World Autism Awareness Day

[autoteller]

having aspergers is awesome!

 

no seriously, i knew how to completely take apart, and repair bikes, most tvs, and electrical sockets by the time i was 8. only 2 years ago, i found out why i was obsessed with taking things apart and putting them back together. and here they were giving me ADHD medicine for 8 years.....

[Mensa]

all this is from getting shots when you are an infant to prevent diseases

 

[Milk Grenades]

has anyone considered that it may not be an epidemic, but possibly a change in evolution?

 

 

“From my clinical experience I consider that children and adults with Asperger’s Syndrome have a different, not defective, way of thinking,” says Tony Attwood, a clinical psychologist at Griffith University and author of Asperger's syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals. We all have a different perspective on the world from the person sitting next to us, so perhaps autism and Asperger’s are just relative extremes to the much more prevalent mild differences of individual perspective. The information that bombards our brains everyday is analyzed, processed and scrutinized until we arrive at a consistent model of the world that allows us to cope with everyday life. How this happens must rely heavily on how our brains are constructed and how our genes and DNA sequencing determine our final brain composition during embryo development.

 

Interestingly, Richard Dawkins considers DNA-as-blueprint to be a bad analogy, claiming that using origami provides a much better one. “The main organization of the body is initially laid down by a series of foldings and invaginations of layer cells. Once the main body plan is safely in place, later stages in development consist largely of growth, as if the embryo were being inflated, in all its parts, like a balloon,” says Dawkins. Unlike most balloons, however, “different parts of the body inflate at different rates, the rates being carefully controlled,” Dawkins adds. The important point here is that cells know what to do in reference to adjacent cells. Dawkins claims that cells attract, repel, change shape, die and even secrete chemicals that may affect neighboring cells. “All cells contain the same genes,” says Dawkins, “so it can’t be their genes that distinguish cell behavior. What does distinguish a cell is which of the genes are turned on. Which usually is reflected in the gene products – proteins – that it contains.”

 

This leaves a lot of scope for variation in individual people, and perhaps external factors affect how genes turn on and off during this embryonic phase. Dawkins says that certain social and environmental conditions play an influential role in how the gene pool is divided. Religion, language, geographical location and social customs all ensure that mating is not just a random process. “I am suggesting that human culture has done very odd things to our genetics in the past,” says Dawkins. However, Dawkins also claims that taking the totality of our genes into account “we are a very uniform species,” and that these so called differences are mostly superfluous.

 

Recent studies show that autism and Asperger’s are not similar to those gene anomalies that Dawkins describes. Evidence is mounting to support suspicions that autism has genetic roots, and it is not peculiar to specific locales determined by culture or geography and is blind to cultural specifics.

 

Interestingly, Matt Ridley, author of Nature via Nurture, claims that those with Asperger’s disorder: “are more than twice as likely to have fathers and grandfathers who worked in engineering.” Ridley also says that on a “standard test of autistic tendencies, scientists generally score higher than non-scientists and physicists and engineers score higher than biologists.” Collectively, various experts claim that the prevalence of autism or autistic disorder is 1:1000, and Asperger’s disorder at anywhere from 1:150 to 1:500, depending on what you read. That’s quite a high figure, and it doesn’t include those who fit somewhere in between. On the face of it, then, we are looking at a society that has a full spectrum of ways of seeing and interpreting the world, and these perspectives and abilities might be passed on to our progeny.

 

A study conducted by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, claimed that no single gene produces Asperger’s disorder. Rather, the commonly accepted model states that it is a result of the accumulation of between five-to-ten genetic mutations. "Having one of these variants appears to approximately double an individuals risk for the disorder, but it is an accumulation of genetic factors that cause the disease,” said Joseph Buxbaum, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Identifying all or most of the genes involved will lead to new diagnostic tools and new approaches to treatment," Buxbaum added. Considering that the disorder affects so many parts of a person’s mental composition, any treatment for autism or Asperger’s may also change the person’s personality in fundamental ways; a point that researchers and medical practitioners might want to think about. Consider this statement from Jim Sinclair, who holds a BA in psychology, has autism himself, and also advocates for those with autistic disorder: “Autism isn't something a person has, or a shell that a person is trapped inside. There's no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion and encounter - every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person – and if it were possible, the person you'd have left would not be the same person you started with.”

 

Conditions such as autism and Asperger’s raise controversial questions on normalcy in society. If autism is proved conclusively to be biological, there is consequently nothing about autism that can be “cured”, without also changing the person in fundamental ways. But what is normal is also a moot point, and it seems that society and culture have a larger role to play in that respect. Describing the characteristics of certain animal survival techniques, Dawkins says that the “brain needs to construct a mental model of a three dimensional world.” All of these world models are constructed via different attributes like a keen sense of smell or sonar. Could certain conditions that we call “disorders” really be evolution at work?

[Mensa]

Mams, that "in my language video" is pretty crazy.

[Mensa]

I'm not so sure about it being "evolution at work" because the entire "survival of the fittest" concept would fuck these people over big time. Sure they might "interact with their surroundings", but they don't have an advantage over the "normal" people. The concept of evolution is based around mutations (autism, in this case) providing an advantage to the people effected. Not so.

 

SO: It might be "evolution" as in a mutation, but it's not "evolution" in the fact that the mutated (that feels harsh) are not given any particular advantage.

[After School Special]

RON PAUL

[Spitfire15]

RON PAUL IN 08 OR GET BANNED.

[Milk Grenades]

I'm not so sure about it being "evolution at work" because the entire "survival of the fittest" concept would fuck these people over big time. Sure they might "interact with their surroundings", but they don't have an advantage over the "normal" people. The concept of evolution is based around mutations (autism, in this case) providing an advantage to the people effected. Not so.

 

SO: It might be "evolution" as in a mutation, but it's not "evolution" in the fact that the mutated (that feels harsh) are not given any particular advantage.

 

i disagree. i think there are select advantages. especially since, many scientists, mathematicians, engineers, etc, are often said to be high-functioning autistics.

[autoteller]

DICK BUTT DICK BUTT DICK BUTT DICK BUTT DICK BUTT

[Mensa]

i disagree. i think there are select advantages. especially since many scientists, mathematicians, engineers, etc, are often said to be high-functioning autistics.

 

Alright, what advantages do you think there are?

[Milk Grenades]

Alright, what advantages do you think there are?

 

i don't want to get into it too deeply, as i don't feel like typing a lot of shit, researching more to support my understanding of it, but over the past few decades, humans have moved from hunter/gatherer type societies, to ones in which your survival is not dependent on your physical strength or abilities, but more so on your mental and intellectual well-being.

 

people with autism/asperger's and savants all have the ability to rationalize their world without the interference of societal rules and pressures. they're understanding of shame or incompetence is often very limited. things such as color, race, judgments, etc, that most "normal" people involve themselves in are not very easily comprehended by these people.

 

those are a few advantages.

[viperface]

human camera who drew London from memory

 

 

 

 

 

[Cracksmoka]

yea, so alot of you REALLY dont know alot about autism.... aspberger's itself comes in varying degree's of severity and THAT is the variation that has the most normal functioning "autistic" people. There are versions where the people will NEVER function as a normal or even semi-normal adult.

[Milk Grenades]

there's a lot of people without those afflictions that can't function normally

[itsallafarce]

i worked with this dude that was autistic at the rainforest cafe. i would prep everything and he would portion it out to a T. perfect everytime. the exec. chef loved him. although every now and then he would freak out if shit wasn't workin. sometimes it was not that bad other times it was fuckin crazy. i watched him bang his face on the prep table this one time and split his lip open. yellin like all crazy loud and shit. it was pretty gnarly. i heard he's gonna retire soon cause i guess it's gettin worse from what my buddy tells me being that i don't work there anymore.

[El Mamerro]

Alright, what advantages do you think there are?

 

[DRUNKEN-ASSHOLE-ONER]

 

That's fucking awesome.

[Milk Grenades]

they got skills

[After School Special]

human camera who drew London from memory[/url]

[/size]

 

 

WHAT?!

[Smacky636]

HAVE YOU SEEN MY BASEBALL?!?!?!?!?

[yinz n'at]

my girlfriends sister just moved to maui to aide autistic kids in schools there. she gets paid decently, but she gets cut bitten punched etc etc... she has stuck with it for a while now and has asolutly no intention for having her own kids, she just loves helping autistic kids