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19 years ago I was researching #Autism online, when my mother-in-law called me. I clicked on another website and saw the still photos of the towers. I packed up the baby & went to get the older two from pre-school & elementary school. After the panic of realizing our country 1/
was under attack, after the horror of realizing thousands of people were dead or dying (jumping out of the collapsing towers), my thoughts wandered to how war was going to interrupt all progress in the world, including advances in medical science. Hans #Asperger, for whom that 2/
particular spectrum disorder was named (it's all autism now) had his work interrupted when his clinic in Vienna was bombed during WW II. The brilliant doctor was at some point sent to the Russian front. It took close to 50 years for someone to revive his work. In 1991, 3/
Lorna Wing coined the term "Asperger's Syndrome," which broadened the work on autism and laid the foundation for it to be characterized as a "spectrum disorder" later. Asperger's hit the DSM-IV in '94, I think. Losing Asperger's work for half a century made me wonder about 4/
how much science, how much advancement, the upcoming (2003) "War on Terror" would cost us as a society. We'll never know. I remember & mourn those who died; I am grateful to our brave first responders & those who fight in our military. But I also mourn the sheer waste of it all.
