The Canary Party thanks Celia Farber and David Rasnick for their attention to the autism issue today on their show Radio Free Science when they interviewed our Executive Director, Ginger Taylor.

For their viewers, the following is a list of resources discussed on the show:

For Immediate Release:

Catastrophic Autism Rate Now 1 in 88, 1 in 54 Boys;

Advocacy Groups ask What Will it Take for the Feds to Act?

“When will the federal health authorities wake up?  Will it be 1 in 25? 1 in 10? How many children have to suffer from autism to call this an emergency?”

The Focus Autism Foundation joins a Coalition of Autism Groups call press conference on World Autism Day

Blast HHS ongoing failures

New York, NY, March 29, 2012 – Grassroots autism advocacy organizations representing over 100,000 autism families will hold a press conference Monday, April 2, 2012, World Autism Day, at 11:00 at Hilton Manhattan East, 304 East 42^nd St., to push for official recognition of autism as a national public health emergency and to analyze the federal health authorities’ ongoing failure to respond.

Yesterday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new prevalence rates among 8-year-olds from 2008 as 1 in 88 children and 1 in 54 boys.  “These numbers are staggering,” said Katie Wright, daughter of Autism Speaks co-founders Bob and Suzanne Wright and board member of the National Autism Association.  “When will the federal health authorities wake up?  Will it be 1 in 25? 1 in 10? How many children have to suffer from autism to call this an emergency?”

Recent research from Stanford University conclusively shows that environmental triggers account for most cases of autism, not genetic predisposition.  “Parents have been calling on the NIH to study environmental factors for decades, but almost all the money has gone into genetic studies.  No matter how high the autism rate soars, the CDC’s continued denial of an autism epidemic is certitude comparable to death and taxes,” said Mark Blaxill, Editor-at-Large of Age of Autism web-based newspaper.

These advocacy groups believe that ongoing government research appears to be driven by corporations that fear being implicated in any environmental relationship with the autism epidemic, and believe that these apparent conflicts of interest must be exposed.

The organizations call for three urgent action steps:

1.      Secretary Sebelius should declare a national health emergency and order the NIH and CDC to shift their research focus to prevention efforts, especially investigation of long overlooked environmental factors.

2.      The Government Accounting Office should initiate a study of past research funding that has ignored environmental causes.  We need to understand whether this was the result of lobbying to avoid possible liability that might be uncovered with examination of environmental triggers.

3.      The U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform Committee should initiate promised hearings as soon as possible on the failure of federal health agencies in appropriately responding to this epidemic. It has been about ten years since this Committee examined the role of the federal authorities in the autism epidemic.  We can think of no other instance of any comparable epidemic that has gone on so long without Congressional oversight.

Grassroots organizations represented at the press conference: Age of Autism, AutismOne, Autism Action Network, Autism File, The Canary Party, Center for Personal Rights, The Coalition for Safe Minds, Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law and Advocacy, Focus Autism, National Autism Association, Talk About Curing Autism

Contacts:

Barbara Fischkin

(516) 525-3511

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Rebecca Estepp

(858) 829-6454

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Press conference:

Monday, April 2 11:00 a.m.

Hilton Manhattan East

304 East 42^nd St.

For Immediate Release  

Contact:
Ginger Taylor 
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
855-711-5282

This week, the Canary Party expects CDC to announce a new autism prevalence rate of 1 in 88. As boys are diagnosed with autism at more than four times the rate of girls, this translates to 1 in 54 boys. That new rate would be an increase from the previous 1 in 110 reported two years ago by the CDC’s ADDM (Autism Developmental Disabilities Monitoring) Network. This would only be the latest uptick in the autism rate reported by CDC, as the disorder was diagnosed in 1 in 10,000 in the 1960s, and the rate was virtually zero before 1930.

The Canary Party also expects federal health authorities to continue to downplay the seriousness of the skyrocketing autism rate, just as they have done for the past two decades since the rate began rising dramatically. Canary Party Chairman and autism father Mark Blaxill, drawing on his own experience working with federal agencies on autism for many years, commented, “No matter how high the autism rate soars, the CDC’s continued denial of an autism epidemic is certitude comparable to death and taxes.”

History shows us that Polio was called epidemic when the rate was only one in 2,700. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently called trampoline injuries epidemic, even though that rate was only about one in 1,200 children for the year the those injuries were reported (1996). By these measures, The Canary Party holds the position that autism should have been declared an “epidemic” many years ago. Some have offered the excuse that only infectious diseases can be called epidemic, but as the CDC has announced that obesity is epidemic in the U.S., the Canary Party believes that this leaves the agency with no good explanation for failing to characterize autism as such.

Ginger Taylor, Executive Director of The Canary Party, echoes the questions that autism parents have been asking for years: "How did we go from one in 10,000 children born 50 years ago being diagnosed with autism to 1 in 88 diagnosed today? Why do the Centers for Disease Control refuse to call the avalanche of autism diagnoses in the U.S. anything more than an “urgent public health concern?” Why is the federal agency downplaying a national emergency with special wording created just for autism – Urgent Public Health Concern – a label that is not used to describe any of the thousands of other disorders and conditions the agency tracks? When dozens of published research papers and multiple congressional hearings have shown that the primary causes of autism are environmental, and include vaccines and their components, why has CDC failed to offer any advice to new parents on how to decrease the chance of a child developing autism? Why has CDC chosen not to even attempt to identify which children are the subset vulnerable to these environmental exposures so that they can be handled with greater care?"

Taylor further said, “We hold the CDC accountable for failing to warn parents about the risks of these exposures, and especially for CDC’s own bloated, one-size-fits-all vaccine schedule – which exploded in the late 80’s after vaccine makers were indemnified against litigation by Congress.”

Canary Party member Lisa Goes added, “The vaccine schedule – never tested for safety as a whole - is a vast, uncontrolled human experiment on a generation of children.”

The Canary Party calls on Americans to demand that federal health authorities call this what it is, an autism epidemic, and to demand that government take action to make our air, water, foods, medicines and vaccine program safer. Please contact your legislators and President Obama. http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Staff St. Robert Bales has been charged in the massacre of 17 innocent Afghan civilians, and questions are surfacing on whether or not he was taking the anti-malaria drug Lariam, which is known to cause psychotic behavior, paranoia and hallucinations.  The drug is believed to have been a factor in several homicides and suicides involving military personnel.  

Today the Huffington Post reports that days after the killings, the Army ordered an emergency review of the use of the drug, which leaves us wondering if they believe that it was a factor in the Bales case as well.  

Read Mark Benjamen's report.

Another day, another letter.

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Tricia Selka, and I am an elementary school teacher in Norwalk, Ohio.  I earned my Bachelors of Science in Education from Bowling Green State University, and my Masters Degree in Technology in the Classroom.  I have been teaching for ten years.

 As an educator, I feel it is my responsibility to help to educate others regarding public health issues, current research, and policy that affects the health and safety of our children.   This film helps to educate our society regarding the development of vaccines and vaccine policy.  It shows personal stories, along with professional opinions that can help everyone to be well-informed and make educated decisions regarding vaccines and vaccine safety. 

Being an elementary school teacher, I am fully aware of the broad spectrum of needs that children today have.  Parents want to do all they can to help their children.   This film is an educational tool that can help parents make informed decisions about the health of their children. 

Sincerely,

Tricia Selka, M.Ed.