Friday May 19, 2006
One of the boards I go to seems to be discussing autism a lot lately since it seems to be in the news a lot. One of the networks did a series on it, there was a woman who killed her autistic child recently (horrifying article here), the military recruited an autistic boy even though it is supposed to disqualify them, and there are activist groups on both ends of the autism debate being very vocal right now. (one side is the DAN! / CAN! and other places who think autism is only mercury poisoning and should be cured, and the other end who thinks it is genetic and are aiming to gain acceptance as a valid minority group who are just different, not ‘defective’. )
Here is one of the more interesting articles I ran across about autism:
The Age of Autism: The Amish anomaly: Part 1, Part 2
edited to add one more article that explains the crux of the vaccine-autism controversy: Vaccinations: friend or foe?
That’s one of the things that confuses me at times — which “camp” is right and that I should align myself with.
For the time being, I guess I’ll just concentrate on dealing with our current issues and day-to-day life and let the people with more time on their hands debate definitions.
Something about the image of officials from the local health dept’s knocking on doors of Amish families and urging them to vaccinate their children just makes me irate. Maybe it hits home a bit because I spent many summers visiting amongst Amish communities as a child. I often thought, as a kid, that they had the right idea (with their chosen life). Perhaps I had no idea just how right they are!
I think both sides are right. Yes, Autism(some parts of the spectrum) is an illness that needs to be recognized and those afflicted by it need to be given disability status. I do also believe strongly that it can be caused by heavy metal poisoning. I also believe though that it can be caused by a body’s inability to detoxify anything from gluten to dairy, etc. A severe allergy in the wrong body causes autistic behavior in some people.
That is incredibly sad about that little girl. Her mother must have really been struggling in her head and heart to come to such extremes.
About the recruiting, totally absurd. The military blows my mind. I just can’t even believe that the family of that boy even needs to wait for an answer…of course he shouldn’t be in the army.