I have no problem with Jenny McCarthy as a person, just the idea that one can "get" autism over a few days, and then be "cured" of it by eating certain foods. Really, I think he and others must have a different condition entirely. Thanks for your reply.
Some people have found that functioning levels can be effected by diet, too - so it may be that her son actually was autistic, but just found things easier to deal with once sensory overload from digestive issues was addressed...
^^ Oh, dang. The last thing any self DX-er needs is for Asperger's to become a trend...
ADHD was also a trend for a while, and may still be, but there's no denying that a lot of people genuinely have the condition.
Cause and effect comes into this a lot.
ie.
A child is 14 years old, their parents gets it into their head that feeding them shark cartilidge supplements from a health store will cure their autism. (I saw a bottle of them once but was clueless what purpose they might serve XD)
The parent gives them the supplement for 4 years, and slowly they see an improvement.
Therefore the parent concludes that shark cartlidge can cure autism, hundreds of other people try it, and many of the other 14 years old particularly show dramatic improvement over the next 4 years and many parents rejoice and add their evidence to the list of "proof", although many mostly younger kids show little change lending those parents to be disillusioned.
The the end though the cause was more likely to be age, experience and coping techniques rather than any kind of food supplement. Parents trying to "cure" their kid are often trying so many various remedies simultaneously it's hard to determine which if any were the cause of the improvement, or if it was merely time which changed it.
Asperger's is too difficult for teenagers to fake. The current trend is to cut themselves. Shaving their heads, dyeing their hair weird colours and wearing baggy bum pants is not shocking anymore. I don't think that having Asperger's is quite shocking enough. Faking having no social skills and getting beat up for it all the time is not going to last long.
I find McCarthy rather frightening, considering the cover photo for her book "Baby Laughs", in which she's posing with a naked baby and sporting a grin that looks like she might eat that baby." I don't know that much about her, but the fact that she would do a scene like that doesn't speak well of her.
I find McCarthy rather frightening, considering the cover photo for her book "Baby Laughs", in which she's posing with a naked baby and sporting a grin that looks like she might eat that baby." I don't know that much about her, but the fact that she would do a scene like that doesn't speak well of her.
I have never considered Jenny McCarthy to be intelligent in any intriguing way. Intelligent for using her looks and personality to get where she is, yes--it requires a good deal of street smarts to climb the ladder so efficiently. But intelligent in other ways? Not as far as I can see. She doesn't demonstrate it, anyhow.
She also is a queen of gross-out humor and has a nearly fetishistic obsession with anything that falls into said category, and I'm not so enamored with that.
I think it's dangerous for anyone to take a blond bimbo like Jenny McCarthy seriously. What is it, is it the appeal of having a grown woman behave like a little girl, so you can say, "Awww look at what hard work she did! What a gooood girl!" Nobody wants to hear about Autism from someone who actually would know something about it, say, oh I don't know, someone who isn't a former Playboy whore.
It isn't that she's simply a slut, by making her career based off of nothing than her ability to undress, she should have no credibility what-so-ever. People are so desperate to hear about a cure for Autism, they'd rather hear about it from an idiot. Then hear the truth from someone who isn't child-like and pretty.
[PS: BTW, don't mean to disrespect Jenny McCarthy for being a nude model (god bless nude models
), and she has always seemed to me a very smart and funny lady, but yes,
I am skeptical about the diagnosis as well as the "cure".---------------------------
DITTO!
ELLEN
I think many children naturally outgrow the severity of their traits with or without treatment. I doubt JM's son had "something different" but he might not have been as impaired as she initially thought. Higher functioning individuals do "iron out" to some degree (not necessarily a lot, but some do) as they get older and mature.
My son's behavior was "classic" autism up until around age 5. Then suddenly at that point he began to "wake up." He began to speak for the first time and with the speech we were able to communicate with and help him. He began to use the bathroom as opposed to diapers, and he had fewer meltdowns. I didn't feed him vitamins or chelate him, but I'm sure if I had, I'd be crediting all that for "saving" him.
I wasn't looking for anything related to my above post but just stumbled across this:
Improvement In Autistic Behavior Seen As Individuals Age
At the April 1995 Society for Research in Child Development Meeting, Dr. Piven and his research group presented the results of their behavioral studies. They reviewed data on the current autistic behaviors in 38 high-functioning adolescent and adult autistic individuals and compared it to their behaviors at age 5 years. These researchers found that there was clear improvement in all three domains of behavior that define autism.
However, the most substantial change occurred in the social and communication behaviors. Eighty percent of the males and one hundred percent of the females improved their social and communication skills. Both males and females had fifty percent improvement in ritualistic-repetitive behaviors. Dr. Piven and his colleagues are continuing their study of the course of behavioral change in autism.
Piven J., Harper J., Palmer P., and Arndt S. Course of behavioral change in autism: a retrospective study of high-IQ adolescents and adults. Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 35:4, 523-29, 1996.
http://www.autism-pdd.net/research.html
[PS: BTW, don't mean to disrespect Jenny McCarthy for being a nude model (god bless nude models
), and she has always seemed to me a very smart and funny lady, but yes,
I am skeptical about the diagnosis as well as the "cure".---------------------------
DITTO!
ELLEN
What about the diagnosis of AS/autism are you skeptical about?
Please expound.
Well I am skeptical that Asperger's is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a "light" form of autism. People with Asperger's share traits with any number of disorders, the assignment to autism could legitimately be questioned. No one can prove, at this point, that it IS autism, and no can prove that it isn't. The one genetic study (the SHANK3 one done in France) actually found that 2 siblings with "classic" autism and Asperger's, respectively, had different genetic markers.
Adding to the confusion is that high-functioning individuals, as children, can appear to have a lot of "classic" autism traits. As a child I head banged and did a lot of the "classic" stuff. But most high functioning (i.e. Asperger's) individuals will normalize to some degree as they get older. So is it a "cured" autism or just something different altogether?
Of course no one can prove whether aspergers is autism or not, they are both social constructs. That doesn't change the fact that the asperger criteria are essentially less restrictive autistic disorder criteria plus some random stuff about IQ, speech acquisition and self-help skills.
I don't know where you're getting this about "most high functioning individuals will normalise." People in general tend to gain skill as they get older, that doesn't mean they are getting normal. Two siblings probably would have differnet markers, unless they are identical twins. They still haven't linked anything this complex to a single specific gene, and I don't think they ever will.
Well I am skeptical that Asperger's is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a "light" form of autism. People with Asperger's share traits with any number of disorders, the assignment to autism could legitimately be questioned. No one can prove, at this point, that it IS autism, and no can prove that it isn't.
You are just so mistaken in thinking that AS could conceivably not be a form of autism. AS/Kanner's/LFA share so many similarities--in fact, many who formerly were somewhat non-communicative (HFA) become a textbook case of AS when they get older--that to think AS could just be a "mishmash" of other disorders, is rather foolish.