New Scientist Magazine’s lead article considers if the idea of autism as a spectrum is completely wrong.
Team member and geneticist Olga Troyanskaya at Princetown University and the Flatiron Institute states, “the researchers were surprised by how strongly the four groups came out of the data. "Every individual is unique, but there do seem to be these replicable groups."
New Scientist discusses the study by Geneticist Natalie Sauerwald and her colleagues at the Flatiron Institute in New York. “They used a dataset from Simons Powering Autism Research, a research study that is led by the autistic community, which included 5392 autistic people—an order of magnitude more than previous studies”. They too found patterns in the combinations of traits that fell into four subgroups. It is unclear how these two studies and other subtype studies fit together.
In the article, Anoushka Pattenden of the National Autistic Society has concerns, "We fear that further categorising of autism is unhelpful and may lead to more stigma or discrimination,"
New Scientist science writer Michael Marshall considers “The idea of an autism spectrum, where autistic people have similar traits only to a greater or lesser extent […] is challenged by studies that find that autism may come in multiple distinct forms. These subtypes have more in common with the colour wheel picture of autism […], which plots the extent to which an autistic person experiences each trait as you move around the spokes of the wheel”.
”The researchers hope that a respectful approach to subtyping can reveal autism's underlying biology in a way that also brings this colour wheel, and the lived experiences it contains, into focus”.
The full article (pay to subscribe) is at the link, but New Scientist and other magazines and books are available to read free of charge through public libraries. You need to become a member first and then download the Libby app to read.
I’m content to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to what future research might reveal. I believe there are potential benefits to moving to four subtypes, but I have concerns that some people might end up not in any category and that it could end up stigmatising some groups more than others. As it is, the spectrum model of autism does not reflect what it is to be autistic and I don’t consider myself ‘disordered’ (Perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that the thinking that lead to such a label was disordered?). I’m glad that the value of the autism colour wheel model is recognised by scientific researchers and New Scientist Magazine. Perhaps that is a big step towards encouraging psychiatrists to evaluate their terminology when talking about and to autistic people.
Any thoughts?
