TACA holds monthly meetings in many locations throughout the United States that feature educational speakers on important topics and allow family members to connect with one another and stay on top of the latest information in the autism world. Each TACA group maintains a resource library of the latest autism books and tapes that can be checked out by members at no charge.

Check out our group listings: each contains information on TACA meetings and special events as well as a contact form.

Are you wondering what happens at a TACA meeting? Watch our video.

With just a few steps you can make a world of difference for children with autism and their families. 

• Request a free fundraising kit (call 949-640-4401 or contact Roxanne Hall).

• Launch a personal fundraising web page at www.firstgiving.com/tacanow. Send it out to all your contacts.

• Use the campaign tools that come in your kit to help raise funds and awareness.

• See your fundraising totals rise.

• Enjoy our gratitude (and incentives)! Check out this year’s great incentives.

• Know that you have made an impact on families living with autism.

View Real Help Now Family & Friends Campaign Presentation

Read Letter from TACA Executive Director, Lisa Ackerman

Orange County, CA
Saturday, June 27, 2009, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

After receiving the diagnosis of autism for a beloved child (or children), parents typically struggle as they search through various resources to locate information needed to help their child the fastest. The goal of the one-day New Parent Orientation is to provide parents and caretakers the “jump start” they need at the beginning of their journey from parents who have “been there, done that.” In addition to sage advice, parents who attend will receive: an overview of beginning therapies and biomedical intervention, where to go for what information, and recommended first steps. The seminar will be given by experienced parents who volunteer their time in providing the education new parents need.

Who should Attend?
This one-day seminar is geared for parents and caretakers of children affected by autism. Content will be provided in an “overview” presentation with web and book resource information for additional details. This seminar is geared to parents and caretakers new to the autism journey (less than 18 months) who have not yet started a behavioral/educational program or biomedical testing and interventions.

Register Online

For daily updates to all autism legislative issues: ChangeforAutism.org

President Barack Obama on Friday appointed Dr. Thomas Frieden as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, turning to New York City's health commissioner to deal with the swine flu outbreak and other major health issues.

Frieden has served as commissioner for the past seven years, where he led a campaign to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, boosted the number of New Yorkers getting HIV tests and helped to distribute millions of free condoms.

In a statement announcing Frieden's appointment, Obama said the new CDC chief had been a "leader in the fight for health care reform, and his experiences confronting public health challenges in our country and abroad will be essential in this new role."

Frieden will inherit a looming decision on how best to manage a swine flu outbreak, including whether or how to produce a swine flu vaccine. The virus has infected 6,673 people in 35 countries.

The White House said Frieden will begin at the CDC in early June.

Health experts say the CDC needs to make immediate improvements in employee morale and organization as the Obama administration works to overhaul the national health care system.

"Dr. Frieden is an expert in preparedness and response to health emergencies, and has been at the forefront of the fight against heart disease, cancer and obesity, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS, and in the establishment of electronic health records," Obama said in the statement.

Frieden, 48, is expected to take office next month. His appointment does not require Senate confirmation.

He will succeed Dr. Julie Gerberding, who resigned in January. Dr. Richard Besser has served as acting head of the Atlanta-based CDC in recent months.

The White House announcement said Besser, who has led the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response for the past four years, would return to that position.

Managing Editor's Note: On Saturday night at the Autism One dinner, young Sam Debold turned on the charm (and every tear duct in the room) with his muscial performance. Here is Dr. Andrew Wakefield's introduction of Sam. You can see Sam's complete performance, including the intro, on the other side of the post jump. Just click down.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have just a very, very small role tonight and that is to introduce someone that I first met some years ago in Detroit. He’s a Red Wings fan. And a when I met Sam Debold through my great friend Vicky Debold, his mother, Sam was profoundly autistic. And back then when I knew very little about this disease, I wondered quite what the prospects for Sam were. And I’ve been following his progress over the years and Sam has been doing extremely well.

And then I received the other day a YouTube video of Sam which his mother instructed me to watch of Sam playing Hotel California - he’d only just heard it, I believe, for the first time that day and it was one of the most extraordinary things I’d ever seen. And so it is a great great privilege for me and without any further adieu for me to introduce Sam Debold.

I should just say that Sam is dressed in a way that makes me look under-dressed. I forgive him for that. Sam, over to you man.

How Long Must We Sing This Song?
Vicky Debold, PhD, RN

In 1983, the band U2 released an album titled War which includes Sunday Bloody Sunday, a song widely considered to be one of the most powerful political protest songs of all times. For anyone who doesn’t know the song’s history, it captures the anguish of an observer who witnessed Northern Irish civil rights protesters being fired upon by the British army (lyrics below).

For those of us within the vaccine-injured communities who are fighting on behalf of our children for the basic human right to make voluntary, informed vaccination decisions that are based on sound science rather than ideology, it is a battle. And it is personal. Like the victims of the civil war described in Sunday Bloody Sunday, many lives have been lost, our families torn apart, and everyday there’s unbelievable news where indeed, “fact” is fiction and TV becomes reality.

For anyone fortunate enough to be able to attend this weekend’s outstanding Autism One conference and Saturday night’s dinner, they heard my 11 year-old son, Sam, sing Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Sam’s story is a common one these days. He was a healthy, happy, normally developing baby until 15 months-of-age when he experienced a significant physical and social regression after receiving seven vaccines during his well-baby visit. The following day, he was unable to stand up in his crib, seemed “dazed”, was ataxic and lost interest in walking which lasted for two months, developed chronic diarrhea and progressively lost his ability to speak and all interest in socializing with his family.

In hindsight, I think he suffered from vaccine-induced ADEM (HERE) but it wasn’t diagnosed or treated. In 2000, at 3 years-of-age Sam was profoundly autistic, non-verbal and mostly disconnected from the world and his developmental pediatrician told me that he would never be able to go to school and would probably be institutionalized. Even so, he consistently would come running any time he heard the Jeopardy theme song. As a result, we started music therapy and that’s how he learned to play piano. If you’re interested, here's Dr. Wakefield's intro and Sam's first two songs (Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter and Hotel California):

And here's Sam's closing, song, "Rhapsody in Blue" by George Gershwin.

Although I’m very proud of Sam’s courage and what he has achieved, I’m even prouder of the autism community and more broadly, the vaccine-injured communities. Without the support, hard work and dedication of these communities, I doubt Sam would have delivered the amazing performance that he did. I happen to think that there’s something rather poignant and ironic about an autistic child soulfully wailing, “I can’t close my eyes and make it go away. How long must we sing this song? How long?”

In contrast to the song’s lyrics, the vaccine-injured community is heeding the battle call. And it’s not just the autism community. As a longtime volunteer for the National Vaccine Information Center (HERE) which has been fighting for vaccine risk awareness and informed consent for nearly three decades and answered thousands of calls from grief-stricken parents the world over including those of previously healthy teenaged girls who are devastated by Gardasil-induced injuries and death, I know that there are many more lining up to for fight for their rights.

And to all who either deny the existence of “broken bodies strewn across the dead end streets” or claim it is only a coincidence that individuals can be seriously harmed by vaccines --- we know that this is not true. These are people whom we love and their lives count.

If this issue is something you care about and would like to hear Sam sing Sunday Bloody Sunday, please come to Washington, DC on October 2–4, 2009 for the upcoming NVIC 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination (HERE).

Sunday Bloody Sunday
U2, 1983

I can’t believe the news today
Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away
How long...
How long must we sing this song?
How long? How long... (Read the full lyrics HERE.)

Dr. Debold has worked in the health care field for over 25 years and currently works as a consultant performing health services research and policy analysis related to patient safety. She has worked as a health policy analyst for the U.S. Congress, Physician Payment Review Commission, Michigan Health and Safety Coalition, and the Michigan State Commission on Patient Safety. Additionally, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and an Associate Professor and Director of the Health Systems Management Program at the University of Detroit Mercy. Her doctoral degree is from the University of Michigan - School of Public Health (Health Services Organization and Policy) and School of Nursing (Health Systems Administration). She was a Regent's Fellow and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in health systems research. She serves as an Executive Board member for The Coalition for SafeMinds.

"Caution: Graphic Content:"

For children diagnosed with ADD and bi-polar disorder, Risperdal is widely used for treatment. As Sharyl Attkisson reports, the side effects are putting them at serious risk.

Watch Video Online

I received official word from a Merck representative that the company plans to resume production of the separate M-M-R component vaccines. They anticipate these becoming available in 2011 (no actual month specified). This is good news for those parents who want the vaccines separated, but the two year wait will leave some kids unprotected. In my MMR blog from January I discuss all the ins and outs of deciding whether or not to do the full MMR. Delaying it definitely puts children at risk of catching these diseases. Parents have to weigh all the information and decide what to do. The good news is that it looks like the separate shots will be back. I will certainly let you know as soon as they become available in 2011.

Dr. Bob Sears

Family faces uncertainty in dealing with autism. With all the questions swirling around about the causes and treatment of autism, Tim and Rose Ziegeweid of Eau Claire know this much for sure: Their only child didn't say her first words until three weeks after starting an alternative therapy to remove mercury from her body. Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, Wisconsin.

By Eric Lindquist
Leader-Telegram staff

With all the questions swirling around about the causes and treatment of autism, Tim and Rose Ziegeweid of Eau Claire know this much for sure: Their only child didn't say her first words until three weeks after starting an alternative therapy to remove mercury from her body.

Sheryl Ziegeweid, diagnosed with autism at 18 months, was 7 years old at the time.

The Ziegeweids also recall Sheryl's development taking a step backward after receiving infant immunizations at 6 and 12 months - regression they attribute to a form of mercury in those shots.

The potential vaccine-autism link burst onto the world stage in 1998, when British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a study claiming to show that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine caused autism in some children. Autism spectrum disorders are a group of developmental disabilities defined by significant impairments in social interaction and communication.

Public health officials, however, insist study after study has refuted the alleged connection between autism and vaccines, including the widely disseminated theory that the disease can be triggered by the ethyl mercury included in the thimerosal previously used as a preservative in many childhood shots.

A statement on the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site is direct and to the point: "There is no convincing scientific evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines."

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., agreed in three critical test cases in February.

Yet the controversy endures, thanks in large part to the anecdotal experiences of families such as the Ziegeweids, the persistence of activists such as Anne Dachel of Chippewa Falls and the viral way information - both true and false - spreads on the Internet.

Dachel, co-owner of Think-And-Say Tutoring in Chippewa Falls and the mother of an adult child with a high-functioning form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome, is on the front lines in the battle over the cause of the so-called autism epidemic. As media editor for a Web site called Age of Autism, she monitors autism-related media coverage, stays in contact with many of the debate's major players and posts hard-hitting blog entries.

Rising caseload
At the heart of the debate is the question of what is causing the huge spike in the number of children with autism spectrum diseases. The latest estimate by the CDC puts that rate at one in every 150 children in the United States, up from as low as one in 10,000 in the 1980s.

Some public health officials maintain most of that increase is the result of more awareness and better diagnosis, but vaccine skeptics argue the numbers represent a real and alarming change, one they suggest started, not coincidentally, with the rising number of recommended childhood immunizations about two decades ago.

Dr. Darold Treffert, a former president of the Wisconsin Medical Society and one of the state's autism research pioneers, believes both sides have some truth on their side.

"Some of the increase is no doubt due to what we call diagnostic creep, but beyond that there does seem to be a real increase," said Treffert, who retired from active practice five years ago but remains a clinical professor at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

It doesn't take a biochemical scientist to recognize that the number of children with autism has skyrocketed in the past two decades, said Boyd Haley, a retired University of Kentucky chemistry department chairman and an outspoken critic of thimerosal in vaccines.

"Ask anyone over 30 how many autistic children they knew growing up," he said. "The answer inevitably will be none or almost none."

The change is evident in a CDC report indicating that the number of 6- to 17-year-old children classified as having an autism spectrum disorder in public special education programs increased more than ninefold from 22,664 in 1994 to 211,610 in 2006.

The stakes are enormous, Dachel stressed, because eventually this generation of "poisoned" children will grow up and then society will have to find a way to pay for the extensive care they will require.

"There will be huge costs down the road," she said, citing a Harvard study that estimated the lifetime costs to care for a person with autism at $3.2 million.

It's easy to understand why parents are so desperate for answers, Treffert said, as autism can be an overwhelming and costly affliction for families to deal with.

The search for a cause has been going on for decades, he said, recalling that in the 1960s a popular theory advanced by some psychologists was that cold, uncaring mothers prompted some children to retreat into autism. While the so-called refrigerator mother theory since has been discredited, it's an example of people's eagerness to find a reason, any reason, for the abnormality.

Even when he did his own study of Wisconsin children with autism (then diagnosed as "childhood schizophrenia") in 1970, Treffert recalled, parents in late-onset cases often pointed to some sentinel event - perhaps a near drowning or tonsil removal - that in their minds accounted for the disease.

"There is a natural tendency on the part of parents to seek out and blame some event or procedure for the onset of such startling regression in a child who has otherwise been developing normally," Treffert said.

Sue Gallagher, co-president of the Chippewa Valley Autism Society, said such a response is understandable. Regarding the Ziegeweids, she said, "Tim is a dad who's very, very, very frustrated. You have to feel for him because you know he only wants what's best for his child."

No longer an alternative
For the Ziegeweids, the controversy hit home in November when the state Department of Health Services ruled that its Family Support Program no longer would pay for certain alternative autism treatments considered "questionable" or "experimental."

The decision meant the state stopped funding the chelation therapy that Sheryl, now 14, had been undergoing for seven years and that her parents believe was responsible for their daughter speaking and making eye contact for the first time. The family can't possibly afford to continue the treatment, which costs more than $1,000 a month, Tim Ziegeweid said.

Chelation involves taking chemicals known to bond with heavy metals, including mercury, with the goal of pulling them out of the body. In March, when the Ziegeweids still had their full array of chelators, an entire shelf of one kitchen cabinet was devoted to the products. Sheryl took 20 doses of the pills, liquids and creams every morning and 10 in the evening.

Two months later, the stockpile has nearly run out, and the Ziegeweids are rationing the remaining products in half doses and experimenting with over-the-counter substitutes such as cilantro oil that are purported to help with heavy metal detoxification.

So far, they haven't seen any signs of regression, although they remain anxious about that possibility, considering their belief that Sheryl is among a small percentage of children without the natural ability to excrete toxic metals and thus likely to need chelation forever.

Representatives of the Eau Claire County Department of Human Services, which administers the Family Support Program locally, acknowledged Sheryl made progress while using chelation and other therapies but said they understood the policy change.

With chelation considered experimental and reports of some children suffering serious side effects and even dying from various forms of the therapy, the state opted to fund only treatments that have been proven effective, said Kay Evanson, a Family Support social worker.

Dachel, who counts Sheryl among her tutoring clients, considers the policy change more political than medical and said she knows of many children who have improved or even lost their autism diagnosis after undergoing chelation and other alternative treatments.

The National Institute of Mental Health canceled a planned study of chelation's effectiveness last year in response to concerns about the safety of testing it on children.

With that in mind, it also becomes a question of using taxpayer money responsibly, Evanson said.

Bill Stein, social work supervisor for the county's Department of Human Services, said he believes the Ziegeweids were the only Eau Claire County family affected by the tightening of the funding guidelines related to chelation and noted that most Family Support clients seem happy with the conventional therapy received by their children on the autism spectrum.

"We work with these families as best we can because we know many of them really have their plates full dealing with a child with autism," Stein said.

Stein gets no argument on that point from Tim Ziegeweid, who described his daughter as having no writing ability, a difficult time adjusting to schedule changes and severely limited communication skills.

In a visit to the Ziegeweids' north side home, where the furniture backs in the living room are all lined with Sheryl's stuffed animals, she wouldn't speak other than to respond to her father's questions with one- and two-word answers: "What's your name? Sheryl. What school do you go to? DeLong. What's your teacher's name? Mrs. Sarazen."

"She can't tell you what she did yesterday," Tim Ziegeweid said of his daughter, noting that she often pursues the same activities - making sticker signs while watching "Deal or No Deal" is a favorite - and makes the same comments over and over.

The Ziegeweids initially heard about chelation from a co-worker of Tim's mother whose autistic grandson started speaking after beginning the treatments.

"We felt very uneasy about it at first, but at the time we were looking at the possibility of having a child who was nonverbal for her whole life," Tim Ziegeweid said. "Given that option, we reached for what seemed like the only life preserver out there."

Public health risk
The fear, among health officials, is that what they consider to be unwarranted hysteria over vaccine safety will lead to lower immunization rates and outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases that largely have been eradicated.

"In general, the studies that have been done by the federal government have all shown clearly no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism," said Richard Thoune, director of the Eau Claire City-County Health Department. "We're going to continue to err on the side of science. We recommend people follow the vaccination schedule."

The potential return of serious vaccine-preventable diseases poses a much greater threat to public health than largely discredited theories about a link between thimerosal and the rising incidence of autism, Thoune said.

"Part of the problem is that many parents don't remember what whooping cough was like. I'm old enough to remember green or yellow or purple cards on houses because the people inside were quarantined," Treffert said. "Vaccine-preventable diseases are not innocuous. There's a reason we've been trying to wipe these things out."

The numbers tell the story of the achievements of vaccines: Smallpox, diphtheria, measles and polio alone killed an average total of nearly 750,000 Americans a year in the years before vaccines were developed for each, but that number has been reduced to fewer than 100 annually, according to the CDC.

An increase in people opting out of vaccinations for their children in other parts of the world and pockets of the United States has led to some disease outbreaks - a trend public health officials are working to avoid.

So far, the vaccination rate in Wisconsin has remained among the highest in the nation, said Dan Hopfensperger, director of the Wisconsin Vaccination Program.

"We are quite aware of the complications that can arise from vaccine-preventable diseases," Hopfensperger said, "so we want to make sure people are aware that the science shows us that vaccines are safe but that the diseases they prevent are pretty dangerous."

The great debate
Such warnings don't deter Dachel. She remains convinced vaccines play a role in autism because she remembers her own son getting sick after each set of shots and has heard too many similar parent testimonials to believe otherwise.

She doesn't profess to fully understand the link but is "absolutely sure" it exists and should be studied further. It could be from exposure to thimerosal, either in utero through flu shots for pregnant mothers or in the trace amounts in today's vaccines, or possibly from the MMR problems originally identified in the British study or from the cumulative toll of the rising number of recommended childhood vaccines (currently about 50 by age 6).

As for the lack of scientific proof, Dachel said, the pharmaceutical industry and top U.S. health organizations have a vested monetary interest in not acknowledging a connection.

Haley, the retired University of Kentucky professor and one of Dachel's key allies, put it this way: "The people saying there is no connection are the ones who caused the problem by making all of these vaccines mandatory. The CDC made a big mistake, and they don't want to admit it."

The self-described "laboratory rat" said his suspicions about an association between vaccines and autism are fueled by a combination of science and common sense. Among his main arguments:

- The autism surge began between 1988 and 1992, which suggests children in all 50 states must have been exposed to some environmental toxin at about that time. He suspects an expansion of the mandatory vaccine program.

- The toxin has to be something that strikes males much more than females because the CDC says autism is four times more likely to occur in boys than in girls. Mercury, which he called "one of the most neurotoxic substances known to man," is the only thing known to do that, he said.

After concerns about thimerosal in vaccines took off, the federal government responded in 2001 by ordering that thimerosal be removed from or reduced to trace amounts in all vaccines given to children 6 and younger. The only exception is for flu shots, and even those are available in a thimerosal-free version, Hopfensperger said.

The movement away from thimerosal was more to alleviate fears than to acknowledge any risks, Hopfensperger said, although in retrospect it may have led to the strongest evidence yet that thimerosal in vaccines has nothing to do with autism.

"If there was a link and you removed thimerosal from vaccines, as we have, there should be a significant drop in autism cases," he said. "But that has not occurred."

Seeking answers
Treffert, the former Wisconsin Medical Society president, said it likely will take a long time to diffuse the perception of a link between vaccines and autism.

"What would really help, of course, would be if we could find a definitive answer for what does cause autism," he said.

With a rise in autism and all sorts of congenital abnormalities, Treffert said the culprit most likely is environmental and could be related to pollution, widespread use of the plastic additive chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, or even discarded medications that enter the water supply.

Finding the answers as soon as possible offers the promise of providing health benefits beyond just stemming the rise in autism.

"If this were just an academic argument, that would be one thing, but it's not," Treffert said. "It means that some people aren't immunizing their kids, and that creates problems for all of us."

Lindquist can be reached at 833-9209, 800-236-7077 or eric.lindquist@ecpc.com.

Flu vaccine (trivalent inactivated flu vaccine—TIV) has unknown effects on asthmatics.

"The concerns that vaccination maybe associated with asthma exacerbations have been disproved with multiple studies in the past, but the vaccine's effectiveness has not been well-established," said Avni Joshi, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. "This study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the TIV in children overall, as well as the children with asthma, to prevent influenza-related hospitalization."

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend annual influenza vaccination for all children aged six months to 18 years. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (3rd revision) also recommends annual flu vaccination of asthmatic children older than six months.

In order to determine whether the vaccine was effective in reducing the number of hospitalizations that all children, and especially the ones with asthma, faced over eight consecutive flu seasons, the researchers conducted a cohort study of 263 children who were evaluated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota from six months to 18 years of age, each of whom had had laboratory-confirmed influenza between 1996 to 2006. The investigators determined who had and had not received the flu vaccine, their asthma status and who did and did not require hospitalization. Records were reviewed for each subject with influenza-related illness for flu vaccination preceding the illness and hospitalization during that illness.

They found that children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization, as compared to children who had not received the vaccine. In asthmatic children, there was a significantly higher risk of hospitalization in subjects who received the TIV, as compared to those who did not (p= 0.006). But no other measured factors—such as insurance plans or severity of asthma—appeared to affect risk of hospitalization.

"While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations," said Dr. Joshi. "More studies are needed to assess not only the immunogenicity, but also the efficacy of different influenza vaccines in asthmatic subjects."

Adapted from materials provided by American Thoracic Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.