The Autistic Me

English: Podcast or podcasting icon Français : Icône pour les podcasts ou la baladodiffusion (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The Autistic Me Podcast is coming! My microphone and mixer sit on my desk, waiting for me to record the introductory episode, which I will make available in January if all goes according to plan. The podcast will begin without any guests, but that will change if I can build an audience. Podcasting requires some extra effort, from preparing cover and episode artwork to publishing the RSS feed for iTunes and other services. I’m hoping the extra effort helps make The Autistic Me available to more people. I do plan to transcribe episodes, lightly edited, and post the text to the standard blog, too. With the podcast and podcast transcripts extending the reach of The Autistic Me, I intend to increase my activity on social media. We have a Facebook page for The Autistic Me and a neglected Twitter feed (@autisticme) . The Facebook page growth stalled at 950 followers...

Parenthood (2010 TV series) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Television now includes a surprising number of autistic and possibly autistic characters. We've already had shows with autistics (The Bridge, Touched, Alphas , Elementary , Parenthood , and more). There seem to be more, now, or maybe that's merely my perception. I am not impressed with this trend. As with the novel and play, __Curious Incident__, the characters seem like a collection of assumptions about autism. Not horrible, but too reliant on shallow understandings of atypical neurologies and savant personalities. An expert consultant? A specialist? Maybe even an autistic person offering some opinions regarding scripts or even on set. But, generally, the characters feel superficial. Atypical is just bland and lousy, with or without the geeky boy in search of sex (or love). I simply don't like the characters. If it weren't pitched as a show about autism, maybe it wouldn't be streaming. The Good ...

The Los Angeles Times has published an interesting take on "Autism Now." A PBS series injects doubt back into the autism issue By James Rainey April 27, 2011 [ Excerpt only -- read the full column via the link above!] I asked her father whether he should have told the television audience more about his daughter, given her strong positions, which have been expressed on blogs for several years. MacNeil said it "never occurred" to him to make such a disclosure since he said the community of families involved in autism is familiar with her activism. I suggested that there were likely many others watching PBS who didn't frequent autism chat rooms, who had no idea that Alison MacNeil, a psychiatric social worker living in Cambridge, Mass., was such an activist. The veteran newsman — who has written a biography, novels and appeared occasionally on PBS since leaving in 1995 — said he was dismayed at the heated atmosphere that surrounds the autism question. ...

There is substantial blog and Twitter traffic on this issue. Again, not much call for me to comment, as anything I write will be nuanced and not change any minds. Still, this is a good read: Autism-vaccine link debunked — too little, too late - latimes.com It's frustrating for any researcher. I've tried to explain quantitative and qualitative research statistics. I've tried to explain science seldom claims to be "certain" — but the public demands certainty, just like they see on television dramas. Vaccines are valuable, important, and statistically safer than having unvaccinated children in our communities. Nothing, nothing, nothing in life is 100% safe. Sadly, humans are bad at measuring and understanding risks.

I don't think I need to write much. Read the full story at USA Today and I'm sure dozens of other news organizations will have more in-depth coverage. From USA Today: Report linking vaccine to autism 'an elaborate fraud' By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY January 5, 2011 An infamous 1998 study that ignited a worldwide scare over vaccines and autism — and led millions of parents to delay or decline potentiatly lifesaving shots for their children — was "an elaborate fraud," according to a scathing three-part investigation in the British medical journal BMJ. Bad science would be enough, but fraud? The article continues: Now, the BMJ reports that Wakefield, who was paid more than $675,000 by a lawyer hoping to sue vaccine makers, was not just unethical — he falsified data in the study, which suggested that children developed autism after getting a shot against measles, mumps and rubella. In fact, the children's medical records show that some clearly had symptom...

On many Web forums dedicated autism, no matter the topic there is an increasing likelihood that a discussion will be hijacked by the anti-vaccine, "curebie," anti-establishment, conspiracy theorists. They are led by "journalists" and celebrities given prominence by the Huffington Post, DailyKos, Age of Autism, and other websites. They admire discredited men and women, individuals reprimanded in legal proceedings, sanctioned by medical review boards, and disavowed by universities. Yes, to many of us with science and quantitative backgrounds, the science is firmly established — as firmly as one can expect within medical science. And what annoys us is that self-proclaimed watchdogs and anti-vaccine hooligans, and they are hooligans, point to "journal articles" and demand other articles in response. Of course, the "journals" publishing the Geiers and most others are vanity journals, foreign publications, or minor journals of no standing — but that do...

The following mixes and matches several quite different groups, confounding people that represent various political views -- not a monolithic anti-government movement, but general skepticism: The Very Angry Tea Party By J.M. BERNSTEIN http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/the-very-angry-tea-party/ In a bracing and astringent essay in The New York Review of Books, pointedly titled "The Tea Party Jacobins," Mark Lilla argued that the hodge-podge list of animosities Tea party supporters mention fail to cohere into a body of political grievances in the conventional sense: they lack the connecting thread of achieving political power. It is not for the sake of acquiring political power that Tea Party activists demonstrate, rally and organize; rather, Lilla argues, the appeal is to "individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power." He calls Tea Party activists a "libertarian mob...