Author name: Ahmad

FIONA MACLEOD TEACHERS must be given training to cope with the rising numbers of autistic children in mainstream schools, campaigners said yesterday. Carol Evans, the national director of the National Autistic Society Scotland, said there were worrying levels of ignorance about the condition in schools. "One man described how the teaching assistant at his son's school did not even know what Asperger's syndrome was," she said. "This lack of knowledge contributes to the argument that autism should be a compulsory subject in teacher training." Despite an estimated one in 100 people being affected by autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), teachers in Scotland receive no standard training on the condition. As part of an awareness- raising campaign, NAS Scotland has called for teachers to be given training to ensure that children with ASD receive the appropriate education. Mrs Evans added: "I have every sympathy with teachers working with children with autism who have had insufficient or no training. It was a political decision to bring children with special needs into the mainstream. However, it has not been backed up by adequate resources and support." In just six years, Scottish schools have seen a 623 per cent rise in the number of autistic pupils. In 2005, state secondaries had 825 pupils with ASD compared with 114 in 1999. In January, The Scotsman highlighted a damning report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education, which found that services for autistic youngsters were "frequently deficient". Dr Evelyn McGregor, a lecturer in child development at Edinburgh University, co- authored a study on teaching children with autism. She found that teachers with no experience of ASD children often held shocking misconceptions. She said: "They had an exaggerated view of autistic children as acting out and screaming, where the experienced teachers saw that was very rare." She said children with ASD can be misunderstood as simply being badly behaved. "I think it would help if teachers had guidance," she said. "Autism is not a simple thing to diagnose - mild autism is quite complicated and people need special training for that. "A teacher who had some knowledge might be able to stop and think, that this child has additional needs." Carla Rowden is the co- ordinator of the NAS Advocacy for Education service, which helps parents fight for the best education for their ASD child. She said: "Some local authorities and teachers are doing their best, but they perhaps need some support. "Parents come to us saying their parenting skills are being questioned because their children are seen as badly behaved. With the prevalence of autism, teachers can expect to teach a child with autism at some point in their career, so training would help," Ms Rowden went on. "And things which would help autistic children learn, would help all children - such as getting straight to the point and not using figurative language." Scotland's largest teaching union, the EIS, backed the call for training. A spokesman said: "It is certainly something we acknowledge as needing to be addressed." 'Blair's not just in my care - he's a friend' BLAIR Houliston, 14, found himself isolated in school because his teachers didn't understand his Asperger's syndrome. His mother, Avril Ferguson, 43, from Livingston, West Lothian, said: "A lot of them haven't even heard of it. He's told sit down and shut up but he can't do that because of his condition. "In his first year, one teacher just thought Blair was being bad and and that isolating him would make it better." However, Blair needed social interaction and through the National Autistic Society he met befriender Jackie Scott. Mrs Scott, 59, said: "We go to garden centres because Blair likes gardens and chocolate cake. Our interests have been matched well and I don't think of Blair as just someone in my care - he's my friend."

New Scientist: Richard Lathe and Michael Le Page A study of mercury levels in the baby hair of children who were later diagnosed with autism has produced startling results. The babies had far lower levels of mercury in their hair than other infants, leading to speculation that autistic children either do not absorb mercury or, more likely, cannot excrete it. The results will be seized upon by parents who blame vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal for their children's autism, some of whom are suing health authorities in the US and Canada. (The MMR vaccine that some accuse of triggering autism, despite a lack of credible evidence, does not contain mercury.) But while the study's findings support the theory that some children have a genetic fault that makes them far more susceptible to mercury poisoning, the results certainly do not prove this, or that thimerosal is involved. The difference in mercury levels in hair may be a sign of a more general problem in dealing with metals or it could simply be an anomaly that reveals little about what is happening elsewhere in the body. But if the results are confirmed, the conclusions of studies looking at the safety of low levels of mercury (New Scientist print edition, 14 June) could also be called into question. Many of these studies relied on mercury levels in hair as a measure of exposure. First cuttings Autism experts say the findings are intriguing, but all emphasise the need for further studies. Although the findings are to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, some critics say the results are rather too striking, and point out that the researchers who did the work all believe that thimerosal is to blame for autism. The team leader, Louisiana doctor Amy Holmes, in fact set out to try to prove that autistic children had been exposed to high levels of mercury. She obtained baby hair from parents who had kept the first cuttings and sent off a few samples for analysis. To her surprise, mercury levels were low. Holmes has now done a bigger study, comparing mercury levels in first baby haircuts from 94 autistic children with those of 45 other children. The mean level in the baby hair of children later diagnosed as autistic was 0.47 parts per million, compared with 3.63 ppm in the others, the team found - nearly nine-tenths lower. What is more, the more severe the autism, the lower the mercury levels. The mean levels of children with mild, moderate and severe autism were 0.79, 0.46 and 0.21 ppm respectively. Fillings and fish Most of this mercury came from the mothers. The main sources of exposure, according to the team, were mercury amalgam fillings, Rho D immunoglobulin injections containing thimerosal given to Rhesus negative mothers, and heavy consumption of fish (defined as more than five fish meals a month). In the control group, hair mercury rose in line with the mothers' exposure. But the baby hair of autistic children had consistently low mercury levels, even when the mothers' exposure was high, the team found. The results will appear in the International Journal of Toxicology in September. One explanation, says team member Mark Blaxill of the campaign group SafeMinds of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a problem with metal uptake. If so, autistic children might also be deficient in metals essential for brain development such as zinc, iron and copper. Alternatively, some children may have a problem excreting mercury. The metal might then build up in the brain, producing autism. Most mercury is excreted in urine and faeces, but the lack of mercury in hair might be a sign that the metal is being retained in cells rather than getting into the blood, the researchers suggest. Mercury is one of the suspected causes of autism, with proponents arguing that there are many similarities between autism and mercury poisoning. But a review published earlier in 2003 pointed out that poisoning by the different forms of mercury found in fish, fillings and thimerosal has effects distinct from autism, and concluded that what little evidence there is does not support any link. 'Loaded to the gills' Despite this, some doctors, including Holmes, have been experimenting with giving autistic children metal-binding agents, or chelators, to rid the body of heavy metals. "They are loaded to the gills with metals," Holmes, who was unavailable for comment, claimed in 2002. The only published evidence, however, is a very small study from 1976 suggesting autistic children have higher levels of lead in their blood. Critics such as child neurologist Emanuel Dicicco-Bloom of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey says concluding that autistic children accumulate mercury on the basis of low levels in hair is a big logical leap that is not justified by the evidence. Even some of those who blame heavy metals such as mercury for autism echo his warnings not to try potentially dangerous therapies such as chelation. Parents should wait for the results of the clinical trials about to begin, they say. And Dicicco-Bloom's colleague Mike Gochfield, who does mercury testing, says that the levels of mercury in the control group are way above what he would expect for children in the US. Blaxill's response is that no one has ever tested first baby haircuts before, so there are no "normal" results to compare to. The lab that did the testing was not told which children the samples were from, he adds. And according to unpublished work by Steve Lindow and Steve Haslow at the University of Hull in the UK, hair mercury levels in newborns can be even higher than in the mother. Active transport They suspect that mothers may actively transport metals to the fetus. But on average the first baby hair in Holmes' study was cut at 18 months old, so this would not explain the high levels in the controls. Astonishingly, only one other published study, from 1985, has compared mercury levels in the hair of children with and without autism. That

http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2002/01/29/eline/links/20020129elin011. Reuters Health - Contrary to what many researchers have thought, new study results suggest that rhythmic behaviors such as rocking back and forth and banging hands and arms vary little between children who are at high risk of delayed development and children who are not. Some people with developmental disorders make rhythmic movements that are common in very young children, such as continuously rocking back and forth. Since babies usually stop these behaviors by their first birthday, several researchers have predicted that it might be possible to identify children at risk of delayed development by observing their rhythmic movements. Dr. Alan S. Unis and colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle tested this idea in a study of 18 children who had an increased risk of delayed development because they had been born prematurely. The researchers compared the at-risk children with a "control" group of children who were not born prematurely. The investigators evaluated the children's rhythmic behaviors while they snacked and played at age 13 months. They then evaluated the children's mental and motor development at age 2. Overall, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups in the level and types of rhythmic behaviors, the researchers report in the January issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. "The central hypothesis of this study, that children born prematurely would differ from control children in the type and frequency of their rhythmic behaviors, was largely unconfirmed," Unis and his colleagues conclude. The researchers did detect some differences, but not the ones they expected. For instance, boys who had higher levels of rhythmic behaviors while snacking tended to have higher mental development scores at age 2, the report indicates. The researchers did not observe the same link in girls. But both boys and girls who exhibited lower levels of rhythmic behavior while playing on their own were more likely to have a higher mental development score at age 2. Why less rhythmic behavior during one activity but more during another are both associated with higher development scores may not seem to make much sense, but Unis and his colleagues offer a few possible explanations. Children who show more rhythmic behavior while snacking may be trying to communicate, the authors suggest. For example, a child may point repeatedly to food that is out of reach. In contrast, a child who is developmentally delayed might bang on a play phone rather than pretend to talk on it. As for the differences between boys and girls, the results "are an indication that girls and boys develop cognitively through different pathways," according to the researchers. SOURCE: Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 2002;41:67-74. http://www.feat.org

Nov. 24, 2004. 01:00 AM Toronto Star Families of autistic kids deserve helpCanada's provincial governments are celebrating the news that they cannot and will not be forced to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars a year to treat autistic children. But while the provinces' relief is understandable, they have not been absolved of a serious social responsibility - not one bit. The Supreme Court of Canada merely told them what their legal obligations are, what the letter of the law says must happen. The judges did not spell out the moral imperative confronting the provinces. And when it comes down to morality, it is difficult not to conclude that more should be done to serve the needs of one of the most vulnerable groups in Canada. Autism is a rare but debilitating mental condition that usually strikes in early childhood. While autistic children bring joy to their families, they also bring heartache, demanding an overwhelming commitment of time, energy and money. This burden is felt by the general public also. It has been estimated that 90 per cent of autistic children are eventually institutionalized at great expense to the state. The parents of autistic children do not expect pity. They do, however, expect help. The therapy pioneered by Texas researcher Ivar Lovaas has produced life-altering results for many autistic children. The therapy's price tag is, unfortunately, exorbitant. It can cost up to $60,000 a year because it provides autistic children with one-on-one treatment for 20 to 40 hours a week. In essence, the court said that no law requires the provision of medically necessary services. So, autistic children are not being treated unfairly under the law. It is hard to disagree with the logic of this court decision or with the vision of governance it reflects. Yet it would be a grotesque distortion of this ruling to conclude that governments need only do what courts compel them to do. True, the expense for the therapy in question is daunting. But surely the needs of autistic children and their families deserve a place at the top of any priority list for any government. Think of the government waste and bungling recited annually in auditor general reports. Think of the $101 million for two corporate jets for the federal government or the $100 million lost in the sponsorship scandal. Think of the $8.9 billion surplus the federal government will be holding in its fist at the end of this fiscal year. And then forget the wrangling over federal versus provincial responsibilities. Just think of the autistic children and their families and you will likely agree that there is money in the provincial and the federal treasuries to help. It only requires a will. This is an edited excerpt of an editorial from The Record, Waterloo Region.

States seek grants to address threat posed by toxic metal found in fish Bruce Henderson in the Charlotte Observer. On The Waccamaw River - After more than a decade of measuring mercury in fish, water and air, Carolinas officials will seek grants this week to test a final frontier: people. Thousands of people on the coastal plain, where mercury most commonly takes a toxic form, would be tested if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approves the grants. Many in Piedmont counties east of Charlotte would be tested, too. Even without a CDC grant, South Carolina hopes to forge ahead with plans to test 12,000 toddlers, who are at special risk. In North Carolina, a state toxicologist estimates 7,400 children born each year are already at risk from mercury. In its most toxic form, it can cause neurological damage to developing fetuses and harm the way children think, learn and problem-solve. A naturally occurring metal, mercury also blows out of industrial smokestacks, mostly coal-fired power plants and incinerators. Released into the air, mercury falls back to earth in rain. A national study released last month indicated average concentrations of mercury in rainfall in the Carolinas were at least twice as high as the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe in surface waters. The chemistry of the Carolinas' blackwater rivers on the coastal plain transforms mercury into a highly toxic form. Called methylmercury, it works its way up the food chain from tiny organisms to the largest fish. People are most often exposed to it by eating contaminated fish. Most previous estimates of mercury's health impact in the Carolinas have been projected from concentrations measured in fish and water. Testing people is a direct approach. "Blood doesn't lie," said Karen Brazzell of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control's biomonitoring unit. Each year the Carolinas update advisories on what fish species and waterways to avoid. The growing list now covers the half of North Carolina south and east of Interstate 85, and 53 rivers and lakes in South Carolina. Because of the potential damage to developing babies, pregnant women are especially cautioned not to eat fish known to be high in mercury. But some officials worry the warning isn't reaching the people who most need it. Many of the coastal plain's poor rely on fish for a substantial part of their diet. They may also be less likely to read newspapers, brochures or Web sites where mercury information is posted. Neither state budgets money for public outreach. North Carolina sends fact sheets to doctors, clinics and health departments, but hasn't spent the $42,000 it would cost to print and mail posters and brochures -- information women could take home and post on the refrigerator. South Carolina mails 30,000 to 40,000 information booklets a year. "We do the best we can within the scope of no resources," said Tracy Shelley, a state environmental toxicologist. Mercury News Misses Many The Waccamaw River flows between the two states, a tea-brown syrup oozing downstream from Lake Waccamaw in southeastern North Carolina to Winyah Bay at Georgetown, S.C.Tests of people who live along the N.C. portion of the river, in 1993, found 10 times more mercury in frequent fish eaters. Some concentrations were among the highest in the nation. Despite fish-consumption advisories out for several years, mercury is still news to some local people. "I haven't heard anything about that, and I've been here nearly two years," said Myra Ward, who owns a bait-and-tackle store near the Waccamaw. "I see a truck come here and test the water ever so often, but they haven't said anything to me about it." North Carolina advises limiting consumption of three freshwater predators -- largemouth bass, blackfish and chain pickerel. State advisories also include the saltwater species shark, swordfish, tilefish and king mackerel. Michael Best, 40, who regularly fishes the Waccamaw, knows about mercury -- he believes he has seen it in largemouth bass and bream. It looks like pockets of the silvery liquid in oral thermometers, Best said. Biologists say mercury isn't visible in fish. Best said he cleans out the mystery substance and eats the fish. "It ain't never bothered me yet," he said. Regulatory Questions Interest in mercury is growing in Washington, Raleigh and Columbia. North Carolina's Clean Smokestacks Act, enacted last summer, is expected to reduce mercury emissions by 55 percent by 2013 as power plants install pollution controls for ozone and haze-forming chemicals. The Bush administration says its Clear Skies Initiative would, by 2010, reduce mercury in Carolinas rainfall by up to 25 percent. N.C. power plant emissions would drop 56 percent and S.C. emissions 64 percent by 2020. The Natural Resources Defense Council -- an advocacy group critical of Bush's proposal -- estimates the Bush proposal would let power plants release five times as much mercury for a decade longer than the Clean Air Act now does. Scientists, meanwhile, aren't able to say how much of the contamination in water and fish comes from industry. "The big question is what concentration coming out of a smokestack is going to equal what concentration in a bass that you're going to pull out of a lake and eat?" said Todd Crawford of the N.C. Division of Air Quality. "There's so much that happens between that smokestack and that fish that it's a daunting question." The state has measured mercury in rain at two spots in Eastern North Carolina, Lake Waccamaw and Pettigrew state parks, since 1996 without drawing a clear picture of whether more or less mercury is falling. S.C. fish consumption advisories rose rapidly in the early l990s as state officials expanded their tests of fish and waterways, said Butch Younginer, aquatic biology manager for the S.C. Bureau of Water. "In the last three years the numbers and intensity of mercury in fish have pretty well leveled off," he said. The N.C. air-quality division is also studying the amount of mercury in Charlotte's air. An Environmental Protection Agency study, based on computer

W. Hammesfahr, M.D. D. Adkins, REEG.T Hammesfahr Neurological Institute Copyright © 1997 MedForum. All rights reserved. With a long history of medical investigation behind, diseases affecting the brain, nervous system, and psyche have been named, categorized, classified and recategorized again. The diseases bear names of those who first described them, a common pathological finding, or bear the name of their primary clinical symptom. Such naming protocols rarely name aetiology or cause, as the cause is rarely known. Yet we have found that a large number of apparently diverse neurological, psychological, or psychiatric diseases share a common underlying disorder, that of chronic or intermittent ischemia1 of the brain. The disparate clinical manifestations of that disorder2, depends on the acute or chronic onset of the disorder, the rapidity of the evolution of an underlying vascular disorder, the age of the patient when the disorder develops, other medications that the patient may be on which helps to limit or aggravate the underlying vascular disorder, and the body's ability to compensate for this disorder. We have further found that all of these disorders2 respond similarly to techniques that correct the underlying vascular/ischemic disorder. In essence, most of the neurological diseases associated with chronic ischemia result in either cognitive disorders or chronic degenerative neurological states. Thus Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder and similar syndromes, including Tourette's, many cases of Depression, psychosis, and other neuropsychiatric disorders are frequently seen in a chronic ischemia. In some cases, the chronic ischemic state results in a degenerative neurological condition. Thus, ongoing ischemia may mimic what we more commonly diagnose patients with diagnosis of Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis, and Parkinson's. In others with these diagnoses, there may be a an underlying chronic vascular ischemia which also aggravates the original condition, and is clinically indistinguishable. That vascular portion of their disease may be entirely reversible. When the problem develops rapidly, physical symptoms predominate. Thus patients are diagnosed as Migraine Headache, Stroke, Closed Head Injury, Ataxia, Vertigo, Tinnitis, Fibromyalgia, etc. As few will read beyond these opening remarks, the headache deserves special mention. In our experience, it is the equivalent of Angina. In Angina, blood vessels downstream from a partial blockage dilate as one of the body's most important mechanism to compensate for a decrease in blood flow. As such, this dilations helps to preserve blood flow to the tissue. This dilation stretches the nerve fibers in the walls of the arteries, which results in pain. Similarly, the headache in our patients represents one of the body's compensatory mechanisms used to increase blood flow in response to a blockage. As the patient's vascular disorder becomes chronic, the body develops other compensatory mechanisms. By developing these other mechanisms, the headache becomes a more infrequent and less noticed clinical problem. As the body develops the ability to compensate, the physical symptoms become less noticeable, and the cognitive/emotional/behavioral disturbances become the major problems3. Thus, as the patient recovers, it becomes vitally important to be aware that the patient's symptoms will vary and alter as the vascular disorder improves. Indeed, many of these symptoms become less of one specialty's province, and becomes that of another's. Thus, the managing physician and patient need to continue to consider the entire range of symptoms as "ischemia/vascular equivalents", and continue to treat all symptoms aggressively. The present or past history of headache or family history of migraine, becomes incredibly important in understanding that patient's disorder may have a vascular component. What follows is a discussion of the development of our experience. I have a baseline practice consisting of mainly post-traumatic, closed-head injuries and post-traumatic migraine disorders of which many have attention deficit disorders, (ADD). However, several years ago I had a large number of patients who presented with ADD of which the origin of their problems was associated with silicon breast implants (silicon toxicity). What became evident in evaluating of these patients was that the neuropsychological tests, computerized EEG and Transcranial Artery Doppler results were essentially identical. Another common characteristic in these patients was the waxing and waning nature of at least some of their complaints. Those patients with Attention Deficit Disorder both post-traumatic and in particularly those patients with silicon breast implant disease with MS-like syndrome would have normal neurological examination one day and on another day the exam would be abnormal. This finding substantiated the patients' complaints of waxing and waning of symptoms and seemed to be related to the degree of physiological or psychological stress the patient experienced when being interviewed or tested. The degree of abnormality of neurological exams would extend to the point of normal or abnormal Romberg and Tandem Gaits, reflex examinations and Babinski examinations in the same patient. Evoked potential test results varied from normal to abnormal on different days and the testing was performed by the same examiners. In this same time frame, a series of new medications were developed to treat migraine headaches. As headache was a major complaint of many of my patients, we tried these medications out including Imitrex (Sumatriptan), IM Toradol (Ketoralac) and other medications under direct monitoring. As my patients tend to be intractable, it was not expected that any of these medications would have dramatic results. Rather, it was expected that one or another set of medications might help point the way into using specific classes of medications or approaches. Accordingly, each of these patients, equivalent of a large number of patients, were monitored continuously across the day. The patients would come in and be hooked up with EEG's or Brain Stem Auditory Evoked Responses, or VEP's, or Transcranial Dopplers, and across the day would have many of the different short-acting medications tried on them to see which would work and which monitoring tool would be most effective in identifying the improvement. With respect to the different monitoring tools, some were more helpful than others. It was found that the EEG was not very sensitive. The Brain Stem Auditory Evoked Response and other evoked potential tests were very insensitive tools for monitoring, because of the length of

By Eric R. Williams I've just re-read this article and counted no less then 54 references to bodily functions…so if you are faint-hearted it might be best to skip a few pages. If you're still reading, roll up your sleeves, grab a half dozen wet wipes and brace yourself…we're going in. First things first. Three years ago I fell in love with Kristina and became the step-father to an eight year-old girl Tara and a nine year-old boy Tom. Tom has autism. He doesn't speak. He wears diapers and rolls a belt. When most people hear about Tom, they say, "I'm so sorry," or "How sad!", as if he is a tragedy. However, when they get to know Tom and watch him interact with the family, they quickly lose this image. My boy is fun and clever; he gives as much love and joy as he gets. There are struggles, to be sure: he eats his sister's toys, pulls down the curtains, pours shampoo onto the bathroom floor. These things are part and parcel of living with Tom, and as a general rule aren't really that big of a deal. The tough part, the real challenge is diapers…or more honestly, what ends up in them. I guess it was about a year ago that Tom discovered poop. I had been up late watching a movie and on the way to bed, decided to check on him. Opening the door to his room, I saw what would have been enough to shock a New York garbage man. Tom was break dancing on the slick linoleum floor of his room, covered in poop. Like most disasters, this one wasn't nearly as horrible as it looked. I plopped Tom into the bathtub and Kristina and I took a few turns wiping down the room. At that very moment I became a "clairvoyant". I saw into our future, Tom as an adult peeing on the guests at parties, Tom wearing sew-up suits to bed; I saw a line of dirty diapers stretching endlessly to the horizon. That was the day Kristina and I decided to give toilet training our complete and undivided attention. Work, friends, hobbies, all would take a back seat to potty training Tom. Why hadn't we tackled this problem years before? Well, Tom was a very different child a few years ago. He bit, scratched and punched so much that everybody who came in contact with him left with bloody scratches. He threw tantrums and pounded his head against the wall. When Tom was six, his parents took him to the Option Institute where they spent a week in training. When they returned they set up an intensive program. Tom spent six to eight hours a day with "facilitators." That's how I entered the picture. We would join Tom in whatever he wanted to do, even if he just wanted to roll a belt for six hours, or hop and yodel. The results were spectacular. The more time Tom spent in a structured, cozy environment with people who accepted him as he was, the softer and happier he became. After a year, I fell in love with Kristina, Tom and Tara, and (to make a very long story, very short) moved in. Tom started back in his special school with other kids. Now he rarely scratches or bites, he almost never bangs his head, and he brings us the honey jar instead of dumping it on the floor. The combination of two parents on the same track, a structured safe environment, and a big, crazy play-room to channel surplus energy, really changed his life. And finally, he was available enough to attempt potty training. Kristina and I worked out a game plan: we would throw everything we had ever seen or read about potty training into the battle and invent as many things we could along the way. We had previously researched potty training and found conflicting methods, but similar results. It seemed that any concentrated effort that stemmed from acceptance had a good chance of working, and methods that used any form of punishment were equally ineffective. The focus would have to be on fun, rather than negative reinforcement. We all can pretty much agree that it's hard to use the toilet when you are nervous or uncomfortable. We had to find a way to make the toilet the coolest place for Tom to be. Like most guys I believed that all of life's problems could be fixed with duct tape, glue and a bit of ingenuity. I spent several hours in the garage crafting the one and only, guaranteed successful toilet top, the cozy pad potty enhancer. And as potty enhancers go it was a beauty. Formed from a boat pad, molded over a child's plastic toilet top, it was like a giant horseshoe, sleeved with two thick cotton ski socks. My theory was that Tom didn't like the old toilet seat because it was cold and just too wide for his nine year-old 'patootie.' I marched into the house triumphantly and fitted it into place. Let the miracles begin! Tom eyed the thing with the skepticism it deserved. I picked him up and lowered him onto it. We stared at each other with anticipation. Things were going to start happening now, I could just feel it. Now…Or soon at least… Pretty soon anyway… After about an hour the only thing I could feel was my butt going numb from lack of blood as I sat cross-legged on the floor. Every time I moved he would hop off the toilet and eventually, I let him go. I limped into the living room and Kristina patted me. "It's a good start", she said, "We just have to find a way to keep him on there till something happens." We had been avoiding the bribery method with Tom because we wanted him to find more purpose to life's actions than gummy bears. However, desperate times called for weak resolve. "How

Tingle Bells, Tingle Bells! Well, not quite, but these special "Tinglers" founded by Wendy Robbins and partner, Jorli McLain are finding their way around the world to millions of users. If you haven't seen or heard of them yet.....you will. These fabulous sensory tools have been found to be extremely helpful where people have had brain damage, Alzheimer's, have been sexually abused and most recently helping our population with autism and Asperger's syndrome. It only makes sense that this contraption would help these individuals who also suffer from sensory dysfunction. Quote from Jonathan Sicoli age 13 who has autism! "I think the tingler feels very relaxing. It is one of the most comforting things to come along since the "aquamassage". If I'm upset, it helps to calm me down. It feels like.......well I can't exactly describe it but it feels real good, so try it for yourself." Click here to find out how you can get your tingler!

By Jerome Burne Virtually every fortified cereal packet broadcasts the message that vitamin A is vital for good eyesight. But even the most gung-ho marketing manager would pause before claiming that the vitamin can dramatically improve the symptoms of autistic children by repairing damage to their retina. However, this is precisely the claim being made by an American paediatrician, who has evidence that treating these children with the right sort of vitamin A is not only highly effective but provides valuable new insights into some of the most puzzling symptoms of this disorder. "Once you understand the way autistic children 'see' their world," says Dr Mary Megson, a professor of paediatrics at the Medical College of Virginia, "the fact that they don't look you in the eye and can't bear for things to be changed makes perfect sense." She emphatically rejects the widely accepted hypothesis that these children have no theory of mind (ie, no understanding that other people have their own thoughts, plans, points of view), and that they relate to other people as just another type of thing. Instead, she maintains that their seemingly alienated behaviour is perfectly rational. It is their way of surviving in an extraordinary and terrifying visual world, the result of damage to a protein pathway that affects the way that certain specialised cells in their retinas work. "Imagine that everything appeared to you like a some paintings by Picasso, flat and two-dimensional, with various features superimposed," urges Dr Megson, who has specialised in developmental disorders for the last 15 years. "Or think of a Hockney collage, digitally remastered with all the depth cues taken out." At a conference on nutritional psychiatry in London earlier this year, Dr Megson described how she has found that a proportion of her patients have only a tiny visual window on the world where things are reasonably clear and appear in 3D. All around this they only see colours and vague shapes. This makes it very hard for them to follow movement, especially the subtleties of facial expressions. Making sense of a new scene is equally challenging - hence their desperate insistence that everything should follow ritualised, predictable patterns. What concerns Dr Megson, like many other clinicians in this field, is the massive increase in the number of children coming to her with this sort of damage. "Since I've been practising, the number of cases has gone up from one in 10,000 to one in 600, and it may be more," she says. "There are officially 1,522 cases in the state of Virginia, but I've got 1,200 in my practice, which just covers one district." She is certain that vaccination is at least one of the factors fuelling the rise. But although she agrees with Andrew Wakefield's controversial ideas about the effects of the MMR vaccine on the gut, she is particularly concerned about the vaccine for whooping cough and the "pertussis toxin" it contains. The evidence that she has seen has convinced her that certain children have a genetic susceptibility that makes certain proteins in their bodies vulnerable to damage by the toxin, which can have wide-ranging effects. Known as "G proteins", they are found all over the body, but especially in the brain and guts, and are involved in boosting or dampening down the signals coming in from our senses (such as sight via the retina), as well as controlling such vital pathways as those for fats and glucose. The scary visual world of the children provides a close-up of how far-reaching the damage can be. The theory is that receptors in the brain that control the "rod" cells in the retina have been affected by the whooping-cough vaccine. Rods are the cells that convey shading and depth, and allow us to see in black and white in the dark. They are more thickly clustered around the edge of the retina. "When these children look away from you," says Dr Megson, "they are turning their eyes so that the light reflected from your face lands on the outside of their retina, where the rods still have some function." Controversial as her theory is, what has made her clinic in Richmond, Virginia, such a magnet for desperate parents is that it leads to a form of treatment that seems to be having considerable success. The key to getting the G-protein pathways working again is a form of natural vitamin A. "The results can be dramatic," says Dr Megson. "Within a few days, these children regain eye contact. They may start looking at their mother and speaking. Watching it happen, you get a strong sense of something being unblocked." It is vital to use unsaturated "cis" vitamin A, as found in cold-water fish such as salmon or cod, as well as liver, kidney and milk fat. "These are foods that children often don't get in modern diets," says Dr Megson. "Synthetic vitamin A, the sort often found in supplements and cereals, can actually make matters worse because it has to be properly absorbed. This in turn needs a healthy gut, but many of these children have damage to the gut due to food allergies and overuse of antibiotics." That is why treatment is usually supported by removing certain foods from the diet, most commonly wheat and milk, and giving probiotics - beneficial gut bacteria. Article continues: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=512884

By Andy Nelesen at greenbaypressgazette.com Three Green Bay teens were convicted Monday of beating up a 15-year-old disabled classmate in October. Cole Young, Shawn Quayle and Justin Bower, all 18, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor party to the crimes of battery and criminal damage to property. They were originally charged with felony physical abuse of a childand criminal damage to property. According to the criminal complaint, the boys chased the victim - who was riding a bicycle - from Ninth Street through Colburn Park to Fisk Street and down Seventh Street. The suspects rode in a minivan as the victim pedaled west along Mason Street, crossed Military Avenue and fled through Fireman's Park. At Kennedy Elementary School, the suspects hit the victim's bike with the minivan. The older boys held the victim on the ground, kicked him and spit on him and choked him with his shirt. At one point, Young asked the victim, "How does a steel toe feel?" and then stomped on the victim's head. The victim, who is now 16, did not appear in court. His parents were present for Monday's hearing. The victim's mother said he suffers from high-functioning autism. Quayle and Young were sentenced to 90 days in jail. Their lawyers declined to accept probation as a punishment because both young men said they were joining the U.S. Marine Corps and were expected to report for duty in August. Being on probation would disqualify them from joining. Brown County Circuit Court Judge Kendall Kelley described the incidentas "outrageous." Quayle told Kelley he was sorry and remorseful for his actions, which he said were "stupid and childish." "What it was, in fact, was brutal . that's different," Kelley said. Bower, who is not joining the military, was sentenced to two years' probation and 30 days in jail. The young men must pay restitution of $469 for the victim's medical bills and damage to his bicycle.