A Dual Approach for Autism

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Newsweek
Hari Srinivasan is a Ph.D. neuroscience student at Vanderbilt University, an alum of UC Berkeley, PD Soros Fellow, Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project, NISE fellow at the Frist Center for Autism & Innovation, and selected to the NIMH's Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. He is also on the boards/advisory boards of DREDF, ASAN, ASA, INSAR, Duke U's ACE, Autism Europe and The Brain Foundation.

There already is a dual approach to autism & everything its been in place for nearly 200 years?

Its called Science and Religion

The state and its medical services follow the science because its the only one provable and based in reality. People can opt out to follow their own belief structure, this happens today.

If you get involved in an accident the medical services will give you a blood transfusion automatically if you need it.

Some religions forbid blood transfusions, some people who follow them wear a necklace or something similar advising "no blood" and medical services respect that, even if it means death.

There was a big news item in the US over 20 years ago Bush II banned some types of genetic science to appease the Christian right causing outrage among scientists and those with genetic disorders.

I`m sure that's since probably been reversed?

So two things including those who see their autism as their identity and those that want to follow the medical model or be "cured", can exist side by side its only extremists that try to impose their view on the other side.

What ever happened to the Christian Right or evangelicals by the way? they used to be a big voting block with a lot of influence, we don't hear much about them these days are they all disgruntled Trump fans?

I have the inverse of the whole problem;

I'm all in all identify an autistic, and as person with autism issues.

Yet people around me believes my issues are all about autism, or a part of autism -- that there's nothing can be done about it.
All accusing me of not accepting autism -- as if they know what they're talking about.

... They don't see me as someone with whatever crap I'm struggling to cope who happened to be autistic.

It's not just the so-called advocates, anti treatment/anti cure NDs or otherwise.
These people are also professionals.

My experience tells me it's just more ignorance.


There are differences between "being autistic", "having autism" and coping with common crap that could've been avoided or solved if people could fricking listen to me instead of psychoanalyzing or accusing me of being a fricking brat about the female body.

I have that amount of discernment and experience to a wider range of contrasts of states, to a point that anyone saying "anxiety is a part of autism" is cringe.
Anxiety is a human thing can could've prevented with enough knowledge and means, not an entirely unavoidable autistic thing.

My own experience proves that statement wrong, and I'm not even taking meds or self medicating for it.

My communication and language issues ARE an autistic thing; and it's just exacerbated by everything else.
People confuse the basis of my issues or the trajectory that translates into limitations from what worsens it.

I'll be fine with whatever baseline issues I have with autism, but not while dealing with something else that makes the issues worse than it supposed to.

So I'm very hyperaware and possibly paranoid about diagnosis overshadowing.
To a point that I wouldn't communicate being autistic to any doctors related to any biological issues.

People can't seem to separate my autism from dealing with crap as a human.
They mistook whatever hormonal issues I have as "being autistic" and my regulated self as "being normal".
They don't know the difference between healthy from so called "normal".

I want to be a healthy autistic.
This is not a contradiction. Yet people do not see it that way. It's frustrating.

I would want an anti-inflammatory treatment alright -- it'll likely make my body more comfortable and be less irritable.
Or heal whatever psychological hung ups I have to a point that autism cannot explain it yet blames autism for it.

Just because it'll turn me into a functioning person, that doesn't mean becoming 'less autistic' -- just less dysfunctional.
Again, people do not see the difference.

I'm not even sure how many experienced the difference -- I had. It's very different in the inside as it is outside.
The change did not stop me from being autistic, and I didn't lose autism -- but gain more as an autistic person.

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It seems to me that a lot of this comes down to how you view autism and the consequences of being autistic. A lot of the worst of it isn't inherent to autism, and people are rightly concerned that the focus on finding a cure for autism versus finding a way of treating/curing some of the more problematic traits is going to win out. There's already been a major problem in terms of the people that missed out on diagnosis due to inadequate screening getting screwed out of any support or help because of the historic bias towards only identifying the most glaringly obvious examples. It's part of why self-diagnosis is likely going to be with us for quite some time as there's a significant portion of the autistic community that doesn't qualify for any sort of diagnosis or treatment, even though they're not necessarily less impacted by it.

That being said, I expect that as time goes by and the methods available for studying the brain improve, that there will come a time when there can be targeted treatments and potential cures for the parts that are causing the bulk of the problem. It's just a shame that the same people pushing the hardest for a cure are often the same ones that think that torturing autistic people into masking themselves are the ones pushing for cures the hardest.