I am privileged to announce that my son Adam Mueller successfully defended his P.h.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics last week at the University of Virginia. His thesis was:
Non Coding RNA Mediated Regulation of Gene Expression in Disease and Development.
Adam presented the results of two papers. The first one in which he discovered a method to cause cancer cells to become more susceptible to radiation treatment by pre-treating them with certain non coding RNA. The second paper involved heretofore unknown genetic factors that control the differentiation of stem cells into muscle cells.
Adam's story
After attending courses for parents of well and brain injured children at the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, my wife Joanne and I began a program of neurological development with Adam on the day he was born. We stimulated his senses with lights, touch, smells, tastes and sound to ensure that his brain was given optimum opportunity to grow and organize itself around a rich sensory environment.
We next created optimum opportunity for him to learn by showing him large words, art, quantities of dots, animals, plants, and any information that we could get onto an 11X11 card and provided him with as many complex vestibular experiences as we could.
We home schooled Adam for twelve years and he attended the Evan Thomas Institute part time for nine years. My wife Joanne commuted 100 miles from Baltimore to Philadelphia, driving up on Monday morning and coming back Friday evenings.
At 8 years old Adam was tested by the university of Delaware LEAP program and they determined that he was post high school in language (10 years advanced) and in the top .5% of the population in intelligence.
Adam first took the SAT at 12. He never finished lower than the top .5% in the national scores. At 12 Adam also took a community college biology course and got an A. The college then created what they called their "prodigy" program so they could give him his first scholarship.
Adam then took off one semester to perform Shakespeare as Hamlet.
Adam graduated from Harford Community College at 16 with a 4.0 and 120 credits. He was then offered scholarships by a number of universities including Johns Hopkins and chose UMBC where he graduated with a degree in biology. Next, he completed a one year Masters program at UMBC in Applied Molecular Biology.
His next assignment was to take a year and help me design software for NASA.
He then applied to schools for his P.h.D. and chose UVA. A couple of years into his P.h.D., Dr. Ralph Pelligra, the chief medical officer at NASA Ames, convinced him to take the MCAT and he aced it with a perfect score in the essay. UVA then converted his program to MD/P.h.D. and he went to medical school on a full ride. Adam graduated medical school two years ago and again aced his exams and medical boards. Then he returned to his lab, which brings us to last week and his P.h.D. award. He will now begin his last two years at UVA medical school.
Adam is a well rounded human being. He plays violin, guitar, piano, sings beautifully and is a terrific stage actor. He is a second degree black belt and instructor in Jiu-Juitsu, a mountain climber and snowboarder. He is self deprecating, helpful and strong willed but very empathetic and has more friends than I can count. His P.h.D. defense auditorium was filled to standing room only, the largest crowd his PA had ever seen.
Before you think this all came on a silver platter, Adam has suffered four concussions, two broken arms, two knee reconstructions, an appendicitis, a shoulder reconstruction, a broken nose and just went through his second shoulder reconstruction this week.
So my beautiful son is completing one stage of his life and moving on through the open doors to the next stage. I am convinced that he will save many human lives, which in the end is the one thing that really counts.
But I guarantee you that he was no accident. Had we not been already doing an extensive program of neurological development, I'm absolutely convinced Adam's outcome would have been dramatically different. His mother and I learned how to optimize his sensory neurological environment, create opportunity for learning, protect him from poisons in the environment and filled his life with love and support. Sound familiar? Yes, it is all the things that anyone who has a brain injured child wants for their child too.
After 30 years of search, research and development of tools for enhanced early learning and treatment for brain injury, I can be comfortable in the knowledge that the techniques that I have based my life's work upon are powerful and effective.
Bill Mueller
