Wikipedia editors allege bias and bigotry against AS

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Could you elaborate some on this? I have not heard of either of these organizations, and am completely unfamiliar with them or the advertisements.

Heheh. I have a story named Outcast, which has a section that focuses around an Aspie/Autistic character named Kipo. The catch is that it takes place on another planet with a fictional alien race. I take advantage of this futuristic setting and have The Cure come out, and Kipo's Mum does everything in her power to make her take it. Her dad, on the other hand, is the exact opposite, and they eventually divorce.

Kipo came to my mind after reading Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-time, where I wanted to have my own Aspie character. Upon reading of the inconsistencies (such as his extreme stereotypical personality) I wanted to do a better job with Kipo, and also explore how he could be different, what with being an alien. For instance, she isn't hypersensitive all over, rather in specific areas. Her shoulders have extreme negative hypersensitivity, whereas her feet have extreme positive hypersensitivity. The rest of her body is a transition point.

Anyways this is rambling off the topic... erm, yeah, wiki, it's uh... so good and, stuff...

I hope you don't mind me jumping in here, CAN is Cure Autism Now - what I have heard Aspies call curbies. Autism Speaks takes the position that mercury (thermisol) is the source of ASD. Both organizations share the same homepage, so I am unclear on their differences. I am sure someone will correct me, but I believe this is the the organization the president of NBC started when his own granddaughter was diagnosed ASD (profound, I think).

The mission statement from their site.....

In my research during this past year as an NT mom, I must say <holds breath> I am not impressed with Judy Singer, Maxine Aston, Tony Atwood, and yes, Temple Grandin (although she is the best in the group, IMHO). I see some very large money machines, some very powerful lobbies rolling with their own agenda. Can I point to any one incident? Well, not really......but I sense an agenda where the majority of the population it effects has not been polled. It's like the cash cows will tell you what is good for you whether you like it or not. Maybe I am just feeling empathetic for my kids and thinking this is what they are up against, I don't know. I know when someone makes assumptions about me, I find it offensive. Make sense?

Sorry, bad habit of mine going off on a tangent. I am just so relieved to see a post along these lines and see the response.....there is an Aspie message to be told and only you fine folks can tell it and take a stance. I am just the cheerleader.

Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks are two American-based organisations aimed at finding a Cure for Autism (and thus Asperger's, as it is very similar). The Autism Speaks policy, quoted by SheDevil above me, doesn't actually say directly what their aim is except in their first sentence. The two organisations are so similar that they are in the process of merging as one (the site for example).

Cure Autism Now is the bluntest way to see their mission statement. They want to cure Autism, preferably now. However, and this is the important factor for many if not all on WP and other sites, they present it as being entirely negative. This includes videos of meltdowns only, and parents saying how their autistic child made them want to kill them and their kids (Autistic or not). Another example is their surveys. If they say, as an example, that "one in every 15 children is Autistic", not only is this shown with their negative take on it, but they also do not explain in any form that Autism is a Spectrum, and that you can get varying severities of it, from near un-noticeable to painfully obvious, intrusive, and generally how they perceive (or rather, present) it to be. As is well known by WP and other sites, either sides of the case is not common at all, and the middle is more often occuring than not (the middle can be considered Asperger's Syndrome).

Sadly, they do not accept this, and rather than tell the full story, they focus on the negative side of things. They also can sometimes be seen, on their forums, to make attempts at tearing down positive Autism/Asperger's stories (for instance, they have/had a thread about trying to prove that one of the contestant's of the latest America's Top Model does not have Asperger's. There's a WP thread about her which is a sticky in the Autism Discussion board).


Many WPteers would agree and accept that there are sad cases of AS and Autism out there, and that many of them would prefer to be cured rather than think and act as an Aspie or Autist. However, what CAN and Autism Speaks deny/fail to see is that many of us also do not, that we have minds of our own, and that we are appalled at the way that they represent us in the media and thus, the public at large. It could be considered a form of neurological racism, in my opinion.

EDIT: This is my opinion of it. Not fact.

Yes, to add to what KBABZ said, Autism Speaks is perhaps most notorious for their film, Autism Everyday, http://206.252.155.61/media/d_200603_Ev ... 9_256k.wmv . This film shows desperate and miserable mothers with out-of-control autistic kids. One mother admits to thinking about killing her autistic daughter - in the presence of the girl. Three days after the release of this movie, a mother named Karen McCarron murdered her autistic daughter. I know, post hoc ergo propter hoc, but one still has to wonder.

Both organizations apparently began under the firm assumption that autism resulted from an environmental toxin, especially mercury (thimiserol) present in childhood vaccinations. That theory didn't pan out. Now autism looks genetic.

Which raises the spectre of a new "Cure" - selectively aborting fetuses whose gene sequences are less like theirs, and more like ours. Fortunately, the genetic basis of autism is proving diffuse, hard to isolate to one spot.

Good thing. After all, we've seen this "cure" before.

It marched into Poland in 1939.

Has anyone brought up the word "Eugenics" to describe this?

If not; why not?

Not that I know of. Maybe it's time to start.

There has been some mention in the press : "Would you have allowed Bill Gates to be born?"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7899821/

Now, about that wikipedia article .... ;-b

I'm getting there, I'm getting there. :P

Wiki is useful but light weight.

As an old Free Range Aspie, 61 now, all this is new to me. No one asked my opinion, so I will give it.

There is money involved.

I have heard of the CAN film, and know of another, it was produced before 1939, maybe 1934-5, a means of altering public perception, and was run in all German movie houses. I think the title in English was, "Unworthy of life." It showed the defective, showed they were nothing but a burden on the living. It showed what went on in mental hospitals, homes for the impaired, people who were washed, dressed, fed, well cared for, but would never become anything but a burden. Useless mouths, I recall they were called.

Before my recent discovery of WP, I knew nothing of AS, I now remember images, a woman, talking to herself, flapping her hands. I only do that sometimes.

By 1936-37, all of these people were dead. CAN is running the same propaganda.

The medical reports, death certificates showed Influensa and Colera epidemics ran through mental hospitals, home for the defective, killing everyone, then it struck the prisons, those with a terminal illness, and nursing homes.

Soon after the camps were opened, all people who did not fit the social ideal.

By 1939 all of the medical personal were available for war wounded. All of the medical centers empty and waiting.

It was not forced on the people, just suggested, in film, and happened quietly in less than five years.

There was no famine, the economy was strong, the Mark rising in value. Getting rid of useless mouths funded the Autobans, rebuilt cities, rail, water, and from what I hear, art, culture, and party time, leading up to the war. Their technology lead the world.

There is a bit more than opinion behind my anti-cure stance.

Facts lie. Fair and balanced lies are the worst. Neutral is censorship. At least two major points of view, a half dozen minor, to cover most subjects, let me cite WP here, diverse opinion in action.

Sometimes Wiki is great, someone who knows their stuff tells all. It may be very one sided, just what I want. Where opinions differ, it turns to mush.

There is a lot more money paying CAN and Autism Speaks.

When two views conflict as much as ours do, neutral does not work. I would suggest two pages, for and against. If we allow others to define us we lose. If we accept neutral we lose.

They are working public opinion. We do well with those on the spectrum, family, teachers, a limited group.

In the public opinion we are being equated with Downes Syndrome, and they do not get born any more.

Aspies should speak out, and let the world know they are worthy of life, that their mouths are not useless.

Germany lead the world in art, culture, technology, science, till they got rid of the Aspies, since then they have been neat and orderly, but have lost leadership in all fields.

We are the yeast in your bread!

An interesting suggestion, Inventor. I believe such a split is called, in wiki parlance, a POV-fork (Point Of View-fork). Not a bad idea, really.

A terribly ironic twist is that Asperger ran a school for aspie kids in Austria under the Nazi regime. These kids remained protected as his research subjects, and some believe that was intentional. Asperger's thesis on "Autistic Psychopathy" states over and over again - on the first page of each new section - that these are talented and useful people.

He wrote,

Then Asperger's clinic was bombed by the allies, and his research lost in the wreckage of post war europe, save for one copy at the University of Cambridge.

Which was finally resurrected by Lorna Wing fifty years later in his name, but in a form he would certainly find appalling.

You just can't make this stuff up. If irony were oranges, we'd all be drinking a lotta smoothies right now ...

Inventor, this is a point that has been a focus for me over the past year. How, do you get Aspies motivated to speak out? I sometimes get the feeling I am more indignant than some Aspies.....and on Aspie issues! I won't bore you or anyone else with some of my travels in the AS world, but in all honesty, I see many Aspies so accepting of limits placed on them, but not by them. And, my sense of fairness kicks in, sensing the Aspie has been wronged, yet I am the only one that is riled. I will acknowledge there are some angry Aspies, but to the extreme. It's things like challenging Wiki or getting someone to send an email to a reporter pointing out errors in an article that puzzle me - when no one reacts. As I stated to someone, I am ready to march for your (AS) cause, but I need you to be there, too. So, is it going to take a tragedy to see motivation?

(Sorry Mr. Smith, not an attempt to hijack - it's not often I hear a comment about something that is near and dear to my heart).

No hijacking taken When a subgroup of the population is misrepresented in a negative way, we call it bigotry and let's call it by its real name - hate speech.

We've seen it with respect to "race" (a funny term when you think about it, there is just one human "race") and 'racial' minority groups have become amazingly vigilante about one thing : when a public statement is made demeaning to a racial group, there are immediate consequences. You demean a minority group publically, and you get called on it, you get fired, you are going down. Because with freedom comes responsibility.

I support the right of the bigot to say anything he wants. And I support of the right of others to respond in any lawful way they wish, including boycotting his employer and picketing his house.

More recently, self-protecting "minority" groups have transcended the traditional bounds of 'race' and gender and now include sexual orientation, disability and even age.

As for neurodiversity, we're just not there yet. Perhaps because we're so new. We're african americans in the deep south in 1956. There isn't much we can do right now, we don't have any power yet and nobody fears a reaction from us.

But there is one thing. We can speak out. Whatever the outcome. Nobody's really going to listen, they may just briefly notice. But that's enough. That's how it starts.

Martin Luther King was - in my estimation - the greatest American, for one simple reason. He answered bigotry with the truth. Not water cannons nor police dogs nor even the bullet he knew was coming dettered him from just speaking the truth.

"In a time of moral crisis, silence is treachory." - MLK

You don't know the meaning of the words.

I'll tell you something: people like you contribute to the situation where people like me are unable to disclose, IRL, they have AS. People like you condemn people like me to a lifetime on the edge of society. If you want to make a political career then do us all a favour and stick to gay and ethnic-minority rights.

I hope not.

I would agree on that comparison to Black Rights in 1956. What gets me on edge though is people like CAN and Autism Speaks. To use the Black Rights metaphor once again, it would be similar if they found a pill that would change Black people to White. At that point, the Black Rights were so bad they would not have had much chance to retaliate against it. I believe it's a similar situation with us. Better to speak up now than when everyone thinks we're all little meltdown kids who are impossible to manage and drive people to suicide and they have a cure for it.

I find the metaphor of race or sex to be off. They have numbers.

All ASD we are up to 1 in 150, and not saying anything, but some are not going to become involved with the world. Maybe we are 1 in 500.

Blacks and gays have votes, perhaps 18%, counting liberals. We have 0.02%. If we could get everyone, which is impossible, 0.06%.

We will not have political power in any form. Jews are maybe half of Gays, but have economic power. We do not have that culture.

We are far from united in opinion. Some want out, they are close to the NT border, and through hard work would sneek in and pass if they could. Nothing wrong with passing for normal. They are our best examples, they do have the ability to reach high, if they can get in the game.

My older group gave up on that idea and took up small business. Before Tech was pop, watch and instrument makers, jewelers, camera repair, the little but highly skilled markets, were ours. Maps, books, highly detailed work, and not having to speak with anyone.

He moved strangly, spoke strangly, dressed different, and it became the image of the rare book seller, the scientific instrument maker.

I think I fit in there, and self measured around here, HFA rather than Aspie.

We are not a drop in the Neuro Diversity bucket, and are more, not less functional, than NTs.

I was the one called after the repair team did their best and failed.

After three mechanics had given up, it was my turn. They saw machines, I saw systems, I rarely failed.

When I did it was because I discovered the problem was beyond repair. I could say why it would be cheaper to buy new.

I will fully claim strange, weird, even here. I am not defective. I am the other side, High Function.

I can see Neuro Diversity, accept people with defects, I have long tolerated NTs.

What I see about Neuro Diversity is like grouping Gays with the Celibate, for both are not involved in Hetrosexual practices. The catagory would also include Beastiality, Necrophilia, Sadism, and you see my problem.

As a system, we have NTs with Aspie traits, Aspie/NT borderline, Aspie, Aspie/HFA, HFA, Then I differ, being close, to Profound Autism, with the accent on Profound. They may not function in the world, or speak much, but I hear great wisdom in their few words.

Other Neuro conditions I do see as defects. I am not defective.

I write my own Patents, Books, Publish, did IT, till the flood, Business Consultant, fine art prints, and have a long past in other subjects, that I keep up with new developments.

I am Diverse from everything. Wrong Planet is the only thing I ever identified with.

With age comes adapting, in earlier times we just did. I see it here, many want to be NT, and work at it, and in time, they will pass, perhaps not unnoticed, but enough to work, marry, live.

Some here will never adapt, they will always be outside. I can function in the world, and do not want to.

Knowing nothing, I had to come to terms with myself, and found I like the guy. His strange ways made more money than his peers. I do not watch TV or go to movies, or listen to music, the world does not entertain me. I read, and work on my projects. I do not associate with people, I deal with them.

If my demographic is one in a thousand, that is still 300,000 in the USA. We survive on knowledge and skill.

Linking me to a Neuro Diversity Movement is doing me no favor.

It will not help those who have the goal of just living in the world and interacting with NTs. They do not want to be tolerated because they are like Psychopaths, Sczophrenics, the mentally ret*d, birth defects, the depressed, and a host of other ills. They want to be just like everyone else.

Identity politics is not for us. We are not defective.

I fought my way up, I am me. The 1994 AS Law does not apply, I am Grandfathered in. As I keep saying, AS is 6,853% and we each get 100% out of that. It is bad Science, Medicine, some babble from a storefront religion called Psychology, it lacks facts, math, and a consistant point of view.

I do not accept the priesthood or the premise. We grew up, this last generation is stunted by treatment. Natural development, which has worked for all time, is being blocked with experimental drugs, to create a chemically Dependant class of customers. People who would have had lives in the past are being destroyed to buy some condos and BMWs.

We are not defective. Psychology is. The first rule of Medicine is, "Do no harm." not "Original Sin."

We are bright people, focused, with talents, drive, who make a great contrabution to the life of all.

We can be found in the First Chair in Music, we own Math, we developed and run the Hard Sciences, Computers are just useful toys, wait and see our Robots. Our world is just starting. Educated on the Internet, identified on WP, we are the future.

We are the people who gathered and formed Colleges. The self educated who taught this world.

The light of knowledge was us burning at the stake for our views. We won.

WE broke the power of Church and Feudel State, formed Free Villages with Free Trade, and secured it with Patents and the Magna Charta. We lead the world out of a thousand years of darkness.

It was our technology that produced the printing press, the steam engine, and changed the world from one that barely produced food with human and animal labor, to one that produces a surplus of all things.

We took lightning from the gods and built a world communication net.

It is just the beginning.