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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Autism Speaks & You, or "Autistic children will ruin your marriage"
 
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cheese
Jan 7, 2004

Shop around for doctors! Always fucking shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

rkajdi posted:

Phineas Gage was the same person before and after the accident. He acted differently, but he was still a continuation of the same individual. People tend to act differently after traumatic experience (or really any kind of experience), regardless of brain damage. Does that make them different people? If so, you're literally a different person every second of every day. How do you determine which time period is the "real" you worth protecting? Seriously, the idea is incredibly disordered.
He was the same person in the sense that he was still Phineas Gage, but the aspects of personality and character that made up his old self had been irrevocably changed. Phineas Gage is one of the landmark examples of concrete evidence that physically altering the brain can completely change aspects of a person that were thought to be permanent. He was concrete evidence that there is no "real" you, there is only a brain shaped by the experiences and events of life, and altering that brain will alter "you" (because you are a reflection of the sum total of your brain).

Also, since anecdotes are apparently an important and valuable source of information on this topic, my uncle's best friend is married with a severely autistic son. They gave up on a number of dreams after their first born had autism, including having more children (didn't think they could handle their son PLUS other children), having grandchildren, ever being able to retire by themselves, career aspirations, trips and a whole host of activities that they will never be able to do with their child (sports, shopping, just loving going to lunch, etc). They love their son but a few years back he had a drunken breakdown at a party we held when my cousin passed the California bar and he admitted he wished they had never had kids and he would have had an abortion if he knew what it would all meant

But lets not CURE this person because we wouldn't want to change the "fundamental essence of who he is".

cheese fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Jun 29, 2014

* # ¿ Jun 29, 2014 01:56
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Autism Speaks & You, or "Autistic children will ruin your marriage"