The tumor had been reduced in size by 50%, but her lung function was simply not up to the task.

My father passed in 1992.

/sigh

Time for blogging is constrained by

• an out of state mother (I’m her only child) in the midst of 7 weeks of radiation and chemo for a 12 x 7 x 8 cm ‘non-small cell’ cancerous tumor in her upper right chest and throat that surrounds several major veins and arteries as well as affecting her breathing and swallowing. (many details omitted for brevity.)
• job searching (ugh)
• Aspie Boy’s home schooling
• etc.

It’s the ‘etc.’ that really eats into free (blogging) time.

We hope you all are well…

Manuscript? What manuscript?

Diwali and Yule are past, Hanukkah/Chanukah is ongoing, which leaves various Saturnalias, Kwanzas, burning of bonfires and, of course, Christmas. [Yes, I have ignored Festivus].

Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms [CNN]
A few weeks before 13-year-old Jonathan King killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in “time-out.”

“We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes,” Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she called “our baby … a good kid.”

But time-out in the boy’s north Georgia special education school was spent in something akin to a prison cell — a concrete room latched from the outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper.

Called a seclusion room, it’s where in November 2004, Jonathan hanged himself with a cord a teacher gave him to hold up his pants.

An attorney representing the school has claimed no wrongdoing. (…)

His parents say they don’t recognize the boy described in records as one who liked to kick and punch his classmates. They have launched a wrongful death lawsuit against the school — the Alpine Program in Gainesville — which has denied any wrongdoing. A Georgia judge is expected to rule soon on whether the case can be brought before a jury.

Jonathan’s parents say the boy had been diagnosed since kindergarten with severe depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But his father remembers him as a boy who was happy when he sang in the church choir.

“He was a hugger, liked to go fishing with me and run after me saying, ‘Daddy, when are we going to the lake?’ ” Don King said. (…)

A behavioral plan for Jonathan King, provided to CNN by the Kings’ attorney, shows that Jonathan was confined in the seclusion room on 15 separate days for infractions ranging from cursing and threatening other students to physically striking classmates.

Howard “Sandy” Addis, the director of the Pioneer education agency which oversees Alpine, said that the room where Jonathan died is no longer in use. Citing the ongoing litigation, he declined to answer questions about the King case but defended the use of seclusion for “an emergency safety situation.”

The Alpine Program’s attorney, Phil Hartley, said Jonathan’s actions leading up to his suicide did not suggest the boy was “serious” about killing himself. Jonathan’s actions were an “effort to get attention,” Hartley said.

“This is a program designed for students with severe emotional disabilities and problems,” he said. “It is a program which frequently deals with students who use various methods of getting attention, avoiding work.”

A substitute employee placed in charge of watching the room on the day Jonathan died said in an affidavit that he had no training in the use of seclusion, and didn’t know Jonathan had threatened suicide weeks earlier.

The Kings say they would have removed their son from the school if they knew he was being held in seclusion, or that he had expressed a desire to hurt himself.

“We would have home schooled him or taken him to another psychologist,” said Don King. “If we would have known, our boy would have never been in that room. He would still be alive.”

“Mercury in vaccines causes autism!”
“There is no longer mercury in vaccines. How come autism is still prevalent and, in fact, apparently on the rise?”
“Urm, vaccines have toxins!!”
“What?”
“Toxins. ToxinsToxinsToxins!!!”

Sigh.

Defending Vaccines: Actress Dispels Link To Autism
by Jon Hamilton

Alberto E. Rodriguez

Actress and mother Amanda Peet is an outspoken advocate for childhood vaccines, unlike some of her fellow celebrities. Getty Images

Morning Edition, December 11, 2008· A movie star and a prominent scientist have teamed up to reassure the public that childhood vaccines are safe and do not cause autism.

Amanda Peet, who starred in films including The X-Files: I Want To Believe and Syriana, is working with Paul Offit, the chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Their goal is to counter the assault on vaccines led by celebrities including Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and Holly Robinson Peete.

These stars, along with several advocacy groups, contend that “toxins” in vaccines can cause children to develop immune-system problems and autism. More than a dozen large scientific studies, however, have found no connection between vaccines and autism.

Peet says she began to investigate the safety of vaccines a couple of years ago, when she was pregnant. She says friends were urging her not to get her child vaccinated.

But her sister, who is a doctor, helped her get in touch with Offit, who had very different advice.

Peet says she was bewildered and frustrated by “the disparity between what I was hearing from other moms here in Hollywood and what I was hearing from the doctors.”

After her baby was born in early 2007, she decided to speak out publicly. Since then, she’s been advocating vaccination through interviews, talk show appearances, and public service announcements.

But Peet says parents shouldn’t look to her as a scientific expert. She defers scientific questions to Offit, who directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital.

He’s also the co-inventor of a vaccine against rotavirus, an intestinal bug that kills hundreds of thousands of children each year in developing nations. Vaccine critics say this means he can’t be trusted on questions of vaccine safety.

For his part, Offit has plenty to say to people who question the safety of vaccines for things like measles, hepatitis and the flu. He’s put much of it in a book called Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and the Search for a Cure.

Offit says the money and time spent showing that vaccines don’t cause autism could have been used to help figure out what does cause the disease. And he says parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated are allowing a resurgence of preventable diseases.

Offit notes that this year there have been 135 cases of measles in the United States — the highest number in more than a decade. Most of the cases were children, he says, “and most of those children’s parents chose not to vaccinate them, chose not to vaccinate them because they feared the MMR vaccine would cause autism, when clearly it doesn’t.”

Offit says he hopes Peet’s celebrity will prompt more parents to investigate the facts about vaccine safety.

Governor Creates Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorder
Governor Jim Gibbons today signed an executive order creating the Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorder and charged it with continuing the work of the Nevada Autism Task Force, which dissolved by statute earlier this year.

The Nevada Autism Task Force was created by the Nevada Legislature in 2007 through Assembly Bill 629 and presented a report to the Governor on July 31, 2008 that made 146 recommendations on how to improve autism services and screening in Nevada. “The incredible growth in the number of children born with Autism is striking,” the Governor said. “The Nevada Autism Task Force, and all those who partnered with it, did a tremendous job illuminating the amount of work that needs to be done to address Autism in Nevada. My hope is that the Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorder will continue the work of the task force and be a strong voice advocating for the recommendations made in the report.”

The Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorder will consist of three members appointed by the Governor. It is required to update the Governor on its actions on or before June 30 and Dec. 31 of each year. The three members of the commission have not yet been appointed.

The incidence of Autism has increased greatly in recent years, and it’s now estimated that 1 in 150 newborn babies will be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Studies have shown that 47 percent of children receiving intensive early intervention go on to lead independent lives, while 90 percent of children who do not receive intervention need a lifetime of care.

The full report of the Nevada Autism Task Force can be found online through the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services at: http://dhhs.nv.gov.

Executive Order by the Governor Establishing the Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorder
(http://gov.state.nv.us/EO/2008/EO-2008-11-19_Autism.pdf)

‘”Are You Sure, Sweetheart, That You Want to Be Well?’”: An Exploration Of The Neurodiversity Movement
This question gets at the heart of many of the issues with which the Neurodiversity movement and the people who identify themselves as part of the communities from which this movement stems are concerned. What does it mean to be ‘well’? Who is it that gets to decide if one is well or not? By what criterion is this decision made? Is it the subjective experience of the patient which determines wellness? The opinion of the medical community? The extent to which a person is able to blend effectively into the social and economic world, regardless of the possible cost to the person doing the blending? In a world in which emotional, perceptual, intellectual and interpersonal experience can come in many forms and configurations, who is it that must accommodate whom and to what extent? To what extent do the so-called ‘neurotypical’ have the right to enforce their social and behavioral rules and expectations on those whose ways of experiencing themselves and the world differs from the accepted norm?