May you continue to enjoy many many gifts of days.

I actually find it terribly sad how some parents of a child diagnosed with autism often openly express, sometimes even with wide exposure on TV, their displeasure and disappointment in their child due to their condition.

Let’s face it, parents only want to sue pharmaceutical companies that used to produce thimerosal containing vaccines to reprimand the high cost of care for the child, and perhaps in some cases, their displeasure that their child has turned out the way it has.

Amicus Brief for gun ownership rights
http://www.aapsonline.org/judicial/heller-02-07-08.pdf

I see faria is his own publisher.
http://www.haciendapub.com/

Rational Wiki has a lot of informaton on the group.
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons

I had not heard of Rational Wiki. I shall have to look at more of their work. It appears to be a response to Conservapedia.
http://www.asd.org/99pics.html

It is a typical fake front which promotes their political causes by laundering the source of the message in a facade of feigned legitimacy.

Here’s what SourceWatch reveals about their political leanings:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons

Readers here might also be interested in the following blog discussion of the same group from Neurodiversity Weblog:

http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/

“Previous perusals of JPandS tables of contents left me with the general impression that its sponsors tended toward the conservative end of the political spectrum. I therefore decided to make a comprehensive survey of the website of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, to get a sense of the convictions driving its editorial policies.”

And this blog entry from ConWebWatch (disclosure: it is a liberal political blog that reports on the shenanigans from the right) reveals even more:

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2005/medicine.html

“The report suggested several Draconian remedies for this alleged problem, none of which have a thing to do with medicine, as one might expect from a journal that has “physicians and surgeons” in its name. Among them: “Closing America’s borders with fences, high-tech security devices and troops” and “Punishing the aiding and abetting of illegal aliens as a crime.”

It makes one wonder what kind of medical journal this is. The answer to that appears to be: Not much of one.

The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons seems to be little more than a conservative publication gussied up with a medical spin. A look at the references in the illegal-alien report, written by Madeleine Pelner Cosman — a “medical lawyer” whose previous claim to fame appears to be a book on medieval cooking but who has also written an article for a group called Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership — is chock full of hardline conservative cites, including books by Michelle Malkin and former WND writer (and Slantie winner) Jon Dougherty and articles by Phyllis Schlafly and Tom DeWeese.”

The same group also seems to be responsible for another facade:

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Doctors_for_Disaster_Preparedness

“The website for the group, Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP), is registered to Jeremy Snavely of AAPS. [7] DDP and AAPS also share the same mailing address, in Tucson, Arizona. [8] [9]“

Is Jeremy Snavely the same person as John Hanni? The email address for Snavely is jhanni@.
http://www.who.is/whois-org/ip-address/asd.org/

Hanni and/or Snavely is/are tied to The American Society of Dermatology which has a similar agenda to the other 2 groups:
http://www.asd.org/government.html

“At its February Board Meeting in New Orleans, the ASD Board approved moving the Society’s offices to Peoria, Illinois and named M. John Hanni, Jr., CAE interim Executive Director. In making the move, the Board expressed its appreciation to Christopher W. Hayen for his services as Executive Director during the Society’s formative years….

…Before coming to Peoria, Hanni served as Executive Vice President of the Dade County (Miami, Florida) Medical Association and Executive Director of Medicine of Cleveland. He is a certified Association of Medical Society Executives and a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.”

This Dermatology group doesn’t appear to have been active since 1999. But they have a picture of Mr Snavely with a caption that says he is a “computer consultant with AAPS”. There are no pictures of Mr Hanni.

So it is interesting that the apparent source of the webpage for the Dermatology group has the three domains registered, one for the derm group, the disaster group and the AAPS. Is Snavely using 2 names or just using Hanni’s email address?

You can learn a lot more from following the pictures. In the “1997 annual meeting” of the Dermatology group they are selling books with the assistance of the editor of “The Sentinel” which is the AAPS “oficial journal”
http://www.asd.org/97annpics.html
http://www.haciendapub.com/medsent.html

That editor is one, Miguel A Faria, Jr, MD who apparently is a Cuban refugee and retired neurosurgeon with a very strong political agenda.
http://www.haciendapub.com/bio.html
http://www.haciendapub.com/writings.html

I wonder what one would find looking at the other speakers of the dermatology group? The topics appear to be more politcal than clinical.
http://www.asd.org/99pics.html

I am going to post this but with no preview option, I apologize in advance for the typos that are invariably going to be in this comment.

While there may be risks associated with certain forms of asbestos, these are far less than the risks of many substances that are still widely used or ingested despite lack of any compensatory benefits, such as cigarettes.

The mind boggles.

http://www.jpands.org/vol8no3/schlafly.pdf

JPANDS is suspect in my just as one of the safe-harbors for the Geiers. However, I recall hearing Dr. Brent in the Autism Omnibus make some comments about the quality of JPANDS. I seem to recall him stating that this was the only journal he had come across that wasn’t listed in a major index (I forget the name of the index).

I re-read the referenced quote a couple of times and saw no reference to race. In fact it almost monotonously limited itself to “illegal immigrants” (a term which I find oxymoronic – you can be an immigrant, or you can be here illegally, but not both) without specifying race. The language may be inflammatory but I honestly can’t see it as racist.

I do. It’s totally racist, and reading the whole thing shows it to be pretty vile.

The article is completely of a piece with portrayals of immigrants of other races dating back to time immemorial as stupid carriers of disease and pestilence here to contaminate the purity of this nation or as an “invasion” that’s threatening to destroy us. See other examples:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/05/immigrant-plague.html
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/02/immigration-against-right.html

And isn’t arrogance one of the things that the antivaxxers (among others) routinely accuse the medical profession of?

I must quibble a bit with one thing, though:

“Regardless of your position on immigration, doesn’t the sheer racism apparent in the above passages sicken you?”

I re-read the referenced quote a couple of times and saw no reference to race. In fact it almost monotonously limited itself to “illegal immigrants” (a term which I find oxymoronic – you can be an immigrant, or you can be here illegally, but not both) without specifying race. The language may be inflammatory but I honestly can’t see it as racist.

In any case, I’ll be duly suspicious of any “study” cited in JPANDS. That is, I gather, your main intent. Thank you for taking the time to assemble this article.

Maybe I’m being a bit too cynical, but my hypothesis fits the data at least as well as in the papers JPANDS seems happy to publish.

D’oh!

Odd how, after reading the post over and over and over I still missed that…