Autism conspiracy theories...some people have their foil hat on a bit to tight

As I was poking around the net I ran across this blog by Fore Sam entitled Hating Autism. This guy is something else. He is a firm believer in the idea that mercury causes autism. I understand that many people believe that, so I can excuse that to some degree. But this guy takes that far off into conspiracy theory land.

He seems to think that mercury was introduced as a vaccine preservative in order to dumb down the American people. He doesn't end there. He also thinks there is a neurdiversity conspiracy out there. He also is a firm believer that Amanda Baggs is a fraud working on behalf of "Neurodiversity"(note capital N) and the drug companies. What makes me scratch my head is how Amanda's message benefits drug companies. Drug companies don't want people to be told that their kids are fine the way they are, just different. No, they want people to get the message that their kids are broken and they have just the thing to fix them.

This guy also thinks that any autistic person who refuses a cure is insane. In a comment on one of his blog entries he says "There aren't any sane autistic people who disagree with me. The sane ones want to be cured." Then I guess this makes a certified whack job because I don't want a cure.

I swear some people have their foil hat on a little to tight.

Assistive tech update

So I finally got around to learning some python not to long ago. My python skills are still pretty basic. Hopefully I can get good enough with it to crank out some text to speech software for autistics. The software will probably end up being open source.

On the hardware side of things. Once I can afford it, I want to get an Asus EEE PC. Those are small enough that they might make good text to speech devices. Also, the newest flavor can apparently run for 5 to 7 hours. The other thing I want to look at is a PDA that can run linux. That would be sweet. Although a small laptop would be more convenient for entering text. Inputting text on my Palm PDA is a bit of a pain.

Thats about it. I will keep you updated.

It's that time of the year folks. It's "lets pity those poor unfortunate cripple kids day".....err the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon. So get get out your credit cards to help pay the high priced salaries of the executives at the MDA.... I mean, those poor children suffering from muscular dystrophy. Seriously though. The MDA, their telethon and Jerry Lewis can all burn in hell. For years disability activists have been complaining about how the telethon is demeaning to people with disabilities. I personally haven't ever seen an MDA telethon. But, I plan on watching it this year. I will probably write a blog about it.

Update on assistive tech for autism

Recently I switched to using Linux. I currently use OpenSuse Linux, I am also going to be installing Ubuntu Linux on my laptop. So I am looking at linux that as the basis for assistive tech software for autistics. It's free (as in freedom) and many distributions are available at no cost. The XO laptop seems like a good platform for assistive tech for autistics (particularly kids). Unfortunately my programming skills are not very good. I plan on playing around with the python programming language. My first project will probably be some text to speech software for autistics. It will run on linux using the festival text to speech engine. Once I get something done with that, I will post an update here.

Adventures in Autism 3

I just whipped up another Adventures in Autism Comic. It's based on the experience of a guy from my Aspergers group.

Here is the new strip

Autism comic strip

I have started up a comic strip called "Adventures in Autism". It centers around the (mis)adventures of Adam Aspie. The content of the strip is based on my own experience and that of other people with Aspergers/Autism. I created it using strip creator. You should check it out.

Here are the first 2 I have created. There is a slight typo on the first comic. Unfortunately I can't edit it unless I donate money to strip creator. Once I do that I will fix it.

Comic one

Comic two

Let me know what you think. Hopefully this will be an ongoing comic and I will update it regularly.

vaccines and autism

I had written a post about why people latch on to external causes for autism. I have taken some time to think about the issue of vaccines and autism. So here are where my thoughts stand now. There might be some kind of link between autism and mercury and other environmental contaminants. But I still believe that autism is mostly genetic. Also, if kids receiving mercury containing vaccines exhibit symptoms of autism, it doesn't mean they have autism. All it means is that they have symptoms related to mercury toxicity. There are other conditions out there that have similar symptomatology. Unfortunately autism is diagnosed on symptomatology. With other conditions a doctor would say "you have X symptoms so I think you may have Y. So lets run some tests to see if you have Y". If the person turns out not to have Y, then they run tests to see if they have Z. But you can't currently diagnose autism based on blood tests and brain scans. So there isn't a good way to separate genetic autism from mercury toxicity.

Additionally, many of the parents who blame the vaccines may not have noticed autistic symptoms early on. Lack of verbal speech is a big cue for most people that something is going on. If the child is at an age where most children don't speak, then the parent may overlook or not notice the more subtle symptoms. This is especially true if they don't have a neurotypical child to compare to. There used to be a video on YouTube talking about a court case where a mother was suing because vaccines cause her childs autism. She had some pre-vaccine video of her child to show that she was fine prior to being vaccinated. They had an autism expert examine the video. He was able to pick up symptoms of autism from the video. So clearly, in this case anyway, the child was autistic PRIOR to being vaccinated. The mother just never noticed that anything was going on. Now it may be possible that the vaccines did do something. But they certainly didn't make the kid autistic.

All that being said. I am by no means against removing mercury form vaccines or changing vaccine dosage schedules. But I am concerned about people being afraid to vaccinate their children due to all the hysteria surrounding the issue. Even if vaccines can cause autism, autism wont kill you. Diseases CAN kill you. I personally think it's better to have an autistic child than a dead child. Unfortunately some people don't see it that way. They would rather put their child at risk for developing a potentially deadly disease, than risk the possibility of their child being autistic. They seem to be implying that autism is worse than dying of a deadly disease. I would be very upset/angry if I found out that a child died from a preventable illness because the parents refused vaccination because they were afraid of their kid becoming autistic.

So I urge parents to continue to vaccinate your kids. Even if their is a link between autism and vaccines, don't buy into all the hysteria and put your kids life at risk.