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Autism Vox

August 21st, 2008

In Search of Accurate Autism Prevalence Information

The prevalence rate for autism among children in the US is 1 in 150, according to the most recently released figured from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007. The 1 in 150 figure is based on data from the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM); the figure represents an […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 9 comments

August 20th, 2008

Minnesota Has the Highest Autism Rate?: Depends on How You Count It

Darn, I thought it was my own state of New Jersey that does: According to the most recent figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007, about 1 in 150 8-year-old children in multiple areas of the United States had an ASD, and New Jersey has the highest prevalence rate, […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 25 comments

August 8th, 2008

Blame it On the Media

“It’s the media’s fault.”
How often do you hear that, or even say it to yourself, on hearing some tired myth or piece of misinformation about autism stated yet again? Michael Savage’s over-the-top “99% of kids are no autistic but brats” comments is but one example.
An article by a team of bioethicists and available online August […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 6 comments

July 24th, 2008

9 Years Ago Charlie Was Diagnosed

July 22nd is a date that stands out to me. It’s the birthday of someone very special, and it’s the day, nine years ago, that we received Charlie’s formal diagnosis of autism.
Slate has a recent Explainer column on how do you diagnose autism (prompted in part by Michael Savage’s claim that autism is widely overdiagnosed). […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 17 comments

July 10th, 2008

Chicken or Egg: What’s Behind the Increase in Autism?

Dr. Antonio Hardan, the director of the autism clinic at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, says this in a July 9th ABC Local (Bay Area) report about increases in autism diagnoses throughout the region:
“If you are diagnosed with autism you will get more services from the county from regional centers than if you just have […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 20 comments

June 21st, 2008

Vaccines, Diagnosis, and Databases

After my son was diagnosed with autism in July of 1999 and we had started him in a home ABA program in September of 1999, and as we found ourselves spending more time with families with autistic children, and as we read more and more (in books, on the web) about autism, I started to […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 16 comments

April 23rd, 2008

The Case of Hannah Poling Again

According to an April 22nd Scientific American piece about the case of Hannah Poling—the 9-year-old Georgia girl whose “pre-existing mitochondrial disorder…. was ‘aggravated’ by her shots” according to a concession by the federal government and who was awarded a settlement:
“….. scientifically, from the documents presented in the vaccine court, the Polings did not make a […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 42 comments

March 9th, 2008

Metaphors, Mitochondria, and the MMR

“It wasn’t like a switch being turned off….It was more like a dimmer switch being turned down.”
I’ve read this quote from Dr. Jon Poling, the father of Hannah Poling, in more than a few news stories and most recently in one today in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Poling uses the metaphor of a dimmer switch […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 16 comments

March 8th, 2008

This Week’s Top Posts

If you can remember back to before Thursday when Hannah Poling’s parents had their news conference and before every other autism news headline seemed to blare (not entirely accurately) “Government concedes vaccines linked to girl’s autism,” a few other things were being talked about this week: Senator John McCain’s misguided statements about “evidence” linking vaccines […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 1 comment

March 7th, 2008

About This Autism Debate

In the wake of the concession by the government in the case of a 9 year old girl whose underlying, rare mitochondrial disorder was “aggravated” by vaccines, CBS News has reposted an article that was originally published last June, Autism: Why The Debate Rages by investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.
Attkisson offers seven reasons as to why—-as […]

By Kristina Chew, PhD -- 35 comments