FDA takes action to make a treatment available for autism symptoms

It's interesting how USA politics has polarized the autism community so heavily.

Leucovorin only helps in 1 of 6 ways the prenatal damage occurs.Sucks as well that it's prescription.

L-Methylfolate might work as well, as a supplement alternative? Havent tried it. Same with NAC, havent tried it.

CBD will help, no thc allowed, no alcohol allowed.

Omega 3 fish oils will help.

Hot showers will help.

Whole foods, low carbs will help.

It's also not even an American company, despite your insinuation: it's British. This isn't some fly-by-night operation created by Trump or whatever.

How well will this pill work? I don't know. There is reasonably good research [1], (carried out during the Biden administration btw!) that a large percentage of autism is linked to folate deficiency due to autoantibodies that wreck your folate pathways, and that d,l-leucoverin bypasses those and restores folate to developing brains.

Complaining that it's "a simple pill" to me feels pretty anti-intellectual. So were antibiotics, so were antivirals, so were many other treatments for horrible diseases that just... are solved now. The fact that it's pill-shaped tells you nothing about the research it took to develop.

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34834493/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34834493/

I'm a foreigner, not even in the USA. Your politics are melting down but I feel like the FDA isn't tracking or seeking to harm you.

>In today's political climate, nobody should be revealing their autism status to anyone remotely connected to any level of government. Nor should one trust any sort of medical advice or reporting from same. Our government is explicitly targeting minorities of all sorts for abuse and persecution.

Pretty strong argument against socialized medicine. Here in Canada the government actively tracks each of these. For example to get the covid shot, they wanted to know about my autism, non-binary/trans etc. They werent just asking everyone this, I didnt bring it up because why would it matter? I was in their system. I also happen to know this data is being transferred out of country to CDSI; ASN 23498.

>Now is, unfortunately, the time to hide and weather the storm. That or flee to another country with a functioning society.

I dont think you need to flee the usa. Canada has drastically reduced migration, you dont want to come here. Europe maybe?

Yes I think so. And I think they'll want to target people with autism particularly because people with autism are less likely to go with the flow, they question social customs and traditions that other people take for granted. Why do I have to wear a tie, what practical purpose does it serve? Why do I have to put forks on one side of the plate and knives on the other? Etc. Lower conformity to social norms, and a preference for precise and literal information.

This tendency makes people with autism somewhat resistant (but not immune) to most normal forms of propaganda. This scares power hungry politicians.

It seems like some powerful contemporary political entities are highly averse to being called out, especially if it's a subtle jab that goes under their radar.

While it's true that parents and schools have a weird relationship with ASD, with some parents doing anything to refuse the label no matter how apt, at other times with officials and parents going out of their way to do things like label kids with symptoms of severe trauma as having ASD, along with a long tail of higher SES parents who see claiming various special ed needs (not just ASD ones) as a way to get more resources for their children, particularly in states where they can get additional vouchers or payments with a label, these things don't really change a ground truth: severe autism is not easy to hide or easy to fake, and cases are increasing.

IMO diagnostic drift is maybe a fine thing hem and haw about when it comes to mild cases.

But it's basically a form a bike shedding because the severe cases are so incontrovertible and so much more common than they used to be. You can't claim that kids with severe cases are okay and just out to get money because they're so obviously and clearly not well. And schools have gone from maybe having none to a couple per grade to needing whole classrooms or even schools to safely handle high severity autism over the last 50 years.

You could maybe instead claim that "when achieving any semblance of normalcy is impossible, society shouldn't spend so much effort," but that is usually not a well-received message because it sounds like the forced institutionalization or incarceration of the mentally ill or locking them in bedrooms to be forgotten.

Similarly, there are some situations where the repercussions of severe early childhood trauma get diagnosed as autism, but these are also situations where you'd still have a massive service need, so there's no cost reduction to be had, just a proportionally small chunk of misdiagnosis.