I'd like to give a shoutout to teenaged antineurodiversity blogger
Oliver Canby's latest post in which he draws an excellent analogy to the occupy wall street movement to demonstrate the problems that those of us who'd like a cure for our autism face.
Though I don't agree with all of Oliver's statements, particularly a call for violence if necessary, nor will I be contributing $500.00 to his cause or soliciting donations of my own, I believe this post deserves commentary.
For years some of the members of the neurodiversity movement have made the statement that most autistics don't want to be cured.
Wrong planet founder, Alex Plank has been at the head of the pack in this regard. He even has the motto "autism is good" on his website.
While I won't claim most autistics want to be cured or give an exact number of 99%, there are certainly a good many autistics who are not represented by neurodiversity. It is likely many of these who can't speak or head bang would like a cure.
Many persons on the spectrum are too low functioning or would not have the inclination to write a blog post trying to dispute neurodiversity. Many parents who are working hard, fighting for services and other help for their kids just don't have the time to blog and refute what the ND's say.
Many if not the majority of ND's are young college students or even younger teenagers who have time on their hands with very little responsibilities. They are not encumbered from being able to rant and rave and spread their evil message. So, though the numbers may not be exact, the analogy between the top 1% and bottom 99% rings true.
It is wrong for Alex Plank, Michael John Carley, Dawn Prince and others to speak on our behalf. They have no way of knowing what percent of autistics support neurodiversity and which don't. There is a good chance that a silent majority does believe autism is not a trivial condition and wish for a cure--including the majority of those on the spectrum themselves.
I have no job, can't get anything done during the day and have very little social interaction and I'm in the bottom 99%.
Though not easy, I'll do what I can to combat neurodiversity. Hopefully someday there will be a cure for autism or a way to prevent a child from becoming autistic. No, I'm not talking about abortion.
I hope the time will come when neurodiversity is exposed for the fringe movement that they are and the 99% of us whose impairments make it difficult to fight back will allow our message to be heard by the media.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Will New DSM end the autism epidemic?
Fred Volkmar, director of the child study center at Yale University has made the very strong statement that changes in the new proposed DSM that are due to come out this December will result in the end of the autism epidemic.
The definitions of autism will become far more stringent, making getting a legitimate diagnosis more difficult. At least according to Volkmar and the people he's worked with who compiled the data and have presented it to a conference. This data is as yet unpublished. Autism researcher Catherine Lord has disputed Volkmar's contention, claiming his analysis in part is the result of antiquated data.
I wonder what are the implications of this. Will people requiring various services or who want to get on disability have a harder time doing so? Will the Age of Autism crowd who insists that some changes in the environment (such as vaccines or more exposures to mercury) have their arguments refuted and be proven wrong if Volkmar's insinuations that the so-called epidemic is an artifact are proven correct? Will the neurodiversity movement have a harder time trivializing this condition, claiming it's not so bad and claiming that perhaps as many of 30% of autistics are savants have a harder time making their argument? Will certain extremely high functioning individuals such as Valerie Paradiz or Deena Gassner who present at conferences and make money from autism have a more difficult time doing so? What of Laurent Mottron and Isabelle Souleries' research? Will they still be able to legitimately claim that all autistics have superior skills in certain areas? There are other questions one could ask, but you can get the drift.
Aside from knowing that Michael Carley will be unhappy that he will have to possibly be associated with head bangers and diaper wearers and may no longer be able to fancy himself an incarnation of Bill Gates or Albert Einstein, Gadfly wonders if Volkmar is correct and if this will really change anything.
My first impression is that the answer is no. Nothing will convince Mark Blaxill, Ginger Taylor, Kim Stagliano and others that their kids did not become autistic because of vaccines. This is apparent to me. They will claim that Volkmar is wrong. Neurodiversity will continue to insist that Jamie Gilbert is not disordered but is only differently wired, that if society were to accommodate him, he'd be able to communicate using an assistive device, he wouldn't engage in head banging. His mother would not need to make all of these drastic videos and post them on youtube. They will claim she is a bigot for not accepting her son the way he is. Like other mothers who long for a cure, she only rejects her son and teaches him to hate himself. If Jamie is unhappy about his head banging, inability to speak and compulsion to self-mutilate it is entirely his mother's fault ala Bettelheim. These vicious hatemongers will not change their color.
I was denied disability, based on the fact that I was able to work somewhat in spite of my limitations, My success was punished while others' sloth was rewarded. The use of assistive devices has apparently given the government an excuse to deny disability benefits to people. Any excuse will be used to deny disability regardless of the reported prevalence of autism.
Having met both Deena Gassner and Valerie Paradiz, it is beyond my comprehension how either of these two merit an autism diagnosis. Of course, I may not know everything about their lives. Both of them allege to have been diagnosed by certified clinicians. I must defer to the judgement of the clinicians and realize that individuals who can attain advanced degrees, get married, have children must have impairments that are not obvious to my untrained eye and somehow merit a diagnosis under the current DSM criteria. But what if the DSM changes? Will Gassner and Paradiz lose their respective diagnoses?
I believe the answer to that question can be obtained by looking at another extremely high functioning individual, John Elder Robison. Mr. Robison had written a best selling memoir based on being on the autism spectrum. When neurodiversity complained of no autistics having positions of power in autism speaks, AS used affirmative action and recruited Mr. Robison, someone who hadn't even completed the tenth grade in school, to sit in a room with M.D. and Ph.D. scientists and decide what research they should fund. Robison also gets to decide how tax dollars should be spent.
This is in spite of the fact that Robison has admitted to not being a disabled person by any means (his words). Though I am not completely familiar with the current DSM criteria, I find it hard to believe you don't have to have some sort of disability to qualify for a diagnosis. Yet, I must defer to Robison's psychologist friend who diagnosed him at age 40. Perhaps there is some explanation as to how a nondisabled person can be legitimately diagnosed with this condition according to current DSM criteria. So somehow I don't see changing the criteria would take Robison's diagnosis away.
Is Volkmar correct? Will this end the autism epidemic (alleged or otherwise)? Will this change anything at all. No, I don't think so.
The definitions of autism will become far more stringent, making getting a legitimate diagnosis more difficult. At least according to Volkmar and the people he's worked with who compiled the data and have presented it to a conference. This data is as yet unpublished. Autism researcher Catherine Lord has disputed Volkmar's contention, claiming his analysis in part is the result of antiquated data.
I wonder what are the implications of this. Will people requiring various services or who want to get on disability have a harder time doing so? Will the Age of Autism crowd who insists that some changes in the environment (such as vaccines or more exposures to mercury) have their arguments refuted and be proven wrong if Volkmar's insinuations that the so-called epidemic is an artifact are proven correct? Will the neurodiversity movement have a harder time trivializing this condition, claiming it's not so bad and claiming that perhaps as many of 30% of autistics are savants have a harder time making their argument? Will certain extremely high functioning individuals such as Valerie Paradiz or Deena Gassner who present at conferences and make money from autism have a more difficult time doing so? What of Laurent Mottron and Isabelle Souleries' research? Will they still be able to legitimately claim that all autistics have superior skills in certain areas? There are other questions one could ask, but you can get the drift.
Aside from knowing that Michael Carley will be unhappy that he will have to possibly be associated with head bangers and diaper wearers and may no longer be able to fancy himself an incarnation of Bill Gates or Albert Einstein, Gadfly wonders if Volkmar is correct and if this will really change anything.
My first impression is that the answer is no. Nothing will convince Mark Blaxill, Ginger Taylor, Kim Stagliano and others that their kids did not become autistic because of vaccines. This is apparent to me. They will claim that Volkmar is wrong. Neurodiversity will continue to insist that Jamie Gilbert is not disordered but is only differently wired, that if society were to accommodate him, he'd be able to communicate using an assistive device, he wouldn't engage in head banging. His mother would not need to make all of these drastic videos and post them on youtube. They will claim she is a bigot for not accepting her son the way he is. Like other mothers who long for a cure, she only rejects her son and teaches him to hate himself. If Jamie is unhappy about his head banging, inability to speak and compulsion to self-mutilate it is entirely his mother's fault ala Bettelheim. These vicious hatemongers will not change their color.
I was denied disability, based on the fact that I was able to work somewhat in spite of my limitations, My success was punished while others' sloth was rewarded. The use of assistive devices has apparently given the government an excuse to deny disability benefits to people. Any excuse will be used to deny disability regardless of the reported prevalence of autism.
Having met both Deena Gassner and Valerie Paradiz, it is beyond my comprehension how either of these two merit an autism diagnosis. Of course, I may not know everything about their lives. Both of them allege to have been diagnosed by certified clinicians. I must defer to the judgement of the clinicians and realize that individuals who can attain advanced degrees, get married, have children must have impairments that are not obvious to my untrained eye and somehow merit a diagnosis under the current DSM criteria. But what if the DSM changes? Will Gassner and Paradiz lose their respective diagnoses?
I believe the answer to that question can be obtained by looking at another extremely high functioning individual, John Elder Robison. Mr. Robison had written a best selling memoir based on being on the autism spectrum. When neurodiversity complained of no autistics having positions of power in autism speaks, AS used affirmative action and recruited Mr. Robison, someone who hadn't even completed the tenth grade in school, to sit in a room with M.D. and Ph.D. scientists and decide what research they should fund. Robison also gets to decide how tax dollars should be spent.
This is in spite of the fact that Robison has admitted to not being a disabled person by any means (his words). Though I am not completely familiar with the current DSM criteria, I find it hard to believe you don't have to have some sort of disability to qualify for a diagnosis. Yet, I must defer to Robison's psychologist friend who diagnosed him at age 40. Perhaps there is some explanation as to how a nondisabled person can be legitimately diagnosed with this condition according to current DSM criteria. So somehow I don't see changing the criteria would take Robison's diagnosis away.
Is Volkmar correct? Will this end the autism epidemic (alleged or otherwise)? Will this change anything at all. No, I don't think so.
Monday, January 2, 2012
More media attention to autistic adults in the future?
I'm gratified to see Susan Senator and The age of autism are bringing attention to the problems of autism in adulthood which are largely ignored by the media. I wrote about this several years ago.
One of the likely reasons for the dearth of coverage of adult autism is the reluctance to acknowledge the poor prognosis that most with this condition will have once they reach the milestone of their twenty-second birthday. This is the time when autistics age out of the special education system and can no longer get certain services.
Ivar Lovaas' landmark study claimed that approximately half of the children in the treatment group achieved complete normalcy. These children were followed up in adolescence and had maintained their gains. However, Lovaas in his lifetime never published adult outcomes of these children though the oldest are now in their forties. We don't know what became of these children and how they fared later in life.
Other pie-in-the-sky promises are made for autistics with social skills training, speech therapy and other services. The insurance mandates being passed in so many states that autism speaks lobbied for is attempting to fulfil these promises. AS even went so far as to claim these services would make the difference between kids having friends and not having friends.
Ms. Senator, who wrote a book ironically entitled "Making Peace With Autism", now seems to have some trouble making peace with the fact that her son has aged out of this system and the obstacles she now faces as his mother. In spite of the fact that her son received multiple services under IDEA, he has not done well as an adult and Ms. Senator was compelled to put him in a home at age seventeen. Will others on the spectrum do as poorly or better than her son? Time will tell.
Another reason is that not as many adults have been diagnosed as children. Some believe that this is because there were huge increases in autism that started in the 1980s and then took off in the 1990s. Others believe that autism is a much more popular diagnosis because it enables disabled children to get services and cultural shifts in thinking. This debate will probably never be resolved as doing prevalence studies in adults analogous to the ones done on children will never happen. One must remember the analogy about looking for a needle in a haystack. The reason the CDC was able to get nearly 1% prevalence figures in children was because they presented to special education services and such; this does not happen with adults. The Brugha study done in England attempted to address this problem, but likely had a variety of methodological flaws which makes it claims of finding a 1% prevalence in adults dubious.
Now that the year is 2012 and the population of the birth cohorts in which a diagnosis was more common are coming of age. So we're going to see more problems that autistics face in adulthood come to the fore. Ari Ne'eman's no myths video will be shown to be a myth itself. Ne'eman and others like him won't be able to get away with painting a false rosy picture of autistics doing just fine in maturity.
Perhaps this is the start of something new. Adults with autism won't be so invisible anymore. We will no longer regard autistics as Peter Pans who won't grow up. With this new publicity we'll be able to assess how really effective ABA and the IDEA law have been. I realize the insurance mandates are something new. The powers that be may use that as an excuse claim that all hope should not be abandoned.
In the meantime, I hope that Senator's piece as well as the age of autism's coverage will generate even more publicity. Perhaps it's high time those of us who suffer from autism in adulthood get the coverage we deserve.
One of the likely reasons for the dearth of coverage of adult autism is the reluctance to acknowledge the poor prognosis that most with this condition will have once they reach the milestone of their twenty-second birthday. This is the time when autistics age out of the special education system and can no longer get certain services.
Ivar Lovaas' landmark study claimed that approximately half of the children in the treatment group achieved complete normalcy. These children were followed up in adolescence and had maintained their gains. However, Lovaas in his lifetime never published adult outcomes of these children though the oldest are now in their forties. We don't know what became of these children and how they fared later in life.
Other pie-in-the-sky promises are made for autistics with social skills training, speech therapy and other services. The insurance mandates being passed in so many states that autism speaks lobbied for is attempting to fulfil these promises. AS even went so far as to claim these services would make the difference between kids having friends and not having friends.
Ms. Senator, who wrote a book ironically entitled "Making Peace With Autism", now seems to have some trouble making peace with the fact that her son has aged out of this system and the obstacles she now faces as his mother. In spite of the fact that her son received multiple services under IDEA, he has not done well as an adult and Ms. Senator was compelled to put him in a home at age seventeen. Will others on the spectrum do as poorly or better than her son? Time will tell.
Another reason is that not as many adults have been diagnosed as children. Some believe that this is because there were huge increases in autism that started in the 1980s and then took off in the 1990s. Others believe that autism is a much more popular diagnosis because it enables disabled children to get services and cultural shifts in thinking. This debate will probably never be resolved as doing prevalence studies in adults analogous to the ones done on children will never happen. One must remember the analogy about looking for a needle in a haystack. The reason the CDC was able to get nearly 1% prevalence figures in children was because they presented to special education services and such; this does not happen with adults. The Brugha study done in England attempted to address this problem, but likely had a variety of methodological flaws which makes it claims of finding a 1% prevalence in adults dubious.
Now that the year is 2012 and the population of the birth cohorts in which a diagnosis was more common are coming of age. So we're going to see more problems that autistics face in adulthood come to the fore. Ari Ne'eman's no myths video will be shown to be a myth itself. Ne'eman and others like him won't be able to get away with painting a false rosy picture of autistics doing just fine in maturity.
Perhaps this is the start of something new. Adults with autism won't be so invisible anymore. We will no longer regard autistics as Peter Pans who won't grow up. With this new publicity we'll be able to assess how really effective ABA and the IDEA law have been. I realize the insurance mandates are something new. The powers that be may use that as an excuse claim that all hope should not be abandoned.
In the meantime, I hope that Senator's piece as well as the age of autism's coverage will generate even more publicity. Perhaps it's high time those of us who suffer from autism in adulthood get the coverage we deserve.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Amazingly LBRB's Sullivan actually gets something right
One of the most well-known and widely read autism blogs is Kevin Leitch's creation ,Left Brain/Right Brain. For good reason, I've sometimes referred to them as Left Brain/Right Brain/No Brain. The blog's main author, Matt Carey (AKA "Sullivan"), appears to have a track record for not doing his homework and getting things wrong. As has been seen in the past, "Sullivan" has gotten his facts wrong about special education. When autism's Gadfly exposed Ari Ne'eman for being less than truthful when he claimed that he never said that autism was not a disability Sully made some pathetic attempts at damage control along with factual errors. He also made numerous factual errors about a Newsweek article that featured Ne'eman and the proactive stance against this article that was undertaken by a number of persons who wish to cure autism and don't believe in neurodiverse bull.
Well I'm happy to report actually for once he got something right. Ari and the autistic self advocacy network are apparently requesting that person's with autism be reviewers for federal research grants. They apparently only want people who have their warped ideology:
As a result, we’re issuing a call for resumes from Autistic adults and other people with disabilities who believe in the civil rights/social model approach to disability and want to ensure that self-advocates are represented in grantmaking. Please include any areas of expertise within your resume.
You can note the bolded part which is certainly bigoted and discriminatory. Apparently I don't qualify because I don't agree with ASAN's belief in the social model of disability. They only want people with their own warped ideology and not everyone's perspective.
Aside from this Gadfly wonders why it is necessary to have autistic reviewers and what this accomplishes. Steven Jobs was a very intelligent and talented individual who made great technological contributions to society, yet he was never appointed to a board that reviewed research grants to study cancer. I doubt that just because a person gets an infection that there is a call for them to be research reviewers on antibiotics.
Yet, in the world of autism this does not appear to be the case. Stephen Shore, a man with extremely mild autism, has been a reviewer of federal grants in the past. Though he has a doctorate in education, he has no formal background in science and has limited knowledge of the scientific issues of autism. Even worse, John Robison, a man whose claims to having autism are dubious, at least to me, has also been a reviewer of federal research grants. Robison, dropped out of school in the tenth grade, yet gets to review grants along with M.D.s and Ph.Ds. He has admitted that he is not a disabled person, so Gadfly wonders why he even qualifies for a diagnosis.
In light of this, I was pleasantly surprised to see this comment from "Sullivan":
Well I'm happy to report actually for once he got something right. Ari and the autistic self advocacy network are apparently requesting that person's with autism be reviewers for federal research grants. They apparently only want people who have their warped ideology:
As a result, we’re issuing a call for resumes from Autistic adults and other people with disabilities who believe in the civil rights/social model approach to disability and want to ensure that self-advocates are represented in grantmaking. Please include any areas of expertise within your resume.
You can note the bolded part which is certainly bigoted and discriminatory. Apparently I don't qualify because I don't agree with ASAN's belief in the social model of disability. They only want people with their own warped ideology and not everyone's perspective.
Aside from this Gadfly wonders why it is necessary to have autistic reviewers and what this accomplishes. Steven Jobs was a very intelligent and talented individual who made great technological contributions to society, yet he was never appointed to a board that reviewed research grants to study cancer. I doubt that just because a person gets an infection that there is a call for them to be research reviewers on antibiotics.
Yet, in the world of autism this does not appear to be the case. Stephen Shore, a man with extremely mild autism, has been a reviewer of federal grants in the past. Though he has a doctorate in education, he has no formal background in science and has limited knowledge of the scientific issues of autism. Even worse, John Robison, a man whose claims to having autism are dubious, at least to me, has also been a reviewer of federal research grants. Robison, dropped out of school in the tenth grade, yet gets to review grants along with M.D.s and Ph.Ds. He has admitted that he is not a disabled person, so Gadfly wonders why he even qualifies for a diagnosis.
In light of this, I was pleasantly surprised to see this comment from "Sullivan":
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Neurodiversity Plays the Murder Card once again
Persons who believe in the philosophy known as neurodiversity, that autism is not a disease or devastating disorder or in some cases state it is not even a disability, are full of nastiness and dirty tricks. They insult people they disagree with, calling them Nazis, they insult the mothers of autistic people who desire a cure, and even essentially bring back the Bettelheim era, claiming the person's disability comes from a mother who taught them to hate themselves. They even stoop to making fun of the person's disability in some instances.
One of the dirtiest tricks they play is the murder card. From time to time autistic children are murdered by their parents. In one recent instance a woman smothered her 6 month old child, believing the child was autistic and claiming she could not bear the thought of having an autistic child because of the costs to society and the inconvenience to herself. Without fail, whenever that happens, those of us who want a cure and/or state the truth about what a devastating disability autism is or present figures about the monetary costs of this disability are blamed for these murders. We are told these murders would not happen if everyone felt the same way neurodiversitites did and we just accepted autism as a natural variation of genetics and brain wiring.
Autism self-advocacy network stalwart Paula C. Durbin-Westby does not fail to disappoint. On a blog ironically titled The thinking person's guide to autism she writes a propaganda laden post at how terrible we are and how it is all our fault that these kids are murdered. She trots out some of the most ludicrous arguments imaginable, including quoting the post Joseph of the Natural variation blog wrote more than four years ago which was a pathetic attempt at debunking the costs of autism to society. He quoted employment statistics that he could not give the source to when I asked him, but assuring me he did not make it up. He also gave Vernon Smith and Bill Gates as examples of autistic persons. I have shown that Vernon Smith has no diagnosis of an ASD, but rather diagnosed himself by taking an AQ test, a nonstandardized instrument that in no way can be used to give a legitimate diagnosis. I have covered the problems with diagnosing Bill Gates in a variety of places, so I won't repeat those arguments here.
All I want to say to members of the neurodiversity movement and the autistic self advocacy network is that you're hurting your own cause by using such nasty propaganda tactics. You're only making yourselves look like the nasty people that you are. You accomplish nothing. It is an absolute disgrace that you have to insult people and use murder to bolster your positions because you have no facts to back up your deranged philosophy.
One of the dirtiest tricks they play is the murder card. From time to time autistic children are murdered by their parents. In one recent instance a woman smothered her 6 month old child, believing the child was autistic and claiming she could not bear the thought of having an autistic child because of the costs to society and the inconvenience to herself. Without fail, whenever that happens, those of us who want a cure and/or state the truth about what a devastating disability autism is or present figures about the monetary costs of this disability are blamed for these murders. We are told these murders would not happen if everyone felt the same way neurodiversitites did and we just accepted autism as a natural variation of genetics and brain wiring.
Autism self-advocacy network stalwart Paula C. Durbin-Westby does not fail to disappoint. On a blog ironically titled The thinking person's guide to autism she writes a propaganda laden post at how terrible we are and how it is all our fault that these kids are murdered. She trots out some of the most ludicrous arguments imaginable, including quoting the post Joseph of the Natural variation blog wrote more than four years ago which was a pathetic attempt at debunking the costs of autism to society. He quoted employment statistics that he could not give the source to when I asked him, but assuring me he did not make it up. He also gave Vernon Smith and Bill Gates as examples of autistic persons. I have shown that Vernon Smith has no diagnosis of an ASD, but rather diagnosed himself by taking an AQ test, a nonstandardized instrument that in no way can be used to give a legitimate diagnosis. I have covered the problems with diagnosing Bill Gates in a variety of places, so I won't repeat those arguments here.
All I want to say to members of the neurodiversity movement and the autistic self advocacy network is that you're hurting your own cause by using such nasty propaganda tactics. You're only making yourselves look like the nasty people that you are. You accomplish nothing. It is an absolute disgrace that you have to insult people and use murder to bolster your positions because you have no facts to back up your deranged philosophy.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Eric Courchesne's new paper: an answer to my problem's etiology?
Lately, the new paper by Eric Courchesne and company has been receiving a fair amount of media attention. It deals with the count of neurons in a small number of postmortem autistic brains. The neuroskeptic has written a pretty decent take of it on his blog. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the paper online anywhere where it is not behind a paywall. UCLA biomed was not open when I went there yesterday in the morning. I hope to someday read the primary source.
In brief, the research group found a far greater number of neurons in the prefrontal cortex area of the brain than in the normal control brains. There were some other abnormalities found in the autistic brains as well, but none in the nonautistic brains. This was a very small sample aged 2-16.
This finding may strengthen some of the research findings previously reported. These are the areas that contain some of the mirror neurons. Regular readers of this blog will recall, I'm interested in mirror neurons and have written about them previously. There is a good deal of research that suggests that mirror neurons may somehow be implicated in the etiology of autism. Either a paucity of MN's or problems with connections could be involved. Though this study obviously would not suggest the former, the latter could be a possible scenario as the excess number of brain cells might have difficulty making connections to various other parts of the brain that would ensure good functioning.
These neurons are only formed during the prenatal period and no new ones grow in the brain after this. This suggests that the brain abnormalities in autism only develop in the womb and not after birth. This suggests evidence against the Age of Autism folks and others who believe that vaccines or some other exposure in the environment after birth caused the autism. I'm sure they have some sort of alternative explanation though. Of course it doesn't rule out some sort of environmental insult during pregnancy.
Nearly my entire life (more than five and a half decades now) I have wondered about the etiology of my problems. One of the first suggestions, as some Gadfly readers will remember was castration anxiety in my youth during the psychoanalytic heyday. One doctor speculated that roseola that I contracted at age one and a half was responsible. But no definitive answers as I don't buy those first two. This study does make some sense in giving some explanations for my disability. One of these areas is Broca's area which is implicated in the motor mechanics of speech. Person's who develop strokes in this area lose their ability to speak. This might be why I stopped speaking at age two and a half. These also comprise the motor areas, so they could account for my handwriting and fine motor coordination problems. However, they don't account for the twiddling (self-stimulatory) behaviors. Of course, even if this were the case with me as an individual, it does not explain why I would have grown all those extra neurons while still in the womb.
It was Courchesne who more than twenty years ago, found abnormalities in parts of the cerebellar vermis in autistics on MRI scans. Shortly after that I was his research subject in a few studies he did. I wrote an article about that
I also wrote a blog posts about some of these experiences.
When I met Courchesne, I was curious as to why some persons with autism (not including myself) had intact motor systems and if they had cerebellar impairments why they would not have ataxia or other motor problems. He stated the reason was that if damage to the cerebellum occurred early enough (during fetal development) there would be no motor impairments. So, if this is true, this might mean analogies between the excess of prefrontal neurons and the lack of connections might not be analogous to aphasias that occur when people have strokes in Broca's area.
So, there is still stuff that is left unanswered and I guess I will never know the etiology of these problems and what areas in my brain don't work correctly.
If I can ever get my hands on the actual paper, perhaps I will write a follow-up blog post.
Addendum: My sister, who's a faculty member of a university and has a subscription to various journals had access to the complete paper and I read the .pdf file. Though I have read the entire paper now, I have nothing more, unfortunately to add to my commentary at this time.
In brief, the research group found a far greater number of neurons in the prefrontal cortex area of the brain than in the normal control brains. There were some other abnormalities found in the autistic brains as well, but none in the nonautistic brains. This was a very small sample aged 2-16.
This finding may strengthen some of the research findings previously reported. These are the areas that contain some of the mirror neurons. Regular readers of this blog will recall, I'm interested in mirror neurons and have written about them previously. There is a good deal of research that suggests that mirror neurons may somehow be implicated in the etiology of autism. Either a paucity of MN's or problems with connections could be involved. Though this study obviously would not suggest the former, the latter could be a possible scenario as the excess number of brain cells might have difficulty making connections to various other parts of the brain that would ensure good functioning.
These neurons are only formed during the prenatal period and no new ones grow in the brain after this. This suggests that the brain abnormalities in autism only develop in the womb and not after birth. This suggests evidence against the Age of Autism folks and others who believe that vaccines or some other exposure in the environment after birth caused the autism. I'm sure they have some sort of alternative explanation though. Of course it doesn't rule out some sort of environmental insult during pregnancy.
Nearly my entire life (more than five and a half decades now) I have wondered about the etiology of my problems. One of the first suggestions, as some Gadfly readers will remember was castration anxiety in my youth during the psychoanalytic heyday. One doctor speculated that roseola that I contracted at age one and a half was responsible. But no definitive answers as I don't buy those first two. This study does make some sense in giving some explanations for my disability. One of these areas is Broca's area which is implicated in the motor mechanics of speech. Person's who develop strokes in this area lose their ability to speak. This might be why I stopped speaking at age two and a half. These also comprise the motor areas, so they could account for my handwriting and fine motor coordination problems. However, they don't account for the twiddling (self-stimulatory) behaviors. Of course, even if this were the case with me as an individual, it does not explain why I would have grown all those extra neurons while still in the womb.
It was Courchesne who more than twenty years ago, found abnormalities in parts of the cerebellar vermis in autistics on MRI scans. Shortly after that I was his research subject in a few studies he did. I wrote an article about that
I also wrote a blog posts about some of these experiences.
When I met Courchesne, I was curious as to why some persons with autism (not including myself) had intact motor systems and if they had cerebellar impairments why they would not have ataxia or other motor problems. He stated the reason was that if damage to the cerebellum occurred early enough (during fetal development) there would be no motor impairments. So, if this is true, this might mean analogies between the excess of prefrontal neurons and the lack of connections might not be analogous to aphasias that occur when people have strokes in Broca's area.
So, there is still stuff that is left unanswered and I guess I will never know the etiology of these problems and what areas in my brain don't work correctly.
If I can ever get my hands on the actual paper, perhaps I will write a follow-up blog post.
Addendum: My sister, who's a faculty member of a university and has a subscription to various journals had access to the complete paper and I read the .pdf file. Though I have read the entire paper now, I have nothing more, unfortunately to add to my commentary at this time.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
My disability case: The end of the line
I heard from that second lawfirm I hoped would take my SSDI case to district court. They turned me down. This means that my nearly four and a half year pursuit of this matter is over. Though it is disappointing, it is somewhat of a relief not to have this issue hanging over my head anymore. I have not had autism's gadfly for even four years, which means this issue goes back to before this blog existed.
It is true that I did work with some success with my limitations. However, considering how tough I had it, I felt that I should have qualified for this help. As I have stated in previous posts, this was not a handout. I did put more than $40,000 into social security. I tried like hell for more than 27 years to avoid this fate. Because I had some success in getting a few licks in against this figurative 800 lb gorilla I am being punished (or at least that is part of the reason). The government believes that people like me should fend for ourselves. It would seem that effort is punished and decadence and sloth are rewarded. Even the idea that autism is an advantage in the workplace rather than a liability gets credence from the government who funds rogue scientist Morton Gernsbacher and autism speaks has funded her partner in crime Laurent Mottron in the past.
However, I take solace in the fact that even though I'm 56 years old my life is not over and it might not be too late to accomplish something. Maybe even a miracle will happen and I'll be able to make some money again. Previously,I wrote about my bad experiences with the state department of rehabilitation It was quite a long time ago, but I felt pretty hopeless in those days, but I was able to get out and find some work in spite of these mishaps.
So this issue finally comes to an end and I can get on with the next chapter of my life whatever that may be.
I'll just have to remember that you never know what is around the next corner.
It is true that I did work with some success with my limitations. However, considering how tough I had it, I felt that I should have qualified for this help. As I have stated in previous posts, this was not a handout. I did put more than $40,000 into social security. I tried like hell for more than 27 years to avoid this fate. Because I had some success in getting a few licks in against this figurative 800 lb gorilla I am being punished (or at least that is part of the reason). The government believes that people like me should fend for ourselves. It would seem that effort is punished and decadence and sloth are rewarded. Even the idea that autism is an advantage in the workplace rather than a liability gets credence from the government who funds rogue scientist Morton Gernsbacher and autism speaks has funded her partner in crime Laurent Mottron in the past.
However, I take solace in the fact that even though I'm 56 years old my life is not over and it might not be too late to accomplish something. Maybe even a miracle will happen and I'll be able to make some money again. Previously,I wrote about my bad experiences with the state department of rehabilitation It was quite a long time ago, but I felt pretty hopeless in those days, but I was able to get out and find some work in spite of these mishaps.
So this issue finally comes to an end and I can get on with the next chapter of my life whatever that may be.
I'll just have to remember that you never know what is around the next corner.
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I applaud ASAN for actively working to pull autistics into the research grant approvals. But, I am very curious as to how people respond to this sentence:
“As a result, we’re issuing a call for resumes from Autistic adults and other people with disabilities who believe in the civil rights/social model approach to disability and want to ensure that self-advocates are represented in grantmaking. ”
This is a place where I think ASAN tripped up. “...who believe in the civil rights/social model approach to disability…” shouldn’t be there.
Autistics of various beliefs should be recruited and represented
Thanks Sullivan for finally getting something right, and for having the tolerance, unlike ASAN, to be willing to go to bat for people who have beliefs that don't necessarily agree with yours. You are curious as to how people will respond, this is my response.
However, perfect records are indeed rare, and in a sense it is regrettable that yours for not getting it right is no longer intact.