As a break from the usual blogfare, there is a Titoism post up at\LeftbrainRightBrain this week. If you haven’t read blog posts by Tito Mukhopadhyay (a young adult with autism), or even if you have, it’s worth reading Creativity.

Probably the big news item for the week was the Presidential Debates. Senator McCain pulled autism as a discussion point with

She’ll be my partner. She understands reform. And, by the way, she also understands special-needs families. She understands that autism is on the rise, that we’ve got to find out what’s causing it, and we’ve got to reach out to these families, and help them, and give them the help they need as they raise these very special needs children.

And,

And I just said to you earlier, town hall meeting after town hall meeting, parents come with kids, children — precious children who have autism. Sarah Palin knows about that better than most. And we’ll find and we’ll spend the money, research, to find the cause of autism. And we’ll care for these young children. And all Americans will open their wallets and their hearts to do so.

It seems to have backfired. Many blogs commented negatively–and these are autism-specific blogs. LeftBrainRightBrain had McCain Courts the Autism Vote. Autism Street had McBain on Autism, Again. Both posts were up immediately after the debates.

From AutismStreet:

Sarah Palin knows about that better than most? We’ll find “the cause of autism”? It’s really a shame that a grown man doesn’t seem to have the appropriate judgment to reserve comment on issues for which he seems to have no specific knowledge. I mean really, several causes of autism are already known. It’s difficult to think this is not a simplistic, completely uniformed conclusion, formed by listening to those who promote the scientifically unfounded notion of an “autism epidemic”.

I’m sure his intentions are good, but in my opinion, ignorance does not deserve a vote.

ScienceBlogs bloggers chimed in: Respectful Insolence with Autism in the Presidential Debate?, and Thoughts from Kansas with McCain on Autism.

Respectful Insolence had, well, a respectfully insolent approach:

Was it just me, or did anyone else find it jarring when suddenly John McCain interjected special needs children and autism into the debate last night? As you may recall, a few months ago he was tripped up by the antivaccine fearmongers who think, despite an absence of scientifically compelling evidence supporting their view, that vaccines cause autism.

AutismVox discussed McCain and Obama Debate: Down Syndrome, Autism, Special Needs (a post with a big banner ad for the McCain/Palin campaign when I read it!). Kristina Chew (AutismVox) quoted non-autism blogger Andrew Sullivan’s post at The Atlantic, Special Needs. Andrew Sullivan’s post was quite short, and I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting it entirely here:

I was curious about McCain’s apparent conflation of Down Syndrome and autism. They are very different ways of being human, but they do come under the same umbrella of “special needs” according to Wiki.

That “…very different ways of being human…” comment was just a wonderful way to make the statement.

I expected the response to the debate to be divided amongst the autism blogs on vaccine/non-vaccine lines. Judging by the comments on some blogs, even the vaccines-cause-autism people weren’t happy with Senator McCain’s approach to autism. David Kirby came out with a blog post on the debate, Last Night’s Autism Debate — Who Will Win the Special Needs Vote? Wow, he missed the mark. In his effort to push the vaccine-autism notion, he totally missed the idea that lots of people on both sides of the vaccine question were unhappy with Senator McCain. I wonder if he read is fellow Huffington Post blogger Janet Grillo, My Autistic Son is Not a Political Pawn. It’s tough to read through the comments to the blog, as it devolved quickly into the usual “mercury causes autism” discussions that are old, tired and off-topic. That said, here is the top comment when I read the post (on Thursday afternoon):

As a mother with 2 Autistic boys it will be the Obama/Biden ticket hands down. Obama has had a plan posted on his site, specific to Autism, for some time now. It’s a real approach and concern not just a comment solely for a vote.

Even comments from “epidemic” minded people weren’t for Senator McCain:

Being the mother of a 10 year old autistic son, I have looked very closely at both candidates and their running mates, and questioned who would better handle the issues. Hands down it is Obama/Biden. Obama really is empathic about our epidemic and sees a need to fund some studies, to find out what is going on and how to help deal with it.

Frankly, I think people saw a lack of substance in Senator McCain’s comments. Yes, he mentioned autism, but autism parents have learned to read through comments that have no teeth. Anyone who has been through a couple of IEP’s knows the difference between, “We will work on that” and “Here is a measurable goal that we will work towards, and here are the resources we will apply to it.”

David Kirby seems unable to see that Senator McCain’s statements were pretty clearly not putting autism as a major focus, but, rather was trolling some carefully phrased statements in an attempt to curry favor with a constituency–without giving anything tangible in return. Either that, or it didn’t fit the message David Kirby was crafting.

Another comment from his blog:

I have an 11 year old with autism. While I’d love to know someday what caused it definitively (although in my opinion there’s a pretty clear genetic component – not a cause, but a component) I’m much more focused on making sure he has access to quality health care, educational and vocational opportunities. Obama’s plan has a focus on that as well as basic research.

The Obama camp seems to think Senator Obama did so well on this question that they blogged it too.

But, enough of the election.

Earlier in the week, there was much discussion about Measles. EpiWonk had an Op-Ed piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on MMR and Autism, followed by a blog post. That gathered responses from LeftBrainRightBrain, with a followup discussion of one of EpiWonk’s own papers on the effectiveness of the Hib vaccine.

LeftBrainRightBrain has an occasional guest blogger from the UK research community. He chimed in this week with a post on The Truth about Andrew Wakefield.

Denis Leary (I’ve got to admit, I’d never heard of him before) got some press for a book, part of which took issue with autism. Think of the recent comments by Michael Savage (whom I unfortunately had heard of), but in print. I won’t quote what he said, but you can read what Emily has to say about it at DaisyMayFattyPants, with Leery of Leary. Kristina at AutismVox took a look with Denis Leary does a Michael Savage. Marla Baltes chimed in with According to Dennis Leary, I am an inattentive mother and my child is stupid. It didn’t just get outrage from the autism community, as The Butterworth Group made clear in Denis Leary’s an A-hole.

A new face has entered the vaccine-autism-alternative-medicine debate. A Canadian Doctor named Moulden made comments about how autism (in his model) is caused by micro-vascular strokes, which, in turn, are caused by vaccines. The concept was given a Respectfully Insolent response in Vaccines cause “microvascular strokes” that cause autism? The idea and presentation by Dr. Moulder is bad enough to look like a parody. And, yet, I’ve seen discussion groups take him and his ideas quite seriously. It is depressing, really, to see such junk science taken seriously by families who might be spending time, money and emotion on this (reportedly delicensed) Doctor.

That’s so sad that it’s time to bring this back to where it started: did you see that Tito has a new blog post?