Editorial #264: The Dreaded DSM V

Autism Politico is aware that the DSM V is going to be revised. Soon, it will lump the five autism categories into one, thereby voiding previous diagnoses.

While we think this is an excellent way to get rid of people who don’t deserve to be spectrumized (such as people diagnosed by school psychologists for the purpose of getting funding for special needs students who are not really on the spectrum) our greater concern is about the people advocating for a reinstatement of the spectrum categories.

In looking at the self-diagnosed individuals who are in an uproar over this, Autism Politico thinks they should butt out. They haven’t been officially diagnosed yet, ergo nothing that happens in regard to the DSM V is of interest to them.

The good news for them is this: Now that the DSM V is introducing one broad sweeping category for autism, it should be easier than ever for self-diagnosed people to finally get diagnosed. If they fail to get a diagnosis once the DSM V goes into effect, then we can pretty much toss them off our radar for good, don’t you think?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

 

 

Editorial #251: We’re back! And Lisa Jo Rudy is Gone!

We at Autism Politico have come out of retirement because Lisa Jo Rudy is going into hers (in a manner of speaking). She says:

Note: as this is the last blog post I’m writing for this site, I have closed the post to comments.  To those of you who enjoyed reading my blogs, thanks so much for the kind words!

Autism Politico doesn’t know why Lisa Jo has ended the comments but knows that Lisa Jo has a habit of closing comments when people who emphatically disagree with her decisions or opinions post their opinions. Such was the case with the notorious Zoey Roberts article she posted.

Many people in Facebook forums are cheering the exit of Rudy, who, for the duration of her reign at Autism.About.com, never really seemed to have a firm opinion on anything, never really seemed to take a firm stance against unproven therapies, and sometimes seemed to make her readers wonder if her son was a guinea pig for autism treatments.

Even as she exists, she throws in some parting shots at the autism community which some people are interpreting as bitter:

Many people on the autism spectrum are amazing human beings.  Many are not.

says Rudy, seemingly in exasperation. Our counter to that is a restatement of something we picked up from a poster in a WrongPlanet community: ALL autistics are amazing, even if some of them behave like jerks.

So we see now how Rudy has viewed the community which she allegedly served.

Rudy says:

This so-called “autism community” includes some very scary people.  Beware of these people, and try not to allow them to influence the decisions you make on behalf of your children.  When sites like Age of Autism LITERALLY photoshop images of horns and tails onto people with whom they disagree, you can make a shrewd guess that they have an agenda that they are trying to push.

But she posts this unaware that there is a big brew-ha-ha going on right this minute across Facebook about a person she featured in one of her articles. This person has many different online aliases and is badgering people with them to the point where people are visibly angry. Rudy billed this person as an advocate. So while Rudy may say that AofA photoshops images of horns and tails onto people, Rudy may have knowingly or unknowingly pasted a halo onto person many people consider to be a demon.

Another nugget of wisdom from Ms. Rudy, who invites us to follow her on her new blog:

Gold-plated, double-blind, controlled, expensive studies may tell you far less than you think they should.

Yes, Lisa, let us all disregard these studies, which are put together by a scientific method which is accepted worldwide by researchers. Let us all reject these studies, which are done in such a manner as to reduce error ratios to a minimum, and quantifiable, reproducible results to a maximum. Let us ignore the fact that there is a control group. What we should want, Autism Politico gathers, is a random sampling of people who give vague opinions on things, and this should be our source of knowledge.

Autism Politico notices that Lisa Jo Rudy was always “open-minded” about ABA therapy, but now that she has no interest in Autism.About.com, she tells us that for HER child:

We specifically stayed away from ABA because, quite frankly, when it’s done poorly (and it often is) it is dehumanizing and disrespectful.  Worse, it is focused entirely upon behavior, and not upon the human being that is your child. 

Never in our recollection did she try to discourage other people from ABA. Autism Politico guesses that while she certainly would not expose her own kid to ABA, she didn’t care as much what other parents did with their kids.

Now Autism Politico must state that we do not believe Rudy is a bad person. We actually LIKE some of the things she has to say. For instance, when Rudy says:

The goal of autism therapies and treatments, in my opinion, should be to help the individual with autism to become as fully human as they can be.  Being “fully human” means so much more than being typical.  It means learning, loving, creating, imagining, laughing, playing, singing, being silly, having fun.

Autism Politico hears two things:

1) Rudy genuinely wishes the best for autistics.

2) And she must be naive, because she seems to think we are less than fully human.

Autism Politico is pleased that Lisa Jo Rudy, who has expressed the idea that we are not as fully human as others, is leaving. Good riddance, and goodbye.

And no, we will not be reading your new blog.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #248: Government Healthcare and What It Means for Quack Therapy Believers

Autism Politico can’t wait until national healthcare comes into effect in the US because it will mean that all the curbies who believe in quack treatments will be required to buy health insurance which will not pay for the treatments they want to get for the autistics they supposedly love and care for.

It’s adding insult to injury and boy does it feel good!

Won’t it be great to see them lobby the government for legitimizing those treatments and see the government turn a deaf ear on their pleas? Won’t it be great to see the more militant among their numbers being labeled as “threats”? It’s a good way to shut up these people, and hopefully it will put an end to the quack treatments too.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #246: Getting Autistics Off the Dole

Think about this carefully. Schools are diagnosing autism where autism doesn’t exist so they can get funding to care for special needs students which may not really be special needs.  Some of these kids may be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders and are growing up to claim that because they have these disorders, they are disabled and cannot work.

So our tax dollars are going to pay for these people to be on disability.

Autism Politico’s opinion is that everyone who is diagnosed with any kind of disability for which they may become eligible for disability payments needs to have a thorough exam by accredited medical professionals to determine whether they even have that disability. 

If it turns out that the people claiming certain disabilities do not have them, then they should be denied disability payments, and the school districts which applied for funds on their behalf should be required to return them to the federal government. Also, given that people with these falsely diagnosed disabilities benefitted from special accommodations made by the school, they should be made to pay some compensation, perhaps even going as far as to retake school courses without assistance to see if they can achieve the same results without accommodations, like every other student who does not get them.

Also, people falsely diagnosed should have the right to sue their schools for compensation after being exploited for so long, and they should have the right to sue their parents for being complicit in such activities.

It is time to stop favoring people who are falsely diagnosed. It will save taxpayers money, get people off the government dole, and cause falsely diagnosed people to work harder for a living.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #243: Are schools your friend?

Autism Politico would like its readers to carefully the implications of schools diagnosing children with any disorder.

If a child has a disorder, a child may be entitled to additional funding to meet the educational needs of this special needs child. Autism Politico agrees that all children are entitled to an education and that all special needs students are entitled to whatever funding they may be entitled to under the law.

But Autism Politico also questions whether or not schools are qualified to make a diagnosis of any kind. They are not medical professionals. As far as autism goes, there are, under the DSM IV, different kinds of autism, and a medical diagnosis can take years, rather than hours or days to reach and accurate diagnose.

If a school can identify a child with special needs, then they must develop an IEP for that child within a specific time period, and they may apply for certain kinds of funding, depending on where these schools are situated. The amount of funding they are entitled to is also dependent on what the laws are in their locality.

In a time when cuts in funding are made to education, it seems that schools have additional motivation to secure funding wherever they can, and so the question arises as to whether or not children who are quickly diagnosed are properly diagnosed, or whether or not a diagnosis even exists.

While we as taxpayers can rest easy when we know our tax dollars are used for good purposes, when we see the number of autism diagnosis climb dramatically over a period of years, and when we see most of these diagnoses being made by schools rather than qualified medical professionals, can we continue to rest easily?

Could it be that schools are diagnosing special needs children so that they can make up for cuts in funding to regular education elsewhere?

A diagnosis follows someone the rest of their life the same way a conviction for a crime follows them for the rest of their lives.

Isn’t a false diagnosis under these circumstances the equivalent of exploitation of children for monetary gain? In which case, are schools our friends?

Keep in mind that when a child is diagnosed falsely, the parent of that child may believe the diagnosis and subject that child to all manner of legitimate and quack cures, causing themselves considerable expense, and causing their own child considerable trauma. All so that schools can make money.

Is this what we want from out schools?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #240: Good News! Two Autism Schools in Two Years Have Problems!

Autism Politico is pleased to hear that a private autism school has lost accreditation and another one has closed within the past two years.

The story is a pretty extensive one, but we will focus on three small paragraphs of a very long article:

John Locke Academy, a mainstream high school, and the special needs School of Autistic Healing, opened as companion schools two years ago. They are largely run by the family of Bob Jones, the real estate developer blamed by many teachers and parents for the August 2008 closure of Utah Southvalley Community School (USC), a Murray private school formerly known as Woodland Hills.

Jones had acquired the financially strapped Woodland Hills, for children with Asperger’s syndrome and other cognitive and behavioral impairments, a year earlier and hoped to revive it, partly through introducing a comprehensive sports program. But the school suffered rapid teacher turnover —­ at least 50 teachers quit or were fired in one year — and some parents complained about the new focus on athletics.

The “School of Autistic Healing” is a silly name for a school seeing as how no government agency will state that there is a cure for autism. “Healing” implies that there is a way to a cure.

With regard to athletics, as we know, some autistics may suffer problems with coordination. Having them play sports if they don’t want to might cause them to feel even more inept that they already do. That a school would not understand this goes to show how little they know about autism.

At the time, Jones argued he had kept the school from closing and lost his own money in the process. In March 2009, he filed for bankruptcy, leaving behind $6.5 million in debts both from his real estate ventures and USC. The Utah Office of Debt Collection reports there are still 30 outstanding cases for unpaid wages to school employees.

That he invested his own money is nice, but considering the debts the ultimate fate of this man’s adventures, it’s best that the school closed before the attendees came to suffer from lack of proper funding. This is not to imply that the students would have suffered, but it appears from this story that the person behind the two schools doesn’t have much knowledge about autism or how to deal with autistics.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #239: Heavy Metals in Makeup

Autism Politico would like all moms who believe that mercury causes autism to concede the possibility that the heavy metals in your cosmetics may have been absorbed into your system and poisoned your baby while it was  in-utero, thereby making the baby autistic.  

The group tested 49 makeup products and found all of them contained varying amounts of heavy metals, including one lip gloss which contained levels of arsenic and lead exceeding limits recommended by Health Canada.

But that’s not all:

Tests found that all of the products tested contained trace amounts of nickel, lead and beryllium. On average, products contained four of eight “metals of concern.” All but one of the products, however, contained metal amounts within Health Canada’s draft guidelines.

Maybe there’s mercury in there too?

One thing we must admit to…putting on makeup is a social thing. There really is no hygienic purpose for using it. So moms, in the interest of being social, you may have contributed to your kid’s autism. How does that make you feel?

Let’s hear you speak up!

Alternatively, you could get with the program and recognize that autism is genetic. It;s what the rest of the world has believed since 2007.

The discovery was part of the largest genome scan ever attempted in autism research. Called the Autism Genome Project, the initiative involved 137 researchers from 50 institutions in nine countries, including Canada.

 Working together, the scientists were able to share samples, data, and expertise to analyze DNA from about 1,600 families worldwide.

Of course we know most mercury-causes-autism people (the flat-earthers of our generation)  refuse to entertain the idea that they might be wrong. But we just thought that if you anti-vaxers are willing to sue doctors, governments, and vaccine manufacturers for “causing” autism in your kids, perhaps you’d like to sue yourselves for wearing makeup with heavy metals in them, because you could be just as guilty as you think the vaccine manufacturers supposedly are.

By the way, why don’t you people who wear makeup subject yourselves to chelation therapy?  You might become autistic if you don’t.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #237: Stem Cell Clinic Closes After Baby Death

Autism Politico is aware that

Europe’s largest stem cell clinic, which is at the centre of a scandal over the death of a baby given an injection into the brain, has been shut down.

What does this have to do with autism? Well…

Experts in stem cell research had accused the clinic of preying on vulnerable patients, desperately seeking a cure for such illnesses and diseases as cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

As usual, Autism Politico is of the opinion that parents who wish use treatments not approved of by their governments on their children should try these treatments on themselves first. We hold this opinion because we know that any parent who loves their child wouldn’t think of subjecting their children to treatments which are not only potentially fatal, but are also not government approved.

Or maybe we’re wrong…

The clinic had come under increasing scrutiny following the death of an 18-month-old boy in August last year, in a case first revealed by The Sunday Telegraph. The child, who was from Romania, was injected in the brain with stem cells but suffered internal bleeding. Three months earlier, a boy aged 10 from Azerbaijan had almost died when the same procedure went wrong.

You never know what parents will do. But Autism Politico wonders if there is some kind of diagnosis in the DSM IV that describes parents who do such things? Will the parents who brought their children to the clinic be charged with child endangerment?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #228: Europe and France Hit By Measles

Autism Politico has read that Europe and France are being hit by measles.

Europe, especially France, has been hit by a major outbreak of measles, which the U.N. health agency is blaming on the failure to vaccinate all children.

Well, what did you expect?

The World Health Organization said Thursday that France had 4,937 reported cases of measles between January and March — compared with 5,090 cases during all of 2010. In all, more than 6,500 cases have been reported in 33 European nations.

It doesn’t sound like much…yet. But what if…what if…the virus, thanks to incubation in its hosts,  mutates so that it becomes resistant to vaccines? Then there night be trouble. Of course, we have no idea if this will happen or not. We are not doctors, but…what if?

But vaccination rates across Europe have been patchy in recent years and have never fully recovered from a discredited 1998 British study linking the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism.

Question: Would this discredited 1998 British study be the one anti-vaxers still stand behind to this day? Could be.

Well, in the past, AP has reported about measles outbreaks, and not too many people paid attention.

http://autismpolitico.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/editorial-94-just-spotted-in-ireland/

http://autismpolitico.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/editorial-109-a-lesson-to-be-learned/

http://autismpolitico.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/editorial-110-a-second-lesson-to-be-learned/

http://autismpolitico.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/editorial-124-measles-outbreak-in-malawi/

http://autismpolitico.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/editorial-141-next-time-it-could-be-you/

http://autismpolitico.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/editorial-153-65-of-measles-cases-in-us-in-unvaccinated-people/

Maybe when measles comes knocking on your own doorstep, you WILL start paying attention.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.  

Editorial #227: Gluten-Free Diets Fail. Now Go Quack Somewhere Else.

Autism Politico is aware that yet another study claims gluten-free and casein-free diets fail as a treatment or cure for autism. We’re dismayed that some stubborn parents will ignore this study because it will mean that these people will further waste their money on terrible tasting food that annoys autistics.

A popular belief that specific dietary changes can improve the symptoms of children with autism was not supported by a tightly controlled University of Rochester study, which found that eliminating gluten and casein from the diets of children with autism had no impact on their behavior, sleep or bowel patterns.

The study is the most controlled diet research in autism to date.

Some of these parents should be going to therapy to try to find out why it is they refuse to believe scientific and medical studies except those which are discredited by all reputable scientific authorities.

Unlike previous studies, they also controlled for other interventions, such as what type of behavioral treatments children received, to ensure all observed changes were due to dietary alterations.

These controls were necessary so that it could be shown once and for all, that when autistics are subjected ONLY to gluten-free casein-free diets, that the diets did nothing for the autistics. Ergo no need to waste money on gluten-free/casein free foods.

Following the gluten and casein snacks, study participants had no change in attention, activity, sleep or frequency or quality of bowel habits. Children demonstrated a small increase in social language and interest in interaction after the challenges with gluten or casein on the Ritvo Freeman Real Life Rating Scale; however, it did not reach statistical significance. That means because of the small difference and the small number of participants in the study, the finding may be due to chance alone.

Now can we please move on and quit with the stubborn insistence that this therapy works? Instead, why don’t we focus on the fact that some parents of autistic children simply cannot accept their autistics the way they are and want to change them and make them more manageable and compliant, like well-trained dogs?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.