SCHAFER AUTISM REPORT "Healing Autism:

No Finer a Cause on the Planet"

EXTRA EDITION ________________________________________________________________

January 3, 2003

Media Alert - NBC Nightly News Tom Brokaw Fri. 1-3-3 6:30pm ET

ALSO:

COMMENTARY

* Saddam's Weapons and Autism

* Seasonal Song Parody for Senator Doc Bill Frist

Media Alert: NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3

6:30 P.M. ET

From the NBC website: It's a story that has some parents of young children very nervous -- fears of a link between certain vaccines and autism. What's the reality, and how does it all tie into our homeland security?

* * *

Saddam's Weapons and Autism

Catherine Johnson resurfaces

[Catherine Johnson, Ph.D. is an early contributing editor to the former FEAT Daily Newsletter, and mother to two ASD children, as well as being a long-time autism research advocate. "I've been radically off email . . ." explains Johnson of her absence, "but am resurfacing today to send you some extremely creepy links."]

This week, reading Hitchens on regime change (I'm for it), I came across this passage:

"Are Saddam's Weapons Really So Unconventional?" By Christopher Hitchens, posted December 26, 2002.

"In the summer of 1991, I went to the Kurdish city of Halabja for National Geographic magazine. This is the town that's now world famous for being hit by Iraqi chemical weapons. The effects of such tactics are mainly instantaneous-hence the celebrated in the street as if an angel of death had done a drive-by-but the longer-term fallouts are quite arresting, too. Women, in a region celebrated for modesty, could roll up their heavy skirts to show horrifying burns. People were blind. Children were in semi-autistic states. One unexploded weapon, bearing Iraqi air force markings, was still lodged in the rubble of a basement, and I possess a photograph of myself sitting gingerly on top of it." slate.msn.com/id/2076026/

This means our autism epidemic began at the precise moment we defeated Saddam in war but left him in power. (Hey! Anyone for a class action suit against Colin Powell??)

Anyway, I have no idea whether it's even possible for biological and/or chemical weapons to create an autism epidemic this big this fast--I don't know the biology or the science of transmission, especially not artifically-aided transmission (I'm sending one terrific quote from an FBI guy saying "If West Nile Virus is so natural, how come it's following Route 95?").

But I do know one thing: somebody needs to be taking a look at those semi-autistic Kurdish children.

Are they autistic?

And if so, why? What made them that way? What chemical and/or biological agents, in what combination?

This is a Jeffrey Goldberg article, and here is possibly the most appalling passage (the point being that Saddam targets children): In 1995, the government of Saddam Hussein admitted to United Nations weapons inspectors that its scientists had weaponized a biological agent called aflatoxin. Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the now-defunct UNSCOM, told me earlier this year that the Iraqi admission was startling because aflatoxin has no possible battlefield use. Aflatoxin, which is made from fungi that occur in moldy grains, does only one thing

well: It causes liver cancer. In fact, it induces it particularly well in children. Its effects are far from immediate. The joke among weapons inspectors is that aflatoxin would stop a lieutenant from making colonel, but it would not stop soldiers from advancing across a battlefield.

I quoted Duelfer, in an article that appeared in The New Yorker, saying that "we kept pressing the Iraqis to discuss the concept of use for aflatoxin." They never came up with an adequate explanation, he said. They did admit, however, that they had loaded aflatoxin into two warheads capable of being fitted onto Scud missiles.

Richard Spertzel, who was the chief biological weapons inspector for UNSCOM, told me that aflatoxin is "a devilish weapon. From a moral standpoint, aflatoxin is the cruelest weapon-it means watching children die slowly of liver cancer."

West Nile Virus the First Bioweapon? Thursday, Oct. 25, 2001 newsmax.com money quote: "Commenting on a recent outbreak of West Nile and the related death of one woman in Maryland, J.B. Hanson, spokesman for the Maryland state health department, said authorities have noted that the migration of the virus has roughly followed theInterstate 95 corridor."

* * *

Seasonal Song Parody for Senator Doc Bill Frist

[Thanks to Cecelia Hammond and the Michigan's Unlocking Autism.]

Fristy The Surgeon

By Madeleine Begun Kane

(To be sung to the tune of "Frosty The Snowman," by

Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins)

Fristy the surgeon

Was elected on the phone.

With a White House boost got the Leader post.

Will he throw Trent Lott a bone?

Fristy the surgeon

Made a mint from HCA.

Rarely casts his vote for the common folk.

Wants to be the Prez some day.

There always is some magic

When Karl Rove lays out his trap.

He's guaranteed to get his way.

Makes no difference what the flap.

Fristy the surgeon

Is a doc from Tennessee.

Jumped ahead of those far more in the know

And much more Seniority.

Fristy the surgeon

Has a lot of dough it's true.

He's a drug co.'s dream and makes health cos. beam.

Votes a lot like you know who.

Fristy the surgeon

Is the leader of the pack.

Way back in his past Fristy killed some cats.

Trent Lott should have watched his back.

He snatched away Lott's Senate crown.

He pulled out all the stops.

And he never paused a moment when

He heard Trent holler "Stop!"

Fristy the Surgeon

Says he'll heal the GOP.

Can he deal with race? Can he legislate?

Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Thumpety thump thump,

Thumpety thump thump,

Watch the heart man go.

Thumpety thump thump,

Thumpety thump thump,

Running the Hill for Rove.

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Lenny Schafer, schafer@sprynet.com Kay Stammers Edward Decelie

CALENDAR EVENTS@doitnow.com Michelle Guppy Ron Sleith

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