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  • Autism is not a disease, and this isn't really an improvement over wanting to abort autistic fetuses. What happens to children who get this gene therapy but stay autistic? That person is going to have to live their whole life with the realization that their parents tried to change them and failed. And any child who is too old for it, because autism is a developmental disorder, but they have a sibling getting it, will feel equally unwanted.

    An autism "cure" is an excuse for why a neurotypical world is hostile towards autistic people, deepening that hostility and saying "Well actually it's because you're diseased but that's okay because we're going to try to change who you are."

    • Do you have the same opinion for someone with a level 3 on the ASD? They will require constant care just to function, and will decrease the material conditions of anyone who takes care of them.

      • The idea of classifications of autism into high-functioning and low-functioning groups like that was invented by famed Nazi Hans Asperger because he was enthusiastic about eugenics and wanted a method for determining which autistic people should stay and which should go.

        Someone who would get classified as "level 3" will 100% have issues that would be classified as diseases, and it makes more sense to treat those diseases first. But for someone with autism and nothing else? Yes I hold the same opinion that they should not have their autism eradicated.

      • They could “function” just fine if we didn’t live in this hellworld. Everyone needs support, some people need more, but it doesn’t make them “nonfunctional” it just means they need more support. Jesus

  • Paywall so I can't read the article. Presupposing a problem with neurodivergence is pretty gross. If this treatment eliminates neurodivergence in the child, I completely oppose it. If it only helps prevent lifelong disabilities like nonverbal development, then there could be some benefit.

    • I mean, like lots of scientific news stories, this is a bit... thin. "We solved it in mice!" is a headline we get for virtually every ailment imaginable and rarely results in a human-ready treatment in the immediate future.

      Past that, I don't think there's anything you can do to "eliminate neurodivergence" shy of intensive eugenics. There are definitely more sever instances of autistic symptoms and behaviors that undermine quality of life - sever speech impediments, pronounced OCD, epilepsy - that I don't think you can just condone in the name of diversity. If these symptoms can be treated, you're in a position to preserve neurodivergence by mitigating their worst manifestations rather than eliminating it.

      But gene editing is a dicey business for a whole host of reasons. This has all the hallmarks of a Trolley Problem dilemma, as there's going to be a real human cost to testing and mainstreaming a treatment that as the potential to make radical changes to the human genome. But it also has the potential to benefit an enormous number of people suffering from a debilitating condition.

      So much of the ethics will be bound up in the execution. When and how the treatment is administered, how the various conditions are diagnosed, whether we treat autistic tendency as a real quality-of-life affair or a purely cosmetic condition, whether it is something made generally available or paywalled behind for-profit bureaucracy...

      But the idea that we're just going to eliminate a general form of neurodivergence with a simple jab... That's more fantasy than reality.

    • ASD jab: Chinese scientists reach milestone in revolutionary gene therapy for autism

      Chinese scientists have reached a significant milestone in creating the first injection that can undo the signs of autism through genetic base editing within the brain.

      The treatment, developed by researchers in Shanghai, showed positive results when tested on mice.

      The team created a genome editing system, which successfully modified the DNA of mice that had been given a mutation found in some patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

      Mice given the injection containing the editing system registered a decrease in ASD-associated behaviour.

      In a paper on their research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on November 27, the scientists said the potential treatment method could not just be used for patients with ASD, but also other genetic neurodevelopmental disorders.

      ASD affects around 1 per cent of the global population. One in every 36 children in the United States is diagnosed with the disorder, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

      The disorder can affect a person’s ability to interact and communicate, as well as cause repetitive behaviours and intense interests.

      To study the impact of genomic editing for the treatment of ASD, the researchers created mice with mutations in the MEF2C gene, which they said was “strongly associated” with the disorder.

      Mutations in this gene were thought to cause developmental deficits, speech problems, repetitive behaviours and epilepsy, the paper said.

      The male mice given the mutation were found to have lower levels of the MEF2C protein in the brain, and had symptoms that mimicked ASD-like hyperactivity, problems with social interaction and repetitive behaviour.

      Earlier this month, Britain approved the world’s first CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing therapy for patients with blood conditions such as sickle cell disease.

      CRISPR-based systems perform gene editing by cutting the DNA double strand in half, which is repaired by cells once editing is complete. This process can lead to unintended mutations.

      To limit unintended mutations, the researchers used a single-base editing system – which they called AeCBE – that is able to work on individual DNA base pairs without creating any cuts.

      Li Dali, a professor of Life Sciences at East China Normal University, who is not an author on the paper, said this was the first effective treatment of mice with ASD-related mutations using base editing in the brain, according to Shenzhen-based autism media platform Dami & Xiaomi.

      To deliver the system into the brain, it needs to pass through the blood-brain barrier, which is a group of cells that tightly regulate the entry of molecules into the brain.

      Researchers overcame this barrier by packaging their editing system on to an adeno-associated virus vector – capable of crossing over into the brain.

      The combined editing system and virus vector was administered to mutant mice through a single injection into a tail vein. A few weeks later, the mice were examined.

      “The treatment successfully restored MEF2C protein levels in several brain regions and reversed the behavioural abnormalities in MEF2C-mutant mice,” the paper said.

      Through examining brain cells of the mice, the team found that the editors were able to perform repairs across the brain at an accuracy rate of 20 per cent, which was enough to raise levels of the MEF2C protein.

      The samples taken were a mixture of neurons along with other cells, so the team said that the editing rate of the neurons alone could be higher, as base editing happens preferentially in these cells.

      Researcher Chen Jin and his student Zhu Junjie at ShanghaiTech University, who are not authors on the paper, said that “although cases of ASD are extremely complex” this study provides guidance in using base editing to treat neurodevelopmental disorders, according to Dami & Xiaomi.

      Expansion of the technology and lower costs would make treatment using base editing more prevalent, the team added.

      “Individualised gene editing therapy could become feasible and affordable for patients in the near future,” the paper said.

      ASD is a complex disorder, and hundreds of mutations have been found to be related to it, said Zou Xiaobing, chief physician in child development behaviour at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University, according to Dami & Xiaomi.

      For some patients, the disorder may not be caused by a single nucleotide variation like it was for the mice in the study, but rather more complex mutations that would be difficult to edit.

      “Even if an effective gene therapy method is found in a specific single nucleotide variation, it is at least a very valuable thing for people with autism caused by this gene,” said Zou, who is not an author on the Nature Neuroscience paper.

      “Continuing scientific, targeted and personalised intervention and training based on the child’s specific situation is still the main way to deal with autism.”

      “This work suggests that in vivo base editing might be a feasible approach for intervening in genetic brain disorders in humans,” the paper said.

      While the target scope of the team’s genetic editing – as well as that of other scientists – was still limited, the paper said base editing systems with broader targets “would notably facilitate the development of genetic tools to intervene in genetic disorders”.

  • An injection to treat autism spectrum disorder might be within reach after a scientific trial on mice shows positive results.

  • Man, it really sucks to find out that even on this site, there's still people who get upvotes for saying that people like me are something to be "cured"

  • I think it should be 100% voluntary, the last thing I want to hear is people saying that Autism is a disease to be eradicated, I know plenty of people who have it and don’t consider it a disability in any sense. There are admittedly some that I know that don’t like it and the feelings and anxiety that comes with it. I can’t speak to it personally bc I don’t have it but from what I gather (from personal bias admittedly) it’s not something like Polio or Covid or Cancer in which a cure or breakthrough is more important. Just my 2 cents

    • I agree with that, neurodivergence shouldn't be seen as a negative. It's good to have options available for people, but we should also try to structure society in a way that's as accommodating as possible without people feeling forced to change how their minds work to fit in.

  • A sad development, I'll now become an ultra-left reactionary maoist and hate on Xi specifically for hating autistic people.

  • Commenting again just to say I hate how medical science reporting often doesn't even cite the name of the researchers. Not only is this very disrespectful towards the people who put in a lot of work into the research (and usually even publishing their results for the world to see), but it also makes it incredibly hard to verify the facts of the story.

    Naming them only as "Chinese scientists" is just insulting. And now all search results have been poisoned by people only citing what's in the SCMP article.

    • this is true for so many fields, in both science and art, the mass of people doing the bulk of the work get no recognition 😐

      also

      Li Dali, a professor of Life Sciences at East China Normal University, who is not an author on the paper [...]

      Researcher Chen Jin and his student Zhu Junjie at ShanghaiTech University, who are not authors on the paper [...]

  • For milder forms of autism, treatment should be left up to the person and definitely isn't necessary.

    However, I also know people who have extremely severe forms of autism, which are debilitating and require 24/7 care, for which such a treatment would be a godsend.

  • Excuse me what the FUCK?

    They really still trying to fucking cure us off the face of the earth huh

    This is fucking disgusting and I can’t believe I’m seeing people here reacting in any way positively, especially autistic people!

    This is genocidal shit!

    “Curing” autism is genocide

    • Speaking as a relatively high-functioning autistic person, and as a person who definitely perceives those people with autism I know as objectively blessed when compared to their allistic "peers", I'm trying to read this as the reporter's white-savior-y take on what may simply be a scientific advance?

      All but the first paragraphs are pay walled but, here goes my charitable guess toward the scientists here;

      Doctors have discovered how to undo a thing (in mice) that the author of this article describes as causing symptoms of autism. This is useful science I suppose, with it we might one day have the power to cure allism. Alternatively, as other comments have pointed out, there are autistic people who are unable to live "normal" lives (save, for a moment, the argument over what the fuck a "normal" life is and who the fuck thinks they have the right to "save" it). Consider instead an autistic person who wishes they had any choice regarding their autism, it would be cool if the science of neurodivergence had been developed enough to provide them with that choice. Realistically... I bear no illusions that choice might be involved. If doctors in the US had an excuse to call it "helping" when they fuck nonconsensually with someone's brain, I have no doubt I would be strapped to a fucking bed faster than you can say "free healthcare?". Between lobotomies and forced sterilization, the US has an undoubted record for society "cleansing".

86 comments