Reseach Based Autism Understanding and Hope for Treatment

Children and adults with autism and their families have been cursed by ignorance. Ignorance of what autism is, what causes it and what treatments are suitable. From Bettleheim, to his heirs in the Neurodiversity movement today, parents have been scapegoated for the challenges faced by autistic children, children who become adults and in some cases face greater challenges alone, without family. A variety of quack treatments have defrauded families of time, money and hope.

Early intensive intervention with Applied Behavior Analysis has been demonstrated and proven effective in helping many autistic persons to overcome their autism deficits or improve their abilities to function and understand the world. But ABA is expensive and time consuming and governments and other service providers have resisted the introduction and proper provision of ABA services. They have been aided in their resistance by ideologues with personal agendas who argue against ABA on any ground they can and who will use distorted caricatures of ABA to advance their agendas.

Today research into the causes of autism and possible biomedical treatments is exploding. An Autism Knowledge Revolution is taking place. The paradigm for researching and understanding autism has shifted to a combined genetic/environmental perspective withtreatments encompassing combined biomedical/behavioral approaches. Each days headlines bring new reports of important developments. With this research is coming greater understanding of autism, its genetic roots and its environmental triggers. And hope for treatments that will help all autistic persons grows.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/

Researchers: New understanding of autism is near

Last month, the Cold Spring Harbor team developed a grand unification theory that stitched together previous notions about the genetics of autism and demonstrated how DNA variants - often transmitted from mothers to sons but not exclusively so - may lie at the disorder's roots. Boys are three times more likely than girls to develop autism, Wigler said. He's calling on the CDC to use laboratory techniques similar to the ones he and his Cold Spring Harbor collaborators have developed to assess the prevalence of autism-related mutations in the U.S. population. Screening would help provide guidance on the rate of autism's growth in the population, he said.

...

Based on his work to date, Wigler surmises a clear genetic understanding of the numerous ways in which autism manifests may be tantalizingly close: "I expect that we'll have a very good bead on a number of the [genetic] causes," of autism in the not-too-distant future, Wigler said. "And I suspect there will be a way to treat children to lessen the symptoms." With his Cold Spring Harbor collaborators, Jonathan Sebat and Lakshmi Muthuswamy, Wigler has found that spontaneous mutations specific to autism occur with a relative degree of frequency in the human genome. These random strikes are technically known as copy number variants, or CNVs. The Cold Spring Harbor team defines these mutating hits as a major cause of autism.

...

Alison Singer, executive director of Autism Speaks, a national advocacy organization, said the Cold Spring Harbor studies are destined to have a strong impact on how parents understand autism.

"We want them to pursue the science wherever it leads," Singer said. "But we don't want to get into a situation where we blame the parents. When some parents read stories about older fathers or older mothers, they can become very sensitive."

Singer said what's missing in Wigler's work is the mechanism that causes genes to mutate. Susceptibility genes, she said, often need an outside stimulus to set off a genetic chain of events. Perhaps parents may be correct who think vaccination underlies autism, said Singer, whose daughter and brother are autistic.

"In the 1960s, when my brother was diagnosed, there was the theory of the 'refrigerator mother,' the mother who was too cold," Singer said. "They were essentially telling my mother that she wasn't interacting and bonding with her child. But, of course, we found out that autism is not the fault of bad parenting."

Wigler thinks his work will yield practical information that aids the lay and scientific understanding of autism. It is even possible that knowing which genes are affected can lead to medications that block the function of variant DNA.

Mississippi Establishes Division of Autism Spectrum Disorders

The autism news has been dominated, until recently, by the professional misconduct hearings of Dr. Andrew Wakefield and the "vaccine court" proceedings in the US and now the exciting Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory study offering a unified theory of autism causation. A less dramatic but interesting autism public policy development has taken place in the State of Mississippi where that state has established an Autism Spectrum Disorders division of its Mental Health department. This sounds mundane beside the dramatic developments mentioned above but it seems to show a real commitment by the State of Mississippi to address the autism health crisis in that state. Such a demonstration of commitment should not go without recognition.

In New Brunswick Canada our province does not have a separate Mental Health Department let alone an Autism Spectrum Disorders division of its Health Department. New Brunswick did have an interdepartmental review of its existing autism services which completed its efforts and published a report in 2001. There have been some very positive developments in pre-school interventions since then in New Brunswick. Education is now just beginning to provide a real education to some autistic students, but adult residential care and treatment remain abysmal. But many of the recommendations of that 2001 interdepartmental autism report in New Brunswick were literally ignored. Some them are now outdated.

The fundamental promise of the 2001 IDC Autism Report in New Brunswick, a commitment to provision of evidence based services is not fully respected even, unfortunately, in the provision of preschool autism interventions in New Brunswick. The consequences of that failure will not be borne by the interest groups that stubbornly insist on implementation of non-evidence based interventions in New Brunswick or the public servants and politicians who defer to those groups. The consequences will be borne by the autistic children who could have benefited from evidence based effective autism intervention but were denied the opportunity.

The chance of seeing a stand alone Mental Health department in New Brunswick is slim to none let alone an Autism Spectrum Disorders division of such a department. But it would be of great benefit to autistic children in New Brunswick if the 2001 commitment to evidence based intervention were honored and prevailed over ignorance and vested interests.

In the meantime the State of Mississippi is providing some interesting organizational lessons that might be worthy of study by the Province of New Brunswick and other Canadian provinces.



http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070723/NEWS/70723033

July 23, 2007

Division of autism established at DMH

The Clarion-Ledger

The Mississippi Department of Mental Health (DMH) recently established a new division concentrating on autism in Mississippi. The Division of Autism Spectrum Disorders will initially focus its work around the newly formed Caring for Mississippi Individuals with Autism Task Force.

DMH was designated as the lead agency in HB 1267 which created the task force. The bill charges the group with reviewing the current state of services and practices and in turn filing a report making recommendations to the Legislature on its finding by Dec. 1, 2007. The recommendations made by the task force will address the areas of medical, educational and early interventions services. Further attention will be given to services across the lifespan of an individual and the preparation of professionals in the field for future service delivery.

Once the task force has made its recommendations, the Division of Autism Spectrum Disorder begins its long term function creating a Mississippi support system capable of serving Mississippians. This work will address the needs of individuals from birth throughout their life. The Division will work with other agencies to help improve existing services and create new ones.

Autism is the second most common developmental disability in the country second only to mental retardation. It is four times more common in boys than girls and present data has been offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that 1 out of every 150 children born is affected by an autism spectrum disorder. Autism is a neurological disorder. There is currently no known cause and no known cure. Autism knows no racial, ethnic, social boundaries, family income, lifestyle, or educational levels and can affect any family, and any child.