Do Our Origins Matter?

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I see many people getting indignant about how we're not from vaccines or from environmental toxins, but even if we were would that really change anything? We are what we are however that happened.

There seems to be this bias that if a disease originated in genetics it's not as bad as if it came from toxins in the environment.

If it came from an environmental toxin, it's definitely a disease, illness (whatever you want to call it, it's all negative). If it's genetic, there always the possibility that it's not a disease, just a benign mutation, a difference, not necessarily negative and, in the correct circumstances, might be positive.

These false etiologies are a problem for more than just us.

Here's a pretty stark presentation of what the anti-vaccination propaganda has caused:

http://jennymccarthybodycount.com/Jenny ... /Home.html

As for us? How about:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9074208/ns/ ... n-therapy/

These stories lead to parents taking extreme actions and untested treatments - they don't vaccinate their children, which reduces herd immunity - as well as specifically their own children's immunity. They can subject their autistic children to dangerous, unproven treatments just because they believe that heavy metal exposure caused autism and they need to have it removed. And these are far from the only dangerous treatments that autistic children have been subjected to. The point is these false claims cause tangible harm to people. That's what's wrong with them.

All the power is in the present, rather than the past or future

it does indeed matter; trying to stop a cause for autism that doesn't exist might kill off many other good things to lots of people, anti-vaccination movements are only the tip of the iceberg.

it doesn't really matter to me that it is found out what causes autism, but they should not throw around bogus claims.

I think understanding the cause(s) of autism does have some importance.

Lay-people without autism seem to have more difficulty understanding, accepting, and supporting us when they have no idea what makes us different.

Helping professionals (doctors, therapists) need to have an accurate understanding of the cause(s) of autism to provide appropriate help to people with ASDs. I think that knowing cause(s) can also be important in terms of accurately diagnosing people.

I've always known it as just a disability, just like Down's Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, Soto's Syndrome, Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Mental Retardation, and lots of other diversities, only with different symptoms.

As far as it being caused by an "environmental toxin," I have a sneaking suspicion that it has rather a lot to do with how an individual is raised. Their home environment, if you will.

If you'll pardon an analogy, I see it like computer programming. You start with the same hardware, but the programming language makes for an entirely different interface. Like this: "NTs are windows/DOS, Aspies are Linux." There is going to be a lot of translation error getting those different operating systems to communicate with each other.

Do any of us really want to "format drive c:" in our heads so we can be rebooted with NT?

An AS parent is rather likely to load their AS operating language on their children, while school tries to load NT onto them (a DOS shell, hehe). The efficacy of one vs the other determines how far along the autistic spectrum is.

Just my theory, mind you.