September 15, 2009
EVERYTHING IS ABNORMAL NOW EXCEPT SEXUAL DEVIANCE:
Are we all autistic now?: Lumping Mozart and Einstein in with those who have severe socialisation problems is no help to sufferers or science. (Sandy Starr, 9/15/09, Spiked)
How can you tell if someone’s not autistic?This may seem like an odd question, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the world of autism and the families, clinicians and researchers who deal with it. But speaking as someone who’s currently overseeing a project examining the genetics and sociology of autism, and who has experienced autistic traits and related difficulties both in himself (I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in my teens) and in his family, I believe that this is the most contentious question one can ask about autism today.
It is a question that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is currently wrestling with, following the UK government’s request that NICE ‘develop a clinical guideline in relation to the initial recognition, referral and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in children and adolescents’. As NICE points out, ‘the prevalence in children and young people of all disorders in the autism spectrum (which includes autism, Asperger’s syndrome and atypical autism) has risen in the past decade’ and ‘ranges from 60 per 10,000 to more than 100 per 10,000 in the UK’, causing ‘a significant impact on referrals to diagnostic services’ (1). This proportion may yet rise further, as the general trend is to cease to regard autism as an exceptional disorder, and to see it a set of non-pejorative traits that most, if not all, of us possess to some extent.