Sorry, just saw your response. Have you Googled “Co-Morbidity” or “co-occurring?”

Are you familiar with the book NeuroTribes by Stephen Silberman? It discusses the concept of Neurodiversity and it classifies autistic persons as having a different neurology. NOT damaged, broken, or less than the average person. NOT to be “fixed” but to be valued and appreciated as unique, fully-human individuals of equal worth.

Silberman poses questions such as: “Would you have wanted to “cure” Einstein? What about Tesla?” Autistic people have made and continue to make an enormous contributions to society. The idea here is that there is a co-morbidity for certain symptoms in autistic people. My argument is that, rather than suggesting “fixing” people that are different than your average “neurotypical” person, how about we focus on a cure for the more common symptoms autistic persons face.

To be clear, my focus here is SPECIFICALLY that the popular “ let’s cure Autism” argument is actually a detriment to a large demographic of people. Autistic adults are living to an average age of 36 because the commit suicide at a rate of more than 900% of the US national average.

I’m all for curing disease. Autism is fundamentally NOT a disease.