Cherokee teacher pleads guilty to duct-taping autistic student

[Byrthnoth]

All of the autism treatments and causes are just people/organizations making a quick buck off some desperate parents. Autism has genetic and (likely pre-birth) environmental components, and because it involves the central nervous system nothing about it is reversible. Anyone that tells you otherwise is selling snake oil. The reason Autism doesn't manifest younger isn't because of some vaccine or anything, it's simply because kids can't demonstrate autistic behavior when they're little rolly-polly infants without voluntary motor control.

I think high functioning autists should probably be placed in normal schools and have teachers compassionate enough to deal with their occasional oddities. Low functioning autists and retards are going to be institutionalized their entire lives anyway. If they want to call the institution "school" when they're young, that's fine, but don't expect it to save them from their ultimate fates. Confining low and high functioning autists together is a good way to lower the potential of the high functioning autists.

[Kuya]

and because it involves the central nervous system nothing about it is reversible.

Independent of the autism topic; what do you mean here?

[Byrthnoth]

Independent of the autism topic; what do you mean here?

If you fuck up your CNS, you're fucked. If it's inside your skull or spinal cord, you realistically have no hope of ever regaining function.

[archibaldcrane]

The reason Autism doesn't manifest younger isn't because of some vaccine or anything, it's simply because kids can't demonstrate autistic behavior when they're little rolly-polly infants without voluntary motor control.

I thought some autistics start out talking, making sentences, etc., and then regress to incommunicative piles of secrets?

[Byrthnoth]

I thought some autistics start out talking, making sentences, etc., and then regress to incommunicative piles of secrets?

Well, first I should say that "autism" is actually a group of disorders with similar symptoms. Some autistic kids can talk their entire life, and some can never talk. The majority don't seem to demonstrate a real quantifiable "regression." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_autism) There are various explanations (like mimicry) for why autistic kids appear to reverse course, and the "regression" doesn't necessarily mean they've lost something as much as it means their deficits have become more noticeable.

Example: Autistic kid learns to mimic some of the noises his parents make or their behaviors around other humans. When he sees a human he tries to hug it because that's what is constantly happening to him, makes happy noises when he sees people because they always make happy noises when they see him, etc. But whatever "autism" is for this kid prevents him from taking these motor motions he has learned and combing them into meaningful behaviors of his own. His brain outgrows the mimicry phase and now he's left without a system for dealing with speech or social behavior. The parents notice something wrong and their kid is diagnosed with autism. Nothing has necessarily changed, but his developmental deficit is evident.

The only thing we can know from the autistic process is that something goes wrong developmentally before the age of diagnosis.

[archibaldcrane]

"Most examples of autistic regression...are based upon a child's loss of a handful of words...it's possible that these children were only echoing sounds they heard from their parents"

Ah ok.

[TheTaru]

I think high functioning autists should probably be placed in normal schools and have teachers compassionate enough to deal with their occasional oddities.

I agree with basically everything you said except for this, if you mean they should be in classes with normal kids. Maybe I just experienced a really bad Asperger's kid, but he was EXTREMELY disruptive in every class I had with him (see: my cool story bro on page two). He took up significant amounts of class time with his usually meaningless dribble, literally screamed about/was visibly stressed out by people talking quietly around him, and constantly interrupted teachers and other students. It's great that the teacher can mentally handle it, but the thirty other kids in the class probably would object (if their objections had any significance) to having someone like that in their class.

I know all high-functioning autistics aren't that way, but I think schools would have a hard time deciding where they belong individually.

[Byrthnoth]

I think it depends pretty heavily on the kid. Obviously the majority's education shouldn't be sacrificed for the benefit of the minority. Like, cost-benefit. Having a kid with a touch of Tourette's in your class may lower the average amount learned by other kids, but him receiving a normal education may be the difference between him being a brain surgeon and a life-long institutionalization case. If it's not too disruptive to the majority to accommodate him (cost), the long-term benefit from educating him (another brain surgeon) is possibly worth it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...335737/?page=1

[Kuya]

If you fuck up your CNS, you're fucked. If it's inside your skull or spinal cord, you realistically have no hope of ever regaining function.

Your previous statement (and this one to a lesser extent) made it sound like brain cells do not regenerate or change (in every sense).

[Byrthnoth]

Your previous statement (and this one to a lesser extent) made it sound like brain cells do not regenerate or change (in every sense).

They change for sure, throughout your entire life. CNS regeneration is inhibited by a lot of things and generally doesn't happen. People regain functions after a stroke because non-damaged areas take over functions that were previously dependent on destroyed areas, not because the old areas regenerated.

New neurons mostly come from very small section of hippocampus and the olfactory bulb and (iirc) don't migrate very far away from those places and represent a very minor portion of your cells at death. It's more of a novelty than a useful mechanism, though the people who study it certainly argue it is.