SCHAFER AUTISM REPORT "Healing Autism:

No Finer a Cause on the Planet" ________________________________________________________________

Thursday, January 02, 2003

EDUCATION

* Judge Finds Official Liable for Denial of Special Ed - Parents Gain Tool

* Students Bring Lessons to Life With I-Movies

PUBLIC HEALTH

* UK Autism Fears Over Mercury In Flu Jabs

* Dose of Danger Dressed Up As Protector

CARE

* No Ordinary Village

TREATMENT

* Computational Autism - Hope Lies In Flair For Logic

* Computational Autism

EDUCATION

Judge Finds Official Liable for Denial of Special Ed -- Parents Gain Tool in Fight to Make Schools Meet Kids' Educational Needs

A school official is liable for not meeting a boy's needs.

Parents of special education children who claim a school district is failing to meet their children's needs may have a new weapon against school officials.

On Dec. 5, a federal judge ruled that a Santa Barbara High School District administrator was personally liable for damages under the Civil Rights Act for violating a mother's right to get a "free appropriate public education" for her special-needs son, as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Goleta Union Elementary School District v. Andrew Ordway, CV99-07745 (C.D. Cal., verdict Dec. 5, 2002).

Cynthia Ordway-deNeveu alleged Diana Rigby, director of student services for the Santa Barbara High School District, placed her son, Andrew, in a new school four years ago without making sure the school met Andrew's needs.

Ordway-deNeveu's attorney, Steven Wyner, a sole practitioner in Manhattan Beach, says this is the first case nationwide in which a school official has been held personally liable for monetary damages.

"I feel this is a landmark decision because it is going to hold school officials personally accountable for complying with the law," Wyner says. "That's the only way there will be compliance."

Because school districts in California are partially funded by the state, they are immune to lawsuits seeking damages under federal law. In the past, school districts have been ordered to reimburse parents for educational expenses and to provide compensatory education when they were found to have denied students a free appropriate public education, according to Wyner.

Marc Miles of Carpenter, Rothans & Dumont in Los Angeles, who represents Rigby, says he may challenge the ruling.

Eight of the 11 federal appellate courts nationwide have held that a person cannot recover money damages under the Civil Rights Act for violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Miles says. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles appeals from California, is the only remaining district that has not ruled on this issue yet, he adds.

The 2nd and 3rd U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal ruled in favor of the parent in 1987 and 1995, respectively, in cases that applied the same legal argument.

Given the discrepancy in findings among the circuit courts, Miles says he may also appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the issue, if the appellate court votes in Ordway-deNeveu's favor.

"There is a split in authority," Miles says.

Ordway-deNeveu alleged that Rigby transferred her son from Goleta Valley Junior High School to La Colina Junior High School in March 1998 without assessing Andrew's special education and behavioral needs and without investigating whether his placement was appropriate. In 1993, Andrew was diagnosed with having difficulties with his short-term memory and attentiveness and therefore was entitled to special education by law.

When Andrew started 7th grade at Goleta Valley, he joined a gang - his moniker was "The White Ghost" - and began having academic and disciplinary problems. He was getting bad grades, suspended for fighting and possessing a razor knife, and disciplined for choking a student, according to court documents.

On March 24, 1998, after his transfer to La Colina, he was arrested at Goleta Valley for trespassing on school grounds and for possessing antique coins he had stolen from his physician, according to court papers.

"He was beyond control - parental control, school control and self control," Ordway-deNeveu, who was a single mother back then, says. She has since remarried.

Overwhelmed, Ordway-deNeveu requested that Andrew be taken into juvenile detention. Ordway-deNeveu requested a hearing before the California Special Education Hearing Office. She believed her son was denied a proper public education and needed to be put in a strictly supervised setting, which would have dealt with his behavioral problem and kept him out of trouble.

Andrew was diagnosed with a depressive disorder and placed in residential group homes in Fresno and Petaluma until last year.

On April 30, 1999, the hearing officer found that the Santa Barbara High School District failed to give Andrew a free and appropriate public education. He ordered the district to reimburse Ordway-deNeveu for educational costs and required that the Santa Barbara County Mental Health Department repay her for the costs of putting Andrew in a residential group home.

Ordway-deNeveu says her expenses for Andrew ranged from $3,000 to $6,000 a month.

The school district appealed the hearing officer's decision by filing a federal lawsuit. But U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson upheld the findings. Rigby, who was sued by Ordway-deNeveu in a counter-claim, asked for summary judgment, contending she was entitled to qualified immunity. Pregerson rejected her argument.

Trial on Ordway-deNeveu's damages is scheduled for Jan. 21, but Wyner says he will ask for an extension because his client is recovering from spinal surgery.

Ordway-deNeveu says the last four years have been a nightmare for her.

"When the decision came in I was ecstatic," she says. "It's not just a matter of money, it's the issue that is at stake. Being a school official, your No. 1 priority should be to follow the procedures and protocols. ... I feel like with this decision I've done something right for the other parents out there."

Andrew, now 17, is a senior in Crescenta Valley High School's special education program and wants to become an electrician, his mother says.

"It's like night and day," Ordway-deNeveu says of her son's change.

© The Daily Journal Corporation.

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* * *

Students Bring Lessons to Life With I-Movies

Teachers and pupils make Internet films to cover topics from social ills to math and science.

=la%2Dnews%2Dlearning

Fifth-grade teacher Max Schafer's class at Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace has become a mini-film school.

But instead of shooting ghost stories, adventures or romances, the students are producing, directing and acting in computerized videos about math, science, vocabulary and other educational topics. These I-movies (Internet movies), produced and edited on a program in classroom computers, are an increasingly popular tool at schools in California and nationwide.

Schafer's students, for example, recently began creating a science movie about the solar system that features Styrofoam planets and narratives about rotation around the sun.

Besides mastering new technologies on cameras and software and giving students a sense of independence, the I-movie process teaches them the subjects themselves, Schafer said. Students become motivated to learn about science when creative expression and artistry are involved, he added.

"It's really fun. I love learning something new," said a fifth-grade camera operator, Ashley Hernandez.

Schafer explained that the I-movies, usually 20 to 30 minutes long, do not replace exams or term papers. "Writing skills are too important at early grades to cut back. But enhancing their writing with pictures, sounds and video really develops deeper understanding of the subject."

Such technology has been embraced by more and more schools, according to Milton Chen, director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a San Rafael-based foundation started by the "Star Wars" creator to promote video and computer advances in K-12 classes. Multimedia projects like I-movies, Chen said, help "students develop the ability to work together in groups and develop self-knowledge as well."

Making I-movies is a relatively easy multimedia process. The footage shot in Schafer's class with a digital video camera includes pictures of planets found on the Internet. After the tape is copied to the computer, I-movie software is used to produce an edited product that can be copied to video or burned onto a disc. "What's really nice is that you can put it on a CD to give to parents, so that they can see what's going on in the classroom," said Schafer.

I-movie software comes with the Macintosh computers that the charter school, sponsored by the Los Angeles Unified School District, has purchased for every fourth- and fifth-grader with district funds and grants.

The students approach the projects seriously. For instance, fifth-grade movie director Marielle Ordono told students to "take two" when they didn't speak loud enough or had trouble reciting their lines, or when props were not arranged correctly. Marielle was ultimately happy with the final product about outer space and enjoyed being in charge. "I liked telling them what to do," she said.

Last year, Schafer's class created a math I-movie. Student actors used props such as baseballs and milk cartons to demonstrate math principles, such as measurement.

Schafer's fifth-grade students worked on a project last year based on "Theater Games," the book of acting exercises by Voila Spolin. Teachers were sometimes uncertain about how to demonstrate the games to the students after reading the book. "So we thought, 'Hey, why not put this on CD and show video-clip examples of how to play the games,' " Schafer said. The I-movie featured students enthusiastically doing improvisation acting, such as playing "tug of war" without a rope.

Fenton Charter students soon will be working on an I-movie in which they will visually act out vocabulary words that may be difficult for students, particularly those with limited English skills.

Although L.A. Unified does not keep a list of how many schools are active in I-movie production, the district has installed 35,000 multimedia computers equipped with the program for students to create I-movies, according to Jim Konantz, information assistant superintendent for the district. "The students do independent research to make the movies. They really get involved," he said.

Similar enthusiasm has been shown in other districts around California and elsewhere.

For example, in Atherton in Northern California, Menlo Middle School students have created various I-movies, including a 10-minute "electronic scrapbook" based on the eighth-graders' trip to Washington, D.C. "They have scanned images from brochures, museum tickets and photos. Added music, text and their own voices," said Nancy Fortman, the school's technology director.

She was pleased with the process and results. "I believe that one of the most important skills students need is the ability to communicate. Today's technology allows for students to create a story, use still pictures or moving video, sound and text to tell their stories with I-movie," Fortman said.

In the Los Angeles area, Consuela Molina, a senior last year at San Fernando High School, made a documentary-style I-movie for her social studies class about sweatshops and women workers in Indonesia, Mexico and the Los Angeles area. Molina, now a student at UCLA, posted it on the Web, where it was seen by a teacher in India, the Women's Human Rights Conference in Paris and students in Australia, according to her high school social studies teacher Marco Torres.

San Fernando students have made more lighthearted films too, such as a recent Christmas movie about a snowman in a snow fight with elves.

The research and script writing for I-movies, Torres said, sometimes can take the place of writing term papers.

Torres explained that scripts are often more clearly and concisely written than term papers because students are more actively involved in choosing materials.

"I see kids who don't traditionally do well in school succeed because this was another way for them to express themselves," said Torres.

Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Editor's note: Yes, Max Schafer is related.]

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PUBLIC HEALTH

UK Autism Fears Over Mercury In Flu Jabs

[By Fraser Nelson in The Scotsman.]

Four of the seven flu jabs being issued by the [UK] government this winter contain a mercury-based preservative which is being withdrawn in the US amid fears of its links to autism.

The Department of Health has confirmed that most of the flu vaccines being issued through the National Health Service contain thimerosal, a preservative which is 50 per cent composed of ethyl mercury.

Thimerosal is already being withdrawn in the US, where a government health authority has warned that it has a "biologically plausible" link to autism and should not be given to pregnant women.

The UK government has this year chosen seven vaccines to combat three expected strains of the flu virus, and is aiming to vaccinate 70 per cent of people aged over 65 in a UK-wide programme.

The Scotsman can today name the four which, according to the Department of Health, contain thimerosal - and, therefore, mercury. They are Fluvirin, Fluarix, Influvac and Agrippal. The mercury-free vaccines are Inflexal V, Begrivac and this year’s flu vaccine from Aventis Pasteur.

Officials have said they do not recognise any health risk posed by the mercury in thimerosal. As a result, patients - whether pregnant or not - are not being advised which vaccines contain mercury.

"There is no evidence of long-term adverse effects due to the exposure levels of thimerosal in vaccines," a Department of Health spokeswoman said.

"The risk-benefit balance of thimerosal-containing vaccines remains overwhelmingly positive."

She added that the Institute of Medicine in the US had looked at the issue and had "concluded that evidence does not support a causal association between thimerosal contained in vaccines and neuro-developmental disorders".

The IoM’s exact conclusion, however, argued that such a link was "biologically plausible" - and said there is not enough evidence to accept or reject a link between thimerosal and neurological disorders.

In a statement which fuelled fears about thimerosal safety, it urged that "full consideration should be given to removing thimerosal from any biological product to which infants, children and pregnant women are exposed".

Pregnant women are advised to avoid thimerosal because the mercury affects the foetus to a greater extent than the mother. For the same reason, pregnant women are advised against having silver dental fillings fitted as the amalgam is 50 per cent composed of mercury.

However, the Department of Health does not include pregnant women among the categories of people at risk from the flu vaccine.

It instead lists those with heart problems and people allergic to hen’ s eggs, because the vaccines are incubated in a similar substance.

The Department of Health said its decision to buy mercury-free vaccines is "a purely precautionary measure", which is part of "a move in both the US and Europe to minimise the exposure of infants to mercury".

Robert McKay, a Scottish co-ordinator of the National Autistic Society, said he was astonished that dangers about mercury in vaccines have not been spelled out by the government. "We need access to the same information given to parents in other countries."

"If we have a choice in vaccine, we would like to know about it. This information should be given to families in this country so they can make decisions for themselves."

Mercury’s links to autism and neuro-developmental disorders have been well documented.

Children born in the Faroe Islands in 1987 were found to have developmental disorders after their mothers ate mercury-contaminated whale meat.

Two years ago, the Journal of Neurochemistry ran a study showing brain cells exposed to even minute levels of mercury developed the exact set of neuro-deformations associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Last year, Canadian research reinforced the suggested link between exposure to mercury and Alzheimer’s.

* * *

Dose of Danger Dressed Up As Protector

Would you like your flu vaccine with mercury or without? Anyone familiar with a toxic metal would not hesitate in their answer. But it’s not a question that anyone will be asked this winter.

How about your child’s immunisations? Would you like a preservative-free vaccine - or one which contains a substance which a US government’s medical adviser says has a "biologically plausible" link to autism?

This is the thimerosal debate. In the US, a it is huge storm involving congressmen, medics, some £30 billion in lawsuits and a cover-up which has left Washington mystified. But in the UK, the storm has yet to break.

Thimerosal is not new. It has been used since the Thirties to kill any bacteria in vaccines - but by hugely controversial means. Its toxic power is drawn from its main ingredient: mercury, second only to plutonium as the most toxic element.

Once injected in the body, thimerosal breaks down into ethyl mercury - a substance liable to bind with body protein and, most ominously, brain tissue. Once lodged in the body, mercury traces are exceptionally difficult to remove.

Worse, mercury is a proven neurotoxin - that is, even small doses have been linked to brain defects including fibromyalgia, lupus and depression. It has not taken US lawyers long to extend this trail to autism.

Other scientific studies have found that mercury placed next to brain tissue leads to deformities associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This is the substance which the government believes is safe to put in flu vaccines.

There must be a good reason for this, is the immediate response. But this is the most staggering part of the debate. Mercury is not needed in these vaccines - indeed, mercury-free jabs are available across the NHS now. So why is no-one being told?

This is being treated as a scandal in the US, where the House of Representatives has set up a committee to investigate the issue. Suspicion has been fuelled by the behaviour of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the supreme decision-making body on vaccines. It decided to phase out mercury in three years ago. The FDA has adopted a somewhat contradictory attitude. "Lead, cadmium, and mercury are examples of elements that are toxic when present at relatively low levels," it advises chemists. But this is the same FDA which approves the intravenous injection of such mercury in infants and pensioners.

It does not take a medical expert to spot something amiss. Mercury is a neurotoxin - no-one disputes that. Its use in child vaccines was greatly increased during the Nineties - a decade where autism spiralled. Mercury in the brain induces deformities common to Alzheimer’s. Might the two be related?

The House of Representatives committee has produced two booklets of evidence pointing to the danger of mercury in medicine. Meanwhile, the lawyers, scenting a tobacco-style payout, have produced their own facts. The US government has laid down what a "safe limit" of mercury for infants. The committee found that the vaccination programme could leave children with 41 times more mercury than that laid down by this limit - a key finding which fuelled calls for its abolition from medicine.

This safe limit is based on studies of 900 children born in 1987 in the Faroe Islands whose mothers had eaten mercury-contaminated whale meat. When they grew up, these children had slower reaction times and diminished attention spans.

The amount of mercury in their umbilical cord blood was minute - 0.1 micrograms per kilo. But even this trace of was enough to trigger a set of neurological conditions commonly associated with autism.

Mercury is, after all, strong enough for the amount in a thermometer to pollute a small lake. So how can any amount be considered safe? This is the conclusion of Dan Burton, a congressman and the chairman of the special committee, who asked that all mercury-containing vaccines be discontinued, given that mercury-free substitutes are now available.

"To ignore an avoidable risk and to put 8,000 children a day in harm’s way is not only inhumane, it may be criminal," he said in a report to George Bush, the US president.

The Department of Health does not use the term "avoidable risk". It simply says its committee for safety of medicines (CSM) has reviewed the issue and "concluded that the risk- benefit balance of thimerosal-containing vaccines remains overwhelmingly positive". This is a trick statement. The CSM, it says, believes that a mercury vaccine is safer than no vaccine at all. This is true - but is a mercury-free vaccine safer than a thimerosal-based vaccine? There is no answer on this point.

But the choice facing Britain is between a complete portfolio of mercury-free vaccinations - including three out of the seven flu jabs being made public this winter - or those still using thimerosal. The question is why GPs are not advising patients that one vaccine contains mercury and the other does not.

The latest statement was made last month by Lord Hunt, a health minister, who said the CSM has its findings backed up by the Institute of Medicine (IoM) in the US.

He said: "The IoM published a detailed review of the evidence relating to possible neurotoxicity of thimerosal in vaccines in October 2001. The IoM findings were consistent with the CSM conclusions."

Lord Hunt is not telling the whole story. This was the same IoM report which said the link between thimerosal and autism is "biologically plausible" - and that the mercury may well kill enough brain cells to scramble children’s thinking.

Dr Marie McCormick, who chaired the IoM expert panel, advised parents to ask doctors for mercury-free vaccines if they are available. Wise advice - available from absolutely no-one in Britain.

The Department of Health says that the IoM report "concluded that the evidence did not support a causal association between thimerosal contained in vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders."

Here, for the second time, is a slightly misleading statement. No evidence? Compare this to the FDA’s summary of the same IoM report into thimerosal safety.

"It concluded that the evidence is inadequate to either accept or reject a causal relationship between thimerosal exposure to childhood vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders of autism," it said.

It is, in other words, a grey area. Mercury may lead to autism; it may not - we don’t have the evidence to accept or reject this. We just don’t know.

So why is the Department of Health not admitting this doubt? It may be connected to the 200 lawsuits which were filed, claiming a total of £30 billion on behalf of parents of autistic children. This was seen off by the US government when it passed the anti-terrorist homeland security bill last month - guaranteeing Eli Lilly & Co, a former maker of thimerosal, protection from multi-million-dollar lawsuits.

What had this to do with terrorism? Not very much - but it is a sign of how seriously the link between thimerosal and autism is being taken in the United States. The Department of Health is falling increasingly victim to the compensation culture.

There is one final aspect to the IoM report which is not being reproduced in the UK. It urged that "full consideration be given to removing thimerosal from any biological product to which infants, children and pregnant women are exposed".

The Scottish Parliament has the power to ban all mercury from vaccines now. Health is devolved, the vaccines are available and GPs have the freedom to order what they want. It can be an example of Holyrood using its smaller size to innovate.

The medical evidence is mounting. One study suggests it is hypersensitivity to thimerosal, not necessarily mercury poisoning, which triggers autism. A new study into mercury and Alzheimer’s is expected later this year.

In the mean time, being injected with traces of ethyl mercury is a risk that no-one in Britain needs to take. The latest, mercury-free vaccines are freely available on the NHS - for those who know how to ask for them by name. Sooner or later, the government will tell us about it.

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CARE

No Ordinary Village

At first glance, the village of Aigues Vertes looks like any other development constructed in the 1960s.

But what makes it different is that its 84-strong community is entirely made up of mentally handicapped people.

This unique project based at Bernex in the Genevan countryside, aims to promote the independence of the mentally handicapped by giving them jobs and encouraging them to live on their own.

The village has been constructed around a farm and includes 11 residences and four workshops plus a bakery, a grocery shop and a church. There is even a daily bus.

All the residents, men and women aged between 19 and 82, have conditions such as autism or Down Syndrome. Most of them live in the village but several travel in for the day.

Social workers – 120 in all - are on hand to help them in their jobs

and in their daily lives. Serge Bednarczyk, President of the Aigues-Vertes

Foundation (swissinfo) Bread and cakes The bakery, on the corner of the

village square, sells croissants, bread and cakes, all made by the villagers. It makes the bread for the village but also takes orders from outside.

Seven villagers, plus the baker-social worker are at work. Arnold, who originally comes from the Congo, is concentrating on making pains au chocolat. He carefully cuts the dough before adding the little squares of chocolate.

“What I like doing here is all sorts of bread and croissants, and also what I’ve learnt is how to do some types of cakes, Black Forest or some mille feuilles,” he says cheerfully.

“So if it’s my brother’s birthday, instead of my parents buying a cake at Migros, I can do it myself as a surprise for my brother.”

Serge Bednarczyk, Aigues Vertes’s director, is pleased with the progress that Arnold – who comes in daily – has made.

“At the beginning he was not able to do anything. Now he can do everything on his own and this is exactly what we are looking for - independence,” he said. Down on the farm The farm, at the heart of the village, bustles with activity as its 25 workers go about their allotted tasks.

The farm houses a variety of animals: cows, which are raised for their meat, donkeys and horses, as well as ducks and chickens. Vegetables are also grown, although the village is not yet self-sufficient. All the methods used are environmentally friendly.

Workers start at nine in the morning and finish at five in the evening, just like a normal working day. They even receive a salary – but smaller than average because they do not produce as much as regular workers.

But Bednarczyk is careful to point out that Aigues Vertes is not interested in how much they produce but in how they produce it.

He explains that it usually takes a lot of time to train a handicapped person for a job and the task is made more complicated by the fact that they can normally only learn one thing thoroughly. But sometimes they are surprised at how well the residents do.

“There is even one handicapped person who is able to drive a tractor around the farm. This is fantastic because its not easy for them to drive and when you see him on the tractor he is very proud, ” Bednarczyk told swissinfo.

Independence

The pride that the villagers take in their work is evident. Nicole looks after the rabbits and the cows at the farm.

“I love my work at the farm because I love animals and I wouldn’t like to be sat down all day in a workshop. I prefer to be outdoors,” she said.

“I am the only woman at the farm but my friends look after me well, even if some of them say that I am the only woman and it’s not my work.”

Having her independence is very important to Nicole. Apart from working on the farm, she also lives in accommodation with three other handicapped people and is learning to cook on her own – an important step for her.

“In the evening I do my cooking myself. I’m trying to follow a diet and I eat lots of vegetables. My favourite meal is pasta but I’ve stopped eating that because it makes you get fat,” she explained.

Not everybody is as independent as Nicole. There is also a workshop which makes candles and paper for those who are unable to carry out tasks in the farm or in the bakery. Another workshop specialises in weaving and sewing.

Special environment

The idea for the village came about in the 1960s, when some parents in Geneva who were worried about the future of their mentally handicapped children, asked a group of anthroposophists to help them create a village based around a farm.

Bednarczyk explained that at the time the only alternatives for mentally handicapped people were hospitals or asylums.

The idea was to give mentally handicapped adults some freedom and the ability to develop through their relationships with the animals and other people.

According to Bednarczyk, the effects of the village’s environment on its residents have been astounding. Their life expectancy has jumped from just 40 years to 80 years old – with the oldest current resident being 82.

“Once you stop progressing, you start dying and this is absolutely unacceptable for me and for everybody in the village,” he said.

Although Aigues Vertes exudes a very warm and content atmosphere – it is hardly possible to walk down the street without people shouting out greetings to each other or giving friendly hugs - the social workers can sometimes encounter problems with the residents.

“We have to be careful because if you lead them too far, they are going to meet their limits and if you pass those limits, they become frustrated and can become depressed,” warned Bednarczyk. Future development The success of the Aigues Vertes concept has lead Bednarczyk to declare the village a model for the social reintegration of mentally handicapped adults in Europe.

To achieve this goal, a SFr64 million (~US$ 39.3 Million) rebuilding programme is planned, starting with the farm and moving on to the other buildings. A nursing home will also be built in which the residents can live out their final days.

It is hoped that a further 30 people can be welcomed to Aigues Vertes at the completion of the work in 2010.

Financing will come from the Swiss government, the canton of Geneva as well as from donations.

In 2003, which is officially the year of the handicapped, the director also plans to go to Brussels to help form working groups on how to improve the lives of handicapped people - a theme very close to his heart.

“We want to change people’s opinions,” said Bednarczyk. “Often we look at handicapped people as though they are completely different from us, but they are like us - they are us.”

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TREATMENT

Computational Autism - Hope Lies In Flair For Logic

[The article below is from “NewScientist” July 20, 2002. Greater detail comes from researcher Boris Galitsky, following. This is presented for our readers' information only and has been neither evaluated nor necessarily recommended by the Schafer Autism Report. By Duncan Graham-Rowe.]

Autistic children can be taught to interact more naturally with other people simply by “programming” them to understand how other people think.

The technique, invented by Russian researcher Boris Galitsky, exploits the aptitude of many people with autism to understand logical formulae. Galitsky claims it has already helped 10 autistic children lead more normal lives.

The technique makes sense, says Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, as there is anecdotal evidence that autistic people often create their own logical rules to help them interact with others. “If you take it to the extreme it sound unethical because you are training them to perform unnaturally,” he says. “But if it works then I think it’s a good way forward.”

Autistic people generally find it difficult to comprehend the mental states of others. “For example, they don’t know what it means to pretend,” Galitsky says. Yet they can be particularly adept at understanding formulaic rules. Galitsky’s technique, which he calls computational autism, tries to exploit this talent.

Working with children at Sunny World school in Moscow, Galitsky started with rules that use mental states familiar to autistic people, such as “want” and “know”. He then used them to derive more complex mental states normally beyond the children’s grasp.

In a basic example, Galitsky may tell Peter, who has autism, that “Jane knows something”. This is expressed as “know(Jane, something)”. These – logical units are then built up into compound formulae to derive more complex expressions such as to inform, deceive, explain, forgive and pretend.

Galitsky admits that is sounds confusing, but claims this isn’t a problem for children with autism. His technique involves repeating particular rules with different variables. In trials presented last month to the International Conference on Development and Learning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he assessed the children’s ability to recognise certain mental states before and after training.

He found that the children could easily take these rules, and generalize from them to interact in a similar way to children who are not autistic. If you show them the rule for pretend, he says, “then they pretty much start pretending”.

Galitsky tailors training sessions to individual children, as the abilities of people with autism can differ widely. Some respond better to verbal instructions, while others prefer the rules to be written down.

Galitsky, who works for Knowledge-Trail, a start-up specializing in computational linguistics based in Massachusetts and Moscow, hopes that the children will start to derive their own rules as they encounter new, “unknown” mental states.

* *

Computational Autism

This novel approach aims to merge the traditional autism research community with the researchers who study the reasoning and perception capabilities of humans and machines, which are actually corrupted under autism.

We target the introduction of ideas from computer science, artificial intelligence and mathematics on the possible mechanisms of reasoning to the autism practitioners. Autism phenomena needs the thorough study of autistic behavior and reasoning, backed by the strict representation of what it means to reason in a “normal” versus an autistic manner.

What is autism?

Autism is a developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life. The result of a neurological disorder that affects functioning of the brain, autism and its associated behaviors occur in approximately 3 of every 1000 individuals.

Autism interferes with the normal development of the brain in the areas of reasoning, social interaction and communication skills. Children and adults with autism typically have deficiencies in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions and leisure or play activities. The disorder makes it hard for them to communicate with others and relate to the outside world. They may exhibit repeated body movements (hand flapping, rocking), unusual responses to people or attachments to objects and resist any changes in routines. In some cases, aggressive and/or self-injurious behavior may be present.

Does the above description of autism symptomotology sound like a set of bugs (or possibly even adaptive features) characteristic of a broken software system?

We think it does. To put it more precisely, we believe that useful insights may be gained by viewing autism in humans via computational

How to find these bugs? Can one talk about fixing them?

Psychological, biological, linguistic loci of autism is very hard to find. It seems productive to focus on the reasoning-specific locus, that is more experimentally viable and can be done with higher strictness and accuracy at least for individual patients. Phenomena of computational autism is expected to provide a convincing background for both diagnosis and rehabilitation. The latter is connected with teaching autistic children the internals of mental world.

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