Autistic Appointee to US Govt Agency Does not support a Cure

[Alphawolf55]

Which would be goddamn retarded.Homosexuality is not an ethnicity or race, it's a fucking defect, just like deafness or blindness. Anyone who actually puts stock in that kind of shit - the whole "Homosexual culture rar rar rar' thing - is absolutely full of shit. There is no actual homosexualnation. There is no self-sustaining homosexual race, so there is nothing to destroy.

Note, I know you probably don't think homosexuality is a defect and I know the comparisons aren't 100% but just pointing out how the logic could be applied elsewhere.

[loomer]

The biological element of homosexuality is pretty hugely different though. We're not just talking about people who are a little different here, like those of us afflicted with the gay, we're talking a group of people of whom the majority are actually unable to function in the world without significant difficulty and who require extensive care even into adulthood, and sometimes until death. They're really not comparable at all.

[Alphawolf55]

They're likely a strong biological link to autism.My grandpa and me both have it and many people I know who have it can link to someone else. A big problem is, that it's hard to know how biological it is, because there could be tons of older people who just weren't diagnosed.

And define significant difficulty. I know more people with autism who are able to function on their own vs aren't able. We've only had truly comprehension autism treatment for the last 20 years, shouldn't we really wait to see how effective early intervention is before writing it off as a mere defect?

[Saxtonite]

The biological element of homosexuality is pretty hugely different though. We're not just talking about people who are a little different here, like those of us afflicted with the gay, we're talking a group of people of whom the majority are actually unable to function in the world without significant difficulty and who require extensive care even into adulthood, and sometimes until death. They're really not comparable at all.

This thread should interest you.

EDIT: I've seen PDD-NOS (which tends to be 'lighter' than aspergers') two to three PDD Nos vs 'lower functioning' autistics here. However, diagnostic rates vary and due to the spectrum of the condition there is no hard cutoff - so it is not a good estimate.

There is no actual autistic nation. There is no self-sustaining autistic race, so there is nothing to destroy.

Please explain.

[loomer]

EDIT:
Cheers, I'll take a look at that.
÷

Oh, I'm not meaning to deny autism being a product of biology - that's my view of it, in fact - I'm just saying that the effects of whatever differing neurological process during development are vastly different from the biological roots of homosexuality.

I don't think we should wait, if an in-the-womb cure (and, for that matter, screening) that actually works becomes available. It prevents any risk at all of the child never progressing beyond the mental age of a toddler. I'd call that pretty significant difficulty - in fact, I'd call failure to progress to beyond the mental age of twelve a highly significant difficulty, to the degree that I would be uncomfortable allowing such individuals to live without someone caring for them.

Now if the screening could tell us, hey, this guy will be high functioning? Well, then it's a greyer area. High functioning autism is a tricky fucking ethical minefield, because people like yourself and Nitram are clear evidence that it doesn't interfere completely with quality of life - it may make it harder, sure, but it doesn't basically block you from self-sufficiency.

[loomer]

There is no actual autistic nation. There is no self-sustaining autistic race, so there is nothing to destroy.

Please explain.

What's to explain? There simply is no autistic nation. There are people who suffer from it, people who've overcome that suffering, but no one unified Autistic culture, geographic context, or ethnicity.

[Saxtonite]

What's to explain? There simply is no autistic nation. There are people who suffer from it, people who've overcome that suffering, but no one unified Autistic culture, geographic context, or ethnicity.

How do you define 'nation', or 'culture'? If you use the generic 'a nation is a group of people with something in common' you could say autistics constitute a nation. The autistics who form their myriad cultures on various internet forums would differ on whether they have a culture. Stuff like that.

Or if you use analogies to belief systems like the 'Ummah' or the Jewish Diaspora.

[Alphawolf55]

I think a problem that alot of us are forgetting that even if a magic cure existed for autism for adults, their lives would still be difficult. One of the biggest issues with autism is the inability to naturally learn social cues at a young age and thus have to learn it intentionally like one would learn a second language, merely curing their difficulties won't magically make them social creatures, they'll still have to learn all those little things alot of us take for granted, and it's still going to be far more difficult to learn it later as an adult, then it would've been as a child.

[loomer]

Argh, here we go into the grey areas again. This is why I took so long to really start posting.

My definition of nation is, in this particular case, a distinct (large) collective of individuals capable of self governance, self sufficiency and sharing some form of commonality, be it geographical context, culture, or descent.

Now, as far as I can see, there is no current capacity for the first criteria to be properly met by the autistic world. There is no governing body of the autistic world - there are plenty of groups that act like it, but they have no actual power. While that could change if enough HF autistic individuals set about it, I suppose, would it be wholly representative of all autistic people?

As for the culture? Well, that's tricky. I'd argue that most of those forums just represent subcultures unified by a neurological defect and are simply groups of people unified by a common experience within their actual culture. Now, I also hold this view of my own 'disability subculture' (using this sense of the word), being those with physical disability. I know I personally only view my experience with disability through the filter of Australian culture, not as a stand-alone worldview covering everything from social conduct to shared history. Anecdotes aren't everything, I know, but that's a major element of why I hold this view.

EDIT:

I think a problem that alot of us are forgetting that even if a magic cure existed for autism for adults, their lives would still be difficult. One of the biggest issues with autism is the inability to naturally learn social cues at a young age and thus have to learn it intentionally like one would learn a second language, merely curing their difficulties won't magically make them social creatures, they'll still have to learn all those little things alot of us take for granted, and it's still going to be far more difficult to learn it later as an adult, then it would've been as a child.

Oh, absolutely. That's why I'm arguing only on the subject of an in-the-womb cure and the associated screening it would entail, since I'm not willing to venture into the minefield of an effective adulthood cure.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Except, it's treated all the time without doing that. I'm not sure how the specifics are even relevant, since people are talking about whether 'curing' autism is inherently good or bad, and not silliness like 'if 1 in 20000 people get a negative side effect it sucks'. Amusingly, not all autistic people have the symptoms you describe, and most higher-functioning individuals have no trouble speaking or recognising people.

Symptoms can be treated, the co-morbid conditions that manifest as a result of the underlying condition. There is no effective treatment for the underlying autism, just ways of dealing with the side effects. Depression, anxiety, seizures in some cases etc. And no, not all autistic people have those symptoms, that is why I linked to an overview of autism and what is going on in the brain earlier. Apparently you never clicked it. There are several different regions of the brain that are affected, I selected a few examples. Would you like a comprehensive list, or were you being deliberately obtuse?

Wait, so when you're addicted to something and your brain needs it, getting over it is fine. When your brain chemistry is wrong, adjusting it is a complete brain rewire that kills you and replaces you with a doppleganger.

This. This right here. It is proof that you do not read your opponents arguments. I have not argued, and if you were in any way literate you would know this, that changing neurochemistry is a brain rewire. If you could read, you would notice that I made a distinction between the physical connections in the brain, and the neurotransmitters/hormones that regulate mood and some behaviors. What? Do you think the brain is just a sack of chemicals? Have you heard of neurons, and how their aggregate structures and connections are responsible for the core processes of the brain? Go crack open a book sometime. I know it hurts.

And before you nitpick, yes, neurotransmitters are what gets information across a synaptic gap. However they are not what processes the information, they are just the means of transmittance. Something that is mood altering like serotonin is itself information, and a defect in serotonin reuptake alters the information the neurons get. The processing of that information occurs normally.

Are you just saying that any change to a 'default condition' is fine? Since autism can be developmental - with symptoms worsening around puberty - surely 'curing' it is simply restoring a default condition and thus acceptable?

No. If you could read, you would notice that distinction I made above.

Neurotransmitters in the brain are regulated by a variety of positive and negative feedback loops. Cocaine blocks re-uptake of one of them, and shuts down production of that same neurotransmitter as a result. As a result, when you go off cocaine, you have to wait a while until it completely leaves your system, and your brain ramps up production again. Even when you do not use cocaine, there are times your brain down-regulates production of dopamine. That regulatory pathway is very very dynamic, and it is meant to be.

Brain structure is somewhat less so, and while it does change (particularly the parts of the brain responsible for behavioral control and higher level cognition) as one ages, the pathways for the basic functions do not. Those basic functions are what are affected by Autism, in its various forms, and changing them amounts to broad scale brain rewiring, and the consequences of that in terms of personality could be far greater than just getting rid of Autism.

Can a person circumvent many of these problems through higher level cognition? Yes. Yes they can. I learned for example how not to walk like a vulture. I also manually learned to consciously control how much eye contact I give. I do however when my guard drops still go into my autistic little world and stare for 15 minutes at the movement of a blade of grass, a frog breathing, fidget with objects and run my hands over interestingly textured surfaces. These are things that certain parts of my brain want to do all the time, but that my frontal lobe cognitively vetoes.