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Tomorrow, September 30th, is the deadline to submit a comment regarding the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)’s Draft Strategic Plan for ASD Research. Feedback is sought from ASD stakeholders which means—as you’re reading this blog—you: individuals with ASD and their families, scientists, health professionals, therapists, educators, officials of state and local programs for ASD, and […]
The National Institute of Mental Health calls off a study on chelation as a treatment for autistic children. Safety concerns are cited and it also needs to be noted that the reasons for using chelation to “treat” autistic children rest on an unproven hypothesis about autism causation, that autistic children have mercury and/or “heavy metals” […]
According to the claim that vaccines or something in vaccines can be linked to autism—the source of much discussion and dissent for most of my son’s life—-autistic persons are “damaged” and “injured”; they were once “normal,” “typical” and “ok.” The notion that vaccines or mercury poisoning are the cause of autism not only poses some […]
This week my summer school class on Psychology and Literature read Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. On Thursday morning the students had a quiz in which they had to “diagnose” Christopher, the novel’s main character, with autism or Asperger Syndrome, based on the DSM criteria. We also talked about […]
I’ve started teaching summer school, in a special program for local high school students and a course on translating Virgil’s Eclogues. The Eclogues are pastoral poems about shepherds and poetry and…….ok, that’s a bit too far from the usual discussion on this blog. The other class is on Psychology and Literature and, as of today, […]
A couple of years while teaching this poem to an English Literature 101 class at a mid-sized university in New Jersey (it’s not where I teach now), I asked my class what “green” signifies. While we live in New Jersey, I grew up in California (think Berkeley not Los Angeles) and — having started to […]
I just got back from Commencement at the college where I teach. We don’t have the facilities to hold the event on campus and it’s held some distance away down the Garden State Parkway. I’ve been teaching at my college for three years now and have gotten to know some students fairly well: So exciting […]
“Happy is he who knows the causes of things,” writes the Roman poet Virgil in Book 2 of his Georgics. Virgil was writing about the stars and the sun and the moon, about why there are eclipses and earthquakes, about natural phenomena, about the cosmos—-and his words can be applied to a much more specific […]
The Artistic Spectrum is the name of an exhibition of artwork of young people aged 10-21 with an autism spectrum disorder. The exhibition will be held from March 19th to April 24th at the Jewish Community Center at 334 Amsterdam Avenue, at 76th Street in Manhattan. Today, April 6th, there’s a Family Art Day (from […]
Classes started at the college where I teach last Wednesday, so I knew it would be a busy week. As the posts below suggest, the past week turned out to be far busier, and intenser, and more emotionally wrenching, than I had bargained for.
Wishing the family of Katie McCarron much peace: Katie will be remembered.
Autism […]
Autism mother gets on her soapbox.
Written by Kristina Chew, PhD [email] for b5media.
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