by Alex Everard

Immediately after Craig Rafail turns off the lights to his son Dyllan’s bedroom, the young boy responds, “Dad, why did you turn the dark on?” “That was one specific time I can recall thinking to myself, ‘Wow, he sees things totally differently. His mind is so unique,’” Rafail, a physical education and science teacher, said while recalling a memory of his son Dyllan, now a published author at the age of 12.

http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/the-deuce/local-author-provides-insight-into-autism-and-aspergers-syndrome-at-age-12/

A Powerful Identity, a Vanishing Diagnosis

Much of the growing prevalence of autism, which now affects about 1 percent of American children, according to federal data, can be attributed to Asperger’s and other mild forms of the disorder. And Asperger’s has exploded into popular culture through books and films depicting it as the realm of brilliant nerds and savantlike geniuses.

But no sooner has Asperger consciousness awakened than the disorder seems headed for psychiatric obsolescence. Though it became an official part of the medical lexicon only in 1994, the experts who are revising psychiatry’s diagnostic manual have proposed to eliminate it from the new edition, due out in 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?_r=1