An answer for the other 80% of autism may have been found

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I am ASD-1. I have three siblings, none of them are Autistic. I would not want a cure that made me like them. By most measures I've been more successful than them. And I would not have wanted to be "cured" before *I* could make an educated decision on the topic.

Rather than "curing" me, I would prefer everyone else be "cured" to be more tolerant of my differences.

It appears to me that Autism is still incompletely understood. There probably really is a SPECTRUM of different "disorders" lumped under that label. From where I'm sitting, I think it (my spot on that SPECTRUM) is not inherently wrong but rather inherently different from the majority of people...but the current consensus is the difference is unacceptable. I don't feel popular opinion is correct in my case.

Popular opinion is not always correct.
▫ My bride was born left-handed. Her grandmother was born in Europe in the 1800s and considered left-handedness to be EVIL and exerted much pressure to "cure" the left-handedness. She partially succeeded; my bride is not left-handed now, just clumsy.
▫ Red hair has been thought evil, too.

And where would you draw the line? If more people were Autistic would that make it OK?

P.S. !

Eugenics is always risky business. Humans haven't had the best track record in such matters. And it's extremely questionable if changes made to the brain to an extent that could be considered a cure wouldn't fundamentally alter who somebody is.

There's also the issue of how voluntary it would really be when it would have to be done early and anybody that wasn't picked up in screenings early enough probably wouldn't be able to be treated anyways.

I'm all for fixing executive dysfunction related issues (the kind that us autistic adults would and will prioritize over), which usually includes everything to do with emotional dysregulation, painful sensory issues, cognitive processing and working memory issues, stuff around multitasking and even some aspects that are ADHD-like -- the very things that made a lot of autistics , even with higher IQ, "useless beings" -- which can very much do feel like turning into a better and way more functioning version of an autistic person and without altering their personalities when that type of solution is found.

I sincerely believe this is plausible even without directly touching IQ.
Maybe even not even needing touching genes itself if I stretch it further.

Because there are very much other avenues that can address to such, like the consequence of curing the effects of sleep disorders -- if that's the consequence of that research, yeah, I'll be all for it.


But the 'socialization and emotional aspects', altering one's rewards system to make them more 'verbal' and personally 'sociable', another scheme to make another autistic "indistinguishable from their NT peers"...?

Anything that pertains to becoming more neurotypical is questionable.
Even something like touching IQ itself is even a touchier subject.

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I DOUBT that they could do that!

They DO have a CUSTOM ONLY therapy called Crispr, and it CAN change genes, but SO WHAT! Autism is primarily a remapping of the brain, Not only is that logical, but FMRI concurs! THAT IS NOT GENETIC!! !! ! It is a WIRING that happened at least PARTIALLY due to genes, apparently, Such things CAN'T remap, and logically WON'T.

It is kind of like putting too much voltage into a semiconductor circuit. It may fail such that even when CORRECT voltage is applied, it still fails. That circuit was CHANGED by the voltage, but removing the voltage doesn't fix the problem.

And crispr is meant to be CUSTOM. It looks for a particular string, like a spell checker. If a part is different that won't be changed. If it exists somewhere else, that WILL. I wouldn't trust it in a on size fits all case.

A "vaccine" to "cure" autism. Anyone see the irony in that?

But let's play autistic devil's advocate and say there was a stem cell therapy designed to reverse the genetic cause of autism. What would it do to a person, since their lifelong pattern of thinking was being changed? Could they cope with this sudden paradigm shift? Compare it to deaf adults who receive a cochlear implant. Some of them have rejected it due to it bringing intrusive and disruptive sounds into their life, and others just refuse it in anticipation of this. And those of us with Asperger's - would it "dumb us down" and take away any advantages our narrow focus may have given us?

And what would this do to people who in my opinion have 50/50 Asperger's - a combination of genetics and upbringing by the same people who gave us these genetics? It might only be halfway effective.

Just like anything else in life changing therapies - not one size fits all.