Two Questions Implicit In The Idea Of A Cure

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I posted this on my blog: Barefoot Amongst Birch Trees and I was hoping that, if I posted it here, you guys could help me untangle the following two questions:

Do disabilities need to be fixed?

Does fixing a disability change who the person is?

So, with those questions to ponder on, here it is.

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Also posting this over at Wrong Planet.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the notion of “curing” Autism. I’ll try to organize my thoughts on it here.

First of all. Autism is not something I or anyone else just “has”. It is not something that can be put on or taken off, not something that can be separated from who I am. You cure my Autism, you cure me. I don’t NEED curing. I LIKE who I am. I LIKE existing.

Sometimes, to NTs, autism seems so overwhelming that they can’t tell who the child “underneath it all” is. That doesn’t mean that Autism is holding them prisoner. It means that Autism is such a different way of being that it can be completely incomprehensible to NTs, just as someone speaking Spanish won’t understand a Hebrew speaker. But let me tell you something else–despite what many people wish to believe, there is no normal child hiding inside an autistic. What you see is what you get.

The Autistic brain is wired fundamentally differently from the NT brain, and if “curing” means changing that, then “curing” means changing who and what a person is, and I can’t support that.

But if by “curing” we mean easing some of the challenges that come with Autism…I’m hard pressed to see why that is a bad thing. One aspect of Autism is disability. The whole point of a disability is that it hinders you, makes life harder for you, is a negative. If we could regulate the senses, improve the cognition, and polish the social skills of an Autistic person without taking away what fundamentally makes that person who she is, I think that would be a good thing.

Or would it?

Let’s look at the “triad of impairments” that make up Autism: Social and Emotional difficulties, Language and Communication difficulties, and Flexibility of Thought. http://www.nas.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=458&a=5489 If you solve all of those, there is nothing left. No more Autism, and a different person. We’re back where we started. Take away my Autism, and I am no longer Julia.

I’m not saying that Autism is fun or easy. I’m not saying that it isn’t a disability. I am challenging myself to wonder what would happen if all disabilities were cured. If Autism didn’t exist. If extremes in natural variation weren’t allowed because other people could not understand.

I guess, if I am ever to be able to satisfactorily answer this question, I must answer two implicit ones: do disabilities need fixing? And does fixing a disability change the person?

No one wants to talk about this?

The one thing that you might not have considered is that you are NOT your autism. Truth be told, none of us here really know what it's like to be NT any more than NT's know what it's like to be autistic.

SO discussion of a cure is pretty pointless. Who knows... I might enjoy talking with people as much as organising my collection of anthropology books.

Last edited by Izaak on 05 May 2009, 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's a tough one...

I have relatives with severe physical disabilities and pain who would like to be cured. Removing these disabilities would improve these people's qualities of life, so would make them happier. They are unhappy being in pain.

These people I know have frequent objective medical tests to monitor their the condition of their bodies. Their disabilities are obvious and physical: there's no doubt that these people have severely limited mobility and chronic pain. X-rays, blood tests and so on are clear medical evidence of these physical difficulties.

As for me, these relatives don't believe that I'm "disabled".
I can walk around and I'm not in severe pain.
There's certainly nothing visible that would suggest a disability apart from say my glasses.

I accept that I'm short-sighted and that's a disability.
It's physically obvious and medically testable.
Opticians help me to correct for and look after my sight.
Having normal sight would certainly be more convenient for me: I wouldn't have to put my glasses on or contact lenses in. There's no question that my having normal sight would improve my quality of life and therefore my self esteem.

As for AS, my relatives don't honestly believe that I have it because it's based on subjective assessment. I had a subjective behavioural assessment many years ago which found AS traits. There is a lot of controversy over whether I'm strictly AS or not.

I have had social difficulties during my life, but I've also had academic successes. I don't want to change my personality as I don't think it's all bad, in fact, there have been times where I have thoroughly enjoyed being me.

I wonder if perhaps being hyper-aware of detail in the physical environment comes at the price of being less aware of the social environment?

I wonder if there isn't some kind of "trade-off" going on.

There's also the question of culture and perhaps social outgoing people being more accepted than less social people.

Perhaps how well one functions depends on the environment that one is placed in.

For instance, I could feel "disabled" in one environment, but highly enabled in another.

Is that really a disability in my case?

When does a disability become just an inconvenience?

There's also the issue of others not believing in "invisible" disabilities. For a while after my assessment I didn't believe in them either.

Perhaps I would have believed more if there had been a clear objective medical test and evidence for my "condition".

its probably because there's been a few 'cure threads' very recently on this board/GAD,and users are staying to the same ones instead of repeating it in every thread.


only if the person with the disability/ies wants it.


in a way it would- if that disability has had a profound effect on a persons life,as removing a disability from a person would be changing a lot of things,depending on what was fixed it could be as impairing as what they were trying to cure.
For those who have grown up with their disability,it would be a bigger change removing it than for those who aquired a disability later in life.
Removing the impairments of the disability,would make a lot more sense than removing the disability for those who have never known any different.

I just read your post Almandite. I will say, you have addressed this issue in a splendid manner. It would make the basis for a great research paper. I really like your reasoning.

Ok...let me answer your questions based on my opinion (I am diagnosed with AS):

1. Do disabilities need to be fixed? No. I do not believe they do. They need to be understood by those around him/her so that an understanding and an acceptance of the differences can be tolerated. As we know, most NTs do not understand those of us who are autistic. And...as I heard recently at an autism talk, "You've met one person with autism...you've met one person with autism." No two of us with autism are alike. We have to tolerate each other's differences if we are to understand each other.

2. Does fixing a disablility change who the person is? Yes. As you stated, take these so-called "disabilities" away from this "difference" and you have a different person.

Some of my thoughts:

I favor the term "difference" rather than "disorder."

I think of people trying to cure autism as Dr. Walter Freeman in the mid-20th century lobotomizing psychiatric patients. Wrong.

I live with someone who thinks that even low-functioning autism can be cured with natural remedies and detoxification. To an extent, I agree, since I went through the detox, but she thinks that I can be cured of Asperger's. As I'm typing this, I'm getting all tense in my chest; it makes me mad. She doesn't understand that I generally like who I am; I just wish I could be more stable. Unfortunately, she thinks that the Asperger's is what's keeping me unstable. It's not. It's the fact that my personality basically split and fractured when I became sick with systemic lupus a few years ago. That I want to be cured of, but not the AS. It's made me who I am, and I like who I am.

It depends on what you mean by "disability".

If you mean a condition that prevents the person who has it from doing things that they want to do, then yes, it would be good to fix it and make the person "enabled".

If you mean a condition that prevents the person who has it from doing things that other people think the person should want to do, but the person doesn't feel they're missing out on anything, then that doesn't need to be fixed.

Of course, with ASD being such a spectrum, and with spectrumers having all different personalities and goals and desires aside from their ASD, there's no single answer to whether ASD is or is not "disabling".

I don't feel disabled. I don't want to be fixed.



As KoR said, the onset of the disability is a factor. I work with people who have a certain kind of acquired disorder which varies in severity from very low-functioning to almost no loss of function. Probably all of these people would like to be fixed. They know what they could do before, and want to do those things again.

I don't have a "before". If I were fixed, I would be some strange alternate me. I don't know whether that me would be better or worse. I just know it would be different.