The future of Autisim!

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HEY!! ! No fair developing ToM (theory of mind) and using that on this board!! !

LOL!

Guys, I gotta do my real job. Be back at this later. Still looking for data btw.

This made me laugh.

I wish it was TOM. But it is an austere exercise, not one meant to connect on any level with actual people.

I definitely don't think this would be a good thing. People should have the right to live no matter what, even though it can be very hard to live with a disability. Abortion- no matter what you think of it as- is the killing of a human being, and I personally think it's wrong to kill people, so I am strongly against aborting unborn babies just because they have a disability. It would not be painless because even unborn babies can feel the pain of being cut up or having their heads crushed to death. However, we should definitely try to find cures for all these disabilities so that we can get rid of these disadvantages without having to kill anyone.

Your example only proves my point that a "cure" would NOT be forced upon the adult population just as cochlear implants are not forced upon adults. Children (who are too young to make a rational decision) SHOULD be guided by the decision of their parents NOT by the disabled community. Likewise with abortions. Unless you want to completely make abortions illegal how is it "right" for you to make the decision for a woman as to whether she should have to raise a child that she knows is going to be disabled? Again abortion and choices of children belong to the parent unless deemed unfit by some law. Nobody can rationally argue this point.

You will have to come up with MUCH better "canaries in caves" in order to argue a case of "fear" that research is going to come up with a cure that we will all be forced to consume.

The process of using science in order to form opinions and stance is called "rational thinking". And while it isn't always possible to use double blind research for every decision there is a hierarchy of data that I use outside of the realm of peer reviewed studies/data. Clinical anecdotal evidence almost always exists for these sorts of arguments and barring that I might even consider "street" annecdotal evidence if I can verify the sources. BUT to take "what if" statements and to twist them into "possible" things that could go wrong is just.... well... beyond the realm of common sense.

Clearly the parent is the decision maker. But these decisions are not made in a vacuum and the information available to a parent is heavily influenced by many different agendas.



How about Terri Schiavo? That was a classic case of public debate and policy running headlong into an individual's decisions. The fear of heavy handed agencies, public or private, interfering in personal matters is not unfounded. Overstated at times, yes, but certainly not delusional.



People aren't rational. Even those predisposed toward analytical thinking are prone to irrational conclusions. The nuclear accident in Japan caused a run on iodine tablets in California. Wasted money from a scientific perspective. But if I were a business man, would it be irrational for me to refuse to sell those tablets because the people buying them were inventing their need from fear? Humans will never be fully rational. That's not how we work. We process information somewhat rationally and when we reach the limits of that we mix in feelings and make our choices based on that mix.



Clinical anecdotal evidence is not without value. It does NOT belong in scientific work, but it often DOES inform the direction of formal research. If enough anecdotal evidence exists of sufficient veracity, then structured research is often initiated to investigate the matter. Dismissing anecdotal evidence out of hand is actually irrational. It is 'soft data', but not necessarily false. It must be examined critically and immediately recognized as not scientific, but it is not entirely irrelevant.

BUT to take "what if" statements and to twist them into "possible" things that could go wrong is just.... well... beyond the realm of common sense. [/quote]

...and your point? If parents are influenced by different agendas it stands to reason so are other people. How does this mean that one is more "able" to make decisions for an unborn or very young child versus another... By law (and by common sense) a parent has the right to do this. NOT some random group of people. When our culture changes significantly, this may change but for now it is this way.



Completely strawman argument here and not even remotely valid to this conversation. We are discussing children too young to make decisions on their own and who should advocate for them and you bring a story RE an adult who is in a comma and on life support? How does this even remotely apply? If you are trying to point out that she is an ADULT who was FORCED to take something, that is invalid too as we obviously do not have her personal opinion on the matter of whether to live or die.



Outside of rational thinking, your choice is to flounder around in the pointlessand infinite realms of "What ifs" and "street-science" (listening to crap from this board for example) or appeals to authority. You are left to make choices based on what? Emotion? How about whoever has the best marketing? Or perhaps whatever that person said that is popular on the forum or most senior? That is how MOST people make decisions and it is why most people are also pretty limited in their lives. If you want to streamline your life and make the right choices the first time, employ rational thinking to your daily decisions. It is how all highly succesful people operate. And I am saying the exact same thing as you RE clinical annecdotal evidence. It has great merit but in the heirachy of things, I place valid peer reviewed data above it normally. I even recognize appeals to authority as having merit in the grand scheme of data gathering but again I am very cautious in this and place this data well below the others.

In this thread you guys have NOTHING. There is not one piece of evidence or shred of reason in the argument that science will invent a cure that will alter our brain's structure and then someone will FORCE us to take that cure. Yet it is used over and over again on this board as an "argument point"...

It boggles the mind.

I've completely lost you.

How is the Terry Schiavo affair not relevant? The irrational fear of forced medical procedures is what is relevant. And what happened with Schiavo is EXPLICIT evidence of institutions over stepping their bounds.

kfisherx

I may have an answer on some of this at least for myself. I have a tendency to take things very literally. I have a tendency to take words and definitions out of their cultural context. Others may be doing the same thing. I may be wrong on a number of things on this board. I do have some questions. Will you please answer them?

1. What exactly are the facts and what are the conclusions of these facts? How do I make sure I am correctly interpreting the facts correctly and how do I make sure I am drawing true conclusions from the premises? I could have true premises but false conclusions. Can we truly be 100% certain of anything?
2. How do I employ true rational thinking? I think I am but I do not know for sure.
3. With Autism Speaks, I believe it is possible that I am misinterpreting what they are saying. How do I comfirm that I have the correct data and the correct interpretation to the data?
4. kfisherx, you are one who is successful. I need to be talking to those who are successful. Do you mind being my mentor? Honestly, I'm the most ignorant person on this board and on the face of the planet. I know absolutely nothing to be honest.

Yes, you did completely lose me. So your point is that institiutions can over-step their bounds NOT that she was FORCED to be on life support right? Since she was brought into the institution in a comma we do not know what her wishes are. Can we aree on this?

Institution overstepping bounds in what way? Her parents did not want life support removed and stepped in to threaten if the institution did so. This all DESPITE what her husband wishes were. If anyone overstepped bounds it would be the parents because once a child is an adult the parent's rights to make decision for said child go away. I would say this example is more a "corner case" of a situation where the laws are not clearly defined RE what to do and the business had to protect itself. This is much different than some major push to FORCE life-support on any individual in a coma despite their previously signed DNRs and really does not correlate to the scenario of curing autism and forcing it upon all of us.

kfisherx, this is what occurs from my experience. I do try to comfirm data by asking people questions. Here is the problem. They will tell me I'm rude for asking or I'm ignored. Some will melt down as well. All I'm told is that I'm selfish, rude, an a**hole, and inconsiderate. Here is the kicker. They do not tell me why and what I am doing wrong from their perspective. One person told me I was misguided. Again, I am never told how I am misguided. Some people will say that I am an adult I should know. Again, what do I do. As a child and a teen they will say I will know when I get older. Well guess what, I'm older now and I still do not know and I still do not understand.

All I can do is go by speculation and guesses. I believe that may hold true for some members of this board because asking normal people does not bring some any results.

I think we are discussing two different things. I am looking at WHY these irrational fears exist, regarding medical procedures in general, and more specifically regarding cure research in autism. These fears DO exist. Incidents like Schiavo help to create those fears.

It is irrational to insist that autism cure research is solely intended to force compliance to some arbitrary standards of functionality. But it is not irrational to have concerns that institutions will overstep their bounds in implementation of cure related public policy. Even as we speak there is legislation being brought up in Arizona that would institute patient fees for medicaid/medicare recipients that don't follow doctor's orders regarding obesity and smoking. This is precisely the type of thing that gets rapidly conflated into "forced cures".

Despite the fact that there was a thread here that proposed that if a cure existed, the "sheer cost" of autism demanded that anyone young enough to work be compelled to take the cure, I doubt anyone will be forced to take a cure.

But then my position has always been (even though it is mischaracterized as painfully expensive) that living people who exist today need assistance and that a cure is a painfully expensive pipe dream - and should one come about, it'd likely only be available to those families who can afford it, due to class stratification and the execrable state of health care in the US.

I guess this could be characterized as black and white thinking, but somehow I doubt that:

* Suggesting that people who are in bad shape need help that they are not receiving
* That too much money is spent chasing a cure that may never happen
* That a cure would only likely be available to those who could afford it

Is actually all that controversial, based on the state of the world today.

It's also not controversial to suggest that early identification will simply lead to more abortions, and not potentially autistic babies being born neurotypical. Not that I am anti-choice, but I somehow doubt that the pressure medical professionals put on women to abort fetuses that may have down's syndrome is particularly pro-choice (and it is certainly ableist and inaccurate).

Your logic escapes me on this thread. You are saying all of this to tell me that "irrational fear" exists?! ! Thank you Captain Obvious. LOL! But excuse me if I call it "irrational" and therefor dismiss it as stupid as well.

The legislation in AZ does not even remotely apply here. Smoking and Obesity are choices not diseases or disabilities. There is no "cure" involved only choices. This is no different than people who chose to ride motorcycles or engage in other high risk activities paying more for insurance. Ergo the leap from this to autism cure being FORCED upon us one day is quite astounding.

quebec foxtrot tango

ruveyn

I missed that thread but did so on purpose because the whole premise of it is based on NOTHING just as we are discussing here. Like you assert, the facts are there is NOTHING to suggest we will ever have a dream and furthermore nothing to suggest that we'll be forced to take it.



1. I don't get this first bullet
2. Chasing a cure that may never happen doesn't preclude the research from providing us very useful information. If you read the current studies on autism cure, there are all manners of information and technologies and advances being made from the information. Research has many, many objectives outside of the BIG CURE ones.
3. History suggests that technology is always out of reach expensive when it first comes out and as it is developed and as manufacturing of items becomes understood the costs decrease and it eventually is released to the general masses. Just because it begins expensive doesn't mean it will never be available and history has shown us that normally it is.

Can you explain how it is that understand the pressure that medical pros are putting on woman with down syndrome babies?

Okay, that is actually not true. It's not supported by research. I suppose one can argue that it can be a choice, but there are many reasons from genetics to activity levels people are capable of to metabolism to food accessibility (google "food deserts") to economic class and thus affordable foods that play into body weight. Calling it a choice is so misleading as to be deceptive.