I Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.
FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.
There’s an educational video from that time, called “Understanding Asperger’s,” in which I appear. I am the affected 20-year-old in the wannabe-hipster vintage polo shirt talking about how keen his understanding of literature is and how misunderstood he was in fifth grade. The film was a research project directed by my mother, a psychology professor and Asperger specialist, and another expert in her department. It presents me as a young man living a full, meaningful life, despite his mental abnormality.
“Understanding Asperger’s” was no act of fraud. Both my mother and her colleague believed I met the diagnostic criteria laid out in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. The manual, still the authoritative text for American therapists, hospitals and insurers, listed the symptoms exhibited by people with Asperger disorder, and, when I was 17, I was judged to fit the bill.
I exhibited a “qualified impairment in social interaction,” specifically “failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” (I had few friends) and a “lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people” (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels).
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opinion/i-had-asperger-syndrome-briefly.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1
= new reply since forum marked as read
Who's editing the Paper of Record(TM) these days, Michael Savage?!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opinion/aspergers-history-of-over-diagnosis.html
Eventually, biological markers, now in the beginning stages of development, will help in separating autism-spectrum disorders from social disabilities. For example, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have recently developed three-dimensional brain scans that look at brain wiring. In preliminary studies people with autism-spectrum disorders appear to have too much wiring and disorganized wiring in areas involved with language acquisition.
Nevertheless, children and adults with significant interpersonal deficits are being lumped together with children and adults with language acquisition problems. Currently, with the loosening of the diagnosis of Asperger, children and adults who are shy and timid, who have quirky interests like train schedules and baseball statistics, and who have trouble relating to their peers — but who have no language-acquisition problems — are placed on the autism spectrum....
The downside to this diagnosis lies in evidence that children with social disabilities, diagnosed now with an autism-spectrum disorder like Asperger, have lower self-esteem and poorer social development when inappropriately placed in school environments with truly autistic children. In addition, many of us clinicians have seen young adults denied job opportunities, for example in the Peace Corps, when inappropriately given a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome instead of a social disability. George Orwell might never have been able to write his brilliant essay about the shooting of an elephant if Asperger syndrome had been part of his permanent medical record.
So we should hide our diagnoses because NTs might discriminate against us??!! 
And, "too much" brain wiring? Sounds to me like the NT equivalent of a middle-aged guy with a flashy sports car, shirt open to his navel, and cheap toupee trying to compensate for his small winkie. 
mandey7
No current medication can treat asberger syndrome - but you, and many others can do much to minimal the effect of the aspeberger, if you just try to treat your nephew as normal as you can.. I have a brother who do have asberger, but thanks to our foster parents effort, to try to treat him as normal as they could.. He is today a person who might have asberger, and sometimes act weird, specially around people he do not know well, today is as "normal" as it is possible to be, with his problems and challenges... He might be my "weird little brother", but he is also my closest friend, and maybe also the person I am closest to when everything comes... And he is maybe also the only family member I do have who care for me too...
Hm, I think I wil invite him over one of the days
Diclotican
From what I have learned, it cannot be cured. Those living with it have to learn to consciously recognize and learn eye contact and social norms that are appropriate. These are things that people without Aspergers are automatically reading without effort. That's why I think if everyone in the country or even western world gets together they can come up with an "agreed upon standard" for social norms to teach that kids with Aspergers are known to lack. Because right now the differences can create a lot of confusion in someone trying to learn these and also a lot of depression and sometimes suicide as teens and adults. Of course even after learning these things life with strangers is not automatically ever going to be easy. Eye contact timing etc- the appropriate replies and gestures, facial expressions and body language- all require training and effort and stress. I would love to see a software program that could do this with the help of web-cam and microphone for facial and vocal training. It does seem that more and more are being diagnosed with Aspergers or mild forms of autism so hopefully something like this will be created soon. I think that whoever comes up with something like this and gets gets the government contract to sell in schools etc is going to be very wealthy, especially if the results are good.