For those who do NOT want a cure...

Post Reply New Topic

Easy now...I'm on YOUR side.

I was asked this this Sunday and I responded no too. The guy said, "why? don't you know what your missing out on?" I told him basically if we had a cure for everything, cure for blindness, etc. Then we would miss out on empathy for people "worse" off than us, not to mention the wonderful points of view we get from others. It takes me awhile to learn something but everyone has their difficulties in areas of learning, doesn't mean your inferior.

There was a twilight zone episode where there was a man in a village full of blind people. Since he was the only one who could see he thought that he was the one who was going to lead them and such. When he told them that he could see they thought he was ill, imprisoned him and held a council. They decided to remove the guys eyes because he was seeing things. Those people wanted him to conform by removing his eyes, they did not respect something out of the ordinary, and I think that is what we all fear if there is a cure.

On a final note I met with my physician yesterday and he took note of my meds, I told him I had AS and he asked me if the meds helped with the moods and the obsessions, I said, "moods yes, but everyone has their own obsessions, as long as they do not get in the way of my life I don't see why my obsessions need to go away."

This is a really interesting question. I suppose one theme of response could examine teenagers in general. Most teenagers lives are not unproblematic.
A significant proportion fall outside normal areas of behavior and exhibit a variety of differing psychological conditions. Someone skilled debate could examine all these behaviors and complex underlying reasons,many of them social, and reduce them down to neurology, brain chemistry and "cure".

The point is, parents of Aspergers children, like all parents, tend to be parochial when it comes to seeing the problems their children present. Add to this
the sometimes less than honest , competitive natures of other families, who often play down the extent of their own child's problems, parents of
Aspergers children find themselves believing its only their child who falls outside the normal range of behavior.

One other thing to realize is there is no absolute normality . It varies from time to time and culture to culture.

So, if you weren't faced with one set of teenage problems that fall outside whatever local and temporal convention is currently around you, the chances are you might face a different set of equally challenging ones, and it is very tempting to go for the notion of a simple medical response and definition of "illness." In contemporary society ,the label also exonerates the parents from social responsibility once medical diagnosis, (that their child is "officially ill' ) has been applied.

Of course if "cure" came in a plastic packaging with directions for dosage, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I worry that a cure would take away my creativity. I never need to be told to "think outside the box" because I essentially live outside the box! My creativity stems in a great way from the fact that I see things differently from the way a neurotypical does. I've come up with solutions to problems that seemed obvious to me but no one else saw, and everyone praised as creative. My mother has told me for my entire life that there are so many things she wouldn't see if she didn't have me...maybe everyone needs an AS person in their life! I'm okay with who I am, and I worry that a "cure" would take away so many good parts, just to replace them with boring conformity.

What s/he said.


If I was "cured" I would no longer be me. I would be someone else. My creativity and long term memory would be gone. I would no longer be able to obsess on meerkats. That might make most people's day if I could no longer obsess on them but I would rather be tortured.

People mainly see the bad things in others, and the good things in themselves. Your own flaws are normal, other's strengths are unappreciated.

There's good sides and bad sides to everything. I wouldn't want to trade my special interest, independent opinions and focus for following others mindlessly, chronic lying and being easily manipulated.

Regarding conformity, a cure would only change neurological settings, your will is always your own.
Regarding boring, i'd say it's the other way around, there's no way a cure can make an autistic person more boring than he already is.



Wise words.



I've found quite the opposite, to people the grass always looks greener on the other side. People are way more insecure than you think, so full of envy, always wishing they were older, younger, taller, thinner, richer, smarter, shorter, prettier, stronger, popular. Or maybe you live in a weird town opposite of mine.

I'm not sure if you're saying those with autism are boring or that the cure would definitely not affect their level of interest. If the former, I take offense.

I don't think grass is greener on the other side. In my case, there are two patches of grass with a barren wasteland between them. Time must pass for the grasses to grow towards each other to make for a bigger, better field. (That is, I am quite okay with and even fond of myself, it is my situation I have trouble of. Being that my situation is unique, there is no envy, only a hint of bitterness.)

Those are superficial things, and you're right about those. But for different ideologies - politics, religion, any kind of discrimination - theirs is always best.

That's a bit sexist isn't it? I kid, I kid.
But seriously, I've been looking up supplements to boost brain performance and people that take them complain of a loss of creativity. Although the affects are temporary, I still value my creativity, my imagination, my individuality. I would rather be a great artist or author over a social whore (Warhol's words, not mine).

The first few years of life we learn the basics of all our senses... I'm accustomed to my heightened senses. I wouldn't want to literally re-learn everything simply to live like an NT, as NT's seem to think they are the end all be all of perfection (I have a sneaking suspicion autistics are the new evolution of man, the next step). Do we really need fixing?

Cure me not.

A class I teach just undertook a literature review of the state of science in autism research. In short, if you're worried about a near term "cure", don't be. The animal models used to attempt to identify autism-associated genes seem to uniformly suck. Autism researchers now really don't have a clue as to what makes autistics tick right now. That, of course, is subject to revision.

The class was surprised to learn that many autistics are leery, if not outright opposed, to the notion of a cure. I did my part fo educate them.

Evolution does not really have steps, as some have noted here before. It is not directional. It is more like a vine, spreading along the ground, filling in nooks and crannies than it is like a river, relentlessly pushing forward. But there is no progress in evolution.

^ theoretically. Everything on the planet is constantly changing, trying to keep up.

[quote="ProfessorAspie"]

The class was surprised to learn that many autistics are leery, if not outright opposed, to the notion of a cure. I did my part fo educate them.quote]

This is why I started this thread and why I am featuring Autism on Facebook in the manner that I am. People have no idea that many autistics do not want a cure, and with the limited knowledge about autism, I'm sure anyone with an average knowledge of the subject would be surprised too, because of how it's generally portrayed. I didn't realize it until I was on here, and I understand why. I want others to realize that too, and I wanted them to hear it from all of you.

Many thanks to everyone who has responded to both of my threads regarding my Facebook page. I hope I make at least a little dent.

Autism is a different neurology to neurotypicality. Any "cure" would be necessity have to rewire a large number of synaptic connections, kill brain cells off, move others to different areas and do a lot of processing modification. There is absolutely no way that any individual "cured" would be meaningfully the same individual as the one who originally consented to the procedure.

That sort of wholesale re-wiring would mean that the individual would have to re-learn pretty much everything, re-shaping the individual's personality and sense of self even more. Because autism entails differences to pretty much every area of the brain compared to nuerotypicality, they would react to everything differently, but their lack of connection to past experiences, past self, would mean they'd never react in a "normal" fashion even if provided with the wiring to do so. So then society would probably clamour for another "cure", this time for pervasive regression that would probably appear to manifest as severe autism/schizophrenia (technically it would be neither but the lack of expected responsiveness through disconnection with own cognitive processes would be a shared trait of certain forms of schizophrenia, severe Kanner's autism and post-"cure" pervasive regression).

As such, the entire process of looking for a "cure" for autism strikes me as pointless. It would end up disabling everyone it touched, probably to a larger extent than they already were irrespective of prior position on the spectrum.

Also, there is an argument that in certain circumstances, it's better to be autistic than neurotypical. Note "certain" rather than "all". The 21st Century is the Century of the Network, if the first decade is anything to go by. Progress will stand or fall on the strength and diversity of those networks. The diversity offered by both autistic and neurotypical people - and methods to enable all to use their best of their abilities for the greater and broader good instead of short-termism and selfishness - will be necessary to make progress. In many ways their strengths and weaknesses of neurotypicals and people on the autism spectrum complement each other. Removing part of the diversity necessary to optimise the networks of progress simply because not everyone likes the idea that they might have differential needs strikes me as a particularly stupid way of encouraging humanity's stagnation. And is that really what humanity as a whole wants for itself?

Therefore, I oppose a cure. Not only because I like who I am (though I do), because I try to oppose plans bound to disable people and societies alike on principle.