wow, another fascinating article.  thanks, Meir!

Tamar Magenta Raine
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Oakland Mayor's Commission on People with disabilities


> [Original Message]
> From: Meir Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 3/7/2004 11:21:29 AM
> Subject:
>
> canada.com Entertainment
>
>
> The Geek Theory of Autism
> At university, William K. met for the first time people with exceptional
> skills like his own
>
> Brad Evenson
> National Post
>
> http://tinyurl.com/39lpo
> Saturday, March 06, 2004
>
> Glenn Gould may have had Asperger's syndrome. He disliked human contact
> and could only maintain relationships when he was in total control. He
> was an inspiration for William K., who has a mild form of autism.
> CREDIT: CBC, The Canadian Press
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Millions of people have mild versions of autism, depression and
> attention deficit disorder. They are doctors, neighbours, even the pilot
> of your plane. Without a diagnosis, these "shadow syndromes" can ruin
> lives, yet with insight and understanding, they can be a gift. The first
> of a four-part series on hidden mental disorders.
>
> - - -
>
> OTTAWA - 'I'm in the closet," says William K., his eyes darting around
> the Starbucks coffee shop, avoiding contact. "Some people at work may
> suspect, but nobody knows. I don't talk about it. There are a few
> others, too, I think. You can sort of tell. They're different."
>
> William grew up with a smothering mother and a distant father, in a
> childhood of isolation. He met his share of bullies. He spent his first
> 18 years struggling with his identity, unaware of others just like
> himself. At 34, he has never kissed a girl.
>
> But his "closet" doesn't hide his sexuality -- he's a different
> invisible minority. Autistic. Not the unyielding, world-of-his-own kind
> of autism most of us know about. Not the cute, movie autism of Rain Man.
> William did well at a regular high school, attended university and found
> a good job. Like the mixed-blood blacks of the American South who used
> to pretend to be white, he has "passed."
>
> He is a kind of shadow.
>
> "Florid, full-colour mental illnesses like major depression and
> manic-depressive illness come trailed by grey and silver shadow versions
> of themselves, the same thing in outline, but indistinct in detail; not
> easy to recognize for what they are," John Ratey, a professor of
> psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote in his landmark book, Shadow
> Syndromes.
>
> Millions of people have some of the biological and personality
> characteristics of autism. "In some people, it might show up as a strong
> need for structure and order in their lives," says Wendy Roberts, a
> developmental pediatrician at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, who
> is collaborating on a hunt for autism genes.
>
> As scientists peel back the layers of autism, attention deficit disorder
> and other mental disorders, they are discovering that millions of
> healthy, functioning people have shadows of these disorders. Such hidden
> traits may not be crippling, but they can drive behaviour and silently
> chart the course of our lives. Sometimes, they are even blessings.
>
> "I think it's very true that the flip side of a disability is often a
> gift," says Peter Szatmari, a psychiatrist who is the author of A Mind
> Apart: Understanding Autism and Asperger's Syndrome, to be published in
> May.
>
> "What people with autism-spectrum disorders have is a gift in perception
> and attentiveness. They can see the world in a way that you and I don't
> see it. They notice patterns; they notice colours; they notice shapes;
> they appreciate that perceptual architecture....
>
> "I think the other gift that they have is they are without guile. They
> don't lie. They aren't deceitful. They don't tease and bully; they're
> not manipulative."
>
> William K. shifts in his seat and opens his cloth briefcase. He is
> prepared for questions. He pulls out a dark green notebook.
>
> "Here," he says, taking off his glasses. "I brought my diary."
>
> Many people know autism as a disorder characterized by withdrawal,
> repetitive behaviours and obsessions with bizarre topics. In severe
> cases, parents may watch powerless, feeling unloved, as their children
> grow into strangers. But like most disorders, autism is a spectrum that
> ranges from severe to mild, as with William K.
>
> "[Mental illness] is seen as a black and white situation, but human
> beings don't follow these rules and regulations," says Doug Saunders, a
> past president of the Canadian Psychological Association. "They follow
> their own biological ebbs and flows."
>
> Over the past 20 years, the diagnosis of autism has risen with
> mystifying speed. In California, where the increase was first noted,
> cases tripled from 1987 to 1998 and have doubled since then. Canadian
> figures tell a similar tale.
>
> Theories for the rise range from pollution to the use of mercury in
> childhood vaccines. Nothing sticks. Studies have largely ruled out the
> latter possibility -- the rate of autism is the same in vaccinated and
> unvaccinated children.
>
> Another intriguing notion is the "geek theory," which posits that
> autistic men and women, who often thrive in the high-tech industry, meet
> and have autistic children.
>
> This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.
>
> In the late 1980s, Edward Ritvo, a California researcher, began to look
> more closely at the parents of some severely autistic children. They
> looked a bit autistic themselves. Many of them walked with an odd tiptoe
> gait, flapped their hands and rocked in their chairs. A few were social
> loners. Other experts confirmed Dr. Ritvo's cautious suspicions -- at
> least 11 of the parents in his study were autistic. He later remarked,
> "If you had told me 10 years ago that there were autistics who were
> married and had kids, I would have said, 'You're crazy.' "
>
> "As with most diseases there appears to be a mild form of autism that is
> compatible in adulthood with marriage, parenting, satisfactory
> heterosexual performance and gainful employment," he wrote in a landmark
> 1988 article.
>
> In 1994, psychiatrists added Asperger's syndrome to the ever-growing
> menu of mental illness to include the estimated 75% of people with
> autism who have normal or better IQs.
>
> Dr. Szatmari, who is head of child psychiatry at McMaster University in
> Hamilton, Ont., says not only has the definition of autism broadened,
> doctors are better at detecting it. At the same time, similar disorders
> such as pervasive development disorder have been lumped together as
> "autism spectrum disorders."
>
> "When I started working here in Chedoke Child and Family Centre in 1981,
> there weren't people with autism here," he says. "And now we've got more
> than 300. It's because people who were getting a different diagnosis in
> the past -- a development disability, a learning, disability -- we now
> recognize have autism spectrum disorders."
>
> William's mother threw herself into his childhood. She read and sang to
> him constantly, believing it would bolster his communication skills. She
> read books about left-brain, right-brain thinking. Nothing fit. "Doctors
> told me he was just a bit slow," says Mildred Sullivan, who remarried.
>
> But William wasn't slow. On his eighth birthday, he built a working
> clock out of an Erector set. "It kept perfect time," Mrs. Sullivan says.
> Friendless, sitting at the front of the class -- he's nearsighted -- he
> passed all his grades in primary school. "Arithmetic and science came to
> him easily," she says. "He laboured over English composition and
> grammar. I remember one poem just threw him. 'The fog comes on little
> cat feet,' by Carl Sandburg. Metaphors really threw him."
>
> Researchers say autism can be characterized by a deficit or delay in
> understanding social cues. "What you often hear is, 'I just don't get
> it,' " says Dr. Roberts in Toronto.
>
> Imaging studies show certain brain regions are enlarged in people with
> autism, which may affect the speed at which they process some things,
> such as dialogue. In the hurly-burly of conversation, they are always a
> few steps behind, a little bewildered. Another social function, the
> ability to read faces, is also impaired.
>
> "Children with autism often don't make much eye contact with other
> people and have little experience in learning to recognize faces," said
> Elizabeth Aylward, a professor of radiology at the University of
> Washington.
>
> Dr. Aylward told a recent meeting of the Association for the Advancement
> of Science that in autistic children, the fusiform gyrus -- the brain's
> face-recognition area -- often fails to activate when viewing faces. To
> them, human faces are no different than toy trucks, with one exception:
> their mother's face.
>
> "This does suggest that this part of the brain is not broken," says
> Geraldine Dawson, the psychiatrist who directed the research. With
> training, people with autism can learn to recognize faces and develop
> coping strategies, such as laughing when other people laugh, even when
> they don't really get the joke.
>
> - - -
>
> "Ask him about Glenn Gould," says William's stepfather, Terry Sullivan.
> Ten years ago, while attending the University of Waterloo, William read
> that the Canadian virtuoso pianist may have had Asperger's syndrome.
> Gould was uncomfortable with audiences, disliked human contact and could
> only maintain relationships when he was in total control.
>
> "A light went on in my head when I read that," William says. "Growing
> up, kids in school used to joke that I was autistic because I rocked in
> my chair sometimes and I was good at math. But I thought autism meant
> you were retarded. And I am not."
>
> During university, William listened to Gould's most famous recording,
> Bach's Goldberg Variations, thousands of times on his Sony Walkman. He
> found it soothing. Rocking back and forth in his chair, he built
> conceptually upon his Erector set creation, writing software codes to
> make sophisticated clocks for computer programs. He also found some
> self-esteem. He needed it.
>
> "When I was growing up, I got teased a lot for being different," he
> says.
>
> Once, some schoolboys changed the number on his locker, believing it
> would confuse him. They didn't realize how William's mind worked in
> patterns and sequences. "My locker was the 37th one," he says. "Changing
> the number didn't fool me. But it was cruel. And it hurt my feelings."
> Ironically, children with severe autism -- the most "different" ones
> --don't notice teasing. People like William are stricken by it. Indeed,
> surveys show about 40% of people with autism suffer mood and anxiety
> disorders -- about four times the general average.
>
> At Waterloo, William met other people like himself who were different.
> He learned that Albert Einstein and Bill Gates are both suspected cases
> of Asperger's syndrome. He discovered people with the syndrome, which
> may also include Sir Isaac Newton, often have unusual skills. William
> does. He knows, without consulting his watch, what time it is. Not just
> on Earth. On other planets. "A Martian day is 24 hours and 37 minutes
> long in Earth time," he says. With practised ease, he adds, "At El
> Capatan [on Mars] it's 20 after three."
>
> As disorders go, he decided, his could be worse. Still, he keeps it to
> himself. Too many bruises in his past.
>
> - - -
>
> Steve Scherer, a University of Toronto geneticist, has collected the DNA
> from more than 100 families with more than one autistic child. He works
> with Dr. Szatmari and Dr. Roberts, trying to pinpoint the genes that
> give rise to the disorder. But unlike single-gene diseases such as
> cystic fibrosis, autism is very complex.
>
> "We noticed a few years back that children who were autistic had a
> higher percentage of chromosome abnormalities than the general
> population," he says.
>
> As many as 20 genes could be affected. Indeed, vast numbers of people
> could possess in their genome the spot mutations that lead to certain
> autistic behaviours. Or perhaps not.
>
> In 2000, Dr. Szatmari conducted a study to look at autistic traits in
> the blood relatives of children with autism and in the general
> population. The researchers looked for social isolation, personal
> rigidity and difficulty with conversation. "We found that it occurs in
> about 25% of biological relatives and that it occurs in about 10% of
> non-biological relatives," he reports. That doesn't mean one in 10
> people has autism genes. It means plenty of folks are wooden, geeky and
> shy.
>
> "A lot of people are now overdiagnosing autism spectrum disorder,
> particularly in kids who are a bit shy and anxious and love to hang out
> on the computer," he says.
>
> - - -
>
> William opens his diary to Aug. 17, 2003. On that day, he recorded his
> interest in a female employee at his company, a large Ottawa high-tech
> firm, which designs software for satellite applications.
>
> "She is beautiful," he wrote.
>
> "She likes to wear black. She changes the colour of her hair. I like it
> the way it is today."
>
> He has not yet summoned the courage to ask her out. No longer a loner,
> he has spoken of his plight with one of his work colleagues. But he gets
> too anxious when he sees the woman and veers away.
>
> It could be her loss. Dr. Roberts says mildly autistic men can make good
> husbands. They certainly are not deceitful. And they are affectionate;
> they love the touch of skin and strong hugs. She knows a Toronto woman
> who married a highly functioning autistic man, and they have had three
> autistic children together -- all boys. The woman laughs with
> resignation but no bitterness about her situation. "After all," she told
> Dr. Roberts. "I fell in love with their father."
>
> Simon Baron-Cohen, a Cambridge University psychologist, noting that four
> times as many men as women are autistic, suggests autism is an extreme
> form of male intelligence. While women are better at empathizing, men
> are better at systemizing.
>
> Autism, he suggests, isn't a disease or shadow syndrome lacking a cure.
> It's a guy thing. Dr. Baron-Cohen says people with autism lack a "theory
> of mind." They can't guess what other people are thinking, an essential
> social skill. So they adopt coping mechanisms, turning social situations
> into cognitive problems.
>
> Hmm. This person is smiling. Maybe he told a joke. Oh yes, there's the
> joke. I should respond in kind. It looks a bit stiff and formal, but
> it's just a coping mechanism.
>
> Do they get the joke?
>
> "Eventually," Dr. Szatmari says.
>
> "Once they think it through, they're perfectly capable of understanding
> the joke. Just as they're perfectly capable of love and affection and
> deep feeling and deep emotion."
>
> - - -
>
> William flips his diary pages forward to Jan. 18, 2004. On that day he
> made contact with the woman in his office.
>
> "She spoke to me about the [Mars] Spirit lander. She knows I am
> interested in space. I talked too much. I wish I could stop talking
> around her. It is a problem."
>
> Perhaps. But that particular problem has nothing to do with autism or
> shadow syndromes.
>
> That's a guy thing.
>
> On Monday: Most people know the stereotype image of a hyper child pumped
> full of Ritalin, but few of us know about the millions of adults who
> have symptoms of a mild "shadow" of ADD, which affects their
> personality. They don't seem sick or even unusual. They are often
> emergency room doctors, stockbrokers and pilots -- smart people who need
> stimulation to keep their noisy, whirring brains feeling good.
>
> C National Post 2004