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ASPERGER'S SYNDROME: A SPECIAL REPORT (Part One of Two)
Broadcast starting week of September 12, 2007

Click here to hear "Asperger's Syndrome: A Special Report (Part Two of Two)

"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?"

The program opens with an essay by Dr. Peter Kramer on geeks, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and Asperger's. The absence of emotional reciprocity in a family beset by the syndrome can be heartbreaking, Dr. Kramer tells us, but there can also be undeniable benefits in having the condition as well.

To explore the complexity of Asperger's, Dr. Kramer talks with Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University in Cambridge, England, where Baron-Cohen is the co-director of the Autism Research Centre. Dr. Baron-Cohen explains where and how Asperger's Syndrome falls within the autistic spectrum, both psychologically and physiologically. People with Asperger's have normal intelligence and normal language; their difficulties occur in social relationships and in empathizing with others. Yet coupled with their narrowed range of interests, Aspies are generally extremely adept at what Dr. Baron-Cohen calls "systemizing," an attraction to and facility with systems natural, abstract, and man-made.

You can visit the web site of the Autism Research Centre at www.autismreseachcentre.com.

Next, The Infinite Mind's Jackson Braider interviews Dr. Michael Fitzgerald, a child psychiatrist based at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and author of "The Genesis Of Artistic Creativity: Asperger's Syndrome And The Arts." Dr. Fitzgerald discusses findings he's published in a recent series of articles in the Journal of Medical Biography, in which he offers a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome for a surprising group of historical figures, including the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo, the English mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll, and American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. These "diagnoses of the dead" are somewhat controversial, but as Dr. Fitzgerald notes, he has also made some 1000 Asperger's diagnoses in his practice on living patients. The rich biographical and historical record can be similarly revealing. You just have to know what to look for; like a guy with disheveled hair who greets you at the door with a mockingbird on his shoulder. (That would be Jefferson.)

After the break, Dr. Kramer joins a discussion among three people who grew up with Asperger's Syndrome and who now count among the Asperger's community's most enthusiastic advocates. Liane Holliday Willey holds a doctorate in education and is a writer and researcher in psycholinguistics and learning differences; Stephen Shore, a musician and writer, is a doctoral candidate in special education at Boston University; and Michael John Carley is a playwright, actor, and artist and is executive director of G.R.A.S.P., the Global and Regional Asperger's Syndrome Partnership.

In a free and wide-ranging discussion, Willey, Carley, and Shore talk about discovering community among people who, because of the emotional isolation of Asperger's, had never previously experienced community in their lives. As Willey explains, they were able to meet, thanks in no small part to the emergence of the internet. Shore says that in discovering the community of "aspies," he and his compatriots now take joy in their singular culture, a culture not unlike that found among the deaf and the gay communities, for example. Growing up aware of being different from their peers, the panel discusses the difficulty of relationships, and the work they have done to arrive at satisfaction and fulfillment in their lives.

Dr. Willey is author of the web site, www.aspie.com. To learn more about Michael John Carley's organization, G.R.A.S.P., you can visit his web site at www.grasp.org. You can ask Stephen Shore questions about Asperger's Syndrome at his web site austismasperger.net.

Part one of this two-part special report on Asperger's Syndrome concludes with a commentary by Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In a world moving irrevocably toward genetic choice, will there be a place for risky genes?

In Part two of our special report, Dr. Kramer visits with an adolescent who's learning how to manage his Asperger's; autism authority Dr. Stanley Greenspan offers advice on connecting with an Asperger's child; a mother describes the challenges of raising an Asperger's teenager; and Dr. Richard Howlin, a psychologist who specializes in treating young people with Asperger's, offers insights into treatment and care.

Heard on this week's program:

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