Is the speed of dark the same as the speed of light? This is one the questions that Lou Arrendale is concerned with, the protagonist of Elisabeth Moon’s Nebula Award winning science fiction novel. Lou has autism, but he grows up a future where prenatal diagnosis and early intervention helps people with autism lead an independent life. Lou works for an IT company with a special autism unit that takes advantage of his superior pattern recognition skills. The novel is about Lou’s internal struggle and external pressure through his employer and friends to enroll in a novel experimental therapy that might “cure”  autism. In a recent paper in Science, Novarino and colleagues now claim to have identified a potentially treatable form of genetic autism. Continue reading →