Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Fuck everybody.
😉
Well, autism isn’t something that you can “cure” in somebody. Now, if it were focused on determining specific causes and means of prevention, that would be different.
How do you know we won’t be able to cure in the future(maybe a couple hundred years from now)?
Well, to answer the question seriously and completely requires a bit of a historical disability rights primer. You don’t have to agree with this 100%, I’m just presenting this as background information.
The easiest gateway to understanding is to consider the deaf community, cochlear implants, etc. Deafness can be caused by maladies, but it’s not a malady in itself. Some proportion of the human population has always been deaf, and the deaf community considers itself simply part of the natural variation in humanity–not that much different than variations in height–there’s a bell curve, but not sitting at the average is simply not a problem that needs addressing. That’s not to say that a society designed for the middle of the bell curve doesn’t present difficulties for them, but those difficulties are the things to be managed, not the people. i.e. tall/short people may have a hard time finding clothes, being at the right height for photo booths, etc, but those are problems that can be managed. Similarly, deaf people can run into issues talking to people who don’t understand their language. The solutions in those scenarios would be teaching more people to sign, using interpreters, or–technology FTW–texting.
But then there’s things like cochlear implants. They don’t remove the barriers for deafness, they remove the deafness, which is a different thing entirely. You don’t have to know very much about deaf culture to see how this presents a real threat to deaf identity. There’s at least one documentary about the bitter and divisive struggle that has raged over cochlear implants. To deaf community activists, it’s very much like someone invented a cure for blackness, and sells it with the promise of how much easier it will be when you can hail cabs, get help from the police, and make it through in-person job interviews. All of these promises quite possibly being true, but missing the larger point.
Autism is in a similar place. It’s not neurotypical, but it’s within the natural variation of humanity. Many of the problems are simply with interacting with the society at large, and can be addressed individually without changing the identity of the person.
Anyway, that’s the background on that. Again, there’s a whole lot of wild twists and cul-de-sacs I avoided to keep things as simple as possible. So basically, “curing autism” is not something some people would want to pursue even if it were scientifically feasible, but “things that make being autistic in a non-autistic world a lot easier” are.
Sorry but I have to disagree. I don’t know how anyone could be against the idea of allowing the deaf ability to hear. I mean, I ok, if deaf wants to chose not get or use cochlear implants that is one thing. But to deny a deaf person that wants them the ability to get them? I don’t get that. Then there is this.
Also the problem for deaf people is more than just about other people not being able to understand their language. The problem is they can’t hear. This means they can’t enjoy music(and yes I know there is the ability to “sign music”, but that is not the same thing as actually listening to music). If someone is behind a deaf person and is at a distance and wants to warn them that something is about to fall on their head, they can’t, because the person can’t hear the warning. I can easily see all kinds of difficulties for those that can’t hear, other than just just language difficulties.
Was Jesus wrong to make the lame walk and the blind see?