Published on 12, July, 2020
I was reading an article on Zerohedge today,a well known "far right conspiracy nutcase site" which was about the rising prevalence of Autism.
We all know that many people claim that vaccines (or mercury used as an adjuvant in vaccines) cause Autism, (which doesn't work in my case, but what the heck, people claim all sorts of unlikely things to be true nowadays) and that position is made very clearly in the comments sections amongst many others.
Where I agree with the strident people here who ALWAYS pop up to rubbish any ZH link I publish, is that there is a lot of rhetoric, misguided or actually 100% false opinion and information to be read in the comments section, and some of the articles are not much better, indeed.
Where I disagree with those same detractors is that reading them is a useless or even BAD experience. JUST as this forum has ME, Malojian & Juniper from Gallifrey all very different posters with different styles coming from quite clearly diffferent places ALL of us have a "place at the table" (even if it does mean putting up with the likes of me!) and a right to be heard*.
SO that being in mind, I read a lot of them as well as the article..
Sometimes a comment really makes me sit up and think, such as the "Autism can be cured but the cure is being suppressed" comment, not least because the author has put a lot of effort in and has added citations and evidence that can be followed up on... and I did do some of them before I needed to do something else. (It's not just laziness, I am struggliing through interruptions and "new tasks" even during the writing this post, and am now irritated with how long everything takes to get done...
I saw a well dressed person clearly more successful, comfortable, and articulate than me, telling the audience to her you tube video that "yes Autism can be cured". I would rush to believe but for the fact that I've also had a bunch of very similar appearing people telling me that a succession of MRNA injections can make sure I don't catch covid I believe "Safe and Effective" was the psychologcial "baited hook" in that case, so why should I believe her?
BUT nevertheless, the question having been raised in this "fixers" head remains:
COULD Autism be "Curable"??
Not interested in the modern idea of "treatments" which are about as effective as the "servicing" that modern cars get, I'm wondering if it can be CURED like my own suicidal ideation was a few years back.
As I am not a Catholic and have zero intention of converting to Catholicism, I don't have an issue with many of the things the Catholic Church seems to frown upon.
You have your beliefs. I have mine. Other members have theirs.
No offence to you (or anyone else), but when I feel other people are trying to project their religious beliefs onto me, I see it as a waste of their time and mine, and it just winds me up. It is not that I am intolerant of anyone's religion because I feel they ALL offer something positive.
Not criticising, just genuinely interested in other people’s belief systems when it comes to religion…
does this mean that you wouldn’t take any medicines for colds/flus, no antibiotics, no treatment for cancer, no medical intervention at all? Where do you draw the line on what you believe your god would accept as not altering his design?
its just that i cant see how youd get a partner in the first place. seems unnatainable even regular friends or social circles are just not a thing you just access.... where do you get a partner? i cant find any for sale at tesco!
The rise in diagnosis is because autism is being spoken about more freely. The stereotypical view on autism isn’t true, more people are realising why they have always been different and are seeking a diagnosis. I’m in my 50’s, there are whole generations of people who never dreamed they could be autistic and never had the opportunity of an assessment.
On balance, we have a lot of common ground with the LGBT community who as Lady Gaga sings, we are “born this way” and there is evidence for the existence of a “gay gene”
This seems to be a live debate as things like gene editing become possible. I think it would be very foolish for humanity to remove "the autism gene" were such a thing to be possible. While you may remove cases of profound disability, you would also lose the brilliant, singularly focused people who have made great discoveries and advanced human thought over the centuries. There would probably have been no Newton or Turing, and I'm pretty sure a significant percentage of the tech geniuses who are making the modern world possible are probably autistic.
Dawn said:"Cure" anyone of their given brain type and humanity at large ultimately loses out
Very well said, not just this bit, but all of your post. Thanks for writing this, it was very inspiring!
I said othering. Not contention. Different thing.
Caelus said:a autistic person isnt very likely to have a child anyway lol
That is not true! There are many autistic parents many of whom discover their autistic identity because of their autistic child. Why do you think this? I do understand though for some autistics, they may think that parenthood is not right for them.
Here is a link to Autistic Parents UK which is quite a large community:
https://www.autisticparentsuk.org/
If you didn’t already know there are quite a few autistic parents on this forum!
I Sperg said:I'm surprised that here where we are pretty much ALL victims of being "othered" that so many people are so keen to do "othering" here in this forum to each other.
If you bring up contentious subjects and link to contentious websites, you will get contention.
Yes some of us DO have the smug and annoying sense of superiority akin to that which seems to be the hall mark of those who would say "it's all bunk".
But a sense of superiority is just that, a "sense".
It's knowledge of facts and ability to command critical thinking skills that actually gives some people an edge in some situations, makes them a social outcast in others.
For myself it's classic & simple Psychology.
I was lied to and mistreated as a kid by the ultimate Authority figures, my parents. It makes me "overly suspicious" of Authority in disinclined to outsource my thinking, which apparently works for most of you, very well indeed..I have to collect enough data to make up my mind. That means I have to listen to an awful lot of absurdity, dishonesty, madness,misrepresentation etc. ON BOTH SIDES OF THE MEDIA but there is also a lot of truth.
Unlike most of you who have different imperatives in life, I have spent some 20 years now acquiring and sharpening a tool known as occams razor. I have better skills at using that tool and otehr slike it, , than whose who have not practiced. Jjust as I do with a soldering iron, function generator or 25,ooo volt home made power supply.
It's easy to mock.
It takes time, effort, and perseverence to learn things that other people would rather you did not know.
In an ever widening area the very act of learning things is Illegal and people can and do to jail for simply having acquired "the wrong knowledge"!
Setting aside any woo, when covid appeared, I had knowledge that most of you did not.
IT wasn't because some conspiracy site told me things, (that came later, the early bullshit all came from China and the WHO figures which indicated a CFR of about 45%!! IF you did a bit of arithmetic). That was the first clue I got that something was off about this "event".
The knowledge I had was because many years ago I asked the question (and received an answer pitched at a level I could understand) "Why isn't there a vaccination against the common cold?"
First it was explained to the much younger me what a vaccination actually was. (At that time. The definition has been recently changed)
I was told that a vaccine was a weakened form of the actual virus one was immunising (that word "immunisation" used to define the action of a vaccine, it does not any more) against.
I was then told that a vaccine could be developed against the common cold virus but due to it's speed of mutation it would rapidly produce clades that would be immune to the virus in such a short time that it was not a viable option.
When those clever scientists came up with a solution in a mere six months, to a problem that people had been trying to solve all my life, and in light of my already knowing (through simple arithmetic and looking out the window) that he virus did not in fact have a lethality of 45%(!) I reached for my trusty microbiologist "friend" and asked her to confirm my understanding of basic biology and assess my misgivings for me from her more educated perspective.
I decided that at best this seemed to be a colossal experiment with new technology, akin to biological software in that this concoction directly programs you immune system to do a specific thing rather than letting it find out how to fight the virus itself like an old style vaccination used to (and I've learned never to buy new software always run the older & fully patched release!) and elected to stay in the "control group" since I knew I had well above average ability to evade the virus, due to situation and some rudimentary NBC training, which I've self updated over the years.
As the broad spectrum push to get everyone to take the injections grew and knowledge of my avoidance grew in my peer group, I got told repeatedly "It's those conspiracy sites you go to"...
I'm surprised that here where we are pretty much ALL victims of being "othered" that so many people are so keen to do "othering" here in this forum to each other.
God! I hope it can NEVER be cured! It's bad enough that society oft tries to pressurise us into masking and behaving like NTs, without them trying to force a cure on me. What if that had been done to me as a kid when I'd no say in the matter?
Anyway, all brain types have their strengths and weaknesses, I wouldn't want the gifts of my autism "cured out of me", even if there are down sides. Anyway, most of those down sides are only downsides because society does not accept difference, not because I was born in any way defective.
Even my sensory differences that cause mayhem in trying to access healthcare wouldn't be as big a deal as they are, if they had been known about by medics treating me as a kid and better respected in those contexts now.
Should we try "curing" non-autistic people of their "deficiency" in being non-autistic? After all, not very logical are they? Waste a lot of time with "small talk" and following fashion, and some of them invest too much importance in social status and hierarchy and other assorted silly prejudices, and poor things not very good at sustaining intense interest in a single hobby, are they?
OK, I'm taking this to silly lengths now and I don't mean to be mean to non-autistic people, but you gather the point, I hope. Both autistic and non-autistic people were created to knock about the human genome for a reason, - both have something to contribute. "Cure" anyone of their given brain type and humanity at large ultimately loses out.
Martin said:I think that the world would be a better place if it contained more people with a tendency to be honest, loyal, kind, say what they mean, do not want to manipulate or dominate others and who seldom have hidden agendas.
+100
I think that the world would be a better place if it contained more people with a tendency to be honest, loyal, kind, say what they mean, do not want to manipulate or dominate others and who seldom have hidden agendas.
Those people are a tiny minority.
It was the lizard people..
I don't think there's much "ringing" going on from any pulpits now.
Any sort of Christianity is a bit niche in our current society. It is currently being predicted that Islam will fill the void for most "spiritual" people in the not to near future.
It's hard to refrain from upvoting everything you write, to be honest, and you are WAY better at what I try to do, but I will refrain from total sycophancy...
a autistic person isnt very likely to have a child anyway lolbut if they did and they prevented the child from being autistic would the child then be alienated from the autistic parent?
and surgery is expensive plus brain surgery often carries too much risk to even allow when its needed... so that will never happen.although the private sector pushing into the idea of brain chips could change that..... with brain chips they could perhaps do anything, but we would no longer be human if we accept brain chips... we would become robots and the big business and government would control and read and edit our every though and idea.... and probably flood our brains with adverts too!
I wouldn't cure my autism. It makes me who I am - I'm not looking for a cure, I'm looking for more support, and so far it appears to be non existent.
If the world spent less time trying to cure us we might get a little more support which would make a huge difference for so many people like us.
people who arelike this wouldnt want to be changed or cured though even if you could magic it away.... because it is experience, experience that shapes who you are. your personality and being is a culmination of your lifes experiences and growth. to want to change that is to cast aside your life and your lessons, to throw away the results of your hardships.