May 18th, 2008
I never got around to making a list of last week’s top posts last week so here’s two weeks of “top posts” about autism. Rather than arrange them in chronological order, I’ve arranged them by topic:
My son Charlie turned 11 last Thursday, on May 15th. Life on the road with Charlie is my constant theme […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 3 comments
May 16th, 2008
With another round of vaccine court going on this week, the question of whether there’s a link between vaccines and autism is again getting a lot of discussion. Here’s five past posts on this blog that suggest how this one hypothesis about the cause of autism has become entwined in debates about research, the understanding […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 3 comments
May 12th, 2008
There’s been plenty of debate about whether or not there is an epidemic of autism; about whether or not the increase in the prevalence rate of autism (now 1 in 150) is due to our being better able to diagnose and count cases of autism, or whether there is some actual something that can be […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 22 comments
May 9th, 2008
The British government has announced that it is planning to calculate the number of autistic adults in England. The £500,000 project is the first to specifically study the number of adults who have autism, the BBC reports.
It will be interesting to see how the study is conducted: The tools for diagnosing autism in adults are […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 111 comments
April 30th, 2008
“Detoxifying” a child’s body of “heavy metals” via chelation is an alternative, and not uncontroversial, treatment for autism. It is based on the belief that exposure to environmental toxins is one factor behind the increase in the number of children diagnosed with autism in the past decade-plus. This book talks about the dangers of heavy […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 28 comments
April 29th, 2008
Is there a “vacuum” of information on autism, as Karin Klein writes in today’s Opinion LA?
Klein suggests that this “information vacuum” is one reason why, when it comes to autism, “people tend to rush in with theories, wild or otherwise” about the causes of autism (such as these), and especially theories about the supposed “autism […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 11 comments
April 28th, 2008
In the past several months, more and more scientific studies have added evidence that disputes a link between thimerosal and rising autism rates, and that link autism to mercury. Concurrently, a number of studies offer further evidence about genetic of factors and autism. Also at the same time, proponents of the view that some external, […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 25 comments
April 26th, 2008
After a lot of hesitation about riding his new bike, Charlie hoisted himself up, put his left foot on the left pedal, put his right foot on, and zoomed off with Jim easily catching up—that’s the image in my mind after a full week here.
Parents Going Back to School
Some parents of autistic children are returning […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 0 comments
April 25th, 2008
Considering how many pressing issues there are to talk regarding children and adults—education, employment, housing, to name a very few—-why do we keep getting stuck talking about the hypothetical claim of a link between vaccines and autism?
Here’s some thoughts towards why the whole issue seems to have devolved into something approaching paranoia, not to mention […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 42 comments
April 23rd, 2008
Autism now occurs in every 1 in 150 children, according to figures released in February of 2007 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. To illustrate what some term an “autism epidemic” (including three presidential candidates), people regularly compare the prevalence rate of children diagnosed with autism to that of children diagnosed with […]
By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 35 comments
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