Aspies For Freedom

yeah, that about sums it up.

and you honestly think it would not be mandatory?

get real.

anything which cures this "awful, misery causing, life destroying, expensive disease" is going to be rammed down our throat's/veins quicker than you can say "human rights infringment"

really?

the Scientists are being sponsered by generimegapharmocorp. they are in it to make money.

and as for the comment about the LFAs?
i suggest you have a word with Amanda.

as i said.
have a word with Amanda.

she is non-verbal, but I must admit that at times I feel slightly threatened by her sheer intelligence and the way she can put an idea across very concisely.

and selfish?
perhaps. it is a possibility.
but its a surprising number of us that do not want a cure.
as far as i can see, you are here to post against the very core ideals of this forum.

"not talking is not the same as having nothing to say"

For starters, autistic traits would no longer be allowed for in the workplace - if a "cure" was available, the option for reasonable accomodation would be taken away.

Secondly, most parents would give an available cure to their children - probably while they were too young to understand what it meant.

Third, as you say above, funded social services would be taken away. For people unable to work, especially considering there would no longer be reasonable workplace accomodation, the choice may be between cure or starvation.

Fourth, those who were able to survive the other three points would still be ostracised by society for their choice, and placed under immense social pressure to conform.

Right now, not modifying the workplace to reasonably accommodate an autistic person would be considered discrimination.

If the cure option was available, the behavior would be seen as the persons choice, and firing them for this behavior would no longer be considered discrimination.

It's pretty well established that the qualities involved in getting a job are entirely separate to the qualities involved in keeping a job.

It's true that parents do "what they think is right" for autistic children - unfortunately, parents can justify just about anything in the name of what they think is right.

I don't see this as merely an "our job to educate" issue - I believe that drastic alteration of neurology is unethical in and of itself, and as such, should not be permitted.

In any case, my original statement was that society would force a cure on us - and it seems that you have acknowledged that it would "probably" be forced on autistic children.

Many autistic people need specific kinds of support to survive. My point here seems to have been reiterated - their unemployment status would be seen as voluntary, thus creating the choice between cure and starvation.

It's great that your political ideology would still leave a decent level of support for autistics, but in reality this would not happen.

Very true. Now imagine how much worse this would become if autistic people were seen to be choosing the way they act.



I should also point out that I believe that a real cure would be an impossibility - after all, autistic people have structurally different brains, not merely differing chemical levels.

Generally, when I debate the cure idea, it is because I believe the myth of the cure is damaging, not because I believe that the cure is going to happen.

The majority of autism fundraising money currently goes into cure research, rather than support services. If this could be redirected into something that would actually help autistic people, rather than aiming to destroy them, things would be much better for autistics.

It seems that you agree with most of what I have said - our only difference appears to be that you see no issue with someone being forced into personality altering surgery in order to gain basic human rights.

Reasonable accomodation in the workplace isn't really too much to ask, and it's also reasonable to disallow parents from authorising irreversable brain surgery on their children. Having the cure option available would make these two things impossible.

It's true, but a much more effective way to help us understand how the brain works is to research how the brain works.

The ethical issue with removing "autism" via this kind of surgery is that it's core personality that is being altered. If it were merely skill levels, it wouldn't be ab issue, and research into "combining the benefits of autism and NTness" would not be such a disturbing concept.

Besides which, it's quite easy to combine the benefits of autism and neurotypicalism: Find one autistic person and one neurotypical person, then ask them to work together.

True - the phrase I used was "society would force it on us". Economic forces are a part of our current society.

It doesn't quite work that way - employers do not wish to make allowances for individuals, and will not do so without justification. If a cure was available, they could justify not making reasonable accomodations. As it is, they cannot.

And again, I agree that the autism cure is "not controversial to the population at large", and will bear "no ill will by society". That's the problem.

There's plenty of positive goals researchers could be funded to engage in, and no reason that a researcher couldn't examine the brains of NTs and Autistics regardless of what was being researched.

Some examples of positive research would be the cause of increased prevalence of seizure activity in autistic people, cognitive development strategies, etc.

This doesn't make much sense. Do you mean "As a transhumanist I do not have an issue with altering core personality"? Or possibly "As a transhumanist I do not believe in the existence of core personality"?

Autism influences every aspect of a persons personality. Remove autism, and you have a different person.

I know - I was indicating that there's no need to do so.

I don't really think that's necessary - if someone's open enough to talk, then we may as well talk to them. After all, we have to influence society somehow, and one person at a time is better than nothing.

Many people simply don't have all the facts, have never been exposed to the ideas before, or are simply in a panic about their children. These things can pass.

It's only the ones that are actually insulting about it that should be avoided entirely.

That's fair enough - I was referring to society as a whole.

To clarify, I don't believe anyone will pass a law making a cure mandatory. I do, however, think that if one existed, society would find a thousand little ways to enforce it.

True, but cut the research funding, and the problem goes away. I think it's entirely possible to convince parents that the funding is better spent on things that will actually help their children.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, I don't actually believe the cure is realistic - at least, I don't believe that that degree if genetic alteration will be available in our lifetime. The reason I debate against the cure is due to the dangers of the myth of the cure.

The original point that prompted this debate was that if a cure was available, society would force it on us. You don't appear to disagree with this.

Also, the fact that the researchers think the goal is noble is irrelevant. If a researcher has a point to add to the pro/anti cure debate, I'd look at it - but them merely thinking that they're right isn't worth talking about.

It all depends on how you define identity, I guess. To me, identity involves interests, methodology of thought, ethical systems, the criteria for evaluating other people... All these things would be drastically altered by switching neurotypes.

Granted, these things can evolve naturally - but each new thing is built upon the old, which makes it very different...

Yep - or at least, they're a significant chunk of it. The other portion is government funding, which is also influenced by popular opinion.

As I've said many times over, this is exactly my point.

I haven't called the character of the researchers into question.

At the end of the day, the cure ideology is only dangerous if it would encourage others to also support the cure viewpoint.

GnosisRoads, it would appear that we are not going to agree, as the basic ethical precepts we are debating on are out of synch - it would be like having a health care debate with someone who believed that the economy was more important than human life. It can't be done.

Your basic precept is that genetically altering people to a state of "perfection" is a desirable goal. Our basic precept is that human diversity is a desirable thing. These two things do not mesh in any way, thus making further debate useless.

That being said, as per my first sentence, I do not believe that your ideology is a threat, simply because no-one is going to back the idea of replacing humanity with genetically altered super-people. In fact, a curbie reading your ideology may have to think twice about their own ideas of genetic supremacy - so it would be a great help if you were to head to the Autism Speaks forums and try to convince the people there...

In the meantime, I think this conversation has run its course...