Autism Acceptance not Autism Speaks
“If you’ve met a person who is autistic, you’ve met one person who is autistic”. This can be applied with any sort of category you typically can attempt to put anyone in, it is very important to understand statistics only show what has been reported and not reality. Mere a sample-size for pre-existing theories and hypotheses. This cannot be emphasized enough, and necessary to preface before the rest of the article.
What is Autism?
Autism itself has become known as “Autism Spectrum Disorder”, merging many different pre-existing disorders into a more inclusive spectrum. ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) is a neurological developmental disorder with a wide array of symptoms that include a dysfunction (and/or malfunction) in social communication, physical motor skills, and intellectual abilities beginning in the early stages of development to late young adulthood. Autism Spectrum Disorder has two aspects that are commonly used such as the Spectrum and Subtyping. However the spectrum method is more universal than the second “subtype method”. The spectrum concept of ASD reflects the dysfunction in social communication (SEC’s or Socio-emotional-communicative) and interaction in various contexts. Notably characterized by restricted, repetitive patterns in behavior, interest, or activities (otherwise known as RSM’s, Repetitive Sensory-Motor). The term spectrum allows (for example) consideration for people whose behaviors conform to Asperger’s descriptions are clearly very different from people conforming to Kanner’s description.
-Spectrum versus Subtypes/Labels Controversy
The decision (in 2013 within the DSM-V, the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to group all these identities under one umbrella is not going to occur with rainbows and sunshine by any means. Something like this will no doubt cause some backlash from those who disagree. In general these subtypes still exist but they aren’t officially used. Such subtypes of the spectrem tend to be groups of ASD children/adults who are more similar to each other than a larger group. Examples include the terms High or Low Functioning Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Kanners, etc. Identification of these subtypes are often caused by behaviors such as cognitive or language abilities. The major problem with the subtype concept was that it proved difficult in practice to make unambiguous distinctions between the three putative subtypes of autism.
Why is this Important?
Organizations posing as charities to help individuals officially diagnosed on the Spectrum such as Autism Speaks, Next for Autism, and massive institutions like them are focused on a cure for Autism in addition to supporting/spreading various harmful stereotypes about the disorder. Autism according to the years of research and people who are Autistic themselves know for a fact that Autism isn’t something to be cured. It isn’t something you can seperate from the person in question. The brain is physically altered either genetically, environmentally, and or a mixture of both, therefore irreversible by the very nature of these disorders. The aforementioned organizations, specifically Autism Speaks, has made it clear in the past that they’re researching autism prevention by genetically altering fetuses. By definition that is what you would call Eugenics.
