Autism Vox

This and Last’s Weeks Top Posts

by Kristina Chew, PhD on February 17th, 2008

Neon-bright marquees and music (from B.B. King’s theater–Buckwheat Zydeco is playing) and tour buses driving up halfway onto 42nd street and Russian Spanish Korean Twi being spoken and the smell of the gyros and steam from the subway grates: That was what Charlie walked through, holding Jim’s arm and grinning, with my parents and me bringing up the rear on Saturday afternoon in New York City. Too much going on, same as the topics for the past two weeks’ posts.

• What’s It All About, Eli? (2): Keeping the Faith
  While the court case that the main character of ABC’s legal drama, Eli Stone, successfully argues in the show’s first episode involves vaccines and “mercuritol,” a stand-in for thimerasol that is claimed to have caused a child to become autistic, it is matters of faith and spirituality that people seem particularly to be eager to hear about in regard to autism.
• Super Tuesday Tomorrow: The Candidates’ Views on Autism
  Not that you want to know, but I vote for Obama.
• Whack, Wack, Quack
  A typo on an Age of Autism post by Dan Olmsted leads me to reflect on the mob, the Sopranos, the movie “On the Waterfront,” and Lucky Ducks.
• Surprise Surprise: No link between the MMR and autism
  A study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood shows that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Repeat: There is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
• $200,000
  How much is too much, or maybe just enough, to spend on “treatments” for autism?
• A Physiological Marker for Autism?
  Scientists from the Baylor College of Medicine have identified a physiological marker that might be used to create an assessment tool for those with “higher functioning autism” by looking at the brain responses of adolescents with Asperger Syndrome when they played an interactive trust game. Is this a useful assessment tool?
• Autism and Schizophrenia
  In the past, autistic individuals might have received a diagnosis of schizophrenia (or mental retardation, or something else); they could not be diagnosed with autism because autism as we understand it today did not exist as a diagnostic category. That is, for much of the history of autism—if we posit that autism has always existed and was only very recently identified as such—-autistic persons did not have an “autism diagnosis,” but were considered “something else.”
• How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep
  Researchers at the Vanderbilt Sleep Disorders Center have found that melatonin “shows promise” in helping some autistic children fall asleep.
• Special Ed for Asian Students
  The Boston Globe reports that 2.3 percent of students in Massachusetts receiving special education services are Asian, while Asian students make up 4.8 of the public school student population; in Boston, Asians make up 9 percent of public school students, while only 3 percent are enrolled in special education. What’s going on?
• Tased
  15-year-old Tony Presley, who has high-functioning autism, was tased by police on January 28th for “getting out of control at school.”
• Study on Adult Sexuality in Autistic Individuals
  The North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System is doing a joint project with the University of New Brunswick on Adult Sexuality for individuals between 21 and 65 who fall into the Autism Spectrum. Individuals can participate in the study via a confidential online survey (which commenters have some concerns about).
• Maternal Immune Systems and Maternal Antibodies: A causal factor for some cases of autism?
  Researchers at the University of California-Davis M.I.N.D. Institute suggest that some cases of “regressive autism”– in which a child seems to be developing normally and then loses skills and becomes autistic, in contrast to “early onset autism”—-may be connected to the immune systems of mothers during pregnancy. Antibodies in the blood of mothers of autistic children were found to bind with fetal brain cells and affect healthy brain development.
• The Wearying of the Green
  What in the world does “green our vaccines” mean? Maybe Generation Rescue (who took out a full page ad in USA Today proclaiming this) knows.
• High and Low
  Charlie takes his first cello lesson.
• Kids With Autism Are Not Retards
  That’s what Big Brother contestant Adam Jasinski said: Many (most/all of us) beg to differ.
• The Medication Question AgainThere’s an image out there in the public mind that people seek out prescriptions to pop pills for minor ailments and issues, and put more medication into the mouths of babes (their children) because Johnny can’t sit still after lunch: But is this true?

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