Startup Tests Drugs Aimed at Autism 171
An anonymous reader sends in this link from Technology Review about a startup company testing drugs that may help those with autism-spectrum disorders — even adults. "Seaside Therapeutics, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, is testing two compounds for the treatment of fragile X syndrome, a rare, inherited form of intellectual disability linked to autism. The treatments have emerged from molecular studies of animal models that mirror the genetic mutations seen in humans. Researchers hope that the drugs, which are designed to correct abnormalities at the connections between neurons, will ultimately prove effective in other forms of autism spectrum disorders. ... The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. [A spokesman] says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval."
Assumption much? (Score:2)
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Re:Assumption much? (Score:4, Interesting)
i probably should have elaborated my point. what I meant was that it is entirely possible that autism is the result of a developmental process that occurs before birth. the animal models you mention are not of autism itself, but of fragile X syndrome. TFA says that the syndrome is associated with less than 5% of autism.
the key point is, "While it's not yet clear if there is a critical window during development for giving the drug, adult animals still benefit from the treatment." There is no evidence yet that this will translate to any effect on autism, even in those with fragile X.
so before you mouth off next time, RTFA yourself.
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Re:Assumption much? (Score:5, Informative)
the article is about a drug that targets a rare genetic trait. because the article appears in layman media and is remotely linked to autism, the submitter titled the
My original comment:
"i sure hope autism isn't something that is more-or-less cemented at birth, making drugs like these not very useful."
i was tacitly talking about the minority of autism cases linked to this fragile X syndrome, as evidenced by the fact that I was talking about "drugs like these." I was trying to make the point that, even though the drug has been shown to mitigate some of the symptoms of fragile X in adult animals, this tells us nothing about whether the drug will have an effect on autism. i.e. autism's link to fragile X could be completely unrelated to the symptoms of fragile X seen in the animal models (seizures, abnormal protein synthesis, etc). We have no idea what all the functions of FMRP are. anyone who says we do is a fool.
it is entirely possible that mGluR5 has nothing to do with autism. it could simply be a receptor in a downstream pathway from FMRP, separate from whatever pathway(s) are involved with autism development. furthermore (getting back to my first post), even if this receptor is somehow involved with autism, it could be involved only at a very specific stage in development. thus, giving mGluR5 antagonists to people who have passed that stage would have no effect.
thus your comment:
"Whether it's cemented at "birth" is beside the point of this drug as it attempts to correct a current state not prevent one. They claim it works on adult animals they have tested."
is practically worthless, even without the rude bit at the end that I left out. they have only shown that some non-autism symptoms of fragile X are mitigated in adult mice. it's poor form to extrapolate as you seem to be doing when there is no evidence to support it. might i recommend a biochemistry course?
i sincerely hope these drugs do work. but even if they do it will only affect ~5% of the population of people with autism.
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Re:Assumption much? (Score:4, Interesting)
looks like we're going to have to do a close reading here, for the sake of your education.
In your first clause of your first sentence, you directly refer to my comment about the possibility that autism may be "cemented at birth," (meaning that regardless of which small molecules you give to someone with autism caused by fragile X syndrome, there will be no effect). You therefore made it clear that you were also talking about autism caused by fragile X, and not simply fragile X itself.
In your second clause (where your main misunderstanding of the facts/developmental biology seems to lie), you state that there is a distinction between 'correcting a current state' and 'preventing one.' The main mistake you are making here is connecting the mGluR5 receptor with autism. This connection appears nowhere in the article, and is likely the result of you reading too fast. Your second sentence continues with this incorrect idea. You correctly point out that the mGluR5 inhibitors appear to have reduced some non-autistic symptoms in adult mice. However, because your original statement was about autism, not fragile X (because my statement was about autism, not fragile X generally, and you were responding to me), you committed a logical mistake.
i'll state it again, just for you. there is no evidence that the seizures and protein synthesis abnormalities seen in animal models of fragile X are causationally related to autism. a small fraction of autism cases in people appear to be linked to a gene that is upstream of the mGluR5 receptor, but that definitely doesn't mean that the drugs that antagonize the receptor will have any effect on autism. again, even if this receptor does play a role in autism, it could be at a specific developmental stage, making the drugs useless for treating the disease in people. that is what i meant by "cemented at birth."
and you did extrapolate. let's detail it for you. you made the assumption that because these mGluR5 antagonists reduced some neurological symptoms in animal models, that autism would be similarly affected. granted, you never said this explicitly (perhaps you were too busy insulting me?). the context of your comment makes it crystal clear though. by responding to my post about autism, you made your comment about autism too. and you mistakenly said that the drugs mentioned in the article, "attempts [sic] to correct a current state not prevent one." In the context of autism, this is not true in the least.
feel free to keep it coming though. me and my degree in molecular and cell biology have all night.
2 sides that are unlikely to ever meet midpoint (Score:2)
Biology (hard science) has a constructive approach going from the ground up - chemicals and physical operations.
Psychology (soft science) is about identifying trends and describing them clearly to other experts; something like anthropology or sociology does. Attempts to deconstruct these trends using other more "atomic" trends as well as finding interdisciplinary connections is extremely difficult and builds prestige; however, these often amount to being temporary fads that are later found to be weak or fa
$60m is pocket-money (Score:3, Informative)
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Seriously, $60m isn't anywhere near enough to bring this to market. Most studies in pharma show that $1000m is far closer to the real figure these days, with some pushing that towards $1700m.
One billion dollars to bring a product to market? Smells like BS to justify insane prices and legislation to stop generics being made. I see nothing much in the linked article to suggest the money is being used meaningfully, only commercially (which could be hookers and blow for the execs, or sales gigs for doctors to push their pills, etc...)
Serious question: Where does the money go? What specifically makes the trials expensive?
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The reason the expenses are so high is the number of high-level employees feeding from the trough (IP, legal, management, and even a handful of scientists) and the absurd amounts some doctors get paid for experimenting on their patients (tens of thousands per data point is not uncommon)
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Those figures are roughly correct. They are computed by dividing the research expenditure of a company by the number of new drugs going to market in a specific time-frame.
Oh please, that's a bullshit calculation. That doesn't represent the cost of taking any one drug to market. The represents the cost of putting drugs through trials plus the cost of wasted research into dead-end areas plus all the organizational overhead of those research units plus god knows what else.
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That doesn't represent the cost of taking any one drug to market. The represents the cost of putting drugs through trials plus the cost of wasted research into dead-end areas plus all the organizational overhead of those research units plus god knows what else.
True, the cost to bring a single drug to market is far less. Now all you have to do is go back ten years to the benchtop chemist and tell him or her which one of the 500 structures they are working on is that one so they can ignore all the rest.
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True, the cost to bring a single drug to market is far less. Now all you have to do is go back ten years to the benchtop chemist and tell him or her which one of the 500 structures they are working on is that one so they can ignore all the rest.
Uhuh. And what's your point, exactly? You see, mine is that, despite what the libertarian slashbots here would have to believe, the overhead created by government regulation to bring a drug to market is not, in fact, 1 to 1.7B, as the OP would have us believe.
Is th
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But once a promising compound has been found
That was my point.
Once I pick the right numbers, the Maga Millions will be mine.
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But once a promising compound has been found
That was my point.
Once I pick the right numbers, the Maga Millions will be mine.
Of course I meant Mega Mullions.
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I work at a Big Pharma, and I was going to make the same comment as the one to which you're replying. $750M to $1000M is much more realistic a range for the cost to bring a NEW API to market. (API = active pharmaceutical ingredient)
This cost is the end result of high, demanding standards for quality, safety, documentation and a zillion other details governed by the FDA. If you want to know why FDA-approved drugs cost so much more than "dietary supplements" and all the other alterna-crap, it's because the
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Then your sense of smell and bullshit detection is faulty.
What makes trials expensive is that the vast majority of drugs don't work or have too severe side effects. And you don't find that out until after you've spent some money.
So yes, the actual dollars spent on "wonder drug X" is not $1 billion. But once you also count the other 1000 drugs that didn't make it (and were indistinguishable from "wonder drug X" at the start) you've spent that much.
But in this case $60 million might do it. Of course if it fai
Side effects? (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone has some form of autism making him extremely good at something (music, math, extreme memory, collecting stamps, ...), would this medicine affect his ability to do that?
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This is a drug that may alleviate some of the symptoms of fragile X syndrome, many of these symptoms are not reversible, and one of them can be some forms of Autism
This is not a "Cure for Autism", it is a possible, partial cure for a genetic disorder that has as one of it's effects in some patients some forms of Autism
Autism is not simple...it has no one cause, and has no one cure ....
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I just find the idea of a cure for autism hard to accept, because I think the cure is incompatible with what autism "enables" in some people. If someone is socially inept because he spends all his time with mathematics, the cure would make him socially active, but he'd stop doing math. What is cured then? You've made a person normal instead of special.
Of course in the above I'm not talking about people with autism who can't do anything at all except sit in a corner, I guess for many people with autism you c
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As I said Autism is not simple, assuming the range of Autism Spectrum disorders are all part of the same thing (which not everyone agrees on) then the range of causes is huge, and the range of effects is also huge
This is a possible cure for one actual genetic disease (Fragile X) in some people along with the normal symptoms it can cause some autism spectrum symptoms, this may if it works at all alleviate some of the symptoms and it may alleviate autism if that was one of them.... note the large number of ma
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I think you missed the point. Imagine magic pill X that immediately and perfectly cures autism. 100%, not a trace of physiological abnormality left. Arguably, giving that to an adult would be akin to wiping their mind empty and starting over. They would be left unable to appreciate any of the things they enjoyed before and would have no idea what they might enjoy now. Having never experianced normal socialization, they would still be on the outside looking in, but now with no special abilities and enjoymen
Results (Score:2)
The dangerous case with your note is that it's result dependent.
"Spends all his time with math" ... and writes semi-pro papers, tutors a kid, and writes little freeware puzzles to amuse the net hordes. Win.
"Spends all his time with math" ... and tries to figure out the numerology of life, but crucially, gets the worst of new age with none of the science of emergence. Then he's total bait for medical pigeonholing. Too smart for "ordinary" types, but too flawed to play the "strange genius" card.
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Or possibly even worse
"Spends all his time with math" ... and sits in a corner calculating and reciting pie for 12 years before dieing due to lack of movement. It would be better to reduce the maths ability in order to give the person the ability to experience life.
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Very possibly.
If the ability comes together holistically/gestalt, I believe there is a "critical mass" that needs to occur to get it right. When the subject falls below that threshold, they get GarbageOut that proves very frustrating.
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>>If someone has some form of autism making him extremely good at something (music, math, extreme memory, collecting stamps, ...), would this medicine affect his ability to do that?
In the study of "idiot" savants, studies have shown that curing their extreme social inability also "cures" their ability to be exceptional at math, or whatever.
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I also have a very high IQ and an eidetic memory for relative location (like puzzles and spatial problems) and conversational dialog (also tested by actual professionals).
I struggled with depression as a teenager, and I can tell you that Prozac is my kryptonite. I struggled at math and even basic reading while on the happy pills. I decided I would rather be sad and smart, then ha
You're exaggerating (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, he probably wouldn't be able to do such useful things as remembering the whole phone book or recalling which baseball player did what in each year.
Or design and implement bittorrent, and run a company around it; see http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105046863317.htm [businessweek.com]
Or win the Nobel Prize in economics; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_L._Smith [wikipedia.org] and http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/03/vernon_smith_on_1.html [econtalk.org]
(Okay, that's Asperger's Syndrome; but I think that's within the scope of this discussion)
He might be able to button his own shirt or wipe his own ass, though.
Or it might be that he is better able to communicate with other people; he might have an easier time stumbling unto the idea that i
You're trivializing (Score:3, Insightful)
(Okay, that's Asperger's Syndrome; but I think that's within the scope of this discussion)
Uh, no, it's probably not.
When people talk about searching for cures for autism, they aren't typically talking about Asperger's. They mean actual, severe autism. You know, the kind where the individual is virtually non-functional.
As an aside, I don't suppose you're a self-styled Asperger's sufferer, are you? Because around here, the slashbots seem to think it's kinda cool to blame all their social problems on Asperg
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Well, not if it's the "self-styled" types he refers to. I was diagnosed (legitimately) twenty years ago before it became the fashion to diagnose every social phobia as some form of autism. It's a little pathetic how many people latch on to it nowadays to justify being socially awkward. At this point, I've managed to work around all but three symptoms:
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Uh, no. If you think ADD is the same as Asperger's, you are, in all likelihood, unfamiliar with both.
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Autism is not ADD, however Autism diagnosis is very clearly rising. The rate of autism in adults is the same as in children. [ic.nhs.uk] Yet Autism diagnosis is going WAY up.
And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria? Here are a few that jump out:
stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
vs
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat when sitting still is
Cost? (Score:2)
The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. Carpenter says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval. "We are prepared to do it ourselves," he says. "But if there is a partnership that allows us to more rapidly advance compounds, then we would embrace that opportunity."
So they basically get to develop a drug and bring it to market for free.
How much do you think they'll charge for it?
The cynic in me suspects the answer won't be "slightly over cost"
fragile x is creepy (Score:2)
creepy in the figurative sense, but also creepy in the literal sense too: it creeps up through the generations
the basic idea is that you have a region of genetic code that, with every generation, gets a little longer with repeats. such that, after a few generations, it results in mental deficiencies. of course, its not so straightforward: your child's number of copies of repeats may dramatically jump, or it may hold relatively stable with an unchanged number of copies at a borderline level for many generati
A bargain (Score:2)
Seeing as how the average cost to a major pharma to bring a drug from the bench of the medicinal chemist to the bottle in your medicine cabinet is approaching a billion dollars, having only $60 million to work with seems like running on a shoestring.
A cure, not management (Score:2)
How about finding the cause of autism or a cure, rather than a drug to manage it?
My guess? The Pharmaceutical companies make more money selling drugs to manage a condition rather than curing it, so that is where their researchers look.
Additionally, the human genome has not changed much. So, either diagnostics have gotten better so more cases of autism are being noticed or there is actually more autism. If the latter case is true it has to be an environmental change as the cause. Discovering that would me
Interesting drug for Fragile X. But autism? (Score:2)
The article is pretty good, actually, in that it doesn't try very hard to claim that they're curing the world of its ills. There's a little in there, but mostly it deals with Fragile X.
Randi Hagerman (the researcher quoted extensively in the article) is one of the leading lights in Fragile X research. She and her husband, Paul, described the gene, developed the RFLP that we now use to diagnose the illness, and did much of the fundamental work to explain the genetic-expression behavior of the gene. It is not
Big Pharma: "Theres a drug for it!" (Score:2)
This paradigm is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche now that I automatically wonder about some new medicine for all the new disease syndromes we hear about. There are substances for mental health and physical fitness. Even herbal remedies are squished into pill shapes to make them seem more "medical".
THIS JUST IN (Score:3, Funny)
Autism vaccine is linked to flu in children. News at 11.
Test Subject (Score:2)
I'm a test subject in a trail.
From what I understand (from my doctor) autism is thought to be genetic but it does have certain environmental triggers that affect whether or not you develop symptoms and to what extent. One of these triggers is exposure to the measles virus (the vaccine is an attenuated form of said virus). Apparently a person's body develops inappropriate antibodies that attack certain parts of the brain (Amygdala) after exposure to one of these triggers.
The neurotransmitter Oxytocin (which
Re:Do I have it (Score:4, Informative)
If you were really autistic you would lurk and never post.
Re:Do I have it (Score:5, Informative)
Then again, if you had fragile X syndrome you wouldn't actually have autism. This is a deeply misleading article title and summary, since Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) covers a wide range of psychological profiles and is deeply misunderstood by most people - even plenty of people who work with it every day. You will notice, reading the article (yeah, I must be new here) that none of the scientists mention ASD. The guy who wrote this piece just thought that would give him an angle, since no one has heard of fragile X syndrome, but everyone loves a good autism story, despite (because of?) most people never having met someone with serious levels of ASD.
Just to clear things up, fragile X syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality that causes various physical deformities and some forms of mental retardation. This [wikipedia.org] is acceptable of you want to know more. There is some limited evidence that correlation exists between some forms of ASD and fragile X syndrome, but causality is far from demonstrated.
Additionally, ASD is defined as being a "pervasive developmental disorder", meaning that a) symtoms must be present from fairly early on in life and b) autism is an innate part of the person suffering from it, and a cure not only doesn't exist - the concept of a cure is nonsensical. Don't get me wrong, I would love there to be a cure for ASD, but medical science currently defines it as uncurable. As an analogy, it would be like trying to 'cure' someone of having social function and being capable of imaginitive play - you could teach them limited functions to appear like they had no grasp of the abstract, but you couldn't turn them autistic.
The media, and people in general, need to cease this endless obsession with autism - it's an incredibly complex subject, and studying it for years only allows you to scratch the surface (trust me on this). Being crap with people suggests some form of social, behavioural, or anxiety disorder. ASD is a serious disorder with serious consequences. Rainman does not exist. As a rule of thumb, if you can put together a fully formed sentence, you almost certainly don't have meaningful levels of ASD. If you can read facial expressions without spending years actually consciously memorising what faces mean what, you don't have meaningful levels of ASD. Okay, if you've gotten this far you might have comparatively mild Asperger's or something on that end of the spectrum, but it'll be clinically relevant only in a small fraction of a percent of that already small group.
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One of the reasons that the media, and people in general, have seemingly become obsessed with autism is that there has been a very significant rise in diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Furthermore, autism spectrum disorders are often misdiagnosed as other problems. Finally, the public is not aware that autism spectrum disorders cover a range of different, distinct disorders, from very low functioning varieties to very high functioning varieties.
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I think you have a high bar for what a "meaningful" level of ASD would be. My son is (as far as the spectrum goes) very high functioning, but it's impact is tremendously meaningful. And my experience is that this end of the spectrum is not a small group at all. It seems to be the broader end of the spectrum, at least as current diagnostic trends seem to me to indicate. As for the clinical relevance, certainly odds are small that this particular drug will be of use for a wide range of ASD sufferers, but
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I disagree that "the concept of a cure is nonsensical". Your reversal is a bit like saying 'imagine someone can play guitar, and you had to teach them to be incapable of playing it...' - people who can play guitar can't un-learn it, but people who can't play guitar are capable of learning to play it to a greater or lesser degree. Someone with a severe physical disability may never be able to play guitar, depending on that disability.
In one sense I do understand what you mean, that the disorder is an intri
Re:Do I have it (Score:5, Interesting)
Being crap with people suggests some form of social, behavioural, or anxiety disorder. ASD is a serious disorder with serious consequences. Rainman does not exist. As a rule of thumb, if you can put together a fully formed sentence, you almost certainly don't have meaningful levels of ASD. If you can read facial expressions without spending years actually consciously memorising what faces mean what, you don't have meaningful levels of ASD. Okay, if you've gotten this far you might have comparatively mild Asperger's or something on that end of the spectrum, but it'll be clinically relevant only in a small fraction of a percent of that already small group.
I have Asperger's Syndrome. Two of my biological children also have it. And a son we adopted from Russia has high functioning Autism. All of us have an autism spectrum disorder. All of us can put together fully formed sentences. The ability to form sentences is largely irrelevant with respect to autism spectrum disorders. High functioning autism kids have a speech delay that they overcome fairly early in childhood. But that's about it.
Here's a metaphor what learning social skills is like for people with AS : The entire world communicates by playing the piano. 99% of the people out there are born knowing how to play the piano and can simply walk up to a piano at age 2 and start playing. Some are better than others. But most people can play the piano very well. I was born without being able to play the piano. I can learn it. But it's going to take me years. And a lot of variables will affect how fast I learn it and whether I learn it correctly. Am i an introverted shut-in who never seeks piano lessons? If so, I'll never learn it. Am I extroverted (but constantly making mistakes) and always trying to learn from as many piano teachers as possible? I may learn it faster and eventually play very well. Innate ability matters also. Some normal people are naturally good at the piano (social skills) while other normal people are not. What would the AS person have been had they not had AS? This affects things as well.
It's not so much about memorizing facial expressions, but that's part of it. It's more about memorizing prerecorded behaviors and verbal responses for every possible social situation imaginable. Smile at a wedding... don't smile at a funeral... crying at a wedding doesn't equal sad... someone can be sad but not crying... there's a million combinations.
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On the other hand, I bet most people here have Aspergen's to some degree. Raise your hand if you're at all uncomfortable looking people in the eye.
Re:What if (Score:5, Insightful)
Backward what-if (Score:3, Interesting)
You asked the question backward, buddy: if autistic traits as a package are all so very bad, then why weren't they weeded out of the gene pool millennia ago? Why is there a persistent trail of autistic achievers from Archimedes to Grigory Perelman and Craig Newmark? Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent? If the multiple reports showing a statistical increase in autistic traits have any merit at all, that would seem to suggest that indeed there is an INCREASING value
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The species might yet become "mostly autistic", though even our great-great grandchildren won't be around to comment on it, much less us. All we can do is speculate. The point of my comment was specifically to challenge your implication that all autistic traits are consistently detrimental and thus inconceivable that they might actually be increasing in prevalence and replacing what we now call neurotypical traits. I doubt that many people would argue that ALL autistic traits are beneficial, but some mos
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You asked the question backward, buddy: if autistic traits as a package are all so very bad, then why weren't they weeded out of the gene pool millennia ago? Why is there a persistent trail of autistic achievers from Archimedes to Grigory Perelman and Craig Newmark? Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent?
1. For autism to have been weeded out of the gene pool, it would have to be solely genetic and hereditary. The best research we have to date says that autism has a genetic/hereditary component and is also caused by "unidentified environmental factors" [google.com]
2. The people you are talking about (assuming they have autism) are what's called "high-functioning". The type of autism that leaves you banging your head against the wall isn't very conducive to reproduction or intellectual success.
3. You need to prove that "t
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if autistic traits as a package are all so very bad, then why weren't they weeded out of the gene pool millennia ago?
You could say the same thing about a number of other traits as well -- homosexuality comes to mind; you're not likely to reproduce if you only copulate with members of your own sex.
Why have the traits not only persisted but seem to be increasingly prevalent?
The increasing prevalence hasn't been going on long enough to have an effect on our evolution. Plastics have only been around, for instan
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Also note that 10 years ago no one was talking about Asperger's, which suggests that this disorder is a fad.
Dr. Hans Asperger, for whom Asperger's Syndrome is named, published his research in 1944.
Re:What if (Score:5, Interesting)
More seriously, what if high-functioning autism was a somewhat beneficial trait for a few individuals, provided not everybody in a community was like that, and natural selection has formed the balance we see now? After all, science and technology has been advanced significantly by people who now seem autistic more than once.
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Well, nowadays, you can argue that families with some members on spectrum have advantage; I am quite sure that some autistics are more than responsible for getting people laid (By taking care of communication chanells that allow hookups, yay for explaining how to use im and for setting up accounts!).
You'd also have "a bit better factor" - simply put, easiest way to pick up opposite sex is to be accompanied by someone who is similar to you but slightly less attractive (Ever noticed that girl on boyfriend hun
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This is what worries me about genetic testing before birth. What if Stephen Hawking had been determined to be "unfit for life" before he was born, in order to save him from horrors of ALS?
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More seriously, what if high-functioning autism was a somewhat beneficial trait for a few individuals, provided not everybody in a community was like that, and natural selection has formed the balance we see now?
The exact same thing has been postulated about color-blindness, which affects 10% of the male world population.
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"If today's dead was normal, then today's living would be called dead. Objectively, we are all dead and living at the same time really." Because life and death is merely a definition. I'm sure you understand that only works for cats in boxes.
You know, we could settle this once and for all by asking the cat.
Scientists: Meow once if you're alive, meow zero times if you're dead.
Cat: Meow.
Scientists: Eureka!
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Yes, but the boxed cat is all about the state being unknown until observation.
I'm sure hearing counts as observation.
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I'm sure you understand that only works for cats in boxes.
And beer in fridges [angryflower.com].
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Autism seems to be on the rise and some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.
Squalene and mercury based preservative let drug companies extend expensive drug stocks over many more shots.
Until the cost of law suits impacts the bottom line
Re:What if (Score:5, Informative)
Autism seems to be on the rise and some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.
I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if everybody stopped vaccinating their kids until well after autism's typical age of onset.
Although I think I know the answer: we would have just as many autistic kids, which would suggest that it isn't the vaccines causing the autism, yet a few people will cling to their belief no matter the evidence against it.
Re:What if (Score:5, Interesting)
We know what would happen: Far more people would suffer from complications of diseases, such as male sterility from rubella, some would even die. No cases of autism would be prevented however, because there is no known link between vaccines and autism. This is what happened in the UK when MMR vaccination rates dropped dramatically after an idiot made up evidence and the study was published in the Lancet.
See the link in my reply to your parent.
Oh yes, the horror of disease too (Score:2)
We know what would happen: Far more people would suffer from complications of diseases
Ah yes, of course. I probably should have mentioned that too.
You should be modded up for pointing this out. It's rather important that people see your post and are aware of this point.
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I think "death" is pretty effective prevention of "autism". In absolute numbers, there would be less autistic people. In percentages, it would be about the same, but you know how statistical studies are created.
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I think the bigger skew to the risk judgment is that vaccines have been too successful for their own good in some respects. Do you remember when polio paralyzed people regularly, measles killed and a cough might being fears of being Whooping? If you're around my age (34) or even a bit older, you don't. Neither do I. Of course, I've read many accounts, but haven't seen it first hand. So it would be easy to discount the threat that these diseases pose.
Some people think: "I haven't seen anyone I know of d
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Likewise, if they had nobody die from any of those but they saw their kid develop normally until having the vaccine, followed by a regression, of course they start suspecting the vaccine. Now this also happens to be the scenario that I've experienced first-hand; I can understand s
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Keep in mind, the cases of autism theoretically linked to vaccines include a lot of relatively mild cases (high functioning, Asperger's, etc.) While I know I was more trouble as a child due to my Asperger's, it didn't hurt me or my family in the long run; by the time I was fifteen I had adapted enough that I functioned close enough to normal as to go unrecognized (aside from occasional lapses into monologue mode; luckily, my girlfriend is actually entertained listening to me, or so she claims).
Deaths from p
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This is easily solved. Autism can be detected as early as 14 months, but typically . Change the health standards to delay the MMR a year and if the age at which autism appears does not change, then it's unrelated. If it does, figure out why. There's not likely to be a substantive increase in deaths from kids getting the MMR at 2 1/2 versus 1 1/2, but changing those standards would likely put this unlikely theory of causation to rest permanently.
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Oops. Forgot to finish the first sentence.
...but typically is obvious after about 2-3 years.
Oh, and one last thing. Research has shown that in autistic kids, there is brain overgrowth relative to the size of the skull during the first 12 months, which is prior to any vaccinations. It's safe to say that there is *no* possibility that MMR causes autism....
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"Sure, Thiomersal/Thimerosal has been ruled out as a factor. But can we really already rule out that any link exists between vaccines and autism (or no link at all, by the way)?"
This is one problem I have with the antivax groups. A little tactic called "moving the goal posts." Why are autism/vaccines linked? Thimerosal! Wait, that's been removed and autism rates haven't dropped? Then it's the MMR combined shot. Wait, studies have shown no link? Well, then it's the number of shots kids get. Wait, kid
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My generation suffered from it. One of my friends had polio as a child, but he survived (he has some disabilities) and is the father of two healthy men. Of course, had it killed him he wouldn't be, and lots of kids did die from those diseases.
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This is what I find infuriating about the anti-vaccination crowd; their "risk assessment" that decides to avoid protecting their children relies on the rest of us taking said risk for ours and providing "herd immunity" on behalf of their offspring. The recent, needless pop-ups of preventable diseases is a result of not enough parents feeling the need to protect their own children because "everyone else's kids are immunized, mine don't need to be".
Selfish gits.
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!
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Free riding is the rational choice, so while they are selfish they are obviously better at economics than us suckers who do get vaccinations for the kids...
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some families seem to point out patterns - pre vaccines, happy, post vaccines dolphin-esque.
This probably originates from a single study in the UK more than ten years ago that linked the MMR vaccine with increased incidences of autism. That study has been since been thoroughly debunked and discredited [timesonline.co.uk]. Stop repeating it.
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Anecdotes, made more common by the fact that autism almost always gets diagnosed at about the age kids get vaccinated, (even in unvaccinated kids - perhaps the absence of vaccines causes autism too, hmm?). Large studies do not show such patterns.
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Stop putting all this chemical crap into vaccines (preservatives, etc.)
Vaccines are pretty much 99% artificually created. Remove the chemicals and you're left with something that has little to no useful effect. Besides, many chemicals are created in ways that just immitate nature.
or at least give us (those who worry about what's injected into our kids) an alternative that we can trust.
Trust is highly subjective. What would need to be changed in order for you to trust vaccines?
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Again: about the same amount of mercury as a tin of tuna fish.
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This is Slashdot. News for Nerds. You should already know that you're made of chemicals.
I did not say that, it doesn't look like I said that, and I don't believe you actually think I said that.
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The issue is one of impairment of functioning. This, of course, means that many self-proclaimed 'Aspies' are not what this drug targets.
A child that is not capable of communicating with its parents is autistic. A child that leads his parents by the hand to something instead of pointing to what he wants is autistic. Even dogs are capable of shared attention (pointing at an object is a concrete example) while autistic children are not. Shared attention is of course necessary for language communication as verbally expressing ideas is based on shared attention of ideas and concepts - and these kids can't even point to a toy or cookie.
An 8 year old that learns to program in C++ at the age of 8 is exceptionally bright, not autistic. At this same age an autistic kid will be spinning the wheels on a car (as opposed to playing with it) or stacking blocks for hours on end. They may play in the same vicinity as other children, but almost never with them. You see these same tendencies in normal children up to a certain age - an 18 month old will play in the proximity of other children but not with them. A 3 year old plays with other children instead of simply being in the same vicinity. Autistic children never reach this stage.
Autistic adults social and communication issues are simply an extension of these milestones that were reached significantly (or never) later than other people because of neurological problems. A geeky guy that enjoys chatting on Ventrillio while raiding in World of Warcraft for hours on end is very likely not autistic given how social using voice chat and raiding is. An autistic adult isn't very likely to frequently visit comic book or Star Wars conventions either. Just because these activities are stereotyped for males with social phobias or other social issues doesn't mean that they're indicative of autism.
True autism is a very real and very impairing condition, not a matter of having odd interests and being a bit socially awkward.
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Speaking as someone with Asperger im inclined to say:
Im not sick. I just have different set of tools by which i precieve and communicate with.
Problems arise when my tools try to interface with "normal" tools.
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Could you describe how your "tools" work compared to the "tools" of non-autistic people?
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Indeed. It's all part of the medicalisation of perfectly normal conditions and behaviours. There have been no real breakthroughs in terms of treating real disease since the 60/70's when all the big stuff happened. Since then, outside of cancer, not much has really happened. As a result, big pharma have started to work on finding cures for problems we never knew we had - controlling behaviours outside the norms, rafts of mumbo jumbo like anti-oxidents, miracle foods et
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As for Autism, it's not ideal and can cause a lot of problems for people but it can also bring some big pluses too. Do we really all want to be clones? looking the way celeb culture says we should and having perfect personalities? Hell no! Rejoice in the difference.
Enlighten me, please explain what the pluses are of this severe disability.
Would you say the same about rheumatism, heart failure, emphysema, Parkinson or any other disability? I think it's probably best to let patients or their caregivers decide whether their condition is worth treating.
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Gives some examples. Not sure it outweighs the negatives but it's still food for thought.
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I get the feeling that you're using the tag autism where you really mean 'nerd'.
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Because there might be a milder form of the disability which is useful to have in society. And you risk losing it as well. The full blown version might even be useful for society as a whole (possibly not for the individuals though) in small doses.
The obvious example if sickle cell anemia. Being heterozygous for HgbS in areas where malaria is prevalent is beneficial, homozygous for HgbS completely sucks.
http://www.blip.tv/files/2204956 [www.blip.tv] is long, but just the first 10 minutes has a bunch of examples (including
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