“I don’t feel like I miss out on anything”
December 14, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
So says 15-year-old Roderick Robertson, who takes care of his younger brother, Tim, every day. Tim has autism and his older brother is his regular caretaker, today’s Courier-Mail reports:
Roderick, who also lives with his stepfather, two stepsisters and stepbrother, describes home life as “hectic” but says it with a smile.
There are times when he misses out on social outings with friends because he looks after Tim and school holidays aren’t always as fun and carefree as they are for many of his peers.
“I have a roster of when I need to be at home to look after Tim over the school holidays,” he says.
“I take him to the park, muck around with him – that sort of thing.”
Sounds like how I spend many any afternoon with Charlie, and many moments that I wouldn’t have missed for anything.
What a wonderful article- they are lucky to have each other!
The group that’s sending Roderick to camp (Carers Queensland) sounds like it’s doing very good work. It certainly sounds like they go well beyond respite and offer a lot of services. What a very good idea- especially with the strains on the funding systems everywhere, I would imagine that supporting carers could go a long way to avoid burnout.
My oldest daughter cares for Matt a lot too. This whole past summer she was with him. I paid her because as I told her, “Anyone who wipes a 12 years old booty deserves a little compensation.” lol. She never asked to be paid though and tried to continously give any money we gave her back. She loves her little brother so much and that is exactly where she wants to be.
People who serve others especially those with physical challenges are due blessings and will go to heaven. Those who hurt children or provide comfort, aid, or help to those who hurt children will get bad karma and certainly go to hell. Can we say that those who protect the drug companies that produce MMR fall into this category? Maybe not, since most who do so do so because they believe “the party line” and have no first hand knowledge to the contrary. However, there are plenty of studies not funded by pharma that do raise eyebrows in open minded people. (See below) Tell me what you think:
US Researcher links MMR to autism
by Alan R. Yurko
A highly respected and well-published scientist at the Utah State University, Vijendra K. Singh has further linked autism to the MMR vaccine. His study published in New Foundation of Biology, Elsevier Science BV 2001: 447-58 titled Neuro-immunopathogenesis in Autism provides brain autoantibody and virus serology evidence that links autism to MMR and postulates autism as a neuroautoimmune response that occurs at the neuroimmune biological interface.
Singh found that autoantibodies to myelin basic proteins were present in 80% of autistic children but that none were found in the normal children control group and only rarely in all other controls. These autoantibodies attack the basic proteins that constitute myelin, which surrounds the sheaths of nerve fibers. Regarding the virus serology, autistic children had a significantly higher level of measles virus antibodies as compared to controls, which suggests a temporal link of measles virus with autoimmunity in autism.
Furthermore, Singh found a very important serological association between measles antibody level and antiMBP, which showed that the higher the measles antibody titer the greater the chance of autoantibodies to myelin basic protein. The shocking fact is that none of the children had a wild-type measles infection, but they all had the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Singh also offers hope. He notes an open label trial of oral Sphingolin (myelin containing autoantigen) is being assessed. Preliminary results show significant improvement in autistic people, which further support the neuroimmune pathogenesis in autism.
Vijendra K. Singh, Department of Biology and Biotechnology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA 84322-5305
Further study:
http://www.taap.info/immunology.htm
Just a “heads-up” in case the phamra company didn’t tell you about this line of study.
What a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing it.