Sunday, April 8, 2012  NYT on the Rising Incidence of Autism
Autism causes a lag in language ability for mental age, social
isolation from poor relatedness, and stereotypic movements
(purposeless repetitive movements that go away when busy, such
as hand flapping, or finger flicking).  One should think of it
as a very broad final common pathway for likely hundreds of
undiagnosed conditions. It is similar to the word, fever, or the
phrase, mental retardation. It does not exist as a unified
disease. Asperger Syndrome differs from autism in that that
language is fluent, and the patient talks too much, lecturing on
a narrow subject, even to people who are not interested.  These
features overlap with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia,
another likely very broad syndrome. They are reliable predictors
of a poor, outcome, unified by the lack of social interest or
relatedness. One should think of all these patients as mentally
retarded. Even if the autistic person has an IQ of 110, he will
always come from familie