Read the Kansas City Star obituary “Ole Ivar Lovaas, professor who pioneered a standard autism treatment, dies at 83.” Here is an excerpt:

Lovaas’ 1987 paper, “Behavioral Treatment and Normal Educational and Intellectual Functioning in Young Autistic Children,” showed for the first time that intensive one-to-one therapy early in life could eliminate symptoms of the disorder in some cases.

He described some of his research subjects as having “recovered,” a concept that remains controversial but appealed to parents and helped launch an industry that provides the treatment to the growing numbers of children being diagnosed.

“Before that (paper), people still felt that there was no hope once your child was diagnosed with autism,” said Doreen Granpesheeh, one of his former graduate students who went on to open the Center for Autism Research and Treatment, a large therapy company.

(The Lovaas Institute.)

Checkout Tyler Cowan‘s book Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. Here is a description of it:

In this book, Cowen takes a look at current technology—social networking, digital music, micro blogging, smart phones, etc—and shows how these things allow us to better educate ourselves, keep in touch with our loved ones, and even help us develop richer personal identities. Cowen argues, for example, that sending cell phone texts can actually open emotional doors, allowing us to communicate feelings that we might feel uncomfortable expressing in person or writing in a longer format. Social networking, for another example, allows us much more daily intimacy with others than we might otherwise have; programs like Facebook and iTunes also help us cultivate and share niche interests.

Create Your Own Economy also highlights a burning issue in our national debate: autism. Appreciating “neurodiversity,” or the range and depth of people’s various cognitive abilities, is now more important than ever. Cowen argues that we should not define autism in terms of its impairments. Instead, we should recognize and even emulate the cognitive strengths of people with autism. “We’ve had far too much of diagnosis and far too little of simply considering what keen, specialized perception and mental ordering bring to society as a whole,” writes Cowen. “In fact, mainstream society is already reaping benefits from mimicking autistic cognitive strengths.”

Neuroskeptic has an important post titled “Autism And Wealth.” Here is an excerpt:

In general, it’s sad but true that poor people suffer more diseases. Within a given country almost all physical and mental illnesses are more common amongst the poor, although this isn’t always true between countries.

So if a certain disease is more common in rich people within a country, that’s big news because it suggests that something unusual is going on. Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have long been known to show this pattern, at least in some countries, but this has often been thought to be a product of diagnostic ascertainment bias. Maybe richer and better-educated parents are more likely to have access to services that can diagnose autism. This is a serious issue because autism often goes undiagnosed and diagnosis is rarely clear-cut.

Neuroskeptic has an excellent post worth checking out titled “Oh Crap. More Autism Genes” about the findings and continued work of The Autism Genome Project.

Michael Wigler, Genetics Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Checkout Alex Plank’s website.

Read about Vernon Smith.

CNN Health has a couple of posts “10 sites worth checking out if your child has autism” and “Latest on autism research – Paging Dr. Gupta.” We have commented on and/or posted many of the research developments Dr. Gupta mentions.