Newsweek reexamines anxieties surrounding autism, a mystery with no known cause. The uncertainty is fueling an ongoing vaccine debate and harsh divisions within the autism community about how to view and treat the disorder. While some feel that autism is a disease in need of a cure, others are calling for neurodiversity, the idea that differences in human behavior should be celebrated.

“Our feeling is that the autism spectrum is an intrinsic part of our personality that cannot be separated,” says [Ari] Ne’eman, [president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and a 20-year-old university student with Asperger's syndrome.]

And he worries about research that might one day locate genes and other markers that could help doctors test for autism. Researchers say such knowledge would allow them to intervene early, during a critical window of development in the first year of life. Ne’eman’s fear? That autism will become like Down syndrome—essentially selected out of the population.

An accompanying chart of NIH research funding shows autism is expected to receive $128 million this year, or approximately $85.33 for each of the 1.5 million people diagnosed.

Of the conditions named, Down syndrome receives the smallest amount of research funds, both in the aggregate and on a per capita basis, with a total of $17 million or $48.57 per person diagnosed.

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In an interview on Wisconsin Public Radio, author Jonathan Mooney says our culture’s concept of normal is damaging to everyone, not just people who are identified as different.

Mooney, who had dyslexia and didn’t learn to read until he was twelve, is the author of “The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal.” His book documents a four-month journey that he took around the country in a converted special-ed bus (the “short bus” of the book’s title.) Along the way, Mooney came to terms with his differences as he confronted his preconceptions about other people who have been labeled as disabled.

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By Emily Bazelon in O the Oprah magazine:

(Newstands only; article not available on the magazine’s website.)

After her son was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, Gwenyth Jackaway went on the Internet in search of other women who had used the same anonymous sperm donor. She has found seven other mothers. Among them they have eleven children and one on the way. Three have diagnoses on the autism spectrum, a rate that is about 45 times higher than the chances for the general population. Bazelon spends time with the women and documents their lives.

Is the bank that sold Donor X’s sperm at fault for failing to catch the genetic defect he appears to carry? (None of the mothers of affected children has family members with autism.) No history of the disorder showed up on the three-generation medical profile that Donor X filled out for the California Cryobank. The bank conducts DNA testing for conditions like Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia, which are primarily caused by a single mutant gene.

Autism is a different story. The disorder clearly has a hereditary component (if one identical twin has it, the odds the other will, too, are between 60 and 90 percent), “but there is not a genetic test for autism because we have not yet identified enough genes that might cause it,” says Peter Szatmari, MD, a veteran autism researcher and psychiatry professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Experts say an Oakland County detective ran roughshod over a 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s in a sexual abuse case against his parents

Detroit Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson documents a videotaped police interrogation of a 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome. Dickerson says Detective Joseph Brousseau repeatedly lied to the boy, telling him that police had videotapes depicting him in sexual situations with his father and sister. The interrogation was part of an investigation into charges that were later dropped.

Legal experts who have reviewed the videotaped interrogation, which was obtained by the Free Press, say it reveals multiple violations of the rules Michigan law prescribes for questioning juveniles who may have witnessed sexual abuse.

“I would not hesitate to use the word ‘reprehensible,’ ” David Moran, associate dean of the Wayne State University School of Law, told me after watching the interrogation at the Free Press’ request.

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From the Columbia Missourian, produced by students and faculty at the Missouri School of Journalism

Pulitzer prize-winning music critic Tim Page

… has transformed disability into ability. It’s a real-life twist on making lemonade out of lemons: When life handed Page Asperger’s Syndrome, he forged an illustrious career out of music criticism.

“Would I wish Asperger’s on anybody? No,” said Page, who was diagnosed in 2000. “On the other hand, it seems to me that a lot of things I did and am doing in my life happened because I had Asperger’s.”

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Mentors, trained teachers help students to see success

From the Detroit Free Press:

Universities across the state and the country are reaching out to students with autism and related disorders as their numbers grow rapidly — thanks to early treatment of the disorders in children.

The schools are setting up peer mentoring programs, having one-on-one interventions and working with housing officials, campus security and professors to help them understand why some students might seem quirky, rude or out of place.

Steven Schwartz, an associate professor of special education at Madonna University, noted that “15 or 20 years ago, the idea of including an autistic kid in a general education classroom was craziness. Now it’s not only an expectation, it’s the law.”

Above: Tim Hull, a student with autism, expects to graduate from the University of Michigan this spring with a double major.

From the Boston Globe, Associated Press:

The attorney for 17-year-old John Odgren asked a judge to throw out a first-degree murder indictment against his client, arguing that a prosecutor had cut off a grand juror’s questioning about Odgren’s Asperger’s syndrome.

Odgren has been accused of using a 14-inch kitchen knife to fatally stab another student through the heart at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in Massachusetts.

Attorney Jonathan Shapiro maintained that Odgren’s syndrome would make it impossible for him to have planning the killing. (Odgren at left, above, with Shapiro.)