Autism discussion in meaningless drivel

I read this in another thread:

paul wheaton wrote: Then he gets started on autism connection to vaccines. This again?

I stopped watching it. I've heard this crap a hundred times before.

He started talking about scientific method: try lots and lots of stuff and see what works. Well, a lot of people tried the vaccines and had problems that were serious enough that they are shying away. Show a little respect for the numbers.

This shocked me. Children have been dying because they weren't vaccinated, especially here in California. So I decided to do some research -- like Paul says, respect the numbers -- before i shot my mouth off. Turns out that Autistic Spectrum Disorders probably have a wide range of causes . Since many things can cause developmental disorders such as Autism, and vaccines may be among them, there are a lot of fingers to point. I didn't know this either: the reccommended vaccination schedule can (and should!) be negotiated with your pediatrician. Fascinating. The deeper I dug, the more links I found between ASD and seizures -- and seizures can be caused by many, many environmental things, including some of the ingrediants that used to be in vaccinations. Some children incorrectly diagnosed with severe autism were completely cured when correctly diagnosed with brain seizures and anti-seizure meds ended the seizures.

Here's some more facts and fascinating quotes about Autism Spectrum Disorders, vaccinations and other childhood horrors:

20%-30% of ASD sufferers have seizure disorders.

# of children not vaccinated who yet have autism: about the same as there ever has been, per capita -- not reduced, not increased.
# of children sick from vaccine-preventable diseases: 95,341
# of children killed: 888
** http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny_McCarthy_Body_Count/Home.html

The top ten chemicals thought to be associated with both autism and learning disorders in children:

* Lead
* Methylmercury
* PCBs
* Organophosphate pesticides
* Organochlorine pesticides
* Endocrine disruptors
* Automotive exhaust
* Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
* Brominated flame retardants
* Perfluorinated compounds

"It's time to start looking for the environmental culprits responsible for the remarkable increase in the rate of autism in California," Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, an epidemiology professor at the University of California, Davis MIND Institute, has said. Those culprits, she said, might lie "in the microbial world and in the chemical world."

Temple Grandin wrote: Grandin: There is a strong genetic basis (into the causes of autism). And "environmental insults" now are highly suspected. For example, a higher incidence has been discovered among children living closer to freeways.

Finally, we are going to be hearing a good deal more about vaccines, seizure disorders, and autism as a "residual sequela" of the injury. Maybe vaccines can't cause autism, as the government says, but they can cause complex seizures.

And complex seizures, "during early postnatal development may alter synaptic plasticity and contribute to learning and behavioral disorders" in certain types of children, said one recent study. "Early life seizures may produce a variety of cellular and molecular changes in hippocampus that may contribute to the enhanced risk of IDDs and ASDs in patients with early life seizures and epilepsy."

That study did not link vaccine-induced complex seizures to residual sequelae. But the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has many cases of normally developing children who developed seizure disorders and "encephalopathy" (brain disease) following vaccination.

"This pattern is seen frequently in vaccine cases. An otherwise healthy petitioner receives a vaccination, the vaccine causes a fever, which in turn causes or triggers a complex febrile seizure," one VICP special master wrote in ruling that the DTaP vaccine "was the legal cause of (the child's) seizure disorder and developmental delay."

Some children who suffer from vaccine-induced complex seizures go on to suffer from "developmental delay," "behavioral problems," "affective disorders," "mild mental retardation" and other residual sequelae, VICP records show. Some of them also develop an ASD, and some now get government funds to pay for things such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA), a treatment used mostly for ASD.

In early 2009, a child in rural Minnesota died from meningitis caused by the bacteria Haemophilus influenzae. His parents had refused to vaccinate him against the disease. Four other children were hospitalized with the exact same disease. Two of those were also children of parents who had refused vaccines. The fourth was a 5-month-old baby who was just too young to have been completely immunized. The fifth was a child who has an immune deficiency.

This year, in my home state of California, more than 900 cases of whooping cough have been recorded so far, up from around 200 last year. Five children have died.

Reports of elevated autism rates among children of immigrants are nothing new. A small study this year showed that Swedish-born children of Somali immigrants to that country were far more likely to have autism than the general population, (Somalis there call autism the "Swedish Disease"), and another small study in 1995 found an autism rate of 15% among children in one Swedish town born to mothers from Uganda - 200 times more than the national average.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/minneapolis-and-the-somal_b_143967.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/autism-vaccine-_b_817879.html
http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/x331594913/Most-famous-face-of-autism-Dr-Temple-Grandin-shares-insights-with-The-Californian
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-06-28/opinion/parikh.childhood.vaccines_1_vaccine-whooping-cough-kids-shots?_s=PM:OPINION



So... thanks, Paul! I learned stuff I didn't know before.

With all the chemicals we're exposed to now that we never evolved for, it's a wonder more of us aren't seriously ill......

And many that are diagnosed with mild autism or ADHD would have been simply considered "active" boys a generation ago. Dennis the Menace would be highly medicated these days....

@ P. Thickens. Thank you for starting this thread. I agree wholeheartedly with your opinion.

The 'cause' of autism might be multi-faceted.

Here in Canada we have a wonderful science show called The Nature of Things (by biologist Dr. David Suzuki)

There was a TNoT show about a sub-set of children who have autism and may have gotten it due to a neurotoxin produced by Clostridium Difficile (bacteria in the gut.)
Watch the show, it was fascinating. Also, I've done research and seen that many scientists looking in to the cause/causes of autism suggest that in another sub-set of people with autism it may be a particular Mitochondrial Disease. Also, a small % of children with autism have a particular chromosomal abnormality on Chromosome 16.

People want and psychologically need a reason for their child's illness. It's easier to blame a pharmaceutical company or a governmental policy ("they made me vaccinate and now look what happened.") It harder to accept the multi-faceted world we live in with pollution, widespread use of antibiotics, changing family structures/support, different stimuli and media from infancy, genetics, maternal stressers/oxidative stress while pregnant etc, etc, etc could be the real culprit.

My 2 cents.

Anti-anti-vaccine ammunition.
www.virology.ws
Website by Dr. Vincent Racaniello,virologist and author of text books for University Immunology courses.

Take that, Jenny MacBonehead!

A video on Dr. Larry Brilliant on the success of early detection, vaccines and the eradication of smallpox.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNhiHf84P9c

Sorry for my non-autism related comments.

My 2 cents.

I *REALLY* don't want this site to be about this sort of thing.

Here is one story. I know a woman with a boy who went in to get his shot. He was a chatty boy. Got the shot and didn't talk for 18 months. Autism.

I have met two other women who have told me similar stories.

It may be possible that the diagnosis is something that looks like autism, but isn't. But the key component is: there was something fucked up in that vaccination.

And this is just the beginning. This debate is something that would take hundreds of hours to wage.

The quick summary is this: the "truth" on this one has been fucked with. The chem corporations want us to believe their stuff and only their stuff and don't listen to the mothers of children made sick by their chemicals. In the mean time, some moms believe other moms more than the chem corporations.

Interview of Dr. Sydney Finegold and the link between gut flora and autism. Read about "Regressive Autism"
http://cogentbenger.com/autism/interviews/finegold-interview/

Peony Jay wrote:Interview of Dr. Sydney Finegold and the link between gut flora and autism. Read about "Regressive Autism"
http://cogentbenger.com/autism/interviews/finegold-interview/

That makes sense--it can explain why many can be helped with special diets and why there can be an onset apparently from a vaccine.

Our internal flora need to be treated like permaculture, too....

I believe we are on shaky ground on this subject because our usual villian may not be guilty. But mental health is still a medical thing. We freely discuss which foods may help or hurt our hearts, livers and other parts. The brain is one of those parts. I think the politicised nature of this in the U.S. particularly in the bible belt has led to polarization on the subject.

I have dealt with autism in one form or another for most of my life. There's my brother who is 3 years older than me, some of his school mates and several kids for whom I provided respite care. These people all had eccentricities that would make any parent scream "why me". I have seen one parent blame the other and I've seen a large crowd blame the devil. Families hoping to escape the stigma of a disorder which may very well have a genetic component are sometimes quick to latch onto anything big and scarry that can be blamed. Many parents are litterally at their wits end with lack of sleep and the constant worry of what the kid might do next. My brother lit fires. Lots of them.This sort of atmosphere does not breed rationality and for that reason I don't believe the majority of first hand accounts.

I have several extended family members on my mother's side who have jumped on the anti vaccination bandwagon. Many have also claimed to have witnessed miraculous healings at church services. Some have seen aparitions. I'm not sure if they separate belief in this sort of thing from their iron clad beliefs on autism. I can't and therefore, to me they are not credible witnesses even though they were there and I wasn't.

Dale Hodgins wrote: But mental health is still a medical thing. We freely discuss which foods may help or hurt our hearts, livers and other parts. The brain is one of those parts.

I personally think a lot of mental illness may be metabolic and the increase in recent decades may be caused by incorrect diet as well as other factors affecting metabolism (stress from noise, pollution, etc). I'm having a big fat opinion on this subject because I'm mentally ill as is my sister. Some of these illnesses seem to be inherited and they may be an inherited metabolic condition. Many mental illnesses and neurological conditions (bipolar, schizophrenia, autism, etc) share features in common and may be a spectrum of metabolic disorders. Toxicity from vaccines may trigger the onset of these disorders, as other stressful life events can trigger onset of mental illnesses such as bipolar in people who did not show symptoms before the stress occurred.

People treating autism with diet: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/finding-the-person-within-a-mother-and-daughter-journey/#axzz1vt5dk2UT

News flash!
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/23/news/la-heb-fevers-pregnancy-autism-20120523
Moms who had fever while pregnant-

"2 1/2 times more likely to be diagnosed later with a communications disorder on the autism spectrum, and 2 3/4 times more likely to have developmental delays."

the latest microflora study finding no link, but controls in same family?

http://questioning-answers.blogspot.com/2012/09/autism-gut-bacteria-link.html

The study that found a link ,
http://mbio.asm.org/content/3/1/e00261-11.full


and anonorexia as autism?

http://www.scienceofeds.org/2012/09/22/is-anorexia-nervosa-a-version-of-autism-spectrum-disorders/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-anorexia-nervosa-a-version-of-autism-spectrum-disordersl

paul wheaton wrote:I *REALLY* don't want this site to be about this sort of thing.

neither do I (not that I have a say ). It becomes religious for many people, a black/white hegalian thing based on ... what?

paul wheaton wrote:Here is one story. I know a woman with a boy who went in to get his shot. He was a chatty boy. Got the shot and didn't talk for 18 months. Autism.

I have met two other women who have told me similar stories.

P Thickens wrote: Children have been dying because they weren't vaccinated, especially here in California.

The question here, and, applying principals of law - it's nothing personal - is 'Who says?'

One is first-hand, eye-witness testimony taken by a Paul Wheaton.

The other is likely reported in the 'news'. Most of that stuff is made-up, and the paper is good for... firelighter.

So one is first-hand, the other is hearsay through a cash-intensive operation which requires massive credit from... bankers. And I mean the few people who control the central banking direction, especially, privately. And, anyone should have the common-sense, however, they typically don't it seems, that if testimony is given first-hand by a living voice flesh and blood soul-occupied body, it has a whole lot more weight than something printed on a dead piece of paper, allegedly from someone, whom you've never met, anyway. This 'chain of custody' of the information cannot be overlooked.


---

I was a medic, and gave plenty of vaccines. Vaccines are not the only cause of these modern, chronic health epidemics - mostly unreported or under-reported in the permies, for a reason - but they certainly contribute. And the only known source of smallpox is... da da da... the vaccine. Yeup, all those photos I screened of people with horrible smallpox outbreaks - from the vaccine. None of those were acquired 'naturally'. Consider this before pumping your newborn's blood system full of a bunch of junk that frankly, you _don't_ know what's in it.

Here's a first person account: I had a little baby shipped to my hospital in an ambulance with pertussis. Amish family--no immunizations. 5 older siblings had the disease and suffered greatly (another name for whooping cough is the 100 day cough) but they're going to be o.k. The baby died.

Here's another first person account: my father has lower limb weakness from polio contracted as a child.

I have heard many second hand stories about shots causing autism, but I have no first hand experience. I have cared for hundreds (at least) of kids with autism and I've never been given this story or found it in their medical record. I do remember a kid with a muscle cancer. Her family was fixated on a bicycle accident as the cause of the cancer. Our oncology attending said that the cancer was already present and may have contributed to the fall, but the family had the cause and effect turned around in their heads and nothing could dissuade them from this. We are story telling primates. We take what we see and we look for the narrative.

Most kids with autism are identifiable (by an expert) even at very young ages, but there are some where the child seems to lose communication skills. This type tends to show up in the toddler years, which are also a time of vaccinations. I can see how a connection is easily drawn from a bad day when you held your kid against his will as mean people stuck him with needles. . . to a change in your child. Much energy has been spent trying to establish that connection. First it was MMR, then it was mercury preservatives. (I'm actually glad that we've stopped using the preservative, although we are now generating a whole lot more plastic waste with all of the single use vials.)

I wish we would spend our energy looking at the toxins in all of our bodies (phthalates, anyone?) that are more likely to be the culprit. I'm actually more worried about the plastic vials than what is in them. (My husband has donated platelets for years, but is beginning to note fatigue afterwards. I wonder if it is the plastic residues he must be having injected into his body with all that single use plastic tubing. FYI when you donate platelets, they pull the blood out of your body, run it through a machine that harvests platelet, and the run it back through you via a second IV.)

Julia Winter wrote:Here's a first person account: I had a little baby shipped to my hospital in an ambulance with pertussis. Amish family--no immunizations. 5 older siblings had the disease and suffered greatly (another name for whooping cough is the 100 day cough) but they're going to be o.k. The baby died.

Here's another first person account: my father has lower limb weakness from polio contracted as a child.

I have heard many second hand stories about shots causing autism, but I have no first hand experience. I have cared for hundreds (at least) of kids with autism and I've never been given this story or found it in their medical record. I do remember a kid with a muscle cancer. Her family was fixated on a bicycle accident as the cause of the cancer. Our oncology attending said that the cancer was already present and may have contributed to the fall, but the family had the cause and effect turned around in their heads and nothing could dissuade them from this. We are story telling primates. We take what we see and we look for the narrative.

Most kids with autism are identifiable (by an expert) even at very young ages, but there are some where the child seems to lose communication skills. This type tends to show up in the toddler years, which are also a time of vaccinations. I can see how a connection is easily drawn from a bad day when you held your kid against his will as mean people stuck him with needles. . . to a change in your child. Much energy has been spent trying to establish that connection. First it was MMR, then it was mercury preservatives. (I'm actually glad that we've stopped using the preservative, although we are now generating a whole lot more plastic waste with all of the single use vials.)

I wish we would spend our energy looking at the toxins in all of our bodies (phthalates, anyone?) that are more likely to be the culprit. I'm actually more worried about the plastic vials than what is in them. (My husband has donated platelets for years, but is beginning to note fatigue afterwards. I wonder if it is the plastic residues he must be having injected into his body with all that single use plastic tubing. FYI when you donate platelets, they pull the blood out of your body, run it through a machine that harvests platelet, and the run it back through you via a second IV.)

One rational medical person, beats 100 distraught mothers in my book.
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I mentioned earlier that I have an autistic brother. I also had an uncle who had some screws loose. He was quite smart. Even my brother is very bright in many ways although he's socially awkward and has never learned to read. He has a "Rain Man" memory and can recount childhood events in perfect detail. He obsesses on minute detail. Everything in his room is laid out like he's expecting a barracks inspection. If someone is seen, frantically searching for lost keys, he says --- "I keep my keys in my room".--- I think he's calling them a dumb ass.

When I was 6, I was the subject of some debate amongst teachers and counselors. I had test scores ranging between 20% and 100% in the same subjects. I was completely disengaged whenever it got boring or I took a dislike to being told what to do. A tester from the big city came by and engaged me in all sorts of interesting topics. I listened intently while he told my teacher that I had a firm grasp on many subjects ranging from history, to things in the news, to things on TV. By grade 3, I was a model student academically but got in trouble sometimes for mocking anything or anyone that displeased me. I went way too far in matters of self defense. Wrung a kid's neck.

A few years later, I was in trouble again. I determined that my grade 4 teacher wasn't smart enough to be of much use. (my parents have agreed with this assessment). I explained this fact to Floyd, the principal during a (behavioral prompted) visit to the office. He refused to engage in this line of thought and he asked his secretary to stop laughing.

It was later suggested that I might be some sort of mild Aspergers case. This is considered a branch of autism for smart guys. I've read up on it a few times, but most of what is talked about, either doesn't apply to me or I'm not as bad as the extreme cases that are studied. Much of it has to do with becoming fixated on a problem or problems and letting that take over other aspects of life. There have been times when I have allowed the desire for revenge to consume far too much time. More often, I find myself awake at 3 am working out some sort of invention or solving all of the problems of the world.

I got my first immunization when I was in kindergarten. I viewed classmates who cried over it as major sissies. I clearly recall many events before that and I clearly recall being just as difficult for my parents to deal with as I was for the school system. I decided that authority figures were my enemies and my parents were dumb asses before I had the vocabulary to express it. Genetics probably have a lot to do with autism. Whatever my status in this regard may be, I'm quite convinced that nothing has changed concerning my mental state since long before my first needle.

I still see dumb asses around every corner, but I refrain from wringing their necks.

I find this whole subject very interesting from many angles .
I would recommend the Book " Bad Science " by M Goldberg who looks at the evidence and how it has been used by the press to whip up fear and anguish amongst people the whole world over.
Here in France there are even people who believe that autism is caused by the mother and that the mother needs therapy ! talk about a guilt trip.
Is autism totally a bad thing ? If you look at many genius's (er geni ?) er ..... ok very clever people, often they exhibit traits that in others would be considered autistic . Einstien for instance refused to wear socks or at least ones that matched and was thought to be stupid at school
As a musician I see it very often in fellow musicians the dedication ( monomania? ) the attention to detail ( no brown smarties ) and difficulty in enguaging the public meaningfully .

David

I'm so glad you're here at permies Dale, your posts are always entertaining and enlightening. I too, in later life, have had it suggested that I might be an Aspergers case. Damn sure if I were a kid in school now I'd be drugged all to hell. Your description of your school years may as well be my own, except for the wringing of necks, never been in a fight. Later on, I learned some call it the zero aggression principle, no one messed with me, so I messed with no one. There were only two "teachers" who I learned anything from. They were good friends and never lasted long at any school as they were too smart and subversive but they would always end up working at the same school. I learned a very different story of American history from them.

It is frustrating to have a nephew whose parents consider autistic, even though a couple of neurologists have told them he's not. I know he's smart enough to survive them but it is going to be a long road.

There may be no conflict between the information that vaccines cause autism and the evidence that it is caused by dysbiosis or some bacteria in the gut. An MD in Europe found the same strain used in the MMR vaccine in the guts of every autistic kid he had tested - despite the fact that the agent wasn't supposed to be active. He was discredited and false accusations to assassinate his character were widely published to protect the vaccine industry, much like the scientist who proved GM food is toxic and the reporters who tried to publish an article showing the hormones in milk had strong links to breast and prostate cancer.

In addition to that, the pertussis vaccine is known to cause food sensitivities to agents ingested within 24 hours of the vaccine. In some older clinics they told parents not to feed their kids peanuts or strawberries after the pertussis vaccine, it was that well-known! So the food sensitivity-vaccine link could also be a valid reason to be careful when vaccinating. With food sensitivities, the gut becomes inflamed, the walls get leaky and it is able to become colonized with "bad" bacteria and candida.

On a totally different note - there is a group that has fantastic conferences called Lyme-Induced Autism Foundation. They've found that in some kids, especially whose mothers had undiagnosed Lyme disease while pregnant so the kids were born with it, toxins produced by the bacteria or co-infections caused all the symptoms of the autism - and the kids recovered when treated for the Lyme disease - and tested positive (in some cases. Lyme is notoriously hard to test for).

I believe from reading Dr. Natasha Campbell-Mc-Bride's "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" and from many other sources, that autism as well as depression and many other mental/emotional disorders stem from the digestive system not being right, whether the initial cause is a vaccine, Lyme, h. pylori (also a suspected cause), or others. Lyme colonizes the gut and can still be found there in people "cured" of Lyme disease. A Dr. Houston has a line of enzymes that the autistic community has been raving about - some completely break down protein in the stomach so there are no partial protein chains to incite the immune system or inflame the gut, and some work on gluten a similar way. Some parents of autistic kids say that after 6 months of taking the enzymes every time they eat anything, their kids food sensitivities are cured and no longer need the enzymes. Not only that, but after just a few weeks the kids become higher functioning and start new behaviors, like smiling at people, communicating, using the toilet, and playing with other kids. What I find most interesting about that is that, when enzymes are not needed to digest food, many believe they go into the bloodstream and are used against pathogens or to get rid of the remains of damaged cells. So the enzymes could be doing much more than restoring digestion, but the digestive system HEALS from that approach in some of these kids, where nothing else was working so that's a kind of minor miracle, IMHO.

Oddly, if you talk to high-functioning "autistic" people (autistic used to mean people who couldn't learn to talk, were basically vegetables in their own world, unreachable - I've worked with some like that in group homes and wards used to be filled with them left by parents who didn't know how to care for them - some wouldn't even learn to go to the bathroom and wore adult diapers), they'll argue that there's no need to find a cure, they've accepted who they are and resent, highly, (and militantly) people trying to "fix" them or "make them normal". I've been attacked before for that reason.

There are a few problems with the scientific method:

It doesn't work outside the lab very well.

It doesn't work on self-aware creatures, especially when you tell them about it.

It is hard work so people don't do it right.

It usually proves the hypothesis wrong which is bad for the business or grant.


Environmental factors are just too many variables to figure out unless you have a HUGE sample size and accurately record all possible environmental factors for each one. Otherwise you get false correlations.

Dale, I'm so glad you've got a handle on the whole "wringing their necks" thing! That sort of thing could really get you in trouble.

David, is autism totally a bad thing? Well, it depends on the degree and on the environment. Many kids with autism do not communicate (in any way that the people around them can discern), and this causes anguish for most around them. Other kids with autism have different ways of communicating, and how well things work can depend on the creativity, flexibility and determination of those around them. I'm reminded of a boy whose mother taught him to read and write via rather cruel sounding persistence (no food unless he performed) but now is able to communicate with researchers via writing.

When I'm with a family of a child whose been having trouble in school, who is impulsive and blurts out what's in his head without regard for the social consequences, who tends to daydream and has a hard time with multi-step directions, who can focus intently on a video game (or maybe a book) but can't seem to settle down to finish homework, etc etc I often bring up Thom Hartmann's metaphor of the hunter versus the farmer. He wrote a book back in 1995 (after having the experience of taking his son in for evaluation when school became difficult around age 12) called "ADD: A Different Perception." Writing this, I'm embarrassed to say I still haven't read the whole book, but what I heard of its main formulation has appealed to me and so I use the central metaphor as well.

It's interesting how it fits in with the view of some in permaculture that agriculture maybe wasn't such a good thing for humanity as well as the planet.

The idea is that long ago, there were hunters and there were farmers, and their brains worked differently. The "hunter" traits are less common in our modern population because they are less useful in a farming society, but they are not deficiencies or deficits, just different. A hunter is obviously going to have sharper perceptions of their surroundings, constantly scanning the environment for sources of threat or food ("distractible") but when actively tracking an animal they will be almost unreachable by any other stimuli (hyper focus). A farmer is more likely to be organized and time aware. I could go on, but I need to pack! Here's a table summarizing the basic idea: Hunter vs Farmer table. While looking for a summary, I found this interesting article ("Hunters and farmers: five years later"), which describes something called Wetiko (on the source page, there is an accent over the "e" and that goes wonky when I copy and paste here) as the source of a dominating, conquering, farming culture.

In his penetrating and thought-provoking book Columbus and Other Cannibals, Professor Forbes points out how Wétiko, which he calls a "highly-contagious form of mental illness," originated in Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago. From there, it spread across the fertile crescent and into Syria, eventually infecting northern Africa, Europe (via the Roman conquerors who carried Wétiko), Asia, and, with the arrival of Columbus, the Americas.

The Bantu-speaking farmers of northwest Africa, culturally contaminated by Wétiko beliefs in the "correctness" of genocide, systematically spread across the entire African continent over a 2,000-year period, destroying every group in their path. The result is that now fewer than one percent of the entire African continent's population are hunter/gatherers, and the languages and cultures of thousands of tribes--developed over 200,000 years of human history--have been lost forever. Entire ethnic groups were wiped out and have now vanished from the Earth.

"Hunters and farmers: five years later"

Huh, the accent thing only goes wonky in "Preview," not when actually posted.

I'm amazed that the Bantu expansion isn't common knowledge. I have relatives from the States who know a little of the various wars in their own country's history but have learned little of much more important events in the history of our species.
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I'm not done wringing necks --- I'm keeping a list.

Ben Plummer wrote:I'm so glad you're here at permies Dale, your posts are always entertaining and enlightening. I too, in later life, have had it suggested that I might be an Aspergers case. Damn sure if I were a kid in school now I'd be drugged all to hell. Your description of your school years may as well be my own, except for the wringing of necks, never been in a fight. Later on, I learned some call it the zero aggression principle, no one messed with me, so I messed with no one. There were only two "teachers" who I learned anything from. They were good friends and never lasted long at any school as they were too smart and subversive but they would always end up working at the same school. I learned a very different story of American history from them.

It is frustrating to have a nephew whose parents consider autistic, even though a couple of neurologists have told them he's not. I know he's smart enough to survive them but it is going to be a long road.

Thank you David. When I look at all of the effort that goes into trying to make weird kids normal, I find that all of the intervention is not working. Many people have unrealistic expectations for their children. --- I once spoke to a teacher who said that she was teaching a class of 24 above average children. It turned out that it was just a regular bunch of kids with a range of abilities. Each family desperately wanted their child to be a top notch student and the teacher found that on "meet the teacher night", she found herself in the awkward position of telling most parents that they had a normal child.

My work has sometimes put me in contact with social workers and advocates for the homeless population. They made the mistake of letting me speak at meetings, on a few occasions. My view that their problems are drugs, drugs and more drugs was not at all welcome in a room full of people whose mission in life is to extract further public funds to pour down the drain. My suggestion that low innate intelligence was also very common, met with open hostility. These people work in a culture where the idea of equality is so ingrained, that they can't see stupid when it stares them in the face. They want to believe that everyone is fixable, that they deserve to be fixed, and that they want to be fixed. Most don't.

Drugs are usually not the answer for children. Lazy parenting and an unwillingness to resort to discipline has led in many strange directions. Once a person is an adult, and their brain is fully developed, some may require pharma help. Many people are able to fit right in and lead normal lives. With the worst cases, I think the best we can hope for is to manage behavior that affects the rest of the world. I think that's a higher priority than vain attempts at normalcy.

I am so with you in the all parents want there children to be above average .
Its just nuts and shows that they themselves dont understand the math
All children are different and we can give things all sorts of names weather its dispracsia ADDH , dyslexia types of autism or whatever . But not all children are suited to a formal education upto the age of 22 ,we need to accept that and have alturnatives that are respected .
Good parenting is the key ,and I think accepting and suporting your child achieve there potential , what ever it is .
When I was younger industry employed lots of mainly men doing jobs labouring, moving stuff from a to b basically ,so did farming . These days where these jobs ? The blokes had standing in the community, raised kids ,had homes not the dole or food stamps , they had respect .
Could putting these kids into permicultural activities be a solution for some of them ?
I woked with kids with communication difficulties who got on better with horses than people for example

David

The book "The DaVinci Method" says that a proportion of kids just think differently and now we call that ADD but in times past they were the inventors and the artists and CANNOT be happy unless they are using that part of their brains to invent or do art or in some way be creative because they have wild creativity and are gifted at thinking outside of the box.

On the Hunters Vs Farmers:

Maybe it's epigenetic. Now we CAN blame our parents.
Perhaps kids raised on good permaculture food can start reversing these trends. But like all things, it will take generations to know for sure.