I made the mistake of cramming all of my kids’ check-ups into one week. What a bad idea! So on a lighter note, a new study on children and healthcare…

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

If you haven’t seen this already, you should read it. Department of Defense is taking some interesting stances on autism and vaccines. Also – the occurence of autism in military families is 1 in 88. So is someone playing with the numbers at CDC (1 in 150) or is there really a higher rate among military families?

“There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can’t compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don’t give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you – yer kid is NOT autistic. He’s just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.”

Leary’s delightful book is called Why We Suck: a Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid. I can’t believe this guy actually does charity work on behalf of fire fighters… Some hero he is.

From the LA Times: “In Vanity Fair, Leary mentions the autism chapter as his “favorite” and hopes that autism activist Jenny McCarthy will picket his book tour. “That would be really good for me,” Leary told VF interviewer George Wayne. “It will help sell more books.”

What a really classy guy. I occassionally watch Rescue Me… guess I won’t be doing that any longer.

- Claudine

Hearing on KID-SAFE CHEMICALS ACT
Held Tomorrow – Sept. 16, 2008
CALL COMMITTEE MEMBERS TODAY
URGE THEM TO ATTEND THE KID-SAFE HEARING AND SUPPORT THE BILL

The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is holding a hearing on EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Efforts., this Tuesday, September 16th, at 10 am.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=496b9602-802a-23ad-4bd5-51ca373b22eb

If your Senator is a member of the EPW Committee, please call and urge them to attend this important hearing on the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act (members listed below). If your Senator is not a member, you can still call and ask your Senator to send a staff member to the hearing.

You, too, can watch or listen to the hearing via the Senate web site at:  http://epw.senate.gov/public/.

Kid-Safe would reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and ensure that chemicals are safe for the fetus, babies and children before they are put into the products we consume and use every day.

Babies are now polluted with hundreds of industrial chemicals in their blood. Recent studies have also shown that infants are born with as many as 300 industrial chemicals in their bodies. Some of these chemicals have been linked to a variety of adverse health effects including childhood cancer, obesity, autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, infertility, and birth defects.

TSCA is more than 30 years old and is so weak that was not able to ban asbestos, one of the most deadly materials known to man.  Recent concerns about chemicals in baby bottles and children’s toys are a direct result of a failed TSCA that does not give the EPA the tools it needs to protect the public health and ensure orderly regulation of chemicals that present legitimate health threats, particularly to children.

The Kid-Safe Chemicals Act would change this. Kid-Safe requires:

• chemicals to be proven safe  for infants, children and other vulnerable populations in order to get on the market, or stay on the market;
• expedited EPA to review of chemicals found in people, particularly those found in cord blood;
• health and safety data on chemicals to be made publicly available.

We believe Kid-Safe is one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress could pass. Please call and urge your Senator to attend this important hearing and thank Chair Boxer for holding this hearing.

For more information on Kid-Safe, go to:  http://www.ewg.org/kidsafe — this site will give you a summary and copy of the bill, health statisticcs, news on kids and their helath, and some tips for making your kids safer.

Committee Members
Democrats
Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA-Chair)*      202.224.3553
Sen. Max Baucus (MT)                     202.224.2651
Sen. Benjamin Cardin (MD)             202.224.4524
Sen. Thmas Carper (DE)                   202.224.2441
Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY)                 202. 224.2441
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN)               202.224.3244
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)          202.224.2921

Republicans
Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN)         202.224.4944
Sen. Kit Bond (MO)                     202.224.5721
Sen. John Barrasso (WY)             202.224.6441
Sen. Larry Craig (ID)                   202.224.2752
Sen. James Inhofe (OK)              202.224.4721
Sen. Jonny Isakson (GA)             202.224.3643
Sen. David Vitter (LA)                202.224.4623
Sen. George Voinovich (OH)      202.224.3353
Sen. John Warner (VA)              202.224.2023

Independents
Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT)               202.224.4041
Sen. Bernard Sanders (VT)            202.224.5141

]]> http://artnowforautism.com/2008/09/kid-safe-chemicals-bill/feed/ 0 http://artnowforautism.com/2008/08/at-the-movies/ http://artnowforautism.com/2008/08/at-the-movies/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:33:51 +0000 Claudine http://artnowforautism.com/blog/?p=41 Autism Society of America and AMC Host Sensory Friendly Films
AMC and ASA have teamed up to begin testing a pilot program to bring families affected by autism a special opportunity to enjoy their favorite films in a safe and accepting environment on a monthly basis. “Sensory Friendly Films” are premiering across the country this month with a special showing of the new animated film Star Wars: Clone Wars. Read more at ASA’s web site…

(Over the summer we have gone to a couple of these sensory friendly showings. It is so great! My son on the spectrum has sound sensitivity so going to a regular showing is difficult. Sound is turned down and lights are turned up a little. So it is nice to see that more theaters will be doing this.)

Using the R-word
Why do some people think it is okay to make fun of adults and children with special needs? Ben Stiller’s latest movie, Tropic Thunder, includes a film inside the film which has the special needs community up in arms. Using the word retard is offensive, Mr. Stiller! Please read the commentary by Timothy Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, on why you shouldn’t see the film.

You can also read more on Patricia Bauer’s Disability News blog.

“I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ “

I wish that was all it was. I wish that if I was a “better” parent my son would have friends and be “normal”. I wish that the simple cure for autism epidemic was “better” parents because that would be easy. But it isn’t that easy. Maybe some radio executive will make him go to a school for kids with autism or even just visit someone’s house and see the reality. Well, maybe we shouldn’t let this clown near children. The next thing he will learn is don’t mess with the special ed parents. Some of his sponsors (AFLAC) are already pulling their ads from his show.

Visit A-CHAMP’s web site for how to contact Mr. Savage and more importantly his sponsors

• Tim Sharp and the World of Laser Beakman. I love the piece called Mowvember – It reminds me of my house every Fall.
• Jonathan Lerman I think I first saw the work of this artist on MTV. His portraits are so expressive.
• Jessica Park She creates very colorful works that remind me of another Art Now for Autism artist, Stephen Wiltshire… mostly because they both do detailed architecture.
• Noah Erenberg will be participating in Art Now for Autism for the second year in a row. I love the way he incorporates words in his pieces… since I frequently do that, too!

Although not an artist with autism, I found this exhibit by Kevin Connolly to be really interesting. Kevin was born without legs and explores how people stare. We occasionally deal with staring strangers when we take our son out in the world. When our son has meltdowns or acts “strangely” in public, we try to avoid looking around as usually there is someone who can’t help but stare at us. The Rolling Exhibition

Let’s keep the momentum of Jenny McCarthy’s and Jim Carrey’s Green Our Vaccines Rally going by getting your member of the House of Representatives to sign on as a sponsor of three excellent vaccine reform bills already in Congress.

Representatives Dave Weldon, MD, (Republican-Florida) and Carolyn Maloney (Democrat-New York) along with other thoughtful Representatives have sponsored three bills that move us toward greener vaccines.

Please send a message to your member of the House of Representatives and ask them to sign on as sponsors of the following crucial legislation. Insist that your representative sign on as a sponsor. These bills need solid, public support now, not a weak promise to vote in favor of it if the bill every makes it to the floor.

House Resolution 881, Mercury-Free Vaccine Act of 2007 would ban the use of mercury-containing vaccine in pregnant women and children younger than 6. It would ban the use of any vaccine with more than 1 microgram of mercury for the rest of the population.

House Resolution 1973, Vaccine Safety and Public Confidence Act of 2007,  This bill would create a new agency completely separate form the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to evaluate the safety of vaccines. This would stop the fox from guarding the henhouse. Prospective employees who had worked for the CDC of vaccine manufacturers I the prior 5 years would be banned for working at the agency.

House Resolution 2832, Comprehensive Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Un-Vaccinated Populations Act of 2007, This bill would have the National Institute of Health do the obvious, but never performed, analysis of the health outcomes with vaccinated and un-vaccinated groups.

These three bills would make important steps to a vaccine policy that puts the safety and health of children first.  But they will only happen with your active support. Please click on the link below which will take you to the A-CHAMP website where you can send an email to your Representative and get these bills moving.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/63j9ey to send an email now!