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Autism and the autistic rights movement
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In this June 10, 2009 photo, Elias Cazares Jr., 13, participates
in the PEERS program at the University of California,
Los Angeles. The 14-week course helps autistic teens build
social skills.(AP Photo/Kim Johnson Flodin)
Some groups claim that autism is a vaccine injury, and have been disproven repeatedly. Others insist that it must be some sort of illness or disease, but their point of view has accomplished little other than to invite prejudice and discrimination against autistic people. Dr. Laurent Mottron, one of the top researchers studying autism, has gone so far as to say "We don't really know what autism actually is." What is known is that it affects the entire person, is not likely to be dietary or a reaction to environment, and is so utterly a part of the autistic brain and mind that the very notion of a "cure" would be absurd.
Aspies For Freedom, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, ADAPT, ACT UP, and other autistic rights and disability rights organizations stand by the consensus of the scientific community which currently believes that autism (including the entire spectrum) is mostly genetic, and likely to be a complex interaction involving hundreds or thousands of traits.
Given that, the hope of well-known groups such as Autism Speaks for a "cure" or a means of "preventing autism" (mostly a euphemism for prenatal screening similar to that which is available for trisomy-21, also known as Down Syndrome) is highly unlikely to happen.
There is no way to predict how functional a child will be later on based on initial diagnosis, and a person on the spectrum may be relabeled numerous times before age 13. Even so, there are hundreds of groups that hold this "curebie" perspective, as many autistic rights activists prefer to refer to it. Most of these organizations are infamous for refusing to include any autistic people in their leadership, and often even exclude them from the rank and file memberships as well. Many attempt to narrow the definition of autism and to disregard the presence of a spectrum outside of their message that it's a menace that must be stopped.
To the average autistic person, that comes across as being attacked simply for existing. As a result of this desire to not be "cured", the idea of neurodiversity, which states that all people have the right to be accepted regardless of their neurology, became more prominent in autism-related discussions, much to the ire of some rather venomous individuals who have gone as far as making death threats against autistic rights activists for their views.
Currently, the major concerns of the autistic rights movements are to address inequalities in employment, housing, health care, education, and so on. The primary messages of the autistic rights movement are that autistics have the right to exist as they are, the right to live in their communities in the most appropriate and most integrated setting possible, and the right to equal access to all public facets of life. In time, that message is likely to be heard by many more people...
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