On Things That Won't "Cure" Autism

One of the tendencies of the assorted parents' groups which I find most annoying is the tendency for many of them to promote an attitude of desperation towards autism -- and, with it, the idea that a parent should try anything and everything which could help their child "recover". In practicality, of course, this means anything or everything that someone somewhere claims will help.

The fact that people get swindled as a result is among the least appalling aspects of this.

The list of things which have been promoted as such -- and which parents have tried -- is absurdly long and often just plain absurd. Seriously, it almost mocks itself at times. If it wasn't for the fact that parents are actually doing these things to their kids (which I cannot emphasize enough) out of desperation to "cure" or "recover" their children, it would actually be comedic.

Among other things, the horrific list of things which parents have done includes (but is by no means limited to):

•  Feeding their kids massive overdoses of vitamins to the point that they suffer from or risk vitamin poisoning.
• Putting their kids into a potentially explosive tube full of compressed air for a prolonged period of time (usually around an hour per session).
• Getting their kids high on marijuana.
• Forgoing protection against potentially deadly diseases.
• Strapping their kids down for several hours while they pump an irritant into said child's veins.
• Deliberately infesting their children with intestinal parasites.
• Chemically castrating their children.
• Feeding their kids an industrial chemical which has never been subjected to proper safety testing.
• Making their children drink an industrial bleaching agent.
• Giving their children bleach enemas.

 
 This is a highly incomplete list.

When I say that the stigmatization and panic-mongering that organizations like Autism Speaks engage in has real consequences for autistic people... the above is just one of the things I'm talking about.

Take this as you will.

Edit: Was corrected on a relatively minor point.

"I Am Autism"

Autism Speaks's latest video, "I Am Autism", is the single most offensive thing I've ever seen.

I'm not going to get into the issue of Autism Speaks's history of excluding autistic people, its repeated patronization of us, its... well, you get the idea. I'm just going to confine myself to the video.

I will, however, comment that I think this despite the fact that I grew up in the South Florida Jewish community and have read Mein Kampf in its entirety. I am also quite familiar with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and have seen a translated brochure for Stalin World. During high school, I made something of a study of Soviet propaganda. Keep this in mind when I say that "I Am Autism" is the most offensive thing I've ever seen. It's that bad.

As I've tried to explain before, you cannot separate autism from autistic individuals. Anything said about autism is said about autistic people. Anything said about autism on a demographic level is said about the existence of us as a group; anything said about autism in a child is said about that child.

The following is, other than some changes in number (I changed a few uses of "I" to "we" for gramatical reasons) identical in meaning to the video. Hopefully, it will make just why the autistic community is so outraged a bit more apparent to anyone reading it:

(In sinister tones)

I am the existence of autistic people.

I am visible among your children, but I am invisible to you until it is too late.

I know where you live -- and guess what? I live there, too.

I hover around all of you. I know no color barrier, no religion, no morality, no currency. I speak your language fluently, and with every voice I take away, I acquire yet another language.

I work very quickly. The existence of autistic people works faster than pediatric AIDS, cancer, and diabetes combined.

And, if you're happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands, and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain.

I don't sleep, so I'll make sure you don't, either.

Having an autistic child will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend a temple, a birthday party, a public park, without a struggle, without embarassment, without pain.

You have no cure for me. Your scientists don't have the resources, and autistic people relish their desperation.

Your neighbors are happier to pretend that I don't exist. Of course, until it's their child who's autistic.

We are autistic people. We have no interest in right or wrong. We derive great pleasure out of your loneliness; we will fight to take away your hope. We will plot to rob you of your children and your dreams. We will make sure that every day you wake up, you will cry, wondering "Who will take care of my child after I die?"

And the truth is, we are still winning and you are scared, and you should be.

I am the existence of autistic people. You ignored me. That was a mistake.

And that's the first half. To try and translate the second, I'd need to change the semantics a bit more. Suffice it to say that it's a determined statement that people are getting together to rip their actual child out of the "shell" that we are.

In other words, it's based on the implicit philosophy that we're not real people and that they need to make us into real people.

Gyah.

Edit: Katie Miller did a brilliant parody of the video here. I'm still laughing.