to commend them on such a wonderful piece. (even though the piece touched me so much I bawled my brains out)
Here is my email....
Thank you so much for airing that wonderful piece on autism and ABA therapy. My son has autism and we did ABA for 2 years. Unfortunately, our last school district was hostile about providing ABA therapy. They were inconsistent with the therapy--an important factor for success. They made him work (forced to sit) for 4 1/2 hours with no food or drink. (yes, I know this is illegal, but the OCR, ISBE, and DCFS would not investigate when I pursued it)
"The only thing worse than no therapy, is bad therapy"
Even with my horrible nightmarish experiences, I would highly recommend ABA. During our 2 year experience with ABA, I met many parents and saw their children make tremendous gains. Many like Jake, some like Andrew. My son made some tremendous gains during the summer that we did it at home without the school.
Thank you for airing this piece. ABC just went up in my book. I am boycotting NBC for their insensitive and inaccurate episode of ER, regarding the vaccine/measle/dead child episode. Their figures were incorrect and the entire piece was one-sided. I will pass on my opinion to others in the autism community.
Thank you again.
Shirley Newsome
P.S. Please do a story on the vaccine/injury connection next. Check out Senator Dan Burton and what he has uncovered. My son regressed after his vaccines at 18 months. I have him on videotape--a healthy, beautiful boy that was talking and thriving. Then I have him doing his autistic behaviors as he faded away. My story is NOT unique. Many many many other parents have experienced the same thing. The connection...the vaccines contain an ingredient, "thermisol" which is 47% mercury. There was a "conflict of interest hearings" in 2000 where they discovered that many members of the Center for Disease Control that were on the committees to pass the vaccines had a financial interest in the drug manufacturing committees. There is so much to uncover. They have ruled to take the "thermisol" out of the vaccines, but they are leaving the products that have it in there on the market, and are not producing anymore. Yes, there is a pre-disposed genetic link. The mercury is damaging our genetic make-up. There is a correlation with all auto-immune diseases that are rising with mercury poisoning. And if you go to the autism research institute, you will find pages and pages of "mercury poisoning" symptoms and paired next to it are the matching "autistic characteristics".
There are many people who would love to see a journalistic piece on this. Thank you for your consideration.