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Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 198

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Jeebus said:

Warbler said:

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

Autism doesn’t render someone incapable of making their own decisions, it’s a spectrum. There are many autistic people smarter than you or I who are more than capable of making decisions.

Are there any cases at all wear autism does render someone incapable of making their own decisions?

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 (Edited)

Warbler said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Maybe, but shouldn’t the cure be there for those that want it?

This gets into the weeds pretty fast. The problem is not necessarily the “cure” per se. It’s the subtext that anyone who doesn’t opt for it is being unreasonable. It’s the issues that arise when people stop spending money on ADA compliance when you could just take a pill for it. It’s the minority group becoming even more invisible as their numbers diminish. It’s the loss of cultural connections between family members.

This are problems that have to be dealt with, but I can’t see this problems are justification for denying “the cure” to those that want it.

And of course it’s treating a disability as if it were a disease.

How about we treat a disability as a disability instead of a person’s race, or religion?

That’s not going to fly with this group. Race, religion, sexual orientation, and disabilities are all in a bucket called “identities”. Yes, they’re different from each other, but the basic concept of curing an identity is problematic (and people seriously also try to cure sexual orientation like a disease, and disability advocates see that as a parallel). Curing a disease, no problem. Curing an identity, them’s fighting words.

I completely appreciate those who view their disabilities as identities. Much power to them.

But I’m not sure about the idea that every “problem” is an identity and thus shouldn’t be “cured.” Should people with poor vision not wear contacts (or glasses for that matter)? Should people with bad teeth not get braces?

How about this, what about transgendered people. One could argue their transgender is part of their identity. So should they be denied a sex change operation? You could argue such is a “cure”, just like allowing a deaf person to hear.

Transgender is an identity. Pressuring them to have a sex change, or shaming them into having a sex change, or withholding some other sort of accommodation just because they won’t have a sex change like a reasonable person, those would all be comparable to what we’re discussing. Someone choosing to have a sex change and then doing it? Not a problem.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

DominicCobb said:

However, it’s hard to imagine everyone with a disability thinks the same way. What about the deaf people who want to hear? Should “cures” be shunned by the larger community even when some would welcome them?

At least WRT cochlear implants, many deaf people do in fact opt for the implants, and (at least as far as I know–I’m not Mr. Cochlear Implant) the cures are not shunned by the larger community at all. A large part (maybe most) of the deaf community treats them like poison, but almost all of the hearing community treats them like “We fixed your deafness. You’re welcome.” And later “We have no idea why you’re being so unreasonable, just get the implants and stop asking us for interpreters. It’s not necessary anymore.”

My reaction is neither of those. My reaction is “We have the ability to fix your deafness if you want it fixed”.

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Warbler said:

SilverWook said:

One could probably make the argument that if every deaf person was cured, the uniqueness of deaf culture would be lost.

To that I again answer with this). How do you justify denying the woman in the video the ability to hear?

I could never justify denying someone the ability to hear. Just pointing out some in the deaf community have a different point of view.

Where were you in '77?

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Jeebus said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right to decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured?

That’s really up to the person. I know I wouldn’t want to be cured if the option was available, and that’s because…

You missed the my point here. I was asking Frink this. We were talking about him deciding for his daughter instead of her deciding for herself.

Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love?

I think it influences my personality a lot. Being “cured” would be taking a part of me out, it would figuratively make me a different person.

No offense, but are you saying you have autism?

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SilverWook said:

Warbler said:

SilverWook said:

One could probably make the argument that if every deaf person was cured, the uniqueness of deaf culture would be lost.

To that I again answer with this). How do you justify denying the woman in the video the ability to hear?

I could never justify denying someone the ability to hear. Just pointing out some in the deaf community have a different point of view.

Maybe those with that point of view need to watch the video I posted.

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CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Curing a disease, no problem. Curing an identity, them’s fighting words.

What about curing a disability?

As I think I’ve said before, in their lexicon, disabilities are identities. Deafness is a subset of disabilities. Therefore, from that viewpoint, deafness is an identity.

But it is still a disability.

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Warbler said:

Jeebus said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love?

I think it influences my personality a lot. Being “cured” would be taking a part of me out, it would figuratively make me a different person.

No offense, but are you saying you have autism?

None taken, and yes.

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CatBus said:

Warbler said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Maybe, but shouldn’t the cure be there for those that want it?

This gets into the weeds pretty fast. The problem is not necessarily the “cure” per se. It’s the subtext that anyone who doesn’t opt for it is being unreasonable. It’s the issues that arise when people stop spending money on ADA compliance when you could just take a pill for it. It’s the minority group becoming even more invisible as their numbers diminish. It’s the loss of cultural connections between family members.

This are problems that have to be dealt with, but I can’t see this problems are justification for denying “the cure” to those that want it.

And of course it’s treating a disability as if it were a disease.

How about we treat a disability as a disability instead of a person’s race, or religion?

That’s not going to fly with this group. Race, religion, sexual orientation, and disabilities are all in a bucket called “identities”. Yes, they’re different from each other, but the basic concept of curing an identity is problematic (and people seriously also try to cure sexual orientation like a disease, and disability advocates see that as a parallel). Curing a disease, no problem. Curing an identity, them’s fighting words.

I completely appreciate those who view their disabilities as identities. Much power to them.

But I’m not sure about the idea that every “problem” is an identity and thus shouldn’t be “cured.” Should people with poor vision not wear contacts (or glasses for that matter)? Should people with bad teeth not get braces?

How about this, what about transgendered people. One could argue their transgender is part of their identity. So should they be denied a sex change operation? You could argue such is a “cure”, just like allowing a deaf person to hear.

Transgender is an identity. Pressuring them to have a sex change, or shaming them into having a sex change, or withholding some other sort of accommodation just because they won’t have a sex change like a reasonable person, those would all be comparable to what we’re discussing. Someone choosing to have a sex change and then doing it? Not a problem.

I think the idea he’s getting at is if you’re a trans female, that’s what you are, and you can have an operation to “fix” the “problem” that you were born with a penis, but that won’t take away your identity as a trans female. So you can be deaf and get hearing implants and that will “fix” the “problem” that you can’t hear, but it won’t take away your identity as a deaf person.

As for understanding and not pressuring people to make a change if they don’t want to (or not if they do), that’s obviously something that a lot people in this world need to work on.

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 (Edited)

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their sister not to try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

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CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions?

You mentioned earlier you should learn more about autism. Just go with that 😉

I stated that badly. What I should have asked was "Are there cases where autism renders people incapable of making their own decisions.

Possibly, but not in any of the cases I’ve known (but I’m just Random Internet Dude, not Autism Specialist Dude). Younger than 18, they’re a minor, over 18 they’re good to go. The problem of course is that people with significant neurological impairment are often more hidden from view, so people don’t know about them.

So what about those with “significant neurological impairment” would you deny them “the cure” if it meant they would be able to make their own decisions?

Author
Time

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

Maybe, but shouldn’t the cure be there for those that want it?

This gets into the weeds pretty fast. The problem is not necessarily the “cure” per se. It’s the subtext that anyone who doesn’t opt for it is being unreasonable. It’s the issues that arise when people stop spending money on ADA compliance when you could just take a pill for it. It’s the minority group becoming even more invisible as their numbers diminish. It’s the loss of cultural connections between family members.

This are problems that have to be dealt with, but I can’t see this problems are justification for denying “the cure” to those that want it.

And of course it’s treating a disability as if it were a disease.

How about we treat a disability as a disability instead of a person’s race, or religion?

That’s not going to fly with this group. Race, religion, sexual orientation, and disabilities are all in a bucket called “identities”. Yes, they’re different from each other, but the basic concept of curing an identity is problematic (and people seriously also try to cure sexual orientation like a disease, and disability advocates see that as a parallel). Curing a disease, no problem. Curing an identity, them’s fighting words.

I completely appreciate those who view their disabilities as identities. Much power to them.

But I’m not sure about the idea that every “problem” is an identity and thus shouldn’t be “cured.” Should people with poor vision not wear contacts (or glasses for that matter)? Should people with bad teeth not get braces?

How about this, what about transgendered people. One could argue their transgender is part of their identity. So should they be denied a sex change operation? You could argue such is a “cure”, just like allowing a deaf person to hear.

Transgender is an identity. Pressuring them to have a sex change, or shaming them into having a sex change, or withholding some other sort of accommodation just because they won’t have a sex change like a reasonable person, those would all be comparable to what we’re discussing. Someone choosing to have a sex change and then doing it? Not a problem.

Yet it seems to be a problem when it comes to the deaf person choosing to get the implants to be able to hear.

Author
Time

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their not try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

We aren’t talking about this, at least I’m not. I’m talking about waving a magic wand and “curing” my daughter’s autism. So I would know the person she used to be and the person she became, and I would fear the consequences.

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Time

Jeebus said:

Warbler said:

Jeebus said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love?

I think it influences my personality a lot. Being “cured” would be taking a part of me out, it would figuratively make me a different person.

No offense, but are you saying you have autism?

None taken, and yes.

Well, that definitely proves to me that autism doesn’t always render a person incapable of making their own decisions. I’ve been posting with you for a long while and had absolutely no hint or idea that you had autism.

Author
Time

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their not try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

We aren’t talking about this, at least I’m not. I’m talking about waving a magic wand and “curing” my daughter’s autism. So I would know the person she used to be and the person she became, and I would fear the consequences.

I guess it is more complicated than I originally realized. Still, what if I were to go back in time to a point before your daughter’s brain developed. What if I were to tell the Frink of that time that his daughter had autism and gave him a magic wand to cure it. What would he say?

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Time

We can “what if” and “possibly” til the cows come home and go back out. “It is” and “it isn’t” are what we have and it all comes down to personal choice. My niece has Asperger’s and she’s going through treatment. It has not changed who she is and always was. She still see’s the world the same way and through the same thoughts. I wouldn’t say “fuck you” to her mother, my sister, for wanting to help her daughter as best she can with all the options available. Why? Because it was never about me, it was about my niece, and if she’s happy I’m happy. I would be the same way if it was my own daughter.

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 (Edited)

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their not try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

We aren’t talking about this, at least I’m not. I’m talking about waving a magic wand and “curing” my daughter’s autism. So I would know the person she used to be and the person she became, and I would fear the consequences.

I guess it is more complicated than I originally realized. Still, what if I were to go back in time to a point before your daughter’s brain developed. What if I were to tell the Frink of that time that his daughter had autism and gave him a magic wand to cure it. What would he say?

I’m not even a parent and I know that that is a ridiculous hypothetical question to ask a parent to answer. It’s like I said earlier, maybe someday they’ll figure out enough about the causes to determine how to prevent it from happening, but “curing” autism isn’t even a possibility.

The Person in Question

Author
Time

moviefreakedmind said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their not try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

We aren’t talking about this, at least I’m not. I’m talking about waving a magic wand and “curing” my daughter’s autism. So I would know the person she used to be and the person she became, and I would fear the consequences.

I guess it is more complicated than I originally realized. Still, what if I were to go back in time to a point before your daughter’s brain developed. What if I were to tell the Frink of that time that his daughter had autism and gave him a magic wand to cure it. What would he say?

I’m not even a parent and I know that that is a ridiculous hypothetical question to ask a parent to answer. It’s like I said earlier, maybe someday they’ll figure out enough about the causes to determine how to prevent it from happening, but “curing” autism isn’t even a possibility.

Maybe what they really want to cure, by finding solid solutions, is the stigma surrounding it.

Author
Time

No, that’s not at all what Warbler was talking about.

The Person in Question

Author
Time

^I was responding to your post, not warblers.

Author
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Jetrell Fo said:

My niece has Asperger’s and she’s going through treatment.

Against my better judgement, I have to ask what you’re talking about. There’s no treatment for Asperger’s. You can get treatment for some of the symptoms, but that’s not what we are talking about.

Author
Time

moviefreakedmind said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their not try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

We aren’t talking about this, at least I’m not. I’m talking about waving a magic wand and “curing” my daughter’s autism. So I would know the person she used to be and the person she became, and I would fear the consequences.

I guess it is more complicated than I originally realized. Still, what if I were to go back in time to a point before your daughter’s brain developed. What if I were to tell the Frink of that time that his daughter had autism and gave him a magic wand to cure it. What would he say?

I’m not even a parent and I know that that is a ridiculous hypothetical question to ask a parent to answer. It’s like I said earlier, maybe someday they’ll figure out enough about the causes to determine how to prevent it from happening, but “curing” autism isn’t even a possibility.

Yes, this.

Author
Time

Jetrell Fo said:

^I was responding to your post, not warblers.

I know. I was responding to him and you posted something directed at me that had nothing to do with what we were talking about.

The Person in Question

Author
Time
 (Edited)

moviefreakedmind said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

Great post. If someone gave me a magic wand and said I could “cure” my daughter today, I wouldn’t do it, because she’d no longer be the girl I love, she’d be someone different.

I see multiple problems with that approach. One is, should you have the right decide she shouldn’t have “the cure” if one existed? What if she would want to be cured? Another is, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? I mean, you don’t love her just because she has autism right? If she had never had autism, you still would have loved her, right? Also how would she be someone different? She would just be your daughter without autism. Your daughter is defined by more than just autism. She a person and would still be that same person if her autism were cured. If your daughter had cancer and that got cured, would she be someone different after she was cured? Myself, if I had kid with autism and there was a cure, I’d want him/her to have it(but I will not be so arrogant to deny the possibility that my opinion would be altered if I actually had a child with autism). Why would I want to deny him/her the opportunity live free of autism, to be free of all of its problems?

Call me stupid, clueless, bigoted or whatever, but I don’t get it.

edit: I really hope I haven’t offended by any of what I said in this post, because that wasn’t my intent. Keep in mind that I have no family members with autism. I don’t know anyone that does. So if I have offended, it is because of my own ignorance of the issues.

I’m not offended, they are fair questions.

Cancer does not fundamentally change your brain the way autism does. My daughter has challenges that neurotypicals do not,

neurotypicals? You mean people without autism?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

Another way to look at is this - if I could go back and have my first daughter not be stillborn, would I? I don’t know, because it would change the course of our history. Our second child might have been a boy instead of a girl. We might have only had one child, and almost certainly wouldn’t have had three…so our younger daughter would basically cease to exist. “Curing” my daughter’s autism would essentially erase her from this world, replaced by a different girl.

Here we are talking about the problems of altering history as opposed to the issues of curing something. I’d love to go back in time and break my father’s fall so he’d still be with us, but I don’t think I should be allowed to mess with history like that.

My point is that simply “curing” an autistic person would not just be a simple do-it-and-it’s-over thing (assuming a cure existed) and that it has ripple effects, and rather large ones at that. Choosing to go back and have my first daughter survive would change everything that came after it, and so would “curing” my autistic daughter.

Lastly, the argument that she should be the one to have the choice is a compelling one, however I don’t think she is old enough to make that choice (if the choice were available to us). If we were given a magic wand and were told we could choose to wave it any time in the next ten years, I might feel differently ten years down the road.

But here is the problem. If I am understanding autism at all, in order to truly cure iy, it would have to be done sometime early in brain development, way before she was 18 and could decide for herself. This brings up yet another issue. Are people with autism capable of making their own decisions? We are talking about a problem with the mind here. What if “curing” your daughter were the only way to bring her to a state of mind where she could make her own decisions?

My daughter has Asperger’s and is high functioning. She can make decisions already, but at her age I wouldn’t want her making lots of unimportant non-Asperger’s related decisions just because of her age (like if she should watch 14 hours of tv today). My statement was more in relation to the fact that she’s too young to be making certain decisions, independent of her neuro condition.

understood, but as I said before, if I understand things correctly. The only time would be possible to truly “cure” autism is at a time before brain development. This would be way before she could make her own decisions you would have to decide one way or the other. Also this would be before you even knew of any ripple effects.

Consider a story: a man was in a car with his sister. A horrible car accident occurs. The sister is killed. The man is seriously injured. He is brought to a hospital. While there, he meets a nurse and falls in love with her and they eventually marry and have kids. One of this kids grows up and finds the cure for cancer. Now it can argued that that accident had ripples and without the ripples with children would not have been born and cancer would not have been cured. Still, you would not tell someone driving with their not try to avoid a car accident if they could, would you?

We aren’t talking about this, at least I’m not. I’m talking about waving a magic wand and “curing” my daughter’s autism. So I would know the person she used to be and the person she became, and I would fear the consequences.

I guess it is more complicated than I originally realized. Still, what if I were to go back in time to a point before your daughter’s brain developed. What if I were to tell the Frink of that time that his daughter had autism and gave him a magic wand to cure it. What would he say?

I’m not even a parent and I know that that is a ridiculous hypothetical question to ask a parent to answer. It’s like I said earlier, maybe someday they’ll figure out enough about the causes to determine how to prevent it from happening, but “curing” autism isn’t even a possibility.

If you will read my posts I always referred to curing the autism at a time before brain development were to occur.

Author
Time

Why would someone in the Obama administration or any other request the redaction of names caught in “incidental” surveillance? Weird?

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-03/top-obama-adviser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel

White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The pattern of Rice’s requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on “unmasking” the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like “U.S. Person One.”

The National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations – primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.

Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations surrounding the Trump White House since the president’s inauguration.

Both the House and Senate intelligence committees are probing any ties between Trump associates and a Russian influence operation against Hillary Clinton during the election. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Representative Devin Nunes, is also investigating how the Obama White House kept tabs on the Trump transition after the election through unmasking the names of Trump associates incidentally collected in government eavesdropping of foreign officials.

Rice herself has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking. Last month when she was asked on the “PBS NewsHour” about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were swept up in incidental intelligence collection, Rice said: “I know nothing about this,” adding, “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today.”

Rice’s requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials do not vindicate Trump’s own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim.

But Rice’s multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice’s unmasking requests were likely within the law.

The news about Rice also sheds light on the strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks. It emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council that would include the logs of Rice’s requests to unmask U.S. persons.

The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee.

Indeed, much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated.