“We don’t do autism” • Hacker News Board

Re: “We don’t do autism”

#91

Post by maratd » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 2:28 AM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #56

rustynails wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were certainly important points of the article. However, it was a shotgun blast that covered much more, incompetent medical profession, inconsistent terminology causing confusion, stonewalls for patients diagnosed with autism, etc. it tried to capture too much in too little space.

I would think that someone would work to categorize variance in the physical and personality affects of autism... much like Myers-Briggs for personality in general. It seems to me that it should have been broken down into sub-categories (not as the article suggests in terms of cyst affect, but in terms of autism in general... they call it a spectrum, but really what is that spectrum and how is it defined. If differen…

> Imagine if all children were scanned at 6mo, 1yo and every other year until 18... that would be much more valuable data to humanity than some other uses of big data storage out there.

Imagine that instead, upon birth, all children had their entire genome sequenced and recorded. That would be a far greater use of big data storage.

Full genome sequencing costs a third of an MRI.

Re: “We don’t do autism”

#92

Post by maratd » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 2:35 AM UTC

baoyu wrote: post #32

There’s a good reason why doctors have difficulties with rare diseases—which is, of course, the rarity itself. > In medical school, aspiring doctors spend a few minutes at most on these relatively unusual conditions. It would be unethical to spend a lot of time studying these conditions while many more people suffer from the more frequent ones. Sooner than later, we’ll be able to solve, say, depression reliably via p…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

> About 1.5% of children in the United States (one in 68) are diagnosed with ASD as of 2014

That's not rare.

Doctors have difficulty with ASD because it's triggered by genetics, but also by environment, and manifests uniquely in every individual.

Re: “We don’t do autism”

#93

Post by scholia » Mon, Sep 21, 2015, 12:16 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #90

scholia wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real science is just about universal, whereas non-science varies with geography and fashion. I'd be happier with "real phsychologists" if they were closer to the "real science" end of the spectrum. More like, for example, neuro-scientists, and less like psychiatrists. Seems to me this story is about someone looking for real neuro-science and not getting enough of it. Whether that's the right quest is another matter:…

You're using "universal" in a sense that is unfair. Science isn't universal in the sense that any finding must apply globally while ignoring contextual factors. There all sorts of ways in which differing geography, cultural practices, genetics, environmental factors, prevailing diet, etc., etc., can and do create differences in observed diseases. It's unfair and wrong to say that something is unscientific because it…

Hm, don't think so. Real sciences such as maths, physics, chemistry, biology, geology etc apply globally and, indeed, beyond globally. The science of genetics is global even though genes vary with geography. Real science is also consistent over time, even though it changes when new information is added.

This is different from, say, religion, fashion, and psychiatry.