Reporting Fraud, Amanda Baggs

Below is an email I sent to Susan Besio, PhD who is the Director, Office of Vermont Health Access and Health Care Reform. If Dr Besio receives emails from a lot of other people who do not like Amanda Baggs masquerading as an autistic person and misrepresenting the horror that autistic children face, perhaps she will take measures to end Baggs' abuse of our children.

From: "bettwice33@juno.com" <bettwice33@juno.com>
To: soa@state.vt.us

Subject: Fraud
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:32:04 GMT
Hi,

I'm writing to report a case of fraud. The woman involved may be receiving services from the state illegally. Here is 40 page report detailing the fraud of Amanda Baggs in obtaining a bogus diagnosis of autism. http://www.amandabaggscontroversy.blogspot.com/

You will see that Baggs was a normal teenager who could speak, was not incontinent, did not flap her arms in a stim and was not diagnosed with any abnormal condition until after she became involved with LSD and wound up in a mental institution after threatening suicide at age 15. At that time, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, had delusons in which she thought she was an elf, was later diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder and, at age 20 decided she would gain an autism diagnosis upon which she began pretending that she could no longer speak.

She has since become somewhat famous through appearances on CNN for her bogus portrayal of being a person with autism who can communicate with a machine that translates her typing into speech. She is part of a cult that is funded by the Pharmaceutical industry that proclaims that people with low functioning autism do not want to be cured. I have a non-verbal 12 year old son with autism who would very much disagree with this phoney opinion. Baggs is usurping the rights of my son and all true autistic people who would love to be cured of their disorder by faking autism, making herself famous and putting untrue words in their mouths by purporting to be the voice of what all autistic people who can not speak would like to say.

I don't begrudge this woman any services that she may be entitled to by damaging her brain with LSD or being truly affected with schizophrenia or some other diminished capacity. To collect money or services from the taxpayers under the bogus diagnosis of autism is, I believe, fraud and I hope you will investigate this blatant abuse of the system.

Here is a description of the overall fraud that Baggs is involved with. http://hatingautism.blogspot.com/2009/06/debunking-neurodiversity-and-ari-neeman.html This in irrelevant as far as her receiving services illegally but serves as an explanation for her motivation to commit this crime. I have attached a picture of her when she was 15 years old. You can see that is a far cry from the image of herself that she presents now. Since one standard for diagnosing autism is that it must be done by age 3, you can see that Bagggs missed this age cutoff by 17 years and would be the only person in history to have been diagnosed at such an advanced age where these bizarre behaviors typical of autism were never noticed by anyone until that time. I understand that the regulations prohibit you from discussing the case. Since Baggs has thoroughly misrepresented autism publicly on CNN and elsewhere, I request that you let me know if you determine that she is faking autism so I can ask CNN to correct the damage they have done to the public's understanding of autism.

Thank you,
John Best
113 Old Derry Rd
Londonderry, NH 03053
(603)434-3928

Feel free to release my name to anyone who asks regarding this report. If Baggs wants to know who filed a complaint, I would like to receive the credit.