Orwell wrote:
The last paragraph is horrifying. I'll include the last three paragraphs for some context.
Quote:
Vivienne Nathanson, head of ethics at the British Medical Association, agreed a debate was needed. "The question, then, is are we comfortable with [testing] for a disorder which is life-limiting in terms of opportunities and experience, rather than life-ending?" she said.
"My guess is that society would look at it like Down's syndrome," she said. "There are people who wouldn't approve of terminations and people who would. If you talk to parents of people with autism, however much they love their children, they find it very difficult. They agonise over their child's limited life opportunities and some of them say it would have been better not to have had the child and some don't."
The more complicated ethical issue would be that of treatment in the womb, she said. "You get to the situation where you have a very great difficulty if families say we wouldn't want to be tested. As a society, do we accept that people can refuse tests when the outcome can make a difference to that unborn child?"
The head of ethics at the British Medical Association is
actually discussing the prospect of *compulsory* treatment to reduce/eliminate autism in the womb if such were scientifically viable (which it might be in a few years). The head of ethics, folks, and she's talking about forcing a treatment on us. This is a problem. She takes it as a given that it would be acceptable to allow us to be wiped out the way Down's Syndrome was, voluntarily by parents who don't want to deal with the difficulties. She then goes a step farther and says "curing" autism in the womb could become compulsory.
We have a serious problem here. Regardless of whether the science the article cites is accurate, eventually science will reach the level when these things are possible, and we've already seen the ethical go-ahead given to truly abominable policies. There is some serious work we need to do to turn around the public perception of autism before it's too late.
OFT.
Why do we have a somewhat free will and mind anyway?
There's so much done for us that always makes me think we surely cannot need them.
Tell me what I am allowed to eat, tell me where I am allowed to live, tell me what treatments I need and do not need for myself and tell me what kind of baby to get and what not.
Gosh, what to do with even slightly autistic babies if there's no more therapy and behavioural treatment because this is just way to expensive compared compared to such a 'in womb-cure'?
You can cure them... or hide them in your basement.
Kangoogle wrote:
Because most of them have an IQ of under 70 and probably continue their lives blissfully unaware.
You know to say
that is wrong, do you?
Maybe not.
An IQ in the range of at least 70-50 enables a child to be in mixed ed (nomal ed+special ed teacher).
Even a still small kid of 5 or 6 years with an overall IQ of, say, 60, is perfectly aware of when you look at him wrong or say something about them. Very wilful and socially aware too. Much more able than your average diagnosable hf AS guy.
Yes, the closer we come to zero, we less that person is able to develop what we consider 'basic' abilities, such as speech, toilette training, dressing and others.
But to say people with IQs that fall into the MR range are blissfully unaware is like saying those with a PDD/ASD cannot live independently (like some people on the spectrum indeed cannot). It's a gross oversimplifying statement, because ASDs are a spectrum.
IQ is also a spectrum. The brain doesn't just fry as soon as the 70 mark is crossed.
And besides, there
are organisation of people with Down's that speak for their rights and there are people with Down's that do read the newspapers and express their concern and disgust when something happened to other children, adults, whatever with Down's yet again.
I didn't see autistic people doing much more than that.
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Autism + ADHD
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The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. Terry Pratchett
12 Jan 2009, 10:39 am
