Slide 7:
I would like to present some cases tonight because they also help to
illustrate what many of you go through. This is a 6 year old little girl who came to me
with the typical history of normal early development. She actually developed words at nine
months. It is now literally 110% safe to say that if a child starts off normally, does not
present with any neurologic disorder that a pediatric neurologist would say, ‘This is
abnormal, something is wrong with your child’, and develops any language, the only
possible mechanism to do that to your child’s brain is immune or viral. Even if they
don’t develop language, but have gone along normally to 12 or 15 months of age, it is
likely an immune /viral process, with strong debate whether any other mechanism could
create this.
In this case, this girl’s development shut down at two years of
age. She also had the typical history of being chronically ill for many years. She
regressed in 1994, and wound up with the typical diagnosis of autistic disorder, the
famous ICD-9 2.99.
