Reply to The Kids Who Beat Autism: New York Times

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]It is pretty clear to me that many children diagnosed with autism in their early years do not actually have autism...no wonder it 'goes away' later. Real autism is not curable. [/b]With lots of hard work autistic people (high functioning, not severely autistic btw.) can APPEAR as if they don't have autism. But for them that just means constantly working their behind off day in and day out to keep their symptoms in check. It's sad that this kind of 'research' doesn't only give false hope but also may lead to people saying to autistic people 'If only you had worked harder, you'd be fine now'...pretty horrible IMO.[/quote]

To echo a PP: where does DSM define ASD as incurable? Why do you think that's a defining characteristic of ASD? After all, it's a diagnosis based on symptoms.[/quote]

[b]Because, if it is curable, then it isn't autism.[/b]  Look at what autism truly is.  Those kids in the article were not cured.  It is a misleading title.  They have made significant progress but they still have quirks.  Anyone cured or outgrows it, especially in the younger years, probably never had it.  Many things like MERLD, social communication disorder and others also look and have some of the same features of ASD and are often confused.[/quote]

That's completely circular logic.

What autism "truly is" is a triad of deficits in social and emotional areas, language and communication, and flexibility of thought.  It is primarily a neurological disorder.  Because it is appears in children, it is highly susceptible to early intervention.  Children's brains are highly plastic. Early intensive intervention brings tremendous improvement and for some children (especially if they were mildly affected to start out with) it may result in them losing the diagnosis.

Neuroplasticity is truly amazing. There are kids with severe epilepsy who have had one entire HALF of their brain removed to stop the seizures and they continue to live and grow up and function.  Because the surgery occurs at an early age, there is little to no change in brain function, including cognitive ability, personality, humor, or memory. These patients become normal adults and attend college. The remaining hemisphere assumes all of the functions of the whole brain.

If neuroplasticity can do that, then asking if treatment can cure some kids of austism spectrum disorders is silly.  Of course it can. [/quote]

No its not.  Sometimes doctors are wrong.  A lot of medical diagnosis have the same characteristics but are different things.  So, then how to do explain the kids who don't get early intervention services and till outgrow the diagnosis.  They don't know what autism is.  Right now it is just a grouping of "symptoms" and "behaviors' that are out of the norm for what our culture considers normal.  Its very subjective to the evaluator which is why you go to 10 evaluators and you will get 10 different opinions.  If we went to a different evaluator, we would lose our diagnosis and that person, like our therapists would question the initial doctor.  Do you realize these kids are getting diagnosed with a doctor or other person looking at them for 10-45 minutes - some have several hour or day evaluations but many of us have 10 minute evaluations and the doctors do not talk to the teachers, therapist or anyone else involved.  Our last evaluation was 30 minutes, 10 of which was with my child.  My child took that time to warm up and was not interested so the doctor made all kinds of inferences from that (even though he can easily do a 60 minute speech, OT or other appointment that he enjoys).  There is not enough criteria, there are not enough medical tests and there is not enough evidence to truly know what this is to lump it all together except for insurance reasons (as it is one of the main things they are throwing money at right now for therapies).[/quote]

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