WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

Does heaven exist? With well over 100,000 plus recorded and described spiritual experiences collected over 15 years, to base the answer on, science can now categorically say yes. Furthermore, you can see the evidence for free on the website allaboutheaven.org.

Available on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086J9VKZD
also on all local Amazon sites, just change .com for the local version (.co.uk, .jp, .nl, .de, .fr etc.)

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

This book, which covers Visions and hallucinations, explains what causes them and summarises how many hallucinations have been caused by each event or activity. It also provides specific help with questions people have asked us, such as ‘Is my medication giving me hallucinations?’.

Available on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088GP64MW 
also on all local Amazon sites, just change .com for the local version (.co.uk, .jp, .nl, .de, .fr etc.)


Illnesses and disabilities

Autism, savantism and other forms of PDD

Category: Illness or disabilaties

Type

Involuntary

Introduction and description

 

Autism is a disorder of neural development in children and babies.  In effect, various parts of the brain cease to develop in a child and thus parts of the brain are unformed.  The disorder alters how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize. 

It is just one of a number of disorders now all grouped within the heading of  ‘pervasive developmental disorder’ (PDD), in effect brain damage of a baby or child which results principally in behavioural and communication problems rather than sickness or fragility.  Thus the classification principally covers problems with the brain rather than problems with the rest of the body of a child or infant. 

Names, names  names

The five main PDD disorders are:

 
  • Asperger syndrome
  • Autism itself
  • Rett syndrome
  • CDD -  childhood disintegrative disorder
  • PDD-NOS - there is then a grouping PDD not otherwise specified

Autism, Asperger syndrome and PDD-NOS are often called the autism spectrum disorders (ASD).  All of which will not help parents with a brain damaged child in the least and can lead to considerable confusion and further distress.

To make things even more complicated there is also a syndrome called FG syndrome (FGS; also known as Opitz-Kaveggia syndrome) which also causes brain damage in children.  This causes both brain damage and physical anomalies. The symptoms however, do not differ significantly from autism, although occasionally a person will develop an abnormally large head.  It is marked by  partial or complete loss of the corpus callosum. About a third of reported cases of people with FG syndrome die in infancy.

 

I think we need to pause and take stock here.

The current approach to medicine is based on symptoms and not causes. 

In symptom based medicine the doctor tries to identify all the different symptoms of an illness and then having giving that grouping of symptoms a name, he then looks in his book of pharmaceuticals for a named illness and prescribes 'medicine' for it.  There is no attempt to find the cause.   He is thus in some senses a sort of legal drug dealer [I'm sorry if this sounds a little emotive - but facts is facts].

And incidentally saying that autism is 'caused by' an enlarged prefrontal cortex, or any of the other grave pronouncements made by the medical profession is incorrect, it isn't caused by this, this is just another symptom, a cause is knowing why you have an enlarged prefrontal cortex.

 

As a consequence of this approach to medicine, there are now an extremely large number of names for what is, in effect, abnormal brain development or brain damage in a child.  If you think about this for a moment, you should be able to see that for each area of the brain where something has gone wrong, you could get a different symptom.  If you now think about all the possible combinations of brain areas you should be able to see that there are hundreds if not thousands of possible combinations in reality, some of which may be one-offs.   It is thus not particularly helpful to anyone with the illness to be told they have a particular type of autism. 

 

I'm sure it gives doctors a huge boost to their egos to know they can remember all those big long names and occasionally they may even be able to remember which medication they have been told to prescribe for this very long name, but the more names, the bigger the risk that they have got it wrong, and of course they still don't know the cause and without knowing the cause, handing out pharmaceuticals is indeed a very very risky strategy.

For our purposes, it is enough that we group all these under the heading of brain damage to unborn babies, babies and children, from whatever cause.

One of the reasons that they are here on this web site is because some autistic children and adults can develop or demonstrate extraordinary skills - as such they are an extraordinary source in finding out more about the spiritual - meaning functional - side of us.  In effect we can learn about the human being package software for a change instead of always concentrating [as medics do] on the hardware.  By watching them and comparing with other children, we can see which functions we have and which brain processor they run on.

They are often very gifted artistically, or musically, occasionally demonstrate high levels of number crunching ability and rather than memory skills, they often have perfect Perception recall.

All of this one would classify as a spiritual experience, as they are obtaining, via their Composer, functional abilities that others do not have, as well as access to their ‘Perception logs’ – something only possible via the Composer.

The name given to these gifted folks is the savant.

Savants

A savant is a person who expresses extraordinary mental abilities, often in the fields of numerical calculation, art, or music but usually set within the context of autism.  

It is worth adding that the word Savant can also mean a person  of great knowledge in a particular subject, without remarking on the person's overall state of intellect. Savantism in children is a relatively rare phenomenon. Depending on estimates, from 0.5% to 10% of individuals with ASD show unusual abilities.

 

Most autistic savants have very extensive mental abilities. They can memorise facts, numbers, license plates, maps, and extensive lists of sports and weather statistics. Some savants can mentally note and then recall back perfectly a very long series of music, numbers, or speech.  Some other autistic savant skills include:

  • lightning-fast arithmetic calculations, including finding prime factorisations
  • perfect recall of past events
  • precisely estimating distances by sight
  • calculating the day of the week for any given date over the span of tens of thousands of years
  • perfect perception of passing time without a clock

A large proportion of  individuals with ASD also show superior skills in perception and attention, relative to the general population.

Symptoms

 

The signs of autism and PDD all begin before a child is three years old. Parents usually notice signs in the first two years of their child's life. The signs usually develop gradually, but some autistic children first develop more normally and then regress.

Because the disease occurs during childhood, and affects those parts of the brain associated with Memory and Reasoning, children with the disease are not able to learn behavioural functions, which means their behaviour is often characterised by an inability to maintain the social interaction which comes with learnt behavioural functions.  Damage to the Reasoning function sometimes results in both irrational behaviour, but also restricted and repetitive behavior.

They may display an inability to relate to others, have an extremely limited use of language, and have problems with understanding 'system' and the norms of society.  They may be humourless, their behaviour may be more 'ritualistic', so not the behaviour of a learning individual and they may have an obsession with individual events whilst at the same time being unable to classify these events into any form of pattern”.

 

It also affects communication.  People with autism have real difficulty with social interaction. The autistic Temple Grandin described her inability to understand the social communication – the small talk and rattle we tend to take for granted -  of people without her problems, as leaving her feeling "like an anthropologist on Mars".  This too of course is a behavioural ability.  This same problem means that it often proves to be difficult for the autistic child and adult to make and keep friends.  For them, the quality of friendships is what matters, not the number of friends, and any lack of quality makes them more lonely.

But what lovable children they can be.......

Autistic infants also show less attention to ‘social stimuli’.  A child who starts to learn behavioural responses will smile, even if they are not happy, to provoke the right response in those around them, but an autistic child only smiles when he or she is actually happy.

They do not learn how to use eye contact to maintain attention, they do not understand the concept of ‘taking turns’ or how to use body movements to express themselves – all learnt behaviour.  Three- to five-year-old autistic children are less likely to approach others spontaneously, imitate and respond to emotions, and communicate nonverbally – all learnt behaviour.

A 2007 study interviewed parents of 67 children with ASD and reported that about two-thirds of the children had periods of severe tantrums and about one-third had a history of aggression, with tantrums significantly more common than in non-autistic children with language impairments.  Again this is because they cannot learn behavioural functions, they express directly what they feel without modification.

So the pattern is very clear. Memory has either gone or is impaired and because it has gone reason cannot operate, new functions cannot be learnt and behaviour cannot be modified.

Doug with his dog

But autistic children do love and form attachments which are genuine as opposed to atttachments with ulterior motives.  All the Emotions they display are, so to speak, from the heart and completely true to what they actually feel.  There is no manipulation of the emotion to suit the moment.  If an autistic child says he or she loves you, he or she does.  You know they are not after the sweety bag you have in your pocket.

Causes

 

All the 'big Six' causes of most illnesses and diseases are implicated in autism, but with the difference that the damage is mostly caused in the womb.

I say mostly because there is also the real possibility that some of the damage may be caused in their first few months, we will see why in a moment 

There are numerous papers that try to say that autism is somehow genetically inherited, because autism occasionally runs in families, but that is missing the point completely.  Often the children and the adults are exposed to the same environmental causes.  Thus Toxins, fungi, parasites, pharmaceuticals, bacterial infection and viral infection are all implicated and all these affect the whole family.

Viral infection

Autism is associated with prenatal maternal infection with a large number of viruses including the rubella virus, and cytomegalovirus

the presence of cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1), herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV2), human herpes virus 6 (HHV6), BK virus (BKV), JC virus (JCV), and simian virus 40 (SV40) was tested  in .. tissue .. belonging to 15 [deceased] autistic patients and 13 controls [and showed that] BKV, JCV, and SV40 combined are significantly more frequent among autistic patients ….Also polyviral infections tend to occur more frequently in the brains of autistic patients compared to controls …. Follow-up studies exploring vertical viral transmission as a possible pathogenetic mechanism in autistic disorder should focus on, but not be limited to, the role of polyomaviruses.  PMID: 20345322

 

Cats .....a blessing but also a curse

Bacterial infection

Clostridia bacteria species are associated with autism (these bacteria are present in greater numbers in the guts of autistic children). The bacteria responsible for Lymes disease is implicated in some cases of autism and may be passed from mother to fetus.

Parasites

There are a number of parasites implicated in brain disorders of all sorts but the one that appears to cause the most cases is Toxoplasma gondii the parasite carried by the domestic cat.  See Being with cats.

Fungal infection

The following paper shows there is a clear link, but the ultimate cause is still antibiotics, as the disruption of gut flora has enabled the fungi to grow; thus fungi may be a symptom not a cause.  Note that Arabitol or arabinitol is a sugar alcohol and can be used to test for fungal infections such as Candida albicans or other yeast/fungus species.

The level of D-arabinitol (DA) and the ratio of D-/L-arabinitol (DA/LA) in the urine of children with autism were investigated. ....The level of DA is significantly higher (P < 0.05) in the urine of autistic children PMID: 22079796

 

Pharmaceuticals

The eHealthme site collects the Adverse Drug reports submitted by doctors to the FDA and SEDA in the USA.  It then summarises them for ease of use.  We originally provided a direct link to the Autism sections listed on this site and the pharmaceuticals that can cause it, but the eHealthme website frequently reorganise the site and thus break the links.  Thus in order to find out which pharmaceuticals are implicated in Autism

  • Follow the LINK to the eHealthme website
  • Using the ‘All conditions’ index find the appropriate entry
  • Now scroll down until you get to the section marked ‘Drugs that could cause

The list shows you all the drugs implicated in CAUSING Autism as well as the number of people who have made a complaint to their doctor and had their case reported by him.  Note that it is up to the doctor whether he reports or not.

As of October 2016, about 250 pharmaceuticals were in this list.

This eHealthme chart applies to the USA  only and is from Adverse Drug reports only.

Pharmaceuticals  can cause autism if taken by the Mum during pregnancy, they may also cause autism if given to very young children whose immune system cannot cope with the dose.  The eHealthme web site has started to compile a very extensive list of all the pharmaceuticals that are linked with autism.  The reports are not anecdotal.  All are derived from the FDA and SEDA Adverse Drug Reports, thus this is official reporting via well recognised channels.  The only difficulty with the site is that it appears to have separated out three categories, so you may need to do a bit more searching

  • Autism
  • Autism spectrum disorder
  • Autistic behaviour
 

Given the difficulty of correlating autism - which might only become apparent as a child becomes a toddler - with the early administration of pharms, it is deeply worrying that so many pharms have already been implicated.  This may be the tip of a very very big iceberg.

One area of great concern is the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in all children and by pregnant mothers.  Antibiotics can destroy gut flora and there is now a proven link between the presence of gut flora and protection of the brain from pathogens.  In effect, the gut flora provide a very key line of defence.  Destroy that line of defence and the brain is open via the CSF to pathogenic attack.

There is increasing evidence that host-microbe interactions play a key role in maintaining homeostasis. Alterations in gut microbial composition is associated with marked changes in behaviors relevant to mood, pain and cognition, establishing the critical importance of the bi-directional pathway of communication between the microbiota and the brain in health and disease. Dysfunction of the microbiome-brain-gut axis has been implicated in stress-related disorders such as depression, anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. Bacterial colonization of the gut is central to postnatal development and maturation of key systems that have the capacity to influence central nervous system (CNS) programming and signaling, including the immune and endocrine systems. Moreover, there is now expanding evidence for the view that enteric microbiota plays a role in early programming and later response to acute and chronic stress.  PMID: 24997043

Vaccines, Food allergies and allergies

 

This has become such an emotive area that one is almost afraid to mention it. 

But there are clear reasons why vaccines can cause autism, and can also cause allergies. 

I urge you to read these sections, as although the description is not complex, the cause/effect chain needs to be carefully followed. 

Many cases of autism are not caused by vaccines, and those who have seen the link tend to undermine their own findings by saying all vaccines cause autism or all autism is caused by vaccines - neither statement is true.  On the other hand there is evidence that some vaccines have caused some autism.

The pro-vaccine camp appear to believe that somehow those in the anti-vaccine camp want to banish all vaccines.  But this too is not true.   Vaccines could be made much much safer without a great deal of effort or money, if our health service and the vaccine manufacturers were made aware of the problem.  At the moment the scientific community appear to be ignoring all the evidence because they consider it badly argued.  I hope my sections help, they are not badly argued and hopefully are simple enough that even a child would understand.

How could things improve?  Well they might consider using:

  • routes that do not link to the brain - The oral route instead of injection or worse nasal sprays, that can enter the brain through the blood stream and olfactory organs
  • dead pathogens - Started to use 'dead' viruses, instead of live viruses, especially viruses that are latent - that is can linger indefinitely in the body in hiding waiting for a time of low immunity
  • non toxic experient - an excipient that was totally inert - containing no substances that had any similarity with foods, or nerves or other bodily parts, the DNA of the human body or substances to which we might in future come into contact - so no more peanut oil and no more milk proteins added to the excipient!! 
  • non toxic adjuvant - And it might be helpful if they stopped using toxic metals such as aluminium, which has been proven to destroy the blood brain barrier, as the adjuvant.

Toxins and heavy metals

 

There is a very clear link between brain damage in general and toxins, including heavy metals, particularly lead and mercury, although others too are implicated.  By extension, a mother who has a high number of dental amalgam fillings that are leaking, were badly done, or who had dental repair work may have mercury in her blood stream which is then passed to the baby.

Lead and mercury damage the brain.  They are clearly linked to ADHD, for example, which in some cases apears to be a very mild form of autism.  For example:

There are over 165 studies that have focused on Thimerosal, an organic-mercury (Hg) based compound, used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, and found it to be harmful. Of these, 16 were conducted to specifically examine the effects of Thimerosal on human infants or children with reported outcomes of death; acrodynia; poisoning; allergic reaction; malformations; auto-immune reaction; Well's syndrome; developmental delay; and neurodevelopmental disorders, including tics, speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism. In contrast, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that Thimerosal is safe and there is "no relationship between [T]himerosal[-]containing vaccines and autism rates in children." This is puzzling because, in a study conducted directly by CDC epidemiologists, a 7.6-fold increased risk of autism from exposure to Thimerosal during infancy was found. The CDC's current stance that Thimerosal is safe and that there is no relationship between Thimerosal and autism is based on six specific published epidemiological studies coauthored and sponsored by the CDC. The purpose of this review is to examine these six publications and analyze possible reasons why their published outcomes are so different from the results of investigations by multiple independent research groups over the past 75+ years. PMID: 24995277

 

But in the heated debate about thimerosal, the lead in petrol [very very high in America where gas guzzler cars predominate], and dental amalgam fillings, one should not forget all the other toxins with which we are subjected.  Insecticides, pesticides, herbicides ad so on as well as household chemicals in abundance are implicated in brain damage.

In the past decade, the number of epidemiological publications addressing environmental chemical exposures and autism has grown tremendously. These studies are important because it is now understood that environmental factors play a larger role in causing autism than previously thought and because they address modifiable risk factors that may open up avenues for the primary prevention of the disability associated with autism. In this review, we covered studies of autism and estimates of exposure to tobacco, air pollutants, volatile organic compounds and solvents, metals (from air, occupation, diet, dental amalgams, and thimerosal-containing vaccines), pesticides, and organic endocrine-disrupting compounds such as flame retardants, non-stick chemicals, phthalates, and bisphenol A. We included studies that had individual-level data on autism, exposure measures pertaining to pregnancy or the 1st year of life, valid comparison groups, control for confounders, and adequate sample sizes. Despite the inherent error in the measurement of many of these environmental exposures, which is likely to attenuate observed associations, some environmental exposures showed associations with autism, especially traffic-related air pollutants, some metals, and several pesticides, with suggestive trends for some volatile organic compounds (e.g., methylene chloride, trichloroethylene, and styrene) and phthalates. Whether any of these play a causal role requires further study.  PMID:  25199954

Hopefully, now the links have been made we will get more studies into this area.

Radiation

 

If the radiation is at the resonant frequency of one of the organs in your brain it will resonate it.  So, for example, the signals coming off electrical apparatus, including phones, TVs, bedside clocks, microwaves, as well as over headpower lines or similar sources may just have the right frequency to act as a resonator.   All radiation whether 'cosmic' or electromagnetic impacts our bodies and depending on its frequency it resonates different parts of us.  The reason that nuclear radiation is so dangerous is that it impacts cells, but what we appear to have overlooked is that all radiation impacts some part of us.

Every aggregate in our bodies - organs, cells, the body itself, has natural ‘resonance’.  Resonance is a substance’s natural tendency to oscillate – vibrate – at maximum amplitude at certain frequencies, known as the thing’s resonant frequency.  And the brain organs can resonate too, so autism in a child may be being caused by electrical apparatus, which will not affect any of the adults in the house because the size of their organs may be different.  But other children may be affected...........

San Francisco-based photographer Timothy Archibald
began photographing his autistic son, Elijah, when he
was five years old, clearly Elijah is more clued up about
Faraday cages than his father

Autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) are defined behaviorally, but they also involve multileveled disturbances of underlying biology that find striking parallels in the physiological impacts of electromagnetic frequency and radiofrequency radiation exposures (EMF/RFR). .......this paper documents how behaviors in ASCs may emerge from alterations of electrophysiological oscillatory synchronization, how EMF/RFR could contribute to these by de-tuning the organism, and policy implications of these vulnerabilities. It details evidence for mitochondrial dysfunction, immune system dysregulation, neuroinflammation and brain blood flow alterations, altered electrophysiology, disruption of electromagnetic signaling, synchrony, and sensory processing, de-tuning of the brain and organism, with autistic behaviors as emergent properties emanating from this pathophysiology. Changes in brain and autonomic nervous system electrophysiological function and sensory processing predominate, seizures are common, and sleep disruption is close to universal. All of these phenomena also occur with EMF/RFR exposure that can add to system overload ('allostatic load') in ASCs by increasing risk, and can worsen challenging biological problems and symptoms; conversely, reducing exposure might ameliorate symptoms of ASCs by reducing obstruction of physiological repair. Various vital but vulnerable mechanisms such as calcium channels may be disrupted by environmental agents, various genes associated with autism or the interaction of both. With dramatic increases in reported ASCs that are coincident in time with the deployment of wireless technologies, we need aggressive investigation of potential ASC-EMF/RFR links. The evidence is sufficient to warrant new public exposure standards benchmarked to low-intensity (non-thermal) exposure levels now known to be biologically disruptive, and strong, interim precautionary practices are advocated. PMID: 24113318

Nutritional deprivation, including vitamin and  mineral supplements


 

Nutritional deprivation can cause autism - both during pregnancy if the mother is nutritionally deprived and during childhood as the child is growing up.  Mineral imbalance - deficiencies and  overdose, can result in brain damage.  But there also appears to be a link between the giving of vitamin supplements to children and autism.

The eHealthme site, since its reorganisation has lost the data we collected on the link between Vitamin supplements and autism in general:

eHealthme:  On Sep, 6, 2014: 38,361 people reported to have side effects when taking Vitamins. Among them, 21 people (0.05%) have Autism.

but it does have a more general chart showing the adverse drug reports submitted for Vitamin supplements in general

Four years data seem to be missing here, but the trend is at least clear.

 

The figures seem statistically insignificant, which is why statistics is a flawed science [and I am able to say this because I am a mathematicien and logician], as one has to realise that to have been able to correlate the giving of a vitamin with autism requires considerable observative powers on the part of Mums.  Mums have been told by all the magazines and health food stores that because the food now available to them from intensive farming is without any nutritional value whatsover [and indeed this may be true] the solution is to give their children vitamin tablets.  Not, notice, to find a source of food which is better or organic and nutritional or to grow their own.  And the result is clearly in some cases 'poisoning'.

Psychological trauma

For the reasons explained in this section, extreme emotion causes brain 'surges', thus terrifying events could result in brain damage.  See also Watching horror movies.  

Increasing evidence indicates that brain inflammation is involved in the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric diseases. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by social and learning disabilities that affect as many as 1/80 children in the USA. ..... Many children with ASD regress at about age 3 years, often after a specific event such as reaction to vaccination, infection, stress or trauma implying some epigenetic triggers.  ASD children respond disproportionally to stress and are also affected by food and skin allergies. Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) is secreted under stress and together with neurotensin (NT) stimulates mast cells and microglia resulting in focal brain inflammation and neurotoxicity. PMID: 23570274

I am unsure what responding disproportionally to stress means.  Does it mean perhaps they are sensitive, empathetic, kind, gentle, easily hurt, quiet, loving, lovable,  caring, easily frightened? 

In that case these are the children we need aren't they?

 

 

Hypoxia

Hypoxia in the mother from smoking or air pollution and then as the child grows [assuming the little soul doesn't smoke] air pollution, which causes both hypoxia and toxin problems. 

See both Hypoxia and Hypoxia side-effects

 

 

 

Physical damage/surgery

Any of the other forms of damage to the brain which might constitute physical damage may also be responsible for autism including  Brain haemorrhage,  Brain tumour,  Concussion,  Stroke,  Meningitis,  Traumatic injury to the brain and head banging,  Encephalitis,  EpilepsyHydrocephalus,  Epidural hematoma and  Atonia and atonic seizures.

And a difficult birth may also cause autism.

Treatment

 
 

Symptom based medicine

Mercifully, doctors at least recognise that brain damage is something pharmaceuticals cannot be used for, but the drug companies keep on trying none the less, the following is from eHealthme....  The following drugs are reported to be used in the treatment of Autism. :

  • Abilify 
  • Invega
  • Risperdal 
  • Risperidone 

You will find these on the site using the search engine, along with side effects, adverse drug reactions [and deaths].

Cause based treatment

If damage has been done it has been done, but it is still essential you find the cause in order to stop the rot and prevent it happening again to another child, or worsening the condition your little child has.

How it works

 

It may be helpful here to turn to the section on the Model of the Mind.

There is also a generic section on How spiritual experience works, which may also be helpful.

Autistic children are getting almost continuous spiritual experience, and the ultimate cause is brain damage but damage that suppresses intellect and thus leaves the child or adult open to continual inspiration.  If they are able to hear music, for example, they are undoubtedly hearing songlines, which makes them exceedingly special.  They have the key to the 'lost chord'. 

It may be of interest to read the section on Brain damage and children as well, to get some additional background.

More details about which parts of the brain may be affected are to be found in Autism and brain damage.

References and further reading

  •  
    Biomed Res Int. 2014;2014:247218. doi: 10.1155/2014/247218. Epub 2014 Jun 4.  Methodological issues and evidence of malfeasance in research purporting to show thimerosal in vaccines is safe.  Hooker B1, Kern J2, Geier D3, Haley B4, Sykes L5, King P5, Geier M3. 1Simpson University, 2211 College View Drive, Redding, CA 96001, USA;  2Institute of Chronic Illness, Inc., 14 Redgate Court, Silver Spring, MD 20905, USA ; University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, TX 75235, USA. 3Institute of Chronic Illness, Inc., 14 Redgate Court, Silver Spring, MD 20905, USA. 4University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA. 5CoMeD, Inc., Silver Spring, MD, USA
  • Curr Probl Pediatr Adolesc Health Care. 2014 Sep 4. pii: S1538-5442(14)00074-1. doi: 10.1016/j.cppeds.2014.06.001.  Environmental Chemical Exposures and Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Review of the Epidemiological Evidence.
    Kalkbrenner AE1, Schmidt RJ2, Penlesky AC1. 1Zilber School of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI.;2Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California Davis School of Medicine, Davis, CA; Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MIND) Institute, University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA
  • Neurologic adverse events following vaccination Prog Health Sci, 2012, Sienkiewicz D., Ku?ak W., Okurowska-Zawada B., Paszko-Patej G

Additional to those cited in the text

  • ABC programme on youtube about autistic savants
  • Elimination diets in autism spectrum disorders: any wheat amidst the chaff?  - Christison GW, Ivany K, Department of Psychiatry, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, California USA.
  • Rain Man  - is a 1988 drama film written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass and directed by Barry Levinson. It tells the story of an abrasive and selfish yuppie, Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond, a man with high functioning autism of whose existence Charlie was unaware.  The film stars Tom Cruise as Charlie Babbitt, Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbitt, and Valeria Golino as Charlie's girlfriend, Susanna. Morrow created the character of Raymond after meeting Kim Peek, a real-life savant.  Raymond has perfect recall, albeit usually with little understanding of the subject matter, and extreme skill in mathematics. He is said to be a savant by some doctors. He is frightened by change and adheres to strict routines (for example, his continual repetition of the "Who's on First?" sketch). Except when he is in distress, he shows little emotional expression and avoids eye contact.  Hoffman’s depiction was said to be extremely accurate in its portayal of autism’s effects.

Observations

Along with the specific observations it may be helpful to know that the following additional talented people are classified as autistic savants.

  • Hikari Oe, Japanese developmentally delayed composer
  • Kim Peek, US autistic with eidetic memory and model for Rain Man

Related observations