Autism Speaks Question

Post Reply New Topic

The Autism cure idea reminds me of the movie X-men. The X-men were individual who had all the emotional needs of “normal” humans but possessed different powers/strengths. If normal society could have accepted them their powers could have been great assets to society. Instead the “normal” society feared them; we fear what we do not understand. They did not work to find a place for these amazing individuals in society instead they worked to find a cure.

I have found plenty of information, drugs, and social classes to correct me; however I have yet to discover/find any resources available that will work with my strengths so they can be used to benefit society. I don’t feel I have a disease or a disorder, I’m just different. I thought we enriched each other by our differences?

I only seen the first X-Men, so I didn't know they tried to "cure" the X-Men (learned something there). But you are right, everyone should be proud of their differences and embrace others differences and not try to change them in anyway. People are awesome the way they are and that should be embarced not "cured". Dead on discription Jump33.

I've made the X-men connection in the past. I'm glad to hear that others share the view. Anyways, here's a link that you might be interested in. There are groups out there, they're just few and far between.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12 ... ?art_pos=5


I think that the big difference is if we're talking about Aspergers or the problems Aspergers presents.
For a bad analogy, having red hair is neither good nor bad, but being picked on for it would be bad.
Although, it goes a bit deeper than that for ASD, as some of us have issues with communication, sensory problems, etc. When these get in the way of life, that's when it's a disability and something needs to be done. But I agree, difference should be nurtured, so long as it isn't detrimental.

Agreed. Some of the symptoms of Autism and Aspergers can be detrimental for social function and such, but the actual disability (for lack of a better term) of Autism and Aspergers isn't detrimental to anyone...it is the symptoms. Symptoms can be cured or lessened with medications and therapy, but Autism and Aspergers can't. Even if they were, it brings me back to an earlier question...if there was a cure for Autism and Aspergers, would anyone take it? I don't think many would, I honestly believe that. I know we all have days where we hate having Autism or Aspergers, but there are days where we love having it too cause it makes us different. That is just my opinion though

They're a scary group and I think it's key that we spread the word that they do not speak for all of us who either are on the autistic spectrum, or have family and friends who are on the spectrum.

They seem very sure they know what's best for everyone, which is never a good sign.

The reason that I dislike Autism Speaks, is because they stand for all the things that I'm against. They want a cure for every ASD possible. They also use that money for genetic research, so that they can develop a prenatal screening test to detect autism in the unborn. Chances are that 95 times, out of 100, an expectant mother would abort their unborn child, if she knew that the child was autistic. That's the reason that I'm against Autism Speaks. I feel that they do NOT do good work, at all. I also hate their videos, with the bitchy mother of that girl, and that other mother changing her son. I wear Depends, I've graduated from high school, and I'm living on my own.

We're annoying because we're right most of the time. People can ignore those that disagree with them when they can dismiss the disagreement as bogus. When an aspie disagrees with you, though, he generally has facts and logic on his side; you can't just dismiss the disagreement, and that's what's annoying.

Cure aspies and they'll be willing to drop their correct arguments for incorrect ones just for the sake of getting along. That would make them worse at being scientists and engineers, even if their personality types stayed the same. What makes people good at science or engineering isn't personality type; it's the ability and insistence on focusing on a problem so they can understand it fully enough to figure out the factual truth about it.

Psychoist-

They already have a lot of "vested interest" and much social standing to loose. This will form part of the entrenchment. What is required is a small proto-mamillian type egg-nibbler of an approach to get around oversize reptile , slow defensive foot stomping and tail swishing defense.

This will allow them to move onto some other project gracefully.

I completely agree. It's genocide. Yet the public endorses it. They raise 65 million dollars a year. Their isn't a single autistic person on their board.

Annoying aspies. While there does seem to be a strong grouping on WP of xNTx types, there are a lot more with the same personalities who are not autistic, yet have defined the personality type.

Their traits are not autistic, so laying claim to them is unsupported. The same, but with being annoyed by a florecent light humming, is autism.

It may be something else, it may be too much of a good thing, and it may be evolution, for there is a lot of change in brain size and skull shape over the last 100,000 years.

Biological, a denser packing of neurons, caused by a lack of the pruning that goes on in most development.

The quite loner who kept to themself, describes the latest shooter, most Nobel Prize winners, and the modest living person who when they died, it was found they had amassed Ten million dollars.

Aspies do not have a monopoly on any of it.

The Markram's Intense World divide, under stress some socialize and network, some turn within and focus on things. A very small group that looks within are autistic, they may be a Pole of the spread, but they are not alone, they do not own the field.

While the work of others has nothing to do with autism, they are good and bad scientists and engineers for other reasons, only Autism produces the LFA that come with high social costs.

Every "good" autistic trait can be shown to be shared with the non autistic.

While I do see a grouping by personality type, autistics are not the best of the type, and I could not raise a lab or engineering staff from Wrong Planet. The closest it comes is in computers, where Nerds use their Geek skills, but rarely post about social issues.

Computers and math do seem to be fields where a lot of knowledge can be used to avoid everything else. Applied mechanics got me through, a single focus where I do have talents.

This is not autism, lots of people do one thing well. Lots of people have low social involvment,

Autism is mostly about people who will spend their lives in institutions and group homes. It is lives not lived fully, great social costs, and very hard on parents and siblings.

This is no reason for "Aspie Pride" and I agree with the DSM, Asperger's Syndrome can be found from annoying geeks up through the highest levels of performance, it is a personality, a character trait, and not a mental illness, development disorder, and only when it also reaches a disability level can it be included, and then called Mild Autism.

I have no doubt that autism exists outside the DSM, that the traits do grade out through Broader Autism Phenotype, just as Schzophrenia does in the graphic arts.

Murderous Psychopath traits can be useful, in a Uniform Service with rules and strict guidelines, Police and Soldiers. It is why they show talent in tracking down other murderous psychopaths. There is no "Psychopath Pride" they hunt them down.

As we are the closest in type, we should do everything possible to deal with the problems of our type. Like everything, it starts by admitting there is a problem.

Denial about the problem, attacks on others who see the problem and hope to do something, are common human defense mechnisums. AA has explored them in great detail.

Admitting there is a problem, that it is right to try to do something, even if it has not worked yet, seeing beyond yourself, this is a problem of people who will spend their lives in institutional care, and their families.

All that we can do is see that they have the best of care, and support research to learn more about the condition and it's possible causes.

Besides the advance of medical science, there have been advances in treatments, they do work, and they also work for the Broader Autism Phenotype. While little has come out to help the most impaired, the benefits have fallen on the least impaired. Education has changed. I was thrown out of school as being unteachable at 13, that does not happen any more. There are people here who spent over a decade in a mental hospital, ice water baths, Thorazine, electroshock, who when released in 1974, made good lives for themselves in the world. Change is good.

I am pro science, I tolerate the people who can only do the fund raising, I support the parents, siblings, spouses, and I support research which may lead to less people spending their lives in institutions.

I support Disability Rights, but not hate groups who use autism to further their leadership agenda.

If you are living in the world and not an institution, it is because of fifty years of research.

Scientific, Medical, Legal, and Social change has been slow, but it is going in the right direction.

Protesting Autism Speaks is protesting the best chance that even less people will live in locked wards.

But for one Epigenetic Switch, it could be any of us on the other side of that door.

What? Annoying is annoying regardless of if you are an aspie or not. And an engineer that drops their "correct argument" for an incorrect one is just an incompetent engineer and should probably be fired, regardless of neurobiology.

Wish I had annoyed someone like Radovan Karodiz on poetry night. Told him honestly that apart from "the two lines every poet gets free" the rest of what he'd constructed around them was utter cr*p and should stick with at being a Phsysio, forget art and writing, play football with kids, anything but don't write this stuff.

Think you NT's get hung up on annoying people too much, maybe?

"Hey kiddo, twenty years on , none of this matters, no one will care"

Inventor: Wouldn't it be safer/more ethical to use MRI's & other forms of technology to compare the brains of NT & autistic kids? It may be inconvenient (paperwork) but I think it would be less disturbing to the masses.

they want to stop autism and aspies altogether so their saying some of the greatest minds shouldnt have been born including albert einstien

they in a sense are trying to take lives and murder unborn children everyone deserves a chance at life!

It is being done, and does show Autism or NT, but all autism comes out he same, LFA, AS, Broader Autism Phenotype. It does check for a bad Dx, will show autism rather than something else.

It is the only test I have heard of that works, and then you have to be alive to do it.

Also, all children under three have rapidly growing brains, only autistics don't stop at three, prune some networks, and that is when autism hits. We have denser brains. Even predicting who might become autistic, there is nothing that can be done.

All the research shows no pre natal test is possible. Other conditions are one marker on one cromosone, autism is up to 22, and that is not a consistant measure. Epigenetic swiches, what turns off or on a segment, are still an unknown.

This knowledge came from studies, some of which took some Autism Speaks donations. The money they are raising is disproving most of what was thought just a few years ago.

Their view that AS is not autism has changed, they now have an AS Board Member.

I have no doubt that if a marker had been found for LFA, it would have lead to abortions, just like Downes, but that did not, and will not happen.

Now the focus is on helping families, and schools, coping with the living. The science goes on, but while we know more, we know near nothing.

We cannot spot it in genetics, other than a broad group, and that is not total, and even spoting it in children is not sure till three. That is where the work is now, keeping the child learning, involved, and it is working.

One of the other things that is falling into the past is the number of girls, one in five is no longer a working number. girls were mostly ignored.

In the five years that Autism Speaks has been raising awareness, lots of change has happened.

They did come on like they were willing to do what it took, and learning more, they are working on doing right.

They are coming to many of the views that have been expressed on Wrong Planet, working with the children, mild use of drugs to control symptoms, not large doses later to control people. We share one thing, looking for the best outcome.

They did not have a lot to work with when they started. Most of the early studies have been shot full of holes on Wrong Planet, and those I used to call Psychobabbling Witch Doctors have sobered up and from the latest draft of the DSM to the standards of practice, have turned Professional.

We are all converging on the same point, what can we do that is the best for all.

I have done my share of bashing them, Autism Speaks, Psychology, and Tony Attwood, when I thought they were wrong. They changed, now I have to support them.

Call it Black and White Thinking, now I think they are right, and doing the right things.

I am against the very few who protest what happened five years ago, that is old news.

We have been players in this, Wrong Planet has given an unfiltered view of the autistic mind. This was one of the great experiments, and it is still going on.

Where we discuss, work, relationships, it is a world that has been closed, now open to all who can read. Our Differance of Thought and Perception is being shown as a world. We are a lot alike. We have common views and values, we have a style of reviewing an idea, and a differance in the way we cooperate. This Social Dynamic has never been shown before, it is a missing part of autism study, us, what the study was about. No one could see the whole process, and how it changed as we become adults, and what we do with it.

This is of great value in planning a world for the future of autism. We can be very productive and talented people, and the world cannot afford to lose our gifts.

We are all in this together. Wrong Planet has shown the autistic in their natural habitat, the web, where they are most comfortable.

Having joined in a common effort, seeing the same goals, the research will be directed in the best directions. One of the largest complaints was that Autism Speaks, and others, did nothing for living autistics. I said, yea, for $10,000,000 they could send then each a comic book. I did and do favor the focus on science, but that is now paying off in better treatment.

I still favor science, but the young autistics are growing up in a better world. There is still a lot of room to get much better. 35 years ago you could get locked up, 10 years ago you could get help with school, five years ago you could get dosed with super drugs that were full of side effects, addictive, and that has been regulated, off label use. No one knew anything, now we do, and it is better.

So my question is not about the State Mental Hospitals, of 35 years ago, it is where do we go from here?

Autism is very expensive. Everything Autism Speaks raises would not pay for half a day a year. We can turn these numbers around, we can get more and cost less. We will not get a seat at the table by prosting in the streets and throwing rocks at grandmothers.

Many people have come hear and said, they found intelligent, helpful, good people. We are not a bad lot, we do have talents, we want to mix with the world, but it just does not work. Perhaps something can be done.

I support people doing the right thing, and Autism Speaks is.

They are not as cool as Wrong Planet, but they try.