What is the most hopeful solution to autism?

Massive and almost impossible changes to society? An actual working support system? Better education about autism?

It’s not about us changing, it’s about everyone else. 

A lot people have talked about less talk of a cure, which I agree with, we don’t need a cure and frankly, there probably isn’t one beyond lobotomising us. I think autism is too fundamental to be cured, we’re built this way from the ground up. It’s turtles all the way down. Though I’d be lying if sometimes I didn’t wish for a pill that could turn off all the sensory stuff just for a little bit.

That change will only occur when the ratios (growing autistic percentage generation to generation) hit the required tipping point. But it is coming. We won't be around to see it of course.

Ok, slight tangents here from the topic, but do you actually believe that will happen? As the growing percentage can be put down to greater awareness and likelihood of diagnosis in childhood then there was 30 years ago rather then an actual increase, as we’re seeing a lot of older people right now getting diagnosed. We vaguely know that there is a hereditary element to autism, but I don’t think the link is clear, in the same way that neurotypical can have autistic children, autistic people can have neurotypical children, so predictive growth is hard in that regard. Also only a limited number of us will have children anyway. Then we touch upon that autistic people are more likely to have other conditions, lower life expectancy etc. I personally find it difficult to see the autistic community actually growing to a size where there is enough of us to reaching that tipping point, though I could easily be wrong.

Ok, slight tangents here from the topic, but do you actually believe that will happen? As the growing percentage can be put down to greater awareness and likelihood of diagnosis in childhood then there was 30 years ago rather then an actual increase, as we’re seeing a lot of older people right now getting diagnosed. We vaguely know that there is a hereditary element to autism, but I don’t think the link is clear, in the same way that neurotypical can have autistic children, autistic people can have neurotypical children, so predictive growth is hard in that regard. Also only a limited number of us will have children anyway. Then we touch upon that autistic people are more likely to have other conditions, lower life expectancy etc. I personally find it difficult to see the autistic community actually growing to a size where there is enough of us to reaching that tipping point, though I could easily be wrong.

There are some putative answers to the apparent genetic conundrums. Some genetic changes linked to autism involve large DNA variants, stretches of DNA that is excised, duplicated or transposed. These large changes tend to be spontaneous, they are not found in either parent, so are not hereditary. These large changes tend to be associated with intellectual disability and other comorbidities. Other genetic variants linked to autism are very small, such as point mutations or are epigenic (no change in coding of DNA), and very numerous, and are found throughout the population at large. People who are autistic as a result of the small DNA variations are so because they have a higher number of them than is average. This origin of autism is hereditary. There is a further complication and that is that women, as well as masking more efficiently than men, seem to have a biological buffer to exhibiting autistic traits. This means that a woman not being diagnosable as autistic, might have autistic children, especially boys (this is also dependent on the autism-related genetic input from the father).