Posted on 01/09/2008 7:58:35 PM PST by neverdem
This is a parent's nightmare...
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Interesting. I really don’t know that much about autism, but my new neighbor’s son is autistic, so I guess I’m about to find out a bit more. I would want to know more about the parents’ personal histories to see if there are any similarities - environmental or anything else.
Do you know offhand of any famous personalities in history who were thought to be autistic?
Hmmm. A generation or two ago, one of the anti-drug scare stories was that marijuana could cause genetic damage. How many of the kids with the genetic defect had a parent who had smoked weed?
I had that debate on another thread a day or two ago. Neither of us convinced the other.
I doubt it. I know too many people who smoked dope who have normal children. I don’t know if additives/pesticides play a factor now, however.
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I'm am either missing something here or the writer screwed up big time. I would not call a correlation on such as small incidence.
Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg has Asperger's Syndrom, a form of autism. Also, I believe Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell are thought to have had Asperber's. People with Asperger's often have an ability (or disability depending on how you look at it) to hyper focus on things that interest them. They can become great success stories if they can focus in the right area for them.
My 7 year old grandson made a hole-in-one at our local country club last summer after only playing 2 or 3 times. He definitely has the ability to focus in on things, so much so that at first we thought he had a hearing problem. He sees in a very 3 dimensional way. If he can deal with the problems and focus in the right way, we think he will be an inventor or engineer of some kind.
I have a grandson with some problems, as well. He had a traumatic birth (his head got stuck in the birth canal and he swallowed amniotic fluid and developed pneumonia). He’s had problems focusing on instructions given. It’s almost like he’s someplace else and not listening, but when it comes to focusing on a project, especially building, mechanical arts, etc., he is a master.
I have a autistic daughter. Did alot of reading on possible causes for autism. If autism is just a natural genetic problem that was misdiagnosted in the past, then historical retarded kid rate should be at 1 per 150 (assuming autistic kids are lumped together with retarded kids). Our current combined rate of retarded with autistic kids per 1000 kids is much higher than past historical data. We are doing something in the modern life style that is triggering autism in kids who are prone to it that did not happen in the past. IMHO it is the preschool vaccines. It is not the mercury preservative, but in my opinion it may be the large numbers of vaccines givened to the child in such a short period of time and there are possible drugn interaction of side effects with a young child’s body which is undergoing rapid development (especially the brain). We are looking at up to 16 vaccines before the child enters Kindergarten and the states are still adding more required vaccines to the list. When I went to school over 40 years ago, I was givened only 7 shots for school admission. This theory comes from a new theory on the Gulf War Syndrome that struck our soldiers in the first Iraqi war. Soldiers were developing many symptoms that could not be narrowed down to one particular cause, however some military doctors are wondering if the huge multitudes of vaccines givened to the soldier in one day before deployment can be the cause (side affects interacting with side affects). I would like to see a state do an experiment and spread the vaccine schedule out or start eliminating vaccines against nonlethal child diseases and track the autism rate in the state.
IIRC, I believe this genetic anomaly is one of about ten associated so far with autistic spectrum disorders. From the link in comment# 1:
Replication in an Icelandic Sample
We observed that 3 of 299 subjects with autism spectrum disorder from Iceland carried the 16p11.2 deletion, a finding that was consistent with the 1% frequency observed in children at Children's Hospital Boston who had sporadic developmental delay or autism spectrum disorder (Table 5 of the Supplementary Appendix). One of these deletions was de novo, the origin of the second deletion was not known, and one was inherited from a father who had attention deficithyperactivity disorder (ADHD). By contrast, in a control sample of 18,834 subjects who did not undergo screening for a psychiatric or language disorder, only two deletions were observed in other words, the deletion was observed more often in patients with autism by a factor of 100 (P=3.7x105). However, in a study of the same population by investigators at deCODE Genetics, this deletion was observed at a markedly increased rate in subjects with a psychiatric or language disorder. This study showed that the deletion was present in 1 of 648 patients with schizophrenia, 1 of 420 patients with bipolar disorder, 1 of 203 patients with ADHD (the father of a child with autism, as noted above), and 1 of 3000 patients with panic disorder, anxiety, depression, or addiction. In addition, 1 of 748 patients with dyslexia carried the deletion. Overall, in the Icelandic samples, the carrier frequency among patients with autism was 1%; the frequency was approximately 0.1% among patients with a psychiatric or language disorder and 0.01% in the general population.
“We are doing something in the modern life style that is triggering autism in kids who are prone to it that did not happen in the past”
I tend to agree with you on that point. Admittedly, I haven’t read up on the increasing number of vaccinations given at earlier ages, so I can’t comment, but certainly you could be right. Lifestyles have completely changed in the past 40 years and have become increasingly unhealthy for numerous reasons. An increasingly sterile and enclosed environment is setting us up for a big fall, I fear.
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also, she is a bit paranoid and hyper sensitive to criticism and will go on and on if you say something she doesn't agree with....
when she was little, she was relatively happy.....a loner though...she played with her brother a lot....
seems as she grew older, she withdrew more from other kids....paranoid of them .....she probably had a right to be since kids pick on anyone who is differant....
if I had only realized early on maybe I could have done school, etc differantly.....
He had to have someone with him constantly as he would walk off without knowing where he was.
I recall taking grandchildren to the zoo when he was a little guy. One person had to have hold of his hand or he would wander away. He wanted to go certain directions because he could read the signs as to what direction were the elephants, etc. Mom and dad had to keep their doors securely locked with high latches to keep him confined.
There are a few horror stories of him getting away.
Anyway, he has progressed remarkedly to where he is now ready for college and has been accepted at one of the top rated schools in the country.
He has also progressed socially to where he was a homecoming king candidate this year. He's a little geeky but his outlook is bright but he's come a long, long way. We would never have expected this considering the profound problems he had has a youngster.
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