Comment by MattGrommes
13 hours ago
The problem is not fixing diseases. The problem is what is defined as a disease or abnormality. The problem is people who are clearly choosing abnormalities based on politics, power grabs, and anti-science rhetoric.
Science and medicine is what has defined autism as a disease or abnormality. Science and medicine are telling us that the rates of these diseases are growing dramatically, for decades now.
RFK isn’t the one who made autism concern happen. My three year old’s teacher asked us to get him tested with the county for autism. It’s a very common thing parents are dealing with these days. I’d argue that what you’re saying is exactly backward. The medical community has defined a lot of normal behavior as autism.
Now, I agree RFK’s views on what’s causing autism are anti-scientific, and I doubt he’ll be able to figure out what’s causing it. But RFK has a platform because the medical community has diagnosed all these kids as autistic but doesn’t have an explanation for what’s causing it. So looks like RFK fill the void.
It is well understood already that the number of autistic people is not actually increasing. What is increasing is our understanding of it and the number of diagnostics.
The fact that high functioning people like Asperger got merged with it and changed to a spectrum is precisely science at work, achieving to improve our understanding of the phenomenon. We previously believed that only the extreme cases were autistic, but we now understand that this limit was arbitrary and wrong, because autism is a broader spectrum of people with a wide range of possible characteristics.
Autism is not a disease, it's a neurodivergence, and it is very important to understand that autistic people are not broken, but simply function differently. The proof being that outside of a minority of extreme cases, autistic people does not have issues communicating or socializing with other autistic people.
Trying to categorize people as "normal" and "abnormal" and then pretending to "fix" the abnormal ones is dangerous and drifts towards eugenism, because there is not a single definition of normal, and there is probably not a single person on earth that is "normal".
If 97% of the population was autistic, then autistic people would not have any issues. The remaining 3% of what is currently considered neurotypical would be the ones having difficulties socializing, communicating and experiencing severe anxieties and psychological problems due to it.
This is why the solution is not to "fix" autism, but to help them find an environment where they can strive, be understood and live comfortably.
>Science and medicine is what has defined autism as a disease or abnormality.
Not really. DSM is not really scientific, its more statistical.
You could make arguments that autism is actually evolutionary, as people who are on the spectrum in certain ways are often better in select areas than neuro typical people.
What were the symptoms your 3 yr old were exhibiting to be asked to screen them? Was the teacher right to say something or are they handing out these diagnoses like candy?
He was a little speech delayed, has somewhat below age level fine motor function, can sight read a lot of words, and has some odd behaviors, like taking to his hand pretending its Toodles from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The county said he was borderline. There is some gaming of the system going on for sure. They said they were ready to diagnose him with something and give him an IEP if he were going to public school where he could get extra services, but since we’re planning to send him to private K-12 they recommended against it.
I’ll be honest, my first thought was that it was white women (everyone in this story besides me) overreacting. In our circle of friends, several of the kids are diagnosed with something on the spectrum. By contrast I don’t know a single person from my immigrant group whose child has a diagnosis. So I was skeptical. But ultimately, I figured that the teachers see dozens of these kids every year and I trust their judgment.
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