What do you think of Autism Speaks?

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Hello I am a 16 year old male diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and I am curious about what all of you would think about this charitable organization. I personally hold favorable views of it due to the fact that the organization due to the fact that the search for a cure is to help people with severe autism and recognizes that people with AS or High Functioning Autism may not wish to be cured of their autism. I also believe that as people with Asperger's or High Functioning Autism we do not always have insight or know how hard it is to be on the other end of the spectrum with severe or classic autism. However I am aware that many of you on this forum hold strong opinions on this matter which willing to listen to. I am also willing to change my opinion should I gain a broader picture of the topic.

I don't have much a view on it either way, but many on here feel they try to annihilate their individuality.

That's the thing I have a hard time believing.

On the autism Speaks website it actually acknowledges the fact that if you are High Functioning autism or have Asperger's you might not want to be cured and it is up to you over what your choice is. Therefore I find it sort of hard to grasp the belief many autistic people have over the organization trying to wipe away individuality it is only trying to help people with more severe autism.

I hate them. I despise them. Period.

Can I suggest you search on their name in the box in the top right hand corner. There are numerous threads which lay out the consensus of opinion. It isn't positive.

Evil.

Run by idiots for idiots.

We need a purge.

One, two, three, four, I declare a flame war!

Seriously though, I think by now most people on here have made their views on Autism Speaks clear. Any further general threads like this are just redundant

I can't stand Auti卐m 卐peaks. They paint is all with the same dismal brush and they want to weed all of us out of the human gene pool.

Well to start off this whole High-functioning-severe- et cetera stuff is based on the program a distorted and outdated medical model. The current medical model judges health based on a standard of normal function. Though normal only means what is the common and standard way of functioning, and says notion about the objective qualities and values of how people actually are. Under the medical standard if most people cut themselves, or had compulsive homicidal urges, or were rapists, than these things would be considered healthy and to not have these traits would be considered an illness and/or defect. The common medical model is based on a flawed standard and does not provide a sensible guide.
This high-function low function stuff is based in a grading of this standard. What high function or low function or severe only says is how different in function a person is judged to be in the relation of average function. It does not discern the status of a person being able to objectively function, or the potential and value within their life.
These distinctions in separating high-function an severe are also based on highly questionable premises. It premises that that there is a linear grading in which some are more autistic than others, that those who are more autistic are the ones worse off and less functional, and that autism would be the reason for this. All of those premises I would contend against. I would contend that the traits of autism are an alternative functionality, and that the degree to which autistic individuals can function in society is owed to a complex mixture of development, individual variation, opportunities, and the social context in which they reside.
Furthermore, this drawing of a distinction of high functioning and severe is both arbitrary and exaggerated. There is now separate classes of high functioning and low functioning. There is autism spectrum in which there are multiple variables of traits. If it were based merely on differences of these variances and would see little reason why the so called "high function" would be any more distant from understanding the so called "severe" than they would for a different kind of so called high functioning one. Furthermore, I would believe there is a line of commonality between autistic people of various sorts, and on at least that point there can be a basis of common understanding. Though I would believe that such understanding can be increased through mutual learning and communication.
These distinctions of high functioning and severe are erroneous. But beyond this, the distinction in treatment I would find objectionable. If you wish for high-functioning autistics to have a choice on a cure, then why shouldn't the severe get that choice too. For all you know they could like to remain autistic. Why not also give a cure option for NT's, so they can choose to become autistic?
Though that's because the choice is not about freedom of choice at all. The Nuerotypical dominated and normative medical dominated position advanced by autism speaks isn't about choice on the part of those whose lives they effect. Its about their order deciding whether other people deserve to exist and what sort of existence they get to have. They have only mitigated complaints against them for public opinion, for promising that they will focus there all out effort of elimination at the more heavily different. In my view, its little more positive than when the Nazis allowed for some of the physically stronger Jews to be slaves in work camps, instead of executing them with the rest.
I would contend rather than following the broken medical model and trying to advance a cure, that the direction be changed to using a sensible theoretical structure to direct education and cultivation toward developing autistic people's capabilities, and to reform the order of society to produce one in which there is a place for autistic people as social equals. Indeed, autistic people who would have spent there lives in a mental institution decades ago, can in today's society be computer programmers, college professors, and numerous other things they were blocked from being in the past. Efforts directed at bettering the lives of autistic people could in the future enable many of those who are today considered severe to lead much more fulfilling lives. But regardless they still have a dignity in the value of their lives which autism speak's approach does not duly respect.

I think that Autism $peaks is some kind of far right wing organisation and not a charity. I hope their members or funders stay out of the UK.

I like your post Yelekam and will respond to it shortly. But first I have a question which is that how many of you here on this forum know anyone with Low Functioning Autism?

Its just that I have a bit of a dilemma here. One of the most major criticisms of Autism Speaks is that it does not have a single autistic person on its board yet I am actually thinking why should it, instead Autism Speaks has actual parents of Low Functioning Autistic children those who go through immense struggles to raise their children. I am thinking why should someone with High Functioning Autism or Asperger's gain a seat at the table if they may not have met a person with low functioning autism in their life since after all it is those people in particular that the organization is trying to represent.

They are not as pure evil as they were in the 2000's when they talked only in terms of childhood severe autism, used exclusively fear rhetoric, had a video with an mother of an autistic child talking about thoughts of killing him in front him. While they withdrew that and other hateful videos and use more balanced rhetoric these days they have never apologized for those videos.

They still as of 2014 used only 4% of thier money for supports.

They vigorously support Applied Behavioral Analysis. That is a involved topic we have had many threads about.

They still openly boast about #MSSNG collaboration with Google and still use puzzle piece as thier rhetoric. I find it highly offensive to have it implied that I am missing or a puzzle piece. Potententially more important then offensive rhetoric is that the #MSSNG project is to create an autism genetic database. That has the potential to be used for eugenic elimination of autistic people. The Judge Rotenberg Center still uses electric shocks on Autistic people. Autism Speaks says they oppose that yet they allowed The Judge Rotenberg Center have have a booth at thier fair in 2015.

There is plausable reason to think the organization is not the evil entity it once was. Within the last year and a half one of the founding members has resigned his CEO position the other has died and they have added two autistic members to thier board. The rhetoric is noticibly better or not as bad as it once was. But based on thier history and the fact we have little idea where the money is going, suspicion the improved rhetoric and the appointments are a smokescreen to cover a dangourous agenda is reasonable.