Subtitle: Autism, a neurological difference or a snapshot of evolution in realtime?
I use the Google Alert feature to keep up with all of the stories on the internet about autism on a daily basis.
The other day my Google Alert email was inundated with a story about an Australian father who discovered he’s autistic after his daughter was diagnosed.
WTF? Why was this story picked up by multiple news outlets as something worth reporting?
I ask that question because there are thousands of stories just like this one every day.
I’m one of those stories [sort of]. I was 59 years old when I finally learned what the word “autistic” meant which I heard numerous times from the age 6 until I was a teenager. However, nobody, including my mother, ever explained to me what that was all about.
Autism is still a statistician’s dream puzzle to estimate. We keep hearing new updates on the ratio of autism to the general populace annually.
In less than two decades, the statistics have morphed from 1 in 2000 to 1 in 45. Those numbers primarily refer to males, and the ratio of male to female autistics has generally stayed the same, four boys to every girl.
There have been lots of suppositions about those decreasing ratios, and the main argument is that the diagnostic process has improved.
My personal theory is that autism is part of human evolution. If we remove the comorbid condition of Intellectual Disability, most autistics have an above average IQ along with a myriad of special gifts. Those gifts are not universal among all autistics, they are a spectrum just like the negative aspects of autism.
A good analogy is Star Trek and Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock looked similar to humans but he had an amazing ability to problem solve using his gift of incredible logic.
I think pretty logically too, and it is logical to me that autism is a snapshot of human evolution in realtime regardless of what causes it…
[To be continued…]
Story on Parenting.com website
The Mind of an Autistic Savant 