The Age of Autism: An Evening With Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

On Saturday, October 2, 2010, dozens of people from the tri-state area gathered to meet Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill, editors of the online go-to autism newspaper, AgeOfAutism.com, and authors of the courageous new book The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic. Mark and Dan spent years studying the history of mercury-induced illnesses, and tie together in this book the history of damage wrought by mercury over the centuries, with many surprising findings. They shared the back story of how the book came to be and read from it as well. Attendees got to spend the evening mingling with Mark and Dan, asking lots of questions, and enjoying good company.

If you haven't already, do read the book and help spread the word - our friends at SafeMinds have great ideas on getting the news out in your community about this book and other important autism information, even if you only have a few minutes to spare - check out their suggestions here.

Mark and Dan recently have appeared on Imus and on WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show to discuss their book and they also were interviewed by Deirdre Imus on Huffington Post. The comment thread on WNYC shows that this book is stirring up controversy on all sides of the autism debate and has people talking. The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene even contacted WNYC before the show aired.

Recently, many people also have been discussing the very interesting article in The Atlantic about Dr. Leo Kanner's first identified autism case, "Donald T." The Atlantic piece is certainly a lovely article, however, The Atlantic authors were not the first to find or to write about Donald T. Age of Autism's Dan Olmsted first wrote about him way back in 2005! Read an interesting account of the Olmsted and Atlantic stories by Ginger Taylor, of Adventures in Autism, here.

NAA-NY Metro thanks Katie Wright for her generosity in hosting this wonderful event.

by Kim Mack Rosenberg

(pictured: #1: Dan Olmsted, Katie Wright, Kim Mack Rosenberg, Mark Blaxill; #2: Mark Blaxill & Dan Olmsted)