(no subject)

This was just one of the links I was going to point out, but I had more to say about this one than expected. ;)

Via the disability news section at BBC Ouch!:
New drug eases symptoms of autism

A better writeup: Seaside Therapeutics Reports Positive Data from Phase 2 Study of STX209 in ASD

Argh, just argh. I had somehow managed to miss the attempts at using arbaclofen "to rebalance the brain chemistry of those with autism." (Quotes from the first link.) How exactly using a muscle relaxant for "reductions in agitation and tantrums" is supposed to differ from the use of "anti-depressants and anti-psychotics for particular symptoms", I have no idea. Other than that the researchers want us to believe that it's somehow different.

Here's more on Arbaclofen. It is basically jiggered-with, R-isomer-only baclofen. Apparently, the uses for which it was developed were pretty much the same as baclofen: as a muscle relaxant and for certain GI problems. The side effects are apparently pretty much the same as for baclofen, including "Drowsiness -- in up to 63 percent of people" (pretty much what I'd expect from a muscle relaxant). This is being touted to treat agitation. Hmm...

From what appears to be the same trial a different trial connected to SeaSide Therapeutics, LLC (???)*--presented at International Meeting for Autism Research earlier this year, we find out that what they were really trying it out on was Fragile X syndrome--according to the beforementioned paper, "the most common known genetic cause of autism, and about 25% of males with FXS meet full criteria for autism", they say--i.e., some people with Fragile X show some behavior similar to some autistic behavior. In this trial, "Of 63 subjects randomized, 55 were male", and they were specifically trying to treat irritability. Apparently, "[i]t is hypothesized that other etiologies of autism may also be characterized by “synapsopathies” (disorders of synaptic function)." So it's all somehow totally the same and safe to generalize.

Why? (Emphasis mine.)

The rationale for studying arbaclofen (the active entantiomer of racemic baclofen) in FXS and autism is multifold. First, racemic baclofen anecdotally improves behavior in both FXS and autism. Second, racemic baclofen ameliorates abnormal phenotypes in several animal models of FXS, including audiogenic seizures and hyperactivity in the FXS mouse. Third, transcranial magnetic stimulation studies show that racemic baclofen modulates cortical plasticity in healthy control subjects. Lastly, in both human and animal studies, arbaclofen appears better tolerated and more efficacious than racemic baclofen.

Erm, OK.

What particularly caught my eye in that paper?

The interim safety review determined that adverse events were predominantly attributed to pre-existing conditions or viral infections, and none were unanticipated, given the known side effects of baclofen. One subject experienced a serious adverse event, increased irritability, when tapering off study medication (subsequently unblinded and determined to be arbaclofen). Other subjects showed similar deterioration when blinded study medication was titrated downward. On the independent monitor's recommendation, enrollment was then extended to age 6.

One of the well-known problems with baclofen? Nasty withdrawal. They were giving both adults and kids as young as 6 a slightly tinkered-with version of something known to cause physical dependency, then acting surprised when subjects showed "deterioration" going off it. See Acute Intrathecal Baclofen Withdrawal: A Brief Review of Treatment Options: "numerous complications which may require neurocritical care expertise such as respiratory failure, refractory seizures, delirium, and blood pressure lability...Critical care practitioners should be prepared to treat this potentially devastating and often refractory complication of ITB therapy." (also a problem with oral administration). More on withdrawal at Wikipedia.

I have muscle spasticity, and was given benzodiazepines instead of baclofen for it because of the lower (!) risk of physical dependency. I can't find rates for baclofen, since most of the search results apply to the use of baclofen to minimize withdrawal from other substances (alcohol, cocaine, etc.).

Idly looking for previous uses of baclofen for ASDs, I found one from the same conference: Effect of Intrathecal Baclofen On Severe Tactile Defensiveness and Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder, in which a teenager with an ASD got a traumatic brain injury, and the sequelae of that injury were conflated with his ASD. Another with SeaSide Therapeutics, LLC involved: Patent application title: Methods of treating mental retardation, down's syndrome, fragile X syndrome and autism, using--surprise!--baclofen. Gosh, they're getting even less selective here. And they're claiming to treat all this with baclofen "without significant side effects"!

Unfortunately, I have to wonder how many poorly-coping parents will try to get their kids on baclofen, based on reading the reporting in the Daily Fail. Or, about as good, from even less substantive coverage on parentdish.co.uk, New autism drug 'opens doors to treating the disorder', or TheMedGuru's New autism drug offers hope: "However, the small number of people tested in the trail and findings not compared against a placebo drug, come across as negatives. Also, the assessment of the children was purely subjective." Or...

It is probably a good idea for me to link to an older disclaimer post, Psychiatry, freedom, and noninterference. Also a rather good piece (not mine) on How to Recognize Pseudoscience.

_________

* I'm a little confused, but I am trying to read and write through some serious brain fog tonight. The more recently reported one sounds like at least a very similar trial with an expanded subject pool. But, they seem to be looking at the same measures, and the way people with FXS and ASDs keep getting conflated, it's really hard to tell. Confirmed by looking at Seaside Therapeutics' site ("creating new drug treatments to correct or improve the course of
Fragile X Syndrome, autism and other disorders of brain development"), they are different. I can only assume that the conflation was not enough to get eventual approval to flog arbaclofen at people with ASDs instead of FXS.

Ah, assimilation!

Via maevele, an excellent post on assimilation prompted by Elizabeth Moon's recent obnoxiousness:
shweta_narayan's's Dissimilation

Darkly amusingly, for all Moon's care to mention that "(the native peoples had the most troubles with immigrants!)", I found shweta_narayan's post very triggering. She could have been describing my experiences in a very hostile school system in a very hostile town. My culture of origin (best description: Appalachian American Indian) was just not OK. My uppity family who didn't take much seriously--definitely not the snots--was really not OK. More than one set of parents made it clear how open-minded they were being, letting their kid hang out with one of Those People--much less bring one of Them home. (And I think a lot of the discomfort with my totally unrecognized autistic behavior got projected onto my ethnic background. For real. What would you expect from Those People?) I could go on, but shweta_narayan describes the experience entirely too well.

Yeah, talk about continuing troubles with immigrants...

This is what Elizabeth Moon's grand idea of assimilation looks like for the other side.

Because I did try to belong. It was painful, sometimes physically dangerous, not to...And when I dared to act like a full member of any group I was let into, they'd put me in my place. . .

And that abject, miserable, ashamed person, with that deeply ingrained insecurity and this rejection of family, is what Elizabeth Moon wants Muslim Americans to be. That person, hurt so badly that even talking about it half a lifetime later brings back shame to the point of nausea, is what she wants others to be so that she isn't inconvenienced.

And that is why I cannot -- no, fuckem, will not quietly and reasonably and submissively explain to privileged jerks ignorant of their privilege exactly how there is privilege they are missing here.

From another post maevele pointed out, sarasvati's Out of the mouths of xenophobic asshats.:

We have always had trouble with immigrants (the native peoples had the most troubles with immigrants!) Every new group that landed on the shore was greeted with distrust (and often responded badly) until it showed that it was willing and able to contribute something those already here wanted.

Yup, 'cause all European immigrants totally ended up giving in to the demands of the people whose land they were taking. She makes another appeal to sympathy here ("See, I acknowledge the plight of those who have non-white skin.") But then she pretty much blows that out of the water by making the second statement. It's pretty much true, I'll grant you, but it seems to me a bit off that a person wants to appeal to those who came before her and then demands her rights as white overlord and ruling class of America. Can't have it both ways. Either the Muslims are doing it as wrong as all the white folk who came and settled on already settled land, or the previous inhabitants of a land don't mean a damn thing in the grand scheme of things.

Well said.

Vine Deloria, Jr. made some comments that reflected a poor understanding of history east of the Mississippi (not unusual but very politically convenient in a divide and conquer way), but I can't help but think of one of his very reasonable observations. From God is Red, p.8 in the 2003 tradeback: "The general attitude of the whites, however, was that they were the true spiritual descendents of the original Indians and that the contemporary Indians were foreigners who had no right to complain about their activities." Part and parcel of colonialism, with a huge side dish of Manifest Destiny.

And it sounds like Moon is jumping right on associating herself with the "original" Natives for some strange sense of legitimacy. Even though what she is saying makes no freaking sense whatsoever.

More on xenophobic BS

Just spotted through an excellent comment on the_future_modernes's So Elizabeth Moon outs herself: a great post from sanguinity, "...the native peoples had the most troubles with the immigrants...":

In short: we're not your rhetorical pawns to play with. If you want to go after Muslims or Latinos or whoeverall, stop using us to do it. And if you're criticizing U.S. xenophobia and nationalism, thus defending Muslims, Latinos, and whoever else needs it -- well, I personally approve of the goal, but I can't say that I'm much pleased with the method of white people once again using imaginary Indians to score a quick point off of each other. And I'm especially not pleased when doing so distorts and denies that Native peoples have current interests in this fight. Native people are also being harmed by nationalism and xenophobia, and they're being harmed right now, not back in the 17th and 18th centuries. It'd be good if your references to Native peoples in this discussion were actually cognizant of that.

I can't add much to that.

In the "need to stop imagining what indigenous people have to say about immigration" category, I can't resist the opportunity to point at Tom McElwain's take, from The Use of the Mingo Language in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century (emphasis mine):

There is no Mingo political entity, nor has there been one since Chief Logan ratified the traditional Mingo position not only against the Iroquois League, but against all representative government. Mingos still maintain self-control and neighborly co-operation as the only acceptable form of government. That has not prevented some descendants from running for public office, however...

From the Mingo point of view, the indigenous peoples have the right of sovereign self-government. Mingos have historically chosen the path of community self-definition without representation within the framework of indigenous houses on the continent. This means that Mingos do not recognize the authority of non-indigenous agencies, although in practice they might either take advantage of them or submit to their regulations. Such submission does not imply any more recognition of their jurisdiction than giving over one's wallet to a mugger implies acceptance of mugger authority. Both the United States and Canada are no more than guest worker unions with no jurisdiction over Mingos. The fact that guests have been on the continent for several generations does not imply that they are no longer guests. The fact that such guests, who are for the most part welcome in the country, have a tradition of behaving badly does not imply a conquest either. If they were truly the extension of the Roman empire their constituents would be able to pronounce E pluribus unum. They have the possibility of adoption or "naturalization" into the eastern woodland peoples just as people can be naturalized into legitimate nations such as Finland or Denmark. If they have chosen to remain guests over many generations, they are free to so choose, but they are not free to set up government on earth where a viable society has been in place continually for hundreds of years. Such pretension is merely bad behavior in guests.

Trying to set yourselves up as the true spiritual descendents of the folks your ancestors mugged? Deciding you should be in control of who can come and go--not to mention how they should behave while there? Further bad behavior on the part of guests.

Inspired by the bumper sticker sanguinity pointed out, here's a tongue-in-cheek language lesson I ran across a while back, in Giduwa dialect (source):

Description: Video, "Welcome to America, now speak Cherokee!"

Fun with fish tanks :(

Argh. Last night, I found a little water on the bed from the 150L bowfront aquarium where my nightstand used to be. (Limited places to put them, and it's easy to watch there! *g*) That one has a nasty habit of drips running down the sides from the hood, so I wasn't that concerned.

Now, I'm pretty sure it's got a very slow leak at the front bottom corner. I've left the second filter than causes the dripping off--no real need for it, low as the fish load is now--and there's no sign of water running down the glass from up there. But, there is still some dripping down the side of the cabinet onto a towel on the edge of the bed. And examining it a few minutes ago, a little water seemed to be welling up from under the bottom edging at that corner. I wiped it away a couple of times, and more welled up. Bah.

On the brighter side, at least if we have to spring a tank leak, it's one that's very easily noticed before all Hell breaks loose!

Good thing there aren't many fish in there now, just a couple of corys, a paradise fish (whose more aggressive brother lived with a goldfish, no problem), and 3 otos; I've mostly been using it to grow out plants. All of those are potted or on bogwood or rocks, at least. Guess I'll get to move the fishies into the library tank with the goldfish temporarily this evening, try to find places to stick all the plants, and drain the tank dry. Unfortunately, I can't think of a workable way to move all the tiny (2mm long at most!) freshwater limpets that showed up with the last batch of plants!

We just got a tube of aquarium sealant last weekend to use for something else, so that's something at least. I am tempted just to get the plant-choked 60L with snails and cherry shrimp in it sorted out, move the non-goldfish into it, and not set the bigger tank up again since I'll need to break it down at some point in the somewhat near future before we move anyway. But not this evening!

(no subject)

OK, maybe I shouldn't have used that "if it's not one thing it's another" tag.

Thank goodness for prescription sunglasses! One of the lenses fell out of my glasses, and when I was trying to hold it in so I could find the case with tiny screwdrivers, the eensy screw fell in the floor, never to be seen again. *headdesk*

Well, I guess this is a push to get the wrong prescription/otherwise totally unusable new glasses fixed. (I managed to put that off, since I have trouble handling that kind of thing on my own.) Maybe I can scrounge another screw that will fit out of an old pair, in the meantime--I know Ingvar has a couple of old pairs sitting around. Sunglasses all the time is far from ideal.

Edit 23:10: Yay! Ingvar just fixed them, and everything looks very bright.

Fish and plants are moved!

I couldn't resist a few (rather bad) photos.

The goldies now have a serious all-day salad bar.


That's not even trying to be decent aquascaping, but they seem to like it. *g* The stuff at the top is sunset hygro; the color turned out looking weird, but it really is pinkish at the tops. :)

( More photos, including of happy goldies )

The hassle wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected.