Hans Asperger, the doctor famed for his early work in autism, was a cog in Hitler's killing machine

The doctor who gave his name to Asperger syndrome sent helpless disabled children to their deaths in a vile euthanasia clinic, a study shows.

Dr Hans Asperger, an Austrian psychiatrist, was first to chronicle the condition, a form of high-functioning autism in 1944.

He wrote detailed case notes about child patients suffering from what he called 'autistic psychopathy' while working in Vienna under Nazi rule.

The research overturns decades of claims that the child psychiatrist was an 'Oskar Schindler' figure who saved children from being killed or used in horrific medical experiments.

Now patient groups said the research triggers the question whether is still acceptable to continue to call the condition - after the discredited doctor.

Asperger is believed to have consigned dozens of children to their death at Am Spiegelgrund, a children's clinic in Vienna's notorious Steinhof hospital.

The clinic served the Nazi goal of eugenically engineering a genetically 'pure' society through 'racial hygiene' and the elimination of lives deemed a burden.  (more...)

Hans Asperger, the doctor famed for his early work in autism, was a cog in Hitler's killing machine