Fascinating report in the Sunday Times yesterday about how the same genes that confer autism also confer the skills necessary for genius:
…a study of autism among 378 Cambridge University students..[]..found the condition was up to seven times more common among mathematicians than students in other disciplines. It was also five times more common in the siblings of mathematicians.
And this from Patricia Howlin:
Patricia Howlin, professor of clinical child psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, studied 137 people with autism; 39 of them (29%) possessed an exceptional mental skill. The most common was outstanding memory.
She said: “It had been thought that only about 5%-10% of people with autism had such skills, but nobody had measured it properly, and it seems the number is far higher. If we could foster these skills, many more people with autism could live independently and even become high achievers.”
This, to me, is simply confirmation of two things that I believe in – firstly that autistic people have much more ability than people think and that respectful and appropriate education will help and secondly, the scientific method will always reveal the truth sooner or later. It cannot be hurried to be accurate. There is a saying amongst Web Developers when clients ask for the impossible – cheap, fast, good. Pick two. The same thing applies in science I think. You can have it cheap and fast and it won’t be good. Etc, etc.
This is yet more evidence that the continual doom and gloom about autism perpetuated from certain quarters simply isn’t reality. There are, in fact, key skills that our civillisation needs that it seems autistic people have in abundance (try and imagine a world without maths).
Respect, self-confidence, appropriate education. Pick three, please.
Left Brain Right Brain 
On the other hand my autistic daughter cannot even wipe her own backside. Get real.
neither can Stephen Hawking
The gene grouping theory
would seem to be conjecture , but it one
I can readily accept.
Those possessing math skills are a different
population, than those who cannot “wipe
their own backside.” Each has a
different grouping of autism genes.
It won’t help my daughter to learn to wipe her
backside, if someone with autism can
perform LaPlace transforms in his head.
It does give those with higher functioning
children hope. It raises the fear that the
very real problems of the LFA population
will be brushed aside.
The Strphen Hawking comment confirms
that fear is very real. I doubt any of the
mathematicians are walking around with
soiled drawers.
So let’s see.
“In the Cambridge study, seven of 378 maths students were found to be autistic, compared with only one among the 414 students in the control group.”
That’s a pool of 792 adult students, out of whom 8 were found to be autistic.
Prevalence anyone? 1.01%.
I thought autism was something only children got 🙂
And that’s only counting the population without intellectual disability. You’ll easily find at least another 20 in 10,000 in the population with intellectual disability.
The point is (and it is a very important point), which do you want to focus on, what an individual can do, or what an individual can’t do.
Stephen Hawking can’t wipe his own backside. He isn’t walking around with soiled drawers because he can’t walk. He is not seen as a failure, as someone who should be locked away out of sight in an institution because there are things that he can do. He is recognized by his peers (other world-class mathematicians) as a world-class mathematician.
99.9% of people don’t have the mathematical ability to recognize Stephen Hawking as the world-class expert that he is. I know I don’t have the ability to do so.
I do know that if Stephen Hawking were subjected to 40 hours a week of “therapy” to try and get him to be able to wipe his own backside, that it would be a terrible waste; an abusive, horrific, terrible, torturous waste. It would destroy what quality of life he has and very likely kill him.
Deadalus2. Sorry to wake you up, but there are a great many whom have received no special gift from their autism. What are they to do?
98.9% of the people cannot understand the maths behind “A Brief History of Time.” But, despite this ignorance, they praise him for it. Few of those exalters have even read it. Fewer know its thrust, that time has no beginning. Everyone with the ability to understand it states the work is sound, but is much dependent on assumptions. The labeling of Hawking as a genius is not misplaced, but almost who label him so don’t are simply aping others who have made that proclamation. I am one of those who thinks he is a genius, but does not have the ability to understand his work.
Hawking has ALS which has placed him in a wheel chair and made him use alternative means of communication, but has not taken affected his genius. I don’t think anyone is stating Hawking’s prowess in physics is in any way related to the ALS.
I even gather that Hawking, whose ALS problems started while a University student, may wish at times he could wipe his own backside. You suggesting if there was a therapy which could restore limbic movement to ALS suffers that, it would be detrimental to the quality of their lives to avail themselves of it.
Hawking has no connection to autism.
The folks who have gotten the right combination of genes for superior mathematical abilities have little in common with those who have gotten the “right” combination of genes which has resulted in severe delays in there mental development. In deed this should lead to the conclusion that they have different disorders.
As usual, I’m amazed by the people who are parents of autistic kids determined at all costs to stick do doom and gloom.
John – I’m afraid the people described in the articles above are also ‘real’.
Mayfly, you are a constant source of bewilderment. Why do you think that the fact that autism genes are prevelant in gifted kids means that those who aren’t will be shunted aside?
In fact, the opposite is true. As Howlin observes, their study has increased the prevalence of ‘giftidness’ is autistic kids. And when I say ‘autistic’ I mean all across the spectrum.
What is it exactly that bothers you so much about the fact that autism is clearly more than simply a medical disorder? I really don’t get it.
My son cannot “wipe his own backside” yet. It’s quite possible he’ll learn that in time. At one point we weren’t sure if he’d learn to use the potty at all. He learned it quite well. He might have had a couple accidents total since he was first potty trained a couple years ago. He learned to pee all on his own, too, and he has very good aim, if you know what I mean.
The other day he learned to swim, practically on his own.
I’m proud of the little guy and I resent the implication that he’s less of a person because he hasn’t yet learned to “wipe his own backside.”
From my own experience, and from reading some papers, I think that autistics are good at learning things they are interested in, on their own, but not so much at learning things because they are pressured to do so. Trying to teach autistics is a challenge. Mind you, I do think formal education is important. It gives you a sort of rounding that you don’t get on your own, even if you’re talented. But autistics need to be given freedom to explore their special interests and to be who they are. I can’t guarantee this is a key to a good outcome, but it’s our best bet.
I don’t care where a person stands on the autism “wars”, one should never refer to his own daughter in such disrespectful terms, John.
One problem with Mayfly’s version of reality is that he’s saying that someone who can’t manage the physical steps of wiping themselves is not someone who is capable of genius.
People like Mayfly are the ones who will separate out the kids who can’t talk and decide that exposure to math is wasted on them. But, for a fact, there are kids who are absorbing things like math, history and foreign language even when they are staring out the window and flapping, and no one realizes that they are because it’s assumed that they are retarded.
Sue Rubin suddenly knew all kinds of stuff at age 13 when she was treated like she had something worth saying and that she might actually “say it” via a keyboard. Everyone thought she was retarded, but fortunately they kept her in environments where math and history, etc, were being discussed, so she knew it. She wouldn’t have known that Columbus “discovered America” in 1492, for instance, if she had been locked in a closet and had food thrown to her from toddlerhood on to age 13.
But what happens is that kids can get put in an ABA program devoid of much exposure to anything but a spare room, a table and trainer and a set of blocks. Now learn to stack these blocks successfully 9 times out of 10, and then we’ll move on to “touch blue,” and then we’ll move on to “touch red,” and then we’ll work on eye contact and then we’ll work on tying your shoes… If it takes 10 years to do that and you have missed out on 10 years of specific exposure to social studies, reading and math (this is apparently what happened to Dov Shestack, no one was teaching him Hebrew, he just picked it up at his school while they were treating him like he was too retarded to actually read Hebrew, and instead trying to teach him to sit and stand on command or to stack blocks) then too bad because we aren’t going to try you out on History until you can wipe your backside.
Michelle Dawson says she still can not tie her own shoes. Now ABA would have her still working on that “life skill” instead of helping her to figure out how to get another paper published. Instead, she’s found another way to deal with the shoe problem and she’s got people who will recognize her great intelligence even though she couldn’t get a typical university degree most likely.
Temple Grandin has said that if she was a young woman today she wouldn’t be able to go through college and get a degree because they require a more “well rounded” student, and she was able to skip some math classes then that she wouldn’t be able to do, even now.
So autistic kids and adults who can’t wipe their own backsides (“nice” choice of example, one that is more humiliating to point out about Mayfly’s own daughter, than say, tying shoes) can be math geniuses, and might cope with Cambridge’s maths requirements but might never get their if people insist that they be able to wipe their own backsides before they are allowed in Cambridge. It would actually be possible to have an aide do that for a Cambridge student, just as someone is doing that for other students who are likewise physically handicapped at Universities all over the world.
I hope a day comes when Mayfly will not be able to wipe his own backside because then maybe he’ll have some compassion for those who can’t and realize that they don’t deserve to be categorized as a lesser sort of person. That day could come today for Mayfly if he had a stroke that affected his ability to move his arms. Would he want people writing about him on the Internet saying that he had no ability to understand math because he now had to have his wife or an aide wipe his backside?
And what is “limbic movement”? Limbic http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/limbic refers to the part of the brain that is thought of as controlling memory, emotion and behavior (as in making choices of how to act).
Limb movement is movement of limbs (arm, legs).
I contracted a mystery respiratory virus (a sore throat virus), which produced autism-like mental symptoms in me, as well as many other symptoms.
I am wondering if this mystery virus might in part explain the worldwide rise in autism. The virus is easily passed to other people in normal household contact, or in normal social contact, so it could well be one of the causal factors behind the autism epidemic.
For more info on this autism-like virus, see here:
http://chronicsorethroat.wordpress.com/
I am posting this, as I wish to help in the process of bringing to light the likely causes of the autism epidemic.
How much more of this lie that every autistic is a genius has to be spread, before people forget or stop caring that actual severely disabled autistics exist? Who should be happy about this abundance of skills among autistics which is so unevenly shared, besides those that really have lots of ability and the bright people on the spectrum that aren’t really disabled?
I wonder how that group of 137 autistics was selected. How do I know if it is representative of autistics in every level of severity, like ones in institutions, group homes, and ones that would be difficult to have go along with the procedures of the study. 29% still isn’t a majority, and the magnitudes of the exceptional mental skills found aren’t clear.
Here we go with another tidbit of information to make the high functioning poindexters all excited, making it easier for them to hide the reality of many autistics who cannot read or write, and who have concentration and attention problems.
I’ve heard the argument about there being potentially lots of intelligence that just wasn’t being revealed because of being non-verbal. I wonder how many cases that applies in. As if facilitated communication will just have them talking through a keyboard sufficiently or above average, and if they were exposed to the regular form of education they would learn lots.
I’ve had enough of this misinformation and distortions being spread. If someone believes that, I wonder how they’ll know or even remember that autism frequently involves language/communication comprehension problems. Not every autistic that repeats things they heard understands them or necessarily means them. I’m trying to consider what actual experts say. And how come not all of the autistics who come to a level of communication sufficient to reveal their abilities, are found to be geniuses?
Since when do behavioral therapies come with the neglect of attempts to teach academic things? If it was so possible educate all autistics in areas of conventional learning, how come none of the researchers and therapists, etc. figured this out through decades of trying to help them?
Why is anyone so daring to say autism genes cause genius, when so few of the autism genes have been identified, when the combination of genes necessary to cause autism hasn’t been found, when it hasn’t been known if there is or isn’t only one combination of genes that could cause autism, and how different combinations of autism genes can lead to different levels of disability? Also, who knows if some genes that cause genius may just be linked to genes that cause autism, and frequently are found together in some individuals?
I’m sick of all this phony rhetoric being spewed about respect and appropriateness, when some of the ones who shout it are the same people who are spitting on the highly mentally impaired autistics by convincing people that they don’t exist and don’t deserve to be acknowledged, which could lead some to think that the lower functioning don’t deserve a say in what is done for them.
What a drag people are expressing such doom and gloom about the plight of autistics who have to deal with so little ability and have so little to look forward to. I wonder who you all can hush up to make you smart people comfortable. I know a lot of these genius autistics exist, but I don’t want them to command what should be done for all on the spectrum.
And who has said that? I know very well actual severely disabled autistics exist – my child is one of them.
Again, who has said that? Me? I wrote this piece so why are you trying to foist someone elses opinion on me?
And somewhat amazingly Pumma, neither do they.
Seriously – where did you read the statements that informed your opinion? I want to see links. Otherwise I’m going to have to assume you’re making it up as you go along.
Pumma, no one claimed that. If I were you, I’d carefully check that people you’re accusing of lying have actually told the alleged lie.
I also question whether associating genius and autism is a frame that is beneficial to autistics.
But I’m sure it comes as no surprise to autistic persons that autism clusters at the edges of the intellectual spectrum.
Genius is a neurodiversity. So is autism. So is mental retardation, dyslexia, left handedness, and a number of other conditions. Neurodiversities tend to overlap.
Not every genius is autistic, but I’d not be surprised if 20% to 40% of geniuses are autistic; just like 20% to 40% of persons with mental retardation are autistic. (Of the diagnosed ones, clearly more will cluster around the mental retardation edge).
Of course, the majority of autistics fall somewhere in between.
These sorts of findings will probably just keep coming. Michelle Dawson’s work was groundbreaking, and it has been replicated. The Howlin work is new. Are there methodological issues? I’m sure. The way science works is that replications will try to address those issues. I would not get carried away just yet. (Wakefield et al. didn’t prove anything – it’s the same thing with these early studies).
Kev, don’t act like you don’t know that the type of statements I condemn exist. I’m talking about the type of people you associate with and whose blogs you are linked to. It’s not just about you. Not all of this can just be shown in specific quotes because propaganda is being spewed with the actual intended messages that I detest.
Joseph, nobody is going to explicitly tell a lie that horrific. I think they’re doing it through propaganda with implicit messages, and with the way they state and cover things.
“Genius is a neurodiversity. So is autism. So is mental retardation, dyslexia” What do you feel about those “neurodiversities”?
“Not every genius is autistic, but I’d not be surprised if 20% to 40% of geniuses are autistic; just like 20% to 40% of persons with mental retardation are autistic. (Of the diagnosed ones, clearly more will cluster around the mental retardation edge).”
I wouldn’t be very surprised either. I think the reality about autism and intelligence is that there is a larger proportion of genius level intelligence in the spectrum as well as a very large proportion of very low intelligence. With this huge gap between the hugely intelligent and the minimally intelligent within the spectrum, I find this disproportionate coverage and portrayal of autism as being synonymous with genius, very disturbing.
Oh for crying out loud. Did Dr. Howlin say that all autistics had savant abilities? Is anyone saying that all autistics are geniuses of the sort that go to college?
No one said it. No one. Not even any one of the blogs that Kev links to. You appear to be making stuff up as you go along, pumma. Give a link to the person who says that all autism is genius and show how it is that any of the bloggers on this group blog or anyone else who might read your complaint has ever agreed with “all autism is genius” or “all genius autistics have the right to take all the attention from non-genius autistics (like my kid, Kev’s kid and Joseph’s kid) or all genius autistics have the right to say what will be done to all non-genius autistics.
This is garbage. It’s the kind of garbage spewed by Lenny Schafer who, I believe deliberately set out to smear autistic self-advocates as a bunch of selfish genius types who don’t have children and who don’t care about either “low functioning” autistics or “children”. Newsflash Lenny. Many of us who are self-advocates and bloggers are also parents, and many of us who have kids have “low functioning”, “retarded” or “non-genius” kids and some of us even have… whoa… typical kids! Gosh, can you imagine that??? Freaky and smart ASD and neurodiverse adults raising typical kids… totally shocking… something ought to be done about it!
Even the self-advocates who need a great deal of help to live day to day, or who go without being able to do some basic things like cooking, advocate for all others on the spectrum. Not to speak for them to say that what everyone needs is the same thing, but to say that everyone needs respect and help that is aimed at what each person needs, whether or not there is a parent involved. Some people don’t have parents advocating or doing the housecleaning/cooking for them. My kid has me. So far I’ve been able to manage to take care of myself AND my disabled non-genius ASD kid, which is great, not everyone can do that, but I can.
Ms Clark. I did not state one could not be a mathematical genius and not have the mental ability to wipe one’s backside. I said I doubt any of those in the article did. I venture such a condition is extremely rare. I’ll stick by
that.
When did I ever say that education is wasted on anyone? Nearly everyone who has a low-functioning child believes they know more than they can express. For someone so wed
to the scientific method, your mention of someone who uses facilitated communication astounds me. Test after test has shown it to be a hoax. This is not to say that no one has ever learned to communicate via FC, but it is so
rare that its use is seen as detrimental. Autism is not a
coordination problems.
I used the toileting language as it was used in another post. I don’t feel that a person who cannot wipe their own
backsides are lesser people at all. I don;t think people who are geniuses are greater people. I think all people have worth no matter their abilities. I don’t know how why you would think otherwise. You tie worth to ability.
Otherwise you would not conclude that when I suggests that genius coupled with an inability to perform certain
tasks due to mental incompetence is rare, you wouldn’t
conclude that I thought less of such people.
I don’t think Sue Rubin is less of a human being if she can or cannot express her thoughts. I am suspicious that she needs a facilitator and whose thoughts are really being conveyed. That suspicion is well routed in the controlled studies of FC.
Nice to have someone who wishes tragedy on another human being lecture about compassion.
Ms Clark, may you have a long, enjoyable life full of laughter and good tidings. May your son prosper beyond your wildest dreams.
Coordination problems or the ability/inability to move one’s hands on command are very significant for many autistic people. Have you watched, Autism is a World? There’s an interview where Sue is in the same room with Margaret Bauman, who is no small potatoes researcher, she’s a BIG deal reasearcher and Margaret Bauman agrees that Sue Rubin’s communication with the help she gets to focus, etc, is real. What comes out of Sue’s communicator is what Sue wants to come out.
In some extreme situations, Amanda Baggs needs someone to touch her arm or shoulder to help her focus on typing, though usually she types independently.
FC may be 90 or 99% bad in the past, it’s not all fake, and it’s not all bad. There is medical/biological reason to think that some autistic people can not move their bodies on command. I can get you the link to papers on that later. I can’t get them now. You can try looking yourself for “movement disorder” and autism or words to that effect. They can have Parkinsonian kinds of problems where they’ll freeze at a doorway.
If there are few math geniuses at Cambridge who can not wipe themselves… we don’t know who does what for them when they aren’t in class, it might be because the kids who had the movement disorders get shunted aside into low expectation groups and don’t get the chance to keep up with the kids who are also autistic but can do things like self-care in toileting. There could be dozens of non-verbal kids who could be at Cambridge now but who are thought to be retarded because they aren’t speaking, and maybe if they’d been given access to keyboards or letterboards when they were younger to check their intelligence, like Dov and Tito, maybe some of them could do Cambridge level math.
Neither Dov nor Tito can reliably speak. They both can communicate complicated thought processes through writing/pointing.
To be honest, I was under the impression that the room/room transition was more to do with perception than movement, although I do work with a woman who has to stop and restart if her path gets interupted, which is similar to the pathing difficulties faced by many people with parkinsons.
Kev, I fear it because my daughter needs a lot of help. If society is convinced that autism is a good thing raising monies to help those who have not been granted the genius gift becomes much harder.
Actually it will probably mean more money being spent on those who are more likely to progress and less on the ones who have lagged behind. I mean progress as a relative term as all children progress, the LFA kids at a much slower rate.
Look at the attack on ABA in Ms Clatk’s post. No need to go through the tedium of such programs. The child knows all that stuff anyway. There is absolutely no reason to think a child diagnosed with LFA has been a sponge absorbing everything he has been taught. Even though they do know more than they can express.
I’m happy to admit there are geniuses on the spectrum, but how they relate to my daughter, I’m not certain. How dwelling on such people will result in more funds for her I cannot fathom
As a practical matter, if Sue Rubin is able to communicate independently with a keyboard, without her hand being moved around by someone else, what she’s doing should not be called FC. I saw FC in the movie about the play with autistic kids – I don’t remember the name. It looked appalling, and the parents were all credulous, just like they were credulous about vaccines and so forth. I think it’s horrendous that kids were put through that.
Imagine an actually effective and proven treatment comes along, and they call it “biomed” or “alt-med.” Would that make sense?
Mayfly, are you saying that I wished a tragedy on you? Are you really that poor at comprehending what you read? Did I write, “Gosh Mayfly, I sure hope you have a stroke.” ?
Hint: No. I wrote, basically, “If you had a stroke, then ….”
Notice the difference between, “I wish you would have a stroke.” and “If you had a stroke, then…”
Facilitated Communication, as I understand it, may start out with a hand over hand where the faciliator is showing the kid how to point to letters, and then feeling the kid making the movement and still keeping the hand over the kid’s hand… BUT the goal of FC is independent communication, so that, for instance, Alex Bain (a hub blogger) started out with his mom’s hand over his hand and his mom, jypsy, went on to give him less and less support.
Was she the one who held his hand and wrote: “pumpedi” “pumpedi”? When he was something like 5 years old? jypsy may chime in here to confirm the story. Alex was writing, “pumpedi” over and over on his communication keyboard and jyspy thought something like, “that’s some odd nonsense he’s typing out there.” Then she realized that he was typing the name of one of his favorite shows called, “Pumped!” Since there was no exclamation point on the keyboard he was using the next best thing, and upside down exclamation point, also known as the lower case letter “i”.
Dr. Gernsbacher’s son needed some kind of hand/limb support to type in the beginning but soon he was typing independently.
It is wrong to condemn all hand-over-hand assistance of autistic people in using a communicator as fake. By doing this those doing the condemning may be depriving people like Larry Bissonette of communication and some of their thoughts may remain locked away. Larry writes poetry. He makes cogent comments on what is going on around him, but wouldn’t be able to do that by speaking. He can say individual words, but apparently can’t speak out what he’s thinking.
It is wrong to totally demonize everything that looks like FC. It’s just wrong. We know that autistics do have movement disorders. Dyspraxia and autism are known to go hand in hand. Asperger’s people are supposed tend to be clumsy and have lousy handwriting… that would describe me. Some autistics are extraordinarily coordinated. I can’t type anywhere near as fast as Amanda, and it took me years to get up to where I am now, about 60 words a minute with several errors per minute. I never was able to do a cartwheel even though I tried many times, and even though my younger sister mastered them. My handwriting usually looks like a 12 year olds. My ASD kid’s handwriting looks like an 7 year old’s and my ASD kid is pushing 30.
http://spectrumcommunicationcenter.com/aut5.html
Has the statement: “Motor planning disorder, known as Dyspraxia is common in children with Autism/PDD, though it is infrequently recognized.”
Better, PubMed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17880641
Dyspraxia in autism: association with motor, social, and communicative deficits.
“Impaired performance of skilled gestures, referred to as dyspraxia, is consistently reported in children with autism; however, its neurological basis is not well understood.”
If it’s not well understood, then maybe some people need to understand that some autistics might need hand-over-hand to communicate. Why not?
To deprive a kid of communication because one is terrified of ever doing something that looks like the kind of faux-FC that made the news in the 1980s is just wrong.
Besides that, me, Steve D and Bev met Payton Goddard whose parents facilitate for her. They either have a lot of people fooled at USD, or Payton’s parents are facilitating her to communicate her thoughts. I saw Payton run up to Bev and hand her a pair of sunglasses that apparently Payton had picked out for Bev (they had met at a previous conference). Payton didn’t say anything, but no one was with her when she gave them to Bev. No one was saying, “Now Payton, give these glasses you picked out to Bev. There’s Bev, give them to her.” Not any evidence there that Payton’s thoughts are her own, coming out of the keyboard, but it seemed to me that she was much smarter than her movements would lead people to believe.
Yeah, it could be a bunch of well-intended people who are speaking for her, but I don’t think so. (She has a website somewhere if you want to see what she looks like and read about her.)
Prevalence of motor impairments in autism
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17467940?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Mayfly thinks I am wrong to criticize ABA but then he says that autism is not about coordination. Who’s statement is more harmful to autistics? I think his is.
ABA uses mind-reading. The trainer will say, “this kid didn’t obey me when I said, ‘pick up the cup’ because he’s stubborn,” or “this kid didn’t obey me when I said, ‘pick up the cup,” because he’s so retarded he doesn’t understand what “pick up the cup” means. They don’t say, “the kid is trying to pick up the cup but his muscles are not obeying.”
There was an EEG study where they showed that a girl was firing the neurons for motor planning when they asked her to move her arm or pick up something. Her arm was motionless. Lovaas might have slapped her for not obeying even though the EEG showed that it was her intention to do what she was told to do.
I can’t find the study right now, but I know some of us here discussed it via emails when it came out.
All aspects of all FC are not fake or erroneous. It’s wrong to say that it is.
Ms. Clark, look at the title of this post. What can “Autism genes = genius” convey? I’ve seen many bloggers imply that lots of the nonverbal could be highly intelligent despite their lack of communication, who cite just a few examples of other autistics that have been heard about. What is being conveyed when the concepts of low functioning and retarded are being undermined as if they don’t apply to autism?
Even if this true in some cases, there are many cases in which it isn’t true, but those who imply unrevealed genius haven’t wanted to address the issues of the ones on the spectrum who really don’t have a lot of intelligence. Think of how this distracts people who listen to them from issues of impairment. I don’t blame the researchers like Howlin themselves so much as I blame the general media coverage that disproportionatly talks about the gifts associated with autism.
I can’t come to any other conclusion based on what I read when I see genius autistics claiming they know what is right for those on the spectrum, who try to influence policy based on what they claim is right, taking away attention from the non genius autistics in the process. So I haven’t just felt the vibes. I think I’ve seen those things in action.
The things I hear them advocate for are not in the interests of the low functioning. I have noticed that the parents who concur with the line of thinking of the HFA tend to be the ones with high functioning children. I never notice how the self-advocates say that help is needed based on individual needs. I don’t know what a lot of those self advocates have done besides propaganda.
Look, dude.
My kid. Not a genius.
Not anything vaguely like a genius.
I’m not putting my kid’s IQ here, but take my word for it. Not a genius.
You, pumma, wrote:”Even if this true in some cases, there are many cases in which it isn’t true, but those who imply unrevealed genius haven’t wanted to address the issues of the ones on the spectrum who really don’t have a lot of intelligence.”
We don’t know how many kids who were labeled as retarded who could have normal intelligence. I’m not talking genius, I’m talking being assumed to be retarded, but having normal intelligence. The work of Michelle Dawson shows that if they bother to do an IQ test on an autistic kid, if they use the wrong test, it can seriously underestimate an ASD person’s actual IQ.
Not all nonverbal autistics have a hidden IQ of 150, but if everyone assumes that a kid who acts like Tito or Dov (sorry to pick on Tito and Dov) is an empty shell and retarded, as Dov’s parents assumed about him, then we have a BIG problem. Dov’s parent’s situation may be much more common that we think. If we just decide that all autistics are retarded then they aren’t going to get no help from now on, but they may be getting the wrong kind of help. Maybe they’d like to discuss politics, but everyone thinks they have an IQ or 30. One way to find out! See if they actually can read. If they can’t read, then they can’t write, but maybe they can read and no one knows it.
If they can’t read or write they could still have lots of interesting stuff going on in their heads and sometimes you can get at that by paying attention to how the person responds with their body language or with noises or simple sentences.
Not all autistic kids are geniuses. Not all even have normal IQ (I don’t think my kid would turn out to be a genius if give a Raven’s IQ, test, but I don’t know… maybe).
Still, the fact is that genes that seem to carry with them the possibility of genius are associated with autism. To argue that we are not allowed to talk about that is dumb. No one is saying that all autistics are geniuses, and even if they are, they still might need loads of every day help.
Ms Clark, no one does not have to think the child is stubborn. One can think the child has forgotten what the words mean or that they don’t want to d it. Just because one may be limited does not mean the person lacks free will.
Your suggestion that we should think the child wants to, but cannot denies choice to the child. If that is not dehumanizing, I don’t know what is.
If you want to swap anecdotes. Here’s one from Ms Chew’s bog. http://www.autismvox.com/14-year-old-girl-types-that-she-was-sexually-abused/#comment-316714 Read Dr Todd’s comment. If you would rather look at controlled studies and not anecdotes, there
are numerous ones in the “Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. FC isn’t even studied anymore, as it has done so poorly when any efforts are made to ensure the study meets standards.
Is there any center of higher education in the U.S besides Syracuse University and its affiliated institute whose name escapes me that is even looking at it anymore? The studies produced there do not use proper controls.
The child won’t reach for the cup? Put a piece of candy, or something else in its place and see what happens.
I realize it’s a problem that there’s too much assumption of retardation when someone is nonverbal. I wish a better way would be devised to assess how much ability is present when someone can’t read or write.
It’s not like I think it isn’t obvious that there is an association between autism and genius. But I don’t want anyone to be misleading about it, because not all autistics have received the genius from that association.
I think it should be succinctly expressed that there is a lot of genius for some with autism but a lot of intellectual weakness for many others with autism. That association seems likely with the prevalence of geniuses among the parents of autistics, and makes me wonder what the difference consists of, between the genetic basis of the genius of the parents and the genetic basis that leads to low intelligence forms of autism in their children.
The way I see it is most folks have been told that 75% of autistics are mentally retarded. Therefor you have 75% who need help with daily chores and who can not be employed and who need ABA to keep them from being nuisances, but they aren’t going to be self supporting at all.
But now, maybe people will say, “oh look, it turns out we were wrong, maybe it’s more like 20% of autistics are mentally retarded, and then there are 20% who look retarded but who definitely are not and who need some specific kinds of help, and if we give it to them some of them may actually become employable. Employable and totally independent aren’t the same. Some people need help to get them to work like a blind person might need a driver or someone to read things that aren’t in Braille. Autistics might need help in applying to get into college or some accommodations in work or college, but now hey, there are some who smarter and more work/capable than they look. And then 20% are plain old fashioned genius nerds who may need less help, but still probably need some help otherwise they may end up geniuses who do janitorial for a living (I’m not a genius, but I’m pretty bright, and I’ve done a significant amount of janitorial/cleaning for employment in my adult life) and even a genius can end up as a homeless person. So maybe there are a bunch like me who aren’t particularly savant, but have some smatterings of gifts and basic intelligence, but really could benefit from some accommodations sometimes but can skid along the edge of low-income or poverty but not ending up homeless without the accommodations.
My point, saying that “autism genes” can be “genius genes” doesn’t mean that everyone walks away from the obviously disabled autistics saying, “Oh well, now we know those kids are all geniuses. They’re just lazy or prone to tricking us into thinking they can’t talk. We aren’t going to spend any more money on therapy for them. If they’re so smart let them figure out how to get a job, let them figure out how to take care of themselves.”
These researchers could probably have avoided a bit of controversy by stating that some of the genes are associated with brain development, instead of using the leading and misused genius term. I doubt that the results can be construed to the whole ASD population as it was done with sample bias, from what I can see, at Cambridge.
That’s fine. I can see that it’s plausible that if you help a kid get used to a keyboard, then later they might be able to use the keyboard independently. That should not be called FC. It should be called something else. I don’t know what.
And the technique should be tested to see if it actually works. Standards of science don’t go out the window just because it’s cool that autistic kids thought to be retarded turn out to not be.
In FC, the claim was that the “facilitated” communication was coming from the autistic person, not the facilitator. In basically every case this was shown not be happening. FC was practically a gigantic fraud, except that I think both the inventor of FC and the facilitators themselves were drinking the kool-aid. The excuse later was the same excuse you hear psychics give: It only works if you’re not testing it.
Pumma, so you think the media is too positive about autism? We must live in different universes.
The genius stuff might be an inaccurate generalization and so forth, but at least it’s a change from what you always see in the media, in my view.
Hello friends –
Is there an actual link to the study? I’d be very curious to know where on the spectrum these individuals scored.
That’s a pool of 792 adult students, out of whom 8 were found to be autistic.
Prevalence anyone? 1.01%.
This should be great news for everyone! With these rock solid numbers, we can say that almost every child with autism will go to college, and most of them will major in mathematics. After all, even the most ‘alarming’ numbers for rates of autism hover near the one in one hundred mark; it turns out, this is nothing more than a metric for how many mathematicians we will have in the next generation.
It does leave me a bit confused as to why the American Academy of Pediatricians is recommending every toddler be checked for signs of autism by age 2. What is the problem, they’re all going to get by without any services and become students at Cambridge! Great!
Ms. Clarke –
Hell might be freezing over, but I am in agreement with you in regards to motor difficulties in autism up to and including a possible association with poor body control and the ability to express oneself. Nicely stated. [that was weird to say!]
– pD
Well, pD. There is in fact no evidence that autistics are less likely (as a group) to go to college than anyone else.
Does it come as a surprise there are all sorts of unproven myths believed by people, even professionals, about autism?
Half the sample from Szatmari et al. (1989) attended college, and I believe a third obtained a degree.
That’s probably comparable to what you see in non-autistics today in the US. (I’m not sure about the 1980s in Canada).
Granted, the Szatmari group consisted of “non-retarded” autistics.
Additionally, the Cambridge autistics were all previously undiagnosed, most likely. They might be diagnosed today, if they were children. Adult outcomes of autistics diagnosed as children with current criteria and ascertainment methods are obviously unknown. This means that the opinions of the AAP in regards to prognosis can’t be well informed.
Actually, the genius term was my and the headlines misinterpretation, Simon Baron Cohen at least used a bit more appropriate phraseology of “certain intellectual skills.”
The instruments that are used to measure what is called “intelligence” are highly flawed.
Here is an example where it was clearly demonstrated that individuals scoring low on one test scored high on another test.
A 70 percentile difference is gigantic. At a minimum that is going from the bottom 15% to the top 15% simply by using a different test that is supposedly measuring “the same” thing. Very clearly it is not.
What this research shows is that some tests are very highly skewed against autistic individuals. The tests were not purposefully designed to be highly skewed against autistic individuals, but they are.
What that shows is that the people designing and evaluating such tests are unable to appreciate that the tests they generated were so highly skewed and flawed. If the people making and using such tests can’t tell who is intelligent within 70 percentile points using tests they designed to do exactly that, what does that tell us about the ability of ordinary individuals to tell who is intelligent and who isn’t?
“so you think the media is too positive about autism?” Joseph, yes, from what I see. Unless autism generally comes with as much success as the media portrays. I don’t know how well people still realize that a large proportion on the spectrum are very disabled and are in institutions or at home, having to be very dependent.
As long as the benefit of genius is enjoyed by a minority of autistics, the media shouldn’t consistently be using genius as a catchy theme to attract viewers to their coverage of autism. I also worry how such media coverage would affect those who could have the responsibility for making policy, such as funding for research, services, and therapies.
If someone wants to determine the percentage of autistics going to college, I think they should look for the percentage of non-autistics going to college, for comparison. And in looking for the percentages, they should adjust for factors that may differ between autistic and non-autistic groups that affect the probability that one will go to or stay in college.
Hi Joseph –
There is in fact no evidence that autistics are less likely (as a group) to go to college than anyone else.
There are so many things wrong with this argument it is difficult to know where to begin. It is a combination of dangerous illusions of grandeur, and a complete abandonment of common sense alongside either hypocrisy, or selective amensia.
In the first place, I honestly find this type of analysis potentially very detrimental towards children with autism.
What is to keep someone at the county or state level from slashing special education budgets for autism based on the notion that we have no evidence that goals such as college might be obtained at different levels from children with autism, than those without? Our special education class sizes have been surging in the past decade; at the time the people in this study were in grade school, it is exceedingly unlikely they were all in special education; so the notion that special education is even needed for children with autism is up for debate.
What is to keep someone from saying that our national prevelance of autism is ~ 1%, and likewise, their representation in institutions like Cambridge is also 1%; so why bother with early intevetion, special programs, or indeed, even awareness? Children with autism are doing fine without any of these things; in fact, they seem to be well represented in very prestigous universities. Why should I be more understanding of your child’s behavior when in fact, they are just as likely, or more so, than my child, to go to Cambridge?
An extremely common theme on this board is that there is no increase of true autism; instead, many children with an autism label today were labeled as mentally retarded in the past; or they were institutionalized and hidden from view.
In order for us to believe that without evidence on university enrollment we can make no decisions as to differences between the groups, we must simultaneously believe that the mentally retarded and institutionalized of yesteryear also could have (or did) attended college at the same rates as autism today. It is absurd.
– pD
It’s hard to imagine what it is that you see. If you go to Google News and type ‘autism’, there’s one news item about Michell Dawson’s victory over Canada Post in the Canadian Supreme Court. The rest are about autism “the disease”, about vaccines and such.
That’s another myth. While it is true that autistic adults, at the moment, rarely live independently, they are even less likely to live in institutions. And I think this will improve further. If you’re including things like group homes in ‘institutions’, then yes, that’s somewhat more common.
Is it wrong factually, or you mean it’s wrong because it contradicts your convictions and your personal aims?
Your argument seems to be that it’s wrong because it violates common sense as you personally perceive it.
I don’t follow. Why would anyone say, “well, there’s no evidence autistic children are less likely to attend college, so let’s not educate them – that way we will ensure they are less likely to go to college.” That’s utter bullshit.
Whether early diagnosis, early intervention, and special treatments are beneficial is a scientific question that is resolved by carrying out retrospective and prospective studies. Certainly, I’m not in favor of recommendations that sound reasonable on the surface but have no evidentiary basis, any more than there’s an evidentiary basis for the GFCF diet.
Whether undiagnosed autistic children in the past did well despite not being diagnosed or intervened is only material to these scientific questions if in fact the lack of diagnosis was itself beneficial.
I’m not sure what’s hard to get about that. No one has said that *all* currently diagnosed autism is the result of diagnostic substitution from mental retardation.
There’s increasing recognition of autism in the population with mental retardation. There’s increasing recognition in the population without mental retardation as well – and probably much more so, if you look at the numbers.
There’s an error in your assumption that because the prevalence of autism in Cambridge is normal, then all kinds of autistics are equally likely to attend college. It’s true that autistics *as a group* could be equally likely to attend college. What about autistics with an IQ over 130? I’d bet these autistics are even *more* likely to go to college than the general population. Does that make sense or not?
The prevalence of autism in Cambridge appears close to normal, but there’s a margin of error, and it’s quite possible Baron-Cohen’s sample is skewed by Math students. So it could be a bit lower presumably, and the rest is made up by autistics with intellectual disability, who presumably don’t attend college.
BTW, there are several AQ screenings carried out in universities, both in the UK and Japan. The findings are pretty consistent. There’s little difference in the general population distribution and the university distribution.
I don’t see as much detailed coverage lately about how disabling autism can be, even when the coverage describes it as a disease. I think that the lack of independent living should be covered more by those in the media.
So you know they’re saying and apparently I do to but you don’t know where? Bull.
I have not heard one person ever say they feel like ‘spitting’ on people who are low functioning. If I did, believe me I would be attacking them immediately. My daughter is low functioning and has learning difficulties. In IQ terms, that means less than 70.
I’m fed up to the back teeth of hearing people like you, Harold Doherty and Jonathon saying how ‘the neurodiverse’ hate all low functioning autistics and want to deny they exist blah blah blah.
Prove it, with links, or move on to a website where your lies are acceptable. Because what you and your ilk are doing right now is disparaging my autistic child.
I’m having problems posting. Perhaps it’s tied up in moderation. Ms Clark you wrote
”
I hope a day comes when Mayfly will not be able to wipe his own backside because then maybe he’ll have some compassion for those who can’t and realize that they don’t deserve to be categorized as a lesser sort of person. ”
If that is no wishing tragedy on someone, I don’t know what is? You never answered me as to where you drew the conclusion that I thought the disabled were lesser people, or geniuses were greater.
I know I often don’t see spelling or grammatical errors until a second after posting, and I fear sometimes I might leave out an adverb, such as not. But sometimes I feel you filter everyone’s post to fit preconceived assumptions.
Yes, I’ve done this too.
Kev, here is a hypothetical conversation.
I’m trying to raise money to help those with Autism.
You mean the Deans of Mathematics at all our centers of higher education? I just read testimony about them before a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Not only are they smart, but they are sinless as well.
Actually I’m trying to help those whose autism has resulted in severe mental delays.
I’ve heard rumors about their existence. But how many can there be. We cannot help everyone.
————————————–
If one only posts about successes by autistics, are you not indirectly denying the existence of those totally dependent on others? If someone says they fear their child will be institutionalized and some one suggests 98%, a number, I just made up, can live outside of institutions, are they not brushing aside the 2% who need such care.
That’s a nonsense scenario, mayfly. Consider an analogy.
Someone says: black people need our help. And the reply is, “you mean all the great basketball players?”
The right way to construct autism is as a minority; a minority where people have potential, role models, an identity, a culture, etc. It doesn’t mean that all autistic people are successful. It doesn’t mean that autistic people are normal and can do everything normal people do. But at the same time you’re not condemned to be presumed incompetent or less of a human just because you’re autistic.
(Like pD above who goes ape-shit at the first suggestion that autistics might be comparable to non-autistics at something, even noting that hinting at equality means that we have delusions of grandeur).
You’re describing a straw-man, an extreme that will never occur.
Hi Joseph –
LOL!
don’t follow. Why would anyone say, well, there’s no evidence autistic children are less likely to attend college, so let’s not educate them – that way we will ensure they are less likely to go to college.” That’s utter bullshit.
They might say that if they were to believe, that as you implied, the distribution of autism in the Cambridge study was normal. You have made the argument previously that you believed the prevalance in the general population to approach 1%. If I am incorrect, and you do not prescribe to this belief, I apologize.
In any situation, it is by no means is tied to education. For example, in my state, (Florida) a bill was recently passed mandating some type of coverage for things like speech, OT and ABA therapies. The ominious message from the insurance lobbyists was that it would raise rates for everyone. It may indeed. Now lets say a lobbyist takes ahold of this ‘study’. Here, it would seem, is evidence that children with autism do not necessarily require additional therapies; their numbers in the general population (1%) are the same as their numbers in Cambridge (1%) from a time frame where there was no insurance coverage. To Joe Sixpack the argument that dollars are being wasted on other peoples kids who don’t need it sounds good, even if it isn’t. It isn’t about just educating them; it is about giving them ‘special’ (i.e., expensive) educations.
That’s a pool of 792 adult students, out of whom 8 were found to be autistic.
Prevalence anyone? 1.01%.
There’s an error in your assumption that because the prevalence of autism in Cambridge is normal, then all kinds of autistics are equally likely to attend college.
If population at Cambridge is abnormal for the autism group as a whole, then what meaning can we assign to your prevalence value of 1.01% outside of these particular eight individuals? What can we tell about autistic individuals, as a group, by this prevalance figure, in terms of attending college? Anything at all?
What about autistics with an IQ over 130? I’d bet these autistics are even more likely to go to college than the general population. Does that make sense or not?
Sure it does, and it is possible that such individuals comprise several of the people in this study. But if they do, it only furthers my point, this study tells us almost nothing about the vast majority of people with autism.
BTW, there are several AQ screenings carried out in universities, both in the UK and Japan. The findings are pretty consistent. There’s little difference in the general population distribution and the university distribution.
And we are back at the beginning; the implication that having autism is in no way a hinderance towards acheiving university admittance and the many daily living tasks that go alongside it.
How can we believe the AQ is a valid tool for diagnosing autism, and thus, having autism is no detriment to achieving higher education, while we simultaneously believe that autism is a developmental disorder, that merits research dollars, early intervention, insurance mandates, and endless hours arguing with people on the Internet?
– pD
OK,
Mayfly, I’m sorry for writing that and not elaborating on it.
What I meant was that all of us, everyone one of us, if we live long enough will be the people who can not wipe their own backsides.
That’s all of us. We all get there, unless we die before we get that incapacitated.
What I was thinking when I wrote, “I hope the day comes when you can’t wipe your own backside,” is actually saying, “I hope you live a long time and if you do you will experience not being able to care for yourself.” The alternatives are to die before that happens, or to have a stroke and not be able to wipe yourself today or tomorrow.
So, once more, I can likewise say, “I hope the day comes when Kev (or Ms. Clark, or Joseph) has no teeth and is blind,” that means I hope they or I live to somewhere around 90 or 100 years old.
My explanation may sound convoluted, but it’s just a reality check that we all get to that point. We all end up severely disabled if we don’t die beforehand.
My mother is in her 80’s and I’ve helped to care for 90 year old granparents in law and watched them die of old age, so maybe this thinking makes more sense to me than it does to others.
Lord but mayfly and our Harold should get together – they deserve each other, though that’s only in one dimension and i’d hate to put anyone in the same class as the currently despicable Harold. Who knew he could sink so low?
Now this I liked:
“Someone says: black people need our help. And the reply is, “you mean all the great basketball players?”
The right way to construct autism is as a minority; a minority where people have potential, role models, an identity, a culture, etc. It doesn’t mean that all autistic people are successful. It doesn’t mean that autistic people are normal and can do everything normal people do. But at the same time you’re not condemned to be presumed incompetent or less of a human just because you’re autistic.”
Well said and for crying out loud, why is it so difficult to look at autistics as a whole population? Do you expect people to be either geniuses or mentally retarded? Why then are such useless nonsense statements made about autistics and what do these clowns do with the likes of Amanda, who demonstrates what we’ve been saying for years. Hey folks, autistics can have lots and lots of problems living in the world, but hey, that’s not all there is.
There are a good number of autistic people with a high IQ. The people who attend Cambridge are not an even sample of children who grew up within 5 miles of Cambridge, it draws from all over the world, it’s a collection of unusual people. People like me don’t go to Cambridge, I’m not smart enough, autistic people with a stronger perseveration on topics that are taught at Cambridge may end up there… if they get a lot of help.
Simon Baron-Cohen said in a paper that was “presented” at the AWARES online conference, something like, “Asperger syndrome is not a hindrance to attending University. He meant something like, there’s nothing intrinsic to Asperger syndrome that makes people less able to understand the material. But I told him the way he wrote the statement was wrong. Asperger syndrome can make attendance at a University impossible IF the University has admissions rules and day-to-day requirements that require that the ASD person do things that they can not do. Like, walk into a building full of people and go find an office, if the directions to the office aren’t laid out in a particular way (say the ASD person is given the wrong room number, a typical college student might be able to figure out what to do by asking a random person, “where is Dr. So-and-so’s office” or “where is room #47B”? Depending on the set up and how the ASD person is feeling you might as well ask him or her to lift the entire building over his or her head, because going up to someone and asking for directions can be a total impossibility.
So the kid who can do quadratic equations in his sleep, the kid who is the next Einstein or Stephen Hawking might miss out on college if he doesn’t have someone there to back him up and manage this stuff, OR a college that is set up to not put stupid and unexpected pressures on the students.
I would say that if money and ability to deal with the admissions requirements, ability to move and live in a new situation and so forth (smaller hurdles than ability to cope with the academic load) were never an issue that there would be more ASD people in the maths department at Cambridge. The ones who are there are the “survivors” their peers may still be at home because they can’t cope with some aspect of University life like noise or the living arrangements…
And then there are those who might have been seen as Cambridge material if they hadn’t been non-verbal and shunted off into the “retarded” track wrongly.
Not all non-verbal kids are actually Cambridge material, but some are. I’m thinking of Dr. Gernsbacher’s son, who, as far as I know, though he is gifted, is not able to use speech in a reliable way to communicate, but uses a keyboard.
Saying that there are some geniuses among the apparently retarded kids is not going to make people treat the non-verbal kids worse, it’s going to make people make sure that all of the apparently retarded kids are given the opportunity to show their abilities. It’s like if I told you that among a bunch of rocks there are some that are extremely valuable, would you just throw the rocks on your driveway and leave them out in the rain, drive over them, etc, or would you go through all the rocks and treat them all carefully.
In schools, one would think that this would be kind of a “rising tide lifts all boats” thing.
The opposite is the situation now, where people say, “75% of autistics are retarded, and autistics are toxic waste, and they ‘break their mother’s arms’, and they are out to destroy the economy, so lets just plan on shunting 75% of all the ASD kids admitted to the school into the ‘low functioning’, low IQ, low expenditure track. Don’t waste any money on them, they’re toast.”
Yes, I do believe that. When autism is screened thoroughly, as I’m sure it was at Cambridge, the prevalence will be roughly 1%. Lorna Wing has been saying this for years. I wrote about that here.
As to the point, I think Ms. Clark explained it well. I do not believe as you do, pD, that pointing out the strengths of autistics will make people care less, or make people try to screw autistics over. The current situation is the reverse and it’s not a good situation.
While the prevalence we can derive at Cambridge is interestingly what you’d expect, I think it’s important to clarify that Cambridge is not a representative population. We cannot get a representative sample of either autistics or non-autistics there.
NTs with below-normal IQs cannot make it in college, much less Cambridge. That’s just the way things are for everybody.
Let’s say they screened MIT instead, and I’m making this up, but suppose they find 3% of students there are in the spectrum. Does this reflect on the general population prevalence? No. Does it mean autistics are 3 times more likely to go to college? No. Does it mean autistics are more likely to end up in MIT than non-autistics? Theoretically, yes, but I wouldn’t start writing that application yet. There are other preconditions that need to be met, and it’s a near impossibility for anybody to get to MIT.
From a scientific perspective, it doesn’t seem that autistic *traits* are a hindrance as far as being able to follow college material. This is a testable hypothesis, and that’s really the kind of thing an AQ distribution (or some other autistic trait measurement tool) can tell you. IQ is a factor, on the other hand, but this is the case whether you’re autistic or non-autistic.
Alyric, we know that many of our brothers of African ancestry are struggling. I don’t see any attempt to sweep that under the rug. People may disagree about the cause, but no one thinks the problem does not exist. We have come long way in that area, but our journey is not complete.
If all we only read about who is wealthy in the country the poor will be forgotten. “Out of sight, out of mind.” Ever hear of that aphorism. We talk about poverty because not addressing it would be immoral. Not addressing the problems of the low-functioning is also immoral. We can have completely different approaches on both, that’s fine. But not to talk about it at all is immoral.
I do look at autistics as a whole population, I’m happy that you are autistic and skilled. I am however more concerned about my daughter than you. Crass as that may be.
Amanda Blake’s autism is controversial to say the least. She attended programs for giftted children, and then sometime, while at college? I don’t she lost the ability to speak, developed marked perserverations and became a role model for FC. That’s what I’ve been able tp glean from the web. I don’t know how much of it is true. If
the loss of skills did happen at such a late age, what caused it. It is a unique scenario for autism. There are genetic conditions which manifest themselves late in life. Autism is not one of them. Autism is characterized by diagnostic criteria, not how one gets there. If she meets that criteria, than she should be counted. I’m not sure she should be held out as a role mode due to the strangeness of her case.