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from the superhero-cyborgs-need-a-special-suit,-too dept.
Why I'm turning my son into a cyborg (archive) (alt)
Imagine if everyone spoke a language you don't understand. People have been speaking it around you since the day you were born, but while everyone else picks it up immediately, for you it means nothing. Others become frustrated with you. Friendships and jobs are difficult. Just being "normal" becomes a battle.
For many with autism, this is the language of emotion. For those on the spectrum, fluency in facial expressions doesn't come for free as it does for "neurotypicals." To them, reading facial expressions seems like a superpower.
So when my son was diagnosed, I reacted not just as a mom. I reacted as a mad scientist and built him a superpower.
This isn't the first time I've played mad scientist with my son's biology. When he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I hacked his insulin pump and built an AI that learned to match his insulin to his emotions and activities. I've also explored neurotechnologies to augment human sight, hearing, memory, creativity, and emotions. Tiger moms might obsess over the "right" prep schools and extracurriculars for their child, but I say why leave their intellect up to chance?
I've chosen to turn my son into a cyborg and change the definition of what it means to be human. But do my son's engineered superpowers make him more human, or less?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 19 2019, @02:09PM
There is a major question about autism and whether rates have risen or if it has just become more important to notice autism and increased screening tools are finding more cases. Bear in mind that autism is a spectrum disorder - high functioning or mild symptomology might not have been recognized as such.
Diabetes does seem to be on the rise. Sugar is relatively cheap (relatively!) and so are fats. So if you don't have enough resources you are going to load yourself down with foods that actually produce obesity and help a person develop diabetes. If you have too much resources you might also buy more food, also causing obesity. So it's a double-edged sword - the poor and the rich both engage in behaviors which cause it.
This sig for rent.