Editorial #101: From the Floor
Floortime can change eye color!!!
Well, no it can’t.
As Autism Politico reported in Editorial #96, Autism is Genetic. Yet a bunch of parents in Eastern Los Angeles have filed a class-action lawsuit to
force the Eastern Los Angeles County Regional Center to continue to provide the popular autism therapy known as DIR.
What part of the “autism is genetic” do parents not understand?
DIR is the basis for Floortime, a popular method in which a therapist follows a child’s lead during play activities to develop communication and social skills.
Why do they think DIR, an unproven therapy, is going to change genetic code?
Autism Politico wants to know.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #100: In Memoriam
Rather than make significant hoopla over the fact that this is Autism Politico’s 100th blog entry, we will take time to honor all of those autistics who have accidentally drowned or who have been deliberately drowned by a parent or caretaker. While we certainly honor all the other autistics who have been killed by their caretakers or via neglect, or those who have committed suicide, we are going to focus on one particular case for this blog entry.
But first, a slap in the face to Autism Speaks for pioneering the way for parents to drown their autistic kids guilt free:
At times, the pain has become almost unbearable. In a documentary entitled Autism: True Lives, Harry describes the very large pond next to their house in the Hamptons. “We put locks on all the doors leading outside because we didn’t want David possibly going into the pond. But there were times when”–he stops, then talks through his tears–”you hoped he did, because you wouldn’t want him to suffer like this all his life.”
Everyone urged the Slatkins to cut this from the documentary, Laura says, but they left it in. “Since then, we’ve spoken to many families who say, “We all share that hidden, dark thought.”
If you read this article, you know what has most recently happened:
A woman who drowned her four-year-old daughter in a bathtub six years ago told a Toronto court yesterday she hoped to have children in the future — then walked out a free woman.
In a statement of facts submitted to the court, the prosecution and the defence agreed to a manslaughter charge and the lenient term noting the significance of Peng’s bipolar disorder when coupled with raising an autistic child.
Editorial #99: North and South Korea
Autism Politico has learned that North Korea has threatened to blow up South Korea’s propaganda facilities.
Autism Politico finds this interesting. Judging from what the world knows about North Korea, it is an underdeveloped country which has faced famine and economic hardship for some time now. The country, we are told, is repressive, and the country’s leadership fill its citizens with their OWN propaganda.
By comparison, South Korea is a democratic society which is fairly wealthy, its wealth attributed mostly to its capitalism and free market economy.
These two countries are politically and ideologically opposed to one another, with North Korea still insisting South Korea is its on, and South Korea not desiring to link up with North Korea until the North becomes more moderate, capitalistic, and democratic.
While it is perhaps true that one country ought not to be subjected to the rants and ravings of another, what is South Korea ranting and raving about that is so terrible? South Korea is prosperous, with the majority of its citizens living happily. North Korea is miserable and impoverished.
Shouldn’t North Korea try to learn something from South Korea? Shouldn’t North Korea admit its programs aren’t working and concede defeat? Shouldn’t it join up under the leadership of South Korea?
The same can be said for the autism community. As one side continues to improve the lives of autistics, the other side subjects autistics to quack medicine, refusing to believe the FACTS put forward by the autism community that bases its treatments in science-based medicine. The louder the legitimate faction of the autism community trumpets science, the more militant the quack medicine faction gets.
Autism Politico supposes that because the quack medicine faction is so poorly regarded by the autism community, and because the quack medicine faction has no victories under its belts, it can’t help but rant and rage like a spoiled child. But the quack medicine faction would do much better to concede defeat and join up with the legitimate side under the legitimate side’s leadership. It would be better for autistics all around.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #98: Stemming the Tide of Quack Therapies
Autism Politico has learned that stem cell therapies are the latest quack treatment/cure for autism.
New medical clinics are popping up around the world, offering patients “cures” for ailments ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease. These clinics have one thing in common: They say their treatments are based on the latest advances in stem-cell research.
Isn’t that nice?
And that has a lot of stem-cell scientists worried. They fear patients are wasting money on therapies that are little more than a dose of hope and hype.
“The false claims and unscrupulous methods through which some clinics attract patients has quickly become one of the most important concerns facing the field today,” said Drew Lyall, executive director of the Stem Cell Network based in
Ottawa.
Autism Politico has preached enough on quack medicine and the dangers of trying it, but people do not seem to listen.
One thing that is advantageous for this particular form of quack therapy is that it is expensive. People are paying for themselves and their autistic “loved ones” to go to China so that the autism may be treated and cured.
The more this therapy costs, the better it is. It is like having a fine and a tax on stupidity. The only disadvantage to all this is that money that could be spent teaching parents and caregivers how to better care for autistics is wasted on crap. The autistic suffers no matter which route is chosen.
What is to be done?
Well, if you come from a domestic and civilized country, one thing to do is write legislators to make such quack therapies illegal until they are proven to work. Another is to write legislators making it illegal for people to take children and disabled people who cannot make choices for themselves out of the country for the purpose of subjecting them to quack therapy.
Punishment would be threefold:
1) The disabled person or child who is subjected to the therapy must permanently be removed from the home and placed in foster care.
2) The offender(s) must be subjected to the quack therapy.
3) The offender(s) must serve prison time.
4) The offenders must pay a settlement to their loved one for the trauma they have caused, with liquidation of the estate a viable option for payment of said settlement. The monetary amount of the settlement would be determined by a court.
Autism Politico thinks this is more than fair and quite lenient.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #96: Genetics Main Cause of Autism
Autism Politico has learned that a new Study solidifies genetics as main cause of autism.
A large new study that included patients from South Florida strengthens the growing evidence that inborn genetic factors are the main cause of autism, researchers said.
Patients with autism had almost double the number of certain genetic mutations linked to the disease as did healthy people, researchers said in the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study also identified three genes to be studied as possible causes.
It is commonly accepted now that genetics ARE the cause of autism, but there are always quacks and cranks out there who keep blaming vaccines and other environmental factors as being the cause.
The article says:
The findings bolster the belief among many scientists that 90 percent of autism cases are inherited, although the study does not rule out the possibility that factors in the environment may be needed to trigger the condition in some cases.
No doubt we will hear people from the peanut gallery saying “See! See! Environmental triggers are not ruled out yet. That PROVES that environmental triggers cause autism.”
Autism Politico is not going to rehash its opinion of such people, but will say that because autism may be inherited in 90% of the cases, it means that parents who have produced autistic offspring have their own genes to blame.
So remember you hypercritical parents, before you see the faults in your offspring, take a look at your own genetic code which produced them. What you criticize in your children, you criticize in yourself.
Now here is something worth considering….
- We know that in the future, it is anticipated that genetic tests for autism will result in the abortions of many autistic fetuses.
- We know that society as a whole has a negative opinion of autistics.
- We know that society as a whole has little sympathy for parents who give birth to children with autism.
So…
Instead of offending right to lifers by killing fetuses with autism, here is a better solution: Why don’t we genetically test parents who would vote yes to abort their autistic fetuses, and sterilize those parents so they cannot breed?
After all, if they feel they don’t want “faulty” offspring, or that they don’t want “reject” children, or that they are incapable of handling autistic children, they must be bad parents all around, being shallow in the first two instances and incapable of being parents in the third.
It’s a good idea, and no babies will be aborted.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #95: Over-Medicated Children
Autism Politico has learned that nearly one in three children are on medication of some kind.
More than one in four children with health insurance in the U.S., and nearly 30 percent of all children from 10 to 19, take at least one prescription to treat a chronic condition. The most substantial increases over the past nine years have been in antipsychotic, diabetes and asthma drugs, according to the Medco report.
Is this a sign that kids nowadays are getting better medical treatment than past generations of kids have gotten?
Maybe.
But it could be an indicator that gone are the days when good discipline and understanding parents paved the way to good mental health, and good nutrition and enforced sleeping habits paved the way to good physical health.
Is there any reason why the parents of today cannot let kids be kids instead of forcing them into all kinds of extracurricular activities whilst feeding their children junk food?
Scrap the video games, most of the extracurricular activities, and the internet, and what you would have are kids who learn social skills by playing with other kids, kids who get good and natural exercise out of doors, and kids who develop a sense of self-knowledge and self-esteem.
Autism Politico thinks that maybe it is the parents of over-medicated kids, and not the over-medicated kids themselves, which ought to be medicated for doping up their kids so much.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #94: Just spotted in Ireland
Autism Politico has learned that the measles rate in Ireland is now the second highest in Europe.
The highest incidence was in Bulgaria, where 11 children died from measles in the first three months of 2010.
Regarding Ireland specifically:
While vaccination rates in young children have improved over the past few years, they plummeted after the publication in 1998 of a flawed study linking the MMR vaccine with autism.
The prestigious medical journal the Lancet has since retracted the article and its author Dr Andrew Wakefield was recently struck off the UK medical register.
Finally:
In total, more than 12,000 measles cases were reported from 32 European countries in the first three months of this year, a sixfold increase on the same period last year. More than 10,000 cases were reported in Bulgaria and more than 700 cases in France.
Autism Politico can’t wait until these children grow up and berate their parents for abiding the suppositions of a doctor that was struck off the UK medical register.
Autism Politico also can’t wait until Age of Autism and other MMR-causes-autism blogs cheerfully inform people that the deaths associated with measles were worth it. Better to be dead than have autism. Right A of A? How wonderful it must be for the parents of dead children to know that their kids won’t be getting autism, and that even though the research surrounding Wakefield is understood by the scientific community to be invalid, that their unflinching belief in Wakefield’s research was still worth it.
If you believe that thimerosal/MMR causes autism, ask yourself if you are willing to die for not vaccinating yourself, or if you are willing to risk letting your children die. And if you ARE willing to risk having your children die, ask yourself if you would let them walk in front of a speeding car, or commit suicide by pills, or allow them to play with loaded guns. If the answer to these questions is no, then ask why it is you are a hypocrite when it comes to vaccinations, and ask yourself why this ingrained belief on your part should not be seen as some sort of psychological malady by the authorities. Ask yourself why society should not take your children away from you.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #93: Nice Try. No Cigar.
Autism Politico is tired of reading about people who try to use their Asperger Syndrome as an excuse for their criminal behavior.
Here we have a case of a boy throwing a chunk of ice through a bus windshield as the bus drove by. And guess what?
A solicitor for the accused said: “There’s no getting away from the fact that he has been an idiot.”
She added that Cummings suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome and claimed he had not known what he was doing.
Autism Politico doesn’t know the boy, but does know that autistics generally know right from wrong. It is for this reason that Autism Politico is inclined to disbelieve the assertions of Cummings’s solicitor. In all likelihood, the sheriff’s viewpoint is the more accurate:
Sheriff McCreadie noted that a background report referred to the accused as a “binge drinker”.
He then caused “mayhem” in the community after downing cheap alcohol.
Autism Politico doesn’t care what the motive was for throwing a chunk of ice through a moving bus’ windshield. The bus could have crashed. People could have gotten killed. There was no excuse for that crime, and any solicitor who uses the “AS made him do it” or “AS prevented him from understanding what he was doing” defense is simply giving AS people a bad name and perpetuating the myth that people with AS have an inability to know right from wrong. But then, how many AS people to you see right now raising a stink about what the solicitor said?
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Editorial #92: Spare Us the Circus
Please read this article and then tell Autism Politico why we should care about Daniel Tammet’s talent.
Put Tammet on a talk show and make him perform his tricks and he is a hero.
Put an autistic with identical skill in a math class and his peers will beat him up after school for being a know-it-all.
It is not uncommon for autistics with savant skills to actually hide those skills because they are afraid they will be made fun of if they “out” themselves.
Society makes it difficult for autistics to thrive. If some sports nut want to recite all the stats for all the players on the 1949 Boston Red Sox, people, especially men, will think that’s a great thing. But if some autistic wants to recite the stats on the Periodic Table of the Elements, something arguably much more inportant than a bunch of baseball statistics, why, people will think that autistic is weird and tell him or her to shut up.
Tammet may have syneasthesia. Wowie! So do many autistics. But Autism Politico wonders if Tammet’s synaesthesia would be so mesmerizing if he DIDN’T have a savant skill. Would he be thought to be schizophrenic? Suffering from waking hallucinations, perhaps?
Autism Politico believes it is time for society to quit trotting out autistics like circus ponies, and for circus pony autistics, like Tammet to keep himself in the tent by choice. The rest of the autism world is still being denigrated and Tammet isn’t doing much about it that Autism Politico can see.
Replies to this editorial are welcome.
Autism Politico
