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The story of the discovery of autism, and the first child diagnosed with the disorder, as well as a history of the last eighty years of progress in understanding what autism is. Eighty years ago in Mississippi, the first child diagnosed with autism - Donald Triplett - was born. His parents embarked on a journey to understand the mysterious and complex condition that affected their son. Today physicians, parents, and politicians regularly speak of an epidemic of autism. The rate of autism spectrum disorders has been accelerating dramatically since the early 1990s, and some form of autism is now estimated to affect 1 in every 88 American children. Print run 80,000.