FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Sacramento, California http://www.feat.org
January 7, 2002
News Morgue Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp
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Wakefield Is Given New Job With Bradstreet’s ICDRC
·
Bradstreet’s ICDRC Announces Addition of Wakefield
·
How the Clip ‘N Snip’s Owner Changed Special Education
·
Reader’s Posts
[By Lorraine Fraser in the Telegraph, UK.] http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/06/nmmr06.xm
l&sSheet=/news/2002/01/06/ixhome.html <-- address ends here.
The British doctor forced out of his job because of his
studies on the childhood MMR jab and autism has been appointed head of a
multi-million dollar research programme in America.
Dr Andrew Wakefield’s departure last month from the Royal
Free Hospital in North London, revealed in The Telegraph, led to renewed furore
over the safety of the triple vaccine and precipitated intense pressure on the
Prime Minister to reveal whether he has allowed his baby son, Leo, to have the
innoculation.
Dr Wakefield has identified nearly 200 children with a new
combination of bowel disease and autism who became ill after being given the
MMR jab, but was told by the Royal Free and London University Medical School
that his research was “no longer in line” with its strategy.
He will now continue his studies at the International
Child Development Resource Centre (ICDRC) in Florida.
The centre treats more than 1,700 children with autistic
spectrum disorders from all over the world and is to develop an additional £15 million
research facility at Boca Raton, South Florida.
Dr Wakefield told The Telegraph last night: “The autism
world is in crisis with the number of children affected skyrocketing. Not only
does the medical establishment have no answers, it appears that it doesn’t want
to ask the right questions. ICDRC breaks that mould. It holds tremendous potential
and it will be an honour for my team and I to help realise that potential.”
The Director of ICDRC, Dr Jeff Bradstreet, said Dr
Wakefield’s decision to join as Director of Research was wonderful news and
would complete a “world-class” research team of specialists with expertise in
all aspects of autism.
The parents of autistic children helped by Dr Wakefield
while he was at the Royal Free will be devastated to learn that he is to go
abroad. He sought to reassure them last night, stressing that his aim was to
help autistic children everywhere by continuing his research.
Robert Sawyer, the Chief Executive of Visceral, a UK
charity that supports bowel and autism research, said Dr Wakefield would still collaborate
with doctors in the UK, Ireland and Sweden.
He said: “This is an opportunity to bring the best minds
together and get the research done.”
Dr Wakefield is investigating the possibility that the MMR
vaccine, which combines live measles, mumps and rubella viruses in one
injection, may cause bowel problems in some children which lead to autism.
The Department of Health insists parents have no reason
for concern about the vaccine, which is recommended by the government for all
children.
Officials have warned that a measles epidemic could result
if parents shun the vaccine.
Mr Blair has refused to disclose whether his 19-month-old
son has had the MMR combined jab or separate vaccines, but has said it is “offensive
beyond belief” to suggest he his wife, Cherie, are deliberately refraining from
giving their child the treatment while his government advises it.
* * *
[This is the full press release from the International
Child Development Resource Center (ICDRC).]
Controversy over the vaccine-autism connection hasn’t scared
off the medical group at the International Child Development Resource Centre, (ICDRC),
a children’s research and treatment centre in Florida, from inviting Dr Andrew
J. Wakefield, MB, BS., FRCS., FRCPath, and his team to join their faculty.
ICDRC currently treats over 1700 children with autism spectrum disorders, and
the children come from every continent to be evaluated. On this past Wednesday,
Dr. Wakefield agreed to join the ICDRC team as its Director of Research and
continue his efforts to solve the possible autism-vaccine link, the role of the
intestine in childhood developmental disorders and the cause of inflammatory
bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Wakefield is
expected to continue his collaborations with colleagues in the UK, Ireland,
Japan and Sweden, making ICDRC truly international.
The cost of developing and initiating research at the new
centre is estimated at $25,000,000 over three years. Robert Sawyer, Chief
Executive of Visceral, the UK based charity that supports much of the research
conducted by Dr Wakefield and colleagues states. “The cost of lifetime care for
a single child with autism was estimated by independent US and UK assessments as
being between $2m and $4m per child.
The US Department of Education recorded 65,000 diagnoses of autism spectrum
disorders in 1999-2000, up from 12,000 in 1992-93. Seen in that context the
cost of developing the proposed facilities at ICDRC is a drop in the ocean”.
And the news for the autism world got another boost when
ICDRC announced that it had received the initial investments to start building
a new campus in South Florida. Dr. Jeff Bradstreet, Director of ICDRC, also stated
this past Thursday that negotiations are underway with The Centre for Complex
Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), to develop a
collaboration for sharing resources and furthering the research efforts of
ICDRC. The FAU centre is one of America’s top brain imaging facilities, so Dr
Wakefield’s new found freedom from The Royal Free Hospital winds up being a
windfall for the ICDRC and FAU efforts to help children.
Dr Wakefield stated “the autism world is in crisis with
the numbers of affected children skyrocketing. Not only does the medical
establishment have no answers it appears that it doesn’t even want to ask the
right questions. ICDRC breaks this
mould. It holds tremendous potential and it will be an honour for my team and I
to help realise that potential.
“The creation of a truly independent centre, combining
research with clinical facilities for investigation, treatment and evaluation
of potential therapies offers a unique opportunity to increase our
understanding and develop new service models. The overall aim is to deliver the
benefits that we see as increasingly possible for affected children and young
people everywhere.”
This means that Wakefield will spend the greater part of
his time in the United States over the coming months, in order to seize this
opportunity to expedite the research by bringing the power and energy of the
American people to help resolve this issue as soon as possible.
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* * *
How the Clip ‘N Snip’s Owner Changed Special Education
[By Brent Staples, NY Times Editorial Page. Thanks
to Pete Wright.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/05/opinion/05SAT3.html
The people of Florence, S.C., know Shannon Carter as the
owner of Shannon’s Clip ‘N Snip, a barber shop where the locals get haircuts
and conversation. The Clip ‘N Snip has room for seven barber chairs, but
Shannon is limiting the business to two for the moment and renting out space
until the economy improves enough for the barbering business to expand.
Shannon’s public school teachers are no doubt surprised to
see her running a business and working out a financial plan. During the 1980’s
she finished ninth grade failing virtually every subject, and was nearly illiterate.
The schools told Emory and Elaine Carter that their daughter was terminally
lazy and would “never see a day of college.” In truth, Shannon was suffering
from a common but undiagnosed learning disability that made it difficult for
her to comprehend the little that she could read. Alienated and depressed,
Shannon became suicidal. In desperation her parents placed her in a private
school for disabled children, where she jumped several grade levels within a
few years and graduated actually reading on grade level.
The Carters then sued the school system for private-school
tuition and were upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case known as Florence
County School District Four v. Shannon Carter. The law before this case limited
parents of disabled children to schools approved by the state. But the court ruled
in Shannon’s case that the school system lost its right to plan a disabled
child’s education if it failed to provide an “appropriate public education” as
required by the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, known as
the IDEA.
Ask about Shannon Carter in New York or Los Angeles, and
you see school board lawyers snarling or hanging their heads in dismay. The
school boards see Carter cases as “a voucher program for the rich,” in which affluent
parents reserve spaces in private schools and then badger the school systems
into paying burdensome tuition costs. Critics have a point when they note that
small districts can be destabilized by the cost of one student’s stay at an
expensive residential school, and that urban districts with too few textbooks
are sometimes forced to underwrite lavish private school tuition. But as
Congress prepares to reauthorize the federal special education program, it
should bear in mind that the Carters went to court only after the public
schools failed at their most basic mission: teaching Shannon to read.
The task of teaching reading is undermined by the common
but mistaken belief that children are somehow neurologically “wired” to read.
This view led to the “whole language” fad of the 1970’s, in which children were
allowed to wander through books, improvising individual approaches to reading.
The whole language technique works well with some children. But data from four
decades of studies by the National Institutes of Health show that it is
disastrous for the 4 in 10 children who have trouble learning to read. Nearly
half these youngsters fall behind in the early grades, never catch up and
eventually drop out.
In the most extreme cases, children seem to have abnormal
activity in the parts of the brain that process phonemes — the basic sounds
that correspond to the letters of the alphabet. The simplest rules of language make
no sense to them. Asked for a word that rhymes with “cat,” for example, they
simply draw a blank. The disorder strikes children of all backgrounds. It afflicts those who are read to as infants
as well as those who grow up without a book in the house.
The fortunate children are diagnosed early and assigned to
smaller classes where teachers take special care to teach them the fundamentals
of written language that others take for granted. The children are walked through
the alphabet again and again, learning to connect the letters to the sounds,
the sounds to the syllables, the syllables to words and so on. The good news
from the N.I.H. findings is that 95 percent of learning- impaired children can
become effective readers if taught by scientifically proven methods. The bad
news is that less than a quarter of American teachers know how to teach reading
to children who do not get it automatically. At the moment, nearly half of all
children placed in special education are there for reading difficulties. Federal
scientists commonly describe them as “casualties of bad instruction.”
Part of the blame lies with colleges that have resisted
federal attempts to improve teacher education programs. Part of the blame lies
with Congress, which has clung to the view that curriculum is a state and local
matter in which the federal government should not meddle. Congress failed to even
notice the reading research until just recently, when the Bush administration
made reading a priority.
Congress has focused almost solely on the fact that
special education is expensive — and that it takes away money from regular
education. The debate will go nowhere until lawmakers begin to view special and
regular education as part of a single system that is being hampered by an all
too pervasive problem — that schools are teaching reading in a way that fails
to effectively reach millions of children. The basic lesson of the Carter case and
the tens of thousands that have followed is that the country needs a national
reading campaign, based on science. The longer we delay, the more families like
Shannon Carter’s will bolt the system, taking public dollars with them.
* * *
Seeking graduate student
(Special Education, Psychology) or teacher for part-time internship or paid
position to support Asperger’s child moving into an inclusive class. Flexible hours (approximately 10-15
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Please contact ASPEDAdvocate@aol.com.
Hello, I am the father of a 5 year old semi-verbal autistic
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Looking for a good child psychiatrist in the Baton Rouge,
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I will appear on “Real Life” CN8 TV on Tuesday, Jan. 8th
at 6:00 PM
discussing my son and our book “Breaking Autism’s Barriers:
A Father’s
Story” Bill Davis
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