The Autistic Genocide Clock. This is sickening people.

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A personality is created thru experiences far more then genetics, it'll never be possible to tell what a childs personality will be like, the threat of what you are saying isn't possible. I just want to even out the genetic playing field, if there are set of twins, both pretty girls, sep at birth, one is treated like a princess, never wanting, never abused treated kindly and the other is abused, possibly raped, life living hell growing up...its fair to say their personalities will be very diff, genetics would never be able to see into the future.

Certain personality traits *are* genetic. If they pose a disadvantage in the society you envision, they will be eradicated.

Thats down the road even further, if it was to happen, again, I wouldn't cry over a negative feature beng removed, but thats under a diff goal then mine.

For all your pessimism, you do seem quite naive about how people work. Getting rid of the neurodiverse and disabled will NOT end discrimination and inequality for good. Even if we (and blacks, Jews, homosexuals, trans individuals and everyone else who society at large has deemed a threat throughout the ages) were gone, soon enough your utopia full of perfectly normal people would fracture on some other basis, whether it was from a new and little-understood genetic condition that arose some time later or just because people want a "them" to define an "us" against.

I'll reiterate my last sentence from the last post I made: It doesn't hold up to reason that the victims of inequality and intolerance should be held responsible for those problems, not to mention that it's completely unfair and very offensive to say that they are.

When did I say end persecution, I just want to even the playing field, not stop racism and so on...

The thing that you neglect is that equality and an "even playing field" are largely socially constructed and NOT biologically predetermined. If in some reversal of the current situation the ratios of neurotypical and ASD people were flipped, the NTs would surely find themselves at a disadvantage in society, and indeed be considered "disordered," just because the world as they knew it was set up for a certain kind of person - more specifically, someone on the spectrum. Equality (or pretty damn close, as, per my last post, true equality will probably never be achieved given the human mindset) can be accomplished without getting rid of a whole subset of the human experience, but only if society is willing to make some adjustments so everyone truly has an equal opportunity at success.

currently there's work on isolating the genes that make autism "what it is."

google: Department of Bioengineering Ph.D Qualifying Exam, 2009 (click on PDF).

it's a student's work---and most of it is largely incomprehensible to me anyway--but there is mention of the allele's (?) which pre-dispose us to autism.

not sure where it's going to lead. but i think i can guess.

edit: (imo, they'll never succeed. but the fact is: they're trying.)

I'm sorry if you think this is bad news but I think its good news, maybe one day they can cure it, or at the very least they can as I said give peace to the unborn with disabilities.

BoneKaeru:::In a fairytale world people will care about their fellow man and make concessions, here in the real world they'll trample you down in the stampede of life, I just want everyone in that stampede to have equal chance to crush the person in front of them as they have to get crushed themselves...nothing more...

disagree with abortion for any reason other than in the case of rape, serious risk of death to the mother, and those rare cases in which the child will die immediately after birth (as in the case of babies without sufficient brain development to sustain life, etc.). So I am appalled at the idea of aborting children due to genetic defects that are not incompatible with life.
That said, I had screening done so that I could be prepared should my son have DS or have spina bifida. I had no intentions of aborting if anything were found, but I wanted to start early intervention asap in these cases. Imagine if a child were found to be genetically predisposed for an ASD and intervention began in infancy? Symptoms that are problematic for many of us might be a mild annoyance or nonexistent for that person if intervention began that early. I knew my son might be genetically predisposed so I was on the lookout for any signs. He didn't make appropriate eye contact and focused on people's mouths, a typical ASD trait. But I taught him from an early age to make eye contact and it's great. He follows a point and points, in part because I directly taught him. The only real problems we're having now are some intense obsessions with doors and some sensory issues. But he's getting intervention at 2 instead of 5 like some kids. The more intervention before 5, the better the outcome.

Okay, by that logic, why did we have a civil rights movement rather than just getting rid of all the black people because they didn't have an "equal chance of trampling others" at the time? The only thing separating Asperger's or comparable mental disorders from minorities seen as more legitimate, ones that the eradication of which WOULD be seen by the population at large as genocide, is the medical terminology used.

And I'll say it again - some people DO have the "equal chance to crush the person in front of them," if that's how you want to see things, disability or not. They just have less common ways of doing so. Everyone has their assets, and it's for no one to decide that some are more valuable in a human being than others if no one is being harmed by them, so much that a person who excels in nuclear physics, playing the violin or playing chess but lacks social graces would be considered unworthy of existence. Even if someone isn't a savant to the degree one often hears about, it doesn't mean they won't add something to the world that it would be better for.

Don't people become savant through focusing on that skill to the exclusion of everything else, anyway? So it's only a savant skill if it's neither too narrow or too broad. Of course that comes at the exclusion of 'social skills. But I hold to the Renaissance ideal, so I don't think you have to be a jack of all trades or a master of one.

IMO: yes. wipe us off the map--see what happens to silicon valley. and NASA. and the entertainment industry, for that matter. and much of the artwork and poetry in the world.

but aside from that: it's not just about what we can do (or can't). it really is about who we are. in my opinion, that's a gift---despite the struggles.

again: you can't possibly know what someone's interior world is like. we just don't know what gifts we're (potentially) wiping out: especially among those who can't speak.

this isn't an argument about abortion (per se) in my book. for me, it's about who gets to decide who's "worthy" or not. i find it frustrating that i'm still considered a "pervasive developmental disorder." it leads to the kind of invisibility which can then lead to a (subtle) kind of dehumanization, which leads to...

fill in the blank.

I didn't read all of the posts here, but after looking at the first few, and the article which I don't even want to write the title for---has sickened me. We that are autistic must let the world know that we are HUMAN BEINGS. We have rights. We have a voice. I have a MISSION IN LIFE. You have a MISSION IN LIFE. This segment of the world that is uneducated about us autistics are the ones that need help. How dare they assume that we are defective. I do admit that I have plenty of challenges in this world, but I am proud to be autistic. It is time that our voices be heard. I have already begun. In my ministry of music I am telling the world about Asperger's in my life. I testify to my eccentricities and lack of a social life, and I testify to my gifts---basically, I testify the truth. And I do not consider myself as defective. I have begun my mission. Please, let us all educate the world. I am sick and tired of certain organizations being our voice---as if we don't have a voice. We have made plenty of contributions to this world---and we have plenty more to make. We must not be silenced.

all i can say is: amen, brother! amen...

I'm undecided when it comes to abortion, but selectively aborting is social evil embodied. An Autistic baby should have the same chances of being born as a normal baby. It's wrong to selectively kill off "lesser" members of society (of course, "lesser" is in itself a societal term and hence only means something to the sheeple that bobble along with the main riff-raff). If blue eyes are out inferior, just kill the kids before they're born! Beautiful in it's simplicity, fashion.

Frankly, I see life as, for the most part, a 80 year cesspit filled with the mutilated remains of virtue floating around next to the discarded generic C Major popsong CD's, and a half eaten Big Mac, but everyone has the right to suffer it, I know I would have regretted missing out on it, even if it does suck. An experience is an experience. I'm starting to fall into the mindset that even the most unhealthy, crippled and terminally ill child should be born, because life is the most important thing we will ever know, and if there is conciousness after death, I think we'll look back and think it was worth it (or we'll just quote the last lines of Apocalypse Now!; The Horror, The Horror).

I've always been so afraid of this. Soon there will be a future where all cancer and disease and unwanted personality traits are vanquished from society, and we'll all become automotans. Huxley's future realized. Designer babies. What makes us human is our flaws, people! Come on. Enough already with trying to play God!