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"Healing Autism: No Finer a Cause on the Planet" ________________________________________________________________

AWARENESS

* College Student's Redefines Success: Autism Prompted Desire To Help Families

* Films Help, Hurt Public's Understanding Of Issues

EDUCATION

* Autism: Out Of The Shadows - The Value Of Unusual Lives

* The War Against Boys

FORENSIC

* Mercury-Autism Fight Looms in Georgia

* Teen's Starvation Ruled a Homicide

PUBLIC HEALTH

* MMR Names Are Stolen In Clinic Raid

* Reader's Posts

College Student's Redefines Success: Autism Prompted Desire To Help Families

She's been photographed with First Lady Laura Bush.

She's rubbed shoulders with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, not to mention Elizabeth Dole and an assortment of other distinguished women.

She's been honored nationally for leadership and community service.

So what more could 20-year-old Katie Grimes be looking forward to? The answer is plenty if Grimes, a sophomore at Washington State University, has anything to say about it.

Grimes, who graduated with honors from Thomas Jefferson High School in 2000, is working on a double major in biology and German.

She hopes to study abroad.

And she's already thinking about grad school.

Eventually, she says, she wants to work with animals --although not as a veterinarian.

And she'd like to focus on herpetology, the study of amphibians and reptiles.

But right now, Grimes is still basking in the glow after participating in the Girl Scout Gold Award Young Women of Distinction celebration in Washington, D.C., earlier this month.

The Girl Scout Gold Award, the equivalent of the Boy Scout Eagle Award, recognizes community service and leadership.

Roughly 1 percent of all Girl Scouts --approximately 3,000 girls each year --receive the Girl Scout Gold Award. Only 10 of those earn Young Women of Distinction status.

As one of this year's honorees, Grimes was lauded for her role in organizing the Federal Way Autism Support Group for families of autistic children.

Autism is a brain disorder, present at birth, that affects the way the brain uses information. Among other things, speech delays, or failure to develop speech altogether, is a common characteristic. So are difficulty and delays in understanding how people interact, a characteristic that creates significant social challenges.

Grimes' interest was more than accidental.

She herself is autistic.

But, in many ways, she is one of the lucky ones.

Though she experienced the speech delay and social difficulties that are common with autism, she was blessed with a high IQ and is considered "high functioning." As it turns out, both school and the Girl Scouts were big motivators for Grimes.

After finishing first grade in a special education class, Grimes wanted to shift to a regular classroom. School officials wanted her to start in a regular first-grade class. Grimes, figuring she'd already done her time in first grade, wanted to start in second. So a deal was cut: Her reading skills weren't where they needed to be. School officials told her if she learned to read over the summer, she could go to a regular second-grade class.

Grimes and her mother, Lisa Grimes, set to work.

"It was frustrating for both of us," Lisa Grimes said. "She had limited reading skills. So we'd sit down for a couple of hours a day and she'd be in tears and I'd be in tears, too. I'd be saying, `You're the one who wants to go to regular second grade.' She'd get up and walk around mad, and then she'd come back and go back to work. By September, she'd learned enough to start second grade. By Christmas, she was reading her head off. They told me, `It will be fine."' And it was -- not that it was always easy sledding.

Grimes spoke differently than other children.

And because she didn't grasp social cues people use when they interact, she acted differently.

"Kids made fun of her," Lisa Grimes said. "She would come home crying. Her younger sister would come home crying because the kids were calling her sister `weird.' There were a lot of tears." But then there also was the Girl Scouts.

Grimes joined the Brownies in second grade.

It was a high point in her young -- and difficult -- life.

"To be in Brownies, to have a Brownie uniform, to do what the other girls were doing -- that was important to her," Lisa Grimes said.

Still, even the Girl Scouts wasn't always an easy fit.

Not everyone could cope with a girl who sometimes acted differently than the other girls, who sometimes had trouble understanding directions, who sometimes needed to have directions written rather than verbalized, who struggled with personal relationships.

Grimes bounced around among troops over the years.

Eventually, she ended up in a troop her mother was leading for Katie's younger sister.

In her senior year of high school, it was time for her to do her Gold Award project.

Initially, Grimes said, she envisioned creating a support group for other "high functioning" autistic young people like herself.

"I felt like when I was a young person, I had a lot of struggles and hardships --autism on top of adolescence," she said. "I felt it would have helped me to have coped with the pain I was experiencing then if I could have met other people like me. I didn't know other autistic young people like me." But Grimes soon realized her focus was too narrow. She opened the group to all families of autistic children.

She facilitated monthly meetings, arranged guest speakers, designed and distributed a booklet on autism and created a Web site with information on the support group.

Grimes ran the project during her senior year in high school, then turned it over to another person when she headed off to college. These days, the Federal Way Autism Support Group serves 90 families.

Colleen Ozolitis, director of the young adult program for the Totem Girl Scout Council, nominated Grimes for the national honor.

Grimes' Gold Award project, she said, was "clearly exceptional.

"To get the Gold Award, you're supposed to identify a need in the community and meet it. It needs to be something you're passionate about," Ozolitis said.

"Social interaction can be tough for her because of the nature of her disability. So it really was a self-challenge. She had to tell people about her disability." Grimes got word of the award in January. It took a while, she says, for the news to sink in.

But in Washington, D.C., this month, where Grimes attended an award luncheon as well as a black-tie gala celebrating the Girl Scouts' 90th anniversary, there was no ignoring the reality of the honor.

And then, Katie Grimes said, there was that moment that caught her totally by surprise.

She was hanging her coat before the award luncheon when she heard a familiar voice.

It was her mother's.

Unbeknownst to Katie, Lisa Grimes (as well as Katie's grandmother, Ruth Tylezak) had flown back to the ceremony to surprise her.

But then Lisa Grimes wouldn't have wanted to miss it.

"She's been so inspiring all her life because she wouldn't be held back," she said. "She has so much desire, so much determination to be no less than she can be. As a parent, you can't give up on a child who wants that so badly. You can't do anything but be there for them."

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Films Help, Hurt Public's Understanding Of Issues

Even after 29 years of psychiatric practice, Dr. Winkler Bond couldn't distinguish between a psychiatric delusion and reality.

Relaxing in a dark movie theater, Bond was drawn into the plot of "A Beautiful Mind." As he followed the journey of the film's main character, John Nash (Russell Crowe), Bond unknowingly fell captive to one of the character's first schizophrenic delusions.

"I kept waiting for the first (schizophrenic) break," said Bond, a VA Medical Center psychiatrist and UAB associate professor.

Bond, and the rest of the audience, assumed Nash's college roommate was real. There was no reason to doubt the roommate's existence. He and Nash laughed, argued and developed a friendship like any other set of roommates.

Later, after Nash was diagnosed with schizophrenia, the audience learned that the roommate only existed in Nash's mind.

Movies can serve as powerful tools in educating audiences about a little-known or misunderstood disease like schizophrenia. They also can alert the public to a social problem, motivating action. But their messages, depending on their accuracy, can be helpful or harmful to the various advocacy groups in their education efforts, according to film experts, advocates and health professionals.

Beautiful Mind is one of several recently released movies dealing with various health issues. Others include "I am Sam," (Sean Penn) the story of a mentally retarded single father who fights a custody battle to raise his daughter, and "John Q," (Denzel Washington) about a father who takes a hospital hostage when his insurance company won't approve a heart transplant for his son.

"Something like 'A Beautiful Mind,' because of the discussion it generates, can put the public's attention on what we can do for serious mental illness. (Movies) can do more for a serious mental illness than any other form of communication we have," said Jennings Bryant, director of the Institute for Communication Research at the University of Alabama.

Movies have the potential to pull viewers into a character's experience. Viewers of "A Beautiful Mind" experience Nash's delusions along with him. "I've never seen anyone put us in the perspective of a schizophrenic person," Bond said.

Various movies over the years have impacted the public thought on an array of issues. Some of the more landmark films in mental health include "Charly," (1968) and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," (1975) Bryant said.

Other movies with different themes include "Birth of a Nation" (1915), a sympathetic film toward slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. But the film's leanings created more uproar over the subject than support, he said.

"Mississippi Burning" (1988), inspired by the 1960s murder of three civil rights workers, and "Philadelphia" (1993), one of the first mainstream films to deal with AIDS and feature a homosexual main character, also brought attention to societal issues.

"They all serve a tremendous educational function that's important to mobilize the public to action on a variety of needs," Bryant said.

In the 1980s, soap operas were credited with generating discussion on AIDS. Their plot lines involved the issue before other media or society opened to the topic, said Emmett Winn, associate professor of communication at Auburn University.

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Autism: Out Of The Shadows - The Value Of Unusual Lives

What does the future hold for people with autism?

One clue is on display at the University of Washington's Experimental Education Unit, where teachers and aides are working intensively with autistic preschoolers to break through the walls that separate them from the rest of the world.

For these children, there is hope ---- not for a cure, but for a life that will allow them to learn and speak and communicate their thoughts.

Another view becomes clear in Washington public school classrooms, where educators scramble to meet the needs of a growing population of autistic children despite inadequate training, tight budgets and uncertain mandates.

Whether school-age children with autism will receive the appropriate education the law guarantees depends ---- on where they live, on the vagaries of school and social service budgets, on whether their parents can find specialists who know how to work with them, and on the passion and intellect parents themselves bring to the quest.

For teen-agers and young adults, the future is more clouded. A few of the lucky ones may find stable housing with paid companions and part-time jobs in sheltered workshops. Others will languish in foster homes or in the homes of their aging parents. Still others may live out their lives in institutions for the autistic, the retarded or the mentally ill, never realizing the potential that was stolen from them when they were young.

Autism was first identified in the 1940s. Those diagnosed in the early years are approaching 60. Many never emerged from the shadows. No one kept track of what became of them.

But hope is on the horizon.

For 27 years, the federal government has guaranteed children with autism a free and appropriate public education. They and their parents have come to expect more from society than custodial care. They have dared to hope for something like a normal adult existence.

"A lot of younger people have had the benefit of a special education, and they want a different kind of life," said Mary Strehlow, a program manager for Clark County Community Services. "They're not particularly interested in living with four other people" in a group home. But federal policies and federal dollars have not caught up with those expectations, Strehlow said.

A new commitment to research is beginning to unlock the secrets of autism in the brain. In February, scientists from three American universities announced that they had identified structural differences in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brains of patients with autism ---- differences that might explain why they withdraw from social contact. Geneticists someday may break the genetic code that helps determine who will develop autism and who won't.

There's also a growing awareness that high-functioning people in the autism spectrum, including those with Asperger's syndrome, have valuable skills to contribute to society. It's a poorly kept secret that many software engineers and computer programmers ---- and now their children ---- have borderline Asperger's syndrome. Wired magazine recently published a story about how this "geek syndrome" is playing out in California's Silicon Valley.

Temple Grandin, a Ph.D. animal scientist who has autism, is a case in point. Grandin's empathy with livestock and her ability to envision spatial relationships from all perspectives without the help of a computer have allowed her to design humane handling facilities for cattle, sheep and horses. Grandin has designed one-third of the commercial livestock facilities in use in the United States.

In her book "Thinking in Pictures," Grandin provides a rare glimpse into the mind of an autistic person. She says that even if she could, she would not wish away her autism.

"It is likely that genius is an abnormality," she writes. "If the genes that cause autism and other disorders such as manic depression were eliminated, the world might be left to boring conformists with few creative ideas."

For the young men profiled on these pages and on The Columbian's Web site, life holds promise, if not the kind most of us imagine.

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The War Against Boys

How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Menby Christina Hoff Sommers Simon & Schuster, 2000 Review by Christian Perring, Ph.D. on Mar 8th 2002

Judging from the subtitle of The War Against Boys alone, it’s clear that Sommers has an axe to grind: she blames the feminist movement for many of the problems that young men experience. Her suggestion is that gender-neutral child rearing ignores that fact that boys have a distinct nature different from girls, and that boys are not well served if we ignore this fact. She criticizes the recent work of Carol Gilligan that argues that young women suffer in a male dominated society, and she equally criticizes the related work of William Pollack that argues that young men are oppressed by cultural ideals of masculinity. She calls for a return to traditional education that includes the forming of moral character, and believes that the old-fashioned goal of helping boys become gentlemen has great value.

Some of Sommers’ arguments make good sense. For example, when feminists deny the obvious average differences between boys and girls, they look silly. Sommers also argues convincingly against educators who put more emphasis on increasing children’s self-esteem than giving them skills they can be proud of. She gives strong evidence that boys are on average performing worse than girls in school and college. She makes a strong argument that we should try single-sex education as a solution to some problems, and allow competition and discipline back into the classroom, if it is actually true that they were neglected.

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Mercury-Autism Fight Looms in Georgia

State on front line of expanding cases over alleged cause of child regression

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Georgia appears to be one of the early testing grounds for litigation over the alleged connection between autism and the use of mercury in preservatives for children's vaccines.

One suit already has bounced from Fayette County Superior Court to U.S. District Court and back to Fayette, where on Friday a dozen lawyers and a judge tried to negotiate a scheduling order opposed by an unlikely

defendant: Georgia Power Co.

Like other mercury cases around the country, those in Georgia -- filed by lawyer Michael N. Weathersby of Atlanta's Evert & Weathersby -- take on pharmaceutical giants such as American Home Products Corp. (now Wyeth), GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson.

But Weathersby has added Georgia Power because, he argued, mercury emissions from Georgia Power's plants contribute to the cumulative effect of mercury exposure to the children.

Vaccines Cited

Weathersby acknowledged in an interview that he believes the mercury in the vaccine preservatives is the primary reason children of his clients have elevated mercury levels in their bodies. The plaintiffs claim mercury poisoning has caused their children's neurological problems, including autism.

Weathersby explained that he expects pharmaceutical companies to shift the responsibility of mercury exposure to other environmental sources, such as power plants.

Thus, Weathersby added Georgia Power to the list of defendants, because "I don't have any intent of trying my case in front of an empty chair."

Pending further investigation, Weathersby said he expects to add other defendants with no connection to vaccines, but he declined to name them.

Vaccine mercury plaintiffs have sued power companies in other states, Weathersby said, including Louisiana.

For their part, the pharmaceutical defendants have denied that mercury caused the children's neurological problems and appear set for a long fight. The F ayette case features Alembik, Fine & Callner of Atlanta and Washington D.C.'s Williams & Connolly for Wyeth; King & Spalding and Houston's Fulbright & Jaworski for GlaxoSmithKline; Alston & Bird and Cleveland's Arter & Hadden for Johnson & Johnson; and Chicago's Sidley Austin Brown & Wood for Armour Pharmaceutical Company, another defendant.

Meanwhile, represented by Hugh B. McNatt of Vidalia's McNatt and Greene and Mary K. McLemore of Troutman Sanders, Georgia Power is fighting to get out of the cases, starting with the one in Fayette.

That case was brought by Lyndelle H. "Lyn" Redwood, who heads Safe Minds, a national support group of parents with autistic children, and her husband, William Thomas Redwood. They claim their son Will suffers from neurological disorders as a result of mercury poisoning. Redwood v. American Home Products , No. 2001V0612M (Fayette Super. filed July 9, 2001).

Last year, Georgia Power removed the Fayette case to federal court, arguing that Weathersby fraudulently added the Georgia-based defendant to the case just to keep it in a state court.

But U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp of the Northern District of Georgia sent the case back to Fayette.

Camp took note of Georgia Power's arguments that the mercury in the air is a trifling amount and that the child had not been exposed to any more mercury than anyone else in the area. But a doctor's affidavit countered that, because the Redwoods lived near four power plants, mercury exposures from the plants would have contributed to Will Redwood's condition.

Precedent required him to view the facts in favor of the plaintiff, Camp said. He concluded, "Plaintiffs' claims of exposure to mercury are likely to have evidentiary support both factually and legally after discovery is conducted." Redwood v. American Home Products, No. 3:01-CV-125-JTC (N.D. Ga. order Dec. 21, 2001).

That brought the case back to Fayetteville, where, on Friday, Chief Judge Ben J. Miller of Fayette County Superior Court tried to resolve a dispute between Georgia Power and the plaintiffs over the scheduling order.

Discovery And Deposition

The problem stems from an underlying dispute over discovery and deposition of the plaintiff's expert witnesses.

"I want some time so the plaintiff can manage discovery," Weathersby said in an interview after the hearing. Also, without a scheduling order, he said, the defendants have the resources to drag the case out forever.

"Georgia Power wants to make it short and incomplete," he said.

Weathersby said he would like the scheduling order to provide for discovery from Georgia Power before the company's lawyers can depose his experts.

Weathersby explained that his experts can't make final scientific determinations of Georgia Power's role until they see some of the company's documents.

In court, Georgia Power lawyer McNatt noted that Weathersby's experts were certain enough of their findings that they filed them in remand proceeding in federal court. Therefore, he added, the experts should be willing to back them up in deposition -- without the need for discovery beforehand.

"They filed the affidavits that kicked me out of federal court and down here -- where I'm happy to be," McNatt told Miller.

Scheduling Opposed

McNatt added that Georgia Power objected to setting a scheduling order in the case because it wants to move faster than the other parties.

McNatt said his client only needs about 90 days to take depositions and get motions before the court. In comparison with what the pharmaceutical companies face, he said, Georgia Power's part of the case is fairly simple.

"While mercury is the issue in this case, it is the only commonality we have with the pharmaceutical companies," he said.

The brief hearing ended with Miller saying he was inclined to enter an order, but he would prefer for the parties to arrive at one by consent.

The process soon may be repeated in Fulton State Court, where Weathersby has filed another spate of mercury cases.

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Teen's Starvation Ruled a Homicide

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AP - The starvation death of an 18-year-old autistic man has been ruled a homicide, and authorities are focusing their investigation on family members who were caring for him while his father was jailed for unpaid parking tickets.

Brahim Dukes died from malnutrition and dehydration on Dec. 29, two weeks into his father's 38-day jail sentence, the Medical Examiner's Office concluded. The teen-ager weighed 94 pounds at the time of his death, down from 130 pounds previously, authorities said.

Dewey Gillespie, 44, the teen-ager's father and main caregiver, was jailed by a Traffic Court judge for unpaid traffic tickets. He was released two days after his son's death.

Gillespie said he went to court on Dec. 13 with $750 in cash and begged the judge not to send him to jail, saying he was the person who best understood the needs of his son, who could not speak and needed assistance using the bathroom and dressing himself.

Gillespie owed more than $2,000 on 11 unpaid traffic citations, most for driving without a license.

"I begged," Gillespie said Tuesday. "I asked to get on a payment program and he said, 'There is no payment program. If you don't have it all you've got 38 days in jail."' The presiding judge, Robert M. Shaffer, did not recall Gillespie offering to make a partial payment or referring to his son's disability, Traffic Court Administrative Judge Fortunato Perri said.

"You all hear all kinds of stories in this court," Perri said. "Had this gentleman or even someone from the prison brought this to my attention, I would have asked to reduce the order." After his arrest for driving without a license in 1997, Gillespie was put on a payment plan but defaulted on $1,558 of what he owed, Perri said. Under the $40-a-day formula that traffic judges use in determining sentences for people who don't pay their fines, Gillespie was sentenced to 38 days, Perri said.

There was no telephone listing for Shaffer, and he could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gillespie also disputed the coroner's ruling that his son died of starvation, saying the teen-ager's stepmother would never have neglected him. He also said his son was naturally very thin and at 5-feet-9, weighed only around 98 pounds, not 130.

"I have been with this woman for 17 years and she has taken care of Brahim like one of her own," said Gillespie, who has nine other children ranging in age from 1 to 13. "This is an 18-year-old boy who can get what he wants if he's hungry. He probably just missed me and took sick." Gillespie said his wife called him at the prison Dec. 27 to say his son wasn't eating. The next time he was able to call, on Dec. 29, he discovered Dukes was dead.

"My son did not starve to death," he said. "Something is wrong here and if I have to have another autopsy done, I'll do it to clear my family's name." Dukes' biological mother has battled longtime drug problems and has not been part of his life, Gillespie said.

Police are conducting an investigation involving family members who lived in the home, Philadelphia police spokesman Sgt. Roland Lee said Tuesday. He would not elaborate. Copyright © 2002 Associated Press Information Services

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MMR Names Are Stolen In Clinic Raid

Computer disks holding the names of thousands of children whose parents have refused the MMR vaccine and who have opted for single jabs instead have been stolen from a clinic in Liverpool.

The records cover patients from all over the north of England, including the prime minister’s Sedgefield constituency.

Police fear the information may be used to “out” politicians and health professionals who have gone against government policy by rejecting the MMR jab, which has been linked to autism, for their children.

They have not ruled out the possibility that the theft was an attempt to find out whether Tony Blair’s son Leo received separate jabs for measles, mumps and rubella.

“There are a lot of people who would like to have this information both in the government and the media,” said Kathryn Durnford of Direct Health 2000, the chain of private clinics whose Liverpool head office was burgled.

Blair has been under pressure for months to say whether Leo has been given the MMR vaccination. He has hinted that this is the case but has refused to give a categoric answer, arguing that to do so would open the door to a media assault on his children’s privacy.

A press report two weeks ago suggesting that Leo was given single jabs was not denied but was described by a government spokesman as “gossip”.

Separate jabs are not available on the National Health Service and this has led to private clinics such as those run by Direct Health 2000 springing up. Its Liverpool offices, which opened last month, were raided on February 25. The thieves pushed in the door and deactivated an alarm. Computers and other office equipment as well as the disks were stolen.

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Reader's Posts

Have a 6.5 year old autistic son who is on an ABA programme and is progressing well. We are in London at the moment and we are thinking about moving to L.A. I would like to know whether there are any schools using ABA in L.A. and roughly the cost of it as well. seema.suresh@eaglegl.com. Seema Suresh

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Have 5yr old PDD-NOS. He's been having hour-long tantrums since the fall. Services (speech/OT/PT/sensory integration) were available on a limited basis. Deep pressure doesn't help during tantrums. He throws things, pounds on his door or walls, screams and cries. Almost seems like he can't breathe if I'm too close but doesn't want to be left alone. Takes nearly a full hour and it seems once he's exhausted himself, he finally calms down and usually is fine the rest of the day. Similar experiences? Themamaspice@aol.com

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Is there any possibility that Mercury poisoning (Thimerosol) may be passed from mother to infant during pregnancy? Allan Walker ACWBART@aol.com

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