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The author of this article seems uninfomed about the "neurodiversity movement" - As someone who is neurodivergent, I am an advocate for awareness surrounding ne

The author of this article seems uninfomed about the "neurodiversity movement" - As someone who is neurodivergent, I am an advocate for awareness surrounding neurodiversity etc. and I've never heard someone say that another person is a "eugenicist" or "neo nazi" for wanting a cure. While I'm sure this has happened (and probably still does happen), it's almost certainly a minority of people. Casting a net and saying that everyone in the "neurodiversity movement" does this is untrue (as is the case for all generalizations).

dekhn 3y ago
See an example here. https://a4aontario.com/2021/03/31/we-deserve-to-be-born-other-reasons-why-we-oppose-autism-speaks/ https://a4aontario.com/2021/03/31/we-deserve-to-be-born-othe... https://medium.com/artfullyautistic/autism-speaks-deception-eugenics-and-abuse-618cf65c094a https://medium.com/artfullyautistic/autism-speaks-deception-... https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/autistic-campaigners-to-protest-over-study-that-sparked-eugenics-fears/ https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/autistic-campaigners-t... I knew the researchers at AS a decade or so ago and they were absolutely unhappy and in fact miserable that people kept making up lies about this or intentionally (and even unintentionally) misrepresenting what they were doing, in terms of research and policy.
- Arch485 3y ago
  In the case of Autism Speaks, they definitely suck. Not because of their research necessarily, but because of how they paint people with ASD as some terrible burden on their family etc. etc. I'm not saying caring for someone who is low-functioning is easy, but the way AS paints people with ASD is certainly demeaning. In terms of the research protest: I can't speak on that too much because I don't have enough of the context, but I can say that people have similar concerns outside of autism/neurodivergent things (e.g. many people are worried companies like 23andme are using DNA samples to build a superbaby). It's less so villainising a company because they're "trying to cure autism" (which this study was explicity not doing) and more so "nobody trusts a private corporation with that data".

dekhn 3y ago

See an example here. https://a4aontario.com/2021/03/31/we-deserve-to-be-born-other-reasons-why-we-oppose-autism-speaks/ https://a4aontario.com/2021/03/31/we-deserve-to-be-born-othe... https://medium.com/artfullyautistic/autism-speaks-deception-eugenics-and-abuse-618cf65c094a https://medium.com/artfullyautistic/autism-speaks-deception-... https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/autistic-campaigners-to-protest-over-study-that-sparked-eugenics-fears/ https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/autistic-campaigners-t... I knew the researchers at AS a decade or so ago and they were absolutely unhappy and in fact miserable that people kept making up lies about this or intentionally (and even unintentionally) misrepresenting what they were doing, in terms of research and policy.

Arch485 3y ago
In the case of Autism Speaks, they definitely suck. Not because of their research necessarily, but because of how they paint people with ASD as some terrible burden on their family etc. etc. I'm not saying caring for someone who is low-functioning is easy, but the way AS paints people with ASD is certainly demeaning. In terms of the research protest: I can't speak on that too much because I don't have enough of the context, but I can say that people have similar concerns outside of autism/neurodivergent things (e.g. many people are worried companies like 23andme are using DNA samples to build a superbaby). It's less so villainising a company because they're "trying to cure autism" (which this study was explicity not doing) and more so "nobody trusts a private corporation with that data".