this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
50 points (84.7% liked)
Technology
966 readers
29 users here now
A tech news sub for communists
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
what about blindness, is blindness too much part of a person for it to be cured, being gay is clearly "incurable" and no one would have a reason to try unless they were servery homophobic, and i think being blind is pretty clearly something that most people would rather do away with clearly divergences from the average are on a spectrum. i would say anything that prevents people from doing things they would like to do are a reasonable target for treatment and cure, and some of the things that are classified as autism are that.
also are u forgetting many people with autism treat their symptoms.
There hasn't been a historical drive to demonise blind people and their parents to this day, use of racially-driven pseudoscience to justify their mass incarceration and euthanasia or invent a whole conspiracy theory about vaccines that had massive consequences in the previous pandemic. And I've never met a blind person who prefers staying blind.
I'm not, I'm only refusing to forget the many people experimented on without consent going all the way back to Hans Asperger, those who don't wish for this treatment at all, or the historical pushing of drugs like risperidone for autistic children (often with lasting adverse effects) by the pharma-"advocacy group" alliance. And above all I don't forget we currently live in a world where a bunch of countries can lock people up "for their own good" in medical institutions and apply treatments with barely any consent.
I don't think it's too outlandish of a scenario to imagine "experimental gene treatments" being imposed on a bunch of children due to pharma companies preying on desperate parents.
Cures for otherwise blinding conditions do exist (e.g., cataract removal, some gene therapies for retinal diseases) and they're good. I have a condition that will eventually render me blind and I would seek to be cured if a cure existed for it.
But pursuing/promoting cures for disabilities, including blindness, is not without problems. See, in the US for example, the politics of the National Federation of the Blind vs. the Foundation for Fighting Blindness. Cures also raise class issues and threaten to further marginalize people who won't or can't be cured, for whatever reason. In particular, imagining a world in which 'everyone' is cured is dangerous and even inherently harmful ideology.
Also, while I have some reservations about the rhetoric and what I think it likely really means, there are blind people out there who will tell you they don't want to be cured because it's part of who they are and they're getting along just fine. Such people do exist. A similar sentiment exists for some within the deaf community as well.
Who are u talking to? I never said there werent any cures for blindness i said it was something most people who have it would rather not have it. i never said there is not conflict between trying to help people with disabilities with cures as opposed to other ways i said that it was reasonable for cures to exists. I never said i wanted a world where everyone was cured, i again said it was reasonable for some of these things to have cures or treatments or for research to be done to find them. And i didnt say that literally every one can agree they would rather be blind i said most people because obviously there is always some who thinks otherwise no matter how big a majority is.
So again who are u talking to, certainly not to what i said and especially not to what i meant cuz i didnt even mean to say anything at all about blindness I clearly meant that this type of research (into autism cures) was ethical (as long as it was only targeting forms or symptoms of autism that people with autism would rather not have). So who is it, at best u completely miss interpreted or ignored what i said or more realistically u are putting some very fucked up and ignorant words in my mouth that i didnt say cuz u know when u reply to me arguing against something i didnt say u are also arguing that i did say it or at least that i meant it. So again what are u doing what are u hoping to do here, this isnt a "fun fact" comment or funny comment u are making an argument but against a position im not even holding.
The reason it doesn't seem like I was arguing against your comment is that indeed, I wasn't trying to refute your comment. Reconsider your defensiveness. And bear in mind that not all critiques aim to establish a kind of propositional negation of what they address.