Will there be a cure for autism before 2032?
21
130
410
2032
3%
chance

"Cure" here means any treatment that can change someone's personality such that they're no longer diagnosed as autistic, or can prevent a newborn from being diagnosed. (Must be an actual change to the person, not a change to the diagnosis criteiria.)

Doesn't need to be widely available or approved by any regulatory agency, just needs to exist and be shown to work without any significant doubt on the matter.

An active brain device would count. Embryo selection would not count, since that's just "choosing a different person".

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Does it have to preserve other aspects of the person's mind to count?

@MartinRandall If it can be done intentionally and consistently, yeah.

predicts YES

@IsaacKing what is it is only a cure for certain friends or causes of autism?

predicts YES

friends -> forms

@MartinRandall Does 80% seem reasonable?

predicts YES

@IsaacKing hmm, your market, I think the current description is ambiguous.

bought Ṁ6 of YES

Do genetic edits count or is that choosing a different person?

@MartinRandall Counts only if the other attributes of the child can be left mostly unchanged.

bought Ṁ10 of YES

@IsaacKing I'm not quite sure what this means. Any cure for autism is going to change other attributes of the person.

@MartinRandall not really

bought Ṁ10 of NO

What proportion of people would a given intervention need to 'cure' (no longer meet diagnostic criteria) for you to resolve this as 'yes'? What standard of evidence would you accept for this?

@WXTJ Hmm, what do you think would be most in line with how we talk about cures for other things?

predicts NO

@IsaacKing Having briefly looked into it, it seems that there's no agreed threshold. The distinction between preventative/curative/palliative seems often used when discussing cancer treatment. It seems that 'curative' treatment could mean that the primary goal is to achieve a permanent remission. This could include situations where a 'cure' is quite unlikely (perhaps 15%), but remains the primary goal.

I don't think there'll be a neat answer here.

The closest I can think of right now is if a reputable medical authority produces well-evidenced treatment guidelines that state that an intervention is recommended, and that there is a reasonable possibility of it resulting in someone no longer meeting diagnostic criteria for autism, such that this is the primary goal of implementing it rather than a rare secondary outcome.

Interested to see how things like this get codified in prediction markets in the future!

Autism is a developmental condition, not a disease. There is no one specific cause that can be targeted, it is simply how a person processes and responds to information and external stimulus.

@BTE Sounds like you should bet NO then!