Television once again throws away its potential with a program featuring a triumvirate of inanity: Larry King lobbing sloppy wet kisses at Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. I might tune in, even — it seems a shame to miss what must be a rare collision of extreme stupidity.
They also have a poll. Of course.
Do you think autism can be “cured”?
Yes 47% 583
No 53% 655
Another question: can King, Carrey, and McCarthy be “cured”? It’s actually the same question: can any developmental disorder which produces a recognizable pattern of changes in the performance of the brain be cured, and should it?
Let’s put the possibility of curing every disease up for a vote!
Isn’t democracy amazing?
Runaway link! Run for your lives! It is going to eat us all!!
Runaway link!
At least they acknowledge it isn’t a scientific poll.
Speaking as a an economist with a graduate degree and years of experience in the field, as well as being an amateur astronomer, a teacher of celestial navigation, and various other achievements too numerous to mention, my vote on a poll about whether autism can be “cured” is utterly meaningless. Go poll some autism experts and see what they say.
Can TV producers be cured of believing that ignorant celebrities have important things to say about matter they don’t understand?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Isn’t Carrey a Scientologist now? Larry King is creepy. I’ve seen him in person. CREEPIER.
I say that autism can be cured. You can trust me. I’m a journalist of some kind.
A lot of folks make me sick, but these guys are close to the top.
OK – I am conflicted. Can it be “cured”? Perhaps. Even maybe “sure” – can it be cured the way McCarthy says it can? Not only no, but Hell no.
So… I think I have to stay out of this one.
JC
What the parents have been told…
But Evan has been cured
Maybe if she had breast fed he would have talked sooner.
My son has Aspergers which is part of the autistic spectrum and guess what he thinks these folks are flaming idiots. Oh, and btw he *DOESN’T* want to be cured. Maybe because he is orders of magnitude smarter than these idiots.
I’m with ‘Tis Himself (#5). I have no experience in the field, and I am not any sort of medical doctor. I’m grossly unqualified to answer that question (kind of like Jenny McCarthy).
“Can King, Carrey, and McCarthy be cured?”
I’m amazed no one has posted the obvious answer.
YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID!
The poll question is misleading. I feel that almost anything can be cured GIVEN time and enough money.
Today, I haven’t seen protocol that leads to a cure. That doesn’t mean that we could have a breakthrough tomorrow. There are lots of things that can be cured now days versus 100 years ago.
Crappy question. Crappier know nothing twins presented by LK like they acutally know something.
YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID!
Oftentimes stupid will fix itself, usually by self-immolation.
Sure it can be cured… eventually. Just give it enough time, surely there will be technological advances to cure it within 500 years or so.
I have avoided watching anything with Larry King, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. I cannot take the pain. The idea that I could accidentally run across those three together on television tonight convinces me that I will not turn it on. I have images of Nazis opening the Ark Of The Covenant.
No way I can vote on that poll. I have no knowledge base on which to judge and thus cannot resolve the question either way. Not even my nephew with Aspergers and his distinctive ways of going about things informs me about the cause or cure of autism.
If the question were, “Would you like to believe that autism can be cured?” then I could vote but that vote would carry weight of authority. It would simply be an expression of my heartfelt desire which would be most common throughout any population.
Or I could have flipped a coin . . .
@#5 ‘Tis Himself
Well, this non-scientific poll is indeed utterly useless, but perhaps a better poll would have some uses, perhaps to survey the public awareness on the issue.
You folks shouldn’t criticize pollsters for asking questions of lay people about specialist subjects.
Why? Because people are supposed to make their own minds up on the big issues like ‘is there a god?’ or lesser issues like ‘can autism be cured?’ or ‘do you believe in evolution?’
It doesn’t matter if the public haven’t researched the issues, does it? Sheeeeesh!
O/T, but this was too amazing to let slide:
Robot Theorizes, Proves Own Scientific Discoveries:
“Scientists at the United Kingdom’s Cambridge and Aberystwyth universities have created a “robot scientist” that they believe is the first automaton to make its own scientific discoveries.”
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216402727
Aaah.
“. . . that vote would carry no weight of authority.”
mumble
I thought vinyl flooring was the bugaboo of the moment for causing ASD. Don’t these shills for woo keep up?
Personally I think there may be an equal correlation between ASD and TV. Possibly Sesame Street and/or The Electric Company. Or could it be low tar cigarettes? [Looking around frantically for other possible pseudo-links] Maybe the Bic pen. Yeah, I blame childrens television; especially those moronic After School Specials, the Bic pen, vinyl flooring, and Tang. And quite possibly Conjuction Junction as a catalyst.
Come on; there’s more to this story than evil science, big pharma, the libruls, and the MSM have led us to believe.
I just went to a lecture on Fragile X syndrome about 30 minutes ago. Researchers found that they can reverse neural spine immaturity that’s caused by the protein mutation in mice (which admittedly aren’t a terribly good model for fragile X). So in one specific model for fragile X, neurons can be stimulated back to their mature state, thus “reversing” mental retardation (aka mice increase their performance on how to run on a spinning column)
I’m going to have to apply Occam’s Razor here and go with the suggestion that her son never had autism in the first place, but instead a different disorder that gets mis-diagnosed as autism.
Luckily [????] for the time space continuum of rationality this isn’t Imus and his wife Diedra doing the interview.
The gravitational pull of the mass of stupidity contained between the four of them would likely cause the universe to give itself a wedgie of unimaginable depth.
Larry King looks like the spider-like character, Kamajii, in “Spirited Away”. As for Carey and McCarthy, those two has beens will do anything to get attention so they can make a buck.
I think she just likes the Egg on her face.
You can submit a question to be asked on the show on the same page where the poll is. I think we all should go over there and ask her why she continues this non-sense in the overwhelming face of scientific evidence, and if she feels responsible for the deaths that have occurred as a result of parents not vaccinating their children.
Maybe someone could also ask her about LtStorm’s thought that maybe her son didn’t have ASD to begin with and was misdiagnosed. And Maybe someone could ask, if her son’s all better, why isn’t he on the show to show off how normal he is now?
The problem is that there are people who think their opinions and/or wishful thinking on a subject is meaningful. “What do those experts know? Ivory tower theorists who think they’re better than us.”
At another website I frequent there’s been a discussion about the government stimulus package for the past two days. There are people there who don’t know about Keynesian vs Lucasian economics, but know that whatever Obama does is right or wrong, depending on what their gut reactions to whatever they’ve read or heard is.
I do not understand why you people think that polls on various questions of science are stupid. I would understand if you people would criticize the uselessness of online polls in general, but surely well-designed public polls on science are useful for finding out the public awareness of the issue.
These sort of polls are useful to see what public opinion on a topic may be. It also shows how misinformed the public may be. But, the most likely person to reply to such a poll has an autistic child or is a Jenny fan. They are going to be the ones watching the show. So the poll is useless to see what the public thinks.
But physicians never mis-diagnose autism.
Otherwise, they’re pig-ignorant about the disorder. This has nothing to do with their 100% accuracy in diagnosis, however.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
And where are the tens of thousands of healed children ???
There was a woman on tv the other who claimed that by using the same kind of treatment and others, her child got 20% better in the first weeks and is now 80% better after many months. What the heck are those numbers supposed to even mean ? I get the idea but it seems rather vague…
PZ, thank you very much for that “should it?”
@LtStorm: People with autism, especially Asperger’s, tend to learn how to act in a more neuro-typical manner as they get older. Autism is a condition in which social interaction is not instinctive, but with therapy (starting at a young age is better) a person afflicted can intellectually learn to act more ‘normal.’ That’s not the same as a ‘cure.’ My best guess is that this kid finally got old enough to figure out that his mother was happier and nicer when he acted in certain ways; she might have had him in behavior coaching as well as all of the dangerous ‘medical’ mumbo-jumbo, and if so that might have helped.
All of the evidence suggests that autism is hard-wired, and that it is genetic. Since we do not yet have any medical therapies that change the fundamental wiring of the brain, nor any that can change a person’s genetic structure, the idea that it can be cured is wishful thinking at best. Furthermore, most HFAs and Aspies see their condition as a part of their personality, and view a ‘cure’ as something akin to being brain-wiped and re-booted with a new personality. Not something to be desired.
Take it from me, PZ. You don’t want to watch this train wreck, and, given my position and longtime efforts against this sort of nonsense, I think I have good reason to say this. It’ll only raise your blood pressure. It raises my blood pressure even more because I know more about the subject. Kind of like you watching Ken Ham, except that Jenny’s even stupider about autism than Ham is about evolution.
Besides, if the waves of stupid emanating from Larry King’s studio tonight and being broadcast on the airwaves are anything like this demonstration by Jenny, your neurons will cry out in pain.
Oh, sweet Jeebus. I just read J.B. Handley’s post on the Larry King Live blog. He’s trying to outdo Jenny for creating a black hole of stupid:
http://larrykinglive.blogs.cnn.com/lkl-blog-exclusive-autism-is-preventable-and-reversible/
No, I think I’ll pass. If I don’t, I may not be able to finish my grant by Monday…
I’m with Fernando Magyar (#12) on this: Who and how is it decided whom to “cure”? I speak with a bit of authority and prersonal interest, because I DON’T want people chasing me around with their “devinylizing audiovibratoryphysiomolecular chelating device,” even if it WORKS!
http://isnt.autistics.org/
I’m following ToddFerguson’s lead, and posting some real questions at the site.
And, yes, I think polls like this are not just pointless but HARMFUL: they encourage people to believe that their “vote” somehow matters, which is bad enough when they’re then told “congress [or whoever] just REFUSES to do what we tole them to and CURE it!”, or, worse, they’re now sure they’ve “done their share!” It also damages the credibility of science, education, of being INFORMED, by implying that their quick opinions on the topic are of comparable worth to those of the people most expert and involved in the field. In short, crap like this is both a symptom and a fertilizer for the toxic fungus of anti-science we have too much of in this society.
Yes, in fact I AM a “College Boy,” and I’m not going to hide it!
ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have proposed a sweeping new theory of autism that suggests that the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible.
I hate to use the words “paradigm shift” so I won’t. But “wow” if true. Jenny McCarthy will surely be quoting this research before the day is out.
How long before we get to “honour” one of these three with a Darwin Award?
I think the only Jim Carrey movie I ever saw was The Truman Show, which I liked. However, I will now make it a deliberate policy never to see any more Jim Carrey movies, ever. It takes a lot to make me boycott something, but this does it. Sort of funny how “grinning naive fool” seems to be his real persona, not just his on-screen character.
‘Tis Yerself, I was being sarcastic.
Key quote about that Albert Einstein review article:
Anecdotal evidence.
Also, that Pediatrics study they cite actually showed that autistic symptoms actually abated somewhat during fever.
In other words, this ‘paradigm shift” is speculative at best and dubious at worst.
@ orac: I suddenly want to change my tag.
http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html
Orac, thank you!
One other thing about the whole “fever/autism” thing. Even if this “paradigm shift” were in fact true, the most that this linkage would mean is that fever from any source might affect the LC-NA system. Yes, sometimes vaccines can cause a febrile reaction, but what causes far, far more fevers than vaccines?
The infectious diseases the vaccines are designed to prevent.
While we’re discussing autism, has anyone heard of this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4680971/Charles-Darwin-had-autism-leading-psychiatrist-claims.html
What I find intriguing is the suggestion that a property of the disorder (namely hyper-concentration on one’s interests) may have been beneficial to Darwin’s work.
Jenny McCarthy?
(fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap….)
Said what?….
(fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap….)
Really? That’s just fucking stupid!
(fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap…)
What a brainless (fap fap fap) twit (fap).
If Jenny were serious, she’d show us her tits.
In the name of the cause she believes in.
They’re the primary things for which she’s able to draw attention to her personal crusade.
What could it hurt?
C’mon, Jenny. Show us your tatas…
Evan was never autistic: he’s a Crystal Child. So how the hell did Jenny ‘cure’ him? Apply red and blue food dye directly to his aura?
By the way, here are the characteristics of a ‘crystal’ child. Skim through the list, and see if your kid has any of the characteristics of this beautiful race of superkids who are here to save us by being attuned to their spiritual nature, whatever the shit that means:
-Large penetrating eyes
-Blissful tempered
-Draw other children to them
-Loving and forgiving–open only to those who warrant trust
-Nurturing towards younger children and animals
-Fearless
-Have healing abilities
-Love water
-Communicate telepathically
-Musically orientated
-May not speak until age 3-4
-Patient
-Love to play with crystals and stones
-Affectionate
-Sensitive
-Relate to adults better unless there are children of the same vibration around
-A strong need to help others
-Choosey with the food they eat
I like the last one; see, unlike most kids who will eat anything you place under their noses without complaint, crystal children are especially ‘choosey’. Must have something to do with the harmonic frequencies of the food.
Anyways, anybody wanna admit to raising a beady-eyed, mean-spiritied, unsocial, grudge-holding, animal-hating, hydrophobic, unmusical, unaffectionate, stoic, garbage-gobbling asshole of a toddler? No? Then you just may be raising a crystal child who will save the world. Also, there’s no one else like you, you have a special mission in the world, and I’ve got a great deal on a bridge for ya.
On the matter of vaccination:
Unvaccinated people are kinda like non-union workers in a union shop: they get the benefits without the investment.
see, unlike most kids who will eat anything you place under their noses without complaint, crystal children are especially ‘choosey’.
hmmmm…absent a cue, this snacks of Poe…
in my admittedly not extensive experience, I always thought kids were the most selective eaters in the world. if it wasn’t batter dipped and slathered in katsup, they threw it at you. Cheerios now, cheerios tomorrow, cheerios for EVER! and macaroni?
c’mon…that’s picky eaters…from what i’ve observed, kids dont develop any culinary curiousity til their teenagers…but i am not expert on the subject…
@LKL (#36): I’m not suggesting there’s necessarily anything wrong with those with autism, I’m just saying if the “autism” in her kid truly did clear up and he didn’t just adapt to it, it could’ve been a mis-diagnosis. With her whirlwind of Indigo Children, Crystal Child, etc. crap it’d fail to surprise me if she missed her physician suggesting it was just something else that caused autistic-like symptoms.
Steve_C: Larry King is creepy.
He’s a lot worse than just creepy. When he got his CNN gig, he ran out of Miami in the middle of the night to avoid a whole boatload of debts he had accumulated (he was on the radio there). He’s a cheat.
God knows who the debts were to — usually, running out of town doesn’t help you much against credit card bills and car payments.
Sorry Woody, but it’s important for parents with choosey-eater children to realise they just might be raising a crystal child.
wasn’t a clue?
Brownian: Anyways, anybody wanna admit to raising a beady-eyed, mean-spiritied, unsocial, grudge-holding, animal-hating, hydrophobic, unmusical, unaffectionate, stoic, garbage-gobbling asshole of a toddler?
I believe it depends on the day of the week, the weather and astrological alignments.
Orac, I don’t see the disparity. What do you think “abate” means? Or am I completely misunderstanding you?
I don’t think anyone in the article was suggesting fever as a cause or a treatment–just that it points to a possible location in the brain for further study.
As a toddler, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s, which is technically in the autism spectrum. Fortunately, my parents were able to send me to extensive behavioral therapy. I am now a college student and I have relatively healthy social relationships.
The best strategy for dealing with autism is early intervention, in my opinion.
Jenny McCarthy is a moron. People should be vaccinated because it’s fundamental to the public health.
Also, though I do not exhibit too many characteristics of Asperger’s, I still feel that it is a distinctive part of my personality, and as such, I would rather not be “cured”, i.e., brainwashed, especially by McCarthy and the other morons. If I watch that show, I may be brainwashed anyway, for what it’s worth.
The day autism is actually cured, the cure will spread quickly through word of mouth, and the results will be evident in autism databases. No such thing has occurred.
I sure hope they find a cure for Autism quickly. It is more widespread than ever and most people who have it are not very functional. I am talking a 200 pound 12 year old who is not potty trained, non verbal and hits others when agitated. They can never care for themselves properly or support themselves. People with Aspergers Syndrome often can live independantly and do quite well especially with therapy. But Aspergers is not Autism. At the rate Autism seems to be growing this will be a crisis in the next 20-30 years when the caretakers of these people start to die. Who will be there to care for them when they are 50-80 year olds who have autism? People live longer and people with Autism can live just as long as anyone else here in N. America. Can our healthcare system handle this large group of totally dependant seniors when they are all on their own?
the only cure for Jenny McCarthyism is an O/D of botox
Akiko: what makes you believe that autism is more common today?
People used to simply be labeled retarded and shipped off to institutions. It’s impossible to distinguish between changes in frequency of autism, and changes in frequency of diagnosis of autism.
I’d leave that one as “unknown” and “unknowable”.
Posted by: Akiko | April 3, 2009 7:28 PM
I sure hope they find a cure for Autism quickly. It is more widespread than ever and most people who have it are not very functional. I am talking a 200 pound 12 year old who is not potty trained, non verbal and hits others when agitated. They can never care for themselves properly or support themselves. People with Aspergers Syndrome often can live independantly and do quite well especially with therapy. But Aspergers is not Autism. At the rate Autism seems to be growing this will be a crisis in the next 20-30 years when the caretakers of these people start to die.
People with Asperger’s can be as disabled as those with the classic version of autism.
The so-called increase in autism is due to better diagnosis and a broadening of the criteria. While some claim an “epidemic,” the actual numbers of children in special education has been fairly stable according to a study in California, which is also the source of some claims of huge increases in prevalence.
Part of the problem is the unwillingness of many school districts to address the needs of such students, and the lack of special institutions who could help train and educate more severely impaired people-and the big factor is that money is tight and was before the economic downturn. It seems like the problem is becoming more apparent now because of parents trying to deal with their kids’ needs, both educational and behaviorally, and there just aren’t any resources or support in most of the country.
As a person with an ASD, I find some of this baffling. Not the incidence of ASDs, but the response to it. My parents didn’t freak out or consider me broken, but then I was diagnosed forty years ago. The idea that there’s some set in stone way to behave, and every one has to hit a behavioral mark…it seems people were more accepting of difference in some ways when I was a kid. Of course, it could be and was harder in others.
I just hope the pendulum for sensationalist woo will swing the other way, to more effective and meaningful treatments.
Brandon P.:
It seems that people have a tendency to attribute them with some sort of disorder such as autism. There are always people out there claiming that Darwin, Newton or Einstein (to name a few) had autism. Why do they have to have autism? Why can’t people just accept that humanities’ past geniuses were just that – geniuses, and they need no explanation as to why they were so. I have no idea whether those 3 I listed had autism. I know that Newton was a self-centered bastard who didn’t get on with many people, and Einstein had a few quirks. But I also know that diagnosing a corpse with something, without an autopsy (not that that would really help with autism), many many years after death, is something that only Gregory House should do.
Aside from geniuses though, we also have people like Lord Owen diagnosing several politicians with “Hubris Syndrome”. He lists David Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and George Bush as those that had it.
Again, wtf? Why is this guy claiming these politicians had/have a disorder? Why is it so hard to understand that power corrupts? Why does Bush’s actions need to be explained by “He has hubris syndrome”, when it can just as easily be explained that he’s part-evil? Clearly it must be a disorder that these people have, it can’t be that when someone gets into a position of power, they can be swayed to abuse that power, can it?
Interestingly, he also claims that, “US presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson had bipolar disorder, John F Kennedy was on drugs for Addison’s disease and Richard Nixon abused alcohol. In Britain, Winston Churchill had depression, Herbert Asquith drank and Anthony Eden took amphetamines.” I have no idea whether any of that is meant to be common knowledge, but they are certainly big claims if not.
Larry King has a history of putting cranks on. He’s given psychics plenty of air time too. Of course, now the Reptilian conspiracy, THAT I’m starting to believe in, every time I see King’s old lizard-like face hissing and snapping and flicking up there on the screen.
@LtStorm (#55): I didn’t get the impression that you were dissing people with autism; I was just offering another alternative to the improbable idea that this kid was ‘cured.’ He simply grew up a little, which even people with autism sometimes do.
Asperger’s is in fact a part of the autistic spectrum, and whenever someone cites numbers claiming that autism is ‘exploding’ or ‘epidemic,’ they are including people with Asperger’s and HFA diagnoses in those numbers. LFA (aka Kanner’s) is in truth a debilitating, sad disease (at least from the outside; I have communicated on the internet with people who claim to be non-verbal LFAs but are quite articulate in print – they simply have no interest at all in anything other than their mental lives), but if you’re going to talk only about the really severe cases, you only get to use the numbers for really severe cases.
just went to a new dentist today for an emergency thing (cant wait to have all 3 extracted!), and it was attached to a “medical spa”. When i saw that, some alarms were going off. Looked around for any woo signals….didnt see much, but did find a brochure for the “spa” and most was standard spa BS….except the reiki -recommended for autistics???
Ewww – the picture of Larry King on his website looks like it was taken 20 or 30 years ago. He looks a lot more weathered than that.
Sorry, but what do you mean, “cured”? Usually that means “a return to normal functioning”, but trying to decide what counts as a normally functioning brain – is that even possible? Surely the spectrum would be so wide as to preclude a “normal.”
Can King, Carey, and McCarthy be cured? Absolutely – just feed ’em enough rhubarb greens. It’s an all-natural cure for stupidity. Some forms of taro root are also good although most domesticated varieties have been selected to be non-toxic. I’ve heard a lot about the bitter almond as well, but I wouldn’t recommend it – it’s unpalatably bitter, although it does fill your nostrils with such a lovely scent.
From the linked site about Crystal Children, in Jenny’s own words: “As all of you know, being a mother changes you in ways that you never thought you could imagine. I went from chain smoking and eating cheeseburgers to Hepa air filters and eating vegetarian after my son was born.
So, she ceased chain-smoking AFTER he was born? Has anyone investigated the link between autism and chain-smoking during pregnancy? What about cheeseburgers?
So many correlations, so little time.
On a pickier note: ‘in ways you never thought you could imagine‘? Isn’t that a slightly less stupid way of saying ‘in ways you never imagined you could imagine‘?
By all means, let’s listen to this woman. /rolls eyes
I saw the whole LK show and, btw, the poll is currently sitting at 50:50. I thought MAX WIZNITZER was fantastic. Did anyome see it? The transcripts from the show are up now:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0904/03/lkl.01.html
Woody – its not necessary to resort to sexism to argue against Jenny’s destructive crusade. Just so you know, every time I hear or read something like your tits comment I feel alienated and less at ease in this forum. For your consideration.
Nonverbal autistics who can communicate fluently in writing? That sounds phony to me, LKL. It sounds like a variation on that facilitated communication crap. It’s a popular idea among some parents that a loving, intelligent child is locked inside an autistic facade.
FWIW, my kids go to a K-8 public school in the Seattle area, and over half of the kids in the “middle school” (grades 6-8) are identified as having “IEP’s” (which is something like “individualized education plans”) — what we used to call “special ed” kids in the bad old days.
Does this mean that the frequency of learning disabilities is shooting upward? No: a lot of these kids are dyslexic, which a decade or so ago would not have been diagnosed properly. Quite a few are bilingual but have difficulties in English, certainly not a neurological deficit, but a cultural one. And so on. We’re recognizing that the “norm” is really not all that typical, and we’re also recognizing that there are, quite naturally, all kinds of minds – and there always HAVE been.
No, it’s true that some autistic people who cannot communicate through spoken word can, however, understand language and can communicate through the written word. They may even be able to hear, but unable to process the sounds of language.
It’s common in the ASD message board I’m a member of to have someone grouse about how society treats them because they’re nonverbal, but have perfectly good mental capabilities. Or it was common a few years ago, when I paid more attention to it.
ASD affects everyone differently, and some of us can be considered “HFA” and “LFA” simultaneously, according to what’s being judged.
Damn, 50%/50% when I just voted, with “Yes” (autism can be cured) in front by 5 votes. That’s me angry for the day.
Woody, although the said body parts are the critter’s only real assets, that kinda thing you only think, while getting a woody, – you don’t say it in polite company like this :^)
While the symptoms can be managed and the disabling elements of autism can be overcome, all available evidence indicates that it cannot be cured without disassembling and rebuilding the person’s brain at the cellular level. All available evidence also indicates that what would result from such an effort, even if it was technologically and medically possible, would not be the same person.
There is a huge range of variation in the severity and scope of autistic symptoms, both within the general spectrum and within classical/Kanner autism specifically. Many autistics are able to lead independently, fulfilling lives; the odds of this are dramatically improved with intensive early intervention.
If you had learned about the disorder from a source other than “Rain Man” you would know this.
1. It’s an observation of many parents, consistent with actual research, that a loving and usually intelligent child has a disorder that prevents him or her from “naturally” expressing those qualities in the usual and expected fashion.
2. Fuck you, back.
Note that the poll is now “Do you pray?” – and “yes” is leading “no” two to one. No indication about the numbers of votes, though.
@84
I find it funny how quickly the poll “corrects itself” at this time on a Saturday morning. Too bad you can re-vote though; I’d be curious to have a better ball park of the readership of CNN.com
Although Woody’s comments were tasteless, he does have a point, in that the only reason anyone ever paid attention to her in the first place was her exhibitionism in the public sphere. I don’t understand why she hasn’t been charged with manslaughter.
Posted by: Btodd | April 3, 2009 11:43 PM
So, she ceased chain-smoking AFTER he was born? Has anyone investigated the link between autism and chain-smoking during pregnancy?
Not sure about autism, but there appears to be a link between tobacco use during pregnancy and ADHD. http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/9478/abstract.html
How do you “cure” what is essentially just a different sort of mind?
Maybe you geniuses missed the fact that the former director of the National Institutes of Health was on the panel. Dr. Bernardine Healey said:
Hard to believe how hostile both sides of this argument are. Nitpicking non-sense, polls and such rot. The poll signifies the amount of hope the audience has for a cure. That’s basic Psy101. And half the people don’t see a positive outcome to autism, so why try.
Here’s a poll question, Will there be a cure for Alzheimer’s before you become disabled by it?
This “hope” is based on a willful misunderstanding of what autism actually IS. As such, it is worse than useless, it is dangerous.
plum grenville:
my partner of 14 years is autistic. he has difficulty with language, yet his IQ tests at 180. he prefers to communicate by typing, rather than speaking.
he did not cease to exist when he left his parents’ house, and he learned a long time ago not to waste his love and intelligence on people who write him off completely based on his “facade”.
@Azkyroth
Do tell me, what IS autism? Is it a brain injury? Is it a genetic abnormality? What about a reaction to environmental toxins? Maybe it’s mental illness? Is it even a disease? What IS it?
And while you’re at it, please let us all know what regressive autism IS.
Azkyroth, would it be asking to much for you to spell out your disagreement with me a little more clearly. Feel free to insult me or swear at me if it enhances your ability to be coherent, but try to explain exactly where your position differs from mine. I don’t see any necessary contradiction between what I wrote and what you wrote. I wasn’t talking about all parents (I said “some”) and neither were you (you said “many”).
I’m not talking about anyone within a hunndred IQ points of your husband, bugland. I am talking about severely retarded autistic people with severe emotional deficits who totally nonverbal.
I have no trouble believing that someone who can talk in coherent grammatical sentences can type sentences coherent grammatical sentences. What I have trouble believing is that someone who can’t say say something like, “The butter is in the fridge” or “Mary went to a movie” can turn into a Shakespeare when handed a keyboard.
I also have trouble believing that an autistic person who displays very little empathy is actually dying to say, “I love you Mommy.”
One thing I’d like to clarify is whether nonverbal autistics who type are doing so without any physical assistance from a caregiver, as in facilitated communication, in which the caregiver “supports” the arm of the autistic person while they type, often long passages with fluency and content far beyond their intellectual, educational, or emotional level.
Facilitated communication has been proven to be nothing more than the ouija board effect. A good number of parentws and some professionals were taken in by it, probably because the autistic person being facilitated tended to write things that the caregiver wanted to hear, like declarations of love and gratitude to their parents.
I have spent an hour or two trying to find more info online. I have found a fair number of comments from who say they are autistic and nonverbal, but are able to communicate well by typing. However, all of them turned out not to be totally nonverbal. There are some comments from obviously biased family members and professionals and some news reports, but nothing yet from a credible expert who addresses exactly this issue.
If anyone can direct me to more evidence in either direction, I would appreciate it. Wanting more evidence is not hostility or bias or a lack of openmindedness. Go watch the video PZ just posted, :).
plum grenville:
unfortunately, it is very difficult to accurately judge anyone’s IQ if they have a hard time coping with speech deficits, sensory problems or various other comorbid disorders, nor does intelligence reflect ability to love.
i won’t attempt to address my partner’s capacity for empathy, as i believe i would do him a disservice considering time and space constraints ;-) i can, however, tell you that he can speak aloud at approximately a fourth-grade level under the best of circumstances, when we are alone in our home, which is very quiet and absolutely familiar to him. he can speak significantly less clearly, usually resorting to echolalia, in public places. when exposed to fluorescent lights and ambient noise, he can’t speak at all. his ability to type coherent sentences also varies according to his environment (although under very stressful circumstances, he can still type a few words). so, tell me: is he very intelligent on a quiet day, and suddenly severely retarded when the fire alarm goes off?
please keep in mind that it is his ability to deal with his sensory issues that changes, NOT his ability to comprehend language, and many autistic people are more disabled- not retarded, but DISABLED- than he is.
there are very few Shakespeares in the world, but as far as the ability to type grammatical sentences goes, you might want to read this woman’s story: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dealcc/Anne2.htm (i hope the link works, as i can’t write html to save my life). a few disabled autistic acquaintances of mine also have blogs, but i hesitate to link to them without permission. if you’re very interested i’ll see if i can get back to you on that.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Bugland. It’s good food for thought for me.
glad to, plum grenville; it’s what the month and the blog is for :-)
@ Plum Grenville:
IIrc, we started out saying ‘nonverbal,’ not ‘retarded.’ Many autistics are nonverbal by choice, and many are non-verbal due to speech impediments rather than due to IQ; of all of those, some are assigned lower IQ scores than they would achieve based on their innate intelligence because testers generally interpret ‘does not answer’ as ‘incapable of answering due to lack of intelligence.’
I also have trouble believing that an autistic person who displays very little empathy is actually dying to say, “I love you Mommy.”
I don’t think that any autistics are dying to say ‘I love you’ to anyone, regardless of their feelings. They may *feel* love for a person, and want that person to understand that they are loved, but quite often the do not understand the need for their feeling to be vocalized and may even resent the need for their feeling to be vocalized. If they do learn to say it out loud, they generally do so with the idea that they are compensating for a weakness that the other person has. The fact that empathy is not shown does not necessarily imply that empathy is not felt.
One thing I’d like to clarify is whether nonverbal autistics who type are doing so without any physical assistance from a caregiver, as in facilitated communication…
afaIk they type completely on their own – often totally alone. But I do not know any in person. I totally understand and agree that ‘facilitated communication’ is bullshit.
Wanting more evidence is not hostility or bias or a lack of openmindedness.
This is true. However, you didn’t start out by wanting more evidence. You started out saying that something I wrote ‘sounded like phony crap.’ I will grant, however, that having no frame of reference for the what I wrote other than ‘facilitated communication,’ and given a context in which we are examining the mumbo-jumbo of a wishful mother that doesn’t even qualify as ‘pseudoscience,’ one would certainly start out pointing in that direction.
Hi, I don’t have time to explain at length, just stopping by, but autism isn’t something like cancer or mental retardation or an open spine that has only disadvantages. I have Asperger Syndrome, and I’m thankful for it. Also, I know many autistic folks personally and/or online, who don’t want a cure – at least not a mandatory one.
Check out my blog and, more importantly, neurodiversity. org and autistics.org! Great sites.
The poll is now – ‘do you pray?’
It’s common knowledge that Churchill was bipolar and experienced periods of manic depression. He also drank a lot by modern standards, though it’s debated whether he was genuinely an alcoholic (the standards of that time were very different).
As to Eden (having read a lengthy biography of him for my A-Level coursework a few years ago) he had serious medical problems and became addicted to painkillers. His health issues were one of the reasons he handled the Suez crisis so poorly, despite his brilliant intellect.