Demographics of who does/doesn't want a cure

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People calling you low-functioning or moderate-functioning is irrelevant to everything.

There are surely people who talk about having "mild Asperger's" for other reasons, but a lot of the time people who say that are... I'm way tired and not sure how to say this. Prejudiced? Thinking of themselves as "I can function so I'm not bad like you" or "I'm not really disabled and I don't have anything actually wrong with my brain, so I guess I have these traits and stuff but I'm a real person and I have a life, so I'm really mild" or something. Like... thinking that Asperger's is bad, and calling themselves "mild" regardless of how autistic they are or how impaired they are (not the same thing).

I am completely unable to judge the severity of anything I have. I just know what I can and cannot reliably do.

I spent a lot of time trying to compare myself directly to everyone else, but I only ended up confused. I don't really care now if someone has more or fewer meltdowns than me, more or fewer shutdowns than me, more or less intense sensory issues. socialize better or worse.

Aside from other people having experiences I can relate to, I hesitate to make a judgment about intensity or severity.

we must not find cure because society would use it wrong "removing" autism

I voted against the cure for several reasons.

1. A "cure" for autism might eliminate our population, this would in turn damage society by impeding the development of new technologys and science.

2. The shock of waking up on monday morning as a NT after having gone to bed on sunday evening as an aspie or autie would be likely to be very disturbing, I think that the flip might drive many people out of their minds.

3. The "cures" which have been used for a range of conditions in the past include some (such as Lobotomy) seem to be worse than the diseases (both real and imaginary) which it was hoped that the treatment would cure. I fear that the cure might leave people in a worse state than they were without treatment.

I am not against things like CBT or some drugs which might be used to manage some conditions, but some of the ideas which parts of the medical community have (such as using the gamma knife to try to fix autism) seem reckless to me.

There often seems (to me) to be an assumption from posters that a 'cure' would change the way you are by removing something that has it's hooks into every aspect of their brain; and thereby change their personality in some way. I think further that some people harbour a mild fear that they would wake up post-cure with an unstoppable urge to go shopping in the morning with their new 'friends', spend the evening bitching on their facebooks, and finish up by part-taying all night in clubs In essence, that everything about them down to their values would be changed.

However if Autism is not an intrinsic part of a person then a 'cure' might just mean deficits were removed/limited. E.g. a person might find they could do what they couldn't before over and above what they can do now. E.g. I guess things like sequencing and organisation, improved communication etc, the things ASD is supposed to have a deficit of.
I think of myself on a good day when the thought processes are clear and come easily to me vs a day where I'm just biding time. On a good day I'm not a different person, I'm just more capable. I think many people would want that.
I think of my four year old who can't say a word, it is very frustrating for him, I can see it in his face. If he was the same little person but could tell me more easily - as this morning that he wanted a muesli bar and not toast again, I'm sure that would be a good thing. Or this afternoon when he was crying and we couldn't work out why.

So to me it comes down to a question of is Autism an intrinsic part of a persons makeup or not? and if so to what extent? Or is it just a blight plonked on top of the person? Probably impossible to answer.

I am one of those in the "don't know" category. I do not know if I am Aspie. I suspect that I am, but seeking information about it is less about finding a label or a "problem" and more about finding an explanation for my differences. I do not feel like Asperger's or Autism are conditions that need to be cured. I truly believe they are often a complex set of personal traits, which have been given a name. Rather than seeing these traits as problems and attempting to "fix" them, I think most often they simply need to be understood and accepted.

I will never be called anything but high functioning, but even that label does me a disservice because it does not begin to describe how what some might see as minor impairment has profoundly affected the trajectory of my life. It is ironic that an NT world so readily uses a autistic trait (categorization) to produce categories about autistics aren't entirely useful to autistics.

~ pensieve said ~

" . . . I like to joke that the cure for autism will be in the form of a vaccine . . ."




That's hysterical.