Re: Vaccine - Autism link
Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2014 12:26 pm
BrandonD » Fri Aug 22, 2014 10:57 am wrote:Plutonia » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:22 pm wrote:Just one other thing: researchers are looking for a genetic marker for autism because autism very clearly runs in families and one of the ways that undiagnosed adult autistics are becoming aware of their own autism is via their child's, or family member's child, autism diagnosis. There are no statistics for adult autistics, as far as I'm aware, but more than one of my friends have "come out" as autistic in this way, in recent years.
This example of people "coming out" as autistic is the type of thing that I would associate with the social/behavioral characteristics commonly associated with autism. People in this area generally did not have any physical or developmental abnormalities when growing up.
My nephew has both physical and developmental abnormalities, I think this is a crucial difference between the two. Because one can be conceivably dismissed as just a behavioral "difference", while the other is truly a disorder.
What you said here ^^ is a great illustration of confounding autism can be! You present the opinion that your brother has "real" autism because he has obvious abnormalities but you say that he is apparently being treated effectively with ABA therapy. Of course, ABA - Applied Behavior Analysis - is Bahaviorism derived from BF Skinners work: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755377/
Also, it happens quite often that an autistic considered profoundly retarded with be discovered to be highly intelligent once someone has figured out how to help him or her to communicate. Carly Fleishman is one case. Also Tito Mukhopadhyay - whose mother, Soma Mukhopadhyay, developed a technique called rapid prompting which she used with Keli Thorsteinsson who promptly requested to be taught to play piano because he had been composing music in his head since he was a toddler: http://www.autismdailynewscast.com/docu ... urel-joss/
And you probably don't know this but autistic self-advocates are constantly being accused of being "not autistic", it's probably the most common way that autistic voices are invalidated. Google the "Amanda Baggs controversy" to see how far it got taken in her case. Then go here to see what Amanda has said for herself, here: http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1073/1239 or here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... anda+baggs
So back to ABA: we've been so inculcated with the crisis model of autism that the simple fact that used to be commonly known is that autism used to be considered a childhood condition because most autistic difficulties, even significant impairments, improve over time - just naturally, on their own - so that autism was seen as a condition that one outgrew. What that means now is that the prognosis for those who receive early intervention is about the same as for those who don't. This was so in my case, which was severe enough that I was considered a candidate for institutionalization.
So if it occurred to you to wonder about treating autism with Behaviorism (which, since you are a Rigger, it aught to have), you should know that Ivar Lovaas developed ABA initially to treat "sissy" boys and switched to autistic children when the idea of curing homosexuality lost it's cache. Lovaas reported what were considered to be spectacular successes with autism but what most don't realize is that he was employing such "adversives" as slaps and electro-shock.
Here is Michelle Dawson's brilliant critique of ABA: http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html
BTW, Michelle Dawson is autistic, has significant impairments, is a ground-breaking autism researcher, and aught to be required reading, she writes so cogently about autism.
Here is an excellent pos-aut backgrounder resource that may also be useful: http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/