Autism is a developmental disease that is caused by problems in the bio-neurogical deveolpment of a child. No one is really sure the exact cause of Autism though. Autism affects many parts of the brain including hindering ones ability to develop communication skills, social interaction skills, and cognitive functioning skills. Having Autism not only affects those skills, it also can cause asthma, allergies, epilepsy, digestive disorders, and many more physical issues. Children with Autism tend to have an ability to remember things such as numbers to an insane extent. For instance, a boy from my high school that has Autism was able to memorize every person's name and address in the whole address book. A video here shows how kids with Autism act.
There are 2 vaccines for Autism, which are Thimerosal and MMR.There are also many treatments people use such as different types of therapy, behavior modification, and relationship intervention modification. A treatment known as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has caused many controversial debates due to the ethical challenges it brings. ABA teaches people with Autism to act like people without Autism but does not actually change anything in their brain; they are just taught to mimic the so-called "normal" people. They are supposed to suppress their natural feelings, which some people consider to be unethical because they are trying to hide who they really are. There is also a debate whether vaccines such as Thimerosal work because there is no concrete evidence that they do. There are some cases where the vaccines work and some where they have no effect neurologically. Do you think that the vaccines and treatments are ethical? Is it possible to treat these Autistic patients in a more ethical and standard way?
