As some one who is let’s say “autism adjacent” it really bothers me when people discuss a cure or prevention. I mean I get it, but this is also who I am and I wouldn’t want to be someone else.
But what about the poor sods who have so much happening all the time that they don't get the chance to learn to speak, or read, and scream in terror continually at the unending sensory deluge they try to live through? If there was a way to prevent that kind of presentation of ASD I think everyone would be better off. I took "prevention" to be about prevention of the life restricting developments of the condition.
On the other hand, if "prevention" is about culling the gene pool, I'm dead set against that.
Well, you can be against it by raising autistic children yourself, it seems you're in a perfect position for that. Why people feel they have the right to demand that from others is beyond me.
IME such strong feelings don’t don’t stay relegated to your personal choices, they get reflected at a broader policy level.
People say “well it was your choice to have such broken people, we gave you a pill that would make that not possible. Therefore we las a society will not support them (you’ll hear rhetoric along the lines of “why should we spend my hard-earned tax dollars on social programs for autistic people, that’s a you problem, why people demand I pay for their choices is beyond me”)
Of course that’s when the government offers a “compassionate” final solution to the autist problem. Since autistic people can’t seem to stop reproducing despite the “cure”, we should sterilize them. Or we should make it mandatory because otherwise they are a drain. Then of course for the ones who are “too autistic” (I.e. who are nonverbal or who otherwise cannot be productive), we can euthanize them.
No thanks we have been down that road before as a society. It doesn’t end well.
They say it’s basically the holocaust because you’re exterminating deaf people by curing them. Do you support their views?
I looked up some info and I find the issue to be far more complicated than you've summarized. One thing I note is that 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. They are making a decision about implants for an infant based on a reality they want the infant to experience, but they wouldn't even know any alternative way of living. Why do they get to make the decision for the child? Deaf people live like the rest of us. They face struggles, yet they live full happy rich lives.
Devices like implants don't come without risks and drawbacks. For people used to deaf culture, they have to learn how to integrate into hearing society, which can be frustrating and also lead to ridicule, shame, and embarrassment. The devices can be broken and can be distracting and annoying. I can understand why many would not opt for them, and would advocate against them when there is a ready and willing culture to receive deaf people as they are.
Maybe some people choose these implants and that's what they want. That's fine. No one is stopping them from doing that.
But I don't exactly see why hearing people are deciding that they must "cure" their child's deafness. I read that people are calling it child abuse. See, that's something I can't get behind, and it's an admission that our society is abusive toward people with differences.
That's not a reason to genetically alter people so that they conform to the abusive society, it's a reason to change society so that it doesn't abuse people with differences.
So again, I'm not familiar with this debate, here is some info I looked up:
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-deaf-people-turn-down-co...
Because past some age, you can't meaningfully learn to use hearing for communication anymore. You can choose to lose hearing as an adult if you really want to. But only if you were given the opportunity to have it in the first place as a child.
>For the majority of people with ASD, the condition is a significant disability, with only 10–20% of children diagnosed before 5 years of age able to live independently as adults.
Here is some literature for you to learn more about autism, particularly how to communicate with nonverbal people: https://www.healthpolicypartnership.com/reimagining-communic...
There is a similar thing for deaf people. Or how screening for Down’s has changed the reality of raising a child with it.
It's one thing to be content with who you are, it's another to deliberately impose hardship on someone when it could be avoided.
But it’s not that I’m against it or wanting to forbid it. It’s that these are very tricky subjects with a lot of very hard moral issues that need careful consideration. In the end I believe it should be about letting people have a choice and to remember that people are human even if they are different. To not take away someone’s agency.
However “prevention” talk is a whole separate issue and that one does give me eugenics vibes.