A talking white elephant called Szilamandee could save the world with his wisdom and "teach us with the deepest voice of history", according to an academic paper published today. The article appeared in the journal
Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.
The authors are led by Otto E. Rössler, a biochemist. It's called Is it Ethical to heal a young white Elephant from his physiological Autism? Many thanks to Michelle Dawson for bringing it to my attention. Rössler et al. start out by introducing a theory of autism as "smile blindness", suggesting that in non-autistic people, smiles serve to bond a child to his or her mother, and thus give rise to the human self: "the playroom is the theater for a radical transformation occurring in a young human being who is not smile-blind". They call this the "holy moment of personogenesis". In children who are 'smile-blind', this holy moment ...
