Where are the autistic Amish?

April 20, 2005

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050321-115921-9566r.html

The Washington Times

April 18, 2005

The Age of Autism: The Amish anomaly

By Dan Olmsted

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Lancaster, PA, Apr. 18 (UPI) -- Part 1 of 2. Where are the

autistic Amish?

Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country,

there should

be well over 100 with some form of the disorder.

I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has

failed, and the

very few I have identified raise some very interesting

questions about some

widely held views on autism.

The mainstream scientific consensus says autism is a complex

genetic

disorder, one that has been around for millennia at roughly

the same

prevalence. That prevalence is now considered to be 1 in every

166 children

born in the United States.

Applying that model to Lancaster County, there ought to be 130

Amish men,

women and children here with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Well over 100, in rough terms.

Typically, half would harbor milder variants such as

Asperger's Disorder or

the catch-all Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise

Specified --

PDD-NOS for short.

So let's drop those from our calculation, even though " mild "

is a relative

term when it comes to autism.

That means upwards of 50 Amish people of all ages should be

living in

Lancaster County with full-syndrome autism, the " classic

autism " first

described in 1943 by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns

Hopkins

University. The full-syndrome disorder is hard to miss,

characterized by

" markedly abnormal or impaired development in social

interaction and

communication and a markedly restricted repertoire of

activities and

interests, " according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

of Mental

Disorders.

Why bother looking for them among the Amish? Because they

could hold clues

to the cause of autism.

The first half-dozen articles in this ongoing series on the

roots and rise

of autism examined the initial studies and early accounts of

the disorder,

first identified by Kanner among 11 U.S. children born

starting in 1931.

Kanner wrote that his 1938 encounter with a child from

Mississippi,

identified as Donald T., " made me aware of a behavior pattern

not known to

me or anyone else theretofore. " Kanner literally wrote the

book on " Child

Psychiatry, " published in 1934.

If Kanner was correct -- if autism was new and increasingly

prevalent --

something must have happened in the 1930s to trigger those

first autistic

cases. Genetic disorders do not begin suddenly or increase

dramatically in

prevalence in a short period of time.

That is why it is worth looking for autistic Amish -- to test

reasoning

against reality. Largely cut off for hundreds of years from

American culture

and scientific progress, the Amish might have had less

exposure to some new

factor triggering autism in the rest of population.

Surprising, but no one seems to have looked.

Of course, the Amish world is insular by nature; finding a

small subset of

Amish is a challenge by definition. Many Amish, particularly

Old Order, ride

horse-and-buggies, eschew electricity, do not attend public

school, will not

pose for pictures and do not chat casually with the " English, "

as they

warily call the non-Amish.

Still, some Amish today interact with the outside world in

many ways. Some

drive, use phones, see doctors and send out Christmas cards

with family

photos. They all still refer to themselves as " Plain, " but the

definition of

that word varies quite a bit.

So far, from sources inside and outside the Amish community, I

have

identified three Amish residents of Lancaster County who

apparently have

full-syndrome autism, all of them children.

A local woman told me there is one classroom with about 30

" special-needs "

Amish children. In that classroom, there is one autistic Amish

child.

Another autistic Amish child does not go to school.

The third is that woman's pre-school-age daughter.

If there were more, she said, she would know it.

What I learned about those children is the subject of the next

column.

This ongoing series aims to be interactive with readers and

will take note

of comment, criticism and suggestions. E-mail: dolmsted

April 20, 2005

I would love to pass this on, but the link does not work and a search on the

Washington Times site for " autism amish " produces no results. Any ideas where

to find this?

Thanks!

Kelly

( Moderator's Note: just guessing but sometimes stories like this get pulled by

management when the story somehow got reported on but then doesn't fit with the

propaganda normally put out by Big Pharma, the AMA or some other economic

special interest group who along with the government control what