Evolution

In 'Heroes', a very popular american series, some of the people have evoluted and have some kinds of special ability. In real life, i believe that this occurs among people around us as well.

E.g. schizoprenia and autism, though these are considered as diseases, i personally feel that these diseases are a kind of evolution of the patients as a protective measures. Why i said this is (just personal opinion), people who get schizophrenia are usually those who are less outgoing, lonely or may be feeling helpless very often and hence they develop this hallucination or illusion e.g. an imaginary friend to help them get through all kinds of situation. There is a movie 'A Beautiful Mind', which is also the best picture Academy Award 2002. This movie is about about John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Laureate (Economics) mathematician. If he did not have his delusional friend that accompanied him throughout the years he would not be survived so long 'alone'.

As for autism, this brain disorder is on the rise in recent decades and the prevalence is about 3 per 10 000 of boys. In Malaysia, the rate is highest among Chinese boys with professional and well educated parents. The main characteristics of Autism are impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, restricted interests and repetitive behavior.

On my 3rd day of attachment, i observed a session of speech language therapy by Dr. Richard Logan for an autistic child. On my first impression, the child appeared to be so normal to me. He was a bright little active child who was able to converse in both chinese and english. During the session, i found out that the child , who was only 4 years old, he was able to read 2 different english books with so accurate pronunciation and recognized so many vocabularies that i think i would not be able to read until i was 10. However, i was told later by the speech language pathologist that this child was actually having hyperlexia (a syndrome observed in children with precocious ability to read words, far above what would be expected at their chronological age or an intense fascination with letters or numbers, having significant difficulty in socializing and interacting appropriately with people). Though he can read very well, when he was asked about the information on the words that he read, he was not able to answer and sometimes he did not understand the questions asked and kept repeating of what was asked (echolalia).

All these make me think that it was also an evolution going on with these autistic children. Since most of their parents are professionals, they may have higher expectation of their children and without realizing it, they have attempted to accelerate their speed of development until it becomes abnormal. These children, in order to achieve their parents' expectation, have outgrown their ability and thus, become autistic. Again, this is just my opinion.

My supervisor, also has his own theory about Autism. His theory is more of spiritual and it happens even during in utero. During pregnancy (especially unplanned pregnancy), both the parents may have the thought in their mind telling the fetus, "why do u want to come at this time?" " This is not the right time you should come.", "This world is ugly. i do not know how are you going to cope." and other stuff like that, and this may have impregnated autism in the soul of the fetus. Therefore, he advices us when we are pregnant, or even before that, try to tell our babies in utero that "although this world is ugly, we both parents will help and guide you through it," etc. Perhaps things would be better then if we have more positive mindset?