Father kills autistic child, "I just couldn't take it anymore" Options

[dggfwtx]

By Rocco Parascandola
Newsday

NEW YORK -- A Bronx man overwhelmed by what he called the “burden” of his 12-year-old son’s autism killed the boy Wednesday morning by slashing his throat -- then confessed to police when they got to his apartment, police sources said.

“I just couldn’t take it anymore,” Jose Stable, 50, said, according to sources. “My son is just a handful.

”He’s a burden.“

The boy, Ulysses Stable, was big for his age and physically aggressive, sources said. That, combined with the father’s growing inability to deal with his son’s disorder, sent the father over the edge Wednesday morning, sources said.

The child’s slaying came after a recent attempt by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services to remove the boy from his dad’s custody after an complaint that he had not been going to school regularly.

Family Court Judge Gayle Roberts instead decided to keep the boy with his father and ordered agency supervision. ACS said it was ”providing services to and maintaining regular contact with the family.“

Early Wednesday morning, Stable stepped outside his building and pulled the lever on a firebox. When police and firefighters arrived he told them what he had done, police said.

”I have terminated the life of my autistic child,“ Police Commissioner Ray Kelly quoted the father saying.

Inside the apartment, police found Ulysses naked in the bathtub, his throat cut, Kelly said.

The father, sources said, had custody of Ulysses for at least 10 years because the child’s mother, who lives elsewhere, is addicted to crack.

Ulysses was enrolled in a school for children with special needs, sources said, and the father told detectives he could not handle the child.

Stable blamed the boy for his stalled career and financial woes, saying he was $12,000 behind in rent and about to be evicted. He also said he had attended culinary school, but had to put his career plans aside to care for Ulysses.

The father, who is unemployed, has 10 arrests on his record, two for assault and eight that are sealed, police said.

Neighbors Wednesday said father and son were always together.

[Gabrielle]

Very sad story. The mental health and social services system are incredibly overburdened. Was just talking to a woman today who's brother is unable to take care of himself secondary to severe alcoholism and some alcoholic dementia. Her comments were "nobody will take these people anymore." Add to that people who are uninsured and have behavioral or psychiatric problems and you can almost forget placement - at least for months at a time these people will stay in the hospital with no ability to cover any part of their bill. No nursing home wants them. There are no longer long term mental health care facilities (at least not very many and they have waiting lists a mile long).

And the families of these people are overburdened and often barely coping themselves. They're coping with a relative with severe mental illness that would challenge even the most experienced mental health staff member. Respite is often very difficult to find unless they know a physician who can admit to a psychiatric facility on a temporary basis. Child protective services and Adult protective services often are slow on the uptake and frequently drop the ball (as everyone else in the MH system is known to do).

Hospital administrators want to help people but they've got to watch the bottom line or else the hospital will go belly up and nobody will get care.

And to add insult to injury the baby boomers are starting to come down with dementia and many need nursing home, personal care homes or other placement and unless they're wealthy or willing to sell their house they're often unable to do it. Getting them in appropriate facilities where they get regular medical care and mental stimulation can also be challenging. Frequently when the nursing home doesn't like anything about them they will send them to the hospital saying they've got aggressive "behaviors" and then will refuse to take them back to the nursing home.

And if they have any mental illness issues whatsoever you can often kiss the idea of nursing home placement goodbye. They end up having to be sent out of state to a facility that specializes in this field and are far away from family. One patient needs surgeries and frequent follow-up with his physicians because of peripheral vascular disease and he won't be accepted to regular nursing homes and will end up out of state most likely. Even if our whole team raises a stink. Which usually backfires, anyway.

And the meth and drug addicts who can no longer get meaningful chemical dependency treatment are having kids left and right. These kids are often born in withdrawal. The women go to the methadone clinics while they're pregnant and given methadone. God knows what other drugs they're abusing. The children have major behavioral and emotional deficits which make it more difficult for their drug addicted parents to manage them at home. And they subsequently end up being abused by both parents. And they watch mother being physically abused. And they watch their parents carted away repeatedly by the police. Which makes things even worse and pretty soon they're on drugs and failing out of school and the same cycle continues.

It's often very discouraging.

This post has been edited by Gabrielle: Nov 22 2006, 07:50 PM

[lazyboy]

My heart goes out to him for all he has been through and all he will go through from now on.

[lazyboy]

It is so easy to blame parents or teachers for bad behaviour, but unless anyone has been in the shoes of someone in a caring position often with undiagnozed mentally ill children on their hands, they can never know the terrible psychological cost of dealing daily with such children, and often the physical effect, because these children often physically abuse others without meaning to of course....or because they have been neglected....and their parents let them away with violent behaviour. This simplistic statement does not do justice to a very, very complicated topic and a broad spectrum of children, and parents.

[NiteOwl]

And ICF/MR and MR/DD funding just keeps getting cut. Medicaid has practically abandoned them and other governement programs are not able to take up the slack.

It's a disgrace.

We, the richest nation cannot, or more appropriately, will not take care of those in need.

What does that say about the United States and its citizens ?

Well... can't or shouldn't lump all of us into that group, but if the GOP and their "compassionate conservatism" goes any further we'll be a third world country before another generation is past.

We'll be a society of rich and poor, with no middle class, and there will be a lot more of the latter than the former.

If you can tell a man by the way he treats animals, you can tell a nation by how it treats its poor, sick and elderly.

We, as a nation, are pretty pathetic.

[Marine]

We had a neighbor once who had two children with severe disabilities. One child had Cerbral Palsy and was a quadraplegic, the other little boy was autistic and basically non-functional.

I have often heard the phrase God will not give you a burden greater than you can bare; I often wonder about the truth of that statement when that family is considered.

[NiteOwl]

We had a neighbor once who had two children with severe disabilities.  One child had Cerbral Palsy and was a quadraplegic, the other little boy was autistic and basically non-functional. 

I have often heard the phrase God will not give you a burden greater than you can bare; I often wonder about the truth of that statement when that family is considered.

Yes, the circumstances that some have to contend with are unimaginably terrible. The tribulations of some people I've known or heard of have been beyond what would seem to be what anyone could reasonably be expected to bear. Some bear the burden and some can't. If God has a hand in it I, even as a Christian, have a difficult time understanding why God would allow anyone to have to endure such a burden... either the afflicted or their families.

This post has been edited by NiteOwl: Nov 22 2006, 08:27 PM

[piccadilly]

We had a neighbor once who had two children with severe disabilities.  One child had Cerbral Palsy and was a quadraplegic, the other little boy was autistic and basically non-functional. 

I have often heard the phrase God will not give you a burden greater than you can bare; I often wonder about the truth of that statement when that family is considered.

There is this theory that says that human developmental capability is the result of some fragility of our own genetic material, itself caused by the loss of 2 chromosomes when we parted evolutionary ways a long time ago from our cousin, the chimpanzee, quite similar to the same genetic deterioration which occurs through inbreeding.

[NiteOwl]

There is this theory that says that human developmental capability is the result of some fragility of our own genetic material, itself caused by the loss of 2 chromosomes when we parted evolutionary ways a long time ago from our cousin, the chimpanzee, quite similar to the same genetic deterioration which occurs through inbreeding.

Is this implying that we are genetically inferior to the monkey ?

Hmmm.... may be on to something there.

[GOPGuy]

There is this theory that says that human developmental capability is the result of some fragility of our own genetic material, itself caused by the loss of 2 chromosomes when we parted evolutionary ways a long time ago from our cousin, the chimpanzee, quite similar to the same genetic deterioration which occurs through inbreeding.

Recent genetic discoveries do not link humans as closely to chimpanzees as previously theorized.

[lazyboy]

Recent genetic discoveries do not link humans as closely to chimpanzees as previously theorized.

That is a very interesting statement to me GOP guy. You may not know but I am a recent convert away from the Evolution Theory. As a Christian who studied the Bible (taking it to bits) at college, I treat Creation as more Myth than Reality. However, I believe the Bible has the hints to the truth and that this Earth is not as old as some categorically state it to be. So if you have a link or name or something, I would like to follow up this idea of yours.

[lazyboy]

And ICF/MR and MR/DD funding just keeps getting cut.  Medicaid has practically abandoned them and other governement programs are not able to take up the slack.

It's a disgrace.

We, the richest nation cannot, or more appropriately, will not take care of those in need. 

What does that say about the United States and its citizens ? 

Well... can't or shouldn't lump all of us into that group, but if the GOP and their "compassionate conservatism" goes any further we'll be a third world country before another generation is past.

We'll be a society of rich and poor, with no middle class, and there will be a lot more of the latter than the former.

If you can tell a man by the way he treats animals, you can tell a nation by how it treats its poor, sick and elderly.

We, as a nation, are pretty pathetic.


There, there.  You can come to Japan and see how its done...although far from perfect, it certainly is way ahead of many industrialized countries.

[lazyboy]

And ICF/MR and MR/DD funding just keeps getting cut.  Medicaid has practically abandoned them and other governement programs are not able to take up the slack.

It's a disgrace.

We, the richest nation cannot, or more appropriately, will not take care of those in need. 

What does that say about the United States and its citizens ? 

Well... can't or shouldn't lump all of us into that group, but if the GOP and their "compassionate conservatism" goes any further we'll be a third world country before another generation is past.

We'll be a society of rich and poor, with no middle class, and there will be a lot more of the latter than the former.

If you can tell a man by the way he treats animals, you can tell a nation by how it treats its poor, sick and elderly.

We, as a nation, are pretty pathetic.

You have my sympathies, Niteowl. Here in Nippon, we have a system which seems to care for the most desparate cases. In fact I hardly know where all the money comes from. It is a step away from Communism but without the rules... social democracy with Capitalism. It is far from perfect though.

[piccadilly]

Is this implying that we are genetically inferior to the monkey ?

Hmmm.... may be on to something there.

Recent genetic discoveries do not link humans as closely to chimpanzees as previously theorized.

Humans, Chimps Not as Closely Related as Thought?
John Pickrell
for National Geographic News
September 24, 2002


For decades, scientists have agreed that human and chimpanzee DNA is 98.5 percent identical. A recent study suggests that number may need to be revised. Using a new, more sophisticated method to measure the similarities between human and chimp DNA, the two species may share only 95 percent genetic material.

The result is surprising, said David Nelson, a geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, "in that it's more than twice as much difference as we thought" existed.

DNA is the nucleic acid found in all cells that stores and transmits genetic information from one generation to the next. By comparing the similarity of DNA between two species, scientists can determine how closely they are related.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, first discovered the astonishing genetic similarity between the two species in the mid 1970s, when they compared proteins in humans and chimpanzees, (Pan troglodytes), and found that they were 99 percent identical.

Further experiments by the same team showed that 98.5 percent of DNA sequences are shared by humans and chimps. The same methods showed that two humans share 99.9 percent of their DNA. In contrast, the DNA of humans and mice is only around 60 percent similar.

Revisiting the Numbers

"People were initially very surprised by the close proximity," said Nelson. Ideas about the uniqueness of man led some people to expect that the chimpanzee would have quite different DNA, he said.

At the time, said Nelson, the results helped resolve a debate regarding the relationships among the great apes—a group which also includes the gorilla, (Gorilla gorilla), and the orangutan, (Pongo pygmaeus). The DNA data proved that humans and chimps are more closely related to one another than either is to the gorilla.

Using the more sophisticated methods that became available in the 1980s and 1990s, scientists revisited the question of how much DNA humans and chimps share, and came to similar conclusions.

However, these researchers may have been missing some crucial information, said Roy J. Britten, a geneticist at the California Institute of Technology in Corona del Mar. Britten is a co-developer of the method originally used to look for genetic similarities in the 1970s.

The early methods only take into account certain types of evolutionary change called substitutions, said Britten. Substitutions occur when one of the four molecules that join to form DNA—called a nucleotide—is replaced by one of the other three types.

However, this isn't the only type of change, or mutation, that can occur through evolution, said Britten. Single nucleotides or whole sections of DNA can end up being deleted or inserted into the existing sequence. These kinds of changes are known as indels, he said.

Due to the paucity of long strings of accurately sequenced DNA data, it hasn't been possible until recently to compare the number of indels between sequences, said Nelson.

Britten decided to re-examine the question of genetic similarity looking at both indels and nucleotide substitutions. He compared long DNA sequences—735,000 nucleotides in length—taken from both the human and chimpanzee genome databases. Britten reports his findings in the upcoming issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study became available online September 23.

Filling the Gaps

While the results confirmed that single nucleotide substitutions did account for roughly 1.4 percent of the differences, in accordance with previous estimates, Britten also found that indels account for a further 3.9 percent of divergence. This gives a rough estimate of five percent difference, he said.

"There seems to be a deep interest in this question," of how genetically similar we are with chimpanzees, said Britten. "Increasing the number is mostly a technical matter though; we are still the same distance away as we were before, and that is about five million years," he said.

The new estimate could be a little misleading, said Saitou Naruya, an evolutionary geneticist at the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima, Japan. "There is no consensus about how to count numbers or proportion of nucleotide insertions and deletions," he said.

Indels are common in the non-functional sections of the genome, said Peter Oefner, a researcher at Stanford's Genome Technology Center in Palo Alto, California. Scientists estimate that up to 97 percent of DNA in the human genome has no known function. However, he added, indels are extremely rare in gene sequences.

"We haven't observed a single indel in a [gene] to date between human and chimp," said Oefner. Therefore, the revised estimate doesn't alter the amount of DNA that holds information about our species. Humans and chimps still differ by about one percent in gene sequences, he said.

Nevertheless, "5 percent is probably closer to what people thought [the difference would be] a priori," said Nelson. Even the smaller figure of 1.5 percent is quite large across the three billion or so nucleotides that make up the human genome, he said.

Researchers hope that studying the differences between the human and chimpanzee genomes could provide insight into language, intelligence, and other factors that define our species. To this end researchers are now in the process of deciphering the chimpanzee genome.


Despite the small genetic differences between our species, the chimpanzee doesn't suffer from many afflictions that regularly affect people—illnesses ranging from malaria to some types of cancer. Studying the genetic differences between chimps and humans may provide insight into some of these human diseases.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...dnachimp_2.html

[Frenchy]

Despite the small genetic differences between our species, the chimpanzee doesn't suffer from many afflictions that regularly affect people—illnesses ranging from malaria to some types of cancer. Studying the genetic differences between chimps and humans may provide insight into some of these human diseases.

Ya know!...Come to think of it...Ol' GW is a pretty healthy feller for his age!

[wliberty]

Ya know!...Come to think of it...Ol' GW is a pretty healthy feller for his age! 

[Mac2]

Recent genetic discoveries do not link humans as closely to chimpanzees as previously theorized.

This is true, mathematicians have for years arrived at that conclusion.


The probability of not finding the missing link by now is pretty conclusive on the subject!

[rla]

Are we raising the question of whether the socalled, "Demonic" behavior observed in humans results from faulty genetic material flowing through the gene pool?
This is partially true but genetic factors usually interact with social, cultural and self management factors to shape behavior. Demonic behavior follows the same
principles as non demonic behavior.

[piccadilly]

And ICF/MR and MR/DD funding just keeps getting cut.  Medicaid has practically abandoned them and other governement programs are not able to take up the slack.

It's a disgrace.

We, the richest nation cannot, or more appropriately, will not take care of those in need. 

What does that say about the United States and its citizens ? 
...

When it comes to dealing with the relatively few products a society excludes because of their inabilities, or even in some cases, simple imperfections, any nation is perfectly capable of providing the minimum resources to allow a dignified life to those excluded, without having such a burden to be carried by just a few, who are asked to sacrifice themselves on a moralist altar, only as much as this nation wants it.

This is *exactly* the same debate going on about the health insurance, the "who pays what to get what for himself and get what for others."