What if we cured Asperger’s?

March 30, 2011 / 12:22 am • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

I was reading Pejman’s post (other interesting links) and found this from the UK Mail:

A 12-year-old child prodigy has astounded university professors after grappling with some of the most advanced concepts in mathematics.

Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170 – higher than Albert Einstein – and is now so far advanced in his Indiana university studies that professors are lining him up for a PHD research role.

***

Jake was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, a mild form of autism, from an early age.

His parents were worried when he didn’t talk until the age of two, suspecting he was educationally abnormal.

It was only as he began to grow up that they realised just how special his gift was.

He would fill up note pads of paper with drawings of complex geometrical shapes and calculations, before picking up felt tip pens and writing equations on windows.

By the age of three he was solving 5,000-piece puzzles and he even studied a state road map, reciting every highway and license plate prefix from memory.

What if Autism and Asperger’s gets cured? Worse, what if the genetic make-up was discovered and “fixed”. Worse, what if they’re diagnosed and destroyed via abortion? What if we have no more socially awkward geniuses around to solve problems?

Not all kids on the Autism spectrum are savants, of course. Many, in fact, require services. But these gems have to more than tip the cosmic balance the other way. And anyway, our definition of contribution to society can be so mangled and utilitarian as anyone blessed with a “special” child knows.

We need the extremes to define the norm for one thing. And we need the unconventional to create novel insights to seemingly insurmountable challenges. Further, we need different perspectives.

In a world dominated with the base and banal, I hope that a child such as this will never be “cured”. Humanity would be worse off for it.

Posted in Abortion • Corrupted Culture • Mind
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  • http://profiles.google.com/jpkalishek JP Kalishek

    Albert's IQ was 170??! Heh, Wish I took more advantage of mine being higher!. What a slacker I am….

    I wonder how many of these kids are ruined by drugging them up, or because people just don't seem to understand that sometimes a slightly different method is needed to teach or deal with them.
    I know my sister sometimes has worried about her boy. Sis too is very smart, but also is chemically imbalanced. I think she worries too much he will be just like her. So far, so good it seems.

    As for a cure? It would depend on what the “cure” is. What we want is it to keep this kid's smarts, but give him more social skills.
    You read of some of histories, and you think ” sounds like X was Autistic or something”. Einstein was considered a failure in school. Spinoza and Pascal were also a bit off.
    The single smartest person I have met is certifiably insane. When not having issues his intelligence is damned scary.

  • MelissaClouthier

    It seems that social skills counteract the intelligence somehow. I've seen it with my own son. The more they come out of their own obsessive world, the more social they get, but the more they lose their gift.

  • An interested reader

    Social skills are more important than intelligence. I have good intelligence but poor social skills, which is why I have not been successful in a career despite earning multiple college degrees.

  • Leebreynolds

    People get confused about the nature of genius and assume that it must always come with functional deficits in other areas. This is simply not true. While there are strange people with extreme gifts in this world, there are also more balanced individuals whose gifts are no less profound.

    The clearest example of this is the story of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, who are both credited with independently bringing together the mathematical concepts that we now know as Calculus into a cohesive new branch of mathematics. Newton is also famous throughout the world for discovering the relationships that define the motion of bodies at non-relativistic speeds.

    Leibniz’s was a true renaissance man who contributed to many different fields (law, biology, medicine, geology, probability theory, information theory, mathematics).

    What makes these two men very different is that Newton was an obsessive recluse who never married and who, if the rumors of the day are to be believed, died a virgin. Leibniz on the other hand was a gregarious and well liked man with many friends and admirers. He also never married, but was far from celibate. A great deal of the debate on which man discovered calculus first hinged on the fact that many in the scientific community admired Newton’s intellect, but detested him personally. Today we know that both men brought these ideas together independently (not least of all because Newton hid his work for 20 years).

    Whenever I hear about savants with severe disabilities in other areas, I have to wonder whether their selective talents are as much the result of concentration of effort into these areas as natural potential.

  • http://www.howloseweightfast.com How to Lose Weight Fast

    Nice article, this article will help people to know that god gift should always underestimate. really nice post.

  • Michele

    Thank you for this post on behalf of my beautiful, brilliant daughter.

  • David

    Obviously we need to stop thinking of Aspergers/autism as a defect, just as we need to deeply re-evaluate all neuro-perspectives.

     There is an interesting meeting between an asperger and an synesthete in the 1600′s.  The Asperger gentleman was Gottfried Leibniz and the other was Baruch Spinoza. The two neurological extremes very close in agreement but yet different in many ways.  The asperger can be, tremendously gifted in logic reductively, the synesthete can be tremendously gifted in logic Non-reductively.

    The Gift that aspergers have is a profound ability to emotionally isolate problem solving. The Gift that Synesthete’s is that they can  emotionally grasp Complex systems. One is better at working on specific problems discreetly, the other tends towards understanding large complex systems holistically. Georg Cantor is a good example of a Synesthete, in his development of Set theory. Set theory is foundationally based on a non-linear concept of infinity.   

    At the end of the day the Asperger is a profoundly sharp linear thinker their weakness they are very very linear. The Synesthete, can be a very very sharp non linear thinker, their weakness they can be a very very non linear..:D Is one better than the other? Well that’s the argument for thousands of years in philosophy actually. Who’s more right depends on the topic and how it’s framed. One tends towards arts starting at language, the other tends towards science starting at math. Both share the common point of where math and language meet as a singular concept between Hard Science and the Arts(or humanities) on the two extremes. One can see this in the university system itself. Most people on average tend to be a bit of both.  

    I will tell you this , as a synesthete, I had the opportunity to work under an aspergers individual for 4 years and who was extremely wealthy. I count that opportunity to be a life saver to me. For someone as myself any idea that aspergers is defective, or is a disorder,  is confusion. There is absolutely nothing wrong with aspergers at all, they are by definition totally “normal” in their unique difference, that is how mother nature works. We are all prisoners to our neurology even neurologist’s. We need to move past placing irrational values on neurology where non can be applied. 

  • http://twitter.com/newclasstraitor New Class Traitor

    Takes all kinds. I have multiple advanced degrees (science) and [expletively] poor social skills, yet have done quite well professionally (thank G-d). In some fields, if people grasp that you’re (a) competent; (b) honest; (c) basically trying to be helpful, poor social skills are surprisingly well tolerated.

  • http://twitter.com/newclasstraitor New Class Traitor

    Asperger’s could as well be called ‘science professor syndrome’. I interact with academia a lot as part of my day job and the physics and math departments are refuges for AS “sufferers” the way the art world used to be a refuge for men of a certain inclination. The very things that make them successful in research make them ‘difficult’ for NTs (neurotypicals) to deal with.

    The art world is more an ADD than an AS refuge— except for musicians. No better Bach performer than an aspie :-) (Such as the late lamented Glenn Gould.)The way I look at it, AS is half handicap and half gift. The latter especially if it comes with IQs in at least the gifted range (2 SDs above average, 130-145), not to mention the “genius” range (3 SDs and more above average, over 145). 

    And at least some aspies become sufficiently adept at “indirectly” reading people (being unable to do so directly) that they not only can pass for neurotypical but develop serious leadership skills. (Two examples I have known were the CEO of a large nonprofit and a very senior military commander.)