Talking - yes!

The boy is not only using more words. He's put three of them together in an actual sentence to say his sister was watching TV. Yes!

An Infinite Number of Monkeys at the Keyboard

So the preemptive defense of Wakefield's cheerleading squad is that Big Pharma was out to get him. You know, by making a British medical journal withdraw a paper by someone who committed ethical violations during the creation of said paper. It's a spooky spooky conspiracy.

So anyway,  the absurd defense is that all this happened because Wakefield is "on the brink" of publishing this really fantastic paper, yo. And it will totally show all these doo-doo heads that mercury causes autism, even though most anti vaxxers have backed away from that one.

Anyhoo, lookie lookie. As the awesome Kim Wombles points out, that paper has been withdrawn. Not that it ever was a good paper or ever proved anything, other than proving that Wakefield is still not above conflicts of interest and bad research methodology.

Others have done awesome jobs pointing out the many many flaws in the methods they used. They added monkeys after the fact. They had training issues with the person collecting data. They didn't blind or randomize properly. They tested at different times of the day. They had to mix their own mercury into the vaccine, because the current vaccine doesn't have Hep B in it. They took one study and split it into three parts. And the whole thing had several massive conflicts of interest built in.

My biggest problem with the study is pretty damned simple. Monkeys don't get autism. Neither do mice, rabbits, polar bears, or chipmunks. Before you go arguing that it's only because monkeys don't get vaccines, I'll point out that yes, they do in research. And none of the monkeys in this study got autism, even if you take their results at face value. Just because you can make a monkey have slower reflex development does not mean you've given that monkey autism!

And on the kid front

The girl neither is nor isn't an aspie. The diagnosis is neither given nor ruled out at this time. She's doing well in school. She's also skipping more of her lunch. Her dad is not a worrier. Her mother is. I think I'll buy some whole milk yogurt and serve guacamole more often.

The boy is suddenly talking a lot more, and it's a trend I hope continues.

He's using "more ___ please" sign phrases to ask for things. Sometimes he vocalizes with it. Sometime not. Not sure how the school will feel about this total mishmash of talker and sign language and verbal language thing, but it's what has worked for us so far.

Old MacDonald had a farm, and apparently he keeps it very well stocked with cows. They're moo mooing her, there, and everywhere. And it's awesome to hear.

Got back his test results, too. Last year he scored as approximately 25 months old. This year he scores as approximately 25 months old. Er... In all fairness, I think the test missed skills he actually had just from being in a strange testing environment. Still, I'd hoped for some awesome improvements.

Still busy

Or else I'd be having a field day. Wakefield gets crucified for his saintly ethical violations motivated by profit by the evil evil pharmaceutical industry he'd hoped to employ with that vaccine he patented. It's ok when Wakefield patents a vaccine but not when Offit does it, most likely because Wakefield didn't make millions from his vaccine. Instead he just makes piles of cash by recommending that kids have unnecessary cameras stuck up their ass for the treatment of imaginary measles that don't cause a neurological condition. Poor, poor needlessly persecuted Wakefield. 


I'd also be having fun with politically-correct-but-only-when-it's-a-Democrat Sarah Palin and her call for Rahm Emanuel but not Rush Limbaugh's resignation over use of the same R word she's alleged to have lobbed about herself a time or two in reference to her little campaign prop. What horrible thing in a past life did we do to deserve either her or McCarthy as spokespeople?
  

Attention, Attention

So, it turns out (much to our not surprise), that we're a family full of neurological variation. Took the girl to a neurologist, and she's been diagnosed with ADHD and a reading disability.  We're not at all surprised with the news, since both of these things have been something we've suspected for a while.

We decided that we'd go ahead and give medication a try. Right now we're trying Daytrana. We gave it a weekend trial, and it went as we had hoped. She was the same girl, same personality, just a bit better focused. We don't want a zombie. We don't want an anxious worry wart. We want just a bit more focus in school, and when we've got the reading issues more under control, we'll give it a shot without the meds.

Another bright spot - she didn't have any problems eating, and she went to bed on time.  

Here's to hoping this will work for us.

Good morning 2010

I've got a busy year planned. Hopefully I'll have a chance to keep up with the latest rantings and ravings, but if I don't, there's a good reason for it. I've got a contract in the mail for a project that will eat up most of my time from now until June. So it doesn't mean I've fallen off the planet. It means I'm working on paying projects for a bit.

Things that take money are also underway. We're scheduling a tentative potty party for the boy in February. It's a bit odd to pay $70 an hour to have someone come out and feed him juice and clap when he pees, but we're just stuck at this point. It would really really really be nice if he could not be in diapers in Kindergarten. Really nice. He's never going to be a neurotypical kid, but man, his chances of any sort of positive social interaction in school will be so much better if he doesn't start the year by earning the nickname "Poopypants."