PLT Test Blog

    Trivial autism can sometimes bring huge benefits, but severe autism always brings huge costs.   Some readers of this blog are involved in public policy relating to autism, which is very much concerned with how public resources are allocated to both health and education. Today’s post is about this big picture rather than the very specific case each family is dealing with.   On an individual basis some people are spending nothing on autism, while others, mainly in North America, are spending/consuming several hundred thousand dollars/pounds/euros a year.   Wherever you live t he process is often far from equitable. All the interest groups have their own particular agendas, often completely at odds with each other. As various factors continue to combine to increase the prevalence of autism, it is important to consider who is going to pay for it, where indeed there is any cost attached to the diagnosis.  For example, the new gender-confused type of a...

  Source: EpiphanyASD   There is a lot written about PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) and PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections) which is a subset of PANS; however they are still not fully recognized as medical conditions. I prefer to see PANS/PANDAS in the broader context of autoimmune encephalitis, a collection of related conditions in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the brain, causing inflammation. The immune system produces antibodies that mistakenly attack heathy receptors in the brain.   Depending on which types of receptors are targeted, you will get different symptoms, plus you will get symptoms from the inflammation. If they are NMDA receptors, you may have hallucinations and appear to have developed schizophrenia overnight. It has been suggested that the definition of PANS is too narrow and a broader term called CANS was proposed.  CANS is not exactl...