I don't like the way the "60 Minutes" journalist has worded this piece of commentary from a recent story about a disabled young Australian man.
"Jackson is the only known person in the world with his particular genetic flaw — a severe form of autism so rare it has no name."
Overall I thnk it's a pretty positive media story about an autistic person, but I think the way they have described his condition (whatever it actually is) is misleading or confusing.
Link to transcript:
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/artic...?id=323571
I don't like the way the "60 Minutes" journalist has worded this piece of commentary from a recent story about a disabled young Australian man.
"Jackson is the only known person in the world with his particular genetic flaw — a severe form of autism so rare it has no name."
Overall I thnk it's a pretty positive media story about an autistic person, but I think the way they have described his condition (whatever it actually is) is misleading or confusing.
Link to transcript:
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/artic...?id=323571
It looks to me like they're saying, "Autism isn't exotic enough of a disability to get people to read anymore. So lets say instead it's some exotic unknown genetic disorder, oooh..yeah that'll work."
The story is very interesting, but the wierd description is strange.
I wonder how you become that sort of foster parent? It sounds really interesting.
My understanding of the autism spectrum is that it is a brain type, or to use biological jargon, a phenotype which clearly has a genetic basis, but which isn't known to be caused by one particular genotype. In fact I believe there are a number of different genetic syndromes that are supposed to be associated with autism or an autism-like condition in some cases. I also think it's pretty clear that there are different autism genes that give rise to different types of primary autism/AS. I think the 60 Minutes commentary makes it sound like autism is recognized as a genetic syndrome, and that the young man in the story has a rare variant of it. I think the experts might disagree with that. I personally think it is of primary importance to properly diagnose and understand any individual genetic syndrome that a person might have, because these conditions are all quite different, some with their own personality types and cognitive profiles.
Hehe awesome, the family are Aussies who run linux
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