Autism

[Michaelangelica]

yes Infinate Now she designs "humane killing systems"> one part of that is the cuddle. it's almost enough to make you vegetarian.
Funny I had to learn to think in words and not pictures.

Just after I posted that (10mins) I got this email from

Gimundo.com who run a "good news" service. (I often get tired of all the terrible things and the "Isn't it awful" brigade.)

Autistic Girl is "Miss Dolittle"
1/10/2008

Four-year-old Rose Willcocks is autistic. She won't look her parents in the eye, and is almost completely mute.
But one day, the family took a trip to a local farm in England as part of Rose's therapy – and to her parents' surprise, she suddenly transformed into a sparkling conversationalist.

Her conversation partner didn't have much of a response, though, aside from a "moo" and a yawn here and there. But what else would you expect from a cow?

"There was something about animals that made Rosie connect," her mother, Esme Willcocks, told The Daily Mail. "We could barely get her to make eye contact or moan or groan but here she was, chatting like an old friend to the cows and horses."

Her mother has since nicknamed the little girl "Miss Dolittle," after the famous fictional doctor who talked to animals. Rose is still silent when she's around members of her own species – but her family considers her animal interactions to be a major breakthrough. Later this year, they're planning a visit to the United States, where Rose will have the opportunity to swim with dolphins.

It's certain she'll have plenty to chat about with Flipper and his pals, but Rose's parents are hoping that her new speech skills will transfer to humans soon, too.

"If we can move her on just a fraction further then it will have all been worthwhile," said Esme.

[Michaelangelica]

The Age of Autism: The Amish anomaly By Dan Olmsted

Another qualifier: The Inions are converts to the Amish-Mennonite religion (Brent is an Asian-American). They simply might not know about any number of autistic Amish sheltered quietly with their families for decades.

It also is possible the isolated Amish gene pool might confer some kind of immunity to autism -- which might be a useful topic for research.

Whatever the case, Stacey-jean thinks the autistic Amish are nowhere to be found.

"It is so much more rare among our people," she said. "My husband just said last week that so far we've never met a family that lives a healthy lifestyle and does not vaccinate their children that has an autistic child. We haven't come across one yet."

[Michaelangelica]

It is too early to say vitamin D has a treatment effect in autism. However, a simple risk/benefit analysis suggests that autistic children should be diagnosed and aggressively treated for vitamin D deficiency. If readers want to learn more about vitamin D and autism, they can obtain the entire paper on the link below. Unfortunately, Elsevier charges $31.50 to download it. You can read a similar document for free on the website, where we first published the theory a year ago.



Cannell JJ. Autism and vitamin D. Med Hypotheses. 2008;70(4):750-9.

Vitamin D Newsletter May 2007 | Vitamin D and Autism



In summation, autistic children should be given enough vitamin D to get their 25(OH)D levels up to the mid to high range of normals, that is, 70 ng/ml (175 nmol/L in countries that use the metric system). In the absence of sun exposure, this usually requires long-term administration of about 1,000 IU/day per 20 pounds of body weight with a loading dose of 2,000 IU of vitamin D/day for every 20 pounds of body weight for the first two weeks. As individual variation in response is very high, they should have 25(OH)D blood tests every month until their level has stabilized around 70 ng/ml. They should stop all products containing preformed retinols (vitamin A), especially cod liver oil.



John Cannell, MD

The Vitamin D Council

[Michaelangelica]

Dogs trained to partner with autistic children

By Gail Knowles • CONTRIBUTING WRITER • June 11, 2008


Simpsonville resident Sandy Teska, an applied behavior therapist who works with autistic children, was attending a routine team meeting two years ago when she learned about a new program to help autistic children.

Teska, whose passion is helping children and their families dealing with this disease, was fascinated when she heard Julie Nye, training director of Dogs for Autism, talk about placing a service dog in the home of a local autistic child.

Dogs trained to partner with autistic children | GreenvilleOnline.com | The Greenville News

[Michaelangelica]

An interesting lecture
AGE OF AUTISM: Part 1 David Kirby's Autism One Presentation: Metals, Myelin & Mitochondria Pathways to Autism?

NEWS SEARCH of the week
Drawn from top recent searches by your colleagues

Social cognitive deficits link people with mild autism and relatives with BAP

Given a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests, both high-functioning people with autism and their relatives who show broad autism phenotype (BAP) share one psychological parameter most strongly: a deficit in social cognition, the ability to "read" psychological states from human faces or bodily motions.

This result from a new report in Archives of General Psychiatry pinpoints social cognition in autism as an important variable in genetic and brain studies.

http://www.searchmedica.com/search.d...ps-news-060209

[lemit]

Part of my training as a journalist was to be willing to ask stupid questions. I think I have a great one here.

I am impressed by this very thoughtful discussion of the causes of and potential cures for autism, but what's it doing in the Political Science forum?

Like I said, I'm trained to ask dumb questions. I'll try to read all the dumb answers.

Thanks.

--lemit