Autism Speaks is a racket that does nothing to help autistic children. They take most of the money that is given to them and waste it on genetic research that they already know is a waste of time.
Bernie Marcus, owner of Home Depot donated $25 million to Autism Speaks. Marcus is a leader of tort reform that tries to prevent people from sueing large corporations. Bob Wright is co-chair of GE, who owned a thimerosal plant, the substance in vaccines that causes autism.
While Bob Wright favors helping his grandson get the mercury out of his brain that caused his autism, he is not in favor of sharing this information with the rest of the world. Telling the world how his company's product caused the autism epidemic would not be in his best selfish interest. Nor would it be in the interest of the drug companies who helped pay his enormous salary with their advertising while he was running NBC.
Bernie Marcus favors tort reform to screw people who get hurt by large corporations. Donating his money to Autism Speaks must make sense to him since Bob Wright's corporation and his sponsors are certanly large corporations who are still hurting babies all over the world. Autism Speaks appears to be a giant sham of a charitable organization that wants to keep selling thimerosal to poison babies into autism while hiding the truth so they won't get sued.
Bob Wright's daughter has an autistic son. That son is the reason Autism Speaks was formed. Yet, when Katie Wright decided to tell people that she was helping her son by using biomedical intervention to address the mercury that caused his autism, Autism Speaks basically disowned her. Does this make any sense?
"We are dedicated to funding global biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments, and cure for autism;..." is what it says on Autism Speaks' website. We now know that this is a blatant lie. When Bob Wright's daughter talks about trying to cure her son, he shuts her up. When scientists apply for funds to do biomedical research, they are always turned down. The only research that is funded is genetic.
The genetic research is funded because it obfuscates the truth about thimerosal. Some genetic markers may be found that happen to be shared by a large number of autistic children. When these circumstantial results are gathered, they will be broadcast as the identification of the cause of autism. That will be a very expensive and very sophistocated lie that a lot of people won't see through. People who don't already know the truth that Bob Wright knows to help his grandson will believe this nonsense.
I won't believe one word of it because I, like Bob Wright, already know the truth. I watched my normal baby boy disappear into an apparent vegetative state at about 10 months of age. I had no idea why back in 1997 and not many other people knew at that time either. My son remained in that vegetative state until 2004 when I began to remove the mercury from his brain with chelation therapy. Expert consensus seems to agree that a child's best chance for recovery from autism is by starting chelation before age 6 while the brain is still producing new brain cells. Since my son was almost 8 years old when I started chelation, he may have missed that chance. Bob Wright is taking actions that will ensure most children plunged into autism by mercury in vaccines will also miss that chance by refusing to publicize the truth. My son continues to improve. Nobody would call him a vegetable now but his chances at independent living and a decent life are still slim. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop spending every waking minute trying to give him whatever help is available.
Bob Wright is doing his best to make sure that no parent with an autistic child learns what they need to know to cure that child. Autism Speaks will not tell anyone how Bob Wright's grandson is being helped.
If you have an autistic child and think curing it is a good idea, ask me, I'll tell you how I'm helping my son get the mercury out of his brain. Unlike Bob Wright, I won't ask for any of your money and I won't lie to you by handing you a line of bull aqbout genetic research.
In the meantime, thimerosal filled vaccines will continue to be sold causing lives of pure horror for millions of babies all over the world. Bob Wright could play a big role in preventing these babies from being poisoned in places like China, India and Africa where the full dose of mercury is still in the vaccines. Bob Wright won't tell the truth so I'll do it. Unfortunately, I don't have his money to advertise this on television so all I can do is write about it here.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Autism, Vaccination and Neurodiversity - A Timeline Part 3: Response to Donna Williams
Donna Williams wrote...
"I have NEVER had a diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder. An unqualified sociology professor gave this OPINION of me in 1994 based on his memories of me in obligatory 30 minute private 1-1 office appointments as my thesis supervisor to discuss my thesis (10 in all)."
I don't think there is any doubt that you have had multiple personalities. Amanda Baggs who should know, says you do. She says on her blog, "Donna Williams and some others have had personas they used in order to pass".
Your book Nobody Nowhere is listed under Healthy Multiplicity Titles at Astreas Bookstore.
Also, it is quite clear from your publishers that you had at least two different personas while you were growing up - Carol and Willie.
You also say on your website here that you lived your "first twenty-five years as three people- a male (Willie), a female (Carol) and me (Donna)."
And yet you claim you have never had a diagnosis of MPD or DID.
I'm quite willing to change (and have changed) the wording of my post, but it won't alter the fact that by your own words you lived for 25 years as three different people. And to a layperson, and I dare say psychiatric professionals, that means you had Multiple Personality Disorder.
"Ask yourself why a sociology professor would have got MPD like behaviour from someone with a long term background of abuse when obliging them to have 1-1 in their office in order to pass the course. It ain't rocket science... "
Are you accusing Dr Chris Eipper of LaTrobe University of impropriety, Donna? You have on a number of occasions in the past referred to him as "a stalker", but here you are giving the distinct impression that his alleged stalking of you isn't his only crime.
This reminds me very much of Amanda Baggs accusing her once close schoolfriend Daniel Drucker of being a stalker of disabled women. I wonder how these men feel when they see themselves being publicly maligned, and their reputations brought into question online for all the world to see, and yet they are not given the chance to defend themselves against such terrible accusations.
"As for formal diagnosis, I was assessed at age 2 as psychotic in 1965 at a private hospital called St Elmo's in Brunswick, Victoria. This was after admission for appearing deaf, no pain response, bruising when touched (leukemia was queried) and coughing up blood. My parents were reassured I was not deaf and didn't have leukemia but was psychotic."
You say, “assessed at age 2 as psychotic”, not diagnosed with ‘psychosis’. I believe you chose your words carefully, Donna. There is a world of difference between having psychotic behaviour and being diagnosed with psychosis, just as there is a world of difference between having autistic behaviour and actually being “diagnosed with autism”.
I don’t understand how the "bruising when touched" could have been the result of psychotic behaviour. Surely, the bruises were either the result of a medical problem which would have needed thorough investigation and treatment, or they would have been indicative of physical abuse.
Could it have been familial abuse, Donna? I read your first book in 1995, and the horrendous descriptions of your early life at the hands of your abusive and neglectful parents. And I pitied you.
That is why I continue to wonder if your autistic behaviours sprang from your turbulent past. It occurs to me that your life could have been very similar to the lives of the deprived, abused and emotionally disturbed children described by both Dr Bartak and Michael Rutter, whose autistic behaviours disappeared when they were moved to caring and supportive environments, or the children recovered completely with “reasonable foster care”.
So much for medical professionals who would have us believe that autism is a mysterious, genetic, and incurable disorder. And so much for Neurodiversity activists who claim that all autism is genetic, incurable, and life-long.
I guess you already know there are children being diagnosed today with autism who actually have Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). To give such children an autism diagnosis is grossly unfair to parents who are devoted to their children and have given them all the love and care in the world. Should we return to the days of Bettelheim and his theory of “refrigerator mothers”? Or Virginia Axline? As if a few hours of Play Therapy could turn a child like Dibs into a genius!
Having first read Dibs in the 70s, I was horrified to discover that this work of fiction is still being reprinted - and, of all things, has become a school textbook!
"In late childhood I read on the teacher's student roll next to my name "Donna Williams is a disturbed child". This was in 1974, I was 11. This was my 2nd diagnosis and based on being studied by the Psych and Guidance service to the school."
Why do you count this description in a teacher’s roll book as an official diagnosis, and other descriptions as opinions? Do you doubt its accuracy?
You have also been described and identified as a person with Multiple Personality Disorder. Why then do you totally discount MPD/DID, when to the average layperson who has watched movies like ‘The Three Faces of Eve’, and then reads that you have lived as three people for twenty-five years, "Dissociative Identity Disorder" might very easily spring to their minds. Is there another disorder in the DSM that would be a better ‘fit’?
”I was diagnosed with autism in my 20s in 1991.”
Did Dr Bartak actually diagnose you with autism, after the test he gave you, or did he describe you as autistic? You have often written, “I was diagnosed as autistic”, but “autistic” to me is a description, not a diagnosis.
You might already be aware that Thomas McKean, who knew you very well for some years, accused you of being a fraud in a message he wrote to a support group in 1998, but it occurs to me that he might have been trying to get his own back after you had openly questioned his “autism” diagnosis in a letter to MAAP in 1995. I want to make it clear to others that you did not question that he was autistic, only that he might have been misdiagnosed with autism. You said, “it is true that many autistics are misdiagnosed and, therefore, it is just as potentially true that schizophrenics (and people with other non-autistic disabilities including some with PDD (NOS), are misdiagnosed as autistic.”
That’s a very important quote from you, Donna, because this statement is as true today as it was back in 1995, and I couldn’t agree with you more. There is a huge difference between being autistic and having autism, isn’t there? And today everyone with a deficit in what is considered to be 'normal' socialization, for whatever reason, is being shoved under the "Autistic" umbrella. Speech delayed toddlers for instance - and adult schizophrenics.
I believe that this problem has become far, far worse in the 2000s, because of the number of self-identifying “autistics” who, having clicked the ‘right’ set of answers in the Aspie online quizzes think they are autistic, have autism and get an identity for themselves with Neurodiversity. Once they’ve joined the Club, they start disseminating anti-treatment, anti-cure propaganda.
What appals me most is that these people, and many of them appear to be very young and naive, some of them in their early teens, are identifying with a brand new “culture”. They haven’t even been misdiagnosed by a psychiatrist, they are self-diagnosed, and they look down on low-functioning autistics, and shun them. Donna, does this appal you as much as it appals me?
I am mentioning fraud because it seems to me that everyone who is 'someone' has been accused of fraud at some point – you, Thomas McKean, Jim Sinclair, Amanda Baggs, and others.
" Yes, my IQ was tested as under 70 in my 20s after I had a university degree.."
I don’t understand why you would want to quote your lowest score in a specific test, if that’s what you are doing. Every time you do, I wonder if you are trying to make a point to show people how impaired you really were to somehow prove you had autism and were low-functioning. An IQ of less than 70 is in the retarded range, isn’t it? And there is no way in the world that I’d believe that anyone could ever think of you as retarded, Donna. With all your skills, you are highly accomplished.
"I would like to neatly fit a box of HFA or Asperger's, but fact is I don't. I do function today in the HFA range, but this is not the girl who peed all over her room at age 11, its not the kid who had 10% receptive language at age 9, its not the kid who had bites all over her arms at age 6 from her own teeth, its not the kid who had no sense of pain and was trying to cough up her own lungs at age 2. Fact is, many people with autism WONT make my journey, but I did."
Yes, you did. With biomedical intervention, and diet.
Donna, you give the impression that you were a very low-functioning child with severe autism, and it appears that you attribute your self-abusive behaviours, and your peeing all over your bedroom floor at age 11, to your autism. Don’t you think that living in a dysfunctional home with abusive and neglectful parents, an alcoholic mother who wasn’t there for you, and your grandfather dying when he did, would have had more than a little impact on your development, and emotional state?
Did you pee all over the classroom floor when you were at school all day or did you reserve that behaviour for your bedroom? Are you trying to say that you were incontinent at 11 and couldn’t control your bladder, or what?
And if your exceptionally high pain threshold and the shocking self-injurious behaviours you describe are examples you use as evidence that you had low-functioning autism, why would you have any ties whatsoever to a philosophy that would have everyone celebrating your 'neurodiversity'?
And, looking back to when you were 11, if at the time a non-autistic sibling had shared your bedroom, do you think they would have accepted your 'difference', enjoyed your autistic company and being part of the eccentricity, and willingly invited their friends home to meet their autistic sister? Or do you consider it more likely that they would have been deeply embarrassed by your behaviour, self-isolated, and begged your parents to get you fixed?
At Sat Aug 25, 03:43:00 AM PDT, Donna said...
"And please also don't misquote Dr Bartak. He has over 40 years experience working with people with autism and is one of Australia's leading autism experts. He did not diagnose Wendy Lawson with autism. He diagnosed her with Asperger's.."
Seeing as I did not quote Dr Bartak, Donna, I could not have misquoted him. I did not say that Dr Bartak diagnosed Wendy Lawson with autism, I said, "Wendy Lawson was diagnosed, also, curiously, by Dr Laurie Bartak, with an Autism Spectrum Disorder".
The information came from a number of websites including Jessica Kingsley Publications, her publisher, and yours.
"Temple was not diagnosed with autism in infancy. She was diagnosed as brain damaged at age 2."
As a side note, I corresponded with Temple, circa 1995, and she was most interested in my son's history and the obvious link between his vaccination, his brain damage and his autism. And I will add, that as a frantic parent who'd been told by medical professionals that regressive late-onset autism is just a condition that strikes some children out of the blue, there wasn't a cause, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help him, and they could give me no assistance whatsoever, I was touched and most grateful that she had shown an interest in my son and taken the time to write to me.
Here is an interview with Temple from 1996. It begins:
"Dr. Temple Grandin is in a unique position to provide parents and professionals insight into autism because she has autism. She was diagnosed at age 2 and has lived a very challenging and adventurous life."
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=817411
"At six months of age, Temple Grandin began to stiffen in her mother's arms and struggle to get away. At two years she lashed out in violent rages, yet had immense powers of concentration, letting sand fall through her fingers or examining her hands or spinning a coin for hours. At three, Temple was taken to a neurologist and a diagnosis of autism was made."
Although you are correct when you say, "Temple was not diagnosed in infancy", she was diagnosed in very early childhood, at the age of two or three, and not well into adulthood at 26, like yourself, or middle-life, at 46, like Wendy Lawson, which was the point I was making. But as you are going to quibble about the wording, I have changed "infancy" to "very early childhood".
Donna Williams said...
"In adulthood Temple was assessed as having Asperger's."
What do you mean by “assessed as having” Aspergers? By whom?
I have never read that Temple Grandin has been re-diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’d certainly like a reference. Do you have one? However, I have ‘heard’ ND activists discussing Temple Grandin and Amanda Baggs on their blogs, and how Temple is more like a person with Aspergers, but from the way she looks and behaves it is quite obvious that Amanda is more the genuine article. After the CNN interview, someone said that they'd told Amanda Baggs years ago that one day she would become the "Great Leader of the Neuroatypicals".
Obviously, Neurodiversity activists thought that Temple looked too high functioning to represent low-functioning autistics, and be a spokesperson for them. However, I strongly suspect that's not the real reason. It has more to do with her attitude towards treatment and therapy. She knows children with autism need intense therapy. From what I have read, her loving, kind and supportive family worked together to give her the intense therapy she needed.
"Kathy Grant was diagnosed in the HFA range in late childhood. Her father is a brain surgeon and she had intensive early intervention from age 2. The sexual abuse you refer to happened to her in late childhood. Kathy has NEVER claimed to have been severely autistic."
In Kathy's own words:
"As a young child, I was raped by a neighbors grandfather. It has left me scarred since."
I have never seen a reference for Kathy Grant's HFA diagnosis in late childhood. That would have been before 1975, wouldn't it? Would there have been a range of autism diagnoses thirty-odd years ago? She might never have claimed to have been severely autistic, but she has claimed for many years before her Asperger's diagnosis in 1994 (or 2001), that she had been "diagnosed with autism".
It reminds me of Jasmine O'Neill who claims to be a mute, Classic Kanner's autistic savant. Did you ever meet her, Donna? I hear that since the publication of her book in 1999 in which she extols the beauty of autism and urges parents to embrace their child’s autism and to celebrate their neurological differences, that she has met the man of her dreams, married him, and regained her voice. Did you know?
"Jim Sinclair didn't speak till age 12. He may have had Selective Mutism but says he hadn't worked out why to speak. Jim had a childhood diagnosis of emotional disturbance and at some point a diagnosis of autism."
And yet in 1990, s/he couldn’t prove to the satisfaction of the SRS that s/he’d ever had a diagnosis of autism?
Jim Sinclair:
“When one of my advocates suggested that some problems that had been attributed to personality and attitude might actually be characteristics of the disability of autism, she replied that she felt I had done research on autism and had decided to imitate it. She suggested that this was a case of fraud.”
“On July 30, 1990, the State Appeals Committee issued a decision affirming the decision of the Hearing Officer.” (Ref: MAAP - Letters)
"None of these people have been treated for severe gut, immune or metabolic disorders though Wendy has recently been diagnosed with Coeliac."
Are any of these advocates believers in the current philosophy of Neurodiversity - that autism is to be celebrated, and children should not receive treatment of any kind such as vitamin supplements, chelation for metal toxicity, or the gf/cf diet and probiotics to heal gut dysbiosis; or therapy such as ABA, AIT, Doman-Delcato patterning, or cranio-sacral therapy?
You must be aware that Neurodiversity activists are accusing parents of child abuse for using such treatments and bad-mouthing them; and persuading and bullying others not to even try to treat their child, because it is, they say, tantamount to killing the "autistic person within". Do you agree with that, Donna? I’m almost certain you don’t.
At Sat Aug 25, 03:52:00 AM PDT, Donna said...
"I met Kathy Lissner and Jim Sinclair in 1992 when involved with the promotion of my second book, Somebody Somewhere."
According to Jim Sinclair you were promoting your first book:
http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html
"In February 1992 Donna Williams came to the U.S. to promote her first book, Nobody Nowhere. During her trip, she took a few days away from the book tour to visit with Kathy Lissner (now Kathy Grant) and me, two of the autistic people she had been corresponding with through the penpal list. I drove to St. Louis, Missouri, where Kathy lived, and we all stayed together in Kathy's apartment."
According to the reviews "Somebody Somewhere - Breaking Free from the World of Autism" your second book was first published in 1994.
It should not be necessary for me to go to the trouble of proving that I am correct, when the evidence is readily available online. Why say that you were promoting your second book, when you must know that it was your first? I really don't understand that, unless you want readers here to believe whatever you say because you are the author and should know when your book was published - or you're expecting me to jump through hoops for your entertainment. No one can promote a book two years before its publication.
"To confuse the origins of ANI with todays neurodiversity movement is fallacious. The neurodiversity movement came along years after the founding of ANI and was begun by Jim and carried forward by many others, including Wendy Lawson. So this should clarify your innacurate history."
This is very confusing, Donna. ANI was founded in 1992, and Jim Sinclair wrote “Don’t Mourn for Us” in 1993, so are you saying that the Neurodiversity Movement began with Sinclair’s writing of this piece? If you are, it looks like ND began one year after the founding of ANI, and that’s not "years after", is it?
And "Neurodiversity" was not dreamed up by Sinclair, was it? Judy Singer coined that word in 1998/9. She's not very popular amongst the ND crowd, is she? They won't even mention her by name. You know why, don't you?
My point to Nine, was that you, Jim Sinclair, and Kathy Grant did not begin the Neurodiversity Movement. Nine claimed that it had started after Jim Sinclair's essay had been published in 1993. But that essay was not widely circulated among parent autism support groups until 1999, after the rate of autism had increased, and parents found out that thimerosal/mercury in vaccines, a neurotoxicant, had been repeatedly injected into their babies starting with the first day of their birth.
Neurodiversity activists use this essay to prove that autism shouldn't be cured, and yet Jim Sinclair didn't have autism, and parents of children with autism today have no idea that Jim Sinclair is an inter-sexed person whom you say "may have had selective mutism", and that s/he is not against "intervention for behaviours that intrude on other people's boundaries".
What exactly did Sinclair mean by that statement?
A child with autism is forever intruding on other people's boundaries, but adult “autistics” who’ve never had their own children, and self-diagnosed “Aspies” wouldn’t know that, would they?
"My place in the neurodiversity politics has always been as a moderate who strongly supports treatment for gut, immune and metabolic disorders for the subgroup of people with AUTISM who share the same health issues I've dealt with."
Yes, I agree you are a moderate. You have a foot in both camps. And being a moderate, you have not budged even when you've come under fire from ND activists for your support of biomedical treatment and special diets, and I thank you for that.
BUT, your recent interview with Amanda Baggs and your You Tube video are supportive of the Neurodiversity Movement’s philosophy. And that is giving everyone with an autistic child a false impression.
It was also a huge disappointment to read your interview with Amanda Baggs, when you should be fully-aware of her history.
By your reputation, Donna, as an advocate for people with autism, and as one of the best known autistic authors for the past fifteen years, you are giving this person who pretends to have been a low-functioning, non-verbal child with autism, CREDIBILITY, especially since your interview appeared after accusations of fraud had started to circulate.
Amongst other falsehoods that you have helped to perpetuate by engaging in this interview, Amanda Baggs was not a non-verbal child with severe autism who learned to communicate at age 9, by slowly teaching herself to type on a keyboard with a little picture of a cat on it. At that age, she was a fully-verbal, fully-toilet-trained, gifted child attending a normal school. And five years later, she was living away from home, attending Simon’s Rock College where she was majoring in psychology. That’s when she started smoking marijuana and using LSD “extensively”, and after several months, crazy and suicidal, she ended up in the psychiatric ward of a hospital, and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Having read that, Donna, do you truly believe that Amanda Baggs was a non-verbal, doubly-incontinent, low-functioning child with severe autism who was institutionalised? Which is the impression she gives in the visually shocking but entirely false Getting the Truth Out website, and on her blog.
She says on her profile at AFF, that the only official diagnosis on paper that she’s ever had is “Autistic Disorder – low-functioning”. She does not say that at the time she was given the diagnosis, she was 19 or 20 years old.
One can only guess why a person who not only supports but recommends treatment, and uses it herself, would have anything to do with the Neurodiversity Movement and their insane philosophy.
Why Donna?
"I have NEVER had a diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder. An unqualified sociology professor gave this OPINION of me in 1994 based on his memories of me in obligatory 30 minute private 1-1 office appointments as my thesis supervisor to discuss my thesis (10 in all)."
I don't think there is any doubt that you have had multiple personalities. Amanda Baggs who should know, says you do. She says on her blog, "Donna Williams and some others have had personas they used in order to pass".
Your book Nobody Nowhere is listed under Healthy Multiplicity Titles at Astreas Bookstore.
Also, it is quite clear from your publishers that you had at least two different personas while you were growing up - Carol and Willie.
You also say on your website here that you lived your "first twenty-five years as three people- a male (Willie), a female (Carol) and me (Donna)."
And yet you claim you have never had a diagnosis of MPD or DID.
I'm quite willing to change (and have changed) the wording of my post, but it won't alter the fact that by your own words you lived for 25 years as three different people. And to a layperson, and I dare say psychiatric professionals, that means you had Multiple Personality Disorder.
"Ask yourself why a sociology professor would have got MPD like behaviour from someone with a long term background of abuse when obliging them to have 1-1 in their office in order to pass the course. It ain't rocket science... "
Are you accusing Dr Chris Eipper of LaTrobe University of impropriety, Donna? You have on a number of occasions in the past referred to him as "a stalker", but here you are giving the distinct impression that his alleged stalking of you isn't his only crime.
This reminds me very much of Amanda Baggs accusing her once close schoolfriend Daniel Drucker of being a stalker of disabled women. I wonder how these men feel when they see themselves being publicly maligned, and their reputations brought into question online for all the world to see, and yet they are not given the chance to defend themselves against such terrible accusations.
"As for formal diagnosis, I was assessed at age 2 as psychotic in 1965 at a private hospital called St Elmo's in Brunswick, Victoria. This was after admission for appearing deaf, no pain response, bruising when touched (leukemia was queried) and coughing up blood.
You say, “assessed at age 2 as psychotic”, not diagnosed with ‘psychosis’. I believe you chose your words carefully, Donna. There is a world of difference between having psychotic behaviour and being diagnosed with psychosis, just as there is a world of difference between having autistic behaviour and actually being “diagnosed with autism”.
I don’t understand how the "bruising when touched" could have been the result of psychotic behaviour. Surely, the bruises were either the result of a medical problem which would have needed thorough investigation and treatment, or they would have been indicative of physical abuse.
Could it have been familial abuse, Donna? I read your first book in 1995, and the horrendous descriptions of your early life at the hands of your abusive and neglectful parents. And I pitied you.
That is why I continue to wonder if your autistic behaviours sprang from your turbulent past. It occurs to me that your life could have been very similar to the lives of the deprived, abused and emotionally disturbed children described by both Dr Bartak and Michael Rutter, whose autistic behaviours disappeared when they were moved to caring and supportive environments, or the children recovered completely with “reasonable foster care”.
So much for medical professionals who would have us believe that autism is a mysterious, genetic, and incurable disorder. And so much for Neurodiversity activists who claim that all autism is genetic, incurable, and life-long.
I guess you already know there are children being diagnosed today with autism who actually have Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). To give such children an autism diagnosis is grossly unfair to parents who are devoted to their children and have given them all the love and care in the world. Should we return to the days of Bettelheim and his theory of “refrigerator mothers”? Or Virginia Axline? As if a few hours of Play Therapy could turn a child like Dibs into a genius!
Having first read Dibs in the 70s, I was horrified to discover that this work of fiction is still being reprinted - and, of all things, has become a school textbook!
"In late childhood I read on the teacher's student roll next to my name "Donna Williams is a disturbed child". This was in 1974, I was 11. This was my 2nd diagnosis and based on being studied by the Psych and Guidance service to the school."
Why do you count this description in a teacher’s roll book as an official diagnosis, and other descriptions as opinions? Do you doubt its accuracy?
You have also been described and identified as a person with Multiple Personality Disorder. Why then do you totally discount MPD/DID, when to the average layperson who has watched movies like ‘The Three Faces of Eve’, and then reads that you have lived as three people for twenty-five years, "Dissociative Identity Disorder" might very easily spring to their minds. Is there another disorder in the DSM that would be a better ‘fit’?
”I was diagnosed with autism in my 20s in 1991.”
Did Dr Bartak actually diagnose you with autism, after the test he gave you, or did he describe you as autistic? You have often written, “I was diagnosed as autistic”, but “autistic” to me is a description, not a diagnosis.
You might already be aware that Thomas McKean, who knew you very well for some years, accused you of being a fraud in a message he wrote to a support group in 1998, but it occurs to me that he might have been trying to get his own back after you had openly questioned his “autism” diagnosis in a letter to MAAP in 1995. I want to make it clear to others that you did not question that he was autistic, only that he might have been misdiagnosed with autism. You said, “it is true that many autistics are misdiagnosed and, therefore, it is just as potentially true that schizophrenics (and people with other non-autistic disabilities including some with PDD (NOS), are misdiagnosed as autistic.”
That’s a very important quote from you, Donna, because this statement is as true today as it was back in 1995, and I couldn’t agree with you more. There is a huge difference between being autistic and having autism, isn’t there? And today everyone with a deficit in what is considered to be 'normal' socialization, for whatever reason, is being shoved under the "Autistic" umbrella. Speech delayed toddlers for instance - and adult schizophrenics.
I believe that this problem has become far, far worse in the 2000s, because of the number of self-identifying “autistics” who, having clicked the ‘right’ set of answers in the Aspie online quizzes think they are autistic, have autism and get an identity for themselves with Neurodiversity. Once they’ve joined the Club, they start disseminating anti-treatment, anti-cure propaganda.
What appals me most is that these people, and many of them appear to be very young and naive, some of them in their early teens, are identifying with a brand new “culture”. They haven’t even been misdiagnosed by a psychiatrist, they are self-diagnosed, and they look down on low-functioning autistics, and shun them. Donna, does this appal you as much as it appals me?
I am mentioning fraud because it seems to me that everyone who is 'someone' has been accused of fraud at some point – you, Thomas McKean, Jim Sinclair, Amanda Baggs, and others.
" Yes, my IQ was tested as under 70 in my 20s after I had a university degree.."
I don’t understand why you would want to quote your lowest score in a specific test, if that’s what you are doing. Every time you do, I wonder if you are trying to make a point to show people how impaired you really were to somehow prove you had autism and were low-functioning. An IQ of less than 70 is in the retarded range, isn’t it? And there is no way in the world that I’d believe that anyone could ever think of you as retarded, Donna. With all your skills, you are highly accomplished.
"I would like to neatly fit a box of HFA or Asperger's, but fact is I don't. I do function today in the HFA range, but this is not the girl who peed all over her room at age 11, its not the kid who had 10% receptive language at age 9, its not the kid who had bites all over her arms at age 6 from her own teeth, its not the kid who had no sense of pain and was trying to cough up her own lungs at age 2. Fact is, many people with autism WONT make my journey, but I did."
Yes, you did. With biomedical intervention, and diet.
Donna, you give the impression that you were a very low-functioning child with severe autism, and it appears that you attribute your self-abusive behaviours, and your peeing all over your bedroom floor at age 11, to your autism. Don’t you think that living in a dysfunctional home with abusive and neglectful parents, an alcoholic mother who wasn’t there for you, and your grandfather dying when he did, would have had more than a little impact on your development, and emotional state?
Did you pee all over the classroom floor when you were at school all day or did you reserve that behaviour for your bedroom? Are you trying to say that you were incontinent at 11 and couldn’t control your bladder, or what?
And if your exceptionally high pain threshold and the shocking self-injurious behaviours you describe are examples you use as evidence that you had low-functioning autism, why would you have any ties whatsoever to a philosophy that would have everyone celebrating your 'neurodiversity'?
And, looking back to when you were 11, if at the time a non-autistic sibling had shared your bedroom, do you think they would have accepted your 'difference', enjoyed your autistic company and being part of the eccentricity, and willingly invited their friends home to meet their autistic sister? Or do you consider it more likely that they would have been deeply embarrassed by your behaviour, self-isolated, and begged your parents to get you fixed?
At Sat Aug 25, 03:43:00 AM PDT, Donna said...
"And please also don't misquote Dr Bartak. He has over 40 years experience working with people with autism and is one of Australia's leading autism experts. He did not diagnose Wendy Lawson with autism. He diagnosed her with Asperger's.."
Seeing as I did not quote Dr Bartak, Donna, I could not have misquoted him. I did not say that Dr Bartak diagnosed Wendy Lawson with autism, I said, "Wendy Lawson was diagnosed, also, curiously, by Dr Laurie Bartak, with an Autism Spectrum Disorder".
The information came from a number of websites including Jessica Kingsley Publications, her publisher, and yours.
"Temple was not diagnosed with autism in infancy. She was diagnosed as brain damaged at age 2."
As a side note, I corresponded with Temple, circa 1995, and she was most interested in my son's history and the obvious link between his vaccination, his brain damage and his autism. And I will add, that as a frantic parent who'd been told by medical professionals that regressive late-onset autism is just a condition that strikes some children out of the blue, there wasn't a cause, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to help him, and they could give me no assistance whatsoever, I was touched and most grateful that she had shown an interest in my son and taken the time to write to me.
Here is an interview with Temple from 1996. It begins:
"Dr. Temple Grandin is in a unique position to provide parents and professionals insight into autism because she has autism. She was diagnosed at age 2 and has lived a very challenging and adventurous life."
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=817411
"At six months of age, Temple Grandin began to stiffen in her mother's arms and struggle to get away. At two years she lashed out in violent rages, yet had immense powers of concentration, letting sand fall through her fingers or examining her hands or spinning a coin for hours. At three, Temple was taken to a neurologist and a diagnosis of autism was made."
Although you are correct when you say, "Temple was not diagnosed in infancy", she was diagnosed in very early childhood, at the age of two or three, and not well into adulthood at 26, like yourself, or middle-life, at 46, like Wendy Lawson, which was the point I was making. But as you are going to quibble about the wording, I have changed "infancy" to "very early childhood".
Donna Williams said...
"In adulthood Temple was assessed as having Asperger's."
What do you mean by “assessed as having” Aspergers? By whom?
I have never read that Temple Grandin has been re-diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’d certainly like a reference. Do you have one? However, I have ‘heard’ ND activists discussing Temple Grandin and Amanda Baggs on their blogs, and how Temple is more like a person with Aspergers, but from the way she looks and behaves it is quite obvious that Amanda is more the genuine article. After the CNN interview, someone said that they'd told Amanda Baggs years ago that one day she would become the "Great Leader of the Neuroatypicals".
Obviously, Neurodiversity activists thought that Temple looked too high functioning to represent low-functioning autistics, and be a spokesperson for them. However, I strongly suspect that's not the real reason. It has more to do with her attitude towards treatment and therapy. She knows children with autism need intense therapy. From what I have read, her loving, kind and supportive family worked together to give her the intense therapy she needed.
"Kathy Grant was diagnosed in the HFA range in late childhood. Her father is a brain surgeon and she had intensive early intervention from age 2. The sexual abuse you refer to happened to her in late childhood. Kathy has NEVER claimed to have been severely autistic."
In Kathy's own words:
"As a young child, I was raped by a neighbors grandfather. It has left me scarred since."
I have never seen a reference for Kathy Grant's HFA diagnosis in late childhood. That would have been before 1975, wouldn't it? Would there have been a range of autism diagnoses thirty-odd years ago? She might never have claimed to have been severely autistic, but she has claimed for many years before her Asperger's diagnosis in 1994 (or 2001), that she had been "diagnosed with autism".
It reminds me of Jasmine O'Neill who claims to be a mute, Classic Kanner's autistic savant. Did you ever meet her, Donna? I hear that since the publication of her book in 1999 in which she extols the beauty of autism and urges parents to embrace their child’s autism and to celebrate their neurological differences, that she has met the man of her dreams, married him, and regained her voice. Did you know?
"Jim Sinclair didn't speak till age 12. He may have had Selective Mutism but says he hadn't worked out why to speak. Jim had a childhood diagnosis of emotional disturbance and at some point a diagnosis of autism."
And yet in 1990, s/he couldn’t prove to the satisfaction of the SRS that s/he’d ever had a diagnosis of autism?
Jim Sinclair:
“When one of my advocates suggested that some problems that had been attributed to personality and attitude might actually be characteristics of the disability of autism, she replied that she felt I had done research on autism and had decided to imitate it. She suggested that this was a case of fraud.”
“On July 30, 1990, the State Appeals Committee issued a decision affirming the decision of the Hearing Officer.” (Ref: MAAP - Letters)
"None of these people have been treated for severe gut, immune or metabolic disorders though Wendy has recently been diagnosed with Coeliac."
Are any of these advocates believers in the current philosophy of Neurodiversity - that autism is to be celebrated, and children should not receive treatment of any kind such as vitamin supplements, chelation for metal toxicity, or the gf/cf diet and probiotics to heal gut dysbiosis; or therapy such as ABA, AIT, Doman-Delcato patterning, or cranio-sacral therapy?
You must be aware that Neurodiversity activists are accusing parents of child abuse for using such treatments and bad-mouthing them; and persuading and bullying others not to even try to treat their child, because it is, they say, tantamount to killing the "autistic person within". Do you agree with that, Donna? I’m almost certain you don’t.
At Sat Aug 25, 03:52:00 AM PDT, Donna said...
"I met Kathy Lissner and Jim Sinclair in 1992 when involved with the promotion of my second book, Somebody Somewhere."
According to Jim Sinclair you were promoting your first book:
http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html
"In February 1992 Donna Williams came to the U.S. to promote her first book, Nobody Nowhere. During her trip, she took a few days away from the book tour to visit with Kathy Lissner (now Kathy Grant) and me, two of the autistic people she had been corresponding with through the penpal list. I drove to St. Louis, Missouri, where Kathy lived, and we all stayed together in Kathy's apartment."
According to the reviews "Somebody Somewhere - Breaking Free from the World of Autism" your second book was first published in 1994.
It should not be necessary for me to go to the trouble of proving that I am correct, when the evidence is readily available online. Why say that you were promoting your second book, when you must know that it was your first? I really don't understand that, unless you want readers here to believe whatever you say because you are the author and should know when your book was published - or you're expecting me to jump through hoops for your entertainment. No one can promote a book two years before its publication.
"To confuse the origins of ANI with todays neurodiversity movement is fallacious. The neurodiversity movement came along years after the founding of ANI and was begun by Jim and carried forward by many others, including Wendy Lawson. So this should clarify your innacurate history."
This is very confusing, Donna. ANI was founded in 1992, and Jim Sinclair wrote “Don’t Mourn for Us” in 1993, so are you saying that the Neurodiversity Movement began with Sinclair’s writing of this piece? If you are, it looks like ND began one year after the founding of ANI, and that’s not "years after", is it?
And "Neurodiversity" was not dreamed up by Sinclair, was it? Judy Singer coined that word in 1998/9. She's not very popular amongst the ND crowd, is she? They won't even mention her by name. You know why, don't you?
My point to Nine, was that you, Jim Sinclair, and Kathy Grant did not begin the Neurodiversity Movement. Nine claimed that it had started after Jim Sinclair's essay had been published in 1993. But that essay was not widely circulated among parent autism support groups until 1999, after the rate of autism had increased, and parents found out that thimerosal/mercury in vaccines, a neurotoxicant, had been repeatedly injected into their babies starting with the first day of their birth.
Neurodiversity activists use this essay to prove that autism shouldn't be cured, and yet Jim Sinclair didn't have autism, and parents of children with autism today have no idea that Jim Sinclair is an inter-sexed person whom you say "may have had selective mutism", and that s/he is not against "intervention for behaviours that intrude on other people's boundaries".
What exactly did Sinclair mean by that statement?
A child with autism is forever intruding on other people's boundaries, but adult “autistics” who’ve never had their own children, and self-diagnosed “Aspies” wouldn’t know that, would they?
"My place in the neurodiversity politics has always been as a moderate who strongly supports treatment for gut, immune and metabolic disorders for the subgroup of people with AUTISM who share the same health issues I've dealt with."
Yes, I agree you are a moderate. You have a foot in both camps. And being a moderate, you have not budged even when you've come under fire from ND activists for your support of biomedical treatment and special diets, and I thank you for that.
BUT, your recent interview with Amanda Baggs and your You Tube video are supportive of the Neurodiversity Movement’s philosophy. And that is giving everyone with an autistic child a false impression.
It was also a huge disappointment to read your interview with Amanda Baggs, when you should be fully-aware of her history.
By your reputation, Donna, as an advocate for people with autism, and as one of the best known autistic authors for the past fifteen years, you are giving this person who pretends to have been a low-functioning, non-verbal child with autism, CREDIBILITY, especially since your interview appeared after accusations of fraud had started to circulate.
Amongst other falsehoods that you have helped to perpetuate by engaging in this interview, Amanda Baggs was not a non-verbal child with severe autism who learned to communicate at age 9, by slowly teaching herself to type on a keyboard with a little picture of a cat on it. At that age, she was a fully-verbal, fully-toilet-trained, gifted child attending a normal school. And five years later, she was living away from home, attending Simon’s Rock College where she was majoring in psychology. That’s when she started smoking marijuana and using LSD “extensively”, and after several months, crazy and suicidal, she ended up in the psychiatric ward of a hospital, and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Having read that, Donna, do you truly believe that Amanda Baggs was a non-verbal, doubly-incontinent, low-functioning child with severe autism who was institutionalised? Which is the impression she gives in the visually shocking but entirely false Getting the Truth Out website, and on her blog.
She says on her profile at AFF, that the only official diagnosis on paper that she’s ever had is “Autistic Disorder – low-functioning”. She does not say that at the time she was given the diagnosis, she was 19 or 20 years old.
One can only guess why a person who not only supports but recommends treatment, and uses it herself, would have anything to do with the Neurodiversity Movement and their insane philosophy.
Why Donna?
Friday, August 24, 2007
Donna Williams, More Fraud from Neurodiversity
Here are some of the comments that I felt would be deleted on this Youtube video by Donna Williams. Sure enough, when I checked back today, they were gone. I had also commented myself, to which Donna replied but that has also been deleted.
As is typical of the neuroinsane, any discussion that points out the horror of true autism is whitewashed. Williams wrote a book that is lauded by the neuronitwits back in 1991, before she ever had a diagnosis of autism. That proves that her level of difference was not so severe that anyone would have bothered to try to identify her condition as autistic. If she'd had autism before the age of 26, no competent person could possibly have missed it.
Here's some excerpts of yet another disingenuous neurodiversity video:
"Autism has a wider context
Anyone with an actual autistic child immediately sees the problem with this portrayal of autism. Autism is nothing like this. Autism is not some insignificant "difference" to be tolerated. Autism is everyone's worst nightmare come true. It is children who can not be reached on ANY LEVEL WHO ARE LIKE WOUNDED ANIMALS run amok within civilized society. Autistic children can not be reasoned with. Their behaviors are completely intolerable. They scream in pain frequently and no doctor on the face of the earth can tell us why.
Autism is a nightmare for siblings too. It is impossible for siblings to interact with autistic children. Unlike Donna's wacky description of teaching siblings how to interact, those of us who have actually dealt with autism know that there is no possibility of any interaction between normal kids and "wounded animals" who can't talk, don't make eye contact, don't play with anything besides objects that are useful for stimming and simply wander about in their own little worlds, oblivious to everything around them.
Comments posted 24 August
Veritas10000
"My non-autistic son learned long before he went to school that his
brother was 'different'. Yes he wanted a playmate. Yes, he was
disappointed and wanted us to 'fix' his brother. Can you blame him?
He was bitten, scratched, kicked, punched and spat upon. As were we
all. My autistic son was incapable of relating to any member of the
family. Of course he couldn't learn to "enjoy autistic company on
equal terms". Autism is not eccentricity, Donna. "
Veritas10000
"And my autistic son would have been terrified of that balloon you're holding."
1210donna
"ha ha, me too. I didn't like the hat or the baloon. The plastic ball
I'm holding is one I carried since I was two. It was a 'friend'. To
this day I'm afraid of baloons near me. Because I was thought deaf my
parents burst paper bags and baloons to try and get a blink response.
I've been posed in that birthday pic and have gone rather 'puppet' in
it on the basis I got to hold my plastic ball. :-)"
Vertitas10000
"My son didn't just dislike balloons, Donna. He was literally scared
almost to death at the sight of them, and would run a mile. And he
didn't have cruel parents repeatedly bursting paper bags and balloons
in an endeavor to get a blink response from him. The "BANG!" of one
solitary balloon was enough to scare the living daylights out of him,
and from then on, nothing on earth would have induced him to hold a balloon. "
1210donna
"Hi Kitties, yes there was a stalker in the 90s, before HFA was known
of. Because I had become HFA this person decided I had manifest
autism in adulthood. In fact my original assessment was 'psychotic'
at age 2 in 1965. I got functional speech by age 9-11, before that
stored speech. My IQ in my 20s was under 70 (already had a degree and
score was result of both genius and retarded) so I was dx'd as autistic."
Veritas10000
"A stalker? Are you referring to your sociology professor, Dr Chris
Eipper at LaTrobe University, who was your supervisor for your
Honours degree?
Whoever heard of a person with an IQ of 70 in their twenties being
accepted at university, majoring in Linguistics and Sociology, and
getting a BA Hons degree?"
The above are honest comments from someone who has obviously dealt with actual autism for a long time. As it says in the moniker, TRUTH is the element that Donna Williams has decided to delete. Donna may have conned some uninformed publisher into publishing her opinions as some sort of expert on autism. Those opinions don't fly with real experts who have dealt with autism 24 hours a day for many long years.
I would have no problem with anything Donna Williams has to say if she would define her conditions properly. If she were to discuss dealing with Asperger's in the same manner, her points might be valid. As it is, she has decided to align herself with the psychotic sadists from Neurodiversity who are doing their best to present the wrong impression of autism. Autism is something that no person on this earth can adjust to. It is a condition that requires a constant state of alert to control uncontrollable children.
Autistic children are dying all the time because it is impossible for anyone to deal with caring for them 24 hours a day. Thanks to Donna Williams and the cult of psychos from Neurodiversity, politicians and high-placed decision makers will continue to hear this false impression of what autism is and more children will undoubtedly perish. Some more will die at the hands of their caretakers who have been pushed to their limits by the incredible stress of this nightmare. Neurodiversity is well aware of this but they continue to obfuscate the issue. It's time for more people to realize the hazards that are being caused by Neurodiversity and steps need to be taken to quiet these lying scoundrels.
Just for the hell of it, I'm adding in this youtube video here. This is one fraud interviewing another fraud. The beast being interviewed is Laura Tisoncik. Does anyone equate what this slob is saying with autism? (That's anyone who's sane, nitwits.) This obese, disgusting thing who looks like she hasn't washed her hair in a month bears zero resemblance to any autistic person I've ever seen. The slovenliness does, however, remind me of the video I saw of David Andrews singing. Asperger's, maybe; just a lazy hog, probably; autism, no way.
As is typical of the neuroinsane, any discussion that points out the horror of true autism is whitewashed. Williams wrote a book that is lauded by the neuronitwits back in 1991, before she ever had a diagnosis of autism. That proves that her level of difference was not so severe that anyone would have bothered to try to identify her condition as autistic. If she'd had autism before the age of 26, no competent person could possibly have missed it.
Here's some excerpts of yet another disingenuous neurodiversity video:
"Autism has a wider context
Before attending school non-autistic children may accept an autistic sibling.
An autistic sibling can be a disappointment to a non-autistic child,
who like many wanted a playmate more similar to themselves.
Some autistic siblings who are taught to feel that an autistic
sibling is a family burden
Others may enjoy being part of the
eccentricity.
Non-autistic siblings who are not taught how to play interact or
communicate, in autism friendly styles may be more likely to feel
helpless and ill-equipped to enjoy autistic company on equal terms.
Some children who are taught to view an autistic sibling as broken
may promote themselves to being paternalistic carers, develop
self-pity, self-isolate, or use pressure on their parents to fix or
get rid of their broken sibling. None of this is healthy for either child
An autie production."
Anyone with an actual autistic child immediately sees the problem with this portrayal of autism. Autism is nothing like this. Autism is not some insignificant "difference" to be tolerated. Autism is everyone's worst nightmare come true. It is children who can not be reached on ANY LEVEL WHO ARE LIKE WOUNDED ANIMALS run amok within civilized society. Autistic children can not be reasoned with. Their behaviors are completely intolerable. They scream in pain frequently and no doctor on the face of the earth can tell us why.
Autism is a nightmare for siblings too. It is impossible for siblings to interact with autistic children. Unlike Donna's wacky description of teaching siblings how to interact, those of us who have actually dealt with autism know that there is no possibility of any interaction between normal kids and "wounded animals" who can't talk, don't make eye contact, don't play with anything besides objects that are useful for stimming and simply wander about in their own little worlds, oblivious to everything around them.
Comments posted 24 August
Veritas10000
"My non-autistic son learned long before he went to school that his
brother was 'different'. Yes he wanted a playmate. Yes, he was
disappointed and wanted us to 'fix' his brother. Can you blame him?
He was bitten, scratched, kicked, punched and spat upon. As were we
all. My autistic son was incapable of relating to any member of the
family. Of course he couldn't learn to "enjoy autistic company on
equal terms". Autism is not eccentricity, Donna. "
Veritas10000
"And my autistic son would have been terrified of that balloon you're holding."
1210donna
"ha ha, me too. I didn't like the hat or the baloon. The plastic ball
I'm holding is one I carried since I was two. It was a 'friend'. To
this day I'm afraid of baloons near me. Because I was thought deaf my
parents burst paper bags and baloons to try and get a blink response.
I've been posed in that birthday pic and have gone rather 'puppet' in
it on the basis I got to hold my plastic ball. :-)"
Vertitas10000
"My son didn't just dislike balloons, Donna. He was literally scared
almost to death at the sight of them, and would run a mile. And he
didn't have cruel parents repeatedly bursting paper bags and balloons
in an endeavor to get a blink response from him. The "BANG!" of one
solitary balloon was enough to scare the living daylights out of him,
and from then on, nothing on earth would have induced him to hold a balloon. "
1210donna
"Hi Kitties, yes there was a stalker in the 90s, before HFA was known
of. Because I had become HFA this person decided I had manifest
autism in adulthood. In fact my original assessment was 'psychotic'
at age 2 in 1965. I got functional speech by age 9-11, before that
stored speech. My IQ in my 20s was under 70 (already had a degree and
score was result of both genius and retarded) so I was dx'd as autistic."
Veritas10000
"A stalker? Are you referring to your sociology professor, Dr Chris
Eipper at LaTrobe University, who was your supervisor for your
Honours degree?
Whoever heard of a person with an IQ of 70 in their twenties being
accepted at university, majoring in Linguistics and Sociology, and
getting a BA Hons degree?"
The above are honest comments from someone who has obviously dealt with actual autism for a long time. As it says in the moniker, TRUTH is the element that Donna Williams has decided to delete. Donna may have conned some uninformed publisher into publishing her opinions as some sort of expert on autism. Those opinions don't fly with real experts who have dealt with autism 24 hours a day for many long years.
I would have no problem with anything Donna Williams has to say if she would define her conditions properly. If she were to discuss dealing with Asperger's in the same manner, her points might be valid. As it is, she has decided to align herself with the psychotic sadists from Neurodiversity who are doing their best to present the wrong impression of autism. Autism is something that no person on this earth can adjust to. It is a condition that requires a constant state of alert to control uncontrollable children.
Autistic children are dying all the time because it is impossible for anyone to deal with caring for them 24 hours a day. Thanks to Donna Williams and the cult of psychos from Neurodiversity, politicians and high-placed decision makers will continue to hear this false impression of what autism is and more children will undoubtedly perish. Some more will die at the hands of their caretakers who have been pushed to their limits by the incredible stress of this nightmare. Neurodiversity is well aware of this but they continue to obfuscate the issue. It's time for more people to realize the hazards that are being caused by Neurodiversity and steps need to be taken to quiet these lying scoundrels.
Just for the hell of it, I'm adding in this youtube video here. This is one fraud interviewing another fraud. The beast being interviewed is Laura Tisoncik. Does anyone equate what this slob is saying with autism? (That's anyone who's sane, nitwits.) This obese, disgusting thing who looks like she hasn't washed her hair in a month bears zero resemblance to any autistic person I've ever seen. The slovenliness does, however, remind me of the video I saw of David Andrews singing. Asperger's, maybe; just a lazy hog, probably; autism, no way.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Autism, Vaccination and Neurodiversity - A Timeline: Part 2
I've been waiting for over a week for a response from Nine.
Will Nine like other ND advocates duck for cover as soon as the tricky questions are asked, or is he or she still searching for answers?
At Sat Aug 11, 12:13:00 AM PDT, Nine said...
"Actually, anti-cure ideas and advocacy to move away from a disorder model of autism were around prior to 1999. Jim Sinclair's essay "Don't Mourn for Us" (url http://web.syr.edu/%7Ejisincla/dontmourn.htm) was written in 1993. Autism Network International was founded in 1992, and activities leading up to its founding date back to the late 1980s (url http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html). 1999 might have been the year that the term 'neurodiversity' was coined, but the movement to advocate away from the disorder view of autism has existed well before 1999."
At Tue Aug 14, 08:45:00 PM PDT, watson said...
Nine said...
"Actually, anti-cure ideas and advocacy to move away from a disorder model of autism were around prior to 1999. Jim Sinclair's essay "Don't Mourn for Us" (url http://web.syr.edu/%7Ejisincla/dontmourn.htm) was written in 1993.
Who does s/he mean by "Us"?
What strikes me about Jim Sinclair's website is that s/he discusses intersexuality in great detail and what growing up as an intersexed person was like for him/her but spends no time at all talking about his/her own experience as a child growing up with autism. The only hint that s/he might have had autism as a child is when s/he says that aside from her intersexuality s/he "had some severe developmental communication and other problems", which s/he doesn't dwell on. I find that curious.
Although s/he is often referred to as a person with Asperger's Syndrome, from what I have read, s/he had no formal autism diagnosis in 1988.
I get the impression from this article and others that as a child and as a teenager, s/he felt misunderstood, rejected and unloved, and that s/he is speaking primarily about him/herself as an intersexed person having undergone - against his/her will - several painful and useless treatments to remedy his/her physical 'difference'.
The problem with that, of course. is that his being born an intersexed person could not be changed, cured or treated, and parents of such a child have no choice but to accept their condition.
The bottom line is that Jim Sinclair did not have autism as a child, and he is not, and never will be, a parent trying to cope everyday with a severely autistic child.
Nine, Can you find another pre-1999 anti-cure article from an autism advocate other than Sinclair?
"Autism Network International was founded in 1992, and activities leading up to its founding date back to the late 1980s (url http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html). 1999 might have been the year that the term 'neurodiversity' was coined, but the movement to advocate away from the disorder view of autism has existed well before 1999.
I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong here.
Donna Williams, Jim Sinclair and Kathy Lissner founded Autism Network International in 1992.
Donna Williams
Donna Williams was an emotionally deprived, abused and neglected child - "a disturbed child", who lived as three people - a male (Willie), a female (Carol), and herself (Donna)- for twenty-five years before her autism diagnosis. In 1990, in her mid-twenties and after gaining an honors degree in sociology, and writing her first book, she was described as "autistic" by Dr Laurie Bartak.
I have not been able to find out if Donna was ever actually given an autism diagnosis, although she described herself as a high-functioning autistic which, after the DSM_IV came out in 1994, would be the equivalent of Asperger's Syndrome. She did not have a diagnosis of autism of any kind when she wrote her book.
After it was published with the word "autistic" in the title, she was accused of fraud by people who knew her well. She has become an autism consultant, author of several books , script-writer, film maker, and she is a sought-after speaker at autism conferences all over the world.
Jim Sinclair
Jim Sinclair was born in 1965. S/he is referred to as a person with Asperger's Syndrome.
S/he has a B.A. in Psychology and graduate education in Developmental and Child Psychology, and a Masters degree in Rehabilitation Counselling. S/he is described as a dynamic and sought-after speaker at autism conferences.
I don't know when s/he was diagnosed with Aspergers, but growing up as an inter-sexed person, treated as a girl until s/he was twelve, and then as a boy, must have been exceptionally difficult.
Kathy Lissner
Kathy Lissner, born 1965, was raped and sexually abused as a young child. She gained a degree in Political Science in her twenties and she was officially diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome in 1994, at the age of 28, - although some sites say that she was diagnosed in 2001, at the age of 36 - having referred to herself as an "autistic" person, and having spoken as "an autistic", on behalf of "autistics", since 1988.
The ARI was founded by three highly-intelligent, high-functioning people with traumatic pasts who met in 1992 while Donna Williams was promoting her first book 'Nobody Nowhere: Autobiography of an Autistic Girl' at autism conferences. All are writers and all became self-appointed autism advocates.
I understand they were joined by Wendy Lawson.
Wendy Lawson was diagnosed, also, curiously, by Dr Laurie Bartak, with an "Autism Spectrum Disorder" in 1994, at the age of 42, after 24 years as a schizophrenic. She has five university degrees. She has written many books and is a qualified counsellor, social worker and psychologist. She was married with several children, and now lives with her lesbian partner.
Dr Laurie Bartak who diagnosed both Donna Williams and Wendy Lawson has said that abused and emotionally deprived children show autistic-like behaviours, and that these disappear entirely when the children are moved to more supportive and loving environments.
Dr Michael Rutter found that Romanian orphans with autism "recovered with reasonable foster care in Britain".
Dr Bartak, Senior Lecturer of Education at Monash University in Victoria, and one of Australia’s best-known authorities on autism with 40-plus years in the field, has said that environmental factors play a part in the development of some autism. Both he and Michael Rutter know that some children with autistic symptoms recover completely when their environment is changed.
Looking at these advocates, do you think that their autistic symptoms could have stemmed from their early traumatic lives and turbulent pasts?
Jim Sinclair, Donna Williams, Kathy Lissner, Wendy Lawson and others may very well have talked amongst themselves and decided to promote greater awareness and understanding of autism, and acceptance of people with autism by the community, but it was only after a link with vaccines had been made that any idea of acceptance of the disorder itself became known to parents of children with autism.
As far as I know, Kathy Grant and Wendy Lawson have not spoken against treatment. Thomas McKean certainly hasn't. Donna Williams herself uses diet and biomed. And even Jim Sinclair has said that s/he is not against intervention for behaviours that "intrude on other people's boundaries".
Although it is quite true that Sinclair wrote "Don't Mourn for Us" in 1993, the article reached my mailbox in 1999. There's that pivotal year, again. That's apparently when it was widely circulated around parent-run autism support groups and e-lists. Parents of children with regressive-autism after vaccination were outraged. They were indeed mourning for a child that they had lost, and they were searching for a cure.
If a child is born with a physical malformation, born with brain damage or born with a genetic disorder which interferes with normal brain development, one can understand why advocates who themselves were born with a physical difference would plead for acceptance, particularly after they'd endured several unsuccessful operations designed to remedy their difference.
However when a normally-developing child is brain-injured in an accident or after an encephalitis, or by a vaccine-induced encephalopthy causing organic brain damage, and they develop symptoms of brain-injury, parents do mourn for the child they have lost and desperately want to put things right.
Many parents in the 80s and 90s were mourning. They knew what had happened to their children, and they wanted to recover the children they'd lost.
In 2002, the first World Autism Congress gathered in Melbourne, Australia. and was attended by 1500 scientists, doctors, autism case workers and parents, "all absorbed in finding causes and treatments for the mystery disorder".
Both Donna Williams and Wendy Lawson were speakers, along with Temple Grandin. The first two we gather were described as "autistic" by Dr Laurie Bartak - at the ages of 26 and 46 respectively. Grandin, on the other hand, was diagnosed with autism in very early childhood. Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders also participated in online chat room discussions.
Why do you think that the very first World Autism Congress was held in 2002?
Why do you think Dr Laurie Bartak "found himself hosing down spot-fires threatening to engulf some of his most eminent guests"?
Why do you think sparks were flying?
And, do you think that the parents attending that meeting had speech-delayed toddlers or quirky children?
Will Nine like other ND advocates duck for cover as soon as the tricky questions are asked, or is he or she still searching for answers?
At Sat Aug 11, 12:13:00 AM PDT, Nine said...
"Actually, anti-cure ideas and advocacy to move away from a disorder model of autism were around prior to 1999. Jim Sinclair's essay "Don't Mourn for Us" (url http://web.syr.edu/%7Ejisincla/dontmourn.htm) was written in 1993. Autism Network International was founded in 1992, and activities leading up to its founding date back to the late 1980s (url http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html). 1999 might have been the year that the term 'neurodiversity' was coined, but the movement to advocate away from the disorder view of autism has existed well before 1999."
At Tue Aug 14, 08:45:00 PM PDT, watson said...
Nine said...
"Actually, anti-cure ideas and advocacy to move away from a disorder model of autism were around prior to 1999. Jim Sinclair's essay "Don't Mourn for Us" (url http://web.syr.edu/%7Ejisincla/dontmourn.htm) was written in 1993.
Who does s/he mean by "Us"?
What strikes me about Jim Sinclair's website is that s/he discusses intersexuality in great detail and what growing up as an intersexed person was like for him/her but spends no time at all talking about his/her own experience as a child growing up with autism. The only hint that s/he might have had autism as a child is when s/he says that aside from her intersexuality s/he "had some severe developmental communication and other problems", which s/he doesn't dwell on. I find that curious.
Although s/he is often referred to as a person with Asperger's Syndrome, from what I have read, s/he had no formal autism diagnosis in 1988.
I get the impression from this article and others that as a child and as a teenager, s/he felt misunderstood, rejected and unloved, and that s/he is speaking primarily about him/herself as an intersexed person having undergone - against his/her will - several painful and useless treatments to remedy his/her physical 'difference'.
The problem with that, of course. is that his being born an intersexed person could not be changed, cured or treated, and parents of such a child have no choice but to accept their condition.
The bottom line is that Jim Sinclair did not have autism as a child, and he is not, and never will be, a parent trying to cope everyday with a severely autistic child.
Nine, Can you find another pre-1999 anti-cure article from an autism advocate other than Sinclair?
"Autism Network International was founded in 1992, and activities leading up to its founding date back to the late 1980s (url http://web.syr.edu/~jisincla/History_of_ANI.html). 1999 might have been the year that the term 'neurodiversity' was coined, but the movement to advocate away from the disorder view of autism has existed well before 1999.
I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong here.
Donna Williams, Jim Sinclair and Kathy Lissner founded Autism Network International in 1992.
Donna Williams
Donna Williams was an emotionally deprived, abused and neglected child - "a disturbed child", who lived as three people - a male (Willie), a female (Carol), and herself (Donna)- for twenty-five years before her autism diagnosis. In 1990, in her mid-twenties and after gaining an honors degree in sociology, and writing her first book, she was described as "autistic" by Dr Laurie Bartak.
I have not been able to find out if Donna was ever actually given an autism diagnosis, although she described herself as a high-functioning autistic which, after the DSM_IV came out in 1994, would be the equivalent of Asperger's Syndrome. She did not have a diagnosis of autism of any kind when she wrote her book.
After it was published with the word "autistic" in the title, she was accused of fraud by people who knew her well. She has become an autism consultant, author of several books , script-writer, film maker, and she is a sought-after speaker at autism conferences all over the world.
Jim Sinclair
Jim Sinclair was born in 1965. S/he is referred to as a person with Asperger's Syndrome.
S/he has a B.A. in Psychology and graduate education in Developmental and Child Psychology, and a Masters degree in Rehabilitation Counselling. S/he is described as a dynamic and sought-after speaker at autism conferences.
I don't know when s/he was diagnosed with Aspergers, but growing up as an inter-sexed person, treated as a girl until s/he was twelve, and then as a boy, must have been exceptionally difficult.
Kathy Lissner
Kathy Lissner, born 1965, was raped and sexually abused as a young child. She gained a degree in Political Science in her twenties and she was officially diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome in 1994, at the age of 28, - although some sites say that she was diagnosed in 2001, at the age of 36 - having referred to herself as an "autistic" person, and having spoken as "an autistic", on behalf of "autistics", since 1988.
The ARI was founded by three highly-intelligent, high-functioning people with traumatic pasts who met in 1992 while Donna Williams was promoting her first book 'Nobody Nowhere: Autobiography of an Autistic Girl' at autism conferences. All are writers and all became self-appointed autism advocates.
I understand they were joined by Wendy Lawson.
Wendy Lawson was diagnosed, also, curiously, by Dr Laurie Bartak, with an "Autism Spectrum Disorder" in 1994, at the age of 42, after 24 years as a schizophrenic. She has five university degrees. She has written many books and is a qualified counsellor, social worker and psychologist. She was married with several children, and now lives with her lesbian partner.
Dr Laurie Bartak who diagnosed both Donna Williams and Wendy Lawson has said that abused and emotionally deprived children show autistic-like behaviours, and that these disappear entirely when the children are moved to more supportive and loving environments.
Dr Michael Rutter found that Romanian orphans with autism "recovered with reasonable foster care in Britain".
Dr Bartak, Senior Lecturer of Education at Monash University in Victoria, and one of Australia’s best-known authorities on autism with 40-plus years in the field, has said that environmental factors play a part in the development of some autism. Both he and Michael Rutter know that some children with autistic symptoms recover completely when their environment is changed.
Looking at these advocates, do you think that their autistic symptoms could have stemmed from their early traumatic lives and turbulent pasts?
Jim Sinclair, Donna Williams, Kathy Lissner, Wendy Lawson and others may very well have talked amongst themselves and decided to promote greater awareness and understanding of autism, and acceptance of people with autism by the community, but it was only after a link with vaccines had been made that any idea of acceptance of the disorder itself became known to parents of children with autism.
As far as I know, Kathy Grant and Wendy Lawson have not spoken against treatment. Thomas McKean certainly hasn't. Donna Williams herself uses diet and biomed. And even Jim Sinclair has said that s/he is not against intervention for behaviours that "intrude on other people's boundaries".
Although it is quite true that Sinclair wrote "Don't Mourn for Us" in 1993, the article reached my mailbox in 1999. There's that pivotal year, again. That's apparently when it was widely circulated around parent-run autism support groups and e-lists. Parents of children with regressive-autism after vaccination were outraged. They were indeed mourning for a child that they had lost, and they were searching for a cure.
If a child is born with a physical malformation, born with brain damage or born with a genetic disorder which interferes with normal brain development, one can understand why advocates who themselves were born with a physical difference would plead for acceptance, particularly after they'd endured several unsuccessful operations designed to remedy their difference.
However when a normally-developing child is brain-injured in an accident or after an encephalitis, or by a vaccine-induced encephalopthy causing organic brain damage, and they develop symptoms of brain-injury, parents do mourn for the child they have lost and desperately want to put things right.
Many parents in the 80s and 90s were mourning. They knew what had happened to their children, and they wanted to recover the children they'd lost.
In 2002, the first World Autism Congress gathered in Melbourne, Australia. and was attended by 1500 scientists, doctors, autism case workers and parents, "all absorbed in finding causes and treatments for the mystery disorder".
Both Donna Williams and Wendy Lawson were speakers, along with Temple Grandin. The first two we gather were described as "autistic" by Dr Laurie Bartak - at the ages of 26 and 46 respectively. Grandin, on the other hand, was diagnosed with autism in very early childhood. Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders also participated in online chat room discussions.
Why do you think that the very first World Autism Congress was held in 2002?
Why do you think Dr Laurie Bartak "found himself hosing down spot-fires threatening to engulf some of his most eminent guests"?
Why do you think sparks were flying?
And, do you think that the parents attending that meeting had speech-delayed toddlers or quirky children?
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Autism, Vaccination and Neurodiversity - A Timeline
Disclaimer: "Although I believe that vaccines caused the autism epidemic of the 90s, I do not believe that all autism is caused by vaccines. Autism is a syndrome, a group of symptoms, that can follow brain injury. Vaccines can cause encephalitis, and the symptoms of post-encephalitic syndrome are identical to autism. I do not believe that the thimerosal/mercury in vaccines is the only culprit. Reducing the amount of thimerosal in vaccines will not make vaccines safe. Removing thimerosal entirely will not make vaccines safe. Vaccines are full of chemicals that should not be pumped ad nauseam into human bodies without any prior research on what these chemicals do, or which organs they target and affect. "
Autism, Vaccination and Neurodiversity - A Timeline
by "Watson"
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the Neurodiversity movement is being supported by our governments and BigPharma. They know very well that many children were damaged by vaccines in the 1990s and, for once, there was an unacceptable number of casualties.
They have always regarded a few casualties as an acceptable trade-off - that's where "the benefit of vaccination outweighs the risks" comes from. The "benefit" they are referring to is not just the supposed benefit to an individual child, it is the supposed benefit to the entire population. The "risk" is to the child. So the slogan should read, "The benefit of vaccination to the population outweighs the risk to your baby." They are putting babies one at a time in the balance. And they really don't care about individual babies. Our babies.
So they had a real problem when worldwide tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of parents, like myself, witnessed their babies, toddlers and young children react to vaccines, sometimes severely as my son did, then lose their ability to communicate and go on to develop a cluster of symptoms, defined as autism, and diagnosed as "autism". There was no explanation given for our children's loss in development. They said it was called regressive-type autism that "just happens sometimes". There was no cause. Autism was not a known result of vaccination, therefore "autism" following vaccination, despite severe reactions, was not a known injury and would not be compensated.
Now the first and only priority has always been to protect the Immunisation Programme - at all costs. Even Jenner did it. When children and adults got smallpox despite being appropriately vaccinated, Jenner said that they would have had a much, much worse case of pox if they hadn't been vaccinated, or worse, they would have died. When children became severely ill after smallpox vaccination, or were brain-damaged, or died, 'something else' was always blamed. Vaccination couldn't be associated with failure to protect, injury or death.
Nothing has changed.
Except in the nineties, it was no longer the case of a child sacrificed here and there, and parents believing that their child was one of the unlucky 'one in a million' damaged by vaccines. With the Internet, parents of vaccine-injured children all over the world could now 'meet' and compare notes - and together, try to find out exactly what it was in the vaccines that had caused their children's problems so that they might recover their children.
Faced with many, many children damaged by vaccines, what were vaccine manufacturers and governments mandating those vaccines to do? Parents would lose confidence in vaccination, and that couldn't be allowed to happen.
Fearmongering was one strategy: "If fewer people immunise their children, there will be outbreaks of KILLER DISEASES. Children will DIE!"
And the other was to change attitudes towards autism.
Now, how were they going to do that?
Prior to 1999, few books had been written about the syndrome, all but two that I can think of were written from a parents' perspective, and they were read mostly by parents of children with autism, not the general public who knew next to nothing, if anything at all, about the disorder. Most had never even heard the word. Temple Grandin's 'Emergence: Labeled Autistic' was the first, published in 1986. Then in 1991 Donna Williams' book appeared.
I think it's important for people to realise that Donna did not write 'Nobody Nowhere' as an autistic person writing about autism. At the time of writing, she didn't have a diagnosis of autism. It was her autobiography, but its original title was "Dolly; autobiography of a disturbed child". Donna says that it was packaged by the publishers as 'Nobody Nowhere: Autobiography of an Autistic Girl', as if she had no idea at the time that "autistic girl" was going to be in its finished title.
Then after the thimerosal-autism link started to surface Jasmine O'Neill wrote her book, published in 1999 - 'Through the Eyes of Aliens: A Book about Autistic People'. She claimed to have very severe Kanner's autism and to be a savant in writing, music and art. She was an elective mute. This was the very first book to mention "celebration" and "beauty" in connection with autism, and the one that became Amanda Baggs' bible.
Not long afterwards, O'Neill flew off to settle in Hawaii with "the love of her life". She moved on.
In the same year 1999, an association was made between autism and genius. Speculative articles appeared such as, "Was Einstein Autistic?", followed by articles such as The Little Professor Syndrome, New York Times Magazine, June 18, 2000.
Frank Klein, then aged 29, apparently read the article which he said "explained everything" and led him a year later to Pittsburgh University and a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism.
He then set up his "Asperger's Advocacy" website which he later changed to "Autism Advocacy" when he said he realized he was more High Functioning than an Aspie. And, amongst other articles, such as, "Don't Cure Autism Now!" and "The Truth of The Myth of The Lack of Autism Recovery", he wrote "Autism, Genius and Greatness".
Then after four years of advocacy, he moved on.
In the meantime Judy Singer coined the word "Neurodiversity" and linked autism to "Nerds Wierdos, and OddBalls" in 1999.
Autistics.org was created by Laura Tisoncik, and Amanda Baggs joined her in 1999/2000.
Then Baron-Cohen's Aspie quizzes appeared, and screening for autism and Aspergers in younger and younger children began. The idea of an ASD which soon became "Autism" was extended to include any toddler with speech delay or shyness, and any shy or socially awkward teen with special interests.
Jim Laidler the ex-DAN! doctor who posted on autism support forums that his two sons had been damaged by vaccines and how they had made great progress after chelation - which is why Dr Rimland chose him to write the DAN! position paper on Mercury Detoxification of Autistic Children in 2001 - turned Judas a year later and joined Quackwatch, starting up his own branch of the organization named Autism-Watch. He had recanted and returned to the fold. Had he ever really left?
In 2002 Edan, diagnosed with Aspergers in 2001, created the website "Aspergia".
He writes:
"At school they are often viewed as normal children, if a little awkward or introverted but childhood and adolescence are such turbulent years anyway that many AMs (Aspergian Mutants) are missed completely". "AM children often develop some special powers too."
"When AM (Aspergian Mutant) individuals combine their strong personal focus with their special power, they have an extraordinary potential to contribute to society and develop new and striking inventions and works of art or science. Further research is required in the field of history to find out how many central innovative figures in human history did indeed have Aspergian traits."
In 2004 Edan moved on.
Bonnie Ventura, and many others, who found Edan's site about "Aspergians", and as a self-identified "Aspergian", jumped on board with her ideas, for one - a site for science fiction writers, which generated much more online Aspie traffic.
The idea that a cure for autism would lead to abortion of autistic fetuses and genocide of a whole race (a superior race - the next step in human evolution) was brilliant! It had anti-abortionists and minority groups up-in-arms, and had, and still has, many people who know a child with an ASD concerned, and self-diagnosed Aspies quaking in their boots.
In 2004, the "Aspies for Freedom" forum was created by Amy and Gareth Nelson, which has the wholehearted support of Simon Baron-Cohen and Tony Attwood, the UK and Australasian autism experts.
In the same year, Kathleen Seidel's undoubtedly pro-vaccination, Neurodiversity.com sprang into action with links to Stephen Barrett's Quackwatch and Laidler's Autism-Watch - which has links back to Neurodiversity.com, Autism Diva and other ND sites and blogs. Simon Baron-Cohen is in touch with Seidel, and he has praised her for her efforts. This year in the March edition of the British Medical Journal he said, "I'm very impressed by the scholarship in the neurodiversity.com website".
Now the word "autism" appears regularly in our newspapers, often linked with genius and giftedness. There must be literally hundreds of books about autism, many of them written by "autistics" or parents of "autistics" who are painting an entirely different picture of autism. I hear that Uta Frith and Simon Baron Cohen have enthusiastically supported "autistic" authors.
We have certainly come a long way since 1988 and the movie Rainman. Aspies today are surprised when they discover that the character, Raymond Babbit, was inspired by the life of the real autistic-savant Kim Peek, and that at the time Kim Peek was regarded as a high-functioning autistic.
Since 1999, several films have been made, and others are on the way, such as the Jason McElwain Movie, all depicting a different kind of autism that wasn't familiar even ten years ago.
Ten years ago, who would have guessed that the president of the USA would be photographed with an autistic basketball player? Who then could have imagined that a young man with autism would be able to play basketball - a fast-paced team sport, with the high-level activity and noise that the game entails?
Since 1999, the face of autism has been and is being deliberately changed.
Let's return to 1999. By that time, the rate of autism had climbed to 1 in 166, and many parents of children with regressive autism were waiting impatiently for the rate of autism to drop after the removal of thimerosal from vaccines. They knew it would take a few years, but they were sure that it would happen. To see a decline in the rate would have been positive proof that a substance repeatedly injected into children's bodies had damaged their brains. Unfortunately, for us and our children, that could never be allowed to happen.
The numbers kept rising, and are still rising. Last month Simon Baron-Cohen announced that autism now affects 1 in 58 children.
To the public that means that 1 in 58 children have autism. They don't. Simon Baron-Cohen knows that 1 in 58 children don't have autism. It is a deliberate deception to keep the rate of "Autism" skyrocketing in the public eye.
Joe and Jane Public read their newspaper, see the numbers rising, and completely dismiss the idea that vaccines cause autism. Their doctor has assured them that vaccines are safe, and warned them that without vaccination their baby could die or be severely brain-damaged from "a preventable disease". They've also read that Einstein, Michelangelo and Jane Austin had autism, and they've heard that autistic children are highly intelligent, gifted, and might even have special powers. They wonder what all the fuss is about. There's no question that they will vaccinate their baby.
O'Neill, Edan and Klein have moved on. How many of the current Neurodiversity activists will move on and get on with their lives, leaving their advocacy behind? Parents don't just advocate for their children with autism for a few years and move on. They can't. It's a life-time commitment.
What was and is the Neurodiversity movement's real aim? Looking at the timeline, what do you think?
Autism, Vaccination and Neurodiversity - A Timeline
by "Watson"
There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the Neurodiversity movement is being supported by our governments and BigPharma. They know very well that many children were damaged by vaccines in the 1990s and, for once, there was an unacceptable number of casualties.
They have always regarded a few casualties as an acceptable trade-off - that's where "the benefit of vaccination outweighs the risks" comes from. The "benefit" they are referring to is not just the supposed benefit to an individual child, it is the supposed benefit to the entire population. The "risk" is to the child. So the slogan should read, "The benefit of vaccination to the population outweighs the risk to your baby." They are putting babies one at a time in the balance. And they really don't care about individual babies. Our babies.
So they had a real problem when worldwide tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of parents, like myself, witnessed their babies, toddlers and young children react to vaccines, sometimes severely as my son did, then lose their ability to communicate and go on to develop a cluster of symptoms, defined as autism, and diagnosed as "autism". There was no explanation given for our children's loss in development. They said it was called regressive-type autism that "just happens sometimes". There was no cause. Autism was not a known result of vaccination, therefore "autism" following vaccination, despite severe reactions, was not a known injury and would not be compensated.
Now the first and only priority has always been to protect the Immunisation Programme - at all costs. Even Jenner did it. When children and adults got smallpox despite being appropriately vaccinated, Jenner said that they would have had a much, much worse case of pox if they hadn't been vaccinated, or worse, they would have died. When children became severely ill after smallpox vaccination, or were brain-damaged, or died, 'something else' was always blamed. Vaccination couldn't be associated with failure to protect, injury or death.
Nothing has changed.
Except in the nineties, it was no longer the case of a child sacrificed here and there, and parents believing that their child was one of the unlucky 'one in a million' damaged by vaccines. With the Internet, parents of vaccine-injured children all over the world could now 'meet' and compare notes - and together, try to find out exactly what it was in the vaccines that had caused their children's problems so that they might recover their children.
Faced with many, many children damaged by vaccines, what were vaccine manufacturers and governments mandating those vaccines to do? Parents would lose confidence in vaccination, and that couldn't be allowed to happen.
Fearmongering was one strategy: "If fewer people immunise their children, there will be outbreaks of KILLER DISEASES. Children will DIE!"
And the other was to change attitudes towards autism.
Now, how were they going to do that?
Prior to 1999, few books had been written about the syndrome, all but two that I can think of were written from a parents' perspective, and they were read mostly by parents of children with autism, not the general public who knew next to nothing, if anything at all, about the disorder. Most had never even heard the word. Temple Grandin's 'Emergence: Labeled Autistic' was the first, published in 1986. Then in 1991 Donna Williams' book appeared.
I think it's important for people to realise that Donna did not write 'Nobody Nowhere' as an autistic person writing about autism. At the time of writing, she didn't have a diagnosis of autism. It was her autobiography, but its original title was "Dolly; autobiography of a disturbed child". Donna says that it was packaged by the publishers as 'Nobody Nowhere: Autobiography of an Autistic Girl', as if she had no idea at the time that "autistic girl" was going to be in its finished title.
Then after the thimerosal-autism link started to surface Jasmine O'Neill wrote her book, published in 1999 - 'Through the Eyes of Aliens: A Book about Autistic People'. She claimed to have very severe Kanner's autism and to be a savant in writing, music and art. She was an elective mute. This was the very first book to mention "celebration" and "beauty" in connection with autism, and the one that became Amanda Baggs' bible.
Not long afterwards, O'Neill flew off to settle in Hawaii with "the love of her life". She moved on.
In the same year 1999, an association was made between autism and genius. Speculative articles appeared such as, "Was Einstein Autistic?", followed by articles such as The Little Professor Syndrome, New York Times Magazine, June 18, 2000.
Frank Klein, then aged 29, apparently read the article which he said "explained everything" and led him a year later to Pittsburgh University and a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism.
He then set up his "Asperger's Advocacy" website which he later changed to "Autism Advocacy" when he said he realized he was more High Functioning than an Aspie. And, amongst other articles, such as, "Don't Cure Autism Now!" and "The Truth of The Myth of The Lack of Autism Recovery", he wrote "Autism, Genius and Greatness".
Then after four years of advocacy, he moved on.
In the meantime Judy Singer coined the word "Neurodiversity" and linked autism to "Nerds Wierdos, and OddBalls" in 1999.
Autistics.org was created by Laura Tisoncik, and Amanda Baggs joined her in 1999/2000.
Then Baron-Cohen's Aspie quizzes appeared, and screening for autism and Aspergers in younger and younger children began. The idea of an ASD which soon became "Autism" was extended to include any toddler with speech delay or shyness, and any shy or socially awkward teen with special interests.
Jim Laidler the ex-DAN! doctor who posted on autism support forums that his two sons had been damaged by vaccines and how they had made great progress after chelation - which is why Dr Rimland chose him to write the DAN! position paper on Mercury Detoxification of Autistic Children in 2001 - turned Judas a year later and joined Quackwatch, starting up his own branch of the organization named Autism-Watch. He had recanted and returned to the fold. Had he ever really left?
In 2002 Edan, diagnosed with Aspergers in 2001, created the website "Aspergia".
He writes:
"At school they are often viewed as normal children, if a little awkward or introverted but childhood and adolescence are such turbulent years anyway that many AMs (Aspergian Mutants) are missed completely". "AM children often develop some special powers too."
"When AM (Aspergian Mutant) individuals combine their strong personal focus with their special power, they have an extraordinary potential to contribute to society and develop new and striking inventions and works of art or science. Further research is required in the field of history to find out how many central innovative figures in human history did indeed have Aspergian traits."
In 2004 Edan moved on.
Bonnie Ventura, and many others, who found Edan's site about "Aspergians", and as a self-identified "Aspergian", jumped on board with her ideas, for one - a site for science fiction writers, which generated much more online Aspie traffic.
The idea that a cure for autism would lead to abortion of autistic fetuses and genocide of a whole race (a superior race - the next step in human evolution) was brilliant! It had anti-abortionists and minority groups up-in-arms, and had, and still has, many people who know a child with an ASD concerned, and self-diagnosed Aspies quaking in their boots.
In 2004, the "Aspies for Freedom" forum was created by Amy and Gareth Nelson, which has the wholehearted support of Simon Baron-Cohen and Tony Attwood, the UK and Australasian autism experts.
In the same year, Kathleen Seidel's undoubtedly pro-vaccination, Neurodiversity.com sprang into action with links to Stephen Barrett's Quackwatch and Laidler's Autism-Watch - which has links back to Neurodiversity.com, Autism Diva and other ND sites and blogs. Simon Baron-Cohen is in touch with Seidel, and he has praised her for her efforts. This year in the March edition of the British Medical Journal he said, "I'm very impressed by the scholarship in the neurodiversity.com website".
Now the word "autism" appears regularly in our newspapers, often linked with genius and giftedness. There must be literally hundreds of books about autism, many of them written by "autistics" or parents of "autistics" who are painting an entirely different picture of autism. I hear that Uta Frith and Simon Baron Cohen have enthusiastically supported "autistic" authors.
We have certainly come a long way since 1988 and the movie Rainman. Aspies today are surprised when they discover that the character, Raymond Babbit, was inspired by the life of the real autistic-savant Kim Peek, and that at the time Kim Peek was regarded as a high-functioning autistic.
Since 1999, several films have been made, and others are on the way, such as the Jason McElwain Movie, all depicting a different kind of autism that wasn't familiar even ten years ago.
Ten years ago, who would have guessed that the president of the USA would be photographed with an autistic basketball player? Who then could have imagined that a young man with autism would be able to play basketball - a fast-paced team sport, with the high-level activity and noise that the game entails?
Since 1999, the face of autism has been and is being deliberately changed.
Let's return to 1999. By that time, the rate of autism had climbed to 1 in 166, and many parents of children with regressive autism were waiting impatiently for the rate of autism to drop after the removal of thimerosal from vaccines. They knew it would take a few years, but they were sure that it would happen. To see a decline in the rate would have been positive proof that a substance repeatedly injected into children's bodies had damaged their brains. Unfortunately, for us and our children, that could never be allowed to happen.
The numbers kept rising, and are still rising. Last month Simon Baron-Cohen announced that autism now affects 1 in 58 children.
To the public that means that 1 in 58 children have autism. They don't. Simon Baron-Cohen knows that 1 in 58 children don't have autism. It is a deliberate deception to keep the rate of "Autism" skyrocketing in the public eye.
Joe and Jane Public read their newspaper, see the numbers rising, and completely dismiss the idea that vaccines cause autism. Their doctor has assured them that vaccines are safe, and warned them that without vaccination their baby could die or be severely brain-damaged from "a preventable disease". They've also read that Einstein, Michelangelo and Jane Austin had autism, and they've heard that autistic children are highly intelligent, gifted, and might even have special powers. They wonder what all the fuss is about. There's no question that they will vaccinate their baby.
O'Neill, Edan and Klein have moved on. How many of the current Neurodiversity activists will move on and get on with their lives, leaving their advocacy behind? Parents don't just advocate for their children with autism for a few years and move on. They can't. It's a life-time commitment.
What was and is the Neurodiversity movement's real aim? Looking at the timeline, what do you think?
Friday, August 03, 2007
What Does Neurodiversity Say About Amanda Baggs?
If we added an elf hat to this thing, is that how Amanda pictures herself?
It looks like Neurodiversity doesn't want to say anything about Amanda Baggs. They must be afraid to defend a fraud. With all the evidence that has been published here, one would think that the leaders of the neuroinsane would come to the defense of their allegedly autistic spokesmodel.
Nope, the nitwits are silent. As viciously as the Neuronitwits attacked Droopy for her exposition of Baggs by sicking a lawyer on an actual autistic woman, one would think they would try the same tactic here. But, no threatening letters from Neuronitwit lawyers have arrived. I don't think you can sue someone for publishing factual statements. If you could sue someone for quote mining, Kathleen Seidel and Kevin Leitch would be broke.
Perhaps the ND's are hoping I'll shut up and go away if they don't respond. Haha, not likely. It's kind of nice to be able to criticize this pack of wacked out weirdos without any of them bothering me.
Neurodiversity claims to seek respect for autistic people. Yet, here they are putting up a new age LSD using hippy who thinks she's an elf as their most visible spokesperson. Is that the image they wish to convey for themselves? I don't think they'll gain much respect from anyone when their mouthpiece is having hallucinations about conversations with elves.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.schizophrenia/browse_thread/thread/e0ab3c21962eda6e/c9128c5244ecd565?lnk=st&q=LSD&rnum=6&hl=en#c9128c5244ecd565
Dec 7 1997,
Galiganinda Dulin First I'm going to say that I -know- what this sounds like. Then I'm going to say that it's not like that, this time. Yesterday I was on a long car ride, staring out the window. The Others suddenly told me that they would be relaying messages from the elves I used to live with (and be one of). I knew they couldn't lie, but I thought they might be being deceived themselves. But then again, they know everything. In this universe. Maybe the elves were in another universe. All sorts of thoughts were flying through my head. But I said, okay, what do they want to tell me? They said that I had indeed lived with them. But I knew that. Then they said that in this life when I took acid they were able to get through to me because it changed my... and they said something that I couldn't figure out at all, but it had to do with sensitivity to different realms of reality (I think). Then they said that, like certain forms of magic, acid takes its toll on the user. They said that I was wise to give it up. They said that now that I had discovered the Others I would be able to talk to them, sometimes. I said something like, "Okay, but I have to know you're really real. Do something to prove that you're real." They didn't answer, but immediately a song that I had never heard came on the radio. It had to do with travel between different universes. So I believed them. Then they sort of misquoted Yeats: Come away, O elven child To the woods and waters wild Reunited with your band For the world's more full of weeping Than you can understand I got excited, but said, "Okay, that first thing might have been a coincidence. Give me another sign." I didn't really expect them to do it. Then the driver turned the car on again and the first words out of the radio are, "Trust I seek and I find in you." Now I really believed them. "Are there any other elves in this world?" "We can't tell you that." "Why not?" "Because it would disturb what is going to happen. We can't interfere." "Well take me to your world now then!" "We can't do that." "Why not?" "It's not time yet." "But..." "We'll give you one glimpse of our world. You will see trees as we see trees." Well now every time I look at a tree, there is a new, but very old in my mind, quality to it. I can't really describe it. I tried to stick my hand in one, but that didn't work (I was able to do that in the elf world). Anyway, I'm really excited and happy to be given this chance to see part of that world again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
