May 10, 2010
Autism Pioneer Stanley Greenspan Dies
CNN reports that autism pioneer and child psychologist Dr. Stanley Greenspan died last Tuesday at the age of sixty-eight.
Greenspan was known for his “floor-time approach,” in which parents were encouraged to seek a relationship based approach with autistics rather than a behavioral approach.
Countless children were helped in this way, and the importance of this approach to advocacy on behalf of autistics as neurodiverse persons cannot be ignored.
The CNN story is available at Autism Pioneer Stanley Greenspan Dies.
November 11, 2007
Lead in Toys
Over at AutismVox, there’s a justifiably skeptical post about a letter to the editor suggesting that lead in toys might be responsible for the supposed ‘autism epidemic.’
I know of no solid medicine supporting a lead-toy-to-autism hypothesis, but the plaintiff’s bar may find a reputed expert, somewhere. It’s likely that there will be lawsuits over these lead-containing toys, but I am not sure if they’ll implicate autism.
In any event, mere implication is neither evidence nor proof of causation.
February 24, 2007
Lawyers and Popular Accounts of Medical Studies
Most lawyers have hobbies in which they’re knowledgeable. A good lawyer shows attention to detail, and that skill may be useful learning a hobby like stamp collecting, embroidery, or baseball statistics. All well and good, but not exactly a second vocation. The true polymath is rare. When lawyers start to tell you how much they know about medicine, you have every reason to be suspicious. A good lawyer finds a medical expert; he doesn’t pretend that he went to medical school.
I think about this often in an atmosphere in which just about anyone seems to have a view about what causes autism. Autism. The idea that a few copies of Newsweek or Time magazine make one an expert on autism is more than laughable; it’s hopelessly deluded. (The staff at Time struggle to keep their magazine afloat, and one wonders how there would be hours to spare to understand so complex a medical condition. First pay your bills, then tell me about how you’re a medical genius.)
Lawyers, though, talk too much, and especially too much about what they think that they know. There’s something about passing the bar that convinces the weak-minded among our profession that they have been initiated into the deepest mysteries of all life. I am content to say that, although I have passed two bar exams (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), my medical knowledge stops where first aid training ends.
Recently, the Star Ledger — Newark, New Jersey’s leading newspaper — published an article entitled, “Jersey Scientists Find a Possible Key to Autism.” Perhaps they have, but I’ll wait to see.
Consider what the reporter writes: “Currently, the only way to diagnose autism is by a clinical assessment of symptoms [sic], which include difficulty with communication and social interaction, as well as obsessive behaviors and interests.” (What the reporter describes are signs, not symptoms.) Now, however, the scholars at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey believe that “in the future a person’s risk for autism could be measured with a simple urine test that would look for high levels of “bad” fat molecules, or a blood test that could reveal genetic problems, including the absence of a key gene, called GSTM1, which is responsible for metabolizing good fats. Many people with autism do not have this gene.” The signs of autism would be present even without the genetic test as confirmation. Risk of autism, however, must refer to the heritability of the trait. Unless, astonishingly, the author means to suggest that many people are on the verge of becoming autistics, and would do so if only they experience further chemical imbalance.
I can see more than one lawyer — on behalf of one activist group or another — demanding research into fatty acids, etc. (By the way, I know — and you do, too — that research of this kind has been going on elsewhere for a while.) Can you see the argument: People might become autistics overnight without the cocktail, for goodness’ sake! It cannot be that simple, but somewhere in this vast, continental republic, some lawyer will argue that it is. That, dear readers, will be one more burden for us to bear.
