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Autism Reversed in Mice at MIT Lab
ClayTapes writes "It seems that scientists at MIT have been able to reverse the effects of autism and some forms of mental retardation in mice caused by fragile X chromosomes. They do so by targeting an enzyme that changes the structure of connections between brain cells. The treatment actually repairs these structural abnormalities which suggests that it may be possible to reverse the effects in children who already show symptoms."
The mice are still not talking... except for one.
Here's some information for those of you interested. I'm not an authority on this, except that I once did a 6 minute presentation for one of my biology classes.
Some researchers believe that autism causes it's havoc by interfering with the brains ability to prune existing connections between neurons. This is also pointed at as the reason that many autistic children appear normal for the first X months of development...they have to build up enough neurons linked to everything else before they lose the ability to function.
For the same reason, many believe that treatments that restore the brains ability to prune those connections could restore normal function to people with autism, even if they are already adults.
Joyous times, indeed.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
"Stop giving away our plans, Pinky, or I shall have to hurt you."
I have to think that the people who say that are mostly saying it because, to date, there hasn't been a way for their child to be any different than they are. It certainly can't help the development of the autistic child for the parent to be running around lamenting the fate that has produced such a child. These statements indicate acceptance of the child as they are, not, as it appears on the surface, that they wouldn't really accept a cure if it were available. I think you would be VERY hard pressed to find a parent who wouldn't go for a cure if it were available. Not saying there are none, just an incredibly small number. And in those cases, a baseball bat might be in order.
I just think you need to cut the parents who make those statements some slack. They are dealing with a very difficult situation.
My brain is overly lubricated
I'm also confident you won't be the last one. But I'm worried you (and your peers) may be overly judging things too rashly.
I am autistic, and I don't consider my condition to be a handicap. Autism makes some parts of my life more difficult, but it makes other parts of my life easier. I imagine it's like being taller than average: some things are easier (reaching the top shelf) and some things are harder (fitting into a small car). It's hard to say whether, from a utilitarian perspective, one way is overall "better" than the other. It'd be an ideal world if it happened to balanced out perfectly so that someone with my degree of autism had exactly the same potential for joy and suffering as a neurotypical person, however I suspect the probability of that is low. I don't want you to discount the idea that perhaps my life is easier than a neurotypical person, and that my degree of autism may actually be an advantage. It's certainly a possibility.
Furthermore, the parents may be working under the (I think) reasonable assumption that there are risks to every medical treatment. There's a strong belief that autism is hereditary, and so if I have a child, I'm open to the possibility that may be born autistic. Given that my life turned out pretty good, I'd probably favour not having medical procedures done on a child, all other things being equal.
To clarify, I'm fully willing to take into account my doctor's advice and opinions. If the doctor told me "Your child is extremely autistic, and will probably require 24/7 supervision and will never learn to speak. I strongly recommend we go through with the treatment, as the risks are very minor.", then I'd probably sign whatever forms were necessary and let the autism get "cured". On the other hand, if the doctor says "Your child has some signs of high functioning autism. If untreated, he'll probably end up within the same spectrum range as you. We can apply a treatment, but there are some very minor risks. It's your call, do you want to proceed?" I'd probably respond with "No. I enjoyed my life. I think he will too."
What I really wonder about is the converse. How many highly useful (in humans) drugs have been abandoned at an early stage because they had no effect on mice.
It's interesting that LSD was thought to have little more than a very mild stimulant effect (and had been abandoned in favor of more promising lysergic acid compounds) until Hoffman got some of it on him and took the first acid trip. Apparently either it's not all that apparent when a mouse is tripping or mice don't trip.
He was looking for a better medication to stop uterine bleeding.
See this.
I wonder what other "uninteresting" substances have been ignored because they don't happen to have any effect on humans in microgram doses and don't effect mice in any dosage.
Unfortunatly, there's no much of a solution to that since we can't have people randomly ingesting chemical experiments just to see.
If Asperger's is like being colour blind, well, I can say that sometimes I'm happy to not see those colours.
1. I hear or read expressions every day to the effect of "he had an honest face", "he looked sincere" or "he had a poker face" or "said it with a straight face", or the fateful step forward from there: "I'd know if he was lying to me." For me that just doesn't exist, but I'll choose to believe that the people saying that stuff actually know what they're talking about. Or maybe it's wishful thinking and make belief for them too, I wouldn't know.
Either way, then I see people falling for the most unbelievable lies, either from the local sociopath or from the the nice IBM/MS/whatever salesman, because, hey, he was "looking honest" and saying that crap "with a straight face" and generally giving the "right signals." It's typically stuff you'd think noone with half a brain would actually believe, if they only engaged their logic for a second. But they believe it anyway, because someone deliberately fed them the false body language signals.
I've known and been around people whose main skill and way to make a living was, basically, giving whatever body language signals they wanted to give. Saying the most mind-boggling lies "with a straight face" and "looking honest", "looking hurt" when they wanted to look hurt, or even getting tears in their eyes on demand. (That last one I can actually tell.) And people swallowed it all hook, line and sinker, because, hey, their instincts tell them to trust that nice person now, to try to cheer them up the next moment, and god knows what else.
Me, I don't even see that kind of stuff, I have to trust other people when they assure me that the nice salesman definitely looked sincere when he sold them that crap. My natural instinct would be to just take that series of statements for what it _is_, and see if it actually produces the conclusion I'm fed. Instead of getting stuck on taking dumb shortcuts like "it must be true, because he looks honest" or "naah, it would be mean of me to hurt him more by dissecting what he just said."
In effect, I'm naturally shielded from what, as far as I can extrapolate, seems to be a very common form of deception. I'm "colour-blind" (metaphorically speaking) in a world where it seems rather common for some people to use colours for deception, deceit, fraud. I can be thankful for that.
2. It seems a rather common trend for Asperger's Syndrome people to be, abover all else, logical, fascinated by one or more narrow scientific domains, and prone to hyper-focus when working on that domain.
It's, if you will, like distributing stat points or traits in a D&D-type game. You take some points from here, and put them in that other stat. Or like when you roll a mage instead of a warrior, you lose HP and armour class, but gain spells.
Ok, maybe not the best analogy, but you surely understand what I mean: it's not just a handicap, we got something else in return. We're the guys who were _fascinated_ by how a radio works, or by assembly language, while the other kids were playing popularity games. We're the guys who (assuming we found a willing listener) were talking about the differences between Haskel and Prolog, while the other teenagers were debating whether Jane or Amy is more fashionable. We're the guys who go into a hyper-focus trance and produce a big block of code, or the proof of a theorem, while the rest of the gang plods through changing an if here and a sign there and see if it worked. Etc.
Admittedly, it's not for everyone, and I'm not saying everyone should be like that. If your goal is to get into higher management, for example, honestly, you won't have much of a chance as an AS, and chances are you wouldn't enjoy that kind of a job anyway. On the other hand, for
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's an interesting issue I have come across as I've been involved in the (European) disability rights movement. Some people within it are VERY much against treating disability as a "medical flaw" in the person that is in need of a cure; they have internalized disability so deeply, that it almost offends their identity to suggest disability is something a cure should be sought for. Instead, according to the so-called "social model" of disability, the hindrances are not caused by the disability, but because there is a mismatch between the person's abilities and the surrounding society.
I've had long discussions about this with a certain otherwise bright girl with CP who is nevertheless an unyielding hippie and who claims that seriously, she wouldn't want to be cured even if a cure were available, as it would alter who she is. And this is a person who is in a wheelchair. Considering that I am a wheelchair-using cripple too, that kind of a position is hard to comprehend. Make my bones not break easily and give me some 50cm more height and my life would be much easier, and I don't think I would lose anything I particularly love about my life!
Of course, the whole medical/social model of disability discussion which unfortunately seems to preoccupy so much of the minds involved in the disability movement is just semantic bullshit that seeks to shift the "blame" for the issue away from the person, and make us feel less like medical objects that need to be conformant to some ideal we don't fit. IMO, while there is limited sense in arguing that people have the right to be who they are, mostly this seems to just expose insecurities in disabled thought... there is a need to be so defensive of our disability, that we end up actually hurting our own cause by saying that the problem doesn't really even exist, and that attempts to make things better on a personal, "individual-altering" basis are "wrong"! Worse yet, producing sociology papers on this topic is such huge intellectual masturbation that I am absolutely certain the time and effort could be better used trying to find actual, pragmatic solutions to issues...
I guess some people are just so traumatized by the almost imagined "blame" and medical "objectification" that they just aren't able to see that it would be OK to accept a cure... at least to me to be able to say that is liberating. My disability is not "my identity"; it's very much a mere medical issue, nothing else. And as such, it is hopefully treatable in the future, if not in my case, but in some future person's case. (But let's not go here to the fact that for my diagnosis the "cure" tends to be abortion these days, and I'm around because fetal diagnostics weren't there in 1979...)
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.