Would you want to be cured if you could?

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Its a double edged sword, I voted neither because some parts of the disability I happen to embrace, others have really screwed me over. My censory issues makes it almost difficult to be in college classrooms which length exceeds four hours. First hour you couldn't distinguish me from the rest of the class, second hour is the same, by the third hour I get a little unerved after the forth hour my ticks start to show. Luckily I've never taken classes that go into five hours of study. My censory issues makes me have problems for processed foods and background noise, the obsessive component to my personality makes me prone to self-abuse and have prejudice for things like contemporary music, rich elites, and popart which I lament about non-stop. Their is one catch to all of this that I wouldn't trade for anything I have a great creative spirit, have written several screenplays am very philosophical and always have an inventive way for solving everyday problems. To the original poster you should've tried making another option I would remove some elements of the disability but others that elevate my level of creativity and intellect I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Can you change the poll for a third option.

I already feel cured.

I preserved all of my positive Aspie traits while getting rid of my bad ones.

Sure, I'm not perfect, but I'm always trying to improve daily.

Autism is part of who I am. To change that would be to change part of my identity. Yes, autism is a disability. But that does not mean that removing the disability would be a good thing. First of all, disability is a neutral fact, not a tragedy. Secondly, removing even a disabling part of my identity still means removing a part of who I am--and that is much worse than having the impairments associated with autism.

On a larger scale, disabilities such as autism are useful in a society because of our interdependence; people with different skill levels get to contribute their different perspectives, and that includes people who have extreme deficits. Without the additional perspectives afforded by people who are different, we would not have the benefits of diversity--and it is diversity which allows us to have many possible solutions to each problem. If everyone were exactly alike, each person would come up with the same solution. A diverse society is stronger, in terms of natural selection and sociological competitiveness.

Ethically, a person's right to keep their own identity is as important as the right to life. Removing autism forcibly from someone would be a form of brainwashing--essentially, torture.

Medically, we cannot cure autism, and we probably will never be able to do so. A prenatal test might be found to abort any fetuses which were more likely to have autism; however, curing an adult autistic will be impossible unless we can physically change any brain structure into any other--which would also allow us to do things like uploading a person into a computer, writing one person's personality into someone else's brain, et cetera. Such things are far in the future if they are possible at all and will present ethical challenges far beyond just curing autism.

The focus on curing autism is hurtful to autistic people, whether severely or mildly autistic. If you focus on curing autism, your goal is to try to turn an autistic person into a reasonable facsimile of a typical person. Take NT as the goal, and you will probably be encouraging the autistic person to do things in ways that are not natural for them. Teaching NT-style skills will take precedence over developing the unique strengths of the autistic person. It is as though you were teaching a dog to walk on its hind legs like a human, and would not allow the dog to practice running on four legs, so that in the end you would have a dog that could walk clumsily balanced on its hind legs, and could not run fast on four. If you acknowledge that the dog is a dog, then it may become a fast runner in its own right--but only if you agree that it is okay to run on four legs. This mentality, that the NT method must be the only one, hurts us. We need to find our own way, and have the world allow us in.

If you look at autistic culture, then the insistence on a cure is quite simply a betrayal of your identity--along the lines of a black person who bleaches their skin because they are tired of suffering prejudice against their skin color. Yes, you might dodge prejudice... but only at the cost of denying your own identity.

I'd defiantly look into it.
I'm fed up with having all of the issues caused by being different, the good parts of the condition aren't worth it anymore, I can't even use most of my good traits anymore because due to Aspie related issues.

Last edited by JellyCat on 03 Apr 2013, 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What are the issues that you face?

I believe that autism is the greatest contributor in how my life has turned out. It is difficult to imagine how my life would have turned out had I not been autistic. It is also difficult to imagine how my life might change now. I kind of like the way I am now. The only thing I would like to change is the fact that I can't seem to get a girlfriend. Besides that I'm pretty much alright.

Even though sometimes it hurts when I get the idea that, because I'm autistic, somebody (or even most people) thinks I have no value and has closed their mind to the possibility of liking, respecting, or even just accepting me as I am....I don't really want to be anybody but the person I am. Other people treating me like crap because of their own prejudice or ignorance is not actually my fault -- it has nothing to do with my being autistic and everything to do with the narrow-mindedness, insensitivity and/or cruelty of those other people. I think I'm okay just the way I am, and I would rather be rejected as I am than accepted as something I'm not.

Plus, if I was magically turned into an NT overnight, I would still remember being the way I am now, and I have a feeling I would just end up feeling like the guy in Flowers for Algernon, because that already sort of happened when I was began taking medication for my ADHD ...it's a truly horrible feeling.

So...No. I'll pass on the complete overhaul of my brain. No cure for me, thanks!

If I could be cured but continue to be myself I wonder what that would be like?

I was thinking hat maybe it would be something like this: I still have hyper focus, special interests, programming skills, don't like small talk prefer conversations to be exchanging information and ideas etc.... But now I can read facial expressions and body language. I don't like small talk but can understand its purpose and feel confortable with it.

On the surface this might seem good, but when I thought about it some more I decided it could also be bad. Example: In this scenario I can now tell when someone is bored but I have the same interests as now. This means that my interests still do not match NTs. So everything I want to talk about is boring to most NTs. Yet I can tell they are bored.

There are other examples I thought of for this scenario, but I think it would result in one of two things: 1) constantly feeling fake due to responding to social cues. 2) not faking but being more aware of rejection than I already am.

Though out of curiosity I would like to know what it is like to be NT temporarily.

I would never want to be cured, even if I could. I'm not broken, I'm not junk, I'm not a tragedy and I don't have a horrible disease. I don't need or want a cure, because I'm not broken or damaged.

Were you diagnosed as a child? I developed lots of depression and avoidant behaviors due to no knowing what was wrong with me until last year. I also got kicked out of elementary school for violent behaviors and was homeschooled so missed out on a lot there as well.

By the time you're my age, how does one even figure out how to separate AS from co-morbids? It's like I have AS and then tons of co-morbids bound up with it. I was also physically and sexually abused as a child, so it's hard to separate that out as well, and my psychologist says my ink blot tests who what would be an attachment disorder without PDD

I used to blame everything on AS, but now I don't know. Maybe I am cured and just have tons of co-morbids. How does one even figure this out?

That sounds like an oxymoron, to me... because I feel like my Asperger's is such a big part of me that it IS myself. It has shaped how I've grown. It defines my brain, literally.



But yes I have wondered about that. I don't think there would be much difference. I'm an introvert by nature, and I have social anxiety. Would a cure for Autism cure those too?

It has been done.

I've often thought that wanting to be someone else is more or less the same thing as wanting to be dead. either way, you cease being you and your existence is snuffed out. I can understand wanting to be in a different body or to be wealthy or live somewhere else or what have you, but to actually change something fundamental about the nature of your mind, your personality, your perceptions? that's suicide in some ways.

I want to manage the negative symptoms I have, largely through Buddhist praxis (under which I would class finding an appropriate job ["right livelihood"] as well as intensive meditation practice), but wishing I wasn't an Aspie would be wishing I wasn't me...which is more or less the same as wanting to die.

I was just diagnosed last year after dropping out of school 10 times and being hospitalized. I know how you feel. soooo much about my life would have been better if I was diagnosed as a child.

It is too difficult to answer because on one hand being on the spectrum is responsible for my creativity but on the other, it has caused a lot of miscommunication in relationships and it is difficult not being able to read social cues or hints when others can.

QFT to both


I'm unable to be hurt by people I don't care about, but some comments I see make me PO'd. Other than that, amen! I have no use for respect from people I despise to the very core of my being.

I most assuredly do not want any “cure”. I hope they never find one. If they did, we’d all be forced to take it at some point. Sure, at first they’d start with those who actually want it, but anyone who thinks that the issue won’t be forced somewhere down the road are deluding themselves. We’ll also no doubt see a sharp increase in hate crime. Think people are indifferent to how we're treated now? Imagine how that’s gonna be if we don’t have to be our true selves. I’m not being overly negative, we all know how easily NTs turn against minority groups. And we all know how popular we are as it is. A "cure" would be the end of us one way or the other.


A “cure” would kill what is me. No thanks. I think suicide is a personal choice but to me it’s pathetic, and not something I intend to do. It's irrelevant whether the suicide would be the death of my personality or the death of my body.

I wish one poll thread about this issue could be made sticky so we could have as many as possible give their opinion on the subject. As it is there are a lot of topics on the issue but the threads are quickly buried. It’d be interesting to see the percentages in a thread that wouldn’t be buried in a few days.

I wish the people who are so preoccupied with finding a cure, would be interested in finding cures for asthma, allergies and troublesome stomachs instead. I’d take every one of those! They are all making my life a bit more miserable on daily basis, and I need meds against them, which I hate. I guess that’s the real reason why they wanna “cure” autism; they don’t have any drugs to use for it, so the pharmaceuticals can’t cash in on us.



Under those circumstances I would have been interested in trying it too. I'm curious about what it would be like!
It's also the most likely way, since they're unlikely to be able to change the brain connections. So a pill that would imitate it is the likeliest.