Disclaimer: I have autism. I sometimes worry that despite functioning pretty well in society, some day, people will say “hey, these people have problems integrating with society sometimes! We should cure all the autisms!” and I’ll be forcibly “cured” and have my personality (autism is a way of thinking, sometimes, so I think that this counts as part of someone’s personality) altered against my will.
Compare with the deaf people, which is BOTH a culture and a disability. Same thing goes on here. I believe that a way should be found to prevent people from being born deaf/with autism (preferrably via curing in the womb, not via abortion, but if people want to abort because their unborn child is deaf/has autism I think they should be allowed to do that because it places a higher burden on the parents). I don’t believe you should forcibly (or via social pressure) intervene in people who, for their entire lives, have been deaf/have autism in order to cure them. You should make the means available to them, but it’s their decision.
From what I’ve read, most of the protest in the deaf community currently is deaf parents insisting they have the right to deny treatment and audible education to their children—which they want to do because it will be too late for the children to get the treatment themselves when they’re adults. If it were possible for their children to get the treatment and learn spoken language once they grew up, and potentially leave the deaf community, parents would have less motivation to deny treatment to them as children.
Disclaimer: I have autism. I sometimes worry that despite functioning pretty well in society, some day, people will say “hey, these people have problems integrating with society sometimes! We should cure all the autisms!” and I’ll be forcibly “cured” and have my personality (autism is a way of thinking, sometimes, so I think that this counts as part of someone’s personality) altered against my will.
Compare with the deaf people, which is BOTH a culture and a disability. Same thing goes on here. I believe that a way should be found to prevent people from being born deaf/with autism (preferrably via curing in the womb, not via abortion, but if people want to abort because their unborn child is deaf/has autism I think they should be allowed to do that because it places a higher burden on the parents). I don’t believe you should forcibly (or via social pressure) intervene in people who, for their entire lives, have been deaf/have autism in order to cure them. You should make the means available to them, but it’s their decision.
From what I’ve read, most of the protest in the deaf community currently is deaf parents insisting they have the right to deny treatment and audible education to their children—which they want to do because it will be too late for the children to get the treatment themselves when they’re adults. If it were possible for their children to get the treatment and learn spoken language once they grew up, and potentially leave the deaf community, parents would have less motivation to deny treatment to them as children.
Sometimes I worry that we’ll find a way of curing autism in the womb and then all progress in mathematics will grind to a halt.
Another reason to find a cure for stupidity first, then.
yes. Forced treatment might not end well...in terms of emotional scarring, loss sense of identity.