Y’know, I disagree with a lot that you say (for the record, I’m an expert on nothing, so my disagreements carry little weight) but you don’t froth at the mouth and can form a cogent argument and adding in the “Young Frankenstein” clip clinched it: You’re gonna fit in real well around here.
Lots of questions for me. I have time to answer one at the moment.
I ruled out genetics by testing for fragile X and Rett’s syndrome (two conditions that are commonly lumped in with mercury poisoning misnamed autism). The tests were ordered by a neurologist 7 or 8 years ago, blood taken by a technician and the sample sent to a lab of the neurologist’s choice. The test confirmed that my son’s autism was not caused by either of these two genetic problems and it was noted that no other genetic abnormalities were found.
As stated earlier, I ruled out the MMR vaccine because my son was clearly autistic before he received that vaccine.
He was born normal, normal APGAR, looked right in my eyes at about two minutes of age when I first held him and the look in his eyes was identical to a look that my father, who was a MENSA member and a scientist, used to express aggravation. At 3 hours of age, he was poisoned by the HepB shot containing thimerosal. I had seen his eyes looking absolutely normal one time and did not see that again for 8 years, after chelation had begun.
That first observation of normal eye contact was exciting. It told me I had chose the right course of action. We now have normal eye contact all the time but he still can’t speak. He can communicate in other ways.
I used DMSA and Alpha Lipoic Acid for chelation for two years. For the last year, I used only the ALA. He also gets multiple supplements. The first improvement from chelation was that the constipation he had had for several years disappeared. I did not treat his “gut” with other methods. The chelation solved the problem without diet or “gut bugs”.
That’s why I discuss autism. I witnessed the normal baby disappear, lived through the nightmare of severe autism and now witness the severe autism waning.
I don’t care if you knock what I have to say as anecdotal evidence. Parents who want to help their kids recognize what I and many others have to tell them as the truth. I can not mention names of any cured children I know because one person posting here is well known as a character assassin of anyone who cures autism. Anyone whose name surfaces as a curer of autism knows they are liable to have their good name smeared in as vile a manner as possible by this person, especially if they have helped their child by using Lupron to speed up the removal of mercury.
Unfortunately, despite REPEATED requests, foresam, you have STILL not provided ANY evidence that ANY autism is caused by exposure to mercury AT ANY LEVEL, and the research provided by others ALL argues against it. Instead, you CONTINUE to provide anecdotes, AKA “hearsay evidence,” to support your arguments. I do not predict a long and happy stay here for you.
Dropzone, I posted the link to Safe Minds where you can read the information you seek. I also posted a link to my blog that contains more of the same.
All evidence is anecdotal evidence to some degree.
Except when it isn’t.
I like how doctors who agree with you are referred to as technicians and neurologists, but doctors who disagree with you are condescendingly referred to as “science guys.” If you expect us to disregard the substantial body of research that shows no link between mercury and autism, you can’t then turn around and expect us to swallow the conclusions of neurologists who determined that there was no genetic component to your son’s autism. Either we trust the scientific process to determine, to the best of their abilities, the cause and treatment of serious medical conditions, or we do not. You can’t switch back and forth to whichever position best supports your preconceptions. Not if you want your arguments to be taken seriously, anyway.
Sorry tom, I do know better. I’m bowing out.
Autism and mercury poisoning are not “synonymous,” or else if I were poisoned by mercury today (I’m 35 years old) I would become autistic. That is in fact not the case; autism does not newly arise in fully grown adults, so far as I am aware, in any circumstances. If I were to become severely poisoned by mercury, the likely symptoms would not be autism, but would be hypertension, gum and tooth damage, vision impairment, skin discolouration, loss of motor functions, and organ failure, usually beginning with the kidneys and liver.
Do you even know what the word “synonymous” means?
Mercury poisoning will certainly make you sick and kill you, but the “science guys” say that autism is NOT one of the ways mercury makes you sick, and I’m going with their take on this, since you have provided no evidence to the contrary.
My kid isn’t autistic. She’s had all her vaccinations, by the way, since vaccinations do not cause autism. When it comes to my child’s health, I’m going with facts and science, not anonymous anecdotes. You’re strongly reinforcing that.
The disorders you mention may feature symptoms that overlap with autism. Ruling out those disorders does not in any way rule out a genetic cause for your son’s autism, as the genetics are complex and as noted by DSeid are far from being completely understood. There is no genetic test currently available that can confirm a diagnosis of autism. Absence of such a test does not mean that we can point to any environmental factors in the absence of evidence.
And as mentioned earlier, other parents are just as convinced (wrongly) that the MMR vaccine caused their children’s autism based on personal observations. Could you tell us
why they are wrong and you are right?
Based on these statements, do you see the problem with equating a subjective impression of “normal eye contact” with presence/absence of autism (or predilection for autism)?
Nothing posted here is meant as a knock on you personally, and no one has anything but the best wishes for the health of your son. What dismays many of us are generalized attacks on childhood vaccination, and the prospect (which has already materialized in Britain and elsewhere) that childhood illnesses and their consequences will be revived due to false vaccine/thimerosal scares. We do not want to see more children injured by these avoidable diseases.
If by “curer of autism” you mean Mark and David Geier (proponents of chemical castration of children through Lupron “therapy” for autism), it’s highly debatable whether they have a “good name”. :rolleyes:
I am not here to continue the ongoing feud that seems to be happening, but did want to clarify a few things.
I never wrote that Through the Eyes of Aliens was my bible (someone else used that term, as a Christian I find that the bible is my bible, thanks). What I specifically wrote was that it was the only book I could find that said that it was okay to be autistic, and that I carried it around everywhere with me, and slept with a copy of it around as well. I also happened to write that in either 1999 or 2000.
There are actually a number of things in the book that I disagree with. The author presents a very stereotyped view of autism extrapolated from her own experience. She says that creativity is an Asperger rather than autistic trait and that all autistic people are picture thinkers. She advocates putting children in residential homes. She advocates a number of “alternative therapies” that I find suspect in nature. She writes in a writing style that is almost unbearably saccharine at times.
The thing is, that is the only book I could find in print at the time that said what it was saying. I was very insecure at the time and so I wanted a tangible physical reminder that it was okay to be whoever I happened to be. That book said it. I never agreed with every page in it, and which parts I have agreed and disagreed with has evolved over the years. I have not carried that book around with me like that in at least seven years. (There are a number of other ways my personal views and experiences have been misunderstood or misrepresented that I don’t want to go into, because it would turn all this into a long drawn-out personal thing. I do have evidence from records posted on a permanent page on my blog that I was seen by neurologists prior to college for the beginnings of shutdowns that led to longer-term speech and motor problems, as well as the timeline of what was diagnosed prior to the schizophrenia diagnosis (which was also a diagnosis of “psychotic since very early childhood” actually) that may interest people previously unfamiliar with my side of things.)
As to the specific references to genocide, opposing some of the fundraising techniques of various organizations, etc., those opinions are not unique to me, or to “self-diagnosed” or “Asperger” individuals, or even to the autistic community. They are part of the larger analysis of the disability rights movement, and are also frequently applied to the fundraising techniques of organizations like the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Prenatal screening and widespread sterilization of disabled people are thought of as genocidal or pre-genocidal by parts of the disability movement, including the mainstream disability rights movement, the developmental disability self-advocacy movement, and the autistic liberation movement, among others. Systemic oppression is terminology and ideas I got from the disability rights movement. Whether we are right or wrong about these things is a matter of political debate, but it should not be written off as individual clinical paranoia, because there is serious and widespread analysis behind it. Many of the links at the end of my getting the truth out website address this. Also, that site (and another piece sometimes cited) was written to highlight how a person can be unfairly misrepresented under the medical model. I pulled all the descriptions from my medical records and conversations I heard from others about me. They were not supposed to represent reality or my actual views of myself, they were supposed to represent a stereotype that I contradicted halfway through. I also run a daily living self-help and support list for autistic people or those similar to us, and would never say we don’t need support or that we should just be left alone, my viewpoint is more complex than that, it isn’t a soundbitable viewpoint.
About the aug comm, I’ve had a decline in speech over the years. I don’t know why, I have my guesses. It doesn’t make me more autistic than anyone else. (And I think since what autism is is clearly defined, it’s unclear what makes a person more autistic or less autistic. I tend not to use those ideas, or mild/moderate/severe, or high or low functioning, in any of my recent work, and do not claim to be any of the above.) It might even be because of something else (such as the movement disorder) in addition to autism. I don’t know. (One thing I’ve learned since some of the posts quoted about me is to attempt to say “I don’t know” when I don’t know something or don’t know how to say it, rather than attempting to invent an explanation because I’m terrified of not giving one.)
At any rate I would rather discuss some of the other issues brought up on this thread. I’m not interested in debating my existence any further.
There have also been some misconceptions about the autistic self-advocacy movement and when it started being considered okay to point out the good parts about being autistic, or to prefer being autistic to being non-autistic. One of the best records of this movement that I have seen, dating back to the late eighties or early nineties, is by Jim Sinclair, a founding member of Autism Network International, an international self-advocacy group by autistic people. Autism Network International: The Development of a Commuity and Its Culture was written in 2005 to give some background on this movement which is much older than most people view it as, and long predates that particular book. There are a number of references in the footnotes that go into more detail. That also includes some of the history of conflict with mainstream autism organizations such as the ASA. This is not unique to us and is also common to blind, deaf, physically disabled, intellectually disabled, and psychiatrically labeled people.
There are some points about autistic people and the nature of autistic cognition that were made. There has been a considerable amount of research on this, and a lot of it overturns what was previously thought.
For instance, young non-verbal autistic children were at one point studied and found to engage in many communication strategies before hitting the point of a tantrum. These strategies were either ignored or not noticed by caregivers, and the tantrum appeared to be the result of that.
A possible flaw was found in the study where autistic people looked at people’s mouths the most often. The autistic people used in the study all had high verbal abilities and were apparently trying to complement this with lip-reading. From Science Daily: Social Cues Used By Those with Autism Illuminated.
I had often reported prior to this study coming out that I was capable of reading some aspects of social situations much better when I was experiencing a shutdown in language processing. Such that, if I looked around a room and was neither trying to understand what people were saying nor come up with words myself, I could tell a lot about what was going on. The moment I had to come up with words, this awareness was put to the side. That research at least tentatively appears to confirm this.
Which is one important point about the role of autistic people in all of this. Many of the things we say for a long time about ourselves, that appears to contradict the research, ends up actually being confirmed by more careful research. Michelle Dawson described on a Canadian radio program being involved in a project that involved autistic people supposedly not lighting up the same area of the brain as usual when faces were shown to them. She said, “How do you know they were even looking at the faces?” When this was controlled for, that same area of the brain lit up.
She has also been involved in research using the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test, which measures fluid intelligence and abstract reasoning. A number of autistic children who scored low on an ordinary IQ test scored extremely high on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices. Sometimes they could move from the bottom to the top of the chart. Even in those where the changes were not as extreme, there were important changes. In ordinary people, scores on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices and convenitional IQ tests are identical or close to it. The idea that we are somehow globally not capable of abstract reasoning is thus rapidly appearing to become a myth, even in those who are by current IQ tests classified as intellectually disabled. This is addressed in their paper The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence. They also did some research that conflicted with the earlier idea that we lacked “central coherence” and that this was the reason for our doing well on block design tasks: Cognitive mechanisms, specificity and neural underpinnings of visuospatial peaks in autism.
One interesting part of that is that if autistic people must adhere to what most people know of the research in order to be considered autistic, then we will be in a position of being unable to point out flaws in the research. Many autistic people do opt to only talk about which parts of them do conform to the research or popularly known research (this has similarities to my prior attempts to conform to what I thought was expected of me, in fact). But what the Montreal research team that employs Michelle Dawson values is her ability to critique the research both from personal experience and from an encyclopedic knowledge of the research (she’s known as the “living PubMed”).
And one reason that MIT has invited me to consult with some of their research teams is because I do not simply regurgitate Simon Baron-Cohen and Uta Frith the way some of the other autistic people they have spoken to do, I speak from a combination of my own experiences and the hundreds of other autistic people I have known, without trying to force-fit each person into an abstract theory. It is important to recognize that theory is only theory. I have a quote somewhere that says that engineers find it fairly easy to believe in the reality of things they don’t know the theory about, but that physicists have a hard time believing in the reality of things that appear to contradict their theories. Maybe pithy and oversimplified (and my dad was an engineer working for physicists, so I might also be biased), but similar things apply in autism research. Often what autistic people say about ourselves contradicts accepted theory about us, but when the research is examined more closely when juxtaposed with what we say about ourselves, often we are the ones pointing out things that will be future discoveries in autism research and eventually accepted as fact. Even when we don’t understand the mechanism behind it and put forth a reason that is invalid, the experience is often quite real. Those researchers I know in various places who do attempt to involve autistic people as colleagues rather than as subjects, have confirmed this and said that the ability of some autistic people to do something other than repeat research they’ve heard is vital for the research to be properly critiqued. And has led to new discoveries that are a lot more interesting and closer to reality than the previous research, even if not matching our own personal theories of why it happens. If we give more and more of the what that contradicts theory, they can often find why it contradicts theory and write theory that more closely conforms to the what. Of course we have to put up with the idea that we might be mistaken about something, but that’s how science goes. One example is an MIT researcher spoke to me about reading emotions, and I asked her how many parents of autistic children she knows who say their child detects tension in the house. She said every parent she knew said that, but she had discarded it as irrelevant because theory said we couldn’t. That’s why they need us out there saying “The theory might be wrong, let’s set up a way to test it.” Morton Ann Gernsbacher, one researcher who values our participation as colleagues, writes more about this here.
Additionally, “autistics” and “autistic people” are not recent inventions.
The timeline went something like:
First we were autistics and autistic people.
Then non-autistic people found that dehumanizing and decided the only respectful way to refer to autistic people was “people with autism”.
Then some autistic people came along and said they were uncomfortable with some of the enforced political correctness around that, or even around having to invert their grammar when they already had some degree of language issues. And so autistic people started often using autistic person or autistic again. (But some autistic people disagree with this of course. We’re not a monolithic group with a single opinion, and even individuals change our opinions over time.)
Who is right is again a matter of political opinion, but that’s the actual sequence, the word “autistic” wasn’t exactly invented by some sort of rabid autistic political activist or something.
“And as mentioned earlier, other parents are just as convinced (wrongly) that the MMR vaccine caused their children’s autism based on personal observations. Could you tell us
why they are wrong and you are right?”
I don’t get it. I ruled out MMR for my son, not for anyone else.
LOL, Using Autism Diva as a source doesn’t enhance your credibility. Chemical castration, indeed.?!!! You can not chemically castrate anyone who has not reached puberty. The decrease in testosterone is temporary. I talk with several parents whose kids are patients of Dr Geier and they are improving.
BTW, if you remove the thimerosal, I am in favor of vaccines.
Of course until more studies are done it cannot be ruled in, or ruled out. But many in my “group” of parents did have extra ultrasounds for various reasons. Just throwing this out into the fray. But I am NOT saying I agree, or disagree just saying another possible factor
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/34/12903
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/34/12661
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114182343/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Most of those are to medical speak for me to understand, I just understand it can mess with a developing mouses brain. And I do think more studies should be done on that possible link.
That doesn’t really answer my question. In order to help diagnose fragile X, our reference lab uses a combination of Southern blot, polymerase chain reaction, and fragment analysis to look for the number of CGG repeats in the 5’ region of the FMRI gene on the X chromosome. Bidirectional sequencing of the MECP2 coding region is performed to evaluate for Rett’s syndrome.
Both of these assays are specifically directed towards finding mutations in these two genes, and cannot address any other genes on the X chromosome, nor on any other chromosome.
Simply put, a negative result for either of these two conditions in no way rules out a genetic cause for autism.
Umm…babies can’t focus their eyes until about six weeks of age. If what you say is true (one HELL of an assumption at this point) then you’re clearly reading something into the event that didn’t exist at the time.
Your son is telepathic?? Wow! :eek:
09-24-2007, 02:29 PM
I heard that someone here linked to a post I wrote about Amanda Baggs. She’s connected to a bunch of people who are trying to obfuscate the truth about the horror of low functioning autism. Some of Getting the Truth Out was written by Laura Tisoncik. I would bet that others also contributed to it.
09-25-2007, 06:47 PM
As anyone can plainly see by reading the Hating Autism blog, Amanda Baggs has had many different diagnoses. I suspect she is a “personal friend” to Mrs Seidel because she is the spokesmodel for the Neurodiversity movement which is nothing but propaganda to defend pharmaceutical companies.
One of the standards for diagnosing autism is that it must be identified by the age of 3.
If anyone decides to peruse Seidel’s insane website, they should be aware of the fact that all of the scientists she is doing character assassinations on are helping autistic children. Dr Mark Geier is a pioneer in the field of curing autism and has donated his expertise and time to help these suffering children. Seidel sees fit to bash this man mercilessly while conveniently neglecting to mention that children’s autistic symptoms are improving quicker thanks to his treatments.
Mrs Seidel normally refuses to participate in any discussion with me. Oftentimes. she disappears when I ask her to show me the 77 year old autistics that she would have us believe exist in the same numbers as todays children at 1 out of 150.
“presumptuous, distorted, inaccurate and downright vicious” are some pretty good words to bash an adversary with. I guess you have to ask yourselves who has more reason to lie, a guy who wants to see all autistic children get cured or a woman who supports the drug companies’ mass poisoning of babies.
Thank you for protesting so much, Kathleen.
Pazu,
The fact that removing mercury via chelation gave my son improvement also proves he does not have fragile X or Rett’s. If he did, chelation would have done him no good.
Miller,
I’ve encountered one person here who claims to be an MD. There are others who know more about science than I do so I used the term “science guys” to include all of them.
The most important study on thimerosal was the first Verstraeten study. That caused the Simpsonwood meeting where 51 science guys decided to protect their own relatives but to keep poisoning the rest of the world for profit. You can find this info at Safe Minds. That was all the science we needed!!. That was just before politicians started pulling dirty tricks to protect Pharma. It was also the time when we learned that chelation was proving useful to help these kids.
The trillions of dollars at stake if anyone in power admits the truth can cause some very strange behavior. It can also produce some very strange studies. What does common sense tell you about Simpsonwood?
It was a couple of scientists who advised me to chelate my son, MD’s as a matter of fact. It seems that MD’s who advise parents that chelation will help are curing children. MD’s who advise parents that chelation will not help are not curing children. Do you think that’s a placebo effect?
Actually one of the standards for diagnosing autism is this:
It does not need to be noticed by doctors, or diagnosed, or anything else. It does not need to be what is currently popularly referred to as ‘severe autism’. The person just has to have abnormal functioning or delays in one of three areas by the age of three. (I had them in two or three depending on how you count it, but you only need one.) There is a difference between exist and be diagnosed.
Note also that a diagnosis of autism requires differences in all three areas to be present later on. So actually, a diagnosis of autism requires fewer differences before the age of three than after. It only requires one by the age of three, but three by the time of diagnosis. If a child is diagnosed by the age of three, they would have all three before three. But a person could be diagnosed at the age of 7, 14, 21, whatever, on the basis of a history taken by the doctor. That is what was done in my case. I had delays and abnormal functioning in several areas before the age of three, and the requisite number of social and communication differences and repetitive and restricted behaviors and interests and whatnot after the age of three.
This was recognized rapidly during a developmental history taken by someone who had no reason whatsoever to suspect autism from why I was admitted to the place he was examining me at (suicidal behavior), and he hadn’t met me yet so it couldn’t have been from my own behavior at that point in time. He spoke with my mother to get a developmental history. He then examined neurology and neuropsychology reports from a year prior (note that this also means prior to college and anything that happened there) and testing done a few weeks before. He found constant references to social and language difficulties, unusual interests, and so on and so forth. He also spoke to my father and my two older brothers. That is how a diagnosis is done for someone over the age of three, they tend to require developmental histories given by people other than the patient, preferably family members.
Additionally, the vast majority of children currently diagnosed as autistic, including most diagnosed as severely autistic, would not have been diagnosable as specifically autistic until 1987. The reason is that Criterion B in 1980 (the year autism entered the DSM, and the year I was born) required a pervasive lack of responsiveness to others, and that’s now considered a misconception of autism and the exception rather than the rule. Most autistic children for instance are responsive in some manner to their parents.
It turns out by the way that I wasn’t given every diagnosis I thought I was. For instance, I misinterpreted a statement a psychologist fleetingly made of “they thought it was factitious disorder” to be about me. It wasn’t. It was apparently a point in a very ugly insurance battle, and it was a (false) accusation of the “by proxy” version of that. I didn’t find that out until much later and by mistake during a conversation about it. One thing that nobody doubted though was that I’d been different since early childhood. That’s why the incredibly strict state of California accepted me as developmentally disabled, it certainly wasn’t just on my word or something (they don’t accept primarily psych or learning disabilities as that category, either).