 The neurodiversity movement weaved together with the American social justice movement and developed an extremist part. By 2013, some neurodiversity advocates wrote that autism and ADHD are the result of normal natural variation in the human genome. By 2019, some said that the real problem is the dominant ableist culture of society that sets standards for what it means to be normal. Autismist is someone who believes that tipp... Is that really, like, radical? I don't know if she used that particular term, but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily radical. I mean, it's pretty in keeping with the social model of disability. Not sure about that characterization. Some of them have put the idea of treating autism on the same level as the idea of treating homosexuality. For example, autism speaks as a charitable organisation with the stated goal of creating an inclusive world for all individuals with autism throughout their lifespan. They partnered with Google on a project called Missing to develop a database to identify genetic variants of autism. On their website, they described the project's mission as to identify many subtypes of autism with the goal of developing more personalised and effective treatments. Two years ago, the project was decried by some people on Twitter as Eugenics, the Nazi doctrine of cleaning society from genetic-clean inferior groups, which back then included disabled and autistic people. It seems to me that these tweets attacking the Missing project were severely misrepresenting what the project website stated. Nevertheless, Autism Speaks, which I remind you is a charitable organisation that supports autistic people, has been labelled a hate group by some activists. This extreme position seems to be held by a small group that is vocal on Twitter and I don't think it's representative for the neurodiversity community as a whole, but it's clearly a sentiment that exists. I wouldn't say that that position is necessarily extremist. You only have to do a bit of digging into it to understand it. Is Sabine saying that she's for Eugenics? I know she's saying that that's not the aim of the study, but... Now this is an interesting one, because I've never seen this person before. They have about 1.3 million subscribers. This is Why Is Everybody Suddenly Neurodivergent by Sabine Hossenfelder. So this might be quite an interesting one. Maybe an outside perspective, maybe a psychological medical perspective on it, possibly. Righty, let's go for it, guys. And three, Simon Baron Cohen, a clinical psychologist at the University of Cambridge, claimed that Albert Einstein had autism. Elon Musk has had his Asperger syndrome, and if you ask Google, you'll find many lists of famous people who supposedly have autism, usually with the preamble, though he was never diagnosed. It's been attributed to Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Eminem, none of whom ever said anything to deny or confirm it. What's going on? Why does everyone suddenly have autism? How is it different from Asperger's syndrome? What does neurodivergent mean? And what is internalised ableism? Am I autistic? That's what we'll talk about today. Science without the gobbledygook. Asperger's syndrome, like, man, it's a bit outdated. Like, it may be ASD1, like, if you're going to be going to take the science perspective on it. Although I don't know about the ICD-10. I don't know if that's still part of the ICD-10. Might be. First things first, what is autism? The term autism was introduced in 1911 by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bloiler. He used to describe what he believed to be a childhood version of schizophrenia. The term autism alludes to the Greek word autus, which means self, a word that Bloiler used because the children seem to be detached from reality and withdrawn into their inner world, even though they didn't have smartphones back then. Autism was later recognised as a condition independent from schizophrenia. Today, the diagnosis of autism... I think that there is also a couple of extra parts to the history of autism. It's kind of the way that she's kind of going over it. It's like, this is where it came from. It's like, it was actually characterised by, like, something, something sucrava, I think, like, I think German scientists or something like that, who really kind of popularised and looked into childhood schizophrenia, which is kind of like, as she said, like a part of history in terms of how autism came to be. There was also another few prime movers in that way. There was Kana, who invented that kind of Kana's autism thing, which it was kind of a little bit of like a marketing kind of money-making thing for him because he made the criteria so narrow that it was basically just to, like, attracts, like, wealthy white people to, like, come get a diagnosis because that was a part of it. And then you obviously have Asperger's, Hans Asperger's who's, you know, has mixed feelings in the community about, you know, obviously, like, a part of the whole World War II thing. So there's different, like, people involved in that. I think Lorna Wing was also a really big prime mover in terms of understanding autism a bit better. She invented that triad of impairments, which we use a lot to explain, like, the traits of autism as far as, like, the medical and science fields go. Includes learning difficulties, especially with language and speech, trouble with verbal and non-verbal communication, avoiding eye contact, repetitive movements, specialized and often obsessive interests or behaviors, difficulties with emotional control and extreme reactions to stimuli, such as light, touch or noise. Autistic people also sometimes have unusual abilities, such as a remarkable memory for facts, numbers of visual details or doing mental arithmetic. This combination of cognitive problems... It's quite a rare thing. I think what she's trying to characterize there is fontism. It's quite a rare thing. Like, you know, someone who would be considered to be ASD-free, you know, very high support needs, just has, like, one skill that they're just exceptional at. It's very raffling. Blimps and abilities is the reason why some autistic people were once regarded idioservants. However, the word idiot has drifted in meaning since then and is now considered an insult, so the condition has been renamed to Sevant syndrome. Most people had probably never heard of autism until Dustin Hoffman introduced it to the world in 1988 with the movie Rain Man. The movie was inspired by Kim Peek, one of the most famous severs ever. But plot twist, why Peek had originally been diagnosed with autism in 2008, a group of doctors studied MRI images of his brain and concluded that he wasn't autistic, but most likely had FG syndrome, a genetic condition linked to abnormalities of the X chromosome. In 1943, the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger described a group of children who had difficulties with social interactions and communication, like autistic people, but who did not have the same troubles with language and cognitive function. This high-functioning autism became later called Asperger syndrome. Fast forward 70 years and psychologists decided that there is no clear distinction between Asperger syndrome and autism, and the term high-functioning autism is neither useful nor descriptive. Instead, there is an entire spectrum of symptoms with expressions that greatly vary. This is why the term Asperger syndrome is no longer in use today. It's now called autism spectrum disorder, ASD for short. ASD subsumes both Asperger syndrome, autism, and some other developmental disorders. Why Elon Musk referred to a retired expression like Asperger's, is anyone's guess? Maybe he spends too much time with this old people app called Twitter. I'd say it's probably because most people, when you say autism, think of people who have extremely high support needs. And so when you say you're autistic, they're like, what? Because it's going against what they have in the head about what an autistic person is like. And so Asperger's, it can sometimes be a little bit more like friendly to the public in terms of them understanding what you're talking about and not making like assumptions or like thinking that you're lying or like, you know, stuff like that. I think that's probably the reason why. And also like, perhaps Asperger's might not have as much stigma behind it than autism, not sure. Just giving it a guess. God, I hate Rain Man. I mean, say what you want about Rain Man. I mean, it's obviously like really like outdated in terms of autism depictions, but it was one of the first things that came out about it. It was kind of like a, I guess, like a start for autism being understood in the mainstream, I guess. Besides the previously mentioned difficulties with language, social interactions, emotional control and repetitive behavior, studies have found that ASD is correlated with anxiety, sleep problems, seizures and an elevated risk of gastrointestinal problems. Symptoms of ASD are usually diagnosed in early childhood and persist throughout life, though they can improve or get worse. The spectrum of the disorder does not refer to the strengths of the symptoms, but rather their variety. How strong the symptoms are is measured separately by three different levels, which indicate how much support the person needs. One is the lowest level, three, the highest. Of course, no one likes to use a clunky term like autism spectrum disorder, which is why most people still refer to it as just autism. To avoid confusion, what was previously called autism is now called classical autism. The other expression that has taken hold for having autism spectrum disorder is being on the spectrum, though I... Classical autism really loves to play the piano. Classical autism. God damn it. I don't think they should have called it quantum autism. Several studies have shown that the brains of children with ASD develop differently than those of most children, and that this difference is often visible in brain scans before the onset of symptoms. For example, a 2017 paper in Nature found that in ASD children, some parts of the brain grow noticeably faster than average, and that this growth is linked to the severity of social difficulties. Other studies... That's interesting. I know that there are some studies, perhaps going into development of the brain to do with neuronal pruning, where the connections are kind of pruned, not doing a very good job of explaining that. You've never watched Rain Man? I'd give it a watch, you know? It's definitely interesting. It's good to, I guess, see why people don't like it. Like, I'm not gonna lie. I did enjoy watching it. If I was to view it in terms of its accuracy and its impact on the autistic community, then I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. But I thought it was somewhat touching in certain ways, and I feel it is kind of somewhat overshadowed by this extreme savantist kind of skill that's very, very rare. It's just not really very representative. And a lot of people talk about it when you mention autism. They're like, oh, Rain Man, they're like, no. That one's not a Rain Man. These have shown that compared to the average person, people with ASD have significantly fewer connections between parts of the brain that are used for social interactions, and instead, more local connections in regions associated with sensory control. These properties can be inferred from brain scans before the age of two. How common is autism spectrum disorder? The worldwide prevalence of ASD is about 1%, but in high income countries, some estimates say the rate is higher. For example, a 2018 review by researchers from the UK found that ASD prevalence in England and North America is between 2.4 and almost 10% depending on region. And another factor to consider into this as well is masking on undiagnosed autism. So who knows what the percentage is like. It could be very, very high. It could be somewhat like around the 1% to 2% bull park. Who knows? According to the American Center for Disease Control, about 1 in 36 children in the United States were diagnosed with ASD in 2020. Probably quite a few of you who are watching this video are autistic. I'm afraid I have nothing whatsoever new to tell you. The number for ASD diagnoses has increased substantially over the past. Okay. We're done now. There's nothing new to just cutting out the autistic people from the video. I'm sure I think you're underplaying it, Sabine. Come on, give us some new factual information. Two decades. In 2000, it was only one in 150 children who were diagnosed in the US. This means the number has increased by almost a factor of five in 20 years. The increase in the UK has been even faster, almost a factor eight in the same period. That made- And this is not necessarily this increase, a result of autism becoming more prevalent, but the increased frequency of diagnosis, which is definitely like a good thing. So you're just catching more autistic people, basically. Not saying that that could be the only thing. Maybe the prevalence is increasing. Who knows? But I'd say that's a really big factor involved in this increase. Understanding de-stigmatization, more education around it, more research, more light input from the autistic community. The major reason for this is higher awareness and better screening. At the same time, the fraction of those severely affected by ASD is dropping. In the 1980s, more than two-thirds of people diagnosed with autism also had an intellectual disability. By 2018, the fraction of ASD children in the US classified with an intellectual disability, that's an IQ below 70, was 31%. This decrease of the fraction of those with severe disability is also likely due to the enhanced awareness and screening, which picks up on the less obvious cases. Yeah, picks up on the ASD ones. People like myself who might not have, you know, it's obviously going to have a big impact on someone's ability to sort of navigate life and learn and be a part of society if they have quite a severe intellectual disability, can be a little bit harder to pick up on people they don't. At the moment, there are about four times more men than women diagnosed with ASD. The reasons for this are not well understood. Several studies have shown that young girls are less likely to be diagnosed with ASD because they're better at hiding symptoms, a strategy that's referred to as masking. Masking includes copying facial expressions and social behavior or memorizing a repertoire of answers to questions that'll be accepted as normal enough. While masking might help girls with social integration, it can cause other mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. In later life, ASD in girls might get covered up by conditions such as eating disorders or OCD. Girls might also be more successful at masking because their social environment makes it easier. For example, a 2017 paper by American researchers observed 96 elementary school children, half of which with ASD. They found that ASD girls weaved in and out of social activities in loose groups, making it hard for anyone to tell whether they integrated well. Boys, on the other hand, tended to play organized games and the ASD boys just played alone so they stood out much more obviously. That's very interesting because that characterization of autistic girls, that's pretty much my experience in secondary school, social drifting between integrating within different social groups. That's definitely why I used to do. But also, I feel like even when I was younger, when I was a boy, when I was a child, a young boy, I didn't to enjoy being a part of group games. Not gonna lie. I think the interesting thing about the boy-to-girl ratio as well, it's definitely something that I've seen. I've seen a lot more undiagnosed women than undiagnosed men in my life, just going out through life. Yeah, I mean, mirroring is a component of masking. It's a component of social camouflage. You have the social camouflage being, I've got a video coming out on it actually tomorrow, a full presentation-style video, which social camouflage is split into assimilation, compensation, masking. Mirroring fits under one of those other categories rather than masking, but it's definitely a part of social camouflage. How much of the sex difference in ASD diagnosis is due to masking is presently unclear. What is clear, however, is that diagnosing girls requires other methods than those used for boys. And also, women definitely do tend to get more of the diagnosis of BPD than men do. Heard a lot about that from testimonials and also some statistics around it as well. BPD is very common misdiagnosis. ASD is normally diagnosed in childhood below the age of five, especially now that doctors look for symptoms during regular childhood screening. However, this is a fairly recent development. The increasing awareness of the condition has also resulted in larger numbers of people being diagnosed later in life because they fell through the cracks as children. Still, it can take a long time, sometimes years to get a diagnosis. It's a problem because the lack of diagnosis can make it more difficult to cope. A study done in the UK estimated that 10% of suicide victims had signs of undiagnosed autism. What causes it? Classical autism was originally believed to be a psychological condition that results from poor parenting. This idea was pushed in particular. Refrigerator, mother, something that was pushed out a lot. You know, I'm very empathetic towards like autistic parents as well because they've had their own wrap, like own like dealings of stigma around autism too. You know, it's a lot of people blaming mothers who are not like warm enough and not communicative and physically, like physical enough with their kids and so they develop autism. It's complete, complete box. Nuclear by the psychiatrist, Leo Kanna. He argued that the leading cause of autism was the refrigerator mother who didn't love her child as she should have. We now know that ASD is not the fault of maternal temperatures, but an unusual variation of neurodevelopment with a strong hereditary component. That is, children of people with ASD are considerably more likely to also have it. Different studies have put the probability at about 40 to 80%. Part of the difficulty of pinning the number down is that ASD has so many different facets. There are loads of genes involved and quite possibly some aspects of it are more others less hereditary. Some environmental factors also seem to play a role. For example, some studies have found a link between obesity or diabetes of the mother and ASD of the child. Really? Really? Odds relative risk ratio. Neonatal hypoxia, gestational diabetes. Valproate. Um, maternal age, paternal age, paternal age as well. Oldest symptom of ASD, really high. Preterm birth, paternal obesity. And it reduces with folic acid intake. Interesting, very interesting. 22 study as well, 2020. Wow, I think as well that there is, if I'm not wrong, some correlation between like polycystic ovary. I can't remember the actual term. Polycystic ovary syndrome, I think. And autism, if I'm not wrong. Though the increase in the odds ratio is not large and as it's often the case with studies like this, it's difficult to infer causation from a correlation because there could be underlying causes linking both. 2016 meta-analysis by a group of Chinese researchers looked at the link between the age of the parents and the chance of the child to have ASD. They took into account 27 studies with a total of almost 67,000 cases and found a clear correlation, especially with the age of the father. Per every increase of 10 years in maternal and paternal age, they found an associated 18% and 21% higher risk of ASD, respectively. You see, this is interesting. Again, as she said, this is a correlation. There might be, I might have to look into it a bit more but could be wrong not saying that this is at all factual but I feel like a lot of autistic people that I speak to, they don't tend to be that focused on having children as opposed to a lot of neurotypicals that I've spoken to. So maybe the increase in age of having a child might just be a fact that the parents were autistic, maybe. It's just a suggestion. I definitely have to look into it a bit more but some made that little little connection in my brain completely based on subjective experience and observing other people but that maybe could be something. Definitely need to look into that a bit more. We've also learned about a few things that do not cause it other than cold months. For example, vaccines. In 1998, an anti-vaccine activist managed to publish a fraudulent paper in the Lancet claiming that measles vaccines cause autism. He was struck off the medical register and the paper was retracted. If you're watching this channel, you probably don't need to be told but vaccines don't cause autism. They don't cause autism spectrum disorder either. To name just one example, a 2014 meta-analysis summarized 10 different studies and found no evidence of a relation between vaccination and ASD. Other things that don't cause ASD are caesarean sections in vitro fertilization, plastic, wrapper, bacterial infections and watching YouTube. ASD is the lifelike. Oh, that's kind of like, she's got this, this, this pizzazz, this like tongue-in-cheek humor. It's just delivered very like bluntly. It just gets me. Like, I love that style of humor. It's so funny. Oh my God. Yeah, vaccines. Yeah. Don't let anyone tell you that vaccines cause autism. It's, it's, it's bull, like, and it's dangerous, 100%. Long condition. There's no cure and there's no medication. However, early diagnosis and intervention with suitably targeted programs can greatly improve life satisfaction and medication as well as psychotherapy can be used to deal with some of the symptoms. And some of these interventions also have some, depending on what intervention you're going for and if you're autistic and you're in the autistic community, you know, I'm talking about, can also cause really negative lifelong things as well. Currently, the treatment focus is on psychological and social support for ASD children and their families. Some young autistic people don't speak at all and can benefit from using picture cards or speech-generating devices. Targeted programs that are started as early as possible can improve attention, language development, social engagement, and can reduce the severity of symptoms later in life. The most successful of these programs are those which include parents and schools because much of it comes down to other people understanding triggers and trying to avoid them. Really, really happy that it's been brought this up because as someone who's very, who applies and, you know, believes a lot in the social model of disability, I think this is a really, really important aspect to it. 100% in schools, that is where we need it. That is where a lot of the mental health comes from in my eyes, just from looking at the research. Some of the things that we experience in schools can have real lifelong impacts on our overall mental health well-being. For example, children with ASD might be bad at rapidly switching between tasks or be unable to read non-verbal clues, both of which can be avoided to a large degree. They also often use repetitive motion such as rocking or hand-flapping to calm themselves down. A behavior referred to as stimming. Asking them to stop is exactly the wrong thing to do. Those are some examples where awareness, among other people, can really make a big difference. There are also some medications to treat co-occurring symptoms like irritability, agitation, anxiety or depression, and some might benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. However, there's no one-size-fits-all approach because the symptoms of ASD are so varied. According to the diagnostic and statistical- A lot of the medications that she brought up there were very much like ADHD-related things. Methylphenidate, you know, Ritalin, all that stuff. And you're of mental disorders. Autism spectrum disorder is a mental health disorder. However, a lot of people with ASD and other conditions that have traditionally been labelled disorders feel that description is inappropriate. Just because they're not typical doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. The term that many of them prefer is that they are neurodiverse, as opposed to neurotypical. Sabine, you are like the golden child. I was so ready to add in a little bit of the autism community angle to stuff. And she's already including it, like, what a G. The term neurodiverse refers to a group, whereas an individual would be described as neurodivergent. Neurodiversity includes not just ASD, but also attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and a few other conditions. That's something that she's got wrong. This is something that I got wrong as well, but neurodiversity is not a restrictive term. It kind of makes it a bit more difficult because, like, in my eyes, at some point, the idea of neurodiversity was sort of like a deviation from that kind of viewing it as a disorder, viewing it as something that's the wholly negative. It was kind of like, okay, it's not all bad. It can actually be positive and can be neutral and et cetera. But, you know, the actual definition of neurodiversity is the variation in the human brain and that covers everything. Even some things that I would probably say are completely negative, like, you know, there's some cognitive things that are just flat out, just not good, like, for the person. And sometimes for people around them, especially if it's something like psychopathy, you know, can lead to a lot of horrible things happening, sociotherapy, or, you know, you could give a list of, like, different ways that human brain varies in terms of, like, diagnoses. That's all covered under neurodiversity. But I like the characterization that she's using. I very much do. But it's not correct. The term neurodiversity was coined in the late 1990s by the Australian sociologist Judy Singer, loosely based on the expression biodiversity. She saw it as an extension of social justice movements that had given women and homosexuals rights they should have had all along. Singer argued that neurodivergent people had not been given their rightful place in society either, and it was about time to stop pathologizing them. The neurodiversity movement weaved together with the American social justice movement and developed an extremist part. By 2013, some neurodiversity advocates wrote that autism and ADHD are the result of normal natural variation in the human genome. By 2019, some said that the real problem is the dominant ableist culture of society that sets standards for what it means to be normal. Enableist is someone who believes that typically... Is that really, like, radical? I don't know if she used that particular term, but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily radical. I mean, it's pretty in keeping with the social model of disability. Not sure about that characterization. Colabilities are superior. If you're neurodivergent but have internalized ableism, you may mistakenly blame yourself for the challenges you face when, in fact, the problem lies with the societal barriers and discrimination that make it harder for neurodivergent people to thrive. Some of them have put the idea of treating autism on the same level as the idea of treating homosexuality. For example, Autism Speaks is a charitable organization with the stated goal of creating an inclusive world for all individuals with autism throughout their lifespan. They partnered with Google on a project called Missing to develop a database to identify genetic variants of autism. On their website, they described the project's mission as to identify many subtypes of autism with the goal of developing more personalized and effective treatments. Two years ago, the project was decried by some people on Twitter as eugenics, the Nazi doctrine of cleaning society from genetically inferior groups which back then included disabled and autistic people. It seems to me that these tweets attacking the Missing project were severely misrepresenting what the project website stated. Nevertheless, Autism Speaks, which I remind you, is a charitable organization that supports autistic people, has been labeled a hate group by some activists. This extreme position seems to be held by a small group that is vocal on Twitter, and I don't think it's representative for the neurodiversity community as a whole, but it's clearly a sentiment that exists. I wouldn't say that that position is necessarily extremist. I mean, you only have to do a bit of digging into it to understand it. Is Sabine saying that she's for eugenics? I mean, I know she's saying that, okay, that that's not the aim of the study, but I think the issue when it comes to, like, I was actually, there was a subsection of this in the UK called the Spectrum 10K, which I believe was somewhat affiliated in that regard, and that was shut down in the UK as well. I actually interviewed Simon Baron Cohen and released my episode with him on the day of, I think, the Spectrum 10K being released. You know, I saw the utility in it. You know, I think that it could have been a really good thing because if we could rule out the sort of the genetic causes of autistic people experiencing mental health and actually point to the fact that it's our environment then perhaps there'll be a lot more evidence to put towards actually making some improvements to improve the life quality of autistic people. That was my view on it. I think the reason why people are against this idea of genetically identifying genes related to autism is that it can be used in other ways. And perhaps it may not be used in the UK because there is a lot of people who do not like this organization or like this sentiment of sort of curing and preventing autism. The thing is is that it could be used in other ways. And there is a probability that it could occur, like even in the UK, it could occur. I mean, it happens with Down syndrome, perhaps. Like people can sort of test for Down syndrome in the womb and choose whether to keep that embryo or not. What ones if that happens with autism? What ones if people have the ability to test and say, okay, I don't want an autistic kid? And that is the eugenics like looming over that aspect of things. And obviously people are going to have their own opinions of it. I don't think that it's a good thing that would happen. I also think that there would be other countries which are involved in this whole kind of open source study who could use that within their own population. People outside of the UK and the US, Australia, perhaps. That could be something that happens. So I don't think it's right, saying that it's a kind of like a radical kind of view because it's from what I've learned from the autistic communities talking to over autistic people. It's generally a bad sentiment to promote eugenics. And there is a lot of background to this organization that's been put forward. I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a hate group. I think that's a bit like over the top. But it definitely hasn't had the intention of putting resources into supporting families necessarily. It can be a very good source of information, some sort of medical information that does come up a lot on Google, which I see the utility of. But again, it was made in order to cure autism in the start. And I don't think that there's been sort of an accountability there of saying like, okay, this was actually how we are and we're trying to change. And it really hasn't been that long since they changed their sort of motives towards it. And I think that's why a lot of people are very hesitant to do so. It's a point of view. I wouldn't say that it's a radical point of view. This whole idea of ableism is also very real. Internalized ableism as well, making yourself feel bad for something that you can't control necessarily. I don't necessarily think it's always about over people. It could be comparing yourself to people who aren't autistic and sort of feeling bad about not being able to reach those standards or be that kind of person or do that kind of thing. It's kind of going a little bit more into like the social side than I expected it to. But let's continue. Let's see what else she has to say. Fast forward to 2023 and TikTok is full of teenagers celebrating their neurodiversity, some of them self-diagnosed. Now you might say there's nothing wrong with teenagers wanting to feel good about themselves. And I fully agree. The neurodiversity movement has a point. Our world is built for typical people and typical people are often not mindful of those who are less typical. In most cases, I think not so much because typical people are actively mean but passively careless. If you're too tall or too short, too loud or too quiet or too anything really, you'll have trouble fitting in. Some people's brains don't work like yours but that doesn't mean they are the problem. The problem might be that you're not making the necessary effort trying to understand them. Paying attention to those outside a standard deviation of the average makes their lives easier and enriches our society. That sounds all well and good. Problem is that most neurodivergent people you see on TikTok are those well enough to produce TikToks. And in contrast to being queer or female, ASD can in severe cases significantly impair person's ability to live independently. This is why the neurodiversity movement has seen somewhat of a backlash in recent years. Primarily from caregivers of people with level three ASD who feel like talking about internalized ableism doesn't help. For example, the London Bay... Very, very mixed feelings on this video now. I very much empathize with parents of people who do have ASD-free children. I think sometimes, I think a lot of the time actually people within the autistic community are kind of neglect to consider that. I do also find that people who do, who are characterized as being ASD-free, also come with an intellectual disability. I would argue the intellectual disability element that is the disabling part to a very large degree. I don't think it's always like that. So it's a bit of a gray area for me. The thing is with... I don't know, the way that she's framing it, it's kind of like... It doesn't sit right. I don't think she's kind of grasping the whole of it. A neurobiologist, Moab Constande, has written an article for Eon titled Against Neurodiversity in which he draws attention to a worrying trend of romanticizing autism that has extended to other conditions that can be severe, debilitating and life-threatening. Yeah, I think that's also like, of course, you're going to have the fringe cases. You're going to have the radical aspect of it. You know, what you can consider something... I've talked about before with psychopathy, which is a genetic thing. And psychopathy, which is more of an acquired neurodiversity, if you want to call it. Man, there is nothing good about having seizures, being epileptic. But the thing is, she's coming from the standpoint of neurodiversity being kind of like a counter-movement to autism being seen as a disability, whereas that's not how people characterize it within the circles that I've been a part of, particularly. It's more characterized as like... Yeah, a lot of people say it's neurodiversity and a disability. So it's not necessarily this kind of like contrasted to perspectives on it. It's more or less kind of drawing attention to the realities of it, some of the actual neutral and positive things that are involved within it. It's not all this kind of negative thing. And the reason why it's not all this negative thing is because it's true. It's not all negative. There are actually some really good things about being autistic. But I also don't think we should shut down parents of autistic people who do have children or the voices of people who are like quite intellectually disabled. It is an important component to think about, of 100%. Such as depression and schizophrenia. He writes that the idea that autism is a variation of normal is at odds with scientific understanding of the condition and that in their zealous pursuit of autistic rights some advocates have become authoritarian and militant, harassing and bullying anyone who dares to portray autism negatively or expresses a desire for treatment or cure. Yes, this happens. I think this happens in any type of social, socially like focused community. Like you're going to get people like that. I'm not one of those people. However, I do express distaste for the idea of treating or curing my autism or being autistic. Yeah, it's a tough one. But I, eugenics, man, like, come on. Tom Clements, who is autistic himself, wrote in an opinion piece of The Guardian that many now self-identify as autistic as though autism were a fashion label rather than a debilitating disorder. Oh my God. I get it. She's done a lot of research into it. She's seen it from both sides. It just feels like she was very much like, it feels like she's siding with some of these kind of mainstream opinions. You know, people saying that, oh, I'm autistic as a fashion label. Maybe like kids, children, people with other neurodivergent conditions, neurodivergencies, whatever, could be at risk for kind of misdiagnosing themselves. But the majority of autistic people that I've come across and know, they spend a long time contemplating learning about it. So it's definitely not like this isn't representative of the majority of adults, I would say. And that such an attitude has led to the marginalization of autistic people who, by virtue of their disability, are unable to speak and rely on others to do so on their behalf. Some neurodivergent people have pushed back, pointing out that Clements used the term high functioning to refer to himself and that such functioning labels should not be used because they suggest some people with ASD do not need help. Others complained that Clements is a very active show who spends a lot of time misrepresenting the neurodiversity movement and that he accuses autistic people of not actually being autistic. I didn't know anything about this. When I started making this video, I was just trying to understand the symptoms of autism and had no idea the topic had become so controversial. But I hope that this rundown helps you make a little sense of what's going on. In summary, autism spectrum disorder is a mental health condition that subsumes what was previously called autism and Asperger syndrome. It's more common than you might think affecting more than one in a hundred people. Most of them are able to live a fairly normal life but face challenges especially at work and in social interactions. Many of them prefer to refer to themselves as neurodivergent and try to raise awareness for the challenges they are facing. But the neurodiversity movement has been criticized for trivializing the problems of those most severely affected. I've been accused mostly by parents. And there is that really big divide between autistic adults and parents. I've seen it, it's very much like a thing. There needs to be more conversations about it. I've actually reached out to Autism Speaks for an interview because I want to talk to them about it. They don't want to talk to me. Like, I've tried, it's something that I want to do. I interviewed someone. Some of the videos are actually within this video that we're watching called the Autism Cafe who is a part of Autism Speaks. And has been subject to a lot of bullying actually from autistic people, which I'm not a fan of. She does also talk about the utility of ABA. So it's a good episode to watch if you want to I suppose understand kind of like our contrasting views on things or at least like hear her side of things, I guess. You know, I feel like a lot of these kind of like these news sources, pieces of information that they're very, they kind of paint it as a lot more of a radical thing than it is in reality, which it makes sense because social media outlets, they tend to focus on the loudest people, you know, and the loudest people tend to be like the most radical people. You know, I understand that it's just we need to get a little bit more like education out there about what it is that we're trying to do by, you know, like the actual autistic community. And a lot of people actually deviate a lot on their opinions and views, I would say. Let's see what she's got to say for the roundup and then we'll give a sort of a roundup to you. You several times of being autistic or having as give a roundup to the video myself. Berger's syndrome. It normally comes after a long list of complaints about how I'm rude and arrogant, talk like a robot. I'm about as empathetic as a brick and similarly spontaneous, but considerably less social. Luckily, there's an online self-test you can do for this. So let's see how neurodivergent I am. Here we go. Your autism spectrum symptoms are high. I think that's wrong. I'm really just rude or German, but then I repeat myself. She scored higher than me. I have like mild signs of autism when I take those tests. But what she said about the German aspect of things, it's a lot of the diagnosis is very subjective and dependent on culture. So you could imagine if someone's from a different culture, like where different sort of social rules sort of dictate what the normal is. Makes sense that perhaps like it wouldn't be as sort of identified in certain cultures. What do you think about neurodiversity? Are you autistic yourself or have autistic children? Let us know in the comments. I've often wished I could collect all news on one topic and see where it's been covered and who put what's been on it. And I've now found a way to do exactly this. It's a website and app called Ground News and they've been sponsoring this video. Okay, let's have a look at some of the comments. I'm interested to see like what people do. There's definitely a fine line between normalization and romanticization. I found it helps all to not consider my neurodivergent traits as weird, but it also feels odd to call them especially good. They are just, they just are and it's just me. Speaking for myself, I did not suddenly become autistic. I was autistic 58 years before I was diagnosed as well as, not everyone is neurodivergent. As a person who is not on Twitter, I want to say it. I think you might want to deeper dive into autism seeks before saying it's harmless. Sure, fearmongering ads, you could shrug off as just bad PR, but one of the co-founders, Bob Wright, has multiple occasions expressed his doubt on whether autism may be called by vaccines. All in all, this foundation is more interested in giving the parents of autism a platform rather than autistic people themselves. Yeah, and then you got, you got that kind of the fearmongering video that we watched when we had to look at Foster on the spectrum's video. You know, all in all, this video is a lot more comprehensive than I expected in terms of like the topics that she covered up, which is just going to talk about like the, the medical side of things. I was kind of like, that was kind of my approach, but it kind of turned into a little bit more of somewhat like kind of a social perspective, like looking at some of the things that are going on within the communities and the media. Yeah, it's not sure how I felt about it. I don't know what Sabine's personal thoughts are on it, but I definitely agree with one of the comments. Like she does need to do a little bit more reading into this stuff, perhaps like interview some autistic people, see what they think, get their voices like actually displayed within the video as well. I think that that could be something that's quite important.