Expressing Doubts: First Scientific Refutal Of Asperger's

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I see what you mean. I think we might just be arguing about wording.

Is Asperger syndrome a label for a set of symptoms?
Or is Asperger syndrome the hypothetical mechanism that causes those symptoms?
Or both?

If we take the first statement as the definition, most people would agree Asperger syndrome exists.

In the second statement, Asperger syndrome is a concept rather than something with an existence. The question is as a concept, is it useful?
Or will one day it be found to not be scientifically useful, like the concept of centrifugal force.

I noticed nobody on the first page did a thorough point-by-point debunking, so I shall now. If someone did on a latter page, I apologise.

So because gay people are healthy, autistic people don't exist?

As obvious as this may seem, autism and homosexuality are different things.

This is overwhelmingly false.

The general consensus about the inheritability of genetic disorders is not that they "flip on and off like light switches from generation to generation."

We know an awful lot about inheritance, as it happens. Mendel's laws are well established. Most genetic disorders that we are familiar with are caused by one gene. Rather than explain this in great detail, here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_ ... l.27s_laws

Autism may have a genetic component. Genetics are studied using twins and adoptees. Comparison between identical and non-identical sets of twins allows us to compare individuals who share genetics, upbringing, and conditions in the womb with individuals who share upbringing and conditions in the womb, but not genetics. Using adoptees allows us to keep genetics the same but change environmental conditions. Anyway, these studies (particularly twin studies) have shown that autism is likely to occasionally have a genetic cause. Of course, that isn't always the case. Sometimes it is caused by rubella during pregnancy, for example.


Mutations occur fairly rarely. It is likely that both autism and homosexuality have genetic components. Men with homosexual uncles are more likely to be homosexual than those who don't, for example.
Sometimes causes have been determined. As above, rubella is one cause. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/340

Fragile X also is known to be a cause of autism.

It is probably a case of "it's complicated". There could be many more causes for autism.
[quote[
and how come the branches of autism spectrum are so broad?[/quote]
Maybe there are actually multiple conditions that are hard to differentiate? For example, it could turn out that what has long been called "Asperger's" actually has a separate cause to classic autism.

Three points:

1) Being religious is not a mental illness
2) Autism is not a mental illness, it is a pervasive developmental disorder
3) One of the symptoms of autism is impaired "Theory of Mind". It is speculated that this may be important for religious belief. In other words, a difference in the autistic brain makes religion harder for autistic people to be religious.

You can't simply use "brain activity" as a simple measure.

In any case, some studies have found differences: http://www.neurology.org/content/44/2/214.short
http://www.neurology.org/content/57/2/245.short
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content ... 1811.short

Here are some meta-analyses that conclude there are differences: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 380701334X
http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal. ... 8/abstract

There are of course a few studies which show no difference, but those are not the bulk of the evidence. The meta-analyses are representative of all the literature.

It's better than nothing. In any case, we don't settle for "it's autism". People are researching the causes of autism, and therapies, assistance and treatments.
Mutations do not happen that often. Severe autism is often more than "mild" retardation. In any case, the evidence would disagree with you. Many ret*d people are not autistic (e.g. most Downs syndrome people).

I think I covered this above.


I think Einstein probably didn't have autism. In any case, it is fairly common for university professors to have poor people skills. It doesn't stop them being brilliant. You are conflating different neurological impairments.

Are the sheep NTs or Aspies? If Aspies... yeah, no. It makes most of us feel inferior, if anything, because we are acutely aware of our failings. If NTs, they are widely unaware of autism, and don't care much about it anyway.

No, you don't have a point.

Do you mean "the diagnosis is only given to smart people", or "all smart people are given the diagnosis"?

Both are untrue, though the former is closer to the truth.

So are all religious people mentally ill by that logic?
I'd like to see your evidence that no God exists.

You mean they're defined by a single trait that causes no problems unless people are jerks and discriminate against you for it?



This statement doesn't make sense to me. Does it mean that you'd only have people who were clearly autistic or clearly neurotypical, or people who were completely gay or completely straight? Because that isn't the case for either autism or homosexuality. Autism shades into normality; it's only when it becomes a problem that it's labelled as an autism spectrum disorder.
Sexuality has all kinds of manifestations.



If said basic attributes in personality occur in particular clusters, and to such a degree that they cause significant problems for the individual who has them, that's when they're labelled as a disorder. Noone gets labelled as ADHD just for being "a bit more hyperactive than normal". Noone gets labelled as autistic just for being "a bit socially awkward".



Because people are still trying to figure it out.
"If matter really exists, why haven't people figured out the exact nature of it's smallest parts?"



Because similar symptoms, but with differing severity, and with different people having some symptoms more severe than others, will produce different results.



1. Autism is not a mental illness, it's a neurodevelopmental disorder.

2, Being religious isn't a mental illness either.

3. You can be an atheist and be completely off your rocker.



Epilepsy is characterised by brief bursts of extremely high brain activity. More activity does not necessarily equal superior function.
One theory I read of autism posited that hyperconnectivity was related to autism: when a sense impression comes into the autistic brain, it gets bounced around so many disorganised pathways that it becomes too chaotic for the person to make sense of.



The word "autism" is just a convenient shortcut for a common set of impairments. Giving it a name makes it easier for people to see it as an integrated concept and to focus their research efforts on all the symptoms considered together, instead of, for example, one group of people concentrating on social impairment, another group concentrating on sensory integration issues, and another concentrating on stereotypic movement, with none of the groups realising that their particular research interests could be related to those of the other 2.



Elaborate.



Wasn't he considered an idiot by some of his teachers?
He isn't considered a genius because he sat and whined about sheep; he's considered a genius because he went out and did something amazing. He didn't sit there w*king over the potential of his mind and talking about how noone understood him. He USED his brain.



Certainly not. Where is your evidence that the pioneers of science are and were disproportionately autistic, and that neurotypicals cannot be smart and enterprising?



1. There are plenty of differences that are not disabilities. I don't see people putting those differences in the DSM to "make themselves feel superior".

2. I seriously doubt that everyone involved in codifying the autism spectrum disorders is a "conformist sheep".

... and continuing, because that last post was getting kind of long:

Other people do not cause sounds to be processed by my brain with such sensitivity that they cause pain.

Other people do not make me struggle to hold a five-minute conversation.

Other people do not give me such trouble with transitions that I have to drag myself out the door even to things I know I'll enjoy.

Other people did not give me the organisation skills of a 10-year old.

Just a handful of examples.

In fact, since I've been out of school, 99% of people have behaved perfectly decently towards me, and, funnily enough, I am still disabled.




You have no way of knowing that.



I don't see anyone taking offense. I see a lot of people disagreeing with both your basic premises and the conclusions you've drawn.



So because your therapist was an incompetent jerk, the entire concept of autism, and all the research that's been done on it. is invalid? Ever hear the expression "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"?




Like I said, Einstein achieved great things because he went out and achieved them, not because people somehow gave him permission to do so by not labelling him as disordered.

Here's the thing. I can stop calling myself autistic. I can assert every day that I'm perfectly normal.
Now, go back to the top of this post and look at all the things I listed. No matter how normal I call myself, they'll still be there and problematic. No matter how much I acknowledge and use my strengths, my disabling traits will still be there and problematic. No matter how many people label me as "totally awesome and smart and capable of great things" (and trust me, plenty do), those traits will still be there and problematic.




Which of course you can and will produce, lest people think you're just making stuff up.



Even if I agreed with the premises behind this argument, if the cost of not being understood includes things like loneliness, unemployment, homelessness and so forth, I don't see how you can call it "not a cost".

He really doesn't. That he claimed it is kind of amazing.

In the time since I discovered I was autistic, I was both convinced that this was not true and convinced it was true. There are times I start to wonder if I'm really on the spectrum, but usually reality comes around to disabuse me of this notion.

I did so much research for my official diagnosis. I had a stack of printed pages for my appointment, although they weren't referenced for my diagnosis, except in terms of me reciting what I had written.

I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand this diagnosis. Didn't really question? I've done nothing but question it.

Also, post-mortem diagnoses are neither particularly ethical nor necessarily accurate. The only thing invoking Einstein's name does is appropriate his life to support the OP's argument. We don't know if Einstein was autistic, and if he was, we don't know that he didn't experience significant impairments. His work is amazing and genius, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on the rest of his life.

I could read at university level when I was 6 years old, but I still have significant impairments that impact my life every day and make it difficult to impossible to manage anything like independent living. If I ever do live on my own I will need support to function. That sort of thing is why I received my diagnosis.

"Genius is an abnormality, too." —Temple Grandin.

Denial…….

I think you are partially wrong in your statement. Why do you think gays are now accepted by most people? Because enough people spoke out for change. Thus, changing societies' views on homosexuality. But this was done by a group of people and not one person alone.

Accepting that you are flawed because society says so is defeatist at best. Then you will believe you are flawed. You need to rise above this flawed idea and have a voice. We all need to raise our voice and cry out for change. If we cannot convince some to accept us than we will never get anywhere because the powers that be will always push us down where they think we belong. Why do you think society pushes the poor minorities into ghettos and slums. This is what they call being "marginialized". They are basically on the fringes of society and honestly that is where aspies are and where they will stay unless there is push for change which is already occurring as I write this and has been for a few years.

If enough aspies speak loud enough they will be able to change society together. Alone you will never win. So what you say is true, partially. Alone you can do nothing to change society but every little bit counts.

It seems that half the people on here are happy just being on the bottom and feeling sorry for themselves. I am tired of doing that and you start to want to avoid most comments because of how negative and defeatist they are. It is a downer. Honestly I am looking for something posititive. I have had enough of being down in the dirt.

I'd like to see your "evidence" that he does.

What's really amazing, is where does that leave us who are self-diagnosed.

And thus we get to the concept of unfalsifiability.

After reading some of the replies I realize you obviously are thinking on a much more deeper level than the first post... I think you would have a much richer conversation about things if instead of lumping everything together and half assing your points, you posed one or two points that were written out better.

I am wondering if maybe on some levels your therapist is right... Your first post didn't really give any empathy towards people who own the label of autism or Aspergers. That whole argument with her.... I am pretty sure there is a difference between knowing what someone is feeling and being able to feel what they are feeling sympathetically. Especially after you shoved it in her face that you were "right." That's not empathy.

That being said I don't think it's right for a therapist to talk about their own problems like that in a professional session... You can always get a new therapist if you're not able to communicate well with watch other...

Looks like democracy is not on your side. You can learn everything you need to know about the OP's post by reading the poll results.