Charlotte Tabachini's son benefited from up to 40 hours a week of applied behavioral analysis therapy, developed by O. Ivar Lovaas. Karen Gelb has two children with autistic disorders. Her son Jared, who is 3, is autistic and her daughter Rachel, 4, was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder, a related condition.
Dr. Robert Koegel, a professor of psychology and Director of the Autism Research Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is an international authority on autism treatment, and has developed a behavioral treatment system used widely in schools and parent education programs around the world. Previously, one out of every 2,500 children was diagnosed as autistic; now, including related disorders, as many as one out of 500 children are affected. The specific cause is unknown at this time. In his therapeutic work, Dr. Koegel tries to identify pivotal behaviors whose improvement will coincide with progress in many other behaviors. Callers raised various issues. One asked Dr. Koegel about early indicators of autistic disorders. He told her to be aware of difficulties with social interactions, speech or language, suspected deafness or blindness, and failure to wave or point. Children oversensitive to sound may benefit from drugs related to Prozac. Vaccinations to infectious diseases are being explored as a contributing factor. One may write to Dr. Koegel at the Autism Research Center at the Graduate School of Education, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9490 or visit their Web site at www.education.ucsb.edu.
Hollywood producer Jonathan Shestack most recently co-producer of the movie AIR FORCE ONE. Jonathan has a son with autism. He and his wife, Portia Iversen, founded Cure Autism Now, a foundation that raises funds for biological research about autism. Contact CAN at 1-323-549-0500, or 1-888-8AUTISM, or visit their Web site at www.canfoundation.org.
Contact the Autism Society of America at 1-800 3-AUTISM for information about disorders in the autistic spectrum, or visit their Web site at www.autism-society.org.
Singer songwriter Suzanne Vega, who frequently addresses issues of the mind, performs "Small Blue Thing" which appears on the CD entitled "Suzanne Vega. " Her latest album, Nine Objects of Desire, is available on A&M Records. You can read about and listen to more of Suzanne on her Web site.
Temple Grandin has autism. She also has a Ph.D. in animal science and is an assistant professor at Colorado State University. Dr. Grandin has designed more than a third of the livestock handling facilities in the United States, revolutionizing the livestock industry's handling of animals, making them both more humane and more efficient. As a child, she had the major symptoms of autism - no speech, rocking, constant tantrums -- and recalls being bothered by loud sounds and rough textures. An early sign of her unusual visual thinking skills, making the scenery for the school play, earned the respect of her peers. It was only far later, as an equipment designer, that she realized that other engineers couldn't do full three dimensional, full motion test runs of equipment in their minds, as she could. "All of my thoughts, even now, are in pictures." Many children with autism and dyslexia may have similar abilities, and Dr. Grandin urges that they be developed into pursuits such as computer drafting, commercial art, and mechanical repair. "I want to emphasize the importance of early education for autistic children. You need to get into a good program with lots of hours of one to one instruction with a good teacher as soon as you see symptoms in two, three and four year olds." She is the author of two books, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, and Thinking in Pictures. You may also visit her Web site at www.grandin.com.
Dr. Edwin Cook, one of the nation's leading autism researchers, is associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Chicago. He tells us that studies of twins show that autism is clearly genetic: if one identical twin has autism, the other, with the same genetic material, has autism or a similar disorder over 90% of the time. Fraternal twins in the same environment who share only half the genetic material, both have autism 3% or less of the time. Dr. Cook has found genetic material related to the metabolism of the neurotransmitter GABA linked to certain cases of autism. A subgroup of autistic children who respond to change with aggression often respond well to Prozac-type drugs used for obsessive compulsive disorders, suggesting a link to serotonin processing. You can write to Dr. Cook at the Laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
Anthony Edwards is best known as the compassionate Dr. Mark Greene on the hit NBC program ER. His long standing interest in psychiatric disorders, and particularly in autism, led him to become an activist with CAN. "I think the great irony of this is that autism, which is a breakdown of communication, is being fought with communication. It's the fact that both parents, researchers and groups are communicating about this, that they're making great strides in making a cure."
