Autism

In 1993, when the Howard County chapter of the Autism Society of America was founded, 11 children in the county had been diagnosed as having autism, said Catriona Johnson, a past president and member since 1995. Today, that number has soared to more than 450 children, giving Howard County the most cases of autism per capita in the state, she said. "The rate of children with autism in Howard County just continues to grow and grow," said Debbie Clutts, co-president of the chapter. The Howard County Autism Society provides services and information to about 500 families and professionals in the county.

AUTISM AND related neurological ailments have reached overwhelming proportions in the United States, affecting perhaps 25,000 additional children a year, or about one in 200. There is growing evidence that the effects of those disorders can be substantially mitigated in most affected children through various types of intensive early childhood interventions, allowing for productive and fulfilling lives. Yet most private insurance companies claim that there is no scientific consensus about how to treat autistic disorders and, therefore, that they have no obligation to pay for treatments.

Paul Law grew up in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and always dreamed of returning one day, following in the footsteps of two generations of lay missionaries before him who built bridges and hospitals and cared for the sick. He envisioned earning a medical degree and moving back to Africa with his wife, Kiely, who is also a doctor, to treat patients. But when the Laws' eldest child, Isaac, got a diagnosis of autism on his third birthday, their well-laid plans began to shift.

Jean Dunaway sat across from 4-year-old Jason Gillis at the white plastic table set up in his family's living room. She used a purple marker to draw lines on a white sheet of paper. "Line down," Dunaway said several times as she guided Jason's hand down the page. Then they drew circles on another sheet. Jason picked up another marker and popped off the cap - a big step in this autistic child's short life. He initially refused to hold markers and only started to color shortly before Christmas.

For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug to treat behaviors such as aggression, deliberate self-injury and severe temper tantrums associated with autism in children. Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug, was approved last month to treat symptoms in children and adolescents ages 5 to 16. "This approval should benefit many autistic children as well as their parents and caregivers," said Dr. Steven Galson, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

They've asked for more money. They've told Howard County politicians the schools aren't doing enough for their children. One has sued the school system.For the past year, parents of young autistic children in Howard County have been fighting for more recognition for their children's disability and the therapy they say it requires."To teach children with autism, you need fairly intensive services, particularly when they're young," says Ben Dorman, president of the county chapter of the Autism Society of America.

His mother suspected that there was something wrong, almost from the start. As an infant, Joshua Huffman kept to himself, didn't babble like most babies do, didn't respond to his name when called. Three years later, Joshua is a whirlwind of activity who can put together puzzles with ease, race around his Clarksville house with older brother Zachary and even tell his brother, in very clear language, to go to timeout. Joshua was part of a study at Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute that revealed that half of children with autism can be diagnosed not long after the first birthday - nearly two years earlier than it has been reliably diagnosed before.

In a major setback for the fight to link autism to vaccines, a special federal court ruled yesterday that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and vaccines that contained a mercury-based preservative were not connected to autism that developed in three children. The cases of the Cedillo, Hazlehurst and Snyder families could sink the claims of several hundred other families who believe the MMR vaccine alone or in combination with vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal caused their children's autism, said Curtis Webb, a lawyer for the Hazlehurst family.

Men over 40 are nearly six times as likely to father an autistic child as those under the age of 30, according to a new study that provides support for the role of genetics in the development of the disabling mental disorder. At least two previous small studies hinted at such a link, said epidemiologist Abraham Reichenberg of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who led the new study. His team examined records of more than 318,000 Israelis born in the 1980s and provides "the first convincing evidence" that advancing paternal age is an important risk factor for development of the disorder, he said.