Autism Visibility Continues To Increase Saturday, May 19, 2007

Dover Speedway has announced that the NEXTEL Cup race coming up there in June will be named “The Autism Speaks 400 presented by Visa”. NEXTEL Cup racing is huge here in North America and has a very large fan base. Autism Speaks is one of the largest foundations in the world that is dedicated to autism. I am happy to see them get their name on the marquee of an event like this. That can only help with awareness.

This is not the first time that autism and automobile racing have crossed paths. Jamie McMurray has an autistic niece and partnered with The Autism Society of American in 2004 when he drove the “Drive For A Cure” car. Tony Renna drove the “Cure Autism Now” car in 2003. There have been others.

It has been almost exactly 5 years since my youngest son Jake was diagnosed autistic. In those 5 years I have learned a number of things about autism and one of those things that I have learned is that there are not a lot of people who know much about autism. Awareness is increasing. That isn't because more people are reading medical journals in their free time. Aside from a dramatic increase in the number of kids being diagnosed autistic, the biggest reason that awareness is increasing is that more and more autism is showing up in the mainstream media. Recently some actors and other celebrities have been criticized for jumping on the “autism bandwagon”. These criticisms often refer to autism as the disease du jour. I don't have much to say about that except to say that raising awareness is an important part of this fight and when I see people going out of their way to help with awareness, I am happy to see that.