Edited by author 05-13-2008 06:30 AM

"There was a very interesting forty five minute long interview with Professor Susan Greenfield
on BBC radio last night. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/nightwaves/pip/o3tnt,
where there is a listen again facility."

"Listen again" will be available until 19 May; if anyone would like to hear the program after that date, I have a 22MB AAC file.

Edited by author 05-13-2008 05:10 AM
There was a very interesting forty five minute long interview with Professor Susan Greenfield on BBC radio last night. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/nightwaves/pip/o3tnt, where there is a listen again facility.

On 13 May 2008, at 06:02, QT - Dinah wrote:

> ...a message arrived this
> morning claiming that "Before you arrive in London, we are happy
> to provide you with the full meeting Program and Abstracts,
> which you can find at this address:
>
> http://cmpgnr.com/r.html?c=1228443&r=1227359&t=1368676520&l=1&d=
> 89621448&u=http%3a%2f%2fimfar%2econfex%2ecom%2fimfar%2f2008%2fwe
> bprogram%2fstart%2ehtml&g=0&f=-1 "
>
> - but I can't find any there...

Abstracts now seem to be available on individual pages if one clicks through from one of the browse links (day, format, or author)

Roger

Edited by author 05-13-2008 04:11 AM
Hi Michelle,

Here is the five day weather forecast for London: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=0008.

I wish you a safe and enjoyable flight tomorrow. I'm looking forward to meeting you. I'm a quiet person so I'll be talking little.

judging by their titles would of course be absurd, sorry! I forgot they hadn't done abstracts, but a message arrived this morning claiming that "Before you arrive in London, we are happy to provide you with the full meeting Program and Abstracts, which you can find at this address:

http://cmpgnr.com/r.html?c=1228443&r=12273...art%2ehtml&g=0&f=-1 "

- but I can't find any there, perhaps because of this:
"For Press purposes, all abstracts are EMBARGOED UNTIL WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 2008
7.01 P.M. EST/THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2008 00.01 A.M. UK BST"

? But then Why tell us that abstracts will be provided "before you get to London" (obviously an impossibility in my case anyway)

For Dinah, re what's up at IMFAR 2008, I can't comment much about anything, because this year, the IMFAR ogranizers didn't provide abstracts. Judging studies by their abstracts is in the realm of wild-guessing; judging them by their titles is impossible. Sorry!

The journalist who wrote up the story about Autism Speaks bullying its youthful parody for the New Scientist wonders if there is anything interesting due at IMFAR. I referred her to Dawson M and Mottron L, but I wonder if you Michelle or Philip have looked through the programme yet and spotted anything of interest? I found the programme too huge and generally repellant to be able to do more myself.

10/05/2008 - Autism Speaks announces multinational initiative http://www.firstscience.com/home/news/biol...itiative_47681.html
aargh

The book 'Childhood Schizophrenia' by William Goldfarb, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. (1961) reports the findings of research in childhood schizophrenia at the Henry Ittelson Center for Child Research in New York City.

The research consisted of an extensive battery of tests on 26 children diagnosed as schizophrenic by the psychiatric staff at the Henry Ittelson Center, and on a control group of 26 presumably normal children. In each group there were 18 boys and 8 girls. The mean age of the schizophrenic children was 8 years and 8 months, and of the normal children was 8 years and 7 months. The schizophrenic children had been resident at the Center for from 2 to 41 months, with an average of 16 months.

The scores in various tests are as follows:

Raven's Matrices scored in accordance with the number of correct responses (maximum score, 36):

Normal children: mean score = 22.5 Schizophrenic children: mean score = 13.7

Intelligence quotient based on the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children:

Normal children (mean IQ): Verbal IQ = 111.00, Performance IQ = 104.7, Full IQ = 108.8.

Schizophrenic children (mean IQ): Verbal IQ = 77.00, Performance IQ= 70.5, Full IQ = 72.4.

77 per cent of the normal children had a full IQ of over 100 compared to only 19 per cent of the schizophrenic children. None of the normal children had a full IQ of below 75 compared to 54 per cent of the schizophrenic children.

The mean scores in the Weigl colour-form sorting test which requires the child to classify objects by form and colour were (maximum score 8):

Normal children = 5.3 Schizophrenic children = 3.5.

It states in 'The Mind of a Savant' that Christopher's responses to the Embedded Figures Test "seemed to be random, and it was reasonably clear that he had no idea what was going on. He scored one out of twelve, and even this was of dubious validity, as his tracing of the figures was too clunmsy to be convincing."

Re /m7747 and the book by Smith and Tsimpli, there are a lot of papers about Christopher (spanning 1991 to 2007 that I know of). You can find some of them free online. No time to go fetch a lot of them, but here's one http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/g.morgan/CU443-16.tex%20typeset.pdf and here's another one http://web.mit.edu/6.863/www/readings/smith-epun.pdf

I read somewhere (I forget where now) that Christopher could not really do the Embedded Figures Task at all (the EFT being something many autistics have been reported to be good at).

Neil Smith, of Smith and Tsimpli, signed the "No Autistics Allowed" open letter. You can find his page (or one of them) here http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/neil/

The CIHR has finally emitted a report about the notorious CIHR autism conference back in 2007. You can find the html version here http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/36237.html and a pdf here http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/documents/inm...ism_symposium_e.pdf

I've only very briefly skimmed through. I am quoted but not named, near the end, as in:

"The value of good experimental design was also underscored, with one participant commenting, “in the autism intervention research … we are accepting much lower standards for the autistic population than we would for any other population.”"

This was in direct response to the ABA-related information presented at the symposium, where the quality of the studies was abysmal, as were generally the standards of science and ethics in evidence.

I would have thought that standards could not possibly get any lower, but at a recent Quebec gov't sponsored meeting (this one http://www.msss.gouv.qc.ca/sujets/groupes/...14c8d4be2bccf3c17d0 ), the Quebec gov't chose to promote ABA-related presentations that achieved even lower standards. I'll always remember that meeting for the extreme hostility that greeted my (rather meek, given the situation) suggestion that resources and funding should as priority be directed to studies that are of sufficient quality to have at least the possibility of being informative. The "autism advocacy" leadership which has got us to this point did definitely spring to mind.

jypsy wrote, "In fact I'm quite offended and shocked speechless."

Yeah. But I'm not sure I'm surprised. After all, isn't this the kind of response anyone raising concerns about "autism advocacy" usually gets? Especially if we're autistic?

Jonathan Howard and Run The Dream are sort of ambassadors and representatives of Autism Society Canada, and their goals, methods, values, etc., can be considered to be supported by ASC.

This reminds me a bit of the SFU conference, where the unwritten rule was not only that "autism advocacy" parent groups are above all scrutiny and criticism and are always right--but also that you are not allowed to make any statement that "autism advocates" don't agree with or want expressed.

So you are not allowed to raise any question "autism advocates" do not want raised, to utter any phrase they don't want uttered, to mention data or studies they do not want mentioned (I was interrupted and verbally attacked for even mentioning a study that has received funding), to in any way raise concerns they do not want raised, etc. And if you do make these terrible and unforgivable errors, you should only expect extremely rude and offensive replies. After all, you've broken the rules.

Anyway, that's one of the things that sprang to mind, when I saw Mr Mike McCarther's reply to the serious and polite concerns of autistic people. And of course so did all the "autism advocacy" leadership that has got us this far.

http://therunman.blogspot.com/2008/05/laug...reams-response.html
Laughter & Profanity - Run The Dreams Response to Our Concerns

On March 28th, 2008, I sent the following email:

    To: jonathan.howard@runthedream.ca,
    Subject: You run & reasons
    Cc: bill.robertson@runthedream.ca,alex.bittner@runthedream.ca,alison.pickard@runthedream.ca,becky.doyle@runthedream.ca,bryan.howard@runthedream.ca,carly.murdock@runthedream.ca,kevin.cassan@runthedream.ca,kevin.fraser@runthedream.ca,lauren.canzius@runthedream.ca,mike.mccarther@runthedream.ca,scott.rogers@runthedream.ca,warren.howard@runthedream.ca

    Sir,

    Words like these - "spared the burden of dealing with Autism", "ultimately preventing it or finding a cure." are incredibly offensive to autistics and parents such as myself.

    My (autistic) son ran across Prince Edward Island in 2006 and runs almost every weekend in a roadrace FOR autism, not *against* it as you are doing. For all of our involvement in running and autism advocacy we will not be supporting you run and will be educating PE Islanders about why we find your attitude so offensive.

    What, exactly, do you have against people like myself and my 2 sons that you want to prevent people like us from existing?

    What, exactly, do you plan to do with any money you raise?

    -jypsy (janet norman-bain)
    The Autistic Celebration Run - http://irunman.blogspot.com
    Runman's blog - http://therunman.blogspot.com



My email was met with silence. Except for the email from one service provider, bouncing back one of the addresses, I got no reply whatsoever. I noted this in the post I wrote on the World Autism Day, April 2nd.

On May 9th, I received an invitation, via the PEI Autism Society, from Mr. Mike McCarther, Production Manager - Run the Dream Atlantic, stating he'd be "ecstatic" if we'd join them Wednesday, May 14th in Charlottetown. Mr. McCarther also invited me to "feel free to contact me to RSVP, or with any questions or concerns that you may have."

We sent him the following email:

    Mr. McCarther,

    Please consider our concerns as expressed below and at http://therunman.blogspot.com/2008/04/runn...against-it-why.html

    Thank You

    -janet norman-bain & Alex Bain

    ("Below" was a plain text copy, minus the links, of what is at the link provided)



I got the following reply (slightly edited to preserve the integrity of this blog) from Mr. McCarther:

    From: "Mike McCarther"

    Haha oh sh*t...



That is the long awaited reply from Run The Dream to autistics expressing concern over Mr. Howard's message. Laughter and profanity.

We are not laughing.

In fact I'm quite offended and shocked speechless.

'The Mind of a Savant: Language Learning and Modularity' by Neil Smith and Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli, Blackwell, Oxford UK and Cambridge, Mass.(1995) is a detailed study of a savant named Christopher.

Christopher was born in 1962 and diagnosed as brain-damaged at the age of six weeks. "Although he was late in walking and talking, his main interest from about three years was books: never fairy stories, but books providing factual information". He can read, write and communicate in fifteen to twenty languages, but lives in a sheltered community because he is unable to look after himself.

On Raven's Matrices he has "on different occasions scored 75 or 76 (where the average is 100). On the performance part of the Weschler Scale test WISC-R, UK "he has scored at different times 42, 67 and 52 (again, the average is 100). This is in striking contrast with the verbal part of the same test, on which he scored respectively 89, 102 and 98."

Although Christopher has not been diagnosed as autistic, O'Connor and Hermelin quote his medical record which refers to "slightly autistic and obsessional behaviour." (O'Connor, N. and Hermelin, B. (1991) 'A specific linguistic ability'. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 95: 673-680).

Edited by author 05-09-2008 11:20 PM
"Whooping cough outbreak closes El Sobrante school," story from [sigh] the Mercury News, see http://origin.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9207819

The Contra Costa Public Health director, Wendell Bruner, explains:

"Closing a school for an outbreak of pertussis is a very unusual action... Normally, we're able to control pertussis cases in schools without closing the school; however, the situation in the East Bay Waldorf School is different. They have a very low rate of immunization among their students."

Also from the article:

"Parents whose children attend Waldorf schools are more inclined to believe in natural and alternative approaches to health, said John Fuller, an AWSNA employee based in Minneapolis, explaining why some may opt out of vaccinations."

I'd eat my copy of "Let Me Hear Your Voice" if autism weren't mentioned. Here it is (they probably mean "cite"...):

"Contra Costa Health Immunization Coordinator Erika Jenssen, parent of an 11-year-old at the school who has been immunized, said some parents site studies that indicate vaccinations may cause autism as a reason for opting out."