The CDC wants 100% of the public water supply fluoridated

Reuters
Friday, July 11, 2008

Water systems serving about 30 percent of Americans are not giving them fluoridated water, six decades after fluoridation was started as a public health measure to prevent tooth decay, officials said on Thursday..

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hails the reduction in dental cavities due to adding fluoride to public water supplies as one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century..

Most Americans get their water from municipal or regional community water systems. A new CDC report showed that as of 2006, 69 percent of people in the United States who get water from these systems received fluoridated water, up from 65 percent in 2000 and 62 percent in 1992..

That means that while 184 million Americans get fluoridated water from community water systems, 82 million do not..

“This is one of the dirty little secrets — that the whole nation has not yet embraced fluoridation of water, which has enormous public health benefits,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a telephone interview..

Fluoridation of public water supplies was introduced in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Mich..

“It’s still an under-utilized, very effective public health measure,” Dr. William Bailey of the CDC’s Division of Oral Health, who led the report, said in a telephone interview..

Some major cities still do not fluoridate their water supplies, including: San Diego; Portland, Ore.; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Wichita, Kansas. San Diego has committed to begin fluoridating its water by May 2010..

In California, the most populous of the 50 U.S. states, only 27 percent of people served by community systems were getting fluoridated water as of 2006, the CDC said. Only Hawaii (8 percent) and New Jersey (23 percent) were lower..

Fluoridation has remained controversial among some people. In fact, some opponents in the 1950s denounced it as a communist plot, which was lampooned in director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War satire “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb..”

Current opponents argue the fluoride being added to water may cause a health problems such as weak bones and bone cancer, an assertion the CDC rejects..

Regional differences in health insurance coverage
Attn: Health & medicine editors
     A Centers for Disease Control report released Wednesday (June 25) indicates there are regional and state differences in health insurance coverage. Folks in New England are more apt to have a health insurance policy than folks in the South and West. Surveytakers in CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics said 91.1% of New Englanders but only 77.2% of Texans have health insurance.
     The CDC’s press release estimated that there are 43.1 million Americans of all ages who were without health insurance coverage for all or part of 2007, but doesn’t mention that this is somewhat of an improvement from the 43.6 million who were counted as uninsured in the previous year’s survey. The latest report is based on data collected from 240,000 people under age 65 as part of the 2004-2006 National Health Interview Survey.

this new peak in diabetes represents a population of americans who will now be seeking regular prescriptions and medical treatment for diabetes. so the timing of this article makes the cdc’s report all the more troubling. according to the journal medical care– and i will readily admit that this is a very boiled-down version of the article– that people will prioritize their medical needs, opting to pay for some drugs and not for others when medical assistance plans can’t help, even when co-pays do not excede $5.

interestingly enough, previous research from jama has shown that people will not prioritize their illnesses according to the actual threat to their physical health but rather the perceived threat to their physical health.  so, when the news media adopt new “pet illnesses” to report on, the liklihood increases that people will fear that illness more than others, and go out of their way to combat it without actually having it. that’s how some people end up not paying for their heart medication because they’ve been frightened anew by reports of mrsa or west nile virus outbreaks.

if that doesn’t paint a dreary enough picture, consider this article as well. in it, the second annual “kid’s share” study reports that of a projected domestic spending increase of $771 billion over the next ten years, our nation’s children will only see about 7.1%. that’s roughly $55 billion dollars to be spent on children today as well as those to be born in the next ten years. let’s not forget, though, that in those convening ten years, medicare and social security costs are expected to never stop increasing.

so what does that say for the united states? as americans feel increasingly pressed by a crippled economy, they are less likely to pay for medications they feel they can do without, even when their share of the price is nominal. furthermore, the money that is increasingly spent on healthcare will be spent less and less on children. so i guess the moral of this story is that if you’re the head of a family with children in america, you may have some hard decisions to make, if you aren’t wrestling with those decisions already. and if you’re a child in america who comes from a racial minority, your health is not guaranteed. and this really only applies to those who even have health insurance in the first place. this is the stuff epidemics are made of.

sorry, kids.

The New York State Assembly has proposed a bill that would make all vaccines recommended by the CDC mandatory for any children attending the government’s brainwashing camps.

These government brainwashing camps are more commonly referred to by the corporate controlled media as the public school system. Assembly Bill 10942 would force children to take vaccines with or without parental consent in order to be admitted into these government facilities.

These terrorists are attempting to setup a system in which the government will force parents to have their children injected with anything that the federal government recommends. Theoretically, if the CDC decided that paint thinner was a recommended vaccination, all children in the state of New York would not be able to attend the brainwashing camps without having paint injected into their veins.

But what was interesting was the reactions of the CDC, EPA and HHS representatives when I questioned them about agency morale and political interference with science. Can you say, dancing as fast as they can? or "not allowed to express my opinion?" How about, "well, in a few months from now, we're hoping to get funding for this study..." I asked the CDC representative where the pandemic flu planning educational materials were, and she quickly informed my ignorant ass that her division of the CDC didn't do that. Check with the HHS rep. When I moseyed over to the HHS booth an aisle away, that rep looked at me as though I had parachuted from the stratosphere. Pandemic flu planning? "Why would that be at a women's health fair", she seemed to ask with rolled eyes and a dismissive wave.

Never mind that women will be the chief caregivers, will have to know how to shelter in place, buy the canned goods, the bottled water in the approved plastic containers, isolate infected family members and care for those in the home who are ill. And if nurses (since half of the attendees are, by the way), they will also be expected to report for work in hospitals and other facilities as designated by their local emergency preparedness planners.

Government under Bush in action: uninformed, unresponsive, scientifically undermined and ineffective - one could even say - dangerous to the public.

I continued on my way around the vendors, and it was at a not-fruit-juice-but-not-seltzer-either booth that I met the Army nurse speaking to the vendor about where to find this new elixir. He wasn't giving away his new and improved wonder water except by mouthfuls in little paper cups. The nurse asked where she might find it in her Baltimore hometown, and then she said, she really didn't have time to look for it because she was leaving for Afghanistan at the end of the week.

Huh? The vendor couldn't have been less interested. 2+2= bottles sold.

I asked her how long she was being deployed. "15 months". Where. "Kabul". Does she speak the language? "No, I'll have a translator - a woman."

Then she said, "I'm active duty so I knew I'd be going somewhere, but I'm not allowed to treat men, it's the culture, you know, and it's all men there. So I'm going to open a clinic since the women can't even be on the base. I really think the Army made a mistake. I don't know what I'll be able to do. I'm a midwife. I guess I can do some suturing and clinic things, but really, I'm supposed to treat just women."

Word has come in from Russia in the past month that the government agency in charge of regulating the mass media and communications is going to start requiring that citizens register every single Wi-Fi enabled device.  Not only does the citizenry have to register the devices, but they also have to receive special permission in order to operate the hardware that they bought.  Processing such a registration could take up to 10 days for laptops and handheld devices and even longer for access points.

Paypal has issued a press release saying that they are implementing yet another security feature to prevent phishing, spamming and identity fraud.  They plan on requiring users of the e-commerce site to only use current and up-to-date web browsers in order to reduce the risk from outdated, breached software.  Their plan goes like this: if you use "first tier browsers" like Firefox 2 (and soon to be 3), Internet Explorer 7, and Opera 9 and up, you will be able to use Paypal the same way you have done in the past.  Next, if you are a user of a so called "second tier browser" such as any first tier browser that is a version behind, you will be warned at the point of login that you are at risk.  And last (as you probably guessed) are the "third tier browsers" which probably reflect browser versions that are ancient by software update standards.

In another interesting story, AFCYBER plans to create a military botnet in order to combat future enemies.  The Air Force's cyber defense command admits that attacks via a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) are a huge problem that we, as a country, have done nothing to protect ourselves against.  Concern over where the computing resources to create such a botnet is great as there is talk about using civilian infrastructure to supplement Air Force resources.  I plan to write more on this topic as more news starts trickling in.

The World Congress of IT will attempt to start a co-op of companies and countries to make a International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism (IMPACT).  The board is said to be made up of security all-stars from companies like Google and Symantec.  It is the hope of the World Congress of IT that IMPACT becomes a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) type of organization for cyber security.  Its main function will be to provide a place for communication when cyber attacks occur.  This coordination system will help organize international response to these attacks, particularly on civilian targets.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich announced today the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has commended Illinois for its efforts to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Illinois was the only state asked to present its program, “Safety Net of Perinatal HIV Prevention in Illinois,” at a recent CDC conference addressing mother-to-child HIV transmission. Illinois’ program has become a model for other states and countries.

Recent data, from October through December 2007, reveals that health professionals knew the HIV status of newborns and their mothers 99.97% of the time upon hospital discharge.

"... [M]ore than 99 percent of mother-to-newborn transmissions of HIV can be prevented if a pregnant woman is tested for HIV ... and treated with medications before and after the birth of her child,” said Dr. Damon T. Arnold, Illinois Department of Public Health Director.

It's a shame, however, that Gov. Blagojevich vetoed money for HIV/AIDS programs last year simply to smite House Democrats. Otherwise, the Governor's record would be pretty stellar.

Source, Author and License

Have developing countries actually been active in EBM (Evidence Based Medicine)? This was a question that kept ringing in my head during a discussion I had with some of my buds recently. Speak to a Joe medic in any of the medical establishments in a country like India, and you can't help feeling that developing countries for the most part have become consumers of research that cannot be applied to them. These medics are not only being taught but are also being tested on guidelines developed by a plethora of alien organizations such as NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence-UK), SIGNS (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network-UK), Cochrane (UK), ACP (American College of Physicians-US), CDC (Centers for Disease Control-US), NIH (National Institutes of Health-US) and many others in their curricula. Most of these guidelines have been produced for patient populations that are entirely foreign to them.

The only international body with a modicum of relevance to their lives and that of their patients and one which cuts across all geographical and cultural lines is the WHO (World Health Organization). Some might argue that such an enormous and overarching agency as the WHO is intrinsically incapable of producing practice guidelines that might be sufficiently context-centric to be of any use. The WHO sure has a lot of responsibility on its hands and it really is difficult to produce guidelines that apply to all geo-cultural contexts. Indeed, the WHO has produced only a handful of guidelines to date.

India and developing countries like it, desperately need indigenous agencies to construct and regulate guidelines that are appropriate to their peoples' resources and needs. It is extremely common, for example, to see how guidelines by some agency are taken lightly solely because of resource constraints (transportation problems, lack of appropriate instruments, etc.). Actions that a clinician needs to make given these constraints, need to be backed by evidence. The whole idea of EBM is that actions need to be based on the 'best available' collective body of scientific evidence pertaining to a problem - pathological, economic, whatever. Doesn't it make sense then, to look for 'evidence' backing a given course of action to our problems?

Source, Author and License

We do have bodies like the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) making progress, but honestly we aren't doing enough. Over the course of my undergrad career, perhaps the only ICMR guidelines we came across were a handful of appendices at the back of a pediatrics textbook. I mean, come on! We can do better than that, right? The arguments linking this appalling void to decreased government funding are no doubt valid. Budgets allocated to healthcare are grossly below the minimum '5% of Gross Domestic Product' standard set by the WHO and quite surprisingly have kept declining. Amidst this budget-strapping,  public healthcare establishments are overwhelmed by the demand for clinicians whose focus is on the manual delivery of healthcare services rather than research. In the 'medical automobile', these clinicians are just too busy being passengers in their back seats to care about driving. This unbalanced emphasis has had a profound impact on the very nature of our medical society. Its effects are visible right from the very beginning, as medical students enroll into institutes. Students are not even remotely exposed to the tenets underlying academic medicine and there is absolutely no mentorship mechanism in place at any level, all the way up to post-graduation and beyond. Departmental research is obscenely underfunded and students lack motivation to get involved in the absence of a nurturing environment. To make matters worse, owing to the abject lack of any academic medical component whatsoever in their curricula, students find it near impossible to take time out to engage in any form of academic activity at all. Even if they do manage it, their efforts often receive no curricular credit. Post-graduate students take the thesis requirement casually and often resort to a trial-and-error hodgepodge approach in the absence of necessary guidance. The situation finally spirals down to a vicious cycle where the blind lead the blind. End result: Institutes in chaos whose sole purpose is to produce en masse, semi-literate manual clinicians of low-innovative-potential who can't even search or appraise medical literature, let alone use it properly.

Let's just try to understand why this is the need of the hour. It not only paralyzes our education system but also our fragile economy. How does it degrade our economy? Well, without national guidelines there can't be a just audit system in healthcare establishments. Without audits, resources are squandered and quality of care declines. When quality declines, the disease burden in a population rises and that in turn leads to an economic vicious cycle as national productivity declines.

How do we solve this?

1. Government funding on healthcare ought to increase. Clearly, providing concessions and subsidies to private establishments hasn't and most definitely isn't going to produce results. Private establishments only care about making money - from the public or the government, and that's all. Unless incentives are provided to them to engage in academic medicine or research, they aren't going to bear the torch. In a developing country like India, the sheer demand for manual services forms a competing interest for these entities.
2. Even if public funding is lacking, it might be possible to develop meaningful research. Some of the most groundbreaking research comes out of very small undertakings. It didn't take a million dollars for us to realize the benefits of surgical asepsis.
3. Hierarchical translational research bodies ought to be created - private or public or a possible mix of the two. Guidelines need to be produced and taught at medical schools. Students should no longer need to put up with the arbitrary whims of their superiors in the face of inapplicable guidelines in their textbooks.
4. Audit systems should be enforced at all healthcare establishments. Students and practitioners should be taught how to audit their departments or practices.
5. An academic component should be incorporated into the medical curriculum at all career grades - whether optional or otherwise. Mentorship mechanisms should be brought into place and could be incentive driven. Sources of funding and grants should be made more accessible and greater in number.

I hope readers have found this post interesting :-) . Do care to leave behind your comments.

--

Readability grades for this post:

Kincaid: 11.0
ARI: 12.2
Coleman-Liau: 14.7
Flesch Index: 49.1/100
Fog Index: 14.7
Lix: 50.3 = school year 9
SMOG-Grading: 13.0

--

Powered by Kubuntu Linux 7.10
-

Copyright © 2006 - 2008 Firas MR. All rights reserved.

Aliza Shvarts, a senior at Yale University has created a whole art project with the subject of murdering her own unborn children repeatedly, and then displaying the results. She claims that she artifically inseminated herself, and then took abortion-inducing drugs repeatedly. A large portion of her "exhibit" includes supposed videotape images of her miscarrying repeatedly. Yale University is displaying her murderous senior "art" project as so much canvas and paint, however they dispute the validity of her claims, stating that she did not actually  carry out the pregnancies and self-induced abortions, calling it "performance art".

Regardless of where the truth lies in this sordid situation, hoax or not, it is truly reprehensible. And the fact that a major institution of higher learning would participate even in part to such garbage is terrible. Ivy League? Who cares. This is despicable.

I have been left overwhelmed by this most recent development in our current society that de-values life to such a hardened callous place. I lift our country up to our Heavenly Father, who is the only one who can save us from this culture of death that is so rapidly spinning out of control. My heart aches because of the willful killing of our most innocent. Enough is enough. Please join me in prayer to end this terrible holocaust.

You can find the source for this news story here:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61970

The article follows below:

BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
'Abortion artist' disputes Yale fraud claim
Student said she repeatedly impregnated self to induce miscarriages for 'art'

Posted: April 18, 2008
12:46 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A "senior art project" publicized by a student at Yale that drew horrified reaction across the blogosphere this week is being called "creative fiction" by school officials, but the "artist" says that's not accurate.

The art major, Aliza Shvarts, told the Yale Daily News earlier this week she wanted to "make a statement" with a  "project" including the blood from her own forced miscarriages. The immediate response ranged from horror and disgust to suggestions it was a fraud.

Yale officials declined to respond to a telephone request from WND for comment but later posted a website statement alleging the claim  was fraudulent.

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," said the statement attributed to Helaine S. Klasky, a spokeswoman for the school. "Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body. She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art. Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

Not so fast, Shvarts told the Yale student newspaper.

The university statement is "ultimately inaccurate," she told the paper, which said she told of "repeatedly using a needleless syringe" to insert semen and taking abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding.

"She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant," the newspaper said.

"No one can say with 100 percent certainly that anything in the piece did or did not happen," Shvarts told the newspaper, "because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties."

Shvarts said initially that she took a nine-month period of time during which she claimed to have artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking "abortifacient drugs."

The student newspaper reported the student showed "footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvartz – sometimes naked, sometimes clothed – alone in a shower stall bleeding…"

The original student newspaper story reported Shvarts wanted to push art into being a medium of politics and ideologies. The newspaper said the display of Shvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room.

"Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting. Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room," the report said.

David Codrea, a Second Amendment advocate who blogs at War on Guns, initially raised objections.

"One could make the argument that the exhibit legally should be classified as hazardous medical waste, and without proper handling, storage and spill clean-up/disposal procedures, with training for affected staff and employees, it poses a danger to the public and to all involved," he wrote. "I wonder if Yale's risk management department was consulted?"

He said he had e-mailed the Yale risk management office and others that the university's own guidelines state: "programs implementing University policy have been established to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, staff and meet regulatory requirements that are required by OSHA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health."

"For the record – has this event been approved … and have all appropriate regulatory conditions been documented as complaint?" he asked.

After the conflicting statements from Yale officials and the student were released, he raised the additional issue of academic fraud and lying.

"Disgusting," he told Yale officials. "Regardless of what this young head case claims, how can you not think she 'violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental … health concerns'?"

"And it looks like she's betrayed you, too," he said, citing the student's own challenge to the Yale statement.

"So she lied to the paper to advance her project and/or she lied to 'three senior Yale officials today...' I thought Yale had a policy against academic fraud?" he continued.

"So when do the expulsion hearings being?" he asked.

"It's clearly depraved. I think the poor woman has got some major mental problems," Wanda Franz of the National Right to Life Committee told Fox News.

The initial report generated shock.

"First off, I'm a liberal. I frequent WND to keep tabs on how people who disagree with me think. But even I was shocked, appalled and disgusted by this," wrote a WND reader.

Ironically, Yale was founded in the 1600s when colonial clergy led an effort to establish a school "wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences [and] through the blessing of Almighty God maybe fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State."

The suggestion of fraud was raised immediately by Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

"Color me dubious about the Yale art project story. In talking to a few knowledgeable docs this morning, the facts don't add up very well," he wrote in National Review's blog, "The Corner." "Self-insemination of the sort she seems to be claiming is no easy feat, and 'herbal' abortifacients are extremely dangerous and not at all reliably effective. It's highly unlikely that these two improbable elements would both be carried off successfully multiple times, and with no side effects. It's more likely that her senior art project is to see how many people she can upset with a hoax.

"If it's a hoax, it’s an abhorrent and disgusting one," Levin said. "If it turns out to be true, it's of course all the more so and far worse. Either way, where are the adults at Yale?"

Yale president Richard Levin declined to respond to WND's request for a comment.

It doesn't work. Instead of being horny but equipped to deal with it, the kids on the receiving end of this "education" just end up horny and ignorant. As a Texan, I can tell you that it's a dangerous combination.

And now we have yet another example of the kind of nonsense that is circulated among teenagers and accepted as fact in the absence of comprehensive sex education:

Fla. Teens Believe Drinking Bleach Will Prevent HIV

Some Teens Also Believe Mountain Dew Will Stop Pregnancy

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Florida teens who believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy have prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state.

Another myth is that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana will prevent a person from getting pregnant, Local 6 reported.

State lawmakers said the myths are spreading because of Florida's abstinence-only sex education, Local 6 reported.

They are proposing a bill that would require a more comprehensive approach, the report said.

It would still require teaching abstinence but students would also learn about condoms and other methods of birth control and disease prevention.

Gee! It almost sounds like these kids could do with some actual education and, I dunno, some responsible guidance from the adults who have been entrusted with their safety and wellbeing. I'm just blueskying it there, but I think that might help.

And while I'm on the subject again, I want to mention something I'm not sure that I covered before:

Regarding condoms, abstinence-only programs teach what they call "human use reality rates", which actually means lying about condoms' effectiveness and exaggerating their failure rates. Here is what the Centers for Disease Control have to say about it:

CDC Condom Info

The proper and consistent use of latex condoms when engaging in sexual intercourse--vaginal, anal, or oral--can greatly reduce a person's risk of acquiring or transmitting STDs, including HIV infection. In fact, recent studies provide compelling evidence that latex condoms are highly effective in protecting against HIV infection when used properly for every act of intercourse.

Latex condoms are highly effective when used consistently and correctly-- new studies provide additional evidence that condoms work.

[...]

MYTHS ABOUT CONDOMS

There continues to be misinformation and misunderstanding about condom effectiveness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides the following updated information to address some common myths about condoms. This information is based on findings from recent epidemiologic, laboratory, and clinical studies.

[...]

Most of the breakage is due to incorrect usage rather than poor condom quality. Using oil-based lubricants can weaken latex, causing the condom to break. In addition, condoms can be weakened by exposure to heat or sunlight or by age, or they can be torn by teeth or fingernails.

[...]

Three prospective studies in developed countries indicated that condoms are unlikely to break or slip during proper use.

[emphasis mine]

Abstinence-only programs do not teach teens that the increased failure rates for condoms are the result of incorrect usage, but instead present them as "human use reality rates", a term used exclusively in abstinence-only programs. The message they want to send is that condoms are ineffective.

This does not decrease the likelihood that teens will have sex. It does, however, decrease the likelihood that they will protect themselves when they do.

ACLU - What the Research Shows

Studies show that most abstinence-only-until-marriage programs do not help teens delay having sex, and some show evidence that these programs actually deter teens who become sexually active from protecting themselves from unintended pregnancy or STDs.

Telling teenagers not to have sex has never and never will stop them. If it did, you wouldn't be reading this post. Teens have sex regardless of how often they're told not to, despite the risks. Deliberately withholding potentially life-saving information from them is irresponsible, unethical and inhumane.

See the report at CDC's site, here.

The Center for Public Integrity snagged a copy of the study earlier, and published it at their website. Some of us infer the hurdles for the report to be more the administration's War on Science. But supression of a report is a lot easier if there are no copies circulating on the internet.

CDC had sat on the report for most of a year. After this interview of Chris Derosa, the report's author appeared on CNN, and before the Alma Conference on DDT, CDC got a sudden change of heart and released the report.

Too few news reports came out of the conference. Let's hope the proceedings will be available soon.

Logo from the Center for Public Interest project on Great Lakes area health, used at the release of the suppressed health report.

According to The Economist, in the last 12 months, there has been a 62% increase in the price of food, making everything from milk to baby formula to bread more expensive for mothers across the country.  And according to the Wall Street Journal (and your local gas station), we are now getting stung by gas prices, as oil hits record highs. 

And despite our best efforts to conserve gas, we find ourselves in the car, because our children are sick.  Our countless appointments with pediatricians, specialists, allergists, and speach therapists are followed by trips to the pharmacy to purchase more prescriptions for our children who are quickly earning the title, "Generation Rx".  As our budgets get squeezed by all of these factors, we find our children overmedicated, undernourished and sick, with health care costs also taking their toll on our family budgets.

Yet at the same time, we watch as our government allocates $600 billion to the Pentagon for war efforts and only $2.4 billion to the FDA "to protect the health of the American public".  That translates into the FDA receiving only two days worth of Pentagon spending to serve as its budget for the entire year.  It therefore comes as no surprise that, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, that a November 2007 FDA report states that "American lives are at risk" because the FDA lacks resources and "can no longer ensure the safety of the food supply".  Two days worth of military spending to ensure that the food that we are feeding our children and the medications with which we are injecting our babies are not going to put them at risk for health conditions later in life. 

In the meantime, we read in the New York Times about a beef recall large enough to feed every American two hamburgers, an ABC report about drugs and sex hormones found in our children's drinking water and an EPA report stating that air pollution is so severe that it threatens the public's health, with asthma now affecting half of all inner-city children. 

And yet, according to our government, the FDA should only receive two days worth of military spending to protect the lives of our children for the entire fiscal year.  Even more explicity, the Food Protection Plan will receive an increase of $42 million - the same amount, according to CNN, that the IRS just spent to send all of us a letter announcing the rebate that we will be receiving.  The safety of our food supply is worth no more than a letter from the IRS. 

As parents, we watch as the government finds resources to fight wars, bailout banks and subsidize corn based ethanol, knowing that these resources are being financed by a future debt and taxpayer burden that our children will never be able to repay. 

How will my five year old feel when he is old enough to learn that his parents' government financed a $3 trillion dollar war with his future taxpayer dollars?  A war that risked our dependency on foreign oil, prompting our government to pay farmers some of the largest subsidies in history to encourage them to plant ethanol-yielding corn over wheat, soy and other commodities?  Will my children understand the food price inflation that resulted?  Will they learn that the Cato Institute tried to warn that ethanol would make gasoline costlier and dirtier?

How will they feel when they learn that, according to the New York Times, these food riots were caused by the food price inflation that resulted from our government's farm subsidies, subsidies financed by their future taxpayer dollars?  Will they question if these subsidies were designed to win favor and buy farm votes in an election year as easy money encouraged the use of an untested corn-based ethanol?  Will they ever know that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the corn farmers themselves questioned the very development of these crops? 

As the EPA, FDA and the CDC repeatedly cite lack of funding as the leading cause for their inability to protect the lives of the American public, our government finances its corporate agenda by taking out billions of dollars of debt on our children's future, potentially indebting them for their lifetimes.

And in the 130 million American households across the country, as we struggle to cope with the sudden inflationary pressures that appear to result from our goverment's allocation of taxpayer resources, the Centers for Disease Control now reports that one in three American children has diabetes, one in three is obese and one in every three American children has allergies, autism, ADHD or asthma.

In 1946, Harry Truman said, "A nation is only as healthy as its children."  What have we done to ours?

Please consider visiting www.allergykids.com to learn how you can protect the health of your children and family. 

Opportunistic infection is any infection which, under normal circumstances, the body could easily fight off. However, due to the lack of CD4 immune cells, AIDS patients are at very high risk of contracting diseases which they would never contract were it not for the virus destroying their immune system. Some diseases are so common in AIDS patients, and so uncommon in non-AIDS patients, that they are considered to be AIDS-defining diseases. Examples of AIDS-defining diseases include Pneumocystis Pneumonia (a fungal infection of the lungs) and Kaposi’s Sarcoma (once believed to be a rare form of cancer, now believed to be caused by Herpes Virus HHV8); these diseases are normally not seen in patients with a normal immune system. While there is viable treatment for many opportunistic diseases, they must be treated swiftly in an AIDS patient due to the patient’s body being unable to fight infection on its own.

Another important way of measuring HIV is by measuring the viral load. The viral load is the amount of HIV in the body. So while a CD4 count measures the amount of damage HIV has done, a viral load count will measure how much of the virus is actually in the body. In this way, doctors are able to measure whether drugs are working to halt the spread of the virus.

AIDS is a pandemic first identified in 1981 by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), due to Pneumocystis Pneumonia being identified in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. The disease did not take over worldwide as quickly as it is generally believed, though. AIDS has been identified in tissue samples of patients who died of unknown causes as early as 1959; one postmortem case identified the virus in a tissue sample from a 15-year-old boy who died in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1969, though it is still unknown how the boy may have contracted the virus. Some scientists suggest the virus could have first infected humans sometime during the end of the 19th Century, while other scientists suggest it first infected humans during the early 20th century, between 1915 and 1930. Regardless of whether it started during the late 19th Century or early 20th Century, it took many decades for it to even become prevalent enough to be noticed. Since the virus is slow to overtake its host, the window for inadvertent infection of others is years, rather than days or weeks as with most viruses.

It is unclear exactly how the virus started, but it seems clear that it crossed species from primates (which can carry a disease known as the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) into humans, likely when humans came into contact with the bodily fluids of monkeys, possibly during consumption, hunting or butchering the animals (monkey meat is a delicacy in some areas of the world, and is regularly eaten in some areas of Africa). The virus spread due to a number of factors, including vaccines given with unclean needles in developing countries. While AIDS is now generally viewed as a disease of gay men and intravenous drug users, the truth is far more chilling, since the virus is not contained only within a particular population. Many women and children are infected with the virus, and in some areas of the world, particularly Africa where infected patients do not have access to proper health care, the number of deaths has become catastrophic.

At this time, there is no cure for HIV, or for AIDS, nor is there a vaccine to prevent transmission. However, scientists have designed a number of drugs inhibit the virus’s replication. To understand how these drugs work, a short primer on the virus is necessary.

HIV takes over CD4 cells, changing their molecular structure by inserting its own ribonucleic acid (RNA). The virus itself, which is too small to be seen except with an electron microscope, consists of an outer envelope containing the virus and the proteins and enzymes necessary for replication; the envelope has about 72 spikes on its surface. When the virus bumps into a cell coated by the CD4 protein, the spikes stick into the cell and fuse, at which time the inner contents of the HIV envelope is released into the CD4 cell.

Once inside the cell, the HIV enzyme called reverse transciptase converts the viral RNA into DNA, which is compatible with human genetic material. This DNA is transported to the cell’s nucleus, where it is spliced into the human DNA by the HIV enzyme called integrase. Once it is spliced into the human DNA, the HIV DNA is known as provirus. The provirus may lie dormant within a cell for quite some time. However, when the cell becomes activated, it treats HIV genes in almost the same way as human genes. First it uses human enzymes to convert HIV genes into messenger RNA. The messenger RNA is transported outside the cell nucleus, and is used as a blueprint for producing new HIV proteins and enzymes, much in the same way as the human body normally produce replacement cells.

Complete copies of HIV genetic material is contained among the strands of messenger RNA produced by the cell. These copies combine with newly made HIV proteins and enzymes to form new viral particles, which are then released from the cell. The enzyme protease plays a vital role of the HIV life cycle, as it chops up long strands of protein into smaller pieces, which are then used to construct mature viral cores. At that point the newly matured HIV particles are ready to infect another cell, and begin the replication process all over again. In this way the virus quickly spreads through the human body, and causes its host to become infectious. HIV is passed to others through bodily fluids; some fluids contain more of the virus than others.

Contrary to popular belief, people do not die of HIV, or of AIDS. They die of the opportunistic infections which accompany the complete loss of their immune system. Patients therefore must take a strong cocktail of medications to stop the virus from replicating and destroying their immune system. Some common drugs prescribed for AIDS patients, to stop the virus from replicating, include reverse transcriptase inhibitors, which prevent the viral RNA from being converted into human DNA; protease inhibitors, which prevent the virus from creating new mature viral cores; and integrase inhibitors, which prevent the viral DNA from being spliced into the human DNA within the cells.

Unfortunately, with those life-saving treatments for the virus come life-threatening side effects, from lethal liver damage to an overwhelming nausea which results in starvation and dehydration; when this occurs, it only worsens those same symptoms which can be caused by the virus itself. Over the years many drugs have been discovered to combat the side effects (those same side effects are found in many other medical conditions as well), and to increase the quality of life for those who are infected with the virus; some of those drugs and treatments are pharmaceutical in nature, and some are natural.

One of the non-pharmaceutical drugs, which has proven very helpful in battling the anxiety, overwhelming nausea and physical wasting which comes with the virus and its treatment, is marijuana. So effective is marijuana that scientists have even made a pharmaceutical version of the drug, used in chemotherapy patients as well as AIDS patients, which contains synthetic THC (the active ingredient in marijuana). However, many patients believe that the natural THC in marijuana works better than the synthetic version in Marinol, and science supports this belief. In studies of marijuana usage for medicinal usage, it was found that other chemicals found in marijuana have additional medicinal effects which complement the effects of THC. Furthermore Marinol is extremely expensive (Tom’s Marinol costs about $2200 per month, so severe is his nausea and gastrointestinal symptoms), and thus the drug is far beyond the financial reach of most patients; and for that reason they cultivate and smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes. While the black market cost of marijuana can be high, the plant can be cultivated at home from seeds, at very little cost to the patient.

In some states, it is legal for patients with a valid medical prescription to possess certain amounts of dried and cultivated marijuana for personal medicinal use. However, even in those states, the US Government - which has declared that marijuana is an illicit and therefore illegal drug - refuses to permit patients to use the cultivated form of THC. Patients are regularly arrested for merely possessing the substance which allows them to live a more normal life, and which in cases of extreme wasting seen in AIDS, is actually life-saving. This occurs nationwide, including in the states where marijuana is legal for medicinal use.

I do not advocate the casual use of marijuana (or any other drug, prescription or otherwise) to get “high”. I do strongly advocate the right of physicians and patients to determine the best course of treatment, and I believe the government has no right to interfere in the doctor/patient relationship when the patient is not being placed in untoward danger.

Enter Tom Faltynowicz. When Tom was diagnosed with AIDS in 1990, he was given “maybe a few years” to live. Eighteen years later, he is in a fight for his life, but it’s a fight of a very different kind.

In September 2007, law enforcement officials in his native Meade County received an anonymous call, stating that Tom had between 75 and 100 marijuana plants growing behind a metal building on his property. It is believed that the anonymous call came from Tom’s daughter, who was angry with him because he had recently stated his disapproval of her relationship with a particular man.

When Meade County Investigator Michael Walker and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation Agent John Griswold arrived at Tom’s home the next day, there were not 75 to 100 plants on the property, or even anywhere near that many; in fact, there were no plants out in the open at all. However, when asked by those officers about the accusation, Tom immediately admitted to growing marijuana to treat his medical condition. He even invited the officers into his home, so they can see where he was growing it, and he was completely cooperative at all times, even according to the police report regarding the incident. All told, the officers found five plants, and about four ounces of dried marijuana. There was never an allegation that the marijuana was being used for anything but his medical condition, and never an allegation that he was selling the marijuana. It remains undisputed that Tom was using the marijuana to treat AIDS, and the side effects of the many potent medications he takes to fight the virus.

Tom takes a total of four antiretroviral drugs to combat the HIV infection: Combivir (a combination of Retrovir and Epivir), Sustiva, and Viread. Each of these drugs, by themselves, come with potentially fatal side effects. All of these drugs can cause severe nausea, and can result in extreme anxiety as an additional side effect. In addition, Tom has been prescribed Marinol, the synthetic THC drug to combat nausea and vomiting, so there is no question that he suffers the side effects which are treated by marijuana, and there is no question that his side effects are severe based upon his dosage. However, Tom says that the marijuana is far more effective than the Marinol, since Marinol makes him so tired that he cannot function; and his physician is aware of and supports his use of marijuana to treat his symptoms.

Tom, though he has no prior criminal record with the exception of two prior misdemeanor convictions for possession of small amounts of marijuana - both of which occurred after he was diagnosed with AIDS - pled guilty to felony possession of marijuana. He faces a maximum of two years in prison, and a maximum fine of $4000; he could also be given probation. His sentencing date has been set for April 21st, before the Honorable Jerome Eckrich, Circuit Judge. Tom’s Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Traub, will speak at the sentencing hearing. The State Attorney has already said that he will not object to anything Dr. Traub might say. It appears that no one is interested in punishing Tom Faltynowicz; at the same time, under the law, his possession of marijuana - regardless of the reason why he possessed it - is a felony in the state of South Dakota.

Tom, however, is an exception to the reason that law was written. It was written to stop people from abusing the drug to get high, and to stop them from selling or otherwise providing it to others for the same illicit purpose. It is extremely doubtful the legislature was aware of the medicinal effects of marijuana when that law was passed, and it’s extremely doubtful the legislature ever intended to punish patients with a deadly disease. It’s even possible that the medicinal effects of marijuana were unknown to them when that law was passed, since it is hardly a new law. Nevertheless, since the law exists, it will be enforced, even against people like Tom who are using marijuana strictly for medicinal purposes.

This raises a number of questions. Even if Tom is merely placed on probation, and even if he stopped smoking marijuana altogether, using Marinol to control his symptoms would result in violation of probation, since he would test positive for THC during required drug tests. If he fails a drug test while on probation, he will be incarcerated.

If he is incarcerated, he will not only not have access to the drug which he needs to survive without excessive suffering due to overwhelming nausea, vomiting, physical wasting, and extreme fatigue; but the South Dakota Department of Corrections will be forced to pay for the extremely expensive antiretroviral drugs which fight the virus as well as the Marinol, at a cost of thousands of dollars per month to the taxpayers, in addition to the increased cost of incarceration for a man with an infectious deadly disease. As you should understand after my explanation of how those drugs work, and how the virus works, missing even one dose of his antiretroviral drugs could be catastrophic for his health, since it would allow the virus to replicate until the drug was again built up to a therapeutic dosage. Yet in a prison environment there is no guarantee that he will receive his life-sustaining medications at all, much less receive them on the schedule those drugs demand.

Tom has said that he will not stop using marijuana, because it allows him to live a relatively normal life. Without it, his body is wracked with pain, nausea, and vomiting; he is unable to eat or drink, and thus his body becomes even more weakened, even more unable to fight the virus, and even more prone to the many opportunistic illnesses, any one of which could easily end his life. This is especially true if he is confined in a jail or prison facility, given that there are large numbers of inmates living in close approximation.

To incarcerate Tom Faltynowicz would therefore place his life at severe risk, and as such would clearly constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Furthermore, it would serve no purpose to incarcerate him, since his crime is merely possession of a drug which allows him to live with his disease and to continue take the cruel medications which literally keep him alive. He poses no threat to anyone and he is not selling or otherwise distributing the marijuana, nor has it even been suggested that he is selling or distributing the marijuana. Rehabilitation is also not a valid cause for his incarceration, since he merely uses the drug for medicinal purposes, and thus he is not in need of rehabilitation.

Society would not be served by incarcerating Tom Faltynowicz. The interests of justice would not be served by incarcerating Tom Faltynowicz.

As such, justice demands that the court show mercy by giving Tom Faltynowicz a suspended sentence, no probation, and whatever fine the court sees fit, as long as it is within Tom’s ability to pay said fine.

For those of you unaware of the specifics of that disease, a patient infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) may or may not develop AIDS. Once infected with HIV, the disease damages the CD4 cells (T-Cells), and in fact uses those cells to replicate within the body; CD4 cells can be replaced through normal process in the early stages of the disease, but eventually the counts start to fall as the cells are overcome by the virus. A CD4 count between 700 and 1000 is considered normal in a non-HIV infected person; while a CD4 count of about 500 is considered normal when the virus is present. A CD4 count below 200 is indicative of AIDS, since it is at that point that the body loses its ability to fight off opportunistic infection.

Opportunistic infection is any infection which, under normal circumstances, the body could easily fight off. However, due to the lack of CD4 immune cells, AIDS patients are at very high risk of contracting diseases which they would never contract were it not for the virus destroying their immune system. Some diseases are so common in AIDS patients, and so uncommon in non-AIDS patients, that they are considered to be AIDS-defining diseases. Examples of AIDS-defining diseases include Pneumocystis Pneumonia (a fungal infection of the lungs) and Kaposi’s Sarcoma (once believed to be a rare form of cancer, now believed to be caused by Herpes Virus HHV8); these diseases are normally not seen in patients with a normal immune system. While there is viable treatment for many opportunistic diseases, they must be treated swiftly in an AIDS patient due to the patient’s body being unable to fight infection on its own.

Another important way of measuring HIV is by measuring the viral load. The viral load is the amount of HIV in the body. So while a CD4 count measures the amount of damage HIV has done, a viral load count will measure how much of the virus is actually in the body. In this way, doctors are able to measure whether drugs are working to halt the spread of the virus.

AIDS is a pandemic first identified in 1981 by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), due to Pneumocystis Pneumonia being identified in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. The disease did not take over worldwide as quickly as it is generally believed, though. AIDS has been identified in tissue samples of patients who died of unknown causes as early as 1959; one postmortem case identified the virus in a tissue sample from a 15-year-old boy who died in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1969, though it is still unknown how the boy may have contracted the virus. Some scientists suggest the virus could have first infected humans sometime during the end of the 19th Century, while other scientists suggest it first infected humans during the early 20th century, between 1915 and 1930. Regardless of whether it started during the late 19th Century or early 20th Century, it took many decades for it to even become prevalent enough to be noticed. Since the virus is slow to overtake its host, the window for inadvertent infection of others is years, rather than days or weeks as with most viruses.

It is unclear exactly how the virus started, but it seems clear that it crossed species from primates (which can carry a disease known as the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) into humans, likely when humans came into contact with the bodily fluids of monkeys, possibly during consumption, hunting or butchering the animals (monkey meat is a delicacy in some areas of the world, and is regularly eaten in some areas of Africa). The virus spread due to a number of factors, including vaccines given with unclean needles in developing countries. While AIDS is now generally viewed as a disease of gay men and intravenous drug users, the truth is far more chilling, since the virus is not contained only within a particular population. Many women and children are infected with the virus, and in some areas of the world, particularly Africa where infected patients do not have access to proper health care, the number of deaths has become catastrophic.

At this time, there is no cure for HIV, or for AIDS, nor is there a vaccine to prevent transmission. However, scientists have designed a number of drugs inhibit the virus’s replication. To understand how these drugs work, a short primer on the virus is necessary.

HIV takes over CD4 cells, changing their molecular structure by inserting its own ribonucleic acid (RNA). The virus itself, which is too small to be seen except with an electron microscope, consists of an outer envelope containing the virus and the proteins and enzymes necessary for replication; the envelope has about 72 spikes on its surface. When the virus bumps into a cell coated by the CD4 protein, the spikes stick into the cell and fuse, at which time the inner contents of the HIV envelope is released into the CD4 cell.

Once inside the cell, the HIV enzyme called reverse transciptase converts the viral RNA into DNA, which is compatible with human genetic material. This DNA is transported to the cell’s nucleus, where it is spliced into the human DNA by the HIV enzyme called integrase. Once it is spliced into the human DNA, the HIV DNA is known as provirus. The provirus may lie dormant within a cell for quite some time. However, when the cell becomes activated, it treats HIV genes in almost the same way as human genes. First it uses human enzymes to convert HIV genes into messenger RNA. The messenger RNA is transported outside the cell nucleus, and is used as a blueprint for producing new HIV proteins and enzymes, much in the same way as the human body normally produce replacement cells.

Complete copies of HIV genetic material is contained among the strands of messenger RNA produced by the cell. These copies combine with newly made HIV proteins and enzymes to form new viral particles, which are then released from the cell. The enzyme protease plays a vital role of the HIV life cycle, as it chops up long strands of protein into smaller pieces, which are then used to construct mature viral cores. At that point the newly matured HIV particles are ready to infect another cell, and begin the replication process all over again. In this way the virus quickly spreads through the human body, and causes its host to become infectious. HIV is passed to others through bodily fluids; some fluids contain more of the virus than others.

Contrary to popular belief, people do not die of HIV, or of AIDS. They die of the opportunistic infections which accompany the complete loss of their immune system. Patients therefore must take a strong cocktail of medications to stop the virus from replicating and destroying their immune system. Some common drugs prescribed for AIDS patients, to stop the virus from replicating, include reverse transcriptase inhibitors, which prevent the viral RNA from being converted into human DNA; protease inhibitors, which prevent the virus from creating new mature viral cores; and integrase inhibitors, which prevent the viral DNA from being spliced into the human DNA within the cells.

Unfortunately, with those life-saving treatments for the virus come life-threatening side effects, from lethal liver damage to an overwhelming nausea which results in starvation and dehydration; when this occurs, it only worsens those same symptoms which can be caused by the virus itself. Over the years many drugs have been discovered to combat the side effects (those same side effects are found in many other medical conditions as well), and to increase the quality of life for those who are infected with the virus; some of those drugs and treatments are pharmaceutical in nature, and some are natural.

One of the non-pharmaceutical drugs, which has proven very helpful in battling the anxiety, overwhelming nausea and physical wasting which comes with the virus and its treatment, is marijuana. So effective is marijuana that scientists have even made a pharmaceutical version of the drug, used in chemotherapy patients as well as AIDS patients, which contains synthetic THC (the active ingredient in marijuana). However, many patients believe that the natural THC in marijuana works better than the synthetic version in Marinol, and science supports this belief. In studies of marijuana usage for medicinal usage, it was found that other chemicals found in marijuana have additional medicinal effects which complement the effects of THC. Furthermore Marinol is extremely expensive (Tom’s Marinol costs about $2200 per month, so severe is his nausea and gastrointestinal symptoms), and thus the drug is far beyond the financial reach of most patients; and for that reason they cultivate and smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes. While the black market cost of marijuana can be high, the plant can be cultivated at home from seeds, at very little cost to the patient.

In some states, it is legal for patients with a valid medical prescription to possess certain amounts of dried and cultivated marijuana for personal medicinal use. However, even in those states, the US Government - which has declared that marijuana is an illicit and therefore illegal drug - refuses to permit patients to use the cultivated form of THC. Patients are regularly arrested for merely possessing the substance which allows them to live a more normal life, and which in cases of extreme wasting seen in AIDS, is actually life-saving. This occurs nationwide, including in the states where marijuana is legal for medicinal use.

I do not advocate the casual use of marijuana (or any other drug, prescription or otherwise) to get “high”. I do strongly advocate the right of physicians and patients to determine the best course of treatment, and I believe the government has no right to interfere in the doctor/patient relationship when the patient is not being placed in untoward danger.

Enter Tom Faltynowicz. When Tom was diagnosed with AIDS in 1990, he was given “maybe a few years” to live. Eighteen years later, he is in a fight for his life, but it’s a fight of a very different kind.

In September 2007, law enforcement officials in his native Meade County received an anonymous call, stating that Tom had between 75 and 100 marijuana plants growing behind a metal building on his property. It is believed that the anonymous call came from Tom’s daughter, who was angry with him because he had recently stated his disapproval of her relationship with a particular man.

When Meade County Investigator Michael Walker and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation Agent John Griswold arrived at Tom’s home the next day, there were not 75 to 100 plants on the property, or even anywhere near that many; in fact, there were no plants out in the open at all. However, when asked by those officers about the accusation, Tom immediately admitted to growing marijuana to treat his medical condition. He even invited the officers into his home, so they can see where he was growing it, and he was completely cooperative at all times, even according to the police report regarding the incident. All told, the officers found five plants, and about four ounces of dried marijuana. There was never an allegation that the marijuana was being used for anything but his medical condition, and never an allegation that he was selling the marijuana. It remains undisputed that Tom was using the marijuana to treat AIDS, and the side effects of the many potent medications he takes to fight the virus.

Tom takes a total of four antiretroviral drugs to combat the HIV infection: Combivir (a combination of Retrovir and Epivir), Sustiva, and Viread. Each of these drugs, by themselves, come with potentially fatal side effects. All of these drugs can cause severe nausea, and can result in extreme anxiety as an additional side effect. In addition, Tom has been prescribed Marinol, the synthetic THC drug to combat nausea and vomiting, so there is no question that he suffers the side effects which are treated by marijuana, and there is no question that his side effects are severe based upon his dosage. However, Tom says that the marijuana is far more effective than the Marinol, since Marinol makes him so tired that he cannot function; and his physician is aware of and supports his use of marijuana to treat his symptoms.

Tom, though he has no prior criminal record with the exception of two prior misdemeanor convictions for possession of small amounts of marijuana - both of which occurred after he was diagnosed with AIDS - pled guilty to felony possession of marijuana. He faces a maximum of two years in prison, and a maximum fine of $4000; he could also be given probation. His sentencing date has been set for April 21st, before the Honorable Jerome Eckrich, Circuit Judge. Tom’s Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Traub, will speak at the sentencing hearing. The State Attorney has already said that he will not object to anything Dr. Traub might say. It appears that no one is interested in punishing Tom Faltynowicz; at the same time, under the law, his possession of marijuana - regardless of the reason why he possessed it - is a felony in the state of South Dakota.

Tom, however, is an exception to the reason that law was written. It was written to stop people from abusing the drug to get high, and to stop them from selling or otherwise providing it to others for the same illicit purpose. It is extremely doubtful the legislature was aware of the medicinal effects of marijuana when that law was passed, and it’s extremely doubtful the legislature ever intended to punish patients with a deadly disease. It’s even possible that the medicinal effects of marijuana were unknown to them when that law was passed, since it is hardly a new law. Nevertheless, since the law exists, it will be enforced, even against people like Tom who are using marijuana strictly for medicinal purposes.

This raises a number of questions. Even if Tom is merely placed on probation, and even if he stopped smoking marijuana altogether, using Marinol to control his symptoms would result in violation of probation, since he would test positive for THC during required drug tests. If he fails a drug test while on probation, he will be incarcerated.

If he is incarcerated, he will not only not have access to the drug which he needs to survive without excessive suffering due to overwhelming nausea, vomiting, physical wasting, and extreme fatigue; but the South Dakota Department of Corrections will be forced to pay for the extremely expensive antiretroviral drugs which fight the virus as well as the Marinol, at a cost of thousands of dollars per month to the taxpayers, in addition to the increased cost of incarceration for a man with an infectious deadly disease. As you should understand after my explanation of how those drugs work, and how the virus works, missing even one dose of his antiretroviral drugs could be catastrophic for his health, since it would allow the virus to replicate until the drug was again built up to a therapeutic dosage. Yet in a prison environment there is no guarantee that he will receive his life-sustaining medications at all, much less receive them on the schedule those drugs demand.

Tom has said that he will not stop using marijuana, because it allows him to live a relatively normal life. Without it, his body is wracked with pain, nausea, and vomiting; he is unable to eat or drink, and thus his body becomes even more weakened, even more unable to fight the virus, and even more prone to the many opportunistic illnesses, any one of which could easily end his life. This is especially true if he is confined in a jail or prison facility, given that there are large numbers of inmates living in close approximation.

To incarcerate Tom Faltynowicz would therefore place his life at severe risk, and as such would clearly constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Furthermore, it would serve no purpose to incarcerate him, since his crime is merely possession of a drug which allows him to live with his disease and to continue take the cruel medications which literally keep him alive. He poses no threat to anyone and he is not selling or otherwise distributing the marijuana, nor has it even been suggested that he is selling or distributing the marijuana. Rehabilitation is also not a valid cause for his incarceration, since he merely uses the drug for medicinal purposes, and thus he is not in need of rehabilitation.

Society would not be served by incarcerating Tom Faltynowicz. The interests of justice would not be served by incarcerating Tom Faltynowicz.

As such, justice demands that the court show mercy by giving Tom Faltynowicz a suspended sentence, no probation, and whatever fine the court sees fit, as long as it is within Tom’s ability to pay said fine.

For those of you unaware of the specifics of that disease, a patient infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) may or may not develop AIDS. Once infected with HIV, the disease damages the CD4 cells (T-Cells), and in fact uses those cells to replicate within the body; CD4 cells can be replaced through normal process in the early stages of the disease, but eventually the counts start to fall as the cells are overcome by the virus. A CD4 count between 700 and 1000 is considered normal in a non-HIV infected person; while a CD4 count of about 500 is considered normal when the virus is present. A CD4 count below 200 is indicative of AIDS, since it is at that point that the body loses its ability to fight off opportunistic infection.

Opportunistic infection is any infection which, under normal circumstances, the body could easily fight off. However, due to the lack of CD4 immune cells, AIDS patients are at very high risk of contracting diseases which they would never contract were it not for the virus destroying their immune system. Some diseases are so common in AIDS patients, and so uncommon in non-AIDS patients, that they are considered to be AIDS-defining diseases. Examples of AIDS-defining diseases include Pneumocystis Pneumonia (a fungal infection of the lungs) and Kaposi's Sarcoma (once believed to be a rare form of cancer, now believed to be caused by Herpes Virus HHV8); these diseases are normally not seen in patients with a normal immune system. While there is viable treatment for many opportunistic diseases, they must be treated swiftly in an AIDS patient due to the patient's body being unable to fight infection on its own.

Another important way of measuring HIV is by measuring the viral load. The viral load is the amount of HIV in the body. So while a CD4 count measures the amount of damage HIV has done, a viral load count will measure how much of the virus is actually in the body. In this way, doctors are able to measure whether drugs are working to halt the spread of the virus.

AIDS is a pandemic first identified in 1981 by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), due to Pneumocystis Pneumonia being identified in five homosexual men in Los Angeles. The disease did not take over worldwide as quickly as it is generally believed, though. AIDS has been identified in tissue samples of patients who died of unknown causes as early as 1959; one postmortem case identified the virus in a tissue sample from a 15-year-old boy who died in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1969, though it is still unknown how the boy may have contracted the virus. Some scientists suggest the virus could have first infected humans sometime during the end of the 19th Century, while other scientists suggest it first infected humans during the early 20th century, between 1915 and 1930. Regardless of whether it started during the late 19th Century or early 20th Century, it took many decades for it to even become prevalent enough to be noticed. Since the virus is slow to overtake its host, the window for inadvertent infection of others is years, rather than days or weeks as with most viruses.

It is unclear exactly how the virus started, but it seems clear that it crossed species from primates (which can carry a disease known as the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) into humans, likely when humans came into contact with the bodily fluids of monkeys, possibly during consumption, hunting or butchering the animals (monkey meat is a delicacy in some areas of the world, and is regularly eaten in some areas of Africa). The virus spread due to a number of factors, including vaccines given with unclean needles in developing countries. While AIDS is now generally viewed as a disease of gay men and intravenous drug users, the truth is far more chilling, since the virus is not contained only within a particular population. Many women and children are infected with the virus, and in some areas of the world, particularly Africa where infected patients do not have access to proper health care, the number of deaths has become catastrophic.

At this time, there is no cure for HIV, or for AIDS, nor is there a vaccine to prevent transmission. However, scientists have designed a number of drugs inhibit the virus's replication. To understand how these drugs work, a short primer on the virus is necessary.

HIV takes over CD4 cells, changing their molecular structure by inserting its own ribonucleic acid (RNA). The virus itself, which is too small to be seen except with an electron microscope, consists of an outer envelope containing the virus and the proteins and enzymes necessary for replication; the envelope has about 72 spikes on its surface. When the virus bumps into a cell coated by the CD4 protein, the spikes stick into the cell and fuse, at which time the inner contents of the HIV envelope is released into the CD4 cell.

Once inside the cell, the HIV enzyme called reverse transciptase converts the viral RNA into DNA, which is compatible with human genetic material. This DNA is transported to the cell's nucleus, where it is spliced into the human DNA by the HIV enzyme called integrase. Once it is spliced into the human DNA, the HIV DNA is known as provirus. The provirus may lie dormant within a cell for quite some time. However, when the cell becomes activated, it treats HIV genes in almost the same way as human genes. First it uses human enzymes to convert HIV genes into messenger RNA. The messenger RNA is transported outside the cell nucleus, and is used as a blueprint for producing new HIV proteins and enzymes, much in the same way as the human body normally produce replacement cells.

Complete copies of HIV genetic material is contained among the strands of messenger RNA produced by the cell. These copies combine with newly made HIV proteins and enzymes to form new viral particles, which are then released from the cell. The enzyme protease plays a vital role of the HIV life cycle, as it chops up long strands of protein into smaller pieces, which are then used to construct mature viral cores. At that point the newly matured HIV particles are ready to infect another cell, and begin the replication process all over again. In this way the virus quickly spreads through the human body, and causes its host to become infectious. HIV is passed to others through bodily fluids; some fluids contain more of the virus than others.

Contrary to popular belief, people do not die of HIV, or of AIDS. They die of the opportunistic infections which accompany the complete loss of their immune system. Patients therefore must take a strong cocktail of medications to stop the virus from replicating and destroying their immune system. Some common drugs prescribed for AIDS patients, to stop the virus from replicating, include reverse transcriptase inhibitors, which prevent the viral RNA from being converted into human DNA; protease inhibitors, which prevent the virus from creating new mature viral cores; and integrase inhibitors, which prevent the viral DNA from being spliced into the human DNA within the cells.

Unfortunately, with those life-saving treatments for the virus come life-threatening side effects, from lethal liver damage to an overwhelming nausea which results in starvation and dehydration; when this occurs, it only worsens those same symptoms which can be caused by the virus itself. Over the years many drugs have been discovered to combat the side effects (those same side effects are found in many other medical conditions as well), and to increase the quality of life for those who are infected with the virus; some of those drugs and treatments are pharmaceutical in nature, and some are natural.

One of the non-pharmaceutical drugs, which has proven very helpful in battling the anxiety, overwhelming nausea and physical wasting which comes with the virus and its treatment, is marijuana. So effective is marijuana that scientists have even made a pharmaceutical version of the drug, used in chemotherapy patients as well as AIDS patients, which contains synthetic THC (the active ingredient in marijuana). However, many patients believe that the natural THC in marijuana works better than the synthetic version in Marinol, and science supports this belief. In studies of marijuana usage for medicinal usage, it was found that other chemicals found in marijuana have additional medicinal effects which complement the effects of THC. Furthermore Marinol is extremely expensive (Tom's Marinol costs about $2200 per month, so severe is his nausea and gastrointestinal symptoms), and thus the drug is far beyond the financial reach of most patients; and for that reason they cultivate and smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes. While the black market cost of marijuana can be high, the plant can be cultivated at home from seeds, at very little cost to the patient.

In some states, it is legal for patients with a valid medical prescription to possess certain amounts of dried and cultivated marijuana for personal medicinal use. However, even in those states, the US Government - which has declared that marijuana is an illicit and therefore illegal drug - refuses to permit patients to use the cultivated form of THC. Patients are regularly arrested for merely possessing the substance which allows them to live a more normal life, and which in cases of extreme wasting seen in AIDS, is actually life-saving. This occurs nationwide, including in the states where marijuana is legal for medicinal use.

I do not advocate the casual use of marijuana (or any other drug, prescription or otherwise) to get "high". I do strongly advocate the right of physicians and patients to determine the best course of treatment, and I believe the government has no right to interfere in the doctor/patient relationship when the patient is not being placed in untoward danger.

Enter Tom Faltynowicz. When Tom was diagnosed with AIDS in 1990, he was given "maybe a few years" to live. Eighteen years later, he is in a fight for his life, but it's a fight of a very different kind.

In September 2007, law enforcement officials in his native Meade County received an anonymous call, stating that Tom had between 75 and 100 marijuana plants growing behind a metal building on his property. It is believed that the anonymous call came from Tom's daughter, who was angry with him because he had recently stated his disapproval of her relationship with a particular man.

When Meade County Investigator Michael Walker and South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation Agent John Griswold arrived at Tom's home the next day, there were not 75 to 100 plants on the property, or even anywhere near that many; in fact, there were no plants out in the open at all. However, when asked by those officers about the accusation, Tom immediately admitted to growing marijuana to treat his medical condition. He even invited the officers into his home, so they can see where he was growing it, and he was completely cooperative at all times, even according to the police report regarding the incident. All told, the officers found five plants, and about four ounces of dried marijuana. There was never an allegation that the marijuana was being used for anything but his medical condition, and never an allegation that he was selling the marijuana. It remains undisputed that Tom was using the marijuana to treat AIDS, and the side effects of the many potent medications he takes to fight the virus.

Tom takes a total of four antiretroviral drugs to combat the HIV infection: Combivir (a combination of Retrovir and Epivir), Sustiva, and Viread. Each of these drugs, by themselves, come with potentially fatal side effects. All of these drugs can cause severe nausea, and can result in extreme anxiety as an additional side effect. In addition, Tom has been prescribed Marinol, the synthetic THC drug to combat nausea and vomiting, so there is no question that he suffers the side effects which are treated by marijuana, and there is no question that his side effects are severe based upon his dosage. However, Tom says that the marijuana is far more effective than the Marinol, since Marinol makes him so tired that he cannot function; and his physician is aware of and supports his use of marijuana to treat his symptoms.

Tom, though he has no prior criminal record with the exception of two prior misdemeanor convictions for possession of small amounts of marijuana - both of which occurred after he was diagnosed with AIDS - pled guilty to felony possession of marijuana. He faces a maximum of two years in prison, and a maximum fine of $4000; he could also be given probation. His sentencing date has been set for April 21st, before the Honorable Jerome Eckrich, Circuit Judge. Tom's Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Traub, will speak at the sentencing hearing. The State Attorney has already said that he will not object to anything Dr. Traub might say. It appears that no one is interested in punishing Tom Faltynowicz; at the same time, under the law, his possession of marijuana - regardless of the reason why he possessed it - is a felony in the state of South Dakota.

Tom, however, is an exception to the reason that law was written. It was written to stop people from abusing the drug to get high, and to stop them from selling or otherwise providing it to others for the same illicit purpose. It is extremely doubtful the legislature was aware of the medicinal effects of marijuana when that law was passed, and it's extremely doubtful the legislature ever intended to punish patients with a deadly disease. It's even possible that the medicinal effects of marijuana were unknown to them when that law was passed, since it is hardly a new law. Nevertheless, since the law exists, it will be enforced, even against people like Tom who are using marijuana strictly for medicinal purposes.

This raises a number of questions. Even if Tom is merely placed on probation, and even if he stopped smoking marijuana altogether, using Marinol to control his symptoms would result in violation of probation, since he would test positive for THC during required drug tests. If he fails a drug test while on probation, he will be incarcerated.

If he is incarcerated, he will not only not have access to the drug which he needs to survive without excessive suffering due to overwhelming nausea, vomiting, physical wasting, and extreme fatigue; but the South Dakota Department of Corrections will be forced to pay for the extremely expensive antiretroviral drugs which fight the virus as well as the Marinol, at a cost of thousands of dollars per month to the taxpayers, in addition to the increased cost of incarceration for a man with an infectious deadly disease. As you should understand after my explanation of how those drugs work, and how the virus works, missing even one dose of his antiretroviral drugs could be catastrophic for his health, since it would allow the virus to replicate until the drug was again built up to a therapeutic dosage. Yet in a prison environment there is no guarantee that he will receive his life-sustaining medications at all, much less receive them on the schedule those drugs demand.

Tom has said that he will not stop using marijuana, because it allows him to live a relatively normal life. Without it, his body is wracked with pain, nausea, and vomiting; he is unable to eat or drink, and thus his body becomes even more weakened, even more unable to fight the virus, and even more prone to the many opportunistic illnesses, any one of which could easily end his life. This is especially true if he is confined in a jail or prison facility, given that there are large numbers of inmates living in close approximation.

To incarcerate Tom Faltynowicz would therefore place his life at severe risk, and as such would clearly constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Furthermore, it would serve no purpose to incarcerate him, since his crime is merely possession of a drug which allows him to live with his disease and to continue take the cruel medications which literally keep him alive. He poses no threat to anyone and he is not selling or otherwise distributing the marijuana, nor has it even been suggested that he is selling or distributing the marijuana. Rehabilitation is also not a valid cause for his incarceration, since he merely uses the drug for medicinal purposes, and thus he is not in need of rehabilitation.

Society would not be served by incarcerating Tom Faltynowicz. The interests of justice would not be served by incarcerating Tom Faltynowicz.

As such, justice demands that the court show mercy by giving Tom Faltynowicz a suspended sentence, no probation, and whatever fine the court sees fit, as long as it is within Tom's ability to pay said fine.  The courts should also order the return of Tom's property; police seized property such as lights, and not just marijuana and implements for its use.  Those lights  should be returned.

Early in the Bush administration it became clear that a trend was brewing. You either got on board or you got fired. Fear, anger and distrust have been with the scientific community since 2000.

Ethical Markets

Features More Than 80 Experts
Innovest, Cleantech, Investors Circle, UN Principles of
Responsible Investing, UN Global Compact, CALPERS,
Instituto Ethos (Brazil), ClifBar, Stonyfield Farms,
Evergreen Solar, Green Mountain Coffee, Interface
Carpets, Shorebank, Fairmont Hotels, Liz Claiborne, Pax
World Funds, Calvert Foundation and many others.

All are trying to get the truth out there. In an article posted on February 11, 2008 they published this:

Integrity in Science Watch - February 11, 2008

Whistleblowers Under Fire. CDC, FDA Scientists Silenced and Demoted

Top officials at the Centers for Disease Control are blocking publication of a 400-page, peer-reviewed report documenting toxic hot spots in the eight-state Great Lakes region after demoting the scientist who led the study, the Center for Public Integrity reported. The House Science and Technology committee last week complained to CDC director Julie Gerberding about the seven-month delay in issuing the report and vowed an investigation into “disturbing allegations about interference with the work of government scientists” at the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The report, which warns that more than nine million people may face elevated health risks from exposure to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants, was slated for release last July.

The study’s chief author was Christopher De Rosa, the director of ATSDR’s division of toxicology and environmental medicine and, according to the story, “a highly respected scientist with a strong international reputation from his 15 years in charge of the division.” Howard Frumkin, the chief of ATSDR, told him the Great Lakes study was “well below expectations” and removed him from his position. De Rosa is seeking reinstatement to his former position, claiming that Frumkin illegally retaliated against him. CDC officials refused to talk to the Center for Public Integrity.

In a separate incidident, the Food and Drug Administration should document all meetings between its staff and companies regulated by the agency, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said last week in the wake of an investigation that found the agency blindly accepted conflict of interest charges leveled by a private company against one of its scientists. The Center for Veterinary Medicine removed adverse events coordinator Victoria Hampshire from her position in January 2005 after top officials at a Wyeth Pharmaceutical subsidiary lodged the complaint. At the time, Hampshire was preparing to go before an advisory committee where she planned to oppose reintroduction of the company’s ProHeart 6 canine heartworm drug, which triggered severe allergic reactions in some dogs.

It seems the interests of Big Pharma and the Bush administration come hand in hand and science be damned. Those not agreeing are swiftly taken in hand and either dismissed or discredited. In an age where science is one of our founding traditions, this is more than just a scary thought.

In another report from the Center for Public Integrity, this was found:

Here’s the report that top officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thought was too hot for the public to handle—and the story behind it.

By Sheila Kaplan

For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

Researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.

The 400-plus-page study, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was undertaken by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the use and quality of boundary waters between the two countries. The study was originally scheduled for release in July 2007 by the IJC and the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

The rest of the report can be found on their website as well as documentation supporting their claims. I hope you will take the time to read the full study especially if you live in the areas surrounding the Great Lakes.

It is important that we understand that as our freedoms are being stripped from us, so is knowledge. Our ability to make coherent decisions with all the facts is a lost reality in the face of this evidence. And there is so much more out there. Do a Google search on the terms “disturbing allegations about interference with the work of government scientists” and you will see for yourself just HOW MUCH comes up. I was totally amazed. Not that it was out there, but just how wide-spread it was. This administration has gone a long way towards censorship in ALL regards. It is time to tell the Bush administration NO MORE!

Full documentation of this report and other reports can be had HERE:

An article from the Union of Concerned Scientists posted on 3-2-07 states:

Reports and Research Atmosphere of Pressure
Political Interference in Federal Climate Science

Federal climate science research is at the forefront of assessing fundamental causes of global warming and the future dangers it could pose to our nation and the world. It is crucial that the best available science on climate change be disseminated to the public, through government websites, reports, and press releases. In recent years, however, this science has been increasingly tailored to reflect political goals rather than scientific fact.

Out of concern that inappropriate political interference and media favoritism are compromising federal climate science, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Government Accountability Project (GAP) undertook independent investigations of federal climate science. UCS mailed a questionnaire to more than 1,600 climate scientists at seven federal agencies to gauge the extent to which politics was playing a role in scientists' research. Surveys were also sent to scientists at the independent (non-federal) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to serve as a comparison with the experience of federal scientists. About 19 percent of all scientists responded (279 from federal agencies and 29 from NCAR).

At the same time, GAP conducted 40 in-depth interviews with federal climate scientists and other officials and analyzed thousands of pages of government documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and inside sources, regarding agency media policies and congressional communications.

These two complementary investigations arrived at similar conclusions regarding the state of federal climate research: while scientists hold a high regard for the quality of federal climate change research, there is broad interference in communicating scientific results.

I don't know about you, but no-one is going to tell me what I can think, what information I can have, or how much of it there should be. And if the information is necessary to my health, I want that information yesterday. I do NOT want some yahoo sitting behind a desk deciding I don't need to know, or that the information is too risqué for me to view. I make those decisions, no one else.

Wired also had this to say on the matter:

Bush Ripped on Global Warming
Luke O'Brien Email 02.07.07 | 3:00 PM

WASHINGTON -- Congress continued to probe allegations Wednesday that the Bush administration tried to muzzle government scientists on climate change and suppress scientific research, including a comprehensive report in 2000 on global warming's impact on the United States.

During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers weighed in with harsh words for an administration that has come under fire in the 110th Congress for its stance on climate change.

"One incidence of political tampering with science is too many," said Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the committee chairman, referring to a survey released last week by two advocacy groups that showed widespread political interference in research related to global warming.

Read the rest of the report on their website. It is very informative. Nor is this just about Global Warming but science in general. What else is the Bush administration trying to keep from us? And why isn't Congress doing their job and removing this President and Vice President from office? These are questions I really want answered.

From United States District Court, Southern District of Iowa - Complaint and Jury Demand:

After Frances Gaskell began to take the Garbhapal Ras she began to feel lethargic and her hands and feet began going numb. She then began having severe back and abdominal pain. The pain was so severe that she was admitted for testing and treatment at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in February 2007. ...

On April 16, 2007, blood test results showed that Frances Gaskell was severely lead poisoned and had a blood lead level of 102 mg/dl, over 20 times the level considered safe by the Centers for Disease Control. Because Frances' level was so high, creating a serious risk to both her life and health, and the life and health of her unborn child, she was forced to undergo chelation therapy while pregnant despite the risks of the therapy to her unborn child, L.G..

After testing the different herbal preparations that Frances was taking, the Iowa Department of Public Health found that the Garbhapal Ras was made up of nearly 3% lead, a level far in excess of applicable safety standards. ...

L.G. was born with a blood lead level of 60 mg/dl, 12 times the level considered safe by the Center for Disease. ...

Dare we hope it'll help? I'm thrilled by some of the names on the committee list though -- Lyn Redwood (Coalition for Safe Minds) and Lee Grossman (Autism Society of America) are excellent choices. The mention of vaccines causing autism is a good sign, but it's almost scary to get encouraged by the thought of that being mentioned in the same article as the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).

State Delivers Reprieve on Autism Aid  Times Reporter, Ohio

Like it should have ever been stopped in the first place? There's too many disabled people, so they get penalized? NO words. There are no words that I can say here.

UN Designates April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day Pravda Online

Interesting.