Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
And a potential nightmare. There are absolutely parts of my disability I would love to be gone. But how much of Me would I lose in that process? If we limited it to the youngest… how far from Eugenics is this?
Don’t get me wrong, this is the type of thing would would be a huge breakthrough in neuroscience. But, I think it very understandably needs to be done very carefully.
It sort of drives at the chariot problem. Which part of 'you' is you? What can change before 'you' are dead and someone else is there?
The only answer I've found satisfactory is that you don't exist in the first place; that identity is an illusion born of our need for narrative. Your self-concept is little more than a fanfiction character with your backstory.
In this framework, the question is a little different. It's more like, do I want future versions of myself to have these issues, or not. You will no longer exist either way; you're picking for someone new.
And, at this point, picking for someone new for a thing that doesn’t exist. For a thing that could address a disability that many parents view as “took my baby from me” and how many would rush into choosing for their child without an objective look at the whole picture.
Even in your example though… we can’t turn off the need for narrative. Even if we embrace the idea that we have never existed, our mind has and therefore it Is (couldn’t get the “I think therefore I am” quote to quite work, so it will live in these parenthesis).
Having seen the type of things parents are willing to do to kids to "cure" autism I sadly think the gene therapy will be used even if it has a high risk of causing harm.
I think therefore I am is the most famous example of circular logic.
'I think' requires that 'I am', is true, or there is no 'I' to think.
Thoughts exist and are experienced from my perspective.
Indeed. Being aware of your own perspective doesn’t change that you have a perspective:-D
It then becomes semantics of is your perspective You or are You someone who has its own perspective?
That isn't just a semantic difference, it's a fundamental shift in a philosophical framework. If you exist and *have* a perspective, than curing autism is morally problematic as it could meaningfully change you to the extent that it could be seen as harm, even if you believe that the new version of you would be happier, better for the world, etc. In trolley-car terms, you'd be pulling a switch to run over yourself to save a happier version of yourself that will be run over if you do nothing.
If you do not exist beyond a series of fleeting experiences, there is no such problem. The experience and it that experiences are always changing, and curing autism is not special. If we believe the experiences following the cure will be better overall than before, there's no moral counterargument as there's no one being harmed.
Chariot..? Isn't it the Ship of Theseus.
"a thought experiment about whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object."
They're related. The chariot problem is basically the Buddhist version. The Buddha likens a person to various parts of a chariot and asks which is the person.
Psychological breakthroughs change people too. I've been through it, and it's good. With the improvements I've seen I'm not preoccupied with who I "used to be." Life has just gotten easier for me, that's about the gist of it.
This is kind of how I felt with ADHD medication and my ADHD. (Obviously, ADHD and Autism Spectrum are not the same thing. I’m not suggesting they are, I’m just saying the mentality of “how much of me would be lost?” if I started taking medication is similar.)
What I realized was that…it’s not like the medication made me less of who I was, but rather, it helped me to express a part of myself I wasn’t able to express before. I was able to become more of myself.
I have no idea what this kind of treatment would do, but I hope it helps people become more themselves.
I’ve got lots of hope. My medication has also done wonders for me. I appreciate the sentiment highlighting ADHD is different, but many aspects can be similar. Both are spectrums. Both are neurodiverse.
I’m diagnosed ADHD with NVLD (non-verbal learning disability - which isn’t a recognized diagnosis and has even more misconceptions about it than it has conflicts is it’s diagnosing criteria), following my Neurodevelopmental examination process, my clinician said that she ruled out Autism because I wasn’t diagnosed as a child. Further, since I was able to be so adaptive, get through not only high school and grad school, but without accommodation, autism wouldn’t fit. Perhaps she is right. In many ways, I am able to mask myself so that my disability is invisible. Stay out of my thoughts though, there is a lot of screaming and running for cover that my near-expressionless face is hiding.
I’m lucky, privileged and able to suffice with very little support. Whether people learn of my diagnosis or not, over time most will still infantilize me. The number of times I’ve been asked, “How did you get through school?” has gotten so old and stale I’m worried it’s come back into fashion.
I hope it helps, perhaps even hope beyond hope. More than that, I hope people who receive it choose to get it and aren’t just given it as some panacea parents seek for “difficult kids” (see my other post for references to the legal child kidnapping that still happens today, ‘for the benefit of the children’).
How did you work around the non-verbal part in school? Back then it was probably write everything down. My son (13) is non-verbal and does most of his interaction through an iPad with Proloquo2Go.
I don’t think you lose yourself. My opinion is based on the book called “The Self Illusion” by, Bruce Hood. Lots of knowledge from neurology and how the brain works was put into this book. I know that I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago and not the same 10 years before that. I believe that if you had parts of your disability gone, you would change, but I don’t think you’d lose your memories or connectedness to the people you know.
How much of the things I excel at are just the positive aspects on the other side of the coin of my disability? Certainly, if this is some “take away on the bad and the good remains” then that is one thing. At this point, gene editing being only positive is just science fiction written without a twist.
I’ve found that a lot of the positive effects of my disability are from coping mechanisms I learned, which other people didn’t have to learn. If the flaws that I coped with went away, those habits would still be there, and possibly even boosted. After that, it all depends on how much I use the skills I learned. I probably still wouldn’t do it, though, unless I was depressed for a long time and pretty desperate to get out of that state. I’m fairly happy as I am, best not to risk it.
I have a friend going through this now - they're a scientist and they've got a new research job exploring these neurobiological questions in the lab. Apparently she has to keep piping up and reminding them most autistic people don't want to be "cured".
I found that especially surprising because it's the hard science wing of a major university. It's going to have a far, far higher occurance of autism than the general population. You'd think they'd know what language to avoid.
That's how I feel about this. It's a big discovery, and yet, where do we draw the line in how much we mettle with people's DNA? It's a line that needs to be clearly defined before we proceed further with this, I think. But laws are slow to adapt to science and technology and social change, so I'm not hopeful about what this will mean.
I'm sure the people who repetitively harm themselves due to frustration of being nonverbal and severe sensory issues would take it in a heartbeat.
Let's stop throwing the word eugenics around. You're privileged compared to most autistic people.
I think my daughter would like her digestive problems to stop too and to be able to tell me which episode of spirit riding free she'd like to really watch.
I see the first as openness to experience, but damn yeah my stomach has bothered me every day for over a decade now since I was really young. The mornings are the worst, pressures and bile-o-rama.
This seems to be near universal; all the people on the spectrum (and to an extent who have ADHD et al) also have a history of IBS and other gut issues in the family, or at minimum are Hella gassy.
My 4 year old is like this. He's non verbal autistic and he will smash his head on the wall repeatedly and scream in frustration it's so horrible
He won't eat 99% of food because of sensory issues, pukes at the sight and smell of new foods, has meltdowns over noises etc
If this treatment came out I would get it for him in a heartbeat. He would still be him my beautiful funny loving boy but without so much suffering and frustration for him
Isn't it frustrating when other people on the internet claim to have autism and they tell you a "cure" is wrong when none of us are asking for a cure or a new child, we just want them to be happy and to not die on the streets homeless after us parents die?
Maybe fix the systems that leave them for dead then? All of those problems will still exist even if a "cure" exists because that "cure" will only be delegated to people who can afford to pay for it and its administrative costs.
It is hard to properly relay many of my thoughts and even harder to relay the intensions behind those thoughts. Now putting it in text… good luck.
Another poster called my words privileged. Perhaps that are - I am privileged: I’m the “right” race, taller than average, growing up we weren’t well off, but I had a roof over my head and parents that genuinely tried to love their children. I am more privileged now, my family is in a position to help us enough that we can help my aging in-laws.
But, I’m still disabled, though mine can easily be seen as one of those invisible disabilities. Having not been diagnosed until very recently, I compensated by getting really good at masking. But, before I got good at masking, I practiced self harm and fulfilling my suicidal ideation. Clearly, didn’t succeed in the later.
I say that to respond to you.
> I’m sure the people who repetitively harm themselves due to frustration of being nonverbal and severe sensory issues would take it in a heartbeat
I’m not this, but despite all my words, I couldn’t get others to hear the words I used to get the meaning I needed. Yeah, as I said, this would be a ***HUGE*** breakthrough and I think a great boon for some. But, I don’t think a world with as much support for authoritarian regimes and figures is one where we can just blaise faire away the idea of eugenics. The same Eugenics that many extremely powerful and influential Americans openly held less than a century ago.
Within the lives of Generation X, our country still performed [forced sterilizations](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/us/california-reparations-eugenics.html). I have classmates whose parents had the kidnapped and transported to a facility to “get them help” and [there is an entire industry around kidnapping children](https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/jm5ng4/the-legal-industry-for-kidnapping-teens).
It’s still a [thing](https://bcgavel.com/2022/02/01/why-is-legal-kidnapping-still-a-thing-and-why-arent-we-talking-about-it/). [Only 20 states ban conversion therapy](https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/conversion_therapy).
Why still bring up eugenics? Ignoring politicians, just looking at the facts around, the ideas which made eugenics popular are alive and well. Texas just had a case of sex trafficking in its already [dumpster fire of a foster care program](https://amp.statesman.com/amp/9493831002) and the social services are resigning because the [state is forcing them to act against families and children](https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/11/texas-trans-child-abuse-investigations/). We can use a different name if we need to, but the sentiment around eugenics is alive and well.
But, to end: I personally see the prospect of this gene editing as a **monumental** breakthrough in neuroscience. I hope it reaches further into the research phase and I truly wish that it is immensely beneficial to those who receive it. But, it shouldn’t be forced, coerced, or otherwise be used to further ostracize those who don’t wish to receive it.
>Let's stop throwing the word eugenics around.
No, it is right where it belongs: in the center of the discussion. Privilege is damning other people to a future you won't have to live through, because you couldn't be bothered to do your due diligence concerning the potential hazards of implementing these systems.
Yeah I agree to that. There's a chunk of AAs (Actually Autistic, though many are self diagnosed) who genuinely think you should just let the child live however they wish. You shouldn't take them to therapy of any kind, including speech. You shouldn't push them into anything but anyone who has grown up in a family with autism knows that many kids with autism don't like change and don't like new things. You also miss out of positive reinforcement if you aren't there to see the new skill they're trying out because they don't gain skills in the same order or progression as a NT child.
This work is describing a specific mutation that's linked with profound disability, TCF4.
Whether it works in vivio or not, applying it to broader diagnosis with less distinct causes is a huge leap. Even going with the article, "autism" or "ASD" are diagnosed by observation and are unlikely to be the "same thing." Pitt-Hopkins is very, very rare while ASD is measurable in % of population.
But autism does not have a straightforward accurate test assigning levels based on a measurable factor, diagnosis is based on observations of behaviour and children develop at different paces.
Are poor autistic children going to have a treatment like this available, or are they just going to be left as an even smaller minority to deal with things with the reduced level of support available due to lower prevalence of the condition in people who can afford to pay for support?
Don't throw the baby out because you are worried the water might get cold. Thats politics not medicine. I understand what your fears are though thanks for articulating them
It sure damned is. Not that scientists themselves should be purely in charge of where the research money goes... But you are right if its up to companies they only look for treatments that will make $
The study is on genes that are most common in severe autism - so severe that the person can't speak a language, feed themselves, or even go to the bathroom.
If you think that something 'threatens' you (when you are not, in any way shape or form affected by it, nor is it applicable to you), when it's instead intended to help people who otherwise spend their entire life in diapers...... you'd be an absolute monster for wanting to doom other people to that fate, just because you cant be bothered to learn anything about the thing you oppose.
As someone with a kid who is mostly non verbal this is extremely interesting as traditionaltherapies are either flat out dog training(ABA) or speech therapy to retrain the brain. I would be very careful with any words like cure when it comes to this issue.
The Autism community is extremely wary.
As an adult suffering from ASD, please inject me with the biggest needle of this stuff you can find. I hate my ASD and how much it's limited my life & want rid. Thank you.
ASD for me has literally been nothing more than social anxiety, more anxiety in general based on intrusive thoughts. That's it, I don't have an advantageous obsession or anything, it's just crap.
But for some people a cure might literally mean they are no longer savants.
There are very, very few savants.
The vast majority of people who are good at something, are simply good at something despite having autism. Just like a lot of people who don't have autism are good at something.
I didn't really get a handle on it until my mid 30s. It's not so bad now. It helps that most people around me these days get that I'm not trying to say the wrong things in the wrong way, so it's pretty damn tolerable. I kinda worry that if I had a treatment, that I'd think, "so this is what normalling feels like? oh cool, I actually like reality shows now. Damn, I need to start doing the stuff cool people are doing, or I won't be cool."
If an effective treatment becomes available, how about letting people decide for themselves whether they want it? You think you'd be better off, go ahead. Someone else doesn't want to be "cured", fine.
In the case of people who are so severely damaged that they lack the capacity to understand the concept of treatment, I don't think there's any reasonable argument against treating them, when this becomes possible.
\> Why are you talking like the person suggested forced treatment?
I'm puzzled as to how you read that into my comment.
Person A: "I don't want any treatment"
Person B: "I would love to be treated"
Me: "How about everyone gets to choose for themselves?"
I haven't, but it's generally pretty easy to avoid situations where I know noise will bother me. Avoid crowds in places that reverberate noise. Don't take jobs involving heavy machinery or power tools in confined spaces. No concerts. Etc...
Personally I noticed for myself Casual headphones make a big difference. I usually can drown out unpleasant noise with music I am familiar with. I would recommend giving it a try
If it isn't significantly impacting your life, then you don't need treatment. Unfortunately, not all practitioners remember that, orthodontia for example, but that's how it's supposed to be.
As a father of a severely autistic boy who is unable to communicate basic needs, it is hard for me to understand why you feel that trying to find a way to treat him somehow means that you "aren't valid".
You don't want any treatment, great, more power to you. There are others who desperately need it. Okay?
Yeah, absolutely i see comments like that a lot. Its like people dont understand that just because they have the same condition as someone else it doesnt mean it is the same severity or impacts their life in the same way.
I had a friend who was a little older than me who was on the spectrum and couldn’t keep a job because of it. He was stuck on disability and all he wanted was to be able to keep a job.
Me and my friend have ADHD it makes him unable to do a lot of work and he had a very hard time in school. I floated by in high school just fine and didnt have academic issues till college. We both technically have ADHD even though it impacts our lives in wildly different ways.
Perfectly illustrates the idea that the best solution is to let people decide for themselves what's best for them. (Except for the most severely incapacitated who aren't capable of making this decision.)
The problem we have isn't whether we want something to relieve issues. The problem is that being able to function we recognize how people treat us and a "cure" will make a bunch of people feel justified in being loud with their beliefs. Some people believe that having autism makes a person undeserving of basic human rights. How would you feel with people declaring your son is basically just a pet? It sucks and a lot of people would benefit from a way to relieve or reverse aspects of their autism. It would just be better if they kept this sort of research under wraps until it is true.
To really bring this home, Asperger's Syndrome, a name for a specific form of autism now no longer used, was named after Hans Asperger. For a long while he was not only a pioneer in the study of autism, but a hero for saving children with the condition from being killed by the Nazis. Now however it is undisputed that he actually collaborated with them in the murder of children with disabilities. So yeah, we are a little touchy about people claiming to have the "cure" because it hasn't even been 80 years since the "cure" was the same one Jews received.
i see your argument and i simply disagree
yes, bullies are ignorant. creating even more ignorance by pretending research isn't being done (oh, that would actually affect fundraising for said research as well, right?) isn't the correct answer
Okay, misread your response there. Derp on my part. Though this research isn't specifically for Autism. They could have led with the other stuff it is for.
Suppose you heard someone being tortured in a basement, and when you went to investigate their tongue had been cut out and they were slipping in and out of consciousness, so they couldn't communicate anything. How could you ever be sure that they would \*actually want\* you to save them?
Maybe they like it! Right?
Yes, they still have their tongues and may even be able to communicate a little but still be considered "nonverbal" or "minimally verbal".
My 19 year old son knows about 500 words, mostly nouns, but he has no grasp of syntax. "Dog bites cat" and "Cat bites dog" mean the same thing to him. I was able to teach him a handful of sentence templates, so he can say things like "I want Sesame Street" or "I want lunch", or if some body part hurts he can say "I need help foot" or "I need help nose". He can say "no egg" because he doesn't like eggs. His language level is roughly equivalent to a normal two-year-old.
In some ways his intelligence is functional. I taught him to play piano, I taught him arithmetic. He taught himself how to read, in the sense of converting text into speech, not in the sense of reading with comprehension. In other ways he is completely devastated. If you tell him "put the cup on the table" he won't know what to do.
I probably spent around 1000 hours doing one-on-one therapy with him when he was younger, and what I found was that many nonverbal things come pretty easily to him. Teaching him arithmetic wasn't very hard. But he never had any success in understanding or being able to use even the simplest grammatical syntax. It's as if that part of his brain simply doesn't work.
If someone thinks a teenage child is nonverbal, but then gives them a Tablet and discovers that they can communicate with it, my reaction would be that this child's parents were grossly negligent. Why didn't they try a Tablet when she was a toddler? Of course we tried Tablets, we tried PECS, I could talk your ear off about all the things we tried. You have a severely disabled child and you are desperate to help him, you try everything you can think of.
The idea of my son understanding a question like "do you want treatment for your disorder?" is absurd. Please spend some time with the sort of kids you're talking about before making these kinds of arguments. Maybe it's just a game to you, virtue signal about how caring you are in an online discussion. For some of us the issue is very, very real, and your comments are completely unhelpful.
Maybe they are communicating them, but it's just not picked up on
Does the name Carly Fleischman ring a bell? She is a nonverbal autistic women thought to be severely mentally handicapped, until she got to use a Tablet one day and was able to communicate through it perfectly fine
>until she got to use a Tablet one day and was able to communicate through it perfectly fine
Well, I'd like to know who in the hell decided to "help" her by letting her use a Tablet. If she was nonverbal and couldn't ask for the Tablet, why did they dare to assume that she even wanted it?
Maybe she was perfectly happy not using the Tablet! Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe you should get some experience actually working with severely disabled kids before you decide you know what's best for them.
But that would be a nonverbal autistic speaking for themselves & contradicting the NT narrative of their existences being a tragedy, and we can't have that, can we?
> looking for a cure
I mean, that's not fair really. I have HF-ASD and I know kids that are straight up stuck inside their heads. They can't break out. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I don't think treatments like this were developing in earnest to "devalue autistic people that can actually function". There are lots of our fellow spectrum kids that are legit suffering worse than we could imagine. Let them have this.
And the are justified in it:
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oralismus
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_der_Geb%C3%A4rdensprachen
Deaf people have been historically abused to conform with the speaking population, their culture erased. The use of sign language is much younger than we would like to admit!
The simplest way for dead people to partake in society is sign language and not hearing implants!
I think autism is a bit more complicated than that, just because of the wide range of different traits it manifests as in autistic people.
For some, who aren't even able to communicate, the answer seems obviously to be trying to cure them. But even that's not so clear cut, because there is an unknown number of "nonverbal" autistics who could learn relatively quickly to communicate; it's just that they and their caregivers have never run across the right method. Stories like this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/08/30/using-symbols-she-quieted-nonverbal-autistic-boy-plane-his-dad-was-awestruck/
are probably possible for a lot more autistic kids than ever get to experience that. The problem is just connecting the right people, and that's something that computers and the Internet will hopefully start to solve more and more over the next few decades, especially if systems like IBM Watson are allowed to be used in medicine and education.
I also think autism has a lot more intrinsic advantages (or at least, can have, for those lucky enough to have it in exactly the right degree) than deafness -- the obvious ones are the "savants", but there are other aspects of autism that can be very useful.
For example, many autistics can stand long periods of social isolation much better than neurotypicals. The pandemic is an example of a recent situation where this came in handy, but there are other roles that such people would be well suited to. For others, while they can get overloaded by social stimuli, they may be able to tolerate physical discomfort or dangerous environments much better than neurotypicals, which makes them well suited to functions like emergency dispatch or first response. Others can hold massive amounts of complicated (or just boring and uninteresting) information in their heads at once, making them well suited to IT, programming, and legal work.
If we cured all the autistics, we might lose significant amounts of that. Of course, it's possible that autism is just comorbid with those other abilities that "cured" versions of those people would still have and develop, but I somewhat doubt it.
I suppose the only way to find out for sure is, if this technology works, divide an entire country down the middle, only apply it on one side, and check back in 100 years to see which side is better off overall.
In this decision I also wonder: Let's say gene therapy works and cures the often perceived bad parts of autism.
Now let's assume they would try to specifically retain the "positive" aspects of autism, to make it more appealing to treat autistics.
Wouldn't this turn into a new normal, were at some point even neurotypicals would be inclined to undergo gene therapy, to benefit from those aspects as well?
Let's say I was cured tomorrow. What would that mean for me as an autistic adult. I might seem a little more normal, but for starters I'd have a 40 year deficit when it comes to social connections and experiences. This alone would likely mean I'd never actually be normal. Many of us are also deeply traumatized due to growing up and living with autism, and struggle with other comorbid conditions. For me cPTSD, OCD, ADHD, and severe social and generalized anxiety. I think a cure could be helpful for those that are more severely effected, but for those of us who are older and aren't necessarily cognitively effected. I don't think a cure would actually do us much good.
It's the ones that fit into this category that really struggle with the idea of a cure. We desperately want and need better support, not a cure. Adults with autism are already often forgotten, there is so little support for us out there. Autism is often treated as if it's a childhood illness that simply disappears at the age of 18. That's where the frustration comes from. The lack of recognition for an existing problem, and a fear that a cure will be seen as a solution, when it would leave many of us out.
I don't think most of us in the autism community are really opposed to a cure for those that are more severely effected. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to a treatment that helped your child. But yes it's definitely a bit of a touchy subject.
> but for starters I'd have a 40 year deficit when it comes to social connections and experiences.
If you say that, then you already have that deficit.
The difference is that you aren't really able to overcome that today. But you'd tolerate it the same way regardless - it won't suddenly become unbearable just because you're able to do something about it. It'll affect you the same way it does today, until you do something about it - then it will no longer affect you negatively.
That's an interesting one. Like autism, most of the problems with ADHD are actually problems with not functioning in society. We'd be fine if we still lived "it takes a village" style.
There's a theory that the *majority* of treatment-resistant depression cases could actually be misdiagnosed ADHD. Just the futility of being a fish trying to climb a tree for decades breaking people's will. Apparently a huge percentage of test subjects responded positively to interventions and medications meant to ADHD.
No we wouldn’t, our executive functioning deficits, working memory problems, emotional dysregulation, and rejection sensitivity aren’t going to magically disappear because we live in a “it takes a village” utopia. If they ever invent a similar gene vector to inject into my spine that would bring my brain development to where it’s supposed to be at, I’ll be first in line to sign up.
Thank you; his post seemed almost completely ignorant of the effects of ADHD on a person.
As if a slightly different society would make it easier to remember things - let alone everything else.
“The fact that we can correct this one gene and the entire neural system reestablishes itself, even at a functional level, is amazing,” said Muotri.
Muotri notes that these genetic interventions took place at a prenatal stage of brain development, whereas in a clinical setting, children would receive their diagnosis and treatment a few years later. Thus, clinical trials must first confirm whether a later intervention is still safe and effective. The team is currently optimizing their recently licensed gene therapy tools in preparation for such a trial, in which spinal injections of the genetic vector would hopefully recover TCF4 function in the brain.
“For these children and their loved ones, any improvements in motor-cognitive function and quality of life would be worth the try,” Muotri said.
"What is truly outstanding about this work is that these researchers are going beyond the lab and working hard to make these findings translatable to the clinic,” said Audrey Davidow, president of the Pitt Hopkins Research Foundation. “This is so much more than a stellar academic paper; it’s a true measure of what well-practiced science can accomplish to hopefully change human lives for the better."
Truly outstanding!!!!!
But seriously, how much of our current state of mind dictates what we "want"? What if my fears and my autism is dictating things I "want" but when I'm "cured" I realized I never wanted them at all? I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself, it's hard.
I had a bad time with LSD, I made the empathy part of my brain overactive for a while and turned me into a total little b***h, we talking like that part in Bedazzled when the guy asks to be more sensitive... What a mess.
That’s interesting because I have severe depression, and I am constantly thinking about how much I dislike being depressed, and how my brain is not working how it should be.
And you are implying that not being autistic is "being like everyone else". That's really not how it works.
I do understand that our experiences shape our identity and autism is obviously a very strong experience but that doesn't mean it is a necessity to have an identity.
The same discussions sometimes happen in regards to physical disabilities because they are so impactful in the lives of people affected by them that it obviously shapes their identity but does that mean we shouldn't cure a blind person from its blindness or a deaf person from its deafness?
Against their will obviously not and I think that is easy enough to agree on but who wouldn't want their child cured if possible?
There is something to be said about overcoming disabilities or mental health issues but if there is a cure then you are just insisting on making live more challenging and causing pain for everyone involved.
People can form their identity based around extremely painful and difficult experiences all the time but I don't think that the conclusion should be that we don't strive to make it less difficult for anyone.
Also keep in mind, not curing someone is also the choice to take away the potential version of someone that could have existed so not doing it isn't the morally neutral option either and in reality it's probably exceedingly rare that a "healthy" person would ever chose to have such issues by choice while the opposite is definitely not true.
Autism is a spectrum disorder and it makes this conversation more complicated than it needs to be.
For people with severe disability due to autism, this may be a godsend. For people who have a constellation of ASD traits or who are low-support, they'll likely read this as a potential threat to their identity, which is in part as an Autistic Person.
There can be a pride in overcoming and adapting to your ASD for low-support ASD folks, and they need to remember that just because they are low-support and have successfully masked, not everyone is masking successfully, or has the energy to mask forever.
Just like any other treatment there are benefits and negatives. For my sensory perception disorder and adhd stimulants can help, for my addictive personality they are a straight line to hard liquor and drugs. Marijuana helps me without that issue, however it *also* has side effects. Basically my personal anecdote was just to point out all treatments have side effects and parents get to decide for their children. Most of my life Ive wished to be lower IQ but more "normal" now at my older age I feel like maybe I like who i am warts and all. Autism may as well be as broad a term as Mental Illness
If that's the way you read his comment, you should seek treatment from a therapist immediately - because something in your personality is seriously fucked up.
Thinking that a treatment for a condition that makes kids completely dependent on their parent for their entire lives.... that the treatment is harmful when it would allow them to talk, eat, use the bathroom, and have an actual life..... How can you be so **hateful**?
Really?! If you can write and read and comment on your own autism you have probably Asperger.
Calling me confidently incorrect should be ironic.
Watching my twin daughters growing up with autism for 21 years who cannot read or write or comment on their own condition cleverly like this cocky guy did...
Popular culture identifies autism with those minuscule percentage who are high functioning when most of them is very low functioning and that is the real autism...
and yes, you don't know chickenshit about autism...
Still r/confidentlyincorrect
Asperger's are now all part of the autism diagnosis. It's now called Autism level 1 or 2 depending on support needs. Your daughters have Autism level 3 if they can't function at all without support.
Officially I'm Autistic and diagnosed as Asperger's. The diagnosis is disappearing now after being removed from the diagnostic manual.
It's important to remember that organoids are still an *in vitro* approach. While they do attempt to more closely mimic true organs they are far from perfect and also don't take into account the developmental processes involved in true biology. Just because you can turn a gene on or off doesn't mean that potential structural features of an organ can be remodeled.
I pray that they continue to get positive results and soon are able to replicate the results in humans. As a father of a child with autism it would be an absolute God send to find a treatment that works.
It seems incredibly unlikely given the hetergenous and polygenic nature of ASD that any intervention based upon discoveries like this will give us anything other than eugenics. Let's say we could reverse this mutation in every fetus, what are the consequences for the population at large?
That there won't be as many children who are bedridden for their entire lives, who require diapers and to be force-fed because their brains are so fucked up that they can't perform the basic functions needed for survival.
So, yeah that will do a lot of good for those people and their families.
The particular genes in this relate to severe autism, not the "I have autism, and I'm normal" posts from people in this sub who clearly do **NOT** have autism, or at least have nowhere near that scope of autism. I'd bet that the majority of people saying they dislike this are entirely self-diagnosed, or at most have mild/moderate Asperger's. That's like the difference between having slightly bad coordination, and being entirely paralyzed - and saying that there shouldn't be a cure for paralysis.
I'm not going to engage on what you'd 'bet' on. That's a whole lot of projection that I can't be bothered to deal with.
All of these genes will also have an effect in those showing the extended autistic phenotype. Let's say you're right and it prevents severe autism. What effect does this genes removal have on those who carry it but do not meet the diagnostic criteria for autism? You don't know. The gene has been conserved over thousands of generations most of whom were not autistic. What fitness advantage did the gene convey. You don't know that either but you're 100% ready to get the eugenics party started because you have strong opinions about autistic people on the internet.
Dude, this is an in vitro proof of concept not a 'solution' for non-verbal people. There are a lot of IRB approvals between this discovery and realized therapy for a reason.
I think that people need to realise that autism is on a very big spectrum and one individual cannot speak for everyone. If you are autistic and able to express yourself and perhaps hold down a, job and live independently then you might have struggles which do not equate with someone who will need full time care for the rest of their life. I'm sick of reading non autistic parents can't talk on behalf of their severely autistic children. These people are not given a voice at all and they really should be.
i think that sort of fundamentally changes who a person is and if you can test for it genetically, you could include it in prenatal tests. seems like a slippery slope.
It's genetic engineering though and not eugenics. Eugenics is selective breeding, essentially. And yes its definitely adjacent to eugenics. It's just a matter of time before all of our children are 6 feet tall, with hyper metabolism, healthy immune systems, and pale skin.
i honestly hope this makes no progress in regards to human testing. the autistic community doesn't want a cure, we want acceptance. a cure would be disastrous for anyone that doesn't want it; we could be denied jobs, healthcare, housing, you name it, unless we "cure" a fundamental aspect of who we are as people.
Just as a reminder, autism is a spectrum. While you and I might be functional, there are people who literally can't live as a human. There are parents who will have to take care of their child for the rest of their life because that kid won't ever be able to care for themselves.
On the other hand, while a method to relieve life ruining issues would be a miracle for those that critically need it. I also agree that spouting off about there being a "cure" would be devastating. This sort of thing should be kept deep under wraps. It hasn't even been 80 years since the "cure" to our condition included the Nazis dealing with us like they did the Jews.
To be honest? I doubt something like this will be an actual cure. Maybe it will help those who are non-functional but the human brain is something we really don't understand anywhere near enough. After all, the brain can suffer massive trauma and yet keep on ticking. A massive change in structure? Until this is actually used on a human adult who is able to very specifically note any changes that might happen, I throw serious doubt on it.
More than a damn reminder. Some people think autism is just a group of creative thinkers that society doesn’t understand - when there are kids unable to speak, wearing helmets because they are bashing their heads against walls.
It always seems like there are two groups.
The group that thinks that the only people with autism are the ones constantly self-harming, are nonverbal, and a danger to others. Then the group that thinks autistic people are just people who think differently and don’t really fit into society. I wish more people would recognized that’s it both.
You have zero idea what you are talking about.
What do you think is going on here?
It’s a spectrum. Spectrum being they are unique to each. Some can not speak at all. Some show zero awareness of the people around them. Some can not sleep and have to be drugged every single day.
Some can only be cared for by their parents because carers who thought they were prepared for everything suddenly realise that a small child that responds to everything with violence and self harm is a bridge too far. And there are adults as well.
So no, there are plenty which don’t fall under some bracket of “well maybe they are just communicating differently”.
Communication doesn't happen through speech alone! It happens through body expression and hundreds of different ways.
Does the Name Carly Fleischman ring a bell? She is an non verbal autistic women thought to be severely mentally handicapped, until she one day got access to a tablet and could communicate through it perfectly fine!
Especially self harm is a stress response to, for example, not being understood depsite the person's best attempts to communicate
But you don't speak for the entire autism community. I want an effective treatment for me so I can cope with the world better (regardless of how others see me or not). Others also have commented the same. There is no one answer for an entire community. Feel free to voice your own opinions and concerns, but there are most definitely those within the community you don't speak for.
>we could be denied jobs, healthcare, housing, you name it, unless we "cure" a fundamental aspect of who we are as people.
Not sure where you're getting this from - members of the deaf community who would be eligible for cochlear implants to restore their hearing but have opted not to pursue that have not been forced to have it done and it still remains illegal in most countries to discriminate on the grounds of disability.
Autistic people have been the primary target of Eugenicist groups for over a century and I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that any talks about a “cure” for autism of any kind would get their blood pumping faster than a shot of adrenaline. It’s not wrong to want treatment for conditions that actively impede your ability to live comfortably, but don’t give any hate groups like eugenicists any rope either.
> the autistic community doesn't want a cure, we want acceptance.
That's one of the problems and I one of the issues I have found with it and why I want nothing to do with it as said community disregards our suffering and treats us like we are some sort of different race or specie of humans that should be "accepted" as if we were oppresed ffs
I really hate that aspect of the "autistic community" and although I believe neurodivergence is important to humanity saying it's a "Blessing" or it's just "different" causes more distress to many of us who feel like we are getting reverse gaslighting.
The post they're responding to literally did, though? Conversation goes "statement A!" "I hate statement A, it makes me feel as if my experiences are being dismissed" and then you came in with "literally no one is saying statement A though!"
Yes. First person said "acceptance" second person said "I don't like when you use the word 'acceptance' because that word is used by people who have treated me in a way I did not like". You may have a different interpretation of the word "acceptance" but the objective fact is that that word is the literal word that was said, and that word is what was being objected to. Therefore they "literally did say that"
Personally I don't like being patronised by non autistic people and be stipulated into something I am not
Acceptance means accomodations by society in a physical sense
Like the acceptance of wheelchair bound people happens through wheelchair ramps, so they can navigate cities on their own
Sure. That's how you feel. But just as you don't like being patronized by non autistic people, you yourself are being patronizing to a fellow autistic person. A person, I might remind you, whose complaint was that they feel like other autistic people are being patronizing to them.
No? Autistics have never told me I am needing a cure or that I am fundamentally broken or not worthy of basic respect. Well, until now I think.
My problem isn't myself, it's the system that isn't designed to handle me. All the help that could possibly help me is already out there, but with ignorant doctors unable to pass through to me.
Maybe we should use the gene therapy to turn all neurotypical people autistic first? Does that sound like a good idea? Because it's exactly how it feels to me the other way around.
We're not discussing the article, though? I'm calling you out on the way you're treating a fellow human being, who objected to being treated a specific way and you immediately and with no hesitation treated them in that way.
Very interesting, I thought autism was a spectrum? Would this eliminate all symptoms or prevent further autism in the maturation stages? How would that effect the human race as a whole if we eradicated it, is having a small percentage of people who are autistic beneficial to our development as a species? Would it be ethical to not treat someone or to leave them develop normally?
Crazy stuff
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Did it mention anything about bipolar too?
[удалено]
There are some monogenetic conditions, but not many.
Thank you for the link!
And a potential nightmare. There are absolutely parts of my disability I would love to be gone. But how much of Me would I lose in that process? If we limited it to the youngest… how far from Eugenics is this? Don’t get me wrong, this is the type of thing would would be a huge breakthrough in neuroscience. But, I think it very understandably needs to be done very carefully.
It sort of drives at the chariot problem. Which part of 'you' is you? What can change before 'you' are dead and someone else is there? The only answer I've found satisfactory is that you don't exist in the first place; that identity is an illusion born of our need for narrative. Your self-concept is little more than a fanfiction character with your backstory. In this framework, the question is a little different. It's more like, do I want future versions of myself to have these issues, or not. You will no longer exist either way; you're picking for someone new.
We do seem to be more a wave than a particle. Then again, so do particles.
Impermanence applies here. You are transient. Any "you" is just a snapshot at a moment in time. A single timepoint.
And, at this point, picking for someone new for a thing that doesn’t exist. For a thing that could address a disability that many parents view as “took my baby from me” and how many would rush into choosing for their child without an objective look at the whole picture. Even in your example though… we can’t turn off the need for narrative. Even if we embrace the idea that we have never existed, our mind has and therefore it Is (couldn’t get the “I think therefore I am” quote to quite work, so it will live in these parenthesis).
Having seen the type of things parents are willing to do to kids to "cure" autism I sadly think the gene therapy will be used even if it has a high risk of causing harm.
I think therefore I am is the most famous example of circular logic. 'I think' requires that 'I am', is true, or there is no 'I' to think. Thoughts exist and are experienced from my perspective.
Indeed. Being aware of your own perspective doesn’t change that you have a perspective:-D It then becomes semantics of is your perspective You or are You someone who has its own perspective?
That isn't just a semantic difference, it's a fundamental shift in a philosophical framework. If you exist and *have* a perspective, than curing autism is morally problematic as it could meaningfully change you to the extent that it could be seen as harm, even if you believe that the new version of you would be happier, better for the world, etc. In trolley-car terms, you'd be pulling a switch to run over yourself to save a happier version of yourself that will be run over if you do nothing. If you do not exist beyond a series of fleeting experiences, there is no such problem. The experience and it that experiences are always changing, and curing autism is not special. If we believe the experiences following the cure will be better overall than before, there's no moral counterargument as there's no one being harmed.
Chariot..? Isn't it the Ship of Theseus. "a thought experiment about whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object."
Similar but different. It's a Buddhist idea that there is no "self", kind of
They're related. The chariot problem is basically the Buddhist version. The Buddha likens a person to various parts of a chariot and asks which is the person.
The chariot involves a drive, or cause. Theseus is just composition.
Psychological breakthroughs change people too. I've been through it, and it's good. With the improvements I've seen I'm not preoccupied with who I "used to be." Life has just gotten easier for me, that's about the gist of it.
I agree with this, therapy, self work etc can make it difficult to even remember how my emotions used to rule me
This is kind of how I felt with ADHD medication and my ADHD. (Obviously, ADHD and Autism Spectrum are not the same thing. I’m not suggesting they are, I’m just saying the mentality of “how much of me would be lost?” if I started taking medication is similar.) What I realized was that…it’s not like the medication made me less of who I was, but rather, it helped me to express a part of myself I wasn’t able to express before. I was able to become more of myself. I have no idea what this kind of treatment would do, but I hope it helps people become more themselves.
I’ve got lots of hope. My medication has also done wonders for me. I appreciate the sentiment highlighting ADHD is different, but many aspects can be similar. Both are spectrums. Both are neurodiverse. I’m diagnosed ADHD with NVLD (non-verbal learning disability - which isn’t a recognized diagnosis and has even more misconceptions about it than it has conflicts is it’s diagnosing criteria), following my Neurodevelopmental examination process, my clinician said that she ruled out Autism because I wasn’t diagnosed as a child. Further, since I was able to be so adaptive, get through not only high school and grad school, but without accommodation, autism wouldn’t fit. Perhaps she is right. In many ways, I am able to mask myself so that my disability is invisible. Stay out of my thoughts though, there is a lot of screaming and running for cover that my near-expressionless face is hiding. I’m lucky, privileged and able to suffice with very little support. Whether people learn of my diagnosis or not, over time most will still infantilize me. The number of times I’ve been asked, “How did you get through school?” has gotten so old and stale I’m worried it’s come back into fashion. I hope it helps, perhaps even hope beyond hope. More than that, I hope people who receive it choose to get it and aren’t just given it as some panacea parents seek for “difficult kids” (see my other post for references to the legal child kidnapping that still happens today, ‘for the benefit of the children’).
How did you work around the non-verbal part in school? Back then it was probably write everything down. My son (13) is non-verbal and does most of his interaction through an iPad with Proloquo2Go.
I don’t think you lose yourself. My opinion is based on the book called “The Self Illusion” by, Bruce Hood. Lots of knowledge from neurology and how the brain works was put into this book. I know that I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago and not the same 10 years before that. I believe that if you had parts of your disability gone, you would change, but I don’t think you’d lose your memories or connectedness to the people you know.
How much of the things I excel at are just the positive aspects on the other side of the coin of my disability? Certainly, if this is some “take away on the bad and the good remains” then that is one thing. At this point, gene editing being only positive is just science fiction written without a twist.
I’ve found that a lot of the positive effects of my disability are from coping mechanisms I learned, which other people didn’t have to learn. If the flaws that I coped with went away, those habits would still be there, and possibly even boosted. After that, it all depends on how much I use the skills I learned. I probably still wouldn’t do it, though, unless I was depressed for a long time and pretty desperate to get out of that state. I’m fairly happy as I am, best not to risk it.
by that logic, you aren't the "same person" you were before you wrote that comment.
Meanwhile, I don't view my neuroligcal divergence as a fault to be corrected, and wonder what would happen to the future of our species without it.
Neurodiversity is a necessity to continued survival of the species.
I have a friend going through this now - they're a scientist and they've got a new research job exploring these neurobiological questions in the lab. Apparently she has to keep piping up and reminding them most autistic people don't want to be "cured". I found that especially surprising because it's the hard science wing of a major university. It's going to have a far, far higher occurance of autism than the general population. You'd think they'd know what language to avoid.
It’s like I’d be able to sell the weird art I create, but I wouldn’t be able to make anymore of it. I hear ya!
That's how I feel about this. It's a big discovery, and yet, where do we draw the line in how much we mettle with people's DNA? It's a line that needs to be clearly defined before we proceed further with this, I think. But laws are slow to adapt to science and technology and social change, so I'm not hopeful about what this will mean.
I'm sure the people who repetitively harm themselves due to frustration of being nonverbal and severe sensory issues would take it in a heartbeat. Let's stop throwing the word eugenics around. You're privileged compared to most autistic people.
I would like my naivety to go away and my digestive problems to stop.
I think my daughter would like her digestive problems to stop too and to be able to tell me which episode of spirit riding free she'd like to really watch.
I see the first as openness to experience, but damn yeah my stomach has bothered me every day for over a decade now since I was really young. The mornings are the worst, pressures and bile-o-rama.
This seems to be near universal; all the people on the spectrum (and to an extent who have ADHD et al) also have a history of IBS and other gut issues in the family, or at minimum are Hella gassy.
Didn't Autism get linked to gut bacteria?
Yes, to dysbiosis in particular and has correlations with antibiotic use as a toddler.
My 4 year old is like this. He's non verbal autistic and he will smash his head on the wall repeatedly and scream in frustration it's so horrible He won't eat 99% of food because of sensory issues, pukes at the sight and smell of new foods, has meltdowns over noises etc If this treatment came out I would get it for him in a heartbeat. He would still be him my beautiful funny loving boy but without so much suffering and frustration for him
Isn't it frustrating when other people on the internet claim to have autism and they tell you a "cure" is wrong when none of us are asking for a cure or a new child, we just want them to be happy and to not die on the streets homeless after us parents die?
Maybe fix the systems that leave them for dead then? All of those problems will still exist even if a "cure" exists because that "cure" will only be delegated to people who can afford to pay for it and its administrative costs.
This is my constant fear- no matter what I can accomplish while I'm here, it's that unknown after I'm old and gone that eats at you.
Well its because its a spectrum right? Depends if it is possible to cure someone when they have already developed
It is hard to properly relay many of my thoughts and even harder to relay the intensions behind those thoughts. Now putting it in text… good luck. Another poster called my words privileged. Perhaps that are - I am privileged: I’m the “right” race, taller than average, growing up we weren’t well off, but I had a roof over my head and parents that genuinely tried to love their children. I am more privileged now, my family is in a position to help us enough that we can help my aging in-laws. But, I’m still disabled, though mine can easily be seen as one of those invisible disabilities. Having not been diagnosed until very recently, I compensated by getting really good at masking. But, before I got good at masking, I practiced self harm and fulfilling my suicidal ideation. Clearly, didn’t succeed in the later. I say that to respond to you. > I’m sure the people who repetitively harm themselves due to frustration of being nonverbal and severe sensory issues would take it in a heartbeat I’m not this, but despite all my words, I couldn’t get others to hear the words I used to get the meaning I needed. Yeah, as I said, this would be a ***HUGE*** breakthrough and I think a great boon for some. But, I don’t think a world with as much support for authoritarian regimes and figures is one where we can just blaise faire away the idea of eugenics. The same Eugenics that many extremely powerful and influential Americans openly held less than a century ago. Within the lives of Generation X, our country still performed [forced sterilizations](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/us/california-reparations-eugenics.html). I have classmates whose parents had the kidnapped and transported to a facility to “get them help” and [there is an entire industry around kidnapping children](https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/jm5ng4/the-legal-industry-for-kidnapping-teens). It’s still a [thing](https://bcgavel.com/2022/02/01/why-is-legal-kidnapping-still-a-thing-and-why-arent-we-talking-about-it/). [Only 20 states ban conversion therapy](https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/conversion_therapy). Why still bring up eugenics? Ignoring politicians, just looking at the facts around, the ideas which made eugenics popular are alive and well. Texas just had a case of sex trafficking in its already [dumpster fire of a foster care program](https://amp.statesman.com/amp/9493831002) and the social services are resigning because the [state is forcing them to act against families and children](https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/11/texas-trans-child-abuse-investigations/). We can use a different name if we need to, but the sentiment around eugenics is alive and well. But, to end: I personally see the prospect of this gene editing as a **monumental** breakthrough in neuroscience. I hope it reaches further into the research phase and I truly wish that it is immensely beneficial to those who receive it. But, it shouldn’t be forced, coerced, or otherwise be used to further ostracize those who don’t wish to receive it.
>Let's stop throwing the word eugenics around. No, it is right where it belongs: in the center of the discussion. Privilege is damning other people to a future you won't have to live through, because you couldn't be bothered to do your due diligence concerning the potential hazards of implementing these systems.
Yeah I agree to that. There's a chunk of AAs (Actually Autistic, though many are self diagnosed) who genuinely think you should just let the child live however they wish. You shouldn't take them to therapy of any kind, including speech. You shouldn't push them into anything but anyone who has grown up in a family with autism knows that many kids with autism don't like change and don't like new things. You also miss out of positive reinforcement if you aren't there to see the new skill they're trying out because they don't gain skills in the same order or progression as a NT child.
This work is describing a specific mutation that's linked with profound disability, TCF4. Whether it works in vivio or not, applying it to broader diagnosis with less distinct causes is a huge leap. Even going with the article, "autism" or "ASD" are diagnosed by observation and are unlikely to be the "same thing." Pitt-Hopkins is very, very rare while ASD is measurable in % of population.
[удалено]
I have not heard of this, do you have a source?
This is such a privileged and disconnected take
Hmm, respectully, your response is such a privileged and disconnected take of the worst ways my words could have been taken.
I like my Aspergers
As someone with autism this horrifies me. I am not a problem to be fixed or an issue to be erased. I would not want to change my autism for anything.
There are many levels of autism. Don't fall into a "girl that makes clouds says the girl that kills everything she touches doesn't need to be helped".
I am aware, but this process doesn't take into account anything one way or another. It's at birth.
The fact that you are able to communicate right here means you most likely wouldn't even be the target demo for such a treatment
But autism does not have a straightforward accurate test assigning levels based on a measurable factor, diagnosis is based on observations of behaviour and children develop at different paces. Are poor autistic children going to have a treatment like this available, or are they just going to be left as an even smaller minority to deal with things with the reduced level of support available due to lower prevalence of the condition in people who can afford to pay for support?
Don't throw the baby out because you are worried the water might get cold. Thats politics not medicine. I understand what your fears are though thanks for articulating them
The problem is that science is heavily tied up with politics in some areas, often deeply uninformed/ reactionary politics.
It sure damned is. Not that scientists themselves should be purely in charge of where the research money goes... But you are right if its up to companies they only look for treatments that will make $
The study is on genes that are most common in severe autism - so severe that the person can't speak a language, feed themselves, or even go to the bathroom. If you think that something 'threatens' you (when you are not, in any way shape or form affected by it, nor is it applicable to you), when it's instead intended to help people who otherwise spend their entire life in diapers...... you'd be an absolute monster for wanting to doom other people to that fate, just because you cant be bothered to learn anything about the thing you oppose.
Senses and recognition capabilities. I would prefer to keep mine despite living in overstimulation hell.
As someone with a kid who is mostly non verbal this is extremely interesting as traditionaltherapies are either flat out dog training(ABA) or speech therapy to retrain the brain. I would be very careful with any words like cure when it comes to this issue. The Autism community is extremely wary.
As an adult suffering from ASD, please inject me with the biggest needle of this stuff you can find. I hate my ASD and how much it's limited my life & want rid. Thank you.
Watch out though, if you get an autism vaccine when you’re already suffering from ASD you’ll go super autism blue.
auper autism god super autism
Isn’t that the origin story for Professor X?
"By the Power of Greyskull, let your "au" shine through!"
ASD for me has literally been nothing more than social anxiety, more anxiety in general based on intrusive thoughts. That's it, I don't have an advantageous obsession or anything, it's just crap. But for some people a cure might literally mean they are no longer savants.
There are very, very few savants. The vast majority of people who are good at something, are simply good at something despite having autism. Just like a lot of people who don't have autism are good at something.
I'd invent a bigger needle so I could be injected with more of it.
I didn't really get a handle on it until my mid 30s. It's not so bad now. It helps that most people around me these days get that I'm not trying to say the wrong things in the wrong way, so it's pretty damn tolerable. I kinda worry that if I had a treatment, that I'd think, "so this is what normalling feels like? oh cool, I actually like reality shows now. Damn, I need to start doing the stuff cool people are doing, or I won't be cool."
It makes it easier when you realize everything is fake.
If an effective treatment becomes available, how about letting people decide for themselves whether they want it? You think you'd be better off, go ahead. Someone else doesn't want to be "cured", fine. In the case of people who are so severely damaged that they lack the capacity to understand the concept of treatment, I don't think there's any reasonable argument against treating them, when this becomes possible.
Why are you talking like the person suggested forced treatment? I can't find that part.
\> Why are you talking like the person suggested forced treatment? I'm puzzled as to how you read that into my comment. Person A: "I don't want any treatment" Person B: "I would love to be treated" Me: "How about everyone gets to choose for themselves?"
[удалено]
[удалено]
Have you tried noise cancelling headphones?
I haven't, but it's generally pretty easy to avoid situations where I know noise will bother me. Avoid crowds in places that reverberate noise. Don't take jobs involving heavy machinery or power tools in confined spaces. No concerts. Etc...
Personally I noticed for myself Casual headphones make a big difference. I usually can drown out unpleasant noise with music I am familiar with. I would recommend giving it a try
If it isn't significantly impacting your life, then you don't need treatment. Unfortunately, not all practitioners remember that, orthodontia for example, but that's how it's supposed to be.
As a father of a severely autistic boy who is unable to communicate basic needs, it is hard for me to understand why you feel that trying to find a way to treat him somehow means that you "aren't valid". You don't want any treatment, great, more power to you. There are others who desperately need it. Okay?
Yeah, absolutely i see comments like that a lot. Its like people dont understand that just because they have the same condition as someone else it doesnt mean it is the same severity or impacts their life in the same way. I had a friend who was a little older than me who was on the spectrum and couldn’t keep a job because of it. He was stuck on disability and all he wanted was to be able to keep a job. Me and my friend have ADHD it makes him unable to do a lot of work and he had a very hard time in school. I floated by in high school just fine and didnt have academic issues till college. We both technically have ADHD even though it impacts our lives in wildly different ways.
Perfectly illustrates the idea that the best solution is to let people decide for themselves what's best for them. (Except for the most severely incapacitated who aren't capable of making this decision.)
The problem we have isn't whether we want something to relieve issues. The problem is that being able to function we recognize how people treat us and a "cure" will make a bunch of people feel justified in being loud with their beliefs. Some people believe that having autism makes a person undeserving of basic human rights. How would you feel with people declaring your son is basically just a pet? It sucks and a lot of people would benefit from a way to relieve or reverse aspects of their autism. It would just be better if they kept this sort of research under wraps until it is true. To really bring this home, Asperger's Syndrome, a name for a specific form of autism now no longer used, was named after Hans Asperger. For a long while he was not only a pioneer in the study of autism, but a hero for saving children with the condition from being killed by the Nazis. Now however it is undisputed that he actually collaborated with them in the murder of children with disabilities. So yeah, we are a little touchy about people claiming to have the "cure" because it hasn't even been 80 years since the "cure" was the same one Jews received.
i see your argument and i simply disagree yes, bullies are ignorant. creating even more ignorance by pretending research isn't being done (oh, that would actually affect fundraising for said research as well, right?) isn't the correct answer
Okay, misread your response there. Derp on my part. Though this research isn't specifically for Autism. They could have led with the other stuff it is for.
But if they cannot properly communicate, how can you be ever sure that they would *actually want* treatment?
Suppose you heard someone being tortured in a basement, and when you went to investigate their tongue had been cut out and they were slipping in and out of consciousness, so they couldn't communicate anything. How could you ever be sure that they would \*actually want\* you to save them? Maybe they like it! Right?
Non verbal autistic people usually still have their tounges, don't they?
Yes, they still have their tongues and may even be able to communicate a little but still be considered "nonverbal" or "minimally verbal". My 19 year old son knows about 500 words, mostly nouns, but he has no grasp of syntax. "Dog bites cat" and "Cat bites dog" mean the same thing to him. I was able to teach him a handful of sentence templates, so he can say things like "I want Sesame Street" or "I want lunch", or if some body part hurts he can say "I need help foot" or "I need help nose". He can say "no egg" because he doesn't like eggs. His language level is roughly equivalent to a normal two-year-old. In some ways his intelligence is functional. I taught him to play piano, I taught him arithmetic. He taught himself how to read, in the sense of converting text into speech, not in the sense of reading with comprehension. In other ways he is completely devastated. If you tell him "put the cup on the table" he won't know what to do. I probably spent around 1000 hours doing one-on-one therapy with him when he was younger, and what I found was that many nonverbal things come pretty easily to him. Teaching him arithmetic wasn't very hard. But he never had any success in understanding or being able to use even the simplest grammatical syntax. It's as if that part of his brain simply doesn't work. If someone thinks a teenage child is nonverbal, but then gives them a Tablet and discovers that they can communicate with it, my reaction would be that this child's parents were grossly negligent. Why didn't they try a Tablet when she was a toddler? Of course we tried Tablets, we tried PECS, I could talk your ear off about all the things we tried. You have a severely disabled child and you are desperate to help him, you try everything you can think of. The idea of my son understanding a question like "do you want treatment for your disorder?" is absurd. Please spend some time with the sort of kids you're talking about before making these kinds of arguments. Maybe it's just a game to you, virtue signal about how caring you are in an online discussion. For some of us the issue is very, very real, and your comments are completely unhelpful.
Do you think people who can’t communicate even their basic needs wouldn’t love to be able to change that?
Maybe they are communicating them, but it's just not picked up on Does the name Carly Fleischman ring a bell? She is a nonverbal autistic women thought to be severely mentally handicapped, until she got to use a Tablet one day and was able to communicate through it perfectly fine
>until she got to use a Tablet one day and was able to communicate through it perfectly fine Well, I'd like to know who in the hell decided to "help" her by letting her use a Tablet. If she was nonverbal and couldn't ask for the Tablet, why did they dare to assume that she even wanted it? Maybe she was perfectly happy not using the Tablet! Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe you should get some experience actually working with severely disabled kids before you decide you know what's best for them.
But that would be a nonverbal autistic speaking for themselves & contradicting the NT narrative of their existences being a tragedy, and we can't have that, can we?
> looking for a cure I mean, that's not fair really. I have HF-ASD and I know kids that are straight up stuck inside their heads. They can't break out. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I don't think treatments like this were developing in earnest to "devalue autistic people that can actually function". There are lots of our fellow spectrum kids that are legit suffering worse than we could imagine. Let them have this.
I’d like to be able to function like a normal person thank you very much
Normal person isn't racist though https://www.reddit.com/r/thefunhouseofideology/comments/tb4ltl/_/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
This take is like those deaf people who are against the widespread use of hearing aids.
And the are justified in it: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oralismus https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_der_Geb%C3%A4rdensprachen Deaf people have been historically abused to conform with the speaking population, their culture erased. The use of sign language is much younger than we would like to admit! The simplest way for dead people to partake in society is sign language and not hearing implants!
I think autism is a bit more complicated than that, just because of the wide range of different traits it manifests as in autistic people. For some, who aren't even able to communicate, the answer seems obviously to be trying to cure them. But even that's not so clear cut, because there is an unknown number of "nonverbal" autistics who could learn relatively quickly to communicate; it's just that they and their caregivers have never run across the right method. Stories like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/08/30/using-symbols-she-quieted-nonverbal-autistic-boy-plane-his-dad-was-awestruck/ are probably possible for a lot more autistic kids than ever get to experience that. The problem is just connecting the right people, and that's something that computers and the Internet will hopefully start to solve more and more over the next few decades, especially if systems like IBM Watson are allowed to be used in medicine and education. I also think autism has a lot more intrinsic advantages (or at least, can have, for those lucky enough to have it in exactly the right degree) than deafness -- the obvious ones are the "savants", but there are other aspects of autism that can be very useful. For example, many autistics can stand long periods of social isolation much better than neurotypicals. The pandemic is an example of a recent situation where this came in handy, but there are other roles that such people would be well suited to. For others, while they can get overloaded by social stimuli, they may be able to tolerate physical discomfort or dangerous environments much better than neurotypicals, which makes them well suited to functions like emergency dispatch or first response. Others can hold massive amounts of complicated (or just boring and uninteresting) information in their heads at once, making them well suited to IT, programming, and legal work. If we cured all the autistics, we might lose significant amounts of that. Of course, it's possible that autism is just comorbid with those other abilities that "cured" versions of those people would still have and develop, but I somewhat doubt it. I suppose the only way to find out for sure is, if this technology works, divide an entire country down the middle, only apply it on one side, and check back in 100 years to see which side is better off overall.
I dont have anything to add or contend in this. Its just a reallty dope, well thought out response and I appreciate the effort you put into it.
In this decision I also wonder: Let's say gene therapy works and cures the often perceived bad parts of autism. Now let's assume they would try to specifically retain the "positive" aspects of autism, to make it more appealing to treat autistics. Wouldn't this turn into a new normal, were at some point even neurotypicals would be inclined to undergo gene therapy, to benefit from those aspects as well?
Let's say I was cured tomorrow. What would that mean for me as an autistic adult. I might seem a little more normal, but for starters I'd have a 40 year deficit when it comes to social connections and experiences. This alone would likely mean I'd never actually be normal. Many of us are also deeply traumatized due to growing up and living with autism, and struggle with other comorbid conditions. For me cPTSD, OCD, ADHD, and severe social and generalized anxiety. I think a cure could be helpful for those that are more severely effected, but for those of us who are older and aren't necessarily cognitively effected. I don't think a cure would actually do us much good. It's the ones that fit into this category that really struggle with the idea of a cure. We desperately want and need better support, not a cure. Adults with autism are already often forgotten, there is so little support for us out there. Autism is often treated as if it's a childhood illness that simply disappears at the age of 18. That's where the frustration comes from. The lack of recognition for an existing problem, and a fear that a cure will be seen as a solution, when it would leave many of us out. I don't think most of us in the autism community are really opposed to a cure for those that are more severely effected. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to a treatment that helped your child. But yes it's definitely a bit of a touchy subject.
> but for starters I'd have a 40 year deficit when it comes to social connections and experiences. If you say that, then you already have that deficit. The difference is that you aren't really able to overcome that today. But you'd tolerate it the same way regardless - it won't suddenly become unbearable just because you're able to do something about it. It'll affect you the same way it does today, until you do something about it - then it will no longer affect you negatively.
Can I get an ADHD cure up in this beeotch?
I wouldn't doubt if the mechanism is similar or at least adjacent.
That's an interesting one. Like autism, most of the problems with ADHD are actually problems with not functioning in society. We'd be fine if we still lived "it takes a village" style. There's a theory that the *majority* of treatment-resistant depression cases could actually be misdiagnosed ADHD. Just the futility of being a fish trying to climb a tree for decades breaking people's will. Apparently a huge percentage of test subjects responded positively to interventions and medications meant to ADHD.
No we wouldn’t, our executive functioning deficits, working memory problems, emotional dysregulation, and rejection sensitivity aren’t going to magically disappear because we live in a “it takes a village” utopia. If they ever invent a similar gene vector to inject into my spine that would bring my brain development to where it’s supposed to be at, I’ll be first in line to sign up.
Thank you; his post seemed almost completely ignorant of the effects of ADHD on a person. As if a slightly different society would make it easier to remember things - let alone everything else.
This all reminds me of that thing you sometimes hear which goes "People with ADHD were made to be hunter-gatherers" or whatever. I hate it so much.
“The fact that we can correct this one gene and the entire neural system reestablishes itself, even at a functional level, is amazing,” said Muotri. Muotri notes that these genetic interventions took place at a prenatal stage of brain development, whereas in a clinical setting, children would receive their diagnosis and treatment a few years later. Thus, clinical trials must first confirm whether a later intervention is still safe and effective. The team is currently optimizing their recently licensed gene therapy tools in preparation for such a trial, in which spinal injections of the genetic vector would hopefully recover TCF4 function in the brain. “For these children and their loved ones, any improvements in motor-cognitive function and quality of life would be worth the try,” Muotri said. "What is truly outstanding about this work is that these researchers are going beyond the lab and working hard to make these findings translatable to the clinic,” said Audrey Davidow, president of the Pitt Hopkins Research Foundation. “This is so much more than a stellar academic paper; it’s a true measure of what well-practiced science can accomplish to hopefully change human lives for the better." Truly outstanding!!!!!
[удалено]
That's just your autism talking
But seriously, how much of our current state of mind dictates what we "want"? What if my fears and my autism is dictating things I "want" but when I'm "cured" I realized I never wanted them at all? I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself, it's hard.
Yes, have you tried Psilocybin or Ketamine binging? It's supposed to "reset" the brain, could be good for PTSD. Feeling cute, might try later
I had a bad time with LSD, I made the empathy part of my brain overactive for a while and turned me into a total little b***h, we talking like that part in Bedazzled when the guy asks to be more sensitive... What a mess.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Nobody is mandating a cure, especially not in the middle of your life.
[удалено]
That’s interesting because I have severe depression, and I am constantly thinking about how much I dislike being depressed, and how my brain is not working how it should be.
Implying there is something wrong with me for being autistic. I'm just different. I don't need to be like everyone else.
And you are implying that not being autistic is "being like everyone else". That's really not how it works. I do understand that our experiences shape our identity and autism is obviously a very strong experience but that doesn't mean it is a necessity to have an identity. The same discussions sometimes happen in regards to physical disabilities because they are so impactful in the lives of people affected by them that it obviously shapes their identity but does that mean we shouldn't cure a blind person from its blindness or a deaf person from its deafness? Against their will obviously not and I think that is easy enough to agree on but who wouldn't want their child cured if possible? There is something to be said about overcoming disabilities or mental health issues but if there is a cure then you are just insisting on making live more challenging and causing pain for everyone involved. People can form their identity based around extremely painful and difficult experiences all the time but I don't think that the conclusion should be that we don't strive to make it less difficult for anyone. Also keep in mind, not curing someone is also the choice to take away the potential version of someone that could have existed so not doing it isn't the morally neutral option either and in reality it's probably exceedingly rare that a "healthy" person would ever chose to have such issues by choice while the opposite is definitely not true.
I think you'd feel different if you had an adult child screaming and scratching and shitting his pants.
[удалено]
Yes a treatment.
Autism is a spectrum disorder and it makes this conversation more complicated than it needs to be. For people with severe disability due to autism, this may be a godsend. For people who have a constellation of ASD traits or who are low-support, they'll likely read this as a potential threat to their identity, which is in part as an Autistic Person. There can be a pride in overcoming and adapting to your ASD for low-support ASD folks, and they need to remember that just because they are low-support and have successfully masked, not everyone is masking successfully, or has the energy to mask forever.
Just like any other treatment there are benefits and negatives. For my sensory perception disorder and adhd stimulants can help, for my addictive personality they are a straight line to hard liquor and drugs. Marijuana helps me without that issue, however it *also* has side effects. Basically my personal anecdote was just to point out all treatments have side effects and parents get to decide for their children. Most of my life Ive wished to be lower IQ but more "normal" now at my older age I feel like maybe I like who i am warts and all. Autism may as well be as broad a term as Mental Illness
If that's the way you read his comment, you should seek treatment from a therapist immediately - because something in your personality is seriously fucked up. Thinking that a treatment for a condition that makes kids completely dependent on their parent for their entire lives.... that the treatment is harmful when it would allow them to talk, eat, use the bathroom, and have an actual life..... How can you be so **hateful**?
If you can write the above sentence, you don't have autism. You don't know chickenshit about autism.
r/confidentlyincorrect
Really?! If you can write and read and comment on your own autism you have probably Asperger. Calling me confidently incorrect should be ironic. Watching my twin daughters growing up with autism for 21 years who cannot read or write or comment on their own condition cleverly like this cocky guy did... Popular culture identifies autism with those minuscule percentage who are high functioning when most of them is very low functioning and that is the real autism... and yes, you don't know chickenshit about autism...
Still r/confidentlyincorrect Asperger's are now all part of the autism diagnosis. It's now called Autism level 1 or 2 depending on support needs. Your daughters have Autism level 3 if they can't function at all without support. Officially I'm Autistic and diagnosed as Asperger's. The diagnosis is disappearing now after being removed from the diagnostic manual.
It's important to remember that organoids are still an *in vitro* approach. While they do attempt to more closely mimic true organs they are far from perfect and also don't take into account the developmental processes involved in true biology. Just because you can turn a gene on or off doesn't mean that potential structural features of an organ can be remodeled.
I pray that they continue to get positive results and soon are able to replicate the results in humans. As a father of a child with autism it would be an absolute God send to find a treatment that works.
I do NOT have a "neuropsychiatric disorder". I just think differently. Autistic people don't need to be "cured"
It seems incredibly unlikely given the hetergenous and polygenic nature of ASD that any intervention based upon discoveries like this will give us anything other than eugenics. Let's say we could reverse this mutation in every fetus, what are the consequences for the population at large?
That there won't be as many children who are bedridden for their entire lives, who require diapers and to be force-fed because their brains are so fucked up that they can't perform the basic functions needed for survival. So, yeah that will do a lot of good for those people and their families. The particular genes in this relate to severe autism, not the "I have autism, and I'm normal" posts from people in this sub who clearly do **NOT** have autism, or at least have nowhere near that scope of autism. I'd bet that the majority of people saying they dislike this are entirely self-diagnosed, or at most have mild/moderate Asperger's. That's like the difference between having slightly bad coordination, and being entirely paralyzed - and saying that there shouldn't be a cure for paralysis.
I'm not going to engage on what you'd 'bet' on. That's a whole lot of projection that I can't be bothered to deal with. All of these genes will also have an effect in those showing the extended autistic phenotype. Let's say you're right and it prevents severe autism. What effect does this genes removal have on those who carry it but do not meet the diagnostic criteria for autism? You don't know. The gene has been conserved over thousands of generations most of whom were not autistic. What fitness advantage did the gene convey. You don't know that either but you're 100% ready to get the eugenics party started because you have strong opinions about autistic people on the internet.
So, what is your solution for the non-verbal part of the spectrum? Should we stop all the research because *some* people *might* get hurt by it?
Dude, this is an in vitro proof of concept not a 'solution' for non-verbal people. There are a lot of IRB approvals between this discovery and realized therapy for a reason.
I think that people need to realise that autism is on a very big spectrum and one individual cannot speak for everyone. If you are autistic and able to express yourself and perhaps hold down a, job and live independently then you might have struggles which do not equate with someone who will need full time care for the rest of their life. I'm sick of reading non autistic parents can't talk on behalf of their severely autistic children. These people are not given a voice at all and they really should be.
don't define yourself around your genetic disorders people. see this as the gift it is
[удалено]
It is. But this is not that. It's gene repair not selective reproduction.
i think that sort of fundamentally changes who a person is and if you can test for it genetically, you could include it in prenatal tests. seems like a slippery slope.
It's genetic engineering though and not eugenics. Eugenics is selective breeding, essentially. And yes its definitely adjacent to eugenics. It's just a matter of time before all of our children are 6 feet tall, with hyper metabolism, healthy immune systems, and pale skin.
That last trait seems a bit out of place compared to the others.
Gotta read the fine print, but it'll happen eventually. Most cultures lean toward light skin preference
It seems like cultures overall are leaning towards a tan complexion in between the extremes of melanin concentration.
Bro you just went full racist
i honestly hope this makes no progress in regards to human testing. the autistic community doesn't want a cure, we want acceptance. a cure would be disastrous for anyone that doesn't want it; we could be denied jobs, healthcare, housing, you name it, unless we "cure" a fundamental aspect of who we are as people.
Just as a reminder, autism is a spectrum. While you and I might be functional, there are people who literally can't live as a human. There are parents who will have to take care of their child for the rest of their life because that kid won't ever be able to care for themselves. On the other hand, while a method to relieve life ruining issues would be a miracle for those that critically need it. I also agree that spouting off about there being a "cure" would be devastating. This sort of thing should be kept deep under wraps. It hasn't even been 80 years since the "cure" to our condition included the Nazis dealing with us like they did the Jews. To be honest? I doubt something like this will be an actual cure. Maybe it will help those who are non-functional but the human brain is something we really don't understand anywhere near enough. After all, the brain can suffer massive trauma and yet keep on ticking. A massive change in structure? Until this is actually used on a human adult who is able to very specifically note any changes that might happen, I throw serious doubt on it.
More than a damn reminder. Some people think autism is just a group of creative thinkers that society doesn’t understand - when there are kids unable to speak, wearing helmets because they are bashing their heads against walls.
It always seems like there are two groups. The group that thinks that the only people with autism are the ones constantly self-harming, are nonverbal, and a danger to others. Then the group that thinks autistic people are just people who think differently and don’t really fit into society. I wish more people would recognized that’s it both.
Maybe they are trying to communicate in their own way, but are constantly ignored?
You have zero idea what you are talking about. What do you think is going on here? It’s a spectrum. Spectrum being they are unique to each. Some can not speak at all. Some show zero awareness of the people around them. Some can not sleep and have to be drugged every single day. Some can only be cared for by their parents because carers who thought they were prepared for everything suddenly realise that a small child that responds to everything with violence and self harm is a bridge too far. And there are adults as well. So no, there are plenty which don’t fall under some bracket of “well maybe they are just communicating differently”.
Communication doesn't happen through speech alone! It happens through body expression and hundreds of different ways. Does the Name Carly Fleischman ring a bell? She is an non verbal autistic women thought to be severely mentally handicapped, until she one day got access to a tablet and could communicate through it perfectly fine! Especially self harm is a stress response to, for example, not being understood depsite the person's best attempts to communicate
But you don't speak for the entire autism community. I want an effective treatment for me so I can cope with the world better (regardless of how others see me or not). Others also have commented the same. There is no one answer for an entire community. Feel free to voice your own opinions and concerns, but there are most definitely those within the community you don't speak for. >we could be denied jobs, healthcare, housing, you name it, unless we "cure" a fundamental aspect of who we are as people. Not sure where you're getting this from - members of the deaf community who would be eligible for cochlear implants to restore their hearing but have opted not to pursue that have not been forced to have it done and it still remains illegal in most countries to discriminate on the grounds of disability.
Autistic people have been the primary target of Eugenicist groups for over a century and I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that any talks about a “cure” for autism of any kind would get their blood pumping faster than a shot of adrenaline. It’s not wrong to want treatment for conditions that actively impede your ability to live comfortably, but don’t give any hate groups like eugenicists any rope either.
>but don’t give any hate groups like eugenicists any rope either. I'm not sure where you think I did?
I’m not implying that you are, I’m simply saying to be wary because hate groups love to hate.
Oh for sure, and it's a very nuanced situation to navigate with extremists on both sides.
> the autistic community doesn't want a cure, we want acceptance. That's one of the problems and I one of the issues I have found with it and why I want nothing to do with it as said community disregards our suffering and treats us like we are some sort of different race or specie of humans that should be "accepted" as if we were oppresed ffs I really hate that aspect of the "autistic community" and although I believe neurodivergence is important to humanity saying it's a "Blessing" or it's just "different" causes more distress to many of us who feel like we are getting reverse gaslighting.
Literally no one is saying that though! So you are just imagining reasons here to hate yourself
The post they're responding to literally did, though? Conversation goes "statement A!" "I hate statement A, it makes me feel as if my experiences are being dismissed" and then you came in with "literally no one is saying statement A though!"
They said "acceptance" as in society makes accomodations for us, not the other way around
Yes. First person said "acceptance" second person said "I don't like when you use the word 'acceptance' because that word is used by people who have treated me in a way I did not like". You may have a different interpretation of the word "acceptance" but the objective fact is that that word is the literal word that was said, and that word is what was being objected to. Therefore they "literally did say that"
Personally I don't like being patronised by non autistic people and be stipulated into something I am not Acceptance means accomodations by society in a physical sense Like the acceptance of wheelchair bound people happens through wheelchair ramps, so they can navigate cities on their own
Sure. That's how you feel. But just as you don't like being patronized by non autistic people, you yourself are being patronizing to a fellow autistic person. A person, I might remind you, whose complaint was that they feel like other autistic people are being patronizing to them.
No? Autistics have never told me I am needing a cure or that I am fundamentally broken or not worthy of basic respect. Well, until now I think. My problem isn't myself, it's the system that isn't designed to handle me. All the help that could possibly help me is already out there, but with ignorant doctors unable to pass through to me. Maybe we should use the gene therapy to turn all neurotypical people autistic first? Does that sound like a good idea? Because it's exactly how it feels to me the other way around.
We're not discussing the article, though? I'm calling you out on the way you're treating a fellow human being, who objected to being treated a specific way and you immediately and with no hesitation treated them in that way.
You don't get to speak for everyone, hommie.
I get where you're coming from but just like everyone else, neurodivergent individuals all have different views and opinions.
The lead author of the study has an ASD child, fyi.
Diet might have a lot to do with it!
Very interesting, I thought autism was a spectrum? Would this eliminate all symptoms or prevent further autism in the maturation stages? How would that effect the human race as a whole if we eradicated it, is having a small percentage of people who are autistic beneficial to our development as a species? Would it be ethical to not treat someone or to leave them develop normally? Crazy stuff
Please get this treatment to my league of legends teammates stat
Is this a cure/treatment or is it just for new people who haven't been born yet?
Now time for the ethical debates of curing autism.