Oxitocin ENDS asperger life!

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This is silly. Oxytocin levels are increased during breastfeeding, and I wasn't different when I was breastfeeding.

~Kate

Oxytocin is released after sex...during breast feeding...it is a bonding chemical.
It doesn't "steal" your autism, it just makes you feel closer to the people around you. Some of us are interested in that...
I should add that I understand why you feel threatened, but it's not going to turn us NT, and I doubt anyone could force something like that on us.

I think it's more like the way the deaf community feels about cochlear implants. We like our identity, it's not that we want an excuse, we just don't want change forced on us.

See, I don't understand that either.

Edit: Post 222! I like numbers with all one digit.

As a lover of music, I personally cannot understand the perspective of "deaf culture" advocates but they do exist, and if they do not wish to change they should not be forced. Apparently deaf people have formed a subculture which many of them value highly, and I respect that.

In the case of autism, it's a little bit more nuanced. Autism is not a discrete condition- everyone has autistic and non-autistic traits and we draw an arbitrary line at a certain intensity. It's an extremely difficult judgment to say what ranges of the spectrum are a net positive and what ranges (on both ends- extremely autistic and extremely NT) are detrimental. It is known that autistic traits are highly correlated with skills that our species needs, and a world of all NTs (or a world of all autistics) would likely be disastrous.

Another issue when you talk about "curing" autism is that implicit in such goals is the claim that autistics are inherently inferior to non-autistics. I reject this premise, thus I reject the notion of a cure. We are not defective- we are different. We may need help in navigating the usual social structures, but that does not make us less than human.

+1 for the whole post.

The first post I made was trying to point out how ridiculous it is for a person to go up in arms at the mere mention of something that may be able to help us. I'm not for the notion of a cure, because as you say, there is nothing to cure.

Something else that was mentioned here a couple times is "forced". Nobody is being forced. At all. If this goes mainstream, nobody is forcing you to take it, just as deaf people are not forced to regain their hearing. I don't see the issue.

Ah. I think some of us (myself included) may have misunderstood you. Measures that can help us cope better- yes, I am all for that. I might even be open to the idea of medication for my sensory problems, though I would be sad if I lost synesthesia.


Autism is typically identified in childhood. Children can not give informed consent, so the decision falls to their parents. Thus, autistic children may be forced to take such treatments. And that is only one possible scenario: in the book The Speed of Dark, a cure for autism was developed, and the protagonist faces the possibility of discrimination in his workplace for refusing to take the cure. There is also a worry that there would be no effort to accommodate an autistic's needs if a "cure" (even one that detracted from autistic abilities) existed. For instance, if I were to request ADA accommodations, they could be denied on the basis that "Oh, you could just go take [X] drug and be all better." This would, in practice, force many autistics to take whatever treatment was offered.

On the more concrete side, the head of medical ethics in the UK has talked about the possibility of compulsory pre-natal cure if such becomes available. She also stated support for pre-natal screening and selective abortion, which to me is indistinguishable from genocide.

Hmm, very good point. From that perspective, even the development of a "cure" just to treat the symptoms doesn't look desirable. But this is preliminary, and as of yet just looks as though it helps a bit, rather than fixing everything (which will likely never happen at all.) But there are many people who suffer with autism, and would be glad to have any help in their lives. Just look around this site. There are so many aspies who say they hate autism with all their hearts and curse the condition for apparently ruining their lives. Isn't it a good thing that these people might be able to improve their lives a little?

Me too. If genocide is the attempt to eliminate a certain type of people from the world, then this is even MORE genocide then the holocaust. Thankfully, this is unlikely to happen. Autism is a very broad condition. I would not be surprised at all if it turns out that autism is caused by several different separate things. After all, autism is not a specific physical condition. It is a collection of symptoms. Many things could cause someone to meet this criteria. If a concrete cause is found though, I don't believe abortion will ever become compulsory. It's not compulsory to abort Down Syndrome fetuses, even though the cause of that has been identified. So why would it with autism, a condition that affects it's patients much less severely (depending on the case.) And if classic autism and "Asperger's" turn out to have the same cause, there will simply be no grounds on which to force abortion on mostly normal people like us.

That's where it gets fuzzy. In principle, yes, I support any measure that could help autistics. In practice, I know that the way society works means that there are going to be significant downsides. If there were some way to address those deficiencies in society, I would gladly support any attempts at finding treatments because then the treatments would truly be voluntary. Though I do not wish to be forced to be normal, I also do not think others should be forced to be abnormal. As long as a treatment would fail to be voluntary, however, I would want to leave everyone as nature made them.


Compulsory no, but very common yes. The BMA ethics head I referenced earlier stated her assumption that it would be routinely aborted as Down's Syndrome is today (at over a 90% rate) and that she had no problem with that at all. I can't help but see that as genocide, and I strongly believe the world will be much worse off if 90% of autistics are aborted. A genetic test would probably not be sensitive enough to distringuish between different autistic spectrum disorders, which means a high proportion "Aspies" would also be aborted.

The possibly compulsory treatment I alluded to was the idea of manipulating fetal testosterone levels in the hope of mitigating or eliminating autistic traits before birth. Interestingly, this was also in The Speed of Dark- the protagonist and his friends were the last autistics around, because all the younger autistics were cured in the womb. I doubt such an extreme measure would ever actually be compulsory, but I find it very concerning that someone very high up in determing medical ethics in Britain thinks it would be a good idea.

I see the abortion of down syndrome individuals as genocide as well. I see these people a lot. There's this one Downs guy who goes to my church. He's happy smiling and friendly, and he always grins at me and gives me the thumbs up while he's alter serving during mass. Why would we want to eliminate people like that? Well, I guess I can arrive at the answer to that fairly easily myself. The parents don't want to deal with it. How unfair.

Also, you were saying about how autism would not be taken seriously if a drug for it was released. I agree in part, but not entirely. I have ADHD (or at least am officially diagnosed, as such so that's what I tell people,) and though treatment exists (which I don't take,) the people who know don't downplay it because there are meds available.

I think at the root of all this is a general idea in society. That if someone doesn't fit in, we should change them instead of trying to accommodating them. This is wrong.

Its looking at what happens with Downs which makes the whole thing so worrying. Some say that it will never happen because of how difficult it is to distinguish from milder forms BUT there are a number of false positive Downs tests leading to babies without the condition being aborted and this is OK. I therefore see no reason for them to be phased by false positives with autism - especially as our condition will not be visible in the aborted fetus so we won't even have the physical evidence that the babies aborted did not have the condition as we have for Downs.

Yes, I know that some of the tests are more reliable than others, but the fact that these unreliable results are followed and allowed to continue makes me believe they will not be too concerned with some "collateral damage". Also remember that some of these testing methods to confirm Downs carry a risk of killing the baby simply by the act of doing the test but still they use them.

PS I love the The speed of dark book. I read it before I knew I was Aspie but was starting to suspect something was up (at that point I had a general screening test show Autism as a posible problem but no specific diagnosis).

It seems all the chemical does is make you more attentive to other people. That's just one aspect of AS - it won't take away things like literal thinking, mono-processing, sensory over- or undersensitivities, obsessions, etc.

So, for you guys who recoil at the idea of a possible forced cure...I don't think that's about to happen any time soon.

My thoughts exactly. We were just speculating.

Okay you are wrong and your title is sensationalist. Me and my doc talked about it when we were discussing AS when I was first diagnosed. It it not a "cure" but a treatment. Oxytocin is a chemical found in new borns when they first make eye contact with the mother and in NT the region in the brain that produces it lights up....this is not the case with AT or AS individuals. It just helps you in dealing with others and makes you normal in the aspect of relating with people but not sensory issues.


Please stop these sensationalist thread title it is annoying.

The title is sensationalist. And it also reads a bit like oxytocin kills us.

If i understand correctly, something detect you are seeing a human, and it secretes oxytocin
If you take quantities in bulk, you don't risk "bonding" with your dog or something?
It could be worse with young children?