Autism News Beat

Tweet From the bottom of the ocean To the mountains on the moon Won’t you please come to Chicago No one else can take your place -Graham Nash, “Chicago” * * * The first autistic Miss America contestant is a cheerful 19-year-old with heart-breaking beauty and a refreshing message. She celebrates her autism, telling reporters [...]

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Tweet You may know him as TV’s Walker, Texas Ranger, or the star of low-budget shoot-em-ups. Now Chuck Norris is venturing into new territory – self-appointed anti-vaccine spokesperson. Blogging on the right-wing website World Net Daily, Norris takes aim at the CDC, IOM, and the FDA  in an article clumsily titled The Venom in Fed’s [...]

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Tweet “Anti-vaccine doctor met with Somalis” went a recent headline in the Minneapolis StarTribune. It refers to Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced former UK physician who reanimated a moribund anti-vaccine movement in the US and elsewhere with his fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper. Wakefield was in the Twin Cities last week to reassure Minnesota’s 70,000-strong Somali population [...]

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Tweet A basic tenet of America’s ill-conceived and foundering anti-vaccine movement holds that autism diagnoses have risen to epidemic proportions. Among the faithful, this imagined increase is “the initial fork in the road in the autism debate,” one that colors their entire understanding of autism. But is the increase real, or an artifact of how [...]

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Tweet AMC has killed plans to screen an anti-vaccine group’s paid ads at dozens of theaters over Thanksgiving weekend. The theater giant’s announcement followed a successful protest and online petition started five days ago by Mayo Clinic pediatrician Dr. Robert Jacobson. After more than 1,000 persons backed Jacobson’s call, an AMC spokesperson left this online [...]

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Tweet Anti-vaccine groups are calling for a “fresh start” in their campaign to turn parents against childhood immunizations. Editors and reporters can expect to be plied with the same old whine, disguised in new bottles. “For too long, the media has misrepresented or oversimplified the science surrounding the autism and vaccines controversy,” says the fringe [...]

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Tweet OK, it’s funny and entertaining. But Penn and Teller’s skewed take on the phony vaccine/autism controversy sure beats the false balance that dominates the news and entertainment industry these days.

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Tweet The Chicago Tribune has earned honorable mention from the The Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism for its year-long series on unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” for autism. Reporters Trine Tsouderos, Patricia Callahan, and George Papajohn “courageously challenge doctors who peddle alternative autism remedies to parents desperate for help,” said Casey’s press release “Through inquisitive, [...]

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Tweet Add “snake oil salesman” to Boyd Haley’s list of public descriptors. The chemistry professor and anti-vaccine activist has been warned by the FDA that his erstwhile diet supplement, OSR#1, is a toxic brew with potentially serious side effects. The Chicago Tribune’s Trine Tsoudeos reports that a June 17 letter from the FDA “details five [...]

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Tweet It’s been a very bad day for Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced UK gastroenterologist famous for birthing the latest wave of vaccine rejectionism. First, the General Medical Council stripped Wakefield of his license to practice medicine. Then, in an ill-advised effort to salvage his public image, Wakefield sat down for an interview with an irritable [...]

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