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The Autism News | English

Senator Janet D. Howell

By Bob Lewis | Business Week

Legislation that would have required many Virginia employee health care plans to cover a treatment for autistic children died Tuesday under business and insurance industry claims that its costs would hurt business.

Sen. Janet Howell’s bill was tabled Tuesday on an unrecorded voice vote by a House Commerce and Labor subcommittee.

The defeat ends a 2010 legislative push by families of children with the neurological disorder to secure coverage for a treatment called applied behavior analysis.

“They were lobbied hard by the insurance and business lobbies not to stand up for children and families,” said Mark Llobell of Virginia Beach, grandfather of an autistic child and one of several tearful relatives who consoled one another after the vote.

ABA treatments cost $30,000 a year and up. Many middle-class families forced to pay the costs themselves confront financial ruin.

Virginia is among 35 states that do not compel insurers to cover the ABA treatments, which specialists say are the best hope autistic children have for living a normal life.

Howell, D-Fairfax County, presented the subcommittee members with a photo of her grandson, Bode, a child with autism.

“He’s in a good place. He’s in Arizona, not Virginia,” she said, noting that Arizona mandates insurance coverage of the treatment. “Kids in Virginia shouldn’t be treated any more shabbily than those in Arizona.”

An actuary who studied likely costs of additional mandated coverage for ABA said the expenses would increase by only 0.2 percent.

Some legislators were troubled that the bill mandated coverage for private employee health plans but excluded state employees until 2015, a concession to a $4 billion shortfall looking for the 2011 and 2012 budgets.

Why were state employees ever excluded, asked Del. Sam Nixon, R-Chesterfield.

“Because we’re bankrupt,” Howell replied. “We don’t have the money right now.”

Robert N. Bradshaw Jr., a lobbyist for the Virginia Independent Insurance Agents, used that argument to benefit the opponents.

“Frankly, businesses are at the breaking point,” Bradshaw said. “If the state can’t afford it today, what makes you think small businesses can.”

Del. Jeion Ward, D-Hampton, sought to amend the bill to force it to apply to all private insurers as well as state employees beginning in July 2012. Her motion failed, and the panel subsequently killed the bill.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9E2IARG0.htm

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The Autism News | English

By Huffington Post

Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works — sharing her ability to “think in pictures,” which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.

Through groundbreaking research and the lens of her own autism, Temple Grandin brings startling insight into two worlds.

An expert on animal behavior, Temple Grandin has designed humane handling systems for half the cattle-processing facilities in the US, and consults with the meat industry to develop animal welfare guidelines. As PETA wrote when awarding her a 2004 Proggy: “Dr. Grandin’s improvements to animal-handling systems found in slaughterhouses have decreased the amount of fear and pain that animals experience in their final hours, and she is widely considered the world’s leading expert on the welfare of cattle and pigs.”

Grandin’s books about her interior life as an autistic person have increased the world’s understanding of the condition with personal immediacy — and with import, as rates of autism diagnosis rise. She is revered by animal rights groups and members of autistic community, perhaps because in both regards she is a voice for those who are sometimes challenged to make themselves heard.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tedtalks/temple-grandin-the-world_b_474799.html

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The Autism News | English

Oscar Magi, the Italian judge in the Google Video case (Associated Press)

By Manuela D’Alessandro | Reuters

A Milan court convicted three Google Inc (GOOG.O) executives on Wednesday for violating the privacy of an Italian boy with autism by letting a video of him being bullied be posted on the site in 2006.

Google, which will appeal the six-month suspended jail terms in Italy, also heard that European Union antitrust regulators were looking into complaints about it from three online firms.

Google said it was confident it would avoid formal investigation by the European Commission.

It said the Milan verdict “poses a crucial question for the freedom on which the internet is built” as none of its employees had anything to do with the video.

“They didn’t upload it, they didn’t film it, they didn’t review it and yet they have been found guilty,” said Google’s senior communications manager, Bill Echikson, in Milan.

The court convicted senior vice-president and chief legal officer David Drummond, former Google Italy board member George De Los Reyes and global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer. Senior product marketing manager Arvind Desikan was acquitted.

The executives, none of whom are based in Italy, do not face actual imprisonment as the sentences were suspended, while an appeals process in Italy can take many years.

They were not in Italy for the hearing. Drummond is based in California, Fleischer in Paris and Desikan in London, while De Los Reyes has since retired, Echikson told Reuters.

The complaint was brought by an Italian advocacy group for people with Down’s Syndrome, Vivi Down, and the boy’s father, after four classmates at a Turin school uploaded a clip to Google Video showing them bullying the boy.

Vivi Down was a plaintiff because it was named by the boys in the video, a lawyer for the group said. But Google’s Echikson and the prosecutor said on Wednesday the boy had autism, not Down’s as widely reported during the three years of the case.

“A company’s rights cannot prevail over a person’s dignity. This sentence sends a clear signal,” public prosecutor Alfredo Robledo told reporters outside the Milan courthouse.

The video was filmed with a mobile phone and posted on the site in September 2006.

“THREAT TO NET FREEDOM”

Google argued that it removed the video immediately after being notified and cooperated with Italian authorities to help identify the bullies and bring them to justice.

It says that, as hosting platforms that do not create their own content, Google Video, YouTube and Facebook cannot be held responsible for content that others upload.

Drummond said in a statement the verdict “sets a dangerous precedent” and meant “every employee of any internet hosting service faces similar liability”. He said the law was clear in Italy and the European Union that “hosting providers like Google are not required to monitor content that they host”.

Fleischer said if employees were “criminally liable for any video on a hosting platform, when they had absolutely nothing to do with the video in question, then our liability is unlimited”.

The prosecutors accused Google of negligence, saying the video remained online for two months even though some web users had already posted comments asking for it to be taken down.

Censoring of web sites has become a hot issue in Italy in recent months, following a spate of hate sites against officials including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The government briefly studied plans to black out Internet hate sites after fan pages emerged praising an attack on the premier, but the idea was dropped after executives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft agreed to a shared code of conduct rather than legislation [ID:nLDE5BL18B].

“NO HINT OF GUILT”

Google counsel Julia Holtz said the scrutiny by EU antitrust regulators “in all likelihood … will not go anywhere. The Commission has not expressed any hint of guilt”.

The Commission can fine companies up to 10 percent of their revenues and has imposed billions of euros of fines on Intel (INTC.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) for breaking antitrust rules, though it was far too early to say if Google could be fined.

Google said British price comparison site Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr had complained that its search algorithm demoted their sites in results and Microsoft-owned Ciao from Bing had complained about its terms and conditions.

Google has 90 percent of the global search market compared to 7.4 percent for Yahoo (YHOO.O) and Bing combined, according to November data from research firm StatCounter. The company has drawn increasing regulatory scrutiny as it has grown.

Breakingviews story on Google [ID:nLDE61N0QS]

(Additional reporting by By Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, Emilio Emilio Parodi and Eleanor Biles; writing by Stephen Brown in Rome; Editing by Diana Abdallah)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE61N2G220100224?type=marketsNews

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The Autism News | English

By The Associated Press

ALHAMBRA, Calif.–A suburban Los Angeles medical center has been told to keep treating autistic children with a special therapy until a judge decides whether it can stop using the method.

An attorney for the families of seven children says a judge issued a preliminary injunction this week against the Eastern Los Angeles Regional Center in Alhambra.

The state-supported nonprofit is being sued for cutting a program that provides weekly one-on-one care to autistic children.

The state considers the program to be experimental therapy. It was cut as California tries to deal with a huge budget shortfall.

A message seeking comment from the center’s executive director wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14461297

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