Preserve secret ballots

Preserve secret ballots

EDITOR:

The writer from Canfield who supported the Employee Free Choice Act in a letter Feb. 27 clearly provides the reasons why not to support that issue. Pressure, threats, assaults, dictating are exactly what labor unions would do to coerce employees to sign authorization cards. How do you explain it when union leaders “recommend” which political candidates to vote for, or whether or not they recommend approving a contract — why are the members told how to vote?

The writer poorly argues why a secret ballot election is bad. It is illegal for employers to threaten employees with “loss of job, reduced hours and/or benefits” if the employees are interested in organizing. How is “free choice” removed by secret ballots? This issue has nothing to do with free choice; it’s all about influencing the choice.

And the writer completely misses the point made a week earlier by the president of a Hubbard company: Labor unions have played a major role in the loss of manufacturing jobs.

MIKE EGGIMAN

Canfield

Autism needs better science

EDITOR:

Autism is a disability that affects people differently. Social interaction and communication skills are always affected, but to different degrees. The focus of science in their pursuit to understand what causes autism has been to search for the autism gene, and they will never find one because one does not exist. Dr. Martha Herbert of Harvard University aptly stated what the focus of autism science should be: “A more inclusive model would construe autism as a disorder that affects the brain, and that is the outcome of complex interactions among factors related to genetic vulnerability, environmental triggers or causes, and epigenetic changes.” What is making our genes go haywire and causing so many to develop autism?

The autism generation is starting to grow up and it isn’t looking pretty. Daily, I read news reports about autistic children as young as nine years old having meltdowns, usually at school, where they have been Tasered, handcuffed, arrested, and thrown into the back of patrol cars. Why are school officials calling the cops on disabled children? And, the police don’t know how to handle these children who don’t respond to commands or act “normally.” Many children are spending hours a day locked in isolation rooms at school because staff can’t manage their behaviors.

A horribly tragic story is the case of an 18 year old severely affected autistic man who allegedly beat his mother in their Kent, Ohio, home in January. She later died of her injuries. The sole message about this tragedy from the Autism Society of Ohio was, “people with autism are not violent.” Well, some people with autism who have such impairment in their expressive communication, and who are so frustrated by this deficit do lash out. Not with premeditation, but in more of a “fight or flight” response.

As the autism population ages, so do their parents, and this horrific incident will more than likely happen again.

My son was not born with autism. He started acting autistic “coincidentally” as he got all those childhood vaccines. The vaccine schedule has more than tripled in the same time frame as the cases of autism have risen. My hope is scientists will take a good, honest look at vaccines and autism. This has yet to happen. Studies backed by pharmaceutical dollars lack the objectivity needed. So how do you disregard the possible causes, when the outcomes can be so disastrous?

ANDREA KELLER

Canfield