Tag: autism

Yesterday, I discovered Derek Paravicini

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I mean, discovered for me. He was already very much about, like when the Khoikhoi when Jan came to the Cape and the Indigenous Americans when Chris went across the pond.

I just found out about him for the first time yesterday.

Who is Derek Paravicini?

Derek Paravicini is one of the most extraordinary pianists and musicians of his generation, yet he is blind and has severe learning difficulties and is on the autism spectrum.
Based in London, Derek performs regularly across the UK, and is also making a name for himself internationally having performed in venues across Europe and the United States.
Derek has a repertoire of tens of thousands of pieces — all learnt very rapidly, just by listening.

Beneath his quiet charm lies a fiery, creative musician, whose astonishing improvisations and dazzling technique have wowed audiences all over the world, with many millions of views on his YouTube channel and a much-revered TED talk, that has been translated into 26 languages.

I came across him on social media on this Facebook reel, and I was “reeled” in (rofl!) primarily because I love the song in question, the beautiful Avril 14th by Aphex Twin:

Derek – as you will see below – gets played about 30 seconds of this and then just absolutely nails his version of it. Even picking up on the tiny excerpt of the gentle repeating phrase which makes up a lot of the beginning of the song, but not so much in the bit he hears.

I know – I know! – I share a lot of videos on here and tell you that it’s worth your time and effort watching through to the end. But this one just blew me away.

It’s definitely well worth your time and effort watching through to the end. Obviously.

Derek’s website is here, with all his links to social media readily available. He’s also part of the Derek Paravicini Quartet (who knew?), which you can find more about here.

On Trump and Tylenol

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In an opening paragraph dripping with sarcasm, as the Marmalade Moron and his brainworm-addled side gimp gave us the answers to autism yesterday (see below), I was reminded of the other times that grifting politicians had helped out humanity by miraculously discovering causes and cures for well-known ailments.

OK, it’s mainly HIV and Covid, but still…

How could we forget Manto Tshabalala-Msimang – our ex-Health Minister, and now also ex-alive – who claimed that HIV could be prevented by a diet of beetroot, garlic, lemons, olive oil and African potatoes?

President (not then and thankfully not now) Jacob Zuma who did have relations with that woman, but then took a shower to prevent infection with HIV.

Let’s not omit Yahya Jammeh, ex-despotic leader of Gambia and all-round bastard:

whose only positive contribution to society was curing people of AIDS using herbs and prayer.
On Thursdays. Seriously.

Amazingly, despite all of these interventions almost 20 years ago, the spread and impact of HIV seems to have been best controlled by the rollout of ARVs and PrEP.

Weird that.

Bringing things a little bit back to the present, Covid brought all the weirdos back out of the woodwork.

Let’s stay in Africa with Tanzania’s ex-President John Magufuli and his plan to get rid of Covid by inhaling steam, and using herbs and prayer.

“You inhale while you pray to God, you pray while farming maize, potatoes, so that you can eat well and corona fails to enter your body. They will scare you a lot, my fellow Tanzanians, but you should stand firm.”

Didn’t really work for him, as he allegedly contracted Covid-19 and died from heart complications a couple of weeks later, but that’s not to say he was wrong.

Well, it is.

Trump told us to use Hydroxychloroquine to combat Covid, but then again, he also said that we should inject bleach to rid ourselves of the virus. Is there really anyone so stupid as to actually do that, though?

Yes, of course there is.

And then there’s his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What a goon.

He despises “Big Pharma” while still punting Ivermectin (made by… er… “Big Pharma”) as the cure for everything (it’s not). And he studiously ignores the ills of “Big Supplement” and “Big Snake Oil” while repeatedly and completely dismissing “Real Science” – including denying that HIV is the causal agent of AIDS and suggesting that 5G masts are being used to control our behaviour.

In which case, could someone please switch him off?

But back to that theatre show last night, hinted at by the Tangerine Twat over the weekend:

“Tomorrow we’re going to have one of the biggest announcement[s] … medically, I think, in the history of our country,” he said. “I think you’re going to find it to be amazing. I think we found an answer to autism.”

A whole 5 months of no research have got them further than every other scientist ever. These guys are superhuman. So it turns out that it was Tylenol all along, then? That’s slightly differnt to RFK Jr.’s previous assertions that it was vaccines and/or environmental toxins, but hey, the facts really don’t matter here.

They never have.

As Trump said yesterday:

“It’s not that everything’s 100% understood or known, but I think we’ve made a lot of strides.”

Oh, I think that there are a few things that we can 100% understand and know. And one of those is that literally whatever these two clowns state as the truth is completely the opposite. Once again, it’s the experts versus the grifters.

I’m really not sure what the Salmon Shithead and his sidekick stand to gain from this ridiculous “discovery”. I’m sure that there will be money in it somewhere for them. Because it surely can’t be the fame in being the guys who rid the world of autism, given that nothing they have said is going to make the slightest bit of difference to those diagnoses.

And as we noted above, time will tell and history will judge – and ridicule – their ongoing nonsensical, alleged “scientific” triumphs.

Sadly, in the meantime, there will be more complications in pregnancy as mothers-to-be avoid a completely harmless medication and instead choose to “fight like hell” (his words) to only take it in cases of extreme fever.

“There’s no downside”

said Trump, being wrong yet again. Because:

“While you’re pregnant, experiencing uncontrolled fevers or some of the side effects from pain, such as high blood pressure, will be a lot more detrimental to a developing baby and a mother than paracetamol will be,” said Dr Monique Botha, who studies bias in autism research at the University of Durham.

My advice?

Listen to the experts, none of whom were the ones talking bullshit at the White House last night.

What could possibly go wrong?

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The measles outbreak in the USA has now killed at least two people, including a 6 year old girl, and has infected at least 430.

430 might not seem like a huge number, but it’s worth remembering that even if infection doesn’t cause death, it can result in deafness, blindness and brain damage, as well as having other serious long-term effects.

And we’ve been through some of the reasons that this outbreak is happening. Indeed, the parents of the little girl that died gave an interview after her death in which they said that they remained strongly anti-vaccination. And while you can argue that that’s their right (sadly, it is), maybe for some context we should add another of the things they said in the same interview:

“The measles wasn’t that bad.”

That ‘s them describing the disease that just killed their daughter.

Absolutely terrifying. Not least given that they have 4 other kids.

Of course, one of the other reasons (other than religion) that measles vaccination has waned is Andrew Wakefield’s long-disproven link between MMR and autism.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

There are now many, many studies refuting Wakefield’s “work” – and it’s a horrible lesson in how incredibly damaging and dangerous spreading falsehoods can be.

It’s absolutely clear that Wakefield’s “study” was – at best – terrible science, and – at worst – completely fraudulent.

So it’s both weird and worrying that The Department of Health and Human Services in the US has decided to launch a study into… er… “the connection between immunisations and autism”, and even weirder and more worrying that [gosh] they’ve chosen a prominent anti-vaxxer to help run it.

David Geier has written several papers on the alleged dangers of vaccines in causing developmental disorders in children, several of them funded by the non-profit Institute of Chronic Illnesses (ICI), Inc.

The CEO of the Institute of Chronic Illnesses (ICI), Inc. is one David Grier.

He’s certainly never medically examined children even though he holds no medical qualification.

Grier and his father have long been grifting while pretending that there’s a link between vaccines and autism. They then tested and “treated” their patients at huge expense to the parents, while raking in money for representing them at (unsuccessful) legal hearings into their childrens’ disorders.

Anyway, he seems like the perfect guy to run an unbiased, objective, non-partisan study into this allegedly contentious and emotive non-issue.

What – I ask again – could possibly go wrong?

Wakefield’s Shameful Legacy

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A new study, ironically published in The Lancet, raises serious doubts that the goal of elimination of measles in Europe by 2010 can be attained. The reason for this re-emergence of a disease which was completely under control 15 years ago is the “shoddy, litigation- and profit-driven pseudoscience” of Andrew Wakefield, whose now discredited study published in The Lancet in 1998, linked the MMR vaccine with autism in children.


Measles virus: small, but nasty

It later emerged that Wakefield was paid up to £55,000 by solicitors acting on behalf of the families of some autistic children to prove a link between the vaccine and the condition. This was something that he somehow forgot to mention to his fellow authors, medical authorities or The Lancet.

Simon Murch, one of the leading doctors involved with Wakefield’s research at the Royal Free, said that news of the £55,000 legal funding was “a very unpleasant surprise”.
“We never knew anything about the £55,000 — he had his own separate research fund,” said Murch. “All of us were surprised… We are pretty angry.”

10 years on and Wakefield’s scaremongering has resulted in a 13-year high in the number of measles cases in the UK: an “embarrassing problem” according to the WHO report’s authors. Vaccination levels have improved somewhat over the past 2 years, with concerted “catch-up” campigns for those who missed vaccination, but even cases of measles in South America, which was all but free of the disease, have been traced back to Europe.

Between 2007-8 in Europe, there were over 12,000 cases of measles, which should have been erradicated from the continent by next year. Over 1,000 of them were in the UK:

1,049 is the highest number of measles cases recorded in England and Wales since the current method of monitoring the disease was introduced in 1995.
This rise is due to relatively low MMR vaccine uptake over the past decade and there are now a large number of children who are not fully vaccinated with MMR. This means that measles is spreading easily among unvaccinated children.

As a microbiologist and a parent, I strongly urge all parents to do the decent thing and vaccinate their children. These are not called “preventable diseases” for nothing. Apart from the benefits for you and your kids, there should be a collective sense of social responsibility to help reduce the reservoir of these illnesses in society.
The results of a decade of misinformation, poor science and hysterical reporting are becoming evident now: disease, disability and even death for hundreds of children, all of which could and should have been avoided.

Don’t let it happen to your kids.