www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall A Personal Request

Glory to Jesus Christ! Slava Isusu Christu!

On October 17, 2004, my family and I will be participating in a walk to raise money for the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR). NAAR is a nonprofit organization that funds research focusing on the causes, prevention, treatment, and cure of autism spectrum disorders. It's the first organization of its kind, and in the past decade has allotted almost $15 million to various studies, fellowships, and programs dedicated to autism research.

Raising money for autism research is a very important cause for me because of my son Nikolas, who was diagnosed last September as one of the roughly 1.5 million individuals in the U.S. afflicted by autism. And even though autism is on the rise, almost in epidemic proportions, there is still limited funding and biomedical research dedicated to finding a cure.

I know you all have worthy causes and charities that you generously support, including the Church, but we hope you will consider sponsoring us in the upcoming "Walk FAR for NAAR" fund-raising event. The walk will be held at Nomahegan Park in Cranford, NJ.

Below is a link to Nikolas's on-line fund-raising page, where you can find out more about NAAR and make a donation. It's simple to use and a secure site.

http://www.justgiving.com/pfp/Nikolas

We thank you in advance for spreading the word and for your generosity. If you would like more information, or would prefer to send a check, just let me know. I can be reached at kalexojr@drew.edu.

In Christ,
Kenneth Alexo, Jr. (Theophilos)

Theophilos,

I will be visiting your link soon, my grandaughter has a minor case of autism, indeed it is a worthy cause.

Nikolas is in my prayers.

james

Ken,

I'll be visiting Nik's page this weekend. Autism holds a special interest for me, as well. I had the rewarding opportunity many years ago, when it was thought that autistic children were incapable of being schooled, to work one-on-one with several of them. My godchild's daughter was diagnosed as autistic a few years ago and is making progress, albeit slowly, and my (almost) 4 year old, Conor, will likely be diagnosed shortly as having some autistic overlay or aspects to his attention deficit disorder.

My prayers for Nik and your family, that he will be benefitted by the tremendous advances and that have been made in dealing with autism and the increased awareness that it is not a condition which must, of necessity, relegate its victims to the life of internalized solitude that was once prognosticated for them.

Many years,

Neil

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I just want to thank publicly those members of the Forum who have made a donation to NAAR on behalf of my son Nikolas. Your great generosity has enabled us to raise more than $1,600 already -- quite a bit more than we initially thought we would raise.

Humbly yours in Christ,
Ken

Ken:

Your son, Nicholas, remains in my prayers each day. I hope that you and your family are well.

BOB

Does anyone have any scientific theories as to what it is, let's say, in our environment, that has autism on the rise, along with ADD and ADHD?

These conditions are almost unknown in some other countries. I can't help but wonder why, and what is making our children sick with developmental/learning disorders, and our adults sick with increasing cases of cancer?

Any thoughts?

May God bless all our parents who struggle with the ailments of their beloved children, giving them strength and hope, and may God save our children from the onslaught of behavioral, developmental and learning disorders which are so prevalent in our land. St. Nektarios, intercede for the health and well being of the innocents.

I am not a medical person, but a teacher/librarian. I have no idea what's causing this, but have been told, even by social workers, "oh, it's all the drug use among the parents." Granted, that could be true in some cases, but I know too many people who have never used drugs who have autistic or ADHD children. So that's not a valid explanation. But you are right, I can see that there is more of those conditions today than 15 years ago.

Alice,

I remember vividly when I first heard of autism. I was a high school student and there was a tv series (which the older among us will remember) called East Side/West Side, starring George C. Scott as a social worker. Throughout the program, I struggled to figure out what was being said, as I knew that it couldn't be "artistic", which is what I thought I was hearing. At the time, one could barely find any references to the condition in the medical or psychological literature (it was only identified by Leo Kanner, a child psychiatrist, in the late 1940s). Yet, less than a year later, I encountered a child at the children's hospital where I worked who exhibited the classic symptomatology which the program had so excellently presented (and about which I had read, after a herculean effort to track down the sparse literature). The child whom I met was a little girl named Angela who, by chance, was the daughter of Greek immigrants.

In the years afterwards, I worked with several others and seriously considered a career in special education devoted to autism. However, it was at a time when autistic children were basically deemed not amenable to educational efforts, since no one had yet observed that there were degrees of it and, consequently, only the most severe cases were being identified and diagnosed as such. My interest in the subject never dimmed however and somehow got transmitted to my eldest daughter, who has done some work with them.

Little did I ever imagine that these many years later I would be blessed and challenged by an almost 4 year old son who has ADHD with some autistic "overlay" (i.e., behavioral features).

Although children who are autistic frequently manifest behavior that is identical to that seen in children with ADHD, often at an extreme level, autism and ADHD are very distinct and separate entities. In speculating as to causes, however, there is some cross-over, as there is with almost every childhood educational or psychological/psychiatric disorder. Relatively little is known with absolute certainty about any of them and many probably have similar causation, just manifesting the consequences differently for reasons that we may never understand.

Some ADHD etymology is fairly apparent, since onset can be traced to a known event. Some examples would be: prematurity; congenital or traumatic (i.e., near-drowning) oxygen deprivation; other congenital or traumatic brain injury; ingestion of or exposure to toxins; medication overdoses or severe adverse/allergic reaction to medication; sequelae or aftereffects of disease (e.g., varicella/chickenpox). As Charles said, there are those who will attribute either (autism or ADHD) to parental drug use; that certainly is among the likely causes, but is unlikely to account for more than a tiny fraction of the cases.

In addition to the instances that are attributable to obvious identifiable causation factors, such as I described, there are many cases that aren't anywhere near so clear-cut. Among the etymologies that have been the subject of speculation or are suspect are: adverse effects of vaccinations; psycho-social environmental factors (e.g., abuse or deprivation of affection); pre- or peri-natal brain damage that defies specific identification; chemical imbalances; and, chromosomal abnormalities.

As to why these types of conditions are observed more frequently these days, it's partially a function of differentiation and also of progress.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when "special education" classes were reserved for children who would properly have been described as "educable" or "trainable" mentally retarded. Those less severely afflicted were the kids in your own class who struggled along, always at the bottom of the ladder, were often chronically truant, were either kept back or "socially promoted", disrupted class, and quit school as soon as they legally could. Generally, no one ever diagnosed them, at best they were labeled "slow learners", at worst they were called "lazy", "dumb", or even "delinquent". In between the extremes, they would be described as "hyper" or "disruptive". Teachers would complain that they were in constant motion, never in their seats, always talking, not paying attention - they were the ones who received poor grades in "works well with others" or had notations on their report card, "runs with scissors".

When it comes to looking at how progress has played into it, medical advances (especially with respect to pre-, peri-, and neonatal care) have allowed millions of infants to survive who a generation ago would never have done so. Part of the price one pays for that is the fact that some of these babies will grow into childhood with deficiencies or defects that will exhibit themselves in educational, psychological, or social ways that cause them to be diagnosed with conditions that (for the most part) were always with us, just not in such numbers or not identified for all that they were. For example, hyperactivity always existed, but it was usually seen as a nusciance factor or, in more severe cases, as a symptom of a child's more severe condition - mental retardation or mental illness; nobody considered that those in which it was at the "nusciance" level might have other problems resulting from it.

Besides the children who survive that once did not, are all the others who would have always survived, but would once have suffered such devastating consequences that the result would have been institutionalization. (And these aren't only from birth injuries, but from trauma, as well.) In effect, medical advances are now able to mitigate the consequences of whatever happened and minimize the disabling effects to the point where the children are no longer relegated to total care, but they still have needs - significantly less and vastly different, but the need is still there. Diseases that were once commonplace (e.g., measles, rubella, chickenpox) and sometimes produced untoward results are now uncommon, but in some instances the prevention of them by vaccination is felt to have had its own negative consequences, as there is increasingly some evidence for vaccination-induced instances of autism and related disorders.

Man's progress outside of medicine is also a consideration. The proliferation of chemicals in everyday live bombard children with a myriad of exposures that they never before had to experience and no amount of pre-use testing can identify all the possible adverse effects. Foreign substances are routinely inhaled and ingested from the atmosphere and in processed foods, with less than certainty as to the potential for resultant harm.

In the final analysis, the tale of societal progress is both wonderful and cautionary.

In looking back at your post, you wondered about the lower incidence in other countries. In part, it is a reflection of an educational philosophy in many nations that accepts that some children are not well-suited for schooling and is more inclined to see those drop out of formal structured education and into the workforce into apprenticed or unskilled trade roles. And, too, there is an American "need" to categorize; which can be a good and a bad thing.

Some of the same factors that I talked about above, particularly as to medical advances in diagnosis and environmental factors, also play into the issue of cancer in adults. Another medical consideration in that regard is the ability to prolong life, thereby affording folks the opportunity to live long enough to get diseases, where they had been dying before the chance presented itself, the ultimate catch-22, I suppose.

Sorry for being so long-winded.

Many years,

Neil

The question is a very interesting. I went over to pubmed to see what ideas are being written about, and queried: autism epidemiology .

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

As Neil pointed out, there is a lot of attention to MMR vaccination, and a lot of controversy. There is a mercurial compound used in some of these vaccines and there may be stronger evidence for this cause. Environmental mercury is also suspect, as are a host of other modern environmantal toxins - not limited to toxic compounds but also including, for example, radiofrequency radiation.

Epidemiological studies can identify correlations or lack thereof, but it's much harder to establish correlation. There are no animal models through which hypothetical causes could be tested. I don't think there very much if anything is known about these problems are manifest at the molecular level. These limitations pose a formidable barrier to progress in this field.

As I was fixing the washing machine pump (why do these thoughts occur at all, let alone at such random moments), I was suddenly struck by the fact that I used the word "etymology" when I meant to use "etiology" in my post above. In looking back, I see that I was at least consistent, using the wrong word throughout - not sure what I was thinking . Sorry.

Many years,

Neil

I was doing research for something one day and came across this website. http://www.genome.gov/10004302
It has a bunch of information. I found some sites also that explained the ADD is a group of learning problems that were always there. They just placed them under a single catagory and gave them one name. I was really supprised when I read that, then it made sence as to why all of the sudden there was this disorder that was bothering so many.

Pani Rose

Bruderhof have some discussions on this site..
http://www.savingchildhood.org/

It often seems to me that just now "ADHD" is a kind of "fashionable" or "popular" diagnosis over there? Like in the UK, anything that drs cannot explain gets called " a virus"...There seems often a desire to say that all children should behave in the same way and less leeway for individuality. I don't mean the really obvious and severe cases, of course, but the less clear.