Posted on 07/27/2003 11:04:47 PM PDT by danielmryan
July 28 issue — Of all the misfortunes a child can suffer, few provoke as much dread as autism. The condition—a neurological disorder that impedes language and derails social and emotional development—has become ever more common in recent decades, thanks partly to better diagnosis.
EXPERTS NOW SUSPECT that one person in 160 lives with some degree of autism. That’s three to four times the rate in the 1970s.
But while the outward manifestations are well known, science is just beginning to illuminate the underlying biology. What goes wrong in the autistic brain? What defect or injury leaves it largely incapable of empathy? A growing body of evidence, capped last week by new findings from the University of California, San Diego, raises a tantalizing possibility. The new study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, links the condition to abnormally rapid brain growth during infancy—and it raises new hopes for diagnosis and treatment.
The key to last week’s finding was not a million-dollar imaging device but a tape measure. Past studies have shown that autistic toddlers have abnormally large brains for their age. But because autism is rarely detected in kids younger than 2 or 3 years old, researchers have never known quite how that situation arises. Two years ago the San Diego team realized that children’s old medical records might hold important clues. Led by neuroscientist Eric Courchesne, the researchers tracked down early-childhood head measurements for 48 autistic preschoolers, and compared them with national norms. As it turned out, the kids’ heads had been smaller than average at birth but had grown explosively during infancy, shooting from the 25th percentile to the 84th in roughly a year’s time. And faster growth predicted greater impairment. Mildly autistic subjects reached only the 59th percentile, but the severely afflicted kids reached the 95th percentile....
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
Liberals have long delighted in passing around stereotypes of the conservative yokel who castigates someone else's character simply to 'own' that person - to make it impossible for a newcomer to succeed through character assassination, for the purposes of creating a guaranteed buyer's market. The root of that stereotype is Henrk Ibsen's play The Master Builder, and if you're a conservative who's faced the usual culture insults, you would no doubt find the plot of that play familiar. It's spread throughout the culture.
With all stereotypes, there is an element of hypocrisy, especially since the so-called 'liberal businessman' can simply say "there ain't no way I would go about a'slanderin' someone - that's right wing! And I ain't right wing!" [This usually calls for a Free Feed.]
More serious, though, is the liberal variant of demagogy which uses adulterated facts and science to keep Johnny 'in his place'. Dr. Thomas Szasz has been battling the most known variant of liberal predation - committment orders based upon false diagnoses of schizophrenia which have been adhered to despite availability of contradictory evidence - for decades, but the first known case of this goes back all the way to the late 1930s. It's also one of the more dubious examples of a "Canadian First."
The Dionne Quintuplets were seized from their parents by the Liberal government in Ontario at the time. Premier Hepburn, in an attempt to make sure he and his gravy boys weren't caught out, spread the 'credit' as liberally as they could, using both economic envy and ethnic bigotry to keep the enslavement of the Quints hidden. This is a process of blame-evasion-through-blame-spreading that the Mafia uses frequently: character assassination all through a community concerning an individual that can't be stood; followed by the "hit;" and then followed by the observation to all and sundry of how many citizens 'participated' in the assault or murder. This shuts everybody up.
Regarding autism specifically, Professor Thomas Sowell noted, as far back as November 5, 1999, that the training for the detection of such a condition is minimal; the checklist test can lead to a child that is simply self-absorbed being labeled autistic.
Or a child that's mis-fitty. A standoffish kid; a kid that takes his schooling a little too seriously (relative to Ace the Quiggan); a kid that's both; a kid that's standoffish because he's there to work; all could be fingered.
As long as there's publicity and dollars to be had; as long as the State gets the authorization to jump on the little misfit that's pissing off both the other kids and their parents; as long as a flawed educational model is continually violated by the performance of kids raised to learn in the correct way, and as long as this damages the prestige of the educational establishment, the above will have the potential of becoming the new hyper-active disorder, in the sense of a diagnosis being used as a weapon.
Watch out!
True.
On the other hand, there are children like my son. I knew very early on he was odd. He got more odd as the years passed. The usual ways of parenting, teaching, relating to him were not very useful. I worried, I prayed and I read everything I could get my hands on.
Finally, when my son was 10 years old, we had a name, a label, a diagnosis. The "only" thing that did was help me find people who could understand him and help me to understand him. It helped me to find out that I am not a bad mother and it helped him to know that he isn't stupid, bad or crazy.
A name is whatever you make it be. For some, it may be incorrect or negative. For others it is a light in a very dark place.
I've visited with several people with Asperger's Syndrome, and they're quite nice. My mother taught one of them (Special Ed. English, high school) before she retired, and she found them delightful too.
It is true that having such a label does remove cruelty. Unknown to me at the time, one of my squadron mates in Air Cadet Camp (1984) was afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. (This was actually unknown to everyone there, and such a realization didn't strike me until a year ago.) The more aggressive boys gave this fellow a "wedgie" and a "purple nurple," supposedly for the purpose of shaking him out of his lethargy.
Had his true condition been known, he wouldn't have gotten that treatment from the unit.
I'm of the old school, which says quite clearly that anyone with an affliction of this sort rates only compassion, unless there is a clear and present danger to someone else. The 'new school' seems to think that the proper use of the mentally afflicted is as new model Jim Dandies.
I wish I could continue on this track, but the proper words of emotion just leave me feeling drained. Best wishes to you and your son.
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