Brain development in children

“The list of chemicals that can affect brain development in children has grown. In a study out today in The Lancet Neurology, researchers outline new chemicals that may be contributing to what they dub the “global, silent pandemic of neurodevelopmental toxicity.” In 2006, the team had released a list of five neurotoxins that may contribute to everything from cognitive deficits to attention problems. Now that list is expanded, based on new research that has since accumulated on chemicals linked to developmental disorders in children. Today, they outline six more.” Forbes

Summary in The Lancet Neurology.  “Neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other cognitive impairments, affect millions of children worldwide, and some diagnoses seem to be increasing in frequency. Industrial chemicals that injure the developing brain are among the known causes for this rise in prevalence. In 2006, we did a systematic review and identified five industrial chemicals as developmental neurotoxicants:

• lead,
• methylmercury,
• polychlorinated biphenyls,
• arsenic,
• and toluene.

Since 2006, epidemiological studies have documented six additional developmental neurotoxicants—

• manganese,
• fluoride,
• chlorpyrifos,
• dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane,
• tetrachloroethylene,
• and the polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

We postulate that even more neurotoxicants remain undiscovered. To control the pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity, we propose a global prevention strategy. Untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development, and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must therefore be tested for developmental neurotoxicity. To coordinate these efforts and to accelerate translation of science into prevention, we propose the urgent formation of a new international clearinghouse.”

The link between autism and oral contraceptives

Birth control came around the same time that autism was diagnosed at around 1 in 10,000 and now, with widespread birth control use, the number of autism cases has skyrocketed. Is there a connection? I certainly think so--and it's in every flush that goes through the water system, so everyone gets it in combination with all the hormones in our food.

http://www.examiner.com/article/autism-and-birth-control-pills-what-is-the-connection

Oral contraceptives are a huge money maker for the pharmaceutical industry, and a huge political football for this president.  I doubt we will ever see large government grants to study the relationship.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-04/opinions/36743431_1_contraceptive-coverage-religious-liberty-religious-employers

http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/04/11/will-obamacare-get-you-free-birth-control

Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' BMJ

The man who brought back measles.

Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds - CNN.com

"An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study's author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study -- and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible."

And like the global warming hoax folks who were found out earlier in the year, he's whining that he's been misrepresented in the press. Restarting measles is pretty serious too, as well as panicking millions of families.

But only 12 patients? That's an awfully small study.

Headline slants exist everywhere, not just politics

“No Connection Between Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) Vaccine And Autism, study suggests.”

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2008) — In a case-control study, the presence of measles virus RNA was no more likely in children with autism and GI disturbances than in children with only GI disturbances. Furthermore, GI symptom and autism onset were unrelated to MMR vaccine timing. Science Daily article

The heading in the original report from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health words it a bit stronger than “suggests.”

Study Firmly Shows No Connection Between Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) Vaccine And Autism
Focus on children with autism and gastrointestinal symptoms; findings show GI symptoms and autism onset both unrelated to MMR timing. Mailman web page

Study findings are reported online in the Public Library of Science on September 4 (http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003140).

3821

School choice is saving us money

Education by the Numbers is the title of a new study about school voucher and tax credit programs. "This study calculates the fiscal impact of every existing voucher and tax-credit scholarship program, in order to bring empirical evidence to bear on the debate over the fiscal impact of school choice. Of the 18 voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs in the United States, twelve began operations before the current school year and their fiscal impact can thus be assessed." It was prepared by Susan L. Aud, PhD, for the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.

"When a student uses school choice, the local public school district no longer needs to pay the instructional costs associated with that student, but it does not lose all of its per-student revenue, because some revenue does not vary with enrollment levels. Thus, school choice produces a positive fiscal impact for school districts as well as for state budgets." (from summary) School choice does not take money away from the district--it saves money. It does cut back on some power, and that in my opinion, is the real threat, whether from private, voucher, or homeschool.

One program that is different than most states is Ohio's Autism Scholarship Program.

"In addition to the Cleveland voucher program, Ohio provides up to $20,000 in state funding for privately provided education services, including private school tuition, for students with autism. Assessing the fiscal impact of the Autism Scholarship Program is difficult, as autism ranges in severity from very mild to very severe, meaning that private school costs for these students will also vary considerably. To make matters worse, Ohio school districts do not currently report data on instructional spending for autistic students.

Since Ohio does not make sufficient data available, we cannot calculate the program’s fiscal impact on local public school districts. We can, however, calculate its fiscal effect on the state of Ohio. Funding for disabled students in Ohio uses weights for the various categories of special needs. For example, a disabled student receiving a weight of 2.5 would generate special education funding for the local school district equal to two and a half times the foundation funding level for one regular student. Students with autism receive a weight of 4.735 for their Basic Aid portion of the formula revenue. In addition, these students are counted in the general enrollment and generate funds that way as well. Determining the formula revenue associated with an autistic student requires multiplying the foundation amount ($5,169 in 2005 and $5,283 in 2006) by 5.735. This gives us the total funding burden that is shared between the state and the local districts. We multiply this by the local share percentage (which is 0.68) to determine how much is funded locally. What is left over after this local share is subtracted is the average state formula spending per student. The results of the calculations for 2005-06 and 2006-07 are shown in Table 7. (of the article)

Even though the program serves very few students, and even if we make the conservative assumption that each student uses the maximum voucher amount of $20,000, the Ohio Autism Scholarship Program has generated $1 million in savings for the state."

HT Joanne Jacobs

3508 Autism statistics

Many of us over age-50 parents are stunned by the autism statistics we see in the TV PSAs and news stories. Where were all these autistic kids when we were growing up or when our children were in school? Children with learning problems were not hidden away in the 1970s--they were side by side with my children, and I was a volunteer in the classroom. For one thing, there has been a redefinition--now thousands of children that use to be called retarded (or one of the challenged words), or ADD or ADHD, are now being called autistic. It seems that any kind of attention deficit or repetitive behavior has to be pathologized, which then qualifies a child for special classes or teachers or programs. A pediatrician, David Safir, had a letter in the USAToday last week saying that in the 1990s the definition of autism began to include many children with a milder collection of symptoms--now called autism spectrum disorder, and this new umbrella definition has created hysteria and an epidemic of austism.

I checked his letter on-line, and he is being attacked by the true believers, the blame the vaccines crowd. I wonder how loud they'd be yelling if they lived in the days when children were mutilated by small pox eating their flesh, or crippled by polio? And this mommy has the best advice: "My son will never die from Autism, but he could die from childhood diseases if not vaccinated. Or he could die from the flu, as has 4 other children already this season in the state I live, because they did not vaccinate. Stop arguing and start helping our little ones to be accepted and to get the proper therapies they need."