A Last Day of Great Presentations
Here in Orlando it's the last day of the Autism Society of America conference. According to ASA CEO and executive director Lee Grossman, over 2,000 participants are here for the conference.
What a great way to end a fascinating conference, by having Temple Grandin, PhD, give the final keynote speech of the event. Dr. Grandin is very well known in the autism community, but for those of you "neurotypicals" who don't know of her, she is, according to the conference program, "arguably the most accomplished and well-known adult with autism in the world." She writes, presents and makes many media appearances on autism. What I didn't know about her, however, is that her PhD is actually in livestock science. She designs widely used and highly respective livestock facilities used by farmers and ranchers internationally.
Dr. Grandin gave a very frank talk on simple adaptations for kids with autism. For example, many children on the spectrum have visual processing disorders. She's found some children get improvement from simple colored lenses in over-the-counter sunglasses, for example. If an intervention is simple and cheap, there is no reason not to give it a try. However, when its expensive and/or could be dangerous, she wants to see science to back it up before you try it. "I like my science hard when it comes to neuroscience," she said.
She also talked about her Three Family Rule for interventions that don't have hard evidence to back them up. If she can find at least three families who can convince her that an intervention has helped them, they she'll accept it. (And she requires a lot more to be convinced than just someone telling her "It worked for me.") For example, she's had many families prove to her that a gluten free/casein free diet can help (though it doesn't help everyone, but since it's simple and relatively cheap, its worth a try). On the other hand, she hasn't had three families convince her of chelation.
Dr. Grandin epitomizes what I've seen quite a lot of here at this conference - there are many, many individuals with autism who can really achieve an impressively high level of function. The next session I attended today was on marriages where one spouse is on the spectrum and the other spouse is neurotypical. Thee marriages are more common than I ever realized, and can be very successful and happy ones. At the conference here, we all wear little flags on our badges to let others know our background. Mine, for example, says "Press." Others include "Occupational Therapist," "Speech-language Pathologist," and "Parent." I've seen more than a few people here who have two flags, one that reads "Parent," and another that reads "Individual with Autism."
Though the conference is winding down (I am very interested in the very last session I plan to attend today, though, on the court battles and evidence surrounding vaccines and autism), I'll be remembering and calling on the information I've learned here for quite a long time to come. Thanks for checking out my conference blog, and stay tuned to ADVANCE, both in print and on the web, for more on autism and the ASA conference!