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Author Mitzi Waltz, patient advocate, has written a comprehensive resource manual on Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD's). She covers every aspect of ASD's leaving no stone unturned. Each of the 12 chapters is broken down into succinct subheadings that virtually cover every facet of autism. Parents starting on the autism journey would be well advised to read this book. Arming oneself with knowledge can help a parent advocate effectively. The first three chapters give a background to Autism Spectrum Disorders - the medical facts, categories of ASD's, and diagnosis. Clear diagrams support medical explanations. Parental examples written in Italics highlight information and give a human experience to ASD's. Ms. Waltz moves beyond technical jargon in favor of using text that will educate and help parents. Chapter 4 is the most critical chapter of the book in that it helps parents set the stage for successful intervention and treatment. Waltz recommends looking at 4 main goals when constructing an intervention plan: health and safety, communication, social, and academic/vocational. The parents can prioritize these goals in a way that best meets the needs of their child. Parents know their child best and any therapy team would embrace this kind of well-thought out, organized parental direction. Chapter 5 tackles medical interventions. Prescription drugs are examined as well as possible medical conditions that may cause or autism or are linked to its onset such as vaccines. Again this information is organized with subheadings so parents can pick and choose what pertains to them. Bulleted points make scanning an easy task. Chapters 6 and 7 look at mainstream and alternative interventions. Methods are highlighted with parental comments from those involved in a particular therapy. Chapter 8 deals with the necessary subject of health insurance. Waltz highlights several other countries in addition to the USA. Much of the information given could be used as a research guide applicable to any country. Waltz also includes a list of alternatives to health insurance. Chapter 9 discusses the issue of schooling. Some valuable sample forms are included in this chapter. Every aspect of schooling is explored - educational options, social skills training, monitoring progress, dealing with behavior, and taking on the school system when it is failing to meet your child's needs. Chapter 10 looks at family issues and support, in other words what families face and how to deal with the issues successfully. Waltz looks at everything from divorce to tips for daily living. If you are not sure about how to cut your child's toenails, it is addressed in this chapter. Sensible and realistic advice is offered from Waltz to the everyday problems of living and caring for an ASD person. The final two chapters deal with what it is like to be an ASD child, what you will see from them, and living as an adult. Few books delve into the adult issues of an ASD person. The book finishes with 7 appendices that are a gold mine of information and resources. Any parent, professional or educator would find these appendices useful. Mitzi Waltz of the Autism Research Institute in the UK has compiled an excellent reference book that would benefit parents, health professionals, and educators. No autism library would be complete without it. C Autism Today 2002

A Review of An OT and SLP Approach: Sensory and Communication Strategies That Work by Nancy Kashman and Janet Mora Reviewed By Maureen Bennie Nancy Kashman, occupational therapist, and Janet Mora, speech-language pathologist, have joined forces to create a team approach in tackling the difficulties of sensory integration. Their book focuses on sensory difficulties that manifest themselves in the processing of sensory information and behavior. Each chapter teams an OT approach with a visual strategy approach provided by the SLP. Every chapter has examples highlighted in italicized writing to draw attention to successful strategies used with children. There are a few "points at a glance" which provide easy to read information in bullets on pages 45, 49, and 52. There is a good chart, Environmental Effects on Level of Arousal, on page 65 that lists what stimuli is arousing or calming. Chapter 7, Intervention, outlines all its strategies in the east to follow bullet format. The book has 10 chapters and appendices A through I. I thought the ideas for use of videos for assessment and intervention in Chapter 9 was beneficial. Chapter 10 highlights three case studies for a team approach in sensory integration but I would like to see more examples sited. The appendices provide practical information such as guidelines for assessing an environment, how to make stuffed pants, how to make stuffed sweatshirts, and how to construct a weighted vest. These items are quite expensive because they are special order so guidelines for making your own will save you money. I love what items to put in an oral box in Appendix F and the general communication tips listed in the bullet format in Appendix H. The assessments, resources and recommended readings located at the back of the book are thorough. There are illustrations throughout the book to support a strategy or point such as what sitting in the "W" position looks like (pg. 76). Any suggested intervention is supported by a list of recommendations or guidelines for implementation. I found this book to be a great practical guide written in an easy to understand and easy to follow format. It could be used successfully by professionals, teachers, and parents who are coordinating their own therapy/intervention team. This resource book can be ordered on-line for $39.95 at Exceptional Resources (www.exceptionalresources.com) or by calling 1-877-482-1555.

I believe the artistic personality may occur commonly in people with Autism, particularly those with a constant pattern of mood extremes and who are constantly fixated with lines, structures, colors, textures, patterns and spend their time fixated on the different variations of flicked water, sound rhythm patterns, the ways light catches color, or the multitude of varieties in which a leaf shreds, how sand falls in constantly changing patterns, or how grasses can be made into mini bouquets. It is perhaps not surprising that whilst some are certainly not warm or sociable (and many Solitary personalities are not by nature), many people with Autism ARE strikingly gentle and kind, although so often drawn to objects over people- characteristics of the Artistic Personality. If the artistic personality is distressed by being unable to create and unlike the Sensitive/Avoidant personality needs creativity more strongly than routine, what happens to these Artistic personalities when treated like Sensitive/Avoidant ones simply by virtue of sharing the label of Autism and given boring repetitive tasks with no discovery learning? Its worth a thought. :-) Donna Williams author of Nobody Nowhere. www.donnawilliams.net

A series of memories by Donna Williams www.donnawilliams.net When a fax came through from a UK agent that my scrappy typed manuscript, Nobody Nowhere, was being auctioned to the highest bidder and was going to be published, I was 26 and had a two hundred dollar car, which was my greatest achievement. At that time, I lived in a one room bedsit... lounge, kitchen, bedroom all one room. In fact there was no bedroom for it was my sofa, and the only one I'd been able to afford was an olive green hard vinyl one (felt like concrete!) from the Salvation Army charity shop which had cost $15 and was shaped like a banana so you couldn't even roll over! My underpants were all years old, there was not a pair without holes and several were held together with safety pins. I had a few jumpers, all but one scrounged from local hard rubbish collections and that one was stained but it was my prized best jumper. I had one bra, I had sewn it to size because it's hard to find your own size in a hard rubbish collection. I had a frying pan, passed down by someone throwing it out, warped, missing half of its non-stick coating, but I felt it was a luxury. I had two cups, one just in case I had vistors, one plate, one bowl, all chipped and mismatching. My shoes had holes in the soles (kind of like me), were faded and the vinyl had peeled. I ate mostly rice and mince and vegies because they were cheap. There had been other times, months, were all I could afford was packets of chicken noodle soup and only the rice. I had known homelessness and poverty greater than this. I knew times when to sleep upright in my friend's shed was a luxury compared to the alternatives of walking around and around the street in the early hours or going home to violence my shattered emotions could often no longer dare (there were kids in those days sleeping in the charity clothing bins who'd been set on fire by those who see street kids as rubbish, there were cases of homeless adults sleeping in rubbish skips who had ended up in the back of rubbish crushers, so I had 'good options'). I washed my greasy hair without soap or shampoo under the taps in the front yards of strangers. I scrounged a shower where and when I could wash with real soap and often felt too guilty and grateful to dare ask for a towel, merely putting my dirty clothes back onto my wet body. I knew what it was to choose education over food and a roof, to choose poverty over domestic prositution. I knew what it was to watch others eating when I hadn't eaten all day, sometimes for two days, (but wouldn't yet eat food from the bin in case it was poisoned). To feel proud of the things I scrounged, to feel blessed to know gratitude so deep you can cry because someone gave you a cup of tea and a biscuit when such luxuries did not exist in your place, if in fact you even had one at that time. But I had the strangest honour, the Christmas of 1989 when I was put on a plane for the UK to meet my new publishers and enter the whirlywind life of a famour author, a life for the next two years of hotels and dinners, interviews and gifts from strangers. I was booked on a flight with Air Lanka and my first stop, on the way, was Sri Lanka. I arrived to a foreign world of Indian-Asian people in horse and carts pulled by bullocks with horns and flaring nostrills, of fishermen and fisherwomen lining the sandy beaches with blankets of shimmering silver- sardines laid out to dry to sell as cheap 'salt-fish', of people with piles of salt who would sell salt for a living. My hotel was on the beach, perhaps owned by foreginers, perhaps built up by collectives of families who had pooled their resources, who knows, but it employed Sri Lankan people who had a gratitude to be of help, a natural kindness and warmth that filled their eyes, they felt so lucky, so lucky to work here, on the beach, in a secure business. The women likely had small children left at home with grandparents so they could work, the young men likely supported an entire family from grandparents through to aunts, uncles and young children. I went wandering along the beach and an old man beckoned me, face beaming, his eagerness burbling... he had found a 'foreigner'. He kept a distance from me and we came to his hut, a tiny shaggy hut about 8 feet square made with bits and pieces of found materials, some natural, some not, a chair on the front 'porch'. He opened the door to his hut and invited me in, forming his hands into a prayer form as if blessing me on my way in. He presented to me his glass cabinet, many of the glass panes missing and some of the wood, but one of those one's that grandma's have with treasured items in it. He opened the door and took out what was obviously his pride and joy, a tea cup commemorating the marriage of Lady Di and Prince Charles, and presented it to me smiling like he was making some great connection between cultures. Of course, I was an Aussie with an accent broad enough to once have been sacked for it, but to him I was 'a westerner'. He took a large big knife and my heart raced. I thought I was a gonner. Then he took a coconut and split it. He lead me to the chair on the porch and insisted I sit on it. then he spooned out the raw coconut and offered it to me. He took great

By Maureen Bennie Linda Cucek of Port Moody, BC may be a soft-spoken, gentle, polite woman but she is no shrinking violet. Linda has been fighting the government of British Columbia for several years over an issue that is most precious to her - a treatment program for her 18-year-old son James. James has autism, a neurological disorder that impairs communication and affects social behavior. Presently James has no program because the BC government provides no funding for autistic children over the age of 6. Linda wants James to have the Lovaas program developed by Dr. Lovaas of UCLA. The program is also known as ABA - Applied Behavioral Analysis. It is scientifically proven to be the most effective program for helping improve the condition of children with autism. So why is the government fighting with Linda Cucek? Is her request for help so unreasonable? The government is resisting because of the cost of an ABA program. ABA requires 40 hours of intervention a week with a trained therapist. The cost for ABA is between $40,000 and $60,000 per year. This may seem like a high price for taxpayers but not administering the program is more costly. Without intervention these children will end up institutionalized at a cost of up to $250,000 a year. If parents like Linda are willing to look after a special needs child, shouldn't the government be willing to help these parents? BC Premier Gordon Campbell used to think so before he was elected. At a rally in Port Moody on April 23, 2001, a conversation was recorded between Mrs. Cucek and Gordon Campbell. He clearly states in the transcript that Mrs. Cucek's son James will have the Lovaas treatment with his help. He and the present Minister of State for Early Childhood Development Linda Reid said they would support treatments for children with autism. Now that they are elected, they are breaking their promise. A broken promise such as this one is destroying the lives of the Cuceks and other families like them. The one who suffers the most is James. In local British Columbia newscasts seen over the past two years, viewers are privy to seeing the amazing musical talent of James Cucek. He plays piano beautifully although he has never had lessons. He has a dream of becoming like Glenn Gould, another former sufferer of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and one of Canada's greatest musical talents. James is not playing as much as he used to because of the pain he suffers while taking various prescription medications. Sometimes he has to be hospitalized to be stabilized on medications. Stan and Linda watch helplessly as their son James crawls along the hospital corridors. "I want my boy back," laments Linda. James is afraid to be away from his mother so she spends her days in his company. It's not easy because James does not like to go out in public places. He finds peace being at home playing his keyboards, but this is not a full life for James. Linda and Stan hope he can eventually move out of home into assisted living. With ABA Lovaas therapy, James' behavior could improve and help him to build social skills. Anyone who meets James can see he is an intelligent young man. "I heard that the Lovaas treatment could cure James up to 80%. This is my goal to see him get this therapy to make sure his dreams come true," states Linda. Linda recently enlisted the help of the most famous person with autism, Kim Peek. He became famous when Dustin Hoffman portrayed him in the movie "Rainman". Kim has amazing gifts such as memory and mathematical skills. Kim and his father Fran were recently in BC for the Autism 2002 Conference: Defining the Leading Edge. Conference delegates were taken with Kim and his father who are helping the Cuceks in their fight for therapy for older children with autism. The Peeks have brought recognition to the autism problem through public speaking engagements throughout North America. On October 9, 2002 victory was Linda's and all those who fought with her. The BC Liberal Government lost in the Court of Appeals and were ordered to stop discriminating against people with autism and start providing treatment. The Court of Appeal states "by refusing to fund or provide medically necessary autism treatment - also known as Intensive Behavioral Intervention or Lovaas type autism treatment - the government is in violation of Canada's constitution and the Charter rights of children with autism." How is the Cucek family doing after the favorable ruling? " I have no support because James' Youth Care worker's contract was up October 25th. James was waiting by the door for Chris, his worker, and she never came. It was very sad for James," said Linda. Minister Linda Reid has sent two people to Linda's home to talk about James' therapy program. They want to modify the Lovaas treatment, something that worries Linda because she doesn't want James to have a watered down version of a Lovaas program. There is still no therapy program in place for James. There are roughly 30,000 children with autism in Canada. The number of new cases diagnosed is growing rapidly each year. Autism is an epidemic that no government should ignore. What is most appalling is that parents like Linda Cucek have to spend so much energy fighting for what should be a right in Canada. Linda will continue to fight for what she believes her son needs to have a decent quality of life. We thank Linda for her bravery because through her struggle she will help all Canadian children with autism have the best life they can. "A promise is a promise," says Linda. Maureen Bennie is the mother of two children with autism.

Wheat Herbicides Suspected By John MacDonald © MMIII The Associated Press. Scientist says study does not make a direct link between birth defects and use of the chemicals, but findings do strongly suggest more research is needed. AP - Babies born in major wheat-producing counties were twice as likely to have birth defects as those born in rural counties with low wheat production, a new federal study shows. The research, published in the July issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal of the National Institutes of Health, suggests exposure to common herbicides applied to wheat could be responsible for the increased rate of birth defects. The study was conducted by Dr. Dina Schreinemachers, a researcher with the Environmental Protection Agency in North Carolina. She examined more than 43,000 births from 1995 to 1997 in 147 rural counties in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. She divided the counties by their rates of wheat production according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, then compared the rates of birth defects among children born in the counties as provided by the National Center for Health Statistics. Schreinemachers said results of her study indicate that in rural, agricultural counties with high wheat production - where the use of chlorophenoxy herbicides is higher - rates of certain birth defects "significantly increased." Specifically, instances of circulatory-respiratory and musculoskeletal defects were twice as frequent in high-wheat counties, she said. Even more significant, baby boys born in high-wheat counties and conceived during April or June - when herbicide application normally is in full swing - were nearly five times as likely to have birth defects than boys conceived during other times of the year and born in counties with low wheat production, the study concluded. Death rates from birth defects among male infants in high-wheatcounties also were more than twice the rates of low-wheat counties, the study found. Schreinemachers said Thursday the disparity between male and female infants was not clear. She said her study does not make a direct link between birth defects and use of the chemicals. It also did not determine whether the children with birth defects were born to parents who had direct contact with the herbicides. But the study strongly suggests that more research is needed, she said. "We do not know how much of these herbicides was used in those particular counties, for instance" she said. "But we know that according to the USDA, these herbicides are used most often on spring and durum wheat." A spokeswoman for CropLife America, the trade group for agriculture chemical makers, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment on the study. The findings are similar to conclusions contained in a 1996 study by Dr. Vincent Garry of the University of Minnesota.His study of births in Minnesota between 1989 and 1992 found ahigher rate of birth defects in western Minnesota, where chlorophenoxy herbicides are applied to wheat. That study, however, also implicated certain fungicides as a possible cause. Chlorophenoxy herbicides are widely used to control weeds in grain farming. In the four wheat-producing states included in Schreinemachers' study, more than 85 percent of the wheat acreage was treated with herbicides such as 2,4-D and 4-chloro-2-methylphenoxyacetic acid, or MCPA, the study said. Dr. Michael Spence, Montana's state medical officer, said he was aware of Schreinemachers' study, but had not reviewed it yet. However, he said the findings were not a surprise, since the herbicides have been linked to other health problems in previous studies. An ongoing study funded jointly by the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health and the EPA is tracking 90,000 herbicide applicators and their spouses to look for possible health effects of pesticides.

A shocking report from California last week suggested that a large increase in childhood autism in that state over the last 15 years is a true epidemic, not a statistical mirage inflated by artificial factors. If that judgment holds up after further analysis and research, it raises disturbing questions about just why this brain-distorting disease is on the rise and what can be done about it. Experts have known for some time that there seemed to be a big upsurge in autism in California - a tripling in little more than a decade of the number of children with profound autism receiving services from the state. The state's Department of Developmental Services found that the number of children with "full spectrum" autism jumped from 2,778 in 1987 to 10,360 in 1998 and continued to rise thereafter. That was bad news indeed given that autism is a crippling brain disorder that often leaves its victims unable to speak, rocking compulsively, and unable to form social relationships or behave normally in everyday life. Last week's report, commissioned by the California Legislature and conducted by researchers at the University of California at Davis, concluded that the upsurge could not be explained away by demographics, changes in the way autism is diagnosed or increased migration of autistic children into California. But whether the study looked hard enough for all possible explanations will need to be addressed when outside experts have a chance to review the findings. One possible weakness is that the study dealt only with autistic children receiving services from the state's regional centers. It did not examine whether parents and professionals are referring more children with autism to the centers today than in the past. California's self-examination has underscored the surprising lack of information about the prevalence of this relatively rare brain disorder elsewhere in the nation. Studies carried out by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in recent years found that the number of cases in metropolitan Atlanta and in one New Jersey township were significantly higher than previous estimates of prevalence wouldsuggest. But nobody knows for sure what the nationwide trends are. The C.D.C. is financing studies in a dozen other states to determine the prevalence there. Virtually all experts agree that genetics play an important role in autism, but genes don't propagate fast enough to cause a sharp change in a decade. Some experts believe that environmental factors can trigger autism in people with susceptible genes, with suspicion falling at various times on vaccines, infections, heavy metals and other environmental insults. The evidence, unfortunately, is sparse. It could take years of study to unravel the widening mystery of autism.