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> Leave autistic people alone and let them be themselves. Seriously, I can't believe some people would rather let their kid die of polio than believe they could be autistic. If you think having an autistic child is that terrible, you probably shouldn't have kids.

That's very much not the case, unfortunately. Many autistic kids are very low function. Their deviations in behavior are way more serious than just some quirky flipping and pacing.

And is that worse than getting polio?

I consider low-functioning autism to be similarly debilitating; both mean that the afflicted individual will not have a "normal" life, the manifestation is of course completely different.

But this is a bizarre strawman because vaccines do not cause autism.

Would you please not post high-indignation, low-information comments to HN? I've sure you have good reason to feel strongly on this topic, but the rant you posted above has little to do with the article, and now you're taking the thread further into pure inflammation. That is what we're trying to avoid on this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think many people are unaware of the difference between high functioning autism and low functioning autism. Severely autistic children often react violently to any deviation from their expected norm. Violent children turn into violent teenagers. A 160 pound human prone to violence is a huge issue for any teacher or care giver. Imagine if being bitten to the point of bleeding, being punched, and having broken bones was a common part of you job. For the record, I agree with the "let them be themselves" answer in most cases. Sometime who they are is a real problem.

Having had a child this year, my greatest fear was that it might be profoundly autistic. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to be stuck with a physiologically-broken child, for life, that is incapable of empathy or love for its parent.

I appreciate that's the sort of thing that happens at the extreme ends of the spectrum and not at all representative of many high-functioning autists, but I don't think it's terrible to have that as a fear.

(I'm a parent of a kid on the spectrum)

While the fear is natural, there are tons of other childhood conditions that are, in fact, worse than autism.

Would you decline vaccines for yourself or your child because you fear they might "get autism" (which has been debunked).

Edit: clarity

No, because vaccines don't cause your child to "get autism"

Thanks I clarified my comment.

Nope, and I'm not sure I even began to infer that.

And also nope, because we ran the gauntlet despite our slightly higher age and subsequent increase in probability of autism (amongst many, may other conditions).

As I say, I don't think it's wrong to fear the possibility, and as your post admirably points out, life is inherently full of risks.

>incapable of empathy or love for its parent

Autistic people are not sociopaths, they are not incapable of empathy or love, they just struggle to understand when you're expressing it, or to express it in appropriate way.

Your fear of being unable to communicate with your child is valid, but autistic people are not "broken".

You seem to be, by choice or haste, missing the conditions in my post - profoundly autistic people at the ends of the spectrum are, by societal standards 'broken' and are indeed incapable of empathy or love.

It's not a nice thing to say or admit, but it is .. well, true.

I have an autistic uncle who is not profoundly so, but is hard to communicate with and has problems existing by himself, often getting into trouble that is hard for the rest of the family to understand the logic of.

We know how kids who really might be "incapable of empathy or love" behave, and it's not the sort of stuff autistics do. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduct_disorder

Autistic kids are demonstrably not "incapable" of empathy as commonly understood. They may be impaired in their expression of it, but that's something quite different.

There's debate whether ODD even exists or is just PDA profile of ASD. I think it's PDA but not expert in this area by any means.

I should say-- I think it's often PDA misdiagnosed as ODD. Which is very sad for those ASD kids not getting the help they need (because the "treatments" for ODD are probably not going to work well on a PDA kid).

"Lack of empathy" in ASD people does not refer to love of other people. It simply means ASD people have a hard time predicting the behavior of others. That's it. They can love just fine. It's a pervasive myth, unfortunately.

Indeed ASD people often suffer from extreme empathy e.g. towards animals or something upsetting on the news (war/famine/etc.)

There's some ambiguity between cognitive and affective empathy. There are people who seem to be quite lacking in affective empathy and the pro-social emotions, that one might definitely call incapable of love. But autism is not like that, indeed it's very different; at worst, autistic folks might be said to have impairments in cognitive empathy, and AIUI even that's disputed to some extent.

Autists have empathy and all the other emotions that neurotypicals think they lack. They're simply deficient in learning the complicated ways that neurotypicals use to credibly signal their internal state.

I did think about clarifying that point of my post, and should have, I suppose. What I mean is that 'from the perspective of a parent' no signalling of empathy or love is essentially the exact-same outcome as there not being empathy or love.

I know I couldn't handle that lack of feedback.

Perhaps that's a severe failing, but there we are.

Exact, and is even worse. We are taking the behaviour of an adult animal, a short lived one, strongly wired to have sex, bite other males at sight, chase off everybody from their territory and chew and eat other smaller animals and plants while avoid inminent death in form of many predators...

And they are living in captivity, between plastic toys and hamster wheels. Males in a cage, and females in another cage. An environment that for its evolution probably would be seen as normal as for us being abducted by aliens and living in an alien zoo for our entire lifes.

And we are taking that and extrapolating it to explain the behaviour to a human children.

Would be ridiculous even for neurotypical children to expect them to behave like vicious sex driven mammals.

It's weird that it has to be repeated so often on HN, but:

Autism is not a superpower.

Yes, sometimes mildly autistic people can become genius mathematicians, or whatever, but most of autistic people simply cannot function by themselves, they struggle with everyday things. So no, we can't just "leave them alone", we should try and understand what causes autism, and maybe someday we can cure it.

It's not so black and white. Most autistic people aren't distinctly "low" or "high" functioning like that. They are otherwise fairly average people with a few traits that make things difficult, and appear "high" or "low" functioning depending on the environment they are subjected to.

Why don't you ask an autistic person if they want to be cured? Go ahead. Jump on r/aspergers and ask them. They will tell you to go fly a kite.

It's possible that people so invested in the identity of having Aspergers that they hang out on /aspergers would tell you to fly a kite. That's hardly a representative sample of people with the condition. Most are probably living their lives and not hanging out on /aspergers.

Nice goalpost scoot. I'm telling you that if you ask any autistic person, they may express dissatisfaction with their autistic troubles, but they would tell you they would not want to be "cured" or "changed", because they would no longer be themselves.

GP's point isn't to move goalposts, it's that your example is not indicative of the autistic community at large - it's a biased sample and, in line with GP's reasoning, I suspect there is a substantial proportion of (especially high functioning) autists who would strongly consider a cure. Imagine having normal, innate desires for friendship and companionship, but being unable to form such relationships and being crushingly aware of this fact. It's a miserable, deeply lonely existence and some of us would consider giving up "ourselves" in order to have a chance at a more socially fulfilling life.

> Nice goalpost scoot.

Please edit snarky swipes out of your comments here. The rest of this post would be just fine without that first bit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm not trying to move the goalposts. I'll try responding in a different way.

I don't know why you have stated everyone would provide identical answers if asked about a cure for austism. A simple reddit search which I just did confirms there is a thread where some have been asked this question and said they would in fact sign up for a cure. Other answered "maybe". Many said "no". Nobody said "go fly a kite".

I will concede the majority of people appear to have answered no, but, again, that isn't a representative sample of the general population. More data would be needed to make a more general conclusion.

I am sure most nonverbal low functioning autistic people would want to be “cured” if they could answer.

I agree there is no need to treat autistic people who get along in society mostly fine, but people who can’t work, talk, or live on their own is probably where I would draw the line of those people needing actual treatment if it ever exists

Yes, but there is a difference between helpful therapies and treatments, and "a cure".

Curing ASD is a bad idea. Helping symptoms may be a good idea.

There's an assumption here that NT socialization is the "correct" socialization. That NT behaviors, world-view, all that thing, is what is "normal" and "correct". This is just straight up bias. You want ASD people to be "normal" for your definition of normal but there's actually no natural law that makes it so. Just the tyranny of the majority.