Iowa teen Levi Null, 13, struggles with Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD. He's always been picked on, but recently the bullies began ramping up their behavior: they started making videos of Null at school—some of them videos of his involuntary movements caused by Asperger's—and then posting them online with school computers.
The internet is coming to the defense of longtime Wegmans grocery store employee Chris Tuttle after he was berated by a customer for being "too slow" to check her out on Saturday. Tuttle, diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, has worked at the store for over seven years and while being a cashier isn't his primary job, his manager will sometimes ask him to cover a register if the store is busy.
Every age, it seems, gives rise to its own medical hysteria rooted in our collective fears. Could the Internet's dehumanizing effect be driving us to fixate on autism?
Gary McKinnon, the U.K. citizen trying to avoid extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on multiple counts of criminal trespass for using a 56k modem to hack into the Pentagon's network in search of UFO evidence, is trying a new tactic. Having lost his appeal, his attorneys are now pointing to a recent diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome as a reason to indefinitely delay his flight across the pond. While the Asperger's defense is nothing new, it has become particularly popular as a gambit by lawyers to excuse the behavior of geeks gone bad. Though not without much success — it certainly didn't work for convicted murderer Hans Reiser. (Photo by AP/Lefteris Pitarakis)
After Mark Zuckerberg's awkward Lesley Stahl interview on 60 Minutes, after his infamous SXSW keynote with Sarah Lacy and, finally, after yesterday's halting CNBC interview, it's time the poor suffering Facebook CEO got some help. Getting a copy of Marc Segar's "Coping: A Survival Guide for People with Asperger Syndrome and pointing out the relevant bits might do the trick. Even brassy Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg isn't gutsy enough for the job, we're betting, so we will. To be sure, we're not doctors. We don't know if Zuckerberg has Asperger's. But experts would agree, his obvious brilliance is as much a symptom as his inability to hold a conversation. And the advice below would seem to apply whether or not the diagnosis does.
Attorneys for software developer and convicted murder Hans Reiser are now trying to convince a judge and jury that their client is "mentally incompetent," having portrayed what looked like attempts to cover up a crime as the misunderstanding of social cues. Their suggestion: Reiser has the mild form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome. If successful, Reiser would be jailed at a mental institution instead of with the general population, where the resemblance to Tobias "Toby" Beecher on HBO's Oz would not serve him well. Sentencing is scheduled for Wednesday, July 9th. (Photo by AP/D. Ross Cameron)
"Dr. Block says about 86 percent of Internet addicts have some other form of mental illness, but that unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet addiction is likely to be missed." By "other form of mental illness," we're guessing Asperger's sufferers like BitTorrent's not-so-adorably quirky founder Bram Cohen. [Canada.com] (Photo by Irina Slutsky)
Heather "Asperger's" Kuzmich of "America's Next Top Model" has granted an interview to Wrong Planet, which is an "online resource and community for people with Asperger's Syndrome." We already knew that Asperger's is a mild form of autism that affects people's ability to interact socially, but did you also know that it causes extreme credulousness? "I finally realized that if I'm gonna learn modeling, i might as well go on a show that has some of the best in the industry," Heather said of her decision to go on the show. [Wrong Planet]
