Slashdot Mirror
CDC Reports 1 In 88 Children Now Affected With Autism In the US
An anonymous reader writes "A new government health report indicated that about one in 88 children in the United State has autism or a related disorder, the highest estimate to date, which represented an overall increase of 25 percent since the last analysis in 2006. The Centers for Disease Control reported on Thursday that the rate increased by 78 percent compared to the reported rate in 2002. From the article: '"The CDC’s new estimate of autism prevalence demands that we recognize autism as a public health emergency warranting immediate attention," Autism Speaks Chief Science Officer Geri Dawson said in a new release.
"More than ever, these numbers compel us to redouble our investment in the research that can reveal causes, validate effective treatments and guide the effective delivery of services to all our communities," she added.'"
And all of them are lurking on 4chan.
Whereas on slashdot the ratio is the prevelance is the far more alarming 1 in 2.
Or are we changing how we mesure it? How we define "autism"? Maybe it's because autism is more acceptable, and doesn't require someone to be locked in a basement until a group of 1980s teens decide that they need to find a treasure in order to save their housing development.
All kidding aside, I'd be interested to know how much the autism scale has changed over the years. I realize that highly functioning people with autism still count as having autism, but was that always the case?
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
It would be useful to know if there's more autism by some objective measure, or just more diagnosis. I've heard it pointed out that children who are diagnosed as autistic get a very large amount more attention, private tutoring, and such, in many school systems.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So once they all have it, it'll be normal right? Then we can stop overdiagnosing it and get back to life.
Childhood friend never spoke until he was five. Seemed to be in a world of his own, but I still liked him. So he graduated from one of the Ivy League (honors or something) and finished two doctorates. He's still in his own world.
It's affected by autism, not affected with autism. And it's not an infection either. There.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
If it's that normal, maybe it's not abnormal after all?
Autism isn't a new issue. It's been around for hundreds of thousands of years. It's just it wouldn't be diagnosed before.
How many cases of appendicitis were there 10,000 years ago? Would be rational to look at existing reported cases and conclude that all of this just started in the modern era?
I'm not saying autism isn't a problem. It's just one of many old problems.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The article I read about this earlier today did actually credit better/more defined diagnosis criteria as a major part of the increase in diagnoses, but that roughly 50% of the increase is still unexplained. But yeah, years ago, just as with other mental diseases/development disorders, higher functioning sufferers were generally just considered slow or slightly odd, but otherwise normal.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
But when doing math, I do sit on the floor, rocking back and forth, whilst mumbling to myself.
In past years, autism was barely understood/defined, and often misdiagnosed as ADHD, mental retardation, or something similar. As awareness increases and the diagnostic criteria become more straightforward, autism is diagnosed more and more frequently. You can't call that increase in diagnosis an epidemic.
Doesn't it mostly depend on what definition is being used this month?
One of the ongoing problems with both medical and economic statistics is that the definitions of what's being measured changes on a time scale of a year or four. This confounds attempts to measure changes over time, since the statistics for constant things are often changing.
Here in the US, one of the ongoing examples is the changing definitions of "unemployment". This was made clear back during the Reagan years, when the military was changed from ignored to "employed". This lowered the unemployment rate by roughly 1% (and varied a lot by state). It also meant that unemployment rates before and after that change were incommensurable.
This is an old, and ongoing story. Both the political and marketing people like to change definitions periodically, so they can use the resulting statistical "changes" in their propaganda.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
ADHD & Mild Mental Retardation & Behavioral Problems & "does not play well with others" are now all diagnosed as autism. Probably mostly due to social acceptance factors.
... will be to end all vaccinations, and not to clean up the poisons that our kids breath, the crap that's in our food, and all the other potentially genetically damaging stuff that we do.
Check your premises.
I Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.
By BENJAMIN NUGENT
New York Times
Published: January 31, 2012
"FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.
I exhibited a “qualified impairment in social interaction,” specifically “failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” (I had few friends) and a “lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people” (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels).
The biggest single problem with the diagnostic criteria applied to me is this: You can be highly perceptive with regard to social interaction, as a child or adolescent, and still be a spectacular social failure. This is particularly true if you’re bad at sports or nervous or weird-looking.
But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome."
General incompetence is increasing. People who are good at math get therapy until they aren't good at anything so they can be normal.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Which still warrants a different look. If we can now recognize what it is, and can do something about it that's better than just writing the situation off as a collection of unsolvable oddities that aren't worth investing much in.
'Cause outside US, not too many seems to care much about patents if they can go ahead with cheaper but equally effective generics.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
For one thing this was NOT a "study" it was a questionnaire. And there is no increase in Autism....there is an increase in the Diagnosis of autism. They have changed the definition down. sort of dumbing down the test. So guess what...you get more positive results. This helps the usual victim group industry such as the Jenny McCarthy vaccine nonsense.
"Normal" is by definition what the majority are.
It just seems strange to me there are so many children on heavy hitter psych meds. It can't be a total coincidence that their parent's generation started the trend toward better living through pharmacology. With their parents taking Zoloft, Seroquel, Zyprexa and Abilify like candy it just seems oddly coincidental that there are so many autistic kids running around.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Jenny McCarthy.
The sad thing about the whole vaccine scare is that vaccines are one of the most selfless things done in medicine today. (That's not to say that the vaccine field is entirely selfless, but your run-of-the-mill vaccines haven't the profits of Viagra.)
At the same time as people are questioning vaccines, there's very little questioning of the "chemical experiments" performed on us during the 50's and 60's, before anyone thought about such concerns. There's a pile of "better living through chemistry" that's so infrastructural we've barely begun to question it - like plastic milk jugs that may have a linkage to female precocious puberty, etc.
Back to vaccines for a moment, in the Muslim world the questioning of vaccines has turned them into a "Western plot" to the extent that many have stopped the practice. As a result, there are places where polio is making a comeback.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Define "normal".
Whatever society at that time had constructed as normal. 70 years ago, if you lived in a rural area, normal would be getting up early, walking several miles to school, playing with the school kids, then walking home and helping out around the family farm. If you lived in a city, you probably helped out in your parents' shop, or watched your younger siblings while your parents worked. But the biggest factor in normality has always been, and more than likely always will, be a certain level of social interaction. This is because we are by our very nature social animals. That is why kids that are less social than normal tend to get singled out, or people get "weird" around asocial adults: it's not a conscious act, but rather a response conditioned by evolution and years of social cues.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Researchers have recognized for years that autism is heavily a question of chemical pollution in the environment, just like cancer. However, it's pretty clear that there is also a genetic component to vulnerability, otherwise we'd all have it. The problem still needs to be understood in full if we want to do anything about it.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Normal people know normal when they see it. But you knew that, right?
My son is autistic, and I can't stand it when people involve the words 'disease' or 'cure' when speaking of it. Autism Speaks goes so far as to use the word 'eradication', so I don't bother with them whatsoever. They want a cure for something, in my own opinion, isn't curable. It's the way you're made. There are no cures for Down's out there right now, are there?
And when it comes to the "OMG SO MANY AUTISTIC KIDS!" issue--I'm sure everyone here remembers the days back in grade-high school, where the special-needs kids were all dumped into one room. From Down's to ADHD, they resided in the basement where none of us "normal" kids ran the risk of running into them and giving us complexes. There were many, many children that were autistic, but they'd only get the colorful, cute euphemisms, like 'retards' or 'speds'. They were ALWAYS used with great care and kindness, of course. /sarcasm
Nowadays, more people are eager to look into each case specifically, instead of throwing a blanket over any kid that falls behind or shows some sign of disability. Therefore, we're all freaking out about how there are so many sudden cases of autism--to me, it's always been here. I myself am in the spectrum, but back when I was little, I was brought to 'retardation' tests to examine my issues (where they discovered that my IQ was actually strangely high). I consider myself an undiagnosed case until I learn otherwise. If you look around yourself, think back to all the kids you went to school with, the more you might realize that autism's always been there... we just haven't met it with the same speculation, sensitivity and care until now. Are there environmental factors? Perhaps. But I think that only delays our understanding of autism itself: we're looking for outside reasons, when it's inborn, 'just the way you are'.
My son is almost nine, doesn't use the toilet exclusively, speaks almost exclusively in echolalia (and in my exact tone and inflection, as I was his main caregiver growing up), has odd, brain-numbing routines (he'll sing the same three words of a song for an hour straight while hitting the floor over and over again in specific patterns)... but he is damned smart, scarily so. I work on meeting him halfway; he does, deep down, have great understanding, and as long as I accommodate the things he can't help, it works out. To be honest, he's one of the easiest kids I've ever had to deal with, and I was a preschool teacher for over ten years.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Here is the actual study and is annoyingly light on details to help answer that question. The total number includes people diagnosed with Autistic Disorder, Aspergers, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder–Not Otherwise Specified. They have tables that slice and dice the data between gender, ethnicity, locality, IQ, and other factors, but nowhere in the paper do the say what the split between these categories is. The closest is a table that shows how many people were diagnosed before the age of 8.
If the increase is largely in Aspergers, the I would expect that it is mostly due to increased diagnosis, since it didn't didn't even have an official diagnosis standard until the early 90's and didn't enter into mainstream awareness till about a decade later.
Without this information I have no idea how to react. If we are seeing a huge increase in the number of people with low functioning Autism, that is a cause for alarm. If we are mostly seeing an increase in the number of people with Aspergers, then that's a good thing, because it means that more people with Aspergers are receiving information that can help them live their lives better, and there isn't much to be concerned about.
First of all it's not increasing any more than A.D.D. is increasing, they're just broadening the diagnosis. By their definition, I have autism. Most of us IT people do (apparently). Who knew? lol. But also, why would we call it a gigantic super panic emergency mega health meltdown-fest 2012 when there's absolutely NOTHING anyone can do about it to prevent it or treat it? That would be the most pointless course of action ever. This isn't bird flu where people can actually do something if awareness is raised.
The figure is now much closer to the 1 in 75 that the UK is reporting, which means that it's much more likely to be honestly reported. The less than half figure that the US previously claimed never rang true - it's genetic, not magic, so the incidence rate aught to reflect the gene pool you have to work with. The US and UK are genetically very similar, so the incidence rate aught to be very similar.
I would be far more interested in knowing why it has been dishonestly reported in the past and whether the now-caught willfully inaccurate reporting will lead to the various US medical boards asking serious questions. I doubt it. That kind of discrepancy can't be the result of a few bad eggs, and there's absolutely bugger all chance that they'd discipline the sheer number of pdocs that would have been required to create an error on that scale.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Was over at a friends house recently. He had on some kind of Mickey mouse adventure DVD for the baby. It was essentially demented. Mickey mouse traping around on an undefined saccharine adventure with shapeshifting companions, reaching into a sack of some kind to use tools on CG doors that lead to the next microplot with no connection to what came before or after.
It was the closest I have ever seen film come to capturing the hazy stream of consciousness of a dream. I think it was over an hour long.
If Disney and others have been mass producing DVDs like that for children for the last 15 years, I'd fully expect incidences of all kinds of mental pathology to be skyrocketing right about now.
May the Maths Be with you!
It's a combination of more aggressive measurement, and broadening of the definition (Autism used to be a peer of Asperger's for example, but is now the container diagnosis for both).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If plastic milk jugs are the cause of the increase in average breast size, I'm willing to live with the consequences.
I don't disagree. The rate of increase in diagnoses is much higher than what we would expect from a better understanding of the symptoms. There is definitely something else going on here that warrants further exploration. But at least we know it's NOT caused by mercury in vaccines :)
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Define "normal".
Like me.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
None, seconded.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Or are we changing how we mesure it? How we define "autism"?
Add to the list of questions: who define "autism"?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Was over at a friends house recently. He had on some kind of Mickey mouse adventure DVD for the baby. It was essentially demented. Mickey mouse traping around on an undefined saccharine adventure with shapeshifting companions, reaching into a sack of some kind to use tools on CG doors that lead to the next microplot with no connection to what came before or after.
It was the closest I have ever seen film come to capturing the hazy stream of consciousness of a dream. I think it was over an hour long.
If Disney and others have been mass producing DVDs like that for children for the last 15 years, I'd fully expect incidences of all kinds of mental pathology to be skyrocketing right about now.
The entire baby-boomer generation was raised by televisions showing hours of insane cartoons. I think we need to look elsewhere for an explanation.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's affected by autism, not affected with autism. And it's not an infection either. There.
Fixed your subject line for you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No they have not. Research has continued to show that genetic factors overwhelm any other possibility.
It has nothing to do with pollution, and is nothing like cancer at all.
There is no epidemic, there's just increasing awareness and better diagnosis.
Fuckin-A right. Just like how all of a sudden everyone had fucking ADHD in the 90's, now everyone has Autism. In ten years it'll be some other bullshit excuse for why their kids are antisocial little fuckwits and there will be a doctor standing right there, ready to smile and nod and write a bunch of prescriptions and set up a bunch of testing that will bill insurance companies for thousands of dollars for another great big circle jerk...
Meanwhile having an autistic kid is the new "in" thing so now all the suburban housewives are rushing their kids off to the doctor and can't ever fucking shut up about it, and if that's not enough here's a goddamn magazine and a pamphlet and a group and a mailing list and a ribbon and a wristband and a bumper sticker...
Give me a break.
Citation needed.
The environment as an etiologic factor in autism: a new direction for research. (2000)
Autism, Brain, and Environment. (2006)
ASD-CARC Genetics and Environments Studies. (2007 or so.)
Nurture over nature (page 8). (2011)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
...from my 37 years on this rock, I've seen the descriptor of ASD go from savant to a whole swathe of "abnormality", from minor zoneouts (such as I have frequently) to total withdrawal (which I have in times of extreme stress). All have been applied to me in passing although I've never had anything like an official diagnosis. I used to act out at school, not because I was ADHD (as false a diagnosis as MSbP), but because I was bored: I had already learned what the teachers were trying to teach me. Problem was, as is common today, the school teaches at the rate of the slowest kid in class. I could think faster than all those kids, even the teachers, combined. So according to them I was the one with the problem - in a way they were right. They were holding me back.
It's not mental illness, it's a defence mechanism.
Back to the topic: ASD/ADHD/AS descriptors have become so diluted over the years, the terms could be applied to anybody. Have you checked out the standard mental health questionnaires? So full of leading questions, you couldn't say no to more than half of them - which is pretty much a guarantee that in any given situation, you could be assessed as having traits of some debilitating mental illness or other that would disqualify you from mixing in public. It's used in the UK on a regular basis to remove children from parents where in fact there is absolutely nothing wrong with the parents, yet one simple questionnaire that takes five minutes to answer ticks the boxes of psychotic, MSbP, NPD, ASPD, any number of "diagnoses" that immediately justifies the forced separation of families.
What we have now is those diagnoses being publicly scrutinised as it's now emerged that the assessments have been carried out by persons unqualified to do so, while claiming that they are qualified. Roy Meadow, Andrew Kawalek, Bruno Bettelheim, David Southall (just some names off the top of my head and I have extensive files on those and more) - all frauds, and provably so. Dangerous ones at that. All have had their hand in removal of many thousands of children from their families on the basis of fabricated mental illness. Southall does not even have a degree, yet he is on the GMC roll as a practising psychologist with license to carry out drug experiments on children. Gentlemen and ladies, I bullshit ye not.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The funny thing about this is that those of us who weren't normal couldn't really tell what normal was. I laugh now about how I thought I was getting away with fitting in.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
For what it's worth, though, it's certainly true that under some circumstances the complex gene networks involved can behave in ways that appear to be trivial if the problematic environmental condition is sufficiently prevalent. This past summer I did linkage analysis on a family that appeared to have Mendelian inheritance of autism. But given the plethora of subtly different autism conditions that our lab has seen and studied, it's absurd to believe that their situation describes the majority of cases.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
All those Facebook personality tests could have told you that.
Also, my Bleach character personality is Kon.
Of course, even in NA where polio has been 'eradicated', there are still thousands of us recovering and dealing with nerve damage from the vaccine. In a way I still think it's a good thing. I'm pretty sure that those of us sensitive to the vaccine would probably have died from the actual disease.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I am extremely skeptical of the artificial compounds created in the last 40-50 years that get put in everything from clothing (fire retardants, colorants, softeners, plastics) to foods (too many artificially modified natural foods) to cleansers & cosmetics of all types with God only knows what chemicals in them.
Homo Sapiens evolved over 5 million years of primate evolution and NONE of those ancestors until modern times almost no one came into contact with isolated elements or chemical compounds and only in the last century did people start to ingest artificially modified and created compounds in any volume.
I believe there is reason to suspect numbers of these chemicals (a lot of which are already outlawed once they found problems) but know that complete broad testing of all these chemicals is impossible in humans because we can't feed lots of the chemicals to people and see if they and their children develop "problems" as that is unethical. Hence, chemical firms just test using animal studies and extrapolate what they think they will do to humans.
Heck, processed soy beans have estrogenic compounds in them, so why are we eating this stuff?
"Modern" foods may not be the best dinner choice.
All right, let me elaborate through my editing your statement: Researchers have speculated for years that autism is heavily a question of chemical pollution in the environment, just like cancer, but it's never been demonstrated.
Perhaps I'm wrong. I'd be very willing, humbled and even eager to give a look-see to any valid, world-renown documents or studies that have demonstrated that what you're saying is true (especially if you're the one who'd come up with the results; I can't dispute that) without question. Seriously. I'll take back the 'bullshit' comment if you can, with promises.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
You should see the Princess syndrome in Mexico!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders
I want to see it.
And I object to the other guy who said Baby Boomers watched insane cartoons. Tom & Jerry. Rocky & Bullwinkle. Mighty Mouse. Flintstones. The Jetsons. They made perfect sense storywise.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Every teen and young adult who has self-diagnosed themselves with "asperger's syndrome"?
I will go half way with you on editing: let's keep "recognized" where it is, but we adopt your "but it's never been demonstrated [conclusively]." I invite you to read this paper, and look at page eight of this. We can say with good certainty that genetic effects alone are probably insufficient to explain the entire autistic problem, as cases are still going up—it's not just a matter of more sensitive diagnostics (this is in TFA.) All that's left to do is to invoke Conan Doyle, and use some good old-fashioned Holmesian abduction: the environment looks pretty damn suspect.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
My son is autistic. Didn't talk until 6 and still has lots of problems. The one thing that we did at 6 years old was to remove all diary from his diet. After this he calmed right down (used to take 2 strong men to handle a 5 year old), started talking, going to the bathroom on his own and various other improvements. The days he come home acting like his old self always turned out to be days when someone fed him diary.
Diary is one food that the vast majority of people can not digest properly. Especially certain races (my wife is Native American) and I've never felt good when drinking milk. This raises the question, does diet make things such as autism worse? I'm not aware of any studies done on it but there are quite a few people who have reported good results from changing diet.
The problem is the diary farmers have very good marketing and most people are convinced that milk is a vital part of the diet. They also have a powerful lobby.
Wheat is another one that may be worth some studying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
No, there was a hour or so of children's programming per day, and then when the soap operas came on you got bored and did something else. Past generations certainly weren't watching baby DVDs every day.
Or are we changing how we measure it?
Most probably, as the criteria for diagnostics have indeed changed over the years, but this is not the only problem. One issue is that the risk for autism increases the more a mother waits to have a kid. This is at least one of the reasons that kids with autism are appearing more and more frequently all over the country.
Medicine/contraception has been getting better. Education is getting longer. And families are waiting longer and longer to procreate. This is in stark contrast with the opposite problem of mothers who are still giving birth way too young, or giving birth to babies with the alcohol-syndrome...
Our society is now suffering from both types of problems, parents who wait too long and parents who do not wait at all, and an entrenched political system that seems to discourage and penalize middle-of-the-ground discussions over these topics.
Perhaps he believes Autism is made up. It is likely psychological diseases are over diagnosed. Pharmaceuticals have an interest in promoting drugs for symptoms they often help define. However, it would be hard to argue that we aren't exposed to chemicals and frequencies of energy than didn't exist for most of our history. Our environment has changed and it would be rather odd if it had no affect on us. It seems equally obvious that genetic variation would mean variations in symptoms/responses.
We have no baseline for what is 'normal' for many of modern diseases. We have a pharmaceutical industry deeply tied to deciding what constitutes the need for medication. And we have introduced countless chemicals(and the chemicals they break down into) into our environment, food and water.
Figuring out cause and effect gave humans a huge survival advantage; figuring out cause + cause + cause = effect +effect seems to give us more trouble.
This might be a stupid thing to do, but at this very moment, do something for me: read this entire comment I'm making to you with deep thought. I'll try not to be preachy and over-wordy.
In some ways, you are absolutely right. In some cases, there's over-diagnosing, and some people use it as an excuse instead of working with the diagnosis. You'll have parents who get their child diagnosed with autism and think "well, nothing I can do", whine about it then expect everyone to understand why their kid just knocked down an end-cap full of cereal boxes.
But that doesn't mean that the child isn't autistic. I myself believe I'm an undiagnosed autist, or at the very least AS, so when my son was diagnosed as autistic, I already had a grasp on what that meant. My world wasn't over, my son wasn't dying and there was plenty I could do about it. He was diagnosed early, so he was able to be enrolled in special programs that popped up in our public school system (free services, with the quality of ones you'd pay thousands for--we're never moving from this town). I'm a parent of an autist who easily and readily recognizes what is an autistic-meltdown and my son just being obstinate. When he IS being ridiculous which is connected to his natural, "I'm a nine-year old who WANTS SOMETHING!" self, I get right down at his level and say, "You know exactly what I'm telling you to do. You're smart and you know better. Now come on," then lead him away. Does it work every time? No, because he's autistic, and his threshold level is MUCH lower. But when my mom's tried justifying something he's done in public as "well, he's autistic," I've sat her right down and said, "He's not stupid. He knows. If it was an 'autistic thing', I'd tell them myself it was, but don't say that when it's not warranted."
Any parent needs to figure it out and know what their child can and can't handle, depending on where they are in the spectrum. My son is almost nine now, and we have worked extremely hard on getting him acclimated, while meeting him halfway. He will never "fit in" or be "normal", and there are times when he can't control his autistic-impulses. Those times, yes, you have to excuse. It exists. No rods or paddles will do anything for my son, and those like him. In loads of cases, it's not an excuse; the sooner you see that, the better.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
If Disney and others have been mass producing DVDs like that for children for the last 15 years, I'd fully expect incidences of all kinds of mental pathology to be skyrocketing right about now.
My boys are both diagnosed (mostly non-verbal) Autistic - they feed on Pixar DVDs like they were crack, same super strong dopamine push high when they get it, same withdrawal symptoms when they don't, same "will do anything to get it" motivation.
The only thing worse are Disney "Sneak Peek" trailers.
Perhaps the cause of "rejection" of science is that the so-called scientific culture tolerates stuff like over-diagnosis, or changing definitions as part of the cost of communicating scientific information. I don't think it has to be that way, but unfortunatly, it is a cancer that pervades the sciences and the policy wonks that distribute scientific information...
I refer you to this historical piece of wisdom...
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another...
If more people communicating science would practice this, I'll bet there would be more trust in the sciences (by all folks)...
I like the limited conclusion of your first link. There is strong political pressure to find a reason to blame something that can be regulated, however tenuous the link. Politicians really want to be seen as "doing something" about this issue, because it affects so many people so deeply. If only we can blame it on some man-made environmental factor, the congresscritters can fight to regulate whatever it is and all be heroes (heck, it would be welome news in general). That makes me suspicious of studies that try to overreach in that direction.
The conclusion of "a disease of very early fetal development" seems strongly supported, and the points this paper makes about more general "environmental factors" seem reasonable, but I do share the GPP's skepticism of "let's blame chemicals".
Your second link is a sales brouchure, if I've ever seen one.
"Autism" has been the word for "I don't know what's wrong" for so long, and the definition keeps getting broader: once that term didn't include all mild retardation, nor ADHD, but was more speciifc to being non-reponsive to the environment, and high-functioning "autistics" of several decades ago shared a common tale of withdrawing from sensory overload, and difficult in processing stimulus that normal people took for granted. (That was certainly the case for me, though thankfully I eventually caught up, more or less).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
strangely...while the number of people with autism is increasing....then number of engineers in America is on the decline.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
See... my issue is the term 'disease'. I can't do it. Even if I don't hold a doctorate in this, I don't SEE it as a disease. Disorder, yes--disease, absolutely not. So I automatically had trouble when both articles use the word. Maybe that's more feeling/opinion, but I don't feel 'diseased', nor does my son.
There could be environmental factors, but I think it's more genetic than junk food. I don't think the numbers have grown to the proportion people say it has when it comes to 'real time' and current environmental factors, because:
--Many of those 'new diagnoses' are people who were never diagnosed in childhood and are in their 40s-60s. The system's changed; as I said in my main comment here, we didn't explore autism as in-depth as we do now. Back when I was a kid, all the special-needs children were put into one group with no distinction.
--There IS, imho, an over-diagnosing going on.
At any rate, I'm not QUITE taking back my bullshit-vote. I need more conclusiveness. I put more stock into how we're made. But thanks for sharing and replying (and forgive me being glib/abrasive, I guess. I admit to being defensive on this issue. :P)
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Suzuki is indeed and unfortunately more of a PR mouthpiece than a real human being at this point (much less researcher); perhaps it would be better to say he illuminates the opinion of the research community by exploiting it to his own shallow ends rather than anything else. And yes, "disease" is a bad word to use; both pieces are dated (the first by age and the second by shortage of recent exposure) and hence prone to what today would be considered something of a faux pas. Make no mistake: it is improbable that it has anything to do with junk food, and Suzuki should have been shot for suggesting that. More likely culprits would be air and water contaminants, or perhaps some cocktail of food preservatives.
The word "autism" is also hilariously broad, certainly. One reason the diagnostic categories are expanding is that researchers want to understand the whole spectrum of attributes that go into making the really dysfunctional cases what they are. As my boss likes to parrot, almost everyone has one or more traits that would be considered autistic if they appeared in the right combination with other aspects; in fact, the diagnostic questionnaires (which you've probably seen) are scored by adding up the 'autisminess' of the responses, so even that is a spectrum. Of course, it's hard to take the news from a psychiatrist that your son has a surplus of autistic traits when they explain it like it's a disaster.
There's another confounding factor, also, in how the population of diagnoses has grown, besides shifting definitions and older people getting re-assessed: better-educated (as well as more paranoid) young families are more likely to seek diagnoses out in the first place. In retrospect there's probably too much interference to say honestly if the rate of autistic traits is increasing or not.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Nope. Its due to more previously undiagnosed conditions being categorized as autism.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
My mother has runs a special needs unit of about 3 classes in a normal government primary school in Western Sydney for about 5 years and has been a teacher of "normal" kids for about 30 years before that. She is convinced that the percentage of special needs kids (autism, downs etc) as compared to "normal" primary school kids is rising due to advances in medical technology. She feels that 30, 40 or 50 years ago a lot of the kids she teaches would have died due to complications at childbirth related to their conditions whereas with better medical technology today more survive. This judgement is just based on her experience only. Whether its true or not I don't know but she has been teaching kids for over 35 years.
Funny and Interesting things from all around the net
I agree, I do wonder myself. There is such big money involved that sometimes what is in the best interest of the public may be changed for political or business reasons. Examples I can think of would be how long it took for big tobacco to be deemed a danger after years of conclusive proof. Or the 0 calorie sweetner aspartame being banned until Rumsfeld was brought on board to be the political cheerleader. Or even an outside testing of the new TSA scanners to know just how much radiation you're getting. I know the chemicals used for new carpeting at an office made my mother have a rash for months, just the fumes in the air.
I know I make sure my Orange Juice is now only made with American oranges because the FDA allows pesticides from other countries to be detected in the imported orange juice, pesticides banned in the US for being harmful.
I would like some large study done for various rates of cancer, autism, other diseases, for population centers that do live a more organic lifestyle. Do the Amish have the same problems with autism? They're the biggest non-modern food eaters I can think of, there are probably many more. Maybe those who stick to a strick Halal diet, etc. What about cancer rates? I assume there are such studies but the studies must not be anything overwhelming conclusive because the headlines would be shouting out the news.
give an increase in the incidence of autism over time if there is a genetic component to the disorder?
I was actually overdisciplined to the point I actually have PTSD as a diagnosis. Don't lump every one of us in the same category.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
if the problem is solved with a pill all the parenting in the world won't fix it. If you try beating the child and it doesn't work because you don't know any better you aren't likely to get a productive response either.
Research advances knowledge, that includes techniques and chemistry. If it really is genetic and chemical well, then we'll have a solution.
Also, if it is genetic then it becomes something that can be tested for. Otherwise you're just finding someone quirky, and lets face it, there are a lot of quirky people.
Again, the first article is very, very speculative. Basically, they state that 1) Autism exists but we really don't know what it is, but it's some sort of neurodevelopmental disorder. 2) That environmental factors have caused (other) neurodevelopmental disorders so there is a potential model for a similar mechanism in autism 3) Genetics is certainly part of it but Mendelian genetics doesn't really explain the data (as it fails to do for most human diseases with a clear genetic component - the review just completely blows by the newer regulatory mechanisms such as methylation, the various small RNA control dohickies and the other neat stuff coming down the pike).
So since genetics can't explain it and environmental factors have been shown to have a role in brain development it is certainly possible that there is an environmental factor.
That's fine but it's not going to get anybody the Nobel prize. The hard work has yet to be done. The paper was really a preamble for a grant proposal. Nothing wrong with that - its a deserving hypothesis but I'm not overwhelmed with the data.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
As a parent of an autistic child, let me tell you:
You are ignorant and have no idea what you are talking about.
Just like all those wonderful "parents" with all the answers who don't actually have children.
Boy though- I do wish you were right. I wish it was just a simple failing of myself as a parent that caused this. I wish I could lift this burden from my daughter through simplistic things like like being more servere in disciplining her. Lord knows my wife and I tried that route unsuccessfully for over a year and a half before she was diagnosed.
Anyways- keep on trucking in your ignorance and comically naive view of complex problems. My family and I in the meantime have to live in the real world.
Maybe he's autistic?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Maybe this is what happens when your society is too safety-conscious and nobody gets weeded out of the gene pool?
Then I believe we are more or less at consensus. FWIW, the paper is from way back in 2000. The second miRNA was discovered that year, in C. elegans. It's an artefact of its age, I guess.
I wasn't trying to argue originally that the data said exhaustively that autism is primarily a matter of environment, merely that most autism researchers were confident that there was an environmental component involved. I guess I should be more careful about using literal language with this topic in particular. :)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
This reminds me of a family my parents are friends with.
Their son was diagnosed with moderate autism at about age 10. Everyone that knew the kid wasn't surprised, he always had just a general lack of social grace. So he was enrolled in classes to teach him social skills. And for the year that he was in the classes his behaviour was vastly improved. You could just tell he was observing the situation and formulating a response.
The problem was as soon as he stopped going to the classes he went right back to being a little asshole. Except, when my mother was around. When she was around he was a pleasant young man, the moment she was out of earshot he transformed into a little prick.
Then there was an incident where my father played a practical joke on him. The boy was red faced and emotionally laid bare in front of everyone he held dear. Then my father puts his arm around and says, "See what happens when you don't listen."
Then it clicked for me. That's what dad did to my sister and I when we were being a little shits. He was the master of public humiliation as discipline device ("You need to listen to the advice I'm giving you, or else.").
Which meant that mom had a "We need to talk" moment with him (My mother has this way of being so calm she's scary during those conversations).
So fast forward to a couple of years ago. We're all at a 4th of July party. He's being a more of an ass than any 15 year old has a right to be. When we were away from the party for a moment, I used a couple of joint locks on him and got him pinned face down on the lawn. Then I told him point blank, "You're being a little shit. Stop it or I will get very angry." After I let him up, he behaved. Never had a problem with him since.
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.
I can tell you've not been out of the basement in while.
I grew up on worse.
Surely you've seen YoGabbaGabba or even Spongebob Squarepants (8+ years old now) or WowWow Wubbzy?
Back in the day it was ScoobyDoo and and let's not forget the venerable Winnie the Pooh and the Hephalumps...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
My kids are all perfectly typical and have the same response. That's just kids.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Patience and politeness are skills that have tremendous value when raising children, autistic or not. (Cazekiel, thanks for the comment: it was very informative.)
Hypothesising about the link =! "confident there is a link".
Pay attention to your young children, make lots of eye contact with them every day. The younger they are the more important it is to focus your undivided attention on them. Stop playing video games. Stop starting at your computer or your phone or whatever you use to distract yourself. Stop shoveling convenience food down their throats because you can't be fucked to plan and prepare a healthy meal for them. Your children are starving for your attention. If you have a genetically normal child, i.e., one not predisposed to autism, then they will probably be OK, even if you suck. But if your child is genetically predisposed to autism, and if you suck, then your child is doomed. The thing is, you cannot know their genetic predisposition until it's too late. So pay attention. Now.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
It's more probable, I think, as time has gone on, that we have developed more sophisticated means of actually identifying it, making it easier to distinguish from what may have formerly simply been dismissed without official diagnosis as simply "weird" or "odd".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Right. ADD is bullshit. So instead of getting proper medication, I'll just keep self medicating with coffee and cigarettes which erodes away my esophagus and stomach and gives me cancer. Maybe I'll try coke or meth too.
My kids are all perfectly typical and have the same response. That's just kids.
This is true of almost everything my kids do, it's mostly "special" with my kids due to the restricted communication aspect, plus the intensity, frequency, and difficulty of terminating total meltdowns is quite a bit higher. Restricted communication also entails a lack of motivational reasoning capacity - we can say something like: "stop rolling on the floor and we can watch Toy Story again," or the opposite tack of "stop rolling on the floor or Toy Story is gone", and it just won't get through a lot of the time. It helps to try to communicate before getting to the meltdown state, but even that can be hit and miss.
I should perhaps reiterate that I've worked with autism researchers in the past. It's much more than a hypothesis; we're having real trouble explaining the phenomenon in terms of pure genetics. It is not hard to find an autism researcher who is downright certain that there is some environmental factor in the illness. Think Sherlock: we're running out of other stuff to rule out.
I'm curious as to why so many people seem to be jumping out of the woodwork and complaining about this. It's not even remotely a novel claim. The world is full of chemicals that interact with each other (and our bodies) in ways we don't understand, and the number of changes in human behaviour and health that they have caused is staggering. It should come as no surprise that we're changing as we change the world around us, even if it turns out that the entire autistic spectrum can be firmly rooted in heritable traits.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Reading your insightful and articulate post about your own 'autism-spectrum' disorder really underscores to me how much of this issue boils down to a problem with semantics.
I've met someone with autism. Requires constant care. Blank face. Mute and illiterate. Likes to bang head repeatedly against solid objects for comfort.
I've met someone with Asperger's syndrome (my informal diagnosis, but not in dispute). Worked for the same company as me. Independent to a fault. Blank face. Slow but precise and articulate communicator. Calm, personable and helpful. Admirable intellect.
Clearly we are conflating things that do not deserve to be conflated.
Researchers have recognized for years that autism is heavily a question of chemical pollution in the environment, just like cancer. However, it's pretty clear that there is also a genetic component to vulnerability, otherwise we'd all have it. The problem still needs to be understood in full if we want to do anything about it.
[Citation needed]
If there is something that can be used to market drugs by big pharmaceutical companies, then studies showing an increase in that something will appear as if by magic.
You may want to read the other replies to that comment. They've already been given and discussed.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
'm curious as to why so many people seem to be jumping out of the woodwork and complaining about this.
Because it sounds close to what the anti-vaccination lobby is claiming. They have been cherry-picking and distorting scientific evidence for more than a decade, not to mention doing fraudulent and unethical research on children, in order to show that mercury in vaccines cause autism. When thimerosal was taken out of most vaccines, the autism rates failed to drop (indeed, the rise did not even slow down), the smarter ones started blaming undefined "toxins" in vaccines.
So, to put it shortly, cranks have been screaming for years that autism is caused by (specific) environmental factors in order to spread preventable diseases. This (unfairly) makes people skeptical of such claims.
Mercury is still present in multi-dose flu vaccines and flu vaccines are increasingly promoted for children and infants. So while the mercury load has been removed the mandatory vaccine schedule, many children could still get thimerosal if they get vaccinated for the flu at clinics that use multi-dose vials.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
That makes sense. Thanks!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
While Thimerosal was removed from vaccine production in North America in the last decade (and earlier in much of Western Europe), it was until very recently still commonly used in vaccines sent to most other second and third world nations. Only recently has awareness of the possible risk and the political will to demand change from suppliers surfaced in those nations. So people in those countries may have some justification in looking askance of being supplied a product created through a process which is deprecated and viewed with strong suspicion in the 1st world nations.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Like me.
Why should I?
You can't handle the truth.
Isn't the environment cleaner now than it was 30 years ago? When I was a kid there was DDT everywhere, asbestos, leaded petrol, everybody smoked...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Perhaps he believes Autism is made up. It is likely psychological diseases are over diagnosed.
I think it's very likely that certain autism spectrum disorders are overdiagnosed, most commonly asperger's syndrome. It's like it is the latest trend in psychology to classify introvert intelligent people as having asperger's syndrome. I've come across more than a few people who function quite well in social scenarios that have been labeled as having aspergers where I seriously want to ask the question "Isn't (s)he just shy or introverted?".
The only person that I was quite convinced he had Asperger's was a man who really showed problems interacting in social scenarios. He wasn't a bad person, but he would sometimes make remarks that were inappropriate to the situation or the mood. He would often come off as rude and arrogant, insult people without realizing it, obsess over small details and maintained a very strict schedule that was nearly mechanical. I know that this sounds a bit condescending over the person, since the above factors alone don't necessarily give you Asperger's, after all he could just be a rude person who overly focused on the details, but if you worked with him for a couple of days you would get this feeling that something was slightly off.
I believe that in many cases people who go take an ASD test do so convinced that they've got Asperger's and will answer questions to skew the results in favor of what they were expecting. Any person intelligent enough can fairly easily subvert standardized psychological testing, and the people typically wondering about Asperger's syndrome are introvert intelligent people. As a part of a discussion about this topic I've done the first diagnostic tests myself twice, once normally and once with the intention of being diagnosed as having Asperger's, and it's needless to say that I got the results I was expecting in both cases. I think we have a lot more hypochondriacs than we have people with Asperger's Syndrome, and the initial diagnostic tests (often found online by the way) play into that by having people visit psychologists for at least 3 times to do an extensive test. The extensive testing here consists of a standardized series of questions (which are often the same questions worded differently for verification purposes), a logical test (including once again the tower of hanoi problem, which every programmer is familiar with) and another test, but I forgot what the third part was, each in a seperate session, followed by a session where the psychologist tells you the results. That's 4 visist guaranteed for everyone who takes the introduction test and manages to score high enough and become worried.
I also believe that it currently is a trend among psychologists to overdiagnose relatively harmless conditions such as Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD. The sale of Ritalin (for treatment of ADHD) has gone through the roof in the past 10 years here, with students starting a black market in schools because the drug supposedly helps you study better during exams. Many parents with kids that are underperforming in school take their children to psychologists expecting an answer among the lines of a psychological disorder instead of asking themselves the question if their child would rather study something different. After all some people just don't care about Latin or math, so it's no wonder they perform badly when their parents force them in that direction because of their own desires.
It's become all too common to hear people say "Well, he's not performing well in school, but it's because of ADHD", while he's been sitting there real quietly reading a comic book in the background for the past 20 minutes. It just reeks of "I pushed my kid in the wrong direction, and now I don't want to admit it, so I get a psychologist who told me it wasn't my fault. If he pops these pills he'll be fine."
Having said that, I don't want to downplay Asperger's Syndrome (or ADHD) or the standardized testing for it. I've certainly c
What an unnecessarily long way of saying "statistically frequent."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
In the US, anybody who is not constantly cheerful and consumerist has a mental disorder and needs to take some pills. That's just part of the new definitions.
Posting to undo wrong moderation...
Autism is the new ADD.
Unrelated: I had a genetics-related question for you but your Journal entries are archived. :)
Please create a new entry
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Even if there is an antisocial factor and the parents are to blame, it's not the kids fault and there are ways to help them without drugs.
It just so happens that I'm aware of a case of autism. My friend's kid was kept at home for the first 5 years with essentially no contact to any kids or any people outside the closer family circle. Sure enough she was diagnosed with a kind of autistic disorder in the kindergarten. They sought professional help and got it. If you look at the methods involved you will find there are surprisingly many things that you need to do counterintuitively with these children. Even if you know something about psychology you will be surprised at what works (talking to the animals...). Anyways, there were no drugs involved, the parents got instructed how to handle the kid in certain situations, the school teachers got a few instructions (and had to do some special handling during the first day of school) and in a few years the kid got to normal.
Yeah. People are up in arms over "oh the corporations are turning our children into zombies flouride in the groundwater supplies argle bargle" while ignoring that THE MEDICATION FUCKING WORKS. Now, it might be that the medicine has some unforseen long term effects (aside from easily-monitored effects on the cardiovascular system of some people which has worried me a bit), but so far it just doesn't seem to be so.
That reminds me, time for my filler-up pill...
Emotions! In your brain!
Ah, see, you've got it all wrong. "Autistic" these days means a child who is either shy or sometimes misbehaves. It also simultaneously means Rain Man, so that they can paint their child as a gifted indigo child on a higher plane of reality.
I feel an overwhelming urge to scream at anyone who says "I think I/my child might have a bit of autism/asperger's" because they clearly have no clue what it's actually like to have either one.
I think the reason so many people love the term "spectrum" now is that when they're called on their bullshit, they can still claim that they do have asperger's, just on the high-functioning end of the spectrum.
Aspartame artificial sweetener. It releases methanol, a known neurotoxin, as it is broken down in the body. Developing infants would be exposed when pregnant women drank diet pop, chewed chewing gum, or consumed other artificially-sweetened foods.
You also do realize it is impossible to have a genetic epidemic right?
I'm pretty sure this is more of a diagnosis epidemic. Kid acts a bit weird, diagnose autism, profit!
No sig today...
My wife is a public school teacher (6th grade), and we're parents of two preschoolers (ages 2 and 3) with cognitive delays (dyspraxia). As a result, we've come in contact over the past few years with a *lot* of people who have children all over the developmental spectrum.
We've seen many cases where a parent sees a developmental delay in their child and takes them for testing. The doctor agrees that they may have a slight delay, but doesn't really have a name for it. This gets you no services from the school system. Often, the doctor will offer to diagnose with an "autism spectrum disorder" (usually PPD/NOS) so that the child can get services.
Why? Autism is *huge* right now. Funding is there. Services are there. A doctor attaching a finding of autism means your kid is guaranteed to get an IEP (individual instruction plan) which can be an incredible boost to a kid like mine. Believe me, I know - my daughter has made amazing strides since she started our county's developmental preschool program in September.
Other times I've seen cases where the first doctor refuses to diagnose autism. The parents then shop around doctors until they find someone who is willing to diagnose autism so they can get services for their kid. There's a university program near me that seems to basically be writing blank checks for whatever diagnosis you think your kid has.
Autism is real, and it's a terrible, terrible disease. But over the years they've expanded the definition to the point where it has become meaningless, and well-meaning doctors and parents who are just trying to get help for the kids in their care have been behind a lot of it.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
I certainly hope the CDC didn't rely on data from just the parents, as some of the truly awful will insist the reason their precious snowflake didn't make the preschool deans list is obviously autism.
Researchers have recognized for years that autism is heavily a question of chemical pollution in the environment, just like cancer. However, it's pretty clear that there is also a genetic component to vulnerability, otherwise we'd all have it. The problem still needs to be understood in full if we want to do anything about it.
[Citation Needed]
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
There was a great story on NPR recently about how they have debated changing the pollution regulations in regards to power plants to basically outlaw coal plants (or at least require very expensive mitigation). After many years of talking about it.... it has finally been done. Yay?
Except.... those pesky reporters asked around in the actual energy industry. Nobody had any plans to build a single new coal plant in the next 30 years. Cheap natural gas has already made it uneconomical.
What is the point of even having a government if that is the usefulness of their decisions, they can't decide until after its already happened?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I don't know how much experience you have with Autism, but I can assure you, as the parent of TWO ASD children, it goes well beyond "quirky".
"Quirky" is when a kid likes to wear silly hats, or insists on wearing tights with everything, or like to dance and sing at not always appropriate times. That's quirky.
"Quirky" is NOT being unable to dress yourself properly or being unable to BATHE yourself, or sitting on your bed making moaning and grunting noises while rocking back and forth and flipping through toy magazines and then stripping your clothes off and shredding your underwear into teeny tiny bits before having a poop accident and then smearing it all over yourself and your walls. At 11 years old. THAT is Autism. Not "Quirky".
I think far too many /.ers have a really inaccurate idea of what Autism actually is. Many here seem to think that it's all Aspies. Trust me, it's not. Aspies are the tiny minority of ASD sufferers. MOST ASD sufferers are so social and learning disabled that even doing basic day-to-day living activities such as toileting or bathing or even feeding themselves is a challenge. So this isn't the kind of thing taken lightly by researchers. If there has been a substantive increase in diagnosis, then I am wont to believe it.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Everyone in America will be autistic by 2026.
Secondly, it is in the interests of the Powers That Be to discount any degradation of conditions as merely "better diagnosis". If societal disasters really are increasing under their rule, they can turn that to their benefit by claiming that without them, we never would have become aware of of the problems created by their predecessors.
So get off this "its just better diagnosis" bromide.
We are facing a disaster -- whether new in the making or not.
Seastead this.
now everyone has Autism. In ten years it'll be some other bullshit excuse for why their kids are antisocial little fuckwits and there will be a doctor standing right there
I agree with you 100%. In fact, I'll push it further: it is not diseases that are affecting the kids. It's the lack of parental education and training, discipline and interaction. So they blame it on external sources (naturally, there are real cases of autism, but that's not what I'm talking about here).
I have a 2 year-old son and a 6-month-old daughter at home and let me tell you that my 2 year-old perfectly understand that we don't tolerate antisocial behaviour. Are we hard, unloving parents? Not at all.
I spent virtually all my free time with my kids when I'm done work until they go to bed. We play, laugh, learn, watch TV, draw pictures, read books, go out to the park, wrestle (all in good fun). But my 2 year-old knows there are limits and what and where they are:
A tantrum gets an automatic "no", period.
Mild misbehaviour gets him a stern warning. Repeated mild misbehaviour gets him to wait in the corner or a spanking (depending on the situation), with a requirement to apologize when it's over.
Strong misbehaviour (like when he decided it would be fun to pull apart the leaves of a potted plant my wife loves) gets a sit down discussion asking why it happened, addressing why it mustn't happen again and explaining the consequences of his acts on my wife, me and ultimately him.
He is allowed however to play in the mud and experiment with nature and toys, so that he can keep a strong sense of curiosity and I try not to intervene when playing with other kids so he can learn to assert and depend on himself.
And you know what? Every person who knows him are enthused by his social graces (polite, happy, interactive). We take our role of parents seriously and it pays off.
My daughter is still a little young, but we'll follow the same principles with her.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
I know my son would not have been diagnosed properly 10 or 15 years ago as autism spectrum. I certainly was not properly diagnosed as a child.
He appears normal, but querky. Would not look you in the eye, could not remember names, even of his best friend and cousins. Can pick up almost any musical instrument and make, if not music, a pleasing set of sounds from it. No interest in learning to play tho, just plink. Kinda sad, we have a semi-retired concert piano tracher down the street, she offered to tutor him for free after hearing him plick away on her stienway. Cheerful disposition at almost any time, is very charming and girls even a few years older just come up to him and talk to him. Hell, he was asked out on his first date by a girl at age 8. At age 9 he is 5 feet all, adrenal glands are in puberty, but not his petutitary. Very picky eater. He can do 2 position multipliers in his head, 4 digit add/subtract. At age 7. At age 8 he could solve for X with the four classic operators. At 9 he could perform 3 and 4 step math problems in his head. Not a math genius, but gifted.
Classic aspergers, an autistic spectrum disorder. Height stinky armpits and pubic fuzz aside, he appears normal. Aside from his natural attractiveness to the opposite sex, he is a typical geek.
Careful testing as revealed that he can store information in his brain, but it is hard for him to get it back out effectively. It is sort of like a bad hash algorithm...
If I tell him the boy work a red hat, a green shirt and blue pants, and then I ask him what the boy wore, he would say "I don't know."
Give him a key, and he can return the value. "what color was the hat?" gets an instant "Red" response. Even a day later he will retain and retrieve the color of the hat.
if you ask him what a book was about, he says "I don't know". Ask him about the boy in the story, or an event in the story you get near total recall, but he needs the key supplied to him.
Ask him to name ten Pokemon or bakugon no dice. Give him a name, you are buried in detail and stats and battle pre plays from a book or a show he has seen.
He can memorize 5 spelling words in a single pass. 8 takes him 4 or 5 tries. Give him ten, you are,lucky if he can memorize 2. Mind you, that ten cold be made of words he learned in two 5 word sessions, and he will not be able to recall the information, but we know it is there.
So all of his therapy is around socialization and how to build his own keys to his knowledge and socialization skills. They are all skills I had to build myself because I was never diagnosed until my 20s.
Now he gets some services for free, some we pay for, like a writing tutor. Autistic awareness has resulted in more autistics being identified and read, and that is a good thing.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Gaming the system is one of the reasons to test early.
A five year old playing a "game" that is really a test of cognitive processing, recall and face recongnition is going to give a much more accurate idea of severity and complexity of the autistic spectrum.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
"Normal" is defined by the majority. People who believe in little grey men are nuts because there is no compelling evidence and very few people share their delusion. People who believe in God are not nuts because despite their being a similar lack of evidence a lot of people who believe in him.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fuckin-A right. Just like how all of a sudden everyone had fucking ADHD in the 90's, now everyone has Autism. In ten years it'll be some other bullshit excuse for why their kids are antisocial little fuckwits and there will be a doctor standing right there, ready to smile and nod and write a bunch of prescriptions and set up a bunch of testing that will bill insurance companies for thousands of dollars for another great big circle jerk...
Meanwhile having an autistic kid is the new "in" thing so now all the suburban housewives are rushing their kids off to the doctor and can't ever fucking shut up about it, and if that's not enough here's a goddamn magazine and a pamphlet and a group and a mailing list and a ribbon and a wristband and a bumper sticker...
Give me a break.
Well now that you have your little hillbilly rant modded up, tell me: do you really think kids enjoy not having social skills? Do you think they choose to be locked-in, not being able to effectively express their emotions or parse that of other people? Do you think this is a choice?
And do you think parents really enjoy having to spend many more hours a week than parents of NT kids, teaching their autistic kids to talk and to be at least a little comfortable in social situations, and then in addition to this pay lots of money to speech therapists and other special need therapists. Read one of Temple Grandin's books to see what her parents had to go through toe get her to be a thriving member of the human community. It's a herculean effort, and you should count your lucky stars that you don't have to do any of it, just spout your deeply ignorant platitudes and insults.
I know your type: always in love with their ignorance, and so proud of it. There is not one chance in a trillion that you could feel the least sympathy with the lesser fortunate than you.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you're not a socially-popular overachieving jock these days, they want to call it a disorder.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
That is a bold-faced lie. We do not have a problem explaining "this phenomenon" in terms of pure genetics. We have two very clear cut reasons why "autism" is shown to explode:
1. Widening the definition of autism to include many aspects of "non-normal behaviour" which answers why we have such ridiculous numbers and where most of growth comes from what was generally considered "kids who didn't know how to behave themselves".
2. Increasing age of mothers which is well known to significantly increase genetic anomalies in children, which is responsible for minor increase in "real" autism, as in the one as defined before the ridiculous widening of the umbrella. Fertility treatments for mothers who's reproductive system is basically non-functional and their exploding popularity and their known genetic disorder risks are a great example of this.
Problem is that there is a very strong profit factor driving the "widening autism umbrella" lobby in case of 1. There is also the problem of telling mothers that it's basically their fault for having children too late when their reproductive system is far past its prime in case of 2., not to mention actually having fertility treatments when mother's reproductive system is in such a bad condition, it actively rejects fertilisation attempts. This is a very delicate issue for many people, and genetics are not delicate. They are a method of selection and evolution, and very brutal (and because of this, very effective). When we mess around with them to allow older and older mothers to have children, we also pay the price with far greater amount of genetic disorders.
But this isn't what people want to hear. It's much easier to blame unspecified "pollution" then accept the fact that your own body is the problem. So we get McCarthys telling mothers that it isn't their fault, and that it can be fixed with medication. And that idea sells, which in term drives the people who want to sell products to such mothers.
For the record, I have a person in my close circle of friends who's sister is actually autistic. Not the modern definition of "anti-social behaviour" autistic, but actually autistic to the point where she simply cannot communicate with outside world mentally. The fact that children like that get crammed under the same umbrella as "anti-social behaviour" ones is a very obvious money grab by sellers of snake oil of the year.
There are studies going on, but I have not heard of conclusive results yet. There was an interesting one a while back though that found, when the same diagnostic criteria are applied, we see similar rates of autism in developing countries and subsistance communities, so that at least indicated the opposite.
If I recall correctly though the rates were a little different, so autism was a little higher in the developing world, but not by huge amounts, so it indicated it was quite possible that chemical pollution (or some specific chemical that children/mothers are commonly exposed to) might trigger or exacerbate rates. It has also been speculated that changes in dating/breeding patterns (higher probablity of males and females with mild disorders forming relationships) could cause a higher rate of genes getting together.
Ahm... looking at the DoE's stats, it looks like nationally about a dozen new coal fired plants go online per year, so they are still being built in significant numbers.
There is a segment of the population that believes unnatural 'energy' is making us sick... so magnetic fields and radio waves going the 'wrong direction', things like that. It is kinda hard to nail down exactly what they mean, but they have plenty of anecdotal 'evidence' and that is all they ever seem to need.
just randomly sticking this reply here because it seems a good place (since you're following up on these research links so nicely)
I wonder if the food the baby gets has something to do with this, and wondering if there's a correlation between synthetic baby formula, breastfeeding and autism.
If the changes that cause the disorder start in the uterus maybe not so much, but if it starts postpartum, certainly seems like a possibility. If more kids are drinking baby forumula, or the chemicals in the formulas have changed over the years, you would think that would be a good place to start looking.
The CDC reports a slowly increasing rate of breastfeeding in the US year over year, with the same rise in exclusive through 3 months and exclusive through 6 months, and a slightly higher rate still in the "through 12 months" category. There's also a slight rise in the overall rate of postpartum breastfeeding from 2000 through now, though the rise is slight it represents quite a few more babies born during the period being breastfed postpartum.
So, no, more kids aren't drinking formula early on. So maybe look at chemical composition of the formulas. You know they're always changing those recipes and there could be some horrible toxic chemical in there causing this.
Imagine the brouhaha that would generate. All those parents supporting these children would demand heads-on-poles, and rightly so.
I am skeptical that introversion is being misdiagnosed as aspergers in any significant numbers. Social dysfunction (or shyness) is one of the publicly visible elements, but it is not the only diagnostic criteria and does not even have to be present for a positive hit. The tests don't even really focus on that part all that much and mostly look at things like thought patterns and difficult with things like focus, black&white thinking, literalism, etc.
It is a useful umbrella though. Autism comes in many forms, and one problem that 'high functioning' autistic people have had for many years is this 'you are not as bad off as this extreme case, so you are fine!' when in fact they do have neurological problems that impact their life.
Also, to be blunt, the 'anti-social behavior' meme is a media creation, not the medical definition. Being diagnosed as on the autism spectrum takes a lot more then being 'anti-social'. I can also attest at just how significant treatment and support of the higher functioning people can be in improving their lifes.. 'snake oil' generally involves not actually doing anything.
Yes and no. Air quality is certainly better. But we're using a lot of chemicals in food production and other applications. HFCS, bovine hormones, pesticides (DDT wasn't harmful to humans, but was harmful to birds and mosquitoes had developed immunity), brominated fire retardants, antibiotics, PFOA (non-stick pans), phthalates, etc.
I'm curious as to why so many people seem to be jumping out of the woodwork and complaining about this. It's not even remotely a novel claim.
Because people are not saying "It is a plausible hypothesis that autism is due to environmental factors." They are saying "Autism is due to environmental factors."
That is very plausible, even likely. But it is not demonstrated.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Autistic people are _extremely_ bright -- their brain just doesn't spend much of its processing power on the "Social Customs" of society.
Some autistic people are extremely bright.
Not all autistic people are Rain Man.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Flintstones. The Jetsons. They made perfect sense storywise.
Those two I understand. Apart from the physics of a foot-powered or flying vehicle, these two series don't use a lot of "cartoon physics". They're really just sitcoms, The Simpsons of their day, and they're animated because animation was cheaper than the animatronics that would have been needed to shoot their settings in live action.
Some people also believe in faries and vampires. One of the best things I've seen on this dates to 1887, in Popular Science. http://books.google.com/books?id=tyoDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA841&ots=q-UT8wqLWR&dq=%22evidence%20as%20well%20as%22%20vampires&pg=PA841#v=onepage&q=%22evidence%20as%20well%20as%22&f=false/
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Mod me down all you want, but everyone knows it's fucking true.
We can't mod you down, because you were too scared to make these comments under an accountable ID. I'll take your suggestions of discipline and punishment on board, but considering my son will react to stress and confusion by biting his own arm until he draws blood, I may have to take a bat to him to get your message across...
"Autism" has been the word for "I don't know what's wrong" for so long, and the definition keeps getting broader
It would really please me if this meme were to drop off the planet, because it's really not so. Grouping various pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) together doesn't mean they're being lumped together or that the definitions are getting weaker, any more than grouping biological organisms into kingdoms, phyla, classes, etc. means that we treat them all the same.
There are reasons for linking low- and high-functioning autism with Asperger's and other PDDs. At some levels, they need similar support structures both in day-to-day life and in clinical settings. It also gives you a basis for comparison as you drill down into the hierarchy for study.
(I'm not a biologist or physician, but I am a parent of multiple diagnosed Aspies and am likely an undiagnosed one myself.)
It's scary that you have just described my 9 year old son. To the letter ... youngest of my 5 children!
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
Will do!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I'm getting a little frustrated with all of these redundant posts. They're right over here.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
If you'd started disciplining him when he as a toddler, then you wouldn't be dealing with a little monster that bites himself whenever you assert your authority in the slightest bit.
He IS a toddler. Any other useful suggestions? If not, just keep trolling anonymously.
Right. We've already punched those people in the face. I am not a McCarthyite. I am a bioinformatics student who consults for an ASD research group. I'm sorry about them, I really am.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
It's still shuffling around; cancer rates pretty much prove this. Also, DDT is still used in some countries.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I've come across more than a few people who function quite well in social scenarios that have been labeled as having aspergers where I seriously want to ask the question "Isn't (s)he just shy or introverted?"
Would those be people who have or have not received treatment?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The article (might be different one, cause I read it on reddit) mentions that methodology did not change since 2009, when the rate was 1 to 108 (or 180, i forgot).
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If we look at cancer rates across the board. They are down over the last 100 years. What I have noticed is that spanking your kids is at a historic low. Which could be a cause of autism. And there's always the pirate theory, with increase in pirates over the last 10 years, that could be contributing factor to autism in our kids.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
there are ways to help them without drugs.
Drugs are not used to treat autism. Any drugs would be to treat comorbid conditions, like anxiety disorders.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Fuckin-A right. Just like how all of a sudden everyone had fucking ADHD in the 90's, now everyone has Autism
I'm pretty sure I had ADHD when I was a kid, but back in the '50s and '60s nobody knew it was a disorder. Back then it was "goddamnit boy, can't you pay attention???"
Autistic kids back then were simply labeled as "mentally retarded" and treated as such.
How the hell you got modded insightful is a mystery to me. The comment is not just uninsightful, it's downright ignorant and shows no knowlege of science, medicine, or progress whatever. I'll bet you and the people who modded you up are all from Texas.
Free Martian Whores!
When I was younger, I was diagnosed with several learning disorders, including dyslexia and ADHD. I would mainly attribute these "disorders" to having a fairly crappy teacher in the early grades.
The dyslexia lasted until I got a *good* teacher (two, actually) in second grade, and was introduced to good books and the joys of reading. AFAIK I never had any issues reversing my letters/words, and the "special time out" I had to deal with my "disorder" really does't seem to be related to dyslexia.
My reading now? Let's just say I have several bookshelves, including on that's about 8" tall and will need replacing as the contents are starting to bend the slats.
ADHD. Well, I definitely found some lessons boring (I didn't have any issues doing the actual work, and was often done ahead of time) and thus was sometimes distracted. The doses of Ritalin left me falling asleep in class, however, and were thankfully short-lived. Eventually they found extra work for me to do that kept me well-occupied, happy, and somewhat less disruptive.
Given the comments received on my last review, I'd have to say that neither of the above seem to be significantly impacting on my productivity as an adult (although my tenancy to juggle multiple tasks actually be beneficial)
I'd have to say I love your sig. I've never heard of that quote before but given my experience it's quite appropriate. People these days are so intent on perfection or personal goals that they lose track of letting kids be kids.
Just to give you the benefit of the doubt, I sent an e-mail to my boss at the local autism research lab asking whether or not she believes autism is linked to some environmental factor. This is what I got back:
Absolutely yes to environment. The increase in rates is not just from increased recognition and diagnosis and broader definitions. The next steps for us are epigenetics which looks more at the environment's impact directly on our genes (methylation, gene expression). Our new equipment will do this! When people say it can't be genetics because of the rapid increase and our genes haven't changed that much in a couple generations, I say, we have the same genes in the pool but the expression is different. I think genes that cause autism now, may have caused schizophrenia and bipolar at a later age then. Toxicity is building up too quickly so we're getting earlier onset in the form of autism.
This is from someone who has been working in the field for a little under two decades and is closely involved in the collection of saliva and blood samples for genetic analysis and who has been involved in the publication of dozens of papers.
I respectfully ask you to change your opinion.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Well good luck with that advice. Like you say, kids are smart. They know, from constant experimentation beginning in the first few months of their lives, how the world works. And how you work.
Telling them something so utterly arbitrary ("If I see you roll around I will throw Toy Story in the trash and you will never see it again.") isn't going to square with their internal models of the way things are. Maybe if a stranger did it. But not you, unless you have been making threats like that and following through on them since they were 3 months old. And if that's the case, your kids roll around on the floor because they are utterly traumatized.
But maybe he should throw Toy Story in the trash anyway, and skip the theatrics. I mean, if your kids were addicted to crack, would you keep giving them crack in order to keep them from going through withdrawals? This is just Pixar movies now, but what are they going to do when they get old enough for even better drugs?
biting his own arm until he draws blood, I may have to take a bat to him to get your message across...
A colleague of mine's son would bang his head on the floor if he couldn't get his way.
She would have none of that. She wouldn't yell or try to stop him or punish him. She'd just ignore him when he would start acting like that.
He stopped when he saw that it's getting him nowhere.
Countering violence (self inflicted or otherwise) with more violence is not necessarily the correct solution. Particularly when dealing with kids.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The AC is correct, you had at most two hours of kid programming on weekdays, Saturday mornings was all kid fare, and iirc nothing on Sundays. And we only had three channels in the St Louis area, and no DVDs or VCRs.
Believe it or not, we were usually outside playing baseball or football or riding our bikes or exploring the woods (lots more woods back then too).
AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY... because we didn't know any better.
Free Martian Whores!
I want to see it.
And I object to the other guy who said Baby Boomers watched insane cartoons. Tom & Jerry. Rocky & Bullwinkle. Mighty Mouse. Flintstones. The Jetsons. They made perfect sense storywise.
That's because thew new cartoons are being written by people with Autism. Bah dum bum!
BPA leaching isn't giving women larger breasts, it's causing girls to enter puberty at an earlier age. It's the plastic boobies (well, a plastic bag filled with saline solution) making breasts larger. That and the gain in weight; when a woman gains weight, her breasts get larger.
Free Martian Whores!
While I agree wholeheartedly with both of your points there is evidence to support an inheritable genetic component as well.
I can't begin to tell you about the guilt I felt after a respected developmental psychologist diagnosed our son...and then told my wife 'You know your husband is autistic too right?' as soon as I left the room.
I was never diagnosed with it, just like kids were almost never diagnosed with ADD/ADHD or other mild disorders 30 years ago. I knew I was introverted and sucked at reading people's moods and facial expressions but I'd never considered that to be some kind of inheritable genetic disorder.
You monster!
-DwS
Many here seem to think that it's all Aspies. Trust me, it's not. Aspies are the tiny minority of ASD sufferers.
According to you. Citation please? When you lump in everyone with Aspergers and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), into "Autism Spectrum Diseases," as is happening now, then of course the rates of ASD are going to increase. Anyone who has mild difficulty with social situations or communication can be diagnosed with PDD-NOS. When the criteria for diagnosis are so broad as to include kids who are likely the victims of abuse (and thus have atypical social and communication development), then yes, we can all agree that ASDs are reaching epidemic proportions. Unfortunately that tells us almost nothing of value.
I *completely agree* that Autism != introversion and/or mild antisocial or asocial behavior, but that's what's happening by lumping them all under ASDs as the (always just-around-the-corner) DSM-5 does.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Protip: If you can have a family, friends, and hold a job, there is nothing wrong with you.
Ok, let's take an axe to your spine. You'll still have a family, friends, and can hold a job in your wheelchair, so there'll be nothing wrong with you.
Fuck you and your ignorant sanctimonious bullshit.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Posted.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Having just been diagnosed with Aspergers at the age of 42, I have first-hand experiences of the daily issues we encounter, but if I can just correct your terminology - ASD stands for Autistic Spectrum Disorder - it's not a disease, you can't catch it (although there are thought to be links with certain immunisations, where symptoms appear overnight for some people who are later given a diagnosis of autism / ASD, and in some cases the strain of engineered bacteria used to carry the immunisation has been found in spinal fluid, where it should *never* appear). Studies of the brain are now starting to show that autism, along with several other "behavioural conditions" such as ADHD or learning disabilities like dyslexia, are closely related - the brain has developed in such a way that it functions atypically, and these changes can be seen on both a physical (post-mortem) and "MRI scan" level. People on the "spectrum" may have deficits in a varied range of abilities, senses, social skills, among others. They call it a spectrum because any of these capabilities can be anywhere in the range from normal to non-existant.
Sorry, you're right -- disorder. I would still argue that without strict guidelines for diagnosis, with practitioners who are both sympathetic to their clients (as they should be) and eager to provide a diagnosis, and especially without any actual objective and physical test (as with many mental illnesses), it's far too easy to arrive at a diagnosis of ASD, and the numbers shouldn't necessarily be taken at face value.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
(if this helps, I sincerely feel ashamed that I posted the GP. I do have excuses but only excuses. Thanks)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The next steps for us are epigenetics which looks more at the environment's impact directly on our genes (methylation, gene expression). Our new equipment will do this! When people say it can't be genetics because of the rapid increase and our genes haven't changed that much in a couple generations, I say, we have the same genes in the pool but the expression is different.
Is this person really unfamiliar with the fact that the older mothers get, the higher amount of harmful genetic conditions are manifested within children, or is she too busy chasing funding for her "local autism research lab"?
Because you don't need to be a researcher specialized in the field to know this. Pretty much anyone with MD who has ever done obstetrics will be able to inform you on basic risks of having children too late and refer you to the specialist in the field if you have more questions. In many countries, it's modus operandi to provide such counselling to couples seeking fertility treatments. The fact that the person you mention blames unspecified "toxins" fly on the wall for changes gene expressions and nicely overlooks the elephant in the room of age increase of mothers and fertility treatments (which I will bet you correlates with increase in worst cases of autism) suggests someone with deep vested interests in the subject of "magic pill to cure autism/reduce symptoms" and therefore this angle of approach to the problem. Because toxins likely do play a role here. The role of the fly on the wall, extremely minor one.
Not to be an ass, but who's funding her lab and paying her salary/tenure?
I think you missed my point. I'm saying that there is a clear cut genetic link. The argument of the other person is that "unspecified pollution" is to blame and that by extension there is a "magic pill" that should help with symptoms of such "pollution-related" autism. This angle was seen in various "vaccine-based autism" arguments. I'm saying that the two reasons I mentioned are the main reasons for increase of cases in autism, with 1st being basically treatable with therapy and proper parenting and second requiring much harsher approach and that we do not need "unspecified pollution" or similar factor to explain vast majority of increase - because we already know the factors and their core reasons are not addressable with current technology. The only things we can do is better counselling of couples in terms of genetic conditions that their children can get (a norm here in Finland as we have one of the most inbred populations in the world with all the genetic problems that brings) as well as societal incentives to make women get their children during their prime fertile period rather then long after it.
Autism is an active expression of certain genetic layout. You can't really fight your genes, at least not yet as we are not nearly good enough in gene therapy department yet. That and your entire purpose of existence is to prove that your gene pool, and combination of your genes and your partner's genes (i.e. your offspring) are viable to survive in this world. I would suggest that if you have healthy, or "mildly autistic" (by modern standards) kids, you're doing just fine from evolutionary perspective.
Holy fuck. You crossed the line into "complete ass" very quickly. Leave the ad hominems about funding out of this, please. I'm very disappointed that you would bring something like that up.
Mutations brought on by advanced age would be caught by the genetic tests we do. That falls under her comment about the gene pool. If you really want, I can ask her specifically about her perspective on maternal age.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Okay, now I can see that you're utterly clueless about the issue at hand and rely only on other people's opinions while lacking even basic understanding on how the basic genetics in terms of hereditary diseases and conditions work. The process of meiosis itself is very complex and our understanding and ability to affect it is fairly limited at this point, but we do know that even in young mothers, a large amount of successfully inseminated embryos is aborted by the system due to detected genetic defects. Our modern equipment can detect some well studied pre-determined genetic anomalies in embryos and fetuses, such as trisomy usually by collecting cells from the amniotic fluid. Procedure is invasive (involves essentially sticking a very thin needle into the womb), and you need to test for each anomaly separately. This is costly, carries risks, and usually only done to risk groups, such as mothers that are significantly older then certain age (varying by the country).
Again, this is a well studied area, and we still do not understand nearly enough to draw conclusions of specifics of individual genes, links between various genes and their expression, but we do understand the connection between cause and effect (parents genes vs child's genes, genetic expression, genetic "lottery" of which genes child will receive and with what likelihood and so on). Our "modern equipment", while able to map genetic material with reasonable accuracy, doesn't really solve the issue of us not understanding the actual mechanisms behind expression of TRAITS based on individual genes well enough to draw conclusions when it comes to complex combinations of issues, such as "mild" autism. We also often make mistakes of oversimplifying the gene structure, and assuming that by affecting a certain expression of genes, we may get desired results. Which we often do not. On the other hand we do understand some exceptionally well studied genetic defects, such as what causes trisomy for example, such as Down's syndrome.
Finally on issue of ad-hominems. Normally I would agree with you. Problem is, we have several well documented cases where big pharma has literally purchased necessary "studies" from reputable laboratories and researchers that would say that "this and that" causes or has reasonable expectations of causing autism. The most famous case is the infamous vaccine link study, where in the end, people got convicted. With such history, taking some random researcher who doesn't even appear to know or conveniently forgets to mention about one of the biggest if not the biggest factor for significant increase in genetic defects in children from unknown lab as a "final authority" on the issue is questionable at best and a very stupid way of stepping on the same rake again at worst.
Based on all above, I call bullshit on "unspecified pollution absolutely being the factor". We have some completely unconfirmed hypotheses on the issue, but we most certainly do not know enough to claim that it is "absolutely a factor" (as for starters, any such claim would have to limit the claim to a specific chemical group). Anyone suggesting this is telling a bold-faced lie. On the other hand, we do have a very large pool of data on both hereditary traits and impact of both having ageing mothers on significantly worsening the odds of their children on not getting significant genetic defects. To claim "unspecified pollution" and not mention ageing mothers is the classic "not seeing the elephant in the room for the fly on the wall".
You're reading too much into what you want to see. I asked specifically about environmental factors, and got a direct response to that question. If you want to know what she thinks about maternal factors, then I can ask her. No one's ignoring any elephants; we were simply discussing the yes/no question of whether or not environmental factors play a role.
And please don't talk down to me about the basis of sexual reproduction. I'm trying to be polite by avoiding uncited statements, and you've become increasingly aggressive. It is true that my area of expertise is evolutionary genomics, not human disease, but your wording in your first two paragraphs makes it appear as if you're swimming in much more shallow water than I am. Studying the semantics of protein networks is a large part of my PhD work. NGS and GWAS (the "modern equipment" you mention) have an immense value in the quest to understand how these complicated expression systems function, and deserve much more credit than you're giving it. The majority of these instruments were developed in response to the needs of cancer researchers, and despite the radical divide between cell cycle biology and neurology, have still been quite insightful into the workings into autism and other mental oddities.
Each fruitless reduction or empty treasure chest is still significant, in that it rules out a possibility. No scientist should ever forget that. As (apocryphally) often attributed to Edison: I have not failed 5,000 times to invent the light bulb; "I have discovered 5000 things that don’t work."
The lab is funded exclusively by the Canadian government, although they have recently begun looking into sharing costs with some of their collaborators at other universities. The researcher in question is the registry administrator. She has personally interviewed hundreds of families from across North America, tracks almost three thousand of them, and trained under Dr. Jeanette Holden, who strongly emphasized the importance of supporting families affected by autism alongside her research in studying the underlying genetics of the spectrum. Get over Wakefield. He's done more damage by causing intelligent people to turn a blind eye to the possibility of an environmental component than he ever did by making uneducated people feel even more alienated by a medical system that they were already predisposed to hate.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Perhaps I should re-word my statement for clarity:
1. I believe that searching for cure for elusive fraction of percent is of far less importance then that of high double digits. ("unspecified pollution" vs known genetic issues caused mostly by societal shifts). The way you worded your question is simply too narrow: "Focusing on this fly on the wall, do you think that it's a factor to the nasty smell in the room?" It probably is. But there's still that elephant defecating in the room!
2. Something you misunderstood - I'm referring to the fact that trying to understand the expression of genome as traits is not dissimilar to trying to reverse engineer a program written in high level language with multiple levels of abstraction by looking at the binary code with no prior knowledge of the language used. It's a herculean task and that is simply not a good approach to the problem. Approach through studying traits and their effects, and correlating these has been far more successful in treating hereditary diseases, morphology and passing of traits in general (perhaps the best example here is advanced domesticated cattle and booming modern agriculture). The problem here is the value of individuality in modern society, so we see that preventing mothers who have significant risk of passing severe hereditary conditions to their children from either having children, or at least incentivise them to have children earlier is not societally acceptable. At the same time we do outlaw sexual relations between relatives deemed "too close" in spite of their offspring being exposed to largely similar risks. Essentially we're going down the path of least resistance, the search for magic pill to cure the fractions of percent caused by potential environmental issues, while purposefully ignoring the societally harder, but much more effective treatments, such as imposing limits on fertility treatments, and pushing to get women to have children in their twenties and at latest early thirties (in this regard the push needs to come from both sides, to reduce both too early and too late motherhood).
I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of actual biology tech is dated. It's been a while since I rubbed shoulders with people doing research in the field in university, and while the hereditary traits, evolution and human psychology are a long term hobby of mine, genetic biology is currently in breakthrough phase of development and any data is outdated in less then five years. That said, only a fool imagines that seeing the code gets him a picture of how the program works. It's the pit into which many of the best bioresearchers fall nowadays when doing work on complex chemical interactions which are but a small part of the huge whole. We've even recently seen a billion dollar medicine project go down the drain because of making broad assumptions that understanding a part of process chain = understanding the chain. Which it is not.
In conclusion, first of all I do agree that there is a small environmental impact. I strongly disagree that it needs to be focused on, or pretend that it's a big enough of an impact to be a meaningful impact. I also strongly disagree that people are "predisposed to hate medical system". The only thing that "predisposes people to hate" is the approach where medical system is slaved to profit-driven industry that wants the "magic pill" that could be sold to a person for life. Most therapies do not and should not involve medication - they should involve therapists and psychologists who help parents to cope and teach parents how to modify and improve their children's behaviour through proper teaching methods. I.e. psychology rather then drugging. The way we handled what we now call "mild autism" and what we called "bad behaviour" before. Severe cases are another story.
And even more importantly, before trying to dig into the genes to treat a complex set of behavioural issues, it would be nice if researchers stopped to define what autism is. Because at the moment, we are broadening this definition
that these problems aren't an evolution of humans? That all these kids that "can't" interact "appropriately" face-to-face, but often have the ability to interact via computers, cellphones, etc. (yes even some of the "sitting moaning" kids are like that) aren't just dropping the inefficient method of interaction and evolving to be better at the more efficient method?
As I said, I agree with both of those points and I'm sorry I didn't catch your primary (briefly stated) one.
Women (and Men) having children in their 30's and 40's vs their 20's is a certainly big factor and quite prevalent nowadays with advanced degrees and two income households becoming the norm in industrialized nations. The stereotypical factory working/blue collar breadwinner no longer exists, you can either be poor or wait.
Unspecified pollution is total pap. 30-40 years ago heavy industry with zero pollution controls was here, not off-shored to some far east country and the vaccine-based autism argument has been thoroughly debunked as bad science...
I know I shouldn't blame myself, but in my case the expression of those genes left me with both gifts (analytical talent) and deficits (ability recognizing social cues). In my son's case it's expressed itself as mild/moderate learning disabilities and obsessive behaviors. I love him very much and I hope he'll be able to overcome them, but I know the pain that I've been through in my own life not fitting into society and I can't help feeling responsible.
Sounds like autism is one of those things where everybody seems pretty clear on what the culprit is. Just none of them agree. You have the vaccines camp, the genetics camp, the chemical pollution camp, the nothing-new-here-just-better-reported camp, and so on.
Ie, we aren't all that clear on what the culprit is, otherwise we'd have moved on.
Not exactly. In autism research, the last three are all accepted as being components of the problem, along with maternal ageing. From the other responses to my comment, I believe it's more a question of "are you a crazy self-victimizer who believes in Wakefield's nonsense?" or "are you hyper-reactive to the Wakefield crap and convinced that anyone suggesting the environment could be involved must be a Wakefield proxy?" or "are you an open-minded person who knows that we've seen weak correlations with lots of different things, that Wakefield was a Bad Person, but you know better than to jump the gun and assume we know enough to rule anything (other than the MMR vaccine) out?"
The same thing happens in response to a Fox News story: you have the anti-scientific paranoids, the pro-science-but-still-kinda-ignorant paranoids, and actual logical thinkers who let the news be just what it is, instead of buying into all of the scare tactics designed to sell the news. For obvious reasons, this is much more of a problem in the US than in most other countries.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
As a parent of, and personal sufferer of ADHD, I can't say I have ever heard it called autism. Do you have any documentation of that? Now Asperger syndrome, I have heard of being called a mild form of autism, which seems to be true as far as I have seen with my own behaviors.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The only person that I was quite convinced he had Asperger's was a man who really showed problems interacting in social scenarios. He wasn't a bad person, but he would sometimes make remarks that were inappropriate to the situation or the mood. He would often come off as rude and arrogant, insult people without realizing it, obsess over small details and maintained a very strict schedule that was nearly mechanical. I know that this sounds a bit condescending over the person, since the above factors alone don't necessarily give you Asperger's, after all he could just be a rude person who overly focused on the details, but if you worked with him for a couple of days you would get this feeling that something was slightly off.
That is about the definition of Asperger Syndrome. Do I know you? Everything there except the schedule part could be about me...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Meth might help, but will definitely screw up your life :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?