Can the Autism Epidemic Be Stopped?

Bright Side with Tekneshia

Kent Heckenlively is a science teacher, an attorney, and a founding contributing editor of Age of Autism. During his undergrad years at St. Mary’s College, Heckenlively worked for U.S. Senator Pete Wilson and was the school’s Rhodes Scholar candidate. In law school at Golden Gate University, he was a writer and editor of the school’s law review, spending his summers working for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco. In the summer of 2010 and 2011, Heckenlively attended the Teacher Research Academy at Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratories, spending eight weeks in a virus lab investigating the expression of micro-RNAs in a monkey model of Ebola infection. Kent is also a member of the Compass group, a consortium of autism parents, leading scientists, and philanthropists in Silicon Valley looking for answers to neuro-immune diseases. Heckenlively served on the Executive Council of the San Ramon Valley Education Association for several years and was the Health and Safety Committee Chairman for the teacher’s union, representing more than 1,600 educators, therapists, and psychologists In the fight against chronic diseases, Kent finds great wisdom in the strategy used by Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Mandela believed the change could only come about when one engaged in satyagraha, a Buddhist concept which insists on speaking the absolute truth, while at the same time practicing ahimsa, a commitment not to harm those who might be your adversaries.