Hero or collaborator?

Steve Silberman’s stunning new book looks across history, back to Henry Cavendish, the 18th-century natural scientist who discovered hydrogen, Hugo Gernsbach, the early-20th-century inventor and pioneer of amateur ‘wireless’ radio, and countless other technically brilliant but socially awkward, eccentric non-conformists, members of the ‘neurotribe’ we now call the autism spectrum.

He argues passionately for the ‘neurodiversity’ model rather than the medical disease model, for society to stop trying to ‘cure’ or ‘normalise’ those with autism, but to recognise them as neurologically differently wired, to accept difference, and support their disabilities when these surface in certain environments. His book could serve as a manifesto about extending dignity and human rights for people with autism, just as society has now done with other neurotribes such as the deaf, left-handed or gay. It is for society to respond to his challenge.

But who would have thought that a book about the history of the puzzling condition of autism would also contain a story about a doctor working in a clinic under the unimaginably horrific conditions of the Nazi eugenic cleansing policies? Nested within this highly original book is a chapter intriguingly entitled ‘What Sister Viktorine knew’.