Jonathan Mitchell

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Newsweek link

This is the top comment on the article, 20 people have actually thumbed it up so far...

How does John Best claim to have a ASD? He is infamous in the community. Argues that Asperger's isn't on the spectrum and it's not autism. It's speculated he is on the spectrum himself and I am not sure why.

Very good article and enjoyable read. I personally do not want to be cured of asperger's syndrome and I have never embraced the notion, but since becoming dissentient towards collectivist rights I have now disaffiliated myself from the neurodiversity movement (I no longer believe in "social justice"). I have retrospectively analyzed many of Jonathan's Mitchell's critiques about the social justice movement as-well as some of its staunch adherents on his blog "Autism Gadfly" and I found them quite suspiciously riveting. For instance, he has questioned the diagnosis of the Nobel Prize winning economist Vernon L Smith as he self-diagnosed himself with the ASQ test and not by a professional clinician. More intriguingly, he has criticized Autism Speaks (the anti-Christ institute to neurodivergents and spectrumites) for redistributing grant payments to a cognitive neuroscientist and proponent of neurodiversity named Laurent Mottron between 2005 and 2008, who upholds philosophical foundations completely antithetical to them (very bizarre).

The idea that most AS/HFA individuals don’t want to be cured is all a parable (irrespective of what the WP polls conclusively state) and it should be the individual's right such as Jonathan's to decide whether they want to be cured (once it's discovered in the foreseeable future) - it's their freedom of choice. Neurodiversity may be applicable as a hybrid of cognitive liberty for the talented and gifted, but it’s a neurobiological delineation of multiculturalism when in concomitance with disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychotic syndromes, intermittent explosive disorder, selective mutism, dysnomia, OCD, depression, epilepsy and sensory integrative dysfunction. It’s also conspicuous to me from the article's facebook comments that the conspiratorialist crank John Best is at it again who believes that neurodiversity is a big pharma/CIA conspiracy to indoctrinate parents of autistic children by covering up the "fact" that ASD is all just simply "mercury induced brain damage".

I haven't read the newsweek article yet, but I've read Mitchell's blogs and usually find his logic laughably absurd.

In reality, if there's ever a cure, it won't be a genuine choice unfortunately.

No, there's never going to be a choice. It'll only be a choice for parents, and we can already observe what choice they will make for AS youth. They're so mired in hatred for AS, they're desperate for eugenic elimination.

Edit: In the comments you can find a cancer comparison, where it has been thumbed up many times. That's what they think of us.

How Jonathon feels about himself is how I felt as a kid when I knew I was different and didn't know why. I thought me being different was the reason for being an outcast and why I was treated different by everyone. I think if someone wants a cure for their condition, that is their business. How someone feels about them self doesn't mean that is how they feel about other people. I have never read his blog so I don't know how he feels about autistic people beside himself and I had never heard of him until now.

I don't have a problem with Jonathan Mitchell wanting a cure or attributing all his problems to autism.
He represents only himself.

But Jonathan Mitchell is still free to say his views, and others are free to say their views and also criticize what is wrong with Jonathan Mitchell's. I don't think people like Jonathan Mitchell who are so negative and make nasty comments to his critics and attribute all problems to autism and have downer attitude in life will prevail in their views over people who have more positive approaches over time. It is not like anyone is going to find a cure soon, esp. for common variant common trait kind of autism, so there is time for people to make progress taking positive approaches.