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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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