Many parents of autistic children do not look to the mainstream media (MSM) for autism information. For good reason. They are unlikely to learn anything about autism from MSM sources.
Most of us learned long, long ago that the mainstream media focuses on feel good stories, Temple Grandin, Rainman, Sigourney Weaver, Clare Danes, and the latest person with very high functioning autism or Aspergers to declare that "WE" don't want to be cured, from Jim Sinclair, to Michelle Dawson, Amanda Baggs, Alex Plank, JE Robison and of course the very well connected young university student Ari Ne'eman. The MSM love to report the Offit Script over and over that vaccines are beautiful and that an autism vaccine connection has been disproved for ever and ever after. The MSM dutifully reports that autism is genetic, that parents of autistic children are emotional even hysterical, irrational and a danger to public health.
Amazingly, apart from a few local NBC outlets, the passing of Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas, the man whose work and studies, had such great and positive impacts on the lives of autistic children, has gone unmentioned. So too, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, Subcommittee on Children's Health which is examining potential environmental factors of autism is also unreported in the MSM. After decades of news reports on the genetic bases of autism high level US hearings on possible environmental causes of autism do not warrant any coverage by the MSM.
Of course it may not be the fault of the MSM. After all the MSM journalists may simply be ignorant of autism realities and over reliant on Hollywood and pharmaceutical industry press releases and the Offit Script. How could they know anything of Lovaas or environmental factors of autism or appreciate the significance of either, particularly when it appears, the marketing arms of Hollywood and the pharmaceutical industry saw no advantage to promoting either of these important autism developments.
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