Whatever happened to Dr Hans Asperger's patients?

Thank you to Michelle Dawson at her blog The Autism Crisis for informing us about an interesting and important recently-published study that has investigated a particularly nasty myth about autistic people - the unfounded idea that we are more likely to commit crimes. This baseless belief most likely has its origin in the many stupid but popular ideas about loners - that bunch of old cobblers about loners being serial killers and serial killers being loners. Its a crock of crap, but simple folks love these stories. Never mind that a fair number of serial killers have been husband and wife teams (hardly loners who are unable to form relationships). Some examples of husband and wife serial killer teams that come easily to mind are Fred and Rosemary West and the Birnies. Ivan Milat has been incorrectly described as a loner despite not actually having a personality that is anything like a loner, and he had and still has a charismatic influence over some people, and many believe he killed in company. Being a serial killer clearly does not have to be a lonely lifestyle.

Anyway, in the land of rational scientific thought, some researchers from Austria and London have done a study following the original patients of Dr Hans Asperger in Austria. They have checked the penal register for the records of these patients who were diagnosed as autistic when they were children. This is what the researchers found:

"In this original cohort of Asperger’s patients, convictions were no more common than in the general male population."

And the nature of the crimes that were found were not different to the norm. No serial killers. No sex offences either. Very boring.


Kathrin Hippler • Essi Viding • Christian Klicpera • Francesca Happe (2010) Brief Report: No Increase in Criminal Convictions in Hans Asperger’s Original Cohort. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. (2010) 40:774–780. Published online: 19 December 2009.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/g5653554rk2l0j34/fulltext.pdf

The Autism Crisis
http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/