Aspies For Freedom

I personally don't think the issue is one of cure. It cuts much deeper than that and extends to the heart of who and what we are as a society. We are a throw away society with little tolerance for imperfection. A fix-it mentality.  At times this is good. At times it is bad. At times it may be both all at once. Cure is not black or white or even grey. It is its own unique shade for each individual. Something need first be finite to debate it. Only with certain perspectives does it become finite. As mine is such a perspective, the issue is an easy one for my decision.  

I would not force my perspective on another though.  That is the art of the discussion. To be able to debate it from like perspective of whomever you are discussing it with. It is something that could be done, but no one bothers to make the efort so all end up talking at
instead of to each other.

How you view it is most important to you. Your answer and reasoning defines who you are.

Hrick

I did not mean to offend you or imply anyone was a lesser autistic, i was generalising which i did say in my post. It is impossible when talking about anything as a whole to include every variation so to not upset everyone, especially when talking about autism which is so different for everyone. My generalisations were based on my life and my experiences.
Maths is typically seen as an autistic thing, you can't deny that even if its wrong for you, and how do you know that the nts that are extremely good at maths don't have any autistic traits. They might not be autistic enough for a diagnosis but i am sure their wiring in their brain is at least similar to an autistic that was also good at maths.

The same was with me when i did an IQ test with an educational psychologist when i was getting the diagnosis of Dyslexia. My mum was irritated that the psychologist which charged £400 didn't pick up on the fact that i am Autistic ( i was unaware of Autism when i got diagnosed with Dyslexia). When i did the IQ test i was tested in four areas, i was extremely high in two, average in one and extremely low in audio processing. She said i was the worst she had ever seen ( i got 3% which was 1 percentile for my age group). All she suggested was that i have a hearing test to make sure it wasn't a physical problem causing the difficulty in the hearing.

The deal is that the impudent cure would be forced on us, and will make band stereotypes.

A very big problem I'm having with the whole Autism Speaks "cure" quest is that it's not even genuine.

If they focused on finding a cure, then my only problem would be in trying to protect their children from maltreatment in the process, or even protecting the parents from being conned and robbed.

However, the whole thing is a sham. They aren't just looking for a "cure." They are also (maybe exclusively) looking for the genetic cause.

Now, that seems a bit duplicitous to me. Selling parents and donors the idea of a miraculous cure, while putting their money and research into a genetic test. That seems so manipulative that I might believe that not even Autism Speaks could be so dishonest and evil. But they've done it before. Autism Speaks (or Cure Autism Now, one of the groups that became Autism Speaks) actually managed to find the genes and create the test that allows doctors to convince parents to abort children with Retts (MeCP2) - one of the five autism spectrum "disorders." Today, there are many places to get the test, and subsequent abortion, even though the test only identifies the genetics, not the degree of the handicap or whether her life would still be sweet or even if having the marker guarantees that there will be a handicap serious enough to make the child better off dead.

I'm convinced that Autism Speaks, and its allies, are not concerned with such shades of gray. They want all people with that gene dead - or not even born.

And now they're working hard on the genes for autism. Will they find them? I doubt it. Will they find SOMEthing? Probably. Then we'll have another test and more life and death decisions that remove a lot of innocent children from the world.

Even if I could see the morality behind such an attack on a certain genetic group, it still flies in the faces of nature and logic. Genetic differences are supposed to be allowed the chance to compete for a place in humanity’s eventual genome. It is, sadly, true that aberrations are more bad than good, at the start. More autistics, for example, will have more debilitating handicaps when the genetic difference first appeared (however long ago that was) than they will many generations later. The way natural selection works, the aberration will either die out because it hinders survival and reproduction, or it will continue to win a place in the mix until it is either un-noticeable, or an actual boon.

I'm not going to say that autism is a desirable state of being. Or even that it has some special gift to give humanity (though it may). But I will say that it should be given a chance to compete for a chance to contribute. It is a bad sign when the usual, slow, painful process of selection is replaced with a genetic graph, and a whole bunch of prejudice, hatred, fear, and greed. Do we really want our worst emotions to become the foremost determinant for our genetic future?

Autism Speaks (and all the people whose minds have become infected by them) need to be stopped. They are preying on the understandably painful reactions of so many parents who waited for so many months for a child they could mold to fulfill their dreams. Autism Speaks tells them their dreams are over, unless they pay enough to make the Cure happen. If they were really interested in helping the autistic or the family, they would teach parents how to create new dreams based on maximizing the potential of everyone in the family - including the autistic. They would work hard to make sure that there were always enough services, aids and accommodations available to make the autistic child able to grow and live a real human life, and to help the family become even stronger, healthier and more secure.

Autism Speaks is, pure and simple, an eugenic organization that justifies itself by convincing people with money and power that only eugenics can save our children from a ravenous plague. Where have I heard that argument before?

It might be worth noting that the first to be euthanized in 1939 were several thousand physically and mentally disabled children - including autistics.

The scientists who developed that program went on to larger fish later.

It began with autistics then....

Nice to think so, but not real likely. First, I'm pretty sure the "Little Professors" designation was not meant to signify any sort of academic achievement. Asperger didn't mean that they should be awarded degrees and high-profile government jobs. So, if they had any value, besides being interesting anomalies, it was in Asperger's own hope that they might be real professors later. That was something he wasn't going to prove to the Reich in any way that would change public policy toward aspies. Even if they did have value to Asperger, that didn't mean they had value to anyone else in the Reich. That was actually an argument Asperger tried to make before his school was bombed. No idea if any of the other Nazis were ever won over. Somehow, I doubt it. The fact that one or more of his original test subjects survived to adulthood doesn't mean any more than that Asperger had enough power to keep them as subjects.

Second, Asperger reached his conclusion that aspies might have value almost 15 years after thousands had already been exterminated. Asperger didn't have a lot to do with the plight of autistics during the main years of the Holocaust.

And third, his interest wasn't for autistics - it was for a few aspie children with savant abilities. The rest of the autistics - however few were left at that point - could go spin, as far as he was concerned.

I think I missed the post where you told me this.

I know for sure I missed the point you tried to make here.

LOL


Well, then the joke was on Hitler ;-)

Good thing Asperger wasn't able to prove his point that autistics can grow up to be regular people. Then they might have had to take all those brainy folks for a dip in the carbon monoxide.

whew! Close call for Speers ;-)

Hey, maybe it WASN'T the Alies that bombed Asperger's school! Maybe some of those secret aspie Nazis wanted him silenced!

hehe

I have to jump in here.

Deciding not to abort a child with the potential for a particular genetic trait is NOT the same as inflicting a painful life on them. That is an awfully self-aggrandizing perspective, and pretty bigoted, too. Given the non-accuracy of prenatal testing when it comes to predicting the future of each particular baby, it's like concluding that all black babies should be aborted because they are so likely to end up in prison.

I tend to use the presence of this kind of thinking in a post as an indicator of severely compromised reasoning powers - also know as "a selfish, arrogant jerk who thinks he should be in charge of the world, since it clearly isn't working the way he thinks it should."

Look. I know that letting natural selection take its course will always result in many subnominal combinations. It will also result in many supranominal combinations. The supranominal will succeed in reproducing more often and the subnominal will fail to reproduce more often. The plan is that the human race improves and life improves for everyone on the planet.

My suspicion is that this whole process is a lot more complex than it appears on the surface, and may be incredibly vulnerable to tampering from those who prefer to skip the whole adventure of having both negative and positive changes. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot use a genetic marker test - a tool with an edge as sharp as a caveman's first sharp rock - to reliably tweak the genetic future of humanity.

Autism is not a disability. It is a genetic difference that often carries disabilities with it, and also often carries benefits with it. If this set of genes is allowed to play itself out naturally, it will carry MORE benefits and LESS disabilities with it. as the generations gos on.

If it is artificially selected out, then it will occur more and more often to poor and uneducated families with less and less resources. Even if they chanced to create a beneficial combination, the child would be so disempowered as to still not be reproductively viable. And it would live out its life in the worst circumstances, and without the social support structure that would have been in place to empower large numbers of autistics - since eugenic abortion would asure that society wouldn't have to develop or support such programs.

So, artificial selection actually creates more misery for the autistics who manage to live. It also deletes a potentially beneficial - or even necessary - change to the human genome. The test is so blunt as to guarantee that the vast majority of fetus' aborted would have led viable, perhaps exceptional lives. When we rely on prenatal screening as a matter of routine, the assumption grows that, beyond a woman's personal right to decide whether or not to reproduce, she has a right to choose between babies using whatever rational she likes - though some would at least insist that her criteria is socially popular.

Given all of this, how can eugenic abortion be ethical? What benefit does it bring to the child, the community, or the world? It only has one benefit, and to only one group - the parents of the autistics who need the most help. And the only benefit it brings those parents is the short term benefit of not having to raise a child who needs help from society that society refuses to give. This is an understandable, but nonetheless selfish perspective on which to hang an ethical endorsement.

The real answer to the emotional weight of that one benefit is that it is unethical for society to ignore its duty to its own offspring - now and future - and to refuse to contribute the extra resources necessary to allow these children to live the lives the deserve.

Actually, I'd settle for starting with the assumption that every human life HAS value. Even if you assume that some are more valuable than others (and many people do suffer from that moral disability), then the argument that the less valuable babies can be disposed of makes as much sense as throwing all your dollar bills away in favor of the bigger bills.

The problem is that someone invariably decides that they are more worthwhile, and even so worthwhile as to have the right to judge the value of everyone else. Strange that no one ever decides that they are LESS valuable and therefore need to turn themselves in to the nearest arrogant jerk for judgment and possible deletion ;-)

The problem is that, for many, there are no real values in the choice of an ethical system itself. My own choices come from a deep compassion, probably formed from my awareness of my own vulnerability. Others may choose from fear of eternity, or from an addiction to generosity. But, for many people, especially the bored and spoiled of the middle and upper classes, it really doesn't make any difference, so they pick and choose their "ethics" based on fashion, convenience or group affinity.

As I said before, I tend to find people with cheap ethics to be people not worth listening to. They are usually so slippery, selfish, and arrogant. Any conversation about ANYthing always seems to devolve into a conversation about them. It is actually better to talk to a person who hasn't developed an ethical system than it is to deal with a poseur.

You know, I'll have to recover from what this question did to my mind. I'll post an answer later.

Actually, I can deny it, and do. and I base my rejection on the very thing you base your argument on: what the NTs have that I don't.

First, let me presuppose that we're talking about a "cure." So, in our game, it would be a change from Aspie to NT. Now, a cure that can magically rewire your neurons and connective material, and make it into a brand-new brain, is an impossible thing. But, for the sake of the question, let's pretend we've found a magic wand. So, we're talking about someone who has been autistic, and now is going to turn into an NT.

One of the few real benefits I can see in being an NT is their ability to attenuate reality. They are like someone wearing sun glasses compared to our naked eyes on a sunny day. They have mittens in the cold, and ear plugs that block the constant hum of traffic. They can shake hands with lepers and hug porcupines. In short, the major difference between an autistic and an NT is that the NT has protected himself by heavily filtering reality. And I admit that this is an enviable ability.

However, there is a trade off. It's a tricky thing to see when you're so vulnerable that looking someone in the eyes gives you a headache, but the trade off is there nonetheless.

The person wearing sunglasses never sees the full spectrum of the colors of the world. He won't see the sheen of a crow's feather, or the matte finish on the surface of the river water. Mittens hide texture, and earplugs muffle birdsong. Their handshakes never actually touch you, and their hugs are just a bit cold. Basically, they are well-protected, and as difficult to connect with as a soldier inside a tank. And they can never remove the sunglasses, mittens, earplugs, or tank.

Necessarily, this makes it hard for them to reach out and get close to other people. Not because they missed the childhood social development that we did, but simply because their filters and social protections keep them a small, but constant distance away from everyone. I contend that NTs don't form deep, fulfilling relationships any more often than we do. Perhaps even less. Sure, they form more shallow, and easier, relationships, but a thousand cold meat sandwiches will never become a banquet.

I also suspect that they filter the world in some other ways, less obvious but just as thorough. As they filter sensations to protect themselves, I believe they also filter the truth to protect themselves. They construct false versions of themselves, and false interpretations of those around them. They settle and compromise on reality based on what those around them claim is true and necessary. Everything they do is for their own protection, gratification and comfort. We may be burning in the light like albinos, but they pale and waste, delusional in their dark, thick bubbles.

Yeah. It hurts to have no protection from the bright sun. It hurts like Hell. But I don’t think the solution is to jab your fingers into your eyes until you’re as handicapped at the NTs.

My sensitive ears can hear someone saying, “I’d gladly give up my ability to hear traffic three blocks away, if I could get a date once in a damn while!” Sure, the NTs get more sex than many of us. There always seems to be a lovely NT girl at hand for whenever the mood presents itself. But that’s a bit of a misinterpretation of reality, which I suspect is really some of that jive NTs are so good at. After growing up in several broken homes, and having managed 30 years of marriage myself, I’ve grown to believe that NTs don’t usually bond as closely as they think they do. Between the armor and the camouflage, it’s a wonder the even manage to reproduce. Don’t get me wrong. More power to them. They probably get just as close as they want to be, and no closer. But I can’t see voluntarily choosing to purposely deaden my heart and distance the people I love. Envying the NTs their constant boffing is like being jealous of the frequent donor at the sperm bank. An awful lot of sex about nothing.

So, the question remains, “Don’t you want what the NTs have?”

Well, so far, no, I don’t. And, by the way, I think it’s wrong to assume, as some folks do, that a silent child is forever crying out to be cured. I would be hard pressed to decide to give a child – especially one who couldn’t ask or consent – a cure that I wouldn’t take myself.

The rest of the NT advantages seem to come simply from their agreement to share and act in each other’s delusions. To be in the “club” as it were. Well, I suspect that most of you would not be willing to change what you’d need to change in order to get an invitation to join. Pretending can be fun, but I wouldn't want to do it my entire life just to be able to pretend I have friends.

The one last significant NT “advantage” I can think of would be the most desirable for me. And, unfortunately, the most elusive: NTs have learned how to communicate with NTs. Again, having that ability would be earth-shattering, since 90% of an autistic’s pain comes from an inability to do just that. So, if there were a pill that would cure me and give me the ability to communicate like an NT, would I take it? still, no. Absolutely not.

Why? Because it would require that I end up with so much less to communicate about! Yes, it is hard to relate to the people around us but, when we find a way to finally speak on our own terms, in our own way, we will have unique things to present to the world – rare things that no NT would have found on his own.

So, once again, I insist that we stop the silly and expensive hunt for an impossible and unpalatable cure. Instead, we need to spend every penny possible, and dedicate every researcher possible, to the methods that will allow us to control our own senses and voices. Perhaps there will come a day when NTs will envy us our naked eyes and tender hearts.

I wouldn't blame them a bit.

I'd say to treat the depression, and get on with life.

Not sure what you mean about genetically engineering autistics.

That's not what I was talking about. I meant that it is sloppy thinking to think that abortion is merciful. Aborting babies is not rescuing them. Period. This isn't logical in any axiomatic system. You don't recuse someone from a difficult life by kiling them. By that reasoning, we should abort every baby who doesn't have a trust fund, and a pony.

Actually it does. Evolution has a plan the way a house or a watch or a computer chip has a plan. It works the way it works. If you leave your hands off of it, it will carry on through eternity doing what it is built to do.

I won't debate whether it was Intelligent Design, or it just started working by accident and keeps getting better and better at it because of quantum physics. Either way, it does what it does, and I think we should leave it be.

Or we could let THIS gene sequence alone, and see if IT has benefits that outweight negative effects.

That isn't how it works. When you start that kind of artificial "improvement" you eventually end up with bizarre behaviors and flaws. Artificial selection causes short term gains, but long term failures.

If we abort autistics as routine, then there will be few autistics born. Government will certainly find more dramatic "epidemics" to care about. Especially since it's an "irresponsible parent who births a defective baby on purpose."

The strengths won't develop unless we let the strain develop om its own. No one would chose autism now. And so they will never have a chance to choose them later.

As I've explained before, the right to choose wether to have a baby comes from the woman's right to self-control. That does not extend to the right to control someone else. Once she has chosen to create a baby, there is no additional right to pick and choose BETWEEN different babies.


Whew. Time for dinner.

ooops. I'll shut up now ;-)

No offense to anyone but I have to agree about a cure. The only kind of cure that I would think I would take is some kind of medication that helps me think better about social awareness. Then BOOM!, no more problems with Asperger's.

I remember before I used to beleive that Asperger's was a gift and that we can all communicate together without any kind of arguement..................every perfect, etc. Later I found out that we don't all think alike, we just have this illness. But then again we are all people. Aspie or NT. If we enjoyed simular interests then you got a friend.

I still have a good friend in my life who's Aspie. But even if she wasn't and we still meet eachother, I would think that we would still be as good friends as we are now.


I love humor so I laugh at everything. But it took me quite awhille to learn how to laugh at myself and my AS problems.

Today I walked into Blockbuster and seen the film "Mozart and The Whale" placed in the humor section. First I was alittle offended then I said to myself "I deserve it, my problems end up being silly anyways".

So laugh at life friends and laugh at yourselfs.

Anyway, I'm sorry that I'm going off subject but anyway. If there was a cure, I would like to know how it would be done before taking it.

If it's drugs or medication, then yes.

Brain or any other kind of sugery, FORGET IT! Besides, I don't like pain of any kind. LOL