OSLERSWEB.COM

I am a less-than-nimble blogger. Short sentences, short paragraphs and fast endings. One idea, not several. One topic, one thought, over and out. I consider my efforts works in progress.

For instance, I’ve been trying to write about the international medical conference held in London on May 29th ever since I returned to the U.S. at the end of the first week in June. I have at least four drafts stored, together comprising so many pages I can’t bear to count them.

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I can’t possibly report everything that happened, or what everyone said, or everything I thought about the city of London and the great nation of England and how changed—how progressive and modern—Europe struck me after having not been there for so many years.

Here goes. (more…)

Fair use for Bumper stickers or on T shirts

I've posted a new page, "CDC Scandal," to my website. It features original documents in PDF format.

This page will feature documents from my own archives: a large cache of government documents and correspondence acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests and other reporting--such as transcripts of taped interviews--gathered while reporting Osler's Web, circa 1986-1995. This material will also include transcripts of interviews with high level government officials, internal documents from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, and other materials of significance to the history of the U.S. government's failed response to myalgic enceophalomyelitis/cfs and the impact of that failed response in other countries.

It is a reporter's effort to acquaint the curious with the historical record. As the sages have noted, absent an understanding of what occurred in the past, the same mistakes are likely to be repeated. With so many millions of lives at stake, it is critical to understand the ebb and flow of past events in order to confront the present with courage and conviction.

I recommend the site "Age of Autism." One of the things I like about it is the take-no-prisoners attitude of its contributors that emerges when they write about what's wrong at the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and other governmental agencies and various hybrid or inter-agencies.

Contributors are not happy with the federal government's response to the autism epidemic. And when they weigh in, they don't worry very much about offending government officials or anyone else. These people are the healthy parents of children with autism. Their discussions are serious and urgent, not surprising given the extraordinary rise of autism in the U.S. and around the world. Currently, the chance of bearing a male child who will develop autism is greater than 2 percent in the U.S.

They have a zeal and focus, not as dramatic as AIDS activists of the 1980s, perhaps, but they don't hold back. Did you see Jenny McCarthy, the mother of an autistic son, and her beau, the actor Jim Carrey, on Larry King's chat show a few weeks ago? (more…)

We’re in a whole lot of trouble, people. I’m sorry, but it’s bad. There’s no easy way to break this and one shouldn’t even try because this requires real speak.

Appreciation and hats off to Craig Maupin’s excellent summary on July 30 (posted on Co-Cure) of an editorial in a journal called, “Future Neurology.” The five-page (including citations) editorial was penned by a former CDC-employee (Senior Scientist, 2001-2006), now employed in the psych dept. at Emory University. Her name is Christine Marcelle Heim; she reveres Sigmund Freud and she even has a breathy German accent to complement that veneration. You can write to her at cmheim@emory.edu.

Thank you Mr. Maupin, once again, for putting it out there. You are not an army of one. You are not alone. You get it, and I suspect there are thousands of others who get it, too, people who are so discouraged and ill and lacking a voice they can only acknowledge the purport of Heim’s pretend-authority—and roll over in despair. (more…)