Are they serious?
Perhaps the carers/parents are just
much kinder to the kid when s/he has a fever, because s/he is in a condition that they recognise as
worthy of kindness and consideration, and the kid is responding to that!
After all, no-one expects a really sick child actually to
do anything but lie there and think - if the kid tries doing that when s/he is well, there is hell to pay.
This is very interesting.
It appears that fever restores nerve cell communications in regions of the autistic brain, restoring a child's ability to interact and socialize during the fever, the study said.
(My emphases)
What, so they'll now keep autistic kids feverish to 'cure' the poor things of not being like them? 
No, I wouldn't think that's it. Here's a comment grabbed from another site (
http://science.reddit.com/info/6218a/comments/):
It breaks my heart just to imagine the pain of having your autistic child suddenly improve in their ability to relate to you, only to have it slip away once the fever went down. On the other hand, having my 27-year-old brother recognize me for the first time in our lives might be worth the subsequent pain.
Although I don't think anyone should be spreading false hope. I don't think helping someone who can't even recognize their closest relatives to understand a little bit more of the social world is bad, nor is it a forced assimilation into "sheep culture".
Of course, noticing your , I dunno how serious you were.
Sorry, I was playing devil's advocate. I wasn't serious! I can just imagine the 'new heat therapy' being promoted by the curebie organisations: "As your child can escape from behind the curtain of autism when they have a fever, we are now selling the Solar Powered Hot Hat, with extra straps to prevent removal by the child and padding against head banging. Only $4,500 rental per annum!"
Interesting, one thing it makes come to mind is that my body temperature is abnormally low. I charted my temperature once to keep track of my fertility and found that my "high" temperature was always less than what the book said the normal "low" should be. I am usually 97.1-97.5. I used many thermometers and always got the same results.
Same here, even cooler for both me and my Aspie son, usually 35.5-35.8C (96-96.5F for you Yanks!). It is a problem trying to convince doctors that a 'normal' reading of 37C in either of us equates to a couple of degrees of fever!
That would be difficult to do, since we're all in different time zones.
Also, saying that being feverish makes an autistic person more neurotypical(which I doubt even happens at all) is not the same as saying a low body temperature makes a person autistic. Fever is way different from just regular hyperthermia anyway since you have this huge cascading thing of immune responses.
Lets set up a special thread then for our bio diaries, this would be the an interesting way to learn about ourselves and give us all a chance to chat etc. We need to decide what stats to keep? Temp (C/k/F or shall we build a converter into the thread?) - Pulse rate (at what times of day - at rest/after walking) - Blood presure - I am going to make the local chemist happy soon! What else do I need to check? Should we do it all once/twice a day and when?
Done!
Poll: Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, Temperature
Just check yours at the same time each day; that is, the same time as you did it previously, NOT the same time as everyone else! We'd jam the server.....
It seems people are so desperate to find a cure, they're now considering archaic mental hospital techniques. What's next, forced ice baths?
It's not an archaic method, someone discovered an effect, so they did a study on it. There's nothing to suggest anyone will induce fever on anyone as a treatment method.
Uh-huh. We're talking about curbies here, they'll try ANYTHING to cure their child. Even if it is inherently deblitating on it's own accord.
Fever didn't work with me. No improvement.
You have got to be kidding with the heating hat. It would be $40,000 per year rental. -some competition with the ABA therapists.
when i got sick, i felt like just going with the crowd, because i didn't have too much energy for much else. so i was a bit of a sheople when i'm sick. i also feel different when i'm sick too, like i'm a bit stronger for a few hours, then i get weak (or that may have been the tylenol).
i'm guessing this article is pretty much that we are more complaint when sick instead of the whole neuro wires being rearranged. either that, or the adults give us more of what we want to keep us happy when sick, but after the fever's gone, they go back to their regular ways, which in many cases are not ideal.
didn't like the suffering and affliction language either, makes us look second class.
You can't do that to NT children, so why should you be allowed to do it with autists?
You can't do that to NT children, so why should you be allowed to do it with autists?
Uh, because autism is viewed as a disease while neurotypicalism is not. Think JRC. Do you honestly think that they would be allowed to use GEDs on NT kids?
they show us that the autistic brain is plastic, or capable of altering current connections and forming new ones in response to different experiences or conditions,"
???
That statement is just like the story that "proved" autistics can feel love.
They needed a #%*&% study to tell them that?
Sorry, I was playing devil's advocate. I wasn't serious! I can just imagine the 'new heat therapy' being promoted by the curebie organisations: "As your child can escape from behind the curtain of autism when they have a fever, we are now selling the Solar Powered Hot Hat, with extra straps to prevent removal by the child and padding against head banging. Only $4,500 rental per annum!"
Fever didn't work with me. No improvement.
You have got to be kidding with the heating hat. It would be $40,000 per year rental. -some competition with the ABA therapists.
OK, it was a bad joke, folks! You are right - I grossly underestimated how much stupid parents are willing to pay for dubious stuff that promises them their imaginary child instead of their real one; and, therefore, how much the quacks will charge for it. 
Am I the only one who thought that the piece quoted by the OP implied an 'improvement' (in the view of NTs, anyway) only while the fever lasted? There were several sentences that hinted at it, and none whatever that implied any ongoing change afterward.
Of course, everyone's brains are plastic. The interesting question is, can we stimulate autistics' brains to develop further coping skills, help them/us navigate better in the social world? And even more interesting: without doing ethically questionable treatments?
I think you posted an interesting bit of research, though the article itself was poorly written.
The idea of using the plasticity of the brain to develop further coping skills is interesting.
