For curebie hating, NT-bashing, holier than thou aspies

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Alright, I just get a little worked up over them. They really bug me. And truthfully, I've only been in the autistic community for a couple of years. If I had known sooner, I would have been here as early as 2000, but 2004 isn't that bad, I guess.

I'd be closer to the last one, though it's weird; I worked at it, recognized my actions, and repsonded. Now I have a great deal of control, and manage to fit in well without faking anything. I just hold myself in check from rocking or stimming, though in times of stress I can hardly seem to help myself, so I stim in hidden ways, like wiggling my toes in my shoes, orclosing my mouth and moving my tounge, or just jamming my hands in my pockets. I feel that I earned my life as it is now, and that it was my effort that got me to where I am. But not everyone can get what I got, and they ought to be able to get it, is my reasoning. Why not, y'know?

I understand that... Yeah, that does make sense. I met another person diagnosed with AS at a summer camp one year... We were completely different. Actually, it was like polar opposites. We got along alright, though we never really hung out much outside of camp activities.

I cannot for the life of me understand these people. They discriminate on the very Autistic Spectrum they're on? It's a painful irony... I recall one time, I saw someone at a local festival. I was volunteering, and I saw him, and it just clicked in my mind. I saw subtle things that stood out to me. I didn't talk with him, I was working, but I just knew that he was autistic.

Like support in education, or offering services to help support people financially or something.

I don't neccesarily want them ejected, or want to be ejected, I just want for everything to not be a great big fight. I want ease with understanding, not the issues of misunderstanding that seem to plague certain places, or people, like parents and so on. I dunno, like a cease fire, I guess. It's a big tangled mess(to me) of arguments and fights where no one really knows where any of it all began... It's hard to sort out.

Still blowing smoke I see.

There was the burning at the stake cure,

There was the chained to a wall cure,

there was the ice pick cure,

there was the massive doses of Thorizine cure,

Then there was a short peroid without cure,

that resulted in computers and the internet.

Now you are back with an imaginary cure bandwagon.

You are going to have a petition, get a law passed.

There is no cure.

There is no reason for pro cure groups except to line their own pockets.

They manage to pocket half of 20 million,

when billions are being spent on real research,

Autism is not the reason the brain is studied.

This has nothing to do with who is for or against, the study goes on.

It is doubtful there could be a cure.

If there was, it would be free choice,

The problem with you is talking endlessly about something that does not exist, and may never.

Yet you freely use this club on everyone who is living their life as well as they can.

You have nothing to do with my life, or ongoing scientific research.

You are a one trick pony. A shallow single issue ranter on a soapbox.

You are here deamonizing people who wish to live as best they can in the existing reality.

The reason there is no cure is because of Aspies?

functioning autistics are ruining it for everyone?

It is not WP, it is just me.

I am blocking the cure, and the adoption of the Metric System.

I laugh at how people think that people will have a choice whether to take a cure or not if it is developed.
Chances are, an AS child will never be told of benefits, and by thinking they are fully impaired in all aspects they will take the cure because they don't know any better.
Heck, even today most aspies don't realize that there are things they can do with autism that NTs cannot - or at least not as well.

Do you really think a doctor will see an aspie child and say "Well, you're autistic. You could become a normal person, although I suggest you research and think long and hard to decide whether to take the cure or not"?
You're definitely not being realistic enough, because that's not gonna happen, especially if you realize how much money people get off "cures." Chances are it's going to look more like this;

"It seems your child has autism." The doctor says, scribbling something on a familiar piece of paper. "Here's the prescription," Dr. Neyers hands over the paper to the mother, now looking relieved for her son. "Most pharmacies should be able to prepare it for you."

Does it give a choice for the child? No. Does it let the child think over whether he wants to take this or not? No, it's automatically put over as something that needs treatment, and nothing that may have benefits or may just be a difference. Sure, maybe us current aspies are spared and can have the choice, but in the future expect autism to be considered "cured" and "treatable."

Frankly, I think that's going to be a big mistake.

Forgive me if my opinion of NT's isn't that high, but you obviously weren't bullied in school by practically EVERYONE in the school... at the same time... Try that one on for size before saying that NT's aren't, at the very least, a vicious mob.

As for the rest of your post:
I have a brother who's LFA and barely verbal. He also happens to be the nicest person you would ever meet. I wouldn't change a thing about him, and the same goes for my parents (although they do have him on a therapy program).

I agree. Everyone who wants to be cured deserves one. I hate people who oppose research and treatments for those who want them. I don't think we are far away from a cure. There is lots of preliminary research that has already found possible causes and treatments for autism. It just has to be studied a little more before it's considered proven.

You are the one blowing smoke.

You aren't talking about cures. You're talking about ill treatment of those society doesn't like.

Good cures and treatments such as antibiotics, anti-virals, anti-fungals, vitamins, bloodletting, and herbs have been found for many diseases. There is no reason why a similar cure can't be found for autism.

Oddly enough, I've heard more autistics say they don't want cured.

when my son was a baby i was told he had a very low liklyhood of being able to sit see walk hear etc when he was a little older he had an iq test which gave him an iq of 70 . i took him to the british institute for brain injured children and started a therapy program , i have milestone certificates for him for things like holding his head up , smiling , making baby noises etc the things that people with regular babies assume will happen at a particular age . we worked hard and he learnt to look at me and stand and walk and finally to talk. that therapy turned our lives around he is still autistic but he is in mainstream school , he still has issues but there are many many autistic children far worse off than he is .
he is a wonderfull child , so loving and smiley ( apart from normal childhood moods ) . i wouldnt change him really but i do want whats best for him and i strongly belive that taking him to therapy was absolutly the best thing to do , he can function in our world now. he may or may not turn out to have some miraculous ability and he isnt cured but he has been helped so much that to many who know him it looks like hes cured, people that didnt know him back then dont believe what he was like because he has come such a long way , so to say you wouldnt want a cure is rediculous , if you had a child who people had such low expectations of , a child who would never be able to do the things that regular children can do i think many of you would opt for a cure if one was available. im still unconvinced that the skills that so many of you posess would outweigh the serious disability of many children with autism , i think its nothing but selfish to deny parents and children the oppurtunity to get help of whatever kind . my son can talk and write and read , maybe not quite at the expected level but certainly well enough to be able to benifit from reading and writing , he can hold a pencil and draw he can use a computer he can talk for hours , he can swim , there are so many things he can do , that are normal things, nothing special , but to me each one of those things is very special and i in no way feel i have done him a diservice by helping him when he was a baby and toddler, he has benifitted in ways you cant imagine . i cant believe you would deny your children that help because autism is good to have.

Nobody ever said "don't do a thing". I don't know of a single autistic who says this.

Joeker, you're not the only one who got worked up.

I don't regret being passionate about belief, though. And I did not know you were Canadian, which I think causes some disparity in our viewpoints. One of my dearest friends is from BC and through her I've learned that Canadian society seems to be a much more accepting one than the US, the schools are CERTAINLY more civilized. The types of behaviors that tortured (yes I use that word intentionally) so many of us in public schools in the US would never be tolerated in most areas of Canada from what I've heard. There doesn't seem to be the stigmatizing there, that we see here, nor do you seem to have the preponderance of "evangelicals" we're being inundated with. People who can't be swayed by facts or philosophy, for they have FAITH, and all too often that faith is following blindly what some hypocritical snake oil salesman with a bad hairpiece tells this is GOD'S revealed Truth. No matter how silly or self serving it is to the salesman. Or how vicious and nasty it is to "unbelievers".

I also understand that each province has it's own healthcare system, and that they can vary widely. Even the worst is far better than the crap the poor get here. Most of the rest of us are forced into HMO's to "control costs". Costs driven UP by the fact the hospitals have to cover the cost of treating poor people who can never pay them in the Emergency Room because no regular doctor sees them That village idiot in the White House actually SAID once, everyone in America has access to healthcare, just go to the Emergency Room... When they were started those HMO's provided low cost care. Really. Prescription co-pays were like $3 and a doctor's visit was covered, no co-pays. Premiums were affordable. Now, I'm paying about 1/4 of my PRE-tax pay to cover my family. My employer pays the cost to cover ME. We have a deductible of $6,000 for the family per year (also covered by my employer, thank all that's holy, or I'd be so broke we'd eat beans and dogfood). Co-pays for meds run me about 1/4-1/3 my TAKE home pay every month. They've gone up 500% in the past 4 years. Now factor in that while I can get doctor's appointments with the child psychiatrist for my kids only for medication reviews, and that only for the co-morbid things that go with Asperger's. Mood disorders and OCD/Tourettes are covered. Asperger's is NOT a covered reason to see a doctor. It's not covered by almost ANY medical plans in the United States. Parents have to fight and fight HARD to get their kids treatment here. Often they lose that fight and have to cover it out of pocket, or just go without. Almost half the people in this country don't have medical insurance. Almost NO poor people do. Even with what I have to pay, I'm FORTUNATE, because I have access to coverage for my kids. Yes, you have to wait for access to surgeons there, but do you have to wait for lifesaving care? If you needed to be treated for a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm would you get it? Many here don't.

As for NT's being Nazi Klansmen, hmmmm interesting choice of words. I say that because actually you disprove your own point using those groups. Nazi's were, for the most part, ordinary everyday people drawn into a "groupthink" ideology by their environment and by their NT mirror neuron pack mentality. Aspie's are certainly as capable of atrocity, we are not saints, we're humans. Omnivorous killer plains apes who have learned to tame fire and smelt metal. Intelligence has made us more DANGEROUS, civilization is a thin veneer over a core of vicious pack killers. Lord of the Flies wasn't dystopian, it was optimistic. Klansmen were (mostly) individually working class stiffs with wives and kids at home. Put a hood on them, and get them in a group and they were terrorists. Brutal killers who spread fear and sorrow among those mostly LESS fortunate than they were to begin with. Most of the people lynched by the Klan were poor, most of them were just trying to make a living or feed their families. Families who's only "sin" was to move into White territory, so they could have a better standard of living. And they killed black men who even LOOKED at white women. How much more irrational can you get than that? Killing someone for LOOKING at another person? Just because their SKIN color is different?? Killings that individually, most of them would have been incapable of committing, yet they did so easily, once part of a pack. The tragedy of what has happened with US soldiers guarding prisons in Iraq isn't that these were "bad people" doing these things.... for the most part they were just NORMAL people, doing what people do when placed in a situation like that. Are people on the spectrum saints? No. But percentage wise I think you would find FEWER autistic spectrum people would go along with something like that exactly BECAUSE we seem to lack that mirror neuron functionality, that groupthink, that pack identity that the NT's have. Maybe it gives us that "take a step back" viewpoint and gives us TIME to think "hey, man this is f***ed UP, I'm not doing it..." that the NT's don't get. Maybe that's the impulsivity curse that THEY bear. I'd even speculate that could be the source of our "sense of justice" that's touted so often.

Now, combine it... the school bully mentalities that we've dealt with all our lives, the HMO's forcing us into the cheapest care alternatives (and yes it's EXPENSIVE to care for autistics, even those who are higher functioning) and the groupthink NT's at places like Autism Speaks seem to espouse and maybe you can begin to see why SO many of us are frightened by the existence of "cures". Especially those of us who believe we're talking about a genetic level neurological condition. "If you choose not to take this treatment we will stop covering your medical coverage for this condition...", "If you choose to carry this pregnancy to term we will not cover medical treatment for the child...". If you think either of those possibilities are ridiculous, I would point out the examples of the Nazi's... how many people STILL try to deny their crimes actually occured? How about the 20 million of his OWN PEOPLE Stalin killed? The genocide against the natives that was committed in the US? The man who uttered that famous quote, "If you want to get rid of fleas you have to kill the nits" while shooting a Native American child was a Methodist Minister... I know, people will argue "we're more civilized now". When did that happen? In the last 50 years? I don't think so. Look at Africa, there's wholesale slaughter going on there. If rule of law broke down here in the US I have no doubt, there would be street fighting in less than a week and "ethnic cleansing" within a year or two. Because people are just human. We are the most dangerous predator on the entire planet.

natty

I think you did just the right thing, there are treatments that work,

Then there are people who suggest bloodletting.

My superior skills come from superior hard work.

All of us have to try harder, like both you and your son did.

When I hear of a treatment from Medical Science, I will listen.

I know some things worked for me, and many others here.

Those pushing cure are skipping treatments that work, seeking the magic bullet.

Researching a cure for autism is a waste, for what has to be researched, is being researched.

I support brain research, spinal cord injuries, which affect many, and the proper way to study is by qualified researchers who do not have a final product in mind. A Cure.

Much more can be learned through proven treatments, Your's is an example of doing everything possible, and not waiting for a cure. It is the best thing to do when there is no cure.

If it existed, I have no doubt you would have used it, but that is imaginary, and might continue to be so.

Children, people with legal guardians, will not be making the choice, but this is not a perfect world.

That still takes a medically approved cure, doubtful, or treatment, more likely. For that, there is nothing to do but wait and see.

The objections to a cure, are about non-approved treatments, chelation, bloodletting, or random antibiotics, which have none to bad results, but do give parents false hope, and seperates them from money. Autism is the target of fraud and quacks.

Many parents here have been Dx'ed along with their children. So this fraud targets the autistic parents.

If the information was coming from The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, or even Tony Attwood, I would listen. When it comes from someone posting quack cures on WP, looking for marks to fleece, I think they are look for people to cure of their money.

Ask your Doctor about Bloodletting.

The next level is genetic study to cure us before we are born, through abortion. That is the 1 in 300 number. Many of us think the numbers are much higher, and prenatal testing would, if it worked, would get many false positives.

Even if Auties met the fate of Downes, autism would still be in the genome.

As for treatment, it sounds like you started way down on the spectrum, and have made great progress. All of us want some of that.

I do have magic powers, they are based on 10,000 hours of work. Like everyone, some parts of the world were closed to me, so I worked where I could, and got to be better than good.

I still can't dance.

It was a combination of being exclued from some of life, and natural talents, focus, persistance, a lot of work, and I am very good with technology.

The value of this site is we can learn from each other what works for us. Your son will have an adult life, and there are some places we fit in. Just knowing there are others, and that they got by, is a wonder.

Your child had the modern view that treatment works, perhaps only ten years before he would have been considered hopeless. There are a lot of children here who have benefited from treatment not available in my time. It does work.

As for my powers, hard work, focus, drive, persistance, sticking to provable facts, it worked for me, and for other of the older people here. Working with what we have is our lives. Here we try to share that.

That seems to upset the curbie faction, who insist that nothing about our lives is worth anything, for we fail to embrace their imaginary non medical cure propaganda.

My view is I can teach what works to other autistic people, and as we do have to work harder, we can teach a few things to Neurotypicals. Curbies are against peer education, deny our lives have any value, claim we are so ret*d we could not know, while many people here hold advanced Degrees, are high in tech fields, own businesses, write books, and do well in many ways.

Curebies say we cannot benefit from treatment, cannot teach each other, can not be sucessful in any field, and have nothing to aid and teach the general population. We are useless ret*ds, and should be cured.

Their cure is still imaginary. Their story is if they were given money, they would cure everyone, or at least their own economic situation.

I will stick with the treatment your child gets, some mentoring in many fields of life found in the various forums, I would like to see more economic development, and am working on it.

I have to deal within the current reality. Sometimes it is two steps forward, and one back. But I persist. It might take me twice the effort to reach he same place, but then comes the differance, I do not stop.

We do have strong points, we can focus, and in a world of complex machines, our type is needed. Can't walk and chew gum, but can fix microscopes, cameras, and having a different way of seeing, might have some patents on advancing technology.

The Patent Office does not care if I can dance.

There is no cure, we do have a different skill set, so the best we can do is use it.

Before there could be a cure, a cause must be found, the problem is there are several. There are several researchers here, autistics studying autism. None of them are pushing imaginary cures.

So Curbie, as I use it, means do it your self quack treatments, a fund raising machine that uses scare tatics to line their own pockets, they are making $10,000,000 a year on the imaginary, and do want to control us, demean us, and spread their propaganda here.

I have nothing against Medical Science, when they anounce a treatment that will let me dance, or other things, I will listen. Like Vista, I will wait for Service Pack II before buying in.

Until then, mothers like you, learning that they are not the only one, gaining life skills, and becoming the best person they can, is all. A cure might be ten years, fifty, never, but our lives are today.

Wrong Planet is new, and a lot of good has happened here. There is a lot more to come.

Quacks and con men first have to get people to belive, A. They need a cure, B, that all of medicine and science has been hiding it, and C, that they know where to get it for only a few thousand dollars.

Fund raisers need the world to believe that they speak for us all, and only they can cure autism.

I will stick with mainstream medical science.

Quacks and Curbie fundraisers are bringing their bad reputation the field, and making it harder for ligitimate autism research.

What we have is Wrong Planet, a great service with 16,562 members.

We find we do differ with how others describe us, and are working on self defining.

Children are welcome, parents, and many have shown great relief in finding the place.

We do attract trolls, snake oil salesmen, and worse, but are mostly are know for being welcoming, helpful, friendly, understanding, and caring.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

inventor
i think the therapy my child had would be considered quak by many , however whilst im not saying it would work for every child , many of the children i saw there did improve in variable amounts of time and certainly it didnt take years to see an apreciable difference in the children, not all of the children there were autistic, many had profound physical disabilities , non believers would say oh they would have got better over time, trouble is that is impossible to prove one way or another, i was sceptical when i went , i was sceptical for a while but within a couple of months he was progressing faster than he ever had as a baby and that is when they normally progress fastest, even when i was doing the therapy with him i wondered if i was being silly and gullible but it worked week by week he changed . it wasnt any magical stuff or medication its was about encouraging the senses , touch taste vision and hearing and balance and it worked.
even the regular peadiatric team couldnt explain , one doctor even called it a miricle , if you believe in those , but coming from a medic it certainly sounded strange, maybe it was a miricle and ive been deluding myself over what made him change so much.
ive never heard of blood letting for autism and its certainly not something i would do to my son or myself. the only hospital procedures he had were brain scans and wot not to try and figure out why he didnt respond to sounds. the only invasive thing , and i truly regret putting him through this was blood tests, it was horrible and i cried and cried each time it was done , he faught so hard he had bruises on his arms from the nurses holding him down , it was horrendous . they beelieve that genetics are at the route of his autism his hair is different, it doesnt look different to me but apparantly it does under a microscope , his peaditrician said he looks odd, he doesnt to me he is beautifull in every way.

see the problem with being anti cure is that i think the negativity around a *cure * will put parents off working with there children when they are very young , just incase they kill off some amazing talent ive forgoten the word oh savant thats it , i think many parents dream that there child will turn out to be a genius and if people say they are anti cure because of the strengths they have because of there autism i think a lot of parents will hang onto that hope and do nothing and then when the child is older and doesnt have some savant quality that makes them rich and famous they will be dissopointed , because believe me there are a lot of people out there who think every autistic person is a savant and that every aspie is a genius at math or computer science and its just not true .

i do think its great that so many people here have had such great success in there field , but i wonder are they in the majority ? or is it just that they are the ones with the best command of english and the loudest voices.

i feel the diversity within the autistic spectrum is misrepresented and misunderstood by the general population, sometimes i wish this forum had different parts where so called low functioning autistics , middle of the road , and high functioning could post but i suppose that would be seen as a bad thing , but our issues are blurred and i dont even know what defines a high functioning versus a low functioning autistic , i dont mean the learning to talk early or late thing i mean in our lifestyles.

im in a relationship i have 2 children however i cant servive in the work place , no matter what i did nobody was ever happy with my work and believe me i tried hard , i got overwhelmed and had meltdowns and got confused a lot , employers dont want people like me , i had too much time off due to migraines caused by sensory issues and stress now i have severe anxiety and depression and am highly medicated , i never leave the house without my dog whos trained to help me. i have an iq of 105 but im hopeless with people and i dont have any talents , i cant even add up i resat my maths GCSE 3 times and never got above an E everything else i got a D in which is still worthless in the work place.

so my question is am i high functioning or low functioning ? or just a middle of the road person with aspergers , maybe they have that wrong and im high functioning autistic but then maybe they do better than i do . realistically where are the lines drawn ?

as for prenatal testing i dont believe in it, i never had any tests for either of my children , why bother , they cant test for every disability its still luck of the draw wether you carry full term and have a non disabled non sick normal child or wether you miscarry or give birth to a child with some form of disability , to me thats a risk of motherhood, if your not prepared to carry a child with a disability why get pregnant in the first place ? because nobody and nothing can tell a pregnant woman her child will be perfect and if your not prepared to take that chance you shouldnt become a mother because even if you deliver a perfectly healthy baby any number of things can change that down the line , then what do you do , say oh sorry kid your in a wheelchair im putting you up for adoption ? life is full of risks , its a lottery if you dont want to lose dont play the game.

prenatal testing is just a cop out , i wonder how many babies are needlessly aborted because the test comes back positive when in reality the disability was non existant or minor?
prenatal testing for autism would be nothing short of ethnic cleansing and i dont see it ever happening because the diversity of the autistic spectrum is so vast , but of course if people dont know that and have in there mind the vision of a non verbal child who wont be touched or make eye contact , who runs away and fails to bond with its parents then they will have a test and they will abort , this is in a way one reason that i dont think a distinction should be made between aspergers and autism until or if its even proven that the two disorders are not infact linked and even then i still wouldnt be in favour of it, think its right or take the test myself. we are afterall like a race , were different , people can butter it up all they want but thats a fact , but were not rare there are lots of us within the spectrum and were just as different from one another as the so called NT population so yes i strongly believe testing for autism does amount to ethnic cleansing and so i cant ever see it happening not if people realize the diversity is greater than the similarity between us all and that means we stop with the labels and just be on the autistic spectrum but equally represented in places like this forum so that people who are finding they are seriously disabled by autism have a place to speak with others who share the same difficulties whilst not being labeled lower , the more i think about the more that label irritates me low functioning what is that any way whats high functioning who decides ?.
anyway insane ramble over my dear beloved is 20 minutes from home and i have to cook him some dinner without cremating the kitchen again.
bb natty

And yet you call them "Autistic" when in fact they are not. This causes confusion instead of your stated purpose.



Generally - yes they have. Specifically - no they haven't.



It's perfectly logical - except when one introduces conditions that are NOT on the Spectrum just because some of symptoms match.



Which have all been debunked and ignored by the majority of the scientific community - due to the lack of peer review.



Again - this is confusing the Spectrum with non Spectrum conditions.



This is not unknown in NT's either so it's irrelevant.



Again, this is including conditions on the Spectrum that do not belong.



There is no science - Autism has already been established as genetic in origin. Not a belief, a long held fact that goes back to confirmation of Kanner's work.



It does, not because of a certain belief - but because of what has already been established to be correct.



Recovering and getting better is not the same as curing. Anyone who'd rather die than be on the Spectrum needs support to show that being on the Spectrum has advantages. Some recovery is natural (I mentioned my balance improving on another thread as an example). Others depend on the environment - hence my view that finding a niche in life is important.

The key to coping is acceptance in the first instance. The level required varies depending on a number of factors too many to mention.

What is hurtful is denial of acceptance - research of any sort will go nowhere without it.

That's the impression I get from many of the anti-cure people on this site. Many autistics have vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Testing and correcting these deficiencies is one of the biomedical treatments. I think many people here oppose giving vitamin and mineral supplements to correct this because it would make the person less autistic.

But supplements do not in anyway make one less autistic.

Then what's the problem with DAN! doctors recommending these supplements to treat autism? I thought it was anti-cure people determined to keep everyone autistic.

I guess studies like the one below using vitamin C are junk science: