http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-zampino/is-autism-the-real-public_b_8191918.html

My Son Has the Kind of Autism No One Talks About

Posted: 09/25/2015 1:55 pm EDT Updated: 09/28/2015 9:59 am EDT
By Bonnie Zampino

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/sep/24/pope-francis-historic-address-congress-expectations-high-live-coverage#block-56041776e4b012f670e05a82

1h ago11:33

Stephanie Kirchgaessner:

There was a notable omission in the pope’s speech before Congress, reports Stephanie Kirchgaessner.

According to the prepared text, Pope Francis was to issue a powerful commentary on how politicians can be led astray, saying that “If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.”

But Francis left out those words, which would have been particularly stinging before a group of lawmakers - Democrats and Republicans alike - who raise hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate interests, particularly banks, to finance their campaigns.

Furthermore, the failure to act on global warming, or finance various social programs that benefit the poor, are often excused for economic reasons. Reasons the pope clearly would not agree with - though he stopped short of making that point today.

Here is the full section of the text that was omitted from the speech.

"Here I think of the political history of the United States, where democracy is deeply rooted in the mind of the American people. All political activity must serve and promote the good of the human person and be based on respect for his or her dignity. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776). If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/15/executive-order-using-behavioral-science-insights-better-serve-american

PRESS RELEASE
September 15, 2015

Executive Order -- Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights -- research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them -- can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people.

Where Federal policies have been designed to reflect behavioral science insights, they have substantially improved outcomes for the individuals, families, communities, and businesses those policies serve. For example, automatic enrollment and automatic escalation in retirement savings plans have made it easier to save for the future, and have helped Americans accumulate billions of dollars in additional retirement savings. Similarly, streamlining the application process for Federal financial aid has made college more financially accessible for millions of students.

To more fully realize the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost for the American people, the Federal Government should design its policies and programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with, participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs. By improving the effectiveness and efficiency of Government, behavioral science insights can support a range of national priorities, including helping workers to find better jobs; enabling Americans to lead longer, healthier lives; improving access to educational opportunities and support for success in school; and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.

NOW, THEREFORE, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby direct the following:

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http://pic.twitter.com/yiHBv7yDCa

"...the burden of proof is upon anybody who feels that there is NOT a real increase here in the number of kids affected."
- Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of National Institute of Mental Health and head of Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)

10:02 AM - 27 Mar 2014

http://www.northjersey.com/news/report-new-jersey-s-autism-rate-is-the-highest-in-the-u-s-1.752693#sthash.XyuaB0ms.dpuf

“The increase could be a growing number of children with autism or better screening or a combination of both,” said Dr. Coleen Boyle, the CDC’s director of the national center of birth defects and developmental disabilities.

http://scienceofmom.com/the-book/

Paul A. Offit, MD, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia:

Alice Callahan has written a breakthrough book, combining the compassion, warmth, and angst of a mother with the measured reasoning of a scientist. She helps parents not only understand how science works, but how they can access that science to answer their questions. She’s found a way to access the scientist in all of us.

http://scienceofmom.com/2012/01/11/on-parenting-science-and-trust-and-choosing-to-vaccinate/

by Alice Callahan on January 11, 2012

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For my guest post, I chose to write about how being a scientist helps me to trust other scientists and medical professionals when it comes to my child’s health. When the scientific community overwhelmingly supports a parenting practice – like vaccinating our children – I’m on board. If you read my blog, you know that I question other decisions plenty. When it comes to the decision to vaccinate, I trust the science that it is the best thing for my child and for our community.

An excerpt… check out The Mother Geek to read the rest! (Link to Mamamia post here )

Because I trust scientists and doctors, I didn’t question the CDC’s vaccination schedule. I didn’t pore over vaccine research or agonize about the decision to vaccinate my child. Instead, I trusted that the committees of experts at the CDC and AAP carefully make the best recommendations possible based on the data available. Maybe that is naïve. Maybe I am a lazy mother for not trying to become a vaccine expert before I allowed those first needles to enter my daughter’s thigh. Or maybe not.

What would be naïve is for me to think that I could become an expert on vaccinations. It would be naïve for me to think that I could understand the vaccine field better than the committees of scientists and doctors who have made this their life’s work. I know how much work it took me to become an expert on one or two corners of nutrition and fetal physiology. It took thousands of hours of reading textbooks and journal articles, sitting in lectures, attending conferences, and struggling at the lab bench before I started to feel even a little bit comfortable calling myself an expert in any field. So I think it is naïve for a parent to think that she can become an expert on vaccines by spending some time on the Internet reading questionable sources, almost all of which have some agenda. I accept that I can’t know everything, and I have enough faith in humanity that I trust others who know more than me.

INTRODUCTION: REMOVAL OF MERCURY FROM VACCINES IN THE EPOCH OF ERROR CORRECTION

By Martha R. Herbert, PhD, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School
and Pediatric Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital

This book is aggressively pro-vaccine. Its focus is not on vaccines in any general way, but only on one ingredient, Thimerosal, which contains ethylmercury.

Although the conversation surrounding vaccines, as with any medical issue, has many facets (especially when you consider technical issues), many people are aware of only two black-and-white opinions: you are either pro-vaccine, or anti-vaccine. If you are a reader who wishes to absorb and evaluate the information in this book, I ask you to consider that, at minimum, there is a third alternative: you can be pro-vaccine and at the same time seek to improve the vaccine program. (1)

This book advocates one specific step to improve vaccines: removing a known neurotoxin (mercury, in the form of Thimerosal) from the list of ingredients. To make a strong case for taking this step, the book presents voluminous evidence of:

* The toxicity of Thimerosal
* The ineffectiveness of even the bactericidal role it is supposed to play
* Safer alternatives to Thimerosal that are already available
* A history of the calls of scientists and high-level governmental and international agencies around the world to remove Thimerosal entirely from vaccines
* Implementation of this course of action in some other countries

It argues that removing Thimerosal entirely will improve both vaccines themselves and people's trust in them.

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(1) Poland GA, Kennedy RB, McKinney BA, Ovsyannikova IG, Lambert ND, Jacobson RM, et al. Vaccinomics, adversomics, and the immune response network theory: individualized vaccinology in the 21st century. Look it up... (first of 27 footnotes in the Introduction, p xvii-xxix).

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