SCHAFER AUTISM REPORT "Healing Autism:

No Finer a Cause on the Planet"

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

ADVOCACY

* Lilly Wins Shield From Autism Suits - Protection May Be Temporary

* COMMENTARY: Politicizing Vaccines: The Wall Street Journal

CARE

* Ontario Inquest Examines Death Of 13-Year-Old Autistic Girl

TREATMENT

* The Soothing Power Of Music

* The Matt Savage Trio's Benefit Performance for Autism Center

AWARENESS

* A Father's Hopes

* A Mother's Tale: Nobody Is 'Typical'

CARE

* A Day To Come Out Of The Shadows

RESEARCH

* Psychiatric Genomics Lands $17M In Funding

* Readers' Guts.

ADVOCACY

Lilly Wins Shield From Autism Suits - Protection May Be Temporary Lawmakers and White House must revisit issue next year.

Eli Lilly and Co. won what may be a short-lived victory Tuesday.

The Senate narrowly upheld language in a homeland security bill that could help shield the company from damages in pending and future lawsuits for selling a mercury-based preservative put in childhood vaccines. But in order to get enough votes to ensure final passage of the bill, Republican congressional leaders and the White House had to agree to revisit the issue in January.

Lawmakers opposed to the provision said the parties had agreed the liability protection would at least not extend to the 45 lawsuits already filed against Lilly by parents who allege their children suffered autism, a neurological disorder, from a mercury-based preservative used in many childhood vaccines until about three years ago. Lilly developed and sold the preservative, called thimerosal, for more than 40 years.

A White House spokesman said he could not comment on the specifics of the agreement but did say the White House would work with the next Congress "to address these issues and some members' concerns."

The protection was one of several items slipped into the bill that didn't become widely known until after the House approved the measure last week.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said he thought the vaccine protections "had merit" but was bothered by the help for companies that reincorporated abroad.

"I just thought on balance, this was not the right thing to do," Bayh said.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said he supported the provisions because making substantial changes would have delayed passage of the bill. He said he has no opinion on the merit of the liability protection.

Defenders of the provision said it's needed to make sure fear of lawsuits doesn't cause pharmaceutical companies to stop making vaccines, particularly those needed to fight bioterrorism.

No one, however, was claiming ownership of the provision.

Lilly -- which is a major GOP campaign donor, has a large lobbying presence in Washington, and connections to the White House that include CEO Sidney Taurel's appointment to the White House Homeland Security Advisory Council -- said it did not ask for the change.

Senators pointed to House Republicans, who pointed to the White House, which denied proposing it.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called on White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels -- a former Lilly executive -- to explain how the language got in the bill.

Daniels' spokeswoman said his office "had absolutely no involvement" on the issue.

Lilly spokesman Ed Sagebiel said the company was pleased with the language approved Tuesday.

"We think this legislation will help protect manufacturers from lawsuits that are either without merit or scientific evidence," he said.

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COMMENTARY

Politicizing Vaccines: The Wall Street Journal

The production of vaccines against bioterrorism hardly seems like a partisan idea. But all of sudden it's emerged as a hot political controversy, as Democrats object to an effort to offer liability protection for companies that could protect Americans from smallpox or the West Nile virus.

We're delighted they brought it up. The state of the U.S. vaccine industry has been a national scandal for years, with needless shortages not just to immunize against bioterror threats but even against such routine childhood diseases as tetanus and whooping cough. The latest threat comes from a proliferation of lawsuits that enrich the tort bar but make vaccine production a masochistic exercise.

Democrats are protesting now because Republicans are trying to insert some liability protection for vaccine makers as part of the new homeland security legislation. "Leave it to the Republicans to sneak in a proposal that protects manufacturers of the vaccine, doctors and nurses and leaves the person who may be injured -- even by negligent action -- to bear the whole burden of their injury," declared Henry Waxman, the California Democrat. This sure sounds terrible, if it were only true.

The real story here is about thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that vaccine makers once used. Though there was no evidence that thimerosal caused neurological disorders or other harm, the Clinton Administration recommended that companies stop using it -- and the tort follies began.

As of June lawyers had hit vaccine makers with 68 thimerosal lawsuits, 11 of them class actions. One in Florida is claiming as many as 175 million victims. Another is said to be asking for $30 billion in damages; the entire vaccine industry is only worth about $6 billion in global revenue.

Congress has already tried to stop this kind of thing once. In the mid-1980s plaintiffs' suits had driven all but three companies out of the vaccine business. Congress responded by creating the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. VICP set up a no-fault alternative to the tort system, which would compensate families for the rare, but inevitable, side effects of government-recommended vaccines.

Parents could still sue in court, but only after they first went through VICP -- which was designed to be quick, generous and require lower burdens of proof. Since 1986 the government has awarded some $1.3 billion in compensation to more than 1,700 families. Vaccine makers and health providers received liability protection to stabilize the industry, and families received just compensation. Few went on to sue.

The only unhappy party was the tort bar, which has tried to get around the legislation ever since. The government's thimerosal recommendation was their opening. Some of today's suits claim thimerosal is a "contaminant" and thus doesn't fall under VICP's side effects. Others are suing not the vaccine manufacturers covered under VICP, but the companies that made the preservative. And since VICP only covers claims of more than $1,000, lawyers are aggregating claims of under $999.

If these lawsuits are allowed to proceed, forget about a stable supply of vaccines. As it is today, only four major vaccine companies supply preventive medicines against such diseases as whooping cough or measles. Most manufacturers have been driven out by skyrocketing regulatory costs and a government that uses its monopoly buying clout to pay a minimum for products.

In sum, the GOP liability effort is an essential part of homeland security that will save lives. Republican Bill Frist has been pushing this legal protection with the support of the federal Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the physicians' community. Mr. Waxman and his Senate allies (Joe Lieberman intends to offer an amendment this week stripping out the Dick Armey provision that passed the House) have the trial lawyers' lobby. Americans can figure out who is really playing politics with vaccines. Copyright 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

LETTER

To the Wall Street Journal

Politicizing Facts

As a parent of an autistic child, I was shocked at how many "facts" the editorial "Politicizing Vaccines" left out (WSJ 11/18/02). Taking the attitude that anything that slows down the Republican (and drug industries) agenda is unpatriotic is like saying "Think like me, or the terrorist have won!"

Although it is true that Thimerosal has been used for over forty years, the amount of Thimerosal a baby is exposed to has increased a great deal in the last two decades. In the early eighties children received a handful of shots. Now children are required to receive almost 20 shots before they begin kindergarten.

Mysteriously, the rate of Autism has skyrocketed in the same period of time. The official (conservative) estimate has gone from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 500 children in that same time. Many in the medical community have tried to brush this off as better diagnosis, but a recent study out of UC Dacvis showed that diagnostic criteria can not explain the increase in autism.

The other fact that was overlooked is that Thimerosal is about 40% mercury. It wasn't a Democratic plot that got the CDC to recommend the removal of Thimerosal. Someone finally did the math and realized that they were giving babies nearly 5 times the maximum dose of mercury for an adult, and there is no safe dosage for a baby. It is also a fact that the many of the symptoms of mercury poisoning and autism are the same. Thimerosal is used as a preservative in vaccines. I am sure the drug companies can come up with something that is not a poison to replace it.

I am not saying that Thimerosal caused the increase in autism. The fact is, the studies have not been done yet. But saying the drug companies need not be responsible for their product is putting our heads in the sand. Are we willing to sacrifice corporate responsibility in the name of homeland security?

Economic factors are more responsible for the slowdown in vaccine manufacturing. There just isn't enough money in vaccines the drug companies no longer own patents to. Blaming the parents for the slow down in vaccine manufacturing won't help, although with 1 in 500 kids being diagnosed with autism, there are a lot more of us.

Arnold Patscott, Father of Stuart, Chicago, Illinois

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CARE

Ontario Inquest Examines Death Of 13-Year-Old Autistic Girl

NewsAt11

The courtroom was packed Monday as an inquest opened into the death of a 13-year-old autistic girl, who was physically restrained under a beanbag chair at an Ontario group home.

Her father, Denis Jobin, told the inquest his daughter, Stephanie, was loving and caring.

"If somebody loved her, she returned that love...if she felt you didn't like her, she became more aggressive."

Stephanie died in June of 1998 at the Digs for Kids group home in Brampton, a city northwest of Toronto. She was restrained for more than 20 minutes under a beanbag chair by two employees at the home.

A W-FIVE investigation revealed Stephanie was being constantly restrained -- a total of 1,047 minutes in one month alone. Her father said he never knew, and thought her condition was improving while at the home.

"She almost felt like a normal child; it was that good," Jobin said outside the hearing room.

"So when I got the call at two in the morning to ... see my daughter in a hospital bed with two guards at the door, that was a pure shock to me. I had no idea that these things were going on while I was away."

Her father admitted Stephanie was difficult to handle and prone to aggressive outbursts. However, he said she responded better to affection than punishment and described one visit when Stephanie lunged at him from across a table specially designed to contain her.

He said that rather than restrain her, "I looked her straight in the eyes and I hugged her." Jobin said she calmed down.

The inquest is examining the issue of restraints and how they are being used on children in group homes. Child advocate Mathew Geigan-Miller says there's very little scrutiny and accountability.

"Should we be teaching people how to do a physical restraint or should we be teaching them not to do it, in other words, how to care for them that's less about controlling and more about supportive," he said outside the courthouse.

At least two previous deaths at group homes in Ontario have been attributed to restraints. William Edgar, also 13, died in 1999 after being restrained in a Peterborough, Ont., home. Another 13 year old from Orangeville, Ont., died last year under similar circumstances.

The inquest is expected to last five weeks. It will hear from the Peel Children's Aid Society, which oversees the Brampton area, the Hastings Children's Aid Society and staff from Digs for Kids.

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TREATMENT

The Soothing Power Of Music

Before he underwent an experimental and controversial sound therapy called the Tomatis method, 12-year-old Cole Taylor was considered a bully at his Danville elementary school.

Other children didn't want to play with him because of his angry outbursts riddled with expletives. His mother avoided taking him out in public for fear that he would have an embarrassing tantrum.

He had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, Tourette's syndrome, Asperger's syndrome, a severe auditory processing disorder and bipolar disorder. He took three medications, but nothing seemed to help.

After listening to 90 hours of specially modified Mozart and Gregorian chants to stimulate his auditory system, his mother says, he is a different child.

Cole still has some behavior problems, but she can reason with him now. His handwriting and vocabulary are better, he pays attention and follows directions more easily, and, best of all in his mother's eyes, he smiles more and seems happier. He no longer takes medication.

"I wish I had known about this sooner, or else I would not have gone the medication route," said Connie Taylor, Cole's mother.

Two new centers offering Tomatis treatments have opened in Walnut Creek and Concord this year, tapping into a market of parents tired of medicating their kids and desperate for a solution to their children's learning and behavior difficulties.

While testimonials about the benefits of the treatment abound, some psychologists caution parents against spending thousands of dollars on it, because there is not adequate clinical proof that it works.

It is one of many experimental, alternative treatments available, including biofeedback, dietary restrictions, vitamins, colored glasses and blue-green algae; ranging in effectiveness from promising to completely bogus, psychologists say.

"When you've got a major attentional learning problem, my advice is to go with the treatments that have been shown to work rather than the newest and most esoteric treatment," said Stephen Hinshaw, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley.

What has been shown to work are medications such as Ritalin, behavioral management programs and social skills training. But some parents, such as Taylor, are growing increasingly afraid of the possible side effects and long-term consequences of medicating their children.

Some parents ignore their psychologists' advice.

Dee Dee Entrikin of Martinez removed her 7-year-old son Morgan from his medications for six weeks before she told his psychologist, who was not happy with the decision, she said.

Since he started Tomatis treatments, Morgan, who has attention deficit and bipolar disorders, focuses more on school, does not get as angry as he used to and seems happier and more alert, his mother said.

"If this can work, I've got to try it," she said. "If it doesn't work, oh, well. If it does, it will be worth all the money in the world."

Dozens of parents came to a recent open house for the Listening Center in Walnut Creek to learn more about Tomatis treatments. Some seemed skeptical, but willing to consider anything that might help their children, even something with a $4,300 price tag.

Taylor is one of the center's strongest advocates. She, too, was skeptical when she brought 12-year-old Cole to Deborah Swain, a speech-language pathologist and the center's director, for treatment. She feared she was wasting her money, but she was so frustrated with traditional treatments that she was willing to give it a shot.

Developed in the 1950s by Alfred Tomatis, a French ear, nose and throat doctor, the treatment stimulates the inner ear by altering the frequencies in Mozart and Gregorian chants.

The theory is that many people with learning disabilities, attention and hyperactivity disorders and autism have trouble filtering or processing the sounds that they hear, making it hard for them to focus or listen for long periods of time.

"If you cannot listen, you cannot learn," Swain said.

While undergoing Tomatis treatments, clients listen to music through special headphones. Gradually, low frequencies are filtered out and higher frequencies are let in, conditioning the ear to process a broader range of sound and, adherents say, changing the neurochemistry of the brain. The treatments develop a right-ear dominance, so sound has the quickest route to the part of the brain that processes language.

"It has excited me so much for my profession, because we're getting changes in a short time that would have taken two to three years to get," said Swain, former chief of speech pathology at the UC Davis Medical Center.

On a recent afternoon at the Listening Center, two boys listened to headphones on long cords in a carpeted playroom with blue, yellow and red painted walls. One boy calmly ate crackers in a beanbag chair while the another jumped on a trampoline and clapped his hands.

Children can do anything they want during the two-hour treatments, including homework.

But the treatment doesn't work only on kids. Adults seek the sound therapy as well.

At the Creative Listening Center in Concord, adults can relax in comfortable chairs, listening to the music in one room while children play in another. The Concord center offers a high-tech variation of traditional Tomatis treatments. It costs $3,000 for a 30-day, individualized program or $600 for a series of CDs to use at home.

"People will pay for what works," said Kay Hogan, an owner of the Concord center. "What is this thing that we can't use something because it hasn't been proven by statistics? If it works, why can't we use it?"

Maureen Ridley, a 37-year-old Lawrence Livermore Laboratory environmental scientist who lives in Lafayette, tried Tomatis at age 30. As a child, she was considered bright, but her reading was slow and laborious; she had trouble writing and couldn't grasp abstract thoughts. She couldn't hear certain sounds, and it took her longer to process and understand what she was hearing.

She made it through college by working longer and harder than other students, but she often felt like she was "faking it."

After Tomatis treatments, she said, she can hear, read and write better. She can understand concepts she never thought she would.

"It feels like you're being mentally rewired," she said. "For the first time in my life I felt like I could achieve my full potential."

Not everyone experiences such striking results, however.

Lew Mills is coordinator for CHADD, Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, in Northern California and a psychotherapist who works with adults with the disorder in San Francisco. He and his son both have the disorder and tried a home CD version of Tomatis treatments.

Mills said he felt different after listening to the CDs for a couple of weeks, but he can't say what, exactly, it did. He did not notice any changes in his son.

He puts Tomatis in the "it might work, it might be worth a try" category of alternative treatments.

"CHADD never has disdain for treatments that we don't approve of, but we'd like to see more studies and evidence it works before going out and recommending it to people," he said.

Clinical trials are expensive, said Hinshaw, the UC Berkeley psychology professor. Without a small-scale study in addition to testimonials, it is hard to convince a funding source to pay for a bigger trial, he said.

At the urging of parents, UC Davis's M.I.N.D. (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute is considering funding a trial to find out if the Tomatis method is an effective treatment of autism. Swain, director of the Walnut Creek listening center, would conduct the study.

There are no scientifically proven treatments for autism, a developmental disorder that makes it hard to communicate and interact with other people. The institute's charge is to find out which treatments work.

Amy Borovsky of San Ramon has noticed "little things that add up to a big change" for her 4-year-old autistic son Noah since he started the treatment. He has been more relaxed, calm, and comfortable around other people. He makes more eye contact and he doesn't hit his head with his hand repeatedly when he's upset.

"I don't need more proof," she said. "I'm seeing the proof. I'm living the proof."

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The Matt Savage Trio's Benefit Performance for Autism Center

Matt Savage is a 10-year-old jazz piano prodigy who has played for Chick Corea, Dave Brubeck, and McCoy Tyner, appeared in PEOPLE Magazine in June, was on The TODAY Show in July, and is currently featured in JAZZIZ Magazine’s November issue.

His Trio's benefit performance is Friday, November 22, 2002, 7:30 PM at The Fontbonne Academy in Milton, MA. Tickets are $35. Proceeds to

benefit: The Autism Center of the South Shore. A reception will follow the concert.

Reserve tickets in advance by leaving a message on the ACSS phone line at (800) 482-5788. Tickets will also be sold at the door on a first come/first served basis.

You can also send a check payable to ACSS for $35 per ticket to ACSS, P.O. Box 692382, Quincy, MA 02269.

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CARE

A Father's Hopes

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My name is David. My son's name is Jesse. This is the inverse of the way these names appear in the Bible. When my son was born I would tell people that our respective names would mean that the child would be the father of the man. This has turned out to be the case in more ways than I would have ever been able to imagine.

My son is a very smart guy. Because he lacks the particular structure in the brain that houses much of the gestalt for language and social interactions, he has had to figure out with sheer thinking power what most of us simply take for granted. The philosopher Wittgenstein once remarked that human beings live in language like fish live in water. Jesse is a fish who has had to teach himself to swim.

Although we live side by side, still sometimes sleeping in the same bed, my son inhabits a completely different world than I do. Aspects of the environment that I have long since filtered out of my immediate perception can dominate his perception of present time. He notices every fire extingui sher, fire alarm, smoke detector and fire hydrant. A siren or an annoying buzz blocks away and on the furthest edge of my hearing can preclude his listening to anything else. A chorus of peepers in the small garden pond can sit him bolt upright at 4 a.m. in a state of high alarm from which there is no return to sleep.

As parents, my wife and I try to help him learn to accept inputs from unscreened oversensitivities, to stimulate the usual reactions to events that will help him form relationships, and to avoid the transgressive behaviors that alarm others.

Some behaviors, like the strong shudders and squeals that are among his reactions to things he really likes, we have not tried to change although they mark him indelibly with social strangeness. We may try to moderate the sub-clinical seizures that these involuntary motions might be related to, but some reactions, some demonstrations are simply too individual and person to be tampered with for the sake of "normal" appearance.

One of the ways my son has taught me is to abandon very deepening layers of assumptions about what is "normal" and how much "normal" matters. Emblazoned over the gates of special parenting is the motto: "Abandon all normal, ye who enter here."

This, of course, is immensely freeing. You can concentrate on the immediate reality of your child. You can temper the annoyance of hearing the same fixated remark repeated for the 10,000th time with the appreciation that your son is actually talking to you. Communication, interaction, is not assumed, it is a gift that seems to gain elaboration with every day.

I do not focus on whether my son will one day get into Harvard and follow his father in an academic career or his mother in the law. I focus on whether my son will learn to read well enough to get through the second grade. I look in him for anything that might help him survive in a world that will one day not include his parents or maybe anyone else who will give him much more than the time of day.

But we take hope in the growing perspective that Jesse is just one point in a spectrum. This spectrum is a description that is beginning to connect how perception, language and behavior combine in our neurological systems. It includes individuals who are diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger's syndrome and a basket of related genetic differences.

These differences may be signs of adaptive mutations that provide new possibilities for human beings. What we call ADD and autism-related disorders may reflect ways of thinking that might be the best way to operate in a world of super fast flows of electronic information.

As parents of a child with autism, it is not unusual to be asked the question, "Well what is the prognosis?" This is a strange question to be asked because it assumes that autism is a disease for which there will be some sort of cure. This does not seem to us to be a very useful model.

There are certainly many things to do to help individuals with autism, ADD, and related issues to assist, adapt and cope with ordinary experience and ordinary expectation. Behavioral therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, assistive technologies, special diet, nutritional supplementation are all part of what we do to help Jesse. But in the end, his prognosis is that he will be autistic, something we are beginning to understand as a state of mind rather than a state of health.

-- David Steiling is a professor of literature and liberal arts at the Ringling School of Art and Design.

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A Mother's Tale: Nobody Is 'Typical'

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At age 31/2, our son, Jesse, knew his ABCs, could already spell dozens of words, and had memorized lengthy passages from videos and books. How clever, we thought, when he recited verbatim and in perfect diction lines he'd heard on television, as in, "This program was made possible with a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

We didn't know that Jesse was "echolalic," capable of memorizing words and phrases, but seemingly unable to put individual words together to form his own sentences. We learned later that children with autism spectrum disorders, including pervasive development disorders (PDD), don't learn language automatically like most children do.

Today, at age 8, after four years of speech and behavioral therapy, our son's language is much improved, but still marked by incorrect syntax and word choice. He might say, "What did he went?" when what he means is, "Where did he go?"

Difficulty learning to speak is a major characteristic of autism disorders. They are also frequently characterized by sensory problems -- distortions in hearing, seeing, feeling and tasting. Our son's hearing seems to be enhanced. He is overwhelmed by the snipping sound of scissors during a haircut and he lives in fear of alarms (fire alarms, especially), which must be painfully loud to him.

When most people hear "autism," they think of someone like the character in the movie, "Rain Man," who operated in his own world of obsessions and compulsions. It is true that many people with autism have a unique set of interests, and that they can become isolated in the pursuit of those interests. But it is a myth that people with autism don't desire to connect emotionally with others.

Many professionals misunderstand this. It was our insistence that Jesse was an affectionate and loving child that made doctors unsure of his diagnosis.

We focused less on the label of "Pervasive Development Disorder -- Not Otherwise Specified" (a miscellaneous category for those with many c haracteristics of autism), which he received at age 4, and more on getting Jesse therapeutic services to address his developmental delays.

Thanks in large part to the Internet, parents can access a wealth of information about autism and suggested therapies. We experimented with anything that was harmless and appeared reasonable (music therapy and yoga, for example).

We don't waste time wishing Jesse was "typical." Nobody's "typical." We take solace in our son's innate intelligence, sense of humor, and sweet nature. Of course we worry about his future. But he's a whiz on the computer and, since age 2, has been fascinated with all things electrical and mechanical. While we struggle to teach him to read, we contribute monthly to his prepaid college plan.

What I most want people to know is that my son is just like other kids. He loves Thomas the Tank Engine, Rolie Polie Oli, and Buzz Lightyear. Like other "only children," he wants playmates.

I have, from day one, loved being a parent. Jesse's diagnosis may make parenting more challenging, but the rewards are that much greater. I am blessed to have my son.

Sarah E. Warren, a former staff writer, is a Sarasota attorney.

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A Day To Come Out Of The Shadows

It was their first visit to a beauty salon. The first time Marcy, who is 48, had a manicure.

The first time Phyllis and Sissy, both in their 30s, had perms. The first time Bruce and Tim, in their 40s, had a professional stylist -- instead of their moms -- cutting their hair.

For all their lives, these developmentally disabled adults from the Valley Village day care and residential centers have lived in the shadows.

On Monday, thanks to the stylists at Secrets Salon in Northridge, they were invited out into the sunshine.

Salon owner Janeen Vendetti and her staff gave up their day off to make Marcy, Phyllis, Sissy, Bruce, Tim and the others with severe autism and Down's syndrome -- people already pretty beautiful on the inside -- look like a million bucks on the outside, too.

"Look at them, all smiles and so appreciative," said hair stylist Reuben Mejorado, putting down his scissors for a minute to enjoy a change in scenery.

None of the people in the waiting area had their nose stuck in a magazine or romance novel. No one was on a cell phone, or looking at their wristwatch like they had somewhere else to be.

These 21 beautiful people from Valley Village were just sitting there looking around and smiling, just happy to be there. They had no place to go but back into the shadows, and they were in no rush for that.

"They've been excited and talking about this day for a long time," said Donna Thomas, director of Valley Village's day care center in Winnetka.

It's a wonderful organization, founded in 1971 by a group of parents whose children were developmentally disabled. Since then, it has grown to serve more than 300 clients in 15 residential homes and two day care centers in the San Fernando Valley.

"Most of their days are taken up with classes on basic self-help skills, like personal hygiene and learning to clean up after themselves," she said, watching Janeen and her staff work their magic.

Why are they doing this, she wondered aloud -- dedicating their time, their day off to a group of strangers living in the shadows? The answer is pretty simple, say Janeen, Reuben and the other stylists: Because it's the right thing to do.

So right that they have trouble understanding why more salons don't do the same thing. Besides Valley Village, they also give up a day off to do the hair and nails of women living in battered women's shelters and give free haircuts to boys in foster care homes.

"I guess the other salons just don't know how rewarding this is," Reuben said. "These are people who, for the most part, have been left out of society. But they're just as important and vital as any of us.

"When Janeen said she wanted to do this, we all volunteered our time. This is worth so much more than a day off."

It's a crime that the Valley Village beautiful people live in the shadows because they have so much to teach us, Janeen says.

How to be humble and how to appreciate those everyday things we take for granted -- like being able to go to the beauty salon when you want to.

Because when it comes right down to it, the beautiful people of Valley Village could be any one of us, or our children, says the owner of Secrets Salon -- looking over and smiling at Marcy having her nails done for the first time.

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Psychiatric Genomics Lands $17M In Funding

Psychiatric Genomics Inc., a Gaithersburg biotech firm that is trying to find a cure for schizophrenia and depression, raised $17 million in venture capital from a group of investors that included Maryland's Department of Business and Economic Development. Catalytix LDC, a Cayman Islands-based investment fund, led the latest round of investment for the drug research company. The state Department of Business and Economic Development contributed $250,000 through its Enterprise investment program.

Several other companies, including Oxford Bioscience Partners, GIMV NV, Emerging Technology Partners, CIBC and Alexandria Real Estate Equities LP, also contributed.

Psychiatric Genomics plans to use the money for research on so-called disease signatures and drug signatures that could be used to develop and commercialize treatments for psychiatric diseases.

In its research, the company studies samples of brain tissue from deceased people and uses the results to develop drugs to treat bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression or autism.

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Readers' Posts

Communication Matters in Thousand Oaks, California seeking PT/FT associates to join our team providing DIR services. SLP, OT, Floortime providers invited to email CommmMatters@aol.com . Join our wonderful team- let's expand our reach! mbnew@aol.com

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New Tactile I O are being used in computers. The AS and HFA who make computers, should make computers for little Kids with autism, not just programs! degby@webtv.net

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How can we persuade our Granddaughter to try new foods. 6 1/2 yrs. old. Diagnosed PDD NOS, very sensitive. Special Ed slow to help. Eats only pizza, orange juice, icecream, choc. graham crackers sometimes cheerios. Has become very thin. Should we go for OT help. If so, can you recommend anyone, Baldwin, Long Island, NY area? Gkessler1@aol.com

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My now 5-yr old son with autism was diagnosed with Choroid Plexus Cysts at 20 weeks gestation. At week 24, the CPCs had dissolved. I can't help thinking this may be related to his autism. Does anyone have a similar story? Thanks. lauralee0309@aol.com

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10-year old non-verbal daughter with autism. We are trying out a communication device. Does anyone have experience with a "Dynamo"? Looking for tips on the best ways to use it. happs65@yahoo.com

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