“my name is Isabel and my strength is that I have autism”
February 10, 2010
I like this article about the proposed DSMV - I particularly like the very last line! Just 5 years from now, autism will have a very different meaning for society, for families, for teachers and schools. I certainly hope my son is able to walk up to his teachers one day and proudly let them know that he has autism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/opinion/10grinker.html
Asperger’s Officially Placed Inside Autism Spectrum
February 10, 2010
Asperger’s syndrome is really just a form of autism and does not merit a separate diagnosis, according to a panel of researchers assembled by the American Psychiatric Association.
Even though many researchers already refer to Asperger’s as high-functioning autism, it hasn’t been listed under the autism category in the official diagnostic guide of mental disorders, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM. The DSM serves as a guide for mental health professionals and government agencies.
But a new draft fifth edition released Wednesday moves Asperger’s officially into the autism category, provoking a wide range of responses among people with Asperger’s — some of whom say they do not want to be labeled as autistic.
Read more
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123527833
Autism, Aspergers and social thinking: A conversation with Michelle Garcia Winner
February 7, 2010
One day during Matthew’s freshman year at our local high school, he observed Joe pushing his girlfriend flirtatiously and then tapping her on the head. The couple kissed, took each other by the hand, and skipped away. Inspired Joe’s success, Matthew tried the same moves on another girl with too much force, and she ran to the principal’s office in tears.
When I arrived at school for a debriefing, Matthew was trying to explain himself. “Joe did the same thing to Sue, ” he cried, “and she liked it!”
Good social skills vs. bad social skills? Not exactly, says Michelle Garcia Winner. She is the developer of Social Thinking, a philosophy and a treatment for individuals with social-cognitive deficits such as autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD and nonverbal learning disorder (NLD).
“Social thinking is required before the development of social skills. Successful social thinkers consider the points of view, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, prior knowledge and intentions of others (this is often called perspective-taking - considering the perspectives of others).”
I got the chance to meet San Jose based Michelle Garcia Winner last week in Palo Alto, where she was speaking to a group of teachers and parents. She is what we call in the autism community “A big deal.” But she is humble and approachable so I stopped slobbering on her after a few minutes.
“In neurotypical (so-called normal-thinking) people like Joe,” says Michelle, “social thinking is hard-wired at birth and learned intuitively from infancy onward. Joe developed communication skills as he grew up, steadily observing and acquiring social information. He learned how to respond to the people around him. Social thinking and intelligence is something that most of us take for granted.”
Matthew, however, needs to be taught how to think socially and to understand the use of related social skills.
It takes more than just medicating our kids!
February 6, 2010
Adhering to guidelines when treating children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) relieved symptoms but had no effect on kids’ performance in school or in their relationships with others, researchers found. Although parents and teachers noted significant improvements in symptoms among ADHD kids (P<0.001) in a special treatment program, there weren’t similar outcomes for functional impairment, Jeffery N. Epstein, PhD, of the Center for ADHD at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, reported in the February Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Click here for the full story: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/ADHD-ADD/18292
from Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey on Dr. Andrew Wakefield
February 5, 2010
Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys:
A Statement from Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey
Los Angeles, February 5, 2010
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.
It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues.
The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.
Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield’s original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet’s retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.
Dr. Wakefield is one of the world’s most respected and well-published gastroenterologists. He has published dozens of papers since 1998 in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals all over the world. His work documenting the bowel disease of children with autism and his exploration of novel ways to treat bowel disease has helped relieve the pain and suffering of thousands of children with autism.
For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.
Few people are aware that this extremely important work has not only begun, but that a study using an animal model has already been completed exploring this topic in great detail.
Dr. Wakefield is the co-author, along with eight other distinguished scientists from institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Washington, of a set of studies that explore the topic of vaccinated versus unvaccinated neurological outcomes using monkeys.
The first phase of this monkey study was published three months ago in the prestigious medical journal Neurotoxicology, and focused on the first two weeks of life when the vaccinated monkeys received a single vaccine for Hepatitis B, mimicking the U.S. vaccine schedule. The results, which you can read for yourself HERE, were disturbing. Vaccinated monkeys, unlike their unvaccinated peers, suffered the loss of many reflexes that are critical for survival.
Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.
There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism. The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.
Behind the scenes, the pressure to keep the work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues from being published is immense, and growing every day. Medical journals take extreme risk of backlash in publishing any studies that question the safety of the vaccination program, no matter how well-designed and thorough the research might be. Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.
The press has been deeply misled in the way The Lancet retraction, and Dr. Wakefield’s mock trial, have been characterized. Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.
What medical journal would want to step in front of this freight train? Moreover, why now, after 12 years of inaction, did The Lancet and GMC suddenly act? Is it coincidence that the monkey study is currently being submitted to medical journals for review and publication?
We urge the media to take a close look at the first phase of the monkey study discussed above and to start asking a very simple question: What was the final outcome of the 14 primates that were vaccinated using the U.S. vaccine schedule and how did that compare to the unvaccinated controls?
The U.S. vaccine schedule has grown from 10 vaccines given to our children in the 1980s to 36 today, perfectly matching the dramatic rise in autism. The work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues deserves to be shared with the world to further, rather than censor, scientific progress.
Scientific Link to Autism Identified — JACKSON, N.J., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ –
February 5, 2010
Scientific Link to Autism Identified — JACKSON, N.J., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ –
