Temple Grandin: autistics asset to workplace?

I see that Temple Grandin is once againgiving commentary about autistics in the workplace. I still think of my own personal struggles in the workplace and my forced retirement at age 51 after years of effort. I was interested to see Grandin's figure of 3% employment among autistics. This is a far cry from Joseph of the natural variation blog's 30% rate of employment among autistics which he neglected to cite a source for and could not do so when I asked him. It is an even further cry from Joseph's assertion based on the UK prevalence study with questionable methodology that found 1% of the adult population in the UK in private households had autism and that they were employed in the same manner as non-handicapped people. I am still curious as to where Grandin gets this figure or where thereare any documentable figures or studies of employment rates among autistics anywhere. I have tried to find them myself on Google. Possibly due to my own ineptitude I was not able to find any. Of course if Grandin's figure is accurate I can take some solace in the fact that at various times in my life I was in the 97th percentile in terms of employability among ASD persons.

Though her call for more autistics in the workplace is commendable, it is dubious that a company will lose out as she says or that autistics as a group (particularly when you look at the entire spectrum) will provide an asset to any company. Though I don't like saying it I believe it is the sad and unpleasant truth.

I'm convinced that this group is one of the most untapped pools poolsof talent we have," said Best Buy's Webteam vice president Cindy Holker

Assuming this statement is true, I wonder where are the examples of all of the autistics who are employed by Best Buy and why we have not heard of them.

People with mild autism or Asperger's syndrome are basically "geeks," Grandin said. They have tremendous skills that can help corporations solve problems, grow sales and program a company's ways to greatness, she said.

If this is true why does not Grandin give any examples besides Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. I believed that I have debunked the non-clinician Grandin's (who likely never met Gates) arguments in my essay undiagnosing Gates, Jefferson and Einstein, which the interested reader can link to from this blog. There is no evidence that Zuckerberg has autism and again this trivializes my horrible disability (and others' disability as well)


Silicon Valley, Hollywood, corporate labs and IT departments are often "loaded" with well-paid individuals who live somewhere on the spectrum of autism, Grandin insisted.
Many just haven't been diagnosed yet, she said, and so don't carry the label of the illness, which is typically characterized by heightened intellect, awkward social skills, black-and-white, literal reasoning, an intolerance of noise and the inability to read facial cues or body language.

Again, no real examples, and one wonders why these people have not been diagnosed. Perhaps it is because they had no real impairments in their life that a legitimately diagnosed individual has had. So, they would not present to a doctor or psychologist for diagnosis and a comparison between these people and someone actually diagnosed with an ASD is likely not apt.

Grandin emphasizes that social skills can be taught to ASD'ers in the workplace. I question the validity of this approach, given the consideration that voice volume and other behavioral quirks might not be easily controlled. Also, it assumes that life is not spontaneous and follows a script where every variable in the workplace can be accounted for. However, I do laud Grandin for acknowledging that social skills are necessary to obtain and maintain employment. This is in stark contrast to the never employed (excepting his patronage government job at the NDC) Ari Ne'eman, who has stated that an autistic's lack of social skills should be completely overlooked in the workplace.

Gradin has assertedthat half of the silicone valley has something you would call Asperger's. I find it hard to believe she has even met one tenth of 1% of the people employed in the Silicone valley so I believe this is rather a stretch.



Though Grandin's accomplishments and the obstacles she had to overcome to obtain them are laudable I do not believe that it is helpful for her to trivialize the employment problems of persons with autism.

Will ASTEP be a misstep?

As a person with high functioning autism who has not worked in over four years and has been fired from approximately 20 jobs or more, as well as having significant problems on others where I was forced to resign, I was interested in hearing from my friend, Stephen Shore, about a newly formed organization whose purpose is to help persons on the spectrum find and keep employment. Steve serves on the advisory board of this organization.

This organization has the cute acronym ASTEP, which stands for Asperger's syndrome training and employment partnership.

As I suspect I am not the only person with autism and/or Asperger's syndrome who has had problems in the workplace, this interests me greatly. This is light of the fact that the Obama administration has appointed to various government policy posts a never employed 22 year old who states that a solution for unemployment among persons with autism is to eliminate social pleasantry as a criteria for hiring and evaluating people's job performance. Also it is rumored that a person high up in his advocacy organization is the retired neurodiversity blogger "the autistic bitch from hell" who has stated that those of us with ASD's on/or applying to be on the dole are nothing but lazy loafers who don't want to take responsibility for our lives so we spend time interfering with the noble individuals of this advocacy organization who are trying to do something about job discrimination against autistic persons.

We also have autism speaks who promotes an autism in the workplace dog and pony show yet has never, to the best of my knowledge, hired an autistic person to work for their organization even as a minimum wage janitor or file clerk with a job coach or contributed to the employment of an autistic individual in any way. The exception to this could be their giving money to that Robin Hood-in-reverse, John Elder Robison, to help pay for the costs of his son's film making endeavors, in exchange for lending his celebrity to their organization by serving on an advisory board. In Gadfly's opinion, this is not much different than Warren Buffett serving as an advisor on an organization designed to help the homeless then giving him money.

So, on superficial analysis, it would seem that ASTEP might be a noble cause and this newly found organization might be something that could do some good, if they were able to help autistic people find and keep work. However, it would seem unclear to me on exactly how this is done. The photo on their homepage shows persons working in what would appear to be prestigious, highly skilled work such as in a science laboratory or computer job. I have to wonder, how many persons on the spectrum are capable of receiving the training for doing this job and how realistic is this. I am also curious where these photos were obtained and if any of these people at all have Asperger's or autism.

One intriguing item is apparently there are government subsidies for hiring people with disabilities. One of the things that I attempted when I was struggling to make a living was going to this organization ADEPT (I don't remember what the acronym stood for) which I don't think is any longer in existence. The jobs that I applied for, for the most part did not want to hire me and make an agreement with ADEPT. The one job I got that made an agreement with ADEPT, transcribing some radiology reports, fired me after a month. After this I got another job where they declined to make an agreement with ADEPT and I held this job for more than two years.

They also apparently talk about disclosure of the diagnosis as part of the basis of their plan for helping those on the spectrum and giving counseling to their clients and prospective employers about accommodations that could be made. What exactly these accommodations are and how they could help persons on the spectrum be employed, I don't know. I have not read everything on the site, yet, so perhaps, there is something I missed. I just know that part of ADEPTs strategy was this sort of thing, disclosure and subsidizing the persons did not work out for me.

I don't believe that disclosure is tremendously helpful based on my own personal experiences. It would likely result in someone not being hired, or if they were hired, if the employer did not like them for some reason, or they had bad behavior on the job or problems with work performance, it would not dissuade them from firing that person.

Another red flag is their citing various offices of state departments of rehabilitation around the country and apparently part of their strategy is to have an alliance with these government organizations. I would only recommend the services of the California state department of rehabilitation to my most mortal enemies and that might be cruel even to these people.

About two years ago I wrote a blog post about my bad experiences with California's state rehab department so the interested reader can link to this and read about them to see what is wrong with this approach.

Another reason to be wary of ASTEP is the citing of Temple Grandin's books and work, where she implies that most autistic people have special talents and gives the solution of having mentors and claiming that obsessions can be channeled into work careers, yet neglecting to give any specific examples of these besides herself. The sad story of Darius McCollum is certainly one example where this approach would not be workable. Grandin also gives examples of good jobs and bad jobs for autistic people. Medical transcription, which I did on and off in various places was given as a bad job for persons with autism. Though I was not able to succeed in this field well enough to continue working in it, there is the old cliche' about the glass being half full rather than half empty. I was more successful and made more money doing this than anything else and there were a variety of transcription jobs I was able to keep for reasonably lengthy periods of time, one of them more than nine years.

Perhaps the biggest eyeroll of all is the executive director of the program, one Michael John Carley. Carley, who is married and has two children and received an AS diagnosis in his mid 30s after his son was diagnosed has claimed that there is a universal feeling among autistics that "we" don't want to be cured. As most readers of this blog can guess, I take umbrage to this.

Carley, as reported by MJ, author of the autism jabberwocky blog has stated that proposed changes in the DSM are "hard for him to swallow because he does not want to be associated with head bangers and diaper wearers". Apparently, Carley would prefer fancying himself an Einstein or a Gates and claiming these two had Asperger's than a person who has had life impairments due to their ASD. One has to wonder how much sympathy Carley would have for those of us who have employment problems. Would he find being lumped in with us, 'hard to swallow'? This would reduce his credibility in my eyes as a director of an organization that seeks to help ASD persons with employment issues.

Interestingly, Carley at one time made a living as a diplomat for the United Nations. This seems rather ironic in light of the rather undiplomatic statements that he has made about persons with autism who do not function in the world as well as he does. I wonder whether the reason Carley is now doing work in autism related fields and is no longer a diplomat is because he worked in a profession he was so ill-suited for and had to leave it. If he can't even pick a job he has a good aptitude for,how can he help other persons?

I realize that this is a very new organization and perhaps I should heed the old saw, "don't judge a book by its cover" and maybe give ASTEP a chance and see if they are actually successful in helping those of us on the spectrum find and keep work.

Though I will withhold judgement until all the facts are in, I still can't help thinking that ASTEP might be a misstep.

Possible autistic short story collection

I have just received a tip about some people who are interested in putting together a short story collection by autistic authors. I have written 23 short stories, 14 of them have been published on my stories page. It has been a few years since I have written any stories, though at some point I might write more. I'm more interested in writing novels and technically I have now written two of those. Of course short stories can often be a novelist's baby steps. I have submitted my story, Guess who isn't coming to lunch to these people. I may submit one or two more to them. They have a 3,000 word limit so this would preclude a good number of my stories that are substantially longer than this but I have a number of others that do fall within this range.

At one time I believed that I was one of the few persons on the spectrum to have written fiction. After I wrote this on my home page of my stories website, various people countered this claim and I must concede that there are apparently more fiction authors on the spectrum than I previously had believed.

This seems like an exciting project, the fact that there could be a collection of short stories by autistic authors and that it could be published.

One of the problems with this project however is that these people are planning to submit the collection to Jessica Kingsley, probably the premiere publisher of autism-related books. I met Ms. Kingsley at an autism conference a few years ago or so, and she told me that as a general rule, she will not publish fiction books because they did publish one children's book that was fiction and it sold poorly. Though, I think such a project would be worthwhile, I understand that Ms. Kingsley is concerned with her company's bottom line. So, I am guessing the chances that this story collection would be published by JKP is certainly a longshot. If JKP declined to publish it, the chances of anyone else doing so are miniscule, as short story collections are only published by mainstream publishers when the author is an established writer who has had stories published in various magazines, anthologies etc.

If any other autistic authors who have written short stories are interested in this I guess they can follow the link to the wrong planet post and contact the parties concerned.

New law proposed in connecticut: what's the point?

I was interested to read about a new law being proposed by the Connecticut state legislature against bogus autism therapists. Apparently a woman who only had a high school education claimed to have advanced degrees and credentials as a professional autism therapist and bilked the hapless parents of some autistic children out of thousands of dollars.

I have to wonder what the point of this law is. I have already written about William Stillman who charges $100 an hour for a phone consultation in spite of not having any credentials and a self-diagnosis of Asperger's and presumes that autism is a new evolutionary development and in 5 to 10 years the prevalence will be 1 in 10.

I have also mentioned Valerie Paradiz in the past, who admittedly has a Ph.D. in German literature yet misleads people by flaunting her Ph.D., advertising herself as a paid autism consultant.

Interestingly enough, one of the person's pushing for this legislation seemed to be from autism speaks, who has John Elder Robison, a high school dropout, on their scientific advisory board amidst the M.D. and Ph.D. scientists, so it is rather strange that they care about these qualifications.

Additionally, federal special education law does not have a precedent where people are required to have credentials or training. This has been decided upon by the Supreme Court in the Shannon Carter case. The Carter decision also set the precedent for a New York court decision Malkowitz v. DeBuono which paved the way for uncredentialed, untrained Lovaas/ABA therapists to practice at taxpayer expense.

So I am wondering what is the point of this law?

has holy grail molecular pathway for autism been identified?

An old acquaintance of mine sent me this interesting piece by economist and mutual fund manager, John Hussman, who has an autistic son and apparently moonlights as a genetic researcher with some other persons. The research involved genome wide sequencing of two different datasets, using a sophisticated computer algorithm that I don't really understand that studied what were called single nucleotide polymorphisms where there are normal variations in the genes of various people some of these can have risk alleles which are genes or a cluster of genes which can cause or predispose someone to conditions like Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, or autism.

From what I understand of the article, they were saying that there are so many possible locations that could result in genes which cause alterations to proteins or instructions on how to construct neurons, etc., it is infeasible to examine them all by conventional methods. However, many of the SNP's that could cause autism might be in very close proximity to one other and the problem could be confounded by a large "noise to signal ratio". The researchers Hussman was associated with apparently used an algorithm which helped with the signal to noise ratio in finding candidate alleles that could cause or predispose someone to autism. Two different data sets, one from the University of Florida and another from the autism genetic resource exchange were used with the idea is that you might be able to find locations for the same candidate genes in two different data sets, then this might make a clearer picture for a possible genetic etiology of autism.


I have written in the past about the simplistic statements that Simon Baron-Cohen and Temple Grandin and perhaps others have taken towards the genetics of autism in that perhaps there is only one or a few "autism genes" that have stayed in the population due to a protective effect and are responsible for every invention from the spear to the cell phone.

As Hussman correctly states, the problem with this thinking is that instead of a few genes, there are probably hundreds of genes that operate in concert with each other which could have a small effect on many individuals or a large effect on a few individuals. But what was intriguing is that these hundreds of genes could operate on a common biological pathway, which might make an understanding of the etiology of autism clearer.

With this computer algorithm, the researchers claim to have found a biologic pathway which could explain at least some aspects of autism. The biologic pathway regulates how axons and dendrites in a neuronal brain cell are formed and guides them to the appropriate places. For those who don't know, brain cells communicate with each other chemically and electronically by sending electrical pulses down what is called the axon of the cell. Then a chemical is released into a space called the synapse which is received by a dendrite of a neighboring brain cell. If something is amiss in genes that regulate this, then cells won't be able to communicate with each other properly and this lack of adequate transmission could cause the debilitating features of autism.

Though admittedly I am far from a science expert, one problem with this research that I see is that autism is likely not 100% genetic, since though we have high concordance rates in identical twins, it is not 100%. Likewise, as I remember correctly some studies have shown fraternal twins have higher concordance rates than siblings who are not twins; it would be the same if autism were 100% genetic. So, there may be something else, besides abnormalities in single nucleotide polymorphisms such as some environment insult during the prenatal period that could cause a person to become autistic, though it is possible this pathway found by Hussman and the others might predispose a person to autism.

I suppose Lorene Amet, a prolific commenter on autism's gadfly who has a doctorate in molecular biology can critique this research and correct me where I am going wrong if anywhere. Or possibly someone else better trained in science than I am.

However, this research holds out hope, maybe not for me personally, but perhaps other persons who have yet to be born. If there is a common pathway influence by genetic mutations that results in abnormal cytoarchitecture can be found for many cases of autism, perhaps interventions could be done to prevent the person from becoming autistic in the first place and having to live with this disability. Hussman seems to imply this is the case.

As I said, I wish I had more expertise on science so I could understand this stuff better and the possible implications it might have for helping or possibly even curing or preventing autism in the first place.

Equality Demands Responsibility Revisited

As regular readers of autism's gadfly know, a few years ago neurodiversity activist Ari Ne'eman wrote an essay entitled Equality Demands Responsibility in which the gist of the essay was that persons on the spectrum should not use insanity pleas or diminished capacity defenses when charged with crimes. That if we were to state a cure was not necessary then an autistic person was expected to obey the law. If not, they should be prosecuted and suffer the same consequences as the neurotypical law breaker.

A few years later, Ne'eman, and his organization, the autistic self-advocacy network, digressed from the tenets of this essay, when a young special education student was charged with assaulting his teachers. I wrote about this elsewhere. This youngster should not be prosecuted for his crime because of his autism ASAN said. The Midnight in Chicago blog in a recent post has suggested if I am not misunderstanding them is that those who engage in autism advocacy may have ulterior motives for doing so. They write:

Again, I say to you that it is important that you carefully evaluate the motives and intentions of people and organizations in the advocacy field. Often times they are advocating for personal or selfish reasons, rather than advocating in the interest of seeing that true justice is served to those on the autism spectrum

This could serve as an explanation for the inconsistencies between Ne'eman's essay and their advocacy efforts on behalf of the young special education student from Arkansas. However, I am not sure what ulterior motive ASAN would have for their actions, but perhaps there is one.

Retired neurodiversity blogger "The autistic bitch from hell" has suggested that the reason certain autistic persons crusade against the neurodiversity movement and efforts of autistic self-advocates is because they are on welfare or social security and refuse to take responsibility for their lives and are worried that these efforts will jeopardize their welfare benefits.

I find this assertion interesting as a crusader against neurodiversity and a critic of the autistic self advocacy network, who for more than 27 years tried his ass off to make a living, applied for hundreds of jobs, worked sporadically with some success, endured multiple firings and all the headaches of having to avoid going on the dole or being completely supported by my parents just to avoid the fate that ABFH claimed that I covet so much. Yet, two of the highest (at the time) profile spokespersons for the autistic civil rights and neurodiversity movement, Frank Klein and Amanda Baggs were both on welfare and/or social security and as far as I know never worked a day in their lives. It is also interesting in light of the fact that Ari Ne'eman stated that he supported money being spent from the Obama administration's economic stimulus package to expedite processing of social security disability claims and hearings at the administrative law level and in federal district courts and circuit courts of appeal. The fact that ASAN has lobbied for Medicaide waivers for persons with autism in various states as well.

All of these facts has just gotten me to thinking. Should the equality demands responsibility ploy just be restricted to criminal behavior as well as those of us unemployed autistics whom ABFH asserts are just lazy loafers who won't work and take responsibility for our lives? What about in special education? What about the state regional center services in California? What about behavior in school and in the workplace?

The IDEA law, which ASAN has lobbied for funding for costs the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. If equality demands responsibility and autism is to be considered a legitimate way of being rather than a disease shouldn't ASAN be lobbying to abolish it and claiming that autistics should be educated in the same manner as their NT peers for the same amount of money and no extra money be spent on special education for these children, after all, equality demands responsibility?

The state of California where I live is billions of dollars in the hole. Jerry Brown, our new governor has created a hornet's nest by proposing drastic cuts in the state budget. According to the equality demands responsibility mantra the families of children with developmental disabilities should not be lobbying for state services at taxpayer expense. They should be lobbying for Brown and the state legislature to close down the state regional centers and responsible parents of autistic children should no longer avail themselves of these services if they are to assert their children are equal to NT children and don't need a cure.

What about inappropriate behavior and social skills among persons with autism. Shouldn't we expect them to always behave in an appropriate manner in spite of their autism? After all, equality demands responsibility. This is in spite of the fact that Ari Ne'eman stated social pleasantry should be eliminated as a criteria for hiring people for jobs and evaluating their work performance.

According to the equality demands responsibility mantra, autistics should not be allowed diminished capacity defenses in criminal proceedings under any circumstance,they should not be allowed social security benefits and should work for a living. They should take responsibility for their own behavior and should not be allowed services by government if we are to state that no cure should be sought for autism and to do so is morally reprehensible.

I don't see ASAN and other advocacy organizations lobbying for any of these things. All I see is one inconsistency and digression from the Equality Demands Responsibility tenet after another. Or perhaps the midnight in Chicago blog is indeed correct. That the autistic advocacy organizations have an ulterior motive for all of their activities and perhaps don't really give a flying fuck about autistics' rights. I wonder what this ulterior motive could be.

more work at cal tech

About an hour ago, I came back home from The Emotions lab at Cal tech, run by neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs. I participated in some more experiments involving some questinonaires, this sort of experiment involving the Stroop effect where I have to name what a color is when a color word is put in a different color than the word. For example Greenaand having to chose the color red instead of the color green. They also had this eye tracking experiment where I had to wear a camera on my head that tracks eye movements, while I look at some faces and photos of scenery and decide which of two choices is the most attractive. I am not sure what the purpose of these experiments are and what they are trying to measure in autistic persons, but I am able to make $80 for an afternoon's work which is nice considering my financial situation is not as lucrative as it was four years ago or so. Of course some of the money is taken in the costs of gas in driving to Pasadena which is probably about 30 miles or more from where I live. I got to see post doctoral fellow Dan Kennedy again, and say hello to him. I first started participating about a year ago and I have written about my experiences doing this. The eye tracker was kind of a hassle because I had to wear this camera on top of my head while doing it, and it took them a long time to set up the calibrations for it, but they finally did it. Apparently this device is very "finnicky" as they put it and it takes a long time to set it up.

It was nice to be able to have something constructive to do for the good part of the day and some interaction with some persons as well as making some money. There is sort of an irony involved in all of these people rejecting me because of my autism, but there someone actually wants me because of my autism and wants to pay me some money for it. It is as close as I can get to having a job right now, though not quite the same I guess. Course I am enjoying retirement somewhat also.

Also, the Courchesne lab contacted me recently and wanted me to participate in this study they are now doing. I used to be a research subject with them but have not done so for a while now. I could have made a couple hundred dollars doing that but it involved driving down to San Diego (more than 120 miles each way) on at least two or more different occasions and having some testing and MRI scanning done as well as having a skin biopsy taken from my buttocks. I guess I was squeamish about the skin biopsy and at the time I was having some dermatologic problems with ringworm on my buttocks which has resolved. It is interesting in apparently the idea is that they can do some sort of stem cell thing where they turn skin cells into neurons and the autistic neurons may develop differently than normal controls. I can't help feeling a little guilty that my participating might have made the difference between curing (or at least making a major therapeutic breakthrough in autism) autism in a much shorter time. So at some point I may reconsider my participation in that study if it is not too late, but we shall see.

Another issue that concerns me is that they are only interested in high functioning autistics in a lot of these studies, at least at Cal Tech, as it involves compliance with the eye tracking device and being able to use a computer properly and reading the choices on the computer. I wish there was some way to do research on the lower functioning people so they could have a shot of a decent life and being able to talk and such, but so it goes.

I think Adolph's lab is still looking for research subjects 18 years of age and up with high functioning autism or Asperger's syndrome. They pay $20 an hour for various experiments and $50 an hour for undergoing an MRI scan. So if anyone is interested I guess they can contact the lab. I believe the number of the lab is included in the post that I linked to from last year. If it isn't I guess someone can post a comment to me or send me email and I can give them the number.