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Without intervention today, the cost of care for adults with autism will be significantly greater and the burden will no longer lie with the parents, but on our entire society.
The idea of a cure for autism is itself controversial. Some people with autism say they don't want to be cured, because autism gives them a different way of looking at the world.
An art project, a hands-on science experiment, or a special field trip can transcend textbooks and flash cards. No one knows this better than those teaching students with autism.
I have two young children with autism. What could they have ever done to deserve that? What kind of a God allows the innocent to suffer? It's a mystery. Yet still, I believe in God.
Despite amazing advances in fertility to help older women get pregnant, the complications, increased chances of autism, and chromosomal abnormalities are significant considerations.
I deliver babies for a living. I have certainly delivered more than 150 children in my lifetime, yet I'm always puzzled when I hear that one of those children I delivered has autism.
Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by two main components: an inability to interact socially with other people with joint attention to understand other people's thoughts.
I think a brain can be made "more thinking" or made "more emotional." At what point does this become abnormal? Autism in its milder variants, I think, is part of normal human variation.
Being a typical teenager isn't easy. When you have autism, it can be extra difficult. We need more public awareness about these hurdles as well as compassion towards these young people.
The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition — thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.
What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool? You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.
Many people with autism struggle with reading nonverbal cues and acting on them. When you lose that ability to understand and process nonverbal cues, you're at a huge disadvantage socially.
It may be true in the case of autism that if you start off with a deficit in terms of empathy or mind reading, you've just got more time to devote to understanding the world by systemizing.
My first memory - at about four - was of numbers. The doctors who study me think a combination of mild autism and seizures I had when I was three have made me experience numbers the way I do.
Asking the public health community to investigate the role of vaccines in the development of autism is like asking the tobacco industry to investigate the link between lung cancer and smoking.
Vaccines are extremely well tested; their safety is well understood. The false allegations about vaccines causing autism have been disproven. But there are still echoes out there confusing people.
This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.
I strongly recommend that students with autism get involved in special interest clubs in some of the areas they naturally excel at. Being with people who share your interests makes socializing easier.
A lady emailed me that her child had been diagnosed with autism and that hearing my material on the subject had helped her. To me, it just means that I'm making the right decision in talking about this.
Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life.
I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone facing racial or social prejudices to add autism to their list of struggles. It might be less stressful and at times, easier, to ignore the autism.
My son was diagnosed with autism. He's OK, he makes eye contact, but he doesn't talk. He needs eight hours a day of very intensive school, and you wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much it costs.
In fact, there are autism clusters, you know, around some of the big tech centers. You take two socially awkward computer programmers and put them together, that can kind of concentrate the autistic genes.
Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder.
It is possible that by studying autism we'll learn about the nature of talent. Supposedly there's no connection between scientific talent and autism, but if we look closely, we find a very basic connection.
Society and government at all levels - the state level, the local level and, of course, the federal level - really needs to redouble its efforts if we're really going to make a difference in combating autism.
I wished to God the doctor had handed me a pamphlet that said, 'Hey, sorry about the autism, but here's a step-by-step list on what to do next.' But doctors don't do that. They say 'sorry' and move you along.
A lot of families with kids with autism can't afford speech therapy for their children and can't afford to get them in the best schools for autism. We're trying to help make a difference in those communities.
Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds.
For a long time our son was a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.
I'm not a doctor or scientist. I'm just a mom. But I do think there's a genetic predisposition, and there are environmental triggers. I feel like that combination, in my child's case, is what resulted in autism.
But my favorite of Einstein's words on religion is "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." I like this because both science and religion are needed to answer life's great questions.
I treasure my meetings with individuals affected by autism - parents, children, teachers and friends. Their strength is inspiring. They deserve all possible opportunities for education, employment and integration.
With the incredible rate of growth of autism diagnoses in New Jersey, it is critical that we support the research, education, and access to services that individuals on the autism spectrum and their families need.
One area of study that still needs to be done is the kind of autism where kids have speech and they lose it. Some parents say it's happened right after vaccines. That group needs to be studied separately from others.
One out of every six American women has so much mercury in her womb that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases, including autism, blindness, mental retardation and heart, liver and kidney disease.
Emotion-enabled wearable glasses can help individuals who are visually impaired read the faces of others, and it can help individuals on the autism spectrum interpret emotion, something that they really struggle with.
In the person with autism, the brain may already be seeing the part and be less distracted by the whole, and in the person without autism the brain may have to set aside its picture of the whole to analyze the detail.
My brother was diagnosed with autism, so it's something that hits close to home. And as I got older - especially when I started modeling and being in the city - I wanted to do help. I became involved with Autism Speaks.
Genes are thought to contribute a certain amount to the cause of autism but it's not 100 per cent. It might be about 60 per cent genetic. So there are going to be environmental factors that mediate the impact of autism.
Autism is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by social withdrawal, by repetitive behaviors and by some kind of focal attention in its classic form. Basically, it's an inability to relate to others.
I think we use a lot of words and labels when trying to describe people: ones with autism, ones without autism. In general, I think that labeling people is a major issue, and people don't understand the power of language.
By including children with different learning abilities in mainstream and specialized schools, we can change attitudes and promote respect. By creating suitable jobs for adults with autism, we integrate them into society.
I think the core criterion is the social awkwardness, but the sensory issues are a serious problem in many, many cases of autism, and they make it impossible to operate in the environment where you're supposed to be social.
Vaccines don't cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.
There is abundant science out there that connects mercury exposure in vaccines to not only autism, but to ASD, to SIDS, to ADD, ADHD, language tics - which is like Tourette Syndrome - OCD, asthma, food allergies, and diabetes.
Studies by many labs have already started to identify specific circuits of neurons involved in normal cognitive function like memory and learning, as well as disease processes such as Parkinson's disease, depression, and autism.
William Stillman continues his fascinating exploration of the myriad connections between autism and human personality. The Soul of Autism makes a strong case for why we should embrace rather than fear the differences between us.
There is a direct correlation between gardening and mental health, not just to maintain good mental health but to repair it as well - that's anything in the gamut from depression to serious brain damage, schizophrenia or autism.
Among both individuals with high-functioning autism or Asperger and their parents, many are superfast at spotting details. You hardly have time to get the experimental materials out on the table before they've spotted the target.