Autistic Soldier Exhibits Iron Dome to POTUS

In The Politics of Autism, I note that we need more study of how autistic people fare in other countries.

From the Jerusalem Post:

An IDF soldier on the autism spectrum presented the Iron Dome to US President Joe Biden at Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday, representing the "Special in Uniform" program as well.

Akiva Parsoff, the IDF soldier, is a member of the Jewish National Fund-USA's (JNF-USA) affiliate program Special in Uniform and was inducted into the IDF several years ago as part of the military's inclusion program.

Today, Parsoff serves as a technician on the Iron Dome batteries at the Palmachim Airbase.

“Autism is a gift, a gift to the world, and people on the spectrum can offer a lot to the world. That’s why I’m here—to spread this word. I was ecstatic when my commander chose me to represent the unit and exhibit Iron Dome to President Biden, who is a great friend of Israel,” said Parsoff.

The Special in Uniform program integrates young people with disabilities into the IDF, focusing on the unique talents of each participant to help them find a job within the IDF that is a perfect fit for them.

Zoom Could Hasten Autism Evaluations

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss evaluation and diagnosis.

Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week:

Months of lockdowns have left a massive backlog of children who show the warning signs of autism, waiting for a formal evaluation to get help.

That’s why Megan Roberts hopes to move autism evaluations out of doctors’ offices and onto Zoom conferences, using staff who already work regularly with schools and early learning centers. In the process, she also hopes to clear the entire waiting list of 1,224 children in need of an autism evaluations in Illinois.

Roberts’s project is one of seven projects that have been awarded a share of $14 million grants from the National Center for Special Education Research. All of the funded projects are focused on supporting students with disabilities who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

Roberts, an associate professor for the communication sciences and disorders early-intervention research group at Northwestern University, and her team received a four-year, $3 million grant to develop and validate a telehealth-based protocol to train speech-language pathologists to evaluate students’ risk of autism spectrum disorders. Using speech-language pathologists dramatically widens the pool of evaluators, as most school districts and Early Head Start centers have them, while a 2019 study found 84 percent of U.S. counties have no access to autism medical diagnosticians.

...

About 85 percent of the time, parents of those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders start to voice concerns about their child’s development well before age 3, according to the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. But even before the pandemic, the center found only 42 percent received a developmental evaluation to diagnose the disorder by age 3, and 30 percent of children had not yet been formally diagnosed by age 8.

Obesity and Overweight

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the health problems of people on the spectrum.  Studies indicate that autistic people are prone to overweight and low physical activity levels.  At Nature, Robyn P. Thom and colleagues have an article titled "Prevalence and factors associated with overweight, obesity, and hypertension in a large clinical sample of adults with autism spectrum disorder."  The abstract:

Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at risk for excess bodyweight and hypertension, yet the prevalence of and clinical predictors for these health conditions remain unknown. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and hypertension in a large clinical sample of adults with a confirmed diagnosis of ASD and to examine potential clinical predictors. This retrospective chart review study included adult subjects (≥ 20 years) with ASD who had been seen within the past 5 years at a multidisciplinary developmental disorders clinic. Data collected from the electronic health record included age, sex, race and ethnicity, cognitive ability, language ability, body mass index (BMI), hypertension, and use of second generation antipsychotic medications (SGAs). Of 622 adults with a confirmed diagnosis of ASD potentially eligible for the study, 483 (78%) had one or more notes in their records from the past 5 years. Those with recent notes were 23% female, 89% White, and had a mean (SD) age of 28.1 (7.1) years. Overall prevalence estimates for adults represented by this predominantly male, White, and young clinical sample were 28% (95% CI 24%, 32%) for overweight (BMI 25–29.9 kg/m2), 35% (95% CI 31%, 40%) for obesity (≥ 30 kg/m2), and 11% (95% CI 9%, 15%) for hypertension. Controlling for age and sex, intellectual disability (ID) was significantly associated with BMI (p = 0.003) but not hypertension (p = 0.69); those with moderate or more severe ID had a mean BMI that was 2.26 kg/m2 (95% CI 0.96, 3.57) lower than those with no ID. Controlling for age and sex, neither language ability, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) subtype of autism, nor past or current use of SGAs were significantly associated with BMI or hypertension. The study identified a high prevalence of overweight and obesity in adults with ASD consistent with the prevalence of these medical comorbidities in the U.S. population.

North Carolina Program for Autistic State Employees

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the employment of adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. Many posts have discussed programs to provide them with training and experience.

At Route Fifty, Daniela Altimari reports on North Carolina's pilot program to help autistic public employees succeed at work.

The initiative is called the North Carolina Career Advancement Resources for State Employees on the Spectrum and it is part of a broader state effort, outlined in an executive order issued by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2019, to hire more employees with disabilities.

“North Carolina’s workforce is made stronger by its diversity, and our talented employees on the autism spectrum offer valuable skills and perspectives,” the Democratic governor said in a statement announcing the initiative in April 2022. “This innovative program will help us support and retain these employees and better serve our state.”

North Carolina has struggled in recent years with labor shortages; hiring people with disabilities can help fill those gaps. The state employs about 80,000 people.

...

North Carolina’s pilot program offers state employees with autism spectrum disorder with up to five hours of one-on-one career coaching per year through the state’s partnership with two nonprofit agencies, the TEACCH Autism Program and the Autism Society of North Carolina. Advocates see it as a tool to help the state attract and retain workers.

Palin Goes Full Metal Antivax

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.   Even before COVID, they were fighting vaccine mandates and other public health measures.

The antivax movement is part of a broader system of right-wing conspiracy theory.

Caleb Howe at Mediaite:

Former Alaska governor and current congressional candidate Sarah Palin gave an enthusiastic and angry speech at ex-President Donald Trump‘s “Save America” Rally in Anchorage, Alaska on Saturday, during which she suggested that the global covid-19 pandemic was a conspiracy perpetrated against the American people for political reasons.

Palin’s speech hit many familiar notes for the Save America rallies and her own past speeches, including “drill, baby, drill” and the ubiquitous “mama grizzly” references. She attacked RINOs and Democrats and said that the upcoming midterms are more than just a political contest but a “spiritual” one.

“This is good versus evil,” said Palin of the 2022 election. “It is a spiritual battle.”

Palin said that the midterms are about “control versus freedom” and added that “they” used the plandemic” to try to control people.

“Plandemic” is more than just a rhetorical device, it is a term used for a film and conspiracy theory which claim that, as Decider put it, “a global cabal of billionaires and drug manufacturers created the coronavirus pandemic as part of a plan to enforce ‘globally mandated vaccines.'”

In 2020, Martin Enserink and Jon Cohen wrote in Science: 

In a video that has exploded on social media in the past few days, virologist Judy Mikovits claims the new coronavirus is being wrongly blamed for many deaths...Science fact-checked the video. None of these claims are true. The video is an excerpt from a forthcoming movie Plandemic, which promises to "expose the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system." YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms have taken down the video because of inaccuracies. It keeps resurfacing, including on the Plandemic website, which, in "an effort to bypass the gatekeepers of free speech," invites people to download the video and repost it.

...

Mikovits has not published anything in the scientific literature since 2012. ...She has weighed in on the autism debate with controversial theories about causes and treatments. Her discredited work and her legal travails have made her a martyr in the eyes of some.

...

In another recent video, Mikovits is wearing a hat that says VAXXED II, which is a sequel to a film that links the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine to autism, a debunked theory. She also repeats several claims made by people who are leading the antivaccine movement. In the PowerPoint presentation she sent to Science, she calls for an "immediate moratorium" on all vaccines.

Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights

  In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families.  One challenge is that autism is an "invisible disability," which does not have obvious physical markers.  

From the US Department of Transportation:

The Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, an easy-to-use summary of the fundamental rights of air travelers with disabilities under the Air Carrier Access Act, will empower air travelers with disabilities to understand and assert their rights, and help ensure that U.S. and foreign air carriers and their contractors uphold those rights. It was developed using feedback from the Air Carrier Access Act Advisory Committee, which includes representatives of passengers with disabilities, national disability organizations, air carriers, airport operators, contractor service providers, aircraft manufacturers, wheelchair manufactures, and a national veterans organization representing disabled veterans. The Bill of Rights provides a convenient, easy-to-use summary of existing law governing the rights of air travelers with disabilities.

The Bill of Rights consists of:

1. The Right to Be Treated with Dignity and Respect.
2. The Right to Receive Information About Services and Aircraft Capabilities and Limitations.
3. The Right to Receive Information in an Accessible Format.
4. The Right to Accessible Airport Facilities.
5. The Right to Assistance at Airports.
6. The Right to Assistance on the Aircraft.
7. The Right to Travel with an Assistive Device or Service Animal.
8. The Right to Receive Seating Accommodations.
9. The Right to Accessible Aircraft Features.
10. The Right to Resolution of a Disability-Related Issue.

 

New Estimate of Prevalence

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss evaluation, diagnosis, and the uncertainty of prevalence estimates.

 At JAMA Pediatrics, Qian Li and colleagues have a research letter titled "Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children and Adolescents in the United States from 2019 to 2020."

Using nationally representative data in the US, the estimated ASD prevalence was 3.14% among children and adolescents in the US in 2019 and 2020. This finding was higher than the reported prevalence from the NHIS in 2014 to 2016 (2.47%),2 Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network in 2018 (2.30%),4 and National Survey of Children’s Health in 2016 (2.50%).3 The estimated prevalence was also higher than that reported in other countries and geographical areas in previous years. Chiarotti and Venerosi6 reviewed ASD prevalence estimates published since 2014, which ranged from 0.42% to 3.13% in Europe, 0.11% to 1.53% in the Middle East, and 1.41% to 2.52% in Australia. The prevalence of ASD is higher in boys than in girls, and a significant difference was found in children with different family economic status in this study. We found the prevalence of ASD increased from 2014 to 2016, decreased from 2016 to 2017, and then increased again from 2017 to 2020.

Proud Boy Anitvaxxer Under Arrest

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.

There is a major overlap between the antivax movement and right-wing extremism.

Zachary Petrizzo at The Daily Beast:

The leader of the right-wing and COVID anti-vax 1776 Restoration Movement—formerly called The People’s Convoy—was arrested near the National Mall on Wednesday after his group came to town protesting non-existent mandates. Far-right Proud Boy member and leader David “Santa” Riddell was taken into custody for a warrant out of Maryland, D.C. Metropolitan Police officers told The Daily Beast on scene. “He was placed under arrest for the arrest warrant that he had issued for him,” D.C. Metropolitan Police assistant chief Jeffery Carroll told The Daily Beast. “We can’t allow somebody out here with an arrest warrant.” D.C. Metropolitan Police also impounded Riddell’s black big rig. The arrest follows the group’s July 4 “attack” on D.C. area highways, where they blocked traffic in upwards of three lanes in each direction on major highways. city.

Disability Pride Month

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the neurodiversity movement and changing attitudes toward disability in general.

From HUD:

 July marks the 2022 celebration of Disability Pride Month and the 32nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a comprehensive civil rights law for persons with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is using this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to support the rights of individuals with disabilities to integration and community living as upheld in the landmark case, Olmstead v. L.C. HUD recognizes that quality, accessible, and affordable housing is vital to fulfilling the civil rights of individuals with disabilities, and that furthering the goals of Olmstead is a core part of our mission.

Vaccine Hesitancy

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.

Heidi J. Larson, Emmanuela Gakidou, and Christopher J.L. Murray have an article in The New England Journal of Medicine titled "The Vaccine-Hesitant Moment."

Although many observers point to the 1998 Lancet article by Wakefield et al. (retracted in 2010) as the source of parental fears that MMR vaccination might cause autism, the search for what could be causing the seeming increase in autism was already brewing. In the United States, however, anxieties were more focused on thimerosal in vaccines as a possible cause of autism.45 The attention to thimerosal emerged in the context of a larger global movement that highlighted concern about mercury in food and drugs and in the environment. In 1999, as part of a review of mercury-related ingredients in all food and drugs, the Food and Drug Administration called for an assessment of thimerosal in childhood vaccines, although the small amount of thimerosal used in vaccines contains only a minute amount of ethylmercury and does not contain any methylmercury (the more dangerous type of mercury), which was the prime focus of the larger review.46 The U.S. Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics followed with a recommendation to remove thimerosal from childhood vaccines as a precautionary measure.47 Even though the recommendation was precautionary, with no evidence of harm, it reinforced public concern and prompted an initial 38% decrease in the hospitals that offered hepatitis B vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines for infants.48

To address the growing concerns, the Institute of Medicine conducted a major review of studies investigating links between vaccines and autism and concluded that neither MMR vaccines (which do not contain thimerosal) nor thimerosal-containing vaccines could cause autism.49 Meanwhile, some attention was shifted to the possibility that the increased number of vaccines given to children could be a cause of autism, a concern that is also not supported by any evidence. Nonetheless, the parental concerns have persisted. One study showed 70 additional MMR vaccine–related injury claims per month in the United States after publication of the report by Wakefield et al.50 Other research pointed to the effect of concern about a link between the MMR vaccine and autism on vaccine hesitancy in Somali immigrant communities in Norway and the United States.51 In 2012, a court ruling in Italy granted compensation for vaccine-related injury on the basis of the report by Wakefield and colleagues, which further amplified public anxiety. Having lost his credentials as a general practitioner in the United Kingdom, Wakefield became an activist, appealing to concerned parents and reinforcing their vaccine anxieties, alongside environmental lawyer turned vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose previous work on the toxic effects of mercury in the environment provided fertile ground for his campaign against thimerosal and vaccine safety risks more broadly. The launch of Google in 1998, followed by a cascade of new Internet-based and social media technologies, allowed widespread access to information, as well as misinformation, and fueled the viral spread of questioning about vaccines (Figure 1).52

A study in Italy investigated YouTube video content between 2007 and 2017 that focused on the suspected link between the MMR vaccine and autism.53,54 In addition to an escalation in the amount of negative content over the 10-year study period, partly reflecting the growth of YouTube after its 2005 launch, the study showed that negative videos about the MMR vaccine outnumbered positive ones by a factor of 3, with the negative videos more widely viewed. Another Italian study of vaccine-related content on YouTube had similar findings. A number of studies investigating HPV vaccine content on YouTube also showed that negative videos attracted a larger following than positive ones.55-57

Concern about one vaccine can also prompt questioning and hesitancy regarding other vaccines, such as the reported risks associated with a dengue vaccine (Dengvaxia) in the Philippines that contributed to a drop in measles vaccination58 and an HPV vaccine scare in Denmark that triggered a decline in MMR vaccine uptake. After HPV vaccine uptake declined (from 95% to just over 30%) after negative media reports, two-dose MMR vaccine coverage also dropped, from 86% to 80% among girls and from 85% to 79% among boys.59

Autism History Museum

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss autism history.

Al Urbanski at Chain Store Age:

Albert Einstein and Andy Warhol are familiar names in science and art museums, but both now appear in a museum you’d not expect to find them—especially since this museum is seen to be unique.

The Autism History Museum at Meridian Mall in Okemos, Mich., was the idea of Xavier DeGroat, a former White House intern who started a foundation to increase opportunities for people with autism. Diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome at the age of four, DeGroat, now 31, studied politics and communications in college and set out on a mission to help unite people on the spectrum with mainstream society. And vice versa.

“My museum is meant to educate families and children with autism about their history on the spectrum,” DeGroat said. “People learn about the culture and social history of autism going back to the early 20th Century when it was thought to be overlapping with schizophrenia.”

But the 1,400-sq-ft. space is also designed as a haven for autistic visitors to the mall. Autistic children can get anxious in public places, and DeGroat’s museum contains a sensory room with dimmer lighting, a fish tank, and stress-reducing toys like squeezy balls to help them get re-oriented.

The launch event for the museum at Meridian Mall, which is owned and operated by CBL Properties, was sponsored by fellow tenants Dick’s Sporting Goods and Launch Trampoline Park-- where the Xavier DeGroat Autism Foundation held a fundraising event last year.

“I met Xavier at the party and, while talking with him about the foundation, he told me about his idea for a museum and asked if we thought the mall would be a good place for it,” said Dan Irvin, general manager of Meridian Mall. “I have never met an individual as motivated and as passionate about his cause as Xavier. He stops at nothing to raise awareness of autism.”

DeGroat has been busy promoting his museum in the media. Fox News host and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee hailed him on his show as one of “Huck’s Heroes.” Michigan native and Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz visited and made a donation to the museum. And on July 8, DeGroat will be back at the Launch Trampoline Park for a dinner featuring speaker Temple Grandin, a noted animal behaviorist with Asperger’s who was played by Claire Danes in the HBO movie, “Temple Grandin.”

Purple Alerts in Florida

The Politics of Autism discusses the problems of wandering and day-to-day safety.

In Alaska and other states, "silver alerts" notify the public and first responders when people with developmental disabilities go missing.  (Silver alerts were originally for the elderly.)

Q McCray,  and Matt Reeser, WFTV:

Chances are you’ve heard of an Amber Alert for missing kids, a Silver Alert for seniors, and a Blue Alert for suspects on the run.

Now officials are set to add another color to Florida’s emergency alert system.

Beginning Friday, a Purple Alert will be put into effect across the state to help notify residents if a person with mental or cognitive disabilities is missing and might be in danger.

From the Florida Department of Law Enforcement:

The Florida Chiefs and Sheriffs, Florida Department of Transportation, Florida Department of Lottery, Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and Florida legislators have worked in conjunction with concerned citizens and organizations to develop Florida's Purple Alert Plan.

The Florida Purple Alert is used to assist in the location of missing adults suffering from a mental or cognitive disability that is not Alzheimer's disease or a dementia-related disorder; an intellectual disability or a developmental disability; a brain injury; other physical, mental or emotional disabilities that are not related to substance abuse; or a combination of any of these and whose disappearance poses a credible threat of immediate danger or seriously bodily harm. Purple Alerts engage the public in the search for the missing person and provide a standardized and coordinated community response.


FDLE PURPLE ALERT NOTIFICATION REGISTRATION


SIGN UP to receive Florida Purple Alerts directly in your email. You can be notified as soon as an alert is issued and potentially play a role in the safe recovery of a missing adult. The alert flyer will be sent directly to your home computer, smart phone or other email capable device. You can modify your existing registration or cancel at any time. Already a subscriber? Update your profile.


Florida Purple Alert Criteria and Frequently Asked Questions

Adults, Children, and Portrayals of Autism

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss depictions of ASD in popular culture.  

From UC Santa Cruz:

New research from UC Santa Cruz shows incremental improvements in the representation of autistic adults in film, television, books, media coverage, and advocacy organization websites. The study, published in the journal Autism in Adulthood, follows up on a 2011 paper, “Infantilizing Autism,” in Disability Studies Quarterly, which had found that popular portrayals of autism were overwhelmingly focused on children.

The earlier paper had raised alarm about lack of representation of adults with autism, which can limit public awareness of the unique needs of some autistic adults, like employment and housing accomodations. At the time, the authors of the 2011 paper—Jennifer L. Stevenson, Bev Harp, and Morton Ann Gernsbacher—theorized that the bias toward representing children might be due to factors like advocacy organizations being led by parents and clinicians and a predominant focus on initial diagnosis and treatment of autism.

However, since then, the neurodiversity movement has continued to grow, especially as autistic self-advocates have worked to shift focus onto how autistic people can flourish throughout their lives. And a new team of researchers, led by UC Santa Cruz Psychology Professor Nameera Akhtar, wondered whether these efforts, and other potential influences, may have affected representations of autism over the past decade. So, they set out to replicate the 2011 study.

“This is an important issue to track, because autistic adults often say it’s very annoying to them that autism is almost always depicted as having to do with children, and it's like that is making them invisible,” Akhtar said. “They talk about how it’s like they fall off a cliff when they turn 18, because there are very few resources available for them after that. But, of course, you don't stop being autistic and needing accommodations when you become an adult.”

To see how trends in representation may have changed, one place the research team looked was the websites of some well-known autism advocacy and charity organizations. In reviewing online materials from 49 state and regional chapters of the Autism Society of America, the team found that 20% of photographs depicting autistic individuals were of adults, compared to only 5% of photos when the 2011 study had originally reviewed these sites. While children were still heavily favored, this was a statistically significant improvement. And 80% of websites at least mentioned autistic adults and linked to related resources. A review of 16 additional autism charity organization websites found similar results.

The study also looked for trends across the entertainment industry. Researchers analyzed 124 movies and television shows released between 2010 and 2019 that featured autistic characters. They found that 58% of these characters were children, whereas 68% of autistic characters were children in the 2011 paper’s original analysis. The new paper says one factor that could be contributing to this improvement is that production teams are increasingly bringing in consultants to advise on proposed portrayals of autism—likely due to calls for more accurate representation from autistic self-advocates.

However, levels of representation were quite different in the publishing industry. The research team reviewed 484 English-language fiction books published between 2010 and 2017 that included a mention of an autistic character in the book’s description. 81% of these characters were children, compared to the 91% at the time of the 2011 paper’s analysis. This was a statistically significant improvement, despite the lingering disparity. The new paper conducted an additional analysis showing that representation was better among books geared toward adult audiences, in which 67% of autistic characters were children.

The research team also analyzed 90 news stories from print, television, and radio media outlets in the United States that featured one autistic individual and were published between April and May of 2020. 58% of these stories featured autistic children, compared to 79% of stories in a similar analysis for the initial study.

But the new paper notes that even though autistic adults are increasingly represented in news media, they may still be portrayed as childlike. For example, the study showed that one-third of news stories that included autistic adults also mentioned their parents. And prior research has found that non-autistic researchers, parents, and clinicians are more likely to be presented as experts on autism than are autistic adults themselves.

Overall, the authors of the new study say that, while their findings show a shift toward more numerical representation for adults in portrayals of autism, there’s still plenty of room for improvement, including in the capacity of those representations to truly reflect the lived experiences of autistic adults. UCSC Associate Professor of Philosophy Janette Dinishak, a coauthor of the new paper, says she hopes future improvements in representation might include increased attention to the intersectionality of autism with gender, race, ethnicity, and other social categories or identities.

“We need to see a continued increase in the number of representations of autistic adults, along with an improvement in the manner of that representation to reflect the heterogeneity of how autism manifests across a person’s lifespan,” she said. “Autistic people need to be part of the conversation on how to improve that representation, and they also need to be given space to represent themselves.”