Parent Advocacy, Autism Services and the Lack of Decent Adult Autism Care in New Brunswick
In Canada October is our official Autism Awareness month.
That is not as widely known as it might be for a number of reasons including the fact that we live next door to the large, influential United States where April is the official Autism Awareness month. A second reason is that we do not have a meaningful National Autism Strategy. Here in Canada our federal government has taken a small and narrow approach to autism. Our federal government plays no meaningful role in providing autism services across Canada and in fact plays no meaningful role in providing reliable evidence based information about a...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - October 19, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
High Functioning Autism Speaks Continues Betrayal of 50% of Autism Spectrum With Intellectual Disability
Autism Speaks continues its betrayal of the 50% of persons on the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disability, those for whom autism is a disorder not a superior way of thinking or the possible subject of a new TV comedy series or a career as a well paid "autism" advocate with "Autism" Speaks.
In the October 11 2013 blog "An Emphasis on Strength: Finding Fulfilling Employment" Sarah Andrews, Autism Speaks Coordinator of Adult Services, and mother of two sons with autism, talks about the interests of her two sons "on the spectrum". Ms. Andrews offers the current feel...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - October 13, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Excellent! Chalmers ICU Team Reaches Its Funding Goal to Purchase New Patient Monitoring Equipment!
The Chalmers Foundation has officially announced that it has met its funding goal and will soon be purchasing the patient monitoring system that is instrumental in helping the Chalmers Hospital Intensive Care Unit save many lives ... including my son Conor's for which his Mom and Dad will always be grateful:
"The Chalmers Foundation shared a link. September 25
The Foundation along with the DECH Auxiliary Inc. have officially reached our $600,000 goal to support the purchase of a new monitoring system for the ICU here at the DECH!! A HUGE THANK YOU to all donors, supporters, staff and vo...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - October 11, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Autism Speaks Enters Into "PURE" Autism Research PACT; Excludes Autism With Intellectual Disability
Autism Speaks has entered into a Research PACT to continue its focus on "pure autism" (referred to in the PACT as core symptom autism), while ignoring 50% of the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disability (WHO, September 2013):
"Working together, the PACT team is developing a platform of preclinical tests to evaluate and compare new medications for the core symptoms of autism."
Vivanti and his colleagues offered the term "pure autism" to refer to the tendency of autism studies to intentionally exclude subjects with autism AND intellectual disability:
"the question of the nature of the as...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - October 6, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Autism Speaks Betrays Children, Adults With Severe Autism Disorders: Autism Speaks Blogger Calls Autism A Blessing
Since my 17 year old son was diagnosed with autistic disorder and profound developmental delays (and more recently, like many who share those conditions, with epileptic seizures) little has been done to advance our knowledge of causes, to find treatments or cures for autism disorders. In terms of our understanding of autism we have largely regressed in public understanding of autism disorders.
There are some who talk about autism realistically but there are many who have adopted the perspective of some with very high functioning autism that autism is not a disorder after all. It is very disheartening t...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - October 1, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Dear TPGA Autism Experts: Thanks For Advising Us to Love Our Autistic Son! If Only We Had Known Sooner!
During recent weeks the TPGA "autism experts", have done a great favor to children, like my son, who suffer from severe autism disorders. The TPGA autism wizards told parents like me who speak candidly about the deficits that limit and impair his ability to function independently in this world that we are making "monsters" of ours and all autistic children.
Our children's autism disorders, in the view of the humble yet brilliant autism experts are not really disorders, despite the title, despite the medical diagnoses that identified them as autistic. For our children's benefit we should learn to accept them ...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 30, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Autism Action Network: It Started: DSM5 Used To Revoke Autism Diagnosis
The Autism Action Network reports, in It started: DSM5 used to revoke autism diagnosis, that the revoking of autism diagnoses under the DSM5 regime and the resulting denial of services and educational placements for people with autism disorders has begun. Here in Canada the Childrens' Hospital of Eastern Ontario, CHEO, has excluded from its autism early intervention program a child it described as having global developmental delay, the express exclusionary phrase used in the DSM5 Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnostic definition. Swedo, Lord and company were warned this would happen and stubbornly insi...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 28, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Senator Jim Munson Says Ottawa Has Done Little to Address Canada's Autism Crisis
Laverne Stewart of Fredericton's Daily Gleaner reports (September 24, 2013) that National autism advocate Senator Jim Munson, shown left in his Parliament of Canada photo, is frustrated, that after years of working to secure a national autism disorder spectrum strategy, Munson said the federal government has done little to address Canada's national autism crisis:
"In a phone interview with The Daily Gleaner, he said the federal government has started to look at what approach each province is taking to address autism.
“They’re different all across the county,” he said.
Munson said people across Canada n...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 24, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
50% Some WHO Autism Awareness: Autism and Intellectual Disability 50%
Questions and answers about autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
Online Q&ASeptember 2013
Q: Do persons with autism always suffer from intellectual disability?
A: The level of intellectual functioning is extremely variable in persons with ASD, ranging from profound impairment to superior non-verbal cognitive skills. It is estimated that around 50% of persons with ASD also suffer from an intellectual disability.
The above information is taken from the World Health Organization website page providing Q and A about autism spectrum disorders. Some will always choose to believe that autism and intellectual disabilit...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 21, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
October is Autism Awareness Month in Canada, Canadian Government Still Doing Nothing Eh Mike Lake?
October is Autism Awareness Month in Canada. You would never know it based on the contribution made by Canada's federal government which has taken a strict, division of constitutional jurisdiction, approach to autism disorders in Canada. In other words it has said that addressing Canada's growing National Autism Crisis is not a concern of the federal government. Harper Conservative MP Mike Lake, who I have met in person and spoken with by phone, and who seems like a genuinely nice guy, speaks lovingly of his autistic son in Parliament with a few words recognizing World Autism Awareness Day on April 2nd an...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 20, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Wave of Attacks on Parents of Children with Severe Autism Disorders Is Reprehensible and Based in Pure Unadulterated Ignorance
I have never read or heard any parent of a severely autistic child excuse the murder of severely autistic children by a parent. The people who make this allegation about parents are those who object to parents speaking honestly about their children's severe autism disorders. They also object to parents of severe autistic children describing their parenting challenges and falsely allege that such descriptions depict autistic children as monsters yet it is they who use who use the word "monster" in autism discussions. They do so in an attempt to suppress the truth about severe autism challenges by falsely a...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 15, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
#autism gene AUTS2 tied to dyslexia ADHD epilepsy ID motor delay microcephaly MORE SYMPTOMS should be part of ASD DX
"Dr. Lynn Waterhouse @autismideasfail 6 Sep http://bit.ly/17WbZVi #autism gene AUTS2 tied to dyslexia ADHD epilepsy ID motor delay microcephaly MORE SYMPTOMS should be part of ASD DX"
The above Tweet by Dr. Lynn Waterhouse, author of Rethinking Autism: Variation and Complexity, who also worked with Dr. Lorna Wing on the APA DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria for autism, should be read by any existing DSM5 committee members charged with developing modifications to DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. The DSM-5 has doubled down on the failed approach of simplifying autism contrary to sol...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 10, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
What Happens To Our Children When We Die? Maine Man Killed Himself and Adult Autistic Son in 2010
"Ginger Taylor commented on the pressures on families with autism and on the greatest fear of many parents of autistic children: "That is the big question -- what happens to our child when we die. .... We understand their needs better than anyone else. It really breaks my heart hearing what happened to this family. It shouldn't be like that.""
The Portland Press Herald , April 28, 2010
The recent murder and attempted murder/suicide cases involving mothers and their children with severe autism disorders are not the first such tragedies to occur. Unfortunately the same patterns are unfolding ... the...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 9, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
My Reply to Non Autism Expert Dr. David H. Gorski Also Known as ORAC
Dr. David H. Gorski, who is NOT an autism
expert, somewhat ironically,
attacks parents, professionals and
journalists who disagree with
his autism disorders opinions as
"quacks"
Dear Dr. David H. Gorski.
Thank you for acknowledging your total
lack of autism expertise. For the benefit of readers unfamiliar
with your "style:" I did not make the statements set out in quotation
marks by you, the learned Dr. Gorski which you altered to suit your
(silly) purposes. The statements in
quotation marks are silly distortions, falsifications, of what I actually said
in my blog comment...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 8, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
Alex Spourdalakis Killing Exploited by Neurodiversity Extremist Emily J. Willingham
Parents who speak honestly about the realities of autism disorders and the few journalists who dare challenge established views of autism causation are under attack .... again ... by Forbes Columnist Emily J. Willingham, formerly known, a few years before her Forbes career, as blogger Daisy May Fatty Pants. Not content to express her legal opinions about the outcome of the criminal charges that have been brought against the accused killers of Alex Spourdalakis, his mother and a woman described by Willingham as Alex's "godmother", Willingham launches into a tirade against parents who describe the harsher re...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - September 6, 2013 Category: Autism Authors: H L Doherty Source Type: blogs
