In This Edition
TACA News
4. Have a Happy & Delicious Thanksgiving!
General News
5. Daily Autism Updates for Families
6. The number of adults with autism is growing
7. Boy with Asperger's Syndrome Rides Subway for 11 Days
Vaccine News
Are you receiving TACA's regional newsletters with information on local TACA meetings and events? We can't send it to you if we don't know where you are! Please Join TACA (it's free) or update your membership to include your location. If you include your mailing address, you'll receive TACA's print newsletter, Talking Autism.
Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) provides general information of interest to the autism community. The information comes from a variety of sources and TACA does not independently verify any of it. The views expressed herein are not necessarily TACA’s. TACA does not engage in lobbying or other political activities.
November 2009 #2
Here is your update on TACA (Talk About Curing Autism). If you are new to our site... WELCOME! This newsletter is produced two to four times each month.
We are an autism education and support group. We want to make this e-newsletter informative for you. As always, contact us your thoughts and/or questions so we can improve it.
We focus on parent information and support, parent mentoring, dietary intervention, the latest in medical research, special education law, reviews of the latest treatments, and many other topics relating to autism. Our main goal is to build our community so we can connect, share and support each other.
Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) provides general information of interest to the autism community. The information comes from a variety of sources and TACA does not independently verify any of it. The views expressed herein are not necessarily TACA’s.
1. Find a TACA Meeting
Come to a TACA Meeting!
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, CDs and DVDs 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.
2. Join Us for Coffee Talk!
Come and receive some extra support or to chat all topics related to autism and meet other TACA families at these informal, monthly get-togethers.
›
Birmingham, AL
› Huntsville, AL
› Bakersfield, CA
› Burbank, CA
› Long Beach, CA
› Orange County, CA
› Redlands, CA
› Visalia, CA
› Indianapolis, IN
› Glen Burnie, MD
› Gaithersburg, MD
› Hamilton, NJ
› Las Vegas, NV
› Virginia Beach, VA
› Madison, WI
3. Adopt-a-Family Holiday Campaign – We Need Your Help!
We are very excited to announce our fourth annual Adopt-a-Family Holiday Campaign to help autism families in need. This campaign is open to residents of the United States who have a child affected by autism living with them.
How does a holiday giving program help families affected by autism? Read DeDe’s story.
4. Have a Happy & Delicious Thanksgiving!
The first Thanksgiving after beginning the GFCFSF diet can be stressful and uncertain. Have no fear - help is here! Here are some frequently asked questions to help you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
How Do I Know If a Turkey is GFCFSF?
Does GFCFSF Whipped Cream Exist?
Do I Have to Make Separate Dinners?
What Do You Mean “No Jellied Cranberry in the Can?"
Tips for Preventing or Dealing with Sensory Overload
5. Daily Autism Updates for Families
All news related to autism:
For daily updates to all autism legislative issues: ChangeforAutism.org
AgeofAutism.com6. The number of adults with autism is growing
The numbers are staggering. One in every 150 babies in the U.S. is now born with autism. The rate for boys is even higher. But what happens to those children when they grow up?
Beth Meyer is a hard worker. Beth has always been good with her hands. But her autism affects her ability to interact with people.
Vicki Obee-Hilty is executive director of Bittersweet Farms in Whitehouse where the focus is on adults with autism.
"It is not an institution. It's not where you've just taken a group of people and isolated them. This is a viable farm."
A farm Beth and 29 other adults call home. Beth has an apartment there and a paying job.
Phil Bartus goes for the day program. He has his own apartment off-site, with some help. Phil makes furniture in the woodshop and is also a ham radio operator.
Phil and Beth are both highly functioning. Yet many autistic adults are unable to work. They live with family or in group homes, and their numbers are growing. In the twenty-six years since Bittersweet opened, autism diagnoses have soared nearly 1,000 percent.
Vicki says, "These kids are coming through the system. You're seeing a bubble in the numbers now. Parents now have teenagers and they're saying 'what is the next step'?"
The next step for Melanie Arend was her first job. Melanie got the job through the Autism Model School where she attends classes.
Tom Peters from George F. Peter Son Inc says, "It's pretty simple, she shows up on time, shows up when she's supposed to be here and she shows up with a good attitude."
Melanie has become a valued employee; getting her name on the marquee for her 17th birthday and earning a steady paycheck.
She says working gives her a sense of accomplishment.
Patrick Sabin is Melanie's classmate. He's also seventeen.
Patrick's mother Barb Sabin says, "He would never grow up and move out. I knew that would never happen. It wouldn't be a so-called normal life like everybody else. It was pretty devastating to find that out. I think you just go through a grieving process like everything else. Then you just accept it and try to move on."
Classes there teach life and job skills. But those who provide adult services say there aren't nearly enough.
"To be able to live and have a job, for many people, it's going to take partnership with society, with their communities to make that happen", says Vicki. "It is possible. I'm very optimistic that is possible. But those for whom that are unattainable, families are going to need support."
Experts say people with autism need lifelong support. The growing number of cases means our country will eventually have to fund more services for autistic adults.
7. Boy with Asperger's Syndrome Rides Subway for 11 Days
Mari Sheibley's FlickrA 13-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome—a form of autism that often causes difficulty with social interaction—spent 11 days in the subway system last month. In a heartbreaking Times article, Francisco Hernandez Jr. tells how he took refuge in the subway for over a week because he got in trouble in class and "didn't want anyone to scream at me" at home. He says nobody spoke to him the entire time he rode the trains, and when the reporter asked him if he "saw any larger meaning in that," Hernandez replied, "Nobody really cares about the world and about people."
Hernandez subsisted on snacks bought on subway platforms and spent a lot of time sleeping, using his backpack as a pillow as he rode the trains from one end of the line to the next. "At some point I just stopped feeling anything," he tells the Times. His mother, a Mexican immigrant named Marisela García, says the police didn't make the case a priority, "Maybe because you might not understand how to manage the situation, because you don’t speak English very well, because of your legal status, they don’t pay you a lot of attention."
But the NYPD insists everything was done to find the boy, and he was eventually discovered by a transit officer who recognized him. He returned to school a week later, and though doctors recommend that Francisco be transferred to a small school for children with learning disorders, his mother says school officials told her "he was testing fine and did not need to be transferred." She says, "I don’t know, as a mother, how to get to his heart, to find out what hurts." A stack of signs she made to spread the word about his disappearance remain stacked in the corner because she's afraid she'll need them again.
8. US panel votes against new bug-based flu vaccine
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
BETHESDA, Maryland, Nov 19 (Reuters) - More safety data would be needed before a new type of influenza vaccine made in insect cells should get approval, federal advisers said on Thursday.
A divided committee advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the new Protein Sciences Corp FluBlok vaccine appears effective among adults under age 50 but said the company has not shown that it is safe enough to be approved.
The vaccine is made using genetically engineered pieces of flu virus inserted into caterpillar cells, instead of the current method using whole virus grown in chicken eggs.
The U.S. government is struggling to vaccinate the population against H1N1, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates has infected 22 million Americans and killed 3,900 since April.
Fewer than 50 million doses of H1N1 vaccine are now available.
Some panel members were concerned about some side-effects seen in people who volunteered to test it, such as a woman who had Bell's palsy, a temporary paralysis of the face, that flared up an hour after she was vaccinated.
"I don't feel the safety database is large enough," said Pamela McInnes of the National Institutes of Health. She said the vaccine is a new formulation and so the burden of proof is higher than simply changing the influenza strain from one season to another.
"I feel the safety data do not raise significant red flags," disagreed Dr. Jack Stapleton of the University of Iowa.
"What we are dealing with, rock bottom, is a pretty mediocre vaccine,' said Dr. Theodore Eickhoff, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a panel member.
The vaccine is made using cells from a caterpillar and would be the first influenza vaccine made using cell cultures approved in the United States.
The FDA usually follows the recommendations of its advisory committees.
The company says it could produce a vaccine much more quickly than traditional egg-based techniques -- in two months, versus five to six months for vaccines made using eggs.
The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee said the data show the vaccine works well enough in adults aged up to 50, but six of 11 members said studies do not show the vaccine works safely.
Connecticut-based Protein Sciences, a closely held biotech, won a $35 million federal contract in June to make vaccines for pandemic influenza. The contract could be expanded over five years for a total of nearly $150 million.
Protein Sciences tested a formulation for seasonal influenza vaccine, but it could easily be changed to cover pandemic H1N1 swine flu.
