Updated March 17, 2017
What does cure mean with respect to autism spectrum disorder ASD? Individual difficulties carrying out activities of daily living/self care in the community a person with a disability chooses to live in ("Major Life Activities" & "essential functions" to borrow ADA legal terms for application to personal lives) exposes issues indicating impaired functioning at levels compared to people without disabilities, among them communication and executive functioning skills (personal organization, time management, dealing with disagreement and coping with stress).
People with disabilities experience a range of problems, varying by degrees of severity from person to person, in day to day life functioning. As well, variations exist in the degrees of help an autistic needs with earning money, from finding & keeping a job working for others or self-employment, to support oneself from employment a person with a disability ideally finds both meaningful and lucrative. Help comes in many forms and all #PwDs should have access to all of the forms including help that costs (tax) money that the #PwD needs financial aid in paying for.
Rethink what 'curing autism' means.
People with disabilities who identify as disability, human rights and neurodiversity activists who don't want a prenatal genetic test for autism to lead to as many abortions as the trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome) test has led to after positive tests for trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome) fetuses should stop separating social acceptance of differences from economic costs (and who pays those costs the individual or public sector systems).
Social acceptance comes more quickly with a state doing the most good for the most people at all deliberate speed with cognizance of individual variation.
The private for-profit, AKA the corporate-form of business organization, sector seeks to shift its costs of market participation/business operations, to accommodate individual variation in prospective customers/target markets, from large aggregated groups to 'niche market' prospective customers/target markets. The cost shift helps maximize profit for the private or public equity as that is the core mission of a private corporation. The non-profit form of business organization attempts, but rarely can and should not, completely assist its served population (target market) with paying the costs that the for-profit sector has shifted for the fiscal benefit of each corporations' human owners. Filling in gaps unmet by either the for-profit or non-profit private sector is the job of the public sector (demonized and delegitimized as 'big guvmint/politics.')
The public sector uses a civil rights law protected class framework that relies on the belief that an individual who is left behind in social and economic progress creates costs that grow over time as the individual is continued to be left behind. The private non-profit sector is necessarily limited by the discretionary income, in money, skills and time, of donors to each non-profit organization that inevitably forces horrible "tradeoffs"
in how to spend limited money and personal resources. The public sector has, or should have, a greater base of human and fiscal capital to lessen the need for horrible tradeoffs. At least that is how 'the system' of public and private cooperation to organize civil society of national, state/province and local governance, IMHO, should work.
A dispute
I see that one of my favorite hatemongers and propagandists in the
neurodiversity movement, someone who calls themselves the autism bitch
from hell is at it again Her latest post is another propaganda effort
with the tired cliche constantly purported by neurodiversity. She
writes: Autism Speaks has never come close to being an anti-vaccine
group. Its agenda consists of one thing only: Genetic research to
develop a prenatal test to be used for routine abortion of autistic
children.
between a blogger calling him/herself "autism gadfly" and other bloggers over neurodiversity may have been rooted in the 'autism gadfly' blogger being 'left behind' in social acceptance and economic (secure livable personal income to 'pay his/her bills') progress.
The failure to grasp the concept that many similar independent living problems that autistics live with are repeated manifestations of systemic failures that can be resolved more quickly with a systems change (public and fiscal policy) approach rather than an individual change approach, including assistance with paying the costs of change in money and time, may have been a principled view of the autism gadfly blogger expressed in unfortunately rude and hurtful words leading to conflict.
The
depth of frustration and desperation of personal living circumstances,
from not having his/her views adopted by other autistics as issue and policy consensus in
the autistic self-advocacy/disability rights/independent living
movement, may have led the autism gadfly blogger to post crude insults about bloggers with whom he or she disagreed, taken out of the original context below:
by a blogger who later died.
No comments:
Post a Comment