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Possible Cure For Autism
Henry V .009 writes "Scientists in New Jersey are claiming that children with autism are unable to metabolize key fatty acids that fight brain-damaging inflammations. They have already developed urine/blood tests to identify at-risk children. A preventive cure to autism may be as simple as a 'therapeutic cocktail' of fatty acids. Human trials could start later this year."
it won't cure autism. It sounds like the treatment would prevent the brain from being damaged, not that it would reverse any existing damage, for everyone with The Geek Syndrome.
"Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
There are going to be people vocally declaring that we have no right to "cure" (or prevent, as the case may be) autism, and that it's not a disease. At the same time, others will insist that we should do everything in our power to mitigate the effects of autism, which can be quite formidable...I myself know a family friend a year younger than me who has pretty severe autism, he lives in a group home, but he plays the piano like a concert pianist (and has since he was 12) as well as being completely bilingual. He is quite intelligent but really can't function independently in society. I'm going to reserve judgement on this until the trials are completed and the results are in, but I can promise that there is going to be a HUGE amount of controversy over this.
Please stop spreading this lie. You are killing people by convincing them to avoid vaccination. It is more likely a result of trans-fats in food. Or a new neurological virus caused by sexual promiscuity (cerebral herpes maybe). How do I know these things? Well, both have increased at the same time as rates of autism. And, both can get a rise out of people by making them feel abused by others or powers at be.
And that, is the Modern Scientific Method.
Wishful thinking, really.
People want to believe that Aspies are fakers, because Aspies generally inspire dislike, which makes people want an excuse for disliking them.
The issue is, if people are really faking, and they *can* be likable, what is it they need an excuse for? Saying that someone is faking Asperger's to have an excuse is a bit like saying someone is faking Tourette's to have an excuse for shouting obscenities in public. If they *didn't* have Tourette's, why would they be shouting them in the first place?
(Because it's a lot more pleasant to fit in than to not fit in, but have an excuse, even if the excuse is accepted.)
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They'll have no more excuse to be rude fucking assholes!
Just like you.
Autism is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder, not "smart people acting weird". Just because Hollywood somehow made it glamorous to be autistic, doesn't mean it's remotely accurate.
While I don't agree with the asshat who responded to your original post, I will tell you this. My son displayed the signs of autism far before his two year shots (typically the ones autism is blamed on). Your assessment that it has to be "caused" rather than genetic is flawed.
It took me quite a while to come to grips with the fact that my son has this condition. I've also done a lot of thinking on why so many kids today are being diagnosed with it as opposed to twenty years ago and the answer came from my Mother of all people. She saw nothing wrong with my son. "He's just a little behind" she said. "Your brother didn't start speaking until he was almost three" she said.
Explaining away the condition as some medical conspiracy is ignorance at its finest. Perhaps in the future you should study a little more and get a little more experience with topics you feel you need to comment so strongly on before you make such absurd statements (and no, the internet, while fun, is not the best place to learn if you're looking for facts).
While I appreciate the fact that you took five minutes out of your day to give the matter some thought and you decided that in your limited experience you've never heard of or seen anything that would lead you to believe autism was anything more than mercury poisoning, I'll have to side with the researchers and the doctors and the therapists I've spoken with who have actual years of experience dealing with children afflicted by this condition.
Just because you'd never heard of it in such numbers before doesn't mean they weren't there. They were simply explained away, ignored, or treated quietly while the rest of society went about its business. Not understanding a disease is not the same as it not existing.
Let me say clearly and up-front: Full-blown autism is a terrible thing - and a cure for it is most certainly worth striving for.
The problem is that there is no bright line between "Autism" and "Aspergers" (and no bright line between "Aspergers" and normality at the other end of the scale). We have a range of brain types ranging along a continuum from normal to completely autistic - and we've chosen to confuse matters still further by giving the people in the middle of that range another name for their position along the line.
But this is where the moral dilemma strikes. Those of us (and I'm one of them) with Aspergers frequently benefit from it. Notably, Asperger "victims" who are programmers are able to focus their minds on a tiny problem for insane amounts of time - to be happy to amass vast amounts of ultra-detailed knowledge on ridiculously small topics. This is "A Good Thing" for some of us to be able to do.
I for one would strongly resist being "cured". I like being this way. There are undoubtedly downsides - I'm terrible at reading sarcasm and 'undercurrents' and body language and other societal cues...I know that I suck at this and I try my hardest to make allowances for my possible lack of knowledge. I tell people I work with "don't hint - tell!" - and my wife has come to understand that - yes - I'm even worse than most guys at picking up on subtle hints. I walk on tiptoes too - a classic Asperger symptom which people think is odd. But the benefits (I'm happy and I earn a pile of cash for doing what I do) by far outweigh the downsides. I just wish someone had told me about this when I was 10 years old instead of waiting for me to figure it out in my late forties! Jeez - I have so many memories of teenage problems which just make me cringe when I look back on them and realise how things I did must have looked to other people!
So - at what point in the fuzzy region between 'Severe Aspergers' and 'Mild Autism' do we start the magic treatment?
We could greatly damage society by making the cut too close to the 'normality' side - we gain great benefits from Nerds. Yet we would unnecessarily ruin the lives of too many severe autism sufferers if we went too far the other way and refused to treat people with more severe symptoms.
Where do you make the cut? It's a tough call.
www.sjbaker.org
Thank you, Dahamma. Whenever Hollywood glamorizes a disease, it is almost the worst thing for sufferers of that disease for three reasons.
1. If you tell people that you have , they go "Like that kid in ! Yeah? So why aren't you twitchy/shaky/screaming obscenities in public?"
2. It gets overdiagnosed, and you become "just another aspergers/autistic kid".
3. Help dries up. So many shockingly crap parents that want a disease to blame for their incompetence as a caregiver go out and book appointments with the specialists so you can't get in for 6 months; they buy all the pills to comatose their kids, increasing the demand so up goes the price; and all the people who once gave a crap about helping people with aspergers/autism get so disillusioned with the amount of badly raised perfectly normal kids that walk through their doors, that they unknowingly turn away the people they wanted to help.
It's ADD all over again...
Nothing properly called a "fad" lasts for 12 years, which is the shortest required duration for even one of these landmark dates in the history of Asperger's to fall within the "fad of making everything a disorder". Perhaps you are referring to something more long term than what most people would think of as a fad; if that is the case, my apologies for misunderstanding. If not, then Asperger's Syndrome clearly predates the "fad" you refer to as well.
[1] Wikipedia's page on Asperger Syndrome, History section.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
I have learned much in the fifteen years of my son's life, and the thing I have learned most is that people who claim to have "the cure for autism" are lying. Not always in an evil fashion, and not necessarily knowingly, but they are saying something that is not true.
Man, I'm always late for these things...
My wife is an SLP in a school for autistic children and sees the snake oil marketed to parents as a treatment for autism (of course, marketing themselves in the strictly legal sense, avoiding the magic words that'll land them in hot water). Kelation, vitamins, massage, gluen free diets, raw food diets, etc etc all make the rounds without any real results. Hell, one of her parents are both neurosurgeons who send their daughter for kelation and have a tutor come to their home to pump her head with knowledge to show off that their kid isn't a complete retard.
Parents want their kids to be normal. Many perceive a clinician's attempt at injecting reality into the situation as an overworked teacher giving up on their kid. They'll pay any amount of money to the next charlatan to come down the pike offering nebulous claims. It's sad, I hope that there is a special level of hell for people who prey on the desperate in this fashion.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?