Want info on possible cures for autism/AS?

Post Reply New Topic

It's quite possible there has been some selection going on, I have heard an hypothesis, for example, that ADHD was more common among our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but I think Pinker is overstating his case. I think an inane notion of genetic determinism has developed in many circles as a result of an overreaction the the equally inane "blank slate" environmental determinism that was something of a dogma in the social sciences several decades ago, and thus I think Pinker is too quick to claim a genetic cause to changes that could easily be an interaction between the brain's developmental plasticity and human culture.

I've heard of an interesting theory developed by a now deceased neuropsychologist named Clare Graves back on the 60s. He hypothesized a symbiotic relationship between brain plasticity and an individual's conception of the world. After this guy died his theory, which I think itself is pretty good, was expanded by a couple of his students into a model called Spiral Dynamics. Unfortunately this expanded model has had a tendency of being abused by New Age cranks like the "philosopher" Ken Wilbur that use it to support their nonsense.

Um, several higher-functioning people on the spectrum have difficult lives, me one of them. Do I care? Not really.

I do not wish to be cured. If I was cured of my AS, I'd lose my childlike wonder, which feeds into my artistic abilities, and the way that I make the fun holidays last longer than the dull-minded NTs in my life. I'd lose the empathy that I feel for animals. I'd lose my great thinking skills, and I'd also lose my sense of individuality. I'd also end up wanting to be a part of the herd, and start dressing like everybody else my age, and start listening to the same Top 40 music. No thank you.

This reminds me of radical lesbian feminist separatism. Men are inferior. Is that a useful attitude?


It's only because many keep including certain positive qualities in a blanket construct aspergers/autism that think any suggestion of healing/curing/preventing anything relating to that same blanket structure means will lose best bits of self. But there's no need to follow the "herd" that believe that the terms refer to something real.

However I did wonder the other day if perhaps poorly developed proprioceptive systems might be the price to pay for this fun fluid intelligence ( if it really does correlate with aspergers diagnosis ! ! ? ! ). In which case our society is perhaps creating more and more of it automatically, simply because of how raise children now, because the fluid int quotient has been going up and up ever since first measured it 50 years ago.
Society maybe wants fluid intelligence, even if makes for people not very well rooted in their bodies.
It's just taking a while catching up in terms of how best to look after this talent that recent child rearing practices have created in its Highly Sensitive members.

Last edited by ouinon on 03 Jan 2008, 10:50 am, edited 7 times in total.

While there is no cure for ASD, it seems clear that some people wouldn't want one if there was. And heaven protect the naive soul who uses the word cure instead of treatment, and is really asking if people want to talk about treatments.

Yes, good point. Bin the word cure. "Treatment" ( like motor skills exercise, sensory stimuli doses etc in early infancy) much better.

Last edited by ouinon on 03 Jan 2008, 12:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Was this in the humor section? Harvard is a religious school, but this is showing god science at it's worst.

How could biological evolution stop? 5,000,000,000 years then stop?

Psychology is a religion, and evolutionary psychology a creationist point of view. Yes, there was life before our lord and Savior created the Universe, fathered himself, and wrote the Bible, in 4004 BC, but they were animals that sat in caves going ugh!

Only a psychologist could think evolution stopped, it fits with their other theorys. When proven to have been wrong all along, they have no choice but to take over and put themselves in charge of the new evidence, of god's plan.

Anthropology has been fighting this idea. 10,000 to 50,000 years ago? What is your stopping Point?

Modern humans have existed for 125,000 years, so if you are god's perfect creation, that should be your Eden.

10,000 to 50,000? Oh! big numbers from a Scientist! Psychology is not a science. Is this supposed to be too far in the past to think about? I am sure it is for him.

Cultural Anthropology shows a continous line of development.

10,000 to 50,000 years after Biological Evolution stopped, comes the Industrial Revolution, the mind of man has not changed since created in perfect sameness in 4004 BC, nothing has changed, Adam knew all about computers. The Bible is god's code and operating system, now kneel before me, for I am Psychologist!

The Science of Geology is less than 200 years old.

Anthropology is little more than 100.

Both have been at odds with religion, and have been and still are, denounced from the pulpit.

Starting with the early ramblings of Coke heads, or even going back to B. Rush, On The Brain, psychology has attracted the deranged. Asperger 1944, is mentioned often, I was born in 1945, so it does not seem long ago, I remember the rise of the storefront religions, Scientology and Psychology in the 1960s.

People who did not agree with the majority view were locked up, treated with electro convulsive shock, massive and long term doses of Thorazine, untill they accepted a Psychologist's view of gods creation. I do not think it stopped in 1994, when Asperger was put in the Sacred DSM.

There are god's chosen perfect people, and the damned that need to be cured. In this context cured has always involved being burned at the stake, extirminated, for it is the role of the perfect to clean up god's mistakes.

Biology is old for a Science, no Biologist would buy this creationist nonsense, human biological evolution stopped 10,000 years ago.

Leading Anthropoligists, Colin Renfrew, Richard Rudgley, write about the evolution of the last 50,000 years, so do they need to be cured?

Comparing it to all the hard Science I know, I find that all the psychobabble priests, the recent creationists, and curebies run in a pack.

You come here and say I need to be cured, you are rude, and insulting, and that is curable.

I am happy being me, and by what self elected reason do you have anything to do with my life?

You insult us all with curebie science, but your message is clear, accept that you are defective, and that you need and deserve to be cured.

There is nothing wrong with me, it does not need your cure, and your clip art science is dangerous garbage.

None of you curebies have any background or credibility. You are Quacks.

It is not the vaccine, the metals, or a virus, Medical Science has checked those. It is Genetic, and that cannot be changed, and should not be changed. My DNA cannot be changed, nor the DNA of the unborn. Your whole "Cure" can only be reached through abortion.

So you come here to provoke evidence, that we want a cure, want to end our misrible lives, and we cannot be perfect, we would be better off not being born.

Go to Israel, tell the Jews you have come to cure them, and have them kneel before you and accept your Lord. Tell them it is your god's will that they be extrerminated, and they should agree, because you say so.

After they accept genocide, come back and try me, till then, expect that I am going to call you an evil troublemaker.

Go back to curebietroll.com

I don't think evolution stopped... and I was glad to see some of the people getting into print were finally acknowledging that. The number one boost to human evolution in the past 1,000 years was Henry Ford and the cheap automobile. By making us a mobile society, we were finally allowed to choose a mate from a WIDE pool, rather than a farm within 20 miles. We may still be looking for proof of pheromones, but I consider Silicon Valley, and other cluster's of Aspie's marrying Aspie's and breeding Aspie's as the simple evidence. We FIND each other. Maybe some consider that "tribal". I think it's just Mother Nature playing with the genetic deck. It doesn't mean we'll be the dominant species... we could be the latest Neanderthal's, but we ARE different.

If scientists carry on finding evidence for it being not so much the genes themselves ( independently of anything else) but the way in which/degree to which they are expressed depending on environmental triggers, stimuli, etc (in womb, at birth, babe-in-arms, toddler, etc up to age 7-9 when brain structure development has pretty much stopped) , which determines some elements of cluster known as autism, then there may be some serious questions asked, about whether someone ( who?) might prefer fluid intelligence to a well developed proprioceptive system, for instance, if such a conflict of brain-function-allocation turned out to be real!!
Are scientists ever likely to find such details out?
Is it actually possible that should discover things so intimately connected to the making of a human?

And not use that knowledge?
Aldous Huxleys book, "Brave New World" explored exactly this issue; if know how to create certain types, and levels, of intelligence, what would society do with this knowledge? And who would protest and why?

What about curing the symptoms? Many of the symptoms listed in the official criteria for autism also occur in neurotypicals and can be caused by infections which can be cured. For example, poor eye contact, facial recognition problems, poor short-term memory, and sensitivity to light and sound can be caused by infections which can be cured. In a NT, they are just curing the infection. In someone with autism, curing the infection also makes the person less autistic because the symptoms make it difficult to socialize and understand people.

Well I sure am interested.

I am still having a hard time to believe you really want to be taken serious

First a bit of semantics: you can cure a disease or you can treat symptoms, but can you cure symptoms ?

Secondly: You state that there are infections which can cause some symptoms which are also observed in autism. By curing the infection you can get rid of the symptoms, so in oder to cure autism you just have to cure infections in autistics.
What are you exactly trying to say ?
Are you expecting that somebody is really taking you serious ?

edit:
I see that you came up with Lyme disease earlier, makes it even more mystical
Your poll title is "Want info on possible cures for autism/AS?"
So I see two possible ways in your agenda:

- you say autism is caused by or basically same as an infection which can be cured by e.g. antibiotics; by eliminating the infection you eliminate autism
This is absolutely misleading as there is zero scientific evidence that this is the case (at least currently this is true)

or

- you say some infections show similar symptoms as autism does; by eliminating such a possible infection in an autistic person you can "treat" autistic symptoms as the infection induced symptoms will be eliminated .
This is misleading as well as you are actually not curing any autistic traits, you are just curing an infection in an incidentially autistic person which will just remain as autistic as before

Semantics - I'm not an expert. I think treating symptoms means they will always be there when you stop treatment. Curing symptoms - there are gone once treatment is stopped

I'm saying that infections contribute to some of the autistic traits that are found in some people with autism.

I agree with the second part of what you wrote: "some infections show similar symptoms as autism does; by eliminating such a possible infection in an autistic person you can "treat" autistic symptoms as the infection induced symptoms will be eliminated ."

However, this is NOT misleading because curing an infection in an incidentially autistic person will make them less autistic than before.

For example, I had an infection that caused me to avoid looking at peoples faces. This made it difficult for me to understand people because I wasn't able to read their eyes and facial expressions. I ended up misunderstanding people which made communication difficult. I cured the infection. Now, I naturally look people in the eyes without having to think about it. After a few months, I can learn to read their facial expressions which makes it easier to understand people and communicate with them. Difficulty socializing and communicating is why people are labeled autistic. If socializing and communicating improve, I become less autistic.

Autistics have weak and dysfunctional immune systems which result in more infections which result in autistic symptoms. I'm NOT saying that every symptom of every person diagnosed with autism or AS is caused by an infection. It's possible genetic defects are the reason these infections occur. There are probably multiple causes of autism and multiple causes of symptoms in each autistic person. Autism is just a label to describe people. The traits that used to label someone with autism are also found in people not diagnosed with autism. Some of the traits may be the result of infections, mercury, aluminum, and a whole bunch of other unknown causes.

My point is I want to get tested and treat known causes of my symptoms even if they result in autistic traits. I don't see how that could offend anyone since an infection isn't a part of who I am.

Nor do I - I just wanted to understand where you're coming from.

You are basically having a theory that would still need a scientific verification. I am certainly not an expert or scientist in any event but from what I know so far your theory of current infections making people autistic, which would imply that at least a part of autism can be CURED, i.e. the part that is being induced by infections, is opposing the current scientific theories that autism is rather an irreversible difference in brain development.
If your theory is true I would guess that this would easily be verifyable, ALL autistic people would necessarily have certain infections in common, some autistic traits would need to almost entirely disappear whenever an autistic person is treated with antibiotics. If this would not be true the infection theory would just be kind of a comorbidity measured in some autistic people, not in others. But then again offering "possible cures for autism/AS" would be a bit misleading/big of an expression again. It then would rather be described as kind of a treatment of the "immune weakness comorbidity".

.

is what im working on...... development of syapses involved with sensory integration and various aspects of associative learning... not things that govern your classic intellignece but those first intial steps towards integrating complex information... input from diff brain regions.

because these synapses in various parts of your brain develop 1-3-5 yrs (generally) after birth... i doubt screens will be viable cause things will appear normal during prenatal timeperiods... right down to the genes imo.....

thus i doubt a "cure" will work for ppl already with autism... though gene therapy (with respect to my research) would be used to minimize these sensory issues and increase learning capacity if autistic behaviors are caught early enough by providing proteins to the developing synapses so that they can complete their maturation.... but there's no reversing time to fix development for older people with autism... so i sincerely doubt a cure-all is possible.

One problem with "reduce sensory issues and increase learning capacity", is that there's some research showing that so-called "sensory issues" (which really aren't exactly "sensory" at all) are a by-product of a particular perceptual intelligence autistic people tend to have, which includes the way we learn. So, reducing "sensory issues", if you're going all the way back to the source anyway rather than just making the person more comfortable, might easily reduce learning capacity.