My YouTube Video: The Cure to Autism

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I hope your boy will get better over time...

the latest in comments, and I think the real issue frustrating our troll:

zikasilver1 (me): "Nobody likes it when others are more competent than them."

Well no. I don't like it when I can't do the math that everyone else seems to be able to do with ease. But I don't demand that everyone else be brought down to my level or that I be brought up to their level without any effort on my part. If it's truly worth anything, it takes a LOT of work. If you really want something, you don't give up.
Also, I'm sure that I can do things that many non-autistics can't, and vice versa.

zikasilver1: "Also, I'm sure that I can do things that many non-autistics can't, and vice versa."
This is diversity; the wide range of skills, abilities and differences that human beings have. We are each unique, and thus have unique abilities and disabilities.


nutsndoltz "Why not demand to be brought up to their level? Why should someone have to work harder than someone else to achieve even less than someone else?"


Also, I've temporarily put comments on the youtube vid to be by approval only, so that I can get some sleep. Otherwise I'll be up all night refreshing the page to monitor it all.

sooo, puberty wasn't that bad for you?

I'm trying to determine whether I'm reading what you're saying right.


Oh yes, comments are open again for the video, but so far it's been very quiet. huh.

If I were Catholic, my next confessional would be this:

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have committed an original sin; I have poked a troll with a spork."

What exactly is the difference between trolling and simply differing in opinion? The way I figured things worked was that trolls are in it to provoke for the pure purpose to provoke. This guy probably simply has a strong opinion, which is not unusual in a discussion about a controversial subject. That doesn't make someone a troll. I'm a bit on the fence myself, but I can see the point in his arguments about taking away autism for people who have both autism and mental retardation to deal with.

Well, I've named him my Troll. Whether or not he's a real troll is speculation. However, he's very determined to spam the conversation going on with the same points, then attempting to switch topics, seemingly to be continuing a discussion without it going anywhere and without considering what we're saying.

To be honest, the only reasons why I haven't blocked him is that I believe in free speech, even if I disagree with the comments being made, and that I find it an opportunity to try and understand "the other side". Even though he's amazingly starting to wear at my patience.

The thing is that from his arguments, he considers autism to BE a form of mental retardation. While I know that autism can cause someone to APPEAR to be ret*d due to various reasons , it's not the same as actually BEING ret*d. This, I believe, is a crucial difference.

Right now, as he is not autistic and to his knowledge has never known an autistic individual, I'm questioning as to the nature of the research he has done on autism.

According to wikipedia the amount of people with classic autism who also have mental retardation is somewhere between 25% and 70%. (this is a crazy range) If we dismiss the upper 45% as people without mental retardation but with severe communication handicaps, we still remain with 1/4th of the kanner autists who have essentially two disabilities...their autism and their mental retardation. I found myself wondering if the theoretical miracle cure wouldn't simply make things just a little bit easier for them.

I too have been trying to understand "the other side" and came to wonder, if my parents were to approach me today and tell me: "Honey, when you were 1.5 year old, we had you subjected to an experimental treatment that severely diminished your autism and without which you'd probably be in an institution today. We hope you're not too angry." I have a strong suspicion I wouldn't be angry...as I'd see the way I am now as the real me.

I believe personality murder is a strong term...but is it appropriate? If a "cure" would be administered at young age, I don't think it would be. I believe a personality is not something you are born with and is not something that is predetermined. Each person is born with certain character traits (that are unrelated to one's neurological makeup) and the personality we eventually develop is the sum of our character traits mixed with everything we experience during our development process into an adult. By that logic, you can't really murder a personality that hasn't completely formed yet.

One could argue that taking a young child out of an abusive household and placing him/her into a supportive foster household is personality murder. Ditto for arranging psychiatric support for an autistic child at an early age. Both cases involve interventions that severely affect the experiences a child goes through during its development into an adult. Both cases involve interventions that will have a strong effect on the final personality that is being developed. Parents, educators, case managers and counselors continuously affect the way a child's personality develops. So is intervention personality murder or is it simply replacing one possible outcome with another possible outcome?

Wikipedia isn't exactly a reliable source of information, given the ability to edit articles.

Considering that I wasn't diagnosed until 2003, I don't think I would be in that sort of situation, and I'd be rather pissed myself if that happened. Actually.... the doctors, when my brother was something like 6, told my mom that my brother would never learn how to read and it was okay if he never amounted to anything, encouraging her to give him up to an institution. In Grade 6, he learned how to read and is now doing his Master's of History. Doctors aren't always right.


I do know that "personality death" is a strong term. I'm purposely using strong terms to get my point across.
By the "personality by nurture only" theory, then yes, intervening at an early age would not be killing the personality, but developing a better outcome. However, there are personality types that are genetic in nature, to which we respond TO nurturing and environment. As Autism is neurological and genetic, it's a part of our NATURE, and thus determines a good chunk of our personality. And so, from the moment of awareness, there is personality that continues to develop throughout life. Therefore, "curing" autism is a bit like performing lobotomy on someone who might not need it.

The percentages I got from the article had sources listed behind them which seemed reputable enough to me, so the mere fact that wikipedia can be edited (or the fact there are counterexamples) wasn't a reason for me to see the percentages as being false. (and heck, the range leaves quite a bit of room for error)

I disagree with the notion that a hypothetical cure would wipe out autistic personality traits that a person was born with, because I don't believe in "autistic personality traits". Yes, a person is born with certain character traits. I acknowledged that in my previous post. However, I don't think those traits have anything to do with autism.

ASD's are not personality disorders, they're development disorders. Autism is like a set of glasses that can't be taken off. It determines how you view and experience the world, not how you react to what autism causes you to experience. If two severely autistic children were to have EXACTLY the same case and degree of autism and were placed in the EXACT same stressful situation, yet one was born with more aggressive personality traits and the other had a more passive character, the first child would react by deconstructing the room while the other child would respond to the same situation by assuming the fetal position and covering his head with his arms.

So no, I don't think a cure would erase any personality traits...the differences would merely come from those traits responding to an altered experience of the world around the person.

So then quote the sources, but not Wikipedia. I happen to know that quoting Wikipedia in an academic essay is considered plagiarism and results in an automatic zero. So please don't quote wiki.


I never said "autistic personality traits", only that autism influences our personality. As a developmental disorder, it effects our development in all aspects, right? Which includes the development of personality due to the way in which we think and react to our senses, environment, the nurturing of our parents and the world around us. It's not just Nurture or Nature, but a combination of both.

Also remember, a lot of the times when some of us think of "cure" we mean to "normalize" us, which insults and belittles the achievements of all autistic peoples everywhere by more or less dismissing them as not mattering.

Maybe Personality murder isn't exactly the right term for it, but it is a sort of murder, in terms of destroying a part of human diversity and a part of a human being. With children, they have a lot of developing to do, so to automatically assume that they need to be cured at an early age denies them the opportunity to develop their own skills and abilities through experience, never mind the types of unique perspectives that I have witnessed even on this community.

Personally, I think it's rather like playing god, which I don't think any human being has the right to do.