Autism in the House

Dr. Gregory House is the title character of the television series, "House M.D.." He's a disheveled (but cute), sarcastic (but funny), brutally blunt (honest) middle-aged doctor who has chronic pain from damage to his leg. He walks with a cane and a limp. Last night's epidsode included an autistic boy (enter Autism Diva stage right) and the idea that House could have Asperger's syndrome is raised in the script.

This is how one website described the episode "Lines in the Sand":

House takes the case of Adam, a 10-year-old severely autistic boy who screams loudly for no apparent reason,

at least not a reason his three previous doctors could diagnose. The team wonders why House is taking the case - the boy's not sick; his symptoms seem to be a product of his autism.
House claims he just wants a patient who can't lie, but it seems he relates to this kid: the social aloofness, the obsession with detail, the lack of social graces. In fact, House actually envies him; living in a shell has its advantages. But when Cuddy makes a minor change to House's office and House refuses to use the office until it's returned to its original state, he finds himself wandering the hospital in need of a temporary home, crashing in Cuddy and Wilson's offices. Meanwhile, teenager Ali from the previous episode still has a crush on House and is becoming a nuisance around the hospital. As Adam becomes more ill and the torturous diagnostic procedures yield nothing, House realizes he needs an answer, and his patient just might be the only one who can give him one. House finds he has to break through the very shell he admires in order to get anything out of the boy in the "Lines in the Sand" episode of HOUSE airing Tuesday, Sept. 26 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT).

This blog gives a detailed description of the story line.. It's pretty interesting. Some of the cynical statements made by House about the goal-of-making-someone-normal are very similar to cynical statements made by many autistic adults, including Autism Diva. House talks about how he was a dissapointment to his parents, which sounds very much like a line from the movie, "Mozart and the Whale," where the character based on Jerry Newport says something like, "by the time I was 2 years old my parents got the drill, I wasn't exactly what they were looking for in a child." There's a line in the House episode that seems to be quite insulting to people with the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, one of House's colleagues says that he thinks that House would love to be able to say that he, House, has Asperger's syndrome and use it as an excuse for his rudeness, rather than facing the "fact" that he, House, is merely a jerk.

Well, "jerk" is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, ASD people are capable of being rude jerks, but so are non-ASD people, quite often, in fact. It's troubling to have one's neurology slammed as merely a moral failing. Most autistic people don't make eye contact in a normal way. Is that because they are rude? Lots of people think so. Autism spectrum people will frequently turn down invitations to parties or noisy events. Is that because ASD people are rude? Lots of people think so. Autistic people might cover their ears or go hide in a bathroom if forced into a crowded situation. Is that because they are rude? Lots of people think so, or if not rude, just bizarre and unacceptable. How about turning down an offer of a particular food? Rude! Or not?

Autism Diva thinks it would be great if f Dr. House came out of the closet as someone who rocked and spun things as a child, who has never been able to make friends easily and who is tortured by chit-chat, not because he's rude, but because he's on the autism spectrum, and that he finds chit chat hard to manage and painful, even. Still, Dr. House is not a real person, he's a character, so it's not likely they could build him into an entirely convincing autism spectrum person unless they are willing to show him flapping when no one else is around or otherwise obviously compensating for his autistic neurology in order to deal with so many people.

This is interesting--from a paper in the neurodiversity.com library called, Fathers of Autistic Children, by Leon Eisenberg, M.D. (1957),

Case 1. Dr. R was a caricature of the conventional psychiatric stereotype of a surgeon. He boasted that ne never "wasted time" talking to his patients or their families. When feasible his first transaction with the patient took place witha a draped and disinfected torso prepared for the surgical incision. He conscientiously supervised details of postoperative care but through his assisants. He dealt with infected gall bladders, diseased bowels, or tumors, with little or no curiosity about the person in whom these anatomical problems were housed. ...

More discussion of House and Asperger's/Autism here and here. One hopes that certain horrible mercury parents don't go to those boards and start pontificating on how the poor boy wouldn't be autistic except his parents must have vaccinated him and how Asperger's isn't really autism until you need to add in the Asperger's kids to raise the head counts of "autistic children" or if you are a mercury parent who happens to have an Asperger's kid.


As far as Autism Diva could find, there aren't any YouTube clips of the "Lines in the Sand" episode, so here's a clip of two other doctors that is like, totally G rated and like, totally rocks. Totally.




Autism Diva
on the house