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Mice Cured of Autism
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Feb 08, 2007 08:07 PM
from the of-mice-and-men dept.
from the of-mice-and-men dept.
noahisaac writes "My brother just sent me an article he posted for the Rett Syndrome Research Foundation about a cure for Rett Syndrome, a form of autism. According to the article, researchers successfully re-introduced a fully functional version of the MECP2 gene into mice that had been born with damaged MECP2 genes. Contrary to their expectations, the mice improved. In the article's words, 'restoration of fully functional MECP2 over a four week period eradicated tremors and normalized breathing, mobility and gait in mice that had previously been fully symptomatic and, in some cases, only days away from death.' The ramifications for people suffering from Rett Syndrome are obvious, but mutations of the MECP2 gene are also believed to be the cause of 'classic' autism, and a number of other neurological disorders."
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it's not a game... (Score:5, Funny)
So they're saying this will cure people of World of Warcraft?
They're working on that (Score:5, Funny)
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Time to start investing in potty chairs.
Re:They're working on that (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They're working on that (Score:4, Funny)
As I understand it (Score:2)
Sorry. In fact, my first reaction to the headline was Mice Cured Who? of Autism, picturing some kind of regimen designed to help human by engaging them
Most people do not know what Rett's is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Algernon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Algernon (Score:5, Insightful)
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Alice called -- she wants your next progress report.
This is slashdot, not alt.sysadmin.recovery -- not many people are likely to spot the reference here unless it involves Star Wars or Zero Wing.
Slashdot is doomed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is doomed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is doomed (Score:4, Funny)
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much of your normal social interaction isn't quite learned in the typical sense. it i
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How much will the treatment cost? (Score:5, Funny)
"About a hundred dollars."
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Runtime gene patching! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Runtime gene patching! (Score:4, Interesting)
Misleading title (Score:4, Insightful)
Congrats for the good job! (Score:2)
Girls only (Score:3, Informative)
From TFA: * Rett Syndrome (RTT) is a severe childhood neurological disorder, diagnosed almost exclusively in girls. The most physically disabling of the autism spectrum disorders, RTT strikes at random, affecting an estimated 1 in every 10,000 females.
* First symptoms usually appear between 6 to 18 months of age. Development slows or begins to regress. Children at this stage may exhibit the social withdrawal often seen in autism, or cry inconsolably for months as previously acquired language and motor skills disappear. In classic RTT, this regression is accompanied by the onset of constant, compulsive hand wringing and the loss of all functional hand use. The progression of symptoms varies across the RTT spectrum. Many children become wheelchair bound; those who walk display an abnormal stiff-legged gait.
* As the disease progresses, abnormal voluntary and involuntary movements reflect increasing neurological deficits. The children suffer apraxia, the inability to organize voluntary movement. Parkinson-like tremors are common, as are disordered breathing patterns and problems with chewing and swallowing. Some children require feeding tubes or supplementary oxygen. Abnormal brain wave patterns are present in RTT; a percentage of the children experience seizures.
* The only autism spectrum disorder with a known genetic cause, RTT results from mutations in the gene MECP2. This gene was first discovered by Adrian Bird, Ph.D in 1990. MECP2 regulates the expression of other genes by turning them off at the appropriate time.
* Mutations in MECP2 were identified as the cause of RTT in 1999 in the lab of Huda Zoghbi, M.D. MECP2 mutations are now being seen in some cases of childhood schizophrenia, classic autism and learning disabilities.
Re:Girls only (Score:4, Informative)
It's not been shown that heavy metal poisoning causes autism. Poisoning with lead or mercury can have neurological symptoms that are similar to autism, but removing the heavy metal and flushing it from the body causes rapid improvement in the poisoning patients, while autism has no cure. The mistaken belief that they're the same thing led a lot of parents to stop immunizing, despite every single reproducible study showing no link between the mercury-based compound that used to be found in such immunizations and autism. To wit, autism continues to gradually become more common despite the fact that mercury has now been completely removed from childhood vaccines.
The only statistically significant environmental link found so far to the onset of true autism cases that I've seen was a study that showed that the rollout of cable television appeared to be correlated to a moderate rise in autism in the neighborhoods and time periods of the rollout during the 80's.
Watch your words (Score:5, Informative)
1. Autism is definitely caused by the contributions of many genes;
2. There are various ways autism presents itself- presumably due to varying genetic contributions. Rett Syndrome is (in my understanding) an atypically (genetically) simple form of autism.
The implications are obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Mice cured... (Score:5, Funny)
And far away in some distant dimension, some pan-dimensional hyperintelligent beings have suddenly become extremely anti-social, developed a limp, and are currently wondering if this search for the ultimate question is worth all the bother...
Jim Sinclair (Score:5, Insightful)
Autism isn't something a person has, or a "shell" that a person is trapped inside. There's no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person--and if it were possible, the person you'd have left would not be the same person you started with.
This is important, so take a moment to consider it: Autism is a way of being. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism.
Therefore, when parents say,
"I wish my child did not have autism,"
what they're really saying is,
"I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead."
Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.
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It may be true for high functioning autistic children, but it's cruel to put guilt trips on parents who have autistic kids who can't speak or be potty-trained for wishing their beloved children were
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Re:Jim Sinclair (Score:5, Insightful)
I was seriously bullied and discriminated against at school (by teachers and pupils) and all through university and subsequent life, I have literally no friends or anyone to talk to outside of immediate family members, no chance of ever being in a loving relationship as the only women prepared to have anything to do with me turn out to be menatally ill - seriously, of the two women who've slept with me one turned out to be a schizophrenic and the other had Munchausen syndrome - and a career which has stalled due not to a lack of ability but rather to my inability to connect with people and the fact everyone at work finds me just so damn weird. As a result of these and other problems connected with my AS I now, at the age of 35, suffer from chronic intractable depression. I was, in fact, formally diagnosed with AS after being referred to a consultant psychiatrist for depression last year.
I fully acknowledge that if I did not have AS I would not be the same individual that I am. That does not bother me. So far as I'm concerned AS has caused me to have a life that is not really worth living and I would have been quite happy (in so far as that concept has meaning when discussing an emotional reaction to non-existence) for someone else, with a slightly different set of genes to me who would have been better at life and enjoyed it a little more, to have taken my place (my therapist hates this line of argument btw - we have huge rows about whether people who say they are happy with AS really believe what they say or are just fooling themselves in a desperate attempt to bolster their self esteem and playing the "noble, stoic cripple" role that society prefers its handicapped members to adopt). If there was a cure I would jump at it.
I also have to say that, although it's a moot point (see above), if I did ever find a woman willing to breed with me, having had the life I've had and having gone through what I've gone through I would seek genetic counselling and take whatever steps were available to prevent any child of mine from being born with AS (or any other form of autism). I know that the question of whether a bad existence is better than non-existence is extremely difficult from a theoretical perspective but, so far as I'm concerned, if you bring child into the world who you know will have a hellish existence and you could have prevented it, you've done wrong.
Re:Jim Sinclair (Score:4, Interesting)
Deaf Culture and Medical Treatment (Score:3, Insightful)
wait a minute!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Here [autism.org] is the source of this info.
damn mice! (Score:5, Funny)
But adults may still be out of luck (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's [newscientist.com] another article about it.
Discoveries Require Terrific Education (Score:2)
The U.S. & Canada have terrific engineers and bio-researchers, but we need even more, yet we are not increasing students in these arenas, we are seei
What then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Classic autism aside (Score:3, Insightful)
Classic autism aside, I think a lot of people are suffering from a sociological autism that will *not* be improved by gene therapy. What is autism exactly, is there a definition? I can imagine one, but I'm not sure everyone is on the same page with this relatively new disease.
In other words, I don't think gene therapy will get my dad to shop at designer clothing stores, get his car tuned, or hire contractors to improve his house.
Yawn... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait...
I just wanted to say. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cliff Robertson coming out of retirement... (Score:3, Funny)
But do we really 'need' to cure them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon clip:
Corporate life in early 21st-century America is even more ruthless than it was at the turn of the millennium. Lou Arrendale, well compensated for his remarkable pattern-recognition skills, enjoys his job and expects never to lose it. But he has a new boss, a man who thinks Lou and the others in his building are a liability. Lou and his coworkers are autistic. And the new boss is going to fire Lou and all his coworkers--unless they agree to undergo an experimental new procedure to "cure" them.
The short version: Autistics all have gifts that we just don't recognize, what if they don't want to be 'cured'
Hallelujah (Score:3, Insightful)
I've also written numerous times that I believe that the overwhelming predominance of autism in the Linux community is the single main thing holding Linux as an operating system back. Autistics who use Linux (Stallman being primary among them) believe that their philosophical view is morally superior, when I feel that in reality it (particularly the degree of repetitive consistency of the message over time) is simply a result of their neurological disability.
The "five freedoms" aren't things Linux users care about so strongly because they're people with an inherently more developed moral sense than most people, or because of the inherent moral value of the ideas; they're things that Linux users care about to that degree because autism causes rote, uncontrollable fixations with certain concepts or areas of interest, sometimes on a long term basis. In some kids with Asperger's it's trains or a collection of toilet brushes. In the case of Stallman and the Debian developers, it's a perverted definition of software freedom. The fixation is with an abstract concept rather than physical objects, but that's about the only difference.
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