If Charlie’d had a younger sibling, would we have decided to participate in studies like this one at the University of Washington, as noted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Autism researchers at the University of Washington are seeking parents who will allow them to do brain scans of their infants.
………….
The UW scientists are looking for 84 six-month-old infants from California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Alaska who have an older sibling who has been diagnosed with autism. They also need 34 infants with typically developing older brothers or sisters.
Each child will be scanned three times over two years.
Certainly I would have …read more

Discussion was dominated by two stories, that of 13-year-old Adam Race, against whose parents a priest filed a restraining order, and of 5-year-old Alex Barton, who was voted out of his kindergarden class by his classmates, at the suggestion of his teacher, Wendy Portillo. These two incidents sparked some very heated and often acrimonious exchanges and remind me of why there’s a need to think about autistic persons and the community, in faith communities and all others.
Also: It was reported that there had been 72 cases of measles so far in the US, the highest number since 2001—-and the number …read more

A constant theme in 2008 was the rebranding of autism, as Orac at Respectful Insolence referred to how the likes of David Kirby have been constantly saying that “autism isn’t autism”—-it’s “mercury poisoning,” “vaccine-aggravated mitochondrial disorder,” “mercury-induced neurological disorder,” etc., etc.
(April being Autism Awareness Month—-does your child know about this—let’s not get into what such “rebranding” would do to the month…….)
The notorious Judge Rotenburg Center in Canton, Massachusetts uses electroshock “treatment” on some its residents, some of whom are autistic. In April, one of its staff was charged with rape, assault, and battery of another staff member—-more about the very, …read more

Coming your way………Causecast, “a powerful online social medium that connects nonprofits, leaders, brands and individuals to those who want to make a positive impact on the world,” according to a press release. Already a Featured Leader is Generation Rescue board member Jenny McCarthy who has “long been a vigilant fighter in the search for a cure for autism”: A year or so is a “long” time?—sorry, being a teacher and translator of Latin and ancient Greek who is married to an American historian, I have a slightly different definition of “long.”
I do know, I’m in it for the long run with Charlie, and …read more

Seems a band called Elbow has won the Nationwide Mercury Prize—-a “staple of UK music accolade-giving since 1992“—-for its album The Seldom Seen Kid. Considering the attention devoted by some “autism activists” (Safe Minds etc.) to the belief that vaccines or something in vaccines, like the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, can be linked to autism, there would indeed be some competition for, I don’t know, “most mad about mercury” and “best talking about detoxing autism.” Jenny McCarthy—now starting up a lifestyle line of non-toxic products—would be a fair contender, as would Evidence of Harm author David Kirby who has again …read more

It’s not unfitting that a week in which a new study further disputing the MMR vaccine-autism link appeared would end with the publication of a book with no less a title than Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, and by no less an author than Dr. Paul Offit, chief of Infectious Diseases, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In the words of Orac of Respectful Insolence, Dr. Offit is the “Dark Lord of Vaccination” himself, and the special target, now for some time, of the ire, …read more

Thanks to everyone who tuned in to Good Morning America this morning—-the segment on neurodiversity has been pushed to tomorrow, Tuesday, June 10th, sometime around 8 AM to 8:30 am. Speaking in it will be Ari Ne’eman, president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN); Dr. Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and me.

Now that it is the first of June, my son is down to his last two weeks of being at the school he’s been at for the past two years. He starts Extended School Year in the middle of June; it’ll be at the middle school and with the teacher who’ll be Charlie’s teacher in the fall. Moving up and on.
Here’s what got talked about here last week:

Neurodiversity in New York Magazine
New York Magazine has a long article by writer Andrew Solomon about, indeed, neurodiversity, the view that autism is not an illness, but a difference and a different …read more

At the 290th comment in the discussion about Adam Race and the priest restraining order, a question was asked about neurodiversity. The most recent New York Magazine has a long article by writer Andrew Solomon about, indeed, neurodiversity, the view that autism is not an illness, but a difference and a different way of being. Citing the coining of the term by Austrialian Judy Singer and the seminal essay Don’t Mourn For Us by Jim Sinclair, Solomon interviews autistic self-advocates and bloggers:

Ari Ne’eman, President of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
Kathleen Seidel, writer of the Neurodiversity website and weblog
Alex Plank, founder …read more

A cold wind and steady rain would seem to belie it, but “summer” starts for me today—–following Commencement at my college, the spring semester is over and the fall one does not start until late August (in fact, the first session of summer school courses starts today). Now it’s time to resume being “more of a mom” and clean up the various stacks of books and papers on my desk, dust and vacuum rather more frequently, sort through the clothes Charlie has grown out of instead of waiting for my mom to do this when she next visits…
Time to be …read more