Friday June 26, 2009, 4:14 pm
Bernard Rimland, PhD (15 November 1928 – 21 November 2006) was an American research psychologist, writer, lecturer, and advocate for children with autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, and mental retardation.

Based in San Diego, California since 1940, Dr. Rimland was the founder, in 1967, and director of the Autism Research Institute (ARI), and founder of the Autism Society of America (ASA), in 1965. Rimland was long an internationally recognized authority on autism spectrum disorders, and was the father of a high-functioning autistic son.

Education and early career

After completing his undergraduate studies at San Diego State University, Rimland obtained his PhD in experimental psychology and research design, from Pennsylvania State University in 1953.

Dr. Rimland's son, Mark, was born in 1956, when the diagnosis of autism was rare. From birth, however, something was drastically wrong with Mark. Rimland had recently earned his doctorate, but was not yet familiar with the word autism. Only much later was it determined Mark's condition fell into the category of early infantile autism, rather than regressive autism.[citation needed] Despite challenges, Mark has nevertheless become a talented artist.

After his son's diagnosis, Rimland set forth on a quest to understand autism and bring much needed attention to the disorder, in order to foster research into its causes and treatment. Rimland has often sparked controversy along his way.

Rimland published his book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, in 1964. Its foreword, by Leo Kanner, the man who first identified autism as a syndrome, gave the book credibility among professionals in the field. It was an about-turn for Kanner, the originator of the word "autism" and of the "refrigerator mother" theory; through his observations and research, Kanner had come to believe that autism had a neurological cause-- the accepted view in the medical profession today. But at the time Rimland's book was published,and for many years afterwards, the standard theory was that autism was caused by unloving 'refrigerator mothers', an unproven but widely accepted idea most famously propounded by University of Chicago professor Bruno Bettelheim, notably in his book The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self (1967), which claimed that the traumatized unloved child retreated into autism. As a professional research psychologist, Rimland was well positioned to launch the first major attack on Bettelheim's theory. Rimland's was the first authoritative voice to dispute Bettelheim's research and call into question his conclusions.

Parents from all over the United States, excited that for the first time a professional in the field did not accuse them of maltreating their autistic child, began to write to Rimland. He called a meeting in Teaneck, New Jersey, at the house of one of the families, and this small group of parents, including among others Ruth C. Sullivan (first president of the ASA), became the nucleus that founded the Autism Society of America.

In 1967, Dr. Rimland established the Autism Research Institute (ARI) - the hub of a worldwide network of parents and professionals concerned with autism. ARI was founded to conduct and foster scientific research designed to improve the methods of diagnosing, treating, and preventing autism. ARI also disseminates research findings to parents and others worldwide seeking help via their * [1] website. The ARI data bank, the world's largest, contains over 40,000 detailed case histories of autistic children from over 60 countries.

Another one-of-a-kind database that Dr. Rimland started was the “Parent Ratings of Biomedical Interventions”. Since 1967, over 26,000 parents have completed surveys indicating the extent to which various treatments helped their children. This information is on ARI’s site to help both parents of children with autism and physicians decide on a possible course of treatment.

[edit] Conflicts with medical opinion

Many senior figures in medicine and psychology questioned Rimland's contributions to autism during the later period of his career. In 1995, Bennett Leventhal, a professor at the University of Chicago, tersely dismissed as "rubbish" Rimland's concern about the rise in autism diagnoses, and his assertion that vaccinations might be among the causes. Rimland was among a minority of researchers who believe that thiomersal (a mercury-based preservative) used in vaccines is a direct cause of autism. The United States Institute of Medicine (IOM) in its 2004 report found that, "the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism."[2] The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), National Health Service (NHS), World Health Organization (WHO), European Medicines Agency (EMEA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and many other national and international medical organizations have issued statements of a similar nature, finding no link between autism and thimerosal based on the evidence currently available from a variety of studies.

In her book, Children with Starving Brains, Jaquelyn McCandless, MD, calls Rimland "The grand godfather of the movement for understanding the biological treatment of autism". Rimland's book, Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implication for a Neural Theory of Behavior (1964), is credited by many with changing the prevailing view of autism, in the field of psychiatry, from an emotional illness -widely thought to be caused by refrigerator mothers - to the current recognition that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder.

[edit] Claims of an 'autism epidemic'

Rimland was among the first autism campaigners to draw attention to increases in the number of diagnoses of autism. After correlating the presence of mercury in vaccines with the increase in autism cases, Dr. Rimland concluded that mercury is the primary culprit in the epidemic rise of autism: back in 1990, one out of ten thousand infants as compared to one out of one hundred and fifty at present (March 2007) representing an increase of 6,670%. To this day, the medical establishment still does not know the cause of autism.[1]

[edit] A brush with Hollywood

Rimland has lectured on autism and related problems throughout the world, including before thousands of professional groups, and he is the author of numerous publications. His high profile, within what was then a small community of autism activists, caught the eye of movie producers in nearby Hollywood, California.

Rimland subsequently served as the primary technical advisor on autism for the 1988 movie Rain Man. Mark Rimland was interviewed by Dustin Hoffman, serving as one of several models for the character portrayed by the movie star. The movie helped establish worldwide awareness of autism, just when the prevalence of autism was first becoming apparent.

Friday June 26, 2009, 5:04 pm
Interesting... Thanks Raffi!

Friday June 26, 2009, 7:19 pm
Yeah, they put backpacks on them now that has electrical devices in them. When they don't do as they are told they are zapped. Sounds like a real solution to a problem that could be handled with VitD3 proven to help.

Friday June 26, 2009, 7:25 pm
Sue, my physician tested herself and is now testing all her patients for D3 deficiency.

Friday June 26, 2009, 9:21 pm
Some people will try anything - it's a very trying disability. I'm assuming that the doctor's son had Aspergers syndrome, since it says "high functioning". My son is non-verbal, and has bouts of screaming - which can be scarey for outsiders to see & hear (he is 32, 6'4" & about 260 lb.). He is only on 2 medications, and they work as well as anything has. He did the screaming bit when he was young too, but without the conviction/fury that he has now. And he seemed not to be hurting then, just testing what would happen.. now when he screams & I ask if he's hurting he points to his head 99.9% of the time (an occassional stomach ache the rest of the time).
So far nothing has eliminated the "headaches", and they seem to come in a cycle (which I could understand If he was female) - plus they Started at Puberty.. so I'm still hopeful that as he ages he will gradually lose the headaches. My other two sons are fine, though both get migraines on occassion (as did I when I was younger) - and they are great with their brother. I'm sad though that both have decided not to have children, but I don't blame them.

Friday June 26, 2009, 9:32 pm
I forgot to say that I thought Rain Man was a very damning movie for rich people. The family in that movie Could have afforded round-the-clock supervision that wouldn't have "bothered" the family. Most of us had to do it ALL ourselves - so that family just seemed shallow, selfish, & uncaring!
Institutions may have much more to offer in the way of treatments & activities, but the Family has Love. I know many families Can't Deal with it - but I think dealing with it Together is the best way.

Friday June 26, 2009, 10:13 pm
I kept meaning to put this in here I belong to this-Yvonne-and ARI

This is the Autistic Support Network-http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/-

you may know about it already.

Friday June 26, 2009, 10:57 pm
Voting Himself Rich: CDC Vaccine Adviser Made $29 Million Or More After
Using Role to Create Market
By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill 16 Feb 2009 Dr. Paul Offit of
the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) took home a fortune
of at least $29 million as part of a $182 million sale by CHOP
of its worldwide royalty interest in the Merck Rotateq vaccine
to Royalty Pharma in April of last year, according to an investigation
by Age of Autism. Based on an analysis of current CHOP administrative
policies, the amount of income distributed to Offit could be as
high as $46 million.

Saturday June 27, 2009, 12:04 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/attack-on-mothers_b_52894.html

Attack on Mothers
The poisonous public attacks on Katie Wright this week--for revealing that her autistic son Christian (grandson of NBC Chair Bob Wright), has recovered significant function after chelation treatments to remove mercury -- surprised many observers unfamiliar with the acrimonious debate over the mercury-based vaccine preservative Thimerosal. But the patronizing attacks on the mothers of autistic children who have organized to oppose this brain-killing poison is one of the most persistent tactics employed by those defending Thimerosal against the barrage of scientific evidence linking it to the epidemic of pediatric neurological disorders, including autism. Mothers of autistics are routinely dismissed as irrational, hysterical, or as a newspaper editor told me last week, "desperate to find the reason for their children's illnesses," and therefore, overwrought and disconnected.

But my experience with these women is inconsistent with those patronizing assessments. Over the past two years I've met or communicated with several hundred of these women. Instead of a desperate mob of irrational hysterics, I've found the anti-Thimerosal activists for the most part to be calm, grounded and extraordinarily patient. As a group, they are highly educated. Many of them are doctors, nurses, schoolteachers, pharmacists, psychologists, Ph.D.s and other professionals. Many of them approached the link skeptically and only through dispassionate and diligent investigation became convinced that Thimerosal-laced vaccines destroyed their children's brains. As a group they have sat through hundreds of meetings and scientific conferences, and studied research papers and medical tests. They have networked with each other at meetings and on the Web. Along the way they have stoically endured the abuse routinely heaped upon them by the vaccine industry and public health authorities and casual dismissal by reporters and editors too lazy to do their jobs.

Many of these women tell a story virtually identical to Katie Wright's -- I have now heard or seen this grim chronology recounted hundreds of times in conversations, e-mails and letters from mothers: At 2-1/2 years old, Christian Wright exceeded all milestones. He had 1,000 words, was toilet-trained, and enjoyed excellent social relations with his brother and others. Then his pediatrician gave him Thimerosal-laced vaccines. He cried all night, developed a fever and, over the coming months, this smart, healthy child disappeared. Christian lost the ability to speak, to interact with family members, to make eye contact or to point a finger. He is no longer toilet trained. He engaged in stereotypical behavior--screaming, head-banging, biting and uncontrolled aggression, and suffers continuously the agonizing pain of gastrointestinal inflammation.

After hearing that story a couple dozen times, a rational person might do some more investigation. That's when one encounters the overwhelming science -- hundreds of research studies from dozens of countries showing the undeniable connection between mercury and Thimerosal and a wide range of neurological illnesses. In response to the overwhelming science, CDC and the pharmaceutical industry ginned up four European studies designed to disguise the link between autism and Thimerosal. Their purpose was to provide plausible deniability for the consequences of their awful decision to allow brain-killing mercury to be injected into our youngest children. Those deliberately deceptive and fatally flawed studies were authored by vaccine industry consultants and paid for by Thimerosal producers and published largely in compromised journals that neglected to disclose the myriad conflicts of their authors in violation of standard peer-review ethics. As I've shown elsewhere [see www.robertfkennedyjr.com], these studies were borderline fraud, using statistical deceptions to mislead the public and regulatory community.

The CDC and IOM base their defense of Thimerosal on these flimsy studies, their own formidable reputations, and their faith that journalists won't take the time to critically read the science. The bureaucrats are simultaneously using their influence, energies and clout to derail, defund and suppress any scientific study that may verify the link between Thimerosal and brain disorders. (These would include epidemiological studies comparing the records of vaccinated children with those of unvaccinated populations like the Amish or home-schooled kids who appear to enjoy dramatically reduced levels of autism and other neurological disorders.) The federal agencies have refused to release the massive public health information accumulated in their Vaccine Safety Database (VSD) apparently to keep independent scientists from reviewing evidence that could prove the link. They are also muzzling or blackballing scientists who want to conduct such studies.

Ironically, it is the same voices that once blamed autism on "bad parenting," and "uninvolved" moms that are now faulting these mothers for being too involved.

Due to this campaign of obfuscation and public deception, Thimerosal-based vaccines continue to sicken millions of children around the world and potential treatments -- like the chelation that benefited Christian Wright -- are kept out of the hands of the mainstream doctors now treating autistic kids with less effective tools. Like thousands of other mothers of autistic children, Katie Wright knows what sickened her child. Her efforts to spare other families this catastrophe, deployed with a cool head and calm demeanor, are truly heroic. Maybe it's time we all started listening. Maybe it's time to start respecting and honoring the maternal instincts and hard work of Katie and her fellow mothers by aggressively funding the studies that might verify or dispute them.

Saturday June 27, 2009, 2:54 pm
Raffi, I've emailed this post on the mercury issue to my son - he teaches at a school for special needs children. A while back I tried talking to the principal there about chelation and other holistic approaches - but got abslutely nowhere. Some people are stuck on 'science'........

Thank you for this article.

Sunday June 28, 2009, 1:00 pm
interesting, thanks Raffi

Sunday June 28, 2009, 1:10 pm
Here is an interesting analysis of chelation and mercury, etc.

http://www.healing-arts.org/children
/holmes.htm