Get the Truth Out on Autism

Great Debates
241

[QUOTE=foresam]
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.
[/QUOTE]

That’s irrelevant. I’m simply addressing your claim to have “ruled out a genetic basis” for autism. Since the tests in current use for both conditions are directed at specific mutations, the other 99.999…% of the genome hasn’t been evaluated at all, and therefore, a possible genetic component has not by any means been excluded.

242

Pazu,
Any genetic component that could be identified now would be irrelevant since we already found the cause.

243

Getting the Truth Out was primarily written by me. Laura Tisoncik and Joel Smith helped me with a few areas of proofreading and wording.

Interestingly enough, Joel actually was diagnosed with autism by the strict 1980 definition, as well as mental retardation. A year later he was considered gifted because he had learned to speak and could show some of what he knew. He was really good in some areas and not so good in others, like I was, and was bullied badly in school, also like I was. As an adult, despite having technically spoken since the age of 4 or 5, he still periodically loses the ability to speak, and has had it shut down for very extended periods of time before. When he does speak, nobody but someone very familiar with speech difficulties would know he has serious trouble with it (I can tell because I can hear the same distance in his voice that I felt in my own, but that’s hardly scientific). He can talk at length about a number of subjects. It’s just sometimes he can’t with his mouth. It’s one of the first things to go for many autistic people under stress, demands for increased performance in other areas, or health conditions that impair functioning in general.

And he and I met and instantly could read each other very well – not universal to autistic people, but something I’m very curious because I keep hearing reports of autistic people being able to read at least some other autistic people’s body language, and I think this is overlooked in tests of our reading non-autistic body language. Non-autistic people have enough trouble reading our body language to frequently do things like declare us pervasively unresponsive to others when we’re not (I can remember an entire time period when I was regarded as ‘uninterested in people’ while I was intensely interested but my body was not showing the right signals). So I think it’d be interesting to find some way of studying body-language-reading compatibility among various sorts of autistic people (since it’s something I hear anecdotally very often, but haven’t seen really looked at).

244

[QUOTE=ambaggs]
It does not need to be noticed by doctors, or diagnosed, or anything else.
[/QUOTE]
Umm…yes it does. It needs to be observed, documented, or at least mentioned by somebody in your social network. Otherwise, how do we know you’re not just re-writing your own mental history? Or worse, merely making shit up?

It’s extremely unlikely that anyone with social interaction issues – especially someone with deficits so severe as to require the “autistic” label – would go completely unnoticed by everyone until your teenage years. Neurotypicals can be dense, but they’re not that dense.

[QUOTE=ambaggs]
I’m not interested in debating my existence any further.
[/QUOTE]
A wise decision.

245

[QUOTE=KGS]
Umm…yes it does. It needs to be observed, documented, or at least mentioned by somebody in your social network.
[/quote]

Well, of course. But it doesn’t need to be diagnosed by a doctor officially during that age range, which is what I was referring to. It would of course be noticed, provided it was not considered normal by those people. (There are families where speech delays, for instance, of up to 4 years or so, are considered normal because so many family members have had them.) If it was considered normal it would have technically been noticed but not as anything to be alarmed at.

This is why, as I said, doctors who diagnose such things interview family members and others who knew the person in early childhood, as they did (multiple family members) in my case. But the doctor doesn’t have to notice everything in early childhood, and if they do they don’t have to have noticed that it could mean autism (particularly for someone born the year autism entered the DSM in a manner that would not apply to them).

The main difference between the official diagnoses of autism and Asperger’s is not the extent of overall traits, it is the extent of specific delays or unusualness in a particular area (speech). There are many people who would meet the Asperger criteria if it were not for the fact that they had a speech delay, which puts them into the autism category. This is why with the diagnosis of older children, teens, and adults they have to check on early development if they are going to follow the official guidelines on diagnosis.

I didn’t by the way say that I personally wasn’t noticed in earlier childhood. I was, people had all kinds of concerns. But none of them went to a doctor who knew about autism. (There were many many counselors, including one who decided I was weird because I fell into a duck pond as a kid, but no doctors.) Which is the case for many people I know who were later diagnosed with autism. Yeah, we might have been good enough at some things to get by for awhile, but that actually does not make a person non-autistic. (Unless, again, you’re going to say anyone not noticed specifically as autistic in childhood is not autistic, which excludes most autistic people born before relatively recently. I would not have met autism criteria until I was 6 or 7.)

And, it should be noted again, the range of severity in two of the three areas for autism and Asperger’s are identical. The third area, regarding communication, is only supposed to be present in autism, but can also range from mild (say, a speech delay followed by a total or near-total catch-up) to severe.

246

Amanda,
How come people who knew you before you were diagnosed with autism report that you were normal?

247

Amanda,
How come people who knew you before you were diagnosed with autism report that you were normal

248

[QUOTE=foresam]
I don’t get it. I ruled out MMR for my son, not for anyone else.
[/quote]

Oh, I see. Since you keep referring to “the truth” and “the cause” one might easily conclude you had the dogmatic view that "mercury (thimerosal) is the cause of autism.

Since you are conceding that other parents who don’t blame thimerosal for autism may be correct, what’s your opinion of the folks over at Generation Rescue, who initially singled out thimerosal and then (after repeated studies nixed the link and autism rates kept rising after thimerosal’s removal from common childhood vaccines) did an about-face and starting blaming "live viruses and “toxic loads” for autism. Check out the latest villains on their site.

Around here we respect reasoned arguments, not ad hominems.

I suggest you acquaint yourself with the meaning of the word “castration”. It refers (in the case of males) to removing or inhibiting the function or development of the testes. This is what Lupron does in the children whose misguided parents believe it is a cure for autism. Placing young children on this drug may have a variety of detrimental effects even if one stops taking it before puberty:

“At all stages of development, which extends from fetal and neonatal stages to pubertal accomplishment, androgens also have activational effects that are immediate, multiple, reversible and dose dependent. Both types of actions are intricate during human development.”

I have not heard you state your view on the Geiers’ attempting to patent the concept of Lupron therapy for autism, nor on the huge payoff to Andrew Wakefield and associates (authors of the retracted study on MMR vaccination and autism) from lawyers hoping to cash in on lawsuits against British health agencies. This is curious, given your claim that Big Pharma was pushing dangerous vaccines out of a profit motive (and doubly curious, considering that vaccines are a loss leader for the pharmaceutical industry and the number of firms producing them has dwindled in recent years). If there’s a profit motive operating in the autism controversy, it seems heavily biased towards those “researchers” and alternative treatment promoters who are exploiting parents of autistic children. Here’s an example of the big bucks available to practitioners who promote chelation therapy as the answer to autism and a variety of other conditions.

Fine. Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines for precautionary reasons five or more years ago in the U.S. and other countries. Autism rates are still climbing. Now what?

249

Would you like me to take a lie detector test? I know what i saw.

[QUOTE=KGS]
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:
[/QUOTE]

250

[QUOTE=foresam]
Would you like me to take a lie detector test? I know what i saw.
[/QUOTE]
Why? You have not been accused of lying. It has been pointed out that a specific observation that you have made is not consistent with all the various relevant studies of human infant development.

There are many possible causes for this: wishful thinking of a proud parent; misinterpretation of the appearnce of the infant’s gaze; astoundingly advanced child prodigy; an amazingly perceptive parent who detects clues about newborn characteristics that have been missed by millions of other baby caretakers; etc.

Regardless, you really need to ratchet back on both your assertion that others are lying and your assumption that anyone who challenges you is accusing you of lying. There is plenty of room for serious disagreement among people of good will without making every exchange a hostile one.

251

All the evidence I’ve seen says thimerosal is the cause of most autism.

GR can try to identify every cause of autism. This would certainly be useful in curing all autism. My focus is on removing what I consider to be the main cause from all vaccines, worldwide, today. When trillions of dollars are at stake, you have to follow the money to arrive at the truth. No studies have nixed the link between thimerosal and autsim, although some have claimed to have done this.

The testes do not develop into anything useful until puberty. You can’t chemically castrate someone who has not yet developed the function you claim has been “chopped off”.
I’d be interested in expert opinions about Lupron. Since the Geier’s seem to be the only ones using it, they are vreally the only ones qualified to discuss it. A patent on Lupron therapy could ensure that the treatment is carried out safely and effectively. I wouldn’t want to see another tragedy like the Roy kerry malpractice case.

HepB was replaced with the flu shot. Draw your own conclusions. Remember to follow the money.

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
Oh, I see. Since you keep referring to “the truth” and “the cause” one might easily conclude you had the dogmatic view that "mercury (thimerosal) is the cause of autism.

Since you are conceding that other parents who don’t blame thimerosal for autism may be correct, what’s your opinion of the folks over at Generation Rescue, who initially singled out thimerosal and then (after repeated studies nixed the link and autism rates kept rising after thimerosal’s removal from common childhood vaccines) did an about-face and starting blaming "live viruses and “toxic loads” for autism. Check out the latest villains on their site.Around here we respect reasoned arguments, not ad hominems. I suggest you acquaint yourself with the meaning of the word “castration”. It refers (in the case of males) to removing or inhibiting the function or development of the testes. This is what Lupron does in the children whose misguided parents believe it is a cure for autism. Placing young children on this drug may have a variety of detrimental effects even if one stops taking it before puberty:

“At all stages of development, which extends from fetal and neonatal stages to pubertal accomplishment, androgens also have activational effects that are immediate, multiple, reversible and dose dependent. Both types of actions are intricate during human development.”

I have not heard you state your view on the Geiers’ attempting to patent the concept of Lupron therapy for autism, nor on the huge payoff to Andrew Wakefield and associates (authors of the retracted study on MMR vaccination and autism) from lawyers hoping to cash in on lawsuits against British health agencies. This is curious, given your claim that Big Pharma was pushing dangerous vaccines out of a profit motive (and doubly curious, considering that vaccines are a loss leader for the pharmaceutical industry and the number of firms producing them has dwindled in recent years). If there’s a profit motive operating in the autism controversy, it seems heavily biased towards those “researchers” and alternative treatment promoters who are exploiting parents of autistic children. Here’s an example of the big bucks available to practitioners who promote chelation therapy as the answer to autism and a variety of other conditions.
Fine. Thimerosal was removed from most vaccines for precautionary reasons five or more years ago in the U.S. and other countries. Autism rates are still climbing. Now what?
[/QUOTE]

252

Doctors used to tell us infants couldn’t see until a certain age. That was revised. They now tell us infants can see when they are born. I don’t need anyone to tell me how to read eyes. I’m a good poker player.

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Why? You have not been accused of lying. It has been pointed out that a specific observation that you have made is not consistent with all the various relevant studies of human infant development.

There are many possible causes for this: wishful thinking of a proud parent; misinterpretation of the appearnce of the infant’s gaze; astoundingly advanced child prodigy; an amazingly perceptive parent who detects clues about newborn characteristics that have been missed by millions of other baby caretakers; etc.

Regardless, you really need to ratchet back on both your assertion that others are lying and your assumption that anyone who challenges you is accusing you of lying. There is plenty of room for serious disagreement among people of good will without making every exchange a hostile one.
[/QUOTE]

253

[QUOTE=foresam]
Would you like me to take a lie detector test?
[/QUOTE]
A polygraph won’t be necessary. A simple link to a study supporting your assertions would be nice, though. Google is your friend. Backing up your claims with third-party sources isn’t nearly as scary as you seem to think. Try it, you’ll like it.

I’d also like to see those videos you claim to have. But at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone’s doubting that you even have a son at all.

254

KGS,
As soon as you show me a study that proves I can’t read any pair of eyes on the planet, I’ll be happy to oblige.

255

Well, when you take that small group of people (that my medical records explicitly say I ought to avoid contact with because of their tendency to try to mess with my head and/or egg me on into acting new kinds of ‘crazy’), and then you compare them to the documentation that I was medically considered abnormal prior to even meeting them, the amount of people who have known me since birth, childhood, or preteen years who know I was not normal (some of whom have attempted to publicly say so only to be immediately called liars and even to be accused of being the same person, whereas the views of those claiming I was “normal” are not examined or questioned in any great depth, even one of them who apparently now claims to have lived with me at a time when I wasn’t even living at home), I think it’s possible to draw some conclusions from that, that don’t somehow point to my having been normal.

Hint: They don’t diagnose kids who were “normal” before the age of 14 with any autism-related condition, nor with CNS disorder “dating back to early childhood,” nor with abnormal EEG readings and social isolation, flat affect, periodic incomprehension/immobility/mutism/etc (that all take place prior to the age of 14), nor with psychosis with onset in “very early childhood”. They don’t simply take the kid’s word for it, either (even if the kid has a clue enough to report something), they check these things. They have to have corroboration from family and/or other people who’ve known the kid for awhile, or else they have no early childhood history to go on.

256

I don’t have an autistic child, but my niece does (4 at the low spectrum, no speech at all), and it was after learning about my nephew that I tried to become more informed about different theories… of course the thimerosol/mercury in Hib vaccine worried me and it was after his first one that I intentionally spaced out his vaccines (instead of getting 4 at a time, 1/one month, 2/two months later, 1/following month), and I told the Pedi why, even though he did all he could to convince me otherwise, “there’s such a minute amt in the Hib…” but I considered the cumulative effect once you factor 4 shots at a time. My baby is fine, precocious, and I still have the fears of thimerosol, but wonder since many babies who had gotten the same vaccines, but didn’t develop autism, could it have something to do with how each person/baby metabolises thimerosol and that possibly has much to do with why so many children don’t develop autism but others do?

Please forgive me for interjecting… my niece is so depressed I sometimes don’t even recognize her, sadly she has aggressively researched for a facility to commit him to as soon as she can (he has to be 15yrs olf), as if she’s cutting out cancer from her body… and I still live with the fear of not knowing for sure what exactly is attributable to causing autism.

257

I understand that someone who considered herself to be an elf might be thought of as medically abnormal. I can also understand how someone who is concerned about people mesing with her head might fit into a paranoid schizophrenic catagory. I can’t understand how someone considered “gifted”, who entered college at age 13 could, all of a sudden, go from acting normal to acting like a severely autistic person who never had any life skills at all. Since I’ve heard lawyers are involved, I won’t offer further comment at this time.

[QUOTE=ambaggs]
Well, when you take that small group of people (that my medical records explicitly say I ought to avoid contact with because of their tendency to try to mess with my head and/or egg me on into acting new kinds of ‘crazy’), and then you compare them to the documentation that I was medically considered abnormal prior to even meeting them, the amount of people who have known me since birth, childhood, or preteen years who know I was not normal (some of whom have attempted to publicly say so only to be immediately called liars and even to be accused of being the same person, whereas the views of those claiming I was “normal” are not examined or questioned in any great depth, even one of them who apparently now claims to have lived with me at a time when I wasn’t even living at home), I think it’s possible to draw some conclusions from that, that don’t somehow point to my having been normal.

Hint: They don’t diagnose kids who were “normal” before the age of 14 with any autism-related condition, nor with CNS disorder “dating back to early childhood,” nor with abnormal EEG readings and social isolation, flat affect, periodic incomprehension/immobility/mutism/etc (that all take place prior to the age of 14), nor with psychosis with onset in “very early childhood”. They don’t simply take the kid’s word for it, either (even if the kid has a clue enough to report something), they check these things. They have to have corroboration from family and/or other people who’ve known the kid for awhile, or else they have no early childhood history to go on.
[/QUOTE]

258

[QUOTE=Nava]
Sorry, I should have included a whole batch of rolleyes. Neither my friend nor any of the hundreds of nerds I know who are perfectly happy to call ourselves nerds have any interest in being called autistic. And if you’ve been with a woman for ten years and she suddenly decides that because you (a computer programmer and single child born of two single children) don’t have much to talk about with her dozens of farmer siblings and cousins, you need fixing… damnit, but she should have thought about it years before!
[/QUOTE]

There is no need to apologise, rolleyes weren’t necessary. Perhaps I should have added a couple to my message.

Precisely! That is why I cannot imagine why Simon Baron-Cohen sends messages of support to Aspies for Freedom, when so many members are self-diagnosed Aspies. Can you?

The most vicious attacks on parents treating their children’s Autism come from members of this group which sprang from Edan Dagan’s Aspergian website, founded in 2002, and, judging by the numbers that flocked to his online community, the idea that ‘Aspergians’ are an ancient race with special powers, must have appealed to teens, science fiction fans, and all sorts of crazy people.

Autism and Aspergers Syndrome began to be trivialised when these disabilities started to be associated with Einstein and Bill Gates. That was in 1999. Why?

In 2000, Baron-Cohen published, “Is Asperger’s Syndrome/High-Functioning Autism necessarily a disability?” ", and then came his Geek and Aspie online tests. Then ridiculous websites such as Aspergia appeared.

I have never had a problem with geeks. I have had several friends that would fit into that category, but when they and others diagnose themselves with a disability, and join forces with a group that bullies parents who treat their disabled children, something ought to be done. I would certainly like to see recruiting into this elite group whose members boast about their high IQs, and how successful they are, stopped immediately. And it would help enormously if those Aspie tests vanished from cyberspace.

259

[QUOTE=DSeid]
No. And by definition they do not. I do however think that the Aspergers diagnosis in particular gets very fuzzy. Many socially atypical quirky and obsessive types (some of my favorite people from college and med school!) can be squeezed in there…
[/QUOTE]

Would you describe them as disabled?

I wholeheartedly agree. Do you believe that Stephen Spielberg should have a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome? How about Vernon Smith and Richard Borcherds?

[QUOTE=DSeid]
I don’t know much about Fitzgerald. Baron-Cohen’s work (which he has also called the “extreme male brain” in a more media hookish way) is based on reams of data about a basic processing stylistic in those with ASD, not just Aspergers.
[/QUOTE]

Perhaps you should read Professor Fitzgerald’s books. His studies from 1999 have focused on diagnosing historical figures with Aspergers: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sir Keith Joseph, Eamon de Valera, Lewis Carroll and William Butler, George Orwell, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Andy Warhol, Herman Melville, Simone Weil, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Enoch Powell, Stanley Kubrick, Aldous Huxley, Sir Isaac Newton, Alfred Kinsey, Patricia Highsmith, William James Sidis, Robert Walser, Joy Adamson, Kurt Gödel, Robert Emmet, Pádraig Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Robert Boyle, William Rowan Hamilton, Daisy Bates, WB Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett…
Do you agree with what he says here?

[QUOTE=DSeid]

No. That statement is a complete crock.
[/QUOTE]

Is it?

http://www.firstsigns.org/screening/asd.htm

Can you show me proof that during the 1990s, medical professionals were screening routinely for autism?

260

[QUOTE=foresam]
Since I’ve heard lawyers are involved, I won’t offer further comment at this time.
[/QUOTE]
I have news for you: lawyers are not the issue.

We really do not tolerate stalking or bringing personal vendettas from off board onto our message board. If you (who have claimed to have diagnosed problems and causes and solutions without demonstrating any grasp of medicine or neurology and without providing any peer-reviewed research that substantiates any of your claims) are allowed to post without being challenged to “prove” every aspect of your private life, then you will extend the same courtesy to other posters.
You are free to challenge any assertion that you find contradicted by your knowledge or your life experience, but you will drop this pursuit of “exposing” the private life of another poster–a pursuit that looks very much like harrassment.

This policy is as ancient as the SDMB and it does not require intrusive lawyersto trigger our reaction.

[ /Moderating ]