It is not about what one parent said. Autism Speaks is not what the groups who try to slander them to get attention say. They are a non profit chartered to raise funds for scientific research.
While it is true they are only allowed to exist by the IRS, the second most evil group on Earth, who funds the first, Congress, I still blame the public for getting what they deserve.
Along this Axis of Evil, Congress, IRS, Autism Speaks, Alex, there is a zero point somewhere where where acts cease being evil, and start to counterbalance the Evil Overlords of Darkness.
I would place Alex and John Robison on the plus side.
It is point of view, and I remember the Dark Ages of long ago, up to 1974 autistics could be locked up for life without cause or trial. Compared, Autism Speaks is a shining beacon of hope. What existed in the last century, the Dark Ninties, was a call for medical supervised distruction through mass drugging for autistics, and reprocessing them to recover the metals.
Autism Speaks did consolidate the industry, and found the metal extraction part not profitable. Where drug companies would give large cash kickbacks to Professionals for pushing their pills, they wanted to control research, and refused to fund Autism Speaks, who asked too many questions.
Doing a Who's Who in Autism, which is what I see Alex doing, we know who the big players are. The Media does do some lightweight autism stories, but ignores what is going on because it is boring science, done by a bunch of eggheads who their audience would not relate to.
The other news source, all too common, comes from those who wish to stir up mobs to run the blood of grandmothers in the streets for walking for support of continued research, and Death Camps.
Some people can give blood thirsty mobs a bad name.
So along comes Alex, with camera, offering a no spin documentry style, who has a real interest in autism, and a social blindness that keeps him from seeing egghead do gooders as being strange, everyone is strange to an autistic. This applied Mind Blindness works, Alex is focused on the camera, the interview proceeds showing the real person and intent, just as they see themselves in the mirror.
They see themselves as being fairly portraied, Alex gets to interview some of the top people in a field of his interest, which is much better than most student films. I think we have been moving out of The Dark Ages of Autism, but looking back at these interviews in ten years might show just how dim witted humans are, all of us. So recording a point in time in a rapidly changing field is a worthy cause.
As for the call for the democratic social control of other people's obsessions, obsessions do not work like that. They do not even ask the permission of the obsessed.
It is a gift from the gods, who are easily offended, and often bored,
That John Robison is on the inside, it is about time. Humans can have, wealth, education, power, but they all still have to turn to a mechanic to make things run. Mechanics are born, rare, and needed.
Mechanics are not like humans, even the best trained only replaces parts in hope the problem will go away, an expensive method. Mechanics have the gift of spotting the one thing that is not working out of hundreds, that causes all to fail. Be it a motorcycle, a top of the line car, an aircraft, or a major non profit, they all have the same problem, designed and maintained by humans who lack a view of the whole in function.
When they try to explain what is, they say things like my corporation is going clunk wirr, clunk wirr, but only when I try to speed up and change lanes. They are not good at troubleshooting, or even using english and thought at the same time. The world needs mechanics.
I have been following the Max Planck Institute Neanderthal Genome study. They have proven that about a fifth of Earth is a Neanderthal breed. Other Science has not caught up, to them all humans are identical. Neanderthal is only one mix, there could be more than twenty, there are no humans. What is normal for one sub species is alien to another.
In another decade we will have a very different view of the mental landscape. While everything up to now has beeen based on different from the norm, we now know norm does not exist. The modified Jungian personality profile sorter may just be measuring sub species traits.
All historic periods are misguided and delusional, it does correct, but only to a new era. For now, Autism Speaks is funding the research that show the interface of genetics and brain function, for the wrong reasons and in total blindness. That is always the case, but we do keep the good stuff.
Like Max Planck, they are doing the work I want done, and I do not have to pay for it. No one else even comes close to the broad studies they fund. I will support curing autism, I do not think it possible, but it does bring in the money to continue much more important research.
History shows that all progress was caused by misguided people doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, and accidently coming up with good stuff. It helps if they are well funded.
Babbage's Differential Engine never got finished, but as a side issue, it advanced Metalurgy and Machine Tools, which made the industrial revolution possible.
11 Aug 2010, 5:58 am
