Lupron Notecards

General Trigger Warning
I think that the patent applications and this is enough for the Lupron "cure."

Dr. Mark Geier prescribed Lupron to reduce testosterone, which he says binds to mercury, in an effort to treat autism. He believes that mercury in childhood vaccines is linked to autism, which has been debunked by the CDC on several occasions.

Bernhard, Blythe. "Controversial Autism Doctor Loses License Elsewhere, but Can Still Practice in Missouri, Illinois." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. N.p., 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Mark Geier claims that there are many peer-reviewed studies to support his theory, but all papers linked on his site have either himself or by his son, David, who is not a licensed doctor and did not complete medical school.

Bernhard, Blythe. "Controversial Autism Doctor Loses License Elsewhere, but Can Still Practice in Missouri, Illinois." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. N.p., 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Dr. Steven Rothman notes the complete lack of evidence that Lupron has been helpful for any autistic children and that Lupron should not have been attempted without strict controls and strong evidence that it should work, both of which were lacking in Dr. Geier's work.

Bernhard, Blythe. "Controversial Autism Doctor Loses License Elsewhere, but Can Still Practice in Missouri, Illinois." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. N.p., 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Dr. Mark Geier has had his license suspended or revoked in nine states in the last two years, with active complaints against him in three other states due to this hormone therapy.

Bernhard, Blythe. "Controversial Autism Doctor Loses License Elsewhere, but Can Still Practice in Missouri, Illinois." St. Louis Post-Dispatch. N.p., 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Dr. Geier stated in 2011 that he had prescribed Lupron to hundreds of children.

Bernhard, Blythe. "Autism Doctor with Clinic in St. Peters under Scrutiny." STLtoday.com. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 28 July 2011. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

The Maryland board holds that this treatment endangers children, having a "known substantial risk of serious harm" and no evidence to support the effectiveness. The Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics have also criticized his work.

Bernhard, Blythe. "Autism Doctor with Clinic in St. Peters under Scrutiny." STLtoday.com. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 28 July 2011. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

In six of nine cases reviewed by the Maryland board, Geier gave autistic children an incorrect diagnosis of precocious puberty, sometimes diagnosing children too old for the condition, and then prescribed them with Lupron.

Callahan, Patricia, and Steve Mills. "Board: Drug Therapy for Children with Autism Was Risky." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 04 May 2011. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

In one case, a nine and a half year old (too old for a diagnosis of precocious puberty) was nonetheless diagnosed with this condition, then started on Lupron. Geier also ordered chelation therapy for this boy.

Callahan, Patricia, and Steve Mills. "Board: Drug Therapy for Children with Autism Was Risky." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 04 May 2011. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Prescribing Lupron, a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders, to autistic children, is based upon the (unsupported) theory that autistic children have too much testosterone, which then interacts with mercury, causing their autism.

Tsouderos, Trine. "Autism Drug Lupron: 'Miracle Drug' Called Junk Science." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 21 May 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Experts note that giving unsupported treatments the credit for normal developmental leaps is common, and that this is most likely why parents continue believing in these treatments.

Tsouderos, Trine. "Autism Drug Lupron: 'Miracle Drug' Called Junk Science." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 21 May 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

The program for Lupron that Geiers prescribes is 10 times what it used for early puberty, one of the few approved uses of the drug.

Tsouderos, Trine. "Autism Drug Lupron: 'Miracle Drug' Called Junk Science." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 21 May 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

The paper which supports the mercury/testosterone/autism link was written by Dr. Geier himself, and experts have called the conclusions baseless and the study deeply flawed. The results that are used to "show" higher testosterone levels do not actually show this, nor do the other results in his paper. Notably absent were tests which could have answered the question of "Are these kids actually having early puberty?"

Tsouderos, Trine. "Autism Drug Lupron: 'Miracle Drug' Called Junk Science." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 21 May 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Endocrinologists note that Lupron would also cause children to miss the beneficial effects of puberty, such as cardio health in both genders and bone density for the girls.

Tsouderos, Trine. "Autism Drug Lupron: 'Miracle Drug' Called Junk Science." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 21 May 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Mark Geiers, however, claims that the experts dismissing his work do not know what they are talking about, stating that their lack of experience with autistic children disqualifies them from discussing hormone disorders in autistic children. His son, David, claims that many autism scientists support his work. However, one name he lists, Simon-Baron Cohen, has already stated his disgust at the treatment, suggesting that the claims of support are not as they seem.

Tsouderos, Trine. "Autism Drug Lupron: 'Miracle Drug' Called Junk Science." Chicago Tribune. N.p., 21 May 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Geiers are still attempting to patent this treatment, though the application has been reduced from 109 claims to 30, none of which now mention mercury. The remainder of the patent application still has significant reference to mercury, however.

Carey, Matt. "Lupron, Soon to Be a Patented Autism treatment?" Left Brain Right Brain. N.p., 1 June 2012. Web. 17 Oct. 2012

The mercury binding to testosterone which is the main basis for the effectiveness of Lupron for autism was demonstrated in a beaker of heated benzene, not in the human body. We do not currently have evidence that this binding occurs in the human brain.

Carey, Matt. "Lupron, Soon to Be a Patented Autism treatment?" Left Brain Right Brain. N.p., 1 June 2012. Web. 17 Oct. 2012

Dr. Paul Kaplowitz, a pediatric endocrinologist, notes that Dr. Geier works with a significantly looser definition of precocious puberty than the generally accepted one and that there have been many treatments that parents and doctors claimed to work but which controlled trials showed to be no better than a placebo.

Cohn, Meredith. "Lupron Therapy for Autism at Center of Embattled Doctor's Case." Baltimore Sun. N.p., 16 June 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.

One parent remains convinced that Lupron will become the standard for "mercury-induced autism."

Cohn, Meredith. "Lupron Therapy for Autism at Center of Embattled Doctor's Case." Baltimore Sun. N.p., 16 June 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.

Checkers

I have been told that everyone is in a game of chess with everyone else, trying to figure out who is telling the truth and who is lying and who isn't telling them everything and who likes them and who is out to get them.
I didn't get it.
I didn't get how you could tell all this from a gesture, or the tone of someone's voice. I still don't get how, but I've been told that it can be done. I'll have to take their word for it.
And me? Well, what I can see isn't zero. If someone makes it really obvious that they don't really want to do something, I can usually tell. What I see is maybe a checkerboard instead.
So imagine that you are sitting across from someone you know to be playing chess, but you can't tell their pieces apart. Their pieces may as well all be checkers. And all you have (or all you see that you have) is also checkers. Maybe they really are chess pieces- other people seem to think that my different pieces work differently, anyways. I can't see how, though, so I can't tell you which checker is the queen and which is a pawn. Which means I can't tell how big the threat you are making or how big the threat I am making or how balanced the position looks or anything. I don't know if I just made an illegal move, because I am playing checkers and you are playing chess. It just doesn't make sense to me.
And you?
You see a chessboard, and here is this person using her pieces to play checkers. She moved her rook diagonally one space, for Pete's sake! Or, well, I did some social equivalent of "illegal and probably not all that useful move." You're probably just as confused as I am, actually. The difference is that when you find a different opponent, said opponent will be playing by the same rules you are. When I find a different opponent, I probably find someone who is still playing by rules I don't (can't) understand.
You can choose to interact with people whose social moves make sense. I can't really do that. I have to use my checkers as best I can in this worldwide game of chess, and it is exhausting.

MUAHAHAHA MATH

Yeah, I do like math. You probably guessed from the fact that the top of the page says I am a math major. And today math was really awesome.
So, I'm a junior in engineering and Chinese, but I'm taking the graduate level topology course in math. I'm the youngest in my class by at least three years, possibly more. And today, we were talking about RP^2 in class. After that, we talked about Möbius strips, which sounded a lot like the boundary of RP^2. (I have really good pattern recognition.)
Yet later, the teacher gave us an exercise to think about at home. We were supposed to glue the copies of S^1 (a circle) from a punctured sphere and from a Möbius strip together and think about what kind of space we got. I looked at it for about 30 seconds and then went "OH!" because it's clearly RP^2. And... apparently my classmates don't think it's that obvious. As in, I asked what they thought, and I uniformly got "I don't know- I haven't had a chance to think about it yet." Which amused me, because it took me all of 30 seconds, and then, after asking this question, the teacher went on to explain that RP^2 with an open disk yanked out of it is... topologically the same as a Möbius strip. I took this to be a major hint directed at the class saying what the answer to the problem was, but I am apparently alone in this.
(No, I do not want to make you think autistic people are automatically good at math/science. It doesn't work like that. I, however, am very good at math/science, especially math. I have a history of being the top of math classes that I am the youngest person in, and the homework/exam results I have seen so far and the results of this question are suggesting that I might be doing this again. At least it's college and people don't care as much about this kind of thing anymore, which means I shouldn't get anyone calling me names over it this time...)

Laughing About Language

"I am an autism with personhood"
"an autistic with personhood?"
"An autistic who happens to be experiencing life with personhood!"
Laugh at it. We were joking (sort of...) 
I mean, we were also poking fun at the folk who try to separate the autism from the autistic person, which doesn't actually work. So we're separating it out the other way. Don't take it seriously- the fact that we are people is very important, after all. But think about how ridiculous "an autistic who happens to be experiencing life with personhood" sounds. Think about why it doesn't make sense. 
In this case, we are calling personhood an appendage that can be removed at need or something that is only incidental to who this person is. Clearly, that's inaccurate. But is "person who happens to be experiencing life with autism" any more accurate? Hint: No, not really. Autism isn't a detachable appendage or something that is only incidental to who this person is either.
Which is why, however much those statements at the start were made jokingly, they aren't any less accurate than "person with autism" or "personhood with autism" or "a person who happens to be experiencing life with autism."
I won't ever tell you what to call yourself, but if you tell me to call myself a person with autism, be warned: This is what I'm going to joke about. Possibly behind your back, possibly in front of your face.

Notecards Part Three

Some Encyclopedia notecards:

Rimland, Bernard. "Autism." Encyclopedia Americana. 2006 ed. Vol. 2. Danvers, Connecticut: Scholastic Library, 2006. 803. Print.

The 2006 Edition of the Encyclopedia Americana states that psychotherapy has not been found effective in the treatment of autism, but that "a structured, directive approach in which approach in which appropriate responses are rewarded" sometimes shows results and that some B vitamins could be helpful in large doses.

Go find "Infantile Autism" by same author.

 Frith, Uta. "Autism." The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, 1999. 58-59. Print.

"Contrary to popular belief, failure of bonding or attachment is not a distinguishing characteristic of autism."

Progress is highly variable regardless of treatments, with no known medical treatment and some success with behavior modification therapies.

Notecards from a presentation on camel milk at the Autism One conference. Why camel milk doesn't cure autism to come, along with ripping apart of "we don't know why it works, and we only have anecdotal evidence, but we're presenting it at a conference anyways," which is pretty much what's going on. Those might wait for the paper itself, though.

 Adams, Christina, MFA. "The Benefits and Realities of Camel Milk Therapy for ASD." Autismone.org. Proc. of Autism One/Generation Rescue Conference 2012, The Westin Hotel, Lombard, IL., 30 Apr. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

The mechanism is not understood, but possibilities include heavy chain antibodies, enzymes, insulin, proteins, and something that the camels are eating. Essentially, it could be anything.

The reason it is expected to work is that an ASD-immune dysfunction connection is being explored, and that camel milk helps with many inflammatory diseases. In addition, lactose symptoms may not occur with camel milk.

Adams, Christina, MFA. "Got [Camel] Milk?" Autismone.org. Proc. of Autism One/Generation Rescue Conference 2012, The Westin Hotel, Lombard, IL. N.p., 30 Apr. 2012. Web. 15 Oct. 2012.

Supporters include Dr. Reuven Yagil, a camel expert who holds that autism is an autoimmune disease rather than a neurological condition.