Reversal of autism symptoms among dizygotic twins: A case report
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
"Reversal of Autism Symptoms among Dizygotic Twins through a Personalized Lifestyle and Environmental Modification Approach"
became
"Autism can be reversed, scientists discover"
which is an entirely different thing. Facepalm.
Masking is putting on a face to _hide_ symptoms from others to appear more 'normal'. It's f-ing exhausting. The symptoms never go away.
In this case when you reduce symptoms with masking then you get different symptoms, like exhaustion.
And yes, this doesn’t seem healthy for the person who is masking, especially when taken to the extreme levels.
My biggest symptom as a kid was a difficulty to lie (white lie or otherwise) when asked directly about something. I did a year of therapy to learn that, and how I should learn it. The fact that I can now say 'what a beautiful dress' and not 'I guess it's okay, I don't really care' was directly taught, as do a lot of social stuff non-autistic people learn by mimetism. And now, I do learn by mimetism, I'm just proactive and conscious about it, I replay in my mind how charismatic people do stuff, and decide if I want to emulate them or not, then try to. That, masking and being conscious about my rabbit holes make social situations with 5+ person really tiree, really fast, but tiredness is my only symptom left.
The fist hint for me was the psychologist who taught me how to lie (or rather, explained to me social interactions, as i did not care about it at the time), and that's as clear as it can be, but sometimes its only weird result on IQ tests: if you moved countries if often don't mean anything, but if you did not and you scores are not homogeneous accross the tests, like 4 in the high 130 and one in the low 90s, you're probably on the spectrum too.
Even more - that is also evolutionary change, as 40% speed increase of brain development in embryos is exactly that. How other things are adapting is of different matter. All people will be autistic eventually.
ABA (masking) doesn't reverse autism. It just makes it less visible from outside (no matter the cost from within).
The description suggests ABA therapy + diet. ABA therapy does in fact improve the percieved symptoms of autism, but it also tends to leave the patient traumatised for life.
But how about the gay conversion therapy?
Can anybody do any real science on that or any scientist that would touch the topic would have to say goodbye to his career?
Plenty of subjects are impossible to research for ethical reasons. I think some data on hypothermia is still only known because of some of the terrible things nazis did.
Heck we could have gathered quite a lot of very important and useful data by deliberately infecting a few thousand people with Covid, or even just placing them at risk. To my knowledge none of the obvious experiments on the infectiousness of Covid or the effect of countermeasures happened.
I believe at least in the UK, after the Tavistock scandal, people started asking questions. I mean, you mention taking do no harm seriously, and at the same time doctors give children puberty blockers sometimes after just two visits, knowing it will negatively impact their physical health (bone density, growth, and many others), to move almost all kids on to hormones - in spite of the fact that the study they themselves published shows there are no improvements in their mental health. And people who decided to start asking questions faced a lot of negativity, just for trying to understand how things really are.
I think that's a good reminder/example that you you can't really reason from high-flying principles like "first do no harm" to actual behavior and effect, especially when politics and/or ideology are involved. If my ideology says X is harmful, and yours says X is needed to avoid harm, is harm being done or avoided? That's an political question, not a scientific one, and will ultimately come down to who has the power to impose their view.
The question is which definition of "works" you're using. If you're defining "it works" as "the person is able to live in society", then yes, the victim of "classic" ABA may be a "member of society"... but if you include "the person is a mentally stable and healthy individual", then not.
Mentally, the victim will be completely broken and traumatized, often enough going through many suicide attempts until they succeed. ABA is torture, so is "gay/trans conversion therapy", and IMHO those advocating it, supporting it or tolerating it should be treated like everyone else involved with torture: lock them up, and in the USA where capital punishment is still on the books, go through with it.
Actual "behavioral therapy", aka teaching people with autism how to communicate their needs or how to manage frustration [1], is a completely different beast, and that actually works. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find out what "therapy" scheme will be used, and there's an awful lot of ABA peddlers out there.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15jayxu/...
Some 4 years ago I went through an autism scare with my daughter and booked a 2 day course for parents of children with autism about ABA therapy, held by one of the first parents who cured autism in his child in my country. One of the best courses in my life, and if we could clone that guy and his team, I'm sure ABA therapy would be a lot more efective and the world would be a better place.
Anyway, my daughter was completely neurotypical (the trainers explained that even though she was 1.3 years old and nobody could say for sure at that age, a lot of items in her behavior were neurotypical and how those items would have differed in a child with autism).
There's a huge deal we don't know yet (why 40-50% of children are completely unresponsive to ABA), and ABA is a huge umbrela for a vast array of techniques, but I'm convinced the approach is solid, and the way to go forward.
The issue is the really experienced people who know the high level stuff in ABA go to the "supervisor"/therapy planner role and they work with therapists of various levels in individual therapies.
I was taken aback when they showed us the cognitive/emotional skill sets/inventory for children at various ages. There are HUNDREDS of items they work on and evaluate on.
For each one of those skills there are a few known therapies. Working on each one takes time. Some skills build on other skills. It's probably impossible that a single therapist has all the right personal skills and personal chemistry with a child to work on all the skills. And it's usually a race against time. So you have a supervisor, a team of 2-3 therapists that work with a child for 8 hours a day. It's very expensive when done right. It's impossible that mistakes are not made, and I'm talking if you get the best supervisors money can buy, the best therapists money can buy, which is usually not the case.
The information about the inventory of cognitive/emotional skills ABA has to train in order to "cure" autism made me realize just how complex human beings are, and I'm surprised given this information that the incidence of mental issues is so LOW in the general population, given how many things can go wrong with the human psyche when developing.
But the approach seemed very solid, scientific and professional, though misunderstood by many and I'm sure mistakes are impossible to avoid.
I've seen other "psychologists" of dubious lineages and while I've only seen a few, the difference was just staggering -- the ABA guys looked like professionals knowing their stuff, knowing their limitations, while the various mono-therapists looked like complete amateurs and full of shit.
So I do have faith and hope that in the future, as ABA is refined, things will get better, but the bad labels ABA gets are hurting progress a lot more than they help.
I'm curious, what do you mean by this? If you don't mind elaborating a bit.
Think feral children -- it's almost impossible to aquire language after a certain age.
The parent holding the ABA course for parents was lucky to be well off and being able to hire the best, including a personal team of therapists, and his son made a "full recovery" from non-verbal to indistinguishable by experts from neurotypical children even though he started ABA at 5 years, but he told us that's quite a rare outcome.
It's like saying that you got rid of people with brown hair by making them dye it something else, only instead of hair color it's a fundamental part of who they are and it greatly increases the risk of PTSD and it only works if you're measuring the wrong thing and instead of basing it on the autistic person's ability to be okay it bases it on society's expectations and it's child abuse and just no.
When autistic people are speaking[1] out[2] en[3] masse[4] against[5] it[6], would you ignore what they say? When they say[7] it's[8] bad[9] and[10] unethical[11] and[12] abusive[13] do you say that it isn't?
When a woman goes to a police station saying that she is a victim of domestic violence, should the police say it works way better than the alternatives? Should they reject her statements that it is harmful and bad? If a child comes up to you and says that their parents are beating them and screaming at them if they do poorly in school, would you say that it works way better than the alternatives?
Or is it only okay when the person is autistic?
[1] https://a4aontario.com/2018/05/24/why-we-oppose-aba-in-any-f... [note: a lot of these are personal blogs]
[2] https://autisticselfadvocatesagainstaba.wordpress.com/2020/0...
[3] https://neurodifferent.me/@joshsusser/111495271981897561
[4] https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Firs...
[5] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41252-021-00201-1, by an autistic author.
[6] https://autisticscienceperson.com/why-aba-therapy-is-harmful...
[7] https://loveexplosions.net/2013/09/15/touch-nose-gummi-bear-...
[8] https://www.the74million.org/article/no-more-cures-no-more-f...
[9] https://awnnetwork.org/my-thoughts-on-aba/
[10] https://unstrangemind.com/aba/
[11]https://www.the74million.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Ethi...
[12] https://stopabasupportautistics.home.blog/2019/08/11/persona...
[13] https://neuroclastic.com/aba-horror-stories-are-far-too-comm...
Specifically: is the technique itself cruel or otherwise unethical? Or is gay conversion therapy an unethical application of an otherwise ethical treatment?
I could (and am) googling this, but as with any topic there's a lot of poisoned and contradictory information...
Basically, it involves taking kids, giving them 'good' feedback - eg, access to a toy - if they mask, or act like they are not autistic. It gives them punishments, which in some cases is electric shocks if they misbehave - which can mean anything from not making eye contact to lashing out because they cannot get the bad things to stop and they need it to stop. Other common punishments include forcing kids to touch or smell things they dislike.
A common reward is something like getting your tablet back. Many autistic people are nonverbal, so they are removing their ability to communicate and expecting them not to try communicating by, say, lashing out or having a meltdown when the bad things keep happening.
The goal of the program is not to help, as therapy does. It does not allow them to explore possible coping mechanisms, eg headphones or fidgets, to find ones that work well. It says that their autism - a facet of who they are - is bad. They do not allow autistic children to stim, or repetitively do an action. While some stims can be bad (eg my childhood stim of picking at my skin), that is not because stimming is inherently bad but because the particular mechanism is bad. The way I stopped picking at my skin (mostly) was by redirecting it, eg by using fidgets or by finding something that feels the same but is less harmful. (I'd be getting my fingers covered in kid-strength glue a lot more often if it wasn't inconvenient.) Stimming is important for coping with stress and regulating emotions. Plus, they're enjoyable.
ABA also leads to nearly 50 percent of people who are forced to undergo it having PTSD. (Autistic people are at a higher risk for having PTSD, but it is still a marked increase.)
It is child abuse, plain and simple. There is no possible justification for it, and it is absurd and terrible that when it is being inflicted on autistic children it turns from child abuse into 'therapy' and gains any measure of acceptance.
A great resource on it is here: https://autisticselfadvocatesagainstaba.wordpress.com/2020/0.... A fair amount of the specific details of ABA are from here, as I - thankfully - have not undergone ABA. (If you want a more reputable source than random Wordpress blogs, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network [https://autisticadvocacy.org] also condemns it.)
Also, when over half and possibly nearly 9 out of 10 autistic women have been sexually assaulted (!) [see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9087551/], teaching kids that adults can touch their bodies how they want and they don't get a say in it might not be the best idea.
Ethics are, sadly, totally unquantifiable, so they must always be some level opinion. But if dog trainers are held to a higher standard regarding ethical training of dogs than ABA providers are held to regarding ethical treatment of Autistic children, I think we have a pretty persuasive argument right there that ABA is totally unethical.
It's also notable that Autistic academics like Devon Price, a fairly famous professor of social psychology, also believe ABA is unethical.
In this case ABA treatment is already well known, and there is significant experimental research into it's efficacy. It's demonstrably not effective in 'curing' austism in most people and has measured, known 'side effects' including anxiety, depression, or other mental health problems.
i was classed high functioning but as soon as i hit 20 i feel like gotten less high functioning weirdly
Many parents carried guilt. Many parents transferred that guilt into anger at people like me (for some reason they thought that their child would get better care in an hospital setting) or would direct their anger inwards and feel terrible.
A simplistic headline, along with no actual research can only make thing worse for carers and families.
Families will demand more. Carers will have a harder job.
Maybe the conclusion should be "autism symptoms reversed after highly motivated parents did everything they could think of".
>The diet was casein-free, a protein found in milk; low-sugar; had no artificial colours or dyes; zero ultra-processed foods; primarily organic; and locally sourced
Aspergers can essentially be reversed. Level 2 and 3 can dramatically be reduced.
The thing that really upsets me, the anti-autism/adhd discrimination continues.
One thing is autism that is in genes and other is behavioral/adaptational etc. change.
I can assure you that diet had no impact on my anxiety that I have with my autism, where in stressful situations I have severe communication issues with other people with all rhe "classic autism" symptoms, while in very relaxed environment you will have a hard time to define me as autistic at all - where my adhd(undiagnosed) would crawl out...
What realy upsets is how some autistic people are defining themselves an their place in society. I had less issues wit NT people - almost always the people that tried to impose on me some rules were people with diagnosed/undiagnosed spectrum - the worst damage I have seen to others also have been from autistic people as with NTs you can mirror, but with peolle on spectrum - it is a nightmare.
I deserve that. I legit dont re-read anything i write on here because i tend to be censored.
>One thing is autism that is in genes and other is behavioral/adaptational etc. change.
Not genetic. GWBush put a ton of money into this and they essentially came away with nothing. 23andme isn't detecting autism via genes.
>I can assure you that diet had no impact on my anxiety that I have with my autism,
Which diets have you tried? The article never super specified which exactly. Kind of keto but that wouldn't be good enough. You'd still have problems.
>where in stressful situations I have severe communication issues with other people with all rhe "classic autism" symptoms, while in very relaxed environment you will have a hard time to define me as autistic at all - where my adhd(undiagnosed) would crawl out...
Ya you don't need to be like that anymore. You could be able to sit quietly in a dark room and just be. No chatter in the brain anymore. It's a level of peace that you really need to experience for the first time.
All the major browsers allow users to disable Javascript. It can be done on a per site basis.
There is no "non-JS paywall", e.g., access requiring a password, with respect to The Telegraph. It is relatively rare to see "non-JS paywalls" for news sites on the www. Very few restrict access with a password. Disagree? Name some examples. The list will be short.
The Telegraph is not on the list.
Even Experts Exchange, notable because you could access their locked content if you scrolled down a lot, eventually updated their website[1].
x=https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?rev_t=9999999999999999999999&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.experts-exchange.com%2Fquestions%2F29200758%2FMikrotik-SYN-Cookie.html
tnftp -4o"|grep \"text\":" "$x"It kinda feels like it's pandering to the anti-modernity pseudo-science crowd to me.
"The diet was casein-free, a protein found in milk; low-sugar; had no artificial colours or dyes; zero ultra-processed foods; primarily organic; and locally sourced."
Once again, this shows how important a balanced microbiome is for good lealth.
As a practical matter, if you really care about optimizing your own diet then conduct your own n=1 experiments by adding or removing certain foods. Do you feel better? How do your blood sugar levels change? Does your athletic performance improve? This isn't really scientific but good enough for most people.
Especially the organic and locally sourced part I would think is very unlikely to have good evidence.
Then maybe!