a new super race?

[rosieglo]

Re the article in the guardian about the baby that was successfully screened for the breast cancer gene and the controversy about 'designer babies' - what's the fuss? I'm thinking that breeding out illness and disabilty is a great thing. Improving intelligence also; hopefully the smarter the future generations are the more likely they will find ways to halt our destruction of the planet and stop fighting. What's wrong with wanting fitter, stronger, cleverer and healthier children? And I think it is so wrong for a deaf or blind parent to actively seek out a way to pass their disability on, I cannot begin to understand how they could want to deprive their child of the ability to hear music or see the world around them.
hmmn - for me it's a pretty straight forward matter.

A truly religious person with Asperger's Syndrome! Did you know you are a bit of a rarity?

No, I'm surprisingly common. (er, if you see what I mean... )

It's widely believed that we have no faith/can't possibly understand it. But there's plenty of work being done in this field through the theologians and academics to explain that this is a theory that needs to be looked at again. We can and do often have a faith, and a strong one, but we often find churches and/or the way faith is explained to be a sensory nightmare or complete mystery, which is why a lot of us don't go to church/can't understand a bloomin' thing the vicar/Imam/Rabbi/whoever is saying. Ours tends to be a more logical and social-justice based faith.

I know a lot of vicars/trainee vicars/other church and faith leaders with diagnosed Asperger syndrome/high functioning Autism, but they're worried about telling anyone as they don't want people to treat them differently and are worried sick about being out of a job if they tell.

One very profoundly autistic lad with no language absolutely loves going to the Cathedral to have a look round it, and joins in with the services with great enthusiasm (er, and noise ). Charities like Causeway Prospects have huge numbers of those with LD/autism joining in with their services, too.

I think that faith needs have been largely overlooked by residential/social services care plans.

Xenia on Wed 21-Jan-09 10:50:55
"I still think most parents with a child with a disability would think for their own sake and that of a child particularly if there's pain or suffering or a shortened life and worry and operations that they would love exactly the same child but without those problems and that medical science shoudl work to ensuring that we remove those disablities and indeed we have done wonders with so very many of them adn that's great."

you talk about medical science and how it should work to remove disabilities, well it will never happen....
most of the young people I know are disabled due to negligence or human error at birth, if the men in whiite clothes can allow that to happen, how can you expect disabitity to disapear?

did you read my link?

riven, get a grip, to be educated people would have to actually consider the fact that disabled people are equal. this would mean they would have to reconsider how they look at them.

Clearly it's a lot harder to do a lot of things if you don't have legs or are deaf. If you don't want 100% of children to be born like that then surely that proves you don't think it's desirable all things being equal to have problems that make life hard.

It's certainly the case that a lot of problems are caused during pregnancy or at birth and plenty are just accidents rather than the mother's or the doctor's or midwife's fault too. Most children under 5 used to die int he UK or be born with lots of probolems. because we chose to infere with nature (God in a sense) by doing a whole load of things to reduce those risks that is no longer the case. Taht improvement is tremendous. I don't sit herer saying what a pity we didn't let nature take its course and most children under 5 die.

This has nothing to do with equality. of course disabled people are equal and valuable, everyone is but I do think in terms of aims for teh planet it would be great to eradicate a variety of things which make living/life hard whether that's polio, smallpox, malaria, deafness, blindness, etc etc etc

"the planet" how does it help the planet?

Polio, smallbox and malaria are diseases that no-one wants to have.

There is no call to abort children who may have smallpox or polio at some stage in their life. There are also treatments or preventions available.

It's different.

There are around 8 million people with hearing loss in the country. In fact, most of us will have hearing loss by the time we die. Ever thought you don't want to be alive at the prospect of that? If not, why not? Because not hearing something does not cancel out all of life's goodness, all of life's joy.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is partially deaf!

'Not hearing' is not the end of the world. It makes life a challenge, yes, but the deaf community would have a fit of the vapours if they thought people were suggesting the planet would be better off without them.

As for blindness, try telling Professor John Hull that the planet needs less people like him around. 'Google' his work. Brilliant man. And has much to say about how society devalues those with a disability.

There are some 9 million people with disabilities in the UK. The vast majority of us lead lives that we cope with perfectly well, lives that have some challenges but which also have many blessings. From my disabilities, I have learned patience, I have learned the true value of friends, I have learned the beauty of life rather than materialism and 'Hello magazine' values, I have learned the wonder of nature, I have learned that all the money in all the world can't buy you happiness. I wouldn't swap those lessons and experiences for all the proverbial tea in China.

But I'd change people's attitudes, and make sure there's help for people if they need it.

tbh imo sadly some people on mn like the sound of their own voice, they never listen to the other point of view and never bend from their own views, it is a shame as sadly they will be the ones who loose in the end. thay will be the ones who will all ways fail to meet the perfet expectation they put on others.

Thanks for posting the video link Jute, it's great to see your ds enjoying so many different and fun activities!

'just goes to show, wealth and education really are no barriers to insensitive bigotry.'

But I think inexperience does create such a barrier. It's a bit like before you have kids - you just do not 'get' what it's like to be a parent, to feel the unconditional love that you have for your child, to understand finally what your parents and their parents have experienced, etc. In a similar way, until you have experienced disability in some detail and/or the attendant prejudices that accompany it, then it's something that most people don't 'get' because they don't have to. If you have only NT kids, then it's very unlikely that you'll ever have to educate yourself about the subtleties of ASD or ever have call to visit a special school. At least lots of SN kids attend mainstream schools these days - none did in my day - so this can only help to take away some of the 'mystery' surrounding disabilities.

amber - For religious faith, you need some sort of suspension of disbelief, which is against the AS way of thought, is it not?

Just at that point where the questions "How?" and "Why?" stop having rational answers, religion tells us to "have faith". How do you get beyond that point?

For starters, do you really believe in virgin birth, God himself having fathered Jesus Christ etc?

CoteDAzur, "have faith" means nothing to me at all. I have a rational belief that God exists, and that he can and does help people somehow. Exactly how I don't know. But I don't have a problem with that as a concept as I can visualise God helping people. But I don't know what 'faith' would look like.

Virgin birth? Why not. We can get fairly close to it ourselves with cloning technology etc so why shouldn't God be able to manage something similar with access to everything that created the universe in the first place? Makes sense from a scientific point of view.

If I can figure it out scientifically, it works. It might not be very good religion and I've no doubt a proper vicar would have fainted whilst reading this by now, but it does for me. And since I can't do the spiritual/faith/grace sort, and God made me this way, I guess it's good enough for Him too, under the circumstances.

Besides which, some very odd things have happened to me over the years, things I absolutely cannot explain, when I have prayed. For me, there is definitely Something To It.

Sorry, but I am just psml at the thought of another poster telling Amber what her faith must be like rather than asking her. To me, this totally sums up the situation of disabled people in our society. If we stopped telling them and started asking them, we might get further and learn more.

riven

Cory, I've been asked that same question by some of the world's finest minds on that subject, with exactly the same sort of expectation that we just can't possibly have the right 'wiring' to understand faith. I know people with an ASD who have enough 'wiring' in their brains to be able to comprehend the whole thing - faith, spirituality, love, etc. All depends which bits got the broadband wiring and which bits got the old string and yoghurt pot, I think.

Best weekend of my life was a faith conference for those with disabilities, which was attended by around 25 of us with almost any and every disability. Great fun. Relaxing, engaging, thoughtful, plenty of entertainment from those that brought their musical instruments with them, thoughtful debate, time for prayer, a stroll/push round the grounds of the Cathedral, just marvellous. We all came away from it with a list of things we need to get done for the next one, and a number of good friends/acquaintances. And there didn't need to be one bit of pity or tragedy for the whole weekend. Just ordinary people having a weekend away, from our point of view. What was the big deal if someone needed something passing to them, or a bit of a lie down, or something explained, or sign language, or a hearing loop, or large print, or an access ramp, or a cup with an extra handle?

The wisdom and gentleness of that group of people was just breathtaking. We had time for each other, time to just 'be'.

cory - Can you keep your toilet training efforts to yourself? I'm fairly sure amber understands what I am saying and why.

amber - I'm a bit confused. You said you are "a person of Christian faith" and then went on to say that "'have faith' means nothing to me at all" and "I don't know what 'faith' would look like".

If I understand the rest of your post correctly, you believe in a God who is not only a 'watchmaker' God but benevolent and omnipotent - attributes of the Christian God - but you don't have "faith".

How are you Christian if you don't have faith? I'm genuinely curious.

More than that, I am especially curious about this statement:

"I have a rational belief that God exists"

What does that look like? Seriously, please do explain. I am very interested to hear what you mean by that. What is "a rational belief that God exists"?

OK, first thing to point out is that I'm a visual aspie, which means I'm one of the ones whose brain works in pictures, not words. Words are a second language to me.

"A person of Christian faith" is the same as saying "I'm a Christian" but in more words. It's a learned phrase. After 40+ years I've learned massive numbers of phrases. The only problem is if I'm asked to explain some of the words in them.

I can picture a person who is a Christian, perhaps one with a Bible or is going to church.

"Have faith" doesn't mean the same thing as that to a brain that thinks in pictures. I think it means you're supposed to feel something specific to do with God. I mean, if you had faith, what would it look like? If you were holding faith in your hands, what shape would it be?

"Faith" can't actually be pictured by me. Nor can 'spirituality' or 'grace' or 'love' etc. My faith is built around things, people, actions, rules and practices. And around the beauty of the world around me and the caring of the people around me.

I do have a rational belief that God exists. I can reason that the universe is simply far too complicated to have created itself, and two thirds of the people on the planet believe that God exists in some form. That's a lot of people to all be deluded or mistaken. It's not the same as direct proof that God exists, but it is a rational belief.

There aer fundamental differences then. I think if we could eradicate deafness we'd all be better off including the deaf. That doesn't mean I want to exterminate the deaf but if we can remove the causes, operate to cure the hearing loss, genetically engineer to be rid of deafness that would be a good thing. I don't see why people can't sdeparate that point from the issue of whether deaf people should live and that they have worth. The two aren't connected.

(On faith, they have discovered a genetic thing that makes you more or less likely to believe in God by the way - this stuff is fascinating).

There aer fundamental differences then. I think if we could eradicate deafness we'd all be better off including the deaf. That doesn't mean I want to exterminate the deaf but if we can remove the causes, operate to cure the hearing loss, genetically engineer to be rid of deafness that would be a good thing. I don't see why people can't sdeparate that point from the issue of whether deaf people should live and that they have worth. The two aren't connected.

(On faith, they have discovered a genetic thing that makes you more or less likely to believe in God by the way - this stuff is fascinating).

Xenia, I don't think anyone disagrees with you on operating to reduce hearing loss. I certainly don't.

This is however fundamentally different from discarding a foetus carrying a gene that might lead to hearing loss or might not.

Or as in my case, leave one child disabled and the other athletic. I'd be happy to operate on the disabled child to take her disability away. But not to have the gene removed from the start, as it is also doing good in other places. Genetics are tricky things.

But we mess around with genes everytime we mix them by picking a husband surely and didn't God really give mankind a brain and the ability to develop genetic improvements? I would have thought he or she would be pretty cross if we didn't use the talents we'd been given to ease suffering.