Is anyone really surprised?

I don’t know his feelings on biomed. I don’t really care, either. He’s a parent of a child with autism; we’re in the same club.

I feel like his blog is important because there aren’t a lot of places for fathers to go. Men handle this differently with very little support or outlets. If you’re a father looking for a little help outside, maybe this is a good place to start. You could certainly do worse.

I’ve always found this kind of thing fascinating. While I’m not at all impressed with the never-ending quest for genes (c’mon, there have now been over 40 genes identified; how many genes do we need to identify before we wonder if it’s really genes?) This is the best we’ll get out of the whole gene theory–which just brings it all back to being triggered by the environment, I might add. Gasp! Whodathunk it?

Regeneration, on the other hand, that’s another ball of wax altogether and brings out my Whovian fangirl. This is what science is about. This is what medicine should be about. Real research that produces real results. These are the things that bring us closer to understanding at least the one thing we do know about autism – many of those with ASD have structurally different brains.

Get scientists studying the right things. Metabolism, immune system and brains. Get out of the genes because it’s a dead-end.

This is a rather interesting study. Nootropics have been used my house for almost everyone in the family for a while. What’ interesting to note about this is that it certainly created improvements but there were no nootropic effects found.

I’ll be posting more on nootropics as I really think more parents should know about them.

UPDATE:

I had originally started this as a response in the comments to Channa’s question but then decided it might just be better served up here.

It’s an anti-epileptic drug more commonly known as Keppra. What makes it interesting is that it is structurally similar to piracetam, a nootropic, which is why I posted it. I’m big on nootropics.

Keppra has always been an anticonvulsant and it is not considered a nootropic but some studies have said that it can produce a milder nootropic effect, meaning that it’s probably not really known well enough whether or not it could be classified as a nootropic since there is conflicting data.

I wonder if the effects that some ASD kids have with improvement from Keppra can be somewhat contributed to a possible nootropic enhancement or if it’s strictly due to the lowering of seizure activity. Part of what they describe, lessening of hyperactivity and impulsivity is exactly what a nootropic can do. So I have to wonder if they really didn’t see a nootropic effect.

Just in case some people don’t realize what happens to the parents of special needs kids. This is the reality, folks. Choosing not to be bullied, hurt, lied to, manipulated, or cheated out of helping our kids makes us the bad guys.

It isn’t enough to be ridiculed for standing up for our children. We aren’t allowed to simply love them and do what any parent would do for their children. We have to defend ourselves for it, too.

Chew on why that would be.

I guess someone forgot to tell McDonalds that it’s illegal to refuse someone because of a service dog. I hope an attorney steps up, I hope they sue but at the very least, I hope they contact the Department of Human Rights in Illinois and report them.

Absolutely insane.

“The proposed changes would put an end to the autism epidemic,” said Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at Yale University School of Medicine and an author of the new analysis. “We would nip it in the bud — think of it that way.”

Yup. Since we can’t make those pesky numbers go down as we continue to add those vaccines (hi flu shot to pregnant women, hello Gardasil!), we’ll just change the criteria and voila! No more ridiculous autism numbers climbing every year! We just knocked it back to 1:5000. Guess there isn’t an epidemic after all.

Or wait, try this one on:

Well, we don’t actually want to put any effort into studying things that actually help those with autism so we’ll just make it harder to diagnose people with it. Those crazy moms and dads out there that actually believe they are recovering their kids, well, they never had autism to begin with. See how that works? They actually had Social Communication Disorder. Yeah, we just made that one up for the new DSM, we thought you might like it. *pats themselves on the back* We wanted to make sure we could pull a lot of people out of the autism group and get those numbers down that way, too. Yanno, since we don’t want to do anything and all. Those of you with Asperger’s, good luck getting reevaluated and getting that autism diagnosis and for those with PDD/NOS…you already knew that was the diagnosis stupid doctors gave when they didn’t want to commit to autism because “he’s just a boy, they talk later” or “she’ll catch up with time” or “it’s just a phase” or “autism is not a good diagnosis, you don’t want that and it’ll keep us from having to give you as many services too.“ Yeah, you’ll never get that autism diagnosis.

And now we will have a severity scale so we can tell you exactly how impaired you are because you don’t know any better. So what if you can’t shower without being prompted or feel hunger? We’ll make you write notes to yourself and maybe you’ll remember to read them as they hang on the refrigerator of your, oh wait, we also took away your group home so you don’t have a refrigerator or walls in a dorm room to hang those notes. Sorry! We have to take your aide away too! I hope your parents are alive and able to take you in. Maybe you have an aunt or uncle? Distant cousin? Because you don’t get medicare or disability anymore, either.

See? It’s not really an epidemic! Because we just knocked those numbers back down and it’s all good now. No more autism. Because changing the criteria made them all go away. Poof.

And they call us crazy for doing things like giving them a gluten/casein free diet or some other such off the wall wackiness. Good lord, how could they deprive their kids of Wonder Bread?

How much more, exactly, does the AMA, APA and CDC have to do before people realize we aren’t that crazy?

**Don’t be surprised in a couple years when Social Communication Disorder is miraculously 1:90 with no services available.

In class, Gryffin’s assignment was to paint himself as an adult in his desired profession when he grows up.

As you can see, there’s not much to go on here. I had to ask, of course.

Me: But what do you want to be?

Gryffin: A secret agent.

Sheer genius.

Posted from WordPress for Android. These are not the typos you are looking for…