Weekly Wrap: Married With Children?
By Dan Olmsted
Inexactitude is the best friend (forever) of lousy ideas. This week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about a young woman who was diagnosed with autism at 21. The article said: “Autism spectrum disorder has always been difficult to diagnose.”
No, it has always not. One more time, let’s recall that when Leo Kanner first described it, in 11 children, in 1943, he called autism “markedly and uniquely different from anything reported so far.” The idea that “the experts” have gotten so much savvier about spotting it is part of the “better diagnosing” canard that has kept alive the idea that autism hasn’t really exploded in the past quarter century. Of course, it really has.
That’s not to say that someone at the margins of the diagnostic criteria won’t be overlooked. This woman appears to fit the diagnosis formerly known as Asperger’s, and is possibly a savant. She was discussing the life cycle of insects with her parents at age 2 – no language delay, a criteria of full-blown autism, there!
But what really got my attention was the comment in the article that “people with autism generally have difficulties relating to others, but many are happily married with children.”
Really? Many adults with autism are happily married with children? That would be wonderful, but I’m skeptical under any reasonable definition of the word – a large number, a good proportion, of those with autism are happily married with children, the Journal is telling us.
First of all, there are not many adults with autism under any definition of the word! If there were, we would not be hearing about the disaster in the making of children born during the “autism boom” starting in 1988 now aging into the adult world and workplace. The moment when the school bus stops coming would not be the financial and social crisis it is if there were many adults with autism. We’d have the hang of this.
Let’s see, if we applied today’s rate of 1 in 68 children diagnosed with autism to the population as a whole, there would be 4 to 5 million adults with adults, right? One in 100 would be 3.2 million people in a population of 320 million, and 1 in 68 would put it over 4.
Given that, if “many” of those millions of autistic adults were coupled and raising families, there would be tens or presumably hundreds of thousands of them. You’d know them and I’d know them. (I do know a few such people, and I admire them greatly, but that is not the issue.) I would assume there would be support, social, and legal-advice groups for Autistic Parents United, or similar organizations. Our once-over-lightly mainstream media would have a field day with mother’s and father’s day featurettes on how parents who miss social clues themselves are nonetheless helping their teenagers cope with adolescence.
As it is, the only real role models for young autistic people are Sheldon and Amy on The Big Bang Theory, and their stumbles toward intimacy are being played for laughs, and syndication rights.
Of course, autistic adults raising families of their own is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Why are so many parents working so hard to recover their children if not in hopes of giving them the gift of independence, happiness, and love? And some kids do recover. Who can forget the video of Bernie Rimland calling recovered children up on stage at an ARI conference?
More recently, and personally, I know the family of a child named Quinn who is shown with severe autism as an infant in Eric Gladen’s marvelous film Trace Amounts. Now, after tireless work by his parents (to recover him from vaccine injury) and Quinn’s own indomitable spirit, he is a healthy happy boy with every hope of having the kind of life we wish for every child whatever their "diagnosis."
But like Quinn, most people with autism in this country are children. Most are far more severely injured than the 21-year-old the Journal profiled, and most, alas, are not going to recover to the point where they pick back up with their peers and exit high school with legitimate hopes for what Freud said were the two pillars of a happy life, work and love.
Tossing out the cheery term “many” in the context of happily married autistic adults with children, and suggesting things will be all rosy and typical for "many" of those to come, is just more denial. It glides right past the real trials faced by today’s autistic generation and their devastated parents. (And of course it ignores the issue of why there would be so few autistic adults, married or otherwise, and so many, many autistic children.)
That’s why I had kind of a bittersweet response to the story Anne Dachel sent around from Florida this week, about 500 children with autism who attended their own prom. Good for them, and their moment to shine.
But will “many” of them go on, as their typical prom peers will, to fall in love, to get married, to support themselves and to raise families? To borrow a famous diagnosis of another generation: Isn’t it pretty to think so?
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Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
"First of all, there are not many adults with autism under any definition of the word! "
Dan, That would depend on how autism in adults is diagnosed. Who could have imagined even twenty years ago when virtually no-one had heard the word autism, and some doctors had only seen autistic children in institutions as part of their training, that one day Tom Hanks, Robin Wiliams, Marilyn Monroe, John Denver and Elvis Presley would be added to lists of Famous People with Autism? These lists grow longer every year, and remain unchallenged by mental health professionals. By their continued silence, autism is becoming normalised in the public consciousness, and trivialised.
When my son was diagnosed twenty-two years ago there were definite lines between the different types of ASD, at least to my mind they were - Raymond Babbit in the movie Rainman was described as high-functioning, and in order to be eligible for a diagnosis of Aspergers people had to have "clinically significant impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning". That is no longer the case. Since the stereotypes have been successfully erased over the last decade or so, autism has become a difficult, almost impossible subject to discuss, mainly because of "the din of those who claim expertise based on having "autism" that was not diagnosed until adulthood", as Eileen described. Some of these people are married, like Donna Williams and Liane Willey, author of Pretending to be Normal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jYBsTUmUFo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBgEwcCIxRI
If we accept that these people have autism, then it is very likely that "there are many adults with autism" as United Nations has claimed, "who suspect they have ASD but have not received a professional evaluation or have been misdiagnosed with other conditions. ", and these people might very well be married. I also heard quite recently from an autism organisation that currently many women are taking their husbands along to be assessed for a diagnosis because they lack empathy and intimacy.
Appealing to adults to take tests and self-diagnose, especially those with mental health conditions, has raised the number of adult autistics who have become very vocal, unfortunately. What is the purpose behind tests such as this one in the UK Daily Mail last year?
Do YOU have signs of autism? Take this test to find out if you're one of the rising number with the condition:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2610201/Do-YOU-signs-autism-Take-test-youre-one-rising-number-condition.html
Of the 119,608 test takers, 45% of males and 40% of females had high scores. How many of these high-scoring people now believe they must be on the autism spectrum and how many conclude from the results that autistic traits are commonplace, and that autism is not a devastating disorder? When Baron-Cohen's online test first appeared in Wired magazine (2002) it was said that "many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives".
Posted by: ATSC | May 22, 2015 at 07:48 AM
Great article, Dan!
Posted by: Beth Secosky | May 18, 2015 at 10:26 PM
Benedetta, thank you. I feel certain that vaccines have contributed to the beyond-belief increased prevalence of autism. The "professional" denial that the increase is real is holding up meaningful research.
Clamping the umbilical cord before the first breath is a clear medical error. If resuscitation is not accomplished within 5 to 6 minutes brain damage will occur.
Injection of synthetic vitamin K at birth caused the same brainstem pattern of damage as asphyxia at birth. In 1961 use of the synthetic form of vitamin K had to be stopped. See the free articles, Errors in Neonatology I, II, and III by AF Robertson.
Mercury also poisons the brain in the same pattern of damage as asphyxia at birth. This morning putting "sspe subcortical" in PubMed brought up 29 articles suggesting that the measles virus initiates brain injury by affecting the same subcortical sites.
Clamping the cord before the first breath, then injecting vitamin K and hepatitis B vaccine to the compromised newborn is horrific. We need to assail the "experts" to stop these practices.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | May 18, 2015 at 06:39 AM
Barry you and I know - what we witnessed from vaccine injuries. Eileen on the other hand observed some birthing practices that she is pretty sure caused her son problems.
So now what -
I too think the vaccines causes most of the problems we see and a whole bunch of problems that are not being noticed untill puberty when hormones kick in and moodiness and drug abuse and diabetes and stuff like that.
Eileen has been pressuring for changes in birthing practices and that is good and will help, but it is not causing the huge spike in numbers of sick kids we are seeing.
Just like everyone is worried about Round up ready food and GMOs -- I am sure it adds a bit to the problem - but it is not the real driver of the huge spikes of sick kids was are seeing.
But I could be wrong, because I only know what I observed in mine - we sure cannot trust the CDC to measure things right for us.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 17, 2015 at 10:40 PM
Barry, I believe natural childbirth was promoted by Dr. Eisenstein, and waiting for the lungs to take over respiration before terminating placental circulation.
Traditional teaching was to wait for pulsations of the umbilical cord to cease before tying or clamping the cord. Pulsation of the cord continues until the fetal heart valves close and blood flow redirected to the lungs as the organ of respiration.
In the mid 1980s a mandate to clamp the cord immediately after birth was imposed. Brain damage from asphyxia is likely if resuscitation cannot be established within 5 minutes, which is the importance of the 5-minute Apgar score.
The pattern of subcortical brain damage caused by asphyxia was published in several papers between 1959 and 1974. The damage also impairs the blood-brain barrier (BBB) which increases vulnerability to a second insult like bilirubin or vaccine components injected at birth.
Autism has been reported in children exposed to valproic acid or alcohol during gestation, and the pattern of brainstem damage is the same as that caused by asphyxia. Autism was part of the disorder caused by PKU (phenylketonuria). Toxic abnormal metabolites are produced in PKU, and that is probably the mechanism of damage from most other genetic disorders.
The vaccine schedule is certainly not healthy, especially in combination with asphyxia caused by clamping the umbilical cord before the first breath.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | May 17, 2015 at 07:18 PM
Autism has many causes, not just vaccine injury.
**************
I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but can you explain then how over the last 40 years, over 35,000 never vaccinated Homefirst children have completely avoided autism?
They do live in the same society we do. And as far as I can see, the decision to avoid vaccines is the single biggest difference between their children avoiding autism completely … and us watching it increase in our children from 1 in10,000 , to 1 in 50.
Posted by: Barry | May 17, 2015 at 01:59 PM
There are so many pretty thoughts in circulation about the epidemic and life in the trenches for autism families. Who knew positive thinking could be so blood-curdling?
Posted by: Adriana | May 17, 2015 at 12:27 PM
Cia, Joy, and Mary - Are you advocating more epidemiology, more counting of cases? I will continue to point out why the focus needs to shift to research on specific brain injuries that cause severe autism.
Autism has many causes, not just vaccine injury. Prenatal exposure to valproic acid is one such cause. Difficult birth must be taken more seriously as a cause, especially because brainstem centers in the auditory pathway are prominently affected by asphyxia. The auditory pathway is prominently affected by valproic acid. Damage within the auditory system has been found in the brains of people with autism.
Dan - Thank you again for pointing out the disgraceful article in the WSJ. I wrote to the author, but of course she won't bother to respond to me. I have 50-years experience with autism, computer science, biochemistry, and neuroanatomy. I will continue to try to be heard over the din of those who claim expertise based on having "autism" that was not diagnosed until adulthood.
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | May 17, 2015 at 08:25 AM
I think there may be thousands of undiagnosed Aspies out there who have coped in some way. Also some individuals have become relatively healed over time through maturation, bigger volume of distribution of toxins, the ability of the human body to heal itself in some instances.
Posted by: mary | May 16, 2015 at 07:29 PM
Joy B,
Totally correct. My sociopathic brother is wealthy and has been married since 1988, has three children (all three pretty reticent, probably all damaged to some degree), the eldest of whom had a vaccine reaction and has Asperger's as a result. He was also allergic to DOZENS of things and had severe asthma, and about eight years ago when he had a fever during an episode of severe bronchitis, the fever pulled the mercury from where it had been stored in his bones, and started his severe chronic bowel disease, chronic constipation (just like my daughter, who, after a fever from a summer flu in 2007 also had the vaccine mercury pulled from her bones and it started her identical severe bowel disease). I have severed relations with my brother and will never speak to him again, but several years ago my nephew, who has little ability to interact socially, was saying how much he wanted to have a girlfriend, and what did he have to do to get one? My brother, also very awkward socially, was bitterly resentful when he was young that the girls only wanted to date the doctors in white coats, and wouldn't give him the time of day. Never dated a single girl until he found the one who was willing (??) to marry him. I had dozens of admirers when I was young, one guy said I had an intriguing je ne sais quoi, but neither of us had any idea that it was really brain damage.
So we are seeing what is going to be the biggest cataclysm in history, millions of severely impaired autistic people and millions of severely socially-impaired Aspies with little ability to create stable, happy marriages and families. God help us.
Posted by: cia parker | May 16, 2015 at 01:59 PM
Married to each other, maybe.
My nephew w Asperger's, lucky to grow up in an affluent home with basically an ideal environment for him, is now away in college(on his own), has just gotten his first (new, bought by my SIL) car, and is going to graduate early because of how hard he has worked(with the help of untold numbers of people). Who knows what he will do in the real world but he's about to be an intern for a fire dept's dispatch.
(Did he need college for that? Of course not. College for him was basically an extension of therapy, and a salve to his mother who can tell herself that he's 'succeeding')
See my SIL(a therapist, married to another therapist) has done everything in her power to usher him into a 'normal' adulthood. And yet. He has never had a girlfriend, and the only girls who talk to him are doing it out of pure altruism and kindness, as opposed to attraction. And his new college 'friends' I strongly suspect are also on the spectrum - they all have his same interests and obsessions wrt TV movies, etc.
So imo this will be another 'grey area' in the big autism story. There will be 'marriages', but they will all have the same criteria; high-functioning kids born into relative affluence. They will be encouraged to do so by their families, to maintain 'success' and normalcy.
Though she never says it, my SIL is highly aware of the possibility that her son will never find traditional romance. And in reality, despite his accomplishments he's about 11 years old, forever. What 11 year old cares about marriage?
Posted by: Joy B | May 16, 2015 at 12:28 PM
I think there are many adults now with Asperger's. Autism started with reactions to the smallpox vaccine (no mercury, but a few reacted with vaccine encephalitis, and many were disabled or killed by it for other reasons. The book The Age of Autism recounts the cases of several children dumped in the Bedlam Asylum when they, who had been walking and talking and developing normally, reacted to the smallpox vaccine, immediately lost their language, and one little girl started picking up hot coals from the fire with her bare hands). It picked up when mercury was put in the diphtheria vaccine in 1933, resulting in Kanner's first cohort of autistic children with a never-before seen syndrome (except for those few children from the smallpox vaccine). It really got going with the DPT in the mid-'40s, which was when the rate stabilized at three per 10,000, where it stayed until the vaccine epidemic began in 1988, when the introduction of the Hib vaccine doubled the amount of mercury babies were getting. Now it's one in 36 American children (U. of Minnesota 2013), the rates now are one hundred times more than they were thirty years ago.
But I know a number of adults with Asperger's, but none of them are aware of it. I had never heard of it until 2004, when I started researching autism because of my daughter. I immediately recognized my own social awkwardness and other symptoms when I read the diagnostic list for Asperger's. And I later thought of the fact that my father had told me many times about my screaming for days (non-coincidentally shortly after getting the first DPT at three months old). My father was frantic and took me to the doctor himself and said he would not leave until the doctor treated me and stopped the screaming of his precious baby. Ha ha. My brother reacted to his DPT with beating his head on the bars of his kiddy coop (a sort of crib). And let me tell you, he is a died-in-the-wool sociopath as a result. Cruel, dictatorial, no compassion or kindness, has received death threats from the workers under him whom he tyrannizes. But I was hyperlexic, taught myself to read with no instruction, was very slow to begin speaking, but turned out to be very intelligent and academically accomplished. (You can see the Asperger's in the pretentious word choice which is natural to me.)
My daughter's godfather is autistic, but doesn't know it. It is very very hard for him to say anything at all, he has to ponder and think for some time before coming up with any words, and they're usually the wrong words, or he simply fails to come up with any, and hopes to get his idea across by incomprehensible gestures. The other day he thought for some time before saying "I need to utilize a gasoline station," instead of saying "I need to get gas." He foundered when he needed the words "go to the," and paused for a minute before finding them. Has no ability to interact comfortably and companionably with people, no ability to converse. Is married, but that's another story, not a marriage with mutual sharing or communication.
I know a guy who has a high level job at a trash dump (what's the modern term for it, a waste repository?), who has a very difficult time coming up with the words he needs to communicate. Is in his fifties now, never married, though he would have liked to have been.
I can think of several more, but the point is that most of the autistic adults (most at the Asperger's end, with jobs and some ability to use language, but little ability to make normal social connections). And the reason is that they ALL reacted to the DPT, but with their parents unaware of the symptoms of encephalitic vaccine reaction, screaming syndrome for three hours or longer, staring episodes which are petit mal seizures, excessive somnolence), no one was ever aware that a serious and neurologically vaccine reaction had occurred, and as they grew up socially and/or verbally impaired, no one realized that it was not just the way they were meant to be.
In What to Expect: First Year, there was a section at the back of the book with a short description of autism, and one of the things it said, which shocked me at the time, was that very few people with autism are able to create lasting marriages, again, from the inability to communicate and interact socially. The areas of the brain hardest hit by the vaccine encephalitis are precisely the areas responsible for language (the inborn grammatical structures of Chomsky) and social relations.
I just hope Dr. Profit lives long enough to eke out his final years in federal prison for his crimes against humanity.
Posted by: cia parker | May 16, 2015 at 12:16 PM
Dan, thank you for pointing out this article. Autism has become too popular a self-diagnosis. How have the new self-advocates become viewed as the experts? My son is now 52. I have spent 50 years researching the medical literature on language development, movement disorders, and attention deficits.
Autism is a neurological disorder. It is a disgrace that neurologists have not become more involved in research on underlying injuries in the brain:
(1) Language development occurs during maturation of the language areas of the cerebral cortex. Language is the distinguishing feature of the human species, and aphasia following a stroke is the gravest outcome.
(2) Repetitive movement disorder is similar to that in kernicterus, which is the result of injury to the basal ganglia.
(3) "Social disorder" is part of a diminished level of consciousness.
I earned a PhD in biochemistry from the Boston University School of Medicine in 1975, the same year Dr. Insel earned his MD. I get 3 minutes at IACC meetings as a public speaker. Self-advocates get to yarn on and on at these meetings. Does anyone know if it is selection of self-advocates that is holding up choosing members for the new IACC?
Posted by: Eileen Nicole Simon | May 16, 2015 at 08:46 AM
Pretty to thinks so ...and back to reality...no help from anyone that caused the problem and indemnity free,to boot..bucko! for them living the dream.
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | May 16, 2015 at 07:43 AM
I don't know a single adult with autism who is married and has children. Never met one.
Zero. Zip. No one. Nothing.
It isn't hard to diagnose a person with autism. Once you've seen a child with autism, you get it.
people from the 1980's were pretty smart. They had computers, drove cars, planes, built sky scrappers. Really sophisticated stuff. They understood reality and could diagnose behavioral conditions.
They didn't diagnose a lot of autism because there wasn't a lot of autism.
Posted by: Louis Conte | May 16, 2015 at 07:32 AM