
An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage - salgernon
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental-autism-treatment-cost-me-my-marriage/?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0
======
kauffj
I work with John's son, Jack, on LBRY ([http://lbry.io](http://lbry.io)). The
whole Robison family is full of people with interesting stories:

\- Jack went to trial as a teenager, facing 60 years (!) in prison for
chemistry experiments
([http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionre...](http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionreaction_how_one_teens_c.html))

\- John showcasing a guitar that Jack's mother and Jack built for KISS
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10))

\- John's brother is Augusten Burroughs
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs))

I pointed Jack to this thread. I believe he went through same treatment as
John at one point if people have questions.

~~~
jackrobison
I didn't know HN was interested in the subject, very neat!

I'll keep up on this thread, and if anyone wants to ask me a question via
email you can reach me at jack@lbry.io

~~~
NikolaNovak
_tremendously_ interested, for many reasons - general knowledge, personal
empathy, and for many friends and family.

Is there any good, reliable source of information on the treatment described?
If it started in 2008, I'm surprised I have not seen it mentioned more
recently. Are results as reliably dramatic as described?

Many thanks for joining the discussion - much appreciated :-)

~~~
jackrobison
My fathers newest book - Switched On - is all about TMS and his experience.
The research is being led by Alvero Pascual-Leone at Harvard medical, he's got
a lot of material published.

How it pertains to autism is very new, I'm not sure what the team has
published yet. The finding that I thought was most significant is that TMS
provides an instrumental test for autism - although there's a ways to go
before it becomes the means of diagnosis. An autistic person has measurably
different neuroplasticity than a non autistic person, this low level
biological distinction has the potential to take subjectivity out of
diagnosis. And it is a big step towards a low level understanding of what
autism is, how it can pan out to be a gift or a disability (not mutually
exclusive), and how the challenges many autistic people face work on a
fundamental level.

~~~
tangled_zans
That's _fascinating_ , thanks for sharing.

Where would one go to try out TMS? I would be quite interested in finding out
what my brain is like so long as it was done in a safe manner.

~~~
voronoff
Any good research Uni's psych department will have some TMS studies going on
over the course of a year. You'll probably have to do a repetitive task and
they probably won't be doing any diagnostics (for that you're way better off
with a FMRI or EEG study, where they're often happy to share the data with
you), but if you're just curious about the experience you can probably get
paid a pittance to try it out.

~~~
tangled_zans
Interesting! I will ask my friend in the neurology department if she knows
anything :)

------
graeme
Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal?

When I was younger, I was awful at reading people. Very shy with others as a
result, because I was missing most of the data.

I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. I did some training
to recognize expressions, focussed on one skill at a time, and viewed every
conversation as practice. I improved to the point that people comment that I'm
surprisingly good at reading them.

But the emotions don't hit me the way this author describes. I just....see
them.

Granted, I've also practice stoicisim and mindfulness, which explicitly trains
you to not worry about things like someone insulting you (or hearing a comment
that might be construed as insulting).

But, I've wondered if something is going on. When I was younger, before
learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much
like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a
significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social
skills.

Thoughts?

~~~
aurelianito
How did you learn to read body language? Can you point us to books, websites
or courses?

I also would like to know if you notice different body language based on
culture, race, gender or not. If so, can you describe how?

I am also quite bad at reading body language, and learning some basic acting
skills helped me to read body language a bit better, but I would love to have
more information about this subject.

Thanks!

~~~
maratd
You'll see a few tips and tricks that are useful. Like when a person crosses
their arms, they generally disagree with what you are saying, etc.

The most important thing is to pay _less_ attention to the content and more
attention to the tone, stance, demeanor, circumstances, likely self-interest
in the situation, notice the little things everywhere and that will give you a
clearer picture of what you're dealing with. Do this often enough, over and
over again, and it'll become second habit.

Content is rarely useful unless you're engaging in a very data heavy
conversation, like for example you would when describing requirements for a
project at work. During regular conversation, everything is generally geared
toward communicating emotional state, so focusing too much on content dulls
your senses and you don't pick up what you need to pick up.

~~~
SpaceCadetJones
I want to add to this that you want to be careful about deriving meaning from
one's physical actions alone.

I may have just crossed my arms, but if you'll look closely you'll notice I
wasn't looking at you when I did so. It's not that you said something that I'm
closing myself off from, it's that it sent my mind on a tangent that made me
feel insecure. There's a number of reasons to cross one's arms other than
shunning away from people around you.

~~~
maratd
Let me add a bit more then.

It doesn't matter _why_ you're closing yourself off.

You start wondering about the why, you'll set out on the path of trying to
figure out what people are thinking ... and let me skip to to the end, that
path is a dead end. People feel and think things that are based on their
experience, but you have no idea what the totality of that experience is.

You mention you like jazz. The other person crosses their arms because they
stubbed their toe in the morning and jazz was playing in the background, now
they remember their toe hurts and they're feeling shitty. How can you possibly
foresee that? That sort of random stuff comes up in conversation all the time.
The proper response isn't to try to mind read or to convince them that jazz is
wonderful.

It's to talk about something else.

~~~
over
Sometimes people cross their arms because it's a comfortable resting position.
It's common in overweight men, the arms rest on the belly quite naturally.
Often people will lean back against the chair or wall at the same time.

------
mchahn
A functionally autistic woman, Temple Grandin, wrote a fascinating book on
autism. She offered a simple test for autism. Think of a church steeple (stop
and do that).

If you thought of a real steeple you had actually seen then you probably tend
towards autism. If you thought of an abstract non-existing steeple then you
don't tend towards it.

I was at a gathering of employees in my company. There were about a dozen
random people sitting around a table. I tested the whole group at once. Every
single programmer answered with a real steeple and every non-programmer
thought abstract.

I know this doesn't represent a real study and chance was involved. But it
matches something else she said. Functional autistics with jobs are
predominantly programmers. She quoted a number, like 70%, but I don't remember
for sure.

I, a programmer, personally prefer human interaction on the web. Meeting in
real-life, not so much.

~~~
jcoffland
Simple tests like this are fun, catchy, spread like wildfire and almost always
completely bogus.

~~~
brianwawok
Hey I hear if your hand is bigger than your face you are autistic.

*Smacks your hand and gives you a bloody nose

~~~
fapjacks
This (s/autistic/stupid/) is how I met one of my best lifelong friends in my
first week of junior high.

------
munificent
> Later, people at work told me they’d liked me better the way I was before.

Whenever you make a large change in yourself, you are going to alienate people
in your life. This doesn't say anything about whether the change is good or
bad.

The set of people currently in your life is highly biased towards people who
like you the way you are. If they didn't, they wouldn't _be_ in your life.

The more interesting question is _after_ you make a change and get a new set
of people, how do those people compare to your old set?

~~~
NikolaNovak
Agreed. The change doesn't have to be quite as profound - and it's up to other
people to choose how to react and proceed.

Different quantitatively but I think similar qualitatively, my best friend
(despite my warning) attended a high-intensity motivational/NLP weekend
seminar a few years back. It is no exaggeration that he came out a completely
different person, in the sense that the stimuli/response has radically
changed. He was more emotional, open, intense, etc. My reaction initially was
confused and highly negative; and eventually settled down on "The person I
knew is in some ways gone; but let's give this _new_ person a chance and see
how we get along".

Others, erm... did not react as positively :P

~~~
tangled_zans
That's quite interesting. I have a former friend who joined some sort of super
happy cult a year or so back, and undergone a similar change literally over a
course of a single week. It was quite... disconcerting to watch.

------
theoh
The extreme sense of feeling the emotions of others that is described in the
article seems like something stronger than normal for typical people, but
perhaps it's just relative to previous baseline of little insight into the
emotions of others.

Some research opposes the deficits of autism to the excesses of schizophrenia.
Not sure it's totally relevant to this item, but seeing emotional meanings
where they don't exist is a very schizotypal (positive schizotypy) phenomenon:

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-
is-c...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-is-
creativity-differentially-related-to-schizophrenia-and-autism/)

~~~
jacobolus
Take someone used to wearing stiff-bottomed shoes, and tell them to walk
around barefoot on the street or on a forest trail. They’ll suddenly be
intensely aware of the temperature and texture of the ground. Stepping on a
little pebble will cause pain from sensory overload of nerves which have been
carefully shielded for years. (Most people in developed countries can try this
experiment out first-hand.)

For someone who is habitually barefoot, by contrast, walking around on very
rough surfaces is no problem.

Same kind of thing here.

~~~
danieltillett
As some who used to walk around barefoot all the time as a kid, this effect is
not due to habituation, but due to the skin on you feet becoming thick to the
point that you are effectively wearing shoes. The more you wear shoes the
thinner the skin gets. They other factor is you learn to walk differently such
that you are more careful placing your feet on the ground to avoid sharp
objects.

~~~
jacobolus
A big part of it is nerve/brain response, in my own personal experience,
though sure, a different walking technique makes a difference too.

I started wearing mostly thin soled shoes a few years ago: simple leather
moccasins, $5 Chinese canvas shoes, Vibram Five Fingers. (I don’t typically
walk around outside barefoot.)

When I first started, if I walked barefoot, stepping on a tiny pebble was
painful. Wearing thin-soled shoes itself let me very dramatically feel the
ground in a way I didn’t when wearing stiff-bottomoed shoes. Now, a few years
later, the effect is much reduced, even though the skin on the bottom of my
foot is not noticeably more callused than before. I can notice how the ground
feels if I pay careful conscious attention to it, but it’s not constantly in
my mind as I walk around.

I think the walking barefoot -> calluses idea is exaggerated in popular
imagination. I have a friend who does significant amounts of barefoot trail
running, and frequently run barefoot on pavement. His feet are also not
obviously more callused than anyone else’s.

~~~
danieltillett
I can say that to get thick skin on your feet you need to not wear shoes at
all for long periods of time and walk/run lots over harsh ground. I would go
the entire summer without wearing shoes and running around all day and it
would take a month to get thick skin on my feet and it would still be getting
thicker by the end of summer. I would start wearing shoes and within a month
my feet were back to a more standard thinness.

You do retain the careful walking/running skill, but without the thick skin
you can't really run effectively on gravel, etc.

------
mfoy_
It's hard to imagine what it must be like to go from feeling no emotions to
feeling them all, like the colourblind glasses.

It's relatively easy to imagine seeing the world in black and white and then
having the colour switch flipped. I can't imagine the same for emotion... what
a wild ride it must have been. It must have been so painful at first,
especially when he realized that some of his "funny friends" had really been
making fun of him...

~~~
hosh
Ask someone who is an experienced psychonaut or meditator. These kinds of
experiential shifts can, and does happen to people. In this guy's case, it was
an awakening of empathy -- however, there are other kinds of awakening, other
kinds of consciousness shifts that people are not normally aware of.

~~~
coffeemug
I have gone through some of these shifts and they made a profound impact on
me. I'm still learning to integrate many of the things I learned into my life
in such a way that I can function in a modern society and remain authentic.
It's very, very hard.

Can you give examples of the other shifts you're referring to? I realize many
of them may not have names (or may not have names in the western culture), but
it would be very meaningful to me if you gave it a shot.

~~~
hosh
Awakening of empathy is one of them. There is also tele-empathy which lets you
sense people who you could not have possibly read through body language.

Direct experience of "oneness" is another one. This can range from feeling the
interconnections of everything, to feeling that all is One (monism), and there
ever just the One.

Seeing through your acquired self is another. That sense that the acquired
self -- the socialized personality -- has never been real. People often come
back from that one thinking "my ego died". (Well, it often resurrects ;-)

Another is direct experience of Nothing (similar to the Oneness experience),
where things somehow, mysteriously, spontaneously arises and passes. Also
related is spaciousness.

Then there's a host of parapsychological effects which might make you feel
crazy. They don't feel as insightful as the examples that I listed, but they
do break down the conventional beliefs most people have and think of as
"normal". For example, clairvoiyance, clairaudience, etc.

There are actually transpersonal psychologists holding Ph.D.s who specializes
in counseling for spiritual emergence. There's a great thread on Quora related
to that integration process. I'd find it right now, but my wife is waiting for
me to go with her to the grocery store. ("Chop wood, carry water" You never
thought you'd understand _that_ koan, eh? :-D)

Feel free to email me at talktohosh at gmail.com if you want to continue this
conversation.

------
cookiecaper
The author's life was radically changed by a procedure that runs a magnet over
his brain. It appears to have induced a severe bout of depression and anxiety
that negatively impacted his performance at work and cost him 2 marriages. He
seems to believe that this "treatment" worked, though the empirical evidence
would hardly suggest that. Does he believe that he was reading emotions
instead of descending into anxious paranoia just because the doctors told him
the first thing is what would happen? The unfortunate thing here is that
doctors have probably recorded his case as a success.

I've found that the emotions we read out of people are often exaggerated from
their true thoughts. It's easy to feel like there's some harsh judgment
occurring when, in fact, there isn't. Someone should've told the author this,
and not to take his new "emotional superpower" too seriously.

~~~
lnanek2
Yeah, unfortunately for the author, it sounded a lot like that to me as well.
I've cared for people overly anxious and it sounded like he would have
improved a lot with some sedative or just knowing when to take a calm down
break.

------
scott_s
I'm surprised there was no protocol where he went to regular therapy to help
him process the new emotions, and his new ability to read emotional cues in
others. I suspect therapy may have helped with his understanding that he
gained years later, which is that your _perception_ of someone's emotions is
not always correct.

~~~
neurotech1
I agree. Depending on how TMS treatment is setup, it could stimulate a
particular region of the brain, or a large section (frontal lobe). EEG
biofeedback can also be focused on a small section of the brain (eg.
prefrontal cortex). Its possible the situation in the article was a result of
parts of the brain being "out of balance" and creating different emotions than
what the person previously experienced.

Even if TMS 'activated' the emotional areas of the brain (right
frontotemporal) correctly, the person still may not be ready to use that brain
region effectively. This is where therapy would likely help.

Through research, its believed that Autistic Spectrum Disorders are the result
of poor neuronal connectivity between certain regions of the brain. I'm not
sure TMS would help with that.

Disclaimer: I'm not a physician and this isn't medical advice.

~~~
KingMob
Former neuroscientist here. Emotions are not confined to the right
frontotemporal area. There's multiple regions involved. It appears the TMS
here was targeted on dorsolateral PFC, but keep in mind that there will be
spreading effects, and presumably post-treatment effects, too, that can be
quite widespread.

~~~
neurotech1
> Emotions are not confined to the right frontotemporal area. That is true. I
> should have been more specific.

Just out of interest, do you believe that neuronal connectivity between
regions of the brain are involved in ASD?

~~~
KingMob
That's one of the more likely theories yeah. While the defining ASD
characteristic is impaired social processing, which seems like it would be
_specific_ , scans show it has relatively wide effects throughout the brain.
There's a host of differences. Some are possibly connectivity-based. Localized
processing seems hyperactive, and longer-distance processing is hypoactive.

But, there are other issues as well. In developing ASD brains, there have been
shown to be areas of excess cortical thickening, areas of cortical thinning,
underactivation, etc.

Connectivity certainly plays a role, but given that structure and function are
so deeply interrelated, it doesn't make much sense to try and separate them.

We think there's a strong genetic component, but nobody's been able to figure
it out yet. It appears to be more developmental/structural, but there could
also be a neurotransmitter component, given that a large fraction of ASD
people have elevated serotonin levels, and report intestinal issues
(intestines have huge numbers of ST receptors).

In short, pretend you're debugging an intermittent parallel error in a network
50x greater than the total number of computers on earth, every computer had to
coordinate its protocols on the fly, and your only tools are telnet and email.
I respect what my former colleagues do, but reality was way too murky.

------
franciscop
Maybe a more apt title would be "An experimental autism treatment gave me my
son back".

~~~
nadezhda18
I agree with you... though it wouldn't be that dramatic and thus less clic-
baitish.

~~~
duaneb
Really? Strikes me as equally dramatic: both are equally correct statements
without added tone.

I can understand preferring the glass half full, though.

~~~
nadezhda18
Getting something back is positive, losing something is negative. Negative is
obviously more dramatic than positive.

~~~
duaneb
> Negative is obviously more dramatic than positive.

I agree in the general case, but not everywhere. Shit like "Scientist cures
cancer!" is equally dramatic and clickbaity in spite of being hugely positive.

~~~
nadezhda18
I think you mix up dramatic and tabloid-ish

------
RangerScience
I'm "spectrum" _enough_ to have an opposite reaction to various drugs -
Ritalin being the important one, here - and my experience is... similar, in
some ways.

I probably didn't notice other people's emotions a lot when I was younger, to
the effect that now that I'm older, and do notice them, I frequently don't
have any idea what to _do_ with that understanding.

~~~
hosh
From a meditator's perspective, there isn't anything to do other than to
witness the underlying suffering, and giving space to the other person to be.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
That's overly simplistic and frankly trite. The reality is that in the
workplace, in society, etc the emotions of others matter a great deal to your
personal wellbeing, that is if you don't want to be broke or in jail.

Navigating the emotional world is very important and should be taught, not
dismissed. As someone who only picked up these skills later in life, its
incredible how much life makes sense now. People's emotional responses more or
less rule the world. Logic and rationality take a backseat to all of that and
being able to gauge other people's emotions and knowing how to respond to them
is the difference between failure and success in so many parts of life.
Especially if you aspire to any kind of leadership or founder role.

~~~
draw_down
I'm with you. I've encountered the thinking in GP and thought that way for a
while, and ultimately reached the same conclusion as you. It's too easy to use
it as a way of dismissing the pain and complexity of the world.

~~~
hosh
What makes you think I was dismissing it?

What I was describing is the opposite of dismissing it, and if anything, much
healthier. You do realize I was talking about Vipassana and directly
experiencing the suffering of others, right?

------
orik
It's too bad John felt he needed to seek treatment to 'cure' his autism.

I was diagnosed when I was 17, and I get to interact with a lot of other
students on the spectrum every day at my school. There are a few students that
believe autism is something to overcome, and that if they try hard enough
perhaps one day they won't be 'autistic'. Most of us are comfortable with the
fact that we're different.

~~~
falcolas
Then you're lucky enough to be on the "functional" end of the spectrum.
There's a lot of people out there on the "non-functional" end whom a cure
could help.

As someone who is also on the functional end of the spectrum, I'm tired of
having to intellectualize a feeling of empathy for others. It's draining, and
I'd rather have that brain power to work on something more meaningful. For
better or worse, most of our work involves other people, and being able
empathize with them makes that work much more productive.

~~~
emodendroket
However scientifically sound it is I wonder how much sense it really makes to
lump together all ASD the way we do; how much does the author of this piece
really have in common with nonverbal autistic people, for instance?

~~~
falcolas
I blame the DSMV for lumping us all together. There are definitely some
similarities, like stimming, touch aversion, and hyperacusis, but the degrees
to which they affect daily life are dramatically different.

------
billhendricksjr
Reminds me of Flowers for Algernon, my grandfather's favorite book.

~~~
kimar
I love that book and it was the first thing that came to my mind reading this
story.

~~~
NikolaNovak
Ditto... the first half of the article was eerily similar; and it makes you
ponder some of the very same questions (including, is ignorance bliss?)

------
jveld
Emotional beauty is a multiplayer game. It's created when people use their
time and energy to break the script and let the people around them know that
they are valued. It's not something that's easy to just receive passively - in
order to experience it frequently one needs to be bold and sensitive. Above
all, one needs to be patient.

I grew up in an environment where nobody every expressed themselves. I was
also given the impression that I was the smartest person in town. This is not
a combination that makes for deep human connections. But I was fortunate
enough to have the friendships of several very charismatic people over the
years. Their ability to make instant connections with basically everybody
around them seemed magical, and remained mysterious for years. But as I
watched them and gradually opened myself, I found that skilled observation
wasn't enough. Not only did I need to be open to others and willing to say
what was on my mind, I also had to drop my pretensions and try to engage
people on their own terms, even if those terms were things I would have
previously found silly, like tarot or fireplace ceramics. When I've been
successful at this (which isn't all the time, but it happens more and more),
I've made new friends and learned all kinds of weird and interesting things.
Even though the same period has contained some of the roughest periods of my
life, I can honestly say that I've never been happier to be alive, and it's
the beauty I find in small, everyday human connections that keeps me going.

------
opendomain
Please note that the results are not reproducible.

This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be
dangerous if not administered by a doctor

~~~
ams6110
It can be dangerous even if administered by a doctor, I'd think. Doctors do
many things that you'd normally never think to do, e.g. administer substances
that are essentially poisons but have certain effects that are thought to be
worth the risk compared to doing nothing.

------
hughperkins
I think the premise for the story - applying magnetism to the brain curing
autism tomorrow - seems suspect, and don't really believe it.

~~~
kolbe
The guy still writes as if he has autism, too. I think the placebo is just
strong, and the confidence he's gained is what changed his life.

------
epx
I had a slightly similar experience while taking antidepressants. The anxiety
went completely away. That made me drive more recklessly (my parents and my
wife began to dread taking a lift) and I contemplated getting a mistress. Of
course, I did compensate for that, once I took note of the effects. But
actually a certain level of anxiety is a good tool, and I went out of
medication as soon as possible.

I talked about my suspected Asperger syndrome with the psychiatrist, and she
said "I could medicate you for that, but are you really sure you want to
change?".

------
callesgg
I often think about how strong the emotions that other people feel are.

Situations can be turned upside down when trying to think from the perspective
of a person with stronger emotional responses.

------
foobarbecue
"Seeing emotion didn’t make my life happy. It scared me, as the fear I felt in
others took hold in me, too." Reminded me of an excellent death metal track:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVPIknZ9ao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVPIknZ9ao)

Lyrics include:

The thing that scares me most / Is the fear I see in others / And the thing
that really frightens me to the core / is when I see that fear in you

------
bung
> It took me five years to find a new balance and stability. In that time, my
> sense that I could see into people’s souls faded.

I wondered how that would go, we all go through years of social interaction
and have to build walls. Nowadays, I don't know if my walls have become too
thick or if I never had the same emotional range as others in the first place.

~~~
mfoy_
But without those walls you'd be as dysfunctional as the author in his first
few years of experiencing emotion.

Having some measure of "thick skin" is part and parcel for existence as a
social animal.

~~~
hosh
From a meditator's perspective, developing a thick skin is the wrong direction
for practice. That kind of thing creates a kind of contraction. The social
mask constrains the natural expression of the person to the point where the
social mask becomes confused with the person's identity. That's the stuff of
therapy and existential angst.

What this guy is experiencing is not so much different from a meditator who
has recently reawakened empathy, or a psychonaut whose psychedelic experiences
open up to the world of emotions. "Coping" is no longer authentic, and is seen
for the illusion that it is. For such people, the dysfunction is _not_ in the
awareness, but in that most people around you lack sufficient awareness -- yet
think they are "normal".

------
nxzero
Unclear how it made sense to provide such a potential life changing treatment
to someone that was likely more than halfway through their adult life. Is this
common to perform such potential profound treatment when there's a very real
chance of it having a negative impact?

~~~
josinalvo
As it was experimental, I'd guess they did not know the size of the effect.

If it gets out of the lab, though, I think an adult should always be able to
make the informed choice, rather than being denied because he is too old.

Your comment really pissed me off. The idea of having some doctor choose this
for him is really a special kind of evil.

~~~
nxzero
Medicine is not the Wild West, in my opinion, the best most common example
would be that most "medical" grade medicines require the approval of a doctor.
To me, the idea that someone that's already well adjusted should literally be
allowed to put there life at risk potentially is the very definition of
malpractice. Lastly, age was not the factor, but the percentage of the fellows
life already lived as "well" adjusted. To me, what's evil is the desire to
make everyone the same for the sake of being the same.

~~~
josinalvo
> To me, what's evil is the desire to make everyone the same for the sake of
> being the same.

No such desire here. In fact, I'd not be opposed to a treatment that made
people autistic, or, for a (perhaps) more attractive proposition, synesthetic.

As long as there is informed choice by an adult.

You can want neurodiversity, and think it is a good thing. Maybe it is. But
imposing it on others, for me, is not defensible.

Now, setting diversity aside for a moment...

> Medicine is not the Wild West...

No. In general, we only allow people treatment when we think they have a
disease(1).

This idea has merits: for example, it seems "obviously better" to treat the
hypocondriacs hypocondria than to allow them to take unnecessary surgery.

But it also has problems: the definition of disease becomes a matter of
consensus (i.e.: a political matter, even if the politics just happens amongst
doctors - or worse, philosophers or politicians) and individuals are
disallowed choosing what and who they want to be, by themselves.

Perhaps the best way to go is to have a "waiting period", to force you to
consider and seek alternative treatment before undergoing procedures that are
dangerous. I dont know, and I fear this is one of those "really no good
answer" questions.

(1) This might be a circular definition, "disease" being a thing we can treat
for

------
vehementi
> but instead she said matter of factly, “You won’t need me anymore.”

What? There was no follow up on this. Why would anyone say that - how does
this even make sense at a basic level? Was there no follow up question by him?

~~~
felideon
Sounds like something a depressed person would think, no matter how irrational
it sounds at face value.

------
leemailll
Is what he described different from popular view that autistic personal has a
problem because they are incapable of handling their sense of emotions from
others so they choose to avoid social interaction?

------
StanislavPetrov
Not to be insensitive, but what did he really expect? Experimenting with your
brain in order to change your perceptions and though processes are bound to
lead to major disruptions in your life.

------
rusabd
reminds me this sci fi story:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon)

``The operation is a success, and within the next three months Charlie's IQ
reaches 185. However, as his intelligence, education, and understanding of the
world increase, his relationships with people deteriorate''

------
barney54
This experiment is similar to what happens in the novel The Speed of Dark by
Elizabeth Moon. [http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-
Moon/dp/15012...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-
Moon/dp/1501278843)

~~~
conceit
Is that Brian Griffin's new book?

------
daveheq
Is losing your marriage an acceptable risk to try an autism cure?

------
phazelift
The perfect story for a movie, amazing, thanks for sharing.

------
flagelate
I read the entire article. It's better to be emotionless... at least
sometimes.

