If any sufferer from this condition hasn't been told by their medical advisors about such apps accross all platforms, they are being severely let down.
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Apple Celebrates Autism Acceptance Month With Two New Videos
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Here is one connection that big pharma and their minions in the government do their best to keep away from the public.
WOAH! This isn't prescribed NewSpeak... if you dare to put out ANY opinion that even HINTS at a possible examination of a possible cause that our masters don't allow us to contemplate, you will be shamed with the indelible mark of "conspiracy theorist". Tin-foil hat jokes will dog you for eternity, because YOU are the problem... not the big money made recklessly on the legislation and indoctrination encircling the masses.
You have been warned.
Other than this one I appreciate all of the civil responses to what I knew wouldn't be a popular stance. Thank you all for the feedback.
I have a friend with a son who is similar to Dillon in terms of his ability to speak and interact, that young man is the obvious case and again I'm happy there are tools like this for people with those severe challenges. Another poster mentioned just accepting differences, to me that's more about where this is for the larger population. I have a colleague who has Asperger's Syndrome. He's told me a bit about what it's like for him but had he not told me about this I'd have just thought he was a little awkward and geeky (geeky being a very positive thing to me). To me that type of thing doesn't need a label, doesn't need classification as a disease, and probably doesn't need "treatment". We all have our quirks and our strengths. I liken it to the DISC test for those of you who are familiar. My friend and colleague is probably a very high C on the DISC, he's a great programmer and developer, his position in this organization leverages that. He wouldn't make a good sales person. I'm sure a lot of people interacting with him in social situations would find him weird but he gets along great with the rest of the development team and me. We're not all going to gel with the world, I'm sure there are many people that want nothing to do with me or find me weird for a host of other reasons, we all find the community of friends we like best and we develop that space and flourish.
I don't feel like relationships are a challenge for me at all (although my partner may disagree
) but I think I'd have a good chance of being diagnosed such if I just claimed the contrary. I'm not an emotionally expressive person, I'm highly analytical, just suppress the emotionally intuitive bit of me and I'd probably be placed somewhere on the spectrum. On the DISC test I'm very high D with a touch of C and I. The person who administered that test to me, a long time friend and mentor, expected me to be high C. That may tell you a bit about how I present to the world.
It appears to have 'spiked drastically', however that's not exactly true. Many more people are being DIAGNOSED in recent years with Autism because of advances in diagnosing and the broadening of the Spectrum. Also awareness of Autism is growing. Thank you, Apple.
The exact app that Dillan is using is using in the videos is called, Assistive Express and is available for both the iPad and iPhone. It is sadly $24.99, but you have to do what you have to do. This definitely is the exact App he is using because it looks identical and has all of the same key functions that the App in the video did. It took me a bit to find it because I was just searching through all of the apps in the "Voices of Autism" segment in the App Store. It's definitely worth it and it will truly be a tool that is unmatched by no other apps in the App Store.
you don't have the Inability to communicate on your own... Yes he uses words like everyone else and yes he types the same letters as you but that doesnt make it easy for him. Empathy goes a long way my friend..
Exactly! And let us remember that when Aspergers became a thing in the 80's (the designation has been around since the 50's but few kids were labeled as such; they were just eccentric or weird or nerdish), it was a separate label. The kid was Aspergers or autistic. Now kids are labeled autistic if they're Aspergers. So that also makes the number of autistics higher.
ALSO, poor families often didn't have their autistic children diagnosed at all, let alone added into the numbers. In fact, back in the 50's, autism was though to be a white, middle-class syndrome, because only parents with enough money were bringing their kids into doctors to be diagnosed. But now, with health insurance and awareness in public schools and such, poor parents can get their child diagnosed rather than ignored. And if a kid is labeled as autistic, then parents can get some economic help for them—which gives them an incentive to take the child to a clinic and find out if the child is acting this way because of autism or something else. So, that ups the numbers.
And finally, physicians are able to diagnosis autism earlier. So, that ups the numbers as well, as you're getting the infants as well as the kids who are in pre-school added in. Honestly, there doesn't have to be any sort of conspiracy to explain this "spike." The numbers go up for anything that can be diagnosed early on and, thus, be actually seen in the population, rather than ignored or dismissed.
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I like this boy. He already seems so much smarter than everything Stephen Hawking had to say.
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I cannot express how angry I am when I see people repost fake science. Maybe schools should give kids lessons on how to evaluate what they read on the internet because there are far too many people willing to believe any conspiracy theory they see/hear. I don't know if it is all the sci-fi movies where some evil corporation commits crimes (Resident Evil, etc.) or the way the media repeats unscientific studies as fact but this anti-science crap influencing actual public policy has to STOP ALREADY!
Now that's the stupidest thing Ive read on MR in a minute. The fact that acceptance of people different than you mean that you are criminalized for being a man... Maybe you should give examples of criminalization for being a man instead of just leveling a baseless accusation.
Why do you so readily believe things like that? I really want to know so maybe I'll know how to get the truth to people like you. Why do you choose one person to get answers from and not another that has demonstrably more relevant credentials? Is it because those quacks give you an easy answer to a difficult problem and offer you easy ways to solve the problems (that don't actually work)?
A label can go a long ways. You, after all, have labeled this person "geeky" which to you is a positive, but, alas, not so much to others--unless the geek is good looking, even sexy, as all geeks are on television. Geeky, after all, used to be a label that got you mocked, beaten up after school, and not taken seriously—and it is a label that assumes you don't have to be this way. The Geek who gets a make-over and becomes a "normal" person is a common trope. Even to this day, geeks are still mocked, ignored, dismissed, etc. And it is still assumed that they could be other than geeky if they wanted to be.
So, I'm glad that "geeky" is a positive to you, but it's not an accurate label, and it can be a detrimental label.
Aspergers is much more useful. A neurotypical person who meets a high functioning Aspie, and doesn't recognize the symptoms, will make certain assumptions. Like "he's ignoring me. Does he not like me?" or "he won't meet my eyes or shake my hands, does he have a problem with me?" They make assumptions based on what they know: if a neurotypical person acted this way it would mean "X". So your friend must mean "X" because he's acting this way.
If, however, your friend says, "I'm Aspergers," then the person he's meeting won't make wrong assumptions as to why he's not shaking their hand or meeting their eyes or looking off as if he has better things to do. They will understand rather than mistake. And they won't, as with the "geek" label, presume that he can be other than this if he'd just change his clothes and take a few lessons in social niceties.
As for "treatment"—the younger an autistic child can be diagnosed the better. The world is the world, and we all have to learn how to live in it. Neurotypical people make this world and embed in it things that they take for granted, things that an Aspie might not see (or might see very differently). It's a little like being colorblind. The world assumes you can see the color red and uses it for important things. But if you can't see it, or you see it in a very different way...well, you need to know this, otherwise you could be in trouble. If a parent knows their child is Aspergers, they can teach him how to see things he might otherwise miss or misunderstand, and, thus, have a better life. That is the end goal for any diagnosis isn't it? So, no, it's not a disease. But it is something that needs to be seen and understood. And it won't be if it isn't labeled right.
People choose to believe those people who share their opinions regardless if that person is even qualified to have an opinion in the first place.
It makes communication more efficient for Dillon. Imagine trying to communicate to people by passing Post-Its.
I don't really understand "Autism Acceptence". What do you accept? It's like cancer Acceptence. Autism just is, like diabetes, heart disease or something else. A medical tragedy.
Oh hey I read the thread. I got it now.
There was some early evidence that it was linked to age of sperm. Don't know where that went. The diagnostic uncertainty of many of these disorders and their relative impact on functionality from quirky to total functional loss is a problem many psych disorders face without strong known biological basis. The uncertainty can impact the incidence of diagnosis because some diagnosis become trendy (bipolar, gluten sensitivity, ADHD) while diseases with more clear biological basis (pancreatic cancer) cannot change incidence so dramatically. The uncertainty of diagnosis of such conditions make all research more difficult.
Oh hey I read the thread. I got it now.
There was some early evidence that it was linked to age of sperm. Don't know where that went. The diagnostic uncertainty of many of these disorders and their relative impact on functionality from quirky to total functional loss is a problem many psych disorders face without strong known biological basis. The uncertainty can impact the incidence of diagnosis because some diagnosis become trendy (bipolar, gluten sensitivity, ADHD) while diseases with more clear biological basis (pancreatic cancer) cannot change incidence so dramatically. The uncertainty of diagnosis of such conditions make all research more difficult.
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It doesn't matter what I say since it's not possible to have an intelligent conversation with a person confessing to the blind faith of modern "science".
Since others read this I will say that so-called main stream "science" has become nothing more than an extension of mega corporations marketing divisions. These people own the universities and educational institutions, they own the scientific journals, they own the so-called scientists, the also own the governmental regulatory bodies as well as the politicians. The main stream media is owned by the same interests. When it comes down to it, it's just business. Just like wars.
A scientist publishing anything important that contradicts the interests of the mega corporations will find himself/herself ostracised from the "scientific" community. Scientific research is sponsored by these greedy bastards if the outcome of it will further their agenda. Your scientists have become nothing more than prostitutes, just as the politicians, the media and just about any institution exerting major influence on people in general.
There is ample evidence of serious even deadly side effects from vaccination, that it can be linked to causing autism is not very surprising. That the CDC covers up liks between MMR and autism as well as other side effects of vaccines is just the SOP of the criminal racket that is called the "government".
Anyone interested in understanding more than the dogma served for breakfast, lunch and dinner by the corporate media can easily do some research themselves and draw their own conclusions.
I just worked as the graphics operator for a "Big Pharma" event and they had many fascinating speakers mostly talking about how technology can democratize medicine so that more people have access to better healthcare by keeping costs down and making sure the information is more widely disseminated (hmmm, these are the scary, evil people??). The final speaker was a quadriplegic man named Henry Evans who uses technology to communicate and escape his bedridden body. He has helped develop a bunch of gadgets that he can operate just with blinking his eyes and clicking a button with the thumb he CAN move. He attended the meeting remotely via one of those robots hospitals use so that a doctor can do their rounds remotely and drove it on/off stage himself. He has also used the robot to visit Japan and a museum where he normally could never go (that museum offers the robots for anyone who can't physically visit the museum). He can also open his refrigerator, scratch his own head (can you imagine not being able to scratch an itch by yourself?), fly a drone and talk to people via the computer with the special software/hardware. Another speaker showed some promising methods for making it easier for completely blind or deaf people to experience the visual world to be more independent. Like a vest that converts a camera image or sound into a physical sensation (like the haptic taps on the watch but more sophisticated) that the person learns to convert into the object or sounds that created it. So inspirational how technology can change people's lives, especially for people who are locked into another world. And on a sad note, the meeting had to have security people because there are so many violent, conspiracy theory nut jobs that try to cause trouble at their evil "Big Pharma" events.
This Ted talk was included as a segment for the speech he gave at my meeting:
https://www.ted.com/talks/henry_evans_and_chad_jenkins_meet_the_robots_for_humanity?language=en
How can something stop already? You are asking for an action to happen that has already happened. Is this some weird paradox? Tell you what, you learn to use the English language correctly first before you start dishing out orders ok ALREADY!!
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Is this for real?
Where exactly do you get your information that all these companies are "evil" and filled with people who only want the money and don't actually care about curing diseases and making life better for people? Through working live events for companies involved in "Big Pharma", "Big Ag" and charities like the Clinton Foundation I actually meet these people and listen to what they tell their employees and partners and they have ALL been lovely people expressing a deep desire to help people. And btw, people like you always resort to calling me a shill when I don't agree with your views. These companies don't pay me, the AV company does.
There is NOT ample evidence that vaccines are harmful, quite the contrary. There are "studies" that attempt to prove harm using methods intentionally designed to falsely create the results they want. The original anti-vaxxer Wakefield has been requested to repeat his results like every other scientist is required to do and he refuses. Maybe he can't find another 7 kids to take blood from at his kid's birthday party, lol.
BTW- I have a chemical engineering degree. I have no "delusion" about how scientific discovery works. YOU have the delusion that all science is bad-intentioned. It would be lovely if your Rupert Sheldrake actually COULD prove that his theories about telepathy, psychic dogs and telekinesis were real things!
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I love it when ordinary people think they know science more than scientists.
It makes me angry too. Some conspiracy theories are relatively harmless like the moon landing hoax one. This anti vaccine movement based on nonsense is killing people, I find it both sad and maddening that it gets passed around as fact when theres no evidence to back it up and plenty to say its wrong. Its just so frustrating to see.