Articles

Never in the human history has the civilisation developed as fast as at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Mankind uses all the achievements of science and the standard of living is improving... But is it really? Modern household chemicals, new information and electronic technologies have emerged, we have effective agriculture (thanks to genetic technology), pharmaceutical industry that cares for our health promoting extensive use of its products. In a word, we are becoming a society of "synthetic people". Our contact with the nature and natural products is increasingly limited.

Every creatures living on Earth are closely related, for example the human has 70% of the genetic code of fish. We have in ourselves biological mechanisms which were created millions of years ago by organisms living at that time. The balance and consistency in the living world has unfortunately been destroyed by the human. We have studied the nature of life for thousands of years and, despite the modern research techniques available, there are still more questions than correct answers. New phenomena occur which are the products of multiple factors created by the contemporary humans. It can be argued that everything has already happened on Earth in the human history and it is still happening but the pace of the events is changing now.

Rapid development of brain begins as early as in the third month of foetal life. This process is affected by hormones, in particular testosterone. Nobody knows why, already in the womb, a child's body (either a boy or a girl) develops with a brain of a super-man, with a large amount of white matter (the brain consist of grey and white cells - there are more white cells in a man than in a woman). Many years ago I heard a comedian's monologue on the differences between the male and female brains. He said the male brain contains boxes with inscriptions "house", "family", "hobby" etc., so - if the man is mentally in one such box - nothing is of interest to him except for the contents of this very box. The female brain, however, consists of a myriad of interconnected points. That is, the woman will always know all about everything... Paraphrasing that comedian, it can be concluded that the brain of an autistic child works as that of a super-man. The trouble is that the autistic child is mentally closed in one such box of the brain. The parents and therapists have one basic task: to open the door of that small box so that the child could see the world outside.

Only a few decades ago, one autistic child appeared in several thousand of newborn babies. Now, statistics are published in the USA indicting that one autistic boy in 30 and one autistic girl in 50 are born. The European statistics are slowly getting closer to those figures. It is high time for a systematic approach to this issue. Parents cannot be left without appropriate support.

Nowadays, it is not a singular problem, therefore the governmental institutions should support both the research, and the parents of the autistic children. In a few decades, over 5% of our society might not be able to function independently.