Mice Cured of Autism 233
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."
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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Re:They're working on that (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They're working on that (Score:4, Funny)
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Time to start investing in potty chairs.
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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 with software.
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Most people do not know what Rett's is... (Score:3, Interesting)
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What we are talking about here is a form of gemocide. Have you seen Xmen 3? Its the same thing, as parents fear the words "your child has autism", as, certanly in the US, there is a high proportion of parents wanting only normal and perfect children. Parents with autistic children, can, and do find it hard work, even for people with High Functioning Autism like Aspergers Syndrome. I, for instan
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Should we halt all further study on any genetic disease now because it could lead to Heroes like super-powers? Clearly curing Huntington's and Down's syndromes would be tantamount to genocide as well...
Look, the fact that you'v
Algernon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Algernon (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well theres not a choice for +1 Literary Reference or +1 Nostalgia, so ... You kind of just have to go with it.
It definitely made me want to read that book again. -sigh- Have to go find it now.
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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.
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Usually when a Slashdot comment brings me to tears, it's because of the atrocious grammar.
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 is ingrained rather deeply. you don't even notice all the things you pick up on someone, which is what i don't pick up on. not having those subtle cues that people assume you pick up on does make things very awkward in meeting people.
that isn't the only e
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Social ineptitude or withdrawal does not imply Asperger's. Neither does being good at math or coding. I truely suck at math and if you'd meet me IRL you'd find me quite nice and sociable. But that's all learned behaviour, I still have Asperger's.
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I'm not saying there aren't nice people out there, I'm saying most people will try and not get involved, or their threshold for intervention is very high. For example, the same people that might not help you when you slip, may help if they saw you bleeding on the ground, who knows.
I'm shocked when people hold doors open, which happens enough I suppose, but I've seen my share o
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That doesn't necessarily mean these people care how anyone else feels, or even that they'll understand how or why - but they'll have it easier navigating society, distinguishing between jok
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Two, at least they did walk around instead of over or on him... Seriously, what did you expect them to do?
Three, you need to move to the south. There's less ice here to slip on, and people hold doors open for others all the time. It shocks me not at all when someone holds the door op
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I quit the bus altogether after having to sit two days in a row next to the woman who would be shouting non-stop the whole
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"Well the empathy thing is common amongst 99% of the population? Don't trust me? Pretend to slip on a busy sidewalk and see how many people stop to see if you're ok."
Where does extreme pessimism fit in? Just because your anecdotal experiences haven't shown you a lot of empathy doesn't mean it isn't there. Your example seems a bit off the definition as far a I under
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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)
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So Rett syndrome is a candidate for gene therapy, if the issues with gene therapy can be hammered out...
If you haven't noticed by now, this whole site is the second biggest load of non-xists trying to wr
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Or perhaps I'm just too tired from standing up managing a flow line all night. I dunno, is it Friday, yet?
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Besides, this gene therapy only fixes the outward symptoms of Rett syndrome (tremors and such), not necessarily the cognitive problems (which are hard to measure in mice anyway).
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So they spliced a stop codon into the middle of the relevant gene to disable it, then delivered an enzyme all the way to cell nuclei (!) to delete what they spliced in. The next step then it seems is then to find or engineer a proper enzyme to patch a naturally occurring gene defect -- they've basically proven that runtime patching of the genome works. Nice.
No. Run-of-the-mill. Cre-lox is a standard system in molecular biology (discovered back in the '80s, first used in mice in the early '90s, IIRC), and has been used countless times to perform gene knock-out experiments. The idea of using a knock-in approach to create a disfunctional gene and then lox out the stop codon to make it functional again might be a little unusual and elegant, but I doubt that it's novel.
Rather, the take-home message of the research was that autism could be reversed at all. To
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.
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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.
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And they still haven't come up with any actual proof that such a thing as autism even exists.
The
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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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=woman+c
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Re:Jim Sinclair (Score:4, Interesting)
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Deaf Culture and Medical Treatment (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is that there has developed the attitude among (some) deaf people that being deaf and speaking sign have created a deaf community and culture separate (or at least equally valid) as that of
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This experiment won't 'cure' autism directly, but it will provide data that migh
word games... (Score:2, Insightful)
Therefore, when parents say,
"I wish my child did not have the flu,"
what they're really saying is,
"I wish the sneezing, sniffling child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-flu-having) child instead."
Duh.
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Mod Parent up.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have been officially diagnosed with Aspergers and I can attest to much of what the parent has stated.
If I had been born with a typical neural system I would not be the person that I am today. True, I spent time (and still do) obsessively pursuing new interests while other people were busy making friends, but those things that I learn are all useful and many of them allow me to earn a decent income. In fact, I suspect having Aspergers allows me to becom
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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 not stricken with such a horrible disorder. It's a 'way of being' as much as Down Syndrome is.
(and I speak as someone with (diagnosed) Asperger's and two severely autistic siblings.)
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The point which you are failing to make is that "autism" doesn't exist, and is just a lumping-together of many, many different traits that look similar to the educated observed who hasn't carefully studied them. Some of
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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.
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Okay, now -- I understand your point, but don't judge others. I have AS as well, but I feel that it is an important part of my self, my life, and my current happiness. I've even gone so far as to remark to my wife that if our kids won't have Asperger's Syndrome, I'd just as soon not have any.
My childhood was miserable. I was depressed, and often suicidal, from a very young age. However, in spite of my environment, I grew out of it. I firmly believe that I could be a better and happier person if I had
wait a minute!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Here [autism.org] is the source of this info.
This is /.! (Score:2)
damn mice! (Score:5, Funny)
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Just a thought.
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Clever...
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 seeing declines in most notes I see (decidedly unscientific, I am). And it starts with parents.
Some parents don't care, and others take a "social" position of telling their kids to become something "popular" like a Lawyer. I have a god-daughter who is a stra
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I went into law because it was one of the few reasonably lucrative careers that played into my strengths--hist
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...
Taking a joke too far. (Score:2)
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I have no idea when that will happen, but I highly suspect that the cure won't be given away for free.
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Alright. *gives you copy of "Atlas Shrugged"*
Uh, wait a minute...... *grabs it back* Go buy your own!
Mice... (Score:2)
Genetically-modified people? (Score:2)
Heck, the "organic" food crowd would have you believe, that eating genetically modified foods may be gravely dangerous to you and the humanity.
I would've ignored this crowd for the loons they are, yet, unfortunately, for well-grown food to be given the coveted "Organic" label, it has to be made from non-GM ingredients. That's just annoying — and gratuitously more expensive.
Yet here they are talking about genetically modifying people directly... Why are we willing to modify a sick person's genes, b
I just wanted to say. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have AS, it's ruined my life and I would like nothing more than to be cured (while acknowledging that, even if such a thing were possible, I'd almost certainly be too old for it to make any difference. You mention keeping your personality quirks under control but I've always found that's the easy part. How do you deal with the isolation and loneliness engendered by the inability to talk to people or make conversation about anything other than technical subjects? That's the part that has me
Multiply Determined (Score:2, Informative)
Cure "To Rett" Syndrome? (Score:2)
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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To those who didn't get the reference and modded parent down: that was a reference to the claim that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative previously used in vaccines, may be responsible for a massive growth of several neurological disorders. [rollingstone.com] Others say that, however, that claim is sensationalist bullshit. [slate.com]
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You had me at "have more premarital sex."
Remember, it's for the children!!