In the debate tonight, McCain used people with autism as an example of people with special needs that he and Palin will help. I have autism, and I can't trust him to help me when he can't even get the facts about the disorder right.
He said autism is on the rise. There is no clear evidence that autism is on the rise. It's diagnoses that are increasing. Why? Because we now understand more about it than we used to, due to research. People who would have been considered anything from "eccentric" to "retarded" as little as ten years ago are now being diagnosed as autistic. Obama promised funding for research. McCain did not.
Seeing McCain use my disorder as a desperate ploy to draw votes made me feel somehow slimed.
More below the fold:
Throughout my childhood, my teachers and other kids called me weird and eccentric, either stupid or "a genius but with no common sense," stubborn, preachy, too needy, too insistent on following rules, over-emotional or emotionally distant, obsessive over one subject, said that I talk too much or not enough, and generally didn't like me. I didn't understand why at the time. All I knew was that there seemed to be some sort of secret code that everyone else lived by, a set of rules that everyone else magically knew except me. I didn't learn until I was twenty-seven that I have Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. I recovered tremendously in the last five years, but getting a diagnosis was the most important step to figuring out why I behave the way I do, that it's not my fault, that I'm not alone, and what to do about it.
It's not necessarily people with Asperger's that are in the most need of help. Sure, we could use some. What we need most is understanding and patience. If you've ever made fun of people who go to Star Trek conventions, for example, there's a good chance you were making fun of someone with AS and didn't know it. Napoleon Dynamite is another example of a caricature of someone with AS. Know anyone like that? Our biggest challenge (besides trying to say Asperger's without sounding like we're saying "ass-burgers") is getting people to accept us. We also need people to stop walking up to us and demanding we smile, or saying things like "you look like you're having a good time" or "it can't be that bad." What makes people think they have the right to do this to someone they don't know? (OK, I'm done with the mini-rant portion of this diary. Sorry about that.)
For people with more severe forms of autism, and parents of children with these disorders, a lot of help is needed. Some need help learning to integrate into social situations, and education for parents. Some need constant supervision. Some need help with every single aspect of their lives, like eating and going to the bathroom. The divorce rate for parents of children with autism is shockingly high, and too often, the mothers end up having to care for autistic children alone, as well as providing for the family. They need help. Programs to help them need funding. John McCain's record on this issue, and for that matter Sarah Palin's before she had a child with Down's Syndrome (not a form of autism, John McCain) is not good.
Does autism need a cure?
If there were no autistic people in the world, there may never have been a Leonardo Da Vinci, a Mozart, an Isaac Newton, a Thomas Jefferson, or an Albert Einstein, all of whom many experts suspect could have been autistic. We can't know for sure, but it seems likely to me. "Curing" people whose brains work differently could cost us something valuable.
What do autistic people and the parents of autistic kids need?
Education. Programs to help with care. Research into how autism works, what the causes are and how we can recover and learn to function socially (and sometimes physically) without losing our special abilities. We need to understand why most treatments work for some but not for all. These things need FUNDING. When Obama pointed out the need for funding and research, McCain said nothing. What is he going to do to help people on the autistic spectrum, besides talk about us in a desperate grab for votes?