Hello, welcome to another episode of Unpacking Neuroqueerness.
Well, I really wish I didn't have to record this episode.
I really wish that we weren't even still having to have this conversation, but here we are.
And this is just a reminder of why it's so important to keep advocating and doing the work that I do, because
society still, in large, this does not apply to every person, this applies systemically to society.
It's not even individually about people.
Society wants...
Society still wants to get rid of autistic people.
Society is still pushing eugenics articles.
It is 2024, and we are still dealing with this in all fairness.
This article I'm going to be talking about today was published December 4th of 2023, but you get the message.
We shouldn't be having this conversation anymore.
We're this article that came out in the San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco, known as a very progressive city,
this is what makes me even more alarmed, even more upset, is that we're supposed to be a progressive city,
and we are talking about treating a developmental disability instead of just accommodating disabled people.
We are making links, we are making this dangerous association, once again, of disability and disease, which are very different things.
Can we please, as a society, can we stop comparing disability to disease?
You see, when you think of disability and you automatically think of disease, that comes from internalized ableism,
that whole mentality comes from systemic ableism.
I can't believe I have to keep repeating this, but let's get into it.
This article came out on the San Francisco Chronicle, it's talking about a UCSF study.
This is a major university in a so-called progressive city, mind you,
and it is titled What We Know About Autism and How to Treat It Could Change After New UCSF Study.
This article was published by Jason Fagone on December 4th, 2023, and is on the San Francisco Chronicle website.
It is not a paid article. They might do that because people do that sometimes, they release an article that is highly problematic,
and they get called out, and then they put it behind a paywall that has happened before in Brazil, where I'm from.
It's a whole different story, I'm not going to get into that because I would just go on a tangent.
But, yes, here we have the, you see an op, a photo of Dr. Neven Krogan,
director of quantitative biosciences institute and professor of molecular pharmacology at UCSF.
This is how the article starts.
By fusing the power of artificial intelligence with new molecular techniques that also seemed ripped from science fiction,
researchers at UCSF have mapped the microscopic world of autism spectrum disorder in unprecedented detail,
pointed towards possible therapies for a subset of patients who have genetic mutations according to a new study.
Here we go again with speaking of autistic people as if they're like experiments or like specimen.
You know, like, it just, duh, okay, let me ground myself again.
This opens kind of, so the article continues, this opens up kind of a Goldilocks of potential treatments,
said one of the studies author, treatments, treatments, Jesus, and since the 1990s, mind you,
the neurodiversity movement has been saying no to treating autistic people.
Now, there are, I want to mention, autism is a spectrum of different traits to different intensities and different support needs,
and some people have higher support needs and some people have co-occurring disabilities,
which greatly influence their experience of autism.
And it is, I have nothing against people seeking treatment for certain co-occurring disabilities that cannot simply be accommodated by the social model of disability.
I understand that.
But let's not generalize, let's not say autism as a whole, because autism is more about,
one of the core things of autism is social communication differences,
as well as sensory sensitivities, it is social communication differences,
and how, what is the best, the thing is autistic people have a different style of communication.
I speak of this in the episode 12 about the double empathy theory.
It is a different style of communication, and if we, if society, if neurotypical, if non-autistic society,
could just make more of an effort to understand autistic people and their communication styles,
we would have a lot better communication, and we wouldn't be calling autistic people baffling or complex,
because here we go again, so I'm going to read you another little piece of this article, like, right after what I just read here.
It says, this opens, um, okay, so it talks about,
I'm sorry, I'm not, I'm just going to save everyone's time, but at the, at the end of, of the,
because I think I already mentioned this, but at the end of this, there's a phrase, because, um, okay,
so I'm just going to read this last phrase.
It's an opportunity for shots on goal that we just have not had before, because of the complexity of autism.
Here we, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
We are, we are, we have articles from major universities and so-called progressive cities calling autistic people complex,
treating autistic people like specimens.
Geez, can we just understand, can we just listen to autistic voices, can we just listen to lived experience,
can we just listen to what people have been saying, can we just listen to what autistic people need in terms of accommodations.
Now this is what I was trying to get at, sensory sensitivities, those can be accommodated.
You can turn the lights down, you can turn the sound down, we don't have to put, we don't have to cause PTSD on someone
by putting them through so-called exposure therapies, by exposing them to pain, to sensory overload, which is sensory pain.
And it is very hard for non-autistic people and the people that are running these therapies are majorly non-autistic people
and it's very hard for them to understand the kind of pain they are inflicting on their clients.
By doing this kind of stuff.
Instead of just, how about instead of trying to rewire their brain and make them less autistic,
which is what these therapies like ABA are doing and I speak of this in episode 15,
how about we just maybe turn the lights down, maybe turn the sound down.
Hmm, right?
Instead of trying to fix people, instead of trying to treat them,
instead of trying to so-called treat autism as if it were some kind of disease.
No, it is a disability. Can it be really disabling? Can it have co-occurring disabilities?
Are there disabilities within the autistic experience that maybe have to be treated or cured?
Yes, but autism as a whole, no, that is not what autism is.
Autism is primarily communication differences, sensory differences, speech differences.
All of these things can be accommodated.
We can do these things in a neurodiversity affirming way.
We do not have to treat people or fix people.
Yes, this has been a frustrating episode to record, but here, you know, let's go.
Let's do this because this needs to be called out.
Okay, so, yes, this is that.
This is, I want to call out this person.
This opens up kind of a goldilocks of potential targets, said one of the studies author,
Matthew State, a UCSF child psychiatrist and geneticist.
Matthew, my friend, please read about neurodiversity.
Please read from neurodivergent people.
Please read from people with lived experience.
Please listen to disabled people when they tell you what they need in order to be better accommodated
instead of trying to treat us. Okay?
Stop, stop, full stop right there.
We are not diseased. We are not talking about cancer.
We do not want treatment.
Some may want treatment for certain things that they experience as part of their autistic experience,
but that is not autism.
We do not want autistic people as a majority if you read anything about the neurodiversity paradigm
and the article out there now that's been out there for a while talking about neurodiversity,
you will understand that this is problematic.
What you are doing with this, what UCSF is doing now trying to use,
this whole article goes on about using AI to like essentially make people less autistic.
There's just so much to unpack here. It's hard to even...
Oh, my God. Okay.
Here's another little fun part of this.
In addition, researchers leveraged a system originally developed at UCSF to study viruses.
Yes, we are comparing autism to viruses.
We are comparing... Jesus, we are once again comparing people with a developmental disability to disease.
We are once again comparing disabilities to disease. Can we stop doing this?
Oh, my God. This is all about like changing genes and I'm like, no, no, no, change the lack of accommodation,
change the lack of support. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This freaking...
Ah, here we go.
We've all... We've been at the bleeding edge. This goes on.
We've been at the bleeding edge of putting all this together. Said another study leader,
Nathan Krogan, director of the Quantitive Biosciences Institute within UCSF School of Pharmacy,
which coordinated the research along with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
which is here once again framing autism as a behavioral thing.
And it's like... Instead of just understanding, like, well, there are behaviors that autistic people present
because of being misunderstood, because of not getting their needs met.
An autistic person is in distress, is having a meltdown, and it's not because autistic people like to have meltdowns
or that it is... The meltdown occurs because of sensory and emotional overload,
and that occurs when you don't have your needs met.
So it's just missing the point.
So blatantly missing the point, and I cannot believe we are still talking about this in the year 2024,
that this article was published at the end of the year 2023.
So anyways, I think I'm just gonna spare everybody more quotes from this garbage.
If you wanna read this full thing, it is called... It's on the San Francisco Chronicle website.
It's on the non-paid version. I don't know.
If they get enough pushback from this, they might end up putting it behind the paywall.
For now, it's on the unpaid version. It's under science.
It says what we know about autism and how to treat it could change after a new UCSF study,
because apparently just making society more accommodating to autistic people isn't an option.
You have to treat or eliminate the disability.
I can't even begin to just... I don't even know where to start with how much ableism is involved in that.
And if that's not blatantly ableist, if you don't understand a blatantly ableist with that mentality,
I encourage you to maybe check out my previous episodes, the first few episodes I've done on this podcast,
particularly episode 1 and episode 12.
Aside from that, I don't really know. I don't have anything to say about that.
This is just garbage, this whole article, this whole mentality.
Just make society more...
If we spent as much energy and effort and money on making society more accommodating to disabled people,
as we do on these studies about genes and mutations and, oh my god, how can we make people less autistic,
we would have such a better world, we wouldn't even have the need for me to be advocating so hard about this stuff,
because we would have more acceptance. And so they finished the article.
Oh my god, okay, these findings could lead to new drugs for patients.
Okay.
We're shining a brand new light on autism.
Yeah, like treating it like a disease, like as if this were fucking cancer.
Yeah, like you're... oh Jesus, I can't eat them. I'm sorry.
I'm gonna put, and I'm gonna remember to put a little explicit.
I can on this episode because I'm just letting the... I'm letting it all out today.
I'm letting all this wearing out, because this is just infuriating to me.
I don't know if I made a lot of sense in this episode in classic autistic ADHD style.
I went on different tangents and different directions.
So I hope people were still able to understand the points I was making.
I just really wanted to make this episode because I really wanted to call out this article and how problematic it is.
Thank you for listening. If you've listened this far into the podcast,
this was definitely one of my most animated episodes, if not my most animated episodes so far,
but I just wanted to let the raw emotions and frustration flow for this one.
And once again, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this.
I'm gonna leave you with a little bit of a break about something out of it, and I'll see you next time.