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The Autism War: Fiction or True Crime?
I recently finished The Autism War, by Louis Conte, a fast-paced thriller in the style of John Grisham or Dan Brown, featuring international intrigue, corporate corruption, and some seriously bad guys. Much as I enjoyed the book on those merits – the pacing is good, the plotting is terrific, and most of the characters are pretty interesting – the thing that really intrigued me about it was the fact that a lot of the material was based on real events.
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Anti-Vaxxers Say “You Vaccinate, So We Don’t Have To!”
The folks who work behind the scenes here at Thinking Moms’ Revolution have noticed a number of odd pingbacks to “An Open Letter to My Facebook Friends,” written by our own B.K. on the subject of her numerous Facebook posts about vaccines and their risks. The pingbacks are linked to the exact same blog translated into a number of languages; so far I’ve counted Slovak, Croatian, Spanish, German, and Italian. Clearly, someone thinks there’s something about this blog that makes it worth the trouble to translate it and post in a number of different countries – someone with a lot more in the way of resources than we have. The…
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Autism Policy Reform Coalition: Be a Part of the Solution
AUTISM: The latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) say that 1 in 68 12-year-olds is on the autism spectrum. Given that those numbers represent a 30% increase from just two years ago, with no changes in diagnostic criteria since 1994 and no “official” identification of risk factors that could lead to prevention, and given that similar rises have occurred with every recent count, chances are very good that the numbers are already 30% higher for today’s 10-year-olds (1 in 52, which is close to the overall estimate for childhood incidence in the United States from a 2013 CDC study), and 30% higher than that for today’s 8-year-olds…
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The CDC’s Autism Tracking is Lacking
If you’re not living under a rock you know the CDC came out with new autism numbers yesterday, 1 in 68 children who are currently 12 years old, and 1 in 42 boys. These numbers come from their Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. You probably already knew that’s an increase from the 1 in 88 we were given for 2012’s 12-year-olds. According to the CDC, we’ve gone from 1.14% of that age group being “on the spectrum” to 1.47% in two years. A 29% increase in two years! And we already knew from a CDC study that came out in 2013 that at least 2% of the children…
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“Opting Out”: New York City Flu Vaccine Exemptions
As many of you know, the New York City Department of Health, at the instigation of then-mayor Mike Bloomberg, recently approved a new requirement for “all” New York City schoolchildren under the age of six to get an influenza vaccine in order to attend public school or day care. Most articles I’ve seen on the subject contain some version of this sentence: “Parents may opt out for medical and religious reasons.”
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Un-Investigative Journalists Miss the Obvious: Jenny McCarthy’s Son Has Autism
I keep thinking I’ll write about something other than vaccines because, believe it or not, I am interested in many other health-related topics that I’d love to share with you. But then the propaganda machine cranks up to promote some new (or, in this case, old) outrageous law, story, or video . . . aaaaand I’m right back where I started. Sometimes I feel like Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part III, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
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Vaccine Injured? Sorry! You don’t count.
Recently a “parody” video was posted on Upworthy.com, a site I usually enjoy quite a lot. They post videos about empowering women and girls, and denouncing bullies. This one, however . . . Well, check it out for yourself. The person who posted the video, Morgan Shoaff, claims, “It's hilarious and poses the question "What’s worth it?" when it comes to, you know, staying alive.”
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50 Shades of Grey: How to See the World
I’ve noticed lately that there are a lot of folks who seem to believe that if you don’t agree with them about everything, then you are “the enemy” – even if you were best buds last week. My daughter pointed out something that should be obvious, recently, when I made it clear how much I hate Pink’s new song “True Love”: “It doesn’t matter if someone disagrees with you. Nobody agrees with all of your opinions on everything.”
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Hold Fast to Dreams
Today is the birthday of Jupiter Hammon, the first African-American to publish poetry, so it’s the day that was chosen to celebrate Black Poetry and honor the contributions of all African-American poets to the world of poetry. I thought I would share with you what is still one of my very favorite poems.
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The Evidence on Gardasil: Modern Miracle or Dangerous Scam?
If you’ve been following us for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that we frequently point out the dangers of vaccination, because every single one of us knows countless children (and adults) that were injured by vaccines, some of them permanently. In fact, we cover this subject so often that we are listed (page 39) in UNICEF’s report on “anti-vaccination influencers” in Eastern Europe.
writer and editor
