Autism and 2012 Theory

Originally posted by Xaphan

Originally posted by thefallenacorn
Actually, you could use a dose of awareness; autism is not a disease.

Disease is defined as:

a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.

Read that first part again:

a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ

The brain is an organ. An Autistic persons brain does not function correctly. Therefore, I would consider Autism a disease.

There is room for debate on this. Tests that measure the neurological differences between an autistic brain and a neurotypical brain do not currently exist in a diagnostic capacity, because they still have not pinned down just how an autistic brain functions consistantly differently; or in other words, how it is biologically disordered or functioning incorrectly. Autism is still diagnosed based almost exclusively upon observation of behavior, therefor defining it as a "disease" is still more than a little semantically, and morally questionable; a disorder would be perhaps more appropriate in low functioning circumstances.

An autistic persons brain certainly functions DIFFERENTLY, but "disordered" or "incorrectly" is largely defined by how the behavior of that person manifests, i.e. "low functioning" and "high functioning" and the spectrum in between.

As a slight aside, the degree of disfunction in behavior is directly affected by the environment that that person is in, and if they are immersed in an environment where they are perceived as damaged and treated as such they will respond in turn, and a negative behavioral feed back loop is created.

As one poster already mentioned, Big Pharma has a vested interest in not only expanding the pool of the diagnosed, but negatively categorizing autism to create fear so that they can push their drugs, and far too many people are falling for what amounts to fear propaganda.

I am on the autistic spectrum, and my brain functions just fine, albeit very differently than your own.