Its no secret that Wade and I were once pretty good internet pals. We regularly communicated despite our staunch opposition to the others beliefs regarding vaccines role in autism. That changed however as Wade sunk deeper and deeper into the bad science surrounding autism.

Wade and his wife Sym have recently been the subject of a piece by the Chicagoist following Wade’s open letter to the Trib. The Chicagoist reporter (one Mr Carlson) had obviously read both the Trib articles and Wade’s open letter before writing his own piece.

And now Wade has been obligated into writing yet another blog piece as it seems the Chicagoist has taken a similar line to the Trib. Wade says:

Reading through Mr. Carlson’s brief post gave me the distinct impression that somehow the meaning of our letter had gotten lost,

A brief digression. Wade and his family used to live in the South and were affected very badly by Hurricane Katrina. Once the dust had settled they decided to resettle in Chicago. Once there I learned they had become aquainted with the infamous Erik Nanstiel and David Ayoub, both hardcore believers of the vaccine causes autism idea. Not long after that Wade’s own beliefs on the subject hardened and it wasn’t difficult to see where this hardening of beliefs was being hardened from. I found it increasingly difficult to accept the things Wade was saying. An intellegent man, his new beliefs can be summed up in his opinion of Lupron and OSR.

...we have not, as yet, utilized either the Lupron protocol or OSR #1, both of which were the subjects of Tribune smear pieces. That is not to say, however, that those interventions may not be appropriate treatments in particular circumstances. On the contrary, we know families that these interventions have helped…

The old Wade would not have ever considered using these snake oil treatments. The old Wade would not have described the Trib articles as ‘smear pieces’. The old Wade wouldn’t have described knowing families who did use them and would have been much less credulous about their effectiveness.

SO, back to Wade’s statement that he believed the meaning of his open letter had been lost. It was lost, he’s right. It was totally lost on Carlson, it was totally lost on the commenters to the site and its totally lost to people like me. Not that I’m singling myself out for any special praise – thats kind of the point. I’m just an ordinary person with no special agenda and yet Wade’s point is totally lost on me and I very much suspect the vast majority of people who read Carlson’s piece or either of Wade’s long pieces on the subject. (Its hard to say which of the two points of the Somerset Maugham quote Wade utilises for his blog ‘Have common sense and … stick to the point’ that Wade has more strongly abandoned).

I miss the old Wade very much – a strong, principled and funny man, Wade has become just another sad foot soldier in Jenny McCarthy’s Bimbo Brigade alongside his fellow Chicago hardcore believers. His child is 10 years old and I doubt very much that xe is anywhere even approaching the level of ‘cure’ or ‘recovery’ that Wade has been promised by the various DAN doctors and new friends I have no doubt xe has been worked through. Wade’s tone in both of his blog pieces is a sad, tired sort of bewilderment – a bewilderment that the world just can’t see what he can apparently see. Sadly – pitifully – the viewpoint that he has adopted only means he’s going to become more bewildered.