because of some expedience: this remained the case on November 6, 2020, and remains the case today because whatever the CMOs have said subsequently to the public, notably government Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty they have not updated this statement.
With this in mind let us go back and look at what was said in the statement of March 19, 2020 :it may be one of those occasions when British government documents are more revealing than most.
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK. There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are not classified as HCIDs.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The ACDP were quite clear and in their letter of 13 March emphasised in capital letters that it was not high consequence.
They have recorded their expert view for all time this is an infection without implications for health and government policy (it doesn’t have “high consequence”). So, I think it is the next bit we need to look at to explain what happened:
The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to consider COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), therefore the need to have a national, coordinated response remains and this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.
What they are manifestly saying is that government is not following the advice of relatively sensible (or once sensible) British health officials but the World Health Organization, and WHO is telling the British health officials what to do as a matter of government policy. In this regard the WHO’s most recent attempt to impose its official authority over governments - and particularly Western governments - in May 2022 already seemed to be the de facto reality in early 2020: everything was coming from the network of global organisations - WHO, UN, WEF all closely linked - and the corporate interests, notably the ventures of Bill Gates, GAVI, CEPI etc. they represented as part of a wider project of domination. It is a very interesting question why a country with huge medical and scientific resources, inordinate if languishing expertise of its own should defer to an organisation with a vastly flawed history: while everybody either kowtowed like Whitty, or was brutally swept aside. It seems as if the decision to scuttle our heritage had already been taken by humanly disengaged politicians.
For lazy, cowardly politicians - of which there are many - it may seem like a clever option to defer to authority - it protects them from making responsible decisions themselves, but unfortunately it is simply a gimmick, opening the country to brutal corporate exploitation rather than traditional clinical wisdom. The lunacy of the new science could not be better represented the UK’s new and disreputable partnership with the Gates/WEF/Wellcome creation CEPI to bring emergency mRNA injections to the market without any testing in future in 100 days. We can know nothing useful about the effectiveness and safety of such products in such a time space, and this is simply devoid of the most basic common sense which we should at least be able to expect from the people we elect.
Finally, so sad also to see the British monarchy get sucked into this folly, which people might have thought outside their brief.
John Stone is UK Editor
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Note: Dinner. Dinner. Dinner. Dinner ad infinitem. And when we have special diets - fuggedabouit! Cathy has shared a fun post today with 3 GF recipes. Mangia!
###
By Cathy Jameson
It’s that time of year when things are starting to get really busy – school schedules, sports schedules, after-school activity schedules – those will be full again soon. As we gear up for those new routines, I thought back to what helped our nights run better and remembered this post I’d shared with friends and family. I’ve added a few things to the post, including some links to brands we now use.
During past school years, when my kids were in grade school, I could get away with last-minute meal prep for my family. Those times, I would get so busy (or distracted) when 5:30 rolled around, and I'd find myself panicking. It would be around the same time that my kids' tummies would begin to rumble. That's also when my typical son, who could happily eat 24 hours a day would yell out, "Hey, Mom! What's for dinner?"
Dinner?
He can't be serious, I'd think. The kid just ate snack...
I'd slowly glance at the clock and realize...TWO hours ago.
Oh, no! Dinner!
Dang it.
I did it again, I’d mutter to myself.
You'd think that I'd have this making dinner thing down. I'd been making and serving dinner for our family of seven for a long time at that point. But, I'd get caught up in something else or lose track of time. Those nights, it would be a race against the clock to thaw some meat, to figure out what to do with it, and to begin the prep work for whatever sides I thought could go with the meal.
Happily, none of the food I'd end up throwing together last minute tasted terrible. Quite the opposite! They were some of the best dinners I'd ever made and garnered lots of compliments--even from my pickiest eater! But who wants the pressure of racing against the clock to get a meal on the table with five hungry, hungry hippos underfoot?
Not this mama.
I knew that I needed to make some changes. First, was to plan my day better. Next, was to actually plan a dinner menu each week instead of going by the imaginary one I ignored in my head daily. Third, was to follow through.
As I tippy toed into making some positive changes, I could see that things were going to be better.
Our evening schedule was eventually smoother, and I wasn't feeling so rushed. Dinners were plated sooner than usual, and they tasted even yummier than before. In fact, I was able to add some new dishes to the mix! Now, before you think I added more work for myself and spent too many hours thinking about what to make, I promise that I didn't flip through tons of cookbooks or scan through hundreds of online recipes to find new meal ideas. Since I am a work in progress and admittedly, somewhat lazy in the kitchen, I just threw what I already had in the fridge and freezer into a casserole dish.
Casseroles? How have I forgotten how easy those were?!
Casseroles...yes!
Here are three of those casserole dishes--all gluten-free, that we rotate (sometimes twice because they taste so YUM) during our busy week:
Chicken Chicken
Measurements are for my family of 7; adjust recipe according to your family's needs
Ingredients:
6 organic chicken breasts
1 jar mild organic salsa (we are wimps, the milder the better)
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Directions:
Preheat oven 350°
Cut the chicken into cubes and place them in a casserole dish
Toss salsa onto chicken cubes
Sprinkle cheddar cheese over the chicken and salsa
Mix ingredients so that chicken is covered with salsa and cheese
Bake at 350° for 50 minutes
Serve:
To make it a full meal, we serve Chicken Chicken with a side of organic rice, a garden salad, tortilla chips (we love this brand), and organic sweet corn.
Optional:
After it’s plated, add a dollop (or three!) of organic sour cream on the Chicken Chicken.
I’ve also served the meal in hard taco shells (I really like this brand).
***
Super Noodles
Measurements are for my family of 7; adjust recipe according to your family's needs
Ingredients:
2 pounds organic ground beef
salt
pepper
garlic
basil
oregano
Italian seasoning
2 jars of organic marinara/red sauce (or your own homemade red sauce)
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 package gluten-free noodles (we like this brand)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°
Boil noodles
When cooked, drain and pour noodles into the casserole dish
While noodles are boiling, mix spices with ground beef (I don't measure these, I've always just eyeballed how much is just the right amount. If you are the measuring type, I would guess a 1/8-1/4 tsp of salt and pepper and 1/2 tsp each of garlic, basil and oregano)
Brown meat in a medium saucepan
Once browned, drain the fat
Pour red sauce on the meat and mix
Place meat in a casserole dish on top of the noodles
Sprinkle shredded mozzarella cheese over the meat and noodles; stir ingredients
Bake at 350° for 25 minutes
Serve:
To make it a full meal, we serve Super Noodles with a side dish, like a garden salad or with fresh organic green beans or broccoli. One more side makes it an even better meal when we add oven-warmed gluten-free bread that the kids dip in organic olive oil.
***
The meals were named by Ronan’s younger brother and are as organic as we can make them. With a regular taco night, an Italian night (or two) like spaghetti and meatballs or lasagna, plus a barbeque night (or two), plus a pizza night (gluten-free for Ronan) - we now have a solid week's worth of healthy and yummy meals for us.
These dishes may not be that exquisite or be culinary magazine worthy, but they required more discipline on my part (something I welcomed). And they continued to receive great reviews from each of my children the more I served them.
Extra praise is always nice, and the planning ahead has been good for all of us.
Note: I originally shared these recipes with family and friends in 2015. During the quarantine of 2020, we not only continued to rotate these meal ideas, Ronan’s siblings learned how to make the meals (plus the side dishes) and rotated making dinner one night a week for us. They were successful in creating a life skill and continued to inspire new meal ideas, including Meat Cake. That became another gluten-free meal we all liked. (Sometimes just changing the name of a classic meal…changing Meatloaf to Meat Cake…made all the difference in the world.) Also worth noting, as the typical kids have aged, their diet restrictions have lessened. Depending on the meal—and the preference, we don’t have to use the gluten-free ingredient (like the noodles, for instance).
Planning ahead is loads better than running around like a crazy woman in the kitchen. Being a crazy woman can be fun every now and then. But it's never fun when the kids are hungry, when a tired husband who's worked all day is on his way home, and when something as simple as starting dinner thirty minutes earlier could make for a better transition to our evenings.
Life can still get in the way, though.
So on days that I do get dinner started later than usual, or when our after-school schedule gets full, I'm not afraid to toss in the (kitchen) towel and turn making dinner into a game. My kids love to eat, and they love games, too.
Inspired by my sister, we discovered that breakfast for dinner nights are just the best! We use this brand to make the most amazing waffles and pancakes that get happily gobbled up for all of us.
Those kinds of nights don't happen very often, but when I tell the kids to hunt for their food while I get a quick breakfast for dinner made, well, those nights are never boring. They are actually a lot of fun.
Here's to fun.
Here's to happy.
And here's to making more yummy dinners!
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
Got a favorite meal for kids with dietary restrictions? Please share it in the comments below!
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Seen this week on my iPhone news thingy. Check out the category. Not health, politics. Maybe CNN HAS been paying attention? I think Americans will upchuck before they uptake. I saw our old friend the flu shot featured on a billboard on Rt. 95 in New Haven, CT. It was wiping dust off its syringe and trying hard not to look like second banana to the Covid shot.
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Children’s Health Defense has been deplatformed by Meta: that’s Facebook & Instagram. An online killing is what it is. The information CHD shares is fact checked, accurate and necessary - and yet, the United States Government allows, nay, encourages, nay nay, dictates removal by Meta, and other media. And Meta gleefully complies.
CHD was removed just as the media is talking up a stockpile of Monkey Pox shots that Americans will also snub in droves. They will refuse them in large part due to the education they got from the diligent work of Children's Health Defense, whose reporting on the Covid Vaccination program and its impact on American children and adults alike helped open millions of eyes previously closed to even the mention of vaccine injury. I know many people who willingly got their first shot, and many who took the second, who will NEVER take another Cavid vaccine again and who are openly curious about the safety of the pediatric schedule.
Without CHD, whom will the CDCedia blame? Looks over shoulder.....
Press Release from CHD:
Actions came on the heels of CHD’s-Meta/Facebook censorship lawsuit appeal.
Washington, DC — Yesterday, August 17, without warning, Facebook deplatformed (unpublished) the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) account. Simultaneously, CHD’s Instagram account was deplatformed (suspended). Each of these platforms had hundreds of thousands of followers. CHD received the following notifications from both platforms:
Facebook and Instagram deplatforming dovetails with CHD’s ongoing censorship lawsuit. CHD filed the lawsuit against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, in August 2020. Recently, in its Ninth Circuit Court appeal filed on July 29, CHD provided the court with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) produced documents the agency shared with Facebook. These documents, provided to Facebook on a regular basis, contained what the CDC considered misinformation. Titled “COVID Vaccine Misinformation: Hot Topics,” the documents asked tech giants to “be on the lookout” (BOLO) for various topics the CDC considers to be misinformation including: COVID-19 vaccine shedding, VAERS reports, spike protein data and more. The CHD case is currently pending in a Ninth Circuit decision.
Deplatforming by the tech giants came days after the CDC issued new guidance loosening COVID-19 policies — rules which CHD has criticized since the beginning of the pandemic. Within hours of the CHD deplatforming, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky shared her plans for overhauling how the agency works while admitting to a flawed response to COVID-19 and pandemic missteps.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said, “Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the Federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies. Our constitutional framers recognized this peril of government censorship. We don’t need the First Amendment to protect popular or government approved speech. They incorporated the First Amendment specifically to protect free expression of dissenting opinions. They understood that a government that can silence its critics has license for every atrocity.”
Roger Teich, CHD legal counsel for the Meta lawsuit, added, “Censorship is not only unconstitutional, it’s un-American.”
CHD’s lawsuit against Meta/Facebook aims to preserve First Amendment rights for all and the stakes are high. CHD believes social media platforms have ruthlessly censored, suppressed and distorted information. The litigation against Meta/Facebook to stop censorship is just one of CHD’s 50+ active lawsuits to defend freedom of speech, medical freedom, truth, bodily autonomy and children’s health.
# # #
Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. For more information or to donate to CHD’s ongoing lawsuits, visit ChildrensHealthDefense.org.
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Our AofAngel Laura Hayes sent me an email yesterday am telling me I was quoted on Dr. Mercola's site. Aw shucks! Mercola asked a simple question IGNORED by our current and every former Administration: What’s Behind the Sudden Surge in Autism? Due to censorship, Dr. Mercola's articles are like the cassette from Mission Impossible, they self destruct shortly after publication to subvert the censors. I encourage you to subscribe to his newsletter. Dr. Mercola generously allows non-profits to share his work in full. I have linked the body copy of the full autism article below the jump, it will disappear from his site later today, Thursday, August 18. Thanks. Kim
What's Behind The Sudden Surge In Autism?
Rates of autism continue to increase in the U.S., with the latest estimates showing that 1 in 30, or 3.49%, of children ages 3 to 17 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2020.1The data, gathered in 2019 and 2020, came from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), and revealed that out of 12,554 children surveyed in 2019 and 2020, 410 were diagnosed with autism.2
The overall prevalence of autism in 2019 was 2.79%, increasing to 3.49% in 2020, which represents a 53% increase since 2017.3The study also revealed that autism prevalence increased from 2014 to 2016, decreased from 2016 to 2017, and then increased from 2017 to 2020.4 The stark rise in autism rates in the U.S. is difficult to ignore, but what’s driving the increase remains a mystery.
Are Higher Vaccination Rates Involved?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts out an estimated autism rate every four years, but the data looks primarily at higher-income families, which could lead to underestimates of the true autism rate. The NHIS data is more accurate, because it included data from lower-income families, revealing that the rate of autism in lower-income families is higher than in higher-income families...
...Many, like Dr. Marc Siegel at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, continue to blame the rise in autism diagnoses on parents being more aware of autism signs in their children, but even he acknowledged, “there’s also probably something that women are exposed to in the womb that we don’t yet know about that could be causing it.”25 But as noted by Kim Rossi, managing editor of Age of Autism:26
“Autism numbers continue to rise unabated. But no one is really concerned … Notice how Siegel alludes to ‘something women are exposed to in the womb’ which is ‘probably’ also a factor. After thirty years of exploding autism statistics, we’re still totally uninterested in what that ‘something’ might be.”
1) Data suggest that 1 in 30, or 3.49%, of children ages 3 to 17 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2020
The rate of autism in lower-income families is higher than in higher-income families, and lower-income families tend to have higher vaccination rates than higher-income families
2) In 2010, the federal vaccine court conceded that Hannah Poling’s autism was the result of vaccinations, which “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder”
3) Exposure to glyphosate, mercury, lead, aluminum and other chemicals, including phthalates and air pollution, is also implicated in autism
4) Even acetaminophen, brand name Tylenol, use during pregnancy increases the risk of autism in children
Rates of autism continue to increase in the U.S., with the latest estimates showing that 1 in 30, or 3.49%, of children ages 3 to 17 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2020.1The data, gathered in 2019 and 2020, came from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), and revealed that out of 12,554 children surveyed in 2019 and 2020, 410 were diagnosed with autism.2
The overall prevalence of autism in 2019 was 2.79%, increasing to 3.49% in 2020, which represents a 53% increase since 2017.3The study also revealed that autism prevalence increased from 2014 to 2016, decreased from 2016 to 2017, and then increased from 2017 to 2020.4 The stark rise in autism rates in the U.S. is difficult to ignore, but what’s driving the increase remains a mystery.
Are Higher Vaccination Rates Involved?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts out an estimated autism rate every four years, but the data looks primarily at higher-income families, which could lead to underestimates of the true autism rate. The NHIS data is more accurate, because it included data from lower-income families, revealing that the rate of autism in lower-income families is higher than in higher-income families.
“I think it’s stunning that there’s a statistically significant difference [showing] that the higher levels of autism are now being diagnosed in those with lower income,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief science adviser at Children’s Health Defense. “It’s interesting because it’s something that we suspected all along, but we haven’t seen it quantified like this.”5
It’s possible that the difference is showing up because more children in schools with lower-income demographics are being diagnosed with autism so they can access services, according to Children’s Health Defense, but it’s also known that lower-income families tend to have higher vaccination rates than higher-income families.
“You do have to wonder about vaccination rates because higher-income families tend to vaccinate less,” Hooker said.6
The CDC denies any link between vaccines and autism, but in 2010, the federal vaccine court conceded that Hannah Poling’s autism was the result of vaccinations, which “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder, which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder.”7
Mitochondrial Disorders and Autism
Poling’s case was the first time the government acknowledged that vaccines could trigger autism, in this case due to an underlying mitochondrial disorder. In October 2020, a scientific review published in Seminars in Pediatric Neurology further outlined evidence that mitochondrial function may be related to autism.
It was estimated in 2017 that about 4% of children with autism could be diagnosed with a definite mitochondrial disease, while other research suggested abnormalities of mitochondrial function could affect up to 80% of children with autism.8
“Novel abnormalities” in mitochondrial function have been found in children with autism and treatments targeting mitochondrial dysfunction, such as L-carnitine supplementation and a ketogenic diet, have been found to be beneficial. Children whose autism is rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction will typically have a key set of symptoms that include:9
Fatigability
Gastrointestinal disorders
Seizures and/or epilepsy
Motor delay and/or ataxia and/or muscle weakness
Unusual neurodevelopmental regression, including multiple regressions or regression later than commonly associated with ASD
The review’s author, Dr. Richard Frye with Barrow Neurological Institute at Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona, pointed out that mitochondria are “very vulnerable to environmental factors” and a novel type of dysfunction of mitochondria “in which the activity of the electron transport chain is significantly increased ... may be associated with environmental exposures.”10
It appears something in the environment is triggering mitochondrial dysfunction in an ever-growing number of children, but the question is what?
Glyphosate Exposure a ‘Probable Risk Factor’
Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been studying glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, for years and believes it’s a probable risk factor for autism.11 When I spoke with Seneff about her book “Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment,” she explained:12
“It's been a decade of learning everything I could about glyphosate. When I first heard about it I basically dropped everything else I was doing because I was so confident that I had found the answer to the autism epidemic. That was the thing I was looking for. Back in 2012, I heard a two-hour lecture by Don Huber, and it changed my focus entirely.
I already understood the symptoms of autism, a very complex disease — lots of gut problems and mineral issues — and it all came together with his lecture. Overnight I just started poring over all the papers I could find.
Shortly after that I found Séralini's paper, which had not yet been retracted at that time. It was later republished, the paper by Séralini, a French toxicologist who had shown that very low doses of glyphosate over the lifespan of a rat could cause a lot of damage.
He pointed out that after three months, everything looked good, so it's a slow kill. This is one thing I emphasize in my book. Glyphosate is subtle, and that's really a huge problem because people don't [make the connection]. We have diabetes, obesity, autism, Alzheimer's. It's a long, long list, all the gut problems.
The microbes are being very much disturbed by the chronic poisoning with glyphosate, and then the gut becomes a central starting point for many diseases, including neurological diseases and arthritis. So, you see that disruption of the gut, and glyphosate can cause exactly the things that we're seeing.”
Seneff believes glyphosate also contributes to and worsens damage caused by vaccines, in part because it binds very efficiently to aluminum used as an adjuvant in certain vaccines. It likely binds strongly to many other toxic metals as well.
The theory is that, by being wrapped up with glyphosate molecules, the metals can more easily penetrate various barriers in your body. This is because glyphosate causes these barriers, such as your intestinal barrier and your blood-brain-barrier, to become more porous. And, as leaky gut or leaky brain set in, the toxic metals are shuttled across, along with the glyphosate.
Glyphosate has also been shown to accumulate in the brain, and animal studies show it causes neuro excitotoxicity due to excess glutamate in the brain. This, in turn, “is absolutely connected to autism,” Seneff says.13 In her book, Seneff also discusses the importance of sulfur for optimal health, how sulfate deficiency is connected to autism and how glyphosate can cause sulfate deficiency.
Significant Link Between Mercury, Lead and Autism
Adding support to the toxic exposures link to autism is a September 2020 meta-analysis, which concluded there is a significant relationship between autism and concentrations of lead and mercury in the body.14 According to the authors, the relationship between mercury and autism is so strong that "the concentration of mercury can be listed as a pathogenic cause (disease-causing) for autism."15
Despite being a known neurotrophic toxin, thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, was long used in certain vaccines. While it has been removed from most childhood vaccines, it is still used in some multidose vials, meaning vials that contain more than a single dose of the vaccine. A 2017 review article cited several studies linking mercury and autism among its references, noting:16
"Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been demonstrated to be accompanied by distorted metal homeostasis. The degree to which people are affected by the metals seems to be largely influenced by the individual genetic makeup.
Especially Hg [mercury] exposure has become a suspected causative factor for many pathological conditions, and several sources of exposure to Hg compounds can be listed, including dental amalgam fillings, seafood, vaccines and increasingly from energy saving light bulbs as well."
Today, the most commonly used vaccine preservative is aluminum, not thimerosal; according to a 2018 study, people with autism were found to have high amounts of aluminum in their brains, with researchers noting, “The aluminum content of brain tissue in autism was consistently high.”17
Tylenol Use Also Linked to Autism
Even acetaminophen, brand name Tylenol, among others, which many consider to be completely innocuous, is linked to autism. Compared to children of mothers with the lowest acetaminophen burden during pregnancy, children of those in the second tertile had a 226% higher risk of being diagnosed with ADHD, and a 214% higher risk for an ASD diagnosis, by the time they were about 10 years old (average age 9.8 years).18
Those with the greatest acetaminophen burden had a 286% higher risk for ADHD and a 362% higher risk for ASD. As noted by the authors, their findings "support previous studies regarding the association between prenatal and perinatal acetaminophen exposure and childhood neurodevelopmental risk."19
A 2016 Spanish investigation published in the International Journal of Epidemiology also found children whose mothers used acetaminophen during pregnancy were 41% more likely to present with ADHD symptoms at age 5 while boys were also more likely to have ASD.20
A 2017 study even claims "The use of acetaminophen in babies and young children may be much more strongly associated with autism than its use during pregnancy, perhaps because of well-known deficiencies in the metabolic breakdown of pharmaceuticals during early development."21
Environmental Toxins Contribute to Autism
It’s likely that a combination of factors is at play in the development of this complex disorder. In addition to vaccines and glyphosate, other environmental exposures potentially linked to autism include:
Phthalates, high-production volume chemicals used frequently as plasticizers in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other plastics; in 2009, a link was found between exposure to PVC flooring, which is a source of airborne phthalates indoors, and autism.22
Air pollution; for each per interquartile range increase in prenatal exposure to ozone and particulate matter air pollution, autism risk increased by 12% to 15%.23
Unfortunately, even as it becomes clear that environmental factors likely play a role in autism, not enough is being done to uncover what those factors are and bring awareness to autism as an “environmentally induced illness.”24
Many, like Dr. Marc Siegel at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, continue to blame the rise in autism diagnoses on parents being more aware of autism signs in their children, but even he acknowledged, “there’s also probably something that women are exposed to in the womb that we don’t yet know about that could be causing it.”25 But as noted by Kim Rossi, managing editor of Age of Autism:26
“Autism numbers continue to rise unabated. But no one is really concerned … Notice how Siegel alludes to ‘something women are exposed to in the womb’ which is ‘probably’ also a factor. After thirty years of exploding autism statistics, we’re still totally uninterested in what that ‘something’ might be.”
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Thank you to an astute reader for providing a .pdf of the first chapter of Turtles All The Way Down Vaccine Science and Myth. Available on Amazon.
Read the chapter then please support the authors by purchasing the book:
https://tinyurl.com/TurtlesBookChap1Enghttps://tinyurl.com/TurtlesBookChap1Eng
“We have found the book to be well written, serious, scientific and important... We sincerely recommend it as a scientific, medical, and public ‘must read’. This book should be central to a scientific, rational, logical, skeptical, and critical discussion on routine vaccination. The authors should be congratulated on their vast scientific in-depth endeavor as well as on their courage to think outside the ‘establishment box’.”
—Nati Ronel, Professor of Criminology, and Eti Elisha, Senior
Criminologist, in Harefuah Medical Journal, Sep. 2019
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What does "Turtles All The Way Down" mean? See the reference at the bottom of this post.
From Children's Health Defense:
In 2019, a remarkable book, “Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth,” was published in Israel. The book, originally written in Hebrew, is a comprehensive examination of the evidence behind the assertion that vaccines are safe and effective.
Though it might easily have been lost to obscurity, the book gained initial acclaim when the leading medical journal in Israel, Harefuah (“Medicine”), gave it a positive review.
Writing in the September 2019 issue of Harefuah, two senior academic criminologists, Nati Ronel and Eti Elisha, “found the book to be well-written, serious, scientific and important” offering “a comprehensive view of the issue.”
“Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth” became the first book critical of vaccines to have ever received a positive review from a mainstream medical journal.
Criticism of Ronel and Elisha came quickly from the medical establishment, but as Mary Holland, editor of the book and Children’s Health Defense president and general counsel states in the book’s foreword:
“Their appraisal of the book still stands today, unscathed: in the three years since its (Hebrew) publication, no medical or medical science professional has succeeded in refuting the book’s claims.”
The reason the information offered in the book has yet to be refuted is simple. The book’s 1,200+ citations reference only mainstream scientific journals and health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization.
An attack on the book is ultimately an attack on the medical establishment itself. Read MORE at Children's Health Defense.
Definition:
According to Professor of Philosophy Joel Richeimer, the phrase “turtles all the way down” stems from a story about the British philosopher Bertrand Russell. After giving a lecture on astronomy, Russell was refuted by a woman in the audience, who claimed that the earth was situated not in space, but on the back of a large turtle. When Russell asked what the turtle was standing on, the woman replied that it was “turtles all the way down.”
The apocryphal story has been told in many versions, and while the hypothesis may seem absurd, it gets to the heart of an important philosophical question. “All knowledge has to have a foundation. Something has to be at the bottom,” Richeimer said. “So if you believe in modern physics, you say what’s at the bottom is atoms. That explains everything. Or if you’re a religious person, you might say it’s God.”
But what are atoms made of? Or who created God? “The question is, does it really satisfy us, having a foundation,” Richeimer said. “And her response is not a bad one. Her response is, well, it’s turtles all the way down. Why does there have to be an ultimate turtle? A single turtle is a problem. Infinite turtles is no problem.” Source: https://www.kenyon.edu/news/archive/turtles-all-the-way-down/https://www.kenyon.edu/news/archive/turtles-all-the-way-down/
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Note: We first ran this post on August 14, 2020. Now, 2 years and 1 day later, it's still complycated (sic). The CDC just equalized those they had so badly demonized. The long dark Winter of death, dread, doom, dingbats and destruction is now the Summer of "we're not dead yet!" for the control group. Thanks as ever to Laura Hayes - her continued support of AofA is a big reason we're also "not dead yet." XOX
By Laura Hayes
I went grocery shopping this past Saturday, first time in 30 days. I find seeing my fellow humans masked, including young children, to be soul-stripping, and I come home angry and depressed. For some reason, I thought I would not be the only unmasked person at this stage of the insanity, but I was wrong. The store was more crowded than I had seen it to date, and yet, I saw no other shopper, or employee, not wearing a mask…nearly 6 months into this global machination.
In the event you haven’t noticed, things are getting worse, not better. And I am not talking about “Covid-19”, whatever that is or isn’t (no way for us to know, as we have been lied to from the get-go). I am talking about the state of our God-given rights, many of which our U.S. Constitution was created to protect, rights that include: the right to breathe freely, minus dangerous impediments; the right to communicate and socialize with others, minus facial covering and physical distancing requirements; the right to move about freely, including frequenting businesses of our choosing, minus finding businesses forcibly closed, and minus absurd shopping and walking around town rules; the right to conduct business, minus being deemed non-essential, minus being restricted in scope and ability to conduct business, and minus being coerced to enforce dangerous and absurd requirements of employees and customers; the right to assemble, minus ridiculous and arbitrary physical distancing and maximum number restrictions, and minus the forced covering of the majority of one’s face; the right to seek medical, dental, and eye care, minus temperature checks, facial masking, and in some cases, Covid-19 testing requirements (with the nasal swab testing causing harm and damage to some of those being tested that way); the right to practice one’s religion, and to congregate and fellowship with others, minus rules and requirements which prevent one from doing so; and the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, minus unwarranted, unconstitutional, and unacceptable government interference.
Americans should find it shocking, frightening, and intolerable that acting on our God-given fundamental rights as human beings has now been deemed illegal behavior and can result in being charged with a crime in a growing number of situations and locations. Stop and think about that for a few minutes. That which prior to 2020 were considered basic human rights, including the rights to breathe, smile at others, communicate, entertain, move about, congregate, shop, conduct business, seek care and services, and go to church, have instantaneously been labeled dangerous behaviors if done in a free, unregulated, and unimpeded manner, deemed worthy of fines, ostracization, shaming, social isolation, forced quarantine, closures, lockdowns, lawsuits, and no doubt very soon, prison time and “re-education camps”. Perhaps this is why nearly half of U.S. states have released thousands of prisoners before their sentences were completed, including those who have committed violent crimes…to make room for those who will refuse to comply with rights-stripping, unconstitutional, life-destroying edicts made and enforced by those abusing their positions of power.
In short order, we have been put under mask requirements, physical distancing requirements, quarantining of healthy people, business closures, lockdowns, required testing (or lose your job, or be denied services), contact tracing (how long will it take for literally every American to be put on someone’s list…I predict that could be accomplished in less than 2 weeks), and soon dissenters will be victims of knocks on their doors, removal to quarantine centers and/or re-education camps, forced vaccinations while being held down, and prison time, followed by “suicides” and unexplained deaths.
Our country is being run by a real-life mafia, comprised of a small group who has assumed a powerful form of global authority. These mafia heads have many minions who populate the pharmaceutical industry and government leadership and regulatory positions. These mafia underlings then have their many minions which include elected officials, university and education system officials, the mainstream media, and public health officials. And as of late, this despotic mafia has succeeded in enlisting citizens to “police” one another, both voluntarily and for pay, via snitch lines, social media shaming, contact tracers, informants who report violations, and non-police enforcers of mask wearing and physical distancing.
We are seeing evidence of this mafia, and associated mafia-style consequences, in many places: businesses, schools, and churches being forced to close without having committed any violations; business owners fearful of allowing anyone into their establishments who is not wearing a mask, even when the person meets one of the many “legal” exemptions (given that the requirements themselves are not legal, there is no justification to have to legally exempt oneself), knowing they may face financially devastating fines and/or forced closure; college faculty, staff, and students being required to submit to regular Covid-19 testing, temperature checks, mask wearing, physical distancing, and contact tracing, and for those in the very large UC system, the requirement of an influenza vaccine by 11-1-20 has now been added, with refusal resulting in being fired and being denied enrollment; those needing/wanting surgery are being required to submit to Covid-19 testing, with refusal resulting in no treatment; those needing/wanting medical, dental, or eye care are now being required to submit to temperature checks and masking requirements, with refusal resulting in no service; those frequenting many businesses are being required to “sign in” for future contact tracing purposes, with refusal resulting in being told to leave; all with no viable opt out, even if a “legal” exemption exists, for fear the mafia and its many minions will penalize and/or annihilate persons and businesses not falling into line and enforcing their edicts.
Today’s “exemptions” will soon be on tomorrow’s “no longer accepted” list. Should you need proof of that, just look at the history of vaccine mandates. The noose on freedom and personal liberties is tightening, and in many areas, has already been cinched. For those who think it is no big deal to comply with the ever-increasing rules, requirements, and mandates, or that it is somehow virtuous, I urge you to reconsider and take a look at where all of this is headed, and what it means for your future, and the future of your children and grandchildren. The progression of increasing, illegal, and unconstitutional requirements has been rapid, and backed by force. It is not going to stop. Next up will be “proof” of Covid-19 status, with required periodic and repeated testing, to enter any public or private business (as though there is even one reliable test, for something that has yet to be clearly identified, for something that has yet to be proven to be contagious, and for something that has yet to be proven to be prevented or halted by mask wearing or physical distancing), mandatory signing in wherever you go for contact tracing purposes, proof of Covid-19 vaccination (with proof of additional vaccines in short order), and in the very near future, the requirement of some type of chipping that can be scanned prior to entering any public or private business or entity, to ensure full compliance with the mafia’s demands. Comply, or be denied…or worse.
It is not wise or virtuous to condone or support that which eliminates the most basic rights of human beings. It is not wise or virtuous to willingly give up our God-given, Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and freedoms, in exchange for tyranny, threats, and torture. It is not wise or virtuous to accept mafia dominance over our lives, the lives of our children and grandchildren, or the lives of others.
None of what I have written prohibits anyone from doing that which they believe protects their health, or the health of their children. If someone believes that masks are protective, not harmful, prevent the transmission of viruses, and/or believe that they or their children are particularly vulnerable for some reason, they are free to wear a mask. If their mask works as they believe it does, it should not matter to them whether or not anyone else is wearing a mask. The same argument holds true for vaccination. If someone wants to permit a vaccine for themselves or their child, they are free to do so. If they believe that a vaccine is protective for them or their child, it should make no difference to them whether or not anyone else is vaccinated.
And therein lies the truth…when individuals and parents are free to make their own health-related decisions, that is how and when individuals, children, communities, and society at large thrive. When something is effective, it is continued, or repeated if/when necessary. When something is ineffective, or harmful, it is discontinued, not repeated, and something else may be tried in the future. No one has a more vested and sincere interest in an individual or child being healthy and well than the individual or parent. No one has a better firsthand account of the results of health-related decisions than the individual or parent, and therefore, it is their experiences and their decisions that matter most. No one will be more accountable and personally responsible for individual and parental health-related decisions than the individual and parent, and therefore, such accountability and personal responsibility are the most natural and effective motivators for beneficial and effective decisions to be made, or adjusted as needed, and for harmful and ineffective decisions to be completely avoided, or never repeated.
We do not need elected officials legislating and dictating our health-related decisions, nor do we need public and global health officials pronouncing and enforcing what they deem is and isn’t healthy for us and our families, especially given their terrible track records, their conflicts of interest, and the many lawsuits against and criminal convictions of the companies who bribe, buy, influence, and control them. What we need is health and medical choice freedom, paired with rock-solid parental rights. What we need is the free flow of information so that people can make fully informed decisions. The censorship of anything and everything that challenges or disproves the mafia’s propaganda must be stopped. Perhaps most importantly, we need those who comprise the mafia described above, and their many minions, behind bars.
We need to be the change we want to see. Continued compliance will lead to increasing tyranny. We need to act individually and collectively. Connect with like-minded people in your area and get involved with Dr. Pam Popper’s “Make Americans Free Again” and Peggy Hall’s “The Healthy American”. Become a member of the Weston A Price Foundation, which provides excellent health-related information as well as action items related to protecting and regaining rights and freedoms.
Refusing to comply today is the path to regaining our rights and freedoms tomorrow.
Laura Hayes writes and speaks about the importance of healthcare/medical choice freedom and parental rights. She has been outspoken for many years regarding the urgent need to immediately: ban vaccine mandates; enact a moratorium on each and every vaccine, as not one has been tested or approved properly or ethically; repeal the 1986 Act; and fully restore individual and parental rights with regard to healthcare and medical decision making. You can read more of her work at the Age of Autism Exclusives.
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By Cathy Jameson
Kim shared something last week that reminded me of an incident that happened at our house back in March…
Tuesday night, 9:15pma
I wasn’t going to go to sleep yet, but I just needed to be done with the day. My husband had been out of town for a while, and I was exhausted from trying to do all the things for all the people. After family prayers, and as soon as Ronan was tucked in his bed, I told the kids I needed to go to bed, too. All I wanted to do was get off my feet and watch some mindless television.
So I did.
9:19pm
Pajama time.
I had just gotten under the covers. I had just opened my laptop. I had just started to watch a silly show when Ronan’s younger sister knocked loudly on my bedroom door.
“MOM, MOM, MOM!” She was frantic.
I had just said goodnight to her, so I was not expecting her to come barreling in my room as loudly or as nervously as she did.
9:23pm
“Whoa, what’s up, honey? I asked.
“MOM, the police are at the door. The police. They’re at our door!” she blurted out quickly.
I shot up from under the covers. When I stood up, I heard the doorbell. What on earth?? I had heard a faint doorbell chime a minute earlier but thought it was part of a show I was watching - some of the people in the show were sitting in the living room of an apartment. They were talking about friends coming over, so I thought the doorbell I’d heard were those friends.
Nope, it wasn’t in the show - it was coming from my house!
I bolted out of my bedroom so quickly. After running past Izzy, I grabbed a sweatshirt, threw it on, and ran to the front door. The last time we’d needed the police’s assistance at home was years ago - when Ronan wandered one very cold, winter night. With my heart pounding through my chest, I peeked through the front door window and was startled. Staring back at me was a very young woman. I thought I knew everyone on our neighborhood police force–who were all men. I could see her bullet proof vest, with POLICE blazoned across it, but couldn’t make out much else.
Who is at my door?!
9:24pm
Peering through the glass from the outside, the young officer knocked and said, “Police, ma’am.”
It was dark, and the front porch light was still off. So I couldn’t make out much more than the outline of her face. Flipping on the light switch on, both of us continued to stare at each other. My first instinct was to panic when this all started. It continued to be panic in that moment also.
Without thinking, I opened the front door and also the screen door. I’m sure she’d said who she was, but all I could think to say was, “What’s going on??”
“I’m looking for Linda. We got a call to check on her…can you tell me, is she okay?”
“Linda? Who? What?” I asked, very puzzled. Quickly continuing, I said, “There’s no Linda here.” My mind raced, who near us would need to be checked on? Then it hit me, “Ma’am, which house are you looking for?”
Looking at her notepad, she shared the address.
A wave of relief fell over me. Then a twinge of frustration. “That’s next door,” I said to the officer. Pointing to the left of us, I added, “I think you’ll find her there.”
The young officer apologized profusely. I smiled, accepted the apology and wished her luck. Then, I locked the door and quickly went to find Izzy. She’d stayed out of view of the foyer but stayed close enough to hear the entire conversation. She relaxed her stance the moment we hugged.
9:26pm
I held her tightly.
I held her until she was done hugging me.
Sometime a little past 9:30pm
“Mom, I was so scared. I had no idea why the police would be here. I mean, Ronan’s safe, so why'd she show up?” Izzy asked with emotion.
“Honey, I know. I couldn’t understand why either,” I answered her.
My husband and my oldest daughter were miles away that night. But both of our first thoughts were not on their whereabouts or of their safety. Our first thought was of Ronan.
Ronan was home.
He was safe.
He was under his covers.
He hadn’t wandered.
He hadn’t had any seizures.
He hadn’t fallen either.
So why did the police show up??
That was the question Izzy and I had both thought of the instant we heard the police officer at the door. It was so strange. It was so confusing. But when you live parts of your life in a constant state of worry for someone else, that thought is not so strange and not so confusing.
Things had been so good for Ronan for so long, that the mere presence of this young woman took us both completely by surprise. We hugged one more time. Before letting go, I asked Izzy if she’d be okay.
“Yeah, Mom,” she finally smiled. “Go back to bed. I’ll be okay.”
9:46pm
We’d both be okay.
Eventually.
The adrenaline from those few minutes pounded through our veins long after we retreated to our own bedrooms. When we had said prayers that evening, Izzy mentioned she had only about an hour of homework yet to do. It would take her several hours for her to complete though. Even though earlier I had felt like collapsing after a very long day, I would be wide awake past midnight.
Part of that time had me thinking every impossible thought possible.
I can never fall right to sleep when that happens.
10:06pm
Since I was so wide awake, and since it wasn’t terribly late yet, I texted my sister and our best friend. Our best friend is married to a law enforcement officer. This incident rattled me, and I needed my friends’ support. I also needed a question answered.
“So we just had a wrong-house police response. Scared the ever living poo out of us…it was for a welfare check…I think for the neighbor’s (elderly) mom.”
I then shared that I hadn’t been aware of a new officer on the force, a young woman.
“...that scared me even more. Is she legit? It was dark and panic mode set in. She was very polite, then very apologetic. I pointed her in the right direction…I am back under the covers ready to start my silly show again.”
Both my sister and our best friend responded to my text right away.
I was so grateful.
I replayed the situation in my head one more time, then asked, “I do think I answered the door incorrectly and would love your husband’s advice. I had to turn on all the inside lights. Then I had to turn on the outside light, then I opened the front door. Should I have not opened the door? I’m sure I could've had the conversation through the front window. But all brain cells left the moment Izzy came walking into my bedroom telling me the police were at our front door!”
10:21pm
“If you can look out and see the police car, it should be fine.”
That was the other weird thing - besides the unexpected evening visitor, I couldn’t see how this young woman got to my house. When we’ve needed help from the police, whoever responds has parked right in front of our house. I could not see any police vehicles anywhere when I initially peered out the window.
I couldn’t see anything because the cruiser was not in front of my house. It was in front of the next door neighbor’s house to the right of us. It wasn’t until I watched the police officer walk up my driveway did I get a view of the car. She had left the blue lights on - but they were a solid blue, not the flashing blue I’d have expected to see.
My friend’s husband also offered this advice to me if there ever was a next time, “The other option would be to ask for the badge number, politely let them know you’re going to verify that they’re supposed to be there, and call the police department’s non-emergency number and verify.”
I don’t know if I’d remember to calmly do that with how nervous I’d gotten. Back in 2012 when I called 9-1-1 when Ronan had wandered, I could barely pick up my phone. There were only 3 numbers that I had to dial, but my hands were shaking so badly it felt like it took forever to dial them.
As I got ready to write this story, I reached out to my best friend again. “Remember that scary night? Well, I’m going to write about it. Let me know if there are any other tips I can add.” The advice I received was to, “Ask for their last name and badge number and they shouldn’t refuse…also many cities have it so that you can text 911, so you can verify through that as well.”
Texting 911! I had no idea that was an option.
All of the information I received that night back in March and again last week was helpful. It’s info I never thought I’d need to know. It’s info I wanted to share here after Kim shared that she and her daughter encountered a policeman in their neighborhood the other day. We never know when our kids will need assistance from community helpers.
We never know when our assistance will be needed also.
A random afternoon, several days later, sometime after 5pm
Not soon after that scary night, Izzy came into the house with a little pep in her step.
“Mom, remember that police officer who came to our house? It wasn’t our house she needed but the neighbor’s? Well, I just helped her when I was out skateboarding! There’s a girl who lives down the street who may have run away, and she was out looking for her, and no one knew where she was. I know where the girl lives, and I know where some of her friends hang out. I don’t know them personally, but I said if I see her or any of her friends, we’d call. I was going to come home right after and tell you, but I stayed out and skated a few streets farther in case we could help find the girl.”
Attagirl, Izzy!
The night when that police officer showed up really did scare the poo out of us. But here my daughter was just a few days later offering up some of her free time to help someone else’s family, a family who were probably very scared also. Some days I worry that my kids have seen too much, have heard too much, or have experienced too much compared to their peers. I know, though, that what they have seen, heard and experienced has given them strength to bounce back. In a heartbeat, including a panicked one, I would change what happened to their brother and how it affected their childhoods. I would not, however, change that they have turned into some of the strongest human beings I know. I couldn’t do that. Ronan needs them to be strong, and I do, too.
Cathy Jameson is a Contributing Editor for Age of Autism.
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Autism One was a more than a conference in its hey day, it was yearly retreat where autism parents could meet, greet, learn, eat, drink (mmm hmmm) and be merry in good company. Most of us knew each other from Yahoo groups. The conference returns next week. As you may recall, Ed Arranga passed away earlier this year, a huge loss for the community. We met Robert Kennedy, Jr. for the first time at Autism One, astounded that he understood our topics and was willing to stick his neck out for our kids. We watched film debuts. We met celebrities. We dodged neurodiverse spies and spiteful journalists. Ah... good times. We old timers can forget that parents are STILL getting the gut punch diagnosis, at an ever quickening pace. Let's share what we know with them in the hopes they will strive to do more than the basics.
Learn more about the conference HERE.
AutismOne is a nonprofit organization dedicated to all that is autism.
AutismOne is here to support a parent when you are searching questions about autism, medicine, nutrition, schooling, social skills, recreation, and more. AutismOne has access to a variety of resources to connect you with, whether they are doctors, specialists, or parents, who have successfully experienced improvements. Or AutismOne can simply listen. We are all in this together. AutismOne knows you love your loved one whether young or old.
From AutismOne: SUPPORT AND EDUCATION FOR PARENTS.
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Those with power have always manipulated reality and created ideologies defined as progress to justify systems of exploitation. Monarchs and religious authorities did this in the Middle Ages. Today this is done by the high priests of modernity—the technocrats, scholars, scientists, politicians, journalists and economists. They deform reality. They foster the myth of preordained inevitability and pure rationality. But such knowledge—which dominates our universities—is anti-thought. It precludes all alternatives. It is used to end discussion. It is designed to give to the forces of science or the free market or globalization a veneer of rational discourse, to persuade us to place our faith in these forces and trust our fate to them. These forces, the experts assure us, are as unalterable as nature. They will lead us forward. To question them is heresy. ~Chris Hedges
Read Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 and Part 9.
This is the final installment in Adriana Gamondes' ouevre. She looked into the future and here we are. living in a state of plague. Join us in wishing her well.
By Adriana Gamondes
Neoliberal Noir and the Globalized Junta
On April 28th, 2015, New York University law professor Mary Holland testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to SB277, a bill that would remove all personal exemptions to vaccination—religious and philosophical— except medical for California’s school children.
On the issue of consent, Holland drew sharp parallels that angered Chairwoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara).
MARY HOLLAND: Without some measure of realistic choice—and I do not believe that medical exemptions or homeschooling present viable options for the majority who have resolute convictions against vaccination—this bill will be coercive. Parents will be vaccinating their children under duress, invalidating any notion of informed consent.
In employment, lack of consent is forced labor. In military service, it’s conscription. In contracts, it leads to invalid contracts. In intimate relations, it’s called rape. And in medical treatment, it’s battery.
SEN. JACKSON: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute. Wait a second... Rape is a loaded word and as the Chair of the Women’s Caucus, I don’t take the use of the word lightly.
MARY HOLLAND: I don’t either.
Sen. Jackson chastised further on use of the rape analogy, then asked Holland to provide examples of Supreme Court or other rulings dealing specifically with the issue of informed consent and vaccination. It was some time before Holland could continue with her testimony, at which point she discussed the potential denial of public education that would result from instituting such a law, the fact that the laws already in place in all states ensured high vaccination rates as it is, then asked whether the state would criminalize dissent.
MARY HOLLAND: Furthermore, a problem with SB277 would be in its enforcement.
The parents here today are unlikely to comply with the vaccine schedule. They will either be forced—it would violate the covenant with their God or their conscience because, rightly or wrongly, they believe that they would be putting their children at risk of severe injury or death by vaccinating them.
How will you possibly enforce this with parents who won’t vaccinate and cannot, for economic or other reasons, home school?
Will you be willing to remove children and force-vaccinate them as wards of the state?
Will you be willing to throw non-vaccinating parents in prison?
And what happens if the state does vaccinate a child who is removed and that child is severely injured or dies?
What will the state do?
SEN. JACKSON: Where in this bill does it talk about throwing parents in prison?
MARY HOLLAND: No, but what will you do? The parents—many of the parents who are…
SEN. JACKSON: I’m sorry but there is nothing in this… I mean, there are enough concerns raised. To kind of push it to a level… Now we are talking about putting parents in prison…
Senator Jackson sputtered for several more minutes about Holland’s “inflammatory” suggestions, to which Holland replied, “But I don’t know what you will do.”
We don’t know but we can guess. To quote G.K. Chesterton, “If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.” In other words, if 277 passes, children will be taken and parents will go to jail since there’s absolutely nothing in the bill that guards against this.
Senator Jackson’s objections to Mary Holland’s use of analogy and Orwellian rhetorical inquiry were transparent and Jackson’s reasons for demonstrating outrage didn’t make sense. Any “disservice” these references rendered was not to consumer advocates but to the bill’s sponsors and Jackson’s biased censorship.
As for Jackson invoking her position with the Women’s Caucus, the majority of parents who spoke in opposition to the bill were women and, given the mounting evidence that vaccines do in fact cause neurological and other injuries, there’s nothing particularly feminist about forcing a technology that may relegate a subset of mothers to pre-liberation status as many are forced to give up careers to care for catastrophically disabled children into adulthood and beyond. And as a sexual assault survivor myself, Jackson’s objection seems completely disconnected from both the issue of rape and the fallout of mandated immunization.
Almost 20 years after my own experience with assault, I still walk with a limp and am partly hearing impaired. But I had my day in court with a jury of peers and full due process including discovery, rule of law, etc. I saw justice for myself that I’ll never see for my vaccine-injured children.
Otherwise the two experiences are very similar. For cooperating with the prosecution, survivors of rape are regarded in some corners as anti-male. For reporting children’s vaccine injuries, parents are called anti-vaccine. Being branded extremists for speaking out is par for the course. And in both situations, injuries are minimized, witness testimony is discredited as “clouded by trauma” and irrational, apologists extol the faultless virtues of perpetrators while bystanders and those who are supposed to help either do nothing or quarantine blame to the victims.
I can testify to both and to the fact that it’s far worse when these weapons are aimed at children. To make the parallel darker, one experience doesn’t necessarily preclude the other since roughly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 6 men will have experienced some form of sexual assault in their lifetimes and, what’s more, disabled children have a vastly elevated risk of also being sexually assaulted.
And the parallels become much more literal within the vaccine injury controversy. For example, members of the biotech industry PR front discussed in Part 9—a sort of web-age Pinkerton squad known as the organized Skeptics that leads the charge in demonizing vaccine injury claimants, attacking industry whistleblowers and rationalizing repressive domestic and foreign policy— is suffering from its own internal rape scandal. This was followed by attempts to silence victims using language usually reserved for attacks on consumer activists, then followed by a sort of table cloth trick within the group to oust the most prominent offenders while still preserving the group's PR value, never mentioning the infamous “underage sex tapes” involving Skeptic founder James “The Amazing” Randi which are found on zip files all over the web.
Skeptic figureheads including Randi also founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, an organization that specializes in debunking sexual abuse claims based on controversial theories on memory—both the idea that repressed memory does not exist and that all witness memory is fatally flawed. Political and crime reporter Steven Elbow covered the controversial history of FMSF and its founders for Capital Times:
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Stanton, in a 1997 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, weighed the impact the False Memory Syndrome Foundation had on the discussion as society began to grapple with the concept of recovered memories. At a time when the media were sensationalizing cases of repressed memory, the foundation stepped in and swung the pendulum the other way.
"Rarely has such a strange and little-understood organization had such a profound effect on media coverage of such a controversial matter," Stanton wrote. "The foundation is an aggressive, well-financed PR machine adept at manipulating the press, harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of psychiatrists, outspoken academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud bashers, critics of psychotherapy, and devastated parents."
Elbow notes that the number of sexual abuse allegations based on the repressed memory of victims tapered off so dramatically as a result of attacks on repressed memory that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was gradually ceasing to be relevant. The group’s theories and figures remain an “item” nevertheless, getting recent credulous coverage in the New York Times, and the group has expanded its theory for corporate and political exculpation. Elizabeth Loftus, the star expert witness of FMSF and member of the organization’s board — who referred a colleague for the defense of the “Butcher of Treblinka,” John Demjanjuk (whose first case was won on the theory of “flawed memory” of concentration camp victims), and who once testified on behalf of OJ Simpson, the Hillside Stranglers, Ted Bundy, Scooter Libby and two Yugoslav commanders convicted in the Hague of raping political prisoners (Loftus’s testimony and her science were deemed specious and irrelevant in the latter two trials)— has acted as a consultant for the CDC. In fact, Loftus was interviewed by Seth Mnookin for his vaccine defense screed, Panic Virus, to disparage witness testimony in vaccine injury claims cases.
And, as it happens, a theory of “false memory” was wielded in Vaccine Court by Special Master George Hastings in the ruling against the Cedillo family’s vaccine injury case. In Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Hastings stated,
To be sure, I do not conclude that Mrs. Cedillo was ever, in her affidavits or her hearing testimony, intentionally failing to tell the truth as she remembered it at that time. After observing her testimony during the evidentiary hearing, I certainly have a favorable impression of her as an honest person. It is simply the case that human memories often become less accurate with the passage of time, especially with respect to emotionally-charged events…
In reality, medical documents showed the Cedillo family had remembered events quite accurately, though the court ignored evidence, as if to make Michelle Cedillo’s medical history fit a predetermined theory on memory originally designed for a parallel purpose-- to shut down testimony of sexual abuse, the mention of which nearly shut down a senate hearing in California.
Because Vaccine Court does not operate under the normal rules of civil procedure and has no pre-trial discovery, it may never be known if the Department of Justice consulted with Loftus or other members of the FMSF to fight the Cedillo claim. If Loftus's theories of flawed memory were used in Cedillo, it would have been despite the fact the DOJ knew perfectly well that the theory has not stood unchallenged, either in court or in clinical literature. In Libby's "Plamegate" trial for instance, the DOJ's Patrick Fitzgerald tore apart Loftus's methodology and forced her to admit to the use of altered and flawed data. And according to Canadian criminologist and domestic abuse expert Donald Dutton—who, like Loftus, also testified as an expert witness in the OJ Simpson trial, though for the prosecution— victims of traumatic perpetration tend to have far more accurate recall than perpetrators:
Severe Wife Assault and Deindividuated Violence
Ganley (1980) has confirmed the tendency of women victims to have comprehensive recall of the battering incident (since their lives depended on being able to defend themselves) and of the male batterers to blank it out
When I started to collect questionnaire data on abusive men, I found the same issue with fuzzy memories. (p. 91, Dutton, The Domestic Assault of Women: psychological and criminal justice perspectives 2001)
For another example of relevance, the rape and death threats against Australian medical choice advocate Meryl Dorey led back to Whyweprotest.net, a fringe hub of the hacktivist group, Anonymous, and then traced to Australian Skeptic Dan Buzzard according to Dorey’s attorneys.
In short, the issue of rape is all over the vaccine mandate and vaccine injury controversy whether Mary Holland had drawn the analogy or not. But regardless, Senator Jackson showed only warm appreciation for the testimony of Skeptic-affiliated law professor and neoliberal maven Dorit Reiss, who incidentally applauds state child removal as a tool of biotech enforcement, helpfully binding together the themes that so deeply disturbed Jackson when Mary Holland merely made reference to them. It’s talking about certain issues that appears to be the problem, not the issues themselves.
The point of illustrating the parallel is not to make the case that rape culture only exists in certain spheres; it exists everywhere, but this sphere in particular happens to be emblematic of another parallel— total lack of accountability for those proximate to power and double standards. While critics and whistleblowers of institutional and industrial policy are easily brought down, evangelists for state and institutional policy enjoy relative immunity. For instance, Whyweprotest.net is also where Skeptic mouthpieces like Buzzard and others have campaigned to make institutional and industrial platforms like compulsory medicine and state child removal as a tool of biotech enforcement seem somehow in keeping with Wikileaks’ platform of corporate and state transparency in a clear attempt to rope hacktivist wannabes into the industrial cause. And while these Skeptic hacktivist entryists have never been properly investigated, Wikileaks’ founder remains imprisoned in the Ecuadoran embassy in London due to rape allegations that even the alleged victims have protested.
It’s all particularly curious since hacktivist hubs are deeply infiltrated, leading to a steady stream of prosecutions of Anonymous-affiliated hacktivists. According to a report by Glenn Greenwald’s for The Intercept based on a 50-page presentation by the UK’s GCHQ shared with the NSA and other agencies, British and US intelligence agencies are employing covert tactics to monitor and subvert an array of online activist groups.
And all the while, Skeptic figureheads like Randi, Michael Shermer and others embroiled in alleged crimes are frequently guest editors or commentators in pop-science and mainstream publications like Scientific American (also here), Discover Magazine, New York Times Magazine, etc. and set the tone for public health discourse. It’s no surprise: case after modern case has shown that rendering service to power provides a degree of indemnity while doing the reverse risks bringing about a full Freudian transference of guilt.
The problem with discussing any of it is that the current corporate defense scene is like something out of James Ellroy’s Hoover-era Underworld USA trilogy: World’s richest man (Howard Hughes/Bill Gates) obsessed with germs and looking to sanitize the world; shakedown artists and rogue operatives in a mix and match arrangement with racists and/or perverts wielding a Hooverian bio-behaviorist obsession with the genetics of crime and political dissent and programs to contain minorities while everyone glides around in progressive drag under the guise of philanthropic purity. And they all hate someone named Robert F. Kennedy.
It’s pure neoliberal noir, down to engineering juntas in the resource-rich third world. Who would believe it ever happened in the first place much less again? As Ellroy put it in American Tabloid, the first in his trilogy,
America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.
The grounds for Jackson’s outrage at Holland’s reference to draconian consequences of the bill—child removal and imprisonment of dissenting parents—also seems disconnected in every sense but in keeping with the noir theme. In 2009, I wrote about my husband’s family’s reaction to our twins’ vaccine injuries in light of their experience with political violence under the US-backed Argentine military junta—a regime infamous for child abduction among other horrors:
In Argentina, my husband’s place of birth, Operation Condor manifested as a one-sided “Dirty War”, which took place between 1976 and 1981. An identical number of people were murdered by the Argentine military junta as in [Pinochet’s] Chile, but in a quarter of the time. Argentina was the first country in South America to seek justice against the junta’s leaders, with criminal proceedings ongoing against former military dictator General Jorge Videla and collaborators.
Argentina suffered added atrocities, such as the theft of children. And here’s where the irony gets personal: I can’t even fathom how unreal our twins’ slow regressions must have been for my husband’s family, for his parents especially. They’d escaped one child-snatching regime, then saw both their children pass safely from another. They thought everyone got out— only to watch as two from the next generation were torn away in little pieces.
Because of Operation Condor, because then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the now-declassified “green light" for the Argentine junta to commence the killing and kidnapping of “domestic subversives”—including “dangerous” types such as trade unionists, journalists, Jews, students, homosexuals, women, children, conservative constitutionalists, religious humanitarians and liberals alike—my husband and his family lost their country.
When my husband was five, soldiers of the coup came to his home in Buenos Aires on a round of searches and “interviews”. At the time, my father in law was a relatively well known television writer, filmmaker and author. He and my mother in law had been outspoken regarding their unionist leanings, despair over the coup and sympathies for the cause of indigenous groups in Argentina. But their family was now on “the list” and the visit by the military wasn’t the occasion to make a case for humanity. Innocent people were being “disappeared”, their children taken and secretly adopted by members of the military elite. For the same purpose, pregnant women were being detained and then executed once they gave birth. The adoptions were part of a campaign of “societal reprogramming”…
At the time I wrote the article, I didn’t precisely put two and two together with other contemporary political trends and the neoliberal globalization agenda behind Operation Condor. My sense of "verisimilitude" was not that reckless, so I had no idea how the analogy would incrementally come to life six years later and how so many families would begin seriously discussing leaving the country out of fear their children may be literally “disappeared.”
Children are already being taken from their families for failure to vaccinate, despite various state guidelines saying that Child Protective Services are not authorized to remove children on these grounds. In view of this nationwide trend and in view of protests against excessive use of police force around the country, municipal violation traps, criminalization of American life, etc., Senator Jackson’s outrage at Mary Holland’s rhetorical references to enforcement is bleakly absurd.
The question haunting many is what the connection may be between all these various disasters from the epidemic to the militarization of domestic law enforcement, the explosion in private prisons, arrests of disabled children on school grounds, state child snatching, the destruction of education, incursions on civil and consumer rights, drones, torture, deregulation, surveillance, economic crashes and ecological damage—the list goes on.
Tom Englehardt of TomDispatch claims he doesn’t have a name for it, though he frames the issue neatly nevertheless:
Though the marriage of the state and the corporation has a pre-history, the full-scale arrival of the warrior corporation only occurred after 9/11. Someday, that will undoubtedly be seen as a seminal moment in the formation of whatever may be coming in this country. Only 13 years later, there is no part of the war state that has not experienced major forms of privatization. The U.S. military could no longer go to war without its crony corporations doing KP and guard duty, delivering the mail, building the bases, and being involved in just about all of its activities, including training the militaries of foreign allies and even fighting. Such warrior corporations are now involved in every aspect of the national security state, including torture, drone strikes, and -- to the tune of hundreds of thousands of contract employees like Edward Snowden -- intelligence gathering and spying. You name it and, in these years, it’s been at least partly privatized.
All you have to do is read reporter James Risen’s recent book, Pay Any Price, on how the global war on terror was fought in Washington, and you know that privatization has brought something else with it: corruption, scams, and the gaming of the system for profits of a sort that might normally be associated with a typical third-world kleptocracy. And all of this, a new world being born, was reflected in a tiny way in Hillary Clinton’s very personal decision about her emails.
Though it’s a subject I know so much less about, this kind of privatization (and the corruption that goes with it) is undoubtedly underway in the non-war-making, non-security-projecting part of the American state as well.
More than ten years ago, Noam Chomsky said of the spate of international “free trade” deals, “the major tendency is towards transfer of power to private tyranny and away from the public sphere… It’s happening in different countries at different rates, it’s happening internationally, and I think that’s going to be very harmful to values that we ought to share, like democracy.”
What “it” is is neoliberal globalization. It's what's driven so much violent corporate adventurism abroad and it's now coming home to roost in identifiable ways as many have predicted it would, since these markets cannot expand outward forever.
For clarification, the definition of globalization varies from source to source. Like Englehardt, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. For instance, the Wikipedia entry for “Globalization” describes it in almost entirely positive if completely snooze-worthy terms. Wikipedia employs economic meta-terminology mingled with kinder-gentler references to connections between human beings around the world. Wikipedia pretends, as do most corporatized media, that neoliberal globalization and globalized human connection are inseparable concepts although they are not. For the purposes of this article, “globalization” is a reference is to the mature form of unfettered monopoly corporatocracy on a global scale which relies on international treaties using acronyms such as NAFTA, AFTA, CEFTA, CISFTA, COMESA, GAFTA, GCC, SAFTA, SICA, TPP, and MEFTA. These so-called free-trade treaties promote globalization with a neoliberal agenda to hand democratic functions of sovereign countries to private corporations which naturally seek to minimize regulations that inhibit profits and control.
The globalization scheme apparently often rides in on the “free market” mantra of both neoliberalism and neoconservatism—though laissez-faire capitalism is not new and is neither “liberal” nor “conservative” but an old form of economic radicalism. British economist Adam Smith is often misleadingly held up as an icon of this economic view, though Smith himself warned in 1776, “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” Smith’s concept of the free market was also intended as a “better world” exercise, not necessarily possible in reality. But the point is moot since there’s nothing actually “free” or even laissez-faire about an oligopoly favoring corporations or financial institutions that pay off politicians and result in no-bid government contracts. There’s nothing “free” about a population that lives under a system where these corporations buy favorable legislation. There’s nothing liberating about the fact that 80% of the National Security Agency is run by private industry with multinational ties. It represents the blowback of hegemony and, in a domestic sense, a type of foreign invasion.
Under globalization, domestic law is supplanted by international treaties largely created by international corporations. With the Trans Pacific Partnership, a treaty being convened in secret and pushed for fast track authorization to avoid public input, more Americans might at last start to feel the pain formerly reserved for the working classes and foreign losers of the trade treaty game.
The Trans Pacific Partnership may even explain the mad rush to mandate vaccination since what little has been leaked about the document demonstrates that, once ratified, corporations could sue states that attempt to alter existing legislation in ways that could “harm future corporate profits.” So in theory, if personal vaccine exemptions no longer exist by the time the treaty passes, they could not be reinstated.
According to documents leaked by Wikileaks, there may be something worse in the works—TISA or the Trade in Service Agreement:
TISA is a controversial global trade agreement which brings with it concerns that it will make it easier for corporations to operate and profit across borders with impunity.
This global trade agreement, promoted by the United States and the European Union, covers 50 countries and is being opposed by anti-globalization activists and global trade unions. The TISA deal is expected to promote privatization of public services in countries across the world, and ease regulations in other sectors.
Even without TPP or TISA, the trend has already led to a domestic push for privatization/liberalization of schools, social security, pension plans, health care, utilities, military, prisons, mail, port authority, disaster relief, and police.
In any event, the various barriers that protect local business, banks, workers, unions, citizens and the environment are being removed and, once privatized, these institutions become immune to Freedom of Information Act requests and are no longer accountable to the public. And as each institution is corrupted, it can be more easily bent to serve other wings of the assault, demonstrated by the militarization of public health and its use as cover for foreign exploits or domestic incursions on rights. After all, what is corruption other than the larval stage of privatization? Consequently, there have been discussions of privatizing the CDC.
It’s easy to extend that model to corporate power over state and federal legislation on environment, medicine and everything else. In the NAFTA treaty, for example, there are 900 pages of clauses, most of which seek to override various national environmental, safety, drug, labor, commerce, and tariff laws. NAFTA sets up its own treaty-court system to accomplish this.
One of the simplest way to explain privatization is a short documentary on Halliburton’s conduct during the war in Iraq.
It’s also not much of a stretch to see how this is relevant to vaccine mandates and autism. After discussing the privatization of public schools with one of the teachers who participated in the mass walk out in Oklahoma to protest Common Core, we hatched a few tentative theories.
Drawing from the Halliburton model, it might appear that the autism epidemic and other explosions in childhood chronic disease and disability— aside from setting off a marketing bonanza for mainstream drugs, screening and treatment— have been so instrumental to the campaign to privatize/Halliburtonize public education in the US that it may disincentivize finding a cause for autism and ending the epidemic.
According to Dianne Ravitch, author of Reign of Error and one of the chief critics of Common Core, in order for public education to need “rescuing” by private industry, first it had to start failing.
As public money is dispersed, so is public oversight and accountability for the spending of public money… Corporate reformers want education decisions in the hands of a powerful executive who is immune to public opinion. They like the idea of a governor who appoints a commission to override the decisions of local school boards that resist charter schools. They like the idea of a superintendent at the state level who has unlimited power to impose his (their) policies…Corporate reformers don’t like checks and balances. They want executives who can ignore the protests of parents, students, teachers and community leaders, no matter how loudly they complain and no matter how many show up at public hearings or protest at rallies.
Much of the engineered failure of public schools was achieved through defunding. But as many in the environmental autism arena have brought up, another likely reason for the plummeting global ranking of American secondary education might have to do with the plummeting health status of public school children— 1 in 6 with cognitive diagnoses, 1 in 6 with severe allergies, 1 in 12 with asthma, 1 in 68 with autism, etc.
Without discussing the reasons for rising rates in childhood disability, Ravitch clearly outlines the benefits the epidemic has had for the privatization crusade:
Jonathan Pelto reports that 70% of students will fail the Common Core test called Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC); the tests were designed to “fail” 70% of students, as is the PARCC test. Both Common Core tests are aligned with the “cut scores” (passing marks) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP “proficient” is set very high; Massachusetts is the only state where 50% of students rate proficient on NAEP.
Pelto points out that 90% of students with special needs are expected to fail SBAC.
It may not be incidental that rates of all these conditions are far lower in, for example, Finland—the country that holds the #1 spot for secondary education in the world. Finland also has far better child mortality ranking, a far lower rate of autism and a voluntary vaccination program with roughly 1/3 the number of vaccine doses recommended for birth to 18.
Also according to Ravitch, among the corporations behind Common Core and the Charter school push in the US, several are very familiar within the vaccine safety/autism arena: Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers. All either own or control publications that push compulsory vaccination and orchestrate attacks on safety critics. All have been able to use failing public education in the US as an entering wedge to argue that government cannot be entrusted with the task and that, on the “free market” credo, private corporations must now come in and rescue the system using competitive strategies. The opening phase of this is Common Core and the “testocracy.” As with vaccine mandate campaigns, public resistance has exposed the anti-democratic face of the high priests of corporate progress: Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan now threatens to turn to force if students continue to opt out of endless testing.
And as with Mary Holland's rhetorical inquiry in her testimony before the California Senate Judiciary Committee, we're not meant to ask what that force might entail but this is also not hard to guess. The privatization trap has been laid in that sense as well and is ready to spring: the infamous bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC—which is behind Common Core as well as prison privatization and includes past and present members such as Microsoft, Murdoch's News Corp., and Koch industries– has worked for years to privatize foster care, adoption and child protective services, making state child removal a for-profit industry and arguably resulting in children being taken for increasingly trivial causes.
As a side note, something else Holland would not have been allowed to mention in her testimony is that the rate of sexual abuse in state care is 8-fold that of the worst homes in the US and the risk of death is five times greater. Both the privatization of this system and the way that the privatization of other systems is feeding it have only made the situation worse. comes to mind
As another side note, it’s a common mistake to assume school privatization equates to “private schools” when it's really more along the lines of “Monsanto High,” “Microsoft Elementary,” or “Eli Lilly Middle School.” One can only imagine what curriculum would be like in that final phase, though Bill Gates’ pet concept of teaching “Big History” has already been equated to "historicism”—the mystical, tribal ideological basis of totalitarianism outlined in Part 3. According to political philosopher Karl Popper, historicism refers to the mythical “laws of history which enable [rulers] to prophesy the course of historical events,” a type of trickery that Popper contends is partly motivated by the fact that self-anointed “prophets who announce that certain events are bound to happen make propaganda for them, and help to bring them about"— bringing to mind Gates' disturbingly specific pronouncement in Berlin that a global pandemic equivalent to the Spanish flu may strike humanity within a year.
It’s not reassuring that, as mentioned throughout the series, Gates’ globalization schemes appear to be suspiciously meshed with the use of medical philanthropy as cover for military and intelligence missions, surveillance and coordinated assaults on domestic consumer activists. Gates concluded his Berlin presentation with panoptic recommendations that humanity organize against the coming plague and against "anti-vaccine" views as if “preparing for war.”
To the extent that groups like Anonymous are frequently involved in consumer and environmental causes and in light of government targeting of nonviolent Occupy activists on behalf of international corporate clients, it’s clear those who resist corporate policy are interchangeable with enemies of the state and will receive the same treatment. This in turn illustrates the ties between the globalization process, the war on terror, domestic militarization and increasing incursions on civil rights.
A report from The Guardian brings the chilling point home: an extrajudicial “black site” facility has been discovered in Chicago into which detainees are periodically “disappeared.”
Tracy Siska, a criminologist and civil-rights activist with the Chicago Justice Project, said that Homan Square, as well as the unrelated case of ex-Guantánamo interrogator and retired Chicago detective Richard Zuley, showed the lines blurring between domestic law enforcement and overseas military operations.
“The real danger in allowing practices like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib is the fact that they always creep into other aspects,” Siska said.
“They creep into domestic law enforcement, either with weaponry like with the militarization of police, or interrogation practices. That’s how we ended up with a black site in Chicago.”
The implication is that, even if a controlled media fail to inform the citizens of a country about what is done in their name abroad, these populations will eventually learn of the exploits from first hand experience as they’re eventually subjected to their own state’s foreign policy medicine—the main reason for writing this series. The state of plague is highly contagious.
In some ways, the series is a pathetic attempt to throw a rock at a tank. But even if reports like this are eventually wiped off the web, they would still leave traces and the traces bleed together with other political events and with history.
As a growing human rights movement, I think the consumer safety collective has a duty to track the path of the sword that came down on our heads, to account for other victims of it, to warn those who may be next, to be active in pointing out parallel abuses— the parallel “story within the story”— beyond simply using them as analogies for our own cause. If we don’t, if we shirk the controversy ballast, we’re not much different than those who participate in fraud and coercion to defend their own careers and institutions and blame the collateral.
The lie that this isn’t the case is comforting to some degree, since it pretends that we, as Americans, have not participated in supporting bits and pieces of the system that’s now destroying us. If the cause is ever to succeed, and there’s no guarantee that it will, we should divest and boycott that machine when possible. At the very least, those serious about rights and ecology should not buy from companies that profit from prison and slave labor, wars of aggression, conflict minerals, repression, environmental devastation and fraud. When it's not possible nor wise to fully divest— such as with public education and public health—the fight is to reclaim these institutions. Obviously if we want others to work for change and resist participation in things that harm us even when it hurts, we’ll have to do the same. What makes it simpler is that, in many cases, it’s been the same sword cutting through all of us. We’re connected to the world through these parallels—a more unsettling view of “globalization” from the perspective of those responsible.
Adriana Gamondes is a Contributing Editor to Age of Autism and one of the blog’s Facebook administrators.
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This letter is republished from January 2019. When I wrote to Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer to the British Government, the headline rate for Northern Ireland schools (2018 figure) was 2.9%. The figure for 2022 was 4.7%, a staggering 63% increase on the earlier figure - mark this is 63% for the entire rolling cohort and not for intake. The letter is also published by the British government as part of the correspondence as requested by Angus Files (revised text of January 6, 2019). Later in 2019 Sally Davies was replaced by the notorious Chris Whitty. This is a catastrophe so large that it needs one fake contingency over another to distract from it.
Below is the text of my recent letter to Dame Sally Davies (pictured), Chief Medical Officer since 2010 to the British government. Davies has now replied twice to my original challenge to substantiate her comment on the BBC regarding the MMR: ""It's a safe vaccination - we know that". My original reply was published last November. It is evident that if she had a strong reply to make she ought to have made it the first time around, and the second reply was only an amplification of the first, to which I have in turn responded in more comprehensive detail. I believe it demonstrates how a government department had come to justify its choices made originally on weak evidence, and how as the decades went by the resulting decisions got worse and more desperate: and as the problems got more drastic the denial - even if believed - got more implausible.
It is interesting and likely significant that when I asked about MMR safety it was Davies who brought up the issue of autism (which I had not mentioned). This mirrors the situation two decades ago when I tried to raise the subject with the department of the rising autism numbers and they brought up Andrew Wakefield (though I had mentioned neither Wakefield or vaccines). The message is that they make the connection as a reflex, the safety of MMR and the claimed stability of the autism figures are inextricably entwined and in both instances the department are making a “leap of faith”.
My title refers to “the Department of Health", but to clarify at the beginning of this period when the original decisions were being made it was part of the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), and since January last year it has been called the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), but for the three decades during which most of this happened it was the DoH or DH.
Dear Dame Sally,
Re: MMR Safety and Autism Numbers
Thank you for your further courteous reply (20 December), however I must point to a host of anomalies (apologies for the length and detail of my reply). The MMR programme was introduced to the UK in 1988 but the earliest of the autism safety studies included in the Cochrane review 2005 [1] was published only 11 years after this (and apparently based on illegally obtained children’s records, which cannot be cross checked [2]), while the first listed in the review by Luke Taylor (2014), which you cited, comes from 14 years after the introduction of the products [3]. Indeed, in 1988 the DH recklessly favoured SKB’s Pluserix MMR vaccine although it was already withdrawn in Canada [4] and contrary to your first letter it never made an attempt to withdraw the product until the decision was made to do so unilaterally by the manufacturers in 1992 [5].
The safety of the products had not been established at the time of introduction (quite the reverse as the main one in use was known to be hazardous), and the featured studies only began when, following the intervention of Andrew Wakefield, health officials came under pressure to justify the policy. The picture became further complicated in 1999 when the problem of mercury in other vaccine products, previously unacknowledged, came to light in the US. The problem of the Cochrane paper of 2005 is that the bland reassurance it gave regarding MMR and autism is in stark contrast to the cool to scathing comments about the six autism related studies it reviewed (three of which overlap with the Luke Taylor review of 2014 which you previously gave as your evidence for MMR safety and MMR not causing autism) [6]. The manifest contradiction in the review should in itself raise red flags.
You make the point that all studies have limitations, but you have not argued more directly with my assessment of the 1+6 studies on which you based your claim in your original letter that MMR is safe and does not cause autism, while 6 or 9 inadequate studies do not make a single good one. There is obviously a huge conflict in those who have administered policies over decades ever admitting they have made gung-ho decisions, but the public would be astounded and outraged if they understood how slender the safety evidence base was for a policy which has now reached hundreds of millions of children globally over several decades. In fact, both your predecessor as Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, and Prof David Salisbury (who headed the vaccine programme 1986-2013) were capable of suggesting that an infant would be able to receive safely thousands of vaccine products in one go without harm [7], which should not perhaps have reflected well on their judgment.
The opposite of side the coin is insouciant denial of any harm at all: it may be that the Department of Works and Pensions has recently been forced by the Court of Appeal to make payments in some Pandemrix/narcolepsy cases having adopted a Catch 22 approach claiming that long term damage could not be assessed [8], but until that point payments had dried up altogether for several years, despite the endless expansion of the programme [9]. In the case of Pandemrix and narcolepsy the MHRA and the EMA failed to pick up signals despite there being a great many [10]. In the general case of vaccines and autism, even if the MHRA paid attention to initial adverse events they would have no machinery to follow up on long term developmental problems: the enduring system is in fact designed not to pick them up. In view of the failure to actively monitor vaccine adverse events and their sequelae the DHSC is not even in a position to say that they are rare. Given, for instance, the current debate over HPV vaccines [11,12,13] what are the ethical grounds for not warning the public of failures, or even continuing to license the products?
By a coincidence the 2017 Mental Health Survey for Children and Young People in England [14] was published the day after I wrote to you. I raise an eyebrow at your suggestion that a 30% rise represents stability, but the survey also deserves to be taken much less seriously than the recent Northern Ireland census [15,16] where there was a proper attempt to count all the cases rather than project numbers from a tiny sample. It is possible that there may have been a few more fringe diagnoses in the 2.9 rate recorded compared with 1.2% 9 years before, but nevertheless Stage 5 diagnoses had all but doubled between 2008-9 and 2017-8, from 0.89 to 1.74%, which makes 1 in 57 children today with a complex ASD impairment. Given innumerable media reports of the system breaking down, and many new facilities having to be provided across the entire United Kingdom this seems to be much more likely to be representative than the results of the new survey [17,18, 19,20].
According to a recent report the number of young people with learning disabilities held in unsuitable conditions in short term assessment units (but not necessarily for a short stay) has doubled to 2,375 cases in the last three years [21]. A Haringey budget consultation from January last year [22] states that the number of adults requiring support with learning disability is set to have risen from 556 in 2013 to 1,147 in 2022 – if the trend continues it looks like it will completely have overtaken the elderly by the later 2020s, but these are cases which unlike the elderly will have a lifetime of dependency ahead of them. Bearing in mind the huge and increasing budgetary constraints on local authorities, it seems improbable that their criteria for recognising new cases has become more lenient. Nor are the figures across the country likely to be much different from those in Haringey I have cited. Since each case is set to cost the state and more importantly the public millions of pounds, they really ought to be properly counted.
I fear we also need to return to the old data. In the 1999 schools’ mental health survey the PDD rate among secondary school children born between 1984 and 1988 was 1 in 500 compared with 1 in 250 in primary school [23], but by the 2004 survey when virtually all children in school were of the MMR generation the figure had risen to virtually 1 in 100 across the board [24]. Already in that period some of us were exercised over claims that any of this was at all normal but now if we look at what was written at the time we are still looking at relatively modest figures. For instance, Gillberg and Wing wrote in relation to the rising trend in 1999 [25]:
“The early studies yielded prevalence rates of under 0.5 in 1000 children, whereas the later ones showed a mean rate of about 1 in 1000. There was a marked difference in prevalence rates between those studies that included some children born before 1970 (low rates) and those that included only children born in 1970 and after (high rates). This is probably due to the lower rates obtained by use of criteria strictly based on Kanner's description of his syndrome.”
Even Eric Fombonne in the same year was talking comparatively small numbers [26]:
“Over 4 million subjects were surveyed; 1533 subjects with autism were identified. The methodological characteristics of each study are summarized, including case definition, case-finding procedures, participation rates and precision achieved. Across surveys, the median prevalence estimate was 5.2/10000. Half the surveys had 95% confidence intervals consistent with population estimates of 5.4-5.5/10000…Based on recent surveys, a minimum estimate of 18.7/10000 for all forms of pervasive developmental disorders was derived, which outlines the needs in special services for a large group of children.”
This was one of the papers that the DHSC sent to reassure me when I first expressed concern about the situation in Haringey in 2000. But this is a whole order of magnitude different from the current situation, while attempts to locate the missing numbers (as opposed to the occasional case) in a population now over the age of 30 have signally failed. In 2013, in contrast to National Autistic Society projections, of 700,000 cases across the entire population the DWP knew of only 129,000 who were likely preponderantly minors [27]. Brugha’s figure for adults in 2009 was extravagantly extrapolated, based on flawed diagnostic methodology and the hypothesis that they had somehow missed nearly 3/4s of the cases before weighting, and was downgraded by National Statistics to the status of “experimental statistics” in 2016 [28], while his 2014 data was published in 2016 as only “experimental statistics” [29]. The “they must be there somewhere” line has been playing for two decades without the cases ever being found. But if they were there, they would be a massively dependent and expensive population and they would not have to be looked for.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that while the DHSC has for two decades been trying dispel the notion that autism is rising (and perhaps believing it themselves), a steady trickle of cases has turned into a stream, has turned into a flood. Twenty years ago, the rate was 5 in 10,000, 10 in 10,000, just possibly 20 in 10,000 but now it is 290 in 10,000 and going up. The rhetoric of “more recognition” continues (has been very effective as a public relations strategy), but we are no longer looking at the same thing. These costs will inevitably eclipse that of the care of the elderly, if they have not already. And the question is very much why as this population catastrophe has unfolded - at immeasurable financial cost to the nation, immeasurable personal cost to huge numbers of citizens - has the DHSC just stood by year after year telling everyone that nothing is happening? If the rise is real – and the hard data tells us it is all too real – it is something the DHSC are doing or not doing which is responsible. The “echo chambers” of social media are as nothing compared with the echo chambers of public health.
In 2013 you wrote in your Annual Report on another matter [30]:
“In pointing out the lack of evidence for well-being, I have been asked to ‘take a leap of faith’ about well-being in mental health. As Chief Medical Officer I will not take a leap of faith with people’s health. The truth is that well-being in mental health is one poorly evidenced strand of a much bigger picture, and I recommend that bigger picture to policy makers”.
Yet you continue, as far as I can see, to take the leap of faith on MMR safety and “must be there” adult autism cases.
Thank you very much for letting me know of the “comprehensive Think Autism review” to begin early this year - I have not so far seen any public announcement so that ordinary citizens can give their views. May I also suggest that this correspondence be entered in evidence.
[1] The paper by Brent Taylor and colleagues, Demicheli et al, ‘Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children’, Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2005 Oct 19;(4):CD004407
[2] Lorraine Fraser, ‘Parents' fury over 'betrayal' of autistic boy’, Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2001, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1321029/Parents-fury-over-betrayal-of-autistic-boy.html Brent Taylor who was at the time a member of the JCVI is reported as abusively describing “the idea that the vaccine may cause severe bowel problems and autism as "crackpot"”.
[3] The paper by Madsen. Luke E Taylor et al, ‘Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies’, Vaccine 2014, https://autismoevaccini.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/vaccines-are-not-associated-with-autism.pdf
[4] Canada Diseases Weekly Report, 15 December 1990, https://gsg.uottawa.ca/gov/Docs/CDWR%20RHMC%20Vol.16-50.pdf
[5] Report, BMJ 26 September 1992, https://www.bmj.com/content/305/6856/777
[6] John Stone, ‘Re: Evidence is not bullying’ 18 September 2009, https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/re-evidence-not-bullying
[8] Iam Sample, ‘Ministers lose fight to stop payouts over swine flu jab narcolepsy cases’ Guardian 9 February 2017, www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/09/ministers-lose-fight-to-stop-payouts-in-swine-flu-jab-narcolepsy-cases
[9] Annex A - Vaccine Damage Payments claims received and award statistics, https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/242813/response/599844/attach/3/Annex%20A.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1
[10]Letters of Wendy E Stephen and Clifford G Miller, ‘Responses to Godlee, ‘A tale of two vaccines’, https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4152/rapid-responses
[11] Jørgensen L, Gøtzsche PC, Jefferson T.'The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias', BMJ Evid Based Med. 2018 Oct;23(5):165-168. doi: 10.1136/bmjebm-2018-111012. Epub 2018 Jul 27
[12] Nigel Hawkes, 'Cochrane director’s expulsion results in four board members resigning', BMJ 2018; 362 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3945 (Published 17 September 2018)
[13] Lars Jørgensen, Peter Doshi, Peter Gøtzsche, Tom Jefferson, 'Challenges of independent assessment of potential harms of HPV vaccines', BMJ 2018; 362 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3694 (Published 24 September 2018)
[14] Mental Health of Children and Young People in England, 2017 https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2017/2017
[15] Information Analysis Directorate 'The Prevalence of Autism (including Asperger Syndrome) in School Age Children in Northern Ireland 2018', published 10 May 2018, https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/health/asd-children-ni-2018.pdf
[16] John Stone, ‘Scepticism regarding the NHS survey 'Mental Health of Children and Young People, 2017' and ASD/PDD’, BMJ Rapid Responses 28 November 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4953/rr-0
[17] Responses to Viner RM, 'NHS must prioritise health of children and young people', https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1116/rapid-responses
[18] Carl Gavaghan, 'Number of North Yorkshire children being homeschooled has increased by over 800%' , Scarborough News, 3 December 2018, https://www.thescarboroughnews.co.uk/news/number-of-north-yorkshire-children-being-homeschooled-has-increased-by-over-800-1-9474423
[19] Josh Thomas, ‘County council “can’t carry on like this” amid concern over funding for special needs education’, 21 December 2018, https://www.huntspost.co.uk/news/county-council-can-t-carry-on-like-this-amid-concern-over-funding-for-special-needs-education-1-5827930
[20] Sophie Grubb, ‘Hundreds of special school places needed in Oxfordshire’, 3 January 2018, https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17332636.hundreds-of-special-school-places-needed-in-oxfordshire/
[21] Ian Birrell, 'Scandal of the autistic youngsters locked in solitary confinement: Hundreds of children are being held in appalling conditions and routinely abused in secluded padded cells', Mail on Sunday, 27 Ocober 2018, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6324515/Hundreds-children-held-appalling-conditions-routinely-abused-secluded-cells.html
[22] Haringey, London 2018-19 Budget, Budget proposals consultation January 2018 [Slide 9].
[23] Metzler et al, 'The mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain' National Statistics 1999, p.33 Table 4.1 'Prevalence of Mental Disorders', Pervasive development disorder is listed under 'less common disorders', http://www.dawba.com/abstracts/B-CAMHS99_original_survey_report.pdf
[24] Green et al, ‘Mental health of children and young people in Great Britain, 2004’, National Statistics 2005, p.35 Table 4.1, https://sp.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/5269/mrdoc/pdf/5269technicalreport.pdf
[25] Gillberg & Wing, ‘Autism: not an extremely rare disorder’, Acta Psychiatr Scand. 1999 Jun;99(6):399-406., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10408260
[26] Eric Fombonne, 'The epidemiology of autism: a review', Psychol Med. 1999 Jul;29(4):769-86, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10473304
[27] Freedom of Information request 2014-722, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/661155/foi-722-2014.pdf
[29] Brugha et al, 'Adult psychiatric morbidity survey 2014: Chapter 6 Autistic Spectrum Disorders' https://files.digital.nhs.uk/pdf/1/o/adult_psychiatric_study_ch6_web.pdf
[30] Sally C Davies, ‘Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer 2013, Chapter 1, p. 14, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/413196/CMO_web_doc.pdf
Yours sincerely,
John Stone
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Note: Paul Thacker, Investigative Reporter; Former Investigator United States Senate; Former Fellow Safra Ethics Center, Harvard University, has a Substack newsletter called The Disinformation Chronicle. He wrote about Dr. Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, and longtime topic here at AofA. Hotez is the go to media expert on vaccinations and seems to have replaced Dr. Paul Offit. Below is an excerpt, and you can subscribe if you so choose. We have no affiliation.
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Peter Hotez Sees Aggression Everywhere But In The Mirror
Patrolling scientific discourse, Hotez has a knack for discovering "antiscience" in anyone who disagrees with him.
Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor at Columbia University and chair of an international commission on COVID-19, charged in a wide-ranging interview last week that the National Institutes of Health and allied scientists were impeding an investigation into how the COVID-19 pandemic started. Since the pandemic’s beginning, virologists have been attacking anyone who asks hard questions about what might have started this outbreak.
Predictably, Baylor School of Medicine’s Peter Hotez went on the attack, tweeting that Sachs, as leader of the Lancet Commission, did not represent the views of science. Much like a Pentagon general wrapping himself in freedom and the flag to demand more federal monies for another foreign war—no questions, you anti-war hippie!—Hotez has been shrouding himself in the mantle of science to attack anyone who questions taxpayer funding for dangerous virus research by the National Institutes of Health.
Unfortunately for Sachs, he is just Hotez’s latest target. Read more here.
