The AS Future

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Now AS people can compare notes and find ways to cope. They don't have to wonder what happened to them that made them crazy. They are a people. I think things are getting better and in another generation, they'll be accepted. The next generation of AS people will take their acceptance for granted and not have to experience what the pioneers of today went through,

That describes us nicely. Pioneers.

The way this site is growing, I do not think a generation, 100,000 in a few years.

Well also their will be much more aspies in the comming decades then their are now. If the ratio of AS:NT contines with its current trend anyways. This really has the potential to change society a great deal really. With so many AS individuals potentially in the future NT's may very well see that they will know many more AS people in their lives and will of course mindle and interact with many more AS people in the future then today.

I cant imagine the impact it will have on society, maby it wont be an NT dominated society I guess only time will tell. Really I like the pioneer word to describe us afterall we really were the first children to be DX'ed and receive the first primitive treatments which for me anyways consisted of special ed basicly and occasionally a talk with the school phycologist. Look how far we came in just the last 10-15 years really.

By then it'd be neurotypical to have aspies, yeah?

Our kids won't have as much fun as we did!

I certainly hope the OP is right. The mercury militia is perhaps the biggest threat, but things are happening in our favour.

For example, a Maryland judge ruled that ASD's are genetic in throwing out one of the militia's heavy hitters as an expert witness (Mark Geier). Brilliant!

For another example - we have the Autism Omnibus. Three cases have been heard by the US Vaccine Court, and we should get at least one decision in the first half of 2008. If all three go the same way (against the petitioners I predict) a major precedent will have been set.

Even the mercury militia are starting to turn on their own - the Evidence of Harm group just kicked John Best to the gutter in the last couple of days! Serves him right!

Not to mention the studies into chromosome seven and sixteen providing hope for the genetic identity of the Spectrum to be found.

We have to keep punching though - and in the right places. Just because things look favourable doesn't mean we should relax and just let things fall whatever way they do.

I think we've already reached a point where being NT is no longer the norm... perhaps not if you're just looking at AS but if you include depression and anxiety and ADHD etc But becuase people don't admit openly that they have these conditions, it isn't apparent that so many people have them.

There are a lot more of us than there used to be... we're meeting each other and having kids. Look at Silicon Valley. But we're clustered in "industrialized" countries. I don't think a majority of us survive to adulthood in the Third World, and even when we do, it's difficult to succeed in that environment. And in areas like China, where birth is limited and there are a number culled out of the group, it will take much longer for significant numbers to grow. We may become a large percentage of some areas, but not "the world", not for a long time, if ever.

No. It isn't. It really isn't.

I mean, it's a problem. It's not the biggest one for us.

The biggest problem has to do more with consistent systemic ableism directed at autistic people, the fact that many of us are in institutional situations (whether traditional or take the power structure of an institution and slap it on a differently-shaped building and claim it wasn't one anymore), that abuse and murder usually go more lightly punished (or unpunished) than the same things of other people, the overall employment situation, people who want to eugenically eliminate us, etc.

It's more mundane and everyday things that harm us the most. Not that the mercury stuff is good. It's just not as bad as some of the other things.

It's the biggest threat, not problem. The reason is because that's the theory that is keeping the problem that you are talking about up front and centre (so to speak).

Look, I know it's hard for you to see the positives I am - after what you've been through (I defy anyone to state that they've truthfully had it worse than Anbuend) I don't blame you. But the legal precedents from Judge Berger and hopefully the Autism Omnibus are going to set massive precedents that should kick start the process to eliminate the "ableism" (as you put it) and the other associated problems. And that's just in the US.

You have Andrew Wakefield being investigated in the UK. You have things like the Autism State Plan down where I live. There's a lot of positive vibes going around that haven't been seen before. This is due to the scientific community drawing closer to finding the solution to the ASD puzzle, and the governments of the world being all ears (about the only positive to come out of the mercury militia's panic laden efforts). Of course they ignore the panic merchants as they should.

We are going in the direction against old style institutions. They're gone in Australia, and I can see a time when my country is a world leader in the handling of ASD's the way we are going at present. This will hopefully lead to institutions of this nature being closed in the US - including the pathetic JRC (possibly the US version of the Chelmsford Hospital here).

You might not see all that, Anbuend - and I respect that. And I agree with your views as well. I would be putting them in the past tense myself, though, because things have been worse than they are now. It'll reflect where you can see it sooner than you think.

yea pioneers haha

"We may become a large percentage of some areas, but not "the world", not for a long time, if ever."

haha when i was in preschool I couldnt talk well but hey I made all the buildings out of tyres people were following me.. helping me apparently anyway lol....

so those aspies on the islands must know how to build i reckon... haha..





whats this about Anbuend and wakefield.......?

What's there to pioneer?

I never thought I was crazy, I thought I was different, but logically, everyone is. I always knew I was human, so what if I cannot do what my peers were doing academically/socially, that's one of their strengths, I have my own [that are directly related to AS]. I've always coped well, the only time I haven't is when people expected me to be what I'm not (see: social butterfly); I just kinda avoided those people, and I went back to coping well (avoid the flame and all that). I've actually always been accepted by those I wish to know, sure I've been teased before by people I don't want to know, but everyone is, and has been.

Subjectively: The problem I see with the future "generations" is that they'll be accommodated more and more so that they'll be effectively "normal" then; that's what "awareness" is looking for, if we cannot force you to be like us, hide you from us, we'll then allow you to do what we do with a special piece of paper so you can compete against other people with said special piece of paper until the socially impaired are made social.

The irony....

Anyone with AS will either die off or learn to adapt - i.e see themselves for who they are and to TAKE responsibility for their own actions. Cop to what is theirs. One way or another it's going to happen and that will be called evolution.

No, JJstar - that's eugenics!! The ones who should be adapting are the ones who have that ability to the extent required. And that's the NT's. It's called human rights. We aren't Elephant Men you know!!



I'll leave Anbuend to explain hers, if she feels the need.

Andrew Wakefield - when I last checked - was being investigated by the medical board in the United Kingdom for medical malpractice. On the grounds that his verbal attacks on the MMR vaccine created a level of mistrust that allowed a death from the measles for the first time in a decade and a half not that long ago. His work was presented to the Autism Omnibus as well as "proof" that the MMR jab causes Autism (which it doesn't - the Autistic girl in question had her Autism gene activitated by a 105F tempreture that wasn't treated properly and correctly).

It's a vastly wide spectrum... and as such I suspect that one particular slice of this spectrum represents a breed of humans that are neurologically superior to NTs. These are folks with enhanced cognitive ability, and inborn immunity to the various mental problems that NTs are susceptible to, including dependence on continual social behavior, craving of pop culture, compulsive and irrational conformity, etc.

Now it's politically incorrect to speak of such things, though isn't it? One group of people superior to another? Say it isn't so!