• ameancow@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I’m getting tested for autism as an adult next week. If it turns out I am, who do I contact from the Autistic community? Or does a representative contact me? I don’t want to mess this up and I have a costume ready and everything.

      • Cursed@lemmus.org
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        7 months ago

        The fact that you have a shred of humor in your system means you aren’t autistic.

  • Reygle@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    And the tech school I got a degree from now hosts courses on “Reiki healing” and “Crystal healing”. America is fucking doomed.

  • splonglo@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’m not surprised. The quality of education has been going downhill and there’s been a recent vaccine scare.

  • Godort@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Im almost positive that Andrew Wakefield has caused more harm to modern medicine than any other person in the last 200 years.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      His human megaphone, Jenny McCarthy, isn’t much better. No one heard of him before she advocated for his findings to be mainstream.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      the autism fear stems from one quack asshole intentionally skewing data for profit, then granola hippy moms holding him up as some bastion of truth, Which then evolved into right wing idiocy of medicine bad (until they are sick and think it could help them (which by then its probably too late) )

      • Hamartia@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Hey hey hey!

        Don’t be dragging granola into this fuckwit-ocracy. It’s a perfectly reasonable low effort breakfast for those of us that are unable to cook for ourselves because we can’t find our arses with both hands for the first hour of semi-consciousness in the morning.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    We run into a few interesting possibilities here. Start with the assumption that more children are being diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. That gives us a few possibilities.

    1. Because there’s more and better screening autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is being caught more often. Okay, maybe. But.

    1.a) If more children are being appropriately diagnosed with ASD, then perhaps the criteria needs to be tightened up; at a certain point, behavior/feelings/thoughts are just normal.

    1. Because there’s more screening–but not necessarily better screening–children are being pathologized as having ASD when they do not, because too many clinicians don’t have the necessary expertise. This is a distinct possibility, in much the same way that kids are being labelled as having ADD/ADHD–and then getting drugs–when they’re more frequently just being kids.

    2. More children are actually on the autism spectrum now than there were 30 years ago. E.g., it’s not that more kids slipped through the cracks 30 years ago, but there is actually a higher rate of ASD than there was 30 years ago. This is the one that should cause the most concern; if this is actually the case, and can be demonstrated to be the case, then what factor is causing this maladaption?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      kids are being labelled as having ADD/ADHD–and then getting drugs–when they’re more frequently just being kids.

      I might go a level deeper and argue that the formal education process requires a degree of attention and focus that lots of kids don’t have. The “autism” diagnosis and subsequent treatment is more about fitting round kids into square holes than it is treating an actual mental disorder.

      I can say from personal experience that Adderall helped me study even without ADD. Its a performance enhancing drug, of sorts. And if landing a diagnosis means giving your kids a chemical edge on the next state exam, then more parents are going to discover their children have a problem.

      I might take this one step deeper and assert that the real problem we’re attempting to medicate isn’t autism, its poverty. The underlying fear of an autistic diagnosis is that the child won’t grow up to be self-sufficient. The drugs (whether they’re necessary or simply a competitive edge) are intended to turn children into the successful mindless drones who are capable of churning mechanically through rote exercises that the school system / workforce demands of them.

      This is the one that should cause the most concern; if this is actually the case, and can be demonstrated to be the case, then what factor is causing this maladaption?

      Its possible that this is entirely due to a survivorship bias. Kids with autism are considered “salvageable” in an age where drowning the weakest of six children in the bath tube because they’re dead weight on the family income is no longer consider practical (fewer kids) or acceptable (surveillance state).

      Also possible that autism - like a number of other disorders - is linked to aging mothers or sunlight deficiency or toxic food/water/air in a heavily industrial society.

      Autism could arguably even be a kind-of beneficial mutation - the result of increasingly smart people having increasingly more mentally adapt babies with mental talents the rest of us dumb-dumbs only see as a handicap, because we’re trying to fit them into those aforementioned square holes.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        I might go a level deeper and argue that the formal education process requires a degree of attention and focus that lots of kids don’t have. The “autism” diagnosis and subsequent treatment is more about fitting round kids into square holes than it is treating an actual mental disorder.

        Okay, but that seems to be more prevalent now than it used to be. Is it really more prevalent? Or maybe the way we teach things has changed, leading to worse outcomes? Full disclosure: I was formally diagnosed with ASD in my later 30s; Asperger’s didn’t even exist as a diagnosis until after I had graduated from public schools. I had a very hard time focusing in all of my classes.

        Also possible that autism - like a number of other disorders - is linked to aging mothers

        I know that there’s a strong link between trisomy-23 (Downs Syndrome) and older mothers, but I hadn’t heard of other genetic issues. I’m not disputing it, just saying I wasn’t aware of them.

        more mentally adapt babies with mental talents the rest of us dumb-dumbs only see as a handicap,

        It is absolutely a handicap. This is undeniable. It’s a handicap because it hinders your ability to interact appropriately with the world. I have greatly reduced empathy and communication ability; I can usually guess how people are feeling, but I don’t really feel it in the way that most people say they do, and I don’t really feel much of my own emotions. I can’t just power through shit like some people can either; I’ll sometimes go into complete shutdown when there’s too much going on, things that most people have no issues with. There’s a lot more, really. But trust me, it’s a handicap in dealing with life.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Okay, but that seems to be more prevalent now than it used to be. Is it really more prevalent? Or maybe the way we teach things has changed, leading to worse outcomes?

          Our education system has grown more rigid, more test-centric, and more exhausting under iterative attempts at reform. I’m not even speaking to “worse outcomes” so much as maladaptation. Kids with ADD are going to be more prone to exhibit symptoms in an environment that buckles them down and compels them to concentrate on singular tasks for longer amounts of time.

          I know that there’s a strong link between trisomy-23 (Downs Syndrome) and older mothers, but I hadn’t heard of other genetic issues.

          There’s a number of physical and psychological correlations but not a ton of causation. So its mostly a conjecture.

          I have greatly reduced empathy and communication ability; I can usually guess how people are feeling, but I don’t really feel it in the way that most people say they do, and I don’t really feel much of my own emotions. I can’t just power through shit like some people can either; I’ll sometimes go into complete shutdown when there’s too much going on, things that most people have no issues with.

          I’ve heard different takes on this from different people. And I’ve seen at least a few people horrified at the idea of any kind of change in their condition, for fear of it taking away something fundamental about them.

          So… idk. I definitely understand wanting relief from a handicap. But I’ve also heard people describe the tunnel vision and detachment as comparable to the deep immersion one gets in a state of flow.

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      1)a) you missed the part where you clearly said “spectrum” before.

      maybe instead, you/we need to change how we react to parts of the spectrum. That is a) it isn’t “normal” and b) that’s okay.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Even though it’s a spectrum–in that it’s comprised of a number of different characteristics that are present to varying degrees–I think that perhaps some of those characteristics have been overly pathologized. I’m not sure exactly how to explain it. If I made up a disease–I’m going to call it Short-Man Syndrome (SMS)–and said that any male under 5’2" had SMS, then someone that was 5’2.1" wouldn’t fit the criteria. But wait!, he says, I feel short. So maybe that definition gets widened a little bit. So now a person that’s 5’2.5" says, well, I feel short too, and maybe a doctor disagrees, since 5’2.5" is pretty short, and that definition gets even wider. Eventually maybe someone that’s 5’11" is saying, well I feel short compared to Yao Ming…

        And maybe that’s what’s happening here. I don’t know. Even though all of these characteristics may exist on a continuum, you need to have a definite cut off point where you say, this point and beyond is pathological, and anything up to that, no matter how close, isn’t. Otherwise your definition becomes pointless.

  • Mocking Moniker@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    So, the universe is like a video game but the lesson is morality. Long story short, i have met the antivaxers and i understand. They are dishonest people. I dated their daughter. They will not listen because they’re arrogant. They will face horrors until they learn their lesson. The point is, this is a morality problem, not an education problem. Nothing will save them but their own misery you’re honestly trying to prevent.

    • Facebones@reddthat.com
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      7 months ago

      My friends family is a bunch of trumpers, she’s apolitical and vaguely socially liberal.

      At her graduation party, they hung up a HUGE Trump banner. It wasn’t already up, they put it up before most people started showing up. Fucking insane.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      I’d say it is ,at least partly, an education problem.

      Sure, education is less likely to correct a deeply engraned false belief, but education is one of the most effective tools to prevent the lies, misinformation, and manipulation from taking hold in the first place.

      However, like most preventative measures, it will take a long time to see results.

      • Mocking Moniker@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        OK, if you can educate them early, yeah. However, these folks were homeschooled. They were elitist and arrogant.

          • Mocking Moniker@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Yes, but i bet you don’t know how bad homeschooling is. It’s one of the few beliefs i share with the left that homeschooling is bad. It’s so bad that when people defend homeschooling, they get the objections wrong. Homeschooling fails so socialize children, and homeschooling advocates say that means children have no friends. Nobody says that. It’s so embarrassing. I dealt with homeschool kids and they’re fragile and weak.

            If i was on the left, i would cerebrate this like crazy. They are scared and they’re running away and what’s more their making their children weak.

  • InternetUser2012@midwest.social
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    7 months ago

    I don’t care if these anti vax idiots kill themselves, I care that they are killing people with weakened immune systems or children that are either too young to get them or they didn’t vaccinate them. This is all 100% the fault tRump and Russian propaganda, it’s sad soo many fall for it.

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      survival of the fittest is doing its thing, even if innocent people go down as victims of stupid people, such is life and death.

  • Pringles@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Just give the option to be injected with a vaccine or with chlorine. Watch the numbers drop spectacularly.

  • maximalian@sopuli.xyz
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    7 months ago

    The new vaccines generate lots of profits for the pharma. Therefore, what incentives will ALWAYS there be for the owners and creators of the vaccines? Not vacciness in general, but SOME vacciness, against SOME diseases-19.

    Would or could they, the pharma, ever reveal that some vaccines, especially their own, especially the newest ones, may be harmful to people in any way? That they could cause delayed negatives consequences and side-effects?

    Therefore, who, or ironically WHO, has all the incesitves to always try to prove that all the negative data about the newest vaccines is a lie? And “in fact, it’s getting worse”. Yeah, worse for the those manufacture the vacciness and try to jab people like pigs :)

    This may not prove that they, the vaccines, are or may be indeed harmful. Or not that all of them, for all people, not against all the viruses. Nonetheless, the incentive of hidding the truth about this exists and for one side only.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The new vaccines

      Retvrn To Tradition! Only get the flu shot from 10 years ago. Don’t get the one that’s been selected against the current flu strain.

      Therefore, who, or ironically WHO, has all the incesitves to always try to prove that all the negative data about the newest vaccines is a lie?

      Or maybe they have an incentive to use proven health care technologies that deliver effective treatment, because epidemics are bad for everyone?

  • goddard@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    The fact they think they can definitively state this just proves they don’t actually care about science.

      • goddard@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        You can’t have a blanket statement where you declare vaccines do not cause autism. You could say X vaccine and Y vaccine do not cause autism as evidenced by these clinical trails and 20 years of research data that is public here have a look. Still doesn’t address Z vaccine though which was made by BLAH Company and they are a bunch of douche bags and used shady clinical trial practices that should be investigated by the Federal government, but oh wait the politicians paid off the government so that investigation won’t take place.

        Also measles cases are soaring because our current administration has literally let in some where between 10 million and 20 million illegal aliens into the country.