cure low function autism

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Of course they're not the majority.

NTs who have academic success aren't the majority, either. But since when did the proportion of a group of people who are successful at school determine whether or not that group of people had satisfying lives? Since when did success in general make one group of people better than another?

Have you tried starting your reasoning from the premise that disability is not inherently negative? You may be surprised with some of the logical conclusions you come up with.

That's not fair either. I just don't think it's fair for some to be successful while others can't get success.


That premise doesn't make any sense.

It makes a lot of sense: Being disabled is not an unending experience of negativity. I actually have a lot of positive experiences I associate with my disabilities, and I don't see being disabled as a horrible fate. If anything, my sense of self and how much I like myself has increased considerably once I came to terms with being disabled.

I don't like or dislike having the disabilities I do - investing energy either way is a waste of time because as far as I know there is no way to simply make them disappear. I like knowing that I have these disabilities and understanding how they work, so I can adapt my life around these things.

I consider there is a lot more negativity bound up in the social view (not the social model) of disability, which largely paints it as a terrible fate, characterizes disabled people as "suffering" and "victims" of their conditions. The truth is that disabled people tend to rate our quality of life at similar levels to abled people, despite how many abled people like to characterize our lives as much worse, or try to make judgments on "objective quality of life" to indicate that we can't possibly be correct about our own perspectives.

You are so right. I've worked with a lot of people with intellectual impairments, who apparently according to some people here can't possibly be happy with the way they are, and most of them rate their quality of life as very good. They are happy. They may not be living the life we think is best, most I've encountered are not working and living in group homes, but they don't consider their lives to be bad at all. They're okay with who they are. Obviously some people from any group will be unhappy, tons of people without disabities are unhappy, but I haven't found that they are any more unhappy than the rest of the population.

I don't believe what you're saying.

You're entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts:

Here's one example (not intellectual impairment, but supportive):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3161178

You can go ahead and tell them they aren't happy, but most of the ones I worked with are. They enjoy watching movies and helping pick out their meals and going to their day programs and being friends with each other. They have hobbies and friends and active lives. It may not be what you consider a good life, but you don't know how they experience their lives. I actually bothered to ask them instead of just assuming they thought their lives sucked.

I'm not talking of physical disability.

Indeed. I know someone who was once told by her GP that she doesn't have a good life. Unless you've been there and have the same quality of life, I don't think you can decide for them whether they have a good life.

I guess such happiness could be attained by only focusing on the lower part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I for one can't stand others being better than me and getting to do things I can't do. I wonder what is so innate in me that I loathe my position with such envy of others.

I think that it's because not everyone has the same needs. I also think acceptance has a big role to play in happiness. A lot of the people I work with have relatively sheltered lives, so everyone around them is more accepting of them because we all made a life choice to work with people who have disabilities. The other main group of people they are encountering are people with similar problems as theirs, so there is no judgment and they all accept each other as they are. This is their "normal" They aren't thrown out to fend for themselves in the world. I think what happens a lot with Aspergers is that they are left to navigate a world that doesn't really understand them with little to no help. Some cope remarkably well while others struggle. The rest of society doesn't do much adapting.

You missed the point - people with all kinds of disabilities tend to rate their quality of life close to the same as able-bodied and neurotypical people who have no disabilities.

You didn't prove it.

I know I said I wasn't going to reply, but you're misunderstanding so much.

How do you suppose we'd get rid of natural disaster, war, abuse, fatal accidents, etc? I really am curious, I'm not attacking you, I'm seriously curious as to how this is possible. As for the gene therapy, again, our genes would adapt and something else considered a disability would pop up. That was the whole point of what I said.


Do you understand what I'm talking about when I say strengths and weaknesses? If you didn't have weaknesses, you'd excel at everything. This simply isn't the way people are. We are all good at some things (our strengths) and not so good at other things (our weaknesses)

Yes, everybody has weaknesses. EVERYBODY. You're right in saying some have few and others have more and can be overwhelmed by it, I never said it was fair, not once. I know life isn't fair, though. Do you think that this hierarchy you keep bringing up is only in humans, or that other living beings don't utilize their strengths and focus on them instead of their weaknesses to stay alive?



You are causing trouble. I don't care that your opinion is different than mine, but the way you present your opinion is the problem (This may sound crazy to you, but I also understand this is MY opinion of the situation, and I'm aware not everybody will agree.. Even more, I'm OK with the fact that not everyone will agree.) My original post was about how I take issue with the OP saying that people with LFA need to be cured because they're the reason the world is in financial sorrow as if there are no other disabilities out there, or other causes for the financial downfall. It talked about how I took issue with the OP acting as if people with HFA aren't needing any services and aren't needing to be helped by tax payers and as if people with HFA (or asperger's, whatever you'd like to call it.) only have social issues, and no other problems- That if we just worked on our social problems, all of our sensory, coordination, learning disabilities would suddenly also disappear (or the OP has decided those are only things people with LFA deal with, which isn't true.) You're making absurd accusations about things I never said. I also never said we SHOULDN'T look for a cure for things, I just said the reality is there are so many factors and other things, that it's not likely every single thing that's considered bad and a disability and not normal, etc. Won't ever be completely wiped from the face of the earth. An example- PTSD, it's purely trauma based, meaning you won't get PTSD if you never experience a traumatic event. What constitutes as a traumatic event and how a person will react all depends on that one individual, and to find a "cure" for such a thing is impossible in the sense that it won't ever be completely rid from the world. The best we can do is treat it once it's popped up in someone. If that treatment is what you would consider a "cure," then I see we have differing opinions of what a cure is. That's ok.

I'm the one that wants conformity and obedience, coming from a person who thinks everybody should be cured of everything and that nobody should be considered to have strengths and weaknesses? You mean.. You don't want anybody to have the things that make us unique? Wouldn't that mean you are in favour of conformity and so on? I encourage people to have their own opinions, I like people to be diverse, I find "normal" people EXTREMELY boring, but I still let them live how they please as long is not illegal or harming anyone. I know not everybody is the same as me and to be honest, I wouldn't want them to be. Life would be mundane without differing opinions.

I never said you couldn't have your own opinion, but when you're presenting it in the way you did, don't be surprised when people feel the need to argue their point, especially when you've been so insulting (I've read your posts to other people, you're quite rude and assuming)
and telling people their facts prove nothing when you don't even present facts at all.

I have AS and I don't consider it a disability for me, nor does it "get the better of me". It really doesn't bother me all that much. I was diagnosed in my 40s and had learned to adjust by then. Up until then, I thought everyone else thought and felt like I do but had learned to just put up with things, so I did that.

Like anything else, there are degrees of severity with AS/ASD.

I do agree that there should be a cure or better treatments for low functioning autism, but not because of how much money it may cost taxpayers. I think the people who have it may very well want a cure or better treatments. I also believe it should be optional and not forced on anyone, but available to those who choose to take it. I do not think that having LFA makes someone less valuable, I simply think it makes their life harder.