Possible Cure For Autism 431
Henry V .009 writes "Scientists in New Jersey are claiming that children with autism are unable to metabolize key fatty acids that fight brain-damaging inflammations. They have already developed urine/blood tests to identify at-risk children. A preventive cure to autism may be as simple as a 'therapeutic cocktail' of fatty acids. Human trials could start later this year."
Oblig. Definitely fatty acids... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey cool - my med school - UMDNJ (Score:2)
New Jersey is also the state with the most Nobel prize laureates (although, I'm not sure about that now, since a few died).
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You'd think they'd have figured that little bit out by now.
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This is not good! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Insightful)
People want to believe that Aspies are fakers, because Aspies generally inspire dislike, which makes people want an excuse for disliking them.
The issue is, if people are really faking, and they *can* be likable, what is it they need an excuse for? Saying that someone is faking Asperger's to have an excuse is a bit like saying someone is faking Tourette's to have an excuse for shouting obscenities in public. If they *didn't* have Tourette's, why would they be shouting them in the first place?
(Because it's a lot more pleasant to fit in than to not fit in, but have an excuse, even if the excuse is accepted.)
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Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Informative)
My oldsest friend has actually been diagnosed and is on disability because he cannot perform really useful work and/or interact with people. Unlike the self-diagnosers he can creep people out just by saying hello to them, he isn't just "odd," dislikable or lacking social skills, he's clearly "wrong." People clutch their children to them when he walks by because he even moves creepy in ways that cannot be easily defined.
But here's the thing, even though he can now talk (at tedious length) about being an Aspie he thinks he's charming - while he casually picks up someone's personal diary and starts reading it aloud in a public setting. He would have read the DSM and been absolutely clueless that he exhibited. He can say "I don't fit in," but he doesn't know he doesn't fit in.
The real Aspie does not whine about not fitting in; he lacks the capacity to know he doesn't fit in. That's what makes him an Aspie. He walks around saying "What the fuck is wrong with them?" when people clutch their children to them when he walks by, assuming he even notices (my friend didn't know people do this until one man actually yelled at him "Stay away from my kids or I'll beat the crap out of you, you fucking creep!"). The difference between the socially awkward geek and the socially retarded Aspie is night and day when you put them next to each other. The socially awkward can go to charm school and learn; the Aspie cannot. He does not see what he is supposed to be learning and thus cannot even reproduce it on a purely mechanical level. His eyebrows or something will continue to act fucking creepy.
One may exhibit every symptom of Asperger's to some degree or other without actually having it. It is defined by the incapacity for socialization.If you haven't been diagnosed but think you're an Aspie, you're probably just a jerk who can learn to behave better if you really want to.
The classic Aspie isn't the socially awkward tech geek; it's the socially agressive Robert Johnson who died of trying to pick up other men's wives right in front of them; without the slightest realization that he was doing something risky. He died clueless of why he died, even while the guy knifing him was screaming "Stay away from my woman, you fucking asshole!"
KFG
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Re:This is not good! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not to say you are wrong, as I think you are right. Just making suring others don't misunderstand your point and take it to mean that what you've described is the only form Asperger's takes.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Informative)
There are 2 Aspies in my family. One is my brother, one is my nephew. My brother is absolutely clueless that he doesn't fit in because he absolutely cannot recognize the subtle signs that people show to indicate that he's not being recieved well. While many Aspie people are shy because social situations bewilder them, my brother is not - he will force himself upon all and sundry and he thinks people love him because he's not able to process facial expressions etc. He's starting to get clued in now because he realises he's 40 years old and hasn't ever had a real relationship (never got past a second date) and has come to accept that maybe it *isn't* that everyone else is defective with relationships, but that he's got issues.
My nephew is actually quite charming in a very shy sort of way. My sister told him at a very young age, when she realized that he wasn't "getting" social stuff that she would help him learn how to recognize when people were put off by him. For him, every social encounter is an excercise in observation and processing the results and making guesses - he has done it out loud before, and it is just amazing the stuff he says. "Oh, she is smiling, but her knuckles are white and her tendons are standing out on her hand and she is hunching her shoulders and she hasn't said anything except to nod and look around so I think she is nervous and wants to get away." He's 22 now, and getting better all the time - more subtle about the thinking that goes on - but he's told me that the only reason he thinks he's different from other people is because people tell him that. It just wouldn't occur to him otherwise.
The difference between those two people and those who want to claim to have it is stark. Just being able to have the personal insight to even begin to make the attempt at self-diagnosis is something that can be a differential.
Note: Not saying all aspies are just like my brother or nephew, all comments should be taken as qualified by "in my opinion" or "in my experience" etc. and so on.
Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Informative)
But you CAN learn to fit in - or at least to know where you're likely to have problems and make adjustments accordingly.
You know that you can focus on pretty much any narrow subject and become insanely specialised in it. One day I decided to try to broaden my horizons - so I picked a subject far from work or computers. I decided to get interested in 1960's cars - it was interesting - it came easily - but (predictably) because I have Aspergers, I'm now a leading expert in exactly one make of car and can pretty much name every part - every change for every model year...you get the picture I'm sure. It was no harder than learning a new programming language.
OK - so if you can do that, then you can focus on learning how conversations with other humans 'work'. You can study that with scientific rigor - and whilst it won't ever be a 'natural' thing - you'll be able to fake it pretty well. I don't feel comfortable in idle chit-chat - but I can fake it well enough to get by without coming off as being completely weirdo (or at least I think I can - maybe there are subliminal cues that I'm completely missing that say that I can't!).
You need to do some deliberate 'horizon broadening' so you have at least a handful of interesting things that you know well - but it's not hard to do that. Then you need to sharply rein in that awful tendency we have to tell everyone who will listen the difference between the Mk I 2.5" carberettor fuel feed adjustment and the improved Mk II model. Save that for writing Wikipedia articles. Ration yourself to a few high level sentences on your favorite topics "I restore classic cars"..."I'm working on a '63 Mini Cooper"..."They were successful rally cars" - then that's your lot. You have shut the heck up about that subject and only briefly answer direct questions about '63 Mini Coopers until the next topic of conversation comes around. Learn some vapid questions that cause the other person to feel the need to talk. A 'normal' friend said that "...and how does that make you feel?" works great in response to almost anything a woman says to you. It's hard to believe it - but that seems to work really well. You can actually research that stuff.
Make sure that people who are close to you know that you don't do well at picking up subtle cues from speech. It's no use someone dropping subtle hints that they want you to do something - you'll never notice them. Tell them: "You have to tell me directly - no matter what - you won't ever upset me by doing that". This is why we geeks have trouble with women. They are dropping large hints that they like you and want you to make your move *NOW*...you have no clue that they are saying that because they never seem to come right out and say "OK - tonight you're going to get laid" - or "Don't bother, it's never going to happen"...which is a shame because it would make life a whole lot easier if they did.
Being tall is nothing to do with it. Being tall correlates well with success in most fields.
You CAN learn what you need - you just have to care enough to do it. I just wish someone had told me this thirty years before I found out myself.
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No amount of practice can make a deaf person hear.
That's the whole point: a deaf person does not know what it is to hear. No matter how intelligent they are they cannot compensate for their inability to hear without substantial guidance from a hearing counsellor.
It is equally unlikely that anyone with a clinical presentation of Aspergers would be able to successfully emulate "natural" behaviour without effect
Re:This is not good! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm only 27, but I've had a lot of the same fight. I've only known about my AS for about three years. When I did know for sure, I showed some of the literature to my mother. She immediately breathed a deep breath, her eyes kind of glazed over, and she said quite a number of things I won't repeat here. The gist was that, even as a schoolteacher trained in dealing with kids like me, she had never recognized it from my behavior and didn't suspect what some of the stranger symptoms meant (fear of physical contact, tiptoeing, echolalia, etc.) -- she just thought I was a sullen, introspective child.
I think more people could learn to deal with us. But for people with AS, the tendency is to take the burden on ourselves. We analyze social interaction as a rule-based system and learn enough, intuitively, to get by. But it's like the "Digital Divide" effect seen in CGI characters crafted to look human... The more closely we can approximate neurotypical reactions and behaviors, the 'creepier' we seem to get, because the subtle differences stand out in contrast. And some people, upon really realizing how different things are below the surface, react quite strongly, to wit: your post above.
People won't pity you, and they won't make concessions, because the very act of participating in society hides your differences. If they saw you in a mental institution, or a hospital, they might have some heartfelt reaction of pity or a desire to help. But if they talk to you on the street, you're a wierdo who won't look them in the eye, and sometimes silently repeats what he just said -- a crazy person dressed up to look like an intelligent, handsome, healthy, well-composed young man, and it scares them.
But for people to concede your difference and willingly interact with you, you must provide some overwhelmingly positive basis for that difference. If it is assumed that you are different because you are an artist, or a musician, or a genius, you can get a foot in the door. Many with AS, though, don't have an outstandingly positive trait, and they suffer greatly because their differences are never sanctioned, only condemned and punished. And no matter how hard they try, many will never be able to emulate neurotypical responses 100% -- they'll give off a "bad vibe" that nobody can qualify, all the worse as they try harder.
You, sir, are a jerk. You can empathize with an animal because you concede that they will behave differently. By making no concessions for differing behavior from other human beings, you will find yourself unable to interact with a tremendous number of people. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, while the barriers erected against individuals with AS may be insurmountable, it is you who has the greater social disorder by far.
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I repeat, I have maintained a friendly relationship with one for decades, a man other grown men will literally hide from if they see him coming. I also tutor them in math and music, because they want me to, because they can be at ease around me, something they aren't used to and they like it.
. .
Perhaps you should change your user name t
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Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing properly called a "fad" lasts for 12 years, which is the shortest required duration for even one of these landmark dates in the history of Asperger's to fall within the "fad of making everything a disorder". Perhaps you are referring to something more long term than what most people would think of as a fad; if that is the case, my apologies for misunderstanding. If not, then Asperger's Syndrome clearly predates the "fad" you refer to as well.
[1] Wikipedia's page on Asperger Syndrome, History section.
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-Eric
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Anybody who's been around kids with autism for any length of time would quickly realize that it definitely is a real disorder, and not a fad. There's a kid who lives by my parents who spends most days rocking back and forth, and scouring the neighborhood for sticks to put in his wagon. I think he's in his teens right now. When he was younger, he had to wear
Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Interesting)
I did think about asking slashdot, but they were sod all use when I lost my Swiss army knife. P.S. I found it now - no thanks to you. Bastards.
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Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like you.
Autism is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder, not "smart people acting weird". Just because Hollywood somehow made it glamorous to be autistic, doesn't mean it's remotely accurate.
Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that there is no bright line between "Autism" and "Aspergers" (and no bright line between "Aspergers" and normality at the other end of the scale). We have a range of brain types ranging along a continuum from normal to completely autistic - and we've chosen to confuse matters still further by giving the people in the middle of that range another name for their position along the line.
But this is where the moral dilemma strikes. Those of us (and I'm one of them) with Aspergers frequently benefit from it. Notably, Asperger "victims" who are programmers are able to focus their minds on a tiny problem for insane amounts of time - to be happy to amass vast amounts of ultra-detailed knowledge on ridiculously small topics. This is "A Good Thing" for some of us to be able to do.
I for one would strongly resist being "cured". I like being this way. There are undoubtedly downsides - I'm terrible at reading sarcasm and 'undercurrents' and body language and other societal cues...I know that I suck at this and I try my hardest to make allowances for my possible lack of knowledge. I tell people I work with "don't hint - tell!" - and my wife has come to understand that - yes - I'm even worse than most guys at picking up on subtle hints. I walk on tiptoes too - a classic Asperger symptom which people think is odd. But the benefits (I'm happy and I earn a pile of cash for doing what I do) by far outweigh the downsides. I just wish someone had told me about this when I was 10 years old instead of waiting for me to figure it out in my late forties! Jeez - I have so many memories of teenage problems which just make me cringe when I look back on them and realise how things I did must have looked to other people!
So - at what point in the fuzzy region between 'Severe Aspergers' and 'Mild Autism' do we start the magic treatment?
We could greatly damage society by making the cut too close to the 'normality' side - we gain great benefits from Nerds. Yet we would unnecessarily ruin the lives of too many severe autism sufferers if we went too far the other way and refused to treat people with more severe symptoms.
Where do you make the cut? It's a tough call.
Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Interesting)
The best solution that occurs to me (when faced with the problem of an autism cure, not just this treatment) is to let people choose for themselves, with of course informed consent, a waiting period, and a minimum age. In the case of people who are crippled to the point that they are incapable of communicating thier decision (or having it communicated to them), is to go ahead and give them the treatment in an experiment. I doubt a profound autistic could handle the change from their normal life to "normalcy". I doubt I could make that transformation.
Oh, as a slight tangent... I realize that many people who are not diagnosed (and probably not even aspie) are 'proud autistics', but is there really that many people who claim Asperger's as a reason for their eccentricities? I have spent the last decade and a half of my life trying to fit in, and have only just in the last half a year had reasonable success. It seems incredible to me that significant portions of the nuero-typical population would pretend to be on the spectrum.
Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Messing with peoples brains (their personalities - their 'souls' to use a quaint term) is dangerous stuff. What happens if you cure them - and only after they are "normal" do they clearly and coherently point out that they were happier beforehand?
Not easy.
I recently started to have hearing problems - and was told by the audiologist that a CAT scan of my head would help him to see what was going on. During the scan, they found a 2cm x 1cm x 1cm tumor on my temporal lobe - totally unrelated to the hearing problem. This (needless to say) put me into a complete state of panic - but they told me that from the way the brain was folded around it, it must have appeared when I was a small child and stopped growing in my early teens - and has not changed since. I remarked that maybe it would be a good idea to get rid of it anyway - but as the doctor pointed out - your temporal lobe is where your 'personality' lives. If we "fix" this problem you may not be "you" afterwards. Which makes me think - if that thing hadn't popped into my head at age 12 or so - I wouldn't be the "me" I am now. If I had had truly "informed consent" back when I was a kid, would I have taken it? Would I take it in hindsight?
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Re:This is not good! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. If you tell people that you have , they go "Like that kid in ! Yeah? So why aren't you twitchy/shaky/screaming obscenities in public?"
2. It gets overdiagnosed, and you become "just another aspergers/autistic kid".
3. Help dries up. So many shockingly crap parents that want a disease to blame for their incompetence as a caregiver go out and book appointments with the specialists so you can't get in for 6 months; they buy all the pills to comatose their kids, increasing the demand so up goes the price; and all the people who once gave a crap about helping people with aspergers/autism get so disillusioned with the amount of badly raised perfectly normal kids that walk through their doors, that they unknowingly turn away the people they wanted to help.
It's ADD all over again...
Re:This is not good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most autistic people aren't also savants. Hollywood has glamorized savantism to a degree, but hasn't really glamorized regular old autism.
Fat kids.. lol (Score:2)
fatty acids (Score:3, Funny)
I could use a therapeutic cocktail (Score:2)
Make it a double.
This prevents damage (Score:5, Insightful)
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Furthermore, taking fatty acids wouldn't even fully prevent the brain from being damaged in an autistic. They would just
Ah hah! (Score:5, Funny)
It would appear I have no problem metabolizing fatty acids. I'm definitely safe.
Slashdot quoting (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I'm not responsible for the story link that pops up a big Printer Dialog when you click it.
Expect a shitstorm to arise from this (Score:5, Insightful)
Shitstorm (Score:2)
There was some deaf kid, and when doctors discovered that his hearing could be restored surgically, the deaf community freaked right out. Apparently some people have started to think of deafness as some wonderful gift that makes them unique and special, rather than as the hideous disability that it really is.
I've even started hearing about people who regard Down's syndrome as a legitimate form of Human variability, rathe
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You have to be careful - generalizing doesn't always work.
You'll get no argument from me that deafness, downs syndrome, or full-on autism are obviously detrimental compared to hearing / full mental function. The problem comes with the less obvious cases... attention deficit disorder for example, or color blindness.
I've got a friend who is red-green color blind, and
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The problem is that autism isn't a binary diagnosis. If you have a broken leg - fix it. If you don't have a broken leg then don't cover your leg with plaster and walk around on crutches for a couple of months. Easy choice. But Autism is a spectrum of conditions running from mild geekiness through Asperger's to someone who is completely and devastatingly cut off from the world. There's the problem. It's very clear that at one end of the line a cure is a wonderful
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I think you've just described about 70% of us reading slashdot. Except for the "strength" bit.
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A large part of the noise generated by the [deaf/blind/retarded/dwarfism/other] communities is coming from caregivers, parents & family members.
A certain percentage will always say "
Fish oils baby! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
"Drink your fatty acid cocktail, dear, your psychiatrist has a new BMW to pay for..."
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Always keep this in mind: things are the way they are precisely because people want it that way. If they wanted things to be different, it's entirely within their power to change. All they have to do is stop being idiots for the 0.4 seconds it takes to put
do we want to do this?! (Score:2, Interesting)
False Perception (Score:3, Insightful)
There are healthy people with Savant-level mathematical skills. But no one really cares. But in someone with no real personality, someone who doesn't have conversations, someone who doesn't do any of th
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There's a lot of human variability, and that includes mental capacity.
If you had the option to eliminate the genes that made men weigh over 200 pounds, would that be a good deal? It would definitely get rid of the male obesity problem. It would reduce deaths due heart disease. It would also make football and heavyweight boxing pretty lame, and it would reduce the physical labor capacity of the population immensely - sometimes a heavily muscled construction worker type is damn useful.
Sure, it's obvious tha
Wasn't this already put on film? (Score:2)
Does anyone else remember this? It was a made for tv type movie.
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The movies outlines a diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_Diet [wikipedia.org] called the ketogenic diet, consisting of a coctail of fats basically. I should have went to IMDB.com first. From IMDB.com:
10 out of 10 people found the following comment useful
PG-13 - intense emotional and physical depiction of a child's illness, 20 December 2004
Author: ryanlupin from London, England
In this alternately heartbreaking and uplif
Sounds like Lorenzo's Oil (Score:2, Interesting)
simple explanation (Score:2, Informative)
As a parent of a child with autism who follows the DAN! protocal EFAs are essential to my son's progress. He takes a daily dose of fish oil. This is nothing new or great or even a "cure"....for those of us parents who are working on recovering our children this has been around for a while.
In fact EVERYONE can benefit from a daily dose. Its much better than the cod liver oil of the past, many are flavored now or in gel cap form, my
The cure is vampirism (Score:2)
Another day, another stupid false hope. (Score:5, Interesting)
We will begin with the obvious problem that they are treating autism as a single disorder. We don't know a great deal about the spectrum, but we certainly know that autistic symptoms can be found in a large number of discrete conditions. "Autism" is probably a final common pathway of subtle neurologic failure, and the idea that a single enzyme is associated has been discredited repeatedly. In fact, every time we think we've found "the" cause, more research shows us that we have found, at most, "a" cause, and usually not one that is common. Fragile X syndrome, Rett's syndrome, and others were all previously lumped in as "autism", and I don't think we're done finding things.
The next obvious problem is that if we indeed have a single liposomal storage disease causing most or all autism, you would find it with brain biopsy and/or MRI. We have not found this. You would expect other commonalities as well, since failures of fat metabolism generally have organ impacts outside the brain. We have not found these. I would be unsurprised to discover that there is a rare disorder of this sort with autistic symptoms present, but it means nothing for the vast majority of individuals with autism.
Don't get me wrong - I would give the rest of my life willingly if it would cure my son. I will be grateful beyond words if this works. But it won't, any more than secretin did when it was the last great hope for autism. I have learned much in the fifteen years of my son's life, and the thing I have learned most is that people who claim to have "the cure for autism" are lying. Not always in an evil fashion, and not necessarily knowingly, but they are saying something that is not true.
One minor niggle. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another day, another stupid false hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I'm always late for these things...
My wife is an SLP in a school for autistic children and sees the snake oil marketed to parents as a treatment for autism (of course, marketing themselves in the strictly legal sense, avoiding the magic words that'll land them in hot water). Kelation, vitamins, massage, gluen free diets, raw food diets, etc etc all make the rounds without any real results. Hell, one of her parents are both neurosurgeons who send their daughter for kelation and have a tutor come to their home to pump her head with knowledge to show off that their kid isn't a complete retard.
Parents want their kids to be normal. Many perceive a clinician's attempt at injecting reality into the situation as an overworked teacher giving up on their kid. They'll pay any amount of money to the next charlatan to come down the pike offering nebulous claims. It's sad, I hope that there is a special level of hell for people who prey on the desperate in this fashion.
UMDNJ is crooked as a dog's leg (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A blood test eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A blood test eh? (Score:5, Funny)
I've been using chat programs and on online forums since 1996 and have never seen someone flame someone else and then later claim to have aspergers.
So, I just have to ask: What the hell straw man are you roundhousing to the face, chuck?
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Don't be too quick with the label. As a society, we've started to overdiagnose many conditions, and that hampers proper medical care. But it is just as bad, if not worse, to underdiagnose those who are suffering.
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Apparently, those suffering from "non-chelated pervasive developmental delay not otherwise specified or Asperger's disorder" do not have "significantly increased median coproporphyrin levels", which is the method used in the article to diagnose the more severe forms of autism spectrum disorders. (Note: There is an increase in the median
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The general argument goes like this:
"It's okay for us to torture autistics, because anyone who can object isn't a real autistic. Therefore no one objects."
http://www.autistics.org/library/whoisautistic.ht
Unlearn.
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I'd rather not go into how having this has affected my life, as that is fairly personal to me, but Asperger's Syndrome is vastly different from a diagnosis of "geek" or "smart" or whatever else. And yes, I can suffer from Asperger's and still have the c
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How is being autistic anymore of an excuse for not dealing with life than being normal? Life doesn't stop fuck
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Re:Autism rates (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, is the Modern Scientific Method.
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How much more evidence of trans-fat induced mental illness can you provide than currently exists showing that mercury is a known, proven poison for developing brains? Seriously, one question. That's it. Every doctor on the planet will tell you that mercury is toxic. What evidence exists showing that trans-fats have anything to do with autism? Or brain development?
It's rather suprising how nobody seems to question doctors, pharmacos, or the drones of citizens who read a fucking marketing brochu
Re:Autism rates (Score:5, Insightful)
It took me quite a while to come to grips with the fact that my son has this condition. I've also done a lot of thinking on why so many kids today are being diagnosed with it as opposed to twenty years ago and the answer came from my Mother of all people. She saw nothing wrong with my son. "He's just a little behind" she said. "Your brother didn't start speaking until he was almost three" she said.
Explaining away the condition as some medical conspiracy is ignorance at its finest. Perhaps in the future you should study a little more and get a little more experience with topics you feel you need to comment so strongly on before you make such absurd statements (and no, the internet, while fun, is not the best place to learn if you're looking for facts).
While I appreciate the fact that you took five minutes out of your day to give the matter some thought and you decided that in your limited experience you've never heard of or seen anything that would lead you to believe autism was anything more than mercury poisoning, I'll have to side with the researchers and the doctors and the therapists I've spoken with who have actual years of experience dealing with children afflicted by this condition.
Just because you'd never heard of it in such numbers before doesn't mean they weren't there. They were simply explained away, ignored, or treated quietly while the rest of society went about its business. Not understanding a disease is not the same as it not existing.
Re:Autism rates (Score:4, Informative)
So- of those few vaccines that still contain thimerosal, such as Fluzone (the most I can find in the tables, at 25 micrograms mercury for a 0.5 mL injection), how does that compare with what you eat?
You get twice that much by ingestion from a single gram of chunk white tuna. Or, from the Mercury Calculator [gotmercury.org], two ounces of canned albacore is 180% of what a 40-pound child should eat in a day.
Of course, injection is very different from ingestion- but the example I give is extreme. After the influenza vaccines, thimerosal levels drop off dramatically- and virtually all use of thimerosal was discontinued years ago.
So stop whining about vaccinating your kids. There are low- and no-thimerosal options for everything but straight TT (tetanus toxin), and you can get your kid stuck for tetanus without thimerosal by using Tdap or another vaccine with a tetanus component. And in another 5 years or so, we'll know for sure if the thimerosal was responsible. Until then, your kids get way more exposure from food, water, and air than vaccines.
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The grandparent post mentioned 2 possibilities. You tear down one, but ignore the other, where your objection is not valid. Herpes has become far more common in recent generations; the majority of the adult population have an immune response to HSV-1 (Herpes Simplex Virus, type 1; generally acquired during childhood), and a sizable minority
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Just to throw in another possibility previously discussed on slashdot, perhaps "TV" helps cause autism in those susceptible to it. See:
"TV Really Might Cause Autism"
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/1 7/0435250 [slashdot.org]
Though others disagree:
"Does Watching TV Cause Autism?"
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,154 8682,00.html [time.com]
(even suggesting indoor air quality might be part of the proble
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Freaking moron.
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Re:Autism rates (Score:5, Informative)
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After my son was born, I had concerns about thimerosol as a preservative in various vaccines. The way I looked at it, mercury is a known neurotoxin, and I'd rather not introduce it into his system if I could help it. I had concerns. I didn't know the differences between methyl mercury and ethyl mercury (nor do I know much more now as I'm not a chemist, but those articles were helpful).
Shockingly, my wife's OB didn't know squat about my questions, or
Fearmongering (Score:2)
Also, here [autism-watch.org] is a link that contains information that should do a lot to refute your hypothesized link between thimerosal-preserved vac
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http://www.slate.com/id/2157496/ [slate.com]
Essentially it boils down to the fact that correlation does not equal causation. Then, when you look at history, you see there isn't really any correlation at all!
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There is no medical evidence that vaccinations cause autism. In particular, the MMR vaccination is given at around 3 years old, which is when autism starts to show, because expected neurological functioning does not develop. But the autism has been there all along! Correlation is not causation!
There is more autism around now because the diagnostic criteria has be
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How many other growth trends have been occurring while the rates of autism have been growing? Global warming? The strength of the Japanese economy? The price of oil?
Leave the "A mother's story: We must fight against the growth of the Japanese economy for my special little autistic Suzy" stories to geocities please, and le
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that makes them more susceptible to mercury and those are the people who are affected by the mercury in the vaccine.
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What have the studies shown [washingtonpost.com]?
1) There is no difference [nejm.org] in the rates of autism between vaccinated and un
Nonsense (Score:2)
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Linky?
Three studies (Score:2)
--A study by Gillberg and Heijbel (1998) examined the prevalence of autism in children born in Sweden from 1975-1984. There was no difference in the prevalence
Re:Autism rates (Score:5, Interesting)
purchased by a law firm for almost a million dollars. [timesonline.co.uk]
Re:Autism rates - no relationship to Thimerosal (Score:4, Informative)
Bad modding habits (Score:2)
If you disagree with P strongly enough to mod him down, it would be better to reply and tell him why he is mistaken.
Please save the negative mods for people who actu
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He didn't present references, he presented a link to a google search. Why are people so incensed about him? Many people consider anti-vaccine advocates such as this fellow very dangerous to public health.
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Additionally, it's well and good that children who get chicken pox are only sick for a short time and very rarely have long-term problems from the disease, but take a look over yonder [cdc.gov] and find out some more before you dismiss it as being no big deal. Specifically, it notes that even amongst chi