Let’s make everyone exactly the same!
Photo by Wing-Chi Poon, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5
The title of this post must be what the psychiatric and medical establishment is thinking of late.
A bunch of researchers recently came out with a study showing that giving oxytocin, a hormone that plays a role in bonding, to people with Asperger’s syndrome and high-functioning autism, makes them more social. I am willing to concede that oxytocin and social behavior are correlated, although as a dualist I do not believe that hormones or brain processes actually cause mental states.
But what I don’t get is why anyone would think this is a good idea. Asperger’s and other mental differences are not illnesses. They are not unpleasant things like pains or sicknesses that people want to get rid of. They are a part of people’s personalities, and a part of who they are. To get rid of Asperger’s syndrome would not be to help people but to change them into someone else.
Some people are social, and some people are not very social. Some people have lots of oxytocin, some people have an average amount, and some people don’t have a lot. All these ways of being are equally good.
To say that oxytocin can “help” people with Asperger’s to be more social is like saying that hair dye can “help” blond people to become brunette. If you want to be brunette, than yes, hair dye enables you to do that. But why would society want everyone in the world to be brunette? The world should have people with all different hair colors, just like it should have people with all different temperaments.
If you want to take hormones to change the way you are, fine. But by no means should people be encouraged to do this. To say that making people with Asperger’s more social is a way of “helping” them is incredibly insulting, intolerant, and cruel. As long as you do not violate the rights of others, no way of being is better than other ways. If less social people have trouble getting along in society, then that reflects badly on our society and indicates a need for our society to change, not for perfectly good people to change who they are to fit society’s unjust expectations.