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AUTISM FIRST STEPS
AUTISM DAILY NEWSLETTER
Monday January 7, 2002
INDEX:
* Common Antibiotic May Be
Potential Treatment For MS
* Arrested Teen Says He Sent Daschle Anthrax Letters, Boy Autistic
* Writer Emerges From Martian Past
* "How the Clip 'N Snip's Owner Changed Special Education"
* "Camp Fear"
******************************
Common Antibiotic May Be Potential Treatment For
MS
A
common antibiotic, long used to treat infections in humans, may have potential
as a treatment for multiple sclerosis, a devastating disease of the central
nervous system, according to a new study published Dec. 21 in the Annals of
Neurology.The drug, minocycline, is a member of the tetracycline family of
antibiotics and was tested in a condition that mimics MS. Study results portray
a potential treatment for MS that could significantly decrease the severity of
disease attacks or even block the onset of relapses, hence ameliorating many of
the disease's debilitating symptoms.The drug was tested in rats with autoimmune
encephalomyelitis. "Animals treated with minocycline did not develop
neurologic dysfunction or had a less severe course than untreated rats,"
says Ian D. Duncan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison neurology professor in
the Department of Medical Sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine and the
senior author of the study performed in collaboration with C. Linington of the
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Germany."This clinical difference
was confirmed by the relative lack of pathologic change in the nervous system
of treated animals," Duncan says. "We therefore think that a similar
therapy could be used in MS patients with early relapsing-remitting
disease."In many respects, MS remains an enigma to medical science. The
majority of patients have a relapsing-remitting course of disease with later
more chronic progression in many cases. While the trigger for relapses is often
unclear, infectious disease such as a cold or flu are frequently associated
with their onset.There is no known cause or cure, and treatments to date have
proved to be only partially effective. The disease is especially common in far
northern and southern latitudes; the farther from the equator, the greater the
prevalence of the disease. The disease is characterized by inflammation and
loss of the myelin sheaths that insulate nerve fibers of the central nervous
system. Eventually there is scarring and nerve fiber loss. The location of the
inflammation in the central nervous system -- the brain and spinal cord --
varies from patient to patient and from episode to episode."In the rat
model, we show that you can treat the animal successfully either before or
after the onset of the disease," Duncan says. In other words, in the
context of the human disease the drug could be given when patients start to
show signs of neurologic illness to forestall MS's progressive, nerve-damaging
inflammatory episodes, or prior to a potential relapse."We believe,"
notes Duncan, "that the drug is acting at many levels. While it has
effects on the peripheral immune response, its actions may be primarily as an
anti-inflammatory compound. Indeed, the drug is widely used in another
autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis, where it is thought to play such a
role."In the rat model Duncan and his colleagues used, they believe that
minocycline primarily inhibits the inflammatory cascade in the central nervous
system, particularly the activation of a cell known as a microglial cell, a
step that may be critical to the loss of myelin and the myelin-producing cells.
Duncan says evidence from other labs has shown that minocycline can protect the
nerve cell or fiber itself from loss in other disorders; this may be
additionally useful in MS."If we are correct that it is targeting
microglial cells, then this raises the possibility that the drug or compounds
with similar actions could be used in other neurologic diseases such as
Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease where microglial activation may be the
common final pathway in neuron loss," says Duncan. "This will require
further work, however."The drug will be tested in humans next year in a
Phase I clinical trial in MS patients at the University of Calgary. "It is
very important that a well-conducted clinical trial is carried out to test
whether it is safe and has efficacy in MS," says Duncan. "As
envisaged, minocycline could have advantages over other drugs presently used,
notably the interferons or copolymer I, as it is less expensive, could be
administered orally, and only for prescribed periods at the time of ongoing
disease."Co-authors of the paper include Natalija Popovic, Brian Goetz,
Su-Chun Zhang, all of the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine; and Anna
Schubart and Linington of the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology,
Martinsried, Germany.The results of the study are published online at this URL. - By
Terry Devitt
[Contact: Ian Duncan, Terry Devitt]
http://unisci.com/stories/20021/0103024.htm
******************************
Arrested Teen Says He Sent Daschle Anthrax
Letters, Boy Autistic
Brentwood N.H. (AP) - A teenager who told police he sent ananthrax-laced letter
to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is acompulsive liar who has been
treated in a state psychiatric hospital, hisfather said Saturday.Elijah
Wallace, 18, made the claim when he was arrested for breakinginto a vacant home
Friday. Police found him hiding in a closet with a gunand two knives.
Investigators also found five letters addressed to localbusinesses and a bag of
white powder in the house with Wallace.Preliminary tests on one of five letters
found with the teen wasnegative for anthrax.Wallace told police he was
preparing to send anthrax-laced letters andhad already had sent four others,
including one mailed last week to Daschle,Fremont Police Chief Neal Janvrin
said.But officials said they do not believe Wallace sent the Daschle
letterbecause, with heightened security measures, it would have taken up to
threeweeks for a letter to reach the congressman.The Daschle letter contained a
white powdery substance and threateningletter. U.S. army scientists and the FBI
said Friday the substance was talcand contained no trace of the deadly
bacteria."He's telling a story that is a sensational story to, I think, feelimportant,"
the teen's father, Eric Wallace, said Saturday."I don't think there's any
chance any anthrax was involved."Wallace said his son was diagnosed with
Asperger's Syndrome, ahigh-functioning form of autism, when he was a child."We've
been trying since the third grade to get him help but it's beenvery
difficult," the elder Wallace said."He gravitated to the worst of the
worst."Wallace, 45, a software engineer, said his son was expelled
fromjunior high for making a threatening comment about wanting to kill Jews.
Hegraduated from a high school for troubled youths and in recent years hadbeen
in and out of jail, mostly on minor theft charges.Wallace began assaulting his
family members last winter when hecouldn't have his way, his father said.His
parents had him committed to the state psychiatric hospital lastFebruary and he
was released in April.Wallace entered no plea when he was arraigned on a
burglary charge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2435-2002Jan5.html
******************************
Writer Emerges From Martian Past
By Valerie Grove
The title of Clare Sainsbury’s book about Asperger’s syndrome, Martianin the
Playground, sums up exactly what she felt like at primary school: shelooked
perfectly normal but she felt like an alien.“Half the time my parents were told
I was a gifted child, and half thetime that I should be in a school for kids
with special needs,” she says.Clare was hyperlexic — an unusually early and
fast reader — and wouldpace around the classroom talking, reading Gerald
Durrell when the otherswere on Roger Red-hat. Before starting school she
evolved her own privatelanguage. She hated disruptive excitement such as
children’s parties.School brought new horrors: playtime, noisy corridors, the
lunchqueue, fluorescent lights, physical closeness to others. April Fool’s
Day,with its pointless and cruel jokes, was an incomprehensible torment.
AllAsperger’s children know the pervasive isolation of the child who cowers
atthe edge of the playground, makes no friends, plays no games, is unable tofit
in.“Asperger’s children make perfect victims, as bullies are quick todiscover.
We have no tactics for physical or verbal self-defence,” Clarewrites.Clare
never even thought of telling her parents about all this. “Ijust assumed that
school was supposed to be like that,” she says.School life is designed for team
players, conformists and good mixers.Teachers can handle physical disability,
learning difficulties, behaviourproblems. But what to do with an intelligent
kid who is simply weird?Francesca Happe, an autism expert, says that whenever
she lectures, there isa moment when her audience goes quiet, and she knows that
they areremembering someone in their class at school who was always left out
ofeverything. There must be at least one Asperger’s child in every school,since
the ratio is one in 200.They may baffle teachers by being unable to learn times
tables, yethaving an eidetic (extraordinarily accurate and vivid) memory for
facts onwhatever topic obsesses them: whales or coins or Mesopotamia or the
Book ofGenesis. Their interests become surrogate companions.David Sainsbury,
now Lord Sainsbury, and his wife Susie staunchlydefended their daughter when teachers
suggested that she was emotionallydisturbed, “or just bloody minded, incredibly
irritating, bright but lazyand perverse”.When it was hinted that they were the
lax parents of a rude child,they retorted that Clare was clearly just
different: she was happy at homeand they were delighted by her academic
prowess.One teacher told them that Clare acted “like an autistic child” whenshe
was six, yet she could speak fluently. But the only friend Clare made
inchildhood was an autistic girl who was totally mute.In her school reports —
“not very communicative and somewhat taciturn”was typical — she can see
retrospective clues to her condition. But no labelseemed to fit. She is
grateful not to have been wrongly classified, sinceshe knows other people who
were misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, or put intointensive psychotherapy.At St
Paul’s Girls’ School she felt disliked. “Schoolchildren seem tohave a very
limited tolerance for social deviance of any sort,” she says.Teenage years can
be excruciating for people with Asperger’s, who often donot see finding boy and
girlfriends and going to parties as a priority.Theyappear stuck up, rude,
painfully shy. In her younger sisters Clare couldobserve normal teenage
behaviour.“My sister Lucy is the exact opposite of me: socially gifted,particularly
good with children. She now wants to teach special needs. Shesays that growing
up with me was excellent training.”At 27 Clare is lovely, a taller Helena
Bonham Carter. “Did peopleoften say this?” I asked by e-mail. “Nope. Never,”
she replied. In her teensClare sought help for depression, but psychotherapy
put her into a Catch-22situation.“I was pretty self-aware and gave a textbook
description. I said, ‘Ican’t fit in, I can’t make friends with people, there is
something wrongwith me, please tell me what it is.’ But since they’d never
heard ofAsperger’s, they only saw how articulate I can be in a one-to-one
situation,and said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, you only think there is
becauseyou are so depressed’. So I said, ‘No, I am depressed because I am
isolatedand don’t fit in’. And so it went on.” Like fellow sufferers she was
told:“Everybody feels like that sometimes” ; “You can do it if you just try” ;
“I’m sure they like you really.”It was not until Clare went to read philosophy
and politics at NewCollege, Oxford, and found herself encouraged to challenge
other people’sarguments, that she felt more at home. “I gained more confidence
and stoppedbeing so horribly depressed — but I also realised that, although no
longerdepressed, I stayed weird.”Oxford is tolerant of quirky individualism,
but imposes an obligationto socialise. In Clare’s first term, her behaviour
convinced fellow studentsthat she was having a nervous breakdown.“I would stay
in my room, and never went into the noisy, crowdedcollege bar. I can’t hear
properly when there’s background noise. And Iwould walk around the college
gardens talking to myself and gesticulating. Iknew that talking aloud is
socially forbidden but the only way I can managesocial occasions is by rehearsing
things to say, over and over, whilewalking alone.”One day she went into a
bookshop and in the psychology section shefound Uta Frith’s Autism and Asperger
Syndrome, in which she read an exactdescription of herself.“It was uncanny. I
realised that there were other people just like me.It was too good to be true,
I was afraid to believe it. I showed it to mymother. She said, ‘It does sound
rather familiar. This is a description ofyou, isn’t it?” Later Frith gave her
the Wechsler IQ test: Clare has an IQof more than 130. “I just wished I’d known
years earlier. Just knowing couldhave made a difference,” she says.She found
herself joining in student drama. “Stage managing is aperfect job if you like
lurking in corners and checking through listsseveral hundred times,” she says.
She was assistant director on TwelfthNight.“Having an obsession with
Shakespeare and the meaning of words, Icould be a walking Arden Shakespeare
footnotes, and explain Elizabethanjokes.” Clare also got a first-class
degree.She reported her Asperger’s diagnosis to Janet Gough, a teacher,
laterHigh Mistress,at St Paul’s, who had been particularly understanding.
Shetold Clare that they now had another girl just like her, who wassubsequently
diagnosed.Clare is passionate about raising awareness, and supporting
theNational Autistic Society’s Prospect scheme, which finds companies willingto
employ people with Asperger’s, such as computer companies. “Asperger’speople
naturally understand the rigid, binary, literal way a computerthinks,” says
Clare.When Martian in the Playground won an award, Clare gave the £500cheque to
the NAS, in addition to all her royalties. She runs a website andsupport group
for university students with Asperger’s, and works part-timewith autistic
children, who sometimes remind her of the way she was as achild.“It is such a
subtle disability, but just being socially out of synchresults in devastating
isolation. There are so many bright able people withAsperger’s in their 30s and
40s, living alone or with their parents withenormous collections of information
on Star Trek or trains or medievalmusical instruments or maps of the world.
They can’t get jobs, can’t usetheir qualifications. They are regarded at best
as loony but harmless, atworst loony and dangerous.”She says that she and others
are often followed in shops by securityguards. Their awkward movements and
indecisive loitering excite suspicion;their failure to make eye contact looks
shifty. “It’s ironic, since we tendto be painstakingly law-abiding. It always
makes me wince when newspapersreport that an accused murderer was a loner, a
weirdo, had no friends, as ifall such people are dangerous.”Last summer she
wrote to The Times when Professor David Canterdismissed Asperger’s as a
fashionable term. Clare says this is a commonmisconception. “People think, ‘You
look normal, you talk fluently, youshould just pull your socks up and stop
acting weird’. It works against usthat we are so competent in some areas.
People see you as being wilfullydifficult.”But small amounts of support — such
as arranging socialopportunities — can make an enormous difference. “Since my
book came out,one boy I quoted has committed suicide. He was only 20, very
articulate, butfelt so isolated and depressed he took the only way out. That is
notatypical.” Copyright 2002 Times Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2002004296,00.html
******************************
"How the Clip 'N Snip's Owner Changed
Special Education"
by Brent Stapes, New York Times, January 5, 2002
The people of Florence, S.C., know Shannon Carter as the owner of Shannon's
Clip 'N Snip, a barber shop where the locals get haircuts and conversation. The
Clip 'N Snip has room for seven barber chairs, but Shannon is limiting the
business to two for the moment and renting out space until the economy improves
enough for the barbering business to expand.Shannon's public school teachers
are no doubt surprised to see her running a business and working out a
financial plan. During the 1980's she finished ninth grade failing virtually
every subject, and was nearly illiterate. The schools told Emory and Elaine
Carter that their daughter was terminally lazy and would "never see a day
of college." In truth, Shannon was suffering from a common but undiagnosed
learning disability that made it difficult for her to comprehend the little
that she could read. Alienated and depressed, Shannon became suicidal. In
desperation her parents placed her in a private school for disabled children,
where she jumped several grade levels within a few years and graduated actually
reading on grade level.The Carters then sued the school system for
private-school tuition and were upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case known
as Florence County School District Four v. Shannon Carter. The law before this
case limited parents of disabled children to schools approved by the state. But
the court ruled in Shannon's case that the school system lost its right to plan
a disabled child's education if it failed to provide an "appropriate
public education" as required by the federal Individuals With Disabilities
Education Act, known as the IDEA.Ask about Shannon Carter in New York or Los
Angeles, and you see school board lawyers snarling or hanging their heads in
dismay. The school boards see Carter cases as "a voucher program for the
rich," in which affluent parents reserve spaces in private schools and
then badger the school systems into paying burdensome tuition costs. Critics
have a point when they note that small districts can be destabilized by the
cost of one student's stay at an expensive residential school, and that urban
districts with too few textbooks are sometimes forced to underwrite lavish
private school tuition. But as Congress prepares to reauthorize the federal
special education program, it should bear in mind that the Carters went to
court only after the public schools failed at their most basic mission:
teaching Shannon to read.The task of teaching reading is undermined by the
common but mistaken belief that children are somehow neurologically
"wired" to read. This view led to the "whole language" fad
of the 1970's, in which children were allowed to wander through books,
improvising individual approaches to reading. The whole language technique
works well with some children. But data from four decades of studies by the
National Institutes of Health show that it is disastrous for the 4 in 10
children who have trouble learning to read. Nearly half these youngsters fall
behind in the early grades, never catch up and eventually drop out.In the most
extreme cases, children seem to have abnormal activity in the parts of the
brain that process phonemes — the basic sounds that correspond to the letters
of the alphabet. The simplest rules of language make no sense to them. Asked
for a word that rhymes with "cat," for example, they simply draw a
blank. The disorder strikes children of all backgrounds. It afflicts those who
are read to as infants as well as those who grow up without a book in the
house.The fortunate children are diagnosed early and assigned to smaller
classes where teachers take special care to teach them the fundamentals of
written language that others take for granted. The children are walked through
the alphabet again and again, learning to connect the letters to the sounds,
the sounds to the syllables, the syllables to words and so on. The good news
from the N.I.H. findings is that 95 percent of learning- impaired children can
become effective readers if taught by scientifically proven methods. The bad
news is that less than a quarter of American teachers know how to teach reading
to children who do not get it automatically. At the moment, nearly half of all
children placed in special education are there for reading difficulties.
Federal scientists commonly describe them as "casualties of bad
instruction."Part of the blame lies with colleges that have resisted
federal attempts to improve teacher education programs. Part of the blame lies
with Congress, which has clung to the view that curriculum is a state and local
matter in which the federal government should not meddle. Congress failed to
even notice the reading research until just recently, when the Bush administration
made reading a priority.Congress has focused almost solely on the fact that
special education is expensive — and that it takes away money from regular
education. The debate will go nowhere until lawmakers begin to view special and
regular education as part of a single system that is being hampered by an all
too pervasive problem — that schools are teaching reading in a way that fails
to effectively reach millions of children. The basic lesson of the Carter case
and the tens of thousands that have followed is that the country needs a
national reading campaign, based on science. The longer we delay, the more
families like Shannon Carter's will bolt the system, taking public dollars with
them.
******************************
"Camp Fear"
Gina Score was the
latest teenager to die at a juvenile boot camp. Why do so many states still
insist that humiliation and abuse will straighten out troubled kids?
by Bruce Selcraig , MotherJones.com, November/December 2000
For more stories like this one, visit www.EducationNews.org. In a town
the size of Canton, South Dakota, population 3,195, plenty of people knew that
14-year-old Gina Score liked to steal things. She stole Press-N-Go fingernails worth $2.99 from the ShopKo in
Sioux Falls, stole four Beanie Babies from Brower's Gifts and Collectibles in
Canton, stole $60 from a sleepover girlfriend, even stole candles from her
Lutheran church. Outwardly, Gina didn't seem troubled -- she babysat for
neighbors, wrote cute poems, and smiled radiantly for pictures. But she
confided to social workers what they surely guessed: Kids can be cruel to
eighth grade girls who weigh 224 pounds. Sometimes Gina cried herself to sleep. Supported by her parents, Gina endured years of programs and
punishments intended to change her behavior: community service, individual and
family counseling, group care, house arrest, fines, restitution, probation,
juvenile detention. Nothing really worked. Finally, in June of last year, after
yet another parole violation, a judge placed Gina in state custody until age 21
and sent her to a military-style boot camp for teenage girls located at the
State Training School in Plankinton. Like boot camps in two dozen other states, the Plankinton boot
camp and a counterpart for boys in the town of Custer were set up to treat
children like military recruits. Kids were forced to rise before dawn, perform
rigorous exercises, and march like soldiers. Phone calls and visits from
parents were prohibited for the first month, and the slightest rules violations
were met with swift punishment. As in many other states, the South Dakota boot
camps were part of a political campaign by a tough-on-crime governor; Bill
Janklow, a popular Republican and ex-Marine now in his fourth term, promoted
them as a commonsense solution to juvenile crime. Despite widespread abuses at
boot camps from Florida to California, many politicians and frustrated parents
have found salvation in the camps' simple goal: to reduce troubled teenagers to
their emotional core, back to frightened children, so that their minds will
open long enough to imagine a life without drugs, crime, and self-hatred. As a
boot camp warden from Texas explains, "We want to turn their lives upside
down." Five days after Gina Score
arrived in Plankinton, she and 15 other girls from Cottage B began a mandatory
2.6-mile jog at about 6:30 a.m. on the gravel roads outside Plankinton's
razor-wire fences. What happened that morning is detailed in medical reports
and eyewitness accounts by inmates and staff members at the boot camp. The
girls trotted past sprawling farms of corn and soybeans and a small community
cemetery; but it's doubtful that Gina appreciated the pastoral scenery. She
must have been panicked. Gina was severely overweight and "hated to
run," as her mother later recalled. The temperature and humidity were both
around 70 and climbing. Within a
block or two, Gina started lagging behind. As the girls reached each corner of
the rectangular route, where they were allowed to rest briefly and drink water,
they waited for Gina to catch up. Two youth counselors repeatedly shouted for
Gina to keep moving, sometimes interlocking their armIn a town the size of
Canton, South Dakota, population 3,195, plenty of people knew that 14-year-old
Gina Score liked to steal things. She stole Press-N-Go fingernails worth $2.99
from the ShopKo in Sioux Falls, stole four Beanie Babies from Brower's Gifts
and Collectibles in Canton, stole $60 from a sleepover girlfriend, even stole
candles from her Lutheran church. Outwardly, Gina didn't seem troubled -- she
babysat for neighbors, wrote cute poems, and smiled radiantly for pictures. But
sheIn a town the size of Canton, South Dakota, population 3,195, plenty of
people knew that 14-year-old Gina Score liked to steal things. She stole Press-N-Go fingernails worth $2.99 from the ShopKo in
Sioux Falls, stole four Beanie Babies from Brower's Gifts and Collectibles in
Canton, stole $60 from a sleepover girlfriend, even stole candles from her
Lutheran church. Outwardly, Gina didn't seem troubled -- she babysat for
neighbors, wrote cute poems, and smiled radiantly for pictures. But she
confided to social workers what they surely guessed: Kids can be cruel to
eighth grade girls who weigh 224 pounds. Sometimes Gina cried herself to sleep. Supported by her parents, Gina endured years of programs and
punishments intended to change her behavior: community service, individual and
family counseling, group care, house arrest, fines, restitution, probation,
juvenile detention. Nothing really worked. Finally, in June of last year, after
yet another parole violation, a judge placed Gina in state custody until age 21
and sent her to a military-style boot camp for teenage girls located at the
State Training School in Plankinton.
To See the whole story:
http://www.causeonline.org/Jan02/MoJo1-02.htm
******************************
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