autism's gadfly

Will New DSM end the autism epidemic?

2012-01-19T15:16:00.000-08:00

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 This data is as yet unpublished.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.

More media attention to autistic adults in the future?

2012-01-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

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.

Amazingly LBRB's Sullivan actually gets something right

2011-12-12T18:26:00.000-08:00

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":

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.

Neurodiversity Plays the Murder Card once again

2011-12-10T08:00:00.001-08:00

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.

Eric Courchesne's new paper: an answer to my problem's etiology?

2011-11-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

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.

My disability case: The end of the line

2011-11-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

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.

Dr. Mottron is at it again but where's the beef?

2011-11-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

Many people probably remember the well-known television commercial that aired regularly in 1984 for Wendy's hamburgers where the old woman asks, "where's the beef?" This expression certainly rings true in 2011 where we see that rogue autism researcher Laurent Mottron is at it again, claiming that being autistic is an advantage and not a flaw that needs to be corrected. He claims that autistics can make significant contributions to society in "the right environment" but largely fails to elaborate on what this could be, except alluding to Michelle Dawson and others with autism who work in his lab.

Dr. Mottron's research has focused on differences between autistics and typicals in detecting sounds, embedded figures, superiority in such things as musical pitch and ability to perform on the block design test on the Wechsler IQ test. How these skills could possibly relate to being able to perform in a scientific milieu is unclear to me. This hits hard with me personally as I wished to be an autism brain researcher in the hopes of finding what in the brain causes autism but was too impaired to do it.

The rationale given by autism speaks for awarding nearly half a million bucks in funding to this man stated that these strengths he studied could be applied to employment and other issues. In fact Dr. Mottron states:

Too often, employers don’t realize what autistics are capable of, and assign them repetitive, almost menial tasks,” said Mottron. “But I believe that most are willing and capable of making sophisticated contributions to society, if they have the right environment.”

I believe if an autistic person is capable of doing well in any field of endeavor, whether it be medical transcription, computer programming or plumbing, they could demonstrate this capability and the employer would be happy to employ them and not assign them menial tasks. Dr. Mottron also does not account for the behavioral problems of autism which would certainly be a weakness. If an autistic person lost their temper or groped women in the workplace (two reasons I know of for two others on the spectrum besides myself to have been terminated from jobs), they would not care what this person was capable of. Whatever strengths Dr. Mottron alleges autistics have would be cancelled out by the weaknesses in behavior or social skills, resulting in a zero sum or negative outcome in terms of job capability.

Of course, Dr. Mottron, in the media reported articles on his recent commentary in the medical journal, Nature, neglects to mention that a lot of his research mainly focuses on extremely high functioning autistic individuals and not on nonverbal lower functioning autistic individuals who have behavioral problems that might preclude them from being research subjects in an fMRI scanner.

Another problem is that we must question the interpretations of some of the data of Dr. Mottron and his colleagues. In fact as recently pointed out by MJ of the autism jabberwocky blog Dr. Mottron and his colleagues may either be ignorant of even the most rudimentary skills of interpreting statistical data or disingenuously represent data from at least one of their studies into something that it is not.

MJ wrote:

So when the second paper says this in the results section -"The Asperger adults demonstrated an advantage of RPM over Wechsler FSIQ that was significantly greater than that of the non-Asperger adult controls, Mann-Whitney U=366.5, p<.01"That statement is completely unsupported by the data. In pure numerical terms, the difference might seem to be larger, but in terms of actual increased of intelligence that statement is very much in doubt.Another quibble with the results is the use of averages (means) to represent the group rather than a median. If you have a set of non-linear values such as these percentiles, if really isn't valid to take an average because it is going to misrepresent where the middle of the group is. That goes double when the data is badly skewed, as is the case of the Asperger adults' Raven's test in the second paper. In that case the "average" was 74 but the standard deviation is 50(!). For that to happen, the bulk of the data has to be well below the 74th percentile which means the median value would be significantly lower.

So, in the Mottron group's recent paper on superiority of those with Asperger's syndrome on the Raven's matrices test we see that the mean score was 74th percentile but the standard deviation was nearly 50 (not quite 50 as MJ stated but very close). This means the data did not follow a normally distributed bell curve but were rather heavily skewed to one side or were bimodally distributed making the mean value of 74th percentile meaningless.

A simpler explanation may be in order. To use an analogy, let's say there were 100 people on an island. if 45 of them were 8 feet tall, 45 of them were 4 feet tall and 10 of them were 6 feet tall, you would be technically correct in stating that the average height of the islanders was six feet. But it would certainly be misleading to say that the islanders were typically 6 feet tall.

I have to wonder if other data from the Mottron group is interpreted in a similar fashion. Perhaps there is a much smaller sub group of autistics that has extremely superior skills in embedded figures, detecting pitch, etc. and another sub group that has greatly inferior skills with a few just in the middle. I admit I don't know the answer to that, but knowing about how different autistics can be from one another and the way the Mottron group interpreted their data in at least one study we can't really rule that out as a possibility.

So to date, there is questionable evidence that all or even a large subset of autistics has these superior skills that will allegedly help them achieve educational goals and job placement. To the best of my knowledge, Mottron has never given any evidence of correlations or relationships to these skills enabling success or answered why the negatives of behavioral and poor social skills would not cancel these out. Again I must ask you, Dr. Mottron, where's the beef?

Shallow brooks are noisy redux department

2011-11-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Today is autistics speaking day, which MJ of the autism jabberwocky blog
has commented on. I'm not sure whether or not MJ's percentages of higher functioning who are capable of communicating versus lower functioning unable to communicate are accurate. A significant portion of the reported increase in prevalence, I suspect, is because of increased awareness that autism can exist in persons of normal or above average intelligence. However, that may be neither here nor there. MJ does make some excellent points in this post about how the number of autistics unable to communicate or who may not have the inclination or education or both to write blog posts are not being represented.

Another problem is that one of the dirty tricks of the neurodiversity movement is to have members log on using different identities to give the impression that more persons with autism share their view than anyone would have thought and preach Alex Plank's dictum that "most autistics don't want to be cured'.
some time ago, I wrote about one of these unsavory characters doing this as did Elyse Bruce of the Midnight in Chicago blog before me.

This is aside from the demographic issues that I've written in the past about ND being heavily female skewed (Coreen Becker, who originated the autism speaking day, is just one example) and the other problems of these people claiming they represent all of us.

Exactly one year ago today,I wrote a blog post entitled "shallow brooks are noisy" to comment on when this event first started. This is still true today. Ms. Becker and other neurodiversity proponents at best have nothing to say that is not superficial that has not been said ad nauseum. At worst they are preaching nothing but hate mongering and propaganda how autism is a gift and Bill Gates and Einstein were autistic, so autistics can do just fine and there are no worries.

Well, let me have my say on this auspicious day. I hate having this disability and having accomplished so little at age 56. I hate not being to have good fine motor coordination, not being able to support myself and being given the runaround by various government agencies. I hate my unpopularity with others, the celibacy that goes with this. I hate that Iwas a chronic bedwetter until age 13. I long for a cure, but I realize I am a discontented child crying for toasted snow as the Arab proverb goes.

Last year I pointed out to Ms. Becker that indeed still waters run deep and she and her friends are some noisy shallow brooks. She replied to me that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This may be true. The majority of neurodiversity proponents are probably know nothing college kids who have too much time on their hands and spend it protesting. As MJ pointed out, others more severely afflicted aren't in a position to refute what these people say. But what about their parents? One problem is that parents of autistic children are often busy trying to find treatments. They are busy litigating in court for treatments they feel they are entitled to under IDEA or whatever government benefits they need to make life easier. Though I don't know first hand, I believe that having a child like this is far more time consuming than a typical child, though I know some people might not like hearing the sad truth. So, the parents don't have the time to tell their side of the story either in many cases, one disadvantage they have over the unencumbered neurodiversitites. Ergo, they don't have time to lobby government officials, organize protests against ASAN akin to the protests organized against Autism Speaks, etc.

Is Ms. Becker correct with her squeaky wheel analogy? I don't know. I realize that autism speaks has listened to their concerns. One example is the affirmative action in recruiting a high school dropout on their scientific advisory board along with the M.D.'s and Ph.Ds. The young activists may have successfully pushed for other changes. But we still have the combating autism act, we still have scientific research in genetics and neuroscience hoping to find a cure or treatments that will lead to a better life for these people and their parents. Let's hope another proverb rings true: The dogs may bark but the caravan moves on.

Interesting article on tough job market for autistics

2011-10-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

I see that U.S. News and World Report has published an interesting article on employment problems for those with autism. It rightly points out that this is the time supportive services from the pie-in-the-sky promises but shit-from-the-sewer delivery from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act end and the autistic person has to go out and face the cruel world. The article states: people with autism were only about half as likely to be working as people with disabilities in general (33 percent compared with 59 percent). If true, this means that having autism is a worse disability than most are in terms of employability. Of course, I am skeptical about statistics that are casually bandied around. The article interviews a professor named Scott Standifer who makes a statement that Ari Ne'eman should read: "We forget how important social relationships are in maintaining employment." For those who may not have read previous blog entries I have written, Ari Ne'eman is an individual in his early 20's who is an autism self-advocate who has never had paid employment of any kind who says that social pleasantry should be eliminated in the workplace as a criteria for evaluating new hires and job evaluations.

After this though, the article goes on to state that the lunch break is one of the more difficult things for persons with autism and the mandatory social requirement. I think of all the times in the days years ago, when I worked outside my home and usually ate lunch alone at a restaurant or bought something off a roach coach and was never required to socialize with anyone, so this is rather silly. The last 9 years or so that I worked I worked at home, so this was not an issue. Finding a job you can do at home may make some of the social problems we face easier. I realize this is probably not a feasible option for most on the spectrum, as it was for me for a time.

The article offers an opium-induced dream: Families of people with autism as well as employers and co-workers can all help to make the employment experience a positive one for these individuals. This is never going to happen. The sad truth is the world does not accommodate autistics and their families for their own convenience, regardless of what neurodiversity advocates think will happen. Though I have been out of the workforce for a while, this must ring even more true with nearly 10% unemployment nationwide.

Without going into the further specifics, (the interested individual can read the above-linked article) some rather pat solutions are given as well as certain jobs that autistics are supposedly good at.

The article is of interest to me as an individual on the spectrum with nearly 28 years experience of utter hell attempting to make a living with a fair amount of success. Though I'm retired now at a relatively young age, I will never forget those struggles. I now had to stoop to applying for disability which I probably won't get. I have contacted a new lawyer and have yet to hear from them and the deadline for filing a suit in federal court expires soon. It's probably not worth contacting any other attorneys and I'm probably going to have to drop the case, so it goes.

I wish there was a quick fix way of helping persons on the spectrum find and keep jobs but unfortunately there is none.

is more than 100 grand to teach job interview skills to autistics worth it?

2011-10-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

I see that everybody's favorite autism funding organization, autism speaks, has awarded nearly two million in grants to various research projects designed to help mitigate some of the challenges in life that those of us on the spectrum have. One common complaint of many affected by autism is the lack of funding for studies involving problems in adulthood. So one study in particular caught my eye.

Lindee Morgan, a psychologist in Florida, plans to study a social skills training protocol that deals with job interview techniques. On reading the last paragraph about the rationale of the study, it is unclear to me whether or not the study's purpose is to actually help autistics with their interviewing skills so they can more easily obtain employment:

Because this experimental treatment targets the job interview context, one aim is to evaluate whether ISC increases in targeted social communication skills, changes in adaptive behavior, and quality of life variables. Further positive changes in mental health status as a result of ISC will also be explored.

On reading this pedantically written paragraph, it is unclear to me what the purpose or rationale of this study is, period.

As has been previously mentioned, with the exception of the funding of Alex Plank's trashy autism talk TV videos and John Robison pocketing some of the cash from this endeavor, not a single person with autism, to the best of my knowledge, has ever had a paid job at autism speaks in any capacity. Gadfly wonders why more than one hundred grand could not be spent to employ some persons with autism in this stellar organization that claims to care so much about us rather than on this study with questionable and vague aims from reading the grant material on AS' website.

I concede that my expertise in most areas is limited to nonexistent. One subject I do have extensive knowledge in with nearly 28 years of actual experience, is interviewing and applying for jobs as an individual with an ASD. Though I managed to get some jobs where I was extensively interviewed, I often had a hard time due to body language, lack of eye contact and other issues. Also, the fact I had a bachelors degree in psychology and not pursuing a career in this area was also a liability that prospective employers sometimes commented on. My problems are probably not as overt on first blush as numerous others on the spectrum are. So, I was briefly able to "pass" for "a normal person".

At some jobs, the interview was not so important as assessing my ability to type for various data entry and other types of jobs where nimble fingers were an asset. In spite of my poor fine motor coordination in handwriting, I can type more than 80 words a minute and this helped. When I became more experienced in medical transcription and applied for jobs in that field, prospective employers scarcely interviewed me. They gave me tests, as someone's skill in MT is rather easy to assess to see whether or not they could make the cut before hiring them.

Upon being hired, getting the job was only half the battle. Keeping it was another story. After my problems (as said before not perceivable as first blush) came to the fore, such as funny movements, loud voice, inability to get along with some people, I was terminated from some jobs. Also, in spite of the testing process, my inability to later concentrate on the work and avoid making an excessive amount of careless errors cost me other jobs. My ability, or lack of it, in the interview process was certainly not a major factor in my employment problems.

I concede I can't speak for others on the spectrum completely but I suspect the situation is at least somewhat similar, if not identical, for many of them. Assuming this treatment successfully teaches them how to interview for a job, will they be able to keep a job after the interview? What about training for a job, such as teaching someone computer programming skills, plumbing, etc. I suspect that a number of the subjects involved in this study have no marketable skills or at least paid experience in any sort of profession that is in high demand. Therefore, they will be forced to look for unskilled work, such as a picker in a warehouse (my first job after college) or a ditch digger, etc, or any other minimum wage job you can think of.

I know from my experience that ironically enough, the unskilled jobs are sometimes the most difficult ones for a person on the spectrum to keep. After all, with more than 9% unemployment nationwide, including people who come to this country illegally from Mexico or other countries, the pool of unskilled labor is quite high and if an employer does not like someone due to behavior or poor work performance, they are easily replaced with someone else.

I wonder, for these reasons, if spending more than one hundred grand on a study to teach autistics job interview skills is money well spent. I am inclined to think not. Of course, there may be something that I am missing in this assessment.

Somehow, when I think of an organization that would give a man a half a million dollar grant who states that autism does not have the scientific status of a disease and that autistics are not dysfunctional only different and has a certain tenth grade dropout on their scientific advisory board, I am at least somewhat inclined to think this is another example of money poorly spent and a bad funding decision.

My Lawyer dumped me

2011-10-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

I thought I would update the few readers who have followed my posts about my long and ongoing efforts to get on disability.

My lawyer dumped me. The next step after losing an administrative law hearing and having the appeal of that decision denied is taking the case to federal district court. My attorney was working solely on a 25% contingency, meaning that if he could not win the case for me he could not make any money. He did not believe I had a strong enough case where I had a decent likelihood of winning, so he decided not to file my case in federal court.

There is a two month deadline for filing in federal court and I could still do it if I can find a lawyer who will take my case on contingency. I don't know what the chances are realistically of being able to win in federal court or an appeal to the 9th circuit court or the likelihood of the U.S. supreme court hearing my case in that event. I am not sure it is worth pursuing any further. I plan to consult with some loved ones and someone else with some expertise in this issue and then decide.

I will probably keep readers posted on updates, if any, or write "an end of the line" post if I decide not to look for another attorney or I can't find one in time to file.

So it goes.

John Robison's interesting theory on male/female sex ratios in autism

2011-09-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

I see that one of my favorite scientific reviewers of both public sector research grant proposals for autism research and proposals by people seeking funding from autism speaks is at it again. John Elder Robison is curious as to why the ratio of autistic males to autistic females is so high.

As regular readers of my blog know,i discussed this in a recent blog post.

Robison in the past has made questionable statements about causes of increases in autism prevalence, for example suggesting that a good portion of the increase could come from the rare condition chronic disintegrative disorder. He has also suggested studying geek success as a legitimate scientific endeavor to help ameliorate the problems of autistic persons.

When I find it inconceivable that Mr. R can't top himself in his brilliant theories and suggestions to help understand and help those with autism, he never ceases to amaze me with what has to be his most astute observation ever. On speculating as to why the ratio of autistic males to autistic females is so high Mr. Robison writes:

One explanation is that some parents have a son with autism and stop having children. So the girls that might even the male/female ratio are never born. I think that explanation may be true today, but what about the ages before modern birth control?

That's an interesting idea, however, I do have one question. Previously in his post Robison conceded that there is a 50/50 chance of a baby being born either a boy or a girl. So I wonder why parents could not have a daughter as their first born with autism and then stop having other children after their daughter is born? In that case the ratio of autistic females to males would be 4:1 or higher.

If Robison's theory were to have any credibility it would mean that at least four times as many boys are born than girls. If that were true there would be plenty of typical males who would have trouble finding mates the way autistics do and not as many babies would be born and over population would not be such a problem. Yet he contradicts this notion previously in the post by saying just as many males are born as females.

I would be very interested in hearing Robison's explanation as to why this theory would only apply to first born sons rather than first born daughters, must be a doozy.

I can't think of how well I'll sleep at night, as a former taxpayer, knowing that someone who is so brilliant is reviewing government research grants to decide what sort of autism research is funded at my expense.

The persons who donated money to autism speaks with autistic children who will never make a six figure income, get married or write a best selling memoir will certainly be secure in knowing that an individual that thinks things through so clearly is working so hard to see the right research is funded by this stellar organization.

The rumor mill has it that now that the combating autism act will be renewed after the formality of Obama signing the bill into law that Mr. Robison will be the third public member on the spectrum, alongside Stephen Shore and Ari Ne'eman on the IACC. I wonder what other brilliant suggestions he will make in this capacity. I'm wondering if he can possibly top this one, that would seem quite a formidable task.

He concludes the post by saying:

It would be very interesting to see a study that addressed this question. Perhaps a grad student somewhere will read this, and bring a research proposal to our next review meeting . . . .

Stranger things have happened.

Yes, I do agree with Robison here. Stranger things have happened. Like a certain high school dropout I know getting to review scientific grant proposals along with all of these M.D. and Ph.D. scientists.

Addendum: I see that autism speaks has posted Mr. R's post on their blog they have certainly once again shown their credibility as a fund raising organization.

SSDI appeal turned down

2011-09-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

I got a letter from the social security office today notifying me that my appeal for SSDI has been turned down. I have 60 days to file in federal district court to contest the decision. I am not sure if it is worth doing or asking my lawyer to do it. It means waiting another three years for a court date on top of the more than four years i have been pursuing this matter now. I have written about it previously.

I wonder if the government believes that I'm a welfare bum who won't take responsibility for my life because of the writings of one neurodiversity activist who is also an ASAN supporter .

I know that in spite of the Obama administration's support for ASAN by appointing Ari Ne'eman to two different government posts, that these people are wrong about me. I tried like hell to work for nearly three decades and went through utter hell the whole time. I never groveled at the feet of any bureaucrat. In spite of what this individual may have convinced the government, autism is truly a disease and the reason most autistic people can't work is because they are physically impaired.

I know I am not the only one and many others have been turned down for SSDI or SSI. It is a shame that the government expects us to fend for ourselves and they agree with the mindset of a few deranged neurodiversity activists.

I may or may not keep readers posted of any further developments.

Combating autism act reauthorization: Countdown to Armageddon

2011-09-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

In another ten days, if the combating autism reauthorization act does not pass, the law will sunset and will no longer exist. This is it, folks, countdown to Armageddon.

If this act does not pass, the IACC will cease to exist and it's six public members won't have a platform to stand on. Lynn Redwood will no longer be able to pontificate at taxpayer expense that Mercury is the cause of autism and thimerosal is the most likely culprit. Never mind that study after study has refuted what she said. For another ten days, the government will still pay for her pontification as well as paying for the IOM's study and conclusions that there is not a snowball's chance in hell that mercury and thimerosal caused an autism epidemic. The state of California paid for Schecter's and Grether's study, showing no relationship between thimerosal and autism after this substance was phased out of vaccines. They could have read gadfly's controversial piece on the subject and saved the taxpayers of the u.s.a. and California some hard earned dough.

The law stated that one person on the spectrum must serve as a public member. Though the law stated that the objective was to ultimately cure autism, we have two anti-cure autistics, Stephen Shore and Ari Ne'eman who are barely affected by their autism, if at all. To date, no pro cure autistic has been appointed a public member of the IACC. In fact Ari Ne'eman is opposed to this act, yet serves on the governmental board this law authorized, what irony! Only ten more days to Armageddon. Ne'eman won't be able to recommend that autistics can be employed if only social pleasantry is eliminated as a criteria for hiring and evaluating people's job performances. In fact he might have more time on his hands and perhaps he can get his first paid job. For another ten days the government will also have to finance his lecturing an economist on the evils of committing eugenics by daring to come up with a cost analysis study showing the expense of autism to society, then we have the countdown to Armageddon. Ari will be able to publicly laugh, declaring victory, but privately crying boo hoo, that his power as a public member of the IACC that he so covets has been taken away from him.

It's coming down to the wire, the tension is building. Only ten more days, will congress pass this law or won't it? Will Barack Obama sign it? Perhaps he will ponder a veto once it comes across his desk. After all, how can Mr. Obama sign such legislation stating that he wants to combat autism in good conscience. After all, his administration has appointed an individual to two government posts relating to autism who has made it clear that he believes curing autism would be morally reprehensible. Of course, there is the alternative way of combating autism. Some of us can be strangled to death and turned into cat food, or alternatively we can be taken out, lined up against the wall and be shot. after all, this was a policy recommendation of one of mr. Ne'eman's most ardent supporters since Mr. Ne'eman has not repudiated the statement or this individual, Gadfly wonders if he feels this way or if Mr. Obama who appointed him to these posts does too. After all, in this same post, this individual stated that those of us who have autism and want a cure are only standing in the way of noble self-advocates because we are a bunch of welfare bums who won't look for work or take responsibility for our lives, so taking this recommendation would save the taxpayers money. it would take a two-thirds vote of both houses of congress to override an Obama veto in the event that it happened. Would this happen? If not, we have ten days countdown to Armageddon.

Whether or not this law is reauthorized, the status quo won't be changed in other aspects. John Robison, a high school dropout with no training or knowledge in autism and science, will still be able to review government grant proposals at taxpayer expense. Now the government has an autistic person who states he is a stakeholder though tacitly admitting he has no disability of any kind. Thanks to Robison's federal appointment, or whatever it is, we are no longer disenfranchised. Hallelujah! praise the lord!

Morton Gernsbacher, a woman who does not believe autism is a disease, will still get funding from the Center for Disease Control to carry out her research. She will be able to get this funding even though she trivializes a serious disability by claiming Richard Borcherds and Vernon Smith are autistic. I have dealt with the problems of Gernsbacher's argument elsewhere. My tax dollars will still go to this woman who writes essays with so many factual errors, rather than giving it to me in the form of disability that i have been trying to get for more than four years so i can buy a new car to replace my 16 year old Honda accord.

Well folks, ten more days until the countdown to possible Armageddon if this law is not renewed.

Addendum: Word is out from the autism society of america that the house has passed the combating autism act. I am not sure, but I think it has to be passed by the senate also, then signed into law by Obama in the next 9-10 days.

having an interest in science but not the ability

2011-09-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

In the better late than never department so typical of your humble gadfly, I’ve decided to comment on something John Robison said in his interview with Steve Silberman which caught my eye.
John Robison has been chosen as a member of the scientific advisory board of autism speaks as well as a reviewer for government research grants. When Silberman asked him if others with autism should be included in these roles Robison responded:

Yes. I have argued for having more autistic people on the boards, but it’s not obvious to me who those people would be. I don’t have a lot of personal knowledge of autistic people with an interest in science. Most of the people in the autism community who are critical of the policies of these various groups are not people with any real interest in science, or at least they don’t express the interest in their writing that I can see. Without an interest in science, they don’t have an obvious fit with the boards.

In the comments section, Michelle Dawson seemed to take umbrage at Robison’s remarks. She is an individual with autism who has published journal articles and has obviously taken a great interest in science of autism. In fact she has taken such a strong interest in science, we have seen that she is not above accepting charity from persons who she says "make her sick" and from an organization she claims ideally wishes a short future for autistic persons in order to carry out her scientific endeavors.

I was struck by this because I think of my own interest in the science of autism.

I have on occasion written posts dealing with scientific issues and I know Robison reads this blog. However, I have not written on these issues frequently. One of the reasons is that though I have an interest in scientific issues in autism, my disability has impaired me from pursuing them as vigorously as I could and obtaining the needed expertise to write decent blog posts on the subject.

I did not realize that I had an organic impairment in my brain until adolescence when the individual who was my psychologist at the time discussed these issues with me.

Not long after this, while in community college in the mid 1970s, I took an interest in this and I took a course in physiological psychology as well. After this, I tried to read whatever I could about the brain and later about autism. I read some more physiological psychology textbooks and purchased A.R. Luria’s The working brain. I wanted to major in psychobiology after I transferred to UCLA but had to settle for an undergraduate psychology degree due to getting C minuses in a couple of science courses. There was also the question of whether doing stereotactic surgery on animals would be too difficult for me. I had no idea at the time that MRI scans would be invented. I was crushed when one of the psychiatrists who evaluated me for autism noted that at age 21 I had essentially never had a job (or at least no job where taxes and social security were withhold). He took it upon himself to give me some vocational counseling. He asked me what I wanted to be. When I told him I wanted to be a brain researcher he stated, "You’re going to have to settle for something less than what you want to be." He suggested "manual labor" as an alternative career whatever that means. I never dreamed the irony that would take place more than three decades later when I would read Morton Gernsbacher’s extremely offensive piece with the multiple factual errors which I wrote about previously where she talks about autistics participating as researchers and the cavalier attitude she takes towards individuals such as myself who are too impaired to be scientists.

After college I continued to try to read about the brain and science in order to figure out what the defect was that had made my life so difficult. I read articles in various journals, such as the autopsy studies done by Williams et. al. that found problems in the cerebella of autistics, as well as postmortem reports done by Edward Ritvo and Margaret Bauman and Tom Kemper. It was very hard for me to concentrate and learn much more. My constant desire for twiddling (self-stimulation) coupled by my executive functioning problems made this a formidable task and I was unable to achieve the expertise in science and autism which I coveted.

A few years later, I read the study that Eric Courchesne had published in the New England journal of medicine on the smaller size of lobules VI-VII of the cerebellar vermis. I wanted to be his research subject. I got my wish and talked shop with him. I asked him a variety of questions and he seemed somewhat impressed with my limited knowledge. I wrote about this elsewhere as well.

All of this had been consummated by the spring of 1989, still some years before either Michelle Dawson or John Robison would take any interest in autism or receive their respective diagnoses.

In addition to having my autism and the constant desire to twiddle (self-stimulate) be disorganized and have a hard time applying myself, I was sidetracked in other ways as well. There were various times that I worked 40 hours or more a week. I also took an interest in learning computer programming. I became interested in fiction reading and writing and wanted to be a novelist. I succeeded in writing two (albeit non-publishable) novels. This, exacerbated by my disability, made it difficult to pursue my interest in science that Robison does not seem to think I have. He apparently has never read my essay which I linked to above. I also took an interest in more leisurely pursuits including poker, horse race wagering, tennis and skiing. I wanted to have a happy life with good times in spite of my disability.

Other things took place as well, the amount of research done on autism skyrocketed. It was hard to keep up. An ugly cult of vicious hatemongers called neurodiversity came to the fore. These despicable people appear to believe that persons with autism are better off being crippled and sick than being a healthy individual. I felt that I had to do research and work in order to outwit these people. The results are my article urging people to reject this philosophy as well as multiple posts on this blog. I will let readers judge how much I have succeeded in opposing these people.

Over the years, I have never forgotten my interest in the science of autism and the brain that could have the potential to find out what causes these problems and how they could be mitigated or cured. I hope to one day read more books and study more journal articles, but in sum, my disability and other things in my life have made that pursuit difficult if not impossible. Even though I lack abilities because of my disability, I still have the interest.

Does Robison believe I would be a poor fit on a scientific advisory board? I am not sure of the answer to that.

Is Robison himself a good fit? He is a high school dropout serving on the autism speaks advisory board where everyone else has an M.D. or Ph.D. He has made questionable statements on what has caused a rise in prevalence. He has suggested geek success as a legitimate scientific endeavor, which I took him to task on. He has shown ignorance rather than erudition in these statements.

The reason Robison gives for certain autistics not being a good fit is their dearth of writing on scientific subjects. What of Robison himself? How much has he written about the science of autism anywhere? In his books or in his blog posts?

As far as I can discern, with the exception of writing about his experiences in some TMS studies that Lindsay Oberman was doing and the post where he suggested geek success and one other thing as scientific endeavors, Robison has never written any commentary on the science of autism, how science could be advanced to help autistic people or suggestions how research could be pursued or funded. It seemed he was more interested in making money for himself and helping out his son through autism speaks’ largess than he was in using that money to help others much less fortunate than himself or ways in which science could help mitigate the hardships of autism. If someone can point me to where Robison has contributed to or written anything about the science of autism other than the aforementioned examples, I would be gratified if they would comment on this blog post or send me an email.

Perhaps most germane of all is the question of whether the person who wants to influence the direction of research is a legitimate stakeholder of any sort. Is he a person who himself is afflicted with autism or is he the parent of one? Though Robison has a son who he says is on the spectrum, it would appear his son is minimally affected if at all. On his own autism another statement he makes in the interview particularly stands out:

Even though I’m not a disabled person by any means today, I would say that the social challenge is a characteristic of disability that I have not been able to overcome. I’ve only been able to circumvent it a bit and do my best with it. That’s OK, but if you ask me what the hardest thing for me is about autism, that’s absolutely it.

We seem to have a tacit admission on Robison’s part that he has no disability whatsoever. Claiming he has social challenges that he was able to circumvent a bit seems a stretch for a man able to marry now three times, have a son, start all those successful businesses and write a best selling memoir. If Robison is not disabled by his ASD then why does he merit a diagnosis at all, let alone presenting himself as a stakeholder at government expense as well as the expense to those who donated time and money to autism speaks?

As far as being a good fit for scientific advisory boards it would seem that Robison is the squarest of pegs trying to be placed into the roundest holes by any standards.

I hope that perhaps someday, if I continue to blog, that I can write more frequently on scientific issues in autism as well as a higher quality of posts that I have written in the past. However, my disability, (but not lack of interest), may preclude me from doing so.

Why can’t we have pro-cure autistics who are actually affected by this disability as stakeholders in both governmental funding (given that the government has declared curation and prevention as public policy decisions vis-a-vis the combating autism act) as well as organizations such as autism speaks who claim that their goal is the curation and prevention of autism?
Would I be a better fit on a scientific advisory board than Robison? I don’t know the answer to that question. However, I don’t think I would be any worse and don’t see how I could be.
　
　

interesting piece from Gernsbacher and friends

2011-08-14T22:39:00.001-07:00

I see there is an interesting new article from Morton Gernsbacher and two of her friends. This article deals with a rather unoriginal and cliched topic, the lack of visibility of autistic adults. This is nothing new in fact I wrote a piece dealing with this issue about eight years ago, in which I bemoaned the fact that the existence of autistic adults is largely ignored. In addition to Gernsbacher, one of the authors is Bev Harp, a well-known neurodiversity ideologue and at least one time part of that unsavory clique of neurodiversity bloggers called "the autism hub". The third author is one Jennifer L. Stevensonwho apparently until recently was a graduate student at the university of Wisconsin who studied under Gernsbacher.

Though Gernsbacher(and by extension one of her grad students)is not one of my favorite people, she and the other two authors do bring up some valid points about how autistic adults and some of the problems we have is largely ignored and how the problems of childhood are portrayed by the media. They neglect to bring up the fact that perhaps one reason adults are ignored is that no one wants to acknowledge the poor prognosis that most of us will have. This is especially true for neurodiversity proponents such as Gernsbacher and company.

They trivialize what is a very bad disability by claiming that terms such as "suffering from" is belittling language. Yes, I suffer from autism, it is not belittling I really do have this disability and suffer from it every day. Only one of the three authors (Ms. Harp) alleges to have autism and she apparently is someone extremely high functioning who was able to enroll in a social work graduate program, so certainly the fact that many of us do suffer tremendously from this brain disease is certainly an abstraction to these individuals.

They write:

Autistic children are further mythologized to lack awareness of their situations and surroundings; indeed, the very idea that they might be embarrassed or offended by being used as pawns in pity-driven fundraising campaigns is often dismissed by the very parents who consider themselves autism "advocates." Children, therefore, present the face of choice for virtually all autism support societies and most autism charities.

I am indeed impressed by the omniscience of Gernsbacher, Stevenson and Harp in knowing that autistic children (every one of them) is embarrassed by the use of their images in "pity-driven" fundraising. No, it is not possible that these people are trying to get help for their severely sick and crippled kids. It does not matter that the neurodiversity movement used the murder of Katie McCarron and the dumb remarks made by Allison Singer about driving off a bridge with her kid as pawns in their crusade to express their hatred and lies and propaganda, claiming that those of us who wish a cure for ourselves or our offspring are somehow responsible for murder.

They go on to cite Brugha's flawed study for proof that there are equal numbers of autistic adults to autistic children. I believe it is possible that autistic adults exist in the same numbers of persons born in more recent birth years, but admittedly definitive proof is lacking and may not be feasible to acquire. One must remember the old cliche about looking for a needle in a haystack.

They go on to cite the dismal prospects of most autistic adults (both future and present), certainly ironic in light of decrying the use of pity in fundraising.

Most concerning of all to this blogger, is their comments about autism in the workplace. They talk of "Jack", an autistic man whom they state is an efficient computer technician. In spite of Jack's skill in a rather marketable profession, he "loses out" on various jobs due to inappropriate attire, inability to look people in the eye and reticence in interviews.

They write the concerning statement:

Employers lack the knowledge and resources to support an employee like Jack. They have, after all, like the rest of contemporary society, been inundated with rhetoric asserting that autistic children must either be cured or suffer a lifetime as unemployable burdens. Rarely has the alternative—a capable autistic adult needing appropriate workplace supports—been presented. Scarce resources will not be directed toward such an unidentified need.

As someone who spent many years struggling in the workplace and suffering from these problems first-hand, I believe I have some knowledge about this and I wonder how capable Jack truly is and assuming so, if there are any supports that will be helpful to him or make a difference in his employability. I am certain this is not the case for myself. That part of my problem was an inability to do a job as competently as a nonhandicapped person due to my own disability. I am certainly skeptical that Gernsbacher and colleagues really have valid answers.

I seem to remember Bev Harp had some sort of job, prior to studying social work, but what of Gernsbacher and Stevenson? Do they have the knowledge to support someone like Jack? Gernsbacher's professions have been high school teacher and then college professor. She has lived in a lifetime in an ivory tower with essentially no practical business experience. From looking at Stevenson's website, she is an extremely young (probably no older than 30) graduate student who as recently as 2002 was a college undergraduate. As far as I can tell she has no real work or world experience outside of academic psychology. They claim that no cure is needed for Jack and if employers would somehow accommodate his disability he would be fine. Based on my own experiences in the workplace I am certainly skeptical of this. I don't believe inappropriate attire would make a difference for a computer tech. If he were highly skilled reticence in interviews would make no difference. In the days when I was applying for work as a medical transcriptionist, I was rarely asked extensive interview questions, but prospective employers were interested in assessing my skill for the job. While it is true, that some employers might have prejudices against Jack due to some quirks, if he were truly a competent computer tech, he would be able to work someplace. I did keep a number of transcription jobs for fair amounts of time. Though I suffered some discrimination in the workplace, competence was certainly an issue in my case.

They also speak of an autistic woman named "Jill" who loses jobs due to making "animal noises" in meetings with clients. They go on to claim that the employer should completely overlook Jill's behavior, no matter how disruptive it is. Of course, we have heard this before from Ari Ne'eman, who at 21 years of age and never having had paid employment in his life stated that social pleasantry should be eliminated as a criteria for evaluating people for hiring or ability to do a good job. It is quite clear that these three authors (certainly Gernsbacher and Stevenson) are equally naive about the minutiae in the workplace as Ne'eman.

While I am somewhat gratified these three have brought attention to the lack of visibility of autistic adults, I don't believe it is helpful for them to claim people who want to help themselves or their children are invoking in pity as if it were a bad thing. I think it is even less helpful for them to propose simplistic quick fixes in the workplace for adults with autism, when they themselves have so little experience in the real working world.

autistics may have marriage and employment problems after all

2011-08-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

Some persons may remember a previous post that I wrote about neurodiversity potpourri some time ago. I wrote about how Joseph of the natural variation blog was claiming that the study from last year with the questionable methodology that showed that the prevalence among autistic adults in the UK was 1% showed also that autistics were half as likely to marry as nonhandicapped people and that they were also employed in exactly the same manner as nonautistics. The "autistic bitch from hell" applauded Joseph and also implied that there was generally nothing wrong with autistics employability, as well as the coin-flip probability of marriage as compared to nonhandicapped people espoused by Joseph.

The autism jabberwocky blog has a new post up suggesting that this study's methodology may be extremely flawed.

It would appear that a high unemployment rate as well as a low probability of ever getting married is certainly a possible scenario for autistic people after all.

Ari Ne'eman goes into the employment agency business

2011-07-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

I see that Ari Ne'eman and ASAN have gone into a new line and apparently started a job service for those on the spectrum. According to this article, in May, several large corporations have approached ASAN trying to recruit autistic employees. Before this ASAN has been tapped for persons in government and public policy positions. These jobs apparently want college educated persons in the Washington, D.C. Metro area.

A perusal of ASAN's website shows they fail to mention any information that was in this article. This seems odd, as I would think they would want to widely advertise this service if it had a chance of securing employment for those on the spectrum.

For those who complain that Ne'eman and company are only interested in the high functioning end of the spectrum, they also state that they are contemplating a job service for those with autism who do not have college degrees.

They state for parents that by the time their children reach employment age these services will likely be expanded.

The article neglects to specifically name which corporations these are so Gadfly can attempt to verify this information. I am also skeptical that large corporations would go out of their way to recruit persons with autism in the worst economic times since the great depression, particularly the young 20 somethings who are usually affiliated with ASAN who have little to no actual job experience and dubious qualifications for jobs in computer technology, biology etc., the article specifically mentions.

I am also wondering why ASAN would be contacted, given their low media profile, as compared to autism speaks or the autism society of America. I particularly question this as autism speaks has made an effort to encourage persons to employ autistics with their autism in the workplace public service announcements, yet has never employed any persons with autism in their organization nor, as far as I know contributed to the employment of a single autistic person, excepting this $25,000 grant they gave one vocational group. It would seem more likely that autism speaks would be contacted rather than the lesser known ASAN and AS would jump at an opportunity like this.

I also wonder what industries in the Washington, D.C. area would employ computer technology people or biology persons.

For these reasons, I wonder if these jobs really do exist.

If I can find out more details about this or any further developments occur, I'll let readers know.

scientific proof autism more common in males?

2011-07-19T13:44:00.001-07:00

As most persons who are interested in autism know, the literature suggests that autism is far more common in boys than in girls. Ratios for males to females have generally been reported to be around 4:1. Ratios as high as 10:1 have been reported for the higher functioning types of autism.

In spite of this fact, it would seem there is parity between the sexes or possibly even a greater number of females than males among autistic persons who are proponents of that deranged philosophy called neurodiversity. They sometimes claim to speak for all or most autistics stating "we don't want to be cured". Or Alex Plank's statement that "autistics don't want to be cured". It begs the question how they can speak for most or all autistics.

Numerous females involved in the neurodiversity movement have claimed the numbers are artifacts, i.e. that girls are underdiagnosed as autistic due to certain types of societal constructs. Brenda Myles of autism asperger publishing company fame has claimed that some autistic girls are merely thought to be "drama queens" and don't get a diagnosis.

I always thought that one possibility that would show that they were wrong was the fact that females have an extra x chromosome and thus could receive some protection against an x-linked disease or at least be less susceptible to it. I think Michael Wigler's research has suggested this line of thought. I will concede that my knowledge in the science of this area is limited.

Of course, if autism were an exclusively x-linked disorder, then the ratios of males to females would be far higher than 4 to 1 or even 10 to 1 as they are in x-linked conditions such as hemophilia or pattern baldness. Also in some cases it is known that autism is caused by autosomal dominance, such as tuberous sclerosis and the sex chromosomes are not involved.

Recently, there has been some research done which may provide empirical evidence refuting what the militant female neurodiversitites have been saying for years, and providing further evidence that they don't represent the vast majority of spectrumites in any sort of demographic.

Valerie Hu and colleagues at George Washington University have discovered a gene, retinoic acid–related orphan receptor-alpha (RORA), that interacts with sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone in the brain that could explain the sex ratios of autistics.

RORA controls production of enzymes that convert testosterone into estrogen and the excess of testosterone in the brain may either cause autism or make a male more vulnerable to it. whereas estrogen may provide females protection against autism.

This does not explain why some females do get autism, though and why when they do get autism their autism is often more severe than that in a male.

Of course, this research could not only be the beginning of refuting one of the tenets of the neurodiversity propagandists and hatemongers but also perhaps giving us a breakthrough into the cause of autism. Only time will tell (cliche, I know).

Will research into mathematical ability be the salvation of autistics?

2011-07-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

Gadfly has just read a shout-out by neurodiversity ideologue Michelle Dawson. Apparently, some researchers at Stanford University have received a research grant funded by the NIH to study mathematical skills in high functioning autistic children. Naturally, Dawson neglects to state that these are all high functioning individuals in the study. she quotes the studies objectives:

"The long-term goal of our research is to better understand mathematical, analytic and logical reasoning abilities, and their neurobiological bases, in children and adults with autism. Our proposed studies will provide the first and most detailed analysis of mathematical skills and problem solving abilities in children with autism. Characterizing potentially intact cognitive abilities and areas of relative strength in children with autism is profoundly important not only for defining and more fully characterizing the nature of autism but also for facilitating academic and professional success." (emphasis added)

In reading the source further from which Ms. Dawson quotes the researchers state about autism:

However, its altered developmental trajectory can also lead to cognitive strengths, particularly in the domains of mathematical and analytical problem solving.

The researchers then go on to contradict themselves stating:

Despite its importance, numerical and mathematical reasoning is a grossly understudied cognitive domain in ASD. Here, we propose to initiate the first systematic study of mathematical cognition in children with ASD, focusing initially on children with High Functioning Autism (HFA)

It is true, a small percentage of autistics have mathematical savant skills, but there is no evidence that this is the general case. I do know of the various studies of the raven's matrices done by Dawson and friends in which the control group was not a sample drawn from the general population but a self-selected sample of all males with IQs in the 70th percentile. I have seen that there are some studies showing sex differences in scores on raven's matrices, but i can't recall where. Also Isabelle Souleries study in which she engaged in a non-standard use of the Raven's as a timed test and only used high functioning individuals. No one, as far as I know have replicated their work on the Raven's with the higher functioning autistics. Sven Boelte's work has shown increases in lower functioning (those with IQs less than 85) scores in the Raven's but no effects in higher functioning. Kim Boddner's work (though not yet published but an IMFAR poster) has shown no effect of Raven's versus Weschler in higher functioning autistics.

I also know of the studies involving "attention to detail" whatever that means, superior scores on the embedded figures tests, and superior scores on the block design test of some autistics, though admittedly have not read these studies.

This is similar to the claims that Mottron made to secure his nearly half million dollar grant from autism speaks. That the results of his research would benefit autistics in that they would result in better employment and academic opportunities and better parenting for those with autism. To date, I have seen no evidence to suggest his work has resulted in these benefits for those with autism.

I suspect the Stanford researchers don't have autism themselves, have never spent a day in a special education school and have not been fired from multiple jobs. So, they really don't know what causes autistics to have these problems. Their claim that somehow these math abilities can be harnessed in these kids and help mitigate the problems of autism is offensive to me. Assuming mathematical strengths could be utilized, it is still not going to solve the behavioral and social deficits that exist in autism that would prevent them from achieving their academic potential in a regular education setting or help them with the behavioral and social problems that would impair their ability to get and keep a job.

Since apparently, this question has not yet been studied and as far as I can tell the authors show no evidence that high functioning autistics in general have these abilities, I will only be able to await and see the results of this study and the fruition it will bring.

Gadfly is happy to report though that some good may actually come from this study. Dawson writes:

Wonderful. Maybe I can retire now.

Yes, Michelle, please do. Then we won't have to be exposed to the mammoth chip you have on your shoulder when anyone dares to disagree with you. We won't have to hear about autistics are not write-offs because of the research you and your buddies do and all the other baloney. Also, maybe your buddies, Souleries, Mottron and Gernsbacher can retire along with you, then maybe we can get funding of some sane people who will actually try to mitigate or even cure this horrible disorder.

yes, let's find a cure

2011-07-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

There has been some buzz in the autism blogosphere recently about that dirtiest of four letter words, cu**. (No, I'm not talking about a certain part of the female anatomy). Blogger Harold Doherty has recently written about his desire for a cure. Teenage anti-neurodiversity blogger, Oliver Canby, has stated that autism sucks and how much he wants a cure.

I will write a third post about this, because I suffer everyday from the isolation of autism, the not being able to make a living and the inability to get things done during the day. The fine motor coordination problems that impair my handwriting as well as the irrational fear of birds. I had to attend special education schools for 8 years, as well as an after school tutoring program for a few years. I had to spend recess time at one school to receive tutoring for my handwriting. I was also a chronic bedwetter up until age 13. However, compared to some persons on the spectrum, I have it really good. There are others who engage in self-injurious behaviors, who cannot speak a word, can't dress themselves or take the bus anywhere and will require 24/7 care for the rest of their lives if no way is found to cure them.

I hope that we can get a consensus of pro-cure people in the blogosphere to write posts how much they want a cure for this horrific disability and have more than three.

In terms of finding a cure, we have a formidable uphill battle in that there are limited numbers of autistic brains available for autopsy, no good animal models for autism as well as the fact that autism is a description of many disorders with apparently a combination of genetic and environmental causes, all which make finding a cure or really advanced treatments a difficult task.

In addition to these obvious disadvantages, we also have the public sector and private sector autism organizations who don't give a shit.
Congress created the combating autism act, which had as its goal the curation of autism. It stipulated that at least one person on the autism spectrum must be appointed to the interagency autism coordinating committee, the government body that makes decisions as to how autism research can be best funded. To date, the two autistic members, Stephen Shore and Ari Ne'eman are opposed to curing autism. They are barely affected by their autism if at all. So far not a single pro-cure autistic person has ever been appointed a public member of the IACC.

The government continues to fund rogue, Morton Gernsbacher, who claims that autism is a harmless condition and that severely autistic persons have made great contributions to the arts and sciences.

John Elder Robin Hood-in-reverse also makes funding decisions at taxpayer expense, in spite of saying there is no need for a cure for autism on page five of his book, Look Me In The Eye.

Autism speaks, one of the largest private funding bodies for autism research, has funded Laurent Mottron who states that autism is not a disorder but merely a difference. They also have John Elder Robison on their scientific advisory board. Not only is Robison the only member of that board without an M.D. or Ph.D. degree, he is also the only one who has not graduated high school.

All of these things make the ultimate finding of a cure for autism a more difficult problem than it might be otherwise.

Though I don't expect a cure to be found in my lifetime, I hope that in spite of these things that someday a cure will be found.

New study linking SSRIs and autism

2011-07-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

I read with interest about an article that suggests that there may be a causal relationship between the use of SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) drugs in pregnant women and the likelihood of their giving birth to a child with autism. Apparently, in a group of women, there seemed to be an increase of about 3% in the risk of her having an autistic offspring than someone who either had no depression or other mental condition or a person with the condition who had not used SSRI drugs. Lead author and Kaiser Permanente epidemiologist Lisa Croen has stated that caution should follow interpretation of the results as they are preliminary and more research will have to be done to see if this could be something contributing to the etiology of autism.

I tried to download the primary source and a commentary on it in the same journal. Unfortunately, they were behind a paywall and I could not obtain them for free. As far as I can tell, no reason how the SSRI could have caused the fetus to become autistic was given.

Though I was unable to read the actual article itself, the story about it interested me for two reasons.

First of all, my maternal grandmother suffered from severe depression well before the days of SSRI drugs. She underwent ECT and ultimately committed suicide at age 49 a couple of years before I was born. I suspect that her genetics may have been a factor in my disability, as well as some ADD traits in a couple of my cousins who are also her grandchildren. Though it sounds like Croen and colleagues did make some attempt to control for genetics of the mental illness, I can't help thinking that it was the mother's depression itself that caused a genetic predisposition to the autism, rather than the ingestion of the drugs being toxic to the fetus.

The second reason the story piqued my interest was that some may remember that Lisa Croen's main claim to fame was her faux pas in publishing some interpretations from CDDS data that suggested to her that the reason for the greatly increased prevalence of autism was due to 100% diagnostic substitution of mental retardation for autism, claiming that there was a corresponding decrease in mental retardation diagnoses to the increase for autism diagnoses. The problem, apparently, with her interpretation was that she did not adjust for age of admission into the CDDS which was very different for persons with retardation than for autism. Mark Blaxill, well-known for his beliefs that vaccines caused his daughter and other children to become autistic, showed that she had misinterpreted her data. Croen later, admitted to the mistake. Whether or not this reduces the credibility of Croen's interpretations of the data in her current study I don't know.

As many persons interested in autism now know, recently there was a study suggesting that the environment may play a greater role than thought in autism. Now that the vaccine hypothesis has been refuted in a variety of studies (regardless of whether or not these studies are in fact tobacco science as some die hard proponents of the vaccines-cause-autism camp state), there is apparently a temporal relationship (though not a casual relationship) in terms of a timeline between the advent of SSRI drugs and increases in autism diagnoses. I have shown elsewhere that there is not a temporal relationship between increases in thimerosal and increases in autistic persons admitted to the CDDS. Whether this is true for all vaccines, which don't contain thimerosal such as the MMR, which could factor into the equation, I don't know.

The temporal relationships between introducing autism as a diagnostic category in 1991 under IDEA and then supreme court decisions favorable to those seeking services for their autistic children and increases in diagnoses have been largely ignored by the public interested in developmental disabilities which sees special education and the IDEA law as a quick fix for their kids problems.

Is it possible that SSRI drugs will be the new factor that those who claim there has actually been an increase in autism will claim is responsible? I don't know. Only time will tell.

U.C. Davis study results may rankle neurodiversitites

2011-06-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a story about a new study coming out of U.C. Davis, suggesting that mothers who consume prenatal vitamins during pregnancy reduce the risk of having an autistic offspring.

Since Michelle Dawson, Ari Ne'eman, Amanda Baggs, and other august members of the neurodiversity movement are opposed to anything that will prevent a fetus from becoming autistic, I suspect this study will rankle their feathers a bit. I guess a pregnant woman taking prenatal vitamins in the hopes that it will reduce the likelihood of their offspring from becoming autistic will become the new eugenics and nazism.

Baron-Cohen IT autism prevelance study: some comments

2011-06-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

Another study by the Simon Baron-Cohen research group has been getting some media attention today. I read this media report this morning. Curiosity piqued, I tried to find the primary source for this, but unfortunately it had been behind a pay wall. In the comments section of my previous post, a reader asked me for my take on the study and stated that he/she was able to download it for free. I gave them my take from what I had read in the media reports before reading the actual study. I was wondering if it were still behind the paywall. Skeptical, I tried again, and sure enough, I was able to download the entire study and read it. My comment was short and I feel the study deserves a post all its own.

Baron-Cohen in the past has made the bold statements and strong hypothesis that autism genes are responsible for so-called systemetizers and this is why autism has stayed in the general population in spite of the fact that autistics seldom have children. He seems to have gone further and intimated that my suffering may be necessary to society. I have taken him to task for this elsewhere.

Martine Roelfesema and Simon Baron-Cohen and a few other authors have recently published a study in JADD, suggesting that autism may be much more prevalent in areas of the Netherlands where a concentration of IT companies such as Philips and IBM are based. They surveyed three different metropolitan areas of Holland and found prevalence rates 3-4 times as high in the area with high tech companies than in the other two cities. They suggested that genes responsible for systematization may be responsible for this.

Superficially, this study is interesting and makes good fodder for journalists looking for an intriguing story about autism and its alleged gifts. However, on closer analysis and reading, it would appear the study has some limitations and possible flaws.

While the CDC in the American prevalence studies have found great differences in prevalence in various parts of the country, it would appear that Arizona which has one of the highest prevalence rates does not have industries that would employ so-called systemetizers. I don't know whether this is true in New Jersey or not.

There are also great variations in prevalences in various parts of California according to past CDDS data. Though the Silicone Valley has higher rates than rural parts of California it is substantially lower than in Los Angeles, which would refute Baron-Cohen and company's notion about there being a casual relationship between technology abilities in parents and autistic offspring.

Variations in prevalence in Holland would be far less likely due to differences in income, population density, socioeconomic status as the country is far more homogeneous in its population than the U.S.

Recruitment in the study was voluntary. Only a bit more than half the schools who were asked to survey consented. The response rate was substantially higher for the high prevalence group than the other two areas. Weighting factors that I concede I don't understand were used to supposedly eliminate this bias, but I'm still skeptical. The response rates from special ed schools was much higher than mainstream schools. The age range of kids surveyed was 4-16. In one of the two control communities, the prevalence rate was about the same in the older kids than in the younger kids. In the other two communities it was much higher as later diagnosis was included. This could have influenced the results of the study. The diagnoses were not verified, though this may have been infeasible.

Most germane of all, the Baron-Cohen group did not control for persons moving into the high prevalence area because of the possibility of better services, etc. so this might invalidate the findings. There may be other issues in the study that I will think of and I might go in and edit this post later if I can think of them.

This stuff also interests me, because, as regular readers of my blog know, my father was a pioneer in the computer industry, and I wondered if his genes somehow caused my autism. However, there seems to be a more pertinent history from my mother's family than from my father's, as I had a very depressed maternal grandmother and her brother (my great uncle) was likely to have been an undiagnosed autistic in the very early 1900s. Though neither my sister nor any of my first cousins on my mother's side have autism, there seems to be a high rate of dyslexia and ADHD amongst them, which would be far higher than the occurrence of chance.

Baron-Cohen has also stated (though I can't recall exactly where) that it is possible that males who were good systematizers might have been unable to find a mate at one time and with the advent of the IT revolution and silicone valley this might no longer be a problem and two engineers and programmers would be likely to marry and produce an autistic offspring. This does not jive with the personal experience of my father and the men whom he worked with going back to the early 1950s, before a big computer revolution and increase in autism prevalence. My dad and I'm pretty sure all of these systemetizers he worked with were able to marry and produce children. I'm pretty sure none of their wives were engineers or worked in the IT profession (this includes my mom of course) and with the exception of one individual from England who had a daughter who was either severely retarded or autistic, I don't think any of the other engineers and computer people dad worked with had children that were on the autistic spectrum.

The currently published study is only phase I. They state that phase II of the study which will in part address some of the issues I have discussed in this post are forthcoming. I will await it.

Obama throwing stones from a glass house?

2011-06-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

In a recent speech president Barack Obama criticizes plans of certain republican legislators to reduce the federal deficit. Interestingly enough, he seems to use those of us with autism as a pawn for his own political purposes. He states:
It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents -- may be one of yours -- who wouldn’t be able to afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some of these kids with disabilities are -- the disabilities are so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.

This from a president whose administration continues to fund the work of neurodiversity rogue Morton Gernsbacher, who has probably funded through the NIMH and other public sector funding bodies work of people who have coauthored articles with Isabelle Souleries and Michelle Dawson, persons who have stated that autism is a harmless condition.

Worse yet, he has appointed Ari Ne'eman, a 22 year old with no experience in anything to two government bodies who make decisions for disabled persons. This person has stated that curing autism would be morally reprehensible. He has implied that parents who support charitable organizations who have stated that they want to cure autism are morally complicit with murder. He has stated that he does not believe that autism and Asperger's are disabilities and was dishonest about that, claiming he never said that autism was not a disability until autism's gadfly documented otherwise, catching Ne'eman's hand in the cookie jar.

Barack Obama, if any politician wants autistics to fend for themselves it is you, with your proneurodiversity, anti-cure, anti autism is a disability actions. For you to criticize congressman Ryan and possibly other conservative republican congresspersons and senators is ridiculous. I would say that you are the pot calling the kettle black, but a number of your supporters, particularly neurodiversity proponents who want people like me to be crippled and sick and to fend for ourselves would call me a racist. Instead I will just state that you are throwing stones from a house made of fragile glass.

Does new genetic study on autism disspell sacred cow beliefs?

2011-06-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Lately much has been made in the media about the new genetic findings that were published recently in the journal neuron, showing that there are many mutations on many different chromosomes that can cause autism. I will qualify this post acknowledging I have not read the actual study but only the media reports, I am not an expert on genetics, so if any of my detractors want to comment on errors of reasoning or to attack me personally or whatever I will begin the post with that caveat.

One of the significant things I have read about the study is that it seems to show that the vast majority of cases of autism come from spontaneous (denovo) mutations and are not inherited. This contradicts the tenets of Temple Grandin who has claimed that eradicating autism would be a disaster and that autism genes have stayed in the population because they provide some sort of adaptive or evolutionary advantage in the way that sickle cell anemia genes have stayed in the population to fight malaria or genes for hemachromatosis have stayed to combat iron deficiencies. She has claimed that autism is responsible for every invention from the spear to the computer to the cell phone. Simon Baron-Cohen has made a similar claim that autism genes provide some sort of evolutionary adaption and this is the reason autism has stayed in the population. He includes this in part of his arguments in stating that high functioning (though it is unclear where the demarcation between high and low functioning are from his writings) autism should not be considered a disability. There are some problems with these arguments I have written about them elsewhere. This study would seem to provide evidence against Grandin's and Baron-Cohen's arguments that autism genes are something good and have stayed in the general population due to adaptive status, but rather autism has stayed in the population because of denovo mutations.

What of the arguments of Mark Blaxill and others who support ageofautism website and philosophy who believe that the cause of most autisms were simply that something (such as vaccines) was introduced into the environment that did not exist previously (at least not in high numbers) and this has caused a huge spike in autism and if we could do research and isolate what this thing is, it would lead to solutions in the etiologies and treatments of this condition? It would seem this research might reduce the credibility of their beliefs, though certainly they will have an explanation and this study or any other won't dissuade them.

The neurodiversity movement has long espoused the dogma that genetic research into autism will result in prenatal testing and widespread abortions of autistic fetuses, possibly as soon as the next five years or less. Will this study, showing in fact how complex and diverse the genetics of autism really are, lead to less credibility of this dogma.

Ari Ne'eman who now has power to recommend policy or even vote on autism policy in two different government positions created at taxpayer expense has called for a ban on all research of this kind. Yet Michael Wigler, one of the principal authors of this study, has claimed that this research at some point may present treatment options for some kinds of autism or perhaps even a cure.

Gadfly wonders if more research along these lines are pursued and published, what will happen to all of these sacred cow beliefs?

Autism will be celebrated by Ari Ne'eman and other neurodiversity extremists

2011-06-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

I see there is going to be a new event this august featuring Ari Ne'eman as the keynote speaker in which autism will be celebrated. It will be held in Syracuse, New York, home to Jim Sinclair, one of the founders of the ND movement. This event is apparently an appetizer to that unsavory conclave of neurodiversity hatemongers, autreat, which will be held in Pennsylvania the following week.

The event starts out with the definition of neurodiversity: Neurodiversity is a concept and social movement that advocates for viewing autism as a variation of human wiring, rather than a disease. Other than using the word disease rather than disability, this unabashed definition is actually close to what neurodiversity is about, rather than what other disingenuous or confused persons try to present it as, such as a crusade for human rights. Of course, it is unclear what the difference is between disability and disease, except that neurodiversity proponents offer the social model of disability by claiming that autism would not be disabling if society accommodated those with autism or the mothers of persons with autism who wish a cure weren't such god awful ogres who taught their children to hate themselves or gave them self-fulfilling prophecies as some of the more unsavory characters in the ND movement assert. Of course, I still think Diane Sawyer's definition, a beautiful way of justifying heartbreak is as of yet the most spot on definition to date.

The description of the event goes on: neurodiversity activists reject the idea that autism should be cured, advocating instead for celebrating autistic forms of communication and self-expression,and for promoting support systems that allow autistic people to live as autistic people.

This is the type of stuff that is so insulting to those of us who suffer from this disability every day. I know this is a rehash of things I have said for years, but i get tired of reading this stuff. I remember how John Best would make angry rants when people would say that autism should be celebrated. Where here is another example of something that may cause Best to lose his temper.

These are the type of people that Obama and the senate and the rest of the government support, including the funding of neurodiversity rogue Morton Gernsbacher at taxpayer expense.

Hopefully the day will come when the end of autism and disability and disease can and will be celebrated.

Interesting article about grand dame of neurodiversity

2011-06-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a rather interesting piece about Kathleen Seidel, the grand dame of neurodiversity, and her obsession with now disgraced doctor son medical science team Mark and David Geier. Ms. Seidel is married to a man who finds humor in the fact that someone would mock and ridicule someone with a disability, when one of the more cruel neurodiversity hatemongers was harassing me and ridiculing my disability and engaging in unauthorized use of my photos on the internet. Mr. Kathleen Seidel was the one time administrator of web of hateful neurodiversity blogs called "the autism hub". In response to my email saying I did not believe he should link to blogs that made fun of disabled people and made unauthorized use of their photos, his response was to cc an email he wrote to this perpetrator with the words "very funny". I wish i had saved the email as normally I have reservations about publishing privately sent email. In this instance, I regret that this might be an exception to the rule. But you can take my word for it, Mr. Kathleen Seidel, did in fact find it amusing that someone would make fun of me and by extension all persons with developmental disabilities.

Mr. Kathleen Seidel, when I wrote a blog post in which I questioned the wisdom of his wife, (whom I thought at the time owned the autism hub) for allowing a post from hateful persons who compared parents who supported autism speaks and wanted a cure for their children to members of the Ku Klux Klan who are forced to raise black children, responded that his wife had no control over the hub. When I asked him to explain to me why the hub would link to a blog that posted something like this, he said that he did not care what I thought of blogs on the hub and he did not have to justify anything to me. Perhaps, Mr. Kathleen Seidel supports this sort of bigotry as possibly does his wife, as a husband and wife will usually (though admittedly not always) agree on matters such as this.

Though I don't have a high personal opinion of the Geiers and I don't agree with everything that is said in this article, it does make some valid points about Ms. Seidel and the ND movement and is worth reading.

Ari Ne'eman and company oppose the combating autism act

2011-05-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

In answer to my question from my last post, the answer is yes. Ne'eman and ASAN have gone on record as opposing the reauthorization of the combating autism act which is now currently a bill that has been introduced in both houses of congress. Gadfly wonders why this is, since Ne'eman has accepted public membership on the interagency autism coordinating committee which was authorized as part of the combating autism act. Ordinarily, this would seem a strange inconsistency. As has been documented meticulously on numerous occasions on autism's gadfly, these sort of waffling, hypocritical and contradictory actions seem par for the course for Ne'eman and ASAN. If the combating autism act is indeed sunseted then Ne'eman will lose his coveted bully pulpit to preach his fire and brimstone neurodiversity homilies and call those who oppose him perpetrators of genocide as was done when economist Michael Ganz presented his cost/benefit analysis to the meeting that Mr. Ne'eman was in attendance of.

If Ne'eman is so adamantly opposed to this law why would he not refuse his position with the IACC and refuse to be a beneficiary of a federal law and the tax dollars that go along with it?

Ne'eman makes the dumbfounding statement:

This legislation would keep in place a status quo without services, without consideration of the needs of adults and without inclusion of self-advocates. We urge Members of Congress to oppose any long term extension without needed program reforms.”

To the contrary,the status quo is including Ne'eman, a self-advocate opposed to a cure and an at least one time proponent of the idea that autism and Asperger's are not disabilities. Though the combating autism act was designed to prevent and ultimately cure autism and the IACC was authorized by the CAA for that purpose, and provided that at least one person on the spectrum would serve on the IACC, to date, two anti-cure individuals (one of them Ne'eman) serve and to date not one pro-cure autistic has been appointed to the IACC or allowed any input on how government research should be funded. This also includes Stephen Shore (the other autistic IACC member) and John Robison (also opposed to curing autism) being able to make decisions on which government projects should be funded, though Shore's doctorate is in special ed and not in a scientific discipline and Robison never even completed high school. Not one pro-cure autistic, to my knowledge, has ever been allowed to review government studies, which should have, according to the law, as its intention to ultimately find a cure for autism.

Ne'eman goes further to state:

Many self-advocates also find the language of the act offensive and out of step with the mainstream of disability policy.

If anyone is out of the mainstream of autism policy, it is Ne'eman and ASAN themselves, as most rational persons who are stakeholders believe autism is a disability and want it cured. If this were not the case, congress never would have passed the combating autism act in the first place and Bush would not have signed it into law.

So far, the combating autism act has not done much good or helped anyone, let alone finding a cure for autism. My guess is it will be passed though.

I would have been intrigued by Ne'eman's silence, given his appointment to the IACC. I guess that is no longer an issue and I now have the answer to the question of my previous post.

Will Ari Ne'eman oppose the combating autism act this time around?

2011-05-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

I see from a perusal of the latest post on autism speaks' blog that the combating autism act is up for reauthorization and AS is supporting this and the bills in both houses of congress which will do so. This is interesting in light of the fact that they have given rogue scientist laurent mottron a half million dollar grant when he has not only stated that the notion of curing autism is nonsensical but has gone even further, saying along with morton gernsbacher and michelle dawson that autism is a harmless condition. It is also strange in light of the fact that they have John Robison on their scientific advisory board, in spite of his questionable qualifications and Mr. Robison has referred to them, one Alex Plank and has talked to autism speaks and gotten them to cough up money for this individual's films. Mr. Plank has stated in the past that most autistics don't want to be cured and has stated that autism is a good thing in the title bar of his website, wrong planet. Plank partners with Robison's son.

To digress, gadfly wonders if Ari Ne'eman and ASAN will vociferously protest the combating autism act as they have done in the past along with inconsistencies pointed out by autism's gadfly. As has been stated before on this blog, neurodiversity fought this law tooth and nail when it was first being debated in congress as a bill. After they lost that battle, they took the if you can't beat 'em, join 'em perspective so rampant in the neurodiversity movement. Katie Miller, Ari Ne'eman and other ND's presented their agenda before the IACC, claiming that individuals such as myself should be crippled and sick when it completely contradicted the intentions of the new law.

This was not good enough for them. They were able to get ari ne'eman appointed to an actual seat on the IACC. The combating autism act specified that at least one individual on the spectrum would be a public member. Along with Ne'eman, conference superstar Stephen Shore serves in this capacity also. Shore, is an individual who is barely affected by his autism if at all. In addition to his prolific conference presentations, he has a doctorate, is an assistant professor and has published numerous books. He is also married. He opposes a cure for autism in spite of serving on a government board created for that specific purpose. To date, the number of pro-cure autistics who have been appointed as public members of the IACC is zero. Alex Plank and others may want to deny that we actually exist, but we are definitely out there. Gadfly wonders if the intent of this law and the creation of the IACC was in order to combat autism and find a cure, then why have there never been any pro cure autistics appointed but two anti-cure autistics.

If neither bill passes congress, the CAA will be sunseted and cease to exist. Isn't this what Ari Ne'eman and ASAN wanted prior to 2007? Yet, if Ne'eman and company again take to the streets with placards, he will be depriving himself of one of his two government posts to get his agenda across. Is this what he wants? Only time will tell.

Public members don't even have to attend meetings, they can just do a video phone-in thing on a website. What sense is there having an agency like this?

Well, once again, folks, welcome to another circus sideshow without a tent. I will be interested in what Ne'eman and ASAN do about the reauthorization of the CAA.

Kevin Leitch's take on a cure for autism

2011-05-23T08:06:00.001-07:00

I see that Kevin Leitch of the Left Brain/Right brain blog has given his take on the question of whether or not autism should be cured.

I am glad that Kevin Leitch respects my desire, as a person on the autism spectrum, for a cure if one were available. However, he states that this would be a principle of neurodiversity. Again, he seems rather confused about neurodiversity whose proponents engage in scorn, derision and ridicule of any person on the autism spectrum who wishes a cure for themselves.

This is also someone who has stated that he will only seek a cure for his daughter if she asks him to. His daughter, if I am not mistaken, is nearly completely nonverbal so one wonders how much sense that makes. This is a further problem in his argument in that not everyone can choose whether or not to accept or reject a cure, as a very significant number of persons with autism are nonverbal and can't communicate their desire for or against a cure.

Furthermore, autism is a disorder of childhood whose onset is usually apparent before the age of 36 months (I realize this does not include Asperger's and some other ASD's who manifest themselves later in life). Children younger than 18 don't have the right of consent. Their parents have to make medical decisions for them and as Harold Doherty pointed out to Kev, this compounds the problem further.

The most salient question in this debate, at least in my opinion, is are those who oppose a cure for autism willing to foot the bill for the vast majority of autistics who can't work and are receiving disability or other forms of taxpayer funded assistance. And for the treatments and the methods which Kevin Leitch refers to as helping autistics be the best they can be. At least some autistics who oppose curation live on the dole and receive other services at taxpayer expense. Amanda Baggs (whose diagnosis of autism is questionable) is one of the more well known examples of this. Economist Michael Ganz has shown in various studies that autism is expensive, very expensive. Who pays this expense, oftentimes the taxpayers. Neurodiversity has used hardball tactics to dispute such notions, such as Ari Ne'eman's ad hominem attacks on Mr. Ganz, accusing him of eugenics and baby killing in what is supposed to be a professional government meeting. Joseph of the natural variation blog first gave a 30% employment figure for persons with autism which he could give no actual reference source for and used this to claim this would not be a problem in the future and at some point, we could expect nearly full employment of autistics. Later, he went even further to state that based on the adult prevalence study in the UK with only 19 people that this was merely an urban legend that autistics had a higher rate of unemployment than nonautistics and they were employed and made a living in the same manner as nonautistics.

Others have claimed that successful persons with autism such as Bill Gates and Steven Speilberg and their status as billionaires partially cancelled this out, making the net effect of autism's cost to society at least partially moot.

Kev's good buddy Matt Carey (AKA "Sullivan") has been a very vocal proponent of special education and the IDEA law. I wonder If Mr. Carey shares Kev's view about a cure being a bad thing and unnecessary. If so, how does he reconcile this with the fact that the IDEA has cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, has jammed the courts,and taken away money for other services financed by local property taxes such as police and fire protection which affect everyone regardless of whether or not they are autistic? Does Carey want to pay for all of these things out of his own pocket in lieu of a cure? So, assuming a cure were available, what right does any autistic person or there caregiver have to refuse a cure? Unless of course they are willing to pay the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars the autistic person will cost society over their lifetime out of their own pocket. I do not believe that an autistic person or their caregiver can have it both ways. That they can refuse a cure or something that will help them function better and continue to be a burden to taxpayers.

I agree with Kev that a cure will be found at some point of time, though most likely not in my lifetime at age 55. It will not be easy though given that Ari Ne'eman can be appointed to various government positions, and rogue scientists such as Laurent Mottron and Isabelle Souleries and Morton Gernsbacher can continue to receive funding from public and private sector sources in spite of working against curing autism. Of course I remember the old Arab proverb, the dogs may bark but the caravan moves on.

Korean Prevalence study: Media hype and fodder for fringe groups?

2011-05-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

The media has been making much lately of an autism prevalence study done in Korea in which a nearly 3% autism prevalence has been found. "Is autism more common than previously thought?" is the rhetorical question of the day.

Gadfly has now read this study in its entirety (excepting some supplementary data things that appear online). Michelle Dawson, on her TMOB comment board, as of a few days ago, reported that the study was behind a paywall and she still had not read it. I checked out the abstract and was able to download the whole study and read it yesterday, so apparently something changed in two days.

On a less superficial analysis of the study itself, it would seem the media is once again indulging in "yellow journalism" and a misrepresentation of the facts. Two separate groups were studied. They were very different. In statistics, they are what would be called a bimodal sample. There was a high probability group, who had been previously diagnosed and was receiving a variety of special education services. Another group was screened from the general population of a small area of Korea (not the entire country) and this was referred to as a general population group. They had never attended special education school, never received or requested
any services and apparently never received a diagnosis of autism, though they were all between the ages of 7-12. Of the 2.64/100 prevalence reported it was 1.89/100 in the general group but only .75/100 in the high probability group. Therefore, the high probability group had a lower prevalence than what has been found in recent CDC surveys here in the USA.

The study also found a male to female ratio in the high probability group of 5.1:1 which is fairly close to most reported figures in the literature. Interestingly, the general population group found a much lower ratio of 2.5:1 of males to females. To the best of my knowledge, no study of gender differentiation of autistics has found such a number. This includes ratios in the higher functioning groups which are often reported as 10:1 or higher, much higher than for the general population of autistics. Female neurodiversity activists have claimed, contrary to other evidence, that autism in females has been underestimated and that they are typical of autistic people, might they use the results of this study to bolster their arguments?

Blogger Harold Doherty seems to enjoy writing about the high percentage of intellectual disabilities in persons diagnosed with regular autistic disorder as opposed to all ASD's. The number of persons in the general population sample with intellectual disabilities was 16%, whereas it was 59% in the high probability group. Though apparently some neurodiversity bloggers have questioned Doherty's assertions, the results of this study would seem to give his arguments at least some validity as the ratio for autistic disorders to all ASD's in the high probability group is 2.6:1, whereas it is inversed at 1:2.6 in the separate general population group that was sampled.

Another limitation of this study was the response rate, 63% in the general population. The relatively low response rate in the general population could have easily inflated the prevalence, as parents concerned about a diagnosis would have been the ones to respond.

Missing data may have accounted for some of the results, as in 6.1% of the cases one of the two pages of the ASSQ surveying questionnaire were missing, the authors made some adjustments and this could have affected results.

Statistical adjustments or "weighting" were made to factor in the prevalence based on nonparticipants. The authors neglect to show any data for these.

The ASSQ survey and the diagnostic instruments such as the ADOS were of North American origin, yet were being used on a people of a completely different culture. Could this be a factor?

Most striking of all is the fact that after the survey was completed by the general population students, only 33% of them had a full assessment by a doctor giving them a diagnosis! This, in my opinion, really reduces the credibility of the validity of the diagnoses and consequently the prevalence numbers.

The authors claimed the students were able to perform okay in regular school in spite of their autism because of the structured Korean 12 hour school day. I doubt any of the authors were ever autistic children themselves with more than intact intelligence and had to spend 8 years in special education because of profound behavioral problems. As someone with first hand experience in this area, I dispute the authors contention.

Not surprisingly, this study was funded by that circus sideshow without a tent, autism speaks. This is an organization that gives rogue doctors who state that autism is a harmless condition half a million dollar research grants and who put a wealthy high school dropout on their scientific advisory board amongst M.D. and Ph.D. scientists. This individual, though certainly wealthier than 99.9% of all autistics, myself included, solicited and was awarded money for his own personal use from this organization. Apparently, for some reason, a study like this would be much more costly to do in the united states.

One wonders why autism speaks would fund a study of such questionable validity. They seem to want to appease to the ND anticure movement such as Mottron and his disciples as well as John Elder Robin Hood-in-reverse. They also want to seem to appeal to the "thimerosal causes autism" crowd and others who state that some agent in the environment has caused a huge autism increase in the past 25 years. Another likely reason was that in these recessionary times, funding a study which would show such high rates of autism could be used as propaganda purposes, claiming that autism is a much greater problem than realized and this would induce more funding. Not that the half million dollar grant given to Mottron or the free money given to quasi-millionaire John Robison could not be spent on something more useful like helping autistic adults find jobs or finding more brains to autopsy, or on neuron regeneration research to find a cure. I will be interested in seeing what sort of spin AS will put on this very (at least in my opinion) questionable study.

I wonder if this study will result in the start of a wild "fishing expedition" to find the environmental culprit that caused the prevalence of autism in Korea to be so high in spite of the huge differences in the two groups of children studied, and the questionable validity of the diagnoses (at least to me) of the general population children.

Will the deranged hate mongers in that ugly cult called "neurodiversity" use this as fodder to claim that there is near parity between the sexes in autism ratios? Will they use this as an excuse to claim that autism is no big deal because most of the kids in this study are doing so well?

Teen aged neurodiversity blogger Catatab Tabimount is using this study
which she apparently has never bothered to read in its entirety to bolster arguments for special education and social skills training.

Will others use this study to exploit their own political platform? Will the media continue to use this study (which I doubt any of the journalists reporting on it have read as I have) to continue hype about autism? Only time will tell.

Words of wisdom from an Aspergian

2011-04-19T08:13:00.001-07:00

I see that John Elder Robin Hood-in-reverse is at it again giving his words of wisdom and practical advice from his experiences as a person on the autism spectrum. Gadfly wonders why if JER really cares about helping out those on the spectrum, why he would solicit and accept funds for his own personal use from a charitable organization where he serves in an advisory capacity that is designed (or at least advertised as) as an entity to help those on the spectrum far less fortunate than himself.

Robison starts out that stating that "study after study" has shown that 20 to 40 hours a week of intervention with autistic kids has shown they have far better outcomes as adults than kids left on their own. I am curious as to which studies he is referring to. Certainly not Lovaas (1987) in which no adult outcomes have ever been provided, yet is considered by some as the definitive proof that there is hope for autistics to have a coin-flip probability of normalcy and not have be dependent on the dole.

He also recommends helping a child find out what they are good at and helping them excel at that skill. He uses himself as an example of one who was encouraged in auto mechanics and technology. Never mind that most on the spectrum (regardless of whether they have Asperger's or autism) are not at the functioning level of this gentleman and won't be able to accomplish what he has.

Another word of wisdom is that kids need to avoid making enemies. They need to learn how to act and conform to the rest of the crowd. This is in spite of the fact that he gave a plug for his new book with the ironic title "Be different" at the beginning of the post. It is nothing more than a simple quick fix solution that autistic kids or Asperger's kids with loud voices and funny movements are ever going to be able to control this and they can immediately be accepted by others and not make enemies. Kids with these problems are going to be made fun of and ridiculed and make enemies inevitably. There is really no quick fix for these problems.

Gadfly wonders how wise these words of an Aspergian are.

Higher mortality rate of autistics with epilepsy

2011-04-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

One of the many tenets of neurodiversity is that autism is not comparable to diseases like cancer because autism does not kill. This has been proven wrong many times in the instances where autistic children died in accidental drownings (for example Ashley Brock) or James Deloroy who got lost and died in a snowstorm or children hit by cars, trains etc. due to their autism. From Autism speaks and the California DDS and a new journal article it would seem that there is evidence of a much higher mortality rate in persons with autism who have the comorbid diagnosis of epilepsy than in autism alone. These data found that the percentage of persons who had autism and epilepsy was higher than previously thought. So this is one reason that neurodiversity is yet again incorrect about autism not killing people and another reason we need to find a cure for autism. In an email I received from autism speaks this was elaborated on even further: It is well established that epilepsy is a major medical disorder that is often co-morbid with autism in as many as 30 percent of children. As many as one in 20 children diagnosed with autism by age 3 could either already have epilepsy or develop epilepsy later in life. As noted by the ATP more than a decade ago, sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP) has been identified as a cause of death in individuals with autism. Higher mortality rates than in the general population have been reported among individuals with autism, however, there is relatively little known about the specific risk factors that account for the reported higher-than-expected rate of mortality in autism. “Sudden, unexpected or unexplained death in autism is often, but not always related to epilepsy and we need to use caution when interpreting these data,” explained Autism Speaks Vice President of Clinical Programs Clara Lajonchere, Ph.D. “These findings are important for understanding risk factors that may contribute to early death in individuals with autism and further underscore the need for more accurate and accessible records on cause of death in this population. Furthermore, state surveillance programs should implement better tracking mechanisms to help us better understand mortality for individuals with autism and co-occurring disorders such as epilepsy. Critical initiatives supported by Autism Speaks brain tissue program will help bring these issues to the fore and provide information our community needs to help prevent early death in persons with autism.” Though, this does not affect all persons with autism it is not an insignificant number, so once again neurodiversity can choke on this data while they are saying that nothing is wrong with having autism and that autism is not a life-threatening condition.

Look, there's a kid in a cage: What, again?!

2011-04-14T05:38:00.001-07:00

In the continuing sagas of caged autistic children here is yet another gem

More convoluted logic from Laurent Mottron

2011-04-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

I see that rogue scientist Laurent Mottron is at it again using results from a metaanalysis of various research showing enhanced visual perception in what is likely a limited subset of persons with autism in order to claim that trying to cure autistic children is a bad thing. As has been written before autism speaks, an organization which advertises on its walks and fundraisers that they are funding research to find a cure for autism has given this man a nearly half million dollar grant As has been previously written on Autism's gadfly, At the time this grant was awarded it amounted to 5% of autism speaks net assets. Not an insignificant amount. Dr. Mottron states: it adds another argument against attempts to "cure" autistics. "When we try to turn an autistic toddler into a non-autistic toddler, it's painful, it's expensive and it does not work," he said. "We should not try to assimilate or break the difference (between autistics and nonautistics), but just admit that it's a difference that has good and bad consequences." While I do agree with Mottron that it is not possible given the current state of the art to turn an autistic toddler into a nonautistic one, I do disagree that research that attempts to find a cure or ways to ameliorate autism should not be funded. Autism is more than just a difference. Whatever good consequences it may or may not have,particularly in a small subset of individuals, are far outweighed by the bad. It is really even a further stretch to argue that this research proves it. I will concede I have not read the original source, only the abstract linked on Michelle Dawson's TMOB comment board. However, I have read Isabelle Souleries' study which was published in this same journal. This study had, in my opinion, a myriad of methodological problems which I have commented on elsewhere An additional problem that I was unaware of at the time was that the Raven's matrices is not a timed test, yet they were claiming that the autistics who were matched on intelligence with the typical controls who performed the test faster were somehow superior in some way. Given that this is a nonstandard use of the testing instrument, this really does not seem to have any credibility. There is little doubt that Souleries' study is one of the studies that they are using to formulate this hypothesis. If the rest of the studies have the same limitations, particularly with the use of a subset of pretty high functioning autistics, who have no discrepancies in their scores on the verbal and performance tests of the Wechsler, then there is a real problem with claiming this is scientifically valid work, let alone using it as a reason not to do research to attempt to cure or at least mitigate autistic symptoms. Autism is a horrific disability and disease. We need to fund more research to help mitigate this disability with the ultimate goal that we can cure it and that at some point in time autism will be a thing of the past. Hopefully this effort will continue in spite of Dr. Mottron's sophistry.

Does Ari Ne'eman want low functioning autistic children to die in drownings or traffic accidents?

2011-03-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

It seems that in the online petition crusade, the autistic self-advocacy network
is at it again. In this, their latest crusade, they are complaining against a meeting that the CDC had where they are trying to add wandering as a medical diagnosis and Ne'eman and his cronies fear that somehow the civil rights of autistic children who engage in elopement and run away will be violated if this is enacted. Ne'eman complains about an online survey being bad science in spite of the fact that he quoted an online March of Dimes survey claiming that this proved that the alleged 80% divorce rate among parents of autistic children was a myth.

This is very ironic in light of my post of a few days ago where we see the lunatic ravings of one of Ne'eman's possibly more disturbed supporters claiming that parents of low functioning autistic children wish their charges would just 'drop dead'.

It would appear now that the shoe is on the other foot and it is Ne'eman himself who would appear to have a cavalier attitude about the lives of low functioning autistic children who often engage in elopement and wander away and die in accidental drownings and traffic accidents. I will concede to Ne'eman's credit that he did express condolences over the passing of low functioning autistic Ashley Brock when she drowned on Ginger Taylor's adventures in autism blog. However, Ne'eman, who has stated that curing autism would be morally reprehensible, has offered no alternatives to preventing these children from dying in drownings or traffic accidents when they elope and wander away. He just gives some vague statements about how the environment could be modified and the reason that these kids elope or run away is sensory issues, yet fails to provide any scientific basis for this. Until it is proven that alternatives to labeling kids wanderers and finding ways to restrict their movements in order to keep them alive or a cure for autism is found (which Ne'eman opposes) then I will be completely baffled by ASAN and their supporters who first insult parents by claiming that they wish their offspring would just 'drop dead' but then actively opposing measures that could prevent these kids from dying in accidents in the first place.

the spam catcher on blogger

2011-03-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to let my readers know, some of whose comments did not get published that apparently blogger has some sort of spam catcher that I was unaware of before. These posts got caught in this contraption so I have published them just now. (better late than never as they say). There were a couple by lorene amet that she wrote to me about before privately and then reposted, so I did not bother to post these, I regret that Ms. Amet had to repost these. I remember Socrates was pestering me about some comment that did not get published and maybe this was it, I don't know, but I published it in the dated thread about John Robison wanting to study geek success. This has now been published many months after it was written.

Roger Kulp wrote what at first glance looked like there was an interesting comment about John Robison wanting to check the genetic blood or something like that but I forget which thread it was in, but it has now been published.

There was someone else who admitted that their comment was slightly off topic and then stated something to the effect that I could "censor" certain comments on my own blog. I don't remember the exact details, but I published this in the thread it was placed in, but don't remember what it was.

There was one comment that did not seem relevant to anything and indeed was legitimate spam, so I did not bother to publish it.

I think I know how to check for spam and will be doing so periodically so mixups like this don't happen in the future (assuming I continue to write blog posts).

So, I apologize to Gadfly readers for this and that I am not more adept and can't do better with computer and blogger issues.

Does Ari Ne'eman believe parents of low functioning autistic children want their kids to 'drop dead'?

2011-03-11T17:05:00.001-08:00

I just came across this rather entertaining video on youtube in which Ari Ne'eman's position on the NCD is endorsed. About 2 minutes and 30 seconds or so into the video what this individual says is rather shocking. He states that the parents of low functioning autistic children wish their kids would 'drop dead'. I wonder why Ari Ne'eman has not complained to youtube or has not gone out of his way to disavow this video that his supporter made. Or does Ne'eman himself believe this? We have seen in the past that some supporters of neurodiversity whose blog was linked on the autism hub stated that parents of autistic children who support a cure for their children are like members of the ku klux klan who are forced to raise black children. When your humble blogger asked hub owner Dave Seidel about this, he refused to denounce that statement.

We have also seen in the past that neurodiversity blogger "the autistic bitch from hell" calls autistics that she does not agree with who want a cure "uncle toms". She has also stated that those of us who have had trouble keeping a job due to our disability are lazy loafers who just want a government handout and won't take responsibility for our lives. Also she has stated that those of us who don't agree with her positions should either be taken out and shot or turned into catfood. This person has donated to ASAN. It is rumored that "the autistic bitch from hell" is in fact attorney Meg Evans who is secretary of Ne'eman's organization, ASAN one of the top people in the organization barely below Ne'eman himself in the chain of command. To the best of my knowledge, Ne'eman has never denounced ABFH .

I wonder if Ari Ne'eman would care to comment on this statement from one of his supporters. I wonder if President Obama will read my blog and comment why he would appoint an individual to a government position who keeps company with people like this. However, I won't hold my breath.

autism speaks awards grant for employment training

2011-03-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

I see that stellar and nearly omnipotent funding body, autism speaks has awarded a $25,000 grant to help with job training and placement. I suppose Gadfly can now eat his words about autism speaks putting on their dog and pony autism in the workplace show that I wrote about previously. I had bemoaned the fact that when autism speaks its words are louder than it's actions. With this new unprecedented grant I guess this is no longer true.

Of course Gadfly still wonders why Laurent Mottron's grant to study "enhanced perceptual functioning" in autistics was twenty times larger than the grant given to Woodrow Wilson rehabilitation center. Apparently autism speaks feels it is 20 times more important to study how well certain high functioning autistic people can find embedded figures, do well on the block design subtest of the Wechsler and how they have perfect pitch and other superior talents on given tests than it is to help unemployed autistics find jobs. It seems to me that autism speaks has some rather strange priorities.

cool new piece about mirror neurons

2011-03-03T16:01:00.000-08:00

I see that Psychological Science has published a cool new article about mirror neurons for anyone who is interested in this subject as I am, I have linked to the article.

The pace of research in this subject seems to be picking up. There was some controversy about whether or not they existed in humans as well as in monkeys and birds and other animals, since direct experimentation on humans is obviously more difficult. Of course, when neurosurgical procedures are done to help mitigate epilepsy and perhaps other conditions then experimentation is possible. Apparently last year, a study along this line of thought has suggested that these neurons exist in humans also. Prior to this there was indirect evidence that mirror neurons existed through functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. One problem with this approach is that maybe like two-thirds of the neurons in these areas are not mirror neurons so if an entire brain area lights up or fails to light up on BOLD assessment then it is hard to distinguish effects from the other neurons. Mirror neuron guru Marco Iacoboni has suggested mathematical modeling as a way around this problem. Of course perhaps someday scanning will become more sophisticated and it will be possible to tease out the effects of individual cells in living humans.

It also relates to autism as there are now probably more than 20 studies that have been done to assess mirror neuron dysfunction, in at least a limited pool of autism research subjects. Of course, one of the problems with this approach, so rampant in autism research, is the use of higher functioning autistics rather than those more severely impaired who would not sit still in a scanner or be able to use a computer. Out of all these studies, all but four of them have shown evidence of mirror neuron dysfunction in these individuals.

Another interesting item is that there are some plans to study these neurons in rhesus monkeys based on Harlow's (and perhaps other persons') research showing autistic like behaviors in these monkeys when separated from their mothers at birth, such as rocking and eye contact impairments. Going back as far back as about 1977 or 1978 I dreamed of using these monkeys as an animal model for autism when I still had my pipe dream of being a neuroscientist.

I won't comment on it further as it might spoil it for anyone else who wants to read it, but this is a good pithy article that covers some of the stuff about mirror neurons and I recommend it as an interesting read.

Temple Grandin: autistics asset to workplace?

2011-02-21T08:19:00.000-08:00

I see that Temple Grandin is once againgiving commentary about autistics in the workplace. I still think of my own personal struggles in the workplace and my forced retirement at age 51 after years of effort. I was interested to see Grandin's figure of 3% employment among autistics. This is a far cry from Joseph of the natural variation blog's 30% rate of employment among autistics which he neglected to cite a source for and could not do so when I asked him. It is an even further cry from Joseph's assertion based on the UK prevalence study with questionable methodology that found 1% of the adult population in the UK in private households had autism and that they were employed in the same manner as non-handicapped people. I am still curious as to where Grandin gets this figure or where thereare any documentable figures or studies of employment rates among autistics anywhere. I have tried to find them myself on Google. Possibly due to my own ineptitude I was not able to find any. Of course if Grandin's figure is accurate I can take some solace in the fact that at various times in my life I was in the 97th percentile in terms of employability among ASD persons.

Though her call for more autistics in the workplace is commendable, it is dubious that a company will lose out as she says or that autistics as a group (particularly when you look at the entire spectrum) will provide an asset to any company. Though I don't like saying it I believe it is the sad and unpleasant truth.

I'm convinced that this group is one of the most untapped pools poolsof talent we have," said Best Buy's Webteam vice president Cindy Holker

Assuming this statement is true, I wonder where are the examples of all of the autistics who are employed by Best Buy and why we have not heard of them.

People with mild autism or Asperger's syndrome are basically "geeks," Grandin said. They have tremendous skills that can help corporations solve problems, grow sales and program a company's ways to greatness, she said.

If this is true why does not Grandin give any examples besides Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. I believed that I have debunked the non-clinician Grandin's (who likely never met Gates) arguments in my essay undiagnosing Gates, Jefferson and Einstein, which the interested reader can link to from this blog. There is no evidence that Zuckerberg has autism and again this trivializes my horrible disability (and others' disability as well)

Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate labs and IT departments are often "loaded" with well-paid individuals who live somewhere on the spectrum of autism, Grandin insisted.
Many just haven't been diagnosed yet, she said, and so don't carry the label of the illness, which is typically characterized by heightened intellect, awkward social skills, black-and-white, literal reasoning, an intolerance of noise and the inability to read facial cues or body language.

Again, no real examples, and one wonders why these people have not been diagnosed. Perhaps it is because they had no real impairments in their life that a legitimately diagnosed individual has had. So, they would not present to a doctor or psychologist for diagnosis and a comparison between these people and someone actually diagnosed with an ASD is likely not apt.

Grandin emphasizes that social skills can be taught to ASD'ers in the workplace. I question the validity of this approach, given the consideration that voice volume and other behavioral quirks might not be easily controlled. Also, it assumes that life is not spontaneous and follows a script where every variable in the workplace can be accounted for. However, I do laud Grandin for acknowledging that social skills are necessary to obtain and maintain employment. This is in stark contrast to the never employed (excepting his patronage government job at the NDC) Ari Ne'eman, who has stated that an autistic's lack of social skills should be completely overlooked in the workplace.

Gradin has assertedthat half of the silicone valley has something you would call Asperger's. I find it hard to believe she has even met one tenth of 1% of the people employed in the Silicone valley so I believe this is rather a stretch.

Though Grandin's accomplishments and the obstacles she had to overcome to obtain them are laudable I do not believe that it is helpful for her to trivialize the employment problems of persons with autism.

Will ASTEP be a misstep?

2011-02-17T20:10:00.000-08:00

As a person with high functioning autism who has not worked in over four years and has been fired from approximately 20 jobs or more, as well as having significant problems on others where I was forced to resign, I was interested in hearing from my friend, Stephen Shore, about a newly formed organization whose purpose is to help persons on the spectrum find and keep employment. Steve serves on the advisory board of this organization.

This organization has the cute acronym ASTEP, which stands for Asperger's syndrome training and employment partnership.

As I suspect I am not the only person with autism and/or Asperger's syndrome who has had problems in the workplace, this interests me greatly. This is light of the fact that the Obama administration has appointed to various government policy posts a never employed 22 year old who states that a solution for unemployment among persons with autism is to eliminate social pleasantry as a criteria for hiring and evaluating people's job performance. Also it is rumored that a person high up in his advocacy organization is the retired neurodiversity blogger "the autistic bitch from hell" who has stated that those of us with ASD's on/or applying to be on the dole are nothing but lazy loafers who don't want to take responsibility for our lives so we spend time interfering with the noble individuals of this advocacy organization who are trying to do something about job discrimination against autistic persons.

We also have autism speaks who promotes an autism in the workplace dog and pony show yet has never, to the best of my knowledge, hired an autistic person to work for their organization even as a minimum wage janitor or file clerk with a job coach or contributed to the employment of an autistic individual in any way. The exception to this could be their giving money to that Robin Hood-in-reverse, John Elder Robison, to help pay for the costs of his son's film making endeavors, in exchange for lending his celebrity to their organization by serving on an advisory board. In Gadfly's opinion, this is not much different than Warren Buffett serving as an advisor on an organization designed to help the homeless then giving him money.

So, on superficial analysis, it would seem that ASTEP might be a noble cause and this newly found organization might be something that could do some good, if they were able to help autistic people find and keep work. However, it would seem unclear to me on exactly how this is done. The photo on their homepage shows persons working in what would appear to be prestigious, highly skilled work such as in a science laboratory or computer job. I have to wonder, how many persons on the spectrum are capable of receiving the training for doing this job and how realistic is this. I am also curious where these photos were obtained and if any of these people at all have Asperger's or autism.

One intriguing item is apparently there are government subsidies for hiring people with disabilities. One of the things that I attempted when I was struggling to make a living was going to this organization ADEPT (I don't remember what the acronym stood for) which I don't think is any longer in existence. The jobs that I applied for, for the most part did not want to hire me and make an agreement with ADEPT. The one job I got that made an agreement with ADEPT, transcribing some radiology reports, fired me after a month. After this I got another job where they declined to make an agreement with ADEPT and I held this job for more than two years.

They also apparently talk about disclosure of the diagnosis as part of the basis of their plan for helping those on the spectrum and giving counseling to their clients and prospective employers about accommodations that could be made. What exactly these accommodations are and how they could help persons on the spectrum be employed, I don't know. I have not read everything on the site, yet, so perhaps, there is something I missed. I just know that part of ADEPTs strategy was this sort of thing, disclosure and subsidizing the persons did not work out for me.

I don't believe that disclosure is tremendously helpful based on my own personal experiences. It would likely result in someone not being hired, or if they were hired, if the employer did not like them for some reason, or they had bad behavior on the job or problems with work performance, it would not dissuade them from firing that person.

Another red flag is their citing various offices of state departments of rehabilitation around the country and apparently part of their strategy is to have an alliance with these government organizations. I would only recommend the services of the California state department of rehabilitation to my most mortal enemies and that might be cruel even to these people.

About two years ago I wrote a blog post about my bad experiences with California's state rehab department so the interested reader can link to this and read about them to see what is wrong with this approach.

Another reason to be wary of ASTEP is the citing of Temple Grandin's books and work, where she implies that most autistic people have special talents and gives the solution of having mentors and claiming that obsessions can be channeled into work careers, yet neglecting to give any specific examples of these besides herself. The sad story of Darius McCollum is certainly one example where this approach would not be workable. Grandin also gives examples of good jobs and bad jobs for autistic people. Medical transcription, which I did on and off in various places was given as a bad job for persons with autism. Though I was not able to succeed in this field well enough to continue working in it, there is the old cliche' about the glass being half full rather than half empty. I was more successful and made more money doing this than anything else and there were a variety of transcription jobs I was able to keep for reasonably lengthy periods of time, one of them more than nine years.

Perhaps the biggest eyeroll of all is the executive director of the program, one Michael John Carley. Carley, who is married and has two children and received an AS diagnosis in his mid 30s after his son was diagnosed has claimed that there is a universal feeling among autistics that "we" don't want to be cured. As most readers of this blog can guess, I take umbrage to this.

Carley, as reported by MJ, author of the autism jabberwocky blog has stated that proposed changes in the DSM are "hard for him to swallow because he does not want to be associated with head bangers and diaper wearers". Apparently, Carley would prefer fancying himself an Einstein or a Gates and claiming these two had Asperger's than a person who has had life impairments due to their ASD. One has to wonder how much sympathy Carley would have for those of us who have employment problems. Would he find being lumped in with us, 'hard to swallow'? This would reduce his credibility in my eyes as a director of an organization that seeks to help ASD persons with employment issues.

Interestingly, Carley at one time made a living as a diplomat for the United Nations. This seems rather ironic in light of the rather undiplomatic statements that he has made about persons with autism who do not function in the world as well as he does. I wonder whether the reason Carley is now doing work in autism related fields and is no longer a diplomat is because he worked in a profession he was so ill-suited for and had to leave it. If he can't even pick a job he has a good aptitude for,how can he help other persons?

I realize that this is a very new organization and perhaps I should heed the old saw, "don't judge a book by its cover" and maybe give ASTEP a chance and see if they are actually successful in helping those of us on the spectrum find and keep work.

Though I will withhold judgement until all the facts are in, I still can't help thinking that ASTEP might be a misstep.

Possible autistic short story collection

2011-02-14T10:42:00.000-08:00

I have just received a tip about some people who are interested in putting together a short story collection by autistic authors. I have written 23 short stories, 14 of them have been published on my stories page. It has been a few years since I have written any stories, though at some point I might write more. I'm more interested in writing novels and technically I have now written two of those. Of course short stories can often be a novelist's baby steps. I have submitted my story, Guess who isn't coming to lunch to these people. I may submit one or two more to them. They have a 3,000 word limit so this would preclude a good number of my stories that are substantially longer than this but I have a number of others that do fall within this range.

At one time I believed that I was one of the few persons on the spectrum to have written fiction. After I wrote this on my home page of my stories website, various people countered this claim and I must concede that there are apparently more fiction authors on the spectrum than I previously had believed.

This seems like an exciting project, the fact that there could be a collection of short stories by autistic authors and that it could be published.

One of the problems with this project however is that these people are planning to submit the collection to Jessica Kingsley, probably the premiere publisher of autism-related books. I met Ms. Kingsley at an autism conference a few years ago or so, and she told me that as a general rule, she will not publish fiction books because they did publish one children's book that was fiction and it sold poorly. Though, I think such a project would be worthwhile, I understand that Ms. Kingsley is concerned with her company's bottom line. So, I am guessing the chances that this story collection would be published by JKP is certainly a longshot. If JKP declined to publish it, the chances of anyone else doing so are miniscule, as short story collections are only published by mainstream publishers when the author is an established writer who has had stories published in various magazines, anthologies etc.

If any other autistic authors who have written short stories are interested in this I guess they can follow the link to the wrong planet post and contact the parties concerned.

New law proposed in connecticut: what's the point?

2011-02-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

I was interested to read about a new law being proposed by the Connecticut state legislature against bogus autism therapists. Apparently a woman who only had a high school education claimed to have advanced degrees and credentials as a professional autism therapist and bilked the hapless parents of some autistic children out of thousands of dollars.

I have to wonder what the point of this law is. I have already written about William Stillman who charges $100 an hour for a phone consultation in spite of not having any credentials and a self-diagnosis of Asperger's and presumes that autism is a new evolutionary development and in 5 to 10 years the prevalence will be 1 in 10.

I have also mentioned Valerie Paradiz in the past, who admittedly has a Ph.D. in German literature yet misleads people by flaunting her Ph.D., advertising herself as a paid autism consultant.

Interestingly enough, one of the person's pushing for this legislation seemed to be from autism speaks, who has John Elder Robison, a high school dropout, on their scientific advisory board amidst the M.D. and Ph.D. scientists, so it is rather strange that they care about these qualifications.

Additionally, federal special education law does not have a precedent where people are required to have credentials or training. This has been decided upon by the Supreme Court in the Shannon Carter case. The Carter decision also set the precedent for a New York court decision Malkowitz v. DeBuono which paved the way for uncredentialed, untrained Lovaas/ABA therapists to practice at taxpayer expense.

So I am wondering what is the point of this law?

has holy grail molecular pathway for autism been identified?

2011-01-30T23:03:00.000-08:00

An old acquaintance of mine sent me this interesting piece by economist and mutual fund manager, John Hussman, who has an autistic son and apparently moonlights as a genetic researcher with some other persons. The research involved genome wide sequencing of two different datasets, using a sophisticated computer algorithm that I don't really understand that studied what were called single nucleotide polymorphisms where there are normal variations in the genes of various people some of these can have risk alleles which are genes or a cluster of genes which can cause or predispose someone to conditions like Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, or autism.

From what I understand of the article, they were saying that there are so many possible locations that could result in genes which cause alterations to proteins or instructions on how to construct neurons, etc., it is infeasible to examine them all by conventional methods. However, many of the SNP's that could cause autism might be in very close proximity to one other and the problem could be confounded by a large "noise to signal ratio". The researchers Hussman was associated with apparently used an algorithm which helped with the signal to noise ratio in finding candidate alleles that could cause or predispose someone to autism. Two different data sets, one from the University of Florida and another from the autism genetic resource exchange were used with the idea is that you might be able to find locations for the same candidate genes in two different data sets, then this might make a clearer picture for a possible genetic etiology of autism.

I have written in the past about the simplistic statements that Simon Baron-Cohen and Temple Grandin and perhaps others have taken towards the genetics of autism in that perhaps there is only one or a few "autism genes" that have stayed in the population due to a protective effect and are responsible for every invention from the spear to the cell phone.

As Hussman correctly states, the problem with this thinking is that instead of a few genes, there are probably hundreds of genes that operate in concert with each other which could have a small effect on many individuals or a large effect on a few individuals. But what was intriguing is that these hundreds of genes could operate on a common biological pathway, which might make an understanding of the etiology of autism clearer.

With this computer algorithm, the researchers claim to have found a biologic pathway which could explain at least some aspects of autism. The biologic pathway regulates how axons and dendrites in a neuronal brain cell are formed and guides them to the appropriate places. For those who don't know, brain cells communicate with each other chemically and electronically by sending electrical pulses down what is called the axon of the cell. Then a chemical is released into a space called the synapse which is received by a dendrite of a neighboring brain cell. If something is amiss in genes that regulate this, then cells won't be able to communicate with each other properly and this lack of adequate transmission could cause the debilitating features of autism.

Though admittedly I am far from a science expert, one problem with this research that I see is that autism is likely not 100% genetic, since though we have high concordance rates in identical twins, it is not 100%. Likewise, as I remember correctly some studies have shown fraternal twins have higher concordance rates than siblings who are not twins; it would be the same if autism were 100% genetic. So, there may be something else, besides abnormalities in single nucleotide polymorphisms such as some environment insult during the prenatal period that could cause a person to become autistic, though it is possible this pathway found by Hussman and the others might predispose a person to autism.

I suppose Lorene Amet, a prolific commenter on autism's gadfly who has a doctorate in molecular biology can critique this research and correct me where I am going wrong if anywhere. Or possibly someone else better trained in science than I am.

However, this research holds out hope, maybe not for me personally, but perhaps other persons who have yet to be born. If there is a common pathway influence by genetic mutations that results in abnormal cytoarchitecture can be found for many cases of autism, perhaps interventions could be done to prevent the person from becoming autistic in the first place and having to live with this disability. Hussman seems to imply this is the case.

As I said, I wish I had more expertise on science so I could understand this stuff better and the possible implications it might have for helping or possibly even curing or preventing autism in the first place.

Equality Demands Responsibility Revisited

2011-01-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

As regular readers of autism's gadfly know, a few years ago neurodiversity activist Ari Ne'eman wrote an essay entitled Equality Demands Responsibility in which the gist of the essay was that persons on the spectrum should not use insanity pleas or diminished capacity defenses when charged with crimes. That if we were to state a cure was not necessary then an autistic person was expected to obey the law. If not, they should be prosecuted and suffer the same consequences as the neurotypical law breaker.

A few years later, Ne'eman, and his organization, the autistic self-advocacy network, digressed from the tenets of this essay, when a young special education student was charged with assaulting his teachers. I wrote about this elsewhere. This youngster should not be prosecuted for his crime because of his autism ASAN said. The Midnight in Chicago blog in a recent post has suggested if I am not misunderstanding them is that those who engage in autism advocacy may have ulterior motives for doing so. They write:

Again, I say to you that it is important that you carefully evaluate the motives and intentions of people and organizations in the advocacy field. Often times they are advocating for personal or selfish reasons, rather than advocating in the interest of seeing that true justice is served to those on the autism spectrum

This could serve as an explanation for the inconsistencies between Ne'eman's essay and their advocacy efforts on behalf of the young special education student from Arkansas. However, I am not sure what ulterior motive ASAN would have for their actions, but perhaps there is one.

Retired neurodiversity blogger "The autistic bitch from hell" has suggested that the reason certain autistic persons crusade against the neurodiversity movement and efforts of autistic self-advocates is because they are on welfare or social security and refuse to take responsibility for their lives and are worried that these efforts will jeopardize their welfare benefits.

I find this assertion interesting as a crusader against neurodiversity and a critic of the autistic self advocacy network, who for more than 27 years tried his ass off to make a living, applied for hundreds of jobs, worked sporadically with some success, endured multiple firings and all the headaches of having to avoid going on the dole or being completely supported by my parents just to avoid the fate that ABFH claimed that I covet so much. Yet, two of the highest (at the time) profile spokespersons for the autistic civil rights and neurodiversity movement, Frank Klein and Amanda Baggs were both on welfare and/or social security and as far as I know never worked a day in their lives. It is also interesting in light of the fact that Ari Ne'eman stated that he supported money being spent from the Obama administration's economic stimulus package to expedite processing of social security disability claims and hearings at the administrative law level and in federal district courts and circuit courts of appeal. The fact that ASAN has lobbied for Medicaide waivers for persons with autism in various states as well.

All of these facts has just gotten me to thinking. Should the equality demands responsibility ploy just be restricted to criminal behavior as well as those of us unemployed autistics whom ABFH asserts are just lazy loafers who won't work and take responsibility for our lives? What about in special education? What about the state regional center services in California? What about behavior in school and in the workplace?

The IDEA law, which ASAN has lobbied for funding for costs the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. If equality demands responsibility and autism is to be considered a legitimate way of being rather than a disease shouldn't ASAN be lobbying to abolish it and claiming that autistics should be educated in the same manner as their NT peers for the same amount of money and no extra money be spent on special education for these children, after all, equality demands responsibility?

The state of California where I live is billions of dollars in the hole. Jerry Brown, our new governor has created a hornet's nest by proposing drastic cuts in the state budget. According to the equality demands responsibility mantra the families of children with developmental disabilities should not be lobbying for state services at taxpayer expense. They should be lobbying for Brown and the state legislature to close down the state regional centers and responsible parents of autistic children should no longer avail themselves of these services if they are to assert their children are equal to NT children and don't need a cure.

What about inappropriate behavior and social skills among persons with autism. Shouldn't we expect them to always behave in an appropriate manner in spite of their autism? After all, equality demands responsibility. This is in spite of the fact that Ari Ne'eman stated social pleasantry should be eliminated as a criteria for hiring people for jobs and evaluating their work performance.

According to the equality demands responsibility mantra, autistics should not be allowed diminished capacity defenses in criminal proceedings under any circumstance,they should not be allowed social security benefits and should work for a living. They should take responsibility for their own behavior and should not be allowed services by government if we are to state that no cure should be sought for autism and to do so is morally reprehensible.

I don't see ASAN and other advocacy organizations lobbying for any of these things. All I see is one inconsistency and digression from the Equality Demands Responsibility tenet after another. Or perhaps the midnight in Chicago blog is indeed correct. That the autistic advocacy organizations have an ulterior motive for all of their activities and perhaps don't really give a flying fuck about autistics' rights. I wonder what this ulterior motive could be.

more work at cal tech

2011-01-20T16:54:00.001-08:00

About an hour ago, I came back home from The Emotions lab at Cal tech, run by neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs. I participated in some more experiments involving some questinonaires, this sort of experiment involving the Stroop effect where I have to name what a color is when a color word is put in a different color than the word. For example Greenaand having to chose the color red instead of the color green. They also had this eye tracking experiment where I had to wear a camera on my head that tracks eye movements, while I look at some faces and photos of scenery and decide which of two choices is the most attractive. I am not sure what the purpose of these experiments are and what they are trying to measure in autistic persons, but I am able to make $80 for an afternoon's work which is nice considering my financial situation is not as lucrative as it was four years ago or so. Of course some of the money is taken in the costs of gas in driving to Pasadena which is probably about 30 miles or more from where I live. I got to see post doctoral fellow Dan Kennedy again, and say hello to him. I first started participating about a year ago and I have written about my experiences doing this. The eye tracker was kind of a hassle because I had to wear this camera on top of my head while doing it, and it took them a long time to set up the calibrations for it, but they finally did it. Apparently this device is very "finnicky" as they put it and it takes a long time to set it up.

It was nice to be able to have something constructive to do for the good part of the day and some interaction with some persons as well as making some money. There is sort of an irony involved in all of these people rejecting me because of my autism, but there someone actually wants me because of my autism and wants to pay me some money for it. It is as close as I can get to having a job right now, though not quite the same I guess. Course I am enjoying retirement somewhat also.

Also, the Courchesne lab contacted me recently and wanted me to participate in this study they are now doing. I used to be a research subject with them but have not done so for a while now. I could have made a couple hundred dollars doing that but it involved driving down to San Diego (more than 120 miles each way) on at least two or more different occasions and having some testing and MRI scanning done as well as having a skin biopsy taken from my buttocks. I guess I was squeamish about the skin biopsy and at the time I was having some dermatologic problems with ringworm on my buttocks which has resolved. It is interesting in apparently the idea is that they can do some sort of stem cell thing where they turn skin cells into neurons and the autistic neurons may develop differently than normal controls. I can't help feeling a little guilty that my participating might have made the difference between curing (or at least making a major therapeutic breakthrough in autism) autism in a much shorter time. So at some point I may reconsider my participation in that study if it is not too late, but we shall see.

Another issue that concerns me is that they are only interested in high functioning autistics in a lot of these studies, at least at Cal Tech, as it involves compliance with the eye tracking device and being able to use a computer properly and reading the choices on the computer. I wish there was some way to do research on the lower functioning people so they could have a shot of a decent life and being able to talk and such, but so it goes.

I think Adolph's lab is still looking for research subjects 18 years of age and up with high functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. They pay $20 an hour for various experiments and $50 an hour for undergoing an MRI scan. So if anyone is interested I guess they can contact the lab. I believe the number of the lab is included in the post that I linked to from last year. If it isn't I guess someone can post a comment to me or send me email and I can give them the number.

Is autism speaks suggesting affirmative action to help employ autistics?

2011-01-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

I have read an interesting post by a young man named Kerry Magro, who is described as a college senior who is a "staffer"with autism speaks. One wonders what the term staffer means as Magro's post deals with the problems of finding employment for autistic people and suggesting affirmative action as a means for achieving that goal and he states that he is interviewing for job placement now as a college senior. So, it seems likely he is not a paid employee of autism speaks. Since they published his post on their blog, I also wonder if autism speaks is suggesting affirmative action as a remedy for helping autistic persons find jobs.

This is interesting in light of the fact that autism speaks put on a dog and pony show suggesting how great it is that there are certain employers who hire persons with autism. I have written about this in a previous post. A notable fact is that autism speaks has suggested that employing autistic persons is a good idea, yet, as far as I know, they have never had a single paid autistic employee in their organization-not even as a minimum wage position with a job coach. I have to wonder, why autism speaks would be publishing Mr. Magro's post on such a subject in light of these circumstances. I also wonder why Mr. Magro would be writing about the virtues of affirmative action, yet not asking autism speaks to employ himself or some other deserving person with autism.

I wonder if Mr. Magro is a believer in the concept of neurodiversity. This might help him get a job with autism speaks or perhaps encourage autism speaks to engage in some affirmative action and hire persons with autism in paid positions in their organization.

Perhaps this sockpuppet of the ND movement should change their name from Autism Speaks to Autism Listens as this is what they seem to do 120% of the time that the ND behemoth speaks.

When they found the "I am autism" video offensive, it was removed from the home page of their site.

When neurodiversity wanted them to cough up cash to help them finance research that was aligned with their philosophy. Laurent Mottron, Isabelle Souleries and Michelle Dawson were given a half million dollar grant.

When many adherents to the ND movement complained that there were no autistics on the board of directors or were placed in positions of power within the organization, they responded by appointing, John Robison to their science board. (Robison received an AS diagnosis at age 40). Robison, a high school dropout with no training or expertise in science or autism sits in a room with M.D. and Ph.D. scientists and decides what research AS will fund. It would seem the idea is that Robison can better represent the community of autistic persons in that he has experienced first hand what life is like for a person on the spectrum. I wonder how many persons with autism have been able to marry twice, father a son, get a $100,000 a year engineering job with no degree or formal training and write a best selling memoir. I know that I am not one of them. What have Robison's contributions to the field of autism research been so far? To date, he has seriously suggested studying geek success as a legitimate scientific endeavor. He has lobbied and received funds for his own personal use when his son and his son's friend Alex Plank needed money to make films for their autism talk TV series, partially reimbursing Robison, the cash he laid out.

Interestingly enough, the ND movement has offered solutions of their own to the problems of autistic persons in the workplace. Ari Ne'eman a 21-year-old (at the time) who has never had paid employment of any kind has suggested eliminating social pleasantry as a criteria for hiring and receiving a good job evaluation. Joseph of the natural variation blog has stated that in the near future, there would be a 70% rate of employment among persons with autism. He projected that based on a supposed 30% rate of employment that currently exists but neglected to cite any reference for this figure or where it came from (assuming it came from someplace other than Joseph's imagination). When I asked him, he was unable to produce a source for this figure. Joseph then went even further claiming that unemployment was not a problem for autistic persons at all and they made in a living in the same manner as persons who were not handicapped. He based this on a survey involving only 19 people with questionable methodology.

I can be reasonably certain that Mr. Magro is a 22-year-old with virtually no experience and probably limited qualifications for anything seeking employment in the worst economic times since the great depression. This is certainly an arduous undertaking for someone without a disability let alone someone who has autism. There are no easy solutions or quick fixes for an autistic person to make a living, other than trying very hard to amass qualifications, spending a lot of time applying for jobs. It takes a great deal of work. I know as I am an individual who spent more years than he or Ari Ne'eman have been alive doing just that. I am proud that at least at one time I was able to work sporadically in spite of this horrific handicap. I never looked for work in economic times like these though.

If autism speaks does not want to practice what they preach and won't help Mr. Magro, I wish him the best of luck in finding employment. Of course one solution for him, other than suggested in the previous paragraph might be for him to consult the ND movement and ask them to have a little chat with autism speaks. Given AS's track with ND they'll probably listen.

Finished a first draft of novel in progress

2011-01-03T10:13:00.000-08:00

I have had an interesting start to the new year in that I finished a first draft of that novel that I have worked on off and on for about 3 years now. In fact I first wrote about my starting it on Jonathan's journal in my stories webpage where I briefly blogged just before starting autism's gadfly.

I realize that though a milestone of sorts, a first draft of a novel (at least in my case) does not mean a whole lot in terms of marketability, or publishability. The nice thing about this blog is that I can write posts on the fly without being accountable to an editor for what they are worth (or not worth depending on your viewpoint) and then have some interested people read them. One is not afforded the same luxury with a novel or non-fiction book, or an article you want published someplace and you are accountable to some other entity. Usually, unless the writer is extremely skilled (far more skilled than I am) they have to do extensive editing and re-writing to obtain a finished product ready for submission. I am not sure I am capable of doing that with a book, though technically I have written three books now (four if you count a book length collection of short stories as a book).

Though I realize I have sometimes been lax in my re-writing of posts on this blog, I am gratified that I have now been writing semi-regular posts on autism's gadfly for just about three years and I have developed a following, albeit a small one, of devoted readers. Not only that this blog seems to generate a large amount of comments for a small tiny spec in the blogosphere.

I wrote briefly about my novel in progress last year in another gadfly post.

It would seem now, the real work of rewriting will begin. I think it is too late to enroll in a ucla extension course, for next week, so i may have to wait until April. I don't have as much money as I did at one time to hire a book doctor and for The School of Hard Knocks I was not too inclined to listen to them anyhow and they did not give me a good direction. I suppose that unfortunately I am one of those writers who wants the book doctor to tell me that I am another Dostoyevsky and my novel needs no work, so not sure what the next step will be.

I still dream of using my autism as a gimmick for commercial success. For those who are interested, I wrote about that idea in the post that I linked to last year and they can read it. I learned some hard lessons from that. Of course now, high functioning autistics with intact intelligence are no longer considered such an anomaly. This might reduce the value of using disability as a gimmick in marketability of a book. In fact, we have John Elder Robison representing all autistics on the AS science board. Stephen Shore and Ari Ne'eman are supposed to represent our interests on the IACC. These three individuals have a functioning level that far surpasses mine.

Of course one of the lessons learned was that a seemingly sure fire gimmick for publication is no substitute for the arduous effort it will take to write a product ready for publication.

Kevin Leitch and Simon Baron-Cohen endorse neurodiversity: BFD!

2010-12-16T20:17:00.000-08:00

In the better late than never and the old news is good news department. I see that neurodiversity blogger, Kevin Leitch has given Simon Baron-Cohen's recent endorsement of ND a shout out. Most familiar with the issues of ND already know that Simon Baron-Cohen, though acknowledging some forms of autism can be problematic, has neurodiverse leanings. Kevin Leitch has also stated that those of us who write anti-neurodiversity posts on blogs are misrepresenting what it means, but neglects to go into any specifics. My gut reaction on reading this is Big Fucking Deal! But I suppose I should elaborate more than just my gut and try to use my brain (such as it is particularly from the point of view of my numerous detractors). We should also elaborate on how much credibility an endorsement from either of these parties has.

Kevin Leitch, is a web designer, who designed and owned the autism hub, a collection of pro neurodiversity blogs whose original motto was, "We don't need no stinkin' cure". Being opposed to a cure for autism was basically the gist of this collection of blogs in the beginning. Leitch himself elaborated on this in an interview a few years back on episode 43 of autismpodcast.blogspot.com for those who are interested, they can find it on the web and listen to what Mr. Leitch had to say. He is also the father of a daughter with autism who at least at the time of the interview was virtually nonverbal. Leitch went on to say that not needing a cure was different than not wanting a cure and that if his daughter indicated that she desired a cure and there was one he would give it to her. It does not take rocket science to ponder how much common sense Mr. Leitch has, considering he would expect a nonverbal child to state that she desires a cure. Just as Laurent Mottron and Michelle Dawson have accepted a nearly half million dollar grant from autism speaks. SBC has accepted donations from the now defunct cure autism now and his one time postdoctoral fellow, Matthew Belmonte operated in part on a grant provided by CAN. Also, Mr. Leitch has an assistant blogger on his blog, some character that goes by the moniker, "Sullivan". Sullivan has written on the blog how Ari Ne'eman has never said that autism was not a disability. Gadfly has debunked that notion in the past and Mr. Sullivan made rather pathetic attempts at damage control, going on to say that neurodiversity has always acknowledged that autism is a disability.

Leitch's shoutout of Baron-Cohen's recent blurb is particularly ironic in this regard as Baron-Cohen has written an essay questioning whether or not certain forms of autism should be regarded as disabilities. Cohen goes on to compare autism with left-handedness, trivializing this condition. A left-handed person is not impaired in their abilities to accomplish things and get things done. Cohen also compares the inability of spouses to get along and neighbors inability to get along with the social impairments of autism. Of course, bad marriages can be ended and people can move their residences, but someone can't remove their autism so the analogy fails. Baron-Cohen shows his lack of understanding of genetic principles by suggesting that though autistics don't often have children, autism has still remained in the populace so must have some sort of genetic advantage. Of course the most likely reason for this is De Novo mutations rather than evolutionary advantage.

The article goes on with analogies such as autistics might be considered disabled because they spend more time with math than with people and analogies are given that Michael Jordan is fine motor impaired because he does not do needle work and other absurd analogies. It does not touch upon the problems that those with high functioning autism have in finding social relationships, impaired ability to acquire skills and behaviors that make them employable, etc.

Without going into the rest of the rather pedantically written essay, which the interested reader can go to the link and read themselves, I will sum it up to say, that if Baron-Cohen had autism at a severity level of mine, he would not have been able attend graduate school, to become a professor, write and publish his books, marry and have his three children. If such were the case I think it likely he would consider high functioning autism a disability. I believe I would be considered high functioning by most standards.

We also must look at the august list of persons who SBC acknowledges in having contributed to the essay. We can certainly judge SBC by the company he keeps or has kept in the past. Liane Wiley and David Andrews especially are conducive to a rolling of the intraocular muscles. One individual has suggested that autism is something to be celebrated. The other is one of the most cruel and vicious hatemongers in the ND movement. Who engages in a diatribe of profanity with anyone who dares disagree with him. Has a bigoted, condescending and ableist attitude towards your humble blogger, whom he has mocked for being too impaired to have the same academic performance that he himself had. He also has never been in a special education school in his life by his own admission and added the comment that because I was in special ed, that made him glad that he was never in it. In regards to David Andrews, Clay Adams, Phil Gluyas, Kim Wombles and Dave Seidel and probably other individuals in the ND movement who have spent time mocking me and ridiculing me, one of Baron-Cohen's statements regarding ND is particularly ironic:

Stigmatizing anyone, whether they have autism or any other characteristic, is wrong, since the point about these labels is not to pick out the person in order to make their lives worse, but to help others understand their special needs and qualities.

So, yeah, Kev, if you happen to read this, your credibility is zero and I say big fucking deal to your endorsement and Baron-Cohen's endorsement of neurodiversity. I can only hope that if a cure is found in your and your daughter's lifetime you won't listen to Alex Plank's dictum that most autistics don't want to be cured and then come to that conclusion when you ask your daughter if she wants a cure and she does not answer you.

What is neurodiversity's suggestion for Adam Koumoutseas?

2010-12-14T08:48:00.000-08:00

I see from reading a very interesting article that the 23-year-old profoundly autistic Adam Koumoutseas has been criminally charged with assault and battery for pounding his mother's head on a pavement. Ari Ne'eman, lead neurodiversity spokesman has stated that curing persons such as Adam is morally reprehensible and has crusaded against finding a cure for an individual such as this. Adam's father has stated that his son is incapable of understanding his actions and is hoping that his son will not have to stand trial. Adam is currently being assessed as to whether or not he is competent to stand trial. If it is decided that Adam is to be prosecuted it is likely his family will present a diminished capacity defense. Ne'eman has stated in his previous writings that there should be no diminished capacity defense of persons on the spectrum in criminal matters if autistics are to be equal with NT's and have to shoulder equal responsibility and if we are to assert that autism is not in fact a disorder but a legitimate way of being. In spite of this, Ne'eman and his organization, ASAN, have not really been consistent in their thinking and actions given that one of their crusades was to have the criminal charges dropped against Zach Price who was charged with assaulting one of his teachers.

His mother was taken to the hospital with life threatening injuries but was reported to be in stable condition. A police sergeant on the scene tried to question Mr. Koumoutseas but only heard unintelligible sounds from the man. A court appointed psychologist who evaluated the man stated that it was almost impossible for him to express himself in words.

I am curious as to what ASAN's solution is to this individual's situation. Will they just claim if the man's autism had been accommodated properly the assault on his mother would have never taken place? How could this individual's autism be accommodated for in such a manner? Is the solution (which would be inconsistent with acceptance and accommodation) be to throw the book at this individual, prosecute him and if convicted sentence him to years of incarceration? This would seem to be the solution that Ne'eman suggests in his Equality Demands Responsibility essay. Or would the third alternative be to forget about what was written in this essay and have ASAN take on the crusade of freeing this young man and saying the charges should be dropped? Ari Ne'eman has been appointed to a disabilities council by the Obama administration on which he serves at taxpayer expense. He also has a seat on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee where as far as I can tell he has not offered any constructive solutions for any of the problems that befall persons on the spectrum, but has rather spent his time there making rude comments to one individual because he took umbrage to his cost analyses showing how expensive autism is to society.

It is also possible that ND, and ASAN will make no comment at all about this case as it might show some flaws in their theories, philosophies and what they try to say. However, one can't help wondering about a person who is given money at taxpayer expense and by extension the organizations such as ASAN and others that he represent can remain silent and have a do nothing attitude about an issue like this.

The bullied brain:another form of "neurodiversity"

2010-11-29T08:49:00.000-08:00

As most readers of the gadfly blog know, those who oppose a cure for autism being invented believe that autism and what most rational people would consider other types of deficiencies or even defects in the brain of an individual that would impair them in life are just natural variations involving alternative forms of brain wiring.

For this reason, they will be interested to know there is a new form of neurodiversity being researched, namely the effects of bullying on the developing brain. The new science seems to be showing evidence that bullying causes hormonal changes that can produce damage (or change for neurodiversitites) in the brain. It can reduce the growth of neurons, connectivity in the brain, etc.

For example, neuroscientist Martin Teicher conducted brain scans on a variety of adolescents. The ones who had been bullied, were shown to have abnormalities in the corpus callosum, which connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. There was evidence that the neurons in the corpus callosum had reduced myelin, the white matter of the brain which provides a sheath on the axons of neurons and facilitates transmission of impulses between nerve cells-which would influence functioning of the brain.

Another study suggested that bullied boys have much higher levels of the hormone cortisol than nonbullied controls. It has been suggested this can produce alterations in the hippocampus, the brain structure that controls short term memories. Experiments in bullied rats showed changes to the hippocampus and effects on memory.

Perhaps this is the reason that so many persons in the neurodiversity movement are such bullies. Just as father Flannigan in the movie "Boys town" stated that there was no such thing as a bad boy, they assert there is no such thing as a bad or defective brain only a different one. In fact neurological differences are essential to survival of the species and autistic genes have produced every invention from the spear to the cell phone. Bill Gates success and Einstein's theory of relatively are due to autistic traits or even autism. So by being such bullies and insulting people, they are only ensuring survival of the human race by perpetuating yet another unique form of "neurodiversity".

autism and Rome

2010-11-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

I see that paragon of virtue of our tax dollars at work, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee is having yet another meeting. As far as their value to helping persons with autism I can't help but being reminded of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Phil Gluyas running for Australian parliament?

2010-11-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

I see the rumor mill has it that neurodiversity extremist, 21st century Bruno Bettelheim who called my mother a witch, and nice enough to give gadfly one of his annual most horrid autistic adult awards is rumored to be running for parliament in Australia. He was also author of the now defunct blog "Mitchell's gadfly" where he would pathetically attempt to refute every post I had written and would constantly insult your humble blogger. This blog also seemed to be a safe haven for every wingnut on the internet who had some sort of grievance against me and these people would add posts insulting and belittling me and members of my family. In addition to the preceding that I have already mentioned, Gluyas has threatened to get this blog closed down as well as John Best's blog. As far as I know he is suing John Best for some sort of offense but I am not sure what. In addition to his most horrid autistic adult award, he also gives some sort of award for best medical professional who has made contributions to the autism community. His last award was given to psychologist Nick Dubin whom most gadfly readers will remember has been charged with downloading child pornography from the internet. Gluyas has refused to retract the award.

One wonders what the chances are of this august gentleman being elected to a seat in the Australian parliament. Well here in the good old U.S.A. which a few years ago passed the combating autism act we have Ari Ne'eman and John Robison who craft autism public policy and decide which research gets funded at taxpayer expense as well as funding of Morton Gernsbacher's research. So I suppose it is possible that a certain legislative district in Australia has no more common sense than this country in regards to autism policy. If the outcome of this election is known I will update readers.

my sister's book wins an award

2010-11-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

Well I had a nice thanksgiving dinner with my parents, aunt, cousin, cousin-in-law and some other friends of mine and my parents and I can reflect on some positives in my life in that I am comfortable, not living in poverty, and still have supportive parents still alive. I hope all gadfly readers had a good thanksgiving.

A few regular readers of autism's gadfly may remember a post I wrote more than a year and a half ago plugging a book about complexity that my sister wrote and published. Well there is some more good news about Melanie's book. The phi beta kappa society has wisely decided to give her book an award. Our entire family is proud of Melanie.

Simon Baron Cohen and Temple Grandin (and perhaps Steve Silberman also) would have a field day about this autistic man's father, a pioneer in the field of computer engineering going back to the early 1950's and his sister, a Ph.D. computer scientist and artificial intelligence researcher. Maybe this proves how useful autism genes are to society, no matter that dad and sis got the good from the genes and I got the brunt of them.

However, it is my mother's family who has a history of mental illness and learning disabilities and autism, so it is possible the genes from that side of the family contributed to my disease (that's right, disease, Laurent and Ari).

Simon Baron-Cohen has speculated that the rise in autism may be partially because of assortive mating and the rise of the computer boon that engineers are more likely to meet and marry each other. I seem to remember I wrote a post about this on gadfly some time ago, but am having some trouble locating that post. If I do, I will go back in and edit this post.

The point was is that Baron-Cohen wanted to do a study of how many male engineers were meeting and marrying female engineers, given that at one time it was not possible for these nerdy engineers to meet and marry and reproduce, creating all of these autistic genes and people. I wondered how SBC could explain the fact that my father, an engineer, and most the engineers and computer people he worked with in the 1950's and 1960s, during the computer's nascence were all married and none of their wives were engineers. Obviously these nerds were able to meet women and get married and this might be a flaw in this theory, as well as in Steve Silberman's theories and forthcoming book where it is quite possible that he will touch upon these issues.

Well happy thanksgiving and kudos to my sister for winning that award.

problems with my blog and "senator Fiorina"

2010-11-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noted that my blog archive is at the very bottom of my page rather than closer to the top where it should be. Unfortunately, I was trying to add some more quotes to the quotes section on the home page of the blog and adjust the spacing and somehow I pushed all my stuff down to the bottom of the page. Upon looking at the code, I noted that there were an excessive amount of break statements which added a zillion extra lines and I did not save a template of the original blog. I inquired on blogger's help section as how to access the html in my blog and found out.

Unfortunately, when I click design and edit html only a CSS file loads and not the file containing the HTML code of this blog, even after clicking in the box expand widget templates the file will not load for some reason. Therefore I can't change it back. Otherwise I could go in and edit the file and resolve this problem. Also, on the WYSIWYG editing page, there seems to be no way to place the side bars to the right. I apologize for any inconvenience to anyone who may want to find and access the archives on this blog, but I guess you will have to scroll to the bottom of the page until I can find a way to solve this problem. Any suggestions in comments or email as to how I can solve the problem are appreciated.

Senator Barbara Boxer ,who has been one of the two senators in my state since 1993, has declared victory in her race against Carly Fiorina and is claiming re-election to a fourth term. However, Fiorina has refused to concede the race saying that a margin of a few thousand votes or so is too close to call. Gadfly would agree with this; however, the left leaning media have declared Barbara Boxer the winner. I voted for Fiorina as I saw it as a vote against Ari Ne'eman's confirmation to the NDC which Boxer was a part of. Also a vote against federal funding of Morton "autism is harmless" Gernsbacher's research.

Many members of the neurodiversity community seem to have very liberal political beliefs from what I have read in their blogs. However, one would think they would be enamored of Ms. Fiorina who has stated her desire to overturn Roe vs. Wade and her opposition to abortions except in cases of rape, incest and endangerment of the mother's life. If this happened, the ND argument that autism speaks and other groups seeking a cure for autism's goal of trying to find a way to deliberately abort autistic fetuses would become almost completely moot (excepting the illegal coat hanger abortions that occurred prior to Roe V. Wade). They would not be able to cry about eugenics. Even though we could still have illegal abortions, it might be much harder to obtain genetic testing for fetuses if all that could be done was to abort it. Somehow I suspect most californian ND's supported Boxer due to her appointment of Ne'eman and her liberalism. I also suspect most female ND's of child bearing age believe they have a right to an abortion as a form of birth control. However, they would not give the same right to a mother of an autistic fetus. With the exception of Frank Klein who stated he was for legalized abortion of non-autistic fetuses, I have yet to hear an ND comment on where they stand on the issue concerning nonautistics. I suspect most of them value the child's disability over the child's humanity. I suppose I could have voted for a libertarian or green or other minor party candidate against Boxer, but Fiorina had the greatest chance of winning. If the media or anyone else declares Boxer the winner hopefully Ms. Fiorina will demand a recount against such a narrow margin.

It is my belief that a vote for any politician who would support Ari Ne'eman being able to craft autism policy at taxpayer expense and would support the research of neurodiversity rogue Morton Gernsbacher is a vote for children becoming crippled and sick, not being able to speak, and being in danger of accidentally drowning or running out in traffic and being hit by a car and being killed. Therefore I will await 2012 where all those who feel as I do will cast their vote for any candidate besides Obama or any other incumbent senator who voted to confirm Ne'eman.

Addendum: The latest word is that Fiorina has conceded the election to Boxer

"Look there's a kid in a cage" redux department

2010-11-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

I see there is yet another interesting story about an autistic kid in a cage. Along with "retard", calling the special education bus a "tard cart", "look there's a kid in a cage" is yet another cliched insult among those who bully autistic children who attend special schools. I have previously written about my personal experiences with this slight going back to my childhood in the 1960s. I also used this line in my short story, Mr. Twiddle which I wrote quite a few years ago. Also used this line in my unpublished novel "The School of Hard Knocks".

Stories about autistic or other developmentally disabled kids in a cage fascinate me.

Shallow brooks are noisy

2010-11-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

There is an old saw that some will remember- still waters run deep. When I think of the parents, persons with autism who will neither be participating in the silly moratorium on facebook and twitter posting nor the equally silly autistics speaking day who suffer from autism of a loved one or themselves, but who don't have time for internet wars because they are too busy trying to care for their loved ones or they are too impaired to go online and refute neurodiversity's baloney, I think of this old saying.

I also think of the corollary, shallow brooks are noisy. Neurodiversity's latest gimmick is the autistics speaking day. They are going to make a lot of noise today, but will there be substance? Neurodiversity has nothing of substance to say, gets very minimal media attention and has nothing but superficiality imbibed in it. Most of what they say is just nastiness and meaness to those who want a better life for themselves or their children. Or advertising how offended they are by anyone intimating the autism is some sort of affliction or burden on society. I think the corollary of still waters run deep-shallow brooks are noisy- describes neurodiversity in a nutshell.

No comment, Ari, Michelle, Kev, Sullivan and Kim?

2010-10-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

Nick Dubin's arrest for a pedophilia-related crime has generated a significant amount of buzz in some parts of the autism blogosphere as well as on various facebook pages of some persons with whom I am acquainted with, who, to the best of my knowledge, don't have blogger type blogs that they write.

I have been told repeatedly by various individuals who advocate a certain movement called "neurodiversity" that this movement is about dignity, respect and human rights for persons with autism (and perhaps other 'neurologic differences'). One Michelle Dawson is in the forefront of this. In fact, at the time, I first started writing autism's gadfly as well as my article 'neurodiversity just say no' that was the immediate predecessor and greatest influence of my decision to start this blog, Michelle Dawson has stated that because I was an opponent of neurodiversity this meant I was an opponent of human rights for autistic persons.

Ari Ne'eman and ASAN have stated that their autism advocacy is about civil and human rights for autistic persons. Yet they seem to devote most of their time demonstrating against Autism speaks or Ari Ne'eman making insulting and juvenile comments in his role as the newest public member of the IACC.

One of the leading neurodiversity blogs is the well-known left brain/right brain blog whose posts are authored by Kevin Leitch and another individual who calls themselves "Sullivan". This blog seems to devote nearly all of their posts to the question of whether or not vaccines and/or mercury cause autism, an issue that has been dealt upon ad nauseum, with neither side brooking any quarters in their beliefs.

Kim Wombles is an individual that writes the countering age of autism blog and seems to get some sort of bizarre humor posing as some elderly hick Appalachian woman as an alter ego in another blog she authors. In spite of claiming that she believes that persons should be treated with dignity and respect she has referred to Harold Doherty as "an asshat". She condescendingly referred to Jake Crosby as "the puppy" because of his youthful age. Last but not least, she was nice enough to give your humble blogger a plug on one of her facebook pages where she seemed to think it was funny that someone would make fun of me and my disability and also seems to have some sort of schaudenfreude as far as my disability and celibacy are concerned.

We now have evidence that it is quite probable that Dr. Dubin, a psychologist and educator who had regular contact with autistic children, is a pedophile. There is also a strong possibility that the reason Dr. Dubin chose his profession is that he was looking for children to molest and chose disabled ones as they are the most vulnerable, many of them not able to speak and report what happened to their parents or others or because of prejudice they would not have credibility making allegations against the good doctor.

Outside of the right not to be murdered, it would seem the right of disabled children not to be sexually molested would be about the most important of human rights that these august individuals would be crusading for. You would think that they would comment on this latest news story.

Reading Michelle Dawson's TMOB comment board on a regular basis as well as her blog posts, I see no comment by this crusader for human rights of autistic persons. ASAN is also strangely silent. Ari Ne'eman is not organizing some sort of protest against professionals who evidence suggests are pedophiles and trying to protect autistic children from them the way he does with autism speaks. Kevin Leitch, "Sullivan" and Kim Wombles seem to have no comment on the issue. I wonder why that is.

Neurodiversity activist busted for child porn!

2010-10-17T18:45:00.001-07:00

In a newly breaking story Nick Dubin, a clinical psychologist allegedly diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome has been arrested for online child pornography of children having sex acts with adults!

As regular readers of autism's gadfly will remember, Dr. Dubin,
wrote a favorable article about the ND movement Dr. Dubin, praised GRASP president Michael John Carley, who has insulted severely autistic persons by saying he does not want to be associated with head bangers and diaper wearers.

What is frightening is that Dubin is a licensed psychologist who up until now, worked with and had access to children. ironically enough, he specialized in the issues of bullying and autism. He has admitted to authorities that he knew the material on his computer was illegal. Dubin has been charged and is out on bail. In the meantime, pending the outcome of his trial, he has been barred from using a computer or having contact with minor children.

Dubin, who claims to have an ASD, yet was not diagnosed until age 27 has written about neurodiversity:

In theory, there doesn’t seem to be a chink in the armor of neurodiversity’s philosophy. Who would argue with the notion that society should take responsibility for how it treats some of its most vulnerable but creative citizens? Or that people with autism have inherent gifts and should be respected by others?

Well perhaps one chink is that there is credible evidence that at least one of its adherents is a pedophile, very possibly not above actually having sexual encounters with small children. I realize that Dr. Dubin has not been charged with an actual sex act and as far as his charge on possession of online child porn, he is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. However, this story does indeed give food for thought and perhaps one could rethink the neurodiversity movement and the apparently ever increasing unsavoriness of its adherents.

Mr. Robison goes to Washington

2010-10-17T07:55:00.000-07:00

I see that looking at John Elder Robison's facebook page, that he is on his way to Washington, D.C. to review 106 research proposals for autism related things and he gets to help pick who does and who does not get funded at taxpayer expense.

So, the taxpayers are funding decisions being made by someone who at one time claimed no cure was needed for certain autism spectrum disorders, who has seriously suggested studying geek success as a solution to helping persons with autism, and keeps company with wrongplanet.net founder Alex Plank, who has blanketly stated that most autistics don't want to be cured and has autism=good as the slogan for his website.

In addition to being a scientific advisor in the public sector, Robison is also on the scientific advisory board of autism speaks, possibly to placate some noisy neurodiversity advocates, who insist that persons on the spectrum be appointed to positions of power in autism speaks. upon looking at Robison along with his fellow advisory board members one cannot but help noticing the incongruity of Robison, a high school dropout, being included amongst all these Ph.D. and M.D. scientists. Apparently notoriety and commercial success as an author trumps scientific acumen as a qualification for making scientific decisions in both the public and private sectors. Likewise it also trumps federal law as someone who repeatedly engages in dialogue and activity undermining the noble cause of finding a way to prevent and cure autism as has been passed by the combating autism act.

Of greatest concern to this blogger is the possibility that Robison may go to Washington hat in hand and ask for some taxpayer dollars for his own personal use and be given a handout by the federal government. We have seen Robison has done this in his capacity as an advisory board member of autism speaks. Apparently Autism Speaks has no scruples about this Robin Hood in reverse stuff. Neither Robison nor AS see any ethical lapse or conflict of interest in such things.

With the federal government's track record, Gadfly can't help thinking that history could repeat itself.

Along with Ari Ne'eman's participation in crafting autism public policy at taxpayer expense we see another fine example of our tax dollars at work.

Ari Ne'eman disenfranchises pro-cure and nonverbal autistics yet again

2010-10-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

I see that once again, neurodiversity spokesman, Ari Ne'eman is
shooting his mouth off yet again yet again, claiming that the "autistic community" takes offense at eradicating autism. I have to wonder, yet again, does the "autistic community" include me? Does it include Jake Crosby, Stephanie Keil, Oliver Canby, JediKnight, Tom McKean, Sue Rubin and numerous others on the spectrum who have expressed desire for a cure? How about Connor Doherty who may not be in a position to speak for himself. What about Sean Lapin, Dov Shestack, John Belmonte and many other autistic persons who have limited to nonexistent speech who are incapable of rebutting Ne'eman's nonsense and asking him to butt out and speak for himself and and not for other autistics.

Ne'eman also stated in this diatribe at Harvard that autism should be looked upon as a disability and not a disease, yet neglects to explain the difference between a disability and a disease.

As has been meticulously documented in numerous posts on autism's gadfly, Ne'eman has repeatedly stated that he does not believe that autism is a disability in spite of claiming he never said anything to that effect. We have to wonder why he is now backpedaling and now stating autism should be looked upon as a disability. Could there be political reasons?

Ari Ne'eman and ASAN, I resent you trying to speak for all autistic persons. Almost all of us, myself included, are lower functioning (or more impaired for those who express distaste at the low functioning high functioning dichotomy) than you are. There are others who can't speak and say that they would like autism eradicated. There are others, besides me, who have expressed a desire for a cure. Their numbers seem to be ever growing.

Remember, Ari, nothing about us without us.

interesting petition from Ari Ne'eman and ASAN

2010-09-29T09:23:00.001-07:00

I see that Ari Ne'eman (as well as I presume the rest of the members of the autistic self advocacy network) have taken umbrage at republican senatorial candidate Sharron Angle's controversial remarks about autism and insurance mandates, where she implies that some persons may be faking autism. ASAN is now circulating an online petition urging Angle to apologize for her remarks.

It seems to this blogger the majority of ASAN's advocacy activities are aimed at telling the world how easily offended they are and just trying to claim people should not be offensive rather than actually doing something to help disabled people function better in the world or fighting for abuse such as what happens at Judge Rotenberg center. The Ransom notes campaign from a couple of years ago is the most well-known of these examples. If everyone spent as much time crusading anytime a remark that they found offensive was said, no one would get any work done during the day and the world's activities would grind to a halt.

Since Ari Ne'eman and ASAN insist that Angle apologize for remarks that they don't like how about if they apologize to me for remarks and activities that I find offensive.

I find it offensive that they would state that curing autism is morally reprehensible. That they would spend time on the Zacqhery Price case after saying that no criminal should get a free pass because of autism. I am offended that they would claim they never said that autism was not a disability and after I produced Ne'eman's essay they would make a pathetic attempt at damage control and edit the essay, then admit it was a mistake to phrase things in the essay the way they did, then delete it from their site altogether. I find it offensive that Ne'eman, (a 21-year-old kid at the time) had never worked in a job of any sort and would claim that the solution for reducing employment among autistics was to eliminate social pleasantry as a criteria for hiring and a good job evaluation. This is particularly offensive after I have been fired something like 20 times, forced to resign from other jobs in more marginal situations and tried to make a living more years than Ne'eman has been alive. I find it offensive that they would accept donations from the "autistic bitch from hell" who has stated that persons with autism whose views she does not agree with should be put to death and turned into cat food. There is speculation that ABFH is in reality Meg Evans, one of the top executives of ASAN. I find it offensive that they would accept donations from a vicious and cruel hatemonger like Clay Adams who can only try to win an argument with me by bringing back the Bettelheim era and stating my mother was responsible for all the problems in my life and making up bigoted statements mocking my disability and by extension all disabled people whom ASAN claims they want to have dignity. As well as calling both me and my mother names just because he does not like the fact I take Ne'eman to task. Ne'eman may not know about this since it happened before he was born but in 1980 the Ku Klux Klan endorsed Ronald Reagan's presidential candidacy and Reagan renounced the endorsement and refused to accept money from them. I wonder why Ne'eman and ASAN don't do the same thing where ABFH and Clay Adams are concerned.

I find it offensive that they would imply that there is a possibility that parents of autistic children who donate money to autism speaks are morally complicit with murder. I find it offensive that they would imply that genetic research is used to find a way to abort autistic fetuses.

I don't know how to do an online petition and I don't know how many signatures I would get. But the various statements and actions of Ne'eman and his colleagues are just as offensive to me as Angle's statements about autism are to those who took umbrage at her remarks. I suspect there are others besides me who find a lot of Ne'eman's and ASAN's remarks offensive.

I suggest that ASAN write a public apology to me ( and anyone else they may have offended) on their websites before they start circulating petitions claiming someone who makes remarks offensive to them should apologize. After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Sebelius: pot calling kettle black

2010-09-28T09:18:00.000-07:00

Nevada's republican candidate for the U.S. Senate has recently been mired in controversy for statements she has made about the new autism insurance mandates, using air quotes to describe autism and implying that perhaps these people don't deserve coverage or that autism is a trivial condition.

Interestingly, secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius has given her take on the matter Sebelius states:

It is my understanding that Sharron Angle believes that there is a hoax, under the guise of autism, where you would include requests for treatments that may not even be required," said Sebelius, who was in Nevada promoting health care reform with Harry Reid.
Sebelius pounded Angle's comments as "insulting" to parents and kids, adding: "I don't know if there is anyplace in the country where the differences in the candidates are more stark than here."

Autism's gadfly has questioned the value of these insurance mandates in the past, particularly covering ABA, an experimental treatment where the research has used punishment in order to get the results, in spite of the fact that these punishments have been outlawed in California, where I live and possibly other jurisdictions, as well as the fact there have been no published adult outcomes though the federal government has funded this research to assess adult outcomes.

Of greater concern, at least to this blogger, is is the strong statement by autism speaks is that these insurance mandates will make the difference between an autistic child having friends and not having friends.

Aside from the problems of these insurance mandates and their dubious value it seems odd to your humble blogger that Sebelius would be making these statements in light of the fact she has appointed one Ari Ne'eman to the Interagency autism coordinating committee. Gadfly questions the constitutionality of the IACC and the fact that these appointments by the secretary of HHS would seem to violate the principles of checks and balances between the executive branch and legislative branch that this country was founded upon in that these appointments don't require confirmation by the senate and Sebelius is accountable to no one in making a controversial appointment. Speaking of quotes, air or otherwise, check out one statement by Sebelius appointee:

The belief was that anyone society labeled"disabled" could only go so far. Sadly, these misconceptions had the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies. When the expectation is that people of a certain type can only reach so far, they are not provided with the same challenges and opportunities that educators give mainstreamed students....

Also another statement:

We should recognize what diversity of neurology has contributed to the human race and what it can bring to the future. Difference is not disability and someday, I hope, the world will recognize that those who think in different ways should be welcomed.

Regular readers of this blog will remember that after Ne'eman steadfastly denied that he had ever said autism was not a disability, Gadfly called Ne'eman out on these statements. He subsequently edited the essay changing the difference is not disability statement to difference only becomes disability when not accommodated for. Apparently dissatisfied with this rather pathetic attempt at damage control, Ne'eman and his ASAN cronies deleted the essay altogether from their web page.

Another interesting statement from Ms. Sebelius' appointee:

But if we are to demand equal legitimacy, if we are to assert that a “cure” is not only unnecessary and undesirable but also morally reprehensible

Again, note the irony of the c word in quotes.

Ms. Sebelius, I can't speak for whether some found Ms. Angle's comments insulting. On the other hand, I find your appointment of Ari Ne'eman to a taxpayer funded body that mandates autism policy utterly offensive. I find it strange that you would make these comments critical of Ms. Angle as if you really give a shit about persons on the spectrum, when you appoint someone who does not tell the truth about saying autism is not a disability and claiming that curing people of this affliction, which I presume mandated insurance would pay for if such cure existed, would be morally reprehensible. It would indeed seem your statements are hypocritical and you are a very black pot calling a kettle the same color.

full text of my l.a. mag article

2010-09-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

here is the full text of my l.a. magazine article in case anyone is interested.

John Robison wants to study "geek success"

2010-09-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

A controversy at one time extant in the autism blogosphere was the lack of autistic representation in the leadership of that well known organization autism speaks. Recently best selling memoirist, John Elder Robison was appointed to a scientific advisory board of AS. He has expressed an interest in scientific research that will help mitigate the problems of autism spectrum disorders.

For a while, it would seem that Robison was more interested in garnering AS funds for his own personal use than he was in reviewing science or suggesting ways that persons on the spectrum could be helped by science.

As of recently this seems to have changed. Robison has apparently been attempting to make a couple of suggestions for directions into which autism science should go. One of the interesting ones is to study geek success. Why would Bill Gates be able to become a billionaire in spite of having autism or autistic traits and why would college professors like Vernon Smith and Richard Borcherds have success in spite of being on the spectrum. when other persons with similar traits are on social security disability? Robison's brilliant suggestion is to study these traits and see how they can be applied to persons less fortunate. The criteria for specifying whether these persons are autistic is Simon Baron-Cohen's AQ test.

Though Robison mentions Bill Gates he neglects to mention any other specific examples of autism success stories. I believe that I have debunked the notion of Bill Gates' autism in my undiagnosing essay which Robison has apparently never read, so I won't go into this further. I am sure the interested reader can find my essay and read the section on Gates and judge for themselves.

One of the problems Robison neglects to mention about the AQ test, is that it is a self-administered test meant for adults with normal or above average intelligence. Not for persons with intellectual disabilities. (Though recently newer versions have been devised for children but it is different than the adult test) As far as I know, it has never been standardized in any way and just an informal test. It is also not something meant for a legitimate clinical diagnosis which even Baron-Cohen himself has acknowledged. Professor Vernon Smith who neurodiversity proponents (and perhaps Robison) give as an example of an accomplished ASD'er just decided at age 78, based on this self-administered test that he was on the spectrum without bothering to get any kind of diagnosis.

Richard Borcherds is another example mentioned, here is what Baron-Cohen stated in his book The essential difference on the alleged AS:

One might question whether Richard Borcherds really merits a diagnosis at all, given how well adapted he is. Certainly he is not currently severe enough in his symptoms to warrant a diagnosis in adulthood, as his symptoms are not interfering with his daily functioning. In the jargon of the diagnostic criteria, he is not "suffering any impairment in his daily life"........

Of course, perhaps Robison and his friends (like Alex Plank) in the ND movement can actually find a legitimate geek success who is on the spectrum. All we have to do is isolate that person and find out what makes them so successful, then we can find out what went wrong in the non-geek who is on social security disability and not making a six or seven figure income as a computer scientist or college professor. This can be done in intellectually impaired autistics who can't speak as well. After all, they have more in common with Bill Gates, Vernon Smith and Richard Borcherds and perhaps some geek who legitimately has an ASD than they realize. Wow, what a major breakthrough that will be. Instead of being handicapped all autistic people will have this potential to be successful because of these traits.

I can't wait for Robison's next brilliant suggestion.

Darius McCollum arrested yet again

2010-09-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

We see, that the well known person, Darius McCollum, who is obsessed with trains and has a propensity to steal them has been busted yet again. McCollum has alleged that he has Asperger's syndrome. As a boy, he was obsessed by trains, particularly the New York transit system. He would hang out with the New York MTA workers who took a liking to him and showed him the ropes and ended up knowing more about the system than anyone else. But he had a compulsion to take the subway trains for joy rides and though he knew what he was doing was wrong. He has been arrested now 27 times in the last three decades, so averaging close to one arrest per year. Apparently, not being able to find a train, he took a bus for a joyride.

Personally, I am skeptical that McCollum actually has any sort of ASD. He was able to get married (though now divorced or separated) and the fact that he was able to relate to the NYC MTA employees and they took a liking to him makes his diagnosis suspect at least to me. There is no question, however, he has some very severe OCD issues. I feel, however, that his circumstances are highly relevant to the thrust of this blog, as I will point out below.
when McCollum was arrested last, autism's gadfly gave his take on the matter
I inquired as to whether the neurodiversity movement would actually give a shit about this person. "Jypsy" pointed out to me that there had been some effort to assist Mr. McCollum and she had personally been involved in these matters with the persons who were interested and were trying to help defray some of his legal costs. I found the relevant info online and I emailed the people who were involved to get their take. They were happy that I took an interest and told me McCollum was in North Carolina, staying at his mother's and gave me his phone number. Intrigued I called the number and a person alleging to be McCollum answered the phone and we chatted for a bit. He told me he had tried very hard to stop his compulsion and had taken various SSRI medications used to treat OCD issues but nothing had helped. He seemed resigned to the fact that this was a lifelong issue and there was nothing he could do.

His lawyers tried to use Asperger's as a legal defense without success.

I was still in correspondence with Ari Ne'eman back a couple of years ago and asked him if ASAN was planning to do anything to help McCollum and he stated that McCollum was not an issue they were pursuing.

This was before I had read Ne'eman's interesting essay where he talks about how curing autism would be morally reprehensible and he was claiming that autism should never be used as a defense against criminal behavior under any circumstance. In spite of this fact, Ne'eman later claimed that Zaqhuery Price, who assaulted some teachers in a special ed school should have the charges against him dropped.

When I pointed out these inconsistencies in my post, various members of the ND community pointed out to me because this was an 11-year-old boy and the teachers somehow were to blame because they did not accommodate his disability properly that this should be some sort of exception to Ne'eman's rule.

I wonder how they feel about McCollum, a 45-year-old man, particularly in light of the fact that he may have an ASD (assuming gadfly's skepticism is incorrect). Would Ari Ne'eman and Socrates throw the book at this guy and lock him up in a cell and throw away the key? Would they claim that curing McCollum of his compulsion would be morally reprehensible and that he should go on stealing trains, yet say that he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law? Or would ASAN and ND claim that this behavior should be accepted? Or would they claim that society had somehow failed to accommodate McCollum and that if society learned how to utilize the strengths of autistics and ended discrimination against autistics, then McCollum would not steal trains? Inquiring minds want to know.

three identities for female neurodiversity activist?

2010-08-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

As regular readers of autism's gadfly know, the neurodiversity movement in general and the autistic self advocacy network in particular are full of dirty tricks such as playing the murder card. The internet, however, gives a dirty trickster the opportunity to play their tricks, using multiple identities and pretending to be other people.

I have just read an interesting post on the midnight in Chicago blog concerning three well known female neurodiversity activists. I believe this post deserves a shout out on autism's gadfly as there is apparently some controversy that these individuals could be an actual holy trinity of one person.

The post describes Meg Evans, a well known neurodiversity activist who is an attorney, married to a man named Brian K. White with two children, lives in Ohio and works in the publishing industry. She is the secretary of ASAN, just below Ari Ne'eman and Scott Robertson in chain of command.
The post also talks about another female neurodiversity activist named Bonnie Ventura who also goes by the moniker Ventura 33 and has been a moderator of Aspies for Freedom and has a fan fiction site where stories are published by various authors and are given a star trek bent. She also has a website named Aspergerian pride. I gave Ms. Ventura consent to publish one of my stories, but more about that later.

By a strange coincidence Bonnie Ventura has a few things in common with Ms. Evans. She also is married and has two children and lives in Ohio, and works in the publishing industry. Like Ms. Evans she was considered to be autistic early in her childhood. Of course coincidences do happen.

The author of the blog post goes on to claim that web pages that Bonnie Ventura hosts have as their registered owner a Meg Evans. More interesting is that Meg Evans' husband, Brian White has a webpage foxfire74.com which has a link about his wife, Meg. On Meg's page, she states you can check out her fanfiction site and then it gives a link that goes directly to Bonnie Ventura's site. It would appear indeed that Meg Evans and Bonnie Ventura are in fact the same person, if not, there is a very strange coincidence.

Many are also familiar with the rumor that the identity of apparently retired neurodiversity blogger "the autistic bitch from hell" is in fact Meg Evans. Allegedly the autistic bitch from hell wrote a post on one of Kim Womble's blogs and inadvertently signed her name Meg Evans, though I have never seen irrefutable documentation for such.

So, it would seem there is a strong possibility that we do in fact have a holy trinity, Meg Evans, Bonnie Ventura, and the "autistic bitch from hell" being the same individual.

The "autistic bitch from hell" has, in the past, made rather controversial statements first alleging that the only thing on Autism Speaks' agenda was finding a prenatal test so that autistic fetuses could be aborted. Also, she once stated that autistics who don't happen to agree with her on certain things should be taken out and shot or strangled to death and turned into cat food.

The reason this blog post interested me so much is that I had some positive experiences with Bonnie Ventura more than two and a half years ago, just before I started this blog. Before I started autism's gadfly I wrote an article which I posted on my previous blog, Jonathan's Journal, urging individuals to reject neurodiversity. Later I modified this piece somewhat and put it as one of 9 articles in the nonfiction section of my website. Someone calling himself "Robert Montgomery" alleged in a comment on Harold Doherty's blog that I was a fraud because I could not have gone to a special education school in the 1960s, as there was no special education until the education for all handicapped act was passed in 1975 and made the strong statement about me that like all "house autistics" I lied about my past. I was able to document my former alma mater had been established in 1948, making him eat his words.

Not long after this I got an email from a Ventura 33 stating that she had grown up in Los Angeles in the 1960s and had problems with elopement in her regular education school and that there was some talk in fact of a special education placement for her and recommending such to her parents, though like probably the majority of NDs, she never attended a special education school. She stated because of this she believed me and I should not pay attention to a "loud mouth" like Robert Montgomery and that I should not judge all persons in the ND movement just by persons like him. She also asked if she could publish my short story "Mr. Twiddle" which she had enjoyed on her web page and sort of modify it into a star trek type genre. I consented.

I probably would not have consented now in light of the evidence that I have seen that Bonnie Ventura may in fact be "the autistic bitch from hell". Are all these three people the same individual. I don't know for sure, but there are some strange coincidences. Of course, as I said before, this was particularly interesting based on the experiences I had with Ventura33 in the past.

Los Angeles Magazine autism slide show

2010-08-23T16:48:00.001-07:00

Here are some photos from the September issue of Los Angeles magazine which is partially devoted to covering autism in Los Angeles. These include some photos of your overweight but humble blogger. Also I was working on the computer at the time the photographer came over so I was wearing my reading glasses which I don't always wear. Don't know if and when the short article by me they published will be online but I will keep Gadfly readers posted of future developments.

Will autism speaks get my brain?

2010-08-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

I still remember at one of the autism society of america conferences I attended, I met with a representative from the autism tissue program, which is a program affiliated with that Microsoft of autism research, autism speaks,that collects postmortem brains of autistic persons for analysis.

I signed some paperwork, gladly donating my brain to science in the event of my inevitable passing, whenever that would be. They also gave me a stickie to decorate my refrigerator, which is still a prominent ornament I see everytime I get some food out.

To date, genetic studies have been of limited value in clarifying the etiology of autism. The genotypes which can lead to similar though not necessarily identical phenotypes are probably too heterogeneous and the sample sizes that can be obtained to date have not been large enough to show many unifying genetic etiologies. For obvious reasons, there are no really good animal models of autism, though research similar to the type Harry Harlow did on rhesus monkeys might produce such a model if a scientist ever wants to pursue that line of work. Also Jocelyne Bachevalier has done some interesting work on lesioning the amygdala and possibly other parts of the limbic system in monkeys for a putative animal model of autism, but there are also obvious inherent limitations in this work. MRI scans and fMRI scans are also most likely quite limited in what they can tell us about anomalies in autistic brains.

Autopsies might be our ace in the hole for being able to get to the bottom of the underlying causes of autism and help in finding more advanced treatments, prevention or even a cure. One problem with this is that autistic persons live out their natural lives and the oldest persons diagnosed with autism might be like 75 years old now (though I suppose an older person could be diagnosed retrospectively), so there is a dearth of available brains. For this reason probably not much more than a few dozen autistic brains have been autopsied. I wrote an essay arguing that we needed to locate autism's so called "hidden horde" if possible so we could have as many post mortem brains available for autopsy as possible. Of course the problem with so many different types of "autism" being out there, even if we could get more brains they might not provide elucidation on the etiology. If enough brains were obtained, though we might get a general idea of what was wrong in a significant subset of at least some autistic persons.

Though of late i have been lax in reading more of the recent literature in autism, many years ago I did read the studies with the first autopsy reports in autism including a study by Williams et al which did not find abnormalities in four brains, but did allude to some cerebellar problems in at least a couple of the autistic brains. Then came the study at UCLA by Ritvo et. al. who found reduced Purkinje cell counts in the cerebella of some deceased autistics. They only looked for Purkinje cells and did not look for granule cells or other types of neurons which may have limited the studies potential for usefulness. Last but certainly not least I read the studies by Bauman and Kemper showing the various problems with the cerebellum and limbic systems in autism. Later, I seem to recall that David Amaral of the MIND institute did some studies of postmortem autistic brains that showed differences in the amygdalas between autistics and normal controls (no offense intended Larry Arnold).

About 9 years ago, Margaret Bauman was in town and gave a lecture to our support group. I knew that because of new techniques developed that the etiology of Parkinson's disease had been discovered, damage to the nigrostriatal bundle, the main dopaminergic pathway of the brain. I asked her if enough brains were available for autopsy in autism if some day we might have the same understanding of autism's etiology as exists in Parkinson's. She seemed to believe that the answer was yes.

Later I worried about how autism speaks would be able to obtain my brain when I passed away. Though my parents are both still living, the likelihood I will outlive them is not low. I don't have a terribly close relationship with my sister who lives about a thousand miles away from me. So, who would know that I willed my brain to science and that it would be imperative to get it out of my skull and preserve it in formaldehyde so it won't spoil immediately. I knew that though I had good intentions, I might never be able to carry them out posthumously. Of course one thing I did not have to worry about is having my feelings hurt if Socrates or some other members of the neuroperversity (a tip of the gadfly hat to Billy "Lurker" Cresp for that term) movement called me a traitor and a "house aspie" for having the temerity to donate my brain to an autism speaks affiliated project, as I would be dead and it would not matter.

Slowly I started to become disillusioned with AS.

I learned that they donated half a million dollars to a rogue scientist who stated that their goal of curing autism was nonsensical and also stated that autism was not harmful and was not a disorder but merely a difference.

They implied their insurance lobbying would make a difference between autistic children having friends and not having friends without providing any proof.

They put on a dog and pony show talking about how important it was to employ autistic persons yet did not employ a single autistic person in their organization or do anything to actually help a person with autism find a job.
Last but certainly not least it would seem AS engages in cronyism.

I was a bit distressed about the logistical problems of autism speaks being able to get my postmortem brain, but maybe it does not matter after all.

Gadfly published in Los Angeles Magazine!

2010-08-20T11:55:00.001-07:00

Just a month short of my 55th birthday I have sold my first nonfiction article to a major magazine. Los Angeles magazine has done a feature about autism in their latest issue. In a short article on page 139 of the magazine I attempt to take to task the neurodiversity movement and try to explain as tactfully as I can why I believe they are wrong about not needing a cure for autism. It shows a photo of me in my bedroom with my dresser drawers slightly ajar in typical lack of executive functioning autistic fashion.

The other day they wrote me saying that they were interested in putting additional photos of me on their web page as well as a bit more information about me and asked me a couple of questions which I answered. So, I don't think the article or anything more about me is on the web yet, but I will either edit or put an addendum to this post when that happens. In the meantime I hope that friends and foes alike will go to their local newsstand and if available buy a copy of the magazine and check out the magazine and the article. To avoid confusion, in case the August issue is still on some stands, it is in the September 2010 issue of Los Angeles Magazine.

autism talk tv: the saga gets uglier

2010-08-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

I have just discovered a somewhat dated thread on the wrongplanet.net web page which has the slogan "autism=good" in the title bar of the browser when one logs onto this stellar website.

It goes on with the members of wrongplanet questioning why Alex Plank would go hat in hand to autism speaks, an organization who has described autism as a global health crisis and clearly does not share the "autism is good" philosophy of WP, why Alex Plank and his friend Jack "Cubby" Robison would solicit (and be given) funding by AS for their autism talk TV show.

John Robison has some choice words in defense of Alex Plank and his son Jack:

My joining the Autism Speaks science board was a gamble. I know many of you criticized me, but I believe I am succeeding in what I set out to do. I am able to advocate for research that helps people on the spectrum, and I can speak against research I oppose. Any of you, of course, can do the same thing, but I can do so as an insider, where my vote counts. Yours doesn't. At least not yet.

Gadfly wonders what it is that Robison set out to do. He certainly succeeded in getting autism speaks to donate to a cause that involved his own son for a very questionable activity and a very questionable organization which would, at least on the surface not share the philosophy of AS and the relatives of autistic children who donated money and went on walks who most likely would not agree with wrong planet's "autism=good" message. If he has made contributions in the scientific realm, he has neglected to write about it on his blog or anywhere else that I know of.

Robison ends with a statement that in my opinion would make Marie Antoinette and her "let them eat cake" statement seem philantrophic by comparison:

In my opinion, this whole tempest over a few thousand dollars of underwriting support is just ridiculous. If Autism Speaks is so bad, do you want to pony up the money to fund Autism Talk TV instead? Alex would not need sponsors if you guys were donors

Of course one wonders if Robison feels this way and it is just a few thousand dollars why a successful businessman and a best selling memoirist could not have ponied up the cash himself, particularly when his own son is one of the two principals. The answer of whether or not he contributed follows. Certain posters on wrong planet correctly pointed out to Robison that they were on disability, living in poverty and did not have the money to contribute.

Robison writes:

So why attack Alex over this?

Why attack Autism Speaks for a gesture that brings something interesting and useful to our community?

First of all, it is only Robison's opinion that these videos are useful or even interesting in any manner, except that they show how corrupt and unethical both autism speaks and the neurodiversity movement are. I certainly do not share Robison's opinion.

Why attack Alex? Because, Alex has done nothing but criticize autism speaks. He has a certain constituency on wrongplanet that have donated money to the website who don't like autism speaks. He has libeled the organization by implying they are deliberately trying to develop a prenatal test to abort autistic fetuses. He libeled them by printing the false story that Zach Lassiter's t-shirt business was closed down by autism speaks using intimidation tactics. Then later goes on to make flattering statements about AS that have no factual basis coincidentally right after he received funding from this organization that he clearly despises and forsook his principles over.

I attack autism speaks, because they have parents who have children who will never function the way Robison or Plank do and they participated in walks in good faith believing the money would be funded to do something to help their kids function better rather than having a person who has a slogan autism=good travelling around the country at their expense making videos which so far only seem to extol the virtues of autism and do nothing to present the uglier side.

Robison continues:

We're studying new therapies to help adults with social skills, and many other things. We have some really exciting work going to help autistic people who have severe speech difficulties. You can read about all that on my blogs.

I can't really recall Robison ever writing anything about this on his "look me in the eye" blog. If anyone can point to me where he has ever written anything about his work with autism speaks which entails studying social skills or speech therapy for autistics or any science I would be interested in knowing about it.

So far autism talk tv has aired seven videos, it is only on the last two or so that we see the oil and water mix of autism speaks and wrong planet logos on the credits. But apparently Robison has partially picked up the tab for at least the first few videos:

I paid for them to go with my personal funds, so if anything, I personally sponsored those first videos but we did not say that when we put the credits together. Autism Speaks will reimburse some of my costs with their underwriting grant.

So we see that Robison did have the ability to pay for his son's( and son's friend's) extracurricular activities. Yet, after accepting an unpaid position on the board of autistic speaks, after making scads of money in successful businesses and having a book on the new york times best seller list and likely being paid at least a six figure advance for his forthcoming book, he then goes hat in hand and accepts money from this organization for his own personal use. The words cronyism and conflict of interest come to mind.

Though I have had many differences with "Socrates" of the new republic blog. He makes some valid points that perhaps Plank and Robison, junior could add episodes of kids in special education schools or very low functioning kids in group homes in one of their autism talk tv episodes. I will await with bated breath to see if these two kids will do anything in their autism speaks subsidized activities that does not have an "autism is beautiful" message behind it.

So we see that autism speaks is an organization that funds scientists with a neurodiversity perspective who claim autism is harmless, they fund a public relations campaign showing how great it is to employ autistic people yet, don't have one paid employee with autism in their organization and have never contributed to the employment of a single person on the spectrum as far as I know, they fund the insurance reform efforts in various states, running public service announcements claiming this work is the difference between autistic children having friends and not having friends and neglect to provide any evidence that this is the case. It is this blogger's opinion that the funding of autism talk tv and giving John Robison free money is possibly an all time low.

Marc Sirkin's lame excuse for Alex Plank

2010-08-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

In my previous posts in the last few posts, I have wondered about why in the world an organization that claims they are funding research in the hopes of mitigating or possibly curing the horrible affliction called autism would fund videos done by Alex Plank. In fact, yesterday, I emailed Mr. Marc Sirkin who is apparently in charge of media matters for autism speaks, Peter Bell, vice-president of autism speaks who apparently has developed a friendship between Plank, Robison, Sr. and Robison, jr. and to the contact address for autism speaks itself, asking why they would fund such an endeavor.

Though my email still remains unanswered by any of these three entities it seems that Mr. Sirkin has responded here. He gives what in Gadfly's view is a rather vague statement that somehow these videos are improving the dialogue among various members of the autism community and that a video that he prominently displays on the blog post in which an interview is conducted with a journalist of a major magazine which helps trivialize this disability and which the journalist for this magazine makes sweeping statements without bothering to do his homework and implies that the creation of a significant software company and the well-known Craig's list were due to attributes of the autism spectrum. He states that the financing of these videos are somehow helping in this mission to achieve the goal of addressing autism which he (unlike Alex Plank and other ND's) calls an "urgent health crisis". How any of these autism talk TV videos, particularly the latest one featuring the previously mentioned journalist are helping in this regard is unclear to gadfly. I am wondering how the headbanging, finger chewing nonverbal autistic children of certain parents who contributed money to autism speaks and participated in their walks are being helped by Plank's videos. Another salient point is that Sirkin makes is the panned (apparently macro) statement of Plank's that autism speaks is in no way influencing the content of the videos as if this has any significance or is relevant to anything. Of course Plank's
singing a completely different tune and praising the organization which previously was anathema to him goes unmentioned in Sirkin's response.

John Robison's interesting duties as member of scientific advisory board of AS

As most in the autism blogosphere know John Elder Robison has been appointed as a member of the scientific advisory board of autism speaks, his apparent sole qualification for this position being that he wrote a best selling memoir about his life with Asperger's syndrome. In his book Robison claimed that a cure for Asperger's was not needed He went further than saying that he desired no cure for himself but that also no cure was needed for anyone else with condition-the fact they might be too impaired to make $100K a year as an engineer, be successful business people in automechanic enterprises, be able to write memoirs that appeared in the New York Times bestseller lists was beside the point.

Robison later claimed that this did not mean he did not care for others on the spectrum who happened to be less fortunate than he was. He claimed he was interested in reviewing scientific research proposals for autism speaks that would help in ameliorating the more disabling aspects of autism. The start of Robison's affiliation with AS was not propitious being he immediatelystuck his foot in his mouth implying that he might know more about what was best for autistic children than their own parents, which naturally Harold Doherty of the autism in New Brunswick blog and MJ of the autismjabberwocky blog took umbrage to.

I have yet to see how Robison in his capacity so far with AS has contributed to the betterment of autistic person's lives or made constructive suggestions on which science should be funded or how science should be done by autism speaks which might make it possible to ameliorate some of the more disabling aspects of autism which he stated was his goal in spite of stating that a cure for at least some ASD's was not necessary for anyone at all in his book.

It would seem however that based on Sirken's post and lame excuse for Plank and company that Robison has gone out of his scope in concentrating on the science of autism speaks and has instead chosen to spend more time pursuing media endeavors rather than science and in a case when his own son is one of the two principals involved. He apparently urged autism speaks to fund Alex Plank's endeavor which they agreed to do.

I have left a comment on autism speaks blog. In case they mod it out and don't approve it. I will reproduce it here:

Hello, Mr. Sirkin. The funding of autism speaks of this young man’s media endeavors when he has libeled your organization, implying your main goal is to develop a prenatal test when there are severely autistic persons who bang their heads and can’t speak. Others who are higher functioning such as myself who can’t hold down a job is a slap in the face, to all of the good people who donated money to your organization and participated in your walks as a matter of blind faith, so that this horrible disability could be mitigated or possibly cured.

No, Mr. Sirkin, your excuse does not cut it with me. If Peter Bell or anyone else from autism speaks responds to gadfly concerning this outrage, I will keep the readers updated.

Do Bram Cohen and Craig Newmark have Asperger's?

2010-08-12T05:52:00.001-07:00

One of the many items in neurodiversity's bag of dirty tricks is to trivialize autism by alleging that various historical figures have autism or Asperger's syndrome. Therefore, they claim that these people can serve as role models and that anyone diagnosed on the spectrum has the potential to do just fine. Also, the argument against doing scientific research to find a cure for autism is supposedly bolstered by claiming we are depriving the world of the next Albert Einstein or Bill Gates.

Most people who have read my writings know that about six years ago or so I wrote a fairly lengthy article (originally a book chapter in a book I was working on at one time) in which I attempted to debunk the diagnoses of autism for Bill Gates, Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson, three of neurodiversity's favorite role models.

Nobel prize winning economist Vernon Smith is also lauded as an example of a spectrumite whose gifts allowed him to make great contributions to society. However, upon a less superficial examination, we find that Smith's basis for claiming he has Asperger's at age 78 came from a self-administered autism quotient test and no clinical diagnosis.

Award winning mathematician Richard Borcherds is also touted by the neurodiversity ideologues of having Asperger's syndrome. We find that on further examination, the truth that the ND movement wishes to suppress is that Borcherds sought a diagnosis from psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen who would not give him one. Cohen wrote in book The essential difference:

One might question whether Richard Borcherds really merits a diagnosis at all, given how well adapted he is. Certainly he is not currently severe enough in his symptoms to warrant a diagnosis in adulthood, as his symptoms are not interfering with his daily functioning. In the jargon of the diagnostic criteria, he is not "suffering any impairment in his daily life"........

In my previous post, I discussed the autism speaks funded Talk TV video that was produced by Wrongplanet creator Alex Plank and Jack "Cubby" Robison. They interviewed Wired magazine writer Steve Silberman who stated that he was planning to write a book which in part would extol the gifts of the autistic spectrum to society. Two examples that Silberman used in the interview was the creation of Bram Cohen's computer program, Bittorrent which is a computer program that makes it easier to download large files and Craig Newmark's creation of the well known website Craig's list. Both of these individuals are given as examples of successful persons with Asperger's syndrome.

In a private email to Mr. Silberman, I bemoaned the fact that my disability is often trivialized by stories such as these and I felt he should note this. In a nice reply to me he explained that he agreed autism could cause problems for those who have it and that I had a one-sided idea of the book he planned to write. When he felt I was implying in my last post that he had commercial motivations for granting his interview to Plank and Robison, he posted a comment on my blog claiming that was not the case and that the book had not even reached the proposal stage yet and that he was just beginning to do research on it.

Well perhaps since he seems to plan using Cohen and Newmark as examples of persons on the spectrum who have made great contributions to society I'll try to be helpful to Mr. Silberman in doing his homework.

According to an article in business week about Cohen's alleged Asperger's
. He was someone who was able to go to college, get married and have a child and set up a very successful software venture. The notion that he has Asperger's syndrome came about when he was out with his girlfriend Jenna and Jenna's young daughter at a restaurant and they were talking about empathy and Cohen's lack of it. Jenna, who had worked with autistic children, suggested that Cohen have Asperger's syndrome. The article goes on to state that Cohen never sought a professional diagnosis of Asperger's.

yet another article questions whether or not Cohen really does have Asperger's. Some of the commenters on this article take umbrage (as do I) that Cohen would trivialize ASD's by claiming that he has one without bothering to obtain a clinical diagnosis.

Craig Newmark has also written about Asperger's However he just states the symptoms are familiar to him and he gives no indication that he was actually diagnosed or any evidence that he indeed has this condition. One of the most telling sentences:

However, psychologist friends berate me when I indulge my (mostly suppressed) hypochondria in this area.

It would seem that once again neurodiversity gets it wrong on two more of their role models. I also can't help thinking that after Mr. Silberman does some more research, his book may be shorter than he actually anticipated.

Alex Plank: The Sycophantic Saga continues

2010-08-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

I have been following a rather interesting thread on that aptly named website that has banned your humble blogger from commenting, Wrongplanet. Though Alan Griswold was the exception to the rule of ND's who criticized Dr. Laurent Mottron for holding out his hat to collect money from the organization whose goal he claims is nonsensical and his statement that autism is a harmless condition and no ND's to the best of my knowledge have taken Michelle Dawson to task for accepting money from the organization she so clearly despises, there do seem to be some denizens of Plank's own website that have taken him to task for his consumption of cooked crow and accepting money from the organization he so clearly has opposed and maligned in the past. Ironically enough Plank once wrote a tongue-in-cheek April's fool joke essay about how he had taken over autism speaks-the likelihood that this represented wishful thinking on his part. As my former psychoanalyst would have said, the shoe appears to be on the other foot with wrongplanet not being above accepting donations from autism speaks and perhaps changing their tune in terms of their attitudes towards autism speaks, details to follow.

Of course Plank tries to rationalize his actions to the wrong planet denizens. However, he does not seem clever enough to come up with anything original but rather utilizes the excuses of his predecessors who partook of the forbidden fruit of the autism speaks trough. His statement that autism speaks does not influence the content means he is not a sellout, is reminiscent of what one of the more unsavory characters in the ND movement told me justified Michelle Dawson's accepting money from AS for research. This means that the DNC should accept money from republicans even if the republicans are not influencing policy.

He also makes the fallacious statement that autism speaks has a person on the autism speaks board of directors who is on the spectrum. Of course it is possible that Plank may be stretching the truth a bit in that he means that his partner's father, Robison, sr. is on a scientific advisory board of autism speaks which is not the same thing as the board of directors. Robison also certainly has no understanding of what 99.999% of autistic persons in the world go through as these experiences are clearly an abstraction to him.

Plank also steals Michael John Carley's thunder by claiming that autism speaks is changing and is starting to support autistic persons. He claims this person whose post he is responding to can call him on the phone to get the details privately yet does not want to release this info publicly on wrongplanet. Interesting that he is saying autism speaks does not influence the material in his videos, but I am wondering if the underwriting of his expenses in making the videos have influenced these statements of praise for this organization which he previously had nothing but bad things to say about, including implying that they were engaging in eugenics of autistic persons. Why would Plank insist on just confiding this to a friend in a phone call, why not tell the entire world in the thread of these details if they have any veracity?

Plank also seems to imply that his accepting funding for his videos means that anyone else with an ND perspective who is an ND proponent can now have a say in how the organization they detest so much will spend their money. Well, wrong planet members, I have this bridge in Brooklyn and......

Last but not least John Robison himself steps on the soapbox. I will paste the part of his statement that I find particularly offensive and dissect it:

When I joined the Autism Speaks board earlier this year I made the point that they should be working with other groups, and this affiliation with Alex is one such example. Many of you have been quick to criticize Autism Speaks for not having autistic people working for them . . . I held out Alex and Jack for video production, and you criticize them them for taking up the offer. Well, Jack and Alex are on the spectrum, and they are going to help Autism Speaks with video production. That's the kind of inclusion you asked for, and I think it deserves support, not ridicule.

First of all, John Robison, it is misleading for you to say you are on the board of autism speaks. You only serve on one of their scientific advisory committees and not on the board of directors itself. You are just trying to give credence to Plank's phony statement.

No, John, this is not the inclusion that I asked for. I suspect it is not the inclusion anyone else asked for either. I have criticized autism speaks' autism in the workplace dog and pony show on multiple occasions. Giving your son and his friend money to have a good time going around the country making videos of various people is not giving an unemployed autistic person who needs to make a living a job. The two are totally different. No, I do not believe that autism speaks should work with people whose goals are completely different from theirs and who in fact are working against the noble goal of trying to cure autism and prevent newborn children from becoming autistic (no not abortions) or who are at least using science to try to mitigate this horrible disability while cure and/or prevention are still not possible. Some may find this inflammatory, but autism speaks should no less be involved with neurodiversity than the local police department or FBI should be involved with the Mafia. There is no justification for including the evil ND's in their game plan.

I realize that autism speaks (including board member Jon Shestack) have made justifications for Mottron's funding claiming he was doing work that might help nonverbal autistics or help autistics achieve more educational potential or help with parenting and employment.

I am still trying to understand what possible justification there is for AS to be funding these videos and these kids in their early 20s who are barely affected by their autism if at all who come from affluent backgrounds and can find ways to pay for the videos themselves. In fact, if John Robison thinks these videos are so important and he has made money from his book (his second book coming out soon as well) and his various entrepreneurial endeavors then why he can't pick up the tab for these videos since his own son is one of the people involved? This way the money AS is spending on these videos could go for really important things like helping autistic people find jobs or finding friends or lovers or doing scientific research to help autistic people function better if not cure them or prevent autism in the first place.

I don't understand how these videos are helping autism speaks as Robison claims they are. In fact I don't understand how they are helping anyone except for Alex Plank, "Cubby" Robison and Steve Silberman plug his future book.

Well again I guess in spite of my now five and a half decades on this planet there are some things I will never understand.

I have also been told there may be some problems in commenting in autism gadfly by one of my readers. I am not sure what is causing this and I have checked it out and it seems to be okay. However, if anyone has trouble commenting or deserving comments on this thread don't get published I apologize in advance.

Autism speaks picks up part of tab for Alex Plank videos

2010-08-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

As regular readers of autism's gadfly know, I have written about how neurodiversity idealogues Laurent Mottron and Michelle Dawson have been awarded half a million dollars in funding from autism speaks in spite of the fact they are opposed to the idea that autism is a disorder or disease and this is the basis of autism speaks fundraisers.

Below you can view one in a series of videos made by neurodiversitite Alex Plank and Jack "Cubby" Robison.

You notice this video deals with Wired Magazine writer Steve Silberman, author of the infamous "geek syndrome" article that appeared in that magazine nine years ago or so stating his ambition to write a book detailing the great achievements of those with asperger's throughout history and how many scientific discoveries were made by those on the spectrum.

You can check out the credits in the beginning and at the end of the video and you will notice the logo for Plank's website wrongplanet.net. You also note the logo of another famous autism organization.

Checking with Cubby Robison's father, John Robison, I wondered if autism speaks had funded this video given their name appears in the credits. The answer would seem to be in part yes, they underwrote some of the travel expenses and possibly some other things for Plank's and Robison's video.

We have seen in the past that Plank has wrongly accused autism speaks of intimidating a blogger and getting a website to stop the sale of his t-shirts. Two years after the fact Plank still has this false story on his website and has never offered a retraction or apology.

Alex Plank has some choice words about autism speaks apparently

He states:

Actually, most autistics feel that these nonprofits are doing a disservice to those living with Autism by running campaigns that dehumanize people with the condition and painting an inaccurate picture of what Autism is like. For example, Autism Speaks, the largest Autism organization in terms of financial capital, has no autistic employees and no board members with the condition. They disallow autistic individuals from speaking at their conferences with the rationale that "it wouldn't be appropriate." While a lot of the research they fund may be conducted by good scientists who are unaware of the organization's political slant, Autism Speaks' end-game is establishing prenatal screening. Any good that comes from this research is consequently undermined by the negative messages they send.

In addition to being impressed by Alex's omniscience in knowing what most autistic people think, I am intrigued by the old neurodiversity fear mongering maligning autism speaks by claiming they are trying to establish prenatal screening to abort autistic fetuses when there is no evidence to suggest this whatsoever. I have to wonder why autism speaks would pick up the tab for a person who has treated them in this manner and makes the nasty inflammatory statements that Plank has made about their organization and even written libelous things about them in the past.

It is embarrassing to admit that Robison asked me if I would consider participating in an interview. For a brief moment I said I would consider it though they would have to come here to Los Angeles to interview me. I now realize it was a mistake on my part to consider it for even a moment.

There are autistic people who can't speak and who self-injure themselves and when most of us are unemployed and autism speaks talks about the importance of employing persons with autism in their autism in the workplace dog and pony show in spite of the fact there is not a single example of a person with autism as far as I know who has obtained a job due to any action of autism speaks. There is the fact that many of us can't find romantic relationships, can't get things done during the day, have phobias and have trouble functioning. Gadfly wonders about the priorities of autism speaks and why these videos would be financed in any way shape or form. What would parents such as the well known KGAccount who makes videos of her very low functioning son who will likely never function at a level of an Alex Plank or Jack Robison think if they were donating to AS and participating in walks for the organization if they found out their money was being spent on videos putting such a positive spin on Asperger's. I can only wonder what in the world autism speaks is thinking or why they would consider this money well spent.

I guess there are just some things in this world I will never understand.

Ivar Lovaas RIP

2010-08-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

This story is bound to generate some additional media coverage in the next few days. It is probably still too new as a news item to have gotten much coverage yet. I was intrigued when I was checking the stats of this blog and some persons had entered "ivar lovaas obituary or "ivar lovaas died" as search words and were lead to this blog. I checked it out myself intermittenly and thought it was just an idol rumor, then finally came up with the previously linked to story.

Of course ABA will likely still live on as a treatment of choice for many years or even decades after Dr. Lovaas is buried and/or cremated. I wonder if any of the obituaries or news items will mention the controversies over the aversives that Lovaas used in the past and how dependent his 1987 study was on the use of aversives. I have been involved in autism-related matters long enough to remember the controversy over the shocks, spankings and food deprivation that most of the current generation of autism afficianados has forgotten that are linked to Dr. Lovaas.

Though I have had my differences with Michelle Dawson in the past, she was certainly spot on in her "The Misbehavior of Behaviorists" essay when she talked about how the science behind ABA was falsely advertised as doable without aversives in California and other jurisdictions where they have been outlawed.

As a person on the spectrum I realize I have to watch my social skills and remember it is in poor taste to speak ill about the deceased, so I guess I won't comment further. I still wonder if any of the multitude of obituary pieces that are bound to come out in a day or two will mention the past controversies.

lack of social relationships may shorten autistic's life expectancy

2010-07-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting new study put out recently by Brigham Young University that seems to demonstrate that social relationships or lack of social relationships can determine life expectancy and physical health just as much as smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, etc. This study claimed to show that lack of social relations was equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, being an alcoholic, not exercising and twice as harmful as obesity.

I wonder how this bodes for persons with autism spectrum disorders such as myself whose opportunities for social interaction are quite limited. I wonder how this will affect my life expectancy and others who have autism.

As I have repeatedly tried to point out on autism's gadfly, the neurodiversity dictum "autism is not like cancer, does not need to be cured because it does not kill" has often been disproven by lower functioning autistics who are hit by cars, die in accidental drownings, get lost in snowstorms, etc.

This study that I have linked to may provide further ammo against the ND arguments. I would be interested in studying the question of whether an autistic person's lack of social relations would cause a shortening of their life expectancy or possibly increase the risk of other concomitant health problems such as stroke, heart attacks, etc.

Of course the first persons diagnosed with autism were not born until close to the mid 1930s so, this might be problematic in studying the question if anyone were ever interested in studying it. I know that some persons who believe in an autism epidemic believe the prevalence of autism among adults is much lower than that of persons born in the mid 1980s and later. Assessing the prevalence of autism in adults is problematic for a variety of reasons and it is beyond the scope of this post to discuss them. This might make the question of the effects that autistic's social impairments affect their health and longevity difficult to study. I would be curious how lack of friends, marriage etc. would impact the health and life expectancy of those with autism and similar problems. Of course such a study might not ever be done.

Joseph of the autism natural variation blog has made the very strong statement that autistics are half as likely to marry as their nonhandicapped peers. He bases this contention on one study that alleged that there was a 1% prevalence of autism among adults in the UK. This study had a myriad of methodological problems such as nonstandard use of assessments and in actually guestimates of how many persons with autism were out there. The prevalence of marriage of autistic people that Joseph cites was based on only 19 people. So if the population of the UK were around 10 million adults or more (probably more) Joseph is claiming that statistical inferences can be made from a sample consisting of not much more than .01% of its parent population. No I don't think so. So, no I don't believe that autistics are half as likely to marry as their neurotypical peers.

Of course the ND solution is acceptance. If only society would accept autistic people no matter how they behave, then they would have friends and lovers. Of course this is certainly not realistic and it is never going to happen

Ari Ne'eman has now been appointed to the IACC by the Obama administration in spite of the fact he has stated that he is opposed to all genetic research on autism and wishes to impose a moratorium on all genetic research.

However, I believe the BYU study may be yet another reason to try to use science, including genetic research, that might at some point in time to find treatments that will help autistic people and even possibly cure them. The lack of social opportunities for those of us on the spectrum may be killing us slowly.

Where ASAN and neurodiversity leads

2010-07-22T07:55:00.001-07:00

I see that ASAN member and neurodiversity activist Sarah Pripas, author of the Cat's in a dog's world blog, is at it again, accusing those of us with an interest in autism who are either parents of autistic children or those of us on the spectrum ourselves who wish a cure or help for this condition of being responsible for murder. It is very sad when an autistic child is killed by their parents. No rational person would justify this. Certainly this woman in Texas was insane as are all others who murder their autistic children. To claim that the desire for a cure leads to this is nothing but hateful fear mongering. However, it seems to be the contention of the ND movement and the autistic self advocacy network that the desire to cure autism is what leads these people to murder their kids. Ari Ne'eman has stated that in a testimony before the IACC that there were some people who believe that autism speaks is morally complicit with murder. Even if he did not come right out and say it, he was giving this idea credibility which should have no more credibility than the flat earth society. The admittedly stupid remarks that Allison Tepper Singer made in a video sponsored by autism speaks about sometimes feeling like driving her car off a bridge with her daughter in it was somehow responsible for the murder of Katie McCarron and other autistic children, according to ND and ASAN. How absurd is this. How many people who desire a cure really consider murdering their autistic children? This sort of propaganda only leads to hate and fear. I take great offense to being blamed for the murder of autistic children just because I wish a better life for myself.

It is interesting that the media on a not infrequent basis reports on autistic children who are killed in drownings, being hit by cars, trains, being lost in a snowstorm and freezing to death. Somehow neurodiversity and ASAN members never bat an eye when this happens (though the one exception was when Ari Ne'eman expressed his condolences over Ashley Brock's death by drowning on Ginger Taylor's Adventures in autism blog).

Give it a rest Sarah and the rest of ASAN and ND! No one is going to take you seriously. You conned the Obama administration into getting Ari Ne'eman appointed to the NDC and IACC. You are only hurting your own cause with such hateful propaganda. Your post only leads to hatred and bitterness and divisiveness.

This is one of the many reasons (perhaps the most important one) that neurodiversity and ASAN need to be opposed.

I apologize to gadfly readers if this post, written on the fly, is rambling and incoherent and not as well written as it should be, but this sort of crap from ND and ASAN ticks me off to no end!

Laurent Mottron in charge of autism speaks?

2010-07-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

As has been written previously on autism's gadfly, this humble blogger has been interested in an answer to the question of why autism speaks would give Dr. Laurent Mottron a 3 year research grant amounting to nearly half a million dollars when he says that the ultimate goal of the organization that has given him this grant is nonsensical. and says that autism is not a brain disorder or a damaged brain but merely a difference. The grant was awarded in June 2008 and will expire in less than a year from now. Who wants to take bets that Monsieur Mottron will be asking for at least another half a million in June of 2011?

One would think that being able to receive such a sizable grant from an organization whose stated goals and beliefs in autism are so different from the good doctor's own would be enough for him. However, this does not appear to be the case. If what Alan Griswold wrote on his blog and prints a letter he allegedly received from Mottron is truly from Mottron as he claims, then it would seem this paragon of virtue from the point of view of the neurodiversity movement wants much more than to renew his triannual 500K grant.

Mottron allegedly writes:

I see three alternative ways to change a damaging system/ideology: fight it directly, build something else which is more convincing, or lastly, become the head of this system, then change it. I would call the last one the gorbachevian position. Whereas I used the first two ways at various levels (specially in our clinical organization, and in various influences we have as policy makers in Quebec), I chose the third way for science.

It would seem that Laurent Mottron would like to do something equivalent of a military coup of a third world nation and become its dictator. In fact, he may not mean autism speaks but the whole scientific establishment and its funding worldwide.

I am curious as to what parents think, whose children risk death from elopement, can't speak, and bang their heads and self-injure themselves who went on walks and fundraisers for autism speaks would think if this man whose research subjects as a general rule have nothing in common with their children were to be in charge of the whole organization of autism speaks.

How realistic is Dr. Mottron's ambition? What chance does he have of being able to take over autism speaks and/or influence scientific policy so every single scientist has a neurodiversity perspective? Given the fact our government has passed the combating autism act, stating that cure and prevention of autism are the law of the land and the Canadian government likely has a similar policy and most persons with an interest in autism regard the ND movement as nothing more than a fringe group with no more credibility than the flat earth society, it would seem Dr. Mottron does not have much chance of accomplishing this goal.

Perhaps there is a reason for this. I am reminded of the word
"megalomania". Though this is not a medical diagnosis of any sort, there are persons for whom this layterm is attributed to who have grandoise delusions. Is there evidence that Dr. Mottron could possibly have a state of mind that would lead him to believe that he had a chance of taking over autism speaks or in fact be in charge of all scientific research everywhere in the world? We have only to look at a wired magazine article that was written about Dr. Mottron, Michelle Dawson, a woman with autism who works in his research group, and Amanda Baggs. The article states:

One of the leading researchers here is Laurent Mottron, 55, a psychiatrist specializing in autism. Mottron, who grew up in postwar France, had a tough childhood. His family had a history of schizophrenia and Tourette syndrome, and he probably has what today would be diagnosed as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.

So we see there is a history of mental illness in Mottron's family which could possibly lead to a genetic predisposition to grandoise delusions. He also states that he possibly himself has attention deficit disorder.

For those who are claiming that I am making a libelous statement about Dr. Mottron or even that I am engaging in an ad hominem attack against the doctor, I will clarify. This is not to say that Dr. Mottron necessarily has a mental condition that has caused him to believe that autism is not a defect of the brain but merely a difference and even that autism is a harmless condition. However, as a person who has an autism spectrum disorder, who can't work, has very limited social relations, let alone being able to marry, can't concentrate, can't get things done during the day and longs for an answer using science as to what caused this condition as well as the best available treatments, including a cure, I believe I have a right to answer some pertinent questions. Would a rational thinking person go to medical school and then graduate school obtain a ph.d., specialize in a certain disease and then say this condition is only a difference? I don't believe this is the case. Would someone capable of rational thought believe that they could become the head of an entire organization and then just change the organization's way of thinking? I believe I have the right to question the soundness of mind of a person who is receiving money in a process in which I am a stakeholder.

Dr. Mottron's factotum, Michelle Dawson, has given me a simple explanation for why the group should accept funding from autism speaks and autism speaks should award them lucrative grants. "Science isn't politics". I must disagree with Ms. Dawson. Research scientists whether they work in autism, cancer research or other endeavors involving medical conditions do so because persons want to cure diseases. They are not funded so they can pay their mortgages and amuse themselves. The federal government is already involved with autism issues with just the creation and the passage of the CAA and the creation of the IACC alone. This in itself makes science a political issue. Therefore, as a stakeholder I have a right to question a researcher's political statements.

In the same vein, I believe that I have a right to question a doctor's fitness to practice medicine and/or receive funding for scientific research based on a possible mental condition and/or state of mind which might influence the direction of their research when I am a stakeholder. It is in this spirit that this blog post is written, not to diagnosis him with any sort of mental disorder or soundness of mind which would cause him to have such irrational beliefs and statements, particularly from a medical doctor whose job is usually to alleviate suffering and provide remedies for conditions such as autism.

In the meantime, as a psychiatrist, perhaps Dr. Mottron could look at himself objectively and think about the old saw, 'physician heal thyself'.

neurodiversity's interesting take on Christian Weston Chandler

2010-07-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

I was interested to to read a post on the It's Tabi's time blog by a youthful neurodiversity blogger about an individual who has autism who is about 28 years old and is a virgin and apparently complains about his celibacy, stalks women, dresses in a vulgar fashion and apparently spouts bigoted comments about various ethnic groups and homosexuals.

Until last night, I had never heard of this individual, Christian Weston Chandler. I am very grateful to my friend Chelsea, author of the It's Tabi's time blog, for bringing this individual to my attention for two reasons.

The first reason is that the celibacy that not uncommonly occurs amongst autistic males and the frustration it causes them is rarely written about on the internet or elsewhere. Readers of autism's gadfly know that I am one of the exceptions to this rule. Another exception to this rule is my friend David Miedzianik ,who long before Tom Mckean or individuals such as Stephen Shore and John Robison published their memoirs, who are barely affected by their autism if at all, was the sole male in the world to have written a memoir of any kind about his life's experiences with autism. In fact, at one time, he and Temple Grandin were the only persons so far as I know to have written about their life's experiences with autism and to have it published in any form. I have written about David elsewhere. I am also gratified to see that the torch has been passed to one of the younger generation of autistics, my friend 18-year-old Oliver Canby, author of the autism is bad blog. Unfortunately, Oliver, David and myself would seem to be the exceptions to the rule of helping to publicize this problem that I suspect neurodiversity proponents and others don't wish to discuss. Though it would seem that Christian is a profoundly troubled individual with a very serious disability, I suspect that part of his problem stems from an inability to get laid. His rejection by the opposite sex has apparently caused him to lash out at some others and possibly make inappropriate and untoward advances to some women.

The second reason is that Chelsea's post and take on the matter shows a lot of what is wrong with neurodiversity given the ND point of view in general and Chelsea's point of view in particular. One of the tenets of neurodiversity is that autism is not a disorder that needs to be cured but a different way of being that needs acceptance and accommodation by society. Chelsea has been an active supporter of Ari Ne'eman and has applauded his appointment to the NDC and IACC. Ne'eman has written that social pleasantry should be eliminated as a criteria for hiring people for jobs and as something that should be used to evaluate someone's job performance. He makes this statement in spite of never actually having had a real job of any kind in his life. Chelsea, an 18-year-old with no life or work experience either, has expressed agreement with this. One would think that Chelsea would believe that if social unpleasantry should be tolerated in the workplace., that Mr. Chandler should be given a job, be able to sexually accost woman in his workplace, make bigoted statements and dress inappropriately on the job and still be able to keep his job and not have this be a criteria for evaluating his job performance that her attitudes would extend to Chandler's behavior outside of the workplace.

Strangely enough, this does not seem to be the case she writes on her blog:

This man is an embarrassment to the autistic community. He whines about his virginity at age 27. He dresses inappropriately in public (I mean in a potentially offensive way, not just unfashionable). Apparently he is a racist, sexist, and homophobe with no respect for human diversity. He is so desperate to have a girlfriend, that he will hunt down any BF-free girl he comes across on the internet or in real life. I am unsure of how this all came about. Most ignorant people would assume that it was his autism that caused it all, so the logical answer is to get rid of it (cure it).

If autistics need acceptance and accommodation by society, why would Christian be an embarrassment? One would think Chelsea and her friends would have empathy for this individual and say that it is society's problem. If social unpleasantry should be tolerated in the workplace, then why not in friendships, internet communications and choosing a mate? I would think that Chelsea and the other female ND activists should be glad to hop in the sack with this guy and give him some happiness. I must be one of those ignorant people that is referred to in the blog post because I would suspect it is his autism, or whatever you want to call the defect in his brain that causes him to behave in this manner, of course exacerbated by the frustration his celibacy causes. Though there is currently no cure for Chandler's condition, I would assume that if there was one that this would be the ultimate solution and he would be happy to have one so that he could be a productive member of society and work and have a romantic relationship with a woman.

The blog post ends on this note:

So the point of this post is, I would like to know a practical solution to deal with people who display these unacceptable behaviors and have no desire to change them.

In addition to being impressed by Chelsea's omniscience in knowing that Christian has no desire to change, I will concede that I don't have the solution for helping Mr. Chandler either. I wish I did. However, the ultimate goal (which does not exist) would be to cure Mr. Chandler of his autism, so he does not have these problems and does not have to go through life suffering as he does.

Apparently, most ND's not only not want to help him if there were a cure available and demonize organizations such as autism speaks who want to find a cure for an individual like this, a good number of them apparently want to mock and ridicule this poor man rather than having empathy for him. To Chelsea's credit, she is not one of these people. Of course this is not the case with everyone. Some character who calls himself "Nitz the bloody" writes in the post's comments section:

Okay, I'll admit to being a huge fan of the trolling of CWC,

I looked at this person's profile and briefly looked at his blog and found out he was one of the attendees of autreat, that annual unsavory conclave of neurodiversity hatemongers. So we see instead of saying that Mr. Chandler needs acceptance we see that at least some people think it is okay to harass and mock and ridicule this individual.

Neurodiverse logic will most likely never stop baffling me.

could Yuri Danilov help me and other ASD sufferers?

2010-07-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

Some readers of autism's gadfly will remember some time ago I wrote
a post about the locus coeruleus and autism. One of the readers and commenters of the post was a gentleman named Yuri Danilov, who gave me his phone number and signed his name and asked me to call him. I wrote down the phone number and deleted the comment. I was apprehensive. When I searched for this name in Google, I discovered that this person was a brain researcher and biophysicist in this neurologic rehabilitation department at the University of Wisconsin. I was flattered this pristine individual and scientist would take the time to read my humble blog and called him up.

He told me that he believed he had found a very new and revolutionary treatment in autism that would greatly help ameliorate the symptoms of autism and he was looking for suitable research subjects. He had a thick Russian accent and I had a bit of trouble understanding everything he said. I asked him if this was a cure for autism (something as most readers of my blog know I long for). He replied that it was not a cure but a very revolutionary treatment but that nobody believed him. He asked me how old I was. I was 53 at the time. He claimed that was not necessarily too old to participate in this study, but I had the feeling he may have felt I was a bit older than the research subject he was looking for.

Since I had never heard of him I was wondering if it was a coincidence that he happened to hold a faculty position at the same university as rogue neurodiversity researcher Morton Gernsbacher. I asked him if he was working with Gernsbacher. He replied that he did not work with Gernsbacher but he knew someone who had worked with her.

I told him that I was hesitant to travel to Wisconsin unless I was compensated for it, at least had my travel and accommodations paid for. He told me that he had people come all the way from Australia to participate in his research studies.

Since he had read my article on the locus coeruleus I wondered if his research was somehow related to this area of the brain which is the central location of the various tracts of axons that travel to various locations in the brain carrying the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. He just said that his research involved the brain stem. When I tried to pursue the matter further, he was rather tight lipped and just said that I could check out the lab's website and then email him if I had any further questions.

As I read about him and his colleague, the late Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, I became fascinated and intrigued. They had developed a technique where blind people whose retinas had been damaged could put this device on their tongue which had electrode arrays and the senses through the tongue could enter the visual cortex and the blind person could end up seeing. Bach-y-Rita had stated you don't see with your eyes you see with the brain. Eyes are merely a vehicle that sense changes in light energy but it is the occipital cortex of the brain that perceives these energy changes and thus sees. The skin and the retina have in common they are both sensory receptors and that may be enough. Danilov was a biophysicist and neuroscientist who worked with Bach-y-Rita who passed away about four years ago. The tongue is considered an ideal entry point into the brain for sensory substitution because unlike skin on other areas of the body it generally has no insensitive layer of dead skin on it.

The research that Danilov is also involved in addition to sensory substitution is neuromodulation, which involves stimulating the brain in various ways such as attention to a task, implanting electrodes in various areas of the brain to abort epileptic seizures, and the new cutting edge treatment transcranial magnetic stimulation which John Robison has been participating in. They are also using a revolutionary new technique called cranial nerve noninvasive neuromodulation, to help with neuroplasticity.

I never heard back from Danilov and I seem to remember I sent him an email about something (don't remember exactly what) which he never answered. I won't rule out writing him again at some point.

My recent track record as a research subject has been less than stellar. About 12 years ago Greg Allen was doing a study in the Courchesne lab involving fMRI. My head was too large to fit into the MRI scanner along with the computer equipment so I could not participate. I tried to have an MRI scan at Cal Tech in a study that Dan Kennedy was doing and for some reason the coil would not fit around my head or on my face. I wrote about this in a previous gadfly post. This is in contrast to my earlier experiences as a research subject where I underwent a couple of MRI scans that Eric Courchesne and I guess some other people who worked with him were doing. So even if I were provided airline ticket and hotel in Madison Wisconsin for a brief time I might not be of any use to Dr. Danilov either.

One of the things I don't understand is how this stuff can be applied to autism where the etiology of the brain problems is still not very well understood. Of course I am not sure what Danilov and his people are doing and I guess I will have to wait to find out. I still wonder if there is any chance this treatment (albeit experimental) could help me and others on the spectrum. I find it interesting that Danilov stated that no one believed him. The people who treat autism with questionable non peer reviewed treatments such as chelation, hyperbaric oxygen, gluten free diets etc are believed and still have their adherents. Rimland's heir apparent, Steve Edelson, has been trying to bring back research into secretin in spite of study after study refuting its effectiveness.

I guess I will never know and I will just have to wait and see what Danilov's research produces. At some point he will undoubtedly publish in peer reviewed journals if this research shows promise in treating ASD's. The media will likely pick up on this as he and Dr. Bach-y-Rita before he passed away have already received some media attention.

It does not look like I am going to be a research subject for this lab let alone benefit from what may be a revolutionary autism treatment though.

British Medical Association takes stance on conversion therapy

2010-07-07T08:05:00.001-07:00

I was reading Michelle Dawson's TMOB comment board just now and she cited this interesting piece about the British Medical Association taking a stance against 'conversion therapy' or the therapy that attempts to make gay persons have a straight sexual orientation. I wonder what their stance would be in moving people in the other direction, i.e. turning a straight person into a gay person. This might be a solution for some sexually dissatisfied autistic male heterosexuals. In fact several years ago I wrote a short story which dealt with this very subject in case anyone is interested in reading it. Ironically enough my story is entitled 'The Conversion'. Tamar Brott described this short story on the NPR show Studio 360 which featured your humble blogger.

autrick or treat

2010-06-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

This week is a redletter week in the world of neurodiversity and anti-cure. This is the week that the famous autrick (ooops I mean autreat) annual conference is held. I wrote about this two months ago You can see from the preceding link that some of the most august individuals in the neurodiversity movement, such as Morton Gernsbacher, her offspring Drew Goldsmith and Amanda Baggs, and Ari Ne'eman and Jim Sinclair and others will be giving presentations.

I see from updates on facebook and other places that a few other individuals I had not mentioned before will be attending this neurodiversity preachathon (thanks and a tip of the gadfly hat to Roger Kulp for coming up with that term) such as the well known hatemonger Clay Adams, Not to mention Alex Plank who is well known for his slipshod journalism on that stellar website Wrong Planet and is also known for claiming that most autistics don't want to be cured without providing any evidence or consulting me, Roger Kulp, Jake Crosby, Stephanie Keil or Oliver Canby and JediKnight and numerous others who long for a cure for this affliction. Apparently Phil Gluyas could not make it from Australia to complete the roster of some of the more stellar neurodiversitites in attendance.

Another member of the spectrum who will likely not be in attendance this year is "Droopy" who claims that one of the presenters, Amanda Baggs, copied her life. Though your humble blogger would never attend this unsavory conclave, Droopy has in fact tried to register for this event. She has not been allowed to attend, the belief of the ANI folks that she would be disruptive and cause trouble. I won't be a judge of whether or not Droopy should be allowed to attend.

Another alternative, would be to steal some of Ari Ne'eman's and ASAN's thunder and organize a demonstration outside of ANI with placards and give neurodiversity a taste of the medicine that they have foisted upon autism speaks. Those of us who are pro-cure don't have the capital and abilities to do these things as Ne'eman and his pals do, apparently. Particularly travelling to Pennsylvania where the autrick is being held.

Of course if ANI had a few million dollars in their coffers that they were not discussing, but wanted to dole out to some worthy cause, hopefully those of us wearing the white hats would be too ethical to accept it. The same can't be said of the ND crowd who have accepted half a million dollars from an organization who they claim wants to engage in genocide against them.

Of course the bright side is that ND conferences are few and far between. They have still not acquired the capital to have conferences in the same vein as the biomed groups, such as the infamous autism one conference and the unlocking autism conferences and other big conferences. So they can't afford to pay the speaking fees that quasi superstars like Stephen Shore can generate. Oh well, ND, better luck next year.

Some bad news

2010-06-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Some bad news in the world of autism regarding a certain individual's nomination to a government post

I have read that Unemployment among autistics is higher than 90%. Even the very optimistic Joseph of the autism natural variation blog has placed it as 75% . Though Joseph is quite vague as to where this statistic comes from. When asked by gadfly, he was not able to give an answer, except assuring me he did not make it up, as he claims autism speaks and other organizations just made up the 80% divorce rate among parents with autistic children.

However, no need to fear, Ari is here. The solution to the unemployment problem among autistics is simple. All we have to do is eliminate social pleasantry in the workplace as a criteria for hiring and a criteria for evaluating someone's job performance. Then autistics will be able to be employed and do just fine. Gee, Ari, why didn't someone think of this before? Wonder what other clever ideas this pristine gentleman will have while serving on the NDC in order to better the lives of people with disabilities (though he does not seem to believe autism is a disability).

Thomas Armstrong's book on neurodiversity

2010-06-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

Dr. Thomas Armstrong has a new book out with the offensive title Neurodiversity discovering the extraordinary gifts of autism ADHD, Dyslexia and other brain differences. This book has been given blurbs by two of the most august members of the neurodiversity movement, Ari Ne'eman and the grand dame of ND herself Kathleen Seidel.

I have just read the book and one of its most striking features is its predictability in certain areas. We are reminded that dyslexia would not be handicapping in an agrarian society, that in certain cultures schizophrenics would be shamans or medicine men, etc. It also deals with the flawed concept of conditions such as autism and schizophrenia remaining in the population due to evolutionary advantages. Like other nongeneticists Temple Grandin and Simon B-C, Armstrong neglects to take into account de novo mutations.

It deals with the idea that none of these multiple conditions would be disabling if one were to adapt to a certain environment, a concept that Armstrong calls 'niches'. We have the comparison of Spiders spinning webs and Beavers building dams as to how a person with autism or another neurodiverse condition can adapt to their environment. For example persons with autism are good with computers so they can move to the silicon valley and get an IT job. Armstrong claims that the prevalence of autism is greater in the silicon valley then in the general population. However we see that data from the CDDS contradict this notion. Of the 21 regional centers serving the CDDS in California we see that the San Andreas regional center ranked 9th out of 21 in the growth of autism prevalence, falling far behind the West Los Angeles regional center and the Lanterman regional center in central Los Angeles. Since the growth in the administrative prevalence of autism in the regional centers parallels the growth of the IT industry, these data could be considered relevant.

He steals Temple Grandin's thunder by listing jobs that are suitable for persons with various brain differences but neglecting to cite a single example of anyone with these conditions who was successfully employed in these occupations. This is in spite of the fact that Armstrong lists a 6% employment rate among autistics though I am not sure where he obtains this figure. This contradicts the 25% figure given by Joseph of the natural variation blog who also does not seem to know where he obtained his figure when questioned about it.

Amanda Baggs is also mentioned in the book Her "In my Language" video is extolled and she is compared to a professional percussionist. Computers and the internet are given as examples of successful niche construction on Amanda's part and Amanda is quoted as boasting that her caretakers would not be able to do what she does on the internet. However, Amanda's other video where she shows how much trouble she has with boiling water is not mentioned.

Armstrong states that for some reason that is not apparent to this blogger that Amanda's situation overturns tacit assumptions about autism. Interestingly, Armstrong neglects to discuss that Amanda up until she was a teenager had normal speech, went to a college for gifted children at age 14, had no behavior manifestations that would suggest anything remotely similar to autism as verified by many of her classmates and acquaintances. Apparently by a strange coincidence during a time when Amanda was ingesting in nearly daily doses of LSD for a lengthy period she had some sort of break and thought she was an elf and was diagnosed as schizophrenic rather than autistic. Then apparently was mysteriously diagnosed as autistic well in her 20s.

The studies showing that autistics have superior scores in certain tests such as embedded figures, block design, perfect pitch, etc. are also discussed. Armstrong implies that these studies refer to all autistic people and not necessarily a limited research pool whom would be considered high functioning. Also one wonders what sort of job or life skill or ability to adjust to the world high scores on these tests are correlated with. I score in the retarded range on block design so this would not apply to me. He gives savant musician Leslie Lemke, artist Stephen Wiltshire and Daniel Tammet's accomplishments as proof of autistic superiority, implying that just a few handful of people-these examples can be applied to many thousands if not more than a million worldwide.

He gives examples of how well suited an autistic person would be able to tell edible berries from a predator's eyes in a primitive society and how much rather he would be with someone constructing a spear or making a fire regardless of their social deficiencies. He does discount the possibility that motivational impairments might prevent these so-called systematizers as Baron-Cohen calls them from applying their skills. Of course exception to rule Temple Grandin is listed as an example of this. No matter that most persons on the spectrum are not like that and are probably not too employable.

Armstrong then gives examples of the studies that two members of Laurent Mottron's research team, Michelle Dawson and Isabelle Soulieres showing how autistics could be lifted out of the intellectually impaired classrooms based on the published studies of these two exemplary researchers. He cites Dawson's study where autistics scored much higher on Raven's matrices than the Wechsler and Souleries' study where autistics are able to do Raven's matrices 40% faster than non-autistic controls.

He neglects to mention the methodologic problems of these two studies Dawson excluded autistics with known genetic conditions which would probably mean at least 10% of all autistics. If this percentage were applied to autistics with intellectual disabilities, the percentage would likely be even higher. There was a 12:1 male/female ratio in her study as opposed to 4:1 in the general population of autistics. At least some of these autistics were high functioning with nearly normal intelligence, even though there were some low functioning persons who scored much or at least substantially higher on the Raven's than on the Wechsler.

Though Dawson et. al. implied that their control group in the study was neurotypical, this was hardly the case. Rather than being representative of the general population of non-autistics they were a self-selected sample recruited from a newspaper ad whose average score on the Wechsler was 75th percentile, sorry but an average of 75th percentile of any population is certainly not typical. It presented a comparison of one atypical group to another atypical group.

To date, Dawson's work has not been replicated. In fact there are two at least partial nonreplications, one by Sven Boelte. Though some persons in Boelte's study did have a higher RPM score than Wechsler the effect was much less pronounced than in Dawson's study and was limited to lower functioning autistics with IQs less than 85. There was no effect on the higher functioning group. Kim Boddner has also done an IMFAR presentation showing that there is no difference on Wechsler's vs. Raven's in relatively high functioning autistics whose IQs are 85 or higher.

In spite of this Souleries, in an act of statistical legerdemain, based her study on the fact that this effect existed in high functioning autistics in spite of the two nonreplications. One reason, of course that Souleries did not use lower functioning persons in her research was likely due to noncompliance issues which would cause artifacts on an MRI scan, which was part of her study. She stated the superiority of Raven's versus Wechsler in higher IQ autistics as fact rather than a statement of contention. Her use of speed in the Raven's was also nonstandard as it is not a timed test.

Though the book clearly has a pro neurodiversity perspective, one wonders would at least one of the two blurbees, namely Ne'eman be happy with this book. The answer is no, because Armstrong does concede that autism, schizophrenia and other conditions do present grave problems for the individuals affected. We have seen from the meticulous documentation on autism's gadfly that Ne'eman most likely does not even believe that autism is a disability.

Armstrong also seems to deviate from some of the other tenets of the ND movement, at least as it applies to autism, though not necessarily some of the other neurodiverse conditions such as schizophrenia or affective "differences". He uses Howard Gardner's "Frames of Mind" book to show how different people can have different intelligences. He speculates that dysfunctions in the limbic system but other areas being intact in an autistic could lead to them having superior math skills yet significant social deficits. The ND belief is that autism is not limited to just some parts of the brain but that the autistic brain is hardwired from birth and that to cure a person of autism would be killing them as a human being. In fact neurodiversity hatemonger, the late "Alyric" once called me Jonathan I want to destroy myself Mitchell because of my longing for a cure for this horrible affliction.

He also writes some interesting things about special education, stuff about kids being bullied, having low self-esteem due to having to be in special education and the stories of physical abuse of children in special education schools. I experienced all these first-hand growing up as a special education student throughout the 1960s, so indeed this did resonate with me.

He discusses how special education should be changed so that the emphasis is on strengths rather than on deficits but is rather vague on how this could be accomplished. For example he just goes as far as telling how it would be good to tell a student how helpful they are in cleaning up a lunch room or how well they sing in a musical performance. He also advocates a "neurodiverse classroom" where instead of one teacher teaching an entire class there would be multiple teachers and aides and specialized accommodations involving specialized personnel to help with mobility or signing issues. Armstrong really does neglect to tell how the tab would be picked up for all these goodies given the fact that local school districts have such difficulty in providing funding for special education as it is and the nearly complete neglect of the federal government doing so, since contrary to popular belief the IDEA is an unfunded mandate with no legal obligation to provide funding by the federal government.

Ironically Armstrong talks about combating "ableism" and implies that a large part of the problem for persons with neurologic impairments in the workplace is this prejudice. Though I don't deny prejudice does exist I had a disability that impaired my performance in the workplace, though I did work sporadically with marginal success. Though my intelligence was more than intact I could not be in a regular education classroom as a young child due to behavioral issues.

I have to wonder if Armstrong ever reads any of the neurodiversity blogs or the comments section of the blogs. I don't see how anyone who does so cannot come to an alternative conclusion that the neurodiversity crowd are among the greatest "ableists" of all. From the condescending ridicule I received from Alyric regarding my special education experiences, from the mocking of my mediocre college performance by hatemonger David Andrews who was the one who encouraged Baron-Cohen to write that despicable essay on how high functioning autism should not be considered a disability and Andrews trying to show how superior he was to me because I could not do as well academically as he did or get a masters degree and hang out my shingle and practice, even in a very foreign country like Finland as he has done. Don't forget the cheap shots at my celibacy made by "Socrates" who in spite of being unemployed and homeless seems to imply that he is God's gift to women. Last but not least is the vicious hate I receive routinely from Clay Adams who was able to serve in the Navy, be gainfully employed in various contracting jobs, often being the lead man on crews and was able to get married and support two children. Bigotry and ableism are certainly pervasive on many of the hub blogs past and present.

The bottom line is, whatever assets persons with autism allegedly have, the social deficits produce either a zero sum or negative gain in functioning. I think this is proven by the relatively high functioning persons who are part of the autism hub and various ND cliques. This is something for Armstrong to think about.

Score: John Best 1 Phil Gluyas 0

2010-06-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

This is a story a few people may find interesting.

emails to elected officials

2010-06-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have written the following to my congressman, senators and president Obama. I realize this is probably about as effective as writing a letter to Santa Claus but I have done it anyhow. I am going to share the contents with the readers of autism's gadfly:

Mr. Congressman: I am an individual on the autism spectrum now in my mid 50s who longs for a cure for autism. I realize that this is not realistic in my lifetime. I am celibate. I have not worked in over 3 years and I have been unsuccessfully trying to get on disability for nearly 3 years now. I constantly talk loudly and make funny movements which draws attention to myself. I have very poor fine motor coordination and can hardly handwrite. I have various phobias. As a very young child I was almost completely nonverbal. I have been constantly fired from jobs (probably about 20 now) and had to give up working. i am very frustrated by this disability.
The reason I write to you is that I am very concerned about various autism policies that are now put in place by the federal government.
I am concerned about the creation of the combating autism act and the subsequent creation of the interagency autism coordinating committee. Though the law has stipulated that there must be at least one autistic member, there are currently two members, Stephen Shore and Ari Ne'eman. Both of these individuals have expressed opposition to curing autism in spite of the spirit of the law. Both of these persons are barely affected by their autism if at all. In fact Ari Ne'eman has stated that curing autism would be morally reprehensible. He has advocated a moratorium on all genetic research. Genetics may be in fact the 'ace in the hole' for finding future treatments or at least ensuring that future generations of children wll not be affected as I have. I do not believe either of these individuals should serve in the government in any capacity on autism related matters. I urge you to introduce legislation expelling these individuals from the IACC or introducing legislation to abolish the IACC and/or voting against reauthorization of the combating autism act when that comes up.
John Elder Robison, is another individual who has expressed opposition for curing certain autism disorders other than his own, yet he can be a best selling author, get a $100,000/year engineering job and get married twice. These are things beyond my capacity. He is allowed to review federally funded autism research apparently only because of his incredible celebrity. I do not believe persons who express opposition to a cure such as Robison should be reviewing grants for federally funded research. The same goes for Stephen Shore who does this as well as being a public member of the IACC. I hope these celebrity review of research by those opposed to a cure should stop.
I also would like to comment on the federal goverment's funding of autism researcher Morton Anne Gernsbacher. This is a woman who has publically opposed a cure and who in fact has stated that autism is a harmless condition. I was hoping you could introduce legislation to terminate her funding from the army, air force, NIH and lastly the CDC. It is interesting that she receives funding from the CDC yet does not believe that autism is a disease.
Thanks for your consideration in this matter.
Jon Mitchell

Return of the autism hub

2010-05-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

In the no news is good news department or the "I had Excedrin headache number 64, took my Excedrin, went to bed, had a pleasant dream and woke up and found it too good to be true department" I have just this moment noticed the autism hub is back. I should have known the hiatus would be ephemeral. Gadfly gave his take on these people who wear black hats in a previous post.

Some of the same blogs have been kept, such as Estee Klar who states that those of us with autism should take joy in having a handicap and horrific disability. Also, Left brain right brain, the blog that was basically the progenitor of this hideous hub has been kept.

Among blogs on the science side, are the autism crisis blog. So Michelle Dawson who can state that science is not politics and say that it is fine that she and the people she works with can accept a half a million dollar grant from an organization which she has stated in the past ideally wishes a short future for those with autism.

They also have an archive. They apparently have added the blog of the deceased hatemonger "Alyric" who took joy in making abusive and condescending comments to your humble blogger, particularly about his special education experiences, as if she had any knowledge of being developmentally disabled that was not an abstraction. For those with a wave of nostalgia the archives of autism diva's blog has been kept though it has apparently been close to three years since she has posted anything.

Saliently lacking is The New Republic blog of "Socrates" who apparently from my limited knowledge of the situation was considered somewhat of a trouble maker in the hub's blogosphere and was apparently a factor in Dave Seidel's and "Hollywood Jaded's" "bailout" as administrators of the old hub.

Another blog missing from the list is the Whose Planet is it Anyway blog of "The autistic bitch from hell" I guess she still has her blog so I won't be deprived from reading about how autistics who want a cure for their condition should be taken out and shot or strangled to death and turned into cat food . The rumor mill has it that "the autistic bitch from hell" is in fact the nom de plume of one Meg Evans. I will emphasize that I am not certain that these two individuals are the same person. I just know what I read in the preceding link. The discerning reader can follow the link and judge for themselves.

Meg Evans is an individual high up in the board of directors of ASAN. An organization that claims to be in favor of civil rights and dignity for persons with autism. As most who follow this blog know, ASAN's leader, Ari Ne'eman, has an appointment to the national council on disabilities pending in the U.S. Senate, even though gadfly has provided overwhelming evidence that in fact Mr. Ne'eman does not even believe that he himself has a disability or that autism is a disability, yet has presented himself as a stakeholder. He has also been appointed to the IACC, who coordinates the funding of biologic research in autism, though he has stated he opposed biologic research with the aim of curing autism. Ms. Evans claims to have been diagnosed as autistic as a child, yet is a lawyer who graduated from Case Western Reserve Law school, was able to get married and have two children. One has to wonder if in fact the ABFH and Ms. Evans are one in the same that the government should be appointing a leader from an organization to various posts who has in his organization as executive board of directors someone who has such a flippant attitude towards the lives of autistics whose philosophy she does not happen to agree with.

Most notable of all is the exclusion of the comet's corner blog whose author Clay Adams is one of the most vicious and cruel hatemongers in the ND movement and who seems to have a morbid obsession with your humble blogger, constantly belittling him, making fun of him and writing libelous statements about him. The blog has been taken over by new administrators who one hopes don't have the callous attitude that Dave Seidel and his cronies had towards autistic people who really do suffer from their condition, have been veterans of special education and who can't get married or hold down a job unlike many of the members past and present of the hub himself included.

They also give some other information in various parts of the new hub that I will let the interested reader find for themselves. One statement that intrigued this blogger:

The Hub will continue to carefully review and bring some of the best autism blogging from around the web, to visitors and other Autism Hub bloggers – you know, the kind of blogging that is respectful of autistic people insightful, sometimes scientific, but always thought-provoking and mindful of the Hub’s stated mission:-------

Well the rest of the statement is about their baloney of promoting rights and diversity to make themselves look more acceptable than they were in the good old days when their motto was "We don't want no stinkin' cure". Of course I have to laugh at this highlighted statement. Does this mean that such August blogs as The New Republic, Comet's Corner and Whose planet is it anyway, won't be continued on the new hub? Not necessarily, as they have another statement saying that though not all of the old blogs were included that even if they did not make the first cut, persons whose blogs were not included can resubmit their blogs to the hub for the consideration. It is not impossible that these blogs will be back on the hub. It can also be noted that they have stated the hub is under anonymous administrators and has been financed by "an anonymous benefactor with no financial interest in autism". One must wonder about these anonymous people, who this benefactor is who spends money on this cult of hatred and propaganda and why he/she wishes to remain anonymous. Apparently, the new administrators wish to be anonymous, so people whose blog posts go over the line won't have to be accountable to persons whose libelous statements might actually put them in legal jeopardy as administrators of the new hub.

Of course, the hiatus of the hub, did mean the dagger did pierce the figurative skin, even though it was not put entirely through the heart. We can only hope there will be more daggers and with ND attempting to become more mainstream, with more continued exposure of Ari Ne'eman and other stellar individuals in this movement, people will see the hatred, the lies and propaganda espoused and next time the saber will not miss its mark.