Autism researcher had links to Nazism

A new study has shed more light on the revelations that Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician for whom a form of autism is named, had collaborated with the Nazis and actively assisted in the killing of disabled children.

Published Wednesday in the journal Molecular Autism by medical historian Herwig Czech, the report relies on eight years of research that included the examination of previously unseen Naziera documents.

The study concludes that though Asperger was not a member of the Nazi Party, he had participated in the Third Reich’s child-euthanasia program, which aimed to establish a “pure” society by eliminating those deemed a “burden.”

Asperger referred disabled children to the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna, where hundreds were either drugged or gassed to death from 1940-45.

“The picture that emerges is that of a man who managed to further his career under the Nazi regime, despite his apparent political and ideological distance from it,” Czech, of the University of Vienna, wrote in his study.

Asperger syndrome is a lifelong developmental disability associated with autism that affects perception and social interaction. About 1 in 68 children in the United States have been identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The study’s findings have prompted debate and consternation among people with autism and their advocates, especially those who identify with the term “Asperger,” Carol Povey, director of the London-based Center for Autism of the National Autistic Society, said in an email.

“Obviously, no one with a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome should feel in any way tainted by this very troubling history,” she said.

The editors of Molecular Autism said they believed Asperger was guilty of the accusations against him. “We are aware that the article will be controversial,” Simon Baron-Cohen, a co-editor of the journal, said in a statement.

Asperger, who died in 1980, was a pioneer of autism research and is best known for shaping the understanding of the developmental disorder that came to be known as Asperger syndrome.

In 1944, he used the term “autistic psychopathy” to describe the disability. The name Asperger syndrome was introduced by British psychiatrist Lorna Wing in 1981.