Random Points for Discussion on Mongolia and Autism

A less technical post today, just a few points which I was pondering while watching a documentary last night and which I want to write now so as to postpone grading. The gist of the show was this: a couple had a severely autistic kid who was pretty much non-functional. They discovered that their child tended to calm down around horses, on the one hand, and on the other, the father had been a journalist who had covered many stories on traditional shamanistic healing thought that it was worth a try. So, where do horses and shamans intersect? Mongolia, evidently, so they took a trip out there to see what could be done for their child.

The first point concerning which I would like to have discussion is, to what extent do we need to actually understand the world to get around in it? This family went to Mongolia, saw the shamans, and after a trip to a tribe which herds reindeer, the child came away significantly better. Is it because of the shamans? Or because of the adventure taking him out of his normal circumstances? Both, perhaps? The family had a rather pragmatic attitude about it: it worked, and how it worked didn't really matter. To what extent would such pragmatism justify taking a mythical view of the world (which, for purposes of discussion, I am leaving vague)? And where do we draw the line for evidence for a belief? The child who regularly had temper tantrums and incontinence issues eerily got better after seeing the reindeer tribe shaman, but this is still only a single sample however striking and mixed with all sorts of other factors potentially responsible for his improvement.

Second, some of the experts on autism raised the point that there is a reason for genes related to autism: in limited manifestations at least, it is important that the human race have some autistic individuals. These individuals can do things that other people cannot in mastering immense amounts of details about very specialized topics, and having some people like this is an advantage. Now, if we were to have genetic engineering such that we could choose what our children would be like, we probably would not want them to be autistic. Similarly, it may be that most genetic expressions that we consider to be detrimental exist for some evolutionary reason, and while we don't want any given individual to have them, human society as a whole needs such individuals. So if we could choose what our children would be like, would this entail the eventual collapse of society?

Third, the documentary noted that most shamans had undergone a period of sickness, often with neurological symptoms. They were people on the margins of society, but their societies have places for them. By labeling all sorts of mental disorders and then institutionalizing programs and medicating individuals, do we lose out on being able to utilize human diversity? Even when we champion things like autism awareness, do we really create spaces in our society for such people to not only function in spite of their nature but to flourish because of it?