Steven Shapin om autismens historia

Nyligen släpptes en ny bok om autismens historia, In a different key: The story of autism, skriven av två amerikanska journalister. I det senaste numret av The New Yorker har vetenskapshistorikern Steven Shapin, troligen mest känd för den inflytelsrika boken Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, recenserat boken och han skriver bland annat att:

“[A]utism,” “Asperger’s,” and “the spectrum” no longer belong solely to the psychiatric profession, and have drifted into lay usage. If we all have spectrum tendencies and Aspie moments, then the labels no longer have much use as medical categories. The spectrum has been stretched to the breaking point, and autism now sits astride a social fault line between what’s considered normal and what’s pathological, what’s an eccentricity and what’s in need of expert therapy. These matters belong to our moral life, and we can’t reasonably expect them to be settled by medical science or clinical evidence or even the law.   

 Läs hela recensionen på The New Yorkers hemsida.