January 13, 2005
News Makers
TO CURE OR NOT?: Is autism a disease that needs treating or simply a variation in the human condition, like left-handedness?
The New York Times quoted Jane Meyerding, program coordinator for the UW’s International Studies Center, in a Dec. 20, 2004, article about autism headlined “How about not ‘curing’ us, some autistics are pleading.” A photo of Meyerding also ran.
The story discussed the view held by some people who have autism or Asperger’s Syndrome (thought to be a mild form of autism) that they don’t need to be cured so much as understood. The article took on the question of whether Applied Behavior Analysis, an autism therapy, by its very nature abuses the autistic people it seeks to help by training them to overcome behaviors some see as their natural reactions to a world brimming with overstimulation.
“Behaviors are so often attempts to communicate,” said Meyerding, who has autism and is a contributor to the e-mail discussion list Autistic Advocacy. “When you snuff out the behaviors you snuff out the attempts to communicate.”
STRAINED BEDFELLOWS: The national press often contacts UW sociology Professor Pepper Schwartz on matters of pop culture and sexuality. And so did The Village Voice, in a late-October article headlined “Sleeping With the Enemy,” on how the heated 2004 election season brought political party divisions to the American bedroom.
Schwartz said people are less likely to tolerate political differences in their mate these days than in elections past. “You could have been a Rockefeller Republican and gotten along with a Kennedy Democrat without too much trouble, and now it is a lot less possible,” said Schwartz, who in addition to her UW duties is an author and “relationship advisor” for the dating Web site perfectmatch.com.
“Politics now tends to be one of those litmus tests when you’re dating. People no longer ignore it. If you find out about someone’s views and you disagree, you feel that this is not your soul mate — how could they feel that way, what kind of person are they?”
AN ESKIMO LIFE: Carol Zane Jolles, a UW anthropologist, was quoted late last year in an in-depth New York Times story about the fading of Eskimo traditions in Gambell, Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Jolles wrote a deeply researched book in 2002 called Faith, Food and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community, chronicling life changes over the years among the whale- and walrus-hunting Yupik people.
In a sort of repetition of an age-old story, Jolles commented in the New York Times article that she had seen major shifts in lifestyles over her years of studying the village of Gambell and the Yupik. Satellite dishes now sprout from roofs of prefabricated homes that have replaced the walrus hide houses of generations past. The newer houses emphasize the nuclear family over the extended family, and young children speak English now more readily than Siberian Yupik, the language of their parents.
“Everyone now has access to the rest of the world,” Jolles was quoted as saying. “They are American citizens and they have the same interests and values.” Jolles added, “They are watching how other people live on television, the modern movies, and there is a great impact on young people.”
