You guys don't understand.

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Well...Asperger Syndrome has led to me becoming very ill. I got depressed, self harmed a lot, tried committing suicide and ended up in a mental hospital.

After all that, I still don't want a cure for Asperger Syndrome. For people on the lower end of the spectrum maybe, but not for me personally. At times I really, really do wish I had been born a different person, or not born at all. Yet. I don't know. I.

Never mind.

No, there are two kinds of efforts towards cures so far:
* Claims to have cured high functioning people involving harming them emotionally or physically or by doing dangerous procedures based on pseudo-science such as chelation therapy. The high functioning targets to these approaches are high functioning enough to appear to have been cured or were NTs who were actually misdiagnosed. Of course, this cures no one and is no help to anyone.

or...

* Attempts to isolate the gene, then apply genocide towards people with the autistic gene. (Nope, this does not help any of the low functioning guys that are already alive). Of course, this approach will exterminate all, including high functioning or low functioning. And while money is spent on this genocidal cure, it is not getting spent on improving the lives of the low functioning fellows.


Who named you their spokesman?

Vexcalibur, your outrageous claims belie true concern. You have no forwardly-thinking objection to curing the LFA. Otherwise, you wouldn't have resorted to screaming genocide and pretending that HFAs are nearly the only ones who cure was attempted on. What is it you would do to improve the lives of the LFA? Why don't you do that, instead of devoting so much time to keeping the high-functioning on top and in control, and spreading and controlling with fear towards those ends?

For the LFA. there is a need for someone to understand their concerns and voice them out. Anything wrong with this?

I think this is a concern of the LFA and not their parents or you or me or faux organizations like autism speaks or anyone else.

No cure was truly attempted on HFAs or LFAs for that matter, all we have so far are hoaxes based on pseudoscience and the genetic research. You try to trivialize my argument by using the words 'screaming genocide'. However, the International definition of genocide (edit: it is tiresome that it is impossible to recognize links from normal text in this forum and thus I had to underline the link manually, can somebody fix this issue already?) includes "(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; " in its listing. A search for an autism gene so that the births of autistic individuals are stopped is for sure genocide. Whether you think it is a good thing to do it or not is a matter of opinion, but it truly is a form of genocide.



Tangent. My point was exactly that doing genetic research to stop the future births of autistic people does not improve the lives of the currently living LFA. If you actually think it does, please explain how. Now, if you think that by saying I don't do things to improve the lives of the LFA or that I don't know them you are proving that the genetic research is helpful to them you are way off.


I don't do neither of those two things you are claiming I am doing.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 20 Jan 2010, 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

But so far, we need to listen to the opinions of the LFA to make a judgment.

A number of LFA individuals who are able to communicate with assistive technology have expressed their opposition to a cure. I believe there are a few of them on this site.

Hey LFAs, I hope you guys unite and speak it out loud and clear what do y'all think of yourselves?

Ok.

Vexcalibur, there's no guarantee that the search for "an" autism gene will lead to such abortions. There are many genes and combinations of them to look for anyway. What makes you think that gene therapy won't be done in some cases? I think assuming that strongly that research will lead to such abortions is spreading fear.

Yeah ruennsheng, it's about time they band together and advocate in their interests.

The Cure is a myth. Nothing will rewire the living, and the genetics point to having to cull a third or more of the population, and that might not work. It would end science and technology, and those making the study are science and technology.

Anything having to do with genetics is decades in the future. We just got the Human Genome, but no one knows how it works.

The latest I read in Epigenitics shows that major change can come without mutation, mostly in males, caused by changes, more or less food is one. The results play out over generations, and in an experiment on Fruit Flies, one cause affected 22 generations, then ended.

Besides the simple problem of genetics, I have European, Asian, and Native American ancestors. I am not my mtDNA.

Taking Cure, as something should be done, it has been, we have made great progress in understanding mostly what not to do. Thorazine and Electro Shock are out, Chelation is fading, and the computer has opened the world for me. As the latest book Alex reviewed said, we do better than most on the web, and it is becoming the new world.

It does open some of the world for LFA, but the big event is in the AS/HFA, who are empowered by the web.

I am not reading Autism Speaks Science, but what I am reading was based on all studies before, some of which they funded. I don't care where the research money comes from, or who the cheerleaders are. We are no closer to a cure, or to genocide, but we have learned a lot about how high function fits in the world.

There Wrong Planet deserves credit, we put Wiki to shame on thje subject.

Without Autism Speaks, Alex might have never thought of providing a space for other points of view.

There is no doubt that Autism Speaks cooks the numbers, according to them, 1 in 100 is LFA. That is like saying, Everyone in Haiti has died, twice. Please donate before it is too late.

Still, the only places they can donate are Genetics, and Neurology. I favor the advance of those subjects. Taking the 1 in 100 to 150 that gets thrown around, Autism Speaks is spending what amounts to $3 per autistic American per year on research. As for direct support, that is enough to skip all research and send them each a comic book.

The cost of supporting the 1% who are LFA runs Billions a year. Lifetime care can run millions per LFA. Autism Speaks funding is only a drop in the bucket of what is being spent for research, and we are no closer to an answer than when we started.

There are other problems where research might do a lot of good soon, Malaria, Dengue, which are common, and cause a lot of suffering and death. There are other genetic and neurological conditions that are bigger problems. Perhaps answers can be found.

As for taking personal offense, Rainman is my hate group. No one has ever compared me to an Autism Speaks video.

I do think we are the key to the problem, the Broader Autism Phenotype that produces all of Autism. As a solid 10% of the population, no one will get rid of us, but we may learn that DNA testing is advisable before marriage, having children, and even a small reduction in LFA is a large reduction in social cost. This will take better DNA studies than we have, carried on over generations.

I may be wrong, but it will take a lot more study to prove it either way.

With one in five unemployed, long term it seems, wars, disasters, our problems come low on the list. Autism Speaks may be wrong, but they keep the research we need going.

Advances in computers will continue, and it is getting to reading thoughts. Just technology may free thought, which would be a horror for most. Politics and religion would suffer most.

We have brainwaves turning on lights, moving artifical limbs, and the direct computer interface is coming. First it will be in games, we are close, then in thought controlled robots.

We are in Science and technology too deep to quit now, so all sources of funding are good.

Thank you!

We can only hope for the day LFAs talk for themselves, I'd love to hear their voices from within.

And no matter what Autism Speaks had done, as long as they keep doing the research, we should... appreciate it? They are still helping us to know more about ourselves, don't they? It's just like us cheering for our brother who, against our wills, entered a singing competition when we want to be singers more strongly...

I have to disagree. It is quite uncommon for someone to specifically talk about curing LFA while accepting HFA. It is quite common however, for people to claim that 1 in 150 or 1 in 110 are autistic, (Figures which are meant to include all of us,) and then talk about curing autism, implying that we're all "messed up" in their eyes. We also cannot ignore Suzanne Wright's recent statement that it was a goal of Autism Speaks to eradicate autism.

I think it's more common for them to deny that HFA even really exists, or isn't "real" autism.

But they have autism-like traits, esp. problems in socializing...

I have no opinion on the matter.....

However, I watched my cousin consistently slam himself into walls , have repeated seizures, struggle to eat and so on.

He was severely autistic......and my aunty and uncle and his brothers and sisters did their best and loved him with all their heart, as we all did. He was one of the best people I have ever known.

He died from heart failure 4 years ago at the age of 18 due to the amount of seizures that he had had and his doctors just could not control them. I do not know the indepth correlation between severe autism and seizures, but it was very tricky to manage.

So when you speak of cure, I am sure that my family would have done anything to save his life.

So unless you are my cousin, who could no sooner participate in this kind of forum than understand who is mother was without a photo attached to his favourite key chain, then there is no argument. I, for one, could never in a million years have understood what he was experiencing.

This argument is a moot point.

Mics

Sad to say, such stories could never be told by them.

I wish I can listen to the inner thoughts of the LFAs.