So many issues haven’t made it on to the election radar. Indigenous health, rural and remote health, preventative health…and the list goes on.

While there has been some talk of improving services for children with a disability, Bob Buckley, Convenor of Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia, would like to see far more action.

He writes:

“Bill Shorten and Tony Abbott raised services for children with a disability in the election campaign but their promises must be practical to win my vote.

Ten minutes in a brain scanner could be all it takes to diagnose autism. So says Christine Ecker at the Institute of Psychiatry, UK, who has developed software that identifies the anatomical signatures of the condition.

Ecker's team carried out MRI scans on the brains of 20 adult males with autism, 20 with attention-deficit disorder and 20 healthy controls. They used a machine-learning tool called a support vector machine (SVM) – which analyses data and identifies patterns – to identify key differences between the groups, such as in the cortical folding and curvature of the brain.

Petrina Berry, August 15, 2010

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been criticised for not doing enough for children with autism during this election.

Autism Queensland says Labor's proposal to give teachers cash incentives for improved attendance and literacy and numeracy results will not change outcomes for students with autism and Asperger's syndrome.

A respected and revered pioneer in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders has died. Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas passed away in California.

Dr. Lovaas expanded on the use of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) which helps people with autism learn to function in day-to-day society. His work began in the 1960s and helped thousands of children with autism across the globe. ABA is evidence-based treatment that proves successful in about half of the patients treated, and can offer the chance for a more productive life.

In Reno, Deborah Schumacher's son, Cliff, was the first child to receive treatment from Dr. Lovaas. In the early 1990's, Schumacher said she knew "something was clearly not developmentally right" with her little boy, "but i didn't know what was wrong." She learned of Dr. Lovaas's methods and classes at UCLA, and moved to southern California with Cliff when he was three years old.

"He got 42 hours a week of one-on-one work in the beginning," she said. "That only took-- in his case-- about a year and a half and he went from being non-verbal to being able to handle first grade."

"You have Dr. Lovaas a cheerful bouyancy and a dead seriousness about what's at stake here, and that's the life of a child," said Patrick Ghezzi, Ph.D., who uses Dr. Lovaas's treatments to help children with autism in Reno.

HEATH GILMORE, July 26, 2010

AUTISTIC children are being forced into mainstream classes because of a lack of places in specialised learning groups in NSW schools, an inquiry has heard.

The families and teachers of autistic children have complained to the NSW parliamentary inquiry about the failure to provide an adequate number of places, despite a sharp increase in students diagnosed with learning problems.

An international symposium on the role nutrition plays in the prevention and management of pregnancy complications and early childhood diseases such as autism, asthma, obesity and cancer will be held in Adelaide this Friday, 30 July.

"Nutritional genomics is an emerging area of science that is making a significant difference in our approach to enhancing health outcomes by improving our understanding of how to prevent harmful genetic changes that cause developmental defects and degenerative diseases," says Professor Michael Fenech from CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences.

The opposition did not bring down Kevin Rudd, nor the Labor Party's factions. The answer lies within the man's complex personality.

...

Others say that while Rudd never yelled or became visibly angry in encounters, his displeasure was pretty obvious. Often business people found themselves being lectured by the PM who had a tendency to suck all the oxygen out of the room, ruining any real exchange of views. One chief executive goes as far as saying: "I think he suffered a complete lack of empathy. It was almost like he had a form of Aspergers or autism."

20 June 2010 | 01:05:33 PM | Source: AAP

National Advisory Council on Mental Health chairman John Mendoza tendered his resignation on Friday in a letter to Health Minister Nicola Roxon. (AAP)

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's top mental health adviser has quit accusing the government of a lack of vision and commitment to a problem that affects millions of Australians.
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National Advisory Council on Mental Health chairman John Mendoza tendered his resignation on Friday in a letter to Health Minister Nicola Roxon.

His letter has been obtained by Fairfax newspapers.

A CHILD with Asperger’s syndrome could be forced out of a Wantirna Catholic school by the actions of some parents.

Devout Catholic parents Emily and Mark Jones just wanted to give their son Ed a Catholic education, but are considering removing him from St Luke’s Primary School after what they say has been a campaign of intolerance from some school parents and students.

They will urgently meet with the school this week, but in the meantime are meeting principals of two other schools at which they are considering enrolling him.

Eran Segev

On Thursday, 13 May 2010

Time: 6:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Place: Lecture theatre, Innovations Building, Eggleston Rd, ANU

Free admission

No need to book but note that the theatre seats 106.

Various groups with a variety of agendas have all kinds of ideas about autism. Looking at their claims can be one step towards active skepticism.

Eran Segev is a father of 3 boys, an IT consultant, and the President of Australian Skeptics Inc (Sydney Skeptics).

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