Apparently there are a lot of SAPs, Stupid Autism Parents, behind all the uproar over possible vaccine autism connections.
Those parents who accept the official view that autism is 100% genetic and that substances injected into young children can not possibly disrupt or damage their neurological systems are smart, good guy parents. Those who want to treat or cure their children, who question vaccine safety, the combinations of vaccines, the frequency of vaccines and the biological and chemical agents contained in vaccines are ..... well .... just not that smart.
Being a Stupid Autism Parent who believes that autism is a disorder for which a cure is badly needed, that it results from an interaction of genetic and environmental factors and that vaccines MIGHT play a role in causing or triggering autism in some cases I was grateful to learn from a discussion at "Aspies for Freedom" that it is just my own stupidity that leads me to such erroneous beliefs and irrational concerns. In the end parents who post at Autism Speaks are stupid and parents who post at Aspies for Freedom are smarter. It's true, Aspies for Freedom says so.
Aspies for Freedom is a site which appears to be dedicated to the rights of "
Aspies" to be free, although free in what sense is not clear since most of the posters appear to reside in the US, UK and Canada where fundamental freedoms are constitutionally entrenched. Perhaps it means freedom to determine what is best for other people's Autistic children?
Aspies for Freedom started a highly enlightening, intellectually sophisticated discussion topic called:
A General Comparison Between Parents on This Forum and Parents on Autism Speaks
The general gist of the opening post, by a brilliant intellectual posting as Mars Mariner, and subsequent discussion is that parents who post at Aspies for Freedom are smart and parents who post on the Autism Speaks forum are well ... not so smart:
Post 1
I would make a general comparison between parents here and parents on Autism Speaks. Again, this is a very general comparison, one that I do not intend as a slander against the parents on the "other" forum. However, my sense is that parents here enjoy a greater level of education and critical faculties than their peers on the other forum. It is not my intent to belittle the earnest and sincere parents on Autism Speaks. However, it seemed from my experience there as though they were not discerning people. My sense is that they were younger, not college educated, and more susceptible to seeing the world simplistically. I may be wrong in my perception, but that seems like a general rule of thumb.
I am not coming at this from an elitist perspective (I hope not). Rather, I am sincerely recalling my experience there. What disturbed me, however, was one other difference between parent cultures there and here. Parents there seemed not to care about children beyond their own to the degree that parents here do. It was not so much that they agreed with the torture going on at the Judge Rotenberg Center; more that they did not care too much about the sphere beyond their immediate concern. Parents here seem a lot warmer.
If I am mistaken, or if I have over-generalized, I apologise. Again, I think that parents on the other forum are more likely to look at reality simplistically. A lot of them were disaffected with Autism Speaks because it will not endorse the vaccine view. Autism Speaks endorses establishment positions, while the anti-vaccine people are decidedly against the pharma cartels. However, both factions, the establishment eugenicists and the anti-establishment vaccine people, believe in Neurotypicalism. Neither side can see Autistic people as having positive contributions to make. Both see a "problem," to be cured in a society dedicated to Enlightenment modes of rational problem solving.
In summation, my time there was somewhat disturbing. I wanted to like the parents there, but found that I could not relate to most of them. Few of them were even interested in what I had to say enough to tell me to shove...whatever they would tell me. This was disturbing, because I was willing to be of assistance as much as possible with what I could help.
However, it is also possible that few parents of intellectually inclined Autistics visit that forum. It is possible that more such parents are here than there. Hence, my experiences may not have been of value to them. My time there was brief, and rather unproductive. To top it off, the moderators there allowed a pornographer to spam the whole website, one visited by children! I will never return.
Another intellectual giant writing as Pakrat chipped in:
Post 2
RE: A General Comparison Between Parents on This Forum and Parents on Autism Speaks
I also notice on FB that the old chestnut of vaccine causing autism is very much alive and some of the parents disbelieve the evidence discrediting the supposed link. One woman got incredibly hysterical when I told her that vaccines did not cause her brother's severe autism. She made all kinds of insults against me which I found amusing since they were so ludicrous but it goes to show that when there is an emotive subject, reason can be quite lacking.
Yes, I believe the parents here are generally brighter and more deep thinking than in sites such as Autism Speaks. It's also possible though that the other parents have more severely affected children and therefore were exposed to more hype about "cures" and more indoctrination about the "tragedy of autism". People who prey on desperation are indeed despicable and all too common.
The discussion was also enlightened by one of the "smart" parents, posting as "atypical", who frequents the Aspies for Freedom site and, not surprisingly. agrees with the proposition that parents who frequent Aspies for Freedom are smarter than those at Autism Speaks:
Post 4
I think that if we/us parents seem brighter - it may be because -we found this place and stayed because the people here remind us of our children - or something in ourselves. Not average and mundane, but interesting, complicated, freedom lovers (It's in the name!)...
I feell lucky to have a different way of looking at things -I/WE ARE LUCKY TO BE AWARE, it is a blessing to see things in an atypical way AND instead of us changing our children, our children change us.
I am probably just not as smart, or as "aware", as "atypical" but I do take autism seriously as a disorder which seriously restricts the life opportunities of my son. It is in truth sad to see some persons with Aspergers Disorder, and some parents, posting such offensive material on the site, one of the alleged "Autism" Hub sites.
I know some persons with Aspergers and High Functioning Autism who do not indulge in such foolish, offensive trash talking and who do in fact show respect for the rights and responsibilities of parents to do the best they can to help their children live the fullest life possible. It is too bad that the "intellectuals" at Aspies for Freedom and other Autism Hub web sites don't display the same good character.
In the bigger picture the demeaning characterization of parents who seek cures for their autistic children or those who question vaccine safety as less intelligent than those who embrace their children's autism disorder as a blessing and do not question what gets injected into their young children's bodies is not much different than the marginalization of parents conducted by Paul Offit and other government and pharmaceutical spokespersons.
Offit and company also want the public to believe that parents who question vaccine safety are of lesser intelligence. Parental observations, no matter how many times the same pattern occurs are dismissed as coincidence. Parents, ALL parents who question vaccine safety are gullible fools seduced by charlatans ... or they are hysterical wing nuts because some apparently committed criminal, threatening acts toward Dr. Offit and his family.
And so we can just ignore ALL parents who see their children regress into autism after vaccination (unless they are a neurologist who can not be ignored or marginalized like Dr. Jon Poling).
If only those Stupid Autism Parents would just do as they were told.
autism
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