…And one pill makes you small
Over at io9, there’s a brief article discussing the possibility that at some point in the future we could see people engaging in voluntary and recreational autism thanks to recent scientific breakthroughs.
Over the past year, researchers have demonstrated several times that they can turn mice autistic by messing with brain chemistry—and then “cure” them using the same techniques. The discoveries could lead to a scenario similar to the one in Vernor Vinge’s novel A Deepness in the Sky, where people are given a brain treatment called “focusing” that essentially turns them autistic and makes them obsessive, detail-oriented workers.
It’s a difficult concept to consider seriously, actually. I’ve written before on this blog (but not for a looong time now) about people who feel compelled to engage in experimental pharmacology – using prescription medicines for new purposes and/or experimenting with illegal drugs to get a result different from the common high the substance in question is usually used for.
And there are a lot of things out there that people experiment with. Lately, Provigil – a prescription drug used for narcoleptics – is used by some college students as a brain-enhancer and a stimulant to get them through long nights cramming and working on homework projects. The temptation is great – pop a pill and change the way your body and/or brain behaves long enough for you to do what you want to get done. It’s a recurring theme in Science Fiction from early radio dramas to Transmetropolitan
The problem with the idea of voluntary or recreational autism is that autism is more than just focusing on work and not caring about human relationships. There are a number of troubling issues that go along with autism, and many that don’t crop up in every single case. Autism is a very serious condition that at the moment has no cure. If such research leads to a cure for natural autism, then more power to it – but at this moment I have trouble imagining that anybody who is aware of what autism actually is would ever line up for a pill that would cause them to develop it – even temporarily.