Stanford U & brain plasticity pill to reverse autism

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Wouldn't take it.

I'm perfectly brilliant (in a modest way), so why would I risk losing that for the promise of... better social skills?

We don't actually know if this is even the cause of autism. At the moment it is just speculation. However, as above, it could be beneficial for all people.

OK, whatever. I won't have this pill then.

I wouldn't take it...I like being slightly more perceptive than the average person (was told by tutors that I spotted things that other people missed academically...Ie I make connections they don't) and being able to get A grades in exams without doing any revision (good memory).

I will keep my brain as she is thank you.

Things to remember:

1. There isn't a pill; any treatment derived from this would not be a pill. The big discovery was a knockout mouse. A knockout mouse is a genetically engineered mouse which is modified as a zygote and implanted into a female mouse. They didn't turn adult mice into mentally flexible, immunocompromised mice--they created the mice by modifying the genome of the mouse embryo. It is possible to insert genes into an adult organism via gene therapy, but this is still very chancy, and they haven't demonstrated that they can do this.

2. We don't yet know how to apply genetic changes to an adult creature reliably. Gene therapy is still in its infant stages. I've worked some as a lab assistant doing gene therapy research, and I had enough trouble just inserting a gene for green fluorescent protein into a human cell line. Usually, what you do is you put the gene into a virus, and infect the cells with the virus; the virus takes over and inserts the gene into the cells. Some human experiments with gene therapy have been done--but they were at best partly successful, and at worst deadly. By the way, it's strange that people should be mentioning HIV, because that's actually one of the more promising viral vectors. Scoop out the guts of HIV, insert your gene, and infect your subject with the modified HIV. Needless to say this needs more research.

3. So... this wouldn't be a pill. Gene therapy is a big-deal operation with lots of risks. Plus, this would need to modify the brain, and it's hard as anything to get a virus past the blood-brain barrier. You either go through the skull, or you use a virus that's small enough or sneaky enough to get in. Either way, it's an added complication.

4. Once you managed to insert your gene, we don't know what would happen to an adult who received it. Remember that by the time you're two years old most of your brain development is done. Would changing the gene allow your brain to become more flexible even in adulthood? We don't know. It might result in massive brain damage instead.

5. So let's say we give up on gene therapy and figure out how to force the brain into this flexible infant-like state. This is going to take a long, long time. These knockout mice would be test subjects--people would use them as models. All they've proven right now is that it's possible to force an adult to retain neuroplasticity; regaining it is a different story. Maybe once you lose plasticity, you can't get it back. Or maybe getting it back would mean your brain lost its ability to do its job... like, you know, keeping you alive.

What we have here is an interesting scientific breakthrough and well worth the accolades they have been getting, but it is not a "pill to reverse autism". It is a genetically modified mouse that will teach us more about how the brain develops.

I think the title of the article makes the thing sound a lot more definite than it is.

Ok, say you manage to re-plasticise the brain. What then? How do you retrain that brain to not be autistic? It's not as if there is some magic programming language you can use (BrainC++ ? ) to rewrite the brain We barely even know how the brain works on a 'software' level, if we did we would have much more powerful computers than we do. Simply re-plasticising a brain and hoping for the best is a dangerous game to play I think.

Personally I wouldn't want to even try to have my brain reprogrammed - I'd be too scared of either losing myself or becoming a vegetable because some idiot doesn't know how to reprogram me.

Besides I love the unique, creative and intelligent being that is me, why would I want to be anyone else?

_________________
Autistic dad to an autistic boy and loving it - its always fun in our house

I have Autism. My communication difficulties mean that I sometimes get words wrong, that what I mean is not what comes out.

There will never be any cure. In other words, Aspies are doomed. Asperger's is a cruel, cruel condition.

"There will never be a cure" is not synonymous with being doomed. Things can get a lot better for us.

Life won't be perfect, but then, it's not perfect for NTs either.

Serena- autistic people are significantly more likely than NTs to suffer from mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. I believe we're also more likely to commit suicide. Talk up the advantages if you want (sticking to rules we understand and disregarding ones we don't is one of the major ones IMO) but I think we're objectively worse off than NTs.

Well, I don't think that I'm worse off at least due to autism/Asperger's. If anything, the problems that I have are because of other people, personally.

When I was younger, I wish I had known about the idea that people on the Spectrum tend to have one of three cognitive styles, with some overlap of course,

1)  abstract thinkers,
2)  story and narrative thinkers, and
3)  picture thinkers.

I can be very good at math and often thought of myself that way.  But . . . as an adult I've pretty much decided that I'm a story and narrative thinker.  I can do exceptionally well in a math course if I have the time to turn the ideas and procedures into words.  And if I have the energy to do this, and I tend to do well at only one technical class at a time, and I count courses like economics and astronomy and perhaps even videotape/filmmaking as technical classes.

I first heard of this idea of preferred cognitive style from Temple Grandin and I will try and find a link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgEAhMEgGOQ
See starting about 21 minutes into it.

I'm going to bump this because I have some strong views on what others have said above.

There is a view that autism is some sort of curse. Yes, it makes social interaction more difficult but, on consideration, the reasons for social isolation, depression and anxiety are at least as much the result of the discrimination we face from NT society as something innate to Asperger syndrome.

There are plenty of other people encouraged so seek "cures" because they don't fit into what mainstream society considers "normal" (think homosexuality, for instance) or to be able to "pass" as "normal" when what would make a lot more sense would be for human society to be more respectful and accepting of difference.

Many of us are moving away from the notion that homosexuality is some sort of disease to be cured or lifestyle choice to be discouraged. I think it's time we insisted on the same for us. We are not diseased: we are different, and we should not be expected to learn to "pass" as "normal" just so that "normal" humans can stay in their comfort zones.

The reasons why we suffer massive levels of discrimination and depression are down to NTs largely being bullying and discriminatory, not down to us being diseased!

I don't want or need a cure. I want NT society to get off my case and show some of the empathy they keep trying to persuade me makes them superior to me.