No more mirroring!

I'm sorry to say that I can't keep this blog mirrored. If you haven't noticed, it hasn't mirrored since February. I honestly hadn't noticed until yesterday. Tsk tsk, shame on me.

Please visit the new page for Gryffin's Tail.

For all my Feedburner subscribers, I've finally figured out how to move you over to the new site and you should start receiving your subscription again. Woot woot! ;) I'm embarrassed to say it wasn't that hard. Doh!

You can still use the "Subscribe via email" on this site to subscribe to the new site's feed.

Above you'll find that I added an RSS feed of the new site so any new content will still make it here, it just won't be stored or republished here.

Thanks to all my followers and I hope my Blogger followers and new readers will join me at my new location.

Gryffin's Tail

I Promise You – AGE OF AUTISM Posted: 12 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST I Promise You – AGE OF AUTISM. Just in case some people don’t realize what happens to the parents of special needs kids. This is the reality, folks. Choosing not to be bullied, hurt, lied to, manipulated, or cheated out of helping our kids makes us the bad guys. It isn’t enough to be ridiculed for standing up for our children. We aren’t allowed to simply love them and do what any parent would do for their children. We have to defend ourselves for it, too. Chew on why that would be.

Gryffin's Tail

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Illinois McDonalds kicks autistic child and her service dog out – New Orleans pit bull | Examiner.com Posted: 10 Feb 2012 10:45 AM PST Illinois McDonalds kicks autistic child and her service dog out – New Orleans pit bull | Examiner.com. I guess someone forgot to tell McDonalds that it’s illegal to refuse someone because of a service dog. I hope an attorney steps up, I hope they sue but at the very least, I hope they contact the Department of Human Rights in Illinois and report them.

Gryffin's Tail

» Baby Dies After 9 Vaccines in One Day Posted: 20 Jan 2012 07:13 PM PST » Baby Dies After 9 Vaccines in One Day Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!. Absolutely insane.

Fan-freaking-tastic. Really, you’ll love this. Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:54 PM PST NYT: New autism definition may exclude many – TODAY Health – TODAY.com. "The proposed changes would put an end to the autism epidemic," said Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at Yale University School of Medicine and an author of the new analysis. "We would nip it in the bud — think of it that way." Yup. Since we can’t make those pesky numbers go down as we continue to add those vaccines (hi flu shot to pregnant women, hello Gardasil!), we’ll just change the criteria and voila! No more ridiculous autism numbers climbing every year! We just knocked it back to 1:5000. Guess there isn’t an epidemic after all. Or wait, try this one on: Well, we don’t actually want to put any effort into studying things that actually help those with autism so we’ll just make it harder to diagnose people with it. Those crazy moms and dads out there that actually believe they are recovering their kids, well, they never had autism to begin with. See how that works? They actually had Social Communication Disorder. Yeah, we just made that one up for the new DSM, we thought you might like it. *pats themselves on the back* We wanted to make sure we could pull a lot of people out of the autism group and get those numbers down that way, too. Yanno, since we don’t want to do anything and all. Those of you with Asperger’s, good luck getting reevaluated and getting that autism diagnosis and for those with PDD/NOS…you already knew that was the diagnosis stupid doctors gave when they didn’t want to commit to autism because “he’s just a boy, they talk later” or “she’ll catch up with time” or “it’s just a phase” or “autism is not a good diagnosis, you don’t want that and it’ll keep us from having to give you as many services too. “ Yeah, you’ll never get that autism diagnosis. And now we will have a severity scale so we can tell you exactly how impaired you are because you don’t know any better. So what if you can’t shower without being prompted or feel hunger? We’ll make you write notes to yourself and maybe you’ll remember to read them as they hang on the refrigerator of your, oh wait, we also took away your group home so you don’t have a refrigerator or walls in a dorm room to hang those notes. Sorry! We have to take your aide away too! I hope your parents are alive and able to take you in. Maybe you have an aunt or uncle? Distant cousin? Because you don’t get medicare or disability anymore, either. See? It’s not really an epidemic! Because we just knocked those numbers back down and it’s all good now. No more autism. Because changing the criteria made them all go away. Poof. And they call us crazy for doing things like giving them a gluten/casein free diet or some other such off the wall wackiness. Good lord, how could they deprive their kids of Wonder Bread? How much more, exactly, does the AMA, APA and CDC have to do before people realize we aren’t that crazy? **Don’t be surprised in a couple years when Social Communication Disorder is miraculously 1:90 with no services available.

My son’s self portrait

New post on Gryffin's Tail My son’s self portrait by cheryl In class, Gryffin's assignment was to paint himself as an adult in his desired profession when he grows up. As you can see, there's not much to go on here. I had to ask, of course. Me: But what do you want to be? Gryffin: A secret agent. Sheer genius. Posted from WordPress for Android. These are not the typos you are looking for... cheryl | November 12, 2011 at 8:59 pm | Categories: My Funny Kids | URL: http://wp.me/p1KiHn-b2 Comment    See all comments

Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

Low levels of zinc linked with autism in children

via Low levels of zinc linked with autism in children | Mail Online.

Interesting that they say that nothing should be concluded from this. What about concluding that it's worth testing to see if your asd kid has low zinc? Gasp! What an outrageous thought. How very unseemly to be so forward thinking. You should very well let your children run around with low zinc because low zinc is completely unimportant. As a matter of fact, just stop giving all kids a daily multi-vitamin because we don't them. Nutrition means nothing. There's nothing to see here, move along!

Is it really so hard to just say, well, maybe we should look into this? Why is there such a strong need to discredit anything that might support what the crazy autism moms have been saying for decades? Chew on that question for a while.

I think I'm going to start a category of all the stupid shit the media/governments/organizations/etc. say and do to try to prove themselves right while doing their damnedest to make us look bad.

Hypocrites and idiots. Perfect name for it. Look for it on the right.

Took the plunge

We've done mostly everything biomed and after 5 years, we have come to a point where life has to improve for everyone in the family. My son doesn't really have hyperactivity issues but has severe focus issues. His ADD has really come in the way of his own confidence and our enjoyment of each others' company. I'm always yelling at him and he's always too distracted to care and it always ends in tears. No fun for him and makes me feel like the worst mommy ever. It's really not pretty.

He knows he can't concentrate and it hurts him so much. He doesn't understand why he can't think like everyone else and he always feels like a failure. Unbeknownst to me, the first week of school his teacher asked the class to set goals. His goal was not to make good grades, make lots of friends or even be the line leader. His goal was to concentrate better. Talk about a heart-breaker.

We picked up the Ritalin on Friday. We went to our ped for it since my DAN doesn't generally do stimulants. Our ped started him Ritalin but he likely will not stay on it. It's the oldest and most well known drug and he wanted to start with something they know the best. For the first month, he stays on normal Ritalin (not slow release) because it clears the system fast and if he does have a reaction, we want it out as soon as possible. So for the first week, we just stick with 2x a day of 5mg each. We watch and report back to the doc a week later. Then we'll adjust the dose again and titrate up as we feel necessary to get to the right dose. Once we get there, we'll consider going to long acting and possibly a newer drug that maybe has fewer side effects.

Since we started Saturday, I've noticed that he doesn't sleep very well and has very hard time falling asleep. He already gets 1mg of melatonin at night. I'll be upping his dose to 3 mg and see if that helps. It is a side effect of stimulants.

Today was his first day of school on ritalin and his teacher noticed a huge improvement. She said she knew just by looking at his handwriting that he had started (I hadn't told her but she was aware it would happen).

I never wanted to go to meds but biomed just never made a difference. I would never recommend someone try meds first before biomed but for those of us that have done our due diligence, I'm all for doing what works. I resisted long enough. I've known enough ADHD people personally that have told me how medication has made all the difference in the world for them. How they finally felt normal. I can't and won't deny my son that chance. I put it off as long as I could because I just never felt comfortable putting him on it so young (especially after a Dr. put him on antidepressants when he was 3 to disastrous effects). 

Now he's 8, I'm still not happy about it but I feel like it's really the only thing left for me to do. I might end up regretting the decision but I can't tell you how easy homework was today. He's outside playing right now because he got done with his homework faster than ever and not a single instance of yelling. There was actually quite a bit of humor involved as he came up to me as "Paper Head." He put his homework in front of his face and walked around with it until I checked it. Laughing during homework time with him has always been rare.

We call it his "thinking medicine" since it's to help him think better. Today I struggled with my NT son and his homework and my ASD son said NT son needed some of his thinking medicine.  ;)

So for any of you struggling with the decision after years of biomed, don't beat yourself up if you go there. My son is recovered from autism through biomed. His ADD has only gotten worse. Maybe with this, life will be typical for him and that's really what all of us want.

Antiviral drugs may slow Alzheimer’s progression (The University of Manchester)

Antiviral drugs may slow Alzheimer’s progression (The University of Manchester):

'via Blog this'

Scientists fear MMR link to autism | Mail Online

Scientists fear MMR link to autism | Mail Online:

'via Blog this'

All the tests that folks talk about

All the tests that folks talk about « Gryffin's Tail:

This was from a conversation on a list.


Great answer Cheryl. Do you have a blog entry on this? Would be a nice addition if not.


(redacted)


On daily basis, there are many tests are talked about on this mailing list and since I am a beginner with all biomed, everything sounds to me like alien. I find all this information super overwhelming and takes time to digest everything.


So here goes my questions -
- All the tests that anyone talks about, are they all suggested and ordered but you (DAN!) doctor?


Any MD/DO can order any of the labs. Some you can order yourself


- Do you need special lab to do these tests or regular labs do these tests?


I rarely use a specialty lab. Great Plains and Doctors Data take insurance, though. I think of the specialty labs, the most important one is the CSA and OAT. Not all of the information is reliable but it's defnitely helpful.


- How often these tests are covered by the insurance? (of course, it depends on the insurance but if you have a 'good' insurance, like we have Oxford)


The only test that I've found not to be covered is food allergy testing. IgG testing just isn't mainstream enough. But only if the lab you see takes your insurance. I do believe you can self submit to your insurance if the lab doesn't take it but it will be at a lower rate.


Other labs, like the non-specialty labs are usually all covered by your plan but definitely still depends on how good your coverage is.


- Is there any comprehensive list of tests somewhere up on the net those can be performed for testing and treating our kids with the explanation i.e. what this test is for and what the result means? So that I can read up on that before I approach any doctor.


Oi. That's a lot of possible tests. But the ones to start with would be a **CSA (comp. stool analysis) and **OAT (organic acid test). **Food allergy (or you could do a food journal instead... but if you don't, Alletess has one for $89 that you can have your doc sign off on if willing.) --these 3 are not, imo, something you need to do often.


But a good place to start for a newbie to get some baselines.


viral titers: HHV1-6, any vaccine titers you want,


AntiDnase and ASO titers (PANDAS),


Ig and all subclasses,


CBC + CMP,


T&B lymph/NK cells,


homocysteine


Things to consider at some point:


**Urine Amino Acid (specialty lab - I don't think it's that important but if you have proten issues, could be better than nothing.)


thyroid


cortisol


other hormones (pregnenelone, progesterone, testosterone, IGF-1)


Vitamin D (bet you money you're low! ;) )


other vitamins and minerals (ferritin, zinc, copper, etc)


**hair metals test through GPL/DDI(or Labbio urinary porphyrins if you prefer to consider IV chelation - we do AC so hair test only - and not expensive if not covered by insurance)


**Yasko genetics test ($500/one time deal specialty lab not covered by insurance and nothing comparable in regular labs but I do believe you can get *some* of the genes through a regular lab. I think Toni might be able to tell you which ones. These are all metabolic genes.)


Toxoplasmosis


Mycoplasma


Lyme - you can get the Western Blot through a local lab but it's not as sensitive as a specialty lab (**Igenex) which is not covered by insurance. What makes this specialty lab special is that it actually gives you parasite information for all of them and more band information. Western blot I believe only test for borrelia and the other major one that I can't think of right now. The lyme parents can give better info on it than I can. It's expensive, I think it's $1800.


I marked all the specialty lab tests with a ** and really, they aren't that many and not stuff you need to do all at once or too soon. You could easily break them up if you choose to do them.


As for how to read them...that's steak, not popcorn*. The specialty labs will have explanations and nice little KISS charts that tell you exactly what's going on with an explanation attached. They aren't fully explained well but it's a start.


The regular labs, well...it's hard to tell a mainstream doctor that most people are low in vitamin D to even get one to test it (which I find funny that they say most people are *not* low in it but will never test anyone to know that!) And GPs tend to not understand half of the labs that cross them anyway. Any mainstream endocrinologist will tell you that the lab reference ranges for thyroid are too wide and where most GPs tell you it's fine because it's in range, an endocrinologist will tell you that you need thyroid. Soooo, how to read them is a loaded question. High viral titers a mainstream doctor will tell you that it just means you've been exposed. They don't take anything else into consideration. It's an impossible question to answer, unfortunately.


*For an explanation, click here. I shamelessly stole it from Patrick Rothfuss. He rocks. Buy his books, they also rock.

Children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms have altered digestive genes

Children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms have altered digestive genes:

'via Blog this'

Vaccination's vexed link to autism

Nice, calm article from someone that doesn't have a vested interest.

Vaccination's vexed link to autism:

'via Blog this'

Yay, UC DAVIS MIND Institute! I <3 you.

Of course, this is not news to us biomed families but if just one thing could bring us some vindication for being called whack jobs, HERE IT IS. This is where we need to be looking to see why biomed helps some and not others. This is where we need to be looking to figure out where to start with our kids, who should start where in biomed and how it should be done. This is where we start looking to come up with an actual diagnostic effort and acceptable protocols for mainstream acceptance. This is where we stop guessing and start proving.

Does anyone else find it telling that it's an article from Australia and not the US?

US researchers' discovery promises answers on autism

RESEARCHERS have for the first time identified two biologically different strains of autism in a major breakthrough being compared with the discovery of different forms of cancer in the 1960s.

Read the full article here.

After you read the article, come back and tell me in the comments what kind of autism you suspect/know your child has.

My son has immune and hormone dysfunction. It's likely the hormone dysfunction is a result of the immune dysfunction but hey, that might be digging a bit too deep for the uninitiated. Let's keep it simple for now.

What about you?

Should we even try to recover our kids?

I know, I promised a post on recovery and what it means but I got sidetracked and offer you this instead, which is sorta-kinda the same thing. But not. I still plan to post one on recovery, though. Pinky promise.
In response to Jim C. Hines' review of The Speed of Dark, I'm posting this here because what I have to say really isn't appropriate for his blog comments. I also thought that maybe some of my readers have read the book and might have something to add and would want to go to his blog to comment. I haven't actually read the book so this is really in response to the question he poses:should we "cure" those with autism? There was a little more to it, and I'm not even going to touch the high vs. low functioning topic today, but that's the basic question.


As someone that has a son that is mostly recovered from autism, it's not something that I can understand as being something that changes one's life to the degree that this kind of moral question asks. The book may be showing a "cure" in a different angle than real life, but in reality, there is already help. Not enough help, but some.


In real life, recovery is not a cure because autism is not a mental disorder that needs curing (something the NDers and biomed parents can all agree upon, but that's as far as the agreement goes). It's a bunch of biological inconsistencies and malfunctions that end up creating neurological symptoms. In some people, these symptoms can't be corrected because the underlying condition can't be corrected or found. I would venture to add that it's not for lack of trying. Each child is unique in their issues. There are no two children with autism that present exactly the same way. But with thousands of kids recovering from autism every year, it's hard to imagine that western medicine is right. A lot of people can be helped, and without the use of antipsychotics or antidepressants.


The real question is: what's really going on with our kids? Why does the diet work for some and not for others? Why is it that treatments for other chronic illnesses, like CFS or Lyme or any of the other many things biomed parents and practitioners generally discuss, work on our kids, too? Has anyone ever noticed that even some people with depression seem to recover through biomed? Why has no one in traditional western medicine noticed the pattern? Or maybe they have and just refuse to acknowledge or explore it? Okay, so that's way more than one question. You get my drift.


Not all kids can be treated the same. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. It boils down to this: different biological issues for different children (and adults). But they all produce neurological symptoms.


Is it fair to expect that a child that has nothing but diarrhea doesn't have something wrong with his/her bowels? They call it "normal" in autism instead of asking why. Prevacid is what you get. This is only one of may examples of what plagues these children. Sensitivity to sound. Why is it that when you treat a child for PANDAS, this sensitivity goes away? The OCD goes away? Why is it that when another child is treated for lyme, that child becomes completely and totally recovered?


Because there are really still very few cases of autism. It's still as rare as it's ever been, if it's ever been at all.
Recovery doesn't change who a person is. It gives them the chance to live life the way they want. Being able to not live life with an aching stomach doesn't change the core of a person. It just means their stomach doesn't hurt. Which in the case of developing children, many times means they can sleep better, eat better and focus better. Which amazingly enough, means they function better. Whoda thunk?


So is the question really about changing the core of a person with autism or is it about healing the medical problems they have? A person who thinks in pictures is still going to think in pictures. Having a healthy body isn't going to change that. A savant isn't going to suddenly stop being a savant because their vitamin deficiency was treated and they stopped scripting Thomas the Tank Engine.


My son went from moderate/severe autism to pretty much typical (I always say "pretty much" or "mostly" because he still has raging ADD - we're working on it) and not once did it change him as a person - except when I gave him antidepressants but that's another post. He is still the same lovable, caring and funny little boy he always has been. He's thrived and become so much more. And he's able to tell me exactly how what few issues he has left bothers him and makes him hate himself and frustrates him. I'm not going to lay down and allow him to grow up hating himself and then deciding he has to accept that this is him and he doesn't need to change, all the while silently hating every minute of his life - nor will I let someone else convince him of that.


No matter what, he'll be happy with who he is and I'll encourage him and love him and teach him to love himself, but that doesn't mean I won't strive to help him become who he wants to become.


There's a reason why autistic adults have a high suicide rate. If it's hard for neurotypical people to watch and be around, if it's hard for a mother to watch her son struggle, it's 100 times harder to be the autistic person. Everyone wants to be happy and comfortable with who they are, including those with ASD.


Now, this whole argument is probably geared more toward the management of symptoms with antipsychotics, antidepressants and the like and I've kind of hijacked it for biomed. But that's what happens when the argument is so vague. Could mean traditional medicine, could mean biomed. I dunno. And maybe those drugs do change a person. Like I said earlier, when I gave my son antidepressants, they definitely changed him. He was, quite literally, psychotic. At best, they are only meant to manage symptoms, and they do a very poor job of it. Still, some people do very well on them. I can't argue with that.


But the recovery I'm talking about, the recovery us "crazy moms" are talking about, doesn't change a person. It doesn't change the way a person thinks or views life.


Wait. I'm wrong. It does change people. It makes them feel normal. Or maybe a better way to say it is not that they feel normal, for what is normal anyway, but that they no longer feel abnormal. It takes away the pain they aren't supposed to have. Being in pain (physically or emotionally) doesn't make a person special or unique. It just makes them in pain. To go through life needing to bang your head against a wall long after the bleeding started, is that really something you want to keep?

Packing up and moving

[category This and That}

[tag This and That]

[publicize off]

I've decided to take the plunge and move my blog to Wordpress. Eventually I will be setting up an actual website with my very own domain name that will house my blog and Wordpress is just better for that. And I still get complaints of how blogger is working out. Or rather, not working out, for readers.

What does this mean for you, dear reader? Not much. You can continue to stay right where you are if you are happy with your subscription just the way it is. I will continue to mirror the feed on Blogger because I'm just sweet like that. I don't want to disrupt anyone's happy feeling and it isn't any skin off my back to continue mirroring here. But you may have to deal with seeing shortcodes at the beginning of every post. In order to mirror, I have to email all my posts. I haven't managed to figure out any other way to do it after extensive googling. (I wonder if I can put them at the end? I'll have to try a test of that.)

But for those that are unhappy with Blogger or are irritated by the way the page doesn't seem to load correctly for so many of you, there is an alternative. You can now also find Gryffin's Tail here. I can't make it as feature rich because I'm not self-hosting it yet but maybe someday.

This is actually my first test run on seeing how well emailing all my posts work out. Wish me luck! If all goes well, I shall continue on to focusing on plain old blogging and will get the recovery post up as soon as I can.

Summer reflections

As the summer break comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on how it went.

It's definitely been enlightening. My mostly recovered son didn't behave so mostly recovered while I was on vacation. As a matter of fact, he definitely had me worried for a second that I had accepted recovery as a fact a bit too soon.

Then I remembered.

Oh yeah.

I tried to stop the Valtrex again. Epic fail.

If anyone has ever had any doubt that autism is a poorly functioning biological system, all they'd have to do is take my son for a week or two and stop giving him antivirals. The difference is that big. Even in recovery he still has major ADHD issues. Having to deal with both the ADHD and autism can just be exhausting.

Got back on it and he's mostly back to normal. It will probably take until school starts to get him back to where he was.

Which brings me to another thought. My sil said something to me while I was visiting that made me realize I probably need to do a post on recovery and what it means. We were discussing water and how good Gryffin was around it and in it. And that moved on to how many children with autism drown because they have no concept of danger or drowning, or some don't feel pain or whatever it is that leads a child with autism to jump into water and drown. I told her water was still a concern for me even though I knew he was safe around water. Old habits.

She couldn't understand why I'd still be worried. She said, "But I thought you said he was recovered?"

And that's when I realized that recovery is very misunderstood. My sil is no fool. She's one smart cookie. She owns and runs a learning lab where she teaches struggling kids how to process information better and she's had ASD students. So this wasn't something I would've thought she would misunderstand. What I failed to realize is: why wouldn't she? She doesn't live with it everyday. She doesn't treat it. She doesn't research it and it doesn't engulf her life. She may not have even heard of recovery until the moment I first told her Gryffin was mostly recovered (yes, I always say "mostly recovered"). My expectation that people (anyone, not just my sil) know what I mean when I say recovered is completely unrealistic and unfair on my part.

A child recovered from autism is not necessarily issue free. Like a child with asthma, they live a mostly normal life if they have an inhaler.

So I really need to write a post on what recovery means. All the different forms and variations and how it's perceived. I'm going to post that sometime in the next week.

School is closing in on us and I feel like I haven't really had a summer. My NT son had his tonsils/adenoids removed right when we got back from vacation and that kept us homebound for a while. I wanted to do some more chelating this summer and never got around to it. Especially since I had to get Gryffin back on track with his antiviral. This summer seems to have just completely gotten away from me.

Pfffft.

At least we had some fun, though. We spent time visiting with our families and friends, something we just don't get to do enough.

2 studies connects vaccines to SIDS - 1 old and 1 new

Here's a great article to help put these into perspective: New study proving vaccines can kill children.

Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?

1. Neil Z Miller neilzmiller@gmail.com
   1. Independent researcher, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

1. Gary S Goldman
   1. Independent computer scientist, Pearblossom, California, USA

Abstract

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The US childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year—the most in the world—yet 33 nations have lower IMRs. Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants. Nations were also grouped into five different vaccine dose ranges: 12–14, 15–17, 18–20, 21–23, and 24–26. The mean IMRs of all nations within each group were then calculated. Linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs showed a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates, with r = 0.992 (p = 0.0009). Using the Tukey-Kramer test, statistically significant differences in mean IMRs were found between nations giving 12–14 vaccine doses and those giving 21–23, and 24–26 doses. A closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs is essential.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Pediatr Infect Dis. 1983 Jan-Feb;2(1):7-11.

Possible temporal association between diphtheria-tetanus toxoid-pertussis vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome.

Baraff LJ, Ablon WJ, Weiss RC.

Abstract

Because diphtheria and tetanus toxoids pertussis (DTP) vaccine is routinely given during the period of highest incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), this study was undertaken to determine if there is a temporal association between DTP immunization and SIDS. Parents of 145 SIDS victims who died in Los Angeles County between January 1, 1979, and August 23, 1980, were contacted and interviewed regarding their child's recent immunization history. Fifty-three had received a DTP immunization. Of these 53, 27 had received a DTP immunization within 28 days of death. Six SIDS deaths occurred within 24 hours and 17 occurred within 1 week of DTP immunization. These SIDS deaths were significantly more than expected were there no association between DTP immunization and SIDS. An additional 46 infants had a physician/clinic visit without DTP immunization prior to death. Forty of these infants died within 28 days of this visit, seven on the third day and 22 within the first week following the visit. These deaths were also significantly more than expected. These data suggest a temporal association between DTP immunization, physician visits without DTP immunization and SIDS.

PMID:

 

6835859

 

[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Blogger has gone nuts

So whatever craziness is happening, I can't stop it.  Blogger has been doing some upkeep and it's affecting all the blogs.

I apologize right now for any weirdness.  I know it sent out posts from several different days in last month as if they were all new.  Sorry guys.  I hope they work it out soon.

Biomed book: Food Diary

I have a new page for you to add into your biomed book! Woot woot!

Okay, so maybe it's not that exciting.

I was asked how to handle food, not just supplements. So here it is:

You can find it here.

Keep in mind that you can modify this easily.  All of my pages were created in Word or Excel because, well, I had no idea I'd be sharing them when I made them.  If I had, I would have made them in Adobe InDesign and they'd be hot pieces of graphic design genius.  Okay, so maybe not genius but they'd definitely be hot.

Since I now don't have the time or the inclination to create such genius, utilitarian will have to do.

For the technically challenged, if you need more room, just change the page size to legal and then pull the square on the bottom right of the table box and enlarge the table to fit.  Voila, more room.

Autism doesn't exist

I had a question from a friend with no spawn of his own today.  That question was: what do you mean your child is recovered?  I thought it was lifelong?

Well, not really.  Some do.  But hopefully this can help people understand what it means to have autism. It's a great way to get a good overview of why biomedical interventions exist and why/how they help.