PLT Test Blog

  Some parts of the world are trying to get back to some sort of Covid normal, while others are in crisis.   Where we live 40% have been vaccinated and likely 50% have already had the virus. Monty, aged 17 with ASD, is a big fan of swimming in the sea and where we live that means crossing borders.   Crossing borders is much easier if you have had a Covid-19 vaccine and it looks like for children the best option is the one from Pfizer-BioNTech.   BioNTech is the clever company set up by a Turkish husband and wife team in Germany. They licensed their vaccine to Pfizer for distribution outside of China, in China they have a deal with Fosun Pharma. Last week Monty had the opportunity, at very short notice, to go and get the Pfizer inoculation. I collected him from school and took him to a clinic in the city centre, that he has never been to and which undoubtedly would have a long line of people queuing outside it. Monty knows all about injections and syringes, courtes...

  There is a lot of talk this month about autism awareness and acceptance.   Some people get very excited about this and some people get quite upset about it; it seems to depend on how old the person with autism is and how severely impaired, if at all, they are.   For much of the confusion we have to thank the psychiatrists who keep broadening the definition of autism and their lack of using one of the standard ratings scales to tell people just how autistic they actually are (like on a scale of 1 to 100, not 1 to 3).   The result is a widespread misunderstanding of what the word autism means.  Nowadays it means very little. I think that bubbles better represent autism than pieces of a puzzle. People with any difference, from mild to severe, tend to live in their own little bubble; but bubbles do have a nasty habit of bursting and then a different reality may present itself. Also, if you live in a bubble you generally only hear people with similar opinions to...

  It is easy to get things the wrong way round. This applies to science and to some people getting dressed   Today’s post was prompted by a reader updating me about Roche’s autism drug RO7017773, which targets the alpha 5 sub-unit of GABA A receptors, encoded by the gene GABRA5. Enrollment opens in phase II study of RO-7017773 for autism spectrum disorder A 12-Week Placebo-Controlled Study to Investigate the Efficacy, Safety, and Tolerability of RO7017773 in Participants Aged 15-45 Years With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)   Some people with severe autism, or just plain old ID/MR, which has gone out of fashion as a diagnosis these days, struggle to dress themselves because they do not notice what is inside out, or back to front.   I recall reading a few years ago about one autism parent who started a clothing company to get round this problem.   ADAPTIVE CLOTHING with no front/back and reversible so cannot be inside out.   I must say that writing...