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Why Autism eugenics is everybody’s business

“Spectrum 10K”, an autism study billed as the largest of its kind in the UK, has been launched. The very community at the heart of it are petitioning for it to be halted, but the wider implications should be a concern to society as a whole. Under the new study gene samples from 10,000 autistic people are being collected, and combined with samples already gathered from 90,000 autistics around the world, including questionnaires, medical and educational records. The autistic community fears that the study opens the door to “eugenics” without proper accountability and safeguards
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Elastigirl: The Autistic Zebra

I have lived with the symptoms of EDS my entire life, with joint pain and symptoms of POTS appearing when I was a toddler, although being so small I was unable to adequately express what I was experiencing. Having lived with a certain degree of chronic pain and fatigue my entire life, and being unable to remember a time when I did not live in agony, I assumed it was a completely normal part of the human experience and I was simply lazy and weak for being unable to push through like everyone else did.
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Flow Unlocked: an interim reflection

Dr Georgia Pavloopoulou is an autism researcher specialising in family research and autistic mental health. She uses community based participatory methodologies[1] guided by the lifeworld of the participant [2]. Her recent study on the impact of COVID19 on family members of autistic people[3], showed how lacking society’s understanding is of #autistic lives and the wider autistic community. We have co-established FlowUnlocked to address this urgent issue.
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My Attitude to Autism

“It would have been so easy,” Mum says, “just to say ‘oh, she’s Autie’, on so many occasions.” We’re talking about how Mum and Dad have pushed me through the years, not to be normal, but so I would do better on my own. We shared the same attitude towards parents who prefer to shelter …

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Worn Out

“Have a cup of tea.” Says a helpful voice, carefully placing a cardboard mug next to me on the grass floor. It’s the third festival I’ve been to with my Dad, by this time we have worked up a routine of starting our day in the comedy tent, theatre in the afternoon, then finding some …

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Normal

Normal is a state of equilibrium. I know this because of how much my life has changed just in the past two years - and how much it is set to change in the next five. I have a place to study at university in September, finishing my job in August, from university I plan to go into teaching - but who knows what state of 'normal' I will be in then. Since going into lockdown, there hasn't been a new 'normal' for me to stick to. Of course every week day has pretty much been the same, I have been surrounded by the same people and the same things - there is some consistency in my everyday experiences. But there is a questioning sensation in the back of my mind which is asking what this sort of 'normal' is, will it stay this way forever? What will happen once we go back to mingling with other people?