February 25, 2007
Podcast #1
Lex Autism Podcast for Sunday, February 25, 2007 Show Notes: Why Lex Autism? Lakeland School lawsuit Advocacy as Clarity Lawyers and Medical News in the Popular Press
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.
Advocacy as Clarity: Autism Diva
There’s more than one skill useful to lawyers, but expressing a clear point of view, a memorable advocacy, is a most useful one. Too often, one meets young lawyers who think that all statements on behalf of clients should be expressed in the alternative, lest any possible, theoretical position be foregone. Non-lawyers rightly interpret this tendency as indecision, confusion, and muddled-thinking. If your audience — judge, jury, peers, or public — doesn’t think you have a definite opinion, then don’t take up their time. Just tell them that you don’t know, and then stop talking.
I have been reading Autism Diva’s blog recently, and she has a definite opinion. It’s one of the reasons that I enjoy visiting her website. She tells readers what she thinks, and supports her views. (I may not agree; that’s not necessary. She has a clear point of view, and values her readers’ time. She’s direct, and a lawyer should expect that in any advocate, lawyer or non-lawyer.)
What does she think? Autism Diva’s recent post, Dignity for Autistics, describes aptly what her blog advocates — that, in her words, “Every once in a while autistic advocates have to go dip into the work of other disability advocates to remember that it is possible to talk about loving and admiring your children, your sibling(s) or your peers for who they are, including their disabilities or their (far-out, generally recognized as socially unacceptable) personalities.”
Well, that’s Autism Diva. She’s ‘posautive,’ and writes that way. Advocacy on behalf of a client might, occasionally, place an attorney on the other side from the Autism Diva (e.g., advocating on behalf of a client’s access to treatments that she might not support). Who, though, reading what she writes, does not find her clear advocacy admirable? One might not want to encounter that non-lawyer’s coherence and tenacity in court, but a discerning man would find her a worthy interlocutor for a lengthy discussion over a fine meal and a good red.
February 17, 2007
Lex Autism
It was the habit of jurists in Ancient Rome, and in the Middle Ages, to describe what they considered a coherent field of law, or the law of a specific people, as a modifier of Lex, law: for example, the Lex Mercatoria (merchant or commercial law) or the Lex Gothica (law of the Goths). It was a way to designate a law, or more likely, a set of related laws that comprised a legal field, like commercial law.
Although entitling a blog Lex Autism suggests a legal field related to autism, I certainly do not believe that there is anything so clear, comprehensible, and distinct about autism, either as a condition or as laws affecting those with the condition. On the contrary, I would be the first to affirm the common saying about autism, that “if you have met one person with autism, then you’ve met one person with autism.” Virtually everything about autism is in dispute: its definition, causes, treatment, and the role of law in the lives of those with autism.
If neither autism nor laws affecting autism are so simple and coherent, then at least an attorney, writing on law and autism, can strive for clarity and consistency in his commentary. It is only in that general way that I see meaning in the title, Lex Autism.
