• Here’s a question: Do Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt appearing at an Autism Speaks event merit a “Celebrities” tag on this blog post? I’m going to say … sure. But I won’t enjoy it.

• The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest says Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News are “glossing over the scientific data” in attacking vaccines as a possible cause of autism. The blogger at The Idea Lab says accusations of a liberal media bias are nothing new, and “those who have tended to pitch accusations of a liberal media bias or conspiracy tend to operate from a position of political or material self-interest.”

• All research funded by Autism Speaks will soon be publicly available on PubMed, the organization announced.

• Kev at Left Brain/Right Brain has launched a new Web site that seeks to debunk autism myths. Autism Myths is a collection of writings from his blog and others’.

• Two men completed a cross-country walk to raise awareness of autism. It worked! Everybody reading this blog is totally aware.

The vaccine episode of “The Doctors,” a spinoff of the Dr. Phil show, finally aired. You might recall we wrote that it was, according to one of the parents who appeared on the show, suddenly delayed the week it was to air.

Here’s a pared-down version of the episode.:

“The Doctors,” the daytime talk show spun off from Dr. Phil’s show, taped an episode earlier this month about the hypothesized connection between vaccines and autism. A TACA mom, a pro-vaccine pediatrician and the longtime vaccine critic Barbara Loe Fisher were the guests, and it was billed as a back-to-school episode about vaccine safety.

The episode was postponed and, a spokeswoman for the show tells me, no air date has been set. “We shoot segments and use them as needed,” Theresa Corigliano said.

From TACA’s Lisa Ackerman: “They have asked us to be patient until that air date is determined. The producers are aware that the autism community is extremely interested in the show date and the content. I am curious when their ‘back-to-school episode’ on vaccines will premier.”

Here’s a chat forum on the show’s Web site where viewers ask what the heck?

In Dan Olmsted’s review of “False Prophets” over at Age of Autism, he dings Offit for misspelling his name as “Dan Olmstead.” He’ll love how The Autism File USA misspells it on page 125 of its inaugural issue: Dam Olmstead.

Easy to see why it slipped through; there is a LOT of content in this magazine. It’s 130 pages, and just 15 are ads.

• Olmsted’s review.
• The Autism File.

[Glass-house disclaimer: I make typos, too.]

• Michael Savage’s boss makes Michael Savage look like Doug Flutie, says a “New Media watchdog” blog. (Don’t click through if you’re allergic to excessive liberal anger. Or excessive conservative anger.)

• A private autism school in north San Diego County has delayed plans to open. A parent who paid $4,000 in tuition says “as far as I’m concerned the money is gone,” but the school says it’s just a few months away and money will be returned to anybody who asks.

• Music!

• Parallel Normal blogs that the Department of Defense is getting in on autism research. They’re funding a study at the University of Missouri:

Hypothesizing that autistic kids have unique physical features, they will create a roadmap with head size and facial feature measurements for diagnosticians.

• The government estimates 3,000 kids with autism undergo chelation.

• The Autism Society of North Carolina gets dinged by a state audit: A $1.5 million deficit, inappropriate expense charges and poorly monitored credit card use.

• And from The Toledo Journal: “To others, if vaccines do cause the condition, they could care less, just as long as their child is not affected.” Haha, what? Who has ever heard that argument? I was always taught that journalists should present the strongest points from both sides. Not sure that qualifies.

Age of Autism editor Dan Olmsted takes on the “Tropic Thunder” controversy by considering the language of autism.

There’s one way to employ the word that I really can’t stand, however — when people with autism are referred to as “autistics.” … Overall, I’m not in favor of turning a condition or a description of a human being into a noun.

Which reminds me of the first story I ever wrote about autism, back in 2002. I’d been a working journalist for about two months, and attempted to tackle the autism epidemic on deadline in about 90 minutes. The result was one-sided and strangely uninformed and … well, I’ve long considered it one of the half-dozen worst stories I’ve done. (Here’s the worst. Let’s all laugh at Sam today!)

Why am I bringing it up?

Two sentences in particular from that story:

Parents of autistics convinced Kartzinel to make a trip to Orange County …

and

Dr. Irene Grant, a Tustin doctor, shadowed Kartzinel as he treated patients, and now works with area autistics.

I got a very diplomatic call the next day (I’d swear I remember it being from Tammie, the story subject, but she doesn’t remember it, so maybe not) letting me know that, well, the story was very nice but it’s considered insensitive to call a child with autism “an autistic.”

In a roundabout way, this is why we’re trying this blog. It’s hard to cover a subject sensitively when you’re writing one or two stories a year on it. Autism is simply too important, and too complex, to write stories like my first one and then abandon until the next deadline story a few months later.

I’ve pasted that first story after the jump. Read it for what it is: hysterical, and hopefully not to be repeated.

Read the rest of this entry »

• A Florida mom says the leading cause of death for children with autism is drowning. After her own autistic son died, she founded Christopher Connections, “a website designed to connect families of autistic children to aquatic facilities with the expertise and credentials to teach kids with special needs how to swim.”

• The mom blogger at Autismville considers railing against the repeated use of the word “retard” in the new film Tropic Thunder, but decides instead to let her young son do the talking:

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

(She does some railing, too. “Hey guys. Why don’t you just go ahead and publish Bulllying for Dummies while you’re at it?”)

• Film-making!

• A reminder: This afternoon is the online seminar by a DAN! practitioner.

• And if you missed it, make sure you read the Inside Autism post this week by Tina Cruz. It’s about Asperger’s and girls.