Information's right at our fingertips, but so is what you want to believe. It's the classic thing of someone Googling 'autism vaccines' - they'll find what they're looking for, depending on what they think. You'll find lots of people who are just bolstering what they already think, bolstering their cultural attitude.
Adam Conover
I have an older brother who has autism - James.
Adam Elliott
Autism doesn't have to define a person. Artists with autism are like anyone else: They define themselves through hard work and individuality.
Adrienne Bailon
Autism currently affects one in 88 children in the U.S., and its prevalence continues to rise. That's why it's important to help organizations like Autism Speaks raise awareness and funds to support families and individuals impacted by it.
A friend of mine works for Autism Speaks. It's an amazing cause that is making a real difference in the lives of so many people.
A lot of families with kids with autism can't afford speech therapy for their children and can't afford to get them in the best schools for autism. We're trying to help make a difference in those communities.
Alex Bregman
Vaccines don't cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.
Alex Pareene
When you've grown up always knowing that there's something that seemed to be different about you from most people - and not being able to understand until my mid-forties that what we were talking about here was autism - I've had to learn an awful let about myself and what I can and can't do and what I can or can't cope with.
Anne Hegerty
Back then, people thought if you could talk you didn't have autism. I was just seen as this slightly odd child. I saw another therapist aged 12, and another in my early 30s.
Schools connect children to their communities. Jobs connect adults to their societies. Persons with autism deserve to walk the same path.
Ban Ki-moon
I treasure my meetings with individuals affected by autism - parents, children, teachers and friends. Their strength is inspiring. They deserve all possible opportunities for education, employment and integration.
To measure the success of our societies, we should examine how well those with different abilities, including persons with autism, are integrated as full and valued members.
By including children with different learning abilities in mainstream and specialized schools, we can change attitudes and promote respect. By creating suitable jobs for adults with autism, we integrate them into society.
My mom was a special-needs teacher for many years, so I knew her students. And one of my best friends from when I was growing up is a teacher for kids with autism now.
Brigette Lundy-Paine
Most people think that it would be hard to be on a set or act for people with autism. But when you think about it, most people with autism use a script in their daily life to communicate in social situations, like at a restaurant, or you know, with a day-to-day conversation.
I've learned that it comes in so many different shapes and sizes, and that communities with autism are extremely supportive of one another.
People with autism are extremely good at working... in a scripted environment, because that's how they live their lives a lot of the time.
We wear 'Autism' on our shorts to raise awareness and show support for other families dealing with autism.
Callum Smith
An art project, a hands-on science experiment, or a special field trip can transcend textbooks and flash cards. No one knows this better than those teaching students with autism.
Charles Best
Society and government at all levels - the state level, the local level and, of course, the federal level - really needs to redouble its efforts if we're really going to make a difference in combating autism.
Chris Smith
Autism does exist on a spectrum, and there are so many manifestations of it, so many kinds of expressions of it. And every case is particular.
I actually think in some ways that it might be more challenging to be bipolar because it's so mercurial - it's so ever-changing. You can't get any traction. You can't build on a system. Whereas, somebody who has Asperger's, which is certainly a much more forgiving expression of autism, can create models for coping and build on them over time.
Don't think that there's a different, better child 'hiding' behind the autism. This is your child. Love the child in front of you. Encourage his strengths, celebrate his quirks, and improve his weaknesses, the way you would with any child. You may have to work harder on some of this, but that's the goal.
Sometimes people say that kids with autism aren't capable of love. That's ridiculous. My son loves deeply. He just doesn't communicate well.
For a long time our son was a little boy with autism, which was a certain kind of challenge. Now that he's a teenager with autism - and a teenager who notices girls - we're faced with something else altogether.
When our son's autism was diagnosed at the age of 2, there was no clear prognosis. We didn't even know if he'd ever learn to talk. But we found talented people to work with him and he improved, slowly at first and then more rapidly.
I decided to study special education and fell in love with working with individuals with autism. That's what I planned to do with my life.
My first memory - at about four - was of numbers. The doctors who study me think a combination of mild autism and seizures I had when I was three have made me experience numbers the way I do.
My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.
Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life.
One out of six women are toxic with mercury. Mercury comes out of coal plants and chlorine plants. I am toxic, I deal with symptoms, children are born with, you know, autism - there is an epidemic in this country. This is like, the air that we breath.
As a parent with a child with autism, it's been really tough to experience your child having autism.
The Flutie Bowl is a great event that brings together people who really care about the autism community. We always have a great time bowling and playing music.
My heart bleeds, goes out for families with kids with autism.
My heart goes out to kids with autism.
If you Google some sites about the link between vaccines and autism, you can very quickly find that Google is repeating back to you your view about whether that link exists and not what scientists know, which is that there isn't a link between vaccines and autism. It's a feedback loop that's invisible.
The position of Autism Speaks has been for quite awhile that we need to find out what's happening. We know there's a genetic component, and there's an environmental trigger, and until we get to the bottom of what's happening, no one knows what causes autism.
The genetics of autism are real, but there are also environmental triggers.
My son has autism, and I founded the government relations department at Autism Speaks.
Anyone that tells you what does or what doesn't cause autism is simply not basing that on facts.
What makes autism different is the history of neglect into the disorder. It's remained such a mystery that science has been very slow to address it.
Despite amazing advances in fertility to help older women get pregnant, the complications, increased chances of autism, and chromosomal abnormalities are significant considerations.
Studies by many labs have already started to identify specific circuits of neurons involved in normal cognitive function like memory and learning, as well as disease processes such as Parkinson's disease, depression, and autism.
I have two young children with autism. What could they have ever done to deserve that? What kind of a God allows the innocent to suffer? It's a mystery. Yet still, I believe in God.
It seems you can ask any friend, any relative, and they'll be able to tell you about someone they know with autism.
I have a condition called Aspergers Syndrome, which is like a mild form of autism It means I don't interact properly in certain social situations.
We might want to figure out what are the positive effects of autism - mild cases.
Autism is a very serious condition.
I have Asperger's, I'm on the autism spectrum, so I don't really care about social codes. It makes you think differently.
I'm on the autism spectrum. I don't usually follow social coding and so therefore I go my own way.
