Autism
Autism is a physical disorder that usually appears in the first three years of life with specific symptoms that vary in kind and severity with each individual. The following definition of autism comes from the Autism Society of America. “Autism is a severely incapacitating life-long developmental disability that typically occurs during the first three years of life. The result of a neurological disorder that affects functioning of the brain, autism and its behavioral symptoms occur in approximately 15 out of every 10,000 births. Autism is four times more common in boys than girls. ... No known factors in the psychological environment of a child have been shown to cause autism.” (Gerlach 1) The history of autism has been laced with many false speculations and untruths. Parents often received the blame for autism in their young children, as it was believed that autism occurred as the result of bad parenting. ... When Kanner named the condition known as autism, he borrowed the term from Eugen Bleuler who was “a Swiss psychiatrist who had coined the term in 1911.” (Powers 23) At the time it proved to be unfortunate because Bleuler later used the same term of autism to describe adult schizophrenics who actively withdrew into a fantasyland. ... Bernard Rimland’s book, Infantile Autism, The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior, published in 1964, broke ground in the area of autism.” (Gerlach 3) Rimland helped to dispel the notion that autism was a result of bad parenting and paved the way in establishing autism as a neurological disorder. Although there are many theories, there are no proven medical causes for autism. “Most scientists think autism involves some kind of chemical imbalance or defective brain structure.” (Strom 225) Since many families seem to share a pattern of autism, researchers currently believe autism to be linked by biological or neurological differences in the brain. Even so, no gene has been directly linked to autism, which leads researchers to believe that it may be several genes in combination. ... “There is a high prevalence of autism in the small town of Leomenster, Massachusetts, where a factory manufacturing sunglasses was once located. Interestingly, the highest proportion of autism cases were found in the homes down-wind from the factory smokestacks.