"curing" autism

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This disturbed me deeply. I seen it on my local news just now, doctors can now tell if a baby growing inside a pregnant woman is going to be born autistic. This technology is going to be used to erase autism.
I'm by far not pro cure, I am definately pro acceptance. Most of our greatest minds through history were aspies. This is an injustice, and a call to arms. Aspies must protest this if autism and aspiedom is to thrive and become accepted. Though I doubt anyone on here would be willing to do so, I think we need like a million man march scenario to the white house. We are NOT an epidemic, nor a burden. The only epedimic or burden is hate.

This just sounds selfish to me. If it can be cured, let it be. We're not burdens on society at all, we can be just as functional as any NT, if not perform even better in certain fields, but autism/Aspergers is a burden to those who have it. I've slumped into deep near-suicidal depression and have abandoned many of the things I once cared due to my AS, and I don't believe anyone else deserves that. If anything, I'd be glad to be in what should hopefully the last generation that must suffer through it.

did the news program in question describe the means by which this could be done?

My thoughts are that a cure is not likely. Maybe they will
beable to detect aspergers genes someday and then that
may lead to termination of pregnancies. I'm not crazy about
that. But in theory women can terminate a pregnancy for any
reason they want in the first 6 months (in the US). So you
can protest it but its the law and its unlikely to change.
Back to the subject of cure. At a certain point in time in
an aspergers life (maybe conception, or sometime later) their
brains will be basically wired for aspergers. Just like you could
say the same for many homosexuals. I guess most you would
agree that talking about a cure for homosexuals is something
unlikely. Sure in the future of nano-tech maybe anything is possible,
but in the current world talk of cure is crazy. Now their maybe
treatments that help. I feel I have very bad ADHD and when I get
treated for that I will be one of those aspie that can have a
productive life. And hopefully there will be things that can be done for
young aspies to reduce their problems.

I don't feel it should have to come to this, I think if more NT people stopped acting so arogant and prejudice many aspie problems wouldn't be as difficult. As I said, autism isn't the illness, ignorance is the illness. Without ignorance standing in our way, we wouldn't be treated any different than NT's. That is the goal to shoot for.

Though I don't wish it upon anyone, I won't say that I would accept a cure. I do think it can be hard, depending on the severity of the symptoms, on many children. I think we need to be more accepting of others' differences, and many parents need to be able to understand their children from different perspectives. This is really what we should be striving for, and I feel there is a reason to do so.

I believe that the world needs aspies. We provide the technical and scientific expertise that tends to progress society. It's not only aspies that do that, but we provide quite a bit in that regard, and much of what we do is further used by everyone. Surely, there are lots of us who probably don't even feel that way, since our interests aren't even being acknowledged for whatever reasons. It may be true, but there are those of us that do break through those shackles to become inventors, scientists, or whatever. It has been said that Einstein had it, for example. I believe that many people who have created breakthroughs can't be classified as NT in many ways, since 'genius,' whether aspie or not, is considered a biological anomaly. It is not supposed to happen, and more often than not, it is associated with some sort of learning difficulty. Most aspies are not geniuses, but we do have an innate perseverance for technical and scientific breakthroughs. Some of us just have not tapped into that power, and that could very well be because of a lack of motivation.

If we start genetically altering our offspring to have only 'acceptable' NT symptoms, whom are we going to create? Time will come when we start genetically altering our offspring to have specific genes, then we are on the verge of creating a race of obedient and sociable creatures. This sounds too much like the "Boys from Brazil" analogy, and it is very dangerous. Though being aspie does have its quirks, should it be considered a debilitating illness? There are some whose symptoms are so severe, especially if it exists in conjunction with comorbids, but what about the depression gene? We will start genetically altering individuals so we have a nice race of obedient and controllable people. Very dangerous, because the obedient people who just take orders and do just as they're told are not by any means people who generate technological progress. That involves taking risks.

- Ray M -

With this prenatal test there is a possibility:
1. To "cure" ASD people. (just as you said in first post)
2. To "cure" any people not beeing ASD. (the thing I say now)

end

"did the news program in question describe the means by which this could be done?"

Well, I didn't stand around to watch the actual report because I was too busy with other things, so I figured I'll google it sometime later... But my mom walked in telling me all this and then I heard them preview it on a news broadcast ("coming up, spotting autism in unborn children")... I know they used some kind of cat scan like technology.

Right On Dude!!

Perhaps they are talking about only curing severly autistic people? I agree that functioning autistics contribute greatly to the world, perhaps more so than people who are "normal", and I would not advocate changing them, but, I would agree with a cure for people who are severely autistic. It seems to me that being trapped in a body which is severly autistic would be like a nightmare that wouldn´t end. Of course the question that now presents itself is, "how do we tell who is severly autistic and who is not?"

Next thing you know there going to start having test to see if you kid is going to be ugly before there born.


Why does everone claim that people without autism are not normal? What makes every non autstic normal and aspies/autistics not? For all we know we could be the normal ones and everone elese have a mental "disorder".

I've mostly thought of the "normal people" as the hackers of the real world. They find all the loopholes that exist in the 'democratic system'. For example they might know that robbing banks is illegal, but they find a loophole (they spot no police, so they take the risk to rob it).

The outcome of this is they come out richer, or just found a thing to do, that if none is going to do something about it they can continue to exploit this 'hole in the system'.

Lets take a second example. They see different people as a threat, then they see that's it actually possible to bully them, which will not make them able to concentrate on school, and maybe fail in life. If they think it's good for them and there are no severe consequences, then they'll do it. (they will take the risk)
In this case the "hole" could be that a person that takes the bully as offense is hurt, but the person might also try to do something about it.

Enough, I'm even beginning to get off topic.

Normal is not a judgement of quality, but a judgement of identity based on population characteristics.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.htm ... ht=#208808

In unborn babies, you wouldn't be able to tell, you could see that they were on the spectrum and that's it. That's why there's such a lot of arguement about it.


Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% pesperiation.


The pesperation could easily be the hyper-focus ability and the inspiration could be the special intrest. As such, I think we are more comfratable in prespiring (and can do so bettter, IMHO) than NTs which I think explains why many of the greats were supposedly on the spectrum.


It has been ruled that Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. What he did do was lose the first ever plagraism case.

All of you have valid points.However I think were forgetting that NTs have Lack of Theory of Mind in some respects.They don't know what it's like for people with autism because it's completely out of their experience.Yeah I'm a somewhat annoyed and a little uneasy at the thought of someone who thinks autism=disease=defectiveness,but look at some of the articles and websites.Almost all of them are about people with more severe difficulties.I honestly don't think most NTs have met anyone with Asperger's Syndrome and that they are seriously under informed.One person even asked me if I had feelings!Do I have feelings?Look at me and decide for yourself. + =