Published November 1999 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd Reaching Out to Autistic Children
One of our state's most exceptional educational resources is the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University. The men and women who work at this center provide education, training, and treatment programs for West Virginians who suffer from autism. An estimated one in every 500 children born today will be diagnosed with autism or one of its related disorders -- mysterious diseases that affect brain and nerve development. Autism generally manifests itself in children in the first two years of life, severely impairing language and communication skills, and impeding social development. But its effects have implications for the whole family unit. The Autism Training Center is a valuable resource for autism sufferers and their families. Through commitment, creativity, and a team approach, the center's staff helps families to provide autistic individuals with quality life experiences. Since its inception in 1983, more than 600 families of autistic children have benefited from the center's efforts. The demand was so great, in fact, that a satellite center was established in Fairmont so that services would be more readily available to families in Northern West Virginia. Unfortunately, despite the fact that autism tragically leaves its victims pervasively disabled for an en- tire lifetime, research into this disease has lagged. To help address that oversight, I am cosponsoring the Advancement in Pediatric Autism Research Act. This legislation would expand, intensify, and coordinate the various efforts underway to prevent and cure autism. The bill would authorize $3.3 million for autism research and $7.5 million for work by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that focuses on the incidence and distribution of autism, as well as ways to control it. Additionally, the legislation would authorize $33 million for five National Institutes of Health centers of excellence to conduct extensive research into autism. The legislation must still win the approval of Congress, which I hope will occur next year. At the core of the West Virginia Autism Training Center is the philosophy that individuals with autism can lead happy lives, and that they deserve to have the same quality of life as people without disabilities. By pairing these efforts with the research underway at the federal level, we can better understand the causes of autism, how to treat it effectively, and, hopefully, how to prevent it. In this age of such extraordinary progress on preventing, treating, and curing so many serious and debilitating illnesses, we cannot afford to miss this opportunity to make progress in the elimination of autism. November 17, 1999