Kennedy & Kirby, History and Howl

Generally when I hear the word "mainstream" in reference to autism and disabilities, I think of the supports and the efforts of teachers, school personnel and parents to include a "classified" student in a "regular" classroom. Or, I think of a term such as "mainstream" culture, or of something being "mainstream" now that was formerly avant-garde, never-before-heard-of.

For instance, when the poem "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg was published in 1957, it was considered to be "obscene." Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, who had published the poem, was arrested on October 3, 1957. The famous opening lines of "Howl":

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

"Howl" was later ruled not to be obscene and, it can be argued, it has now entered the mainstream and is taught in college and high school classrooms. So the revolutionary becomes mainstream or, one might even say, domesticated.

But is it possible to say that vaccine-autism research has gone "mainstream"----has gone from being an idea cast upon the public consciousness after the 1998 announcement of a certain Lancet study most of whose authors have retracted their names from it, though not Dr. Andrew Wakefield---to being "accepted"?

Journalist David Kirby and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., write that 'tis so in the January 27th Huffington Post, in a post whose title has a kind of monumental ring to it, Autism, Vaccines and the CDC: The Wrong Side of History:

Even as the evidence connecting America's autism epidemic to vaccines mounts, dead-enders at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) -- many of whom promoted the current vaccine schedule and others with strong ties to the vaccine industry -- are trying to delay the day of reckoning by creating questionable studies designed to discredit any potential vaccine-autism link and by derailing authentic studies.

On January 12, a cadre of mid-level health bureaucrats left over from the Bush administration ignored Federal requirements for advance notice in order to vote to quietly strip vaccine research studies from funding allocated by Congress in the Combating Autism Act (CAA) of 2006.

Indeed, those "mid-level health bureaucrats" are indeed a "cadre," a group of well-oiled, well-heeled "rogue bureaucrats" (my emphasis). And who might be these "rogue" types, these crafty, plotting "mid-level health," may I dare say career, bureaucrats who maybe once had ideals but now are 9-to-5'ers who rush off to get to Emma's soccer game and get Chinese for dinner? Are they the CIA operatives who put a certain jungle doc into Laos in what would turn out to be the prehistory of the Vietnam War?

Oh, sorry, kind of got carried away and recalled some things I read in the biography of Dr. Tom Dooley. Happens when you're reading language in such metaphoric overdrive as it is in Kirby's and Kennedy's piece, in which they try to make the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) seem like some kind of "rogue" government committee in over-denial about what, write Kirby and Kennedy, is "mainstream"---research about autism and vaccines---rather than a topic that's becoming more and more but one among many branches of autism research and, indeed, one that is---as noted in a new study published this week---increasingly being disproven.

Kirby and Kennedy, though, call this study "controversial" and "poorly designed," apparently because "it could only find one child in 1400 who tested with autism"----the study is said to be "poorly designed" because one child in the study was noted to have autism, though the study was not specifically about autism. The rest of Kirby and Kennedy's piece---which, again, seeks to argue that vaccine-autism research is "mainstream"----is an attempted blow-by-blow listing of a number of news items from the past year or two about the case of Hannah Poling, autism and mitochondrial disorders, other studies on autism and the environment, the recent resignation of Alison Tepper Singer from the top levels of the administration of Autism Speaks over the issue of vaccine research: These are all meant as examples of how those who argue that vaccines or something in vaccines are not linked to autism (like the CDC) are on the "wrong side of history." Kirby and Kennedy end their piece with an appeal to President Obama and his new administration to "shed light on the government's abuse and mismanagement of autism research in this country," and cite something HHS Secretary Nominee Tom Daschle said in 2002, and that Obama said at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in April of 2008 as "evidence."

Take away Kirby and Kennedy's rhetoric---all the business about "cadres" and "rogue bureaucrats" and "subterfuge" (there goes that paranoia thing again)---and what you have are some complaints about the workings of a federal committee (never heard that before, oh yes) and mostly a list of, again, numerous new items about autism and autism research and, more specifically, autism causation, that have received varying amounts of attention in the media over the last year. Without the rhetoric and the metaphors, it's just some facts, sirs, with the word-smithing put to use to add persuasive power and to pique the emotions of a reader and stir them in a certain direction---like a good Roman orator back in the days of the Roman Republic, or of a poet (and poets in ancient Rome were trained in rhetoric, the art of speaking and eloquence).

I quoted a poet, the now mainstreamed Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, at the beginning of his post. I first read "Howl" when I was in college in a course on lyric poetry and those words, with their long incantatory lines and their mystical-wild imagery, have a way of sticking in one's mind, to the point that sometimes one's writing might get a little Ginsbergerian---"Howlesque"---to get that effect of seeing those "best minds" of one's generation "destroyed."

For instance:

I have seen their wonderful children. I have heard them wail in pain the whole night through, bang their heads into dented closet doors, hang their inflamed and pain-wracked bellies over the sofa back in vain attempts for deliverance from the agony they cannot describe, because they can no longer speak.

I have seen children with autism run out of the house naked and into the cold, black night, only to be found hours later wandering down a lonely back road.

These lines are from a January 2nd Huffington Post post by David Kirby, in which he seems to have confused, conflated?, Change.gov with this website that you are reading (i.e., Change.org). I am mentioned in that post, and when I first read those above-quoted lines by Kirby---complete with alliteration ("wonderful children" who "wail in pain") and internal rhymes ("hang"/"bang"; "black night"/"back road"), I knew that I'd heard that sort of long incantatory line with the imagery of a figure running into the dark night, somewhere before: In Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," indeed. Here's the opening lines of Ginsberg's poem again:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

Perhaps Kirby was (unknowingly; knowingly) echoing the Beat poet to catch the sense of horror at the opening of "Howl," also to catch some of the sense of transgressive revolution of Ginsburg's poem as it was received back in 1957, when you could get arrested for publishing a poem. For, in their Huffington Post post, Kirby and Kennedy seek to give the impression that they're the transgressive ones, the mavericks going against the evil IACC cadre and busting it up to show, the truth----that it's accepted by most that research be done on autism and vaccines.

Indeed: Research has been, is being done, on this topic.

Really, it's nothing to howl about.

Image by uhuru1701.