Autism, Treatment or Prevention?

Temple Grandin, Ph.D. would opt for treatment to guide children into the proper ways of thinking and preparation for very rewarding careers. Read an excerpt from her:

"Many creative people are on the high functioning autism/Asperger continuum. Albert Einstein, Mozart, and Carl Sagan were all mildly autistic. This book will help smart people who are socially awkward to develop their talents and get into satisfying careers. In my previous book Thinking in Pictures, I describe how I think in pictures and how I started my career in cattle facility design. Developing Talents provides many practical tips for developing skills that can be turned into a career and finding mentors who can help a young person enter an interesting field such as computers, engineering, designing, or journalism. Like me, many people on the high functioning autism/Asperger continuum have uneven skills. They may be good at drawing and poor in algebra or good with numbers and have poor drawing skills. Often their skills in their talent area are way above average."

(by Temple Grandin, Colorado State University)

I have met many inmates in prison ministry who have some form of this thinking process. Most of them can draw fantastic pictures, but cannot do simple mathematical calculations. I am not proposing that all inmates have this problem, but many probably had trouble in high school with some subjects and their coping mechanism was to turn to other outlets such as criminal behavior. They probably didn't fit in such a lock-step mentality as is prevalent in the social and educational life in most public high schools.

In Great Britain, the HFEA is trying to screen out and prevent autism by IVF procedures. Is that wise to try to keep us from having another Einstein, Mozart, Sagan, or Grandin?

Contact your legislative representatives and have them read Dr. Grandin's book. There is pending legislation now to study autism. Let's don't get into such a preventative mode of thinking, but research the possibilities for treatments and guidance to develop some outstanding adults in the future.

(Editor's Note) I remember being thought of as on the outside in high school. My social skills were lacking and later in life they led to some aberrant behavior. I can see myself in some of the traits of the mild form of autism, so I am becoming quite interested in the whole field of study. I can now understand from what Dr. Grandin is saying about thinking in pictures, why I could visualize so much information (but not exactly photographic memory). If high school education is mostly taking in information and regurgitating it back on testing, that would explain my apparent success in high school; however, when I got into courses in college which required extremely logical thinking (like Business Law and the Humanities), I had more trouble getting the concepts. Originally, my piano-playing skills were developed by practice and following the musical score exactly. It has only been in the past 10 years, that I have begun to develop the more artistic side of my brain to produce piano music from hearing, chording, and embellishments to make it more artistic.