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A little boy is throwing various objects-paper, pens, anything he can get his hands on-across the long brown table. His Sunday school teacher is frantically trying to calm him while he yowls several unintelligible words. To an outsider who doesn't know Alex,* this episode just looks like an oversized temper tantrum. But Alex has a form of PPD, Pervasive Development Disorder, a broad spectrum disease 'umbrella' that includes severe cases of non-verbal autism (where the person affected cannot vocalize) as well as more mild cases like Asperger's Syndrome.

PDD is a confusing disease. No one seems to agree on what causes it, why it seems to disproportionately strike boys, or why some children 'recover' and show no autistic behaviors. Most agree that first-born boys are more likely to suffer from it, and that it is not psychologically-based, but rather a difference in actual brain structure. Some insist that it is caused by vaccine reactions, mercury poisoning, and other outside influences. Others say it is genetic in origin, basing this theory on past histories of autism in certain families, particularly those with high percentages of mathematically and scientifically minded males. For some children, however, like Alex, none of these theories fit- he isn't the first-born boy, doesn't have a bunch of techno-geek relatives, or had any noticeable reactions to a vaccine.

Experts are just now only beginning to find that, unlike Down's Syndrome, autism is not a disability that affects intelligence. In fact, people known as savants, or basically, "super geniuses," have historically been autistic. Non-verbal autistics, especially, were commonly thought to be brain damaged with low IQs, until recently, when special speech assisting devices allowed persons with the non-verbal form of autism to type out sentences that the device then repeats for them in an automated voice. Sue Ruben, in her autobiographical documentary, Autism Is a World, relates her journey as a non-verbal autistic from a 'brain damaged' youth with an infinitesimal IQ to a successful college student. When her therapist found out about speech assist technology, she decided to teach Ruben to type, who describes the experience like "waking from a deep sleep," as strangely enough, she had little memories of her past (almost as if she had been in a coma up until that point). Her life was radically changed by the speech assist device, as she immediately began typing complete sentences,

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