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SedanChair posted:I don't know, this sounds like the start of an interesting thread. What is the line between reproductive choice and eugenics? Parents are given information and choices, rather than the government mandating who can breed with whom?
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Jun 28, 2014 12:59
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E-Tank posted:Congrats, you're parroting speaking points from Autism Speaks. I'm autistic. gently caress autism. If there was a magic cure to be rid of it I'd take it in a second. Not to say that I like the pre-screening stuff, discrimination and that kind of thing, but being autistic is a handicap and there is nothing wrong with trying to be rid of it.
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Jun 28, 2014 14:09
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SwissCM posted:I'm autistic. Magic wands; like suicide but nicer for everyone. I too have autism, but trying to imagine myself as a neurotypical is so alien that I cannot even parse it. So much of what makes me who I am is tied to my life experience and perspective, all of which are deeply influenced by my condition. Removing that condition would present such a drastic change that one could say that I died and another person (with my body) took my place. Maybe I'm just too comfortable with myself by now.
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Jun 28, 2014 14:38
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Heh "neurotypical". I went through a pretty decent chunk of therapy to learn how to deal with the symptoms. My childhood was difficult, confusing and frustrating and I don't wish that kind of experience upon any kid.
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Jun 28, 2014 14:41
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E-Tank posted:Congrats, you're parroting speaking points from Autism Speaks. gently caress them for allowing people to speak about their experiences that contradict my views. Silence them, silence them now! Am I missing where they called for MANDATORY 'curing' and poo poo? It sounds like you're angry at a group who wants to find treatments for a legit pretty terrible mental issue that many would like to see cured. Are they demanding we round up autistics and put them in cure camps or something?
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Jun 28, 2014 14:43
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SwissCM posted:Heh "neurotypical". Getting therapy sounds nice - my early life was complicated by my parent's problems and my own orientation. It was pretty rough sometimes, but it beats the poo poo out of polio. Or being dead. No amount of workshops or practice will make polio-stricken legs work, or ears devastated by measles hear. People who are autistic, particularly high and mid-functioning, can have full and fulfilling lives once it clicks that NT society does have rules, albeit a poo poo-ton of sometimes very subtle and convoluted ones. I'm sorry that you're so upset about it and I hope that you will feel better at some point. I don't like it when other people are sad. Have you tried thinking about the positives? You're posting on SA from what is probably a first-world country so you're ahead of the game globally in general and better than low-functioning autistic people.
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Jun 28, 2014 14:58
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Of course. I got through it pretty fine. I was diagnosed with Aspergers so I'm plenty high functioning and mental health services here in Australia are pretty decent compared to the rest of the world. I don't define myself by my illness though, so I find the idea "neurotypicals" to be pretty silly and counter-productive. I can understand how it may work for others though. I do think that poli-stricken legs and deafness from measles (or deafness in general) can be cured though. Humanity is just started getting into cybernetics, being able to interface with the brain is a really exciting frontier. Perhaps it can help Autistic people learn to cope more easily in the future too, who knows.
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Jun 28, 2014 15:22
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E-Tank posted:Much of Autism Speaks’ money goes toward research, and much of that research centers on finding a way to eliminate autism, and thus, autistics (which will likely be done through a prenatal test, in the same way that the Down’s Syndrome test is conducted). What's wrong with this? Seeking to cure or eliminate diseases is a good thing, not a bad one. Or are we at the point where doing things like destroying Tay-Sachs is now considered awful because it involved screenings and some abortions? EDIT: Am I the only one picking up the same weird vibes as the "deaf culture" idiots who see Cochlear implants as some sort of genocide? Not having a disease is objectively better than having one. rkajdi fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 15:37
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rkajdi posted:What's wrong with this? Seeking to cure or eliminate diseases is a good thing, not a bad one. Or are we at the point where doing things like destroying Tay-Sachs is now considered awful because it involved screenings and some abortions? I think that there are some compelling arguments that high-functioning autism could be considered less a disease and more like a divergent perspective. A shift from social to mechanistic thinking can make one a bit awkward at cocktail parties but its very useful in a lot of fields!
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Jun 28, 2014 15:53
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LeJackal posted:Magic wands; like suicide but nicer for everyone. You could say the same about someone who's suffering from mental illness. Is treating them wrong? And if the opportunity to actually fix them permanently was available, is that wrong by definition? Lobotomy is a poor choice is drat near every case due to the other side effects, but would a permanent solution that didn't involve disability be a bad thing? Hell, you could make the same argument with Downs Syndrome even better, since the worst of it isn't the intellectual disability, but the heart, GI, and other brain issues that go along with Downs. It seems like people get really hung up on being authentically "themselves", which makes less and less sense the further you move away from the illusion of free will.
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Jun 28, 2014 15:56
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LeJackal posted:I think that there are some compelling arguments that high-functioning autism could be considered less a disease and more like a divergent perspective. A shift from social to mechanistic thinking can make one a bit awkward at cocktail parties but its very useful in a lot of fields! To bad not every autistic person can be high functioning.
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Jun 28, 2014 15:58
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LeJackal posted:I think that there are some compelling arguments that high-functioning autism could be considered less a disease and more like a divergent perspective. A shift from social to mechanistic thinking can make one a bit awkward at cocktail parties but its very useful in a lot of fields! Lots of diseases can have a positive side effect or at least cause-- take sickle cell anemea. It doesn't stop them from being something worth trying to treat or fix. Seriously, you're "I wouldn't be me anymore" line is something I remember saying as an excuse for not getting mental health treatment when I was younger. It's lazy thinking and is based on the idea that there's some platonic you out there floating in the ether that you need to be similar to-- this is obvious nonsense.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:07
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TURN IT OFF! posted:To bad not every autistic person can be high functioning. Exactly. While most of the genuinely autistic people (throwing out the self-diagnoses idiots) are high functioning, I've also met the children of people I know that were incredibly crippled by the disease, to the point that it was obviously causing them near-constant pain. Not wanting to find a cure or mitigation for these people seems sociopathic to me.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:10
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rkajdi posted:Not wanting to find a cure or mitigation for these people seems sociopathic to me. Killing them in the womb seems like a pretty extreme cure/mitigation.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:12
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rkajdi posted:It's lazy thinking and is based on the idea that there's some platonic you out there floating in the ether that you need to be similar to-- this is obvious nonsense. Though there is an idea to which you are comfortable being similar.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:14
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SedanChair posted:I don't know, this sounds like the start of an interesting thread. What is the line between reproductive choice and eugenics? There isn't one when you take into account sufficiently advanced hypothetical screenings. But while the idea of a woman terminating a pregnancy because she found out the fetus she was carrying would be autistic/gay/brown-eyed makes me seriously loving uncomfortable, to promote the idea that she should have no right to terminate on those grounds (or whatever utterly arbitrary reason she likes) is to say that there are times when a woman has an obligation to donate her body to the gestation of another human, and that idea makes me even more loving uncomfortable. There's really no room for compromise in my mind when it comes to reproductive rights. If you accept that nobody has an obligation to support the life of another with their bodies, the right to terminate a pregnancy must be held to be absolute, regardless of how sick and twisted the reason for termination might hypothetically be.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:14
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LeJackal posted:Killing them in the womb seems like a pretty extreme cure/mitigation. Bodily autonomy is now pretty extreme?
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Jun 28, 2014 16:16
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Presumably if you had a test to detect autism you could also detect severity as well (at least up to a certain extent).
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Jun 28, 2014 16:17
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LeJackal posted:Killing them in the womb seems like a pretty extreme cure/mitigation. Abortion is legal and is not murder. I'd figure someone as MUH RITES as you would get be all about protecting a 9th ammendment right like abortion, but I guess you're just being selective about that as is usual.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:23
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rkajdi posted:Abortion is legal and is not murder. I'd figure someone as MUH RITES as you would get be all about protecting a 9th ammendment right like abortion, but I guess you're just being selective about that as is usual. "The only immoral abortion is their abortion."
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Jun 28, 2014 16:27
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Bel Shazar posted:Though there is an idea to which you are comfortable being similar. Medical averageness can be objectively shown via statistics. There is no ideal you sitting in the ether. Trying to be authentic to what you somehow suss out as being the real you is just bunk.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:27
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rkajdi posted:Medical averageness can be objectively shown via statistics. There is no ideal you sitting in the ether. Trying to be authentic to what you somehow suss out as being the real you is just bunk. I'm not claiming some separate entity. Regardless, people can still be comfortable as themselves. Claiming that someone has to change because they don't meet your level of acceptability is just bunk.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:31
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SwissCM posted:I'm autistic. It's a mental thing, though, and that makes it play by a different set of rules than physical things. It's partly physical sure, in that it's a brain thing, but one thing about mental disorders and mental handicaps is that there's always those arguments over what is a problem and what is just personality quirks. It can be totally crippling or it can be a mild annoyance. When it comes to mental things they generally want to fix the parts that damage your life and let the rest be. In the case of autism it can also come with advantages. The hyperfocus that some autistic people show can be useful and I was reading a while back that engineers tend to be way more likely to be autistic. I know a few autistic people and they range from a bit socially awkward and annoyed by bright lights to literally doesn't speak for days at a time and has trouble functioning in society. This is why Autism Speaks and its mission to destroy autism is very controversial and is pissing off a lot of people, especially those that are autistic. It's a mental disorder, not a disease. The anti-vaxxers are insane because they'd rather a horrifying, murderous disease exist than a mental disorder. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 16:33
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Bel Shazar posted:I'm not claiming some separate entity. Regardless, people can still be comfortable as themselves. Claiming that someone has to change because they don't meet your level of acceptability is just bunk. I don't think anyone is saying that we hold down adults and force them to take this hypothetical cure.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:38
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Who What Now posted:I don't think anyone is saying that we hold down adults and force them to take this hypothetical cure. I thought we had moved on to telling people who don't want to be cured that they were wrong.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:41
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Smudgie Buggler posted:There isn't one when you take into account sufficiently advanced hypothetical screenings. But while the idea of a woman terminating a pregnancy because she found out the fetus she was carrying would be autistic/gay/brown-eyed makes me seriously loving uncomfortable, to promote the idea that she should have no right to terminate on those grounds (or whatever utterly arbitrary reason she likes) is to say that there are times when a woman has an obligation to donate her body to the gestation of another human, and that idea makes me even more loving uncomfortable. Number one, putting gay in there makes no sense. There's not a lot of evidence of it being that genetic, though I have seen some stuff suggesting it could involve in utero conditions. Number two, we have amneocentesis and have people regularly aborting fetuses with Downs Syndrome-- this is much of the reason why we don't have lots more children with the condition after maternal age has increased. We also regularly do the same for piles of other congenital defects. Get the whole "abortion = murder" line from anti-choicers out of your head-- the choice between being born and never existing isn't murder. Otherwise it follows that birth control or really anything that didn't maximize the number of potential births would be murder. The fact that you got to step 6 before becoming alive instead of step 1 or 2 isn't relevant.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:43
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Bel Shazar posted:I thought we had moved on to telling people who don't want to be cured that they were wrong. Are you saying that's somehow worse? Someone said a mean thing on the internet, oh no what a goddamn tragedy.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:44
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Bel Shazar posted:I'm not claiming some separate entity. Regardless, people can still be comfortable as themselves. Claiming that someone has to change because they don't meet your level of acceptability is just bunk. Except that we do this all the time. That's the point of society. Otherwise, we get into the idea that it's okay for the violent schizophrenic to refuse hospitalization or medication because they are not comfortable being "someone else". The idea of an authentic you that needs to be protected makes no sense, especially since your state is determined by everything but your mind (i.e. your genetics and all the environmental effects that have happened to you)
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Jun 28, 2014 16:52
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Bel Shazar posted:I thought we had moved on to telling people who don't want to be cured that they were wrong. I was more dealing with the whole idea of a cure being wrong to go for. That's what I saw LeJackal as arguing. But anything getting people to drop the whole idea of free will and the integrity of the mind is a good thing IMO.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:57
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rkajdi posted:Except that we do this all the time. That's the point of society. Otherwise, we get into the idea that it's okay for the violent schizophrenic to refuse hospitalization or medication because they are not comfortable being "someone else". The idea of an authentic you that needs to be protected makes no sense, especially since your state is determined by everything but your mind (i.e. your genetics and all the environmental effects that have happened to you) Except that we don't do it for everything all the time. It is a function of a person's ability to cope as they are.
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Jun 28, 2014 16:59
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rkajdi posted:I was more dealing with the whole idea of a cure being wrong to go for. That's what I saw LeJackal as arguing. True, that does make for a poor argument against a cure being wrong in general.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:00
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I believe that in the case of Autism Speaks, we're not talking about autistic people "not wanting to be cured." We're talking about them not wanting to have been screened out and aborted before they came into existence.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:05
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SedanChair posted:I believe that in the case of Autism Speaks, we're not talking about autistic people "not wanting to be cured." We're talking about them not wanting to have been screened out and aborted before they came into existence. True. To that point, though, it's hard to win an argument against diagnostic techniques and body autonomy. I don't know that that scenario is avoidable.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:14
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Bel Shazar posted:Except that we don't do it for everything all the time. It is a function of a person's ability to cope as they are. Yeah, but that's more a function of society being horribly inconsistent than anything. I see the whole issue as more similar to it being better for society to pay to have someone given working prosethetics (not that we're there yet with these) than continuing to pay them a disability payment. We'd be better off fixing the broken structures that cause autism versus just trying to mitigate the symptoms. We already are fine with fixing autistic people via therapy, so there's no reason to think that fixing the underlying structure that causes the problem wouldn't be the more efficient and better solution. The brain is just another organ, and there is no rational reason to act like fixing a broken brain is any different than fixing a broken liver or missing legs.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:15
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SedanChair posted:I believe that in the case of Autism Speaks, we're not talking about autistic people "not wanting to be cured." We're talking about them not wanting to have been screened out and aborted before they came into existence. But then they don't exist. What is the big deal? Nobody was killed, and nobody's bodily autonomy was removed. You're playing into the anti-choicer's meme of "abortion=murder" at this point. We don't say birth control pills kill thousands of people by making them not exist-- or rather those of us who aren't the American Taliban don't do so.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:18
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rkajdi posted:But then they don't exist. What is the big deal? Nobody was killed, and nobody's bodily autonomy was removed. You're playing into the anti-choicer's meme of "abortion=murder" at this point. We don't say birth control pills kill thousands of people by making them not exist-- or rather those of us who aren't the American Taliban don't do so. So is sex-selective abortion completely unproblematic, because parents have the choice to do it?
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Jun 28, 2014 17:43
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SedanChair posted:So is sex-selective abortion completely unproblematic, because parents have the choice to do it? I imagine there would be strong social pressure to not discuss the topic.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:45
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Since vaccines obviously have nothing to do with autism, maybe having a debate about aborting autistic kids is a bit of derail for this thread.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:46
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smilingfish posted:Since vaccines obviously have nothing to do with autism, maybe having a debate about aborting autistic kids is a bit of derail for this thread. Relax. There's no argument to be had about any negative effects of vaccination, so all that's left is to explore the nature of narcissistic parents obsessed with having flawless children.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:49
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SedanChair posted:Relax. There's no argument to be had about any negative effects of vaccination, so all that's left is to explore the nature of narcissistic parents obsessed with having flawless children. Start a new thread, there's plenty of things vaccine related to discuss. Like this, for instance.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:59
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