At my 50th high school reunion, a classmate came bounding up to me like a kid on Christmas morning.  “Debby!  Debby!  I have Asperger’s, I have Asperger’s!”

In junior high, Bobby was the acknowledged “math brain.”  Back then, decades before the internet or social media, girls did not bully in the current sense, or physically fight.  I can’t remember any incident of girls physically mistreating another youngster who was poor or slow or vulnerable.  There were quarreling, gossip, jealousy, and stratified cliques, but there was no physical intimidation among the girls I knew.

Boys did a lot of that.  Bobby was mercilessly bullied.  After school, boys made him kneel in the dirt and pick up coins.  I asked, “Why do you take this?  Run away, or throw dirt.  I’ll get Mr. DeLuca — he will help you!”  Bobby just grinned; he thought it was funny.

Bobby had the last laugh.  The boys who bullied him are probably not rich, happy, psychological ten-year-olds, running esoteric codes while basking in golden California sunsets.  Bobby chattered on — math in high school was harder than in college!  And he has a girlfriend!  It’s nice because she’s married!  Not to him, but that’s not a problem for Bobby.  

The condition formerly called Asperger’s is a distinctive neurodevelopmental disability, and not primarily a verbal communication disorder.  Bobby talks volubly about math as if combinatorics were on everybody’s “to do” list.  Asperger’s evidences, among other symptoms, as brain-based arrested development in the experience and behavioral integration of psychosocial nuances and subtleties.

In 2013, the term was voted out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.  The main rationale for discarding the label “Asperger’s” is that it is a form of autism and should be subsumed into “the spectrum.”  This is like saying the term “diabetes” should be dropped and subsumed into the blood sugar problems spectrum.

Dropping Asperger’s was a political decision, not a scientific one.  The “autism spectrum”  serves a numbers-boosting political purpose, like the mash-up “LGBTQ.”  That a group of extremely prevalent, incurable neurological abnormalities remain in the politicized Play-Doh psychiatric nomenclature is disgraceful.

Dr. Asperger was associated with Nazism, which contributed to dropping his name.  The disorder should have been renamed using current scientific terms — except there are no scientific terms, because there’s virtually no scientific research on autism.

The term “autism” was coined in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler, who considered it a form of schizophrenia.  Autism is not primarily a psychiatric disorder.  It results from cellular brain abnormality, but the nosology has not advanced for over one hundred years.

Here’s an anecdote about Matthew Wong, a Chinese-Canadian artist ultimately diagnosed with autism shortly before his suicide.  Because the science is so flimsy, many clinicians resist applying the diagnosis until it is unavoidable.  Matthew was also bullied as a child.  Perhaps if he had been correctly diagnosed earlier, rather than all the other labels dumped on him, his life could have been saved.  Toward the end, he tried desperately to paint his way out of the bewilderment and loneliness of his condition, but he committed suicide at thirty-five.  I recently viewed an exhibit at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, “Painting as a Last Resort.”  It was a kindred conversation in paint between Vincent Van Gogh and Matthew, both men seeking connection to an unfiltered, jarring world.  Both died young.  

Anecdotes about vaccination injuries abound in my life and yours, if you will listen.  I met Miriam when she was ten, being potty-trained for about the fifth time.  Miriam’s parents and grandparents are conservative suburbanites.  Miriam was born in 2001.  She was developing normally, when at nine months old she had a standard series of vaccinations.  She ran a very high fever.  Her frightened mother called the family’s HMO and was told to give Tylenol.  Miriam emerged from that fever a profoundly disabled baby.  She never developed language skills, and today Miriam is a two-year-old in an adult body.  Without bitterness, Miriam’s mother alleges that her daughter’s medical records were altered after the injury.

Here’s another vaccination anecdote from a mother’s own words.  Regarding her mono/di twin boys, “At around 18 months they both finally were walking and talking.  After their 18-month shots, twin B got very sick.  He had a fever and was lethargic for a few days; then he stopped walking and talking.  He has never been the same since.”  At their 5th birthday, “twin A is doing tremendously.  However, twin B is not doing very well.  He uses a speech device for basic communication.  He is a very picky eater, which affects his weight.  Twin B’s emotions are all over the place.  He is a biter, a hitter, and is often unregulated.”

Alternatively, a third mom of my acquaintance whose daughter Tia was diagnosed with autism at age 7 says, “I don’t believe in the vaccination thing.  I am a science girl.  Here we go with the measles crap.  I knew when she was a baby that something was wrong.  But girls mask a lot.  I believe it is genetic.  My brother walks on his toes, and he weighs 270 lbs.”

The total failure of science to establish any causes of a devastating, swiftly worsening neurological disease endemic is a tragedy worse than any stolen election or politicized bureaucracy.  We have a resilient Constitution, which continually renews political freedom, but our lived freedoms of health, material sufficiency, travel, communication, leisure, the comforts of our lives are the fruits of science.  How did the catastrophe of scientific indifference to autism happen?

First, Democrats have controlled the NIH, and they don’t care about children.  They do not hold to the divinity and inherent value of human life, promoting lifestyles, not life.  According to HIV.gov, the current annual budget for research and treatment of the voluntarily transmitted STD called HIV-AIDS stands at $28 billion a year.  There has been major scientific progress regarding HIV because of the unparalleled  political clout among Democrats of that at-risk population.  There is zero scientific progress regarding autism because the left uses children to manipulate entitlements like food stamps and Medicaid but does not care about them.  There is no autism.gov.

According to the website Statista, the 2023 NIH budget for autism research was a paltry $306 million.  For every $993 spent on HIV research and treatment, $1 is spent on autism research.  That is a shameful statistic.

Autism Speaks, a controversial political advocacy organization, credits itself for securing two billion dollars over five years through the 2024 Autism CARES Act.  It provides “services for autistic individuals across the spectrum and lifespan for years to come.”  That is tantamount to America saying in the 1930s, “Polio is here forever.  We’re not looking for a cure; we’re building better wheelchairs and iron lung machines for the future.”  

A genetically associated disease exploding in prevalence in any population suggests that widespread toxicities, possibly numerous, are causing accelerating damage to the human genome.  We must find the courage to face what is poisoning our children.  Bobby was born in 1951, Matthew Wong in 1984, Miriam in 2001, Tia in 2018, and twin B in 2020.  The plague is gathering strength.  There needs to be a massive database that includes genetic and clinical history information on all autism patients just to get started.  Hopefully, whoever takes Bobby’s history is interested in mathematics.  That scientific answers to the catastrophe called autism have been abandoned is a stunning moral defeat of this nation.  

Image: ElisaRiva via Pixabay, Pixabay License.