Change.org is a positive contribution to public life; in the United States and around the world.One of its most unfortunate decisions made of late though was to start an alleged "Autism" blog site and then stack it with two blogger representatives of the anti-cure, anti-treatment Neurodiversity movement. One of the bloggers is Dora Raymaker a very high functioning person with an autism spectrum disorder and prominent member of ASAN and Dr. Kristina Chew, a parent of an autistic child, blogger, and professor of Greek and Latin classics. Both are adherents to the Neurodiversity Ideology which does not view autism spectrum disorders as medical conditions, opposes cures for autism, objects to autism distinctions based on functioning levels despite common sense and their use by expert autism researchers and medical professionals, declares not only that there is no cure for autism now but that there never can be such a cure and tries with every breath to discourage research into possible environmental causes of autism.
The latter effort is becoming ever more desperate as research now has begun on many fronts based a new paradigm of autism research one that works on the basis that there is an interaction between the genetic and the environmental causes of autism. Another jolt to the omniscience of the Neurodiversity movement came in 2008 with comments made by no less an authority than Dr. Bernardine Healy that necessary clinical research into possible environmental causes of autism has not been done and has in fact been discouraged for reasons of public policy, principally the potential impact on public vaccination programs.
The Neurodiversity movement has some parent adherents, of which Ms Chew is possibly the best known, but most parents are too sensible to subscribe to an ideology which dictates that efforts to cure their children of their neurological disorders are wrong and should not continue. The ND movement is offensive and a violation of the human rights of autistic children whose parents represent their interests not strangers with little in common. But the ND adherents serve a useful purpose for media outlets looking for a new angle and for pubic administrations that do not want to spend monies on treatment and research into autism cures.
The Change.org Neurodiversity blog has come out with guns blazing by listing 10 Autism Controversies and then putting a blatantly one sided Neurodiversity spin on all 10 of those controversies. To the full credit of Ms Raymaker and Dr. Chew they did not try to create any illusion of balance or objectivity. Every controversy is described and resolved from a Neurodiversity perspective.
What the two ND ideologues did not do was canvass ALL of the autism controversies particularly those created most directly by Neurodiversity ideologues like Ms Raymaker and Dr. Chew. What they did not do was discuss the controversy over the legal, moral or common sense basis on which these people tell OTHER people how they should raise, care for and protect THEIR autistic children.
The greatest autism controversy arises from the unmitigated gall, audacity and arrogance which sees ND ideologues tell parents of autistic children who can barely understand language or the world that they have no right to speak on their children's behalf. Instead Neurodiversity advocates assert that THEY , high functioning, highly articulate, strangers, with little in common with severely autistic children, should speak on behalf of those children in place of their actual parents. The fraud and hypocrisy arising from this incredible arrogance are part of a reprehensible misrepresentation taking place in world autism discussions. It is a fraud which seeks to deprive autistic children of the protection of their parents and violates their human rights.
Change.org has waded into the autism wars by appointing one party to those wars as the official Change.org blogging voices. In doing so Change.org has sided with an irrational movement which in fact seeks to prevent treatment and cure of autistic children and even prevent open, honest discussion of autism realities.
With this decision by Change.org the autism wars have just been taken to a new level of hostility and confrontation.
autism
0 التعليقات:
إرسال تعليق