Sports Camp - Plan Ahead

The National Sports Center for the Disabled and the Colorado Rapids would like to invite you to the Rapids Soccer Sports Camp for kids with disabilities Tuesday, May 5, 2009 6:00-8:00pm Dicks Sporting Goods Park Field #10 6000 Victory Way Commerce City, CO 80022 Directions from I-70 and Quebec: North on Quebec to 64th East on 64th This free interactive camp allows kids with disabilities, either physical or developmental, ages 6-18 to experience first hand the sport of soccer. This fun-filled day will include instruction and skill development, use of equipment, games, prizes and end with a snack. Appearances could include players, coaches and the Rapids mascot. Camp Schedule 5:45 - 6:00pm Registration & Check In 6:00 - 7:45pm Skills Clinic 7:45 - 8:00pm Snacks & Giveaways Register online at www.nscd.org Questions call 303-293-5308 www.autismlarimer.org aslc@autismlarimer.org 970-377-9640 If you do not wish to receive future e-mails or newsletters, please reply to this message with 'Remove' in the subject line.

Don't miss Temple Grandin on April 21

In Honor of National Autism Awareness Month Join the Autism Society of Larimer County for an evening with Dr. Temple Grandin. The evening will kick off with a silent auction, light desserts and culminate with Dr. Temple Grandin sharing practical strategies for parents and professionals. Dr. Grandin will get down to the REAL issues of autism, the ones parents, teachers, professionals and individuals on the spectrum face every day. Temple will offer helpful do's and don'ts, practical strategies, and try-it-now tips, all based on her "insider" perspective and a great deal of research. Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Time: Silent auction bidding starts at 5:30 pm Location: Hilton Garden Inn, 2821 E. Harmony Road, Fort Collins Cost: FREE EVENT SCHEDULE 5:30 pm—7:00 Silent Auction Viewing 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm Presentation, Dr. Temple Grandin 8:00—8:40 pm Book Signing 8:40 pm Silent Auction winners announced Pre registration is recommended Phone: 377-9640 or Email: aslc@autismlarimer.org ----------------------------------------------------- SILENT AUCTION Come and bid on some of the following great items: Bed & Breakfast at the famous Stanley Hotel 10 hours of Learning Clinic Instruction from Neurodevelpment, LLC Guitar & Piano Lesson from the Piano Institute Stay at the Antlers Pointe Suites on Fall River AND SO MUCH MORE! www.autismlarimer.org aslc@autismlarimer.org 970-377-9640 If you do not wish to receive future e-mails or newsletters, please reply to this message with 'Remove' in the subject line.

Olmsted on Autism: 1 in 10,000 Amish Managing Editor's Note:  Dr. Max Wiznitzer of University Hospitals in Cleveland is an expert witness for the government against the families who file in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.  By Dan Olmsted It is unanimous, apparently -- the rate of autism among the Amish is low. Really, really low. So low that if it were the same in the rest of the population, we wouldn't even be talking about the subject. Shockingly low.   But not so shocking that anyone feels compelled to follow up on the information or its logical implications -- not four years ago when I first pointed it out, not today when the clues it contains are more intriguing than ever -- in fact, never, never, never.   In April 2005 I wrote a UPI column called The Amish Anomaly that began this way: "Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder. I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed ..."   In case anyone had any lingering doubts about the virtual absence of autism among the Amish, they were effectively put to rest on Friday night's Larry King segment when Dr. Max Wiznitzer -- defending the vaccine program, arguing autism has not increased and insisting it is a genetic disorder preset from birth, said the rate of autism in northeastern Ohio, the nation's largest Amish community, was 1 in 10,000. He should know, he said: "I'm their neurologist." So in a nation with an autism rate of 66 per 10,000 -- cut that in half if you want, to focus just on full-syndrome, classic, Kanner autism -- we're looking at a population with one-sixty-sixth, or one thirty-third, or one-whatever, the going rate. Heck, let's just say the autism rate in the USA were only 10 per 10,000; for some reason, the Amish autism rate would still be an order of magnitude lower. That, as they say in the medical journals, is statistically significantly. Massively so, I would say.   That leaves, it seems to me, two questions: Why is the rate so much lower, and why doesn't anyone in mainstream medicine seem to care, other than to fling it out as a debating point to demonstrate -- what, exactly?   Dr. Wiznitzer said those Amish were vaccinated. Well, OK, interesting. That's half right, according to what I reported about that same area back in June of 2005:   "The autism rate for U.S. children is 1 in 166, according to the federal government. The autism rate for the Amish around Middlefield, Ohio, is 1 in 15,000, according to Dr. Heng Wang.   "He means that literally: Of 15,000 Amish who live near Middlefield, Wang is aware of just one who has autism. If that figure is anywhere near correct, the autism rate in that community is astonishingly low.   "Wang is the medical director, and a physician and researcher, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children, created three years ago to treat the Amish in northeastern Ohio.   "I take care of all the children with special needs," he said, putting him in a unique position to observe autism. "The one case Wang has identified is a 12-year-old boy."   He said half the children in the area were vaccinated, half weren't. That child, he said, was vaccinated, but let's not split hairs here. Either vaccinated or unvaccinated, that's a low rate -- 1 in 5000. The question I didn't think to ask at the time but will soon, is, exactly how were those half vaccinated? Flu shots for pregnant moms? Hep B at birth? Chickenpox and MMR on the same day at one year? Rotavirus, Hep B, Hep A, and on and on? Or did it look more like the less intense, less front-loaded schedule in place in the rest of the country back before the autism epidemic began? The kind Jenny and Jim and J.B. and Jerry (hey, the four J's!) keep harking back to when the autism rate was, like, 1 in 10,000 and we still managed to stave off wholesale plagues.   Let's even stipulate that the vaccine schedule for every single Amish child is now fully loaded and follows the CDC to a T. What is Wiznitzer's point? That the Amish genes protect them? Well, good for them, then, let's find out why. Or, that some kind of other environmental risk is absent? In that case, autism is a genetic vulnerability with an environmental trigger, and something about the Amish world is not triggering it, which puts us back about where I started four years ago. There would have been plenty of time to have the answer right now if Julie Gerberding weren't still filibustering the question by talking about numerators, denominators and getting more research into the pipeline as fast as bureaucratically possible (meaning never, never, never).    Critics of the Amish Anomaly -- like critics of the idea that vaccines might be implicated in autism -- want to have it every which way. First, they want to say I just plain missed all the autism cases -- droning on about the Clinic For Special Children, which refused to speak with me over a period of many months. When one of their doctors did finally talk to a blogger whose stated purpose was to tear my reporting apart (a "fraud," he called me), that doctor said, oh yes, they do see Amish kids with autism -- but then went on to say those were ONLY kids with other identifiable genetic disorders. In other words, risk factors. He specifically said they DO NOT  see "idiopathic autism," a basically nonsense phrase that he used to mean autism without any other accompanying disorders. In other words, they don't see the kind of autism now running at a rate of 1 in 100 or so in the rest of the country. The kind no one can figure out. The kind that is destroying a generation and their families and our future along with it. ("You don't have an affected child," people tell me. Yes, but I have an affected world.)   By asserting the Amish have an autism rate of 1 in 10,000 Wiznitzer is in fact scoring a point -- they call it an "own goal," an "oops, I didn't mean to tap the other team's shot in." The point he's accidentally but effectively reinforcing is the one made by the unfailingly intelligent Bernadine Healy -- that there are so many, many obvious studies being left undone by those afraid to do them, even as they sneer and snarl at the rest of us. The Amish are just one study left undone among -- well, one among ten thousand or so. Dan Olmsted in Editor of Age of Autism.

NEW YORK - A suburban New York county has adopted the nation's first ban on the chemical found in plastic baby bottles and sippy cups The measure banning the sale of baby bottles containing BPA was signed by Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy on Thursday after county legislators passed it last month. Several states including California, Oregon and Hawaii are considering bans the chemical formally known as bisphenol A, but Suffolk County, on Long Island, is the first place in the nation to enact one. Canada announced in October it was banning BPA in baby bottles, becoming the first country to restrict sale of the chemical, which is commonly used in the lining of food cans, eyeglass lenses and hundreds of household items. The Suffolk County ban will take effect within 90 days of being filed with New York's secretary of state and applies to empty beverage containers used by children ages 3 and younger. Baby bottles frequently contain BPA, which is used to harden plastic and make it shatterproof. Some scientists believe that long-term exposure to BPA is harmful to humans, but the European Union and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration say the chemical is safe. "While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stands by, Suffolk County is taking measures to protect their most vulnerable population from the potential harm of BPA exposure," said Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union, the nonprofit that publishes Consumer Reports magazine. Levy, the Suffolk County executive, said children's exposure to potentially harmful products should be minimized. "Of all the things a parent must worry about," he said, "whether or not their child is being harmed by a baby bottle should not be one of them." www.autismlarimer.org aslc@autismlarimer.org 970-377-9640 If you do not wish to receive future e-mails or newsletters, please reply to this message with 'Remove' in the subject line.

World Autism Day April 2nd Click on this link to see all the autism groups throughout the world http://www.worldautismawarenessday.org/site/c.egLMI2ODKpF/b.3917083/k.6AFB/Autism_Organizations.htm www.autismlarimer.org aslc@autismlarimer.org 970-377-9640 If you do not wish to receive future e-mails or newsletters, please reply to this message with 'Remove' in the subject line.

A "SPECIAL" LOVE STORY http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=12209365 www.autismlarimer.org aslc@autismlarimer.org 970-377-9640 If you do not wish to receive future e-mails or newsletters, please reply to this message with 'Remove' in the subject line.

New Thriller Features Hero with Autism Thursday, March 12, 2009 By: Carin Yavorcik Author to donate proceeds to ASA Glasshouse Press recently published Gauntlet, a new international thriller by Richard Aaron whose hero is on the autism spectrum. In the novel, a desperate chase covers four continents, as men bent on attacking the United States use every weapon at their disposal to evade the American authorities. Time and again they prove willing to destroy anything and anyone standing in their way. But Hamilton Turbee, a computer mastermind who has autism at the secretive and newly created TTIC agency, discovers a way to follow their tracks. His flawed genius gives the nation its only chance at stopping the attack … if the American leadership will listen. Richard Aaron will be donating 10 percent of his proceeds to support the Autism Society of America. Learn more about the book at http://www.richardaaron.com/. www.autismlarimer.org aslc@autismlarimer.org 970-377-9640 If you do not wish to receive future e-mails or newsletters, please reply to this message with 'Remove' in the subject line.