Operation Jack

Fighting autism, one mile at a time.

The Next Chapter in Vaccine Autism Causation Begins Today

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Quick note from Sam: I was going to go with a guest blog from John Atilano today, but I’m going to run that tomorrow so that I can run this guest post from Ginger Taylor today. The following is her guest post:

In 2008 Johns Hopkins Neurologist Jon Poling went public with the news that his daughter Hannah, who regressed into autism following her 18 month vaccines, was paid by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

CDC, in a public statement, claimed that the Hannah Poling case was “rare” and should not be generalized to “normal” children. Days after the Poling’s announcement, the Hiatt family also went public with their VICP ruling that their autistic daughter Madison was also a vaccine injury victim. Then the Banks family went public. Finally, CBS News reported finding 7 more vaccine/autism cases that dated back to 1991, the very beginning of the autism epidemic.

So the autism community wanted to know… just how many cases of autism have been paid by the program that was established in 1986, how “rare” is this, and what did the government know about vaccine injury and autism causation that they were not telling the public and the medical community. After being questioned by a journalist, the department of HHS that oversees the VICP issued the following statement on whether this was an admission that the government was now paying children for vaccine induced autism. The “official response” from HRSA: [Read more…]

Mother's Day Stories

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I hope everybody had a great Mother’s Day Weekend! I know my wife Tiffany did, and that’s what matters the most to me. She loves Mother’s Day more than any other day of the year — she calls it her annual review and it means a lot to her because she spends every waking moment taking care of our three kids. Come to think of it, she gets a lot of her sleeping minutes interrupted as Jack wakes up in the middle of the night a good 5 or 6 times a week (if you don’t know who Jack is, click here).

Anyways, I’m not going to bore you with a play-by-play recap of our weekend, but I do have a couple of fun stories to share.

Jack’s Card

I went shopping with my other two kids, Benjamin and Ava, last weekend (April 30). That’s huge for me, eight days in advance. Normally, I’d buy something the day before. If I’m procrastinating, the night before. So this was HUGE! I had Ben and Ava look through the cards at Target and I looked for one from Jack. I found one that was perfect. It said:

For a Special Mom on Mother’s Day

on the front and

You may not hear this often but the the feeling is always there—
Love you, Mom — always have, always will.

on the inside.

Jack's Card ...

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Special Help From Afghanistan … For My Daughter!

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My daughter Ava has a project in her kindergarten class called Flat Stanley. They take this little paper guy called Flat Stanley and color him and send him somewhere far away to get his picture taken. When my son Benjamin (now in the fourth grade) was in kindergarten, we sent his to a cousin of mine who lives in Las Vegas. Flat Stanley went out on the Strip, hit some slot machines and played some blackjack.

But Benjamin was kindergarten well before Operation Jack, so I didn’t know nearly as many people as I do now. I was thinking of various places I could have sent Ava’s Flat Stanley — Alaska, Maine, Miami, the Midwest — but then I realized I made a connection last year with U.S. Army Major John Atilano, who’s currently deployed to Afghanistan. I’ve chatted via email and Twitter with John a bit over the past six months and he’s a great guy.

Flat Stanley!

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One Thing I DON'T Miss About Last Year!

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If you’ve never been here before, last year I ran 61 marathons and a couple of ultramarathons to raise money and awareness for Train 4 Autism. My middle child, 7 1/2-year-old Jack, is severely autistic so I did that in his honor and named it Operation Jack. Now four months into 2011, there are some things I kind of miss — the Biscoff cookies on Delta, meeting new people every weekend, having a slew of people tracking every step I run … there are some things I enjoyed. But one thing I don’t miss is not being around my family. I had to leave every weekend and while I got used to it, I sure don’t miss it.

I had an awesome weekend with my family and I was going to write a recap Sunday night for yesterday morning, but I was watching the news about Osama bin Laden and didn’t take the time to write anything. So, here goes.

Real quick, before I get rolling, we had a photo shoot for the kids on Friday evening and here’s one of the proofs we got back for Jack. LOVE IT!

We'll definitely be buying this one.

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