FEAT: Parents Fight For Children They Fear Will Be Forgotten/ 4

[Guest guest]

FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER Sacramento, California http://www.feat.org

" Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the Planet "

______________________________________________________

June 28, 2001 Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp

*** TOMORROW, FRI., IS DEADLINE FOR CALENDAR OF EVENTS: events@...

***

Also Abstracts:

* Autism and Parkinson's Disease

* Quantifying The Phenotype In Autism Spectrum Disorders

* The Broad Autism Phenotype For Molecular Genetic Autism Studies

* Superior Visual Search In Autism

Parents Fight For Children They Fear Will Be Forgotten

[by Joyce Mullins.]

http://www.zwire.com/news/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2007503 &

title=Parents%20fight%20for%20children%20they%20fear%20will%20be%20forgotten

& BRD=1274 & PAG=461 & CATNAME=Top%20Stories & CATEGORYID=410 <-- address ends

here.

DeVore, Chase Hosier and Lucas Padgett don't look different

from other boys, but they are.

The three, all students at the Charlton School, are - as are more than

a half million other Americans today -autistic. What does that mean?

It means something different for every person who has autism. It is a

neurological, developmental disability that typically appears during the

first three years of life. It robs children, to varying degrees, of the

ability to respond to and relate to all things sensory.

Autism was the reason Chase did not like to be held when he was a

baby; it was the reason he did not respond to the sounds around him. It is

the reason why now, at the age of 4 and 1/2 he does not like to be

face-to-face with another person, not even his parents, Mark and Sharon

DeVore.

Recently, however, the DeVores have seen progress - now

presents his cheek to them and his teachers for a kiss. They credit the

Delaware Autism Program and his teachers at Charlton School for helping

their son find his way through the maze of his disability.

About half of all people with autism have little or no language

skills. does not talk. He is a visual learner. He uses picture

cards - called PECS (the Picture Exchange Communication System) especially

designed for him to inform him about the world and help him get along in it.

When Alan and Padgett decided last week that their 11-year-old

son, Lucas seemed to have mastered showering, they took his PECS showering

instruction chart down in the bathroom. Lucas got lost in the shower. He

washed one shoulder over and over because he did not have the chart that

showed him which body part to wash next.

Some autistic people are verbal and with the appropriate educational

tools and training can learn to function fairly well in the world. In rural

Milford, and Hosier's 6-year-old son Chase now reads and

recognizes some words up to the third grade level. First, get a diagnosis

Autism and a host of related disorders can be difficult to diagnose.

It affects children - four times more boys than girls - in very different

ways. As a toddler, Lucas had no perception about space or heights. His

mother said when he started to climb stairs, he had no idea how to do it.

" He would walk up the stairs on the outside of the railing. "

After first being tested for hearing impairment - a frequent first

test for kids whose ears are fine but whose brains are not getting the

messages that sounds bring them - Lucas was diagnosed at about 2 and 1/2

years old.

also passed his hearing tests and was diagnosed at about the

same age.

Chase developed - as some autistic children do - normally, until he

was about 15 months old. His mother remembers being thrilled that at that

young age, he had a vocabulary of about 20 words. He spoke in three-word

sentences and played the usual baby games.

Three months later, he stopped saying anything - not even " Mommy " and

" Daddy. " Then he began to exhibit frightening behavioral changes.

" He would get upset if his toys were not in the order they should be.

His Teletubbies had to be lined up in the order they pop up out of the

ground on the television show, " said Hosier.

Then he began screaming at night and throwing himself off his bed.

Chase was not diagnosed until he was four.

Their boys' behaviors, abilities and disabilities were different, but

the DeVores, the Hosiers and the Padgetts all faced the same diagnosis -

autism.

Early intervention and the kind of education their children receive

through the nationally recognized Delaware Autism Program at the Charlton

School is the only way their boys stand a chance to overcome their

disabilities.

One morning during a recent week-long break from the year-around

program at Charlton, Alan and Padgett had another of many trying

experiences with Lucas that reminded them why they are fighting for his

education.

Lucas wanted the snack food Cheetos for breakfast.

" No, " his father said.

" No, not Cheetos for breakfast, " his mother said.

Their child, behaving more like a toddler than an 11-year-old, threw

himself onto the floor and banged around, shouting, " I'll die. "

" No, Lucas, you won't die without Cheetos, " Padgett said.

As suddenly has he had slammed to the floor, Lucas jumped up, laughed

and hugged his mom and went back to watching the movie " Jaws, " picking up

his toy shark and wiggling it around in a swimming motion through the air.

His tantrum over the Cheetos was brief, but it was physically

impressive. The Padgetts realize he is on a collision course with the

biggest change of his life with puberty right around the corner.

" When he was little, I could pick him up and hold him, but no longer, "

said. " And, yes, we are thinking about adolescence. "

Worrying about what will happen to Lucas as he grows up takes a lot of

Padgett's time. She recalled the many times over the years the family

had driven near a bridge overpass in the Washington, D.C. area and observed

a man who stood by the road waving a branch at traffic. said she

believes the man has lived in a clump of bushes by the roadway for decades.

" There's Lucas in 30 years if the Delaware Autism Program is

dismantled, " she said, her face masking the horror of her fears. ©Dover Post

2001

>> DO SOMETHING ABOUT AUTISM NOW <<

Subscribe, Read, then Forward the FEAT Daily Newsletter.

To Subscribe go to www.feat.org/FEATnews No Cost!

* * *

Autism and Parkinson's Disease

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list_ui

ds=11425297 & dopt=Abstract <-- address ends here

1: Med Hypotheses 2001 Feb;56(2):246-249

Woodward G.

Department of Neurology, University of Kansas, Kansas City, Kansas, USA

The pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder,

is multifaceted, having a variety of genetic and environmental factors.

There is considerable evidence to support the role of toxins, particularly

pesticides and herbicides, in at least some of those affected (presumably,

mostly the genetically vulnerable).

The pathogenesis of autism is no less complex, but little is known

about the potential role of toxins for autism, a neurodevelopmental

disorder. The incidence of autism appears to be rising, and early exposure

to synthetic chemicals is one suspect for this rise. Impaired detoxification

of certain chemicals may be common to autism and Parkinson's disease.

Further study of environmental influences for either disorder may lead

to important insights regarding causation for both, and perhaps for other

neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders as well. Copyright 2001

Harcourt Publishers Ltd.

PMID: 11425297 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

* * *

Quantifying The Phenotype In Autism Spectrum Disorders

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list_ui

ds=11424991 & dopt=Abstract

1: Am J Med Genet 2001 Jan 8;105(1):36-8

Lord C, Leventhal BL, Cook EH Jr. The University of Chicago, Illinois, USA.

cathy@...

Twin and family studies suggest that familial transmission in autism

extends to a spectrum of social and behavioral deficits that characterize

individuals who have significant impairments within the autism spectrum, but

do not meet formal criteria for autistic disorder.

Standardized diagnostic instruments, including the Autism Diagnostic

Interview-Revised (ADI-R) and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule

(ADOS-WPS Edition), offer the opportunity to quantify deficits across the

autism spectrum, controlling effects of language and cognitive delay, in

individuals with significant impairments.

It is suggested that quantitative measures of social reciprocity and

repetitive behaviors and interests, with separate quantification of

expressive language level and nonverbal intelligence, most accurately

reflect the range of behavioral phenotypes in autism spectrum disorders.

PMID: 11424991 [PubMed - in process]

* * *

The Broad Autism Phenotype For Molecular Genetic Autism Studies

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list_ui

ds=11424990 & dopt=Abstract <-- Address ends here.

1: Am J Med Genet 2001 Jan 8;105(1):34-5

The broad autism phenotype: a complementary strategy for molecular genetic

studies of autism.

Piven J.

North Carolina Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research

Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27599-7250, USA.

The genetic liability for autism appears to be expressed not only as

the full syndrome of autism, but in milder, qualitatively similar

characteristics that collectively have been referred to as constituting the

broad autism phenotype.

Identification of components of the broad autism phenotype that

segregate independently in relatives of autistic individuals may provide an

index of genes that, when present together, may interact to produce autism.

Inclusion of information on the broad autism phenotype in relatives, in

linkage studies of autism, may provide a potentially important,

complementary approach for detecting the genes causing this condition.

PMID: 11424990 [PubMed - in process]

* * *

Superior Visual Search In Autism

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & list_ui

ds=11424657 & dopt=Abstract <-- Address ends here.

1: J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2001 Jun;27(3):719-30

O'Riordan MA, Plaisted KC, Driver J, Baron-Cohen S.

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge,

United Kingdom. mafo100@...

Children with a diagnosis of autism and normally developing children,

matched for age and general ability, were tested on a series of visual

search tasks in 2 separate experiments. The children with autism performed

better than the normally developing children on difficult visual search

tasks.

This result occurred regardless of whether the target was uniquely

defined by a single feature or a conjunction of features, as long as ceiling

effects did not mask the difference. Superior visual search performance in

autism can be seen as analogous to other reports of enhanced unique item

detection in autism. Unique item detection in autism is discussed in the

light of mechanisms proposed to be involved in normal visual search

performance.

PMID: 11424657 [PubMed - in process]

_______________________________________________________

Lenny Schafer, Editor PhD Ron Sleith Kay Stammers

Editor@... Unsubscribe: FEATNews-signoff-request@...

CALENDAR OF EVENTS submissions to Guppy events@...