Book Review - I Know You're in There - By Marcia Hinds
It's an absolute pleasure to be able to highly recommend the new book, "I Know You're in There: Winning Our War Against Autism" by Marcia Hinds.
Whenever I'm asked to review a personal story of a family's experiences with autism I always think of the potential pitfalls. The entire experience of autism is so overwhelming that it's easy to get caught up in your own feelings, and not think about what the reading public would find engaging.
There are no such problems in this story. The book is crisp and cleanly written and I think even those who are not struggling with autism will find many things to interest them. One of the unique parts of this book is the conviction by Hinds that for some reason her son seemed different from birth, although she is certain that his vaccinations and many rounds of anti-biotics didn't help.
There are many parts of this story which will be familiar to the members of the autism community, such as the casein free diet and ABA therapy, but I found the sections on Dr. Michael Goldberg and his belief that autism is best understood as a neuro-immune disorder to be the most interesting. Marcia is quite honest about the contentious relationship she had with Dr. Goldberg, but despite that she still believes his central message to be very compelling. He first came up with the immune connection when he discovered that the labs for his wife, who was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, were similar to his autism patients.
The book is broken up into easy to read sections although from my experience I think people will be racing through the book. The book is further enlivened by contributions from their son, Ryan, who is now a systems engineer at a major aerospace company AND he has lots of friends. It made me laugh out loud when Ryan admitted that he had mixed emotions about being the subject of the book, and that he didn't "want any future employers or prospective girlfriends to know I was once considered autistic."
I am pleased that so many parents of children with autism are writing books and getting out a message of hope. Every parent who undergoes this ordeal deserves to have a book written about what they have endured. But "I Know You're in There: Winning Our War Against Autism" ranks as one of the finest in this category. Get your copy NOW!
Kent Heckenlively is a Founding Contributing Editor to Age of Autism and co-author with Dr. Judy Mikovits of Plague: OneScientist's Intrepid Search for the Truth about HumanRetroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Autism, and Other Diseases, being published on November 4, 2014. Visit their website at Plague The Book. You can pre-order the book HERE.
I am half way through this book and enjoying it a lot!
Btw there was quite a bit of research, although scattered, in the 70's pointing to immune/infectious etiology of autism.
(But then the useless psych brigade elbowed its way to the funding pot, followed by the mystery-gene-hunters - both welcome diversions from anything that could steer knowledge towards the inconveniet areas of immunity and immune stressors, ie vaccines)
Posted by: Autism is a NeuroImmuneDysfunctionSyndrome | September 26, 2014 at 06:06 PM
Kent,
Dr. Goldberg was saying "neuro-immune" as early as anyone. His paper titled "“Autistic Syndrome” A Medical Problem" was very helpful to me in the mid 90's as I was trying to understand my own wife's condition. He mentions in the paper he came to these ideas by trying to understand his own wife's condition. He is a pioneer. Here is a good quote from that paper.
"I believe “Autistic Syndrome” probably is a state of dysfunction induced in the brain by a dysregulated immune system. It could be possible that this dysfunction may occur in individuals that have a genetic predisposition. This predisposition is somehow triggered by various stresses placed on their immune systems. It’s severity varies with the individual and age of onset. The triggers may be different (or similar) in each child."
Posted by: Visitor | September 24, 2014 at 02:23 PM