Dyslogic Syndrome II--Rimland and The Solution

In his bold and energetic Oratorio Judas Maccabeaus, written shortly after the abortive 1745 raid by Scottish "Bonny Prince Charlie's" troops on English forces, GF Handel uses the strikingly unexpected victory of Judas Maccabeaus in the mid-2nd century BCE over the threatening powers of Syria and Egypt and the establishment of Jewish independence as the backdrop to highlight England's recent happy victory. One of the arias sung by Judas in the Second Act, after scenes of renewed war are announced, is the riveting "Sound an Alarm." The YouTube version of it by the incomparable tenor Webster Booth, is here. The words of that aria came to mind today as I was finishing Dr. Rimland's book:

"Sound an alarm, your silver trumpets sound,
And call the brave, and only brave, around!
Who listeth, follow:--to the field again!
Justice, with courage, is a thousand men..."

Bernard Rimland, who died eighteen months before this final book of his was published, "sounds an alarm" in Jeremianic tones about the dangers of multiple environmental and medical insults against our children that have resulted in "dyslogic." He also highlights the possible ways we can combat these often-invisible, yet potent, insults. In this essay I will lay out Rimland's thesis a bit further, describe what he sees as a viable solution and then comment on it all.

His Thesis

In the previous essay I explained in some depth the major points of Rimland's book. Here I will only (re)state the "flow" of the book. (1) We have increasing numbers of "dyslogic" kids in our society; (2) This "dyslogic" is manifest in startling increases in autism, ADHD, oppositional disorder, asthma, childhood depression and other symptoms. (3) The causes, or culprits, of this dyslogic are dietary, medical (prescription drugs), vaccinal, and environmental (toxins in the environment); (4) The major modes of treating these symptoms in mainstream health care are through psychological counseling and administration of drugs. Most of these efforts avail nothing, and some of them even exacerbate the situation; (5) A far more promising avenue of help for our children is through dietary and "natural" treatments that have been shown to work in a number of populations; (6) Genetic predisposition towards various conditions in our children is no reason to give up hope for their treatment; dietary and natural treatment can often give "downstream" help as long as we know the way that the brain and other organs has been affected by the specified "insults;" (7) It is time to join together to recognize the problem of "dyslogic" and seek to overcome it.

The Proposal

The book is more of a clarion call to action, a "sounding of the alarm," than a road map for dealing with the problem. Yet in the final chapter Rimland describes action plans for various communities who want to address dyslogic. Parents, for example, need to stop feeling guilty that they have "failed" their children. Parents need to join with other parents who face similar situations. They need also to find sympathetic physicians and begin to demand more of the medical community than simply drug prescriptions or subtle blaming of their parenting. Parents need to recognize the root causes of their children's problems reside in biology and not psychology or pharmacology. Rimland is a great believer in parents' ability to nudge the medical and research communities into directions that are positive; indeed, parents can provide the needed impulse to get reluctant researchers off the dime. Often it is when doctors themselves have dyslogic children that they begin to "come to Jesus," so to speak, and demand something more from the medical community than what they even were providing before the problem took root in their own homes.

Rimland has no illusions about this, however. Often parents and school officials, or others who want to change the system, will be vilified, ridiculed, or ignored. But they need to understand that the fight is a long one and that this kind of rejection is part of the process of provoking change. Indeed, I think the rather uncompromising tone of the book, which will make it a rather easy target for those not inclined to see things as Rimland does, is a product of a lifetime as a 'warrior' against unsympathetic forces.

Evaluation and Conclusion

The major virtues of the book are three: (1) the grouping of many childhood "disorders" under the one umbrella term "dyslogic," in order to have us see these problems as all of a piece; (2) the emphasis on genetics and environment jointly "causing" the problems. Because everyone's genetic makeup is slightly different, the same "insult" won't cause the same reaction in all people; (3) the role of environmental "insult" as a trigger to exacerbate genetic susceptibility. Less helpful, I think, is his rather wholesale "bashing" of mainline medical establishment. In addition, in his chapter on "Medically Caused Dyslogic," he speaks of the "steep increase in new casees of autism" in CA from the 1990s to 2002 "dramatically revers[ing]" between 2003 and 2005 (p. 126). A person who claimed that thimerosal in vaccines, which was removed in the early part of this decade, has been responsible for increasing levels of autism would argue this way. But I understand that the CA evidence is now much more ambiguous, and indeed that the numbers don't show a sharp decline in new cases. Well, I need to check on this more thoroughly in the future...

In the final analysis what we have in Dyslogic Syndrome is an attempt to redefine how we look at some seemingly intractable and dangerously increasing childhood maladies. His approach will certainly have its detractors but it shows us the way for an intelligent future treatment of these issues. Bernard Rimland died in 2006, but he still speaks to us, as powerfully as ever, from the grave.

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