The idea of an AS cure...

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Is about as feasible as an NT cure.

Just felt like I had to put that out there.

I agree with you. You can't cure something that's not a disease.

There is another way to look at it.

Your personality, how you think, etc. is part of being on the spectrum; it is an integral part of what makes you, you (not a typo).

The idea of a cure is to cure the difficulties that come along with ASD disorders so if they can lead happy productive lives. Despite the fact that everyone in this sub forum acts like AS is a great thing, in the real world (and the other forums here) I see people that want to work, want to have friends, want to date, but can't.

It might not be possible, it might be possible, we won't know if we dont' try.

I'm with thewhitrbbit on this one.

I'm also tired of reading the same old themes that express a love of AS by means of using selective dumbwits in the World such as Beavis and Butthead as their standard reference point for non-aspies in order to claim ones own sense of superiority.

Just because some aspies find happy refuge by shutting themselves off from the rest of the population, that does not give them the right to insist that all other aspies should continue to suffer and be denied the chance of possible treatment of the most distressing symptoms.

Last edited by Chris71 on 18 Oct 2012, 6:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

i agree with the sentiment here,

i dont agreew with calling it a cure, it is symptom managemnt medically speaking and a far cry from any definiton of the word cure i would care to use.

I don't want symptom management. That means I have to take pills for the rest of my life. I want a cure.

no symptom management can aslo be a surgery to decrease the size of an enlargened prostate for an example, it wil still continue to grow but you remove the symptoms causing the discomfort.

a one time treatment that removed the negative effects but didnt rewire the differences is strictly speaking only symptom management, just like behavioral therapy is, nothing to do with pills neccesarily.

a cure implies the removal of the cause, which it wouldnt be.

but this is all semantics, only reason i bang on about it is that from what i can see a lot of the disagreement in the "cure" debate comes from definitions.

Agreed

I sometimes wonder if the pro cure advocates even understand what Autism is.

Autism isn't like bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia, caused by a chemical imbalance. A 'cure' would involve surgically restructuring and reorganising your entire brain architecture. Its scientifically infeasible and a complete pie in the sky. Even if the surgery was possible I suspect the risk of death would greatly outweigh the so-called benefits.

Thats ignoring the fact that a cure is to imply there is something wrong with being autistic. Which is exactly what would happen if we lived in a world where a cure existed, we would be treated as 'sick'. There would be an onus placed on us from all levels of society to have life threatening surgery against our wish. Autism isn't the enemy but the ignorance surrounding it is. Its every bit as hysterical, ridiculous and undesirable as the movement to 'cure' homosexuality.

We don't need a cure; we need a country.

Actually I work around disability services 40 hours a week so I do know what autism is.

Anti-cure people are acting like creationists. "Oh there's no need to research, that's just how it is." Maybe a cure is infesable with today's technology but what about tomorrow? Maybe a cure is something we don't traditionally think of as a cure.

The point that anti-cure people forget is that we won't know what a cure will be until we invent it, if we invent it, if it's even possible.

I see ignorance and autism as equal enemies. All the education and tolerance in the world won't fix certain things.

A country for autistic, that would be very interesting indeed.

If you understand what autism is you wouldn't be talking as if its a bacterial, chemical or viral activity that can be medically treated.

'Curing' would necessitate removing someone's brain, rearranging it like a rubix cube and placing it back into the persons skull without upsetting the delicate reciptors that connect it to the spine. To use a space exploration analogy, in terms of technology and knowledge it would be the medical equivalent of a manned return exploration to one of the outer constellations. With an en route manned landing and EVA on the surface of the planet Venus. It would possibly even require brain transplants which raises up another completely different pandora's box on the ethics of personality and identity. For that matter, if you 'remove' a person's autism how do you a quantify that it is even the same person? It is an integral part of our unique personality tapestries that make them who they are.

Autism isn't nor does it have to be an enemy. Sure it has negative aspects but It encompasses many positive traits and advanced abilties that have led to wonderful things many of us take for granted today. What a boring world it would be if we were all the same. Variety is as they say. the spice of life.

Thomas

1.) I'm thinking in the long term. You say it can't be done, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but who knows what the future will hold.

2.) People like Bill Gates are the exception to the rule. He got lucky. John Elder Robison got lucky. Temple Grandin found success, but I debate if she truly got lucky on the level of Gates and JER because she said she has given up relationships because of her AS. Yes certain traits of autism, in the right intensity, with the right surrounding variables, can make someone a huge success. But for every 1 Bill Gates, how many languish on unemployment? How many sit at home on the weekend not by their own choice?

You are ignoring the bad parts of Autism and Aspergers, I am advocating a cure that will keep the good parts, the things that made Bill Gates great, the things that made JER great, but will prevent the things that almost kept JER from ending up unemployed and alone.

We do not need a cure for autism but rather we need affirmative action in employment.

I agree with this. We're not broken at all. We need more employment. We need employees to hire us. We need employees to be educated so that they can see the benefits of hiring us. We need employers to give us a chance and we need job centres for people who are on the spectrum with staff that will educate employees.

I also don't want the Jenny McCarthys of the world messing with my big, clean and beautiful autistic brain with their dirty hands, pills, diets and cocktails.