Can a harmless UFO obsessive stricken by autism be saved from 70 years in a brutal American jail?
The fate of self-confessed ‘bumbling computer nerd’ and UFO spotter Gary McKinnon - who faces extradition to the U.S. and a possible 70-year prison sentence after hacking into 97 military and Nasa computers - hangs in the balance.
In just a few days, this softly-spoken 43-year- old, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism), will go to the High Court in London for a judicial review that might allow him to appeal again against his extradition.
This will be his last chance to stop the British Government sending him for trial in the U.S., where, if found guilty, he could spend what’s left of his life in a maximum security jail in New Jersey.
McKinnon’s crime was to hack into U.S. military computers in a naive attempt to unearth secrets about the existence of alien life.
Better, faster… and no office politics: the company with the autistic specialists
A pioneering company in Denmark is giving people with autism the chance to apply their skills to jobs from IT to product testing. The result is a huge success that’s about to be rolled out across Europe. Founder Thorkil Sonne tells Michael Booth how his workforce’s superhuman recall and unflinching focus could teach the rest of us a thing or two.
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Thorkil Sonne and his wife already had two sons when their third, Lars, arrived in 1997, so they had plenty of experience of the behavioural quirks of growing youngsters. But as Lars entered kindergarten aged two-and-a-half, the couple began to notice a more troubling change. Lars wouldn’t play with the other children, preferring to sit alone for hours on end. He began to talk less and less, until he was virtually unable to engage in any kind of dialogue at all. Something was clearly very wrong.
“We were patient,” says Sonne. “Our older boys had taught us that each child has their pace at which they climb the ladder, but Lars seemed to be stuck on a step.” The Sonnes are Danes and, fortunately, the Danish education system is good at diagnosing childhood developmental problems. Unfortunately in Lars’s case, the diagnosis was childhood autism.
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Most parents, upon learning their child has a condition like this, will read up on it, learn about the treatments, therapies and consequences and start planning for the future. Sonne went somewhat further. He became involved with his local autistic society, ending up as vice-chairman of a housing facility for people with Asperger’s syndrome, a type of autism that affects social imagination, interaction and communication. Through the housing association, he got to know an 18-year-old Asperger’s sufferer who was especially gifted with computers. “He had retired on a state pension,” says Sonne. “But I thought that was so unfair as he had valuable IT skills that I could see would be useful for software- testing, support monitoring, programming and so on.”
So, in 2004, Sonne left his job of 15 years at the Danish communications company TDC, remortgaged his house, and founded a company, Specialisterne (The Specialists), to find employment for adults with autism and Asperger’s as software and systems testers. The 18-year-old Sonne had met through the housing association was his first employee.
Many autism cases ‘undiagnosed’
A Cambridge University team looked at existing diagnoses - and carried out recognised tests to assess other children.
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The scientists first looked at cases of autism and Asperger syndrome among 8,824 children on the Special Educational Needs registers in 79 schools in East Anglia.
A total of 83 cases were reported, giving a prevalence of 94 in 10,000, or 1 in 106 children.
The team then sent a diagnosis survey to parents of 11,700 children in the area.
From 3,373 completed surveys, 41 cases of autism-spectrum conditions were reported, corresponding to prevalence of 1 in 101.
Adults with autism run Camarillo school for kids with autism
Preschool student teacher Ben Brock sat on a child-sized chair at a table and poured vinegar into a soda bottle containing baking soda, stones and a few other small objects. The four preschool-aged children sitting around the table watched, wide-eyed, as a raisin and a cork popped to the surface of the bottle and bubbled onto the table. 
“Look, they’re dancing!” said Brock, 30.
The kids chirped in delight, except one little boy, who jumped and covered his ears.
Brock immediately understood the little boy’s reaction, because like him, Brock has a form of autism. He knows people with autism tend to have extremely acute hearing. The hiss of the chemical reaction when the vinegar penetrated the baking soda sounded loud to the boy.
“He’s like a thermometer among kids with autism,” said Felice Fausto, Brock’s sister and director of the family-owned school where Brock teaches — the Footprints Preschool and Family Resource Center in Camarillo.
