Autism Drug article:

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47630513/ns ... 8e4WHn7WxM

This makes me really nervous. I don't want the doctors/schools to start expecting we medicate. I don't like the idea of giving my son something new that may have bad long term effects.

Be careful, I think that it is very unlikely that a drug will "cure" autism.

Frankly the cure for autism could be worse than living with autism, the day that the state tries to make me take the "cure" I will go off to live in the woods.

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Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

I am against denying parents or adult patients a drug therapy that may help them. However, I am also against forcing a drug therapy on parents or adult patients who don't want it. It is up to parents and adult patients to make up their own minds on whether to have a therapy, based on input from doctors, and from their own personal research. Teachers and other non docs have absolutely no business pushing drug therapies on parents of difficult students. They are not medical professionals, and do not have medical training or degrees. They can recommend that the child be taken to a professional for an evaluation and diagnosis, and for treatment, but these non medical people have no professional standing in the medical profession to order or prescribe drug therapies. Should a child be taken to a medical professional, it is still up to the parent to consider the benefits of drug therapies versus the negatives, and then it is up to the parents to decide whether the child will be given drug therapy.

I've heard of a number of cases of schools really pushing drugs for active kids, not just kids with problems. I was on different ones when growing up, and eventually took myself off of them, without telling anyone, as they weren't helping me in any way, and had unpleasant side effects. I was in my early teens then, and had more sense than the adults around me concerning the use of drug therapy.--Still do. If I should ever learn of a drug that can really help adult Autism spectrum people, and if it has a good safety track record, I might consider it, but then again, I might not. I'm not big on drugs--except supplements like vitamins.

I for one welcome this. Its early days, but ultimately I think that there will in fact be drugs to mitigate/ameliorate whatever cause my son's Autism. Note I say whatever "causes my son's Autism" because to me Autism as it affects my son (NV LFA) does not describe a personality or difference it is a description of the result of something else, something in the way the brain operates (well thats my opinion anyway).

Autism Speaks funded some of this
http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2011/06/23 ... /#comments
Reading comments from people with their children trialling the drug, e.g. "Holly R", this to me looks very promising.

I wouldn't mind a drug that helped with a few things executive function.

I think it would not be bad either to have a drug that could induce short-term autism in neurotypicals, so they could empathize fully.

I want to say a few snide things. I'll go ahead and get them out of my system.

1) NOTHING can be any worse than Risperdal. NOTHING. ANYTHING has to be better. DEATH would have been better, IMO. It's been months and months and months, and I don't think I'll EVER get over that s**t. And categorical statements like that, however heartfelt, are by definition false.

2) Too damn bad nobody's working on a pharmacological treatment for being shallow, judgmental, and intolerant. Of course, when it's a majority behavior, it's "normal."

3) Looks like they STILL can't fix DUMB.

4) I can hardly wait for "Normal In A Bottle." *sarcasm*

5) I want to see a list of the horrible side effects of this particular medication.

6) I've already thought of one thing worse than Risperdal. The attitude it serves. See comments 2 and 3.

Now, on a more serious note--

I really do hope they come up with something to help. Preferably without life-threatening side effects that people are foolish enough to deem "worth it" to avoid being annoyed, embarrassed, or inconvenienced. And yes, there *is* a difference between behaviors that are life-threatening and/or truly disabling and ones that are merely annoying, embarrassing, or inconvenient-- and, unfortunately, plenty of as*holes who will happily medicate the latter as if they were the former.

Because, what is an annoyance for me and the people around me is a real disability for others. I do understand that. And I'll take ANY way that more people can be more enabled without the cure being worse than the disease.

And, yes-- We really need to re-evaluate what does and does not constitute "unacceptable" or "a pathology" in Western (perhaps human?) society. Our current definitions are, let's face it, bloody pathological.

If something could fix the tactile issues, the memory issues, the sensory issues that turn the Farmer's Market into a carnival midway and events at my kid's school into Hell on Earth?? Well, I'd think about it. It would depend on the side effects and what I stand to lose.

I think it's def worth researching.