One of the places where research is needed is all the sensory problems. And you get sensory problems not just with autism, but with dyslexia, learning problems, ADHD, attention deficit, you know, things like sound sensitivity, problems with fluorescent lighting.

People need to learn how to work, learn how to support themselves. I think it's just fine to be eccentric.

The autistic brain tends to be a specialist brain, good at one thing, bad at something else.

Giving those animals [in shelter] quality time - now, I have been in some of the shelters where the cats have been in group housing. Well if you have a cat that never gets out of sternal recumbency, now what that means is that [inaudible] - that's a stressed cat. If they lay on their side, then they are not stressed out.

And while we are on the subject of medication you always need to look at risk versus benefit.

There is a small segment of people with autism that have savant skills, where they can memorize entire maps of whole entire city. They can do calendar calculations. And this is similar to some of the skills that animals have.

People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think.