Anybody can look at a profoundly dependent classically autistic child and know that they need assistance. The idea that someone can, as you say, have strong verbal skills but be totally colour-blind to non-verbal communication is hard for people to grasp, and so they think that autistics are “putting it on”, and that their families are attempting to game the system.

In fairness, he does have several clips on his website where he specifically says that truly autistic children need support, its just that he feels that misdiagnosis diverts funds from truly needy kids.

The problem is that some people believe that I just use Asperger’s as an excuse to be rude. One of the big problems with AS is that patients often have high IQs and excellent verbal communication skills, making it hard for people to believe that you really don’t get non-verbal communication, or why anyone would be offended by what you said, since it was factually accurate.

I was not diagnosed until I was 38 years old, but there is no doubt that I have a form of autism, and that it has negatively impacted my life. My inability to understand other people, other than what they communicate to me directly, has impaired my ability to maintain employment, make friends, find a mate, and generally enjoy what life has to offer. For years I felt tremendous guilt, since I was clearly smart enough to do better, but kept failing. Now that I understand that I am effectively “color-blind” in one area of communication, I am doing much better, since I can compensate. I am actually more likely admit when I make a mistake, since I now know that I miss information that other people have. Hardly what I would call making excuses.

Comments like Savage’s make it easier for people to be bigoted.

Awesome.

In February, a news story with the following comment:

Autism Speaks says its aim is “to change the future for all who struggle with autism spectrum disorders”. One of its stated goals is to “cure” autism - an aim some people with autism find offensive. “The autism spectrum is something that is intrinsic to our personalities,” says Ari Ne’eman, president of the Autism Self Advocacy Network in Baltimore, Maryland. “We can no more separate the autistic part of ourselves than we could our gender or race.”

There have been letters to NS all year from people who don’t want to be marginalised by such extreme negativity. There are many scientists and people in other professions who have worked with their autism or Aspergers and feel they are making a difference. Everyone would like to see the negative (anti-social) aspects better managed, but don’t need bozos like Savage or those who classify them as hopeless and helpless in order to help them.

You, sir, a first class idiot and arsehole, who deserves every bit of adversity that comes your way as a result of your venal outburst.

No-one, I mean No-one, can possibly be that stupid.

Surely he’s living proof that the Almighty has a sense of humour.

Perhaps meeker parents could have ear trumpets surgically attached to their kids, just to be sure.

This is all pretty funny really - except to the extent that anyone believes it yadda yadda - because anyone with (as Robert noted) the slightest exposure to autism knows that sensory assault like shouting is practically a guaranteed epic fail.

Last year a child psychiatrist friend sat me down gently and asked if I had looked at the criteria for Asberger’s diagnosis. I admitted I had glanced at them, and yes some did look err, rather familiar. She gave me a more complete list and I think that I ticked 23 of 25 of them for my childhood behaviour. These days I’d probably be down to ten. While my parents were lefties it was an impeccably stable nuclear family with moderately strict discipline.

One of the noticeable features of my childhood behaviour (although I can’t remember whether this was on the Asberger’s list) was that I was exceptionally sensitive to criticism from adults, particularly in raised voices. On the very rare occasions when my parents spoke to me as Savage says his father did I spent an hour in the foetal position whimpering. I’m not sure much was gained by anyone as a result.

Explaining the Grumpy Old Men (and Bettina)

Autism is just a prop in this drama.

Of course he seems to be one of those upper middle class taxpayers who seem to suffer this odd sort of “lucky ducky” jealousy of the sick and less well off due to the real or imagined tax breaks/credits they might be recieving from the little tax he’d have to pay.

Good thing Dickens and his peers managed to nail down and expose that sort of attitude so we can recognise it in a pinch.