I occasionally stop by the bookstore to see if there's anything interesting in the magazines, but rarely buy any of them.
I only had a few minutes to glance over it, but one of the big science magazines (I believe it was Discover, but can't verify it on their website.) had an autism article that was focused on gastrointestinal issues. Scanning over the article, I saw the word "Asperger's" mentioned only once, and several references to DAN.
Has anyone else here read this article, as opposed to just skimming over it? Anything in that article that we haven't already heard?
Ugh...yeah. In addition to basically endorsing chelation(um, isn't this supposed to be a science magazine?), it also talks quite a bit about how we're apparently "trapped".. Plus, on the contributor's page, the woman who wrote the article said "One of the most amazing aspects of autism is that children are trapped in a nervous system that has gone awry, and yet biomedical intervention can bring out the real person inside"
*gags*
Okay, I finally got a chance to read the article. To be exact, it's the April 2007 issue of Discover, the article is titled "Autism: It's Not Just In the Head", and the author is Jill Neimark.
The word "Asperger's" was only mentioned once near the beginning of the article, just to mention that it shares alot of the same behaviors as more severe forms of autism, followed by the question "Is it the same disease?" (Implying that Asperger's is a disease, but going no further with that. Asperger's was not the focus of the article.)
The rest of the article is nothing new, just the usual about chelation, industrial chemicals, and other treatments and theories.
Though this probably wasn't the author's intention, it supports my suspicion that the "shuttered mind" as they call it, once freed to communicate, more resembles that of an aspie than that of an NT. They even admit to "quirkyness" in their treated kids. (e.g. A treated kid floating French fries in ketchup and imagining it to be a boat race.)
I'm hoping that if all these treatments do is make an LFA more like an aspie, they'll accept that as the closest they'll ever get to a "cure" and stop trying to squash out Asperger's. (AS, in my opinion, is just a personality type, and has a place in this world just like any other personality type. None of the treatments and theories in the article will do anything to improve quality of life for aspies. That's an art still in the making, and can be perfected only by aspies looking out for themselves and each other. My "two cents" again.)