Erasing Autism

My son was diagnosed with PDD(autism), and I have a daughter with Downs Syndrome. I love them just the way they are. We do go to therapies every week, but its not for a cure it is so my children can function better. It helps them stay focused. Children with special needs are perfect. They just require more work. Most people are too involved with their own dreams of perfection to understand special needs children have the right to be.. born, loved, and respected.

Autism and its spectrum disorders is a recent phenomenon, appearing 30 to fifty years ago. It appeared that the number of cases increased in proportion to the increase in the number vaccines developed and mandated increased. Once a normal developing child was struck the lives of the entire family and in many cases, the lives of the extended families were devoted to the needs of the effected child

There are vast amounts of money to be if a newly developed vaccine is approved for world wide mandatory use. The agencies responsible for testing and approval are overwhelmed by the task. Tremendous pressures are brought to bear by the developers of new vaccines on the agencies responsible for testing new vaccines for approval. Many studies were farmed out to European countries whose vaccine formulation and delivery were different than those in the US. The testing that the parents of damage children suggest were disregarded. One example, a study comparing the number of children to be on the Autistic spectrum after receiving the mandated vaccination protocol, compared to a cohort of unvaccinated children.

I donot want to drag on but there are a few other questions that the parents raise that are ignored by the responsible US Government Agencies

Why aren???t children tested for reaction to vaccination prior to vaccination?

Why isn???t vaccine packaged in single dose vials so that toxic preservatives would not be necessary?

Why is a dosing of ???One size vaccine dose for all regardless of age, weight and/or development????

Why the absence of testing for the possible negative synergistic affect between vaccines?

Why doesn???t the government agencies look at the parents as the enemy and never invite knowledgeable parents to be represented on over site meetings and committees?

Why does the Government agencies hold secret meetings and fail to make the minutes available to all? An example was the two Simpsonwood Secret Meeting one of which was held on June 7-8, 2000.

Some of us introverted, pessimistic Aspies are a predatory lender's worst nightmare. A couple of years ago I was paying $800 something a month in rent and my mortgage on a $200,000 condo would have been $1,200 something a month (not counting the fees to cut the grass). Yeah sure there is a mortgage rate interest deduction but how long does that last? You got a 30 year responsibility to fix the damn place and you're committed to the area?

I kept renting. I don't know. Rent is now $1,100.

I'd ask myself a few questions before I'd commit to homeownership

1. Am I going to live here for 30 years?
2. What if I marry a woman who has her own place?
3. This might hurt my ability to relocate to take jobs. My brother values extreme freedom. I think he has month to month, and though he does not exercise the right, he could be in Seattle, San Francisco, or Charlotte in two months.

4. What do I get out of it if I do buy?
a. interest deduction
b. price trajectory
c. HELOC option

5. What am I responsible for
a. the mortgage, nitwit!
b. the fees
c. the property taxes
d. the mortgage insurance
e. property insurance
f. consider flood insurance

Diagnosis -

They told me you were differen - autistic
I told them I was optimistic
How could they know
I love you so
Because you are - DIFFERENT

Actually I didn't make it perfectly clear that disabilities can hit you like a lightning bolt out of the blue, if God wanted you to, if you got very sick or were in a severe accident. When I said car accident I meant brain injured child for the rest of his or her life, being 6 months old for a lifetime. No kids? Your spouse or significant other could, too. Would you stand by your family member or would you "turn them off?"

Disabilities usually occur because you get older. Body systems start failing and not working like they ised to. Mom's macular degeneration, osteoporosis, and loss of hearing and my erratic blood glucose control: signs that eyes, bones, ears, and pancreatic systems (the last one with some dietary abuse as well) all go haywire with age. The arteries can harden because of age even if there is no dietary abuse. Risks for stroke, heart attack from cholesterol coating the blood vessels.

Pregnancy is even a disabling condition, especially if bed rest has to happen. Mom had to for both of us,

We don't have as many diseases nowadays that can leave you blind or deaf if they don't kill you (polio is almost completely eradicated on Earth, for example). But we have cars, and car crashes, violent crime, sporting accidents, etc. And don't forget our soldiers. We save more lives in combat than we used to, but the survivors have disabilities, and not just missing limbs, but injuries to the head as well.

America has about 54 million disabled people and if you or a loved one weren't born into it, you could join it, there but for the grace of God.

Fortunately autism and Asperger seem to show symptoms at about the same time, toddlerhood. You get past that stage, you're lucky. You have one less possibility to worry about.

I admire Ari Ne'eman's spunk and determination concerning embracing his true self -- Asperger syndrome and all. But to be against the study of the genetics of autism only means we will be further from understanding autism spectrum disorders -- and even possibly finding a cure. As the mother of a 14-year-old boy with moderate-to-severe autism, I can only say that not all people with an autism spectrum disorder are as high-funcitoning or self-aware as Ari. My son has great difficulties coping with life. I am for anything that will help us understand him, and future generations to come.

Trying to have a child with a guarantee of no tragedies is every bit as stupid as guaranteeing investments against risk. Tragedy is a part of life and risk is a part of investing. Welcome to adulthood.

Now I happen to believe in salvation and a Heaven.

Maybe that is why we need to believe in a Heaven. If it isn't always going to be OK here, maybe it helps to know it will be OK, later, in the hereafter.

No, I seriously doubt I would have children now. It could be an irresponsible act if it adds one or more special needs people to America. Also that every additional human being, and especially every extra American, consumes world resources at a fantastic rate. I would make a countersuggestion to whomever woman I marry that there are thousands of children who will never have a mommy or daddy.

How sad you would give away your child, for what, a day, a weekend, a lifetime? I think you would come to wish you hadn't done it.

But I've never had your experience. My parents never thought they had autistic kids. Emotionally disturbed, behavior problems, ADD, some clues to possible giftedness, but Asperger (autism spectrum) diagnosis at 25 was a bit of a shock.

It could be a long time before any male Aspie or HFA becomes a pzrent. in the WIRED article I cited below, Dr. Temple Grandin recommended that the best relationships would be between two neurotypcal or two autistic/Asperger adults. Otherwise it would be impossible to make the other partner understand what it is like to be NT/autistic/Asperger.

Of course there are mitigating factors for every Aspie. In my favor, I create friendships with women without even trying. I have intelligence, character, personality (when depression is under control), and a sense of humor. Working against me, I losing weight but still, for the moment, morbidly obese (100+ pounds overweight).

If you wait too long before having kids you start running into risk factors for autism such as paternal age, on top of genetic predisposition. I am 39, slightly older than my dad when I was conceived. It is just as well, I am not sure I'd put up with an average child, let alone an autistic spectrum child.

Perhaps we need a monastery. The Order of St. Asperger?

I do so agree with Ne'eman. My son is 55 now and a computer science university graduate. He could not speak until he was about 9 or 10 and doctors told me, 'He is a write-off', 'stop sacrificing yourself', place him in an institution and forget him'. It was not funny at the time, but it is now when I look back it is. He was a little heller when he was a child, especially as I had to work full-time to support us. I was always exhausted and people used to look down on us in those days. Nowadays he is wonderful company and neither he nor I would want him to be 'cured' of autism, because then he would no longer be him. We both became hooked on computers and the Web and it has made a great difference to our lives.

I wonder what Mr. Ne'eman would think if he were a parent? That's a question that he can't even think about until he is one. His thoughts might change.

Yes, Qazi, and to finish your point, autism is good for human evolution because the human race has evolved into high tech and computers.

Now I have been on http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com for years and not every Aspie claims to have special powers, but enough do that have "math and science" genes (plus those in engineering and computer technology). That has high tech and computers written all over it.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html

It is a pity that we have applied the very best of our technology into killing one another, notably nuclear weapons and the amazing conventional weapons: drone aircraft, radar low-observable aircraft, precision ordinance (although it has saved civilian life) . Some of these have civilian applicatons: GPS, the fact that Life Flight originated out of MASH medevac helicopters in Korea, the many civilian purposes of radar (notably air traffic control) after World War II.

At any stage of human civilization the inventors are probably high functioning autistics or Aspies. Conjecture has it that humanity on Earth has developed and used technology before (nuclear weapons in Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, according to strange archeological evidence cited by Charles Berlitz), only to forget it and rediscover it later.

Let's not kill the inventors, shall we?

The difference between eradicating smallpox and eradicating autism is that Johnny can be a person with smallpox or without smallpox. Autism is not an infectious agent or a something that can be removed, it is hard wired into the human nervous system. It will never come out. You are stuck with it, the best you can do is learn to cope with it whether you are that person or whether you work or live with that person. There can never be a World Health Organization eradicaton of autism, autism is not portable.

If you still think vaccines are to vlame, read this. It suggests instead that Johnny with HFA meets Jane with HFA at High Tech Inc. fall in love and have a kid, maybe as bad as they, maybe worse. It's not mercury or better diagnostics, it's the birds and bees.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers.html

This is an excellent article for those who need to follow this disease