Essentially, it was because parents of oddball children saw quirky characters on TV (I.E. Sheldon Cooper) and took their kids to a shrink to get diagnosed the following day.
http://www.vulture.com/2013/07/aspergers-tv-the-bridge-diane-kruger-sheldon-cooper.html
FROM THE ARTICLE: "I was diagnosed with Asperger’s a decade before these portrayals started cropping up, and for the longest time, I was alone, the only Aspergian I knew. Not anymore. In the span of just six years and countless utterances of "woof!" Asperger’s has gone from being unknown to being ubiquitous. And I don't just mean on TV: Asperger diagnoses in the real world have skyrocketed in that same stretch of time.
The uptick in Asperger cases led to some mild hysteria. People started getting scared. Wild accusations and stupid questions were bandied about. Do televisions cause Asperger’s? What about its programming? Is there a vaccination I can have? What about lead supplements? No one knew. But we insiders did know this: If Big Bang Theory aired on a Monday, you could count on more than a few parents bringing their kids in for an Asperger diagnosis on Tuesday."
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And that is why the APA wanted to get rid of Apserger's Syndrome. They were worried about people being misdiagnosed and this condition becoming the new problem-du-jour like ADD had become. One would think they would just make the testing regimen a bit more rigorous and well-defined but, nooooooo... That would have made sense. And, honestly, whoever accused a bunch of bureaucrats posing as Healthcare professionals of having good sense? They'd rather just stick me with a different label that could actually expose me to a lot of misconceptions and prejudice than actually try to help me and other Aspies. Bastards...
- Lord Publius
People with Asperger's generally have highly concentrated, single-subject expertise: CPU Microarchitecture, Combustion engines, Ballistics, Computer Networks. The problem is people with Asperger's ARE this world's future. So what do they do? They call it a Disorder, a Syndrome, a DISEASE, dammit. Something to be eradicated. These people... would have medicated Einstein had they been around in his time. Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Tesla, Nobel, the Wright Brothers... None of their breakthroughs would have ever COME TO BE had our current pharmaceutical industry existed back in that time. By medicating these people whom they have diagnosed, and I don't care WHAT the diagnosis is... ADD, Asperger's, "Autism Spectrum Disorder", I don't give a damn, they are STIFLING INNOVATION.
ReplyDeleteThat's what NT's do. I'd postulate that the innovation goes far beyond anything STEM-related. We Aspergians probably created Written Language, Law, Economics, Democracy, Republics and History too.
DeleteIf not for us, Civilization would not have lasted 6 minutes, let alone more than 6,000 years.