"Half full, half empty. You live your life the way fits you best, I guess"

Please don't slyly insinuate my life is half full Lizzie - I don't need to spend it all on internet rants and crusades on subjects I know little about.

As for media coverage - a double edged sword!

"This disconnect between the scientific community and the popular media is starkly laid out in a study published in the February issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers found that while 41 percent of research funding and published scientific papers on autism dealt with brain and behavior research, only 11 percent of newspaper stories in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada dealt with those issues.
Instead, 48 percent of the media coverage dealt with environmental causes of autism, particularly the childhood MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella that was once linked with autism in a widely refuted study.
Only 13 percent of published research was about environmental triggers of autism."

Amy Adams
Stanford University Medical Center 2007


Jeff Stier, an associate director of the American Council on Science and Health wrote about the ABC drama series "Eli Stone" (described as, 'a crusading lawyer who has "visions" about how he can improve the world' as one episode perpetuated an 'insidious myth' that the thimerosal preservative formerly used in vaccines causes autism.
A jury in the show concludes the opposite of what just about everyone in the real world should now know: that the supposed vaccine-autism link is based on discredited studies and 'wacky activist assertions.'

An American mother of three children diagnosed with autism has noted that the media "tends to focus either on tragedy or feel good stories."

As if to illustrate this the BBC have just bought the rights to a documentary about
"The Horse Boy: A Father's Miraculous Journey to Heal His Son"

"The final scenes of Rowan riding Betsy on his own, enjoying the freedom and independence that once seemed an impossible dream, reduce us all to tears" - Telegraph TV review