I'm going to have to read it properly when my mind isn't in flu-fog, but this http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene is probably worth reading.

Even in my current state, this is amazing http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man

Found via Marginal Revolution.

re /m9924
the Invisible man is indeed amazing, many thanks for the link.

"Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy"--a whole special issue of stuff that's mostly way over my head (even when my head isn't bogged down in flu) http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122603154/issue

There are two autism-specific papers (by Ian Hacking and Victoria McGeer). There's a paper by Peter Singer which is about what you would expect. None of it is open access though, sorry. I haven't looked around to see if free copies of any of the papers are hanging around...

Edited by author 11-17-2009 05:47 AM
Re /m9926 the titles of the papers are very interesting. If you click on HTML or PDF for a paper you get the full text for that paper.

A bit later today (3pm Montreal time, I think) there should be an online interview with Tyler Cowen about his new book http://www.metanomics.net/show/dont_apolog...author_tyler_cowen/

Pam Heaton has an upcoming talk in London http://www.bps.org.uk/conferences-and-even...tures-2009_home.cfm

Edited by author 11-19-2009 02:42 PM
Ben Goldacre (him again!) makes the top 20 in the Times "100 Best Books of the Decade" http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol.../article6914181.ece

Here's the description:

"Goldacre, a hospital doctor, is a witty debunker of all forms of bad science: quack medicines, ropey dietary theories, incompetent reporting. At a time of increasing credulity, he is a tonic."

While I'm here, here's Stephen Wiltshire's New York (in full) http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/New_York...re.aspx?Size=Medium

In the always-overflowing "definitely not autism advocacy" dept., a letter demanding that the NIH fund "scientifically rigorous inquiry into the state of research ethics, industry-academic relationships, and the effect of these relationships on human health" http://www.pharmedout.org/NIHLetter.pdf

Notice the numerous international signatories (Australia, UK, Canada, New Zealand).

Edited by author 11-20-2009 04:21 AM
Re /m9930, the drawing by Stephen Wiltshire of New York City is brilliant.

I have read the following books in the Times "100 Best Books of the Decade" list:

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell; Atonement by Ian McEwan; The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman; The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K.Rowling; The Accidental by Ali Smith; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon; London: The Biography by Peter Acroyd; No Logo by Naomi Klein; Unless by Carol Shields: Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. Also I might have read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.

Alex Bain is interviewed by CBC about running with the Olympic flame http://therunman.blogspot.com/2009/11/cbc-...-run-interview.html

You can see him here http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Local_News/PEI/ID=1337658013 Click on "Compass November 20, 2009" and the segment about the Olympic torch starts about 8 minutes in. This video will only stay up until next Monday...

The BBC reports that "Athletes with intellectual disabilities can once again take part in the Paralympics" http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_spor...y_sport/8323369.stm

The new system for ensuring that intellectually disabled athletes are in fact intellectually disabled seems bizarre to me, never mind confusing. There will be an on-the-spot test, administered by a panel, of "sports intelligence." And there will eventually be some kind of norms for this new test. Or something like that...

This is excellent journalism from the Chicago Tribune, particularly by the standards usually applied to autistics http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-a...,7095563,full.story and http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-a...v22,0,2165439.story

The director of the Center for Children's Environmental Toxicology at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital asks, "Where's their control group? Their randomized controlled trial?"

Those are always good questions.

There's also comments about how well autistic children do without treatment (provided they are not written off):

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But in evaluating a therapy, the challenge is determining how much, if any, of the progress can be credited to the treatment.

That is because, over time, children with autism do develop, said Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist and an autism expert at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland. They make leaps; some may plateau or regress, but they show improvement.

"Kids are at their worst in the second and third year of life," Wiznitzer said. "That is when they are not talking. That is when they are most into themselves."

But around age 3 the children often begin to talk, he said. "Over 3 to 5 years, you see an improvement in communication skills. ... By school age, they have language to get needs and requests met," Wiznitzer said.

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The fact that all kinds of autistic children are reported to do well while undergoing treatments that are at best useless, and have a good chance of being harmful, is interesting--at least to me...

I read "Age of Autism" about twice a year. This time I found something interesting. I wonder how long this comment will stay up; I'm going to scan in the whole thing. Right now it's here http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/11/autism-...9e20120a6c16e94970b :

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I too, have a daughter who was diagnosed with ASD at age 3. I was told that I should apply for special financial assistance, as she would be in diapers for many years. I was told by her kindergarten teacher that she needed to be able to say her address, so that if she got lost, she would be able to ask for help. This woman wanted to teach her the address by rote. She used to have frequent temper tantrums, did not interact with the children at her daycare, and ignored her teachers.

Now, she is doing great in Grade 7. She just got 90% on her math test, and 75% on her science test on ecosystems. She knows the difference between a predator, a consumer and a producer. She has friends, she has traveled to Europe with her family, and she's a wonderful and happy child.

But, she hasn't been seen by a DAN doctor, she hasn't been taking all kinds of supplements, she hasn't had chelation or any other unproven treatment. You can attribute your daughter's progress to biomed, but I can only attribute my daughter's to maturation, excellent teaching and lots of loving. (She's never had ABA, BTW).

That's the problem with ASD. The course of development is not linear, not easily predicted and it's impossible to clearly ascribe improvements to any specific treatment. That's why we need placebo controlled studies. But there aren't any for all the stuff your DAN dispenses, (at a healthy profit for himself, no doubt!) - Talk about your conflict of interest.

Posted by: Sarah | November 21, 2009 at 04:38 PM

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More from the Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-a...,6519404,full.story Very worthwhile reading.

Regardless of the glaringly obvious need to be cautious, Andrew Zimmerman still claims that:

"I think we will solve this problem in the next 10 to 15 years."

Someone should remember that quote...

The Guardian reports on a man who was falsely presumed to be in a "vegetative" state for 23 years http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/2...apped-coma-23-years

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For 23 years Rom Houben was trapped in his own body, unable to communicate with his doctors or family. They presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983.

But then doctors used a state-of-the-art scanning system on the brain of the martial arts enthusiast, which showed it was functioning almost normally.

"I had dreamed myself away," said Houben, now 46, whose real "state" was discovered three years ago and has just been made public by the doctor who rescued him.

Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, has published a scientific paper saying Houben could be one of many falsely diagnosed coma cases around the world.

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