When I saw the headline "Attacking Autism" in last week's City, I felt as though I had been kicked in the gut. However, I found the article to be a report on researchers' attempts to refine the process of autism diagnosis so that it will benefit more people and families of people on the autism spectrum: a very good thing, in my opinion. Nowhere in the article was there the implication that this research "attacked" autism. By titling this article "Attacking Autism," City editors betray a terrible ignorance of autism and the effect of autism on the many families it affects.

This ignorance is, sadly, understandable. The tug-of-war over the naming rights for the effect of autism on individuals and families has been carried on in the popular media for so many years that most people believe they understand autism and what it means to be autistic, or to have an autistic family member, even if they've never met an autistic person. The very name of our government's legislation concerning autistic persons, the "Combating Autism Act" reveals the general attitude toward autism and the autistic. I have been appalled by this title since I first heard it. In a world of violence and war, why are we yet again declaring war? Who and what are we fighting? What innocents will be harmed by the fallout?

My teenaged son has been autistic from birth, and I see him as a potential victim of the violent imagery surrounding autism. Unlike some who seek a "cure" for their autistic children, my husband and I have always seen it as an integral part of him and not an illness which needed to be "cured." Of course, we have sought and he has received help for the many aspects of autism that give him difficulty. Along the way, though, we have found that the attitudes of society toward people of "difference" (the term we prefer over "disability") are often the real problem.

My greatest worry as a parent of an autistic child is that society has become so sure that autism is something to be "attacked" that my son's existence will not be valued. I could not help but find it ironic that the "Attacking Autism" article was near the weekly "Cost of War" feature. The cost of this "war" on autism is also a cost of human lives. Are these lives just as valuable as those being sent to war? As a mother, and as a human being, I believe the answer is Yes. Please educate yourselves before assuming that the war on autism is a just one.

LISA GWINNER, ROCHESTER