Those with savant syndrome have “quite remarkable, and sometimes spectacular, talents”—such as being able to recite prime number after prime number or to draw the city of Rome with photographic precision—while also having “serious mental or physical disability” (according to one website). Garrett Heaney in Wishtank describes an exchange two individuals who have been diagnosed with savant syndrome, Kim Peek (the model for Raymond in the movie Rain Man, though Raymond is referred to as “autistic” and as an “autistic savant”) and Daniel Tammet, the author of Born on a Blue Day). In particular, Heaney considers this exchange of words …read more

Do childhood vaccines cause autism? (KSDK, St. Louis)
No.
Vaccinations do not cause autism.
Source. Source. Source.

The theory linking autism to a vaccine or something in vaccines (such as the mercury-based preservative thimerosal) has a certain simple elegance: A young child is developing normally. The child gets a vaccine. “Overnight,” the child changes dramatically, perhaps losing speech, having terrible gastrointestinal problems, lining up objects, spinning, flapping her or his hands, not responding to the people and the world around her or him—-”developing” or “becoming” autistic. Today on Assymetrical Information at The Atlantic.com, Megan McArdle writes that claims of a vaccine-autism link are based on associative thinking that confuses correlation with causation:
Our brains are designed to learn …read more