A short rant before a week-long series.
I think this thing, this whole Fragile X/autism/society/vaccines/conspiracy thing, is now getting out of control. Maybe the debate has long since escalated to outright conflict, but I fear there will come a time when someone will shoot someone on the other ideological side, and then this debate — about vaccines, about autism, about what causes this thing that affects so many people — will start to seem a lot like other conflicts. It may be too late, it may be that people are already too polarized to see anything but their own fears, to regard the other side with anything but hate and disgust, though I hope not. And I hope I’m not alone in hoping that there can be a resolution of goals before the polarization is complete and reconciliation becomes, like Democrat and Republican, like evolutionist and creationist, like that other debate about parents and offspring, impossible. People seem happy to take sides — maybe tribalism is so deeply encoded that we need only a single stimulus to begin building fences and cutting spears from the small trees that grow between Us and Them.
I think there are a lot of people speaking in reasonable voices about unreasonable things. And vice versa. I think I’ve finally reached a point where I can ask, as someone with a brother like The Boy, as someone as affected by autism as as any other player in this debate, that people start acting and thinking like 21st-century human beings. By all means let us debate these things. Let us explore the potential causes of autism, be they genetic, environmental, both, or neither. But cease the unwarranted indignation. Cease the anger that blinds, cease the threats and name-calling. Cease, ye bastards!
Consider this my appeal to reasonableness and dialogue, a warning against polarization.
Meanwhile, this week I’ll be rolling out a series on the world of neurodiversity, the voices of the autistic who object to autism being labeled a disease. I’ll begin tomorrow with a look at Fragile X and its connection to autism — and the treatments that might be applied to both. Also there will be a little something on evolution and the turbulent seas of our own genes a little later in the week.
Clutch ye hot chocolate and gather round. Gather, ye bastards!
Nov 8th, 2009 2:30pm
