Children of older men face higher autism risk

BY SARAH GETTY

OLDER fathers are more likely to parent autistic children, experts warned yesterday. Men aged 40 and over are iore than five times more likely to have children who suffer from autism than those born to fathers under 30, they said. However, researchers could not find a link between a mother's age and the disorder.
The findings provide further evidence that men have a 'biological clock' when it comes to producing healthy babies, said Dr Abraham Reichenberg, from the the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. More than 132,000 Jewish children born in Israel during the l980s were assessed for the study. It found that, if the father was aged 15 to 29 when their child was born, the risk of autism was six in every 10,000 children.
But. if the father was aged 30 to 39, then nine in 10,000 children suffered autism (1.5 times higher), going up to 32 in 10,000 (15.4 times higher) for fathers aged 40 to 49.
The risk was even higher among fathers aged 50 and over. Dr Reichenberg said: 'This research adds to our knowledge that men also have a biological clock when it comes to reproducing.Children and people with autism disorders often display problems with language and social interaction, and show repetitive patterns of behaviour.
Autism is becoming more common,affecting 50 in every 10,000 childlren now, a tenfold increase from 20 years ago. Dr Reichenberg said it could he down to several genetic factors, including mutations in sperm-producing cells, or discrepancies in how genes are expressed.
[The Metro Sep5,2006]

Daniel Tammet has savant syndrome, a very rare type of Asperger's syndrome (high-functioning autism). He can perform complex maths calculations at incredible speeds and holds the European record for reciting pi to the furthest decimal point. Daniel speaks ten languages - learning Icelandic in a week. His biography, Born On A Blue Day, is published by Hodder. Can you explain how you do such complex sums so quickly? When I think of a number, I see a shape in my head. Every number up to 10,000 has its own shape, colour and texture. For example, 37 is lumpy like porridge, whereas 89 is very fine, like mist or falling snow. When I multiply numbers together, I think of the two shapes side by side in my head. In between the two shapes there's a space that the two shapes create, almost like a negative space. I visualise that space as a shape and that's the answer to the sum. I can translate that picture. This interview runs on July 17, 2006. What does that look like? I'd think of it as very small and as a dark purpley colour. The purple comes from the day of the week, Monday. I was born on a Wednesday, which is where the book's title comes from. Wednesdays are very blue. July is compact, but wavy, and the six from 2006 makes it small. All these influences pool together in my head and show me a new shape or colour. And numbers also help you to understand emotions? When adolescence began creeping up on me, I started to develop feelings for people and I wanted to understand them. For the first time, I wanted to be part of the normal world and my love of numbers gave me something I could use as a handle. For sadness, I would think of the number six, which is a very tiny number, like a black dot. When I think of it, it makes me feel sad because there's nothing there, just a hollowness. So I think ot myself inside the number six.,crouched inside the darkness and it helps me to have that emotional feeling of sadness that a person is describing to me. You set a European Record by reciting 22,514 digits of the number pi,taking more than 5 hours.Didn't you drift off? It was almost a kind of religious experience for me.I did it for the National Society for Epilepsy.I had epilepsy as a child. I gave myself two months to learn pi,spending most days just gorging on the numbers.When I came to recall the sequence,I just visualised a lanscape of numbers. I never felt bored. You're developing your own language,Manti.Why? Since childhood,I've often had experiences or feelings that I couldn't find a word for, so I'd invent my own. It's quite common with autistic people - they love to play with words. The word Manti comes from Finnish. It means 'pine tree'. And I've created my own words, such as 'kellokult' which means 'lateness' - it literally translates as 'clock-debt' When did you first realise you were different? At primary school. I didn't have any interest in mixing with other children and the feeling was mutual. In a sense, I learned from other children's reactions to me that I was different in some way. Whenever I felt anxious I would count to myself in powers of two. Or I would walk around the playground, which was dotted with trees, and count the leaves. Numbers are very beautiful to me and they're around me all the time, like constant friends. Is savant syndrome a blessing or a curse for you? It's a mixed thing. There are many pluses. The downsides are that I can't drive a car, my coordination isn't very good and I find emotions difficult. My childhood was traumatic, too, for me and my parents. I cried constantly as a baby. And later, I would walk up to a wall and bang my head repetitively against it, to relieve the tension. How does it affect your daily life? Routine is important to people on the autistic spectrum. I spend a lot of my time at home, running my website and teaching language courses. In the morning, I weight my cereal  - 45g of porridge - and have my breakfast. Then I shower and check my e-mails. People write to me from all over the world about their autistic children and how my story has helped them.They feel a connection to me.What used to be a barrier is now a bridge. Memory masterworks BY JAYNE ATHERTON AN ARTIST with a remarkable gift has over come the odds to open his first gallery. Stephen Wiltshire has autism, the condition memorably brought to life by Dustin Hoffman in the Oscar-winning film Rain Man. Like Hoffman's character, he is also a 'savant' trapped in a private world but able to communicate through other means: in his case, art. His ability to make minutely detailed drawings of landmarks from memory captured the nation 's imagination when he was featured in a BBC documentary 20 years ago. The 32-year-old has drawn famous sights in and Italy but his favourite is the Empire State Building. He said: 'I like high-rise buildings and skyscrapers and I just love New York City. I like the rush-hour and the noise. It's very exciting.' When Mr Wiltshire was just 12, the late Sir Hugh Casson former president of the Royal Academy - described him as 'possibly the best child artrst in Britain'. Psychologist Dr Oliver Sacks, who studied his case, called him 'not merely a savant but a prodigy'. More than 40,000 people attended his last public exhibition in 2003 and an original print for sale on his website can cost up to £l,500. His four published books of drawings have all been best-sellers, with one, Floating Cities, reaching No.1. Earlier this year, he was made an MBE for services to art. Today, he opens the Stephen Wiltshire Gallery at the Royal Opera Arcade in Pall Mall, Central London. His latest picture is on display and shows Middlesex Guildhall in the capital, which is being turned into the new Supreme Court. Mr Wiltshire's sister, Annette, said the BBC programme changed his life and helped to raise awareness of autism. 'It enabled him to travel and helped him develop his social skills,' she added 'He still depends on us as a family but he is now able to go out alone.' [Metro Oct27,2006]

The 1980s electro pioneer Gary Numan enjoyed massive international success with hits Cars and Are 'Friends' Electric? He flew around the world in a two-seater plane and drifted out of fashion until a tribute album revived his fortunes in the late 1990s. He is about to embark on a short British tour. Numan appears in Sky One's The Race reality show from tonight. What will you be doing in this racing show? We're taught to drive cars quickty, ha ha. I've heard there's a monster truck around, so that'll be good if it happens. I've been going to racing tracks for fun for years, having a whizz around, so to be taught how to do it properly every day for a week is just fantastic. How many cars have you owned in your life? I've lost count. I've had a couple of great ones - a Ferrari Boxer in the 1980s and a TVR Cerbera. Both were so quick it was almost silly having them on the roads. I've got a pick-up truck now but my wife's pregnant again so I'll be getting a people carrier. I can't believe it. What's the flashest vehicle you've owned? I had a twin-engine aeroplane in the early 1980s, which was pretty flash. The last plane I had was aWWII Harvard. It still had the original gun button on it. You could get one other person in it but my wife, Gemma, didn't like it - she got sick. I bought it because I wanted to get into doing aerial acrobatics at arr shows but I sold it after we had our second baby. You think you've got Asperger syndrome - why is that? It was suggested I had it when I was younger but no one knew much about it then. I've read a lot about it since and I fulfil some of the diagnostic criteria but not others. I probably only have a mild form. It means you're unable to interact socially in a way that is generally acceptable. For example, if people came over for dinner and I saw a magazine I hadn't read, I'd pick it up, sit in the comer and read it - which I now know is wrong. You also don't readily understand facial expressions. You don't communicate in the sarne way. What impact has it had on your songwriting? All my early songs were that teenage angst stuff about being misunderstood by the world but, unlike most teenagers, I really was being misunderstood, ha ha. I was also on quite heavy prescription drugs for a year wheji I was 16, which didn't help the situation. Why have your fans, the Numanoids, stuck by you so loyally over the years? I can't really speak for them but an aspect of Asperger is you have obsessive tendencies and I have an obsessive focus when it comes to pushing forward with my music. I don't get crushed by disappointment. I don't do this for the acclaim, luckily - I got f**k all for the frrst 20 years - I do it because I love it. I've had bad record sales and reviews, my career was f**ked in the early 1990s - no doubt about it - but it's fuel to the fire, as far as I'm concerned. I've been dropped by more labels than most people have heard of. Maybe that's why I've got a following, I haven't given up. I've done some all right songs, too. You're a bit Gothy these days. Do you have crucifixes and stuffed animals about the house? I'm not Gothic but I've got a stuffed Alaskan timber wolf under the stairs. I'm opposed to hunting but I saw some kids poking it in a shop when I was on an American tour. It was so undignified for such a wonderful animal. I bought it and wanted to build a tundra setting in my house with a big mural of the Arctic behind it to give it a dignified end. It's under the stairs now. We used to keep it at the top of the stairs where you could only see its head. Visitors would go to use the toilet, then you'd hear them scream. It cracked me up every time. You have a happy family life now. Does it make writing doom-laden, angsty songs more difficult? No. Because of Asperger, I see the world as a hostile place. When kids come along, rather than making it; more cuddly, it makes you worry even more. You've got this big, hostile world and now I worry about how to keep my kids safe from it while not freaking them out. It feeds into my style of songwriting completely. Interview: ANDREW WILLIAMS Metro 6/11/06

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