Startup Tests Drugs Aimed at Autism

An anonymous reader sends in this link from Technology Review about a startup company testing drugs that may help those with autism-spectrum disorders — even adults. "Seaside Therapeutics, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, is testing two compounds for the treatment of fragile X syndrome, a rare, inherited form of intellectual disability linked to autism. The treatments have emerged from molecular studies of animal models that mirror the genetic mutations seen in humans. Researchers hope that the drugs, which are designed to correct abnormalities at the connections between neurons, will ultimately prove effective in other forms of autism spectrum disorders. ... The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. [A spokesman] says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval."

Comments

Do I have it

[simstick]

If I have the urge to get a first post?

Re:Do I have it

[MichaelSmith]

If you were really autistic you would lurk and never post.

Re:Do I have it

[Anonymous Coward]

Or would he post but never lurk?

Re:Do I have it

[DangerFace]

Then again, if you had fragile X syndrome you wouldn't actually have autism. This is a deeply misleading article title and summary, since Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) covers a wide range of psychological profiles and is deeply misunderstood by most people - even plenty of people who work with it every day. You will notice, reading the article (yeah, I must be new here) that none of the scientists mention ASD. The guy who wrote this piece just thought that would give him an angle, since no one has heard of fragile X syndrome, but everyone loves a good autism story, despite (because of?) most people never having met someone with serious levels of ASD.

Just to clear things up, fragile X syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality that causes various physical deformities and some forms of mental retardation. This is acceptable of you want to know more. There is some limited evidence that correlation exists between some forms of ASD and fragile X syndrome, but causality is far from demonstrated.

Additionally, ASD is defined as being a "pervasive developmental disorder", meaning that a) symtoms must be present from fairly early on in life and b) autism is an innate part of the person suffering from it, and a cure not only doesn't exist - the concept of a cure is nonsensical. Don't get me wrong, I would love there to be a cure for ASD, but medical science currently defines it as uncurable. As an analogy, it would be like trying to 'cure' someone of having social function and being capable of imaginitive play - you could teach them limited functions to appear like they had no grasp of the abstract, but you couldn't turn them autistic.

The media, and people in general, need to cease this endless obsession with autism - it's an incredibly complex subject, and studying it for years only allows you to scratch the surface (trust me on this). Being crap with people suggests some form of social, behavioural, or anxiety disorder. ASD is a serious disorder with serious consequences. Rainman does not exist. As a rule of thumb, if you can put together a fully formed sentence, you almost certainly don't have meaningful levels of ASD. If you can read facial expressions without spending years actually consciously memorising what faces mean what, you don't have meaningful levels of ASD. Okay, if you've gotten this far you might have comparatively mild Asperger's or something on that end of the spectrum, but it'll be clinically relevant only in a small fraction of a percent of that already small group.

Re:Do I have it

[Hieronymus.N]

Thank you. Seriously.

Re:Do I have it

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Its hard to articulate something like that. I particularly like your reversal of the curing, this is something I will use in the future.

Re:Do I have it

[morgan_greywolf]

One of the reasons that the media, and people in general, have seemingly become obsessed with autism is that there has been a very significant rise in diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Furthermore, autism spectrum disorders are often misdiagnosed as other problems. Finally, the public is not aware that autism spectrum disorders cover a range of different, distinct disorders, from very low functioning varieties to very high functioning varieties.

Re:Do I have it

[tigre]

I think you have a high bar for what a "meaningful" level of ASD would be. My son is (as far as the spectrum goes) very high functioning, but it's impact is tremendously meaningful. And my experience is that this end of the spectrum is not a small group at all. It seems to be the broader end of the spectrum, at least as current diagnostic trends seem to me to indicate. As for the clinical relevance, certainly odds are small that this particular drug will be of use for a wide range of ASD sufferers, but I think progress on one aspect of the spectrum at least fills out the picture of this poorly understood class of disorders.

I don't think medical science can "define" autism as uncurable, though it might currently list it in that category. I disagree that the concept of curing it is nonsensical, but it would certainly be along the lines of "curing" amputation, i.e. it would take some serious neurological rewiring to accomplish what could reasonably be considered a cure. And that is certainly beyond the pale of current medicine, but at least for the milder cases like my son's, I have some hope that (should he need and desire it) such a treatment would be available within his lifetime.

Re:Do I have it

[uglyduckling]

I disagree that "the concept of a cure is nonsensical". Your reversal is a bit like saying 'imagine someone can play guitar, and you had to teach them to be incapable of playing it...' - people who can play guitar can't un-learn it, but people who can't play guitar are capable of learning to play it to a greater or lesser degree. Someone with a severe physical disability may never be able to play guitar, depending on that disability.

In one sense I do understand what you mean, that the disorder is an intrinsic part of a person's makeup and not just a bolted-on impairment. However, ASD is a spectrum, and people sit in different places on that spectrum. For some, their ASD would make certain types of social interaction difficult, but not impossible, to process and understand - with patience, it is possible to extend the understanding and mastery of situations that would previously have been too distressing or just incomprehensible. It is therefore possible to 'cure' certain ASDs to the extent that a person is able to function 'normally' (whatever that means) in society and have a better quality of life than they would otherwise have had.

Your sentence "As a rule of thumb, if you can put together a fully formed sentence, you almost certainly don't have meaningful levels of ASD" indicates to me that you have a very little - or a very distorted - understanding of ASD (or you have constructed that sentence poorly and didn't really mean it). Lots of people are able to speak very well and enjoy conversation yet have significant ASD that affects every part of their life.

Re:Do I have it

[dontmakemethink]

On the other hand, I bet most people here have Aspergen's to some degree. Raise your hand if you're at all uncomfortable looking people in the eye.

Re:Do I have it

[infinite9]

Being crap with people suggests some form of social, behavioural, or anxiety disorder. ASD is a serious disorder with serious consequences. Rainman does not exist. As a rule of thumb, if you can put together a fully formed sentence, you almost certainly don't have meaningful levels of ASD. If you can read facial expressions without spending years actually consciously memorising what faces mean what, you don't have meaningful levels of ASD. Okay, if you've gotten this far you might have comparatively mild Asperger's or something on that end of the spectrum, but it'll be clinically relevant only in a small fraction of a percent of that already small group.

I have Asperger's Syndrome. Two of my biological children also have it. And a son we adopted from Russia has high functioning Autism. All of us have an autism spectrum disorder. All of us can put together fully formed sentences. The ability to form sentences is largely irrelevant with respect to autism spectrum disorders. High functioning autism kids have a speech delay that they overcome fairly early in childhood. But that's about it.

Here's a metaphor what learning social skills is like for people with AS : The entire world communicates by playing the piano. 99% of the people out there are born knowing how to play the piano and can simply walk up to a piano at age 2 and start playing. Some are better than others. But most people can play the piano very well. I was born without being able to play the piano. I can learn it. But it's going to take me years. And a lot of variables will affect how fast I learn it and whether I learn it correctly. Am i an introverted shut-in who never seeks piano lessons? If so, I'll never learn it. Am I extroverted (but constantly making mistakes) and always trying to learn from as many piano teachers as possible? I may learn it faster and eventually play very well. Innate ability matters also. Some normal people are naturally good at the piano (social skills) while other normal people are not. What would the AS person have been had they not had AS? This affects things as well.

It's not so much about memorizing facial expressions, but that's part of it. It's more about memorizing prerecorded behaviors and verbal responses for every possible social situation imaginable. Smile at a wedding... don't smile at a funeral... crying at a wedding doesn't equal sad... someone can be sad but not crying... there's a million combinations.

Re:Do I have it

[Kraut_K]

Most mental disorders are incurable. The fact is, for now, all we can do is control them with medication and behavioral modification . Controlling something with medication is not a cure. It only gets rid of the symptoms. Drugs or behavioral treatments can not extinguish the pathology that causes the disorders. The reality is once the patient is off meds or no longer takes part in the behavioral treatment, symptoms will likely return.

Re:Do I have it

[DangerFace]

I apologise if reading my post caused you to feel I was making light of the condition. However, you must accept that anyone that can toilet themselves, feed themselves, and function on a basic level in the real world, suffers very, very mild ASD - additionally, around 80% of ASD people suffer additional severe learning difficulties. The average mental age of a sufferer of ASD is roughly 8 to 10 years old without taking the autism into account.

I think medical science can define this as incurable (for the moment) because it isn't a disease, and doesn't fit into standard models of medical disorders. Curing amputation, which you offer as a comparison, is trivial in comparison - we know what needs doing and we know the theory of how to do it. With ASD not only do we not know what causes it, it is from a young age such a vast part of an individual's personality that meaningful recovery is meaningless - giving an amputee a leg or a blind person sight is meaningful, because these things do not define who those people are. Autism defines the very essence of a person so deeply that removing it would be similar to removing my existential dread and anguish and the drive it gives me to do good - what would be left would be less me than what was taken away.

If anyone wants to learn a little about ASD, check out Aspies For Freedom - obviously the people on this site are extremely high functioning, but check out some conversations on the forums. It can be truly enlightening to see what people have to go through just to make themselves understood.

Re:Do I have it

[Two99Point80]

As a rule of thumb, if you can put together a fully formed sentence, you almost certainly don't have meaningful levels of ASD.

Please provide some kind of scientific-journal citation for this assertion.

While you're looking, let me point out an underlying assumption which it appears to be making: that the verbal/written communication process is a "black box" where ideas go in one end and words come out the other, such that the quality of the cognitive process(es) generating the ideas can be reliably deduced from the quality and quantity of the words.

Please consider this alternative view: the communicative layer is not an inherent part of the cognitive processes, which lie further within the individual. There is no reason that "typical-appearing verbal/written communication" cannot be the output of a laborious and oft-fragile emulation, which is prone to occasionally crashing or producing unexpected/undesirable results. If intensive effort at this emulation manages to produce typical-looking verbal output, the individual making the effort is rewarded by being told that s/he cannot possibly be autistic. Thanks a lot for *that*.

And yes, my username is my DSM code. And yes, I was formally diagnosed, and no, I was not "faking" all the stuff which I've gone through over the years (and still sometimes do). Sheesh.

Re:Do I have it

[budgenator]

I don't think medical science can "define" autism as uncurable, though it might currently list it in that category. I disagree that the concept of curing it is nonsensical, but it would certainly be along the lines of "curing" amputation, i.e. it would take some serious neurological rewiring to accomplish what could reasonably be considered a cure. And that is certainly beyond the pale of current medicine, but at least for the milder cases like my son's, I have some hope that (should he need and desire it) such a treatment would be available within his lifetime.

I hope you realize that talking about "cures" scares the shit out of most people on the spectrum, at least those who aren't wrestling with suicidal depression. To some one on the spectrum, being autistic or an aspie is a fundamental part of their personality, the amount of "rewiring" required to cure "it" would be psychological suicide, you would be a different person. Sure if there was a was to ameliorate some of the disabilities without muting the superabilities too much, the community might move that way, but I don't think it's possible. Do we talk about curing Einstein, Newton or Edison?

Re:Do I have it

[bdabautcb]

Actually 'Rain Man' does exist, his character is based on Kim Peek, a savant with an extremely interesting life. I find it fascinating that although he was not ASD (he had another X-related disease), his social skills increased late in life (2004, according to his father). Kim died in December, I did not notice in the US media any mention of the passing of this remarkable man. Everyone should at least read his wikipedia bio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek. This is not to negate your very valid comment about ASD, but there is a story behind Rain Man.

when I read about "drug"...

[Adolf Hitroll]

...I fear this is more about big pharma milking scared people than about saving people.

Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

i sure hope autism isn't something that is more-or-less cemented at birth, making drugs like these not very useful.

Re:Assumption much?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Autism is what happens when an American marries a Gook, often in a military marriage, and then both of them party and don't pay any attention to the developing baby.

The baby, never having been nursed with real breast milk, shuts themself out of life. They get up at all hours in the morning and just SCREAM, with no rhyme or reason, and inconveniencing everybody else in the neighborhood.

Parents of autistic kids have nothing to blame but themselves. You injected them with all kinds of crap because the news told you to. You never sang songs to them because you hired a maid to watch them while you partied all night. Yes, your kid was born autistic...because you fucked up.

Re:Assumption much?

[Gerafix]

Whether it's cemented at "birth" is beside the point of this drug as it attempts to correct a current state not prevent one. They claim it works on adult animals they have tested. RTFA? Nah this is /. lets just make assumptions.

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I was thinking it was just vaccines. Now I can blame a nationality, a race, and parties!

Re:Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

yawn. is this supposed to be sarcasm? wrong forum, buddy. don't feed the trolls kids. it's what they want you to do.

Re:Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

lol. people on here can be such punks sometimes...
i probably should have elaborated my point. what I meant was that it is entirely possible that autism is the result of a developmental process that occurs before birth. the animal models you mention are not of autism itself, but of fragile X syndrome. TFA says that the syndrome is associated with less than 5% of autism.
the key point is, "While it's not yet clear if there is a critical window during development for giving the drug, adult animals still benefit from the treatment." There is no evidence yet that this will translate to any effect on autism, even in those with fragile X.
so before you mouth off next time, RTFA yourself.

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

"scapermoya" posting anonymously so as to not piss you all off (tee-hee!) but -- Lets be boring and predictable kids. How about another safe, sterile Soviet Russia joke!

Re:Assumption much?

[Gerafix]

I never claimed that the drug was not targeted for fragile X, in fact only you mentioned the drug and autism in the same sentence. Perhaps you should reread the OP.

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

"scapermoya" posting anonymously so as to not piss you all off (tee-hee!) but --
Lets be boring and predictable kids. How about another safe, sterile Soviet Russia joke!

In Soviet Russia, nobody likes Ethanol-fueled.

How did I do?

Re:Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

here we go, buddy:

the article is about a drug that targets a rare genetic trait. because the article appears in layman media and is remotely linked to autism, the submitter titled the /. story "Startup Tests Drugs Aimed at Autism," which is only mildly true.

My original comment:

"i sure hope autism isn't something that is more-or-less cemented at birth, making drugs like these not very useful."

i was tacitly talking about the minority of autism cases linked to this fragile X syndrome, as evidenced by the fact that I was talking about "drugs like these." I was trying to make the point that, even though the drug has been shown to mitigate some of the symptoms of fragile X in adult animals, this tells us nothing about whether the drug will have an effect on autism. i.e. autism's link to fragile X could be completely unrelated to the symptoms of fragile X seen in the animal models (seizures, abnormal protein synthesis, etc). We have no idea what all the functions of FMRP are. anyone who says we do is a fool.

it is entirely possible that mGluR5 has nothing to do with autism. it could simply be a receptor in a downstream pathway from FMRP, separate from whatever pathway(s) are involved with autism development. furthermore (getting back to my first post), even if this receptor is somehow involved with autism, it could be involved only at a very specific stage in development. thus, giving mGluR5 antagonists to people who have passed that stage would have no effect.

thus your comment:
"Whether it's cemented at "birth" is beside the point of this drug as it attempts to correct a current state not prevent one. They claim it works on adult animals they have tested."
is practically worthless, even without the rude bit at the end that I left out. they have only shown that some non-autism symptoms of fragile X are mitigated in adult mice. it's poor form to extrapolate as you seem to be doing when there is no evidence to support it. might i recommend a biochemistry course?

i sincerely hope these drugs do work. but even if they do it will only affect ~5% of the population of people with autism.

Re:Assumption much?

[Gerafix]

Never extrapolated as I never claimed that it worked on adult humans or that they even tested it on humans at all. Only that they claimed that it worked on the animals that they tested. Nice try at back peddling though.

Re:Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

"Whether it's cemented at "birth" is beside the point of this drug as it attempts to correct a current state not prevent one. They claim it works on adult animals they have tested. RTFA? Nah this is /. lets just make assumptions."

looks like we're going to have to do a close reading here, for the sake of your education.

In your first clause of your first sentence, you directly refer to my comment about the possibility that autism may be "cemented at birth," (meaning that regardless of which small molecules you give to someone with autism caused by fragile X syndrome, there will be no effect). You therefore made it clear that you were also talking about autism caused by fragile X, and not simply fragile X itself.
In your second clause (where your main misunderstanding of the facts/developmental biology seems to lie), you state that there is a distinction between 'correcting a current state' and 'preventing one.' The main mistake you are making here is connecting the mGluR5 receptor with autism. This connection appears nowhere in the article, and is likely the result of you reading too fast. Your second sentence continues with this incorrect idea. You correctly point out that the mGluR5 inhibitors appear to have reduced some non-autistic symptoms in adult mice. However, because your original statement was about autism, not fragile X (because my statement was about autism, not fragile X generally, and you were responding to me), you committed a logical mistake.

i'll state it again, just for you. there is no evidence that the seizures and protein synthesis abnormalities seen in animal models of fragile X are causationally related to autism. a small fraction of autism cases in people appear to be linked to a gene that is upstream of the mGluR5 receptor, but that definitely doesn't mean that the drugs that antagonize the receptor will have any effect on autism. again, even if this receptor does play a role in autism, it could be at a specific developmental stage, making the drugs useless for treating the disease in people. that is what i meant by "cemented at birth."

and you did extrapolate. let's detail it for you. you made the assumption that because these mGluR5 antagonists reduced some neurological symptoms in animal models, that autism would be similarly affected. granted, you never said this explicitly (perhaps you were too busy insulting me?). the context of your comment makes it crystal clear though. by responding to my post about autism, you made your comment about autism too. and you mistakenly said that the drugs mentioned in the article, "attempts [sic] to correct a current state not prevent one." In the context of autism, this is not true in the least.
feel free to keep it coming though. me and my degree in molecular and cell biology have all night.

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm starting to think you two have a personal stake in this article (whether you know it or not)...

Re:Assumption much?

[Hal_Porter]

And here I was thinking it was just vaccines. Now I can blame a nationality, a race, and parties!

Ladies and Gentlemen! I have just signed the legislation that will abolish scourge of autism forever. The GOP is banned as of five minutes ago. Any questions? Not from you, Mr Hannity.

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I think you are being a troll, whether you know it or not

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arguing on the internet is like running is the special... ...ah, you know the rest.

Re:Assumption much?

[andreww591]

I strongly believe that this is the case. It looks like autism (or at least "non-syndromal" autism) is present from brain formation, and has multiple causal factors for each individual (and each autistic probably has a somewhat different set of causal factors). Because of the lack of a single cause, and the nature of some of the neurological atypicalities involved, not to mention the fact that autism appears to affect fundamental properties of the personality such as compartmentalization and sense of self, it appears that a non-destructive "cure" for autism is basically impossible. Autistics aren't impaired typical individuals, but something else entirely. Even a prenatal test is unlikely, because there could very well be hundreds of different mutations that contribute to autism, and most of these probably also occur in non-autistics as well.

Re:Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

i agree. in this way, I see autism as similar to schizophrenia. not in symptoms, but in the sense that there are likely thousands (millions?) of possible genotypes that lead to what we have come to call autism. they are also similar in the sense that there is tremendous range to the severity of symptoms. i do believe that we will be able to reduce the incidence of both in the future. through a combination of genetic counseling, IVF with selection for high-risk parents, and drugs taken during pregnancy. pure speculation at this point though.

Re:Assumption much?

[andreww591]

I don't think that is a good idea. It's not as if autism is all deficits with no beneficial traits (if it weren't for certain autistic traits, I think that we'd probably still be living in caves). I think that it would be dangerous to try to eugenically select out autistic traits like that, especially since autism is becoming less and less maladaptive due to better understanding and better technology.

Re:Assumption much?

[scapermoya]

i don't believe that it is completely negative. one of my favorite authors is oliver sacks, who has taught me a lot about the myriad amazing abilities people with autism (and for that matter, other 'disorders') have.

i do think that it's a little tough to call something an 'autistic' trait though. autistics can display enhanced abilities compared to 'normals,' but as far as I know there aren't many things that are completely unique to those with autism. it's a matter of degree. might be semantics though.

those with such abilities (that we can recognize anyway) are on the higher-functioning end of autism. those autistics with less communication abilities are often very hard on their families, and i find it hard to believe that they would have even survived back in cave days.

i don't think there should be a systematic effort to eradicate autism. there should be more options available to us to understand and perhaps improve the lives of those with severe autism.

i completely understand the community of people who see it as just another 'style' of humanity, rather than a deficit. you can see the same attitudes in the blind and deaf communities. but having seen some families turned on their heads by an autistic child, I also understand the desire to find better treatments/'cures.'

Re:Assumption much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm....I just burned my tongue.

What if

[MrMista_B]

What if it's the people who don't have Autism who are sick? What if it's 'normal' that's wrong?

Re:What if

[Gerafix]

If that were the case then natural selection would have taken its course long ago and we'd all be autistic. But it's an amusing question to philosophize nonetheless.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

What constitutes autism is merely a definition. If today's autism was normal, then today's normal would be called autism. Objectively, we are all autistic and normal at the same time really.

Re:What if

[scapermoya]

what if what you think is red is actually blue to me lol!

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is one of impairment of functioning. This, of course, means that many self-proclaimed 'Aspies' are not what this drug targets.

A child that is not capable of communicating with its parents is autistic. A child that leads his parents by the hand to something instead of pointing to what he wants is autistic. Even dogs are capable of shared attention (pointing at an object is a concrete example) while autistic children are not. Shared attention is of course necessary for language communication as verbally expressing ideas is based on shared attention of ideas and concepts - and these kids can't even point to a toy or cookie.

An 8 year old that learns to program in C++ at the age of 8 is exceptionally bright, not autistic. At this same age an autistic kid will be spinning the wheels on a car (as opposed to playing with it) or stacking blocks for hours on end. They may play in the same vicinity as other children, but almost never with them. You see these same tendencies in normal children up to a certain age - an 18 month old will play in the proximity of other children but not with them. A 3 year old plays with other children instead of simply being in the same vicinity. Autistic children never reach this stage.

Autistic adults social and communication issues are simply an extension of these milestones that were reached significantly (or never) later than other people because of neurological problems. A geeky guy that enjoys chatting on Ventrillio while raiding in World of Warcraft for hours on end is very likely not autistic given how social using voice chat and raiding is. An autistic adult isn't very likely to frequently visit comic book or Star Wars conventions either. Just because these activities are stereotyped for males with social phobias or other social issues doesn't mean that they're indicative of autism.

True autism is a very real and very impairing condition, not a matter of having odd interests and being a bit socially awkward.

Re:What if

[Gerafix]

No wonder you posted anon, that's an incoherent statement! You might as well say, "If today's dead was normal, then today's living would be called dead. Objectively, we are all dead and living at the same time really." Because life and death is merely a definition. I'm sure you understand that only works for cats in boxes.

Re:What if

[TubeSteak]

"If today's dead was normal, then today's living would be called dead. Objectively, we are all dead and living at the same time really." Because life and death is merely a definition. I'm sure you understand that only works for cats in boxes.

You know, we could settle this once and for all by asking the cat.

Scientists: Meow once if you're alive, meow zero times if you're dead.
Cat: Meow.
Scientists: Eureka!

Re:What if

[AHuxley]

Its not 1980s Moscow and your not a human rights worker, political type or democrat. Then your "today's normal" would hold.
Autism seems to be on the rise and some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.
Squalene and mercury based preservative let drug companies extend expensive drug stocks over many more shots.
Until the cost of law suits impacts the bottom line ... normal can be called autism.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it's the people who don't have Autism who are sick? What if it's 'normal' that's wrong?

It could be. And considering that folks who aren't artistic can be helped with art therapy tells me that artism is a natural part of being human.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone with Asperger im inclined to say:
Im not sick. I just have different set of tools by which i precieve and communicate with.
Problems arise when my tools try to interface with "normal" tools.

Re:What if

[jonaskoelker]

Autism seems to be on the rise and some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.

I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if everybody stopped vaccinating their kids until well after autism's typical age of onset.

Although I think I know the answer: we would have just as many autistic kids, which would suggest that it isn't the vaccines causing the autism, yet a few people will cling to their belief no matter the evidence against it.

Re:What if

[clickclickdrone]

>What if it's 'normal' that's wrong?
Indeed. It's all part of the medicalisation of perfectly normal conditions and behaviours. There have been no real breakthroughs in terms of treating real disease since the 60/70's when all the big stuff happened. Since then, outside of cancer, not much has really happened. As a result, big pharma have started to work on finding cures for problems we never knew we had - controlling behaviours outside the norms, rafts of mumbo jumbo like anti-oxidents, miracle foods etc. Read 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre (and check his web site of the same name) for some enlightening stuff.
As for Autism, it's not ideal and can cause a lot of problems for people but it can also bring some big pluses too. Do we really all want to be clones? looking the way celeb culture says we should and having perfect personalities? Hell no! Rejoice in the difference.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

You are fucking stupid.

Re:What if

[Paul Jakma]

some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.

This probably originates from a single study in the UK more than ten years ago that linked the MMR vaccine with increased incidences of autism. That study has been since been thoroughly debunked and discredited. Stop repeating it.

Re:What if

[Paul Jakma]

We know what would happen: Far more people would suffer from complications of diseases, such as male sterility from rubella, some would even die. No cases of autism would be prevented however, because there is no known link between vaccines and autism. This is what happened in the UK when MMR vaccination rates dropped dramatically after an idiot made up evidence and the study was published in the Lancet.

See the link in my reply to your parent.

Re:What if

[rve]

As for Autism, it's not ideal and can cause a lot of problems for people but it can also bring some big pluses too. Do we really all want to be clones? looking the way celeb culture says we should and having perfect personalities? Hell no! Rejoice in the difference.

Enlighten me, please explain what the pluses are of this severe disability.

Would you say the same about rheumatism, heart failure, emphysema, Parkinson or any other disability? I think it's probably best to let patients or their caregivers decide whether their condition is worth treating.

Re:What if

[bcmm]

If that were the case then natural selection would have taken its course long ago and we'd all be autistic. But it's an amusing question to philosophize nonetheless.

More seriously, what if high-functioning autism was a somewhat beneficial trait for a few individuals, provided not everybody in a community was like that, and natural selection has formed the balance we see now? After all, science and technology has been advanced significantly by people who now seem autistic more than once.

Re:What if

[clickclickdrone]

http://boingboing.net/2009/07/16/autism-as-an-academi.html
Gives some examples. Not sure it outweighs the negatives but it's still food for thought.

Re:What if

[bcmm]

some families seem to point out patterns

Anecdotes, made more common by the fact that autism almost always gets diagnosed at about the age kids get vaccinated, (even in unvaccinated kids - perhaps the absence of vaccines causes autism too, hmm?). Large studies do not show such patterns.

Re:What if

[bcmm]

And sorry for the doublepost, but the amounts of mercury are minute - about the same as is present in a tin of tuna. Oh help, should we listen to the unscientific claims about consumption of fish making children into geniuses, or the ones about mercury giving them autism?

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted anon because I'm too lazy to maintain yet another account on some site.

Life and death are pretty good examples in this case. Which is THE correct definition of life and death? A medical one? A legal one? A religious one? A philosophical one?

In the end they are just words of which there exists dozens if not hundreds of definitions. And each definition is just some arbitrary opinion from one or more people.

The definition of death has changed over the centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death#Problems_of_definition).

Re:What if

[starbugs]

How about stopping all this crap with so many vaccines?

Vaccines are good when they're needed but how many of them are not needed?

Do you remember how many vaccines you got growing up?
Well, check how many more vaccines children now get.

Vaccines are a hallmark of how great and beneficial our Medicine can be, but please:

Stop putting all this chemical crap into vaccines (preservatives, etc.) or at least give us (those who worry about what's injected into our kids) an alternative that we can trust. We're more than willing to pay extra for it.

Make those with a vested interest in the sale of vaccines have no say in which and how many vaccines we get.(Just check how much the H1N1 vaccine companies made, they love pandemics).

Stop with the "vaccines are the best things in the world and you are part of the 'axis of evil' if you think otherwise" BS. You're just as crazy as those who think that all vaccines should be banned. Just think critically and be skeptical both about promoters of vaccines and those who oppose them.

Many think that vaccines contribute to autism, I think vinyl floors could be worse. But in rare situation, maybe vaccines are a contributing factor, maybe they are not. Show me truly impartial research.

Now I'm off to research if all the money spent vaccinating children against polio in a country that hasn't had a "wild case" since 1979 would have been enough to have already eradicated the disease globally. It's frightening that this vaccine currently causes more harm than good.(In the US 8-9 cases/year caused by the vaccine, 0 cases are caused by the actual disease since 79, but the vaccine companies are laughing all the way to the bank)

Re:What if

[mwvdlee]

Yes, but the boxed cat is all about the state being unknown until observation.
I'm sure hearing counts as observation.

Re:What if

[mwvdlee]

I think "death" is pretty effective prevention of "autism". In absolute numbers, there would be less autistic people. In percentages, it would be about the same, but you know how statistical studies are created.

Re:What if

[zwei2stein]

Well, nowadays, you can argue that families with some members on spectrum have advantage; I am quite sure that some autistics are more than responsible for getting people laid (By taking care of communication chanells that allow hookups, yay for explaining how to use im and for setting up accounts!).

You'd also have "a bit better factor" - simply put, easiest way to pick up opposite sex is to be accompanied by someone who is similar to you but slightly less attractive (Ever noticed that girl on boyfriend hunt is usually accompanied by slightly fatter friend?). Sibling that is a bit socially akward is perfect "wingman". And while he might have less tham optimal change of getting laid, part of genes will still get around through his siblings he helped.

Re:What if

[Pharmboy]

This is what worries me about genetic testing before birth. What if Stephen Hawking had been determined to be "unfit for life" before he was born, in order to save him from horrors of ALS?

Re:What if

[mwvdlee]

Stop putting all this chemical crap into vaccines (preservatives, etc.)

Vaccines are pretty much 99% artificually created. Remove the chemicals and you're left with something that has little to no useful effect. Besides, many chemicals are created in ways that just immitate nature.

or at least give us (those who worry about what's injected into our kids) an alternative that we can trust.

Trust is highly subjective. What would need to be changed in order for you to trust vaccines?

Re:What if

[mwvdlee]

Could you describe how your "tools" work compared to the "tools" of non-autistic people?

Re:What if

[toomanyairmiles]

I don't think it's a belief that MMR is bad that people are clinging to so much as taking a risk judgement. The world has been subjected to so many drugs which, while approved for use by scientists and government, turn out to be killers that many perfectly rational people refuse to believe the scientific evidence and don't want to take any risk with their children's long term heath. To name a few:- Thalidomide (birth abnomalaties), Redux (heart valve disease), Vioxx (increased the risks of heart attack and stroke), Seldane (fatal heart-rhythm irregularities), Posicor [Mibefradil] (caused toxic levels of 25 different drugs to build up in the body), Rezulin (sudden liver failure), Duract (liver toxicity), Baycol (rhabdomyolysis, which can lead to kidney failure), Zelnorm (increased risk of heart attacks and stroke), Just one of these, Vioxx is suspected of causing 27,000 deaths.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

And squalene too...funny how no one ever complains about the squalene in their olive oil or naturally occurring in the human liver, but when there's squalene in vaccines the anti-vaxxers can't shut up about it. Kind of funny when you think that the anti-vaccination crowd and the alternative medicine crowd seem to have strong connection, and the alt-med folks love all things 'natural and wholesome,' including, of course, olive oil. That's the arrogance of ignorance for ya.

It's not the squalene, or the mercury, it is the vaccines. Get rid of squalene, and whatever else, and they'll find a new 'problem.' That's what happened with mercury in the MMR vaccine. They ditched the mercury, and people found some other chemical to complain about (aka moving the goalpost). The anti-vax crowd won't be happy until the syringe is filled with water, and even then, they'll only be satisfied so long as you don't call it something scientific (because scientific=scary), like dihydrogen monoxide.

Re:What if

[bcmm]

Stop putting all this chemical crap into vaccines

This is Slashdot. News for Nerds. You should already know that you're made of chemicals.

Stop with the "vaccines are the best things in the world and you are part of the 'axis of evil' if you think otherwise" BS.

I did not say that, it doesn't look like I said that, and I don't believe you actually think I said that.

Many think that vaccines contribute to autism, I think vinyl floors could be worse. But in rare situation, maybe vaccines are a contributing factor, maybe they are not. Show me truly impartial research.

I think kittens are the sole cause of autism. I don't know why, but I do. No matter how much research you collect to the contrary, I will consider it all to be insufficiently impartial for me, despite having no research that backs up my own opinions.

Re:What if

[Beretta Vexe]

It's not the good screwdriver ! It's a torx screw and you are using a crosshead screwdriver. Good lord are use using imperial unit too ?

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the stats on little autists in families where both parents are in a field like engineering, math, or science? Don't they have a higher tendency to having a little austist. I wonder if it's sort of like schizotrophic/schizophrenic. A schizotrophic person could do well as a village's priest/medicine man/witch doctor. But when two schizotrophic individuals breed, the odds of schizophrenic offspring is significantly higher.

Re:What if

[LanMan04]

More seriously, what if high-functioning autism was a somewhat beneficial trait for a few individuals, provided not everybody in a community was like that, and natural selection has formed the balance we see now?

The exact same thing has been postulated about color-blindness, which affects 10% of the male world population.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

"Trust is highly subjective. What would need to be changed in order for you to trust vaccines?"

Maybe if you remove the mercury which is one of the most toxic substances known to man. There are plenty of animal studies that actually found evidence of thimerosal inducing damage to the neurons. Also i would like to see a long term study done with a large control group.
Such a study does not exist on humans, so there is no way to know what the cumulative and long term effects are from all these vaccines.

Re:What if

[HaZardman27]

Is it common for autistic individuals to reproduce? If not, then non-autistic individuals would definitely be "normal."

Re:What if

[Jason Levine]

I think the bigger skew to the risk judgment is that vaccines have been too successful for their own good in some respects. Do you remember when polio paralyzed people regularly, measles killed and a cough might being fears of being Whooping? If you're around my age (34) or even a bit older, you don't. Neither do I. Of course, I've read many accounts, but haven't seen it first hand. So it would be easy to discount the threat that these diseases pose.

Some people think: "I haven't seen anyone I know of die or be maimed by polio/measles/whooping cough, so how bad can it be?" (Yes, one antivax nut in Australia even said that whooping cough has never killed anyone!) If they had actually had a cousin die from whooping cough, had a sibling scarred for life from measles and had a friend who barely survived polio but will be in a wheelchair the rest of his life, I doubt they'd be so anti-vaccine.

Re:What if

[rkhalloran]

This is what I find infuriating about the anti-vaccination crowd; their "risk assessment" that decides to avoid protecting their children relies on the rest of us taking said risk for ours and providing "herd immunity" on behalf of their offspring. The recent, needless pop-ups of preventable diseases is a result of not enough parents feeling the need to protect their own children because "everyone else's kids are immunized, mine don't need to be".

Selfish gits.

SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!

Re:What if

[uglyduckling]

Really? Have you ever heard of antiretrovirals? There have also been many antihypertensives, antiepileptics and analgesics developed since the 1970s. Intensive care medicine (adult, paediatric and neonatal) has moved on in leaps and bounds since the 70's. I won't go on except to say you're profoundly wrong.

Re:What if

[Teppy]

Not necessarily true. It's plausible that Asperger's syndrome was an evolutionary disadvantage millennia ago (also the food allergies that tend to go with it) , but an advantage today. (And it's no longer hard to avoid troublesome foods.) Furthermore, smart people tend to have kids with Asperger's, and people with Asperger's tend to mate with others with the same condition. This may not be run-of-the-mill natural selection at work - we may be witnessing speciation. How cool is that?!?

Re:What if

[starbugs]

I did not say that, it doesn't look like I said that, and I don't believe you actually think I said that.

The four points I made about vaccines were not directed at you or anything you wrote, but you did mention that autism gets diagnosed around the age a child gets vaccinated. Vaccines in children are so frequent now that (I think) this statement does not make much sense. Children where I live are scheduled for an average of two or more vaccines per year.

There is a difference between chemical 'crap'(as I called it earlier) in a vaccine and substances that are benign. If I order food from a restaurant I will request "No MSG" but "extra salt"(my BP is fine). Both make the food taste better.

I think kittens are the sole cause of autism. I don't know why, but I do. No matter how much research you collect to the contrary, I will consider it all to be insufficiently impartial for me, despite having no research that backs up my own opinions.

There are people who don't believe that smoking is harmful, some of those are smokers who will die of lung cancer. It's not my job to change their mind. We know that there are cases of children who have never received any vaccines but developed autism. There also are people who have "life-threatening" reactions to pet dander. If consistent contact with an allergen creates an auto-immune reaction that contributes to autism, then maybe you are right about kittens. There is the risk of toxoplasmosis in pregnancy, who's to say that something cats carry might not be the cause of other problems. Not long ago it was thought that stress caused most stomach ulcers.

But you have made me more suspicious of Cats.

Re:What if

[rve]

I get the feeling that you're using the tag autism where you really mean 'nerd'.

Re:What if

[maxume]

Probably not, having an extensive understanding of 'normal tools' would likely allow him to utilize them.

Re:What if

[mrjb]

If they had actually had a cousin die from whooping cough, had a sibling scarred for life from measles and had a friend who barely survived polio but will be in a wheelchair the rest of his life, I doubt they'd be so anti-vaccine.

Likewise, if they had nobody die from any of those but they saw their kid develop normally until having the vaccine, followed by a regression, of course they start suspecting the vaccine. Now this also happens to be the scenario that I've experienced first-hand; I can understand some people would become anti-vaccination. I'm trying to stay sensible about it. Correlation is not causation; although the age of onset of regressive autism correlates with the time of vaccinating, it does not imply vaccines cause autism. But AFAIK so far nobody studied changing the vaccination schedules to a bit later age, so it can't be disputed yet either. As such, of course I'll still have my youngest vaccinated, but not without a degree of suspicion.

Sure, Thiomersal/Thimerosal has been ruled out as a factor. But can we really already rule out that any link exists between vaccines and autism (or no link at all, by the way)?

Population groups that do not vaccinate for religious reasons do not develop regressive autism- regardless whether they're genetically related groups such as the Amish or groups from independent backgrounds. How do you explain that?

To put things into perspective, autism rates are now higher than the death count prevented by the vaccines. Just better diagnoses do not account for the thousand-percent increase in autism rates in the last decades, so it seems environmental factors cannot yet be ruled out.

If it turns out vaccines *can* cause (and do cause) more cases of autism than the amount of deaths they prevent, that's some serious controversy there. Which government would want to be held responsible for that?

Re:What if

[mcgrew]

I'm sure you understand that only works for cats in boxes.

And beer in fridges.

Re:What if

[mcgrew]

My generation suffered from it. One of my friends had polio as a child, but he survived (he has some disabilities) and is the father of two healthy men. Of course, had it killed him he wouldn't be, and lots of kids did die from those diseases.

Re:What if

[nedlohs]

Free riding is the rational choice, so while they are selfish they are obviously better at economics than us suckers who do get vaccinations for the kids...

Re:What if

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Keep in mind, the cases of autism theoretically linked to vaccines include a lot of relatively mild cases (high functioning, Asperger's, etc.) While I know I was more trouble as a child due to my Asperger's, it didn't hurt me or my family in the long run; by the time I was fifteen I had adapted enough that I functioned close enough to normal as to go unrecognized (aside from occasional lapses into monologue mode; luckily, my girlfriend is actually entertained listening to me, or so she claims).

Deaths from preventable diseases are higher than you think. Even at a generous reading of the autism statistics (a full 1% of the U.S. population), it's not much higher than the death rate of diseases that we now prevent. A measles infection in a healthy person in a developed country still runs a 0.3% risk of death (roughly a third of the autism rate), jumping to 30% if they are immunocompromised (due to AIDS, certain cancers, old age). Poor health care can raise that as high as 28% in undeveloped countries.

In addition, you talk only of the deaths caused by preventable illnesses. But those illnesses often caused all sorts of long term damage themselves to people who survived them. Rubella rarely kills a healthy person. But a rubella epidemic in the U.S. a few years before the vaccine was introduced triggered 30,000 still births, and 20,000 thousand more children were born impaired or disabled; not minor issues, but permanently deaf, blind, or mentally retarded.

So don't compare the autism rate as a whole to the preventable deaths triggered by illnesses we now vaccinate against. Compare significant impairment from autism to significant impairment or death from vaccines. And then keep in mind that no legitimate study has actually established a link between vaccines and autism, so even if there was a link, it's probably a hell of a lot weaker than a million other environmental and genetic factors.

For the interested: Figures for both diseases were sourced from their respective Wikipedia articles, feel free to investigate their references yourself.

Re:What if

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Amusingly, cats may be responsible for increased culture-wide neuroticism in humans. I don't think it's been linked to autism though. :-)

Re:What if

[nedlohs]

Because there might be a milder form of the disability which is useful to have in society. And you risk losing it as well. The full blown version might even be useful for society as a whole (possibly not for the individuals though) in small doses.

The obvious example if sickle cell anemia. Being heterozygous for HgbS in areas where malaria is prevalent is beneficial, homozygous for HgbS completely sucks.

http://www.blip.tv/files/2204956 is long, but just the first 10 minutes has a bunch of examples (including the sickle cell anemia one of course).

His lecture goes on to claim that things like obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia were beneficial for early societies as long as only a small number of people had them.

Re:What if

[bcmm]

Maybe if you remove the mercury which is one of the most toxic substances known to man.

Again: about the same amount of mercury as a tin of tuna fish.

Re:What if

[ShadowRangerRIT]

What food allergies? I'm aware of (and have personal experience of) a difference in personal tastes (usually related to food texture), but I've never heard of any link to actual food allergies. The closest I've seen is speculation that autoimmune diseases (including celiac disease) in the mother are linked to autism in children, but that's hardly saying that it is linked to food allergies. Now, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the diagnoses were somewhat more likely to occur in tandem, if only because the type of parent likely to get their kid inaccurately diagnosed with mild autism is likely to see food allergies where there aren't any, but I've seen no legitimate clinical comparison that would establish such a link.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, one antivax nut in Australia even said that whooping cough has never killed anyone!

I'd like to see her tell that to Dana McCaffery. Of course, the woman in question, Meryl Dorey, is a homeopath to boot, so big surprise.

I wish people would get it through their heads: If you want to treat cancer with crystals, diabetes with magic water, or heart disease with a foot massage, fine, your body, as long as you are old enough to understand how bad of an idea it is, more power to you. But when you forgo vaccinations, you are putting everyone around you in danger. Unless you are one of the minority of people who legitimately can't get vaccinated (suppressed immune system or whatnot), there is no excuse for such recklessly ignorance.

Re:What if

[Ginger Unicorn]

Someone else would have made the same discoveries. There are plenty of people that are just as smart.

Re:What if

[dgatwood]

This is easily solved. Autism can be detected as early as 14 months, but typically . Change the health standards to delay the MMR a year and if the age at which autism appears does not change, then it's unrelated. If it does, figure out why. There's not likely to be a substantive increase in deaths from kids getting the MMR at 2 1/2 versus 1 1/2, but changing those standards would likely put this unlikely theory of causation to rest permanently.

Re:What if

[dgatwood]

Oops. Forgot to finish the first sentence.

...but typically is obvious after about 2-3 years.

Oh, and one last thing. Research has shown that in autistic kids, there is brain overgrowth relative to the size of the skull during the first 12 months, which is prior to any vaccinations. It's safe to say that there is *no* possibility that MMR causes autism....

Re:What if

[Jason Levine]

"Sure, Thiomersal/Thimerosal has been ruled out as a factor. But can we really already rule out that any link exists between vaccines and autism (or no link at all, by the way)?"

This is one problem I have with the antivax groups. A little tactic called "moving the goal posts." Why are autism/vaccines linked? Thimerosal! Wait, that's been removed and autism rates haven't dropped? Then it's the MMR combined shot. Wait, studies have shown no link? Well, then it's the number of shots kids get. Wait, kids get exposed to more pathogens in a day then we expose them to via vaccines in their lifetime? Well, then it's toxins in the vaccines.... We can never prove to antivax groups 100% conclusively that autism isn't caused by vaccines because every time one of their theories is shot down, they immediately come up with another one. It's a game of "sure, my last 99 theories were wrong but this one's right so you should devote resources towards researching this link."

"Population groups that do not vaccinate for religious reasons do not develop regressive autism- regardless whether they're genetically related groups such as the Amish or groups from independent backgrounds. How do you explain that?"

Easy. It's not true. The Amish actually do vaccinate and their rates of autism are lower. Also see http://antiantivax.flurf.net/#Population_X_and_Vaccines_Autism

"To put things into perspective, autism rates are now higher than the death count prevented by the vaccines. Just better diagnoses do not account for the thousand-percent increase in autism rates in the last decades, so it seems environmental factors cannot yet be ruled out."

The insinuation of that statement is that vaccines cause autism and thus we have to balance preventing deaths via vaccine and preventing autism via not vaccinating. The fact of the matter, though, is that studies have shown no vaccine-autism link. Meanwhile, diagnosis *has* improved dramatically. We know understand that autism is a spectrum, not just a specific illness. Some people might have Asperger's Syndrome and seem fine. Others will have full-blown can't-communicate-with-anyone Autism.

Decades ago, a person might have just been labeled "stupid/retarded/etc" and that would have been it. Now we can run tests and identify people with Autism. The CDC has identified a 57% increase in the past few years. (A far cry from 1000%.) We should definitely look into the causes of autism, but vaccines have been ruled out already. Right now it looks like mainly genetics with some possible environmental factors tossed in.

Re:What if

[mwvdlee]

He knows there's a difference, at the very least he should have some understanding of the difference. At the very least he should be able to describe the communication issues from his own perspective.

Re:What if

[andreww591]

Actually, a classical definition of autism, the way Leo Kanner or Hans Asperger defined it, excludes cognitive impairment, and is a condition of developmental delay at most (however, many autistics have relatively little developmental delay), not developmental stasis. Go read Leo Kanner's papers - most of his patients who weren't sent to institutions did reasonably well, but still had some difficulties, as adults. I don't actually think that a strict classical definition of autism is the one that should be used, though - autistics can have cognitive impairment, but autism should be defined by atypical thought processes rather than cognitive impairment, and individuals with severe cognitive impairment should usually not be considered diagnosable with autism.

Re:What if

[compro01]

Thiomersal was already removed from all routine childhood vaccinations in 2001.

Re:What if

[i0lanthe]

Slashdot is so refreshing. On other boards the whole conversation consists of this:
Them: "5 compelling anecdotes"
Me: anecdote.plural() != data
Them: angry_mob.eviscerate(troll)
Me: assert(flounce)

Re:What if

[rdnetto]

Would they? Given that autism is basically having your mind wired in an unusual way, perhaps there are some discoveries that would only be within the reach of the autistic (and those with similar disorders).
You can play the what if game all day, but ultimately whether or not the person lives should be their decision and their decision alone.

Re:What if

[Thuktun]

True autism is a very real and very impairing condition, not a matter of having odd interests and being a bit socially awkward.

Autism is a spectrum from slight to severe impairment, high-functioning to low-functioning. Asperger syndrome, on the high-functioning end of the spectrum, does include social impairment and odd interests in the diagnostic criteria.

Your comment is a lot like saying "true paralysis" implies quadriplegia not paraplegia, even though they're both on the spectrum of paralysis severity.

Re:What if

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont know about tools...i havent found any yet

but i can give you a 5 second intro into what its like to be "different"

as an aspy for me the most obvious things are people and relationship related, as they are for most of us i guess

for me things like someone dying and not feeling naything, or like when i havent seen my sisters for a year and at the end of the visit im seeing them off and it has the same emotional connection as going to the corner shop to get milk, theyre the ones most obvious to everyone but me.

its pretty much as hard, if not sometimes harder, for people around an aspy, to deal with what aspergerbers means....

ive also been told that only about 10% of aspy's ever have a "successful" relationship, im not one of them, i havent had a gf or partner in my 39 years, just been me. And thast unlikely to ever change, im just not capable of it.

sure i can write like 30,000 lines of code and not get lost and understand it intimately, even if i take a six month break from the project, but i have no clue what it means to interface with people on even a basic level

which ability would you like to have? both? my choice has been made for me.

Re:What if

[Ginger Unicorn]

Something that doesn't exist has no preferences. I'm arguing against a "what if" game. Appealing to what someone might or might not want should they exist in the future is as much of a "what if" game as you could hope to play.

If you take the position that "potential people" have the same right to exist that existent people have then everybody should be cranking out babies as fast as they can, irrespective of their social, financial or health situation, since choosing not to have a child at any point is robbing that hypothetical person of the choice to live or not.

Re:What if

[rdnetto]

The key point here is when you consider the person's existence starting from. IMO, the unborn baby already exists and is not a potential person, in much the same way that a young child exists but is still developing. So it seems to me that their existence would start with conception.
As for not knowing what they want, just wait until they can make the choice themselves. If they're still alive, they can choose. But if they're not, then they can't. It's that simple - let them have the choice (it is their life after all) and most of the ethical problems disapppear.

$60m is pocket-money

[PDoc]

Seriously, $60m isn't anywhere near enough to bring this to market. Most studies in pharma show that $1000m is far closer to the real figure these days, with some pushing that towards $1700m. Of course, this is an average figure, and the costs of drug development are highest towards the end (phase IIb, phase III). Any drug targeting the CNS is going to be expensive in trials, and with the condition apparently 'rare' (an ill-defined term), finding suitable patients willing to undergo the treatment in trials might be difficult. More realistically, $60m might get them to the point where a Big-Pharma will either buy the company or the drug.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[BiggerIsBetter]

Seriously, $60m isn't anywhere near enough to bring this to market. Most studies in pharma show that $1000m is far closer to the real figure these days, with some pushing that towards $1700m.

One billion dollars to bring a product to market? Smells like BS to justify insane prices and legislation to stop generics being made. I see nothing much in the linked article to suggest the money is being used meaningfully, only commercially (which could be hookers and blow for the execs, or sales gigs for doctors to push their pills, etc...)

Serious question: Where does the money go? What specifically makes the trials expensive?

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[Gerafix]

Just buy the Chinese version when it comes out, that's probably where the drugs will be made in the first place anyway.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[PDoc]

A good, and fairly impartial summary is here. A more detailed guide (PDF) is here. However, perhaps the most salient stat is: "Only 5 in 5,000 compounds that enter the preclinical testing phase actually make it to human testing. One of these five drugs tested in people is approved." As for trials, a good break-down of costs is found here. I work in pharma as a scientific researcher, and I find the costs terrifying - especially as my salary appears to be the only thing smaller than six-figures...

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[MrMr]

Those figures are roughly correct. They are computed by dividing the research expenditure of a company by the number of new drugs going to market in a specific time-frame.
The reason the expenses are so high is the number of high-level employees feeding from the trough (IP, legal, management, and even a handful of scientists) and the absurd amounts some doctors get paid for experimenting on their patients (tens of thousands per data point is not uncommon)

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[Abcd1234]

Those figures are roughly correct. They are computed by dividing the research expenditure of a company by the number of new drugs going to market in a specific time-frame.

Oh please, that's a bullshit calculation. That doesn't represent the cost of taking any one drug to market. The represents the cost of putting drugs through trials plus the cost of wasted research into dead-end areas plus all the organizational overhead of those research units plus god knows what else.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[paiute]

That doesn't represent the cost of taking any one drug to market. The represents the cost of putting drugs through trials plus the cost of wasted research into dead-end areas plus all the organizational overhead of those research units plus god knows what else.

True, the cost to bring a single drug to market is far less. Now all you have to do is go back ten years to the benchtop chemist and tell him or her which one of the 500 structures they are working on is that one so they can ignore all the rest.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[Yewbert]

I work at a Big Pharma, and I was going to make the same comment as the one to which you're replying. $750M to $1000M is much more realistic a range for the cost to bring a NEW API to market. (API = active pharmaceutical ingredient)

This cost is the end result of high, demanding standards for quality, safety, documentation and a zillion other details governed by the FDA. If you want to know why FDA-approved drugs cost so much more than "dietary supplements" and all the other alterna-crap, it's because the producers of those things aren't required to prove:
  that they work;
  that they have a consistent strength/dosage across production lots;
  that they aren't adulterated with uncontrolled substances not related to the API;
  that they are safe.

FDA-governed pharmas are required to show all those things, and to a degree far past the diminishing returns of effort that you'd find if we were required to meet *only* a 99% consistent result, and that's only at the point where real production is underway.

Final-phase clinical trials are expensive enough, requiring as they do statistically significant cohort sizes, medical professionals to run them, teams of doctors and statisticians to understand and interpret the results and a huge infrastructure to supply the API in the relatively tiny CT quantities, built despite the significant risk that it could all amount to nothing even having gotten through all the earlier stages of development.

Earlier phase testing isn't qualitatively much different, though there are some interesting expenses that most lay-trolls don't know about, like animals used for various types of studies. Since you have to study under laboratory conditions, you have to buy animals bred explicitly for the purpose. A single monkey can cost $50,000 just to purchase, and again, you need a statistically significant number of them to run a study.

But it's so much easier to dismiss the complexity and difficulty of the effort and to presume that no one involved in the process is doing any sort of earnest job and just say it's all bullshit and greed.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[Abcd1234]

True, the cost to bring a single drug to market is far less. Now all you have to do is go back ten years to the benchtop chemist and tell him or her which one of the 500 structures they are working on is that one so they can ignore all the rest.

Uhuh. And what's your point, exactly? You see, mine is that, despite what the libertarian slashbots here would have to believe, the overhead created by government regulation to bring a drug to market is not, in fact, 1 to 1.7B, as the OP would have us believe.

Is the cost of drug *research* high? Of course, just as it is in any cutting-edge research area. The simple fact is that any company involved in such an endeavour is fundamentally gambling, risking millions if not billions of dollars with the expectation that the rewards will far exceed those expenditures. But once a promising compound has been found, the cost to actually run that compound through trials and bring it to market is *far* less than the aggregate cost of R&D.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[paiute]

But once a promising compound has been found

That was my point.

Once I pick the right numbers, the Maga Millions will be mine.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[paiute]

But once a promising compound has been found

That was my point.

Once I pick the right numbers, the Maga Millions will be mine.

Of course I meant Mega Mullions.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[nedlohs]

Then your sense of smell and bullshit detection is faulty.

What makes trials expensive is that the vast majority of drugs don't work or have too severe side effects. And you don't find that out until after you've spent some money.

So yes, the actual dollars spent on "wonder drug X" is not $1 billion. But once you also count the other 1000 drugs that didn't make it (and were indistinguishable from "wonder drug X" at the start) you've spent that much.

But in this case $60 million might do it. Of course if it fails trials for some reason (and does so later rather than sooner) then that $60 million becomes $0. And chances are it will fail in trials.

Re:$60m is pocket-money

[MrMr]

I presume you don't need to work; you just buy the right lottery ticket and cash in every time you need some money?

Side effects?

[Lord Lode]

If someone has some form of autism making him extremely good at something (music, math, extreme memory, collecting stamps, ...), would this medicine affect his ability to do that?

Re:Side effects?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he probably wouldn't be able to do such useful things as remembering the whole phone book or recalling which baseball player did what in each year. He might be able to button his own shirt or wipe his own ass, though.

Re:Side effects?

[JasterBobaMereel]

This is a drug that may alleviate some of the symptoms of fragile X syndrome, many of these symptoms are not reversible, and one of them can be some forms of Autism

This is not a "Cure for Autism", it is a possible, partial cure for a genetic disorder that has as one of it's effects in some patients some forms of Autism

Autism is not simple...it has no one cause, and has no one cure ....

Re:Side effects?

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone has some form of autism making him extremely good at something (music, math, extreme memory, collecting stamps, ...), would this medicine affect his ability to do that?

Being extremely good at something is genius, not autism.

Re:Side effects?

[Lord Lode]

I just find the idea of a cure for autism hard to accept, because I think the cure is incompatible with what autism "enables" in some people. If someone is socially inept because he spends all his time with mathematics, the cure would make him socially active, but he'd stop doing math. What is cured then? You've made a person normal instead of special.

Of course in the above I'm not talking about people with autism who can't do anything at all except sit in a corner, I guess for many people with autism you could imagine a cure, but I think in some cases it isn't a cure and a person with totally different abilities than regular people, even if these abilities prevent them from living a normal live, should be allowed to keep living with this special ability instead.

Re:Side effects?

[TaoPhoenix]

Very possibly.

If the ability comes together holistically/gestalt, I believe there is a "critical mass" that needs to occur to get it right. When the subject falls below that threshold, they get GarbageOut that proves very frustrating.

Re:Side effects?

[ShakaUVM]

>>If someone has some form of autism making him extremely good at something (music, math, extreme memory, collecting stamps, ...), would this medicine affect his ability to do that?

In the study of "idiot" savants, studies have shown that curing their extreme social inability also "cures" their ability to be exceptional at math, or whatever.

Re:Side effects?

[JasterBobaMereel]

As I said Autism is not simple, assuming the range of Autism Spectrum disorders are all part of the same thing (which not everyone agrees on) then the range of causes is huge, and the range of effects is also huge

This is a possible cure for one actual genetic disease (Fragile X) in some people along with the normal symptoms it can cause some autism spectrum symptoms, this may if it works at all alleviate some of the symptoms and it may alleviate autism if that was one of them.... note the large number of maybe's possibly's in that, and this is only one relatively rare cause of autism and they are not really trying to cure autism in this case, it is just one of a number of symptoms ...

If you count the full spectrum of Aspergers (right down to so mild it is almost impossible to diagnose) then a large proportion of the population has autism ....

Re:Side effects?

[netsavior]

I have been "autistic" my whole life (diagnosed, by a real doctor (1983), confirmed by several therapists(1986, 1990, 2005) )
I also have a very high IQ and an eidetic memory for relative location (like puzzles and spatial problems) and conversational dialog (also tested by actual professionals).
I struggled with depression as a teenager, and I can tell you that Prozac is my kryptonite. I struggled at math and even basic reading while on the happy pills. I decided I would rather be sad and smart, then happy and dumb, and then by the time the awful joke that humanity plays on itself "adolescence" was over, the depression was resolved anyway.
I can't write code or solve problems when I am drunk or on happy pills or on pain pills (have tried on all 3) and it is infuriating. People always assume I am some moralist because I abstain from alcohol, and I have found that "I don't drink because it makes me feel stupid" does not go over well.
I have extreme fear of that exact scenario, because everything I have ever done to alter my mental state has resulted in profound temporary loss of unusual abilities that I use like a survival crutch, make my living off of them, build my relationships around them, etc.

Re:Side effects?

[sjames]

I think you missed the point. Imagine magic pill X that immediately and perfectly cures autism. 100%, not a trace of physiological abnormality left. Arguably, giving that to an adult would be akin to wiping their mind empty and starting over. They would be left unable to appreciate any of the things they enjoyed before and would have no idea what they might enjoy now. Having never experianced normal socialization, they would still be on the outside looking in, but now with no special abilities and enjoyment of non-social things to console them.

The question is would the cure be worse than the disease?

There are a significant number of people with autism who believe it would be.

Re:Side effects?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are deaf people who don't want their children to hear. I understand the question off who and what a person is gets confusing when there are so many drugs that fundamentally change people. Generally I prefer a pragmatic philosophy on this. If someone is not a functioning contributing member of society without medication and is with it. I'd say the medication is a very good thing. Very few autistic people have those special skills you're thinking of.

Cost?

[TubeSteak]

The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. Carpenter says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval. "We are prepared to do it ourselves," he says. "But if there is a partnership that allows us to more rapidly advance compounds, then we would embrace that opportunity."

So they basically get to develop a drug and bring it to market for free.
How much do you think they'll charge for it?
The cynic in me suspects the answer won't be "slightly over cost"

Backward what-if

[macraig]

You asked the question backward, buddy: if autistic traits as a package are all so very bad, then why weren't they weeded out of the gene pool millennia ago? Why is there a persistent trail of autistic achievers from Archimedes to Grigory Perelman and Craig Newmark? Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent? If the multiple reports showing a statistical increase in autistic traits have any merit at all, that would seem to suggest that indeed there is an INCREASING value or merit to at least some of the traits, if not the whole. Natural selection may in fact have been working slowly to weed out the (currently) neurotypical. Perhaps a congested world of 6.5 billion people with an altered environment is favoring a package of mutations that are called autism, and accelerating the prevalence of those mutations?

Bye-bye, neurotypicals... it's about time. We're tired of you disturbing our circles!

Re:Backward what-if

[Gerafix]

Because people haven't stopped reproducing, even if they have certain latent or expressed genetic variations. I suppose I should have said that we would be mostly autistic, not all. It appears you're begging the question as to whether or not it is valuable. Whether autistic traits are increasing or not is debatable, especially as to the cause - genetically valuable or simply better clinically recognized? Keep in mind Homo sapien DNA is not perfect, it is prone to variation and mutation, even variations and mutations which are harmful in one area and beneficial in another. Although I am sure you're aware of that already.

Re:Backward what-if

[macraig]

The species might yet become "mostly autistic", though even our great-great grandchildren won't be around to comment on it, much less us. All we can do is speculate. The point of my comment was specifically to challenge your implication that all autistic traits are consistently detrimental and thus inconceivable that they might actually be increasing in prevalence and replacing what we now call neurotypical traits. I doubt that many people would argue that ALL autistic traits are beneficial, but some most definitely are, and many of the rest are fairly benign in truth... unless "being different" is by itself a death sentence. Are all of what we consider autistic traits actually related, stemming from a common genetic or environmental stimulus? Probably not, and I have no doubt there will be dramatic refinements to diagnoses in the future. We can only talk about it using the lousy definitions we have now, which aren't terribly objective.

Re:Backward what-if

[Anonymous Coward]

Traits that are not purely single-allele dominant are rarely bread out completely. There are fatal congenital diseases with prevalance similar to full-blown autism (as compared to asperger's).

Not to mention that full autism (as opposed to Asperger's) is often low-functioning, at a much higher prevalance than the neurotypical population.

Claiming Archimedes as autistic is a bold move. He is known to have eccentric behaviours, but then, there's more than one term for social disorders (or atypicalities if you'd rather), and records that far back are necessarily spotty and translated. I'll give you Perelman. I'm not convinced Craig Newmark's single notable achievement is anything special. I'm not saying he's a bad person or a dumb person, just a lucky person with a website that I'm fairly convinced could be done far better. At lest make the last entry in a two-column list with an odd number of entries appear in the left column instead of the right. Yikes.

Also, you seem to have a Pokémon view of evolution. Call me back when the world has been congested with 6.5 billion people for thousands of years, OR there's a cataclysm that kills the large majority of those 6.5 billion but spares the Autistic; because we certainly haven't seen autism rise from an environment that didn't even exist when some currently-living people started breeding. If indeed Autism has been displacing the present neurotypicality, it's from environmental factors that have existed in steady-state before modern society, and may or may not still be active.

Disclaimer: I may or may not be neurotypical. I was diagnosed with autism at a young age, multiple times, but each time they eventually decided it wasn't really autism. I'm very very bad at social situations (eg. afraid of approaching the checkout counter because I'll have to deal with a person there -- thank god for the self-checkout kiosks at grocery stores) but I lack many of the strongest hallmarks of autism, so I'm going to do the opposite of what half of slashdot does and self-diagnose as neurotypical (but odd).

Re:Backward what-if

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there a persistent trail of autistic achievers from Archimedes ...

Do you seriously think that he could be diagnosed over 2,000 years after the fact? Anyone you see making historical claims of any given diagnosis is pushing an agenda.

Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent? If the multiple reports showing a statistical increase in autistic traits have any merit at all, that would seem to suggest that indeed there is an INCREASING value or merit to at least some of the traits, if not the whole.

You are aware that autism is based on an arbitrary criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association or World Health Organization, depending on which country you live in. Diagnostic criteria change regularly and diagnosis are solely based on the subjective opinion of the practitioner. Also note that 10 years ago no one was talking about Asperger's, which suggests that this disorder is a fad.

Standards for diagnosis have changed, Asperger's has come into fashion with geeks and nerds, and an increase in the number of diagnosis does not mean that what ever causes autism is becoming more common. Additionally, you seem to be mistaken on how natural selection and evolution occur. First, evolution does not occur within 10, 50, or even 100 years. Second, natural selection relies on genetic fitness, which includes being the most fit to reproduce. If you have ever been around a developmentally delayed adult (autism is a specific type of developmental disorder) you can quickly estimate how many women would have sex with them. This doesn't even factor in their ability to earn a suitable living or properly care for their children. By the way, inappropriate or severely impaired self-care skills is one of the diagnostic criteria of autism.

Natural selection may in fact have been working slowly to weed out the (currently) neurotypical.

No it isn't.

Re:Backward what-if

[TubeSteak]

You asked the question backward, buddy: if autistic traits as a package are all so very bad, then why weren't they weeded out of the gene pool millennia ago? Why is there a persistent trail of autistic achievers from Archimedes to Grigory Perelman and Craig Newmark? Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent?

1. For autism to have been weeded out of the gene pool, it would have to be solely genetic and hereditary. The best research we have to date says that autism has a genetic/hereditary component and is also caused by "unidentified environmental factors"

2. The people you are talking about (assuming they have autism) are what's called "high-functioning". The type of autism that leaves you banging your head against the wall isn't very conducive to reproduction or intellectual success.

3. You need to prove that "the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent". I can't find the article, but some scientists went and did a survey of adults and their conclusion can be boiled down to 'better diagnosing and increased reporting is the main reason that autism rates have been rising.'

Re:Backward what-if

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps decreased barbarism in our societal structures leads to improved survivability for people who run up and scream in your face, flip out because a bus drove by, or get violent due to seeing a picture of a fish? These people would probably have struggled to survive in the past because provocative autistic behaviors would be selected against with violence and institutionalization.

Now that we don't kill people for yelling at us, maybe the screaming autistics are more prevalent?

Re:Backward what-if

[mcgrew]

if autistic traits as a package are all so very bad, then why weren't they weeded out of the gene pool millennia ago?

You could say the same thing about a number of other traits as well -- homosexuality comes to mind; you're not likely to reproduce if you only copulate with members of your own sex.

Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent?

The increasing prevalence hasn't been going on long enough to have an effect on our evolution. Plastics have only been around, for instance, for about a century. Same with EMF, etc.

Re:Backward what-if

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Also note that 10 years ago no one was talking about Asperger's, which suggests that this disorder is a fad.

Dr. Hans Asperger, for whom Asperger's Syndrome is named, published his research in 1944.

fragile x is creepy

[circletimessquare]

creepy in the figurative sense, but also creepy in the literal sense too: it creeps up through the generations

the basic idea is that you have a region of genetic code that, with every generation, gets a little longer with repeats. such that, after a few generations, it results in mental deficiencies. of course, its not so straightforward: your child's number of copies of repeats may dramatically jump, or it may hold relatively stable with an unchanged number of copies at a borderline level for many generations. but the more your number of repeats in the vulnerable region, the greater your chance of having children with fragile x

so fragile x is not something like huntington's, where inheritance is straightforward and pat. in other words, any dilemmas a mother or father who is a carrier for huntington's may feel is the same for that person's grandparent, and its the same for that person's grandchild: its a constant across generations

but instead, with fragile x, you have to consider that your mild number of copies may be amplified through the generations. you have a greater risk than your grandparents, and your grandchildren have an even greater risk still

this creepy pattern of inheritance actually has a name: the sherman paradox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_paradox

Oh yes, the horror of disease too

[jonaskoelker]

We know what would happen: Far more people would suffer from complications of diseases

Ah yes, of course. I probably should have mentioned that too.

You should be modded up for pointing this out. It's rather important that people see your post and are aware of this point.

You're exaggerating

[jonaskoelker]

Yeah, he probably wouldn't be able to do such useful things as remembering the whole phone book or recalling which baseball player did what in each year.

Or design and implement bittorrent, and run a company around it; see http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105046863317.htm

Or win the Nobel Prize in economics; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_L._Smith and http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/03/vernon_smith_on_1.html

(Okay, that's Asperger's Syndrome; but I think that's within the scope of this discussion)

He might be able to button his own shirt or wipe his own ass, though.

Or it might be that he is better able to communicate with other people; he might have an easier time stumbling unto the idea that if he asks someone a question and silence is the answer, it might be because of an internal struggle between not wanting to lie and not wanting to admit the truth. And that he can gain something by not putting people in that situation again.

A bargain

[paiute]

Seeing as how the average cost to a major pharma to bring a drug from the bench of the medicinal chemist to the bottle in your medicine cabinet is approaching a billion dollars, having only $60 million to work with seems like running on a shoestring.

Me to

[Anonymous Coward]

have one of these startups that test drugs... honestly...

Fragile X is not an autism spectrum disorder...

[jcaplan]

... and a few other comments.

First is the whole autism connection. First, the Slashdot headline and summary are completely misleading. The treatment is aimed at fragile X syndrome, not autism. Fragile X syndrome is NOT an autism spectrum disorder. Some people with fragile X syndrome are also diagnosed with autism, but given that people with fragile X syndrome suffer mental retardation, the diagnosis of autism in these people becomes complicated. To be fair the article isn't quite as bad as the Slashdot summary on this point, but it is definitely misleading.

Second, the article describes the role of FMRP (Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein) as "to inhibit molecular activity at the connections between nerve cells." This is so simplified as to be completely uninformative. FMRP is a regulator of mRNA. (For the non-biologists, mRNAs are essentially copies of genes that get used as templates by ribosomes to manufacture proteins.) Many mRNAs bind to FMRP. This usually reduces their ability to get transcribed into proteins by ribosomes. The result is that certain proteins, especially ones that are involved in growing synapses get over-expressed. One of the striking characteristics of the brains of people with fragile X syndrome is that they have elongated dendritic spines. (The dendritic spines are the structures that form the "receiving" end of the synapse.)

Finally, I'm skeptical of the researcher's technique of treating the syndrome by simply reducing mGLuR5 expression for two reasons. First FMRP regulates the expression of many proteins, not just mGLuR5. Second, the role of FMRP is activity-dependent. The whole point of controlling the expression levels of certain proteins in the brain is not to have them the same in every synapse, but to allow the activity of the brain to regulate the strength of the synapse. Bear's treatment may reduce seizures and even result in fewer elongated spines, but that may not relieve the mental retardation significantly if the people with fragile X still have difficulty properly regulating the strength of their synapses in response to activation. It is possible, though, that this could work and that just by getting the levels of mGluR5 into a more normal range that other mechanisms could compensate for the other mis-regulated proteins; the brain is a fairly robust system. If this works, it would be wonderful and could make meaningful improvement in the lives of many people.

You're trivializing

[Abcd1234]

(Okay, that's Asperger's Syndrome; but I think that's within the scope of this discussion)

Uh, no, it's probably not.

When people talk about searching for cures for autism, they aren't typically talking about Asperger's. They mean actual, severe autism. You know, the kind where the individual is virtually non-functional.

As an aside, I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you? Because around here, the slashbots seem to think it's kinda cool to blame all their social problems on Asperger's (probably because the follow-up assumption is that, along with having an excuse for being socially awkward, they can also be comforted by the fact that they must obviously be brilliant, too). Hell, it's the new ADD among the Slashdot crowd, as far as I'm concerned.

Re:You're trivializing

[netsavior]

no, it's the old ADD, just properly diagnosed this time.

Re:You're trivializing

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Well, not if it's the "self-styled" types he refers to. I was diagnosed (legitimately) twenty years ago before it became the fashion to diagnose every social phobia as some form of autism. It's a little pathetic how many people latch on to it nowadays to justify being socially awkward. At this point, I've managed to work around all but three symptoms:

1. Tendency to monologue (though I'm much better about this than I used to be)
2. Problems dealing with larger groups (above six or so, where sub-groups start forming and my ability to track it all goes to hell)
3. Hating specific foods due to their mealy/grainy texture

I am relatively intelligent, but that's probably aided by coming from a family of librarians and professors; the Asperger's just helps me focus on the things that interest me, but even the non-Aspie members of my family are similarly intelligent.

None of those make me unable to function socially, and just because it's a bit more work for me doesn't mean I try and excuse any of it or stay home and mope. Hell, aside from these semi-anonymous internet posting I rarely mention it. I don't consider it a disability, and anyone who leans on it to justify their own social ineptitude makes everyone view legit Aspies through a warped prism.

Re:You're trivializing

[Abcd1234]

Uh, no. If you think ADD is the same as Asperger's, you are, in all likelihood, unfamiliar with both.

Re:You're trivializing

[netsavior]

that is just my point.
Autism is not ADD, however Autism diagnosis is very clearly rising. The rate of autism in adults is the same as in children. Yet Autism diagnosis is going WAY up.

And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria? Here are a few that jump out:

stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
vs
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat when sitting still is expected.

Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language

Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
vs
marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction

Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus


If you are looking for ADD and you see a kid that monologues all the time, is highly focused on trains but doesn't care about spelling tests, doesn't stop moving his hands, doesn't seem to hear what you are saying... then you see ADD... If you are looking for Autism too, then you might see Autism.

AD(H)D vs Autism/Asperger's

Re:You're trivializing

[jonaskoelker]

[edited] When people talk about searching for cures for autism, they mean severe autism where the individual is virtually non-functional.

Fair enough, I may have misjudged the situation. Thanks for informing me.

blame all their social problems on Asperger's ([...] having an excuse for being socially awkward)

Explaining and excusing are two different things.

You can't really excuse being an asshole to other people. You can explain, with "I didn't know what I said/did hurt your feelings, because I don't pick up on other people's feelings very well", but just as ignorance of the law isn't a defence, ignorance of unwritten social rules (norms, "laws") doesn't make people less offended when you break them.

they can also be comforted by the fact that they must obviously be brilliant, too

I can't remember exactly how an Asperger diagnosis correlates with IQ scores, but ISTR the general gist being that it isn't a wonderful predictor for being a genius (possibly on the contrary).

However, the intense devotion aspies can show to an interest, combined with a high IQ when it's there, can lead to good things.

Consider the formula "output = time * output/time". If IQ is a good correlate with output/time and aspies devote lots of time, there's a recipe for high output. Plus, of course, the reporting of these cases is biased outside of the scientific literature (e.g. in the mainstream press). Heck, look at the selection bias I showed in my own post :)

I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you?

No, I'm not. I am a socially awkward geek, though ;)

And to all of those who self-diagnose: if you think you suffer from a disorder that's causing you problems and would like help with those problems, go talk to a mental health professional about what help you can get in getting your life to work out for you.

Re:You're trivializing

[jonaskoelker]

By the way, the tone of your post puts me ever so slightly off.

The "Uh, no" and the "You know" give off a tiny whiff of a smug, condescending attitude. And your "I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you?" sounds like you think I am and think less of me for it.

It's nothing big, but it's there. At least that's how I interpret your post.

Maybe I'm being a hypersensitive crybaby here. Or maybe other people would feel the same way I do. I don't know; I'm not great at judging that.

I'm sorry to call you on this in public, but I want to say it where you'll hear it, and this is the best option I know (by virtue of being the only).

I'd just hate it if it were the case that (1) you didn't know what kind of effect you had on people; (2) that people would shun you because of the effect you had on them; (3) that you wanted to not be shunned; (4) that I could tell you something that would be informative and helpful to you; and (5) I didn't.

I can only choose what to do about point number 5. I'm sorry if I made the wrong choice.

And if (I don't think so, but if) you actually want to be a prick towards others, (voice of Mr. Hankey) Well I guess you can suck my tiny little balls :P

Re:You're trivializing

[Anonymous Coward]

as someone who has asperbergers thats really not a funny thing to post. You probably think its still okay to call someone a retard.

A cure, not management

[assertation]

How about finding the cause of autism or a cure, rather than a drug to manage it?

My guess? The Pharmaceutical companies make more money selling drugs to manage a condition rather than curing it, so that is where their researchers look.

Additionally, the human genome has not changed much. So, either diagnostics have gotten better so more cases of autism are being noticed or there is actually more autism. If the latter case is true it has to be an environmental change as the cause. Discovering that would mean some reach person would have to pay money and change the way s/he did things.

Interesting drug for Fragile X. But autism?

[TheMohel]

The article is pretty good, actually, in that it doesn't try very hard to claim that they're curing the world of its ills. There's a little in there, but mostly it deals with Fragile X.

Randi Hagerman (the researcher quoted extensively in the article) is one of the leading lights in Fragile X research. She and her husband, Paul, described the gene, developed the RFLP that we now use to diagnose the illness, and did much of the fundamental work to explain the genetic-expression behavior of the gene. It is not a simple inheritance model, and the expression of the gene is quite confusing. She's a superstar.

As far as the broader issue of autism (and even more confusingly, autism spectrum), Fragile X has always seemed to me to be a blind alley. People with Fragile X (I've worked in that community as a physician) have a very specific affect and behavior pattern that doesn't look a lot like the behavior of people with autism (a community I know all too well as a physician and a parent of an autistic young man). Most of the early research in autism was tainted by the inclusion of Fragile X patients, and most of the combined research is just confusing.

I hope that the drug proves useful in Fragile X, although pharmacotherapy for these kinds of disorders has frustrated us over and over again. These are simply very hard diseases to affect very much. At the least, though, it'll be another step toward understanding a serious disease. And I'll continue to wait and watch for anything that will help in autism, but I REALLY don't expect much from this specific drug.

Big Pharma: "Theres a drug for it!"

[peter303]

I notice a number of other industries are copying Apple's iPhone App commercials now. This would work perfectly for the drug industry: "Have this disease? theres a drug for it!".

This paradigm is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche now that I automatically wonder about some new medicine for all the new disease syndromes we hear about. There are substances for mental health and physical fitness. Even herbal remedies are squished into pill shapes to make them seem more "medical".

THIS JUST IN

[RoFLKOPTr]

Autism vaccine is linked to flu in children. News at 11.

surprise ppl tat r similar have common genes111!

[Anonymous Coward]

people with autism have common genes, both originally and epigenetic expressions

http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/6/13/2233
this one is still inconclusive consisting of repeated studies that disagree

this one seems pretty clear
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16103890

doesnt make it a disease. hey i reckon many social 'norms' are diseases; cause harm and are certainly pathalogical. I think the best medicine for autism is cannabis, it helps them enjoy, learn and benifit/constructively utilize, being "stuck in their brain" and "thinking too much" ...

Results

[TaoPhoenix]

The dangerous case with your note is that it's result dependent.

"Spends all his time with math" ... and writes semi-pro papers, tutors a kid, and writes little freeware puzzles to amuse the net hordes. Win.

"Spends all his time with math" ... and tries to figure out the numerology of life, but crucially, gets the worst of new age with none of the science of emergence. Then he's total bait for medical pigeonholing. Too smart for "ordinary" types, but too flawed to play the "strange genius" card.

Re:Results

[ArsonSmith]

Or possibly even worse

"Spends all his time with math" ... and sits in a corner calculating and reciting pie for 12 years before dieing due to lack of movement. It would be better to reduce the maths ability in order to give the person the ability to experience life.

Re:Results

[Lord Lode]

That would be cool if he broke the Pi computation record purely with his mind though! :)

Autism

[Anonymous Coward]

Autism is purely based off of a person ingesting Mercury, then storing that nuro-toxin, becoming infertile, losing mental capacity, and then passing it on through his sperm/her egg, and THEN shooting up a newborn with 6-16 NEW shots, ALL with Mercury, Thermisol* and Squaline*.

Wake up...if we did not ingest it in the first place, then autism rates would never have gone up!!

Re:Autism

[bugs2squash]

Yes - the problem is infertile people passing things on to their children.

Test Subject

[ae1294]

I'm a test subject in a trail.

From what I understand (from my doctor) autism is thought to be genetic but it does have certain environmental triggers that affect whether or not you develop symptoms and to what extent. One of these triggers is exposure to the measles virus (the vaccine is an attenuated form of said virus). Apparently a person's body develops inappropriate antibodies that attack certain parts of the brain (Amygdala) after exposure to one of these triggers.

The neurotransmitter Oxytocin (which is what I'm trying BTW) is also thought to be malformed in people with autism along with the receptors in a that person's brain.

The Oxytocin supplementation has helped greatly but it doesn't fix everything.

Re:Test Subject

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a test subject in a trail...The Oxytocin supplementation has helped greatly but it doesn't fix everything.

Obviously it doesn't fix everything if you're stuck in a trail and not being studied at the lab there Rain Man...

2 sides that are unlikely to ever meet midpoint

[bussdriver]

Biology (hard science) has a constructive approach going from the ground up - chemicals and physical operations.

Psychology (soft science) is about identifying trends and describing them clearly to other experts; something like anthropology or sociology does. Attempts to deconstruct these trends using other more "atomic" trends as well as finding interdisciplinary connections is extremely difficult and builds prestige; however, these often amount to being temporary fads that are later found to be weak or false or specific to a group/culture/time. Not to undermine the work, humans will never have easy explanations.

Here we have Autism and Asperger's which are placed on the same spectrum merely because they have some outward common traits in their generalized diagnostic definitions. Neither is well understood and classification at the mild end of the spectrum is difficult for professionals who are trained to have an eye for such things. Even when understood fully-- its psychology and one shouldn't expect the biology to ever align with it - Asperger's is often described as developmental in which case, it may have much more to do with nurture than nature. Autism might actually be 5 different things that produce somewhat similar results creating this so called "spectrum" which again, has been defined by only observing the resulting behaviors of all of them.

There are many similar examples. Nature being on the constructionist side and Nurture on the developmental side.
One that bugs me is how we linked depression to biology when most of the time it is not biological by psychological in origin - they only connect in a niche case; otherwise, the two fields are not aligned. This misunderstanding has led to many people only drugging the affect of their mental condition to change physical feelings and not the psychological ones (not to mention the increase in messed up people who take these drugs which may not cause direct complications but cause some people to mentally go nuts by failing to treat/experience the actual problem. Reminds me of some form of severe repression...)

  Asperger's might be a form of evolution and not related with autism at all. Who knows. Just thought I'd throw out that idea ... if humans evolve - how would we react? (obviously, we'd label them with some syndrome... note I said "evolve" not wanting to create a thread about our devolution.)

Re:2 sides that are unlikely to ever meet midpoint

[scapermoya]

i would argue that psychology provides descriptive explanations because biology has yet to reach the sophistication needed to chemically explain the disorders.

i reject the notion that humans will never be explainable. at the moment, the human brain seems to me to be completely out of our intellectual and technological grasp... that's why I didn't major in neuroscience and picked genetics instead. but it's simply a matter of time.

Speed of Dark

[MathiasRav]

Elizabeth Moon saw this coming. Speed of Dark is an excellent novel about an autist who is coerced into taking treatment against adult autism, though the book is set a bit further in the future from now (2030's, I'd guess, the story doesn't specify exactly).

(I read it recently on recommendation of another /. comment)

The difference (differential diagnosis)

[jonaskoelker]

And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria

How about we also go looking at differential diagnosis, then?

From http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/7/4/310

The conditions differ in that ADHD lacks the classic impairment in reciprocal social interaction, narrow interests, repetitive routines and non-verbal problems of Asperger syndrome.

Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language

A kid with ADHD will talk about trains all the time. A kid with Asperger's will talk in weird ways about trains all the time. Definitely, def-definitely all the time.

Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus

Erm... what? One says "doesn't focus for more than 20 seconds", the other says "focuses for 20 days in a row."

Re:The difference (differential diagnosis)

[netsavior]

to many self-important parents and educators, "Talks about trains for 20 days because he doesn't care what I am saying" is the same as "Can't focus on what I am saying" I am NOT trying to compare the two diagnosis criteria lists, what I am trying to say is that from a culture standpoint it is not that far fetched to think that many people were never diagnosed correctly...

Re:The difference (differential diagnosis)

[jonaskoelker]

what I am trying to say is that from a culture standpoint it is not that far fetched to think that many people were never diagnosed correctly

Ah. Good point.

to many self-important parents and educators

Well there we go, they're not psychiatrists. Don't people not trust the expertise, or do they not recognize where it is absent? Or ...?

(OTOH, according to the holy Adams scripture of the galaxy, psychiatrists are evil and want to run the world :P)

some evidence

[Sparx139]

Diagnosed aspie here. Mod parent up!

Also, to provide some evidence to backup the claim about cures scaring the shit out of us, have a read through some of the posts on this forum, particularly under "media representation".