Autism speaks and asperger's

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So Autism speaks wants to fund research into genetic testing and wants to provide help for autistics (i.e "cure")
not something I personally take offense to. Prenatal genetic testing and abortion is the future. Aborting down babies is one reason given for supporting abortion rights. 90% of Downs embryos are aborted.

Anyhow what does Autism speaks say about asperger's?

On their website it says

http://www.autismspeaks.org/navigating/index.php

Long-Term Care

First, the good news: Your child will likely be able to live independently, earning a living and taking care of their needs.


What To Do About It

Treatments

Fashioning an approach to manage the condition is a highly personal one that requires the input of everyone on your child's healthcare team, including doctors, psychologists, teachers, therapists and parents. Many parents wind up with a multi-pronged approach to treating


Sounds pretty supportive to me.

if you want to support them you can but I will not. I have lost ALL trust and respect for them

This is a support site for people with AS. You're welcome to your opinions and your uncited stats. Of course, it would be nicer if you would go stir the pot elsewhere rather than coming here and trying to make our already difficult lives more difficult.

I suppose next you're off to the Down's Syndrome sites to tell them "abortion is their future" too.

Behavior like this might help make you feel superior in the short-term, but you'll never fill the emptiness inside that way, kid.

The rate of abortion is not necessarily related to the severity of conditions that the child is born with. People are a lot less rational than that. With a bit more of Autism Speaks fear mongering, a lot of us would most likely be aborted if it wasn't such a contentious issue.

"Know that Asperger's does not have to defeat your child."

I feel slightly insulted. Now, if it had said " Know that the problems Asperger's presents does not have to defeat your child" then I might have been forced to change my opinion on Autism Speaks.

Where did you get this?

That seems like a horrible reason to support abortion rights.
I have just lost some respect for anyone who will support abortion rights if it will allow them to terminate fetuses with Down's syndrome.

Then again, my opinons are of little importance because I am not a parent.
But then, using that as an excuse not to read what I have written seems like a case of 'appeal to authority' (parents know better because they are parents).
I cannot imagine how it would be, should Autism Speaks' researchers find the gene that causes autism (or, more likely, cluster of genes), to choose between to terminate or not to terminate.

Listen, Autism Speaks' research will affect the whole spectrum. They will abort any baby on the spectrum. How the hell will they know if the baby will be high-functioning or not before it's even born? They can't, they will simply assume the worst and abort it. We will all be dead in the future if Autism Speaks succeed. Whether that child will grow up to be the next Einstein for a LFA person in an institution isn't even relevant, they will NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome


Screening
Ultrasound of fetus with Down syndrome and megacystis

Pregnant women can be screened for various complications during pregnancy. Many standard prenatal screens can discover Down syndrome. Genetic counseling along with genetic testing, such as amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling (CVS), or percutaneous umbilical cord blood sampling (PUBS) are usually offered to families who may have an increased chance of having a child with Down syndrome, or where normal prenatal exams indicate possible problems. In the United States, ACOG guidelines recommend that non-invasive screening and invasive testing be offered to all women, regardless of their age, and most likely all physicians currently follow these guidelines. However, some insurance plans will only reimburse invasive testing if a woman is >34 years old or if she has received a high-risk score from a non-invasive screening test.

Amniocentesis and CVS are considered invasive procedures, in that they involve inserting instruments into the uterus, and therefore carry a small risk of causing fetal injury or miscarriage. The risks of miscarriage for CVS and amniocentesis are often quoted as 1% and 0.5% respectively. There are several common non-invasive screens that can indicate a fetus with Down syndrome. These are normally performed in the late first trimester or early second trimester. Due to the nature of screens, each has a significant chance of a false positive, suggesting a fetus with Down syndrome when, in fact, the fetus does not have this genetic abnormality. Screen positives must be verified before a Down syndrome diagnosis is made. Common screening procedures for Down syndrome are given in Table 1. Ethical issues

A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies in the United Kingdom and Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated.[34] Data from the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register in the United Kingdom indicates that from 1989 to 2006 the proportion of women choosing to terminate a pregnancy following prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome has remained constant at around 92%.[35][36] Some physicians and ethicists are concerned about the ethical ramifications of this.[37] Conservative commentator George Will called it "eugenics by abortion".[38] British peer Lord Rix stated that "alas, the birth of a child with Down's syndrome is still considered by many to be an utter tragedy" and that the "ghost of the biologist Sir Francis Galton, who founded the eugenics movement in 1885, still stalks the corridors of many a teaching hospital".[39] Doctor David Mortimer has argued in Ethics & Medicine that "Down's syndrome infants have long been disparaged by some doctors and government bean counters."[40] Some members of the disability rights movement "believe that public support for prenatal diagnosis and abortion based on disability contravenes the movement's basic philosophy and goals."[41]

Medical ethicist Ronald Green argues that parents have an obligation to avoid 'genetic harm' to their offspring,[42] and Claire Rayner, then a patron of the Down's Syndrome Association, defended testing and abortion saying "The hard facts are that it is costly in terms of human effort, compassion, energy, and finite resources such as money, to care for individuals with handicaps... People who are not yet parents should ask themselves if they have the right to inflict such burdens on others, however willing they are themselves to take their share of the burden in the beginning."[43] Peter Singer argued that "neither haemophilia nor Down's syndrome is so crippling as to make life not worth living, from the inner perspective of the person with the condition. To abort a fetus with one of these disabilities, intending to have another child who will not be disabled, is to treat fetuses as interchangeable or replaceable. If the mother has previously decided to have a certain number of children, say two, then what she is doing, in effect, is rejecting one potential child in favour of another. She could, in defence of her actions, say: the loss of life of the aborted fetus is outweighed by the gain of a better life for the normal child who will be conceived only if the disabled one dies."[44]

I am pro-choice and that is most definitely NOT the reason why. I agree it's a horrible reason.



I think those of us who disagree with eugenic abortion would have to embark on a massive education campaign. I think DS parents who disagree with eugenic abortion and high-functioning DS people should be doing that right now. I was 35 and 38 when I had my second and third child, respectively, and amniocentesis was offered routinely, and I declined it because I wasn't going to terminate simply on the basis of Down syndrome, and actual lethal anomalies would either show up on ultrasound (if structural) or wouldn't show up on routine genetic testing (if metabolic). But I know that with all genetic differences there is a range of possibility for the outcome and having a given diagnosis, provided it's not something obviously degenerative, painful without hope, or non-survivable, does not equate to a miserable life. I think ppl ALL need to be educated on that fact.

~Kate

Autism Speaks is coming around, they used to deny Asperger's was autism.

Prenatal testing is highly unlikely, and only brain scans can detect autism, and it is about equal for Asperger's or LFA, or Broader Autism phenotype, which covers 10% of the population.

Genetics shows maybe 22 genes involved, but it was 13 a year ago. It is not getting simpler.

LFA is an expensive problem, it is very hard on families, and deserves the fullest scientific study.

Autism Speaks brings in the money, and does not direct the study. They have funded studies that disproved the metals and vaccine stories, and their ethics have been acceptable, except in advertising, where there are no ethics, just what works.

They have accepted Asperger's as real, quit being insulting, where they did not intend to in the first place. They described LFA, used numbers for all ASDs, and marketing and ad copy does not follow science.

They are coming around to what works for milder cases, and the treatments are getting better.

Still, the problem is the LFA with lifetime costs, and that seems to be a growing problem. All ASDs may be a growing problem, so it is in the best interest of all that we work together.

They are making their first steps toward a policy covering all ASDs, and research money is needed for better methods of helping AS, HFA children reach their full potential.

They are changing, broadening their views, and seeing that the cure they sought might well be impossible, and their service is to the families in need. They have explored every lead, so far, all dead ends. Along the way some very good science has been produced. They started in the dark ages of autism, and are coming into an enlighted view.

Most of what has come out of their work has lead to better treatment of the higher functioning, those one step from a full life.

A lot of good, a few self defeating ads, and a growing understanding of the full range of the problem.

We still have nothing much to offer the LFA, but study should continue. We may never find the answer, but genetic study will answer other questions.

Autism Speaks is changing, I chose to deal with today, not yesterday, and have hopes for tomorrow.

It's often made to sound like Autism Speaks will abort any baby deemed autistic. They cannot make us as abort our children before they are born if it is determined they will be autistic.

The world needs the diversity of us autistics and non-autistics alike. To have a culture free of a certain type of group of people will result in an imbalance. The world needs autistics the same as it needs non-autistics. We all have our place. It is of my opinion that Autism Speaks does not view it this way. Therefore Autism Speaks is defective---not us with autism.

And since we all have the right to our opinons---I don't want their treatments. I am doing fine in my autistic world at this time in my life.

source?

There's a gay-activist aspie here who thinks it's no loss to abort autistic low iq, but that it is scaremongering, fearmongering to prenatally test and abort gay and lesbian embryos. Anyhow,

Medical ethicist Ronald Green argues that parents have an obligation to avoid 'genetic harm' to their offspring,[42] and Claire Rayner, then a patron of the Down's Syndrome Association, defended testing and abortion saying "The hard facts are that it is costly in terms of human effort, compassion, energy, and finite resources such as money, to care for individuals with handicaps... People who are not yet parents should ask themselves if they have the right to inflict such burdens on others, however willing they are themselves to take their share of the burden in the beginning."[43]

Who are you or I, to tell a woman she can't abort a lesbian embryo?

I will say that this is the first positive thing I've seen coming from Autism Speaks in a long while. I send this message to them: THIS is what you need to be doing. THIS will help us more in the long run, so keep up this trend.

At any rate, if they do decide to change their ways, then I might even decide to support them. Its going to take a lot to change my mind about them and for them to earn my trust, but they've made a step - however small - in the right direction.

As for the abortion issue, if the day ever comes where the autistic gene is discovered and abortion becomes routine, then we can kiss scientific advancement goodbye. I wouldn't be surprised if we regressed thanks to that. That's my opinion, anyways.

Do they realise we probably invented everything from the original hunting trap to the first computer? ( Open close- Yes no technology has come a long way thanks to us.)


Ie the kind of thinking that enabled them to sequence DNA so they could sequence our genes.


So if they abort us en mass they are going to be stuck when the social and environental conditions they create, demand a new set of technologies to prevent their own self inflicted extinction.

Short termism on their part. As usual.

Exactly. That is why I think education is key. (and Autism Speaks does crappy education, unfortunately).

~Kate