The New York Post Editorial Page, November 15th, 2007, Thomas Sowell touched a subject that is fast becoming a national epidemic. Autism.
Striking mostly white, middle class and up. This terrible heart breaking disease is no more understood today than it was 20 years ago.
Now, thanks in large part to our drug dealing pharmaceutical industry, testing and screening has been widely recommended often leading to tragic results.
Read Mr. Sowell’s editorial.
Count the Casualties Before You Crusade
Autism is a devastating condition, both for those who have it and for their parents. At this point, its causes are unknown – and if there is any cure, that is unknown as well.There are many ways of coping with tragedies. One of the less promises, and often dangerous, ways is to launch a crusade.Crusades may be emotionally satisfying, politically popular and welcomed by the media. But crusaders are not known for caution, for weighing evidence or for counting the costs, which may extend well beyond the cost in money.The crusade against autism has already led to many casualties – and there may be far more if recent recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics are carried out to have every child tested for autism twice by age 2.Think about: How many people are qualified to diagnose autism? Enough to test every child in America? Not bloody likely.Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University has tested and treated children with autism for more than 20 years. “While it is relatively easy to identify a 5-year-old as autistic,” he says, “it’s much more difficult to reliably diagnose a preschooler or toddler.”The word “reliably” is crucial. Anyone can unreliably diagnose autism, just as anybody can unreliably predict the weather or the stock market.The consequences of unreliable diagnoses of autism can be traumatic for parents and children alike.I’ve written books about late-talking children and their parents (the latest being “The Einstein Syndrome”). As a result I’ve encountered more than a hundred parents with stories of emotional devastation after their children were diagnosed as autistic – diagnoses that the passing years have shown to be false more often than not.Camarata has a far larger group of parents of late talking children, since he specializes in studying and treating speech disorders, and he has likewise found numerous cases of false diagnoses of autism among children who are late in beginning to talk.It’s not just the needless emotional stresses on the parents. Many of the treatments inflicted on children diagnosed as autistic, would be called child abuse if they weren’t done as medical procedures – and they can set back or distort a child’s development.The “autistic” label can follow a child into schools and beyond, causing him or her to be treated differently by teachers, nurses and others.Too many people refuse to reconsider any evidence contrary to the label, however blatant that evidence becomes or however much that evidence increases over the years.The initial evidence on which a diagnosis of autism was based may be nothing more than a checklist of characteristics of autistic children – often administered by someone with nothing more to go on than that checklist.But many items on such a checklist can apply to many children who are not autistic. A study of gifted children, for example, found many of them showing the kinds of characteristics found on checklists for autism.Says Camarata, “Because there are no reliable biomedical makers for autism, diagnosis must rely on subjective rating scales – making it difficult if not impossible to conduct accurate screening in toddlers or preschoolers.”But it is precisely the checklist approach that is being urged by those who are crusading for every child to be diagnosed for autism before age 2. Like most crusaders, they seem unwillingly to consider the possibility of errors, much less the consequences.The very definition of autism has been expanded in recent years to include what is called “the autism spectrum.” Among other things, this means there is now more wiggle room for those whose diagnoses have proved to be wrong, who refuse to admit it, and who are now even more unaccountable than ever.
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New York’s Nassau and Suffolk counties are on a speech therapy crusade that has turned into a multi million business. Thousands of children, 4, 5 and 6 years olds are in speech therapy. Could it be possible, that one of the most educated and affluent location in the U.S. be giving birth to children requiring speech therapy? If so, something is terribly amiss.
Listen folks, at www.infinitehealthresources.com we have spent 2 years writing about the effects of out toxic food system, toxic watersheds and just loony dieting. Both for the obese and athletic. Incredibly and as usual, this country will diagnose and treat with big pharmaceutical company drugs rather than find the cause and cure.
Let me take you back 10-15 years. ADHA, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, diagnosis’s by the thousands being recognized as incorrectly diagnosed. Further more, a recent SUNY Buffalo Study that tracked 600 kids since the early 1990s concluded that drugs like Ritalin and Concerta worked for a while but not after 3years. The co-author of the report, Dr. William Pelham said he believes the earlier beneficial impact if the medication were grossly exaggerated.
The pharmaceutical industry saw a drug patient for life. Many of these children are now 18-22 year olds and continue on not one, but several drugs. A financial bonanza. For the pharmaceutical industry and a multi-million dollar drain on our health care system.
Dr. Pelham went on to say, “We had though that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That didn’t happen to be the case.”Instead, he said, the kids “had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren’t growing as much as other kids, both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight. “In the short run, [medication] will help the child behave better, in the long run it won’t. And that information should be made very clear to parents,” he said.
So what are we to expect with early testing and treatment for autism? The health establishment in the U.S. is completely focused on diagnosis and treatment. Not the cure. Ladies and Gentlemen, Parents and Grandparents, please wake up to the fact that something is clearly very wrong, and it may not be with our children. Our environment and health system may be the problem.
At www.infinitehealthresources.com we continue to present fact upon fact how proper nutrition throughout a person’s whole life can and will prevent many of today’s illnesses and life threatening diseases. That’s right, prevent. Prevention can be the cure.
What you put on you body is as important as what you put into your body. Non-toxic shampoos, lotions, nail polish, nail polish removers and filtered shower water and drinking water are essential to healthy living.
Are new and expecting mothers depriving their bodies and then the bodies of their unborn of the essential nutrients for proper brain development? Could the thousands of diets that we all try and fail at, coupled with fast food, be causing our level of nutrition to fail our offspring and us?I certainly do not have these answers. Isn’t it about time some serious discussion begin about autism, ADHD, breast cancer and so many modern disorders that are destroying lives, creating heart ache and pain and the premature death of our loved ones and friends.
This is a stand we must take together, we must unite. Our politicians would never rise to the task. They are owned by the pharmaceutical and processed food industries with billions in political action committees.
Wake up America and take a stand on your families’ health.
Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com and learn more on nutrition, disease, recipes and healthy products. Read the newsletters from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, The Cancer Project and The Organic Consumers Association.
Learn the truth about living a healthy lifestyle.
Visit www.infinitehealthresources.com

Sincerely,
Thomas Affatato