William Coleman, founder and chairman of BEA Systems Inc., has
donated $250 million to the University of Colorado to research neurological disabilities like autism and Down Syndrome. This is the largest gift ever given to a public university in the United States. The Colemans have a niece with special needs. Good news.
Here in Utah, we just had the
Utah Walk Now For Autism. Thanks to everyone who participated and donated. This was organized with Autism Speaks, who is also getting donations through Toys 'R' Us.
May 21-25 is the
Autism One 2008 Conference in Chicago.
My wife heard from one of the neighbors that a kid was doing a presentation in his class about autistic children. Before the presentation began, the teacher of the class began by saying that vaccines have been proven to have no link with autism. So, with that the student presented his arguments, and won over the class, over the vocal protest of the teacher. Why? He argued that
epidemiology was not hard scientific proof, citing the decades of epidemological studies "proving" that cigarettes did not cause lung cancer. His conclusion was that until we have non-epidemiologocal proof, we should be safe rather than sorry. Smart kid! No word on his grade.
For parent of autistic children, wanting to find those answers, it's amazing how aggressive people are in shouting us down. Our society has been well indoctrinated into calling our concerns a myth. But autism is not like the Loch Ness Monster. You can easily sit down with thousands of American autistic children, and solve the mystery. You get a new one every 23 seconds! As demonstrated by this classroom, the propaganda is not working. In this case, the children are smarter than the teacher.
