For the First Time, a Census of Autistic Adults
By CLAUDIA WALLIS
Saturday, Oct. 03, 2009

Among the many great mysteries of autism is this: Where are all the adults with the disorder? In California, for instance, about 80% of people identified as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are 18 or under. Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) indicate that about 1 in 150 children in the U.S. have autism, but despite the fact that autism is by definition a lifelong condition, the agency doesn’t have any numbers for adults.

Neither has anyone else. Until now.  On Sept. 22, England’s National Health Service (NHS) released the first study of autism in the general adult population. The findings confirm the intuitive assumption: that ASD is just as common in adults as it is in children. Researchers at the University of Leicester, working with the NHS Information Center found that roughly 1 in 100 adults are on the spectrum — the same rate found for children in England, Japan, Canada and, for that matter, New Jersey.

This finding would also appear to contradict the commonplace idea that autism rates have exploded in the two decades. Researchers found no significant differences in autism prevalence among people they surveyed in their 20s, 30s, 40s, right up through their 70s. “This suggests that the factors that lead to developing autism appear to be constant,” said Dr. Terry Brugha, professor of psychiatry at the University of Leicester and lead author of the study. “I think what our survey suggests doesn’t go with the idea that the prevalence is rising.” In England, where there is widespread suspicion that the childhood vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella has led to an explosion in autism cases, the study was hailed as part of a growing body of evidence that the vaccine, which was introduced in the 1988, is not to blame.

Brugha’s study was part of a larger national survey of psychiatric disorders among adults. In the first phase, researchers conducted 90-minute interviews with 7,461 people in 4,000 randomly selected British households; the interview included a 20-item questionnaire designed to screen for autism.
(Sample yes-or-no questionnaire items: I find it easy to make friends. I would rather go to a party than the library. I particularly enjoy reading fiction.)

Based on their answers in the first phase, investigators further assessed 618 individuals, using a battery of psychiatric measures, including a state-of-the art autism diagnostic tool. (About 200 of these participants had been selected for scoring high on the autism screen; the rest had been selected to sample for other disorders.) In the second phase, researchers identified 19 adults with ASD. But had they been able to evaluate all 7,461 in the survey, they estimate that they would have found 72 cases, or roughly 1% of the total.

One limitation of the study is its relatively small size, says Brugha. Being the first of its kind, it also needs to be confirmed by other studies. Another issue, notes Richard Roy Grinker, an autism researcher and professor of anthropology at George Washington University, who was not involved in the work, is that the study looked only at adults in the general population. Had it included people living in institutions, which is where the most severely autistic adults are likely to be, the estimated rate of ASD may have been even higher than 1%. Michael Rosanoff, an epidemiology specialist with Autism Speaks, emphasizes that “the small sample size for estimating prevalence requires caution about interpreting this finding on a population-based scale.”

Despite its limits, the new study does begin to fill in the profile of high-functioning adults who are on the spectrum but living in an ordinary home in the community. Researchers found that they are primarily male and unmarried: about 1.8% of men surveyed were on the spectrum — among never-married, single men, an estimated 4.5% had ASD — compared with just 0.2% of women. (Brugha notes, however, that autism screening tools may be poorly adapted for identifying autism in adult females.) People with autism are less likely than average to have finished college but about as likely to be employed. Only 0.2% of adults who had finished college were on the spectrum, but the rate was 10 times higher among those without a high school degree. And, in contrast with people with depression or anxiety disorders, autistic adults were unlikely be receiving any sort of mental health services.

Why has it taken so long to do a study of this sort? For one thing, you need an enormous sample size — at an enormous cost — to find significant numbers of people with autism. Second, it’s more difficult to detect autism in adults than in children. Children often have glaring symptoms, like delays in learning to speak, extreme social withdrawal and terrible tantrums. Less is known about how autism looks in adults. “To diagnose autism, you need to have good information on people’s behavior,” says Brugha. “It’s much more straightforward to get that with children because you’ve got parents and teachers as observers. Adults with autism are not the best people to describe their own behavior.”

The Irish-born psychiatrist and epidemiologist says he sees a lot of adults with ASD in his own clinical practice, and “they have so much difficulty saying what their own difficulties are.” He suspects that this lack of insight and inability to communicate emotional issues also reduces their ability to seek professional help. Efforts to identify and help adults with ASD have lagged far behind efforts to help children.

And yet, Brugha notes that just having an ASD diagnosis to explain their troubles can be enormously beneficial to his adult patients, who often struggle with relationships at home and at work because of difficulty reading social cues. “Once you help them to understand that they are not the only person on the planet who is like this, and help their families understand, it can be a breakthrough. People also have a better chance of staying in their work, if their employer understands why they are the way they are.”

Moreover, Brugha says it is not expensive to provide services to adults with relatively mild autism. “The cost of treating a child with autism is phenomenally high. We are not talking about this. We are talking about support, helping people adapt their lives” with help from a social worker. Grinker, who has a teenage daughter with autism, finds the study to be in some ways comforting. “I would think that a study like this would encourage people that children with autism could grow up and have futures that are meaningful and that they are not going to end up in institutions.”

there are so many reasons not to get the vaccine, even f there’s enough to go around.

one of the ingredients of the new vaccine, still in the early stages of production, is an oil-derived substance called squalene. this chemical has been positively linked to gulf war syndrome. it was an ingredient in the anthrax vaccinations our soldiers got. only those who got these vaccinations later came down with gulf war syndrome.

this is what squalene adjuvant does:

The symptoms they developed included arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, rashes, photosensitive rashes, malar rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, abnormal body hair loss, non-healing skin lesions, aphthous ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuropsychiatric problems, anti-thyroid effects, anaemia, elevated ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate), systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Raynaud’s phenomenon, Sjorgren’s syndrome, chronic diarrhoea, night sweats and low-grade fevers.”

found this article today. this is at the end of the first page:

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes packed with genes that dictate every aspect of our biological functioning. Of these pairs, the sex chromosomes are different; women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y chromosome. The Y chromosome contains essential blueprints for the male reproductive system, in particular those for sperm development.

But the Y chromosome, which once contained as many genes as the X chromosome, has deteriorated over time and now contains less than 80 functional genes compared to its partner, which contains more than 1,000 genes. Geneticists and evolutionary biologists determined that the Y chromosome’s deterioration is due to accumulated mutations, deletions and anomalies that have nowhere to go because the chromosome doesn’t swap genes with the X chromosome like every other chromosomal pair in our cells do.

eighty functional genes. versus a thousand.

what’s the ratio of nerve endings in the clitoris versus the head of a penis?

The clitoris, not the vagina, has 8,000 nerve endings connected with 15,000 nerve fibers in the pelvic area, more than any part in the body. the gland of the penis has 4000 nerve endings the foreskin has 20000 nerve endings making it 83% of the feeling of the penis so as you can see the normal penis has the most nerve endings

this is misleading. most men in the us have been circumcized, robbing them of 20,000 nerve endings, so they come out with 4,000 nerve endings on the head of their dicks, versus 8,000 in our itty bitty clitori.

i think circumcision should be outlawed.

but either way we women win.

it starts at 6 weeks, when the flood of hormones from mom’s body cause the fetus to decide to be a boy or be a girl, physically. at 5 weeks every baby is a little girl. the flood of hormones comes, and suddenly slightly more than half are now little boys. their tiny clitorises get bigger, their ovaries drop out of their bodies, and their wombs shrivel up and become prostate glands.

this is just the physical part of who we are sexually.

the brain does the same thing. at some point in the fetal development, the brains of straight men and lesbian women start diverging from the even-hemisphere brained straight women and gay men. of course, science  knows nothing much at all at this time.

they’ve just found (yet more) evidence of physical differences between gay and straight people. the right hemisphere is larger than the left in straight men and lesbians. it’s the same size in women and gays.and there are more connections to the right side of the amygdala in straight men and lesbians.

many people, especially the gay-hating fundamentalists, argue that you are not born gay, that it’s a choice influenced by satan himself (a middle-aged white guy) for which you will never gain admittance to heaven.

you might look at being gay like this. you’re a gang of guys and this pretend guy comes up and wants to be accepted. or you’re a clot of women and this pretend woman oozes up and wants to bond. it’s kind of creepy.

but look at being gay this way. people are naturally attracted to men, or they’re naturally attracted to women, and it’s completely natural.

people sexually oriented toward women – straight men and lesbian women.

people sexually oriented toward men – straight women and gay men.

a researcher recently did a bunch of autopsies looking at the hypothalamus. it governs sexual behavior in the brain (at least it’s one of t places). lots of study has been done in monkeys. the hypothalamus of a straight man is twice as large as that of both women and gay men. (so it’s not just testosterone, there’s a gland in his brain as well. men are just full of sex hormones. that, and they’ve got an outie, poor things, it rubs up against things all the time and they just can’t help themselves, poor vulnerable men. )

i was lying in bed wondering about this early this morning. if being gay were something you were born with,  would the fundamentalists accept this?

no. would they now argue for selective abortion for gays since they’re an abomination if they can’t be cured?

no. surely they would want to castrate them instead, and apply correction thru the church. they could call them little angels. never going to heaven because they’re constitutionally gay, but can be made to serve the interests of the church.

they could make a law. mandatory fetus testing, and if you’re convicted of being gay they can put you away and do what they want with you. gay slaves. gay mass graves. we’ve been close enough there in the past, it could happen tomorrow.

i’m too tired to give much energy to being pissed off about the for-profit food industry’s poisoning of the food supply (their product) just so they can make a buck.

i eat too many free glutamates to have the energy to be pissed off. i’m too lethargic and have too little stamina to actually do anything about it, and i feel so depressed and hopeless that i don’t think my little self can do anything to solve the problem, except to just lay down and die. let them win.

after all, the great majority of humans seem to thrive on loads of free glutamate in their diet. let’s face it, even tho all these millions of many things are bad for you, humans, like dogs, seem to thrive on absolute, rotting, junk. like goats and plastic bags, we’ll eat anything. and the worse it is, the more we’ll consume.

so why do little i feel it is my duty to go up against absolutely everybody’s preference – people for junk food, corporations for market share – and try to force the food industry to stop giving us anything except good food grown in good soil with no pesticides, and to stop fucking with the food in various ways on its way from the dirt to our tables?

am i getting old? i remember thinking that old people always complain that the old days were better, the music these days is noise, and the old days were better. now i’m saying it, ipso facto.

why would i want to decry the poisoning of our food supply? how silly of me. nobody else cares. they prefer the junk in taste tests. dogs prefer the cheap dog food over the good stuff with actual meat in it. what am i thinking?

i have a new theory. it has to do with addiction. it’s a well known fact that with most substances people become dependent on, their tolerance for the substance increases over time. so you get a buzz off one beer at first, and then it takes two, and you slowly work your way up to four (it’s guinness i’m talking, and i’m only a little girl. 4 pints is a lot in one sitting. and i worked up to that over 2 years).

but with some substances, like marijuana, the tolerance decreases. the longer you smoke, the less it takes to get high. (not if you look at my friend gordon. after 30 years of smoking weed, he rolls them as thick as my thumb, and does it again an hour later. but perhaps that’s a different psychological indicator.)

this is how homeopathy works. the less of a substance you consume, the more it effects you.

a sensitivity to free glutamates (msg in all its forms) works in the same way . you react violently to even the hint of glutamates in your food and drink.

so you isolate. you stop going to restaurants, you prepare all your own food, you eat organic whenever possible, you have a very long list of must-never-haves.

but your food is sprayed in the field - dosed in the pen – with various kinds of chemicals, many of which break down strings of proteins into free glutamates. some on purpose. so it’s in all but the purest raw ingredients.

and the way you cook your food breaks down proteins and frees glutamates. a good slow-simmered stew or spaghetti sauce is full of glutamates.

and even if you eat raw food and nothing but, you’re marinating things to break up proteins and thus release glutamates.

so you end up with an even longer list of can’ts. and this is a bit too much like the princess and the pea thing.

so here’s my new theory. those of us who are too sensitive to eat normal food are just a bunch of whiny victims and should just stop being too delicate for this tough world.

i think we should use the other addictive mechanism, desensitization, and accustom our bodies to larger and larger doses, until we’re walking around numb to all the neurons expiring in our bodies.

so begin today. go out and have a plate of sushi, with loads of soy sauce and wasabi and buckets of water. come home, take an aspirin, and stumble into bed for two hours. then get up, and immediately drink a diet coke. by keeping a constant blood level of free glutamates, your body adjusts, and you can start building up a tolerance to it.

of course, to those sensitive to free glutamates, this advice is like being told to take a pinch of lye with your tea every day and just never mind the tummyache. or the rape-victim advice to just lay back and enjoy it.

the only disuturbing part of laying back is how many times my sky-is-falling things have been right.

cellphones do cause cancer

fluoride is bad for you

msg is a neurotoxin

it’s just that i’m so tired these days i don’t feel like i can take on the world. and these rants are getting weaker. i may be right, but they may win anyway. isn’t that just the way this planet is organized?

Again, from the appendix of Appetite for Profit – How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, by Michele Simon. Nation Books, 2006.
National Organizations – Nutrition and Children’s Advocacy

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

Center for Informed Food Choices

Center for Science in the Public Interest

CHOICE – Citizens for Healthy Options in Children’s Education

Commercial Alert

Community Food Security Coaliatioon

The Food Studies Institute

GRACE – Factory Farm Project

Health Care Without Harm

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Parents Against Junk Food

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Public Health Advocacy Institute

Organic Consumers Association

Small Planet Institute

State and Local Groups

California Center for Public Health Advocacy

California Food and Jusitice Coaliion

California Project LEAN

India Resource Center

International Food Policy Research Institute

Sustain – The alliance for Better Food and Farming

Tracking Legislation and Lobbying

Center for Media and Democracy

Center for Public Integrity

Center for Responsive Politics

Consumer Deception

Corporate Accountability Project

Freedom of Information Center

The Institute on Money in State Politics

National Conference of State Legislatures

National Restaurant Association

Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy

Reclaim Democracy

This list comes from Appetite for Profit – How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, by Michele Simon. Nation Books, 2006.

Appendix 2 – Guide to Industry Groups and Spin Doctoring

Industry trade associations

• American Beverage Association
• Food Products Association
• Grocery Mnufacturers Association
• National Automatic Merchandising Association
• National Restaurant Association
• Snack Food Association

Industry Trade Associations – Advertising

• Alliance for American Advertising
• American Advertising Federation
• American Association of Advertising Agencies
• Association of National Advertisers
• Children’s Advertising Review Unit

Industry Trade Associations – Legal

• American Legislative Exchange Council
• American Tort Reform Association
• Washington Legal Foundation

Industry Front Groups

• American Council on Fitness ad Nutrition
• American Council on Science and Health
• Center for Consumer Freedom (restaurant industry)
  
• Council for Corporate and School Partnerships (Coke)
  
• International Food Infomation Council
• Whole Grains Council

Industry Science Institutes and Advisory Boards

• The Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition (General Mills)
• The Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness (Coke)
• Blue Ribbon Advisory Board (Pepsi)
• Campbell’s Center for Nutrition and Wellness (Campbell)
• Gatorade Sports Science Institute (Pepsi)
• Global Advisory Council on Balanced Lifestyles (McDonald’s)
• Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition (Hershey)
• International Life Sciences Institution (member corporations)
• Worldwide Health and Wellness Advisory Council (Kraft)

Corporate Educational Wellness Programs

• Balance First (Pepsi)
• Balanced for Life (Vending machines)
• Brand New You (General Mills)
• Get Active Stay Active (Pepsi)
• Girls on the Run (Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and New Balance Shoes)
• Get Fit Challenge (Kellogg)
• Kidnetic.com (various corporations and industry groups)
• Live-It!, Step With It, and Fit It In (Coke)
• Passport to Play (McDonald’s)
• S.M.A.R.T. Living (Pepsi)
• Salsa, Sabor y Salud (Kraft)
• Weekly Reader MyPyramid (Grocery Manufacturers Association)

Public-Private Partnerships

• America on the Move (Pepsi and Cargill)
• Champions for Healthy Kids (General Mills and American Dietetic Association)
• Coalition for a Healthy and Active America (Coke)
• Coalition for Healthy Children (Ad Council and others)
• Get Kids in Action (Pepsi and UNC Chapel Hill)
• President’s Challenge (General Mills)
• Shaping America’s Youth (Cadbury Schweppes, Campbells, Splenda)

Industry Newsletters

• The Food Institute Daily Update
• Smart Brief

“The idea is for healthy eating to be the default instead of constantly being the more challenging way to live.” p.43

“Today’s generation of children may be the first to have shorter lives than their parents. According to one prediction, nearly half the children in North and South America will be overweight by 2010. Especially troubling are the rising obestity trends in developing countries as Western foods are increasingly marketed overseas.” p.xiv

“Center for Consumer Freedom. Despite its populist name, this organization does not represent consumers at all. Rather, it’s a lobbying front for the restaurant, food, beverage, and alcohol industries. Employing attack dog-style tactics, CCF consistently portrays nutrition-policy advocates as ‘food cops’ and radicals.” p.xxi

“Big Food is facing a public relations nightmare. The United States is in the midst of a growing epidemic of diet-related health problems, including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Experts have written extensively about our ‘toxic food evironment,’ caused in large part by overzealous corporate marketing strategies.” p.1

“Over the last century, the human diet has been radically altered. The foods we eat now bear little resemblance to those that sustained our ancestors for millennia. In their ceaseless pursuit of profits and new markets, a small number of multinational corporations are running roughshod across the globe in flagrant disregard for public health, the environment, and the welfare of workers and farm animals. We have to stop dancing around the issue and admit this simple truth. In recent years, the privatization of water has spurred global activists to mount passionate and inspiring campaigns againts the takeover of another substane essential to human survival. Why aren’t those of us concerned with food raising similar demands? Like water (and unlike most other commodities, such as toys or electonics), food is indispensable and a basic human right. Why have we turned its production over to private interests? Shouldn’t at least some aspects of society remain off-limits to corporate control?” p.318

Quotes taken from Appetite for Profit – How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, by Michele Simon. Nation Books, 2006

daughter has the optimism of youth and pregnancy; mother is full of cynicism and the wisdom of having made mistakes.

daughter has the intolerance of youth and inexperience and complains about everything mother does; mother is well-ingrained in her ways and feels put upon and unappreciated.

daughter has tried the outside world and finds it overrated, wants to come home and let mom take care of her; mother was looking forward to independance and now finds herself at daughter’s beck and call.

daughter criticizes mom’s cooking, cleanliness, dress, way of expressing herself, what she finds funny; mom alternatively feels guilty, responsible, unreasonably expected to change, not loved for who she is.

daughter tries to establish independance by criticism and scorn, ignoring extreme dependance of living at home  and relying on parents for food, shelter, gas money, razor blades and shampoo, always complaining when parents want her to spend less money. “i can’t use chap razor blades, i’ll cut myself.” but everyone else gets by with the cheap stuff. and $16 a bottle for shampoo? why can’t you use suave? “i’d die if i had to go around using fucking dog shampoo on my head. aren’t i worth more?” you could get a job? “this is so unfair.”

there’s more.

Funny? What’s the difference between funny and pathetic? Or funny and stupid?

The fact that the daughter thinks she’s right in every argument, and the mother finds to her chagrin that she was just as insufferable when she was that age?

The fact that they’re both saying the same things from a different perspective?

Is the dynamic itself funny, the way the daughter can’t hear anything from the mom without thinking she’s being put down, and how the mom can’t listen to the daughter’s unspoken insecurities and fears?

Is their exasperation with each other funny?

Is it the razor-sharp dialogue?

Is it the situation – they’re both alike except for their attitudes, like looking into a mirror and finding nothing but criticism?

Is it funny like the Battling Bickersons was funny?

Or like Abbot and Costello?