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ASD & Genetic Testing - Tell the NAS what you think

51 replies

Davros · 27/08/2007 11:45

I didn't put this on the recent thread about antenatal testing as I am feeling a bit bad about another thread being hijacked into ASD!! I was a bit naughty as I rather ignored the fact that the thread was originally about DS, everyone must get fed up with us ASDers!! I have also been thinking about that anyway and that, although we share many experiences and feelings, the situation with testing is quite different for, say, DS/ASD. Anyway, read on:

In the latest issue of Communication, the NAS's mag, there is a big article about genetic testing and they want members' views and comments about the issue, email [email protected]
By coincidence there is a letter from a parent bemoaning the fact that the magazine specifically (but the NAS and AUtism movement in general if you ask me) is becoming dominated by people with AS/HFA and their parents. I really have noticed this and a lot of assumptions are being made about the "rights" of people with disabilities to just be as they are. That is fine and dandy if you can look after yourself and express yourself, but those who can't have recently been rather marginalised and those who speak for them have even become somewhat demonised as being "negative"!!! I will write in myself when I get a chance to read the article first!!

OP posts:
Bink · 30/08/2007 21:33

That is really a fundamental distinction, isn't it? - as ds's (few) things which have been a problem are definitely channelled through the "fear" brain-wiring-programme, not the sensory one. Eg he adored spiral shapes when he was tiny, which somehow led straight to a fixation with, and frantic fear of, snails - nightmares & everything.

But: something you are scared of is (mostly) amenable to reason & being seen from different perspectives, & ultimately being grown out of (as he has re snails); but something which goes through the sensory wiring programme (like his horror of the sound of a hand running down a metal handrail) just aren't. I wonder if this is even distinctive enough to be diagnostically relevant.

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