Autism Reversed in Mice at MIT Lab 303
ClayTapes writes "It seems that scientists at MIT have been able to reverse the effects of autism and some forms of mental retardation in mice caused by fragile X chromosomes. They do so by targeting an enzyme that changes the structure of connections between brain cells. The treatment actually repairs these structural abnormalities which suggests that it may be possible to reverse the effects in children who already show symptoms."
mice bred with autism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mental stability (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the answer is just as simple as 'cured'. But something tells me that it will never be that simple.
Re:Not misleading, but narrow scope (Score:3, Interesting)
People with Fragile X Syndrome have more dendritic spines than usual, but each is longer and thinner, and transmits weaker electric signals.
The only similarity is that fragile X syndrome has autism like symptoms. A bladder infection may give you the same symptoms as prostate cancer, but are entirely different.
Re:Definitely (Score:2, Interesting)
Dupe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Autism, Autism, or Autism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Definitely (Score:5, Interesting)
What I really wonder about is the converse. How many highly useful (in humans) drugs have been abandoned at an early stage because they had no effect on mice.
It's interesting that LSD was thought to have little more than a very mild stimulant effect (and had been abandoned in favor of more promising lysergic acid compounds) until Hoffman got some of it on him and took the first acid trip. Apparently either it's not all that apparent when a mouse is tripping or mice don't trip.
He was looking for a better medication to stop uterine bleeding.
See this [flashback.se].
I wonder what other "uninteresting" substances have been ignored because they don't happen to have any effect on humans in microgram doses and don't effect mice in any dosage.
Unfortunatly, there's no much of a solution to that since we can't have people randomly ingesting chemical experiments just to see.
Re:Disease vs. how people are (Score:3, Interesting)
The comparison to ADHD is false. In many cases I have seen, "hyperactivity" is simply the result of having a smart, energetic kid in a classroom where an authoritarian teacher refuses to let them excel.
I believe that my experiences as a person who still struggles for social success, but, perhaps as a consequence of this, does not struggle in other areas gives me some room to comment on this. As I am - that is, I can be sociable but with effort - I would not trade my advantages for greater sociability and less anxiety around people. However, were I more socially handicapped, to degree of a person with autism or Asperger's, my response would probably be different. If someone is going to be so handicapped that they require lifelong supervision, or that they cannot have meaningful relationships with others, it is probably best to intervene.
It is unfortunate that we cannot simply ask the child in question which they would prefer, and we cannot possibly anticipate what is truly at stake - that is, how profound their condition will ultimately be, and how they might be if they were "neurotypical". The issue is further complicated by the fact that autistic-advocacy groups desire to elevate their condition from a disease to a way of life. However, any group of people united by some factor will seek to validate themselves, so I do not think that this opinion is really valid in the same way as an objective analysis of how the child's life might turn out, and though they may have interesting (if odd) capabilities, I do not think I would trade places with an autistic person. Is this a chilling thought? Well, perhaps, but sometimes you have to make hard decisions as a parent.
But autistic mice don't *have* social habits... (Score:3, Interesting)
People with severe autism have no social life, for various reasons.
Mice with active cases of "severe autism" likely also have no social life. Keep them in cages with other mice, and it should be easy to tell which mice couldn't care less that there are other mice in their cages.
If an experimental treatment suddenly makes an "autistic" mouse notice and care that there are other mice in its cage, then it is treating the autism.
Re:Not so Definitely (Score:2, Interesting)
I may be bucking the general consensus, but a lot of people would not consider this a good thing.
First, there are the religious types, who dissapprove because "that's how God made them."
Then there are the parents (religious or not) who say "my child is special and I wouldn't want them any other way." You'd be surprised how often this sentiment gets expressed.
Not everyone believes that (and I don't mean it in a negative sense) is a laudible goal for science.
Re:Not so Definitely (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Definitely (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Colour blind" can be rewarding too (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Colour blind" can be rewarding too (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Definitely (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that simple, sadly (Score:3, Interesting)
So, yes, a lot of people can get a promotion or pass for the great guru, based on being socially adept at deceiving others. That much I'll admit. But when you actually get to see the code they produce, or that they spent a week debugging Java's HashMap because they don't actually have any fucking clue about how a hash table or a linked list work, you start to get the idea that maybe things do balance out.
(And no, that wasn't a made up example. I've had no less than 4 people so far come to me with "Java's HashMap is broken! It replaced my item with another that has the same hash code!" *Sigh*)
And I'll tell you one reason why it balances out: there are only 24 hours a day for everyone. Every hour you spend on popularity games, is one less hour you spend on something else, like learning to do your job. There's, if you will, some consolation in being ostracized in that you have that time available for someone else. Maybe a piss-poor consolation, but that's how it works. You have a couple of extra hours to code something or read a book, because you didn't use that time on your social skills.
Of course, the world isn't neatly divided into 100% ace or 100% incompetent, so there are a lot of people who can be _decent_ at two or more things. But when you really move towards the high end on any skill, you have to dedicate a lot of time to it. Try to do it for several unrelated skills, and you just don't have enough hours in a day for that.
Also, given that people perform the best at what they like, it would take some kind of mutant that's equally uber-interested in everything to excel at such a broad mix.
Basically I just don't believe the myth of people who are great, curve-busting even, at a several unrelated skills. It might make for a good unattainable ideal or for superhero comics, but I've yet to even hear of anyone IRL who was actually a great programmer/mathematician/physicist/whatever _and_ the life of the party _and_ a great athlete _and_ god knows what else. Unless they have a time machine and can get 48 hours in a day, it's just not going to happen.
Which brings us back to the first paragraph: so some people _fake_ it instead. They use their social skills to compensate for the lack of other skills, and basically paint an image of themselves that just isn't true. They'll compensate for their actual programming skill by putting up a careful show and taking credit for someone else's work. They'll compensate for their at best sporadic and mediocre athletic interests by spinning fabulous tales about it. Etc.
Sure, that can get them actually more appreciated, but it's not actually being curve-busting in those skills.
Alexander Shulgin develops and ingests... (Score:3, Interesting)
He was for a long time given immunity from the law in order to develop and test the substances he made basically by taking either a base phenethylamine or tryptamine molecule and then attaching every possible configuration of atoms around say, a phen's benzine ring and arm, until he exhausted possibilities. All the while he and his wife ate, smoked, and injected various dosages of the substances and recorded the effects.
So he's basically invented or at least scientificallly documented the effects of a plethora of psychedelic drugs which 95% of the population has never heard of, and some that everyone has heard of.
Phenethylamines such as MDMA (ecstacy) MDA, MDE, 2-CB, 2-CT7, 2-CI, DOB (Probably the Brown Acid)...
Tryptamines such as DMT (super powerful psychedelic and neurotransmitter), Ibogaine (being used to cure drug addicts/alcoholics), LSD, Melatonin & Seratonin (neurotransmitters), 5-HO-DMT (psilocin in magic mushrooms)
So you see, people can just be allowed to test out drugs, especially the willing and chemists who know what they're doing, and have an idea of the effect the substance might have. Because of Shulgin doing that, it has made way for helping a lot of people with depression, post truamatic stress disorder, migrane headaches, addiction, etc, so it is all not just for the sake of tripping out.
Clarification (for those who don't get it) (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to clarify, because obviously some of you don't get it: I have nothing against autistic people. Some of them are quite cool people. If they make an informed consent to refuse treatment for their condition, good for them, and I support them 100%. But we're not talking about an adult making an informed decision about the state of their own health here. We're talking about someone making a decision about the state of someone else's health based not on what's in the best interests of that person, but their own agenda.
And let's talk about agendas. The first one presented in the parent's post was religion. This is going to sound harsh, but it needs to be said. The health of your children takes precedence over your own delusions of how you think your god of choice defines moral. Let's say that instead of treating autism, we're talking about taking your son up on a mountaintop and killing him. If Bob the plumber does that and the police find out about it, when he tells them, "God is testing my faith," are they supposed to just say, "Oh, freedom of religion, we can't interfere. By all means, kill your son, Bob."? That's bullshit, and Abraham, who was presented with this situation in the Bible, should have told his petty god to go to hell; he's not going to kill his son.
Likewise, if you're going to deny treatment of a medical condition to your child because of religion, you should have that child taken away from you because while you're free to practice your religion to your hearts content when it comes to living your life how you want, you're obviously not capable of making responsible, informed decisions for someone else's health. (Sorry Jehovah's Witnesses, but this applies to you when it comes to blood transfusions.) Believe it or not, I highly respect religion, but not when it's causing direct harm to others.
The other situation presented was the "my child is special and I wouldn't want them any other way" agenda. Notice the wording of that sentence: I wouldn't want them any other way. Notice that a parent who says that isn't talking about what's best for the child; they're talking about what they want. There is a small contingent of people out there who are what I call "sufferers." You know the type, whenever you ask them, "How's it going?" instead of answering "not too bad" like any reasonable person does, they proceed to tell you about their back ache, their car repairs, their plumbing problems, their stupid brother who got arrested, and so on. They're the people who, if they won the lottery, would complain about how much taxes they're having to pay.
A subset of these people actually get off on being in a constant state of suffering. They love the attention that it brings to them from people who don't know them well. They just love that feeling when someone tells them, "Oh my god, that's awful! You poor thing!" Having a disabled child and not treating them because of this is about as scummy as it gets. If they want to wallow in their misery, I say, fine. But if they want to impose that misery on someone who can't make the decision for himself or herself, that's where I draw the line and say that a baseball bat is appropriate.
Now, speaking of the misery of autism, I'm not saying that everyone who has autism is miserable. Some of them are pretty much normal, and the cure may in fact be worse than the condition. If parents weigh the risks and benefits and come to the decision that it's not worth it, I'm fine with that, more power to them. But in many cases, autism is not just a matter of a child being different, it's a matter of a child not being able to function in society.
Is there a gray area? Sure, there almost always is. Should parents get leeway when they're operating within that gray area? You bet. But 1) if a low-risk high-success treatment becomes available, and 2) parents make the decision whether or not to have their child undergo it because of religion or what they want instead of the long-term health and well-being of the child, it's time for the baseball bat.
Re:You're a wacko (Score:3, Interesting)
Objectively speaking, I'd rather not be disabled. It is not such a crucial part of who I am that I couldn't leave it behind given the chance. I can't force people to feel otherwise, but I can offer them the chance to be honest about it.
I'd rather not "wait for a cure" but mobilize resources for finding one. And in the meantime while we don't have it, we can certainly seek to spend our time on more immediate-term projects that improve quality of life... and yes, society's attitudes are a big part of it. Accessibility, for example, enables so much and helps one to help oneself. My problem with the social-model style semantic trickery is that it a) turns a "simple and contained" and possibly resolvable medical issue into one that is rather oppressively all around the individual, pretty much everywhere and b) it makes communication with outsiders so much more difficult because of the impenetrable jargon and conceptualizing...
You're sounding a lot like some of the activist friends I have who start blaming me for wanting power over them when I'm saying that they might just consider the fact that they are not bound by honor or a desire to seem like some disabled heroes (a bit of a cult within the disabled activist community). They just actively miss the point, like you do.