Nah.

Post #284,578 by ubernostrum 5/13/07 7:51:16 PM Reply	Nah. Every time the board of education pulls that crap, they get thrown out and replaced with relatively sane folks. The big things here are still the "vaccines make kids autistic" crap and the perennial sex-education controversies. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
Post #284,586 by jake123 5/14/07 4:00:17 AM Reply	Well, as a parent of a child with autism and with no family history on either side, I'm not convinced that there's no connection. I do think there are multiple environmental factors that are influencing this, but looking at vaccines in isolation doesn't dismiss it for me... there's been zero examination of synergistic effects of vaccines with other persistent ubiquitous chemicals like flame retardants or various plastics that give off various gases... and looking at the rates it's very clear that there have to be environmental effects that are driving the rise in the rates in autism. Simply put, going from 1/10,000 births forty years ago to 1/154 births today is not explainable from a straightforward diagnostic perspective. I'd like to see a comparison of the rates of severe autism, just to clear up the dismissal of the rise as a result of better diagnosis of PDD in the population. After having done a fair chunk of reading on this stuff over the last five years, I'm not buying the line that "it's all a result of diagnosis and not because of x, y, and z in our environment."
Post #284,648 by Ashton 5/14/07 5:32:07 PM Reply	Agree entirely with your theses The N! (factorial-) Factor == precisely that sort of massive interaction which demands rather expensive (and difficult to conceive well) experiment$ to refine the search. There's no profit for the Greedheads/marketers of All This Sgit we have been spreading around utterly blindly, for decades. There's also little incentive for 'representatives' funded by the Greed-heads -- ever to embark on a difficult open-ended process like (as your example eloquently demonstrates) WHY 1/10,000 births forty years ago to 1/154 births today ??? Etc. As a species, permeated by the smug presumption of 'sentience' and other sanctimonious self-congratulatory hype --in every National Anthem-- We. Are. SOOO. Fucked. My 300 Cholera \ufffd
Post #284,693 by ubernostrum 5/15/07 7:21:28 AM Reply	I know I shouldn't, but... WHY 1/10,000 births forty years ago to 1/154 births today ??? \r\n\r\n NIMH's "conservative estimate" for autism is currently 2-6/1000. The "one in 150" is for "autism spectrum disorders", which are an extremely broad category including everything from Rain Man to folks who act "normal". And note that Asperger's, which is trying to displace ADD as the "of course there's a medical reason why your child isn't paying attention in school" diagnosis, is an "autism spectrum" disorder. Which, in the end, does a disservice to the real thing. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
Post #284,823 by Ashton 5/16/07 10:57:24 PM Reply	Thus: the Gaussian's base is broad Am well aware that 'changing definitions' constantly alter the specificity of symptoms which one is attempting to correlate. That's an expected consequence of new lore, and of the N! arithmetic of any large scale view. My (sufficiently general) thesis remains -- there is damn little $$ spent to pursue the overall effects of [most of] the millions of substances now to be found in trace amounts in tissue -- which track the er, Industrial .. in some cases, like Dumth-rising? .. Devolution. (My statistically-unworthy lifetime sampling reveals, simply: dumbth Is on the rise.) I'm not yet sure if the i-Pod and its now conditioned-effects, the perpetual tuning-out of all other environmental activities: will be a large marker in a dumbth investigation of say, 2017? Ten years enough for a new benchmark on 'consciousness level'? If anyone can still do stats, then.. of course. Imagine: [massive varieties of contaminants + techno consciousness-lowering devices]: Working Together! >to make the cockroach #1 species on Terra< ;-j
Post #284,991 by Seamus 5/21/07 8:14:08 AM Reply	Asperger is not about attention deficits Nor do I think is it trying to replace ADD or ADHD. It, like Autism is a communication disorder. As a spectrum disorder, no 2 kids with Aspergers look alike. Kids with Aspergers often have difficulty learning language pragmatics. IMO not having been taught language pragmatics during the appropriate developmental phase can look the same as having difficulties with language pragmatics. Seamus
Post #285,137 by ubernostrum 5/22/07 11:32:52 AM Reply	And probably quite a number of kids with "ADD"... ...don't actually have ADD. Asperger's is/has been a fad diagnosis for kids who're having trouble in school, just as ADD used to be (and to an extent still is). That doesn't say anything about what either condition actually entails in those who have them, but instead is an observation on the way we treat our children and our school system in this modern world. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
Post #285,424 by Seamus 5/26/07 9:15:26 AM Reply	The point I was trying to make was that I don't think Aspergers is trying to replace ADD, as you mentioned earlier. If they are false positives, they happen for different reasons. ADD or ADHD can get diagnosed by MDs, Aspergers I don't believe is being diagnosed by MDs. If an overly stimulated kid is given a stimulant and becomes a more focused child it is easy to diagnose that as ADD. There may be no way to tell whether the child just wasn't able to learn to focus or there really is a biological problem with the kids activators and inhibitors. With enough motivation, kids learn to focus if they are able. Learning language pragmatics is not as easy to pick up once you have failed to learn them at the usual developmental stage. Seamus
Post #285,426 by drewk 5/26/07 10:25:07 AM Reply	I haven't read that post, just the subject line Pretending I don't know it's only the first half of the sentence is much more fun. === Kip Hawley is still an idiot. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #284,694 by ubernostrum 5/15/07 7:27:50 AM Reply	Be careful with those stats The "one in 154" number, as I've explained to Ashton, isn't quite what you're making it out to be. \r\n\r\n Also, the part of the original paper which reported a link between the MMR vaccine and autism has since been retracted by the authors, citing a lack of evidence to back the claim that MMR and autism are linked, and numerous independent attempts to demonstrate a connection have failed to yield any such results. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
Post #286,688 by Another Scott 6/10/07 11:52:51 PM Reply	Cecil weighs in. [link\|http://www.straightdope.com/columns/070608.html\|The Straight Dope] on vaccines and Autism. Cheers, Scott.
Post #286,698 by jake123 6/11/07 3:53:44 AM Reply	Intersting From the straight dope page: "A British study of 5,763 children in 2004 showed only a statistically insignificant link between MMR vaccine and autism; a study of 27,749 children in Montreal found no MMR link to autism or related problems." (Emphasis mine.) My son actually participated in that. His blood was sampled twice, and was to be sampled a third time. His first sample contained a lot of mercury, and they said they wanted to double check it. They said the same about the second sample, and wanted to take a third, and then... they changed their minds.
Post #286,778 by Another Scott 6/11/07 5:00:19 PM Reply	I can't explain what you experienced. I could speculate.... Perhaps the mercury in your son's blood was too high to be just from his vaccines. Perhaps mistakes were made. Perhaps they discarded data on your son. I can't explain what happened. I'm sure it's very frustrating and aggravating not to know. :-( A link to the Pediatrics article that has the study, their methodology, etc., is [link\|http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/118/1/e139\|here]. I don't know if you need a subscription to access it. RESULTS. We found 180 children (82.8% males) with a pervasive developmental disorder diagnosis who attended the surveyed schools, yielding a prevalence for pervasive developmental disorder of 64.9 per 10 000. The prevalence for specific pervasive developmental disorder subtypes were, for autistic disorder: 21.6 of 10 000; for pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified: 32.8 of 10 000; and for Asperger syndrome: 10.1 of 10 000. A statistically significant linear increase in pervasive developmental disorder prevalence was noted during the study period. The prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder in thimerosal-free birth cohorts was significantly higher than that in thimerosal-exposed cohorts (82.7 of 10 000 vs 59.5 of 10 000). Using logistic regression models of the prevalence data, we found no significant effect of thimerosal exposure used either as a continuous or a categorical variable. Thus, thimerosal exposure was unrelated to the increasing trend in pervasive developmental disorder prevalence. These results were robust when additional analyses were performed to address possible limitations because of the ecological nature of the data and to evaluate potential effects of misclassification on exposure or diagnosis. Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination coverage averaged 93% during the study interval with a statistically significant decreasing trend from 96.1% in the older birth cohorts (1988-89) to ~92.4% in younger birth cohorts (1996-1998). Thus, pervasive developmental disorder rates significantly increased when measles-mumps-rubella vaccination uptake rates significantly decreased. In addition, pervasive developmental disorder prevalence increased at the same rate before and after the introduction in 1996 of the second measles-mumps-rubella dose, suggesting no increased risk of pervasive developmental disorder associated with a 2-measles-mumps-rubella dosing schedule before age 2 years. Results held true when additional analyses were performed to test for the potential effects of misclassification on exposure or diagnostic status. Thus, no relationship was found between pervasive developmental disorder rates and 1- or 2-dose measles-mumps-rubella immunization schedule. I know a little of what you're going through with your son. My older brother has Autism. It's tough to deal with. Hang in there. Cheers, Scott.

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