Autism Roundtable John Elder Robinson, Kaveh Adel, Robert Naseef, Stephen Shore

Autism Roundtable: John Elder Robison, Kaveh Adel, Robert Naseef, Stephen Shore

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Kathleen 0:11

Hello, everyone, this is Kathleen to Ronnie with autism brainstorm www dot autism brainstorm.org. And this evening, we have the opportunity to have a discussion, a roundtable with john elder Robeson and Dr. Robert nussey. Dr. Steven short, and Dr. cabeza del, thank you very much, gentlemen, and welcome back. Well worth, the reason that I asked for, for you to come together and have this discussion is to have the opportunity to ask specific questions to john about the presentation that he gave at the National Institute of Mental Health. JOHN, why don't we just jump right into it. And if you would just cover a couple of these suggestions, the recommendations that you made to the committee there.

John Elder Robinson 1:03

I suggested to the National Institutes of Health, that autism is a different sort of condition than disease and disorders that they have attacked in the past. In the past, they have used a strategy of attacking the basic foundations how a disease is, is caused, how its spread what carriers are, and they've used that successfully to attack smallpox, polio. Many other diseases, so the who the CDC and the NHF have followed that very successfully, for diseases that we wish to eradicate. However, the evidence shows that a significant fraction of the autism that we see in the human population is what you might call naturally occurring, and a stable variation in humanity. It doesn't mean it's not disabling doesn't mean it's not hurtful to people. And that doesn't mean that there aren't some people today who have symptoms of autistic behavior because they've been poisoned or injured in some way. It simply means that there are a good many people who came by their autism naturally, and therefore, is not subject to cure or eradication. If we recognize that reality, we must then see that the job that we have in the public health community is to maximize the life potential of those individuals. Minimize the ways in which autism disables people minimize the suffering it causes. And at the same time, we have a duty to find environmental causes or things that make people autistic through artificial means, and eradicate those causes. But that's only one, you know, one part the rest of it the naturally occurring part, if you will, we must address by addressing quality of life. And the fact is, we have spent a billion dollars on autism research in the last decade. And we have achieved very, very little that has improved the quality of life, people living on the spectrum today. We have more knowledge, we have more insight, we have more understanding. We do not have any fundamentally new groundbreaking therapies out there changing lives in any broad way. And so I suggest that it is time for a change that rather than primarily fund research into the foundation causes of autism in the biology and genetics. We take a step back. We recognize that over the past decade, we have funded many studies that have shown positive results over a whole range of an effect in autism. We have studies that have helped people sleep better and be less affected by autistic disability. We have studies that have spoken to techniques for reducing gastrointestinal distress we have spoken to, we have studies that have looked at gluten intolerance and conditions like that and autism. We have studies that have looked at therapies to help people make friends and learn social skills. We have therapies that build upon ABA techniques to help adults and others who are presently helped by ABA, we have therapies that are different from ABA that help people that are responsive to ABA. We have, I think, hundreds of studies that have shown promising results in all different areas. And what I believe we should do is we should, at the NIH, undertake an evaluation of all of the studies we have funded, we should identify those studies, which seem most promising based on their published results, we should then go out and fund

validation studies to see if the positive results can be replicated. And if so, for whom and under what conditions and what dosage. Some of these therapies involve medicines. Some involve tools, you know, various medical tools, even things like iPads, some involve counseling therapy. So they're all across the gamut of medicine and counseling. But I believe that if we were to identify the best ones, and we were to then validate those best ones, we could then construct what would be the equivalent of a physicians Desk Reference for autism clinicians, so that if a person with autism walk into that clinicians office, and he said, Well, I have, you know, I have this trouble and that trouble, the clinician could look in the book, and that would be a therapy to speak to that complaint, which does not exist today. And and I then believe that after we have disseminated that to these clinicians, I believe that we should be funding with public money, the development of centers to train people in these new therapies. Right now, the only broadly available therapy is ABA. And the reason for that, of course, is the ABA is part of the curriculum at many, many colleges. Now. We have, as I say, we got 100 therapies that could complement ABA and could change just as many lives as ABA can change. We know ABA only reaches a small fraction of the autistic population, and each of these other therapies will only reach a fraction. But Taken together, they reach a lot. And if we were to use some of this money that we are presently using in genetics, to fund the building of this reference, and then the training of clinicians, I believe that within the next five years, we could begin to have a tremendous positive material effect on the lives of 1000s and 1000s, of people living with autism today. And I believe also, that that would be true for adults, because many of these promising therapies speak to the problems of adults, even though they have not been researched for adults yet. And and I think that I think frankly, that is a better way for us to spend our research money than the current way we are doing it. And that was my charge to the National Institutes of Health when I spoke there for the Autism Awareness lecture last month.

Kathleen 8:29

Very good. Kobe, did you have something in response to that?

Kaveh Adel D.D.S 8:34

It was more of the ability of the adults who are seeking care now and how would they be able to get in touch with anyone right now at this moment? We're talking five year plan with what you're proposing, I think is a fantastic idea. But at this point in time, john, how would you recommend or what would you say would be the best course of action for the adults who are having difficulty understanding the process and figuring out whether or not they are on the spectrum or not? And whether it's other types of issues?

John Elder Robinson 9:10

I would say that every major city in the United States has a hospital which is affiliated with a University Medical School. And just about all of them now have some kind of autism program. I would say that it's safe to say that every major city in the United States has some University Medical School nearby with people who are reasonably conversant with the state of the art in an autism research and that university should, should have psychologists and psychiatrists who could for example, administer a das screening or ADR screening which are the gold standards for adults and children. They Should have staff that could counsel us an adult on what they could do to address problems in their lives, it is true that they would not have the benefit of coherent evidence based therapies to specifically target those things. But they could nonetheless provide significant help to most people. Now, the problem would be whether that would be covered under the general mental health coverage provisions of your health insurance, or you would not have coverage for it. And I think that's going to vary from person to person state to state, but that is sort of outside of the scope of this particular talk. that's a that's a health insurance coverage discussion.

Kathleen 10:50

Thank you. Robert, did you have anything that you would like to comment?

Robert Naseef 10:55

Well, I think, you know, relevant to John's, sort of big picture of this, that, that as children are diagnosed with autism, often one of the parents has some or most or all of the traits. So increasingly, in my work with families, I see adults getting diagnosed, but very few resources to help them deal with the diagnosis. But certainly, as john, as john mentioned, we, we have the we have the tests, we have the measures, the observations. This summer, some of the same instruments that are used with children are also normed for adults. So it's quite, it's quite possible to diagnose this accurately. But there's a big gap in the services available, and in being able to apply the techniques to the adult population. That being said, since there's a variety of symptoms, using the diagnosis of the individual symptoms, in my experience, usually is accepted by insurance carriers, however, but the autism diagnosis itself may not be accepted.

John Elder Robinson 12:04

Right, so you could treat somebody for anxiety, or depression, you have you have some amount of coverage under most policies, for general nonspecific counseling. And, and I suppose that's available to most autistic adults with insurance,

Unknown Speaker 12:23

I would say it is, it depends on the skill of the and the knowledge of the condition in terms of counseling the person sometimes how to access those benefits, and, and you know how to work it through the system, so to speak, but it's completely legitimate if you have anxiety, or depression, or stomach problems, or, you know, any one of a host of symptoms. And really, all we are able to do is treat the symptoms, this bigger picture that John's referring to enables us, I think, to alter the very course of how this might develop through a lifetime. And that's what's really significant about being able to wrap our minds around this and provide this knowledge to clinicians and teachers and families, you know, all up and down the population. Steven, did you have anything you would like to weigh in on this place? I think you're muted. I think your mic is muted, Steven. Oh, that was that. Better? Thanks.

Stephen Shore 13:30

All right. There's a lot of sense to what john is recommending. And that is given the diversity of the autism spectrum, it stands to reason that different approaches are going to have are going to fit and meet the needs of different people. And really, what we're looking at is the idea of getting away from trying to decide which approach is the best approach and moving towards matching practice, to the needs of individuals. And I think it would be great to get to a point where we can have clinicians who know, they know they will specialize in one or two approaches. And that's perfectly fine, because no one can master them all. And certain approaches fit better with certain personalities, but at the same time, to have the awareness to be able to say, Well, I think what I'm doing over here, it's not quite working, but limited knowledge I have approach B. I think that might help. So I'm going to refer this child down the street to this practitioner practices that other approach.

Kathleen 14:41

So basically, what we're talking about is a systems or excuse me a symptoms based approach, rather than at labels based approach.

Unknown Speaker 14:49

Right? We're looking at characteristics is really what it's about

John Elder Robinson 14:53

because people with autism have so many different challenges. You know, a person who suddenly A person who can't talk has very little in common in terms of his medical need with a kid who is who has great intestinal pain all the time. They're just they're just different problems. And the idea that we're looking for one cure or one solution or whatever, I think that that's up a wrongheaded way to approach this particular issue, because it is not a coherent disease to be eradicated.

Kathleen 15:31

Agreed, would you would you say, then, john, that tends to be a very broad spectrum, of course, however, we are, we're looking at the symptoms, we're looking at symptoms, we're not looking at a one particular diagnostic label.

John Elder Robinson 15:50

That's probably true. You know, I think that there is research that is promising, for example, where we look at de novo genetic mutations that are implicated in very profound artistic disability combined with intellectual disability and often other complications. When you look at something like that, you have to ask is that? Is that a disaster? for that person that was brought on by some unknown environmental insult? Quite possibly. And if we knew how to cure that, keep it from happening? Should we do it? Absolutely. I think we should, if we could develop a drug therapy that could reverse the effect of such a thing, should we do that? Probably so. But But I don't think that that is the that's not the life. Most of us on the spectrum are living. That's some people not most, and and sell I guess, I think that we need to shift our dollars to a direction that will benefit the most, not the few, which is what we are currently doing. We are currently pursuing a research strategy, where we look at modeling disorders in mice. And the thing about modeling a disorder in a mouse is that it has to have such severe symptoms, that you can observe them in a rodent. And I would suggest to you that very few of the autistic symptoms that say Stephen and I manifest in daily life wouldn't be visible if they were expressed in a mouse. And so we don't have the level of scientific knowledge to pursue genetic studies with people like us, because the science isn't there, we have no way to model it and test it. And and I think that at the same time, we have this recognition. There's this tremendous unserved adult population. And we have, the more we are aware of the existence of that population, the greater our moral or ethical responsibility to take care of those people who have lived their lives in the total absence of services and recognition.

Kathleen 18:14

Are we looking at genetic predisposition? And the way that it happens to present itself? Is that what we're really looking at it in combination with environmental triggers?

John Elder Robinson 18:24

Well, in some cases, the current research that we're doing today looks at genetic predisposition and environmental triggers. In other cases, we look at what's called de novo mutations, which tends to produce autism of the worst kind. In other words, but de novo mutations tend to be associated with autism, with the most severe disability, and the least, the least progressive outcome in terms of reducing disability through therapy and age. So those de novo mutations may be the result of an environmental insult that attacked either the mother or very young child, the fetus. And there may not be a genetic predisposition, or maybe there is, and then there are people and I think I'm one of them. Where my father had Asperger traits, like me, my son has Asperger traits like me, and and i don't think that the three generations of us ropa sons are all the victims of lead poisoning or vaccine poisoning or whatever, because we grew up in such different circumstances that the idea that we would all be victim to some common environmental insult is simply not realistic. I think when we look at the studies show, such a wide distribution of autism, I think that the evidence suggests that people like me Just appear naturally. And we always have.

Kathleen 20:04

For sure, gentlemen, Does anyone else have anything that they would like to say along these lines? Before we move on very quickly to John's new venture that I want to spend a few moments talking about?

Unknown Speaker 20:15

Well, the thing I'd like to weigh in on is that even with what we do no access to services is severely limited, especially in inner cities and rural areas. And so, so this bigger approach has promise. But, but we still need to get the cert what we know now isn't getting to the people who need it as well. And but surely, we need to do better with what we already know, scientifically, and translate that into practice along the way, but I think right now we're facing a situation where people are having trouble, increasingly accessing services, as more kids are being diagnosed, we're not training an adequate number of clinicians. Schools are strapped for funding, you know, it is a big national problem, you know, and so John's John's point about the federal government sort of taking over and being a leadership role, and a clearinghouse of information, is is spot on in this and also providing the funds to do what we already know how to do, besides advancing the practice and the science.

John Elder Robinson 21:35

It just calls for a shift in how we think because even even though I know that people like me, are naturally occurring variants of humanity, that doesn't mean that I don't think we do that we have desperate need of help on many fronts, you can you can be a naturally occurring piece of humanity, and still pretty profound disability and, and if we have the ability to help remediate that disability, we have a duty to do it. And I believe that that's that should be our charge to, to deliver the therapies that we have already started to develop.

Kathleen 22:18

Steven, do you have anything that you would like to add here at the end of this portion of conversation?

Unknown Speaker 22:23

Yeah. I just think, as john was saying, supported by the others here, that we need to be looking at. Lita need to take a look at matching techniques and approaches to resist. And as as, as Robert said, we do face a challenge, and that more and more people are having a meeting. We're not training people to meet those.

Kathleen 23:00

Very good. I know we got a very late start. JOHN, is really, really interesting. You're beginning a trade school at Robeson service. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

John Elder Robinson 23:15

We are we are five buildings where where I work. And in those buildings we we repair and restore high end European cars. We fix ordinary cars we clean in detail cars, we do front end and undercarriage work on cars and trucks. We dispatch ambulances for emergencies and we run transport system shuttle people from hospitals. So we have vacancies in there. And we are putting a special needs school in training. I have partnered with a Tri County Schools, which is a nonprofit school for at risk kids. These aren't just kids with autism. These are people with various developmental challenges and also environment they are sent to to Tri County from public schools all over Western Massachusetts, Southern Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut. So, you know, he said it's a it's a it's a publicly funded institution, nonprofit institutions. And they currently have a culinary program. And they were interested in, in transition and trade training people because many of their students are not college bound. And one one natural thing of course is can we train those people to clean cars to fix cars to inspect cars to maintain law, US law school to do all that we do in my complex, so the combination of my visibility in the autism community, the fact that I am professionally engaged in practicing all those trades every day at the company. That's for the school to trade in or complex and teach those young people, right and everywhere, people are really doing what they do. So they can go to school, and they can look out at lunchtime, and they can see people really doing what they are learning how to do. I think that's a very powerful and inspiring thing for them. And I think that we are going to be able to put those young people on a path to employment, which would not necessarily be available to them if they simply went to a trade school in the middle of nowhere with no connection to tradesmen. What a wonderful thing that you're doing,

Kathleen 26:03

you're already quite a role model to a lot of people, particularly young asperges. And I think that adding to what you already do for the community is just an amazing thing. Thank you so much for doing this cafe. Did you have anything that you'd like to express regarding this particular adventure of John's?

Unknown Speaker 26:24

I think it's fantastic. possibility for young and even young adults that are being serviced by my wonderful vampire.

Unknown Speaker 26:38

JOHN, do you have any specific framing here? Or is it is it payment to individuals with any disability? Try? How come we have this echo? The people need to mute microphones? I'm not sure why don't we try that? Yeah. Anyone who's not speaking mute your microphone, please.

John Elder Robinson 27:09

So are we still echoing seem to not be echoing okay. Anyway, um, Tri County serves several 100 at risk kids. And some of them have autism, some have other challenges. So Tri County is not, for example, an ABA autism school, Tri County. And we are taking students into the trade program who are able to function in a trade school environment. So they're not just kids autism, there, they are kids in a special needs program, who are judged to be able to go through the trade program that they've chosen, you know, the car one or the lawn care one or whatever. And in so the way it works is they only do one way afraid class in our economy. And then they'll go one week of professional and high school at the main campus have tried out, and then they'll come back and go back again. And we'll have two sets of students. So like a team will be on the team will be even an answer. So the special in training will be done a player and we will be doing the train train. So that's that's how we're trying to allocating it. Well, one of the items is that we won't be able to actually train people to come in and talk to the kids somewhere in a regular train High School, for example, your shop teacher who knew in his days as an auto mechanic, 20 years ago, he's gonna shop for 20 years. I can send him some clothes for master technician and he can talk about the reality of fixes or I can have somebody go over there who is a weaker technician and he can talk about john and i can have somebody who's a welder. So there's beauty of that is we have and they were unavailable and we send them over and essentially the trade school contract. The guy says Well, can keep coming back. And we essentially charge out their time for the school. So if the Labor Rate for a particular person 9999 So it's all right, right, you know, we'll have all these people available. And I think that's going to be very inspiring. And, of course, thank you What's happening? And I think there's the opportunity then to talk about what you would jobs when they graduate and such and make connections. I think it's my friend.

Kathleen 30:35

Robert, do you have anything that you would like to add, about this new venture?

Unknown Speaker 30:43

Can you hear me? Yes, I think it's a great, a great venture and a great concept. And it's certainly the area for young people growing up with special needs today. That's, that's the least developed. And we need a lot of projects like this. And we need small entrepreneurs and big companies and, and all sorts of ventures. And, and something like this could really, you know, be a model program that could spur other other programs like it in different fields. So

John Elder Robinson 31:19

I absolutely think that you could take the concept of teaching trades to young people in a complex where the actual trades are practiced. And you can replicate that in other environments. And in other cities, you know, you might, you might be in an area where they have plumbing and electrical contractors, and you teach those trades next to them might be car mechanics, or whatever, right? I think the great thing about car mechanics is, in our state, for example, you have annual motor vehicle inspection, and you get a credential you get a license from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be a car inspector. So I can teach people in our school to be inspectors, and then the state can come in, and the state can license them. So when they graduate from our trade school in graduate with a Massachusetts inspectors license in their hand, and every automobile dealership in the Commonwealth employ someone to inspect cars. So that's a perfect example of graduating young people with a real skill. I mean, I think we can, you know, teaching somebody to do that is much more realistic than the idea of some of these for pay trade schools that advertise turning you into a $30 hour superduper technician and they can't deliver on that. The idea that we're going to teach young people to do state inspections on cars, like is very real and attainable. The idea that we can teach young people to maintain lawncare machinery and we can teach them to go out and use that machinery in a landscape company. Everywhere you live in America, there's a need to fix small engines, and there's a need to use them, whether you use them to blow snow and winter or cut grass in the summer. Those jobs are always going to be they're not going to ever get outsourced to India. And and I think that teaching you know, young people in an environment like that, I think it's a great thing.

Kathleen 33:15

It sounds like the any any industry that has parallel particularly instruction and activity that can go along is suitable.

John Elder Robinson 33:24

I think it is yeah, I think you could do this in many industries, I think that I have a particular advantage because small engines and lawncare are universal in America. Car maintenance is universal in America, but frankly being a plumber or being an electrician or being a heating and air conditioning contractor or a carpenter those are those are pretty universal in America to the only difference is that the construction trades tend to be more volatile and be up and down with the economy definitely maintenance of motor vehicles and the maintenance of machinery tends to be more constant. And, and and if you teach somebody to say maintain lawncare machinery, do landscaping, or maintain heavy equipment like front end loaders and snowplows, a lot of the people who will employ you are government contractors. Because whether the economy is in crisis or booming, they will still plow the snow, they will still maintain the streets, they will still, you know, maintain the grass on the county byways. So those kinds of jobs I think are less volatile than construction jobs. But I think that this trade idea is absolutely applicable to all the trades. angles. Steven did you have something that you wanted to add?

Unknown Speaker 34:47

I showed you something to add and it's great to hear john talking about a real plan will help real life people with Autism and other conditions. And that's something that we really need people that almost everybody needs to work for living. And that includes those of us with Asperger syndrome, or autism or other conditions. And I think right sizing the job for the individual will be a great help. I'm really interested in this program that john is doing. And at least half the time, I live only 90 miles away. So I'd like to come and see it sometime.

John Elder Robinson 35:31

We expect to be open for business in September, and we're going to have probably fundraisers in July and August. So I can tell all of you folks, and if you want to come out and see, you know, we have staff and all, we should be able to do that in a couple more months. Hey, great.

Kathleen 35:48

Now you have a blog post john, to where you have a call, actually, for people who would like to participate, who would like to be students in this program?

John Elder Robinson 35:58

Yep. And and probably next week, I'm actually going to have application information up there on the website. Now remember that our school is not a parent pay program. So it's not like private school, where you're going to apply and send it to a mission check in to send a kid to our school, typically, what you're going to have is you're gonna have a child who is recognized as needing to be placed out of system in his current school district, and he needs services that they can't provide. So the parents are going to have to go to that school district and say, Look, I've heard that there's a train program, and my son's really interested in cars, and you're talking about putting him in a special, you know, autism concentration, or whatever. And, and I'd like you to send him to this school because my son could learn a trade there. So the parents are not going to be so much applying and signing their kids up, as they are asking the referring specialists in their school district to place the kid in this school instead of some other school to address what they can't provide in the homeschool district. Now, we also hope to provide a parent pay summer camp. So in the 2014, summer, we hope to have summer school running where parents who have a kid who's maybe thinking he's interested in cars, thinking he's interested in lawn care or small engines, they might be able to pay a few $1,000 to put their kid in a day program for a period of time in the summer, and give them an introduction to the trade then if the kid likes if they could, you know, they can push for a transfer. And and we may also, you know, we may be able to take parent paid work. But the focus of Tri County is not to run a for profit school where parents pay to put their kids and our focus is to run an institution that serves the public and serves people of any means through public funds, not through payment of those who are wealthy enough to send their kids there.

Kathleen 38:10

Right, right. Now, does your program is it going to also serve older adults on the spectrum or with special needs? Know,

John Elder Robinson 38:19

our program is a is a publicly funded, special needs High School. Gotcha. Now, what we will have to do is go to what's called mass rehab. Mass rehab is the adult Rehabilitative Services operation in our state. We could certainly go to Mass rehab in a couple of years. And we could say, look, we have this track record, like saying 20 year old, post High School special needs people into jobs. And I think if you gave us funding, we could place people on disability that you identified into our program, and we could get them into jobs too. And we might well be able to work with mass rehab, to take adults who are on disability and put them through a version of our vocational training and graduate them with the same kind of skills and credentials. I think it would take a while longer for us to do that because we would need to show success teaching high school students as a foundation to sell the program for adults on Disability Services. But we could absolutely do that,

Kathleen 39:38

I think sounds like a wonderful plan. Wonderful plan. Kobe. Did you have anything she wanted to add?

Unknown Speaker 39:44

Absolutely, I think no, the idea that the trade school with with cars can be also applied into other types of technical businesses such as computer repair, programming, all those types. Things that that could be also supplied by business owners in the community, all around the United States all around the world, I think you can ramp this idea into on multiple different layers in any sort of technical aspect, whether it's cars, mechanical things, or computer, especially that you're so inundated with the use of computers nowadays, it's a beautiful idea.

John Elder Robinson 40:24

I think that's true. I think that there's this perception that young people will go to college and get a so called White Collar job, or else don't get a minimum wage job at McDonald's. And, and the fact is, there are a lot of skill trade jobs that pay more money than these so called white collar jobs. And I think that many of us, I mean, I'm one of them, right? I mean, I'm a tradesman running our car company. And I've done very well by that,

Unknown Speaker 40:55

I think goes back to the idea of purpose in, in many, many of these cases, whether they're young adults, or their, or their children, or their older adults, it's for them to, for us to recognize that there is a purpose in their life and, and sort of matching their purpose with a skill that they will feel like they feel like they're completely connecting.

John Elder Robinson 41:18

And they don't want to when when you also you talk about teaching other trades, one of the things that I'm interested in, but I haven't pursued yet, one of my tenants, and the complex, as I said, is the primary hospital system in my area. And so I also think, naturally, that if I've got all their ambulances running next to me, know, maybe in a couple of years, I could start an emergency, an EMT, or, you know, an EMT certification program where high school students could get that, that emergency responder certificate, and I now involve the hospital, maybe some of the ambulance staff, and some of the hospital staff could come over, and they can teach young people to. Absolutely. And so there's Yeah, you're exactly right. There's no limit to the number of trades that we can teach. And that's another example. You can get a job as an EMT, or some kind of help aid, even if even a person who drives an ambulance, you know, those jobs are in every town in America. Definitely. Steven,

Kathleen 42:21

did you have anything else that you wanted to share? I know, we're getting close to the to the end of our time, and Dr. Nisi had to leave us and I would want to mention that there is a fatherhood round down, and it's going to take place on June the ninth that Dr. Nassif is going to be leaving. Thank you, Steven.

Unknown Speaker 42:38

Yeah, sure. Well, again, looking for employment, where there's a steady demand, you might say, there's always going to be cars. Now you can't outsource an auto mechanic. And now it's for a car or small engine. So I think john is really onto something.

Kathleen 43:02

Anything that is practical, and is just needed for daily life? Absolutely, I think is suited, and can be done in a parallel training situation. Convey Did you have anything else?

Unknown Speaker 43:15

Oh, I've been privileged to listen, everyone talks. I'm sorry, I wasn't able to add any more of my perspective on it. But I think the idea of purpose is really important here. And I think beautiful ideas. Thank you.

Kathleen 43:30

Thank you. And thank you, john, anything else you want to close with and any anything that you would like for us to have the takeaway, either from your comments to the NIH, or about this new very exciting venture you're

John Elder Robinson 43:45

starting? shows that you can follow the developments of that on my blog, it's jt robeson.blogspot.com and facebook, facebook slash john elder Robison or john dot Robeson. All the content is public. Right. And I'll try and keep up keep putting up updates as such as I have them.

Kathleen 44:08

Absolutely. And I would also mention raising cubby just just a snippet, john, if you would. What is raising covey?

John Elder Robinson 44:15

And as you're reading this book, guys, tell me is my newest book, it's about it's about parenting. It's a unique tale of fatherhood. I have an Asperger's raising my son with Asperger's and all the fun things that we did when he was a little boy and then my son getting interested in chemistry and explosives and his trouble with alcohol, tobacco and firearms when he was a teenager, so it's, it's like every parent's dream come true. They're raising cubby. It's fun.

Kathleen 44:46

It's It's It's interesting. It is serious. It's sad. It's funny, and I loved it. It's a fantastic book highly recommended. Thank you so much, john elder Robison, cabeza del Stephen shore, and we're very happy to have I've had Dr. Robert netsafe with us as well. Thank you so much everyone for your time. See you next time. Good night.

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