ABSTRACT
There is a point that should be made right at the start of our discussion of this topic, one similar to that made in the conclusion to Part I. All serious research into autism acknowledges that it is a lifelong condition 90and that it is built into the fabric of the person who has it. It is, as we noted earlier, not an illness. As such, it cannot be cured. Why, then, does anyone think that the opposite might be true? What is it that somehow does not communicate itself about this aspect of the condition? Here, what is meant by the word ‘cure’ when used in relation to autism is especially instructive. Some would disagree with my first four sentences above, asserting that the research is wrong and indeed that autism can be cured, in the sense of being made to go away, and in this context it is also discussed in terms of words like ‘recovery’ and ‘healing.’ Others talk of cure to mean a process of making things better, of eliminating the most disabling aspects of the condition, in the way that the word might be applied to a process of treatment. For another group, the word ‘cure’ is a threat, a barely disguised attempt to define difference as something inherently negative and unwanted. Some want a cure with considerable passion and others oppose its place in any debate with equal intensity. These, we might feel, are all interesting positions given our starting point here: that autism cannot be cured.
