“Let’s not use the word ‘cure’ if you don’t mind… When you talk about cure you imply that we’re broken. I don’t feel broken.” So says Liane Holliday Willey, a woman who not so long ago would have been described as a “victim” of Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s been more than 60 years since the Austrian doctor Hans Asperger identified the condition that bears his name, but it has only been in the past decade or so that we have begun to understand its broader implications. Asperger’s Syndrome may be a part of the autistic spectrum, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that an “Aspie” can’t function in the world. In this, the first in a two-part special report on Asperger’s Syndrome, Dr. Peter Kramer talks with Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, a researcher at Cambridge University, on recent advances in recognizing the condition. We meet Dr. Michael Fitzgerald of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, a child psychiatrist who’s made quite a stir diagnosing Asperger’s Syndrome among the dead. Then, in a panel discussion, three adults – Liane Holliday Willey, Stephen Shore, and Michael John Carley – talk about growing up as loners with Asperger’s. Now they celebrate their membership in the community of “Aspies.” Finally, in a commentary, Dr. Arthur Caplan, head of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, asks, “If you could go back in time and stop the birth of the world’s most famous nerd, would you have done so?” Part two of Asperger's Syndrome |
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