I wanted to note a shocking book review in the New York Times
review, Sunday, June 24, 2018, p. 12, “A Deadly Spectrum” A history of autism
rooted in Nazi Germany and its program of child euthanasia”, or more startling
online, “Was autism a Nazi invention?”
The book is “Asperger’s Children: The Origin of Autism in
Nazi Vienna”, by Edith Sheffer, from W.W. Norton and Company.
The work as based in part on a German psychiatrist, Lorna Wing,
after Asperger’s death. Asperger probably
was complicit with Nazi euthanasia of children who showed poor social bonding
skills, of lack of “Gemut, the ability to form deep (social) bonds with other
people”, for the sake of the Volk – populism indeed.
Today, Asperger’s is rolled into the autism spectrum
disorder – and yet people with it sometimes are very brilliant and make great
contributions to science.
Michael Burry, a former doctor, may be an example. Not liking to follow the crowd, he founded a
hedge fund that anticipated the flaws in the system that brought about the “Black
Swan” of the 2008 financial crisis.
People with this sort of disposition often see dangers to the “crowd”
before others do, part of the whole “skin in the game” issue.
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