Autism Speaks No Longer Seeking Cure

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https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2016/10/14/autism-speaks-no-longer-cure/22884/

Now it's just a matter of time for autism to be removed from DSM.

The thing is, as a society, we dug a big messy hole for ourselves by shifting autism from education into healthcare, and now we will be forced to shift it all back into education.

Bob Dylan, this year's Nobel Prize winner in Literature, wrote in his "Blowin' in the Wind" song:

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?

The answer is: sooner than you think.

While it is nice (I suppose) to see Autism Speaks move on this -- I think honestly it is driven by the fact that the parents who congregate there who once had little ones now have older ones who need support as older children and adults.

I cannot imagine this will have any impact on the DSM, which is I assume a good thing for people who need insurance to pay for speech, OT and other therapies. In addition, if it removed from the DSM, I would guess that educational supports would disappear as well.

I get that your desire to have it removed from the DSM has to do with wanting autism to seen as a perfectly normal deviation -- much as homosexual orientation used to be thought of as deviant and now is not and was removed.

The difference is that many people do need supports and those supports would go bye, bye if autism were removed from the DSM. I know you like to say that there are no disabilities connected to autism, but that contradicts the fact that no matter how perfectly one parents autistic kids, some really do need help.

Edited for syntax

Autism, in many cases, involves some sort of disability. It would be tragic if it were removed from the DSM.

I'm gay and autistic.

I live in a liberal area and my sexuality isn't really a thing. My autism is disabling no matter what I do, and I exhaust myself compensating.

I also work with autistic children who most definitely need educational supports. They're no hyperlexic or geniuses-yet-to-be-revealed, they're kids who need support. (And guess what, one of them really hates learning phonics, writing and maths but absolutely loves supported imaginary play and communication and language sessions.)

Curious....

If Autism gets pulled from the DSM V...

Would that mean no more IEPs and only 504 plans (which happens for Otherwise Health Impaired, and behavioral issues)?

The issue with the DSM related to autism is that it is not root cause based. It is rather a long checklist of potential behaviors and symptoms. If the patient gets enough checks, he/she is diagnosed. It is obviously possible to treat those symptoms with therapies and medications to help the patient but without understanding root cause it is impossible to cure the patient unless something happens by chance.

Autism has a myriad of causes and will likely require an eventual myriad of cures.

It is my belief that social communication and sometimes intellectual and physical challenges cause individuals to behave in similar ways that lead to an autism diagnosis even when there are hundreds if not thousands of root causes.

It is also clear that some people who are diagnosed just have peculiar personalities and development paths and nothing that really requires a "cure" other that to have society accept them for who they are.

As I said, "the answer is blowin' in the wind," but no one is listening. Ha! Mother Nature taking care of her business, and I can only sit back and watch.

Baby turtles are born ready to be independent. They race to the sea, jump into the ocean, and start to swim and fetch food for themselves, on day one. However, if you raise a human child the way you raise a baby turtle, uh, good luck.

Please, show me, one, just one single parent out there, anywhere in the world, that has made and posted cartoonish video clips like I have posted here.

CASE CLOSED.

If you have a child under 5 years old and you don't have a magnetic drawing board, you are kidding yourself. If your child is furthermore the pro-video type and you don't have "Explain Everything" app (or equivalent), again, you are kidding yourself.

Go back, google, and read my postings on "Hallelujah Mountains" and the "Yogurt is yummy, because it has honey." Look at the p-adic number video that I have posted, too. Sure, you add 1+2+4+..., every single finite partial sum is positive. You will naturally conclude that the result on the right-hand-side can NEVER be a negative number. Yet it surely can be a negative number. Autism should stay in DSM, they say, because that's the ONLY way of getting support. Sure, 1+2+4+.... = -1 would be a lie, too. Yet, it is not. Go back and revisit your assumptions, and see why some people can see things that no one else can see. Why some people are decades ahead, while other people just can never catch up.

Sure, you tell some people 70 years ago that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, and they won't believe you. You tell some people 70 years ago that communism is wrong, and they won't believe you. Galileo was sent to inquisition for saying the earth goes around the sun. Gell-Mann's quark paper was rejected by Physical Review Letters, Zweig couldn't even give his talk at CERN because the CERN's director general censored the talk, and furthermore instructed the secretary never to type up Zweig's paper. Today, those people that stood on the wrong side of the history probably wish they could have done otherwise, but it's a bit too late, isn't it? Me, I just take it easy. It's all just some good stories to tell your grandchildren's generation.

Today, our society is raising autistic children the way we raise neurotypical children. It's basically like mommy and daddy turtles trying to raise human babies. You are doomed to failure. A different species needs a different way of development. So why are we raising autistic children the way we raise neurotypical children?!? The sad thing is, we don't learn. Millions of children have perished, millions more will perish. "The answer is blowin' in the wind." For those that insist in raising their kids the traditionally way, go ahead. I am not the one complaining about my children. I am not the one complaining about myself. Autism is one single issue with one single solution: modulation. Let's see: hyperactivity? gone. Lack of eye contact? gone. Tantrums? trivial. Sensory issues? gone. Verbalization? no problem. Making friends? No problem. Anxiety? a voice recorder solves it all. You go down the path of forced learning and drugs, you forget to develop the brains of these children, from things that they are good at, from things that they enjoy. Your teaching is pure noise to them. They cannot decode your signals. These children then grow up into adults that need a "lifetime support" at the expense of others. The way how we teach our autistic children today is no different than placing them in solitary confinement. Check and google for the effects of solitary confinement, and you will see how similar it is to most autistic people out there. Thank goodness we have outlawed solitary confinement for children. But we haven't outlawed our current way of raising autistic children. That's the problem.

Stare at this image of dew drops on a leaf, and think, why you or your children have failed to develop.



Parents make decisions, parents live with the consequences of their decisions. Just remember, when the night falls, no need to cry. Also remember, somewhere, out there, other autistic children are thriving and smiling everyday, not because they have better genetic disposition, but because their parents have gone where no one has gone before, and reached the final frontier.