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Story Landis resigns from autism committee

story landis.jpgPosted for Meredith Wadman

The chief of neurological research at the US National Institutes of Health resigned abruptly on Saturday (17 October) from a pan-government committee coordinating autism research, after an Internet newspaper, Age of Autism, posted handwritten notes she left behind after a 30 September committee meeting.

Story Landis, the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, had questioned in the notes whether one parent on the committee, [Lyn Redwood] “is pushing autism as [a] multisystem disorder to feed into vaccine injury”.

In her letter of resignation, first reported by The Huffington Post, Landis apologized for “unprofessional” behaviour and said “I understand how my comments triggered frustration and anger” in the autism community.

Image: NIH

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  1. Report this comment

    Sullivan said:

    This is truly a sad day for the autism community. Rather than work within the system, some of the “activists” decided that intimidation tactics must be used on the IACC.

    As a bit of irony, these activists got someone to quit the IACC who was sympathetic to allowing the very research they are lobbying for.

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    alison macneil said:

    As an Autism mom of a severely vaccine injured child I support Story Landis in her resignation. I think she showed grace and honor not evident in her colleagues on the IACC. I also think the notes found on the floor were a conversation among several IACC members and she took the fall for them. They should have spoken up. I also think that the tone of the notes speaks to the climate of the IACC which is set by Tom Insel. This climate distorts the pain of Autism parents as greed, invalidates our experiences of our children’s medical problems which we deal with on the ground every day, and adds to the growing ugly discourse between those who believe vaccines haven’t been properly researched for safety and those who feel they have. I will be thrilled to hear that Tom Insel has stepped down. His leadership has been disgracefully ineffective and on the backs of such vulnerable children and families in such stark pain and circumstances.

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    Natasa said:

    To Sullivan: autism parents have been trying VERY hard to work within the system. They have been knocking on the door of the system for years, and have been turned down again and again and again and again and again.

    The main and only reason the parents are outraged is that the system, including IACC, have been ignoring and patronising them.

    And by the way, Landis NEVER EVER openly expressed sympathy for the kind of research that parents are pleading for. Not until the day before her resignation. It would be very interesting indeed to hear why she had kept those views to herself for years!!!

    Do come forward, Dr Landis. We are dying to hear from you.

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    Richard Blaber said:

    I suffer from Asperger Syndrome. I was born in 1956, well before the MMR vaccine was even thought of, and the quantity of mercury in any vaccines I did receive was almost vanishingly small – too small to make any conceivable difference.

    The problem is that the symptoms of severe autism do not appear straightaway, so parents get the idea that there is nothing wrong with their child. Then the child is vaccinated, and the symptoms appear. Ergo, it ‘must’ have been the vaccine that ‘caused’ the autism. It is entirely understandable why parents should make this mistake, but it doesn’t make them right.

    Autism spectrum disorders are genetic in origin, some resulting from specific alleles in nuclear DNA, others from variants in mtDNA. The idea that autism has anything to do with vaccination is just mythology, I’m afraid, and it’s pernicious mythology, at that, insofar as it’s stopping parents from having their children inoculated against diseases there is no need for them to contract.

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    Sullivan said:

    “And by the way, Landis NEVER EVER openly expressed sympathy for the kind of research that parents are pleading for.”

    To be accurate, you should state “some” parents are pleading for this research. I am a parent and I am not pleading for this research.

    Secondly, Dr. Landis was open to discussing the subject, having chaired an IACC panel which included significant discussion on vaccines

    https://iacc.hhs.gov/events/2009/scientific_workshop/docs/calls/sw_p3c2_20090924_call_summary.pdf

    You can read this comment “Dr. Landis recommended focusing a study of vaccinated/unvaccinated children to measure a range of health outcomes, including preventable childhood diseases.” in this document.

    https://iacc.hhs.gov/events/2009/scientific_workshop/docs/calls/sw_p3c1_20090922_call_summary.pdf

    She wasn’t keeping her views to herself. She was stating them in public.

    Had the bloggers at the Age of Autism (a) been paying attention to these panel discussions and (b) approached Dr. Landis for comment rather than launching a sneak attack, they might have had a clearer vision of what she thought.

    Note that being sympthetic to the cause—looking for research to be done—is not the same thing as being sympathetic to the idea that vaccines cause autism.

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    ronald dishinger said:

    I find it rather difficult with people who have autistic children and refuse to accept one of two principles: one, we live in an age of where Buddha 2550 years predicted we would have micororganisms from polutants come in the form of fogs and rains and invade some people and you have autism. That is the difficucult one . The next one is that people seem to refuse to think the pharacuetical industry would do such a horrible thing with mercury,etc and cause autism. they did and if the pharacuetical industry would be sued the if you think the world went into economica turmoil with banking before it would be even worse with the money pharacueticals would have to pay. and even more importantly until there is a help for autism then you are looking at 30-50 80 years of life and who pays for that? yes our government screwed up big time with this one. the governemnet will refuse to accept the blame. yes I mentioned buddha- he also gave exact forulas to treat cancers, a new disease and autism but no one is listening. so nothng ever gets moved from one point to the next in advancement. bernie rimland was a friend of mine from many years ago, bernie could not cure autism for his son ,now 47 and still and will always be in a rehab home. His too may have been from vacines as bernie told me. I am not a conservative but a moralist- i believe the pharacuetical- government complex should be totally and completely brough to account and yes pay even if every company they have goes bankrupt. Greed was there game and still is. When one is fighting then one is not doing some thing else. I think you can do both. fight for the rights of future people even though some huge damage has been done. bernie also told me way back that autism was 1 in 160 children, now 1 in 110 or even less and that was only 12 years he told me that. I personally believe there are two sources of causes for autism and even one is bad enough.How do you think people feel when they spent their entire lives caring for their son or daughter and finally the last thought before death is their son or daughter with autism and who will help them. all from greed- same thing over again for thousands of years and we still do not learn. If i can help please contact me. my area of research is schizophrenias and my web is http://www.biochemimbal-behavior.com tel 270 6849233

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