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Children with syndromes having social incompetencies are at high risk for becoming targets of bullying.
Learning-disabled students have an increased need for emotional intelligence skills. Many LD students have difficulty interpreting the social cues necessary for interpersonal skills, limited conceptualization of the consequences of their actions (consequential thinking), and poor impulse control. LD students may also experience frustration due to repeated failure in school and feelings of inadequacy, often leading to depression.
Syndromes With Social Incompetencies
Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD)-this label is used for children who clearly have difficulty relating to others, as well as either communication problems or repetitive behaviors, but do not meet the criteria for autistic disorder because of onset after the age of three, atypical presentations or characteristics, or because the child has fewer than the specified number of symptoms for autistic behavior http://www.info.med.Yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/
Hyperlexia-a syndrome which interferes with speech, language, and social interaction. It may be accompanied by unusual or “different behaviors". Children exhibit an intense fascination with letters, numbers, logos, patterns, etc. and a precocious ability to read, spell, write, and compute from as early as 18 months to before the age of 5 www.hyperlexia.org
Asperger Syndrome (AS)-a severe developmental disorder characterized by major difficulties in social interaction and restricted and unusual patterns of interest and behavior
www.asperger.org www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger www.aspennj.org
"Of the people with AS on whom I have detailed records, 64% were reported by their parents as being bullied or teased at school. Bullying involved being aggressive, tearing clothes, opening a boy's fly in the street(something girls do rathr than boys), or spitting on someone. Teasing involved names suggested of social isolation, such as "monster" or "machine." Teasing was sometimes extended to family members. The worst period is, in my experience, the early years in secondary school. I know of two cases in which classes were prepared for the entry of a boy with AS, who was moving because of being bullied at another school, by being told that the new boy had a medical condition which affected his ability to relate to others. In both cases, there was little subsequent bullying."
(Asperger Syndrome Edited by Fred R. Volkmar, Ami Klin, Sara S. Sparrow)
William Syndrome(WS)-a developmental disorder affecting connective tissue and the central nervous system. Characteristics of this disorder include heart disease, dysmorphic facial features, and poor visual –motor integration http://www.williams-syndrome.org/
Autism-a neurological condition characterized by severe language difficulties and a tendency to withdraw from external stimulation *Scientists are mystyfied by the huge increase in Autism among California children. A recent study has reported that the cases have tripled from 1987 to 1998. Research is just getting under way at the CDC to look at the apparent increase in Autism cases in 13 states.(New York Times/2002)
www.autism-society.org http://www.redflagsweekly.com/yazbak/2003_nov01_1.html
www.unc.edu/depts/teacch www.oneworld.org/autism_uk www.autism.fm
www.autismspeaks.org
http://www.evidenceofharm.com/index.htm
SUBSCRIBE to SAR an excellent Autism Newsletter: http://www.sarnet.org
or mailto:subs@doitnow.com
Deadly Immunity
Power Of Truth Rally 7/20/05-listen at: http://www.autismone.org/radio/
Rally Pictures at: http://www.autismrally.com
Salon.com | June 16, 2005
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."
But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.
"We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."
In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.
Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to 11-year-olds.
The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. Congress repealed the measure in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.
Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."
The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical. I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"
It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation's preeminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in 25 years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children." More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among 11 children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.
Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.
What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines 20 years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit.
"You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."
Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to 22 patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."
In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, 10 babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.
In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within 24 hours of birth, and 2-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.
The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that 6-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."
For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.
As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"
But by that time, the damage was done. Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.
Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisors, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next 20 years, because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."
But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and shares a patent on a measles vaccine with Merck, which also manufactures the hepatitis B vaccine. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.
Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisors who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine laced with thimerosal "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."
Offit, who shares a patent on the vaccine, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote to approve it eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works."
Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."
Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.
If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.
For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."
Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.
In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.
The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"
Under pressure from Congress, parents and a few of its own panel members, the Institute of Medicine reluctantly convened a second panel to review the findings of the first. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the earlier panel for its lack of transparency and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.
So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.
As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.
At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa Legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in 32 other states.
But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."
I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen." It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.
Rett Syndrome-a very rare genetic condition that affects primarily girls. It includes some of the motor and social disabilities found in autism and in Asperger Syndrome, but is marked by apparently normal early development, followed by a decline in skills www.Rettsyndrome.org
Child Disintegrative Disorder- a period of normal development often lasting several years followed by a decline in development, in which language, motor skills, and self-care (such as toileting and dressing) regress to a degree consistent with a severe presentation of autism. http://info.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/autism/cdd.html
High Functioning Autism-this term is used for children who meet autistic disorder criteria but but have relatively normal thinking and learning skills (that is , they are not mentally retarded) and language skills (they can speak close to level expected for their age). At least a quarter to a third of children diagnosed with autistic disorder fall within this special subgroup with recent studies suggesting the proportion to be even higher.
Non Verbal Learning Disability (NLD)-a neurological condition believed to result from damage due to the white matter connections in the right-hemisphere, which are important for the intermodal integration. Four major categories of dysfunction present themselves:1. motoric (lack of coordination, severe balance problems, and difficulties with fine graphomotor skills 2, visual-spatial-organizational (lack of image, poor visual recall, faulty spatial perceptions, and difficulties with spatial relations 3.social (lack of ability to comprehend nonverbal communication, difficulties adjusting to transitions and novel situations, and deficits in social judgement and social interaction 4.Sensory Integration www.nldline.com
Special Education
Imagine being the parents of a child who is dead or spending the rest of their life in prison because they did not receive an APPROPRIATE education.
IDEA-Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
A law to assess children(ages 3-22) with disabilities and provide special education programs and services to help them succeed in school. This law entitles your child to an “appropriate” education which meets his/her unique needs.
An appropriate education involves;
*The specific program or class (called “placement”) for your child. Placement is more than just a classroom; it also includes characteristics such as location, class size, teacher experience and peer makeup.
*The specific services (called related services) provided for your child, as well as the amount and frequency of those services and who provides them.
*Other educational components, such as curricula and teaching methods
Special education centers around a process for evaluating your child and the development and provision of an individualized education program, or IEP. The acronym IEP refers to several interrelated things:
The meeting where the school district determines whether or not your child is eligible for special education (called the IEP program meeting)
The yearly meeting where you and school representatives develop your child’s educational plan (called the IEP program meeting) and
The actual detailed written description of your child’s educational program.;
It includes the annual goals and short term instructional objectives tailored for the individual student, as well as standards
By which these goals will be accomplished. Modifications and accommodations needed by the child in order to be successful in an inclusive setting are documented in the IEP. Good IEP’s are always driven by the child’s needs. It defines the kinds of support the child will need and lists the services the school staff will need to provide in order for these goals to be achieved.
504 Plan
This defines a disabled individual as anyone who experiences a “mental, psychological, or physiologic disorder which interferes with (that) individual’s civil right to one or more major life activities.” If a student has a disabling condition which interferes with his/her ability to learn or perform up to his/her ability in school, the school district must draw up a plan of appropriate CAMS (Compensations, Accommodations, Modifications, and Strategies) to be implemented for this student. All special education students covered under IDEA are automatically covered under 504.
Individualized Transition Program (ITP) -is the specific transition plan and strategies required for a student who is 16 years of age or older, who qualifies for special education services under IDEA. The ITP contains a plan for the successful transition of the student from school to work, additional training or higher education, and community living. Sensory Integrative Therapy (SIT)- developed by Dr. Jean Ayres, an occupational treatment program consisting of excercises which encourage the individual to use as many nerve-cell connections as possible
Assistive Technology (AT)-under IDEA, schools are responsible for providing and maintaining computers and/or other assistive technology devices, and services, if such services are included in the student’s IEP. Assistive technology, for students with learning disabilities can include, but is not limited to, computers/ taped-books, calculators, and electronic date books.
Behavioral Intervention Plan (BIP)-is a written plan for a child whose behavior significantly interferes with his/her learning and/or the other students’ opportunity to learn, which specifically addresses those behaviors which interfere with learning. This plan must include a functional analysis of the child’s behavior, as well as non-punitive means for the child to acquire more acceptable replacement behaviors.
Support Services-speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, adaptive physical education, etc,.
Speech and Language Therapy- treatment of speech and language disorders, not limited to articulation problems, and including pragmatic language(the relation between signs or linguistic expressions and their users)
Intervention Based Multi-factored Evaluation-a collaborative, problem-solving process which focuses upon concerns which affect the learner’s educational progress within a learning environment
It is very common for parents to realize their child has unique needs and simply not know what to do. It may be that your child’s problems can be isolated and addressed very specifically, or the problems may be more serious.
Start by focusing on your child’s specific difficulties. Think back and look for incidents of any of the following:
Academic problems in reading, spelling or math
Delays in developmental areas, such as language or fine motor skills
Difficulties processing or retaining information, such as understanding simple instructions or problems with short or long term memory
Social or emotional problems
Trouble sleeping, eating or getting along with the family
Sustained difficulties in paying attention or staying focused
Inappropriate or hyperactive behavior, or
Delays in physical milestones or other physiological difficulties, such as hearing loss, sight problems, difficulties with mobility or handwriting problems
Try to think clearly, focusing on specific behavior patterns. Because your child is currently having difficulty in school, it does not mean he/she will be in special education or even qualify for special education. There may be interim steps or non special education solutions for your child.
You can request information about special education from the principal in writing.
Make a formal request to statrt the eligibility -assessment process.
Talk to your child's teacher about his/her observations.
Talk to your child's pediatrician.
Talk to other parents.
Check books, articles and the internet on special education.
Obtain your child's school file and look for any information about your child's performance and needs, as well as the opinions of his/her teacher and other professionals. You also have the right to amend or remove any false, inacurate or misleading information that violates the privacy or other rights of your child.
Accept or reject the school assessment of your child.
You may want to have an independent assessment.
If you agree with the independent assessment but the school does not you may formally request your due process rights.
The Complete IEP Guide Author; Attorney Lawrence M. Seigel
Help for parents:
Number of Students in Special Education
http://www.ideadata.org/tables27th/ar_aa3.htm
Legal Rights
www.wrightslaw.com
www.specialedlaw.net
Connecticut Parent Advocacy Center, Inc.
http://www.cpacinc.org/
Special Education Parent Teacher Association Network
http://septanetwork.org
Free Special Education on-line workshop/"How to file a complaint"
http://www.reedmartin.com/freespecialeducationworkshop.htm
www.ideapractices.org
National Information Center for Youth with Disabilities
www.nichcy.org
Collaborative Advocacy Associates
Effective advocacy for children with special needs
www.collaborativeadvocacy.com
Special Education Network-CT
www.spednet.org
National Association of Private Special Education Centers
www.napsec.org
Special Education Resource Center
www.ctserc.org
Connecticut Association for Children with Learning Disabilities
www.cacld.org
www.ldonline.org
www.ldresources.com
www.ldanatl.org
Lingui Systems
Quality materials for parents, speech pathologists, learning disability teachers, special educators andothers workingwith childrenand adults with special needs.
www.linguisystems.com
Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities
Subscriptions and articles through:
PRO-ED
8700 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Austin, TX 78757
www.proedinc.com
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Subscriptions and articles through:
Klewer Academic Publishers
Journals Department
101Philip Drive
Assinippi Park
Norwell, MA 02061
EMail- kluweronline.com/issn/0162-3257
Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions
Subscriptions and articles through:
PRO-ED
8700 Shoal Creek Blvd.
Austin, TX 78757-6897
www.proedinc.com
Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities
TASH
29 W. Susquehanna Ave. suite 210
Baltimore, MD 21204
www.tash.org
Association for Behavior Analysis
www.abainternational.org
Association for Positive Behavioral Support
www.APBS.org
ECS Educational Consulting Services
Catherine Hogan MSW LCSW Educational Consultant/Advocate/Anti-Bullying
cahogan@optonline.net 203-877-8449 www.freewebs.com/hoganecs
CT - Connecticut
Collaborative Advocacy Associates
Noreen J. O'Mahoney, C.S.W., S.D.A.
P.O. Box 575
Wilton, CT 06897-0575
Phone: (203) 221-4555
Fax: (203) 762-3748
info@collaborativeadvocacy.com
www.collaborativeadvocacy.com
States Served: CT, NY
Mrs. O'Mahoney is Founder and Director of Collaborative
Advocacy Associates, which provides comprehensive
advocacy/mediation services for children with special
learning needs, from birth to college age and across the
spectrum from developmentally disabled to gifted and
talented. Services: Parent Coaching; IEP/504 Plan
Reviews/Development; PPT/CSE Attendance; Negotiation; Due
Process Mediations, and related support services. Serving CT
and nearby NY State.
Nora Belanger Law Office of Nora A. Belanger, L.L.C.
10 Wall Street
Norwalk, CT 06850 Phone: (203) 854-8597 Fax: (203) 853-9246
norabelanger@prodigy.net
I represent individuals with disabilities in special
education matters including PPTs, Mediation and Due Process
Hearings.
DLK Consulting
Diane Kimble Willcutts
Advocate
21 Oak Street, Suite 602
Hartford, CT 061060
Phone: (860) 916-5836
topgun@ntplx.net
Diane works to help families obtain an appropriate education
for their children, using strategy, courtesy, and clear
communication. Her services include individual parent
training to help prepare for team meetings, assistance with
writing letters, and accompanying parents to meetings. Free
initial consultation. Please call or e-mail for more
information.
Center For Children With Special Needs
Behavioral treatment and assessment of developmental disorders.
2213 Main Street
Glastonbury, CT, 06033
860-436-1762
Anne I. Eason Attorney
10 Wall Street
Norwalk, CT 06850
Phone: (203) 838-5485
Fax: (203) 853-9246
AnneEasonAtty@aol.com
www.spedlawyers.com
Practice limited to Inclusive Education - LRE issues. Also
check www.spednet.org.
John M. Flanders Attorney
57 Washington Road
Cromwell, CT 06416
Phone: (860) 559-4706
Fax: (860) 635-0744
john@flandersgroup.net
I represent families in special education matters including
PPT's, mediation, due process and civil litigation. I am,
also, the father of a child in special education.
The Learning Disabilities Association of Connecticut
999 Asylum Avenue
Hartford, CT 06105
Phone: (860) 560-1711
www.ldact.org
Developed in 1964, the LDA of Connecticut is a non-profit
organization that provides parent assistors (advocates) to
support families with a full range of services, including
records reviews, parent advising, and attending meetings.
Our staff includes experienced special education teachers,
psychologists, and parents of children with disabilities who
have completed our intensive training program. Parent
assistors are located throughout the state. Sliding scale
fees.
Jeen Melendez Advocate
1425 Waterbury Rd.
Cheshire CT 06410
Phone: (203) 232-0031
Fax: (203) 250-2284
childadvocate@cox.net
www.webspawner.com/users/childadvocacy/
Assisting families in obtaining appropriate services,
accomodations and/or modifications for children with special
needs. Assistance with all levels of the eligibility
process, including PPT's, 504's, IEP goals and objectives,
and follow-up.
Beth Reagle Advocate
81 Hoyt St
Darien, CT 06820
Phone: (203) 964-1143
reagleea@yahoo.com
States Served: CT, NY
Beth was a birth to three service coordinator and special
education teacher for 11 years before becoming an advocate.
She has extensive knowlege of both special education and the
laws.
Aaron Schless Advocate
10 Wall Street
Norwalk CT 06850
Phone: (203) 838-7881
Fax: (203)853-9246
Aaron.Schless@gte.net
Representation both at IEP meetings and Due Process Hearings
David C. Shaw Attorney
34 Jerome Ave, Ste. 210
Bloomfield, CT
Phone: (860) 242-1238
Fax: (860) 242-1507
DavidCShawAtty@aol.com
I represent parents and disabled individuals in special
education and civil rights cases in hearings and in state
and federal court.
Law Offices of James C. Wing, Jr.
James C. Wing, Jr. Attorney 51 Gillett Street Hartford, CT
06015 Phone: (860) 527-0640 Fax: (860) 278-7394
lojcw@sbcglobal.net
www.parentsatty.com
Admitted to practice in 1982 and representing parents and
students since 1993, when oldest child's ADHD and LD were
diagnosed. Experience: IDEA, 504, No Child Left Behind,
PPTs, IEPs, Due Process mediation and hearings, Civil
Litigation (including actions against schools and teachers),
Juvenile and Criminal defense of parents and children,
bullying, eligibility, accommodations, assistive technology,
discipline (including expulsion hearings), out-of-district
placements, sexual assault/harassment, etc.
Winona W. Zimberlin
2 Congress St.
Hartford, CT 06114
Phone: (860) 249-5291
Fax: (860) 247-4194
I represent parents in education proceedings - PPT's,
hearings, civil lawsuits, higher education
Howard Klebanoff, P.C.
433 So.Main Street Suite 102 West Hartford, CT 06110
ph.860-313-5005 fax 860-313-5010
www.howardklebanoff.com
A practice dedicated to special education disability law and the educational rights of students.
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