Thu, Jan 17 2008

Elementary, My Dear Mr. Handley

by Kristina Chew, PhD | 64 Comments | Share a Tip

The Age of Autism is, its editor Dan Olmsted proclaims, “the first daily Web newspaper for the environmental-biomedical community—-those who believe autism is an environmentally induced illness, that it is treatable, and that children can recover.” Those who write for The Age of Autism do not follow “journalistic group-think” and “believe whatever ‘the experts’ tell them”—-The Age of Autism, it is promised, is going to make a “difference.”

So what kind of news do we get from The Age of Autism folks? Pathbreaking discussions of new theories about the causes of autism, or treatments for autistic kids? New suggestions about how to help autistic children learn not to engage in self-injurious behavior without electroshock treatment? Honest accounts of the lack of adequate housing and employment opportunities for autistic adults who will need such supports for their whole lives, and careful explanations of how support staff need to be trained?

Alas!—no.

There are plenty of posts about vaccines, “vaccine safety,” thimerosal, biomedical treatments requiring cabinets and cocktails of supplements with pseudo-Greek names, what Boyd Haley thinks about the study by Schechter and Grether, etc., etc., etc., etc.. It’s more like the Age of Anything But Autism, unless you, like Generation Rescue founder J.B. Handley, think that autism is really mercury poisoning, that autism is a raging epidemic, and that the government via the CDC is fostering a plot to poison American’s children, etc.., etc., etc., etc..

Anyways—-this is what The Age of Autism considers really big and breaking news that we all need to know:

Roy Richard Grinker is married to Joyce Chung.

Yes, that was the shocking news over at The Age of Autism on January 15th, written up by the above-mentioned J.B. Handley. Handley portrays himself as hot on the trail of a conspiracy and, he tells us, he has the documents to prove it!!!!!!!. These would be a series of emails between Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University, and Marshalyn Yeargin-Alsopp of the CDC. The emails, obtained (as Handley makes sure we know) by the FOIA, have some mysterious white spaces which most likely contained personal information or mention of others, since third party information and names are not included on FOIA requests—–and Handley is quite tantalized by them. In the grip of his fervid imagination, those white spaces signal that a conspiracy is afoot and Sherlock Handley is here to unmask it. And the January 15th post explains the big secret that our sleuth has uncovered:

In an ARTICLE I wrote last week about Roy Grinker, an autism epidemic-denier funded by Autism Speaks, I included THIS set of emails between Roy Grinker and the CDC which were obtained through a FOIA filing.

One email from Grinker in particular caught the eye of several of our readers where Grinker writes the following to a CDC employee:

“p.s. Did I tell you that ___________ just started working at NIMH as the Autism coordinator (Director’s office) and exec. secretary of IACC?”

Now, the “blank” in the above email where a name should be, was redacted by the CDC, apparently because, according to the CDC’s cover letter, “the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

The blank is Grinker’s wife, Joyce Chung.

Is it private for us to know that Joyce Chung, now the Autism Coordinator at NIMH, is married to Roy Grinker?

Should it matter who Joyce Chung is married to, even if her husband wrote a book stating unequivocally that there is no autism epidemic?

Does Joyce Chung agree with her husband? Did they ask her this question before she took the job?
I hope when the IACC meets tomorrow, someone asks her.

I must say, Handley has a nice way with his rhetoric here. Like some modern-day Cicero, he piles on the rhetorical questions and builds to a climax, then—at a moment of resounding tension—-inserts a sentence starting with the first-person pronoun to remind you, dear reader, that this is J.B. Handley, the concerned parent and citizen, out to uproot something secret.

O tempora! O mores! What is this world coming to! (Asks another parent of an autistic child.)

What is it coming to indeed—–why spill so much digital ink fretting about who is married to whom in this “age of autism”? I kind of thought there were more “urgent” things to consider—you know, like getting speech services spelled out in the IEP or figuring out how to make Medicaid pay for housing for autistic adults. But maybe when you spend so much time thinking about mercury instead of dealing with actual autistic persons in the here and now, you start to see things—you start to imagine conspiracies—-as you cobble together a plot for the Great Autism Whodunnit. This makes for (semi-) amusing reading, but I’m afraid it does not really help too much in addressing the really pressing problems that many of us face in getting the school placements our kids need to thrive in, in finding a babysitter so we can attend a school meeting about transitions, in teaching my son Charlie to write “s” so he can write his last name, Fisher. These are topics that I find need to be addressed in this “age of autism.”

As far as the secrets contained in those white spaces in the emails between Roy Richard Grinker and Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp: Why did Dan Olmsted, in his capacity as editor of The Age of Autism and as a journalist, not call Grinker for an interview? Why is a “daily Web newspaper” publishing speculative accounts of real people, and giving the impression that what Handley’s imagination has so, well, imaginatively, cooked up is fact, and not the fiction (of a rather potboiler sort) that it is? And why, in the case of a comment by Katie Wright on Handley’s post, is The Age of Autism seemingly not honoring its own policy about comments? Back in November 2007, I wrote a comment on an Age of Autism post referencing my son and the son of a friend, DJ Savarese. Kim Stagliano wrote:

Note to readers. We’d prefer if you do not bring other people’s children into the conversation in an effort to make your points. It’s not fair play to discuss a child who is not your own. That’s across the board for all readers and comments. You’re welcome to discuss adults of age who can respond for themselves. Not kids.[my emphasis]

This is to protect the children and their parents, from being drawn into discussions without their knowledge.

Thank you.

KIM

Posted by: Managing Editor | 11/26/2007 at 08:47 AM

Katie Wright, NAA board member, specifically mentions one of Grinker’s and Chung’s daughters in her comment on Handley’s post.

Joyce and Roy are married co-parents of their only child, a daughter with autism. Roy has publicly stated, and written a book and toured the country saying he and his wife believe their daughter is “different” and “quirky”, in essence, autism is not such a bad thing and certainly not a growing problem. I think it is more than fair to assume they are of similar beliefs about autism unless Joyce says otherwise……………………….

Posted by: Katie Wright | 01/16/2008 at 02:23 PM

Well, maybe the comment policies on The Age of Autism have changed since last November or maybe there is a different policy for those who write for The Age of Autism or maybe there’s a double standard or maybe it would be best to see The Age of Autism more as a kind of webzine that offers something of a mix of fact, fiction, various opinions, conspiracy-mongering (with a lot of mention of mercury), with (excuse the expression) kind of quirky graphics (how about The Chelation Kid sometime), instead of a newspaper.

But I really can’t say. Here is a fine mystery, and I am just speculating about the goings-on in this “age of autism.” If I may say so: Elementary, my dear Mr. Handley!

Comments

By Robin Bailey

Ahhhh, spoken like an armchair expert, Dr.Chew. Way back in the dark ages of autism (1996), my son had been diagnosed as severly autistic with mental retardation. He was 18 months old. I was given a list of all the things he would never do….never talk, never imitate, never socialize, never, never, never….. we had him go through two rounds of DMSA to release heavy metals from his system (which he tested “high” for) and within two weeks of the first dose, he said his first sentence. He began to make better eye contact…. He has not been totally healed of autism, but next week he stars in a lead part of the High School’s “Little Shop of Horrors” play, in which he sings, dances and has major lines. He mainstreamed into Kindergarten on schedule and has never been in special ed. Oh, wait, I know – maybe he never had autism to begin with – yeah right.

Reply
Trackback
1381 days ago

The Curious Reports of Vaccines and Autism on CBS
[...] that believes that there is a link between vaccines and autism, and that, from time to time, posts correspondence, documents, et alia, from those who it sees as promoting views contrary to its own, and with robust declaration of the [...]

Reply
Trackback
1390 days ago

The R Word
[...] more that vaccine researchers have received. And let’s not get started at what, well, “not niceness” gets cast when some smell “government conspiracy about vaccines” in the air [...]

Reply
Trackback
1479 days ago

Politicking, Pandering, and Paranoia
[...] speak frequently of autism in apocalyptic language that suggests there’s a lot of catastrophic thinking going on. The language of disaster is often referred to: Autism is a “tsunami“; autism [...]

Reply
Trackback
1546 days ago

Myth, Science, and Autism: A Message from the AAP
[...] about pharmeceutical companies (referred to as “Big Pharma”); some even go so far as to imagine conspiracies (among government officials and agencies) and to see themselves as maverick crusaders like Upton [...]

Reply
Trackback
1546 days ago

Myth, Science, and Autism: A Message from the AAP
[...] about pharmeceutical companies (referred to as “Big Pharma”); some even go so far as to imagine conspiracies (among government officials and agencies) and to see themselves as maverick crusaders like Upton [...]

Reply
Trackback
1566 days ago

Bad Publicity Is Still Publicity: The AAP and ABC’s Eli Stone
[...] be flying if ABC were to air an actual documentary based on “just the facts” (not the fantastically imagined conspiracies) about the autism-vaccine hypothesis. Tags: abc, asd, asperger, autism, autism spectrum disorder, [...]

Reply
By Kristina Chew, PhD

Handley’s piece could, I suppose, be said to have “sources”—the information that various commenters on Age of Autism found about Dr. Chung online. But the speculations and inferences that Handley and a number of commenters then made exemplify what many college students write in a freshman composition class. They insert quotations from a source and then—-in an attempt to follow the directions to “analyze”—-they riff on whatever comes to mind. This makes for some (sometimes) interesting papers but more than a few elements are lacking.

Perhaps one might say that the Age of Autism is a digital blogpaper.

Reply
By Joel B.

The editor should never have to be an apologist, but that is what an editor has to do if an apology is called for. The editor’s job is supervise the writing process and then make the decision about whether something should be published.

So I guess what I mean is that the editor should have never published that stuff. An author writes something, the editor should make a judgment about whether it is good, ethical, well-written, makes an important contribution, etc. That’s why I think the author isn’t to blame here in my view as much as the editor. The editor is ultimately the one responsible for what is published.

Reply
By thinkolmstedisaloon

I started thinking of DAN Olmsted as just as bad as Brad when he **stalked** that poor man who was one of Kanner’s original patients and tried to talk to him and did talk to his brother. Then Olmsted whipped up a cure for autism (neurotoxic gold salts) I still think what dippy DAN did was illegal, and I’d like to know how he found out the real names of these original Kanner patients. Does DAN have my childhood health records? Yours? Will he blog them? Will he show up on your doorstep one day to ask you more questions about them?

Reply
By Regan

“The author of the post cannot be blamed. He is who he is.”

So, then what defines the role of the Editor? Apologist?

Reply
By Joel B.

I know, but I just think that Dan, with his experience in journalism, wouldn’t want to be considered on the same level as Brad.

J.B.

Reply
By Kev

To be honest Joel I think any ‘writer’ who’s gone from being a proper journalist to blogging part time for a group of people widely regarded as kooks hasn’t got much of a reputation left.

Reply
By Joel B.

So do you think Olmsted will apologize to Chung? He certainly ought to. The author of the post cannot be blamed. He is who he is. But the editor, Olmsted, has a reputation at stake, doesn’t he?

Reply
By Prometheus

Even if Dr. Chung shared her husband’s relatively moderate views about autism causation and the “autism epidemic” and even if she allowed them to influence her actions, what about the other members of the IACC, who very clearly hold strong views about the causation and treatment of autism?

Lee Grossman, President and CEO of the Autistic Society of America

Lynn Redwood, founder of NAA and President of SafeMinds

Alison Singer, Executive Vice President of Autism Speaks

Again, even if Dr. Chung used her position to try to counter the “strongly held views” (i.e. “biases”) of these three (and there may be more that I don’t recognize), she’s still outnumbered 3 to 1.

Maybe we should ask to have more people who don’t buy in to the “autism epidemic” on the IACC, just for balance.

Prometheus

Reply
By TheProbe

“I find it interesting that the appointment of Grinker’s wife presents such an impropiety. Yet it is okay with these people that Rick Rollens started the MIND institute in my state (california) for 28 million bucks largely at taxpayer expense. Has funded mady horning’s mouse model studies trying to show a thimerosal connection. Funded a one million dollar study all at California taxpayer’s expense claiming there was no autism epidemic. Also the fact that Rollens is allied with SAFEMINDS and others who are litigating against vaccine companies. Rollen’s blatant conflicts of interest don’t seem to represent an impropiety. I wonder why the double standard?”

Simple. If the anti-vac liar sociopaths did not have double standards, they would not have any standards.

Humor aside, the more I read of their antics, the more Orwellian they seem to me.

Reply
By Kev

Dan Olmsted co-opted himself when he allowed Brad and his band of antivax kooks to utilise his name and status.

Lesson learnt Mr Olmsted? Maybe take your blog and domain name back under your own control?

Reply
By Joel B.

A google search turned up a really positive review of UnstrangeMinds written by Olmstead. He says it is a great book even though he disagrees with the conclusions. Weird.

Reply
By Kristina Chew, PhD

In light of the discussion here and noting, once again, that Dan Olmsted is the editor of Age of Autism, which has published those posts with Handley’s conspiratorial imaginings—– I thought it might be pertinent to share a comment that Dan Olmsted made about Richard Grinker’s book (it was sent to me a while back).

From: Dan Olmsted
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 7:49 am
To: Roy Grinker
Subject: RE: Thanks

I strongly feel people need to take different positions without getting vilified. And as I said, [Unstrange Minds is] a wonderfully written book that was a pleasure to read. Best, Dan

Reply
By Regan

Thanks for the correction.

Reply