Autistic man survives 3 week ordeal in Utah desert

[conuly]

Interesting article. Not sure that the diagnosis is relevant to it, but it's an interesting article nonetheless.

I'm now going to engage in my least favorite pastime: Skimming the Yahoo comments! How many comments will I go down before I find one imploring us to use person-first language? And will that comment come before or after one that's just unapologetically trolling? I'm reading most recent first.

Second comment down is the unapologetic troll comment!

By contrast, the first "person first language!" comment is eleven hours down, I don't know how many comments. That was a surprise.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

No, the diagnosis is not relevant. Plenty of people with no diagnosis of any sort get themselves into severe trouble in the wilderness, just because they miscalculated, made a wrong decision, or had something go wrong unexpectedly. Plenty of people, especially younger ones, are killed every year because they thought they could do something, and found out they couldn't. And this guy LIVED - in that terrain, holy shit! - which is a huge testament to his wilderness skills. IMHO, dragging in the fact that he's autistic is nothing but sensationalism.

"Autistic people are attracted to water", fie! If it comes to that, all people are 'attracted to water', but more to the point, every person who hangs out in the Wild knows that if you're lost, you LOOK for water. Not just because you'll die of thirst if you don't - here in my own wilderness, that's seldom a problem, because it's usually raining - but because water-courses frequently lead to people.

[conuly]

That last paragraph was pointed out in the comments repeatedly :P

It's still an interesting article, not because of the writing quality but because people getting lost and found alive is always interesting.