Maggie's Farm

Fifty to sixty years ago there was "one" form of autism. They typically couldn't speak, couldn't function, had to be fed and were hidden away in the attic bedroom. Today, for many reasons including huge amounts of cash, there are a hundred forms of autism including people who would have been simply recognized as socially inept geniuses fifty years ago. The money, or more correctly the activism to seek more money, has distorted the issue. Many of the people today who are 'autistic' are not 'autistic' but the rules were changed to aid the disposition of government money.

Does it matter? That is does it matter that the definition of autism now is the autism spectrum that includes everyone with a 'tick' or social difficulty? I think it does. fifty years ago this women and others like her would have won the Merit Scholarship award with a full scholarship to college. If she would hold it together and graduate she would have taken a job in the sciences where she would spend the rest of her career and 'maybe' even discover something.

But with the autism label and the attention that brings she cannot and never will get past the idea that somehow the world has 'wronged' her and every misstep or failure is someone else's fault and she will likely not succeed, not graduate, not have a career in the sciences and never discover something. Why should she? All her problems are the failure of the world to simultaneously treat her like everyone else AND treat her like she is special.


IMHO this is 'another' case of the medical community failing to do no harm. If you put a 'normal' child into a spotlight and gave them a ready made excuse to fail they would fail. We treat these people in ways that we would never (should never) want to treat our own children. We label them with self defeating predictive labels and sure enough they live up to our expectations. It is child abuse.

Have you ever seen a dog (watch the veterinary shows on TV) that had a leg amputated. They recover in a few days and are overjoyed to get out and chase a ball or run after the kids, etc. They are blissfully unaware that they are handicapped. This 'unawareness' works in their favor and they succeed. Imagine if you could somehow 'reward' the dog for and constantly remind the dog that it is handicapped. Would the dog then embrace it's handicap and not run around as though it were normal and instead seek your sympathy and use it all to explain away it's inability to do anything???