You can't underestimate the power of an autistic with a special interest. Take me, for example. Since 2004, I've spent an average of ten hours a week on researching and talking about autism and autism-related information--do the multiplication and it comes to over 3000 hours. (For comparison, that's more time than a college student spends in class to get a bachelor's degree.)
Even when you add in the tendency of doctors to be highly intelligent and the background they have in everything from biology to statistics, the doctors don't really pull ahead by too much. In some cases they don't pull ahead at all. How many of us have had to educate our GPs about autism? I'm going to guess most of us have had to, or have avoided doing so because even though we knew they didn't know enough about autism, their white coats intimidated us. You cannot discount someone's opinion because he has not had formal education. You can evaluate it critically, disagree with it, and state that it's illogical; but you can't dismiss it out of hand simply because he doesn't have a degree.
It is not at all uncommon for a specialist to know more than a professional expert, especially if the expert is a generalist. And it doesn't just happen with autism. Talk to someone who's been through a long-term illness or has a disability--most of the time, they will know more about their particular diagnosis than the average doctor knows. The doctor has to know about thousands of diagnoses; they're spending their time on only one.
01 Oct 2010, 12:29 pm
