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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 3:55 pm Post subject: As Autism Diagnoses Grow, So Do Number Of Fad Treatments |
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070820141059.htm
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| �There's no cure for autism, and many parents are willing to believe anything if they come to think it could help their child.� |
Ugg. A disorder without any current treatment + desperate parents = bring out the snake oil.
Interestingly a lot of support groups for diseases and disorders tend to have a very adversarial relationship with the scientists and doctors doing the research, especially if there is no current effective treatment. Parents are not being told what they want to hear. The snake oil sellers are more than willing to tell them what they want to hear and happy to convince them big pharma has a cure but they're hiding it. "Why aren't you putting all research dollars into Lorenzo's Oil!" |
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Jizzo T. Clown
Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Location: at my wit's end
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| Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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| The cure is often worse than the disease. Especially when big pharma is telling the public that something is wrong with them and that they need their products to become *normal* contributing members of society. "Hey, I have trouble waking up in the morning...I must need sleep medication!" or "I like being by myself sometimes--I must have social anxiety disorder. Where's the Prozac??" or "My child is hard to control...he must be autistic. Time to pump him full of vitamin C and see what happens!" |
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kermo
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Location: Eating eggs, with a comb, out of a shoe.
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| Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 7:02 pm Post subject: Re: As Autism Diagnoses Grow, So Do Number Of Fad Treatments |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070820141059.htm
| Quote: |
| �There's no cure for autism, and many parents are willing to believe anything if they come to think it could help their child.� |
Ugg. A disorder without any current treatment + desperate parents = bring out the snake oil.
Interestingly a lot of support groups for diseases and disorders tend to have a very adversarial relationship with the scientists and doctors doing the research, especially if there is no current effective treatment. Parents are not being told what they want to hear. The snake oil sellers are more than willing to tell them what they want to hear and happy to convince them big pharma has a cure but they're hiding it. "Why aren't you putting all research dollars into Lorenzo's Oil!" |
I have seen a lot of goofy treatments for autism, like brushing their skin i.e., "sensory therapy", or giving them tapes to listen to and sort out their brain waves. I'm sure brushing feels nice, and the tapes might be funky, but the only therapy I've seen that makes any difference at all is *Applied Behavioural Modification*.
In eight months of full-time intervention, I saw a mute six-year-old kid who did nothing but pace and cry start singing, then speaking, moving with coordination, naming objects and family members, solving puzzles, get toilet trained, and ask appropriately and politely for desired objects. It was a freakin' miracle, completely without pharmaceutical treatment. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Jizzo T. Clown wrote: |
| The cure is often worse than the disease. Especially when big pharma is telling the public that something is wrong with them and that they need their products to become *normal* contributing members of society. "Hey, I have trouble waking up in the morning...I must need sleep medication!" or "I like being by myself sometimes--I must have social anxiety disorder. Where's the Prozac??" or "My child is hard to control...he must be autistic. Time to pump him full of vitamin C and see what happens!" |
Surely big pharma, like all for profit companies (fashion, diet industry, cosmetic, the "natural" health products industry, homeopaths, etc), market some drugs in the fashion you describe. Better life. Happier life. etc. However, a severely autistic child and those suffering from truly crippling diseases and disorders are really not the target of such glib campaigns. If you have examples to the contrary, I'd like to see them. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 9:19 pm Post subject: Re: As Autism Diagnoses Grow, So Do Number Of Fad Treatments |
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| kermo wrote: |
I'm sure brushing feels nice, and the tapes might be funky, but the only therapy I've seen that makes any difference at all is *Applied Behavioural Modification*.
In eight months of full-time intervention, I saw a mute six-year-old kid who did nothing but pace and cry start singing, then speaking, moving with coordination, naming objects and family members, solving puzzles, get toilet trained, and ask appropriately and politely for desired objects. It was a freakin' miracle, completely without pharmaceutical treatment. |
I can see that being a hard sell as it's kind of an extension of Skinner and in this nice post-modern academia we have in social sciences, Skinner is the devil. Why it denies the essential relative goodness of all humans and treats them like machines, robbing them of the inner humanity they're unable to express. Blah blah.
But yeah. Determine the likely potential. Work with what you have but don't abandon your optimism that maybe you can go to the next level. It's hard work. It ain't maybe always pretty. |
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