Autism-World

I am strongly opposed to effort to “cure” Asperger’s Syndrome and high-functioning autism. While it’s true that it can be disabling for many people and make their lives very difficult, it’s not really a disease as such. It’s a different way of viewing and interacting with the world, a different way of thinking. We’re more honest, appreciate order and stability more, are more straight forward in social interaction, and so forth — and none of these things are necessarily bad traits, they just disadvantage us in a neurotypical world.

Honestly, in some ways, the effort to “cure” autism can almost be thought of as akin to genocide — trying to wipe out a whole race or class of people, or even wiping an entire religion off the earth forcibly. I know people trying to find a “cure” think they’re doing a good thing and probably aren’t morally culpable, but in a way that’s part of what makes it so scary to me. I watch hockey games where they are merrily talking about it being “cure autism” night and it being a charitable thing to do. Can you imagine if sports teams and such held nights devoted to find ways of “curing Christianity” or “curing blacks” through medicine or somesuch like it was doing everyone a favor? It’s something we as a society don’t even seem to know we should be ashamed of.

I worry in a few generations there will be no one like me. And I feel that’s going to be a loss to the world. Granted, I am not really a productive person in traditional senses of the term, but isn’t there more to the worth of a human being than productivity? Isn’t there some value in being unique? We can create a world where everyone is basically the same, basically normal, one day — I have little doubt of that given the way technology seems to be advance — but why would we want to? We’d have missed out on many of the great thinkers and scientists and artists and religious leaders if things had always been that way. And missed out on a lot of folks who might not be “worth” much in a capitalistic sense, but who have enriched the lives and the thinking of their lovers or friends or colleagues, or even just existed and had no impact, but made the world a more interesting diverse place.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Autism Stories.