Posted: May 21, 08 5:06pm

It bothers me that so little reading and research is done - and it is available - by people interested in understanding themselves or others and the processes involved with Asperger's.

I find it most disconcerting that so many people believe the Autism Speaks organisation has all the answers when, in fact, they have none. Their philosphy is that all forms of autism should be isolated, drugged, and institutionalised to rid it from modern society. They believe it should be "cured". Clear and true diagnoses on the spectrum, as well as clinical studies and research, do not hold this to be true.

What has apparently been done to date is medicate certain issues that coexist in many people with autism/Asperger's, such as depression, ADD, sometimes paranoia and bipolar disorder. Often psychologists and psychiatrists will misdiagnose and call it all Asperger's, or they will ignore the elements of Asperger's entirely and medicate everything else.

Cold Harbor Springs Institute did a biological study late last year that determined that people's individual personalities exist because of a random deletion in genome order. This is the case in all people everywhere. Some have more deletions than others, but there is absolutely no system or understanding as to why this happens in the way it happens in so many billions of different ways. They do note that autistics will have more of these deletions. Autistic children who have similar behaviour patterns have not been found to have similar deletion patterns in their genome order.

Random is random.

There are many, many exceptional people who have some form of autism, whether it be Asperger's or something else. It is sad that current American society finds it so abhorrent to be different. Had certain people been medicated and institutionalised because they were different, we would not have some of the great composers, artists, writers, and designers of the past several hundred years.

I am grateful to The Gray Center in Michigan, Munroe-Meyer Institute at the Unversity of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, and the Lovaas Institute in California, as well as papers produced by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cold Harbor Springs Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for all of the information I have received and studies I have had the opportunity to research in order to learn more about Asperger's Syndrome and how it applies to my life.