"Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna"

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Both the author of the paper and the author of the book did discuss the separating science from the person

It's up to AS people to be the deciders of this, not any one researcher whatever his or her scholarship.

Maybe this latest set of revelations, unpleasant as they are, will spur AS people to assume the personal agency as a community that they have in the past surrendered to NTs, many regarding NTs as the source of all wisdom about AS, because that's how the NTs themselves see it.

So people only deserve credit for their work if they have broad social approval. The autistic kid who does well in class shouldn't be allowed to have good marks because all the other kids in the class think they're weird and don't like them.

That's pretty much the standard being advocated here.

I would have thought anyone opposed to Nazism would reject that sort of petty conformism that was very much at the heart of their ideology.

Aspergers Controversial Past: Doctor Behind Syndrome Linked to Nazi’s

Tweet by Ari Neeman first ASAN president
In short, we should pay Asperger no further honors - just as we should not allow this long overdue understanding of history to turn back the clock on the progress that Autistic people - the Nazi's victims - have won over the last several decades.

John Elder Robison
@johnrobison
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Apr 19
Had Czech's findings been known 20-some years ago Asperger Syndrome would never have entered the DSM under that name. In fact there is a high likelihood, were Asperger living today, he'd face prosecution over the war activities


@johnrobison
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Apr 19
We Americans first heard of Herwig Czech and his Asperger findings a few years ago in Different Key, the book from @JohnDonvan and @caren_zucker The brief story in that book was dismissed by some but this new Czech paper has a disturbing level of detail that can't be ignored.

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Apr 19
Many #ActuallyAutistic people describe themselves as having Asperger's. We may want to rethink that name in light of this from Austrian medical historian Herwig Czech. This paper paints a very sad picture of his complicity in Nazi euthanasia of kid

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview with Herwig Czech

Hans Asperger, Researcher Asperger Syndrome Is Named After, Had Ties to Nazi Party's Child Euthanasia Program

There is a curious omission in the media and other discussions on this, and I am grateful to Silberman's comprehensive history "Neurotribes", in which he noted on page 95 in the hardcopy version (regarding Hans Asperger as "discoverer") that:

"In fact, a young Russian psychiatrist named Grunia Sukhareva had written about a nearly identical group of young people in Moscow two decades earlier..."

Silberman expands on her insights for several pages. There is no doubt in my mind that she was describing young people on the spectrum (nor in Silberman's).

"These children didn't seem to be going through any kind of disease process similar to the tragic arc of schizophrenia; they were just deeply, constutionally different from their peers... if they found a teacher who protected them from bullies and encouraged them to develop their natural talents, they might thrive, though they would always remain eccentric". (page 97).
...

I recall that Sukhareva's recognition was briefly "news" a few years back, and then she was dumped again into the dustbin of ignored history. If we are to apply the standard of honouring the discoverer, then why is she being omitted from the discussions going on now? Because she was a female scientist? Seems very likely so to me. The editing out of women pioneers in science is nothing new, of course, nor is the downgrading of their achievements in favour of male colleagues (Think "Watson, Crick and what was her name, the one whose work was used to get the men their Nobel prize?)

..

Re-reading Neurotribes has reminded me of a lot today. The description of JAMA's use of an anatomy book written by a leading Nazi champion named Pernkopf in Austria, which continued to be used until JAMA was challenged by a Jewish surgeon in 1996, who forced JAMA to admit (finally) that the book which the USA medical profession was still using to teach would-be surgeons (and had been using for 60 years up to then) was illustrated with the flayed bodies of disabled children the Nazis had killed for the purpose (see p126, Neurotribes). The book was praised by JAMA as "a work of art".

There's a parallel here (though I'm making it, not Silberman this time): Both the work of Asperger and the work of his compatriate Nazi Pernkopf - both were whitewashed/unquestioned in the USA, and for an incredibly long time, and they were both deeply intertwined with the Nazi regime's murder of people like us.

As long as Autism/Aspergers continues to be a great earner for members of JAMA, the APA and other medical cabals, they won't care at all about AS sensitivities in the light of the latest revelations. They never have. The Anatomy book was emblazoned throughout the pictures in it with Nazi icons like the swastika. The continued USA use of it did not arise from ignorance of its origin.

Another woman "written out" of the history, her observations predating Kanner's, in the USA, and he was aware of her work:

In a recent article, Fellowes (2015) asserts that Kanner built on ideas previously outlined by Louise
Despert, a child psychiatrist living in New York. Despert had already published a 1938 clinical account classifying 23 children as childhood schizophrenic. (This term was used for autism at that time).
In a letter written by Despert in 1943, just after Kanner’s publication, she praised Kanner’s paper but objected to his claim to have discovered something new since she had already described something like autism.

Not only did Kanner not mention it, none of the male "autism experts" in subsequent decades did either.

(Can't make WP format this properly, it just reverts once I press submit..)

I would like to know more about Sukhareva's group of atypical children.

Sarcastic Post.

Such renowned women autism experts as Suzanne Wright and Jenny McCarthy get plenty of recognition.

Maybe it is for the best Dr. Sukareva does not get reconized, there must be some connection with Stalinism there. Imagine if that was discovered today. Fox news would devote all of its programming to show psychiatry is a fiendish commie plot. Trump would tweet who knows what.