The Autistic Place [A Place for Learning]

We've had a number of stories lately on mothers killing autistic or possibly autistic children.

• Mother Posts Blog Blaming Stress Before Killing...
• Texas Mom Kills Children, Blames Autism
• Colorado Mom Wanted to Have 'Fun in Life'

What can anyone say about this? Children are stressful, normal or not. Depression, stress, lack of supports, et cetera, are not excuses to kill. I do not doubt depression is real in some cases, but I do not tolerate any excuse for killing children. Even if we don't have perfect supports, there are supports in most cities and counties. Families also have a responsibility to intervene. It is impossible for me to imagine no one was aware problems were present before these children were killed.

The association of autism with infanticide is a common theme in media. I won't bother listing examples.

This week, the news has been full of the tragic story of a Texas mother who murdered her children because she suspected them to be autistic.  According to the LA Times,

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The Houston Chronicle: "Though Texas has the nation's lowest percentage of registered organ and tissue donors, several recent initiatives have more than doubled the state's donor rolls this year. The number enrolled in the Glenda Dawson Donate Life Texas Registry has ballooned since Jan...

An accurate, faster testing option to identify female carriers and other patients with genetic abnormalities that cause Fragile X Syndrome is now available to physicians in all fifty states with the recent approval in New York. Fragile X is the leading cause of inherited mental retardation and the most common known single gene cause of autism...

Curemark, LLC, a drug research and development company focused on the treatment of neurological diseases, announced that Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is participating in the company's Phase III clinical trials for CM-AT, Curemark's autism treatment. Saint Peter's is affiliated with the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia...

The National Autistic Society (NAS) has ramped up its legal campaigning with the launch of a new Autism Legal Network and a call for cases with the potential to change the law for the half a million people with autism in the UK. Mark Lever, chief executive of the NAS said; "The NAS is evolving. Last year we successfully secured the landmark Autism Act...

Seaside Therapeutics, Inc. announced data from the largest randomized, placebo-controlled study conducted to date in individuals with fragile X syndrome. In a Phase 2 study of STX209, clinically meaningful improvements on global and specific neurobehavioral outcomes were observed in the general study population...

Asuragen, Inc. announced the results from two collaborative studies, one with the University of California Davis M.I.N.D. Institute and another with Rush University Medical Center, that demonstrate comprehensive molecular profiling of the Fragile X Mental Retardation (FMR1) gene using advanced PCR-based methods...

XenoPort, Inc. (Nasdaq:XNPT) announced that it has discovered a novel prodrug that has the potential to improve significantly the blood concentration of acamprosate compared with the currently approved formulation of acamprosate. Preclinical data on this new product candidate will be presented at the National Fragile X Foundation's 12th International Fragile X Conference in Detroit, Michigan...

Hello friends - I ran into a few abstracts,  read a few papers, and tried to get my way through one really dense paper in the past few weeks that got me thinking about this post.  It’s  all shook up, like pasta primavera in my head, but hopefully something cogent will come out the other [...]

Hello friends - One of my tangential pubmed alerts notified me of this study the other day:  Epigenetic and immune function profiles associated with posttraumatic stress disorder The biologic underpinnings of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have not been fully elucidated. Previous work suggests that alterations in the immune system are characteristic of the disorder. Identifying [...]

Hello friends – I ran across this one on accident the other day (why wasn’t it in one of my pubmed alerts?): Gestational Age at Delivery and Special Educational Need: Retrospective Cohort Study of 407,503 Schoolchildren Background Previous studies have demonstrated an association between preterm delivery and increased risk of special educational need (SEN). The [...]

Hello friends – I’ve been referencing this paper in some discussions online for a while; I’ve read it, and in fact, while working on another project, got the opportunity to speak with one of the authors of the paper.  It’s a very cool paper with a lot of information in it, some of which, could [...]

Hello friends - The abstract for Association of hospitalization for infection in childhood with diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders: a Danish cohort study hit my inbox the other morning.  Here is the abstract OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between hospitalization for infection in the perinatal/neonatal period or childhood and the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders [...]

Hello friends –   I’ve been forced to modify my pubmed alerts so that I don’t miss abstracts like this:   Enduring consequences of maternal obesity for brain inflammation and behavior of offspring    Obesity is well characterized as a systemic inflammatory condition, and is also associated with cognitive disruption, suggesting a link between the two. [...]

Hello friends - So this is a really cool paper by some folks that have a series of interesting stuff:  Global methylation profiling of lymphoblastoid cell lines reveals epigenetic contributions to autism spectrum disorders and a novel autism candidate gene, RORA, whose protein product is reduced in autistic brain.  Here is the abstract: Autism is currently [...]

Hello friends – A while ago I saw a completely fascinating Nova  called Ghost In Your Genes concerning the nascent field of epigenetics, the study of the relative expression of genes, which is a bit different than the presence or absence of genetic differences.   I’d recommend this program to anyone interested in learning. In a [...]

Hello friends - I hate to write another vaccination related post, but I keep on running into the same, tired argument, and thought it might be nice to have a single place to list and link the reasons that one of the most commonly used defenses of why we don’t need to study the vaccination [...]

Hello friends - The other day a pretty neat abstract hit my inbox: Increased serum levels of high mobility group box 1 protein in patients with autistic disorder   BACKGROUND: High mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) is a highly conserved, ubiquitous protein that functions as an activator for inducing the immune response and can be released from neurons [...]

I don't feel "lonely" most of the time, I feel isolated. That's different. I don't want to deal with people, I want to do things that too often require dealing with people -- leaving me stuck at home some days. People for me are ways to gain knowledge and data; I am interested in people with knowledge I don't posses yet want want to learn. I don't care to be social for no reason. Even with a reason, I'd rather skip the social elements.

I've written that I do sometimes wish to be more social. Though hard to explain, I perceive there would be intellectual benefits -- people would be more comfortable sharing information with me if I were more "charming." So, when I say I wish I were more socially skilled, it is not because I miss the skills or want them for enjoyment, but I wish I could persuade more people with skills and knowledge I admire to be mentors.

My wife is not social, either, but she does much better with people than I do. She is in field that values skills and creativity over social abilities. Engineers can talk for hours about improving a design, debating and questioning the proposed solutions. It helps to have some social skills, but brilliance is valued more. This might be why the sciences were always appealing to me and others with ASDs.

Sitting at home day after day does get tiring. It isn't people I seek out, though, but a change of scenery. That's why I do leave the house when I can. It isn't because I like dealing with driving (I hate it) or people in a new setting, but my mind craves a chance to see something other than the same walls every day. If I were a bit more financially secure, I'd leave the house a bit more often to focus on my writing elsewhere. That's not seeking out people, but it is trying to end the sense of isolation; home can feel like a trap.