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Possible Cure For Autism

Posted by kdawson on from the umbrella-for-the-rainman dept.

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."

39 of 431 comments (clear)

  1. Oblig. Definitely fatty acids... by gardyloo · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... definitely, definitely.

    1. Re:Oblig. Definitely fatty acids... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Quick, patent the fix now or else the little shitheads will get cured without coughing up some $10,000/vial.

  2. This is not good! by kraemate · · Score: 5, Funny

    What will happen now to the legions of slashdotters who claim to suffer from autism/aspergers ? How can i relate to Knuth now? I'm doomed.

    1. Re:This is not good! by Deliberate_Bastard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.)

      --
      NOTICE: This notice will appear at the bottom of all my slashdot posts.
    2. Re:This is not good! by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:This is not good! by sbaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
    4. Re:This is not good! by strikerworldwide · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    5. Re:This is not good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I agree, this is a dangerous game to play with. Having Asperger's Syndrome, I fall on the autistic spectrum as currently defined, and would NOT want to be 'cured'. (I might opt to have some of my more frustrating quirks toned down, though.. my pseudo-synaesthetic tactile sensitivity precludes many things)

      The best solution that occurs to me (when faced with the problem of an autism cure, not just this treatment) is to let people choose for themselves, with of course informed consent, a waiting period, and a minimum age. In the case of people who are crippled to the point that they are incapable of communicating thier decision (or having it communicated to them), is to go ahead and give them the treatment in an experiment. I doubt a profound autistic could handle the change from their normal life to "normalcy". I doubt I could make that transformation.

      Oh, as a slight tangent... I realize that many people who are not diagnosed (and probably not even aspie) are 'proud autistics', but is there really that many people who claim Asperger's as a reason for their eccentricities? I have spent the last decade and a half of my life trying to fit in, and have only just in the last half a year had reasonable success. It seems incredible to me that significant portions of the nuero-typical population would pretend to be on the spectrum.

    6. Re:This is not good! by sbaker · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't know how old you are - I'm just over 50 years old - I only realised I am an Asperger's "victim" less than 5 years ago. When I saw a list of common symptoms (some very odd - such as the tendancy to walk on tip-toe instead of with feet flat on the floor) - it was blindingly obvious that this was me. Looking back on things that happened when I was younger, I cringe at the realisation of all of the terrible things I messed up.

      But you CAN learn to fit in - or at least to know where you're likely to have problems and make adjustments accordingly.

      You know that you can focus on pretty much any narrow subject and become insanely specialised in it. One day I decided to try to broaden my horizons - so I picked a subject far from work or computers. I decided to get interested in 1960's cars - it was interesting - it came easily - but (predictably) because I have Aspergers, I'm now a leading expert in exactly one make of car and can pretty much name every part - every change for every model year...you get the picture I'm sure. It was no harder than learning a new programming language.

      OK - so if you can do that, then you can focus on learning how conversations with other humans 'work'. You can study that with scientific rigor - and whilst it won't ever be a 'natural' thing - you'll be able to fake it pretty well. I don't feel comfortable in idle chit-chat - but I can fake it well enough to get by without coming off as being completely weirdo (or at least I think I can - maybe there are subliminal cues that I'm completely missing that say that I can't!).

      You need to do some deliberate 'horizon broadening' so you have at least a handful of interesting things that you know well - but it's not hard to do that. Then you need to sharply rein in that awful tendency we have to tell everyone who will listen the difference between the Mk I 2.5" carberettor fuel feed adjustment and the improved Mk II model. Save that for writing Wikipedia articles. Ration yourself to a few high level sentences on your favorite topics "I restore classic cars"..."I'm working on a '63 Mini Cooper"..."They were successful rally cars" - then that's your lot. You have shut the heck up about that subject and only briefly answer direct questions about '63 Mini Coopers until the next topic of conversation comes around. Learn some vapid questions that cause the other person to feel the need to talk. A 'normal' friend said that "...and how does that make you feel?" works great in response to almost anything a woman says to you. It's hard to believe it - but that seems to work really well. You can actually research that stuff.

      Make sure that people who are close to you know that you don't do well at picking up subtle cues from speech. It's no use someone dropping subtle hints that they want you to do something - you'll never notice them. Tell them: "You have to tell me directly - no matter what - you won't ever upset me by doing that". This is why we geeks have trouble with women. They are dropping large hints that they like you and want you to make your move *NOW*...you have no clue that they are saying that because they never seem to come right out and say "OK - tonight you're going to get laid" - or "Don't bother, it's never going to happen"...which is a shame because it would make life a whole lot easier if they did.

      Being tall is nothing to do with it. Being tall correlates well with success in most fields.

      You CAN learn what you need - you just have to care enough to do it. I just wish someone had told me this thirty years before I found out myself.

      --
      www.sjbaker.org
    7. Re:This is not good! by The_Wilschon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      dyslexia.. because that one ACTUALLY IS A DISORDER and is older than the "fad" of making everything a disorder
      Hans Asperger did his work circa 1944. In 1981, work dealing with Asperger's observations was first published in English. In 1992, ICD-10 included Asperger's Syndrome. In 1994, DSM-IV included Asperger's Syndrome. [1]

      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.
    8. Re:This is not good! by sbaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem with informed consent is that once you get sufficiently far along the spectrum to be clearly in need of treatment, you are likely to be so cut off from other people that it's going to be almost impossible for anyone to regard your consent (or otherwise) as "informed".

      Messing with peoples brains (their personalities - their 'souls' to use a quaint term) is dangerous stuff. What happens if you cure them - and only after they are "normal" do they clearly and coherently point out that they were happier beforehand?

      Not easy.

      I recently started to have hearing problems - and was told by the audiologist that a CAT scan of my head would help him to see what was going on. During the scan, they found a 2cm x 1cm x 1cm tumor on my temporal lobe - totally unrelated to the hearing problem. This (needless to say) put me into a complete state of panic - but they told me that from the way the brain was folded around it, it must have appeared when I was a small child and stopped growing in my early teens - and has not changed since. I remarked that maybe it would be a good idea to get rid of it anyway - but as the doctor pointed out - your temporal lobe is where your 'personality' lives. If we "fix" this problem you may not be "you" afterwards. Which makes me think - if that thing hadn't popped into my head at age 12 or so - I wouldn't be the "me" I am now. If I had had truly "informed consent" back when I was a kid, would I have taken it? Would I take it in hindsight?

      --
      www.sjbaker.org
    9. Re:This is not good! by kfg · · Score: 5, Informative

      I know a few dozen people who have self-diagnosed themselves as having Asperger's by reading the DSM and saying to themselves, "Hey, that's ME!" Some of these people are essentially dislikable, but many of them are not. A couple of them are even charming in a shy sort of way. They are odd, don't fit in, have social troubles, etc and most of them find this troublesome. They are wingnuts and nuerotics, but they are not actually aspies.

      My oldsest friend has actually been diagnosed and is on disability because he cannot perform really useful work and/or interact with people. Unlike the self-diagnosers he can creep people out just by saying hello to them, he isn't just "odd," dislikable or lacking social skills, he's clearly "wrong." People clutch their children to them when he walks by because he even moves creepy in ways that cannot be easily defined.

      But here's the thing, even though he can now talk (at tedious length) about being an Aspie he thinks he's charming - while he casually picks up someone's personal diary and starts reading it aloud in a public setting. He would have read the DSM and been absolutely clueless that he exhibited. He can say "I don't fit in," but he doesn't know he doesn't fit in.

      The real Aspie does not whine about not fitting in; he lacks the capacity to know he doesn't fit in. That's what makes him an Aspie. He walks around saying "What the fuck is wrong with them?" when people clutch their children to them when he walks by, assuming he even notices (my friend didn't know people do this until one man actually yelled at him "Stay away from my kids or I'll beat the crap out of you, you fucking creep!"). The difference between the socially awkward geek and the socially retarded Aspie is night and day when you put them next to each other. The socially awkward can go to charm school and learn; the Aspie cannot. He does not see what he is supposed to be learning and thus cannot even reproduce it on a purely mechanical level. His eyebrows or something will continue to act fucking creepy.

      One may exhibit every symptom of Asperger's to some degree or other without actually having it. It is defined by the incapacity for socialization.If you haven't been diagnosed but think you're an Aspie, you're probably just a jerk who can learn to behave better if you really want to.

      The classic Aspie isn't the socially awkward tech geek; it's the socially agressive Robert Johnson who died of trying to pick up other men's wives right in front of them; without the slightest realization that he was doing something risky. He died clueless of why he died, even while the guy knifing him was screaming "Stay away from my woman, you fucking asshole!"

      KFG

    10. Re:This is not good! by omeomi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      Most autistic people aren't also savants. Hollywood has glamorized savantism to a degree, but hasn't really glamorized regular old autism.

      --
      ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
    11. Re:This is not good! by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Here's a question that came up at lunch last week: can Chinese (or others who use ideographic/pictographic writing systems) be dyslexic?


      I did think about asking slashdot, but they were sod all use when I lost my Swiss army knife. P.S. I found it now - no thanks to you. Bastards.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    12. Re:This is not good! by eric_ykchan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Knowing a few people with ASD doesn't make you an expert to say who has and who doesn't have ASD. Whether a "real" Aspie know whether they fit in or not is not a diagnosis whether he/she is an Aspie.

    13. Re:This is not good! by caudron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While I agree with you in large part (a great many people self-diagnose Asperger's especially withing our community), it's worth pointing out that you overstate, I think, the issues. While many people with the Syndrome are severe and exhibit behavior similar to that which you describe, there are those who are not as severe and very much know what we are missing. Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means two things, really: 1. It covers a wide spectrum of symptoms rather than a tight clinically clear grouping and 2) those who have it fall on a spectrum of severity. One can have /slight/ autism just as likely as one can have severe autism. Indeed, severity is highly correlative with order of birth. The first child might display some symptoms, but each successive child is increasingly likely to display increasingly severe symptoms. You friends is likely fairly severe (though not as severe, it sounds, as some I've met), but that can't be used to dimiss legitimate edge cases where the autistic child will have lifelong trouble, but not so severe as to need much help...just enough to be generally unlikable.

      This is not to say you are wrong, as I think you are right. Just making suring others don't misunderstand your point and take it to mean that what you've described is the only form Asperger's takes.

      Tom Caudron
      http://tom.digitalelite.com/

      --
      -Tom
    14. Re:This is not good! by Jasin+Natael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm only 27, but I've had a lot of the same fight. I've only known about my AS for about three years. When I did know for sure, I showed some of the literature to my mother. She immediately breathed a deep breath, her eyes kind of glazed over, and she said quite a number of things I won't repeat here. The gist was that, even as a schoolteacher trained in dealing with kids like me, she had never recognized it from my behavior and didn't suspect what some of the stranger symptoms meant (fear of physical contact, tiptoeing, echolalia, etc.) -- she just thought I was a sullen, introspective child.

      I think more people could learn to deal with us. But for people with AS, the tendency is to take the burden on ourselves. We analyze social interaction as a rule-based system and learn enough, intuitively, to get by. But it's like the "Digital Divide" effect seen in CGI characters crafted to look human... The more closely we can approximate neurotypical reactions and behaviors, the 'creepier' we seem to get, because the subtle differences stand out in contrast. And some people, upon really realizing how different things are below the surface, react quite strongly, to wit: your post above.

      People won't pity you, and they won't make concessions, because the very act of participating in society hides your differences. If they saw you in a mental institution, or a hospital, they might have some heartfelt reaction of pity or a desire to help. But if they talk to you on the street, you're a wierdo who won't look them in the eye, and sometimes silently repeats what he just said -- a crazy person dressed up to look like an intelligent, handsome, healthy, well-composed young man, and it scares them.

      But for people to concede your difference and willingly interact with you, you must provide some overwhelmingly positive basis for that difference. If it is assumed that you are different because you are an artist, or a musician, or a genius, you can get a foot in the door. Many with AS, though, don't have an outstandingly positive trait, and they suffer greatly because their differences are never sanctioned, only condemned and punished. And no matter how hard they try, many will never be able to emulate neurotypical responses 100% -- they'll give off a "bad vibe" that nobody can qualify, all the worse as they try harder.

      You, sir, are a jerk. You can empathize with an animal because you concede that they will behave differently. By making no concessions for differing behavior from other human beings, you will find yourself unable to interact with a tremendous number of people. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, while the barriers erected against individuals with AS may be insurmountable, it is you who has the greater social disorder by far.

      --
      True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
    15. Re:This is not good! by xmousex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      my wife is chinese but born in america, and very dislexic. We often wonder if she had grown up in china instead of america she would probably be reading a language that was easier for her brain to process. This article seems to point in the direction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,130 26,1310286,00.html

    16. Re:This is not good! by thesandtiger · · Score: 4, Informative

      Bing-fucking-O!

      There are 2 Aspies in my family. One is my brother, one is my nephew. My brother is absolutely clueless that he doesn't fit in because he absolutely cannot recognize the subtle signs that people show to indicate that he's not being recieved well. While many Aspie people are shy because social situations bewilder them, my brother is not - he will force himself upon all and sundry and he thinks people love him because he's not able to process facial expressions etc. He's starting to get clued in now because he realises he's 40 years old and hasn't ever had a real relationship (never got past a second date) and has come to accept that maybe it *isn't* that everyone else is defective with relationships, but that he's got issues.

      My nephew is actually quite charming in a very shy sort of way. My sister told him at a very young age, when she realized that he wasn't "getting" social stuff that she would help him learn how to recognize when people were put off by him. For him, every social encounter is an excercise in observation and processing the results and making guesses - he has done it out loud before, and it is just amazing the stuff he says. "Oh, she is smiling, but her knuckles are white and her tendons are standing out on her hand and she is hunching her shoulders and she hasn't said anything except to nod and look around so I think she is nervous and wants to get away." He's 22 now, and getting better all the time - more subtle about the thinking that goes on - but he's told me that the only reason he thinks he's different from other people is because people tell him that. It just wouldn't occur to him otherwise.

      The difference between those two people and those who want to claim to have it is stark. Just being able to have the personal insight to even begin to make the attempt at self-diagnosis is something that can be a differential.

      Note: Not saying all aspies are just like my brother or nephew, all comments should be taken as qualified by "in my opinion" or "in my experience" etc. and so on.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
    17. Re:This is not good! by kfg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      . . .or somehow know an awful lot about Aspergers. . .

      I repeat, I have maintained a friendly relationship with one for decades, a man other grown men will literally hide from if they see him coming. I also tutor them in math and music, because they want me to, because they can be at ease around me, something they aren't used to and they like it.

      . . .since I (without any form of autism, to my knowledge)can analyse social interactions analytically, and fake them.. . .

      Perhaps you should change your user name to Clever Hans. You are actually observeing and reacting to extremely sublte clues that you are not even aware of, all while drawing on a wellspring of "innate" understanding of what is and is not appropriate behavior. An autistic spectrum person does not have that wellspring and may not even be able to recognize the look of extreme horror on the face of the person they are talking to and continue to blithely "fake" it "successfully", where you would realize that your faking it wasn't working and adopt a new strategy of faking it until you found one that worked.

      Which isn't faking it. That's how it's really done. Your toolkit for "faking" it is different from theirs. You have bash, sed, awk and perl; and know how to use them.

      They have Gnome, and do not. They can, with a bit of work, at least learn to use Gnome better, but they cannot learn to use command line. Because that is what autism is. A disfunction of certain kinds of perception/interaction. An apparent inability to understand the very tools.

      The only way for you to know whether what you see is true is to actually observe the effects of someone with the syndrome talking with someone else - and I somehow doubt you've done that.

      Someday you'll have to do lunch with me and my Aspie friend, but you'll need a very high embaressment tolerance for the way he interacts with the waitress. Seriously. The behavior of Aspies is chronically inappropriate, because they do not see what you see; and never have. They do not see and do not see that they do not see, because they have not seen. To one degree of another their world is closed in upon themselves. They are insensate. Yeah, they can often learn to mechanistically get through a first date with a chance for a second, so long as the date follows the script. You can only keep that sort of thing up for so long before the cracks start to show.

      Thus to interact "positively" with an autistic you must entirely abandon your concept of appropriate behavior, accept them for what they are, and follow their lead (which often leads straight to a double bind).

      In point of fact, you must fake it. They live in an alternate reality you have not, because you cannot, visit. Just as they have not visited yours. They are more alien than a cat or dog. They are rather like shark. They understand you like a shark understands a cat.

      Yes, I have interacted with shark in the wild; and helped the crew of the Calypso haul the carcasses of the ones where the interaction did not go smoothly up on the beach. They never show you that part on The Undersea World of.

      Came as a bit of shock to me, but then I didn't know any Aspies at the time. I was young and naive.

      Better eating on a hammerhead then on an Aspie though. I wasn't a vegetarian yet. Just so you know, iguana tastes like . . .lizard. So much for the old saw.

      Good though.

      And remember, always act appropriately here on Slashdot (with the highest density of Aspies on the web), because the Webernets are serious fucking business. Fortunately we have the GNAA Frist P0sTerS to show us how it's done right.

      KFG

  3. Re:A blood test eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You seem to have a strong opinion on this... were you also diagnosed with asperger's syndrome?

  4. This prevents damage by SeanMon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:This prevents damage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is alot more wrong with autistics than just a deficiency of fatty acids. To say this is a potential comprehensive cure for autism would be overhopefully to say the least. There are reasons why autistics are "unable to metabolize key fatty acids". The severe issues autistics have with heavy metals like copper and mercury and how those factor in the causes of autism are now well known.

      Furthermore, taking fatty acids wouldn't even fully prevent the brain from being damaged in an autistic. They would just be... less autistic.

  5. Ah hah! by bryanp · · Score: 4, Funny

    *looks down at his waistline*

    It would appear I have no problem metabolizing fatty acids. I'm definitely safe.

    --
    "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
  6. Slashdot quoting by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know that spelling, grammar, and punctuation, are lost causes for Slashdot editors, but proper use of quotations is easy. I didn't write the sentence "human trials could start later this year." Nor is it accurate exactly. The only "human trial" starting up later this year is a preliminary study of the effects of fatty acid supplements on autistic children aged 5-7.

    Also, I'm not responsible for the story link that pops up a big Printer Dialog when you click it.

  7. Expect a shitstorm to arise from this by tpjunkie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  8. Fish oils baby! by Fizzlewhiff · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now they need to find a cure for printer dialogs.

    --

    'Same speed C but faster'
  9. Re:A blood test eh? by slughead · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is great. It's about time they tied this down to something that can be tested for so the people with real problems can get help, and all the Internet whiners can learn to deal with life instead of always searching for a cop-out.

    I've been using chat programs and on online forums since 1996 and have never seen someone flame someone else and then later claim to have aspergers.

    So, I just have to ask: What the hell straw man are you roundhousing to the face, chuck?

    --
    Latewire
  10. Oh great... by Brandybuck · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh great. Now we'll have another drug to dope our kids up on. I predict an increase in the diagnoses of autism in children as soon as this gets marketed.

    "Drink your fatty acid cocktail, dear, your psychiatrist has a new BMW to pay for..."

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
  11. Re:Autism rates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Autism rates by hunterx11 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stop trolling.

    --
    English is easier said than done.
  13. Re:A blood test eh? by IorDMUX · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry to reply to my own comment, but as long as we are discussing Asperger's and such, I though I'd add this note to the original issue of urine/blood based diagnosis:

    Apparently, those suffering from "non-chelated pervasive developmental delay not otherwise specified or Asperger's disorder" do not have "significantly increased median coproporphyrin levels", which is the method used in the article to diagnose the more severe forms of autism spectrum disorders. (Note: There is an increase in the median urinary porphyrins for those with Asperger's and PDD-NOS, but not sufficient to be statistically significant based upon the authors' criteria.)

    Source: Nataf R, Skorupka C, Amet L, Lam A, et al. "Porphyrinuria in childhood autistic disorder: implications for environmental toxicity." Toxicol Appl Pharmacol 2006;214:99-108
    ...and related Wikipedia Article.

    --
    >> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
  14. Re:Autism rates by Viadd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The autism-vaccine connection was 'research'
    purchased by a law firm for almost a million dollars.

  15. Another day, another stupid false hope. by TheMohel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Obligatory claim of relevance: I am a pediatrician with developmental training. I am also the parent of a teenager with severe autism. It is my informed (but not omniscient) opinion that the odds that this is anything other than a complete red herring are too small to measure accurately.

    We will begin with the obvious problem that they are treating autism as a single disorder. We don't know a great deal about the spectrum, but we certainly know that autistic symptoms can be found in a large number of discrete conditions. "Autism" is probably a final common pathway of subtle neurologic failure, and the idea that a single enzyme is associated has been discredited repeatedly. In fact, every time we think we've found "the" cause, more research shows us that we have found, at most, "a" cause, and usually not one that is common. Fragile X syndrome, Rett's syndrome, and others were all previously lumped in as "autism", and I don't think we're done finding things.

    The next obvious problem is that if we indeed have a single liposomal storage disease causing most or all autism, you would find it with brain biopsy and/or MRI. We have not found this. You would expect other commonalities as well, since failures of fat metabolism generally have organ impacts outside the brain. We have not found these. I would be unsurprised to discover that there is a rare disorder of this sort with autistic symptoms present, but it means nothing for the vast majority of individuals with autism.

    Don't get me wrong - I would give the rest of my life willingly if it would cure my son. I will be grateful beyond words if this works. But it won't, any more than secretin did when it was the last great hope for autism. 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.

    1. Re:Another day, another stupid false hope. by dr_dank · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?
  16. Re:A blood test eh? by Deliberate_Bastard · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is used against autistic individuals on all levels of normal function.

    The general argument goes like this:

    "It's okay for us to torture autistics, because anyone who can object isn't a real autistic. Therefore no one objects."

    http://www.autistics.org/library/whoisautistic.htm l

    Unlearn.

    --
    NOTICE: This notice will appear at the bottom of all my slashdot posts.
  17. Re:Autism rates - no relationship to Thimerosal by hrvatska · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thimerosal has been virtually eliminated in childhood vaccines in the US, yet we see no decline in autism rates. A large scale Danish study http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/ full/112/3/604/ persuasively argued that there was no link between autism rates and Thimerosal. As in the US, they found that the elimination of thimerosal had no effect on the rate of autism. What causes autism? Hell if I know, but it sure doesn't seem that thimerosal does.

  18. Re:Autism rates by DMadCat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  19. Re:Autism rates by Big+Bob+the+Finder · · Score: 3, Informative
    We'll know for sure very soon, one way or another. Thimerosal has disappeared from the (minority) of vaccines that had them in the first place. Table of mercury in childhood vaccines

    So- of those few vaccines that still contain thimerosal, such as Fluzone (the most I can find in the tables, at 25 micrograms mercury for a 0.5 mL injection), how does that compare with what you eat?

    You get twice that much by ingestion from a single gram of chunk white tuna. Or, from the Mercury Calculator, two ounces of canned albacore is 180% of what a 40-pound child should eat in a day.

    Of course, injection is very different from ingestion- but the example I give is extreme. After the influenza vaccines, thimerosal levels drop off dramatically- and virtually all use of thimerosal was discontinued years ago.

    So stop whining about vaccinating your kids. There are low- and no-thimerosal options for everything but straight TT (tetanus toxin), and you can get your kid stuck for tetanus without thimerosal by using Tdap or another vaccine with a tetanus component. And in another 5 years or so, we'll know for sure if the thimerosal was responsible. Until then, your kids get way more exposure from food, water, and air than vaccines.