Autism Street

It’s been a good year

Starting 2007 will mean year two for Autism Street. That’s right Autism Street has been around for a whole year already. It’s been a fairly successful endeavor in my opinion.

I define most of that success by the personal satisfaction of having blogged about subjects that interest me, but also by my subjective interpretation of some of the responses I have received. I’m not referring to the comments in each article which, in my opinion, have been largely supportive, appropriately critical at times, and occasionally nonsense. I’m referring to the mostly nice e-mails I receive from people I’ve never actually met. Sometimes they’re from local parents here in Arizona, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes such e-mails are from another blogger or internet acquaintance and best described as a simple note just to privately say that an article reminded them of something, or extend an invitation to discuss something further (Hi María). Sometimes the e-mails from other parents of autistic children express a strong sentiment of acceptance of their own child(ren). Quite often they’ll mention other Autism Hub blogs as favorites as well.

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If you’re one of those people (or know someone) who still thinks there is solid evidence of a so-called ‘autism epidemic’, it’s past time to get up-to-speed.

You can download Three Reasons Not To Believe In An Autism Epidemic (Gernsbacher et al., 2005) at Dr. Morton Ann Gernsbacher’s website at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Go ahead, it’s a free full-text.

This paper is brief, easy to read (even for the lay public), and asks a very important question:

What message do we send autistic children and adults when we call their increasing number an epidemic? A pandemic? A scourge?

Indeed, especially when increasing numbers are scientifically understandable, and that understanding is supported with evidence.

For additional reading on this subject (including links to much more detail about the expansion of the diagnostic criteria and diagnostic substitution), please see Autism Diva’s post.

The 50th Skeptics’ Circle is up at Humbugonline.

As a bit of a tribute to astronomer/science adovocate/author Carl Sagan, the circle is organized similarly to chapters from Sagan’s “The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark“.

We’ll done Theo.

Deirdre Imus (second from the left in this picture) recently had a letter about autism in Newsweek. Please go have a look here. Dont worry, her letter is short and in my opinion, essentially fact-free about any autism specifics, so you won’t have to work too hard to remember details when you come back to read this little note I sent to Newsweek:

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Something has irked me for a long time.

It would seem nearly impossible that any parent with a child newly diagnosed as autistic could avoid almost immediate encounter with the infamous puzzle piece or puzzle ribbon. They’re pretty much ubiquitous. They decorate brochures, newsletters, and websites. They’re also prominently displayed by the self-styled ‘aware’ on magnetic vehicle decorations, lapel pins, and things like t-shirts. There’s little doubt that these two symbols have been adopted by so many people and organizations simply because of their popularity. If one wants to claim ‘involvement’ with the ‘autism community’ (not to be confused with the autistic community), it doesn’t take much more than slapping the symbols on something and maybe saying “go team autism” to yourself - no actual understanding of autistic people is required whatsoever.

While some parents might think that’s fine for now while their children are young, don’t forget that those children will grow up to become autistic adults. How will those children feel about this as adults?

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Next year is right around the corner - it’s only a couple of weeks away. Sure, the demarcation of calendar years is somewhat arbitrary in daily life, but in many ways it’s not. For me it is a time of year that, although there are always things that carry over, I try to plan (at a least a little bit) for new things.

One of those things on my laundry list of things to try to put behind me prior to next year, was upgrading Wordpress and creating a new Wordpress “Theme”. The upgrade went fairly smoothly, but I do have some posts with some odd text characters following the database upgrade portion - I’ll be cleaning those up as time permits. Preparing the new look for the Autism Street blog was something new to me. It opened my eyes to some of the nature of web development, which seems to include a requirement for lining things up.

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