Will it goes with that whole imaginary Big Business model of abortion.  There has to be money in it somewhere for someone—in this case, I bet they imagine the doctors luring in helpless stupid women and force-abortioning them, thereby taking not only the payment for the abortion but also then selling the fetuses for a bajillion dollars to the evil vaccine making companies.

Have you seen this? I hope criminal charges are pressed. over 800 people exposed! Look at that baby on the bottom. Jesus. All because they’re anti vaccine.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x84945

Poor kid.

Aborted chicken fetuses, from baby chicken abortions.  Duh.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered the IVF embryos to have been “aborted” since they were not carried to term.  If you hold the view that a fertilized embryo is a human being, then there would be no difference between one created naturally and one created for IVF.

#5

anoNY, what a perfectly logical insanity that is.

Soylent Green vaccines?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered the IVF embryos to have been “aborted” since they were not carried to term.”

I think most of them do at least conflate discarded IVF embryos and the products of an aborted pregnancy in their rhetoric.  So I’d be kind of surprised if they didn’t, at least for the purposes of propaganda and legislation.

The second article gives the name of the cell line that some vaccines are being produced in - per c6. This is a cell line derived from a retina cell from an 18 week old human fetus.

That doesn’t mean there are aborted fetuses in the vaccines, but for people who don’t understand vaccine manufacturing and who want to inflame true-believers it’s a “defendable” lie.

It is sooo amazing to me how much anti-science rhetoric has gone from fringe to semi-mainstream. I’m about Amanda’s age, so I don’t have first hand knowledge of pre-1980’s politics (and well, yeah, the Regan years were more about the Care Bears than National Health Policy for me), but still, this anti-science as talking-points on Cable News seems much more of a post-2000 thing than something considered worthy of consideration in the 80’s & 90’s. Now, I’m a scientist’s daughter—a Geologist btw and my father did share that his career was considered blasphemy by some because they believed that their religion dictated that one believe that the Earth was about 6,000 years old. I always found that so strange and sad that people HAD to believe something to feel safe in this world contrary to the REALITIES of the wonder of the world. I also tried to convince the parents of one friend that forcing her daughter to spend Sunday afternoons in her room contemplating God and Jesus’ sacrifice was contrary to belief in a loving God (oh, little bud of a non-theist was I). Suffice it to say, she still didn’t get to come out and play. You know what else would encourage happy, healthy play? Vaccines!!!!

Yeah, the genetic theory is the most plausible. I have NVLD, (which is a light version of AS, which is a light version of autism) and my siblings are both learning disabled too.  We’re all college graduates, and we lead pretty normal lives; it’s just a little stumbling block.  I suspect the thinking behind the anti-vaxxers is much like the thinking behind anti-choicers, ie;

1. My kid was born perfect. (like Adam and Eve in the garden)

2. If s/he has an autistic spectrum disorder, that must mean;

a. s/he has sinned, and God is punishing hir, or
b. I’ve sinned and God is punishing me through hir.

However, since I lead a blameless life, and my kid does too, that leads me to;

3. Some Godless heathen &*(%^ has corrupted my kid (like the serpent in the garden) though some Godless heathen wiles like “science” and “medicine”.

4. Science bad!

Rinse and repeat.

And so it wasn’t exactly a surprise to hear that anti-choicers are running with a bullshit story that vaccines are made with aborted fetuses, and that’s what causes autism.

Oh, Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, really? This? I mean, this tale is just a modern-day version of the classic anti-semitic blood libel, with evil inter-lectual scientists replacing (or being conflated with) evil inter-lectual Joooos. I can definitely see how this veiled narrative would have some appeal to a certain sub-set of anti-choicers, in addition to the other reasons you provide.

I’m surprised, I always thought anti-vaxxers were one of the (true) far left-wing brands of crazy.

1. My kid was born perfect. (like Adam and Eve in the garden)

Many of those in the confluence between anti-vax and anti-choice are so obsessed with conformity that any difference in thought patterns, any unorthodox ways of thinking are unacceptable. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the biggest loudmouths in that area of the Venn diagram of woo have kids on the higher-functioning end of the autism scale.

Since this Anti-Science and Anti-Medicine thing looks like it’s not going away, I want to get into leech farming or become a Barber.  I bet there’s a lot of money to be made bringing medicine back to the good old days of balancing the four humors...

Isn’t the real reason for the rise in autism disorders is that we’re just better at detecting them? That back in the day they would have just called the kid a “little slow”?

And so it wasn’t exactly a surprise to hear that anti-choicers are running with a bullshit story that vaccines are made with aborted fetuses, and that’s what causes autism.

<i><b>Wow.

<blockquote>“It is sooo amazing to me how much anti-science rhetoric has gone from fringe to semi-mainstream. I’m about Amanda’s age, so I don’t have first hand knowledge of pre-1980’s politics…”</blockquote>

In the 1970’s and earlier, most adults had first-hand knowledge of how horrible these diseases are.  They had actually been through measles and/or mumps.  My generation, (I’m 40), was the first to not see these diseases first hand.  The anti-vax movement really began when we started having children.

This idea has been pushed by the Vatican for 5 years, at least. 
http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=2410

Oh, yes, by all means, let us go back to the wonderful idyllic days of the past where no-one aborted children and we didn’t have those horrible vaccines and instead women had around ten pregnancies but with only around two children surviving past age five due to rampant disease and the women therefore died at around age 29 from being worn out from a pregancy per year and thus the father could upgrade to a newer model wife without having to go through the messiness of divorce and basic respect of women.

Hold on, I think that’s ACTUALLY WHAT THEY WANT.

Makes sense, Robert Kennedy Jr. is both anti-choice and believes in the autism/vaccine lie.  If anything, he’s one of the five biggest spreaders of the lie.

<i>Isn’t the real reason for the rise in autism disorders is that we’re just better at detecting them? That back in the day they would have just called the kid a “little slow”? </blockquote>

Pretty much.  Well, not just “slow”.  Depending on the part of the spectrum you’re dealing with, they might have been called “weird”.

Look at it this way: the stereotypical absent-minded scientist with no social skills and an obsession with (his, usually) work is a hoary old trope that’s been in movies and TV since movies and TV started.  When you see such a character these says, one of the first things that gets asked of the writers is “Does the character have Asberger’s?”  And sometimes the answer is “Yes,” the most recent one being Zach on “Bones”.  Their portrayal isn’t significantly different from the aforementioned hoary old tropes.

Ben (#17)—not necessarily “slow”; maybe “really smart, but kind of odd”.

(like my kids)

In saying “slow” I meant in social skills not intelligence, but poor choice of words. The absent-minded scientist (or university professor, for that matter) trope explains it well, though.

In the 1970’s and earlier, most adults had first-hand knowledge of how horrible these diseases are.

Just like most physicians used to have firsthand knowledge of septic abortion wards and associated ER cases in the days before Roe v. Wade.  Now that a lot of those doctors are retiring, that experience is going with them.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence the antichoice movement seems to be getting more traction in recent years.  If they can tie anti-vax hysteria to their movement it’ll be a serious boost in horsepower.

Ben D @14:
The woo left is so far around to the left it is right (sort of like if you go far enough west you’re in the East).

Thanks KeithM.  It help if people did some reading about autism (I’m looking at you Ben D) before commenting.  Some people with Asperger syndrome or other autism spectrum syndromes are brilliant.
They may have trouble connecting emotionally or socially, but it is not about being slow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome

It’s not just the anti-vaxxers. I have a book called “Bread Matters”—it’s essentially a screed against industrial bread. The recipes are excellent (it has one of the very, very few kitchen-scaled recipes I’ve ever seen for Russian rye bread) but the author himself is so anti-science that not only does he rail against every possible additive that can go into a loaf of bread, but he even dislikes the “baker’s percentage” method of measurement (i.e. measuring ingredients, particularly liquids, in terms of the mass of flour used in the recipe) even though it’s pretty much the only useful way to improvise a bread recipe off the cuff. I saw a similar attitude in a review of Michael Ruhlman’s excellent “Ratio”—rather than seeing Ruhlman’s ratios as liberating, the reviewer saw the entire scientific approach to cooking as sucking the fun out of it somehow.

The woo left is so far around to the left it is right (sort of like if you go far enough west you’re in the East).

Ah, so it’s like Trooferism, or anti-semitism then.

What’s super-upsetting about this if you think about it is that they’re willing to let their kid risk death to avoid being autistic.

Given a choice between an autistic two year old and a dead two year old, fucking hell yeah I’ll take the chance my kid will become autistic, rather than the chance they’ll *die*. This fits into that whole “autistic people’s lives are not worth living and caretakers are justified in murdering autistic people” thing that is so appalling about a lot of so-called “autism advocacy.”

I mean, this is not about the hypothetical child that you might give birth to, or the fetus whose face you’ve never seen and who you’ve never held. This is about the baby you *already have*. How can you justify risking that baby’s life to avoid a non-fatal illness?

Of course, part of the answer is that they’ve never seen a baby die of whooping cough or rubella or mumps, whereas they’ve seen some autistic kids. But I really do think part of it is that they think autism *is* death, that an autistic child would be better off dead. As a person with a cousin with Asperger’s, as a person who though undiagnosed might be on the spectrum myself, that offends me.

The anti-vaccine thing is in fact associated with the left, but on any subject that involves anxiety about purity, the standard partisan camps kind of break down, and the right melds with the left.

To your point, Alara, I’d like to point people to Temple Grandin’s TED talk.  Grandin is a high-functioning autistic, and of course, she’s not anti-science, so she is pretty dead set on the idea that autism is part of a genetic spectrum.  I’m sure she’s right, and her points about neuro-diversity are well-taken.  I mean, she’s not saying that really bad cases aren’t horrible tragedies, just that high-functioning autistics have a lot to offer the world.

Of course, her points have no bearing on this debate one way or another, because vaccines don’t cause it.  If they do find environmental factors that influence it, I’ll bet dollars to donuts the result is that we are just able to take children that would have been complete disasters and get them closer to Grandin and other high-functioning autistics who have a lot to offer.

It seems like Autism has a lot more to do with the age of the mother:

They found that a 40-year-old woman’s risk of having a child later diagnosed with autism was 50 percent greater than that of a woman between 25 and 29.

But being an older father—40 or older—only contributes significantly to autism risk when the mother is under 30.

“The older the mother, the more the risk that the child will develop autism, regardless of whether the father is young or old,” said Irva Hertz-Picciotto of the University of California Davis MIND Institute, who worked on the study published in the journal Autism Research.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6174UC20100208

#17:

Isn’t the real reason for the rise in autism disorders is that we’re just better at detecting them? That back in the day they would have just called the kid a “little slow”?

Aside from the inaccuracy of the phrase “a little slow,” I think you have a point.  In past generations, such children were assumed to be willfully stubborn, or shy, or antisocial.  But most were of more or less normal intelligence, so they sooner or later figured out how to deal with the alien species they were growing up among, at least enough to get by.

One of my sons has been diagnosed as Aspergers (i.e., on the autistic spectrum.)  But I would describe my father, my father-in-law, my brother, and possibly my aunt as being at various places on the Spectrum, with the usual caveat that I’m not qualified to make a real diagnosis.  Doesn’t sound like a huge rise in autism in my family.

By the way, as with ADHD, there are a lot of people diagnosing “autism” who aren’t qualified to do so.  When my son was diagnosed, it was a several-week process done by a psychiatrist who specializes in diagnosis, including home visits and visits to his nursery school.  It was confirmed by a psychologist who had autism as one of her specialties.  I would not trust a diagnosis from anyone less.  I strongly suspect that a lot of kids are being diagnosed as autistic who aren’t autistic at all, but have other issues.  Like ADHD, it is a convenient diagnosis if you don’t want to have to deal with what’s actually happening in a kid’s life.

Autism is actually a rather subtle syndrom, and most people aren’t even aware of existence of the levels of mental processing that are affected by it.  Most people just figure “weird behavior”=autistic.  But it’s more like a different way of experiencing the world, and different internal responses to experiences.

This is why I’m skeptical of the idea that it is “caused” by vaccinations, or a blow on the head, or something simple like that.  It’s not a deficiency, like blindness or cerebral palsy.  It’s more like a different distribution of personality traits, or a different way of relating to the world.  It’s like imagining that you can turn a human child into a chimpanzee by some artful brain damage.

What’s super-upsetting about this if you think about it is that they’re willing to let their kid risk death to avoid being autistic.

actually, a fair number of them are only willing to have that risk for other people’s children. think jenny mccarthy—her little precious is already vaccinated—that’s what caused his autism, doncha’ know! it’s a “well, i totally wouldn’t have vaccinated, if only i had known!” thing, and they think that gives them the right to campaign <strike>against vaccines</strike> for death for other people’s kids.

OT, but: is anyone else hearing about Boobquake from offline sources?  (http://orbitaldiamonds.dreamwidth.org/244475.html is the online source, I think)

I would posit that the match was actually made in hell, since hell on earth is what both wish upon the human race.  Otherwise, point taken and agreed.

I bet they imagine the doctors luring in helpless stupid women and force-abortioning them, thereby taking not only the payment for the abortion but also then selling the fetuses for a bajillion dollars to the evil vaccine making companies.

This is exactly what one woman I knew said. She was very upset that people couldn’t see the “money connection” in the “abortion industry” and told everyone who would listen about how abortion clinics made tons and tons of money selling the aborted fetuses. I think she claimed they were used in cosmetics as well as vaccines.

In saying “slow” I meant in social skills not intelligence, but poor choice of words.

I believe the time-honored phrase was “not all there”. It covered both the “slow” and people who simply interacted oddly.

I kinda quit believing Jill Stanek when she asserted that her former employer, Christ Hospital was letting babies die. Christ is part of a system affiliated with both the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. It’s extremely difficult to believe that these mainline Christians were letting babies die. Especially because the place was named for JC and all.

Much easier to believe that Christ fired Stanek’s ass (which they did) for being a wacko.

They are harvesting aborted babies bodies for all kinds of things.

For example, my handbag is made entirely of aborted baby.

I think I’ll drink some Free Trade Aborted Baby coffee this morning!

Mmmmm, fetalicious.

T, but: is anyone else hearing about Boobquake from offline sources?  (http://orbitaldiamonds.dreamwidth.org/244475.html is the online source, I think)
Comment #38: fluffster on 04/22 at 12:53 PM

Didn’t Jerry Falwell say 9/11 happened because of gays, feminists, liberals, and “pagans”? Didn’t he say Haiti had an earthquake because of some pact with the devil?

Now the Mullahs say they happen because women don’t walk around in tents. This once again just shows how close the Islamic wingnuts are to “our” wingnuts.

This is why I’m skeptical of the idea that it is “caused” by vaccinations, or a blow on the head, or something simple like that.  It’s not a deficiency, like blindness or cerebral palsy.  It’s more like a different distribution of personality traits, or a different way of relating to the world.  It’s like imagining that you can turn a human child into a chimpanzee by some artful brain damage.

Good explanation of a compelling argument. I wish this could be said more often and much louder until it became part of mainstream thinking. I’m not on the spectrum myself, but I am a color-letter synesthete with many of the attendant quirks of synesthesia, which has been linked to the A/A spectrum in genetic terms (though that’s still being debated by neurologists and other specialists). My ‘quirks’ are definitely internal, lifelong, and they affect how I process the world/social situations in every moment, particularly via language and words; one of the quirks of color-letter synesthetes, at least IME, is extracting impressions from written and spoken words—even foreign words—that might seem far-fetched or irrelevant to others. Sometimes that allows me to come off as utterly brilliant to other people (it sure helps me as a writer and literary scholar), and other times a little weird. In no way do I feel ‘broken’ by this, and in no way was this ever NOT a part of me, brought on by external factors.*

*I suspect my mother, brother and nephew are also undiagnosed synesthetes, but I’m a layperson so that’s uselessly anecdotal.

*sigh* Jill Stanek again? Does anything ever fall out of her face that isn’t a huge lie?

Nice to see that Knuterockne is staying current with the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News.  Only the most trusted names in reporting.

For example, my handbag is made entirely of aborted baby.

As was the sandwich I had for lunch.  Pass the liberal, elitist Worcestershire sauce, would you?

Ironically, Tim Tebow’s helmet at UF was made of aborted fetuses. His arena football helmet probably will be, too.

@Alara #32

As someone who has high-functioning Autism myself, I’d say that it also creates a problem for those of us who either have something on the Spectrum and have been diagnosed (such as myself and your cousin) and more so for those who might have it but have not been diagnosed.

Genetics matter, people who have some form of Autism are much more likely to have children who are autistic or carry it in their genes without actually having it (that is to say, they carry the possibility of their children being born with autistic traits). When these anti-vaccine people start spreading these lies about the causes of autism, it makes it much harder to actually recognize that there is a specific problem (not just in your children, but in adults who were not diagnosed and have suffered for it throughout their lives), to bring people in for specific problems, and to effectively treat it (Autism Spectrum Disorders are treated almost exclusively through behavioral therapy and the like, and as far as I know there are no medicines to help treat it).

In short, I’m every bit as offended as you are with these anti-vaccine people and their bullshit.

“Didn’t he say Haiti had an earthquake because of some pact with the devil?”

Falwell’s been dead for three years.  You’re thinking of Pat Robertson.

I has been reported that as a five year old child, Stanek did allow that the sky was blue.

Falwell’s been dead for three years.  You’re thinking of Pat Robertson.

You’re right, meant to say Robertson for that. Easy to get them confused…

About diagnosing Autism:  When I was growing up, everyone (me included) thought I was just shy and awkward.  In the last couple years, every doctor I go to diagnoses me with Asbergers.  However I still contend that I’m just shy and awkward.  I think a diagnosis of Autism is only useful if it’s a problem. 

I have an older sister who is retarded, autistic, and schizophrenic.  I have known many kids who were very autistic.  These off-the-cuff casual diagnosis’s almost seem absurd to me.  (No offense intended to anybody with mild autism)

#38 fluffster

OT, but: is anyone else hearing about Boobquake from offline sources?

So, are they really trying to mock Iranian mulllahs, or do they just want to look at women’s breasts? Or is it both?

It seems like Autism has a lot more to do with the age of the mother:

They found that a 40-year-old woman’s risk of having a child later diagnosed with autism was 50 percent greater than that of a woman between 25 and 29.

But being an older father—40 or older—only contributes significantly to autism risk when the mother is under 30.

This way of describing the disease’s likelihood is what drives anti-vaxxers.  A 50% increased risk equates to roughly 3-5 children out of a 1000 I think, maybe 10.  When the news drums these statistics as if they seem realistic and that a 50% increase means fifty children out of a hundred we’re in trouble.  Course this whole argument against vaccination is the hover parent thing.  It’s associated with the left based on compassion and such, but it really is a right-wing issue.  Wealthier parents who tend to vote with their heart strings but really it’s over control and power. 

Honestly, I could probably be classified as Autistic on some level because I am that classic off-in-thought professor but I am INFP, we’re a defined class of people who exhibit Autistic behaviors.  The argument they would rather have a dead baby than an autistic baby is interesting, but I am more in line with an earlier poster relating an article that if parent refuses to vaccinate their children they should be held responsible if they infect others.  If somebody dies, manslaughter should be considered a fitting punishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INFP

Anti-vaxxers and anti-choicers. There’s a match made in hell. Actually it’s pretty consistent. We know ‘lifers don’t give a fuck about wee Fanny Fetus once it’s born, so having it die early of preventable diseases is only a reason for more! babies! That’s why those who insist personhood is bestowed (magically?) at conception would rather save the toddler from the burning fertility clinic than the freezer full of embryos. They know there’s a huge difference, but don’t acknowledge it because society’s over-romanticizing of motherhood and pregnancy is too useful a woman-oppressing tool.

I wish this was new in the anti-vax world, but I was hearing this back in 2006 when I was pregnant and researching vaccination.  This was one of the red-flags that eventually helped me start being a lot more critical of the anti-vax claims I was coming across.  Anti-vaxers sound so science-y and sites like Mercola have taught them to cherry pick quotes from studies and use science jargon to make their arguments, so you start to believe that what they’re saying must be accurate or that there must be some element of truth. There was a PhD in immunology (or maybe it was epidemiology) who would patiently and respectfully debate with the hardcore anti-vaxers on BabyCenter.  I wish there had been more people like her to help keep pregnant and new moms critical of the anti-vax claims—anti-vaxers take advantage of the fact that they are feeling very protective and are susceptible to woo if it makes them feel like they are saving their child from something “awful.”

@leedveious

All due respect, but Autistic traits really are a problem for those people who have them for the simple reason that they almost certainly make life a lot harder to cope with than it would be otherwise. I have no doubt in my mind that I have many problems associated with my disorder that have been addressed by treatment.

Further, it’s worth mentioning that the test of what problems you may or may not have aren’t best answered by a self-diagnosis, but by how you are perceived by your family and peers (and professionals who are trained to deal with it).

From the article:
“The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the same sort of ideological culprits we see covering up the abortion-breast cancer link are also involved here. This would be a huge, huge blow to embryonic stem cell experimentation, for instance. That, and/or big pharma sees huge class action lawsuits on the horizon if this is proven,” Stanek added.

“That virus-laden DNA of aborted babies could be wreaking havoc on the DNA of healthy children is completely plausible,” she said.

Stanek is promoting the “abortion causes breast cancer” lie, openly admits to being a conspiracy theorist, and definitely is obsessed with purity, as Amanda has identified. “Virus-laden DNA”? How is this even possible? Can an IVF embryo even get viruses? She’s freaking about injecting “dirty” genetic matter into her “pure” children.

Well isn’t that special.

Pfil_BC: did you see the comment where the RCC priest/biology professor (Nicanor)basically (but oh so patiently and diplomatically) tells Stanek she’s full of shit and what she’s describing in that DNA quote can’t happen?  Makes you wonder how the heck Stanek ever mad it through nrusing school, which somewhere along the way is supposed to include biology.  ANd a t least a passing familiarity with physiology and anatomy.

ANd even one of her stalwart bullshit artist commenters who purports to be both a medical doc ad a professor (yet is listed on no university’s faculty) tells her the same - yet her ignorant crew goes merrily on still ignorant ten comments later. If it were only their own sorry asses that would get burned (measled mumped and chicken poxed) by this - I really woudn’t give a damn - but it’s their kids and mine and yes Xeranar - you start the petition for them to sign liability ad I’ll be happy to sign. Actually, I think a civil suit would be a great place to start.

Isn’t the real reason for the rise in autism disorders is that we’re just better at detecting them? That back in the day they would have just called the kid a “little slow”?

More like “a little weird” or “a little anti-social,” at least for higher-functioning autistic folks. Back in the day, the “solution” was often either institutionalisation or beatings/bullying. More recently (as late as the early 90s), it’s been over-prescription of standard psychiatric meds, which can have horrific effects on autistic brains.

As I said above, the people who’d tend to be in the area overlapping anti-vax and anti-choice are just the sort of religious fundies who’d be enraged when their high-functioning autistic kid says “gee, mom, when you look at it logically this God and Jesus stuff doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

I’ll agree with Amanda and Alara that a living, breathing, working Temple Grandin is much preferable to a dead or institutionalised one. In addition to the TED talk, I’d also recommend the HBO biopic that came out a few months ago.

And thankfully, for those on the lower-functioning end of the spectrum (for example, my cousin), there are wonderful and enlightened therapies that can allow them to contribute their own unique talents and abilities to society. But enlightenment is clearly beyond the ken of religious fundies and those looking for easy answers, clear-cut villains and helpless victims to pity or hate.

OK, this is merely a speculative, lay, pet hypothesis on my part, so I’m asking if there’s been any research done down this line - TV watching at young ages + Aspie - I haven’t found any in some half-hearted attempts.

Here’s the correlative speculation on my part is the rise in television (and other screen media). - roughly the color TV in every home/multi-rooms by 75, the advent of cable in the 80’s and the rise of the InterNet in 95.  We do know, thanks to the debunking of Baby Einstein - that TV watching (not electro magnetic wave stuff) can actually change the brains hardwiring, from what I understand. 

SO my first thought to blow my own hypothesis out of the water is that if autism or aspie is present in similar rates in much less technologized societies than that’s not it.  Does anybody know?

Stanek is promoting the “abortion causes breast cancer” lie, openly admits to being a conspiracy theorist, and definitely is obsessed with purity, as Amanda has identified. “Virus-laden DNA”? How is this even possible? Can an IVF embryo even get viruses? She’s freaking about injecting “dirty” genetic matter into her “pure” children.

I know, right? I saw that “virus-laden fetal DNA” thing and I was like, WTF? Stanek always manages to be unintentionally creepier than the scare stories she attempts to drum up.

Anti-vaxers sound so science-y and sites like Mercola have taught them to cherry pick quotes from studies and use science jargon to make their arguments

And this is exactly why the anti-abortion/anti-vax marriage doesn’t surprise me. The “sounding science-y” and cherry-picking from studies is exactly the same way creationists, young-earth people, and anti-abortion breast cancer believers have been behaving. Once you’re learned that amount of contempt for the actual scientific method, you can apply it to every facet of your politics.

AnoNY,  even hinting that a frozen embryo created for IVF is a person is the kind of lunatic thinking that leads to folks like Octomom, who just couldn’t bear to destroy her “babies”. But I digress, because the same same folks who scream “murderer” at abortion providers have loudly condemned her and her choices.

I’m not quite ready to put the pet theory out with the cat LWF, do you mind speculating a bit more?

If it was a genetic predisposition, not all sibs share all the genetics, right? So before TV, it would just lay dormant.  And TV watching, even if large families can vary - a second or ill sib or parent temporarily depressed, otherwise busy, etc.  could cause an increase in one sib, but not others born before or after the anomalous amount of TV - parental habits can change through the years - does that make sense?

OK, this is merely a speculative, lay, pet hypothesis on my part, so I’m asking if there’s been any research done down this line - TV watching at young ages + Aspie - I haven’t found any in some half-hearted attempts.

I can’t speak to the effects of TV, but Asperger’s Syndrome (now known as high-functioning autism) was identified in Germany during the 1930s (in part a counter to the Nazis’ charming “solution” for anyone who was mentally “different”) and the formal diagnostic definition was published in 1944. Not much TV watching going on in those days.

Unfortunately, Asperger’s research and associated diagnosis were essentially lost due to an Allied bombing hit on his clinic, and the condition wasn’t “re-discovered” until the early 1980s. It’s one of those fascinating science stories where politics and war conspire to leave research forgotten, lost or ignored.

Anyhow, the Asperger diagnosis was only added to the DSM in 1994, so it’s not surprising that you’d see an up-tick in diagnoses that place people along the higher-functioning end of the spectrum. Before then, high-functioning autistic people were just “eccentric” or “weird geeks” or “extreme introverts”  or “absent-minded professors,” because there was no diagnosis to place them on the spectrum.

I think the dates you identify are more co-incidence than correlation. If any media is re-wiring the brains in that manner, it’s the interactive sort (e.g. demanding videogames) rather than passive kind (e.g. Magilla Gorilla Saturday morning cartoon show).

However, the strongest and base causal element of the condition is genetic rather than external factors (e.g. vaccines, “refrigerator mothers,” television, etc)—where the right-wing anti-vaxxers are focused on conformity and the purity of precious bodily fluids, the left-wing anti-vaxxers (I suspect) can’t deal with the fact that their genes are somehow “bad.”

Phylosopher, whoa, the comments on Stanek’s article are stunning. As in, they stun me into not knowing where to even start to untangle the knots of lack of science education, anti-abortion propaganda, anti-IVF and stem cell research propaganda, religion, and plain old stupidity.
(http://www.jillstanek.com/vaccines-with-fetal-cells-caus.html) That said, the comments are a model of reason by comparison with the Age of Autism site comments.

Here’s a beaut:
“I have never had my children vaccinated with unethical vaccines. I can’t make heads or tails of the autism debate—so much passion on every side, hard to tell where the results are—but even if the vaccinations are purely beneficial, I will not have my children profit at the expense of other children’s lives.
I am given to understand that the children who died to produce the rubella vaccine were actually killed, in part, in order to produce a vaccine, so that one is particularly bad, imo.”

Given to understand by whom?? Source?
And not having her children profit at the expense of others is exactly why she should be vaccinating!

(and if anyone can link me to a lesson on block quotes and links in comments, I would be most grateful.)

The “sounding science-y” and cherry-picking from studies is exactly the same way creationists, young-earth people, and anti-abortion breast cancer believers have been behaving. Once you’re learned that amount of contempt for the actual scientific method, you can apply it to every facet of your politics.

Almost all American right-wing and corporatist use of this technique can be traced back to the work of PR pioneer Edward Bernays, especially on behalf of the tobacco industry.

So there couldn’t be an Aspie diagnosis before 1994 - yeah, that’d explain a lot. 

But re: only interactive hurting cognitive and language abiltiies, there have been studies.  Like this one:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090601182830.htm

though the cause is not directly TV, but displacement of other communication.

I know there is one out there on Tv and brain wiring, because Baby Einstien (yeah, had one of those tapes) was made to retract claims because of it IIRC.

I can’t make heads or tails of the autism debate—so much passion on every side

Ha. Talk about articulating one’s own problem without recognising it. As Madge the Manicurist used to say, the author of that comment on Stanek’s site is “soaking in it.”

blockquotes can be done by surrounding the text as follows:

|blockquote| quotedtext |/blockquote|

With the “|“s being replaced by the appropriate “greater-than” and “less-than” brackets. Hope that makes sense.

links can be done as follows:

|a href=“coolwebaddress”| clickhereforacoollink |/a|

with the same replacement of “|“s as above.

I’m glad I don’t have the job to diagnose autism because I honestly don’t know what to make of it all. First of all, you have all the people who generally would have just been “nerds” self-diagnosing themselves as having Asperger’s Syndrome just because they happen to like left-brainy stuff. Then you have the Autistic kids who can’t seem to process emotions but are very bright. Then you have the severely mentally and emotionally disabled kids (like one that lives nearby) who are also labeled “autistic.” At least, that’s what the parents tell everyone. It’s boggling because I sort of feel like how in the 90’s and early ‘00s, every developmental and behavioral grumble in a child was slapped as ADHD, and now people are starting to resist that label because there’s now a stigma that the parents just aren’t doing their job so they’ve moved on to claiming that every behavioral or emotional grumble in a child is now some special flavor of Autism.

I do remember reading a study that parents who are more left-brain-oriented are more likely to have autistic children: so for example, if my husband (math teacher) and I (database developer) made the mistake of breeding, we would be at very high risk of having an autistic child, even if we weren’t autistic ourselves. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be genetic, or possibly that the childrearing styles of people who tend to be more egg-heady are more likely to result in neurological development that would produce autism, or possibly they’re just more likely to have the cash to hand over to a doctor who can then diagnose autism instead of trying to muddle through with a weird kid.

Of course, we would also feed our child aborted fetuses with virus-ridden DNA. So not only would our kid be guaranteed autistic, they’d also be pretty fat.

OK, here’s the one I’m thinking of, Gracchus:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/113/4/708

Sorry, can’t get you the full official version, but here’s a summary

http://www.whitedot.org/issue/iss_story.asp?slug=ADHD Toddlers

From the bonafides, it doesn’t look like the guys a quack - at least at first glance.

“That virus-laden DNA of aborted babies could be wreaking havoc on the DNA of healthy children is completely plausible,” she said.

but i thought all the aborted babies were pure and special snowflakes whose murders by those dirty, dirty sluts made the baby jesus cry. or is is because their mothers were dirty, dirty sluts—their half of the dna contribution must be where the viruses hide!

wingnut “science” makes my brain hurt.

PM: Falwell’s been dead for three years.  You’re thinking of Pat Robertson.

Ben: You’re right, meant to say Robertson for that. Easy to get them confused…

Brief clue, Ben - the really skinny one who doesn’t talk much?  That’s probably Falwell.

sophiefair—you’re forgetting that abortion doctors will perform satanic rituals with the aborted fetuses before they sell them off for big bucks. The fetuses are pure and special snowflakes until the Rite of the Black Goat is performed on them.

From what I’ve read, the rubella component of the MMR vaccine is grown in a culture from a cell line that was originally created from tissue collected from a single fetus aborted in the 1960s. The termination was medically-indicated (i.e., not elective).

So there’s your itty-bitty kernel of truth in that giant steaming heap of bullshit.

I guess an anti-choicer could still justify not vaccinating his/her kids based on that. Somewhat ironically, rubella can cause all kinds of havoc on a pregnancy, including miscarriage and stillbirth.

But re: only interactive hurting cognitive and language abiltiies, there have been studies.

I have no doubt that media of all sorts has a (very) long-term re-wiring effect on thinking patterns, especially during prolonged exposure during childhood. But autistic spectrum folks have their condition coded into their genetics, and are born that way. External factors (including therapeutic ones to counter the downsides of the condition) can play a part, but the base causality keeps coming back to the genes that determine the structure of the brain.

The links you provide are interesting, but in relation to autism in particular the “problem” is not so much inattentiveness to others as it is obsessive attentiveness to specific topics, usually related to some sort of system. You can see why, say, Civ IV or Wikipedia or TVTropes would be more conducive to re-wiring brains toward those autistic tendencies than would passive consumption of traditional media.

In fact, I recently read an article about an iPhone app meant to help severely autistic kids communicate via pictures, with no intermediation from human “facilitators” (a once popular but now discredited therapy). The kids apparently take to the gadget like ducks to water, and since the only interface is the touch screen they’re in charge. The inventor was the mother of an autistic kid, who clearly had better things to worry about than eeeevil vaccinators.

I’m glad I don’t have the job to diagnose autism because I honestly don’t know what to make of it all. First of all, you have all the people who generally would have just been “nerds” self-diagnosing themselves as having Asperger’s Syndrome just because they happen to like left-brainy stuff. Then you have the Autistic kids who can’t seem to process emotions but are very bright. Then you have the severely mentally and emotionally disabled kids (like one that lives nearby) who are also labeled “autistic.”

Well, I have a second cousin who is profoundly autistic (as in unable to communicate), and the neighbours have a nice kid who’s upper-level autistic.  As I understand it, the brain involves a series of mental processes working in parallel - autism is a deficiency in those processes which make sense of the outside world.  For the profoundly autistic, the entire world doesn’t make sense - it’s too loud and chaotic and they can’t grasp pattern to place on it.  For the neighbour’s kid, he can’t grasp social naunce in the instinctual sense the rest of us can.  Since I have a problem with faces myself, I can appreciate the problem, so I get on well with him.

So Asperger’s Syndrome and the like are not just about being nerdy pattern-freaks; they’re also about deficiencies in grasping people, using the social mirror neurons humans have to model other people.

At least, that’s my understanding.  If anyone wants to correct me, please feel free.

Some research has examined possible contributing environmental factors, including measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine (31), thimerosal-containing vaccines (32), tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, and trihalomethanes in drinking water (33), and certain metals (e.g., mercury, cadmium, nickel) and chemicals (trichloroethylene and vinyl chloride) in the ambient air around birth sites (34). Subsequent studies on MMR vaccine (16, 18, 35, 36) and thimerosal-containing vaccines (see review (37), 13, 18, 20, 38, 39) did not support a relationship with autism. In a 2004 report, the Immunization Safety Committee of the Institute of Medicine determined that the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between either MMR or thimerosal- containing vaccines and autism (40).

I couldn’t read this article, just the abstract.  Does that mean they didn’t rule out contaminants in drinking water and air?

This is exactly what one woman I knew said. She was very upset that people couldn’t see the “money connection” in the “abortion industry” and told everyone who would listen about how abortion clinics made tons and tons of money selling the aborted fetuses. I think she claimed they were used in cosmetics as well as vaccines.
Comment #40: kristin on 04/22 at 01:04 PM

This is an old one, from when “placenta cream” was all the rage in the 70s and collagen in shampoo was supposedly from aborted fetuses.  Because that’s so much cheaper and easier than using stockyard waste, amirite?

Jesus.  There really is an app for everything.

Thanks, Gracchus. (I am at the low end of the html-using spectrum)

Funny thing, I completely agree with that commenter. I’ve been reading up on the autism/vaccine debate, and can’t make heads or tails of it. I get to completely opposite conclusions, none of which involve conspiracies. I just wish my science education had extended past the “biology for arts majors” in first year college.

A friend of mine is reluctant to vaccinate her current cat, as the last one died a few months ago of cancer, just after being vaccinated. She strongly suspects that the vaccine caused the cancer. I avoid talking about it with her. (Correlation ≠ Causation is countered with “science doesn’t know everything”, and her great pain at the loss of a companion.)

So Asperger’s Syndrome and the like are not just about being nerdy pattern-freaks; they’re also about deficiencies in grasping people, using the social mirror neurons humans have to model other people.

Correct. One of the common traits in autism spectrum conditions is called “face blindness”: the autistic person cannot perceive the facial expressions without extreme concentration.

Same goes for body language, and for distinguishing facial features in general. For example, many autistic folks will get freaked out by a roomful of people in uniform, because a common coping mechanism/workaround is to find other patterns (e.g. distinctive clothing) to distinguish individuals. As is common with autism, the compensating mechanism can also end up being a benefit.

She strongly suspects that the vaccine caused the cancer. I avoid talking about it with her.

In cats there is a specific type of sarcoma associated with vaccines. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine-associated_sarcoma

There are newer vaccines that don’t seem to cause the problem. We had a long discussion with the vet about the older vaccines and made the choice to have our former feral vaccinated with it because of her *severe* reaction to going to the vet (we had to knock her out simply to do an exam). The other cats have the newer vaccines that don’t last as long, but do not have the cancer risk.

HEy bisky, how did you do that - I thought ferals could not be domesticated?

“HEy bisky, how did you do that - I thought ferals could not be domesticated?”

Plenty of ferals can be domesticated, but it’s usually a long and not-particularly-pleasant process for either party for not a whole lot of gain.  Way easier to adopt a pound-kitten while trapping, fixing, and releasing ferals you’re concerned about.

In cats there is a specific type of sarcoma associated with vaccines.

Argh. But thanks for the link. Kitty, who is attempting to drape himself across the keyboard even now, and I will discuss this with the vet next time.

Yep, I do that, with our local discount for ferals neutering vet and a haveaheart trap.  Which is where I got my info from. And I guess it could be a matter of what one means by domesticated.

I know anecdote isn’t data, but - I was among the last generation of kids NOT to be routinely vaccinated, and I caught everything, some of it more than once (so much for acquired immunity).  I have hearing damage as a result.  Oh, and I’m also schizophrenic and may have mild Asperger’s.  I had to systematically train myself to recognize other people’s emotions and also taught myself to react appropriately in most social situations, basically by memorizing proper responses out of etiquette books (also INFP and mildly synesthetic).

The feral in question showed up in our back yard with a pair of kittens. We trapped the kittens and brought them in. They were “force” tamed as kittens and we kept them as house cats.

The momma cat was TNRd into our backyard and we just gave her space and let her habituate herself with us. We work from home, so we could leave the back door open and let her come in and out as she wanted. Eventually she decided this outside thing sucked and she wanted to live inside (at least most of the time, she does like to go outside during the day and hang out in the yard).

We eventually started pushing her boundaries a little and petting her. She decided that was OK too and then discovered laps and now we can barely keep her out of the way. (As I type this she’s decided that she doesn’t want me typing, time to pet the cat! and is worming her way across my keyboard)

Recently, she’s even started interacting with guests, up to and including getting petted and claiming their laps.

Overall it was a long process, but we really didn’t do much. We set things up that she felt safe and secure and followed her lead. For instance, she would come in and sit with us in the evening. Then when it was bedtime, we’d let her out, give her treats and go to bed. One night she decided she didn’t want to go out. After midnight we decided to go to bed because we were tired of sitting up waiting for the cat go to out. I woke up every two hours to check to make sure she wasn’t panicked or scared. She wasn’t, she curled up in a cat bed and slept away. She hasn’t spent a night outside since then.

She gets a lot of credit, though, for being smart and figuring out this pampered house cat thing was way better than being outdoor feral.

Aaaaarggghh, blasphemed too soon.  I have seen some research that indicates childhood infections as a triggering mechanism for activating the genes that cause susceptibility to schizophrenia.  If that is the case, then failing to vaccinate is more likely to produce the illness.  I don’t think I’ve seen anything connecting childhood illness to later development of autism, though, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a connection.

Usually in those cases “domesticated” means “relatively normal if skittish cat around one or two specific people in a comfortable environment while still completely freaked out by anyone else, any place else.” So you have the owner swearing the cat’s fine and everybody else seeing a furry streak heading in the opposite direction at mach 10.

So you have the owner swearing the cat’s fine and everybody else seeing a furry streak heading in the opposite direction at mach 10.

Most of our cats are like this, and well, visitors are going to have to suck it up. I’m not going to force the cats to be around strangers. They’re their own critters and not here as entertainment for company.

“They’re their own critters and not here as entertainment for company.”

Not saying they are—one of mine is in the same boat (her mom was an affectionate stray but the babies were at least 10 weeks before the met people)—but it does contribute to the idea that the finer points of human companionship will never be appreciated by a feral cat.  I’m pretty sure my family still thinks I’m exaggerating when I tell them she’s a total cuddle-bug when we’re alone.

“I’m pretty sure my family still thinks I’m exaggerating when I tell them she’s a total cuddle-bug when we’re alone.”

*nodding* I am really careful not to pull from our experience and say “oh, sure, ferals can be domesticated” because n=1 is not a very good sample size.

We do have one friend who gets very upset when she’s told it’s hard to tame ferals and gripes that the local shelter generally will just euthanize them. She uses our cats to prove you CAN take an adult. And, y’know, not everyone has the time or patience or living situation that makes it work. It took 3 years before she was comfortable inside with the door closed and another year before we could touch her. Most people expect their pets to be pets and easy to deal with. The pet fits into the human household, the humans don’t bend for the animal.

That sounds dismissive of people who want a pet and I don’t mean it that way. Having a pet that is independent and has a bit of an attitude means you have to compromise with said animal. A lot of people don’t see animals that way and won’t do some of the stuff we’ve done to accommodate her. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I don’t fault the shelters for their decisions to not put ferals up for adoption. There really aren’t that many people who will put up with the quirks of a feral cat.

I wonder if the crazies would believe someone “explaining” to them that the real problem wasn’t aborted fetuses, it was that the vaccines are filtered through matzoh brei.

“She uses our cats to prove you CAN take an adult. And, y’know, not everyone has the time or patience or living situation that makes it work.”

Yeah—just because you can theoretically do something doesn’t automatically mean it’s any kind of a good idea.  It’s almost always going to be a far wiser thing to stick with getting them fixed and vaccinated, thereby massively improving their lives, without trying to acclimatize them to pet-dom.

55: So, are they really trying to mock Iranian mulllahs, or do they just want to look at women’s breasts? Or is it both?

I’m guessing both, though that may be because everyone I run into on the topic is going “yes!  Let’s mock the stupid by having fun and pointing out that the world didn’t end!”

(goes back to catching up on the thread)

If you really want to freak out the anti-vax folks, you can always mention that British scientists are getting close to a fetal screening test for autism.  Which could lead to all sorts of weird exchanges.

“The fetal test came back positive for autism, so I want an abortion.”
“It’s the vaccines, you baby murderer!”
“Genetics!”
“VACCINES!”
“That’s the end of OUR alliance!”

As someone who is 95% certain that I was a subject of an experiment with some injectable disease in 1969 at Ft. Ord, CA., there is absolutely nothing that I would not believe that the insane experimenters would not do.

Laugh all you want. 

Then go look up the guy whom the FB lying I blamed for the anthrax murders in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  That fruitcake was more than 1 card short of a full deck.  He was, also, allowed to experiment on Anthrax.  All portraits of him show that he should have been locked up in a psychiatric institution for the rest of his days.

The true issue is not that there was an attack with anthrax, but that the United States government was the source.  There does not seem to have been any, repeat, any question that they were playing around with anthrax.

Yes there are WMDs in the world but the Americans have a monopoly on the totally insane research on these potentially total destruction of the human race items.

?

I was diagnosed as autistic back in the Fifties. Where did they get the aborted fetuses for the vaccine they gave my mother? For that matter, there were people with autism before vaccines were invented, like Sir Henry Cavendish.

?

Presumably something to do with <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Edwards_Ivins”>.

Further, it’s worth mentioning that the test of what problems you may or may not have aren’t best answered by a self-diagnosis, but by how you are perceived by your family and peers (and professionals who are trained to deal with it).

So when G suddenly announced one night, “I know what’s wrong with you—you have Asperger’s,” he may actually have been right?

(I think I’m more ADHD, but the intertubes tell me that the two can be mistaken for each other when they’re at the mild end of the scale, so I probably should have a professional check me out one of these days.)

It’s one of those fascinating science stories where politics and war conspire to leave research forgotten, lost or ignored.
Like the original specimen of Spinosaurus?

“Like the original specimen of Spinosaurus?”

And the opposite of the Dresden Codex.

For assistance with feral cats please check with Alley Cat Allies:  http://www.alleycat.org  They’re a great group.  We have 3 ferals (mom and 2 kittens) who live in our back yard.  They’ve been fixed and given their shots and I feed them every morning.  They’re pretty cute.  I don’t try to pet them since mom scratched me (I surprised her) but they do like hanging out on our deck and sitting on the kitchen windowsill to watch us.

They’re NOT coming inside.  We have 2 dogs (one is cat friendly, the other not so much) and my wife is VERY allergic.  But ACA helped us trap them, took them to the vet, helped us get a cat shelter and otherwise helped us find a way to shelter our ferals.  We also trapped a 4th one, who was injured and somewhat tame.  he was fixed up and adopted and has a nice home now with laps to curl up in….

Alley Cat Allies: They will help even confirmed “Dog people”!  http://www.alleycat.org

@80 re: rubella and pregnancy:

Also a fun fact about autism…prior to vaccination, one of the top known causes of an autism-like syndrome was congenital rubella…ya know, that disease that is prevented by, uh, the MMR vaccination.  Stuff that in the autism/vaccine connection pipe and smoke it, eh.

Oh really Knute. Please link to credible examples of aborted fetus material being used for profitable enterprise. Otherwise I will assume fetuses are being eaten by Bat Boy, and since that is awesome, I will be sure to have a few abortions next year.

Dead babies being harvested for profit.  Weren’t they telling us this would never happen in the 70’s?  Who’s next?

Not “who”, Knute, but “what”: your precious bodily fluids.

I read in Weekly World News (a publication I’m sure you respect) that teams of Amazon lesbian liberal feminists are invading the bedrooms of manly American men like yourself and draining them of their magical sperm as they sleep. What they do with those fluids afterward I’ll leave to your fevered imagination.

Simple counter-measure: ask your mommy if you can string used soda cans to your doorknob and windowsills as a makeshift alarm—no icky ladies in your bedroom!

I read in Weekly World News (a publication I’m sure you respect) that teams of Amazon lesbian liberal feminists are invading the bedrooms of manly American men like yourself and draining them of their magical sperm as they sleep.

Ee-bay iet-quay, Gracchus! Don’t be job-blocking me in this kinda recession! I’m a crappy lesbian (no cat, no steel-toed boots) but the pay’s good, and Knut’s bodily fluids go for prices you wouldn’t believe once you got a military contract set up. :D

Sworn testimony in front of the Supreme Court of the United States is not credible??!!

Not if it’s being provided by someone of dubious credibility, nor if it’s being interpreted by an utter moron like yourself. This has been reason 327,425,957 why you shouldn’t come within 10 miles of a judge’s bench—unless you’re sitting in the defendant’s chair in a criminal matter.

I assume you’re referring to the amicus brief of such luminaries of medicine and ethics and reason as: the “United States Justice Foundation” (now “birthers” in the Obama sense of the word); the “Traditional Values Coalition” (a “Xtian” organisation so upstanding it took money from Jack Abramoff to keep its mouth shut on an anti-gambling bill); and the California Republican Assembly, which descibes itself as a grassroots (more likely astroturf) organization promoting conservative policies within the (already conservation) GOP.

Either way, quote the relevant sworn testimony you’re talking about. That way I can show everyone the difference between how a educated and sober grown-up considers the credibility of sworn testimony (on the one hand) and how an ignorant excitable child like yourself does (on the other).

Many vaccines are generated in cell cultures that came from aborted fetuses.  MRC-5 is a cell line that is from the normal lung tissue of a 14-week-old male fetus and is used to produce the oral polio vaccine, Hep A and B vaccines, and various others.  Medscape link lists MRC-5 cell line residual as part of the Hep-B vaccine.  There are several other cell lines like RA273 and WI-38 that are derived from aborted fetal tissue.

As for profiting on aborted fetal tissue, there are several companies that do.  ReNeuron uses aborted fetal tissue for profit as does NeuralStem Inc. and Neocutis