statement in WP's top news story.

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The statement reads as follows:

"From its inception, (Autism Speaks) always has viewed autism as a genetic condition, and it has provided vast amounts of money to fund genetic research studies with the express goal of developing a prenatal test for autism."

Is the bit about eugenics being their express goal true? Is there evidence that can back this up?

Hmm.

It kinda sounds good. Sometimes I wish I was never born.

They made a prenatal test for Downs Syndrome. Now about 90% of Downs Syndrome fetuses are aborted.
Autism Speaks does its best to make all forms of autism look about as severe as Down's Syndrome....Now they are making a prenatal test for autism...
Sounds likes eugenics to me. Kinda like with Hitler.

"...I wish I was never born."

I wonder if a wingless angel called Clarence will show up and start feeding me BS.

...no, wait. It's not Christmas. I guess I'm screwed.

But have they ever stated eugenics as a goal?

I don't think that matters if eugenics would be the result.

yes. i can't point to any citations at the moment, but i could probably find some pretty easy. when i was first doing research into the autism community like two years ago i found a lot of references, straight from autism speaks and stuff that anti-autismspeaks people dug up, that "provided vast amounts of money to fund genetic research studies with the express goal of developing a prenatal test for autism." was a, or the, primary goal of autism speaks.

there was one of their propaganda videos i saw, it was mothers talking about how they wished their kids weren't born, how they were unbearably defective. one woman said she kept thinking about driving her car off a bridge with her autistic son. they've been working for a while to get people ready for the idea of a "cure", when the only cure out there is going to be the prenatal test.

i'm curious, where did you find that statement in the original post?

here's some stuff from their site about prenatal and genetic testing:

These scientists measured maternal antibody reactivity to the fetus during mid-pregnancy in mothers who had participated in a prenatal screening program in California. They found that mothers whose children developed autism had higher levels of this immune marker during pregnancy. Similar results were reported from a group at Johns Hopkins University. Autism Speaks continues to fund a wide range of research on early detection of autism based on both behavioral and biological markers, including how these immune markers interact with genes identified as risk factors.
- http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/sci ... e_2008.php

Autism Speaks also encourages scientists to work together by supporting a number of international collaborative programmes including the Autism Genome Project, Brain Bank for Autism, and the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS).
- http://www.autismspeaks.org.uk/frequent ... tions.html

Launched in 2004, the Autism Genome Project, or AGP, is the largest study ever conducted to find the genes associated with inherited risk for autism. Many of the world's leading genetics researchers pooled their resources and used a promising new technology, the DNA microarray, to scan the human genome in the search for the genetic causes of this devastating disorder, which continue to elude the medical field as prevalence rises.
- http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/res ... roject.php

The first phase of the effort, the assembly of the largest autism DNA collection ever and whole genome linkage scan, was funded by Autism Speaks and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. ... “By combining cutting edge CNV analysis with the more traditional linkage and association [analyses], the scientists now have a promising new experimental framework to look for autism susceptibility genes,” said Andy Shih, Autism Speaks chief science officer.
- http://www.autismspeaks.org/press/agp_results.php (has lots of other interesting on the genetic findings of phase 1 of the AGP)

The project in which the family is participating is called the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange. It started in the late 1990s as a private effort financed by the Cure Autism Now Foundation. At that time, the Los Angeles advocacy group was begging scientists to do more research on autism genes and was finding that a major obstacle was a lack of genetic samples, says foundation founder Jon Shestack .... But if the pieces do ever come together, some researchers and advocates envision a day when fetuses or babies could be tested for autism risks and treated before the damage was done.
- http://www.usatoday.com/life/2004-01-12 ... main_x.htm

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i'm sure if i spent longer looking i'd find more and better, and i didn't even look at the autism advocacy websites - a lot come up when you google 'autism speaks funds prenatal' and i bet some of them have well documented info.

Thats not the feeling of alot lot of aspies, me included.

i keep reading 'cause this stuff fascinates me... here's why (besides the Down's precedent) all this genetics research will only go towards a prenatal test:

from the government's Human Genome Project website ( http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/H ... rapy.shtml ) :
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved any human gene therapy product for sale. Current gene therapy is experimental and has not proven very successful in clinical trials. Little progress has been made since the first gene therapy clinical trial began in 1990. In 1999, gene therapy suffered a major setback with the death of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger. Jesse was participating in a gene therapy trial for ornithine transcarboxylase deficiency (OTCD). He died from multiple organ failures 4 days after starting the treatment. His death is believed to have been triggered by a severe immune response to the adenovirus carrier.
...
Problems with integrating therapeutic DNA into the genome and the rapidly dividing nature of many cells prevent gene therapy from achieving any long-term benefits. Patients will have to undergo multiple rounds of gene therapy.
...
Anytime a foreign object is introduced into human tissues, the immune system is designed to attack the invader. The risk of stimulating the immune system in a way that reduces gene therapy effectiveness is always a potential risk. Furthermore, the immune system's enhanced response to invaders it has seen before makes it difficult for gene therapy to be repeated in patients.
...
Conditions or disorders that arise from mutations in a single gene are the best candidates for gene therapy. Unfortunately, some the most commonly occurring disorders, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, and diabetes, are caused by the combined effects of variations in many genes. Multigene or multifactorial disorders such as these would be especially difficult to treat effectively using gene therapy.

- so, little progress in 19 years, rapidly dividing cells (like in a fetus) is a roadblock, immune response to gene therapy is deadly (will women volunteer to have it in their uterus? the many times it would be necessary?), and multigene disorders (which autism is supposed to be) are right out. there's only one cure for autism...