There is a big difference between "neurodiverse" people and severely autistic people facing huge challenges in their life. Are you seriously dismissing the idea of helping treat that latter group?
" this is not autism but rather autism with an accompanying intellectual disability and the intellectual disability is the reason for higher supports needs. "
This is a self-contradictory statement. But what do you think people are researching if not those intellectual disabilities -- why they occur and how they can be prevented.
> There is a big difference between "neurodiverse" people and severely autistic people facing huge challenges in their life. Are you seriously dismissing the idea of helping treat that latter group?
The people who you are referring to as neurodiverse also face huge challenges. When everyone hates you just for being yourself and not hurting anyone, that is a huge challenge. This can threaten peoples ability to make a living. This can result in people having to live in abusive situations due to lack of financial — not practical — ability to live on their own. When you need to do stimming to feel internally at piece but most other people will perceive this as a threat, that is a challenge. When you need protection (e.g., headphones) from sensory input in the outside world, but the world does not allow this in some cases (for example a job may deem it to be "unprofessional") that is also a threat. Supports are needed in this case, and these supports are for the world to lighten up about allowing these things.
Also, there are, perhaps more challenging, problems that what you call "severely autistic" people face. We should also support these people. For these people, the supports could be similar as above (the world lightening up, perhaps about the requirement that everyone be productively employed) or they could be different (a medical treatment that increases intelligence). Such a medical treatment needs to be performed ONLY with the informed consent of the patient, to the degree that that is possible with the communication difficulties.
> This is a self-contradictory statement. But what do you think people are researching if not those intellectual disabilities -- why they occur and how they can be prevented.
I think that this type of research is unnecessarily lumping intellectual disabilities with the traits in what you call neurodiverse people. I am much more open to helping people with intellectual disabilities, to the extent that these people want that help, than I am to treatments that attempt to normalize neurodiverse people. The word "autism" refers to both groups, so research that is about "curing autism" is at least in part about normalizing neurodiverse people.
Thanks for you comment. I was only splitting the spectrum into the two broadest categories for rhetorical simplicity.
Of course I also agree that society needs to become more accepting and supportive of all types of people. To put it simply, we should not become a bioengineered dystopia. We can do two things at once though.
>I think that this type of research is unnecessarily lumping intellectual disabilities with the traits in what you call neurodiverse people.
This is an unfair and unsubstantiated view that you are projecting onto the researchers. I give benefit of the doubt that these professionals have a far better understanding of the science, sociology, and ethics of the topic than any of us. We need better understanding and improvement in all the areas right now.
The medical system has a history of mistreating marginalized groups (of which neurodiverse people are definitely an example), and there are a huge number of people who fund and perform research aimed solely at eradicating all forms of autism. Autism Speaks is one such group (which is an ironic name since the views of the organization differ greatly from those of most autistic people), and they are quite active in autism research and well-funded. As such, I do not think that giving the benefit of the doubt is reasonable. Furthermore, even if the researchers have an excellent and completely ethical view of autism, many people reading about the research will not so giving such a perspective remains valuable.
If can be easy to say that we should simply explore all avenues of research, and in an ideal world this would be true, but we do not live in an ideal world. There are two concerns with this type of research:
- it has an opportunity cost of research that might be more effective (for example medical treatments that could help with sensory hypersensitivity under an informed consent model could be a good result, or research that helps us understand what, exactly, leads allistic people to hate autistic people so much so that we can improve communication in both directions)
- it creates new abilities for those who would do eugenicist harm, even if they are well-meaning
" this is not autism but rather autism with an accompanying intellectual disability and the intellectual disability is the reason for higher supports needs. "
This is a self-contradictory statement. But what do you think people are researching if not those intellectual disabilities -- why they occur and how they can be prevented.