Today in the Daily Mail

[Lucas]

and the NAS has made a somewhat weak and indirect 'media response' which doesn't even say what story it is given the response to: http://www.autism.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly....459&a=11294

 

The story concerns the summing up by a judge at the trial of a 21-year old man who killed his line manager at work after he was fired. The judge accepted the plea of manslaughter under diminished responsibility and made it quite clear he believed because the defendant had a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome that the defendant couldn't understand the wrong or consequences of his actions and that AS is the reason why the defendant still even now believes what he did was right.

 

Kind of makes anyone with an AS diagnosis look like a potential remorsless killer; at no point stop to think of the consequences of entering these ideas into British legal jurisprudence might be for anyone with an AS diagnosis. My first thoughts while reading the article was that if the killer had no diagnosis of AS, he would certainly have been diagnosed with something else and it would be blamed on that condition because you certainly cannot earn a diagnosis of AS by being in any way like the man described. At least that's what I hoped but then I reached the end of the article which stated that his parents and family didn't know the extent of his 'medical problems' and had never heard of the word Asperger's Syndrome before: it sounds like he did not actually get the AS DX until after the murder and it sounds a lot like he was given the AS diagnosis BECAUSE he killed someone. Not the first time either, when a Swedish politician was killed by an animal rights fanatic a few years back, doctors decided that no normal person could possibly be responsible so the murderer then was given an AS diagnosis.

 

Feeling really nautious.

[OPooh]

Is this the Mcdonalds worker one?

[keyholekate]

Yes. He stabbed her because he thought she was responsible for him losing his job.

[Auriel]

Personally I find it highly outrageous that someone with AS not only got arrested, but the fact that their AS affected their sentance made it into the paper disgusting.

 

How dare they try and sum AS up in one page. I think half the paper should be taken over by the coverage.

[Lucas]

I'm a bit worried over the newsworthiness of it too. The other day the Mail devoted maybe less than five inches to the announcement that support for the 90,000 Autistic pupils in the UK was a disgrace, then did a 3-part article each taking more than two pages to blasting social services for the state of the care system for children(which would have been worthy had the focus been more on the said subject and less on just having a go at social services themselves).

 

I'm shocked at the NAS too for not being stronger in their response. The Daily Mail when giving information on AS alongside the article directly linked the condition with aggression whilst also saying 'the NAS says those with AS are no more likely to commit crime than anyone else'. They were giving out two contradicting messages there that were not simply relying the complexity of AS but actually mutually contradictive of each other. You cannot read them and believe both, you must choose one to emphasis and people are frankly going to emphasis the one with the murdered grandmother who tried to befriend her killer.

[Auriel]

i think that the problem here is that people are taking the Daily Mail seriously, rather than the comic that it is.

 

If you tore apart every mis-reported biased twisted -ist piece of news in it.

 

Then what a life one would lead!

[Lucas]

But is it as bad as the Guardian reporting that reseachers at the university of Israel discovered kids concentrate better at school with high-protein breakfast like bacon and eggs. Bacon and eggs, is that a common meal in Israel then?

[Canopus]

The organiser of an AS support group tells me that her preferred newspaper is the Daily Mail.

 

The Guardian is a newspaper for public sector workers who hold a liberal left stance.