Which one of these people is doing more damage to our image?

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Definitely the minority. Same with people on the spectrum. Unfortunately, there are people who will make generalizations based on that minority.

When you keep hearing about a schizophrenic getting in trouble with the law or killing someone or hearing about someone being attacked by an autistic or by their autistic child, it will look like a common thing because no one will say "My mom is a schizophrenic and she is a good person and has never been in trouble with the law or had any police involved" or "My son is autistic and he doesn't hurt a fly and he is so calm and quiet." Instead you hear all these bad stories about someone with a condition so people make that generalization and even TV will show the bad side just for the drama and entertainment and that reinforces bigotry and justifying it.

I also keep hearing bad stories about working with special needs about how they get attacked or have students who are aggressive or have violent outbursts and of all the time I have been in special ed, not one of them was violent and there was only one kid who was and I was six then when he was in my class and then there was Frankie but he was never in any of my classes but he would come to my house occasionally and he was aggressive towards my brothers and kept throwing an ax at them one time and chopped up my parents hammock. It went nearly a year about me not knowing about this until my dad and brothers told me and I was so pissed and hated him then. I already knew he was violent but once he did it towards my family, I was done with him. He reached my limit. Now I have zero tolerance about aggression. So I am sure these "special" kids are in the minority and I am sure lot of special ed teachers don't get attacked by their students and it would be rare for them to get a student who has aggression. But the stories are still scary and lot of people don't want to risk having an aggressive child so they will fear having an autistic child thinking it will be aggressive and rip their whole house apart and breaking their stuff and getting harmed by them. But those cases are actually rare I hear. But we keep hearing these rare stories online and in the media.

Straight away I noticed a severe lack of links to any credible scientific studies, and there's a good reason for that.
It's because there aren't any.
Here it is here, in black and white, on the page you linked: "but researchers have not yet identified a single “trigger” that causes autism to develop."
That you would gleefully gloss over and ignore this, from your own bias confirmation that you purport as evidence, is just stunning.

From this, we can safely conclude a few things:
You employ a lot of wishful thinking.
You're thoroughly delusional.
Willfully ignorant.
With a very low standard for evidence.

I mean f**k me, they even list quack theories like Heavy metals and Mercury, which isn't new and is straight from MMS child abusers. Rubella and drugs and alcohol during pregnancy, I wouldn't be surprised if they suggested drinking water.

That's some nice bias confirmation you've found. By the way, this message was brought to you by ASAN. lol

It's great that you're in support for curing Fragile X, but don't go around on AS forum saying that we're diseased and that Fragile X is the cause, when we're no more diseased than left handed people are and when it has nothing to do with Fragile X. It impacts and affects AS people in ways you don't have that capacity to comprehend. There are already more than enough quacks when it comes to AS, thank you very much.





To say that you're on the same page as John Elder Robison, is indeed delusional and/or willfully ignorant.

Here are some quotes from John's own blog post, titled, "I resign my roles at Autism Speaks" after repeated attempts over a four year time span, trying to remediate the groups intolerance and bigotry:
http://jerobison.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/i-resign-my-roles-at-autism-speaks.html

"For the past four years I have worked very hard to defend Autism Speak after a series of public relations missteps; beginning with the I Am Autism video. The most recent “Autism Speaks Point of View” http://www.autismspeaks.org/news/news-item/autism-speaks-washington-call-action shows me that my words and efforts have had no real impact on the beliefs of the actual leadership of the organization."
-- John Elder Robison (2013)

Here's the video John's talking about:
http://youtu.be/8mycxSJ3-_Q

And with it, you can see how they view AS, how much they hate and despise Autism and Asperger's, that's what Autism Speaks is. To brush it off as a conspiracy, you would have to pretend it doesn't exist, or that AS people secretly made and tricked them into publicly publishing the video, in order to damage Autism Speaks' reputation and paint them as a hate group choc full of intolerant bigots. Now THAT, would be a conspiratorial.

John continues in his blog post:
"I have tried to help Autism Speaks staffers understand how destructive its messages have been to the psyches of autistic people. We do not like hearing that we are defective or diseased. We do not like hearing that we are part of an epidemic. We are not problems for our parents or society, or genes to be eliminated. We are people."
-- John Elder Robison (2013)

Clearly, a message that you yourself have not heeded.

Here are some more quotes from John, directly from his blog, addressing more of the bigotry of Speaks, and their disgusting lunatic desire to prevent AS, after they proudly announced their misappropriation and waste of donation money in such a disturbing and hateful fashion:
http://jerobison.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/whats-mssng-in-autism.html

"As I said in the beginning, autistic people are not missing. We have always been here, and we always will. Yet I and many other autistics live with the knowledge that we occupy a world where autism is widely perceived as a disease or defect. I can’t speak for other autistics, but I don’t much care to be seen as diseased or defective. Nor do I like being seen as “missing pieces,” which the name mssng implied.

To say that is not to deny the very real ways autism disables us. Rather, it’s a simple statement of fact. Autism is a neurological difference, not a sickness. As such, it’s here for a reason. Who are we, to second-guess that? Remediate its disability – sure! Wipe it from the world – that’s crazy talk, and societal suicide."
-- John Elder Robison (2014)

That you've deluded yourself into thinking that you two are on the same page, and that everyone else is just a conspiracy theorist, is just gobsmacking.





Well, it's unfortunate that a massive ego doesn't protect people from delusion. That's very interesting to me, I also created my own unique style of martial arts just the other day using chopsticks. Instead of issuing challenges over the internet as a "martial artist", perhaps there's a martial arts style that stops people from escaping the rational world.





What the? No one said that you weren't on the spectrum. AS people don't go around proclaiming that they have the proof that they're diagnosed. Why the hell would you mention this? Is this something we should be questioning?

With regard to refrigerator mothers I found this article from 2010:

Whose Fault is Autism? A Historical View of Placing Blame - link

I thought we had gone beyond blaming the mother. Guess not.

A single trigger for all autism, NO. Causal factors, including the genetic diseases above, definitely yes.

And you can wiggle your WAY all around the truth as much as you like but again YOU STILL HAVE NOT PROVIDED ANY EVIDENCE ANYWHERE THAT ANYONE, INCLUDING JER, BUT conspiracy theorists are concluding that Autism Speaks is a Hate Group, and as I clearly stated I personally do not agree with everything they do either but nothing in life is EITHER BLACK AND WHITE ONLY OR PERFECT.

Some so-called Autistic folks are ALWAYS SUGGESTING THAT Autistic People can do anything they want until they say it and Prove IT, and some nameless avatar goes on about big egos instead of lauding accomplishments like MOST real humans do.

And no that's nothing new, here, for sure, BUT I FOR ONE DO BREAK STEREOTYPES AND CAN PROVIDE THE IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE FOR IT TOO, UPON REQUEST, if ya wanna see much more of me.

But anyway have a nice day, I am finished with you here for NOW.

Science is always learning new things, and the lack of nurture in the first two years can cause children to go empathy numb across the lifespan. It's just a biological fact. No use to blame anyone.

But all the cause for providing appropriate nurture to children for the first two years of life, to establish empathic connections in the brain for working social cognition and reciprocal social communication, later in life.

And no it's not a direct cause for Autism, only a potential environmental factor that influences the symptoms that become diagnosable, at least in some cases.

No honey. I researched via more than the internet.

Also, I suppose you have missed the posts where people say that Autism Speaks hates autistics. I guess you missed it when people say they must want to kill us all. You probably just accidentally skipped over the posts that compared them to Hitler and said they were just Nazis. All those people who say that are in your little group of anti-Autism Speaks.

It's perfectl ok for parents to get therapy for their autistic kids to minimize the autistic symptoms. It's fine for parents to want their kids to be like their siblings and like other kids and not have the problems that autism does bring. There is nothing wrong with parents getting treatment and therapy and even medication for their children to help them, whether you approve of it or not. When you have children of your own, then you are free to raise them however you want to. When you are grown and have a job and a way to support yourself and them, then you are actually free to adopt all the autistic kids you want and even *not* get them therapy or treatment or medical care for their autism and see how that goes with you and them.

Just because you are going way over the top with this doesn't mean that it's true and doesn't mean most people are going to buy into your emotional rhetoric. Like I said before, some of ya'll are taking Autism Speaks personally. They don't want to change you, they don't want to change me, they want kids who can't communicate to be able to, they want kids who can't go through a day without a meltdown to be able to, they want people to be able to enjoy and live their lives without being limited by autism. You said in an earlier post that you just wanted to be called something that didn't sound like low functioning autism. This makes me think that your frenzy over Autism Speaks is personal. Maybe you think that because of their commercials, you are afraid that everybody is going to think you are like the kids they show.

I know you are all worked up over them, and really if you would allow yourself to get some perspective on this, and stop taking it personally, and stop being so damn paranoid over it, and maybe think of somebody other than yourself, like the very low functioning kids that Autism Speaks is talking about and wants help for, and their families, even though the families seem to be less than zero importance to quite a few of people in your little group, then maybe you could understand where they are coming from and that they aren't trying to ruin the lives and images of high functioning autistics.

Also, you never listed for me the reasons that you think autism is such a wonderful gift. Please do.

You sound like you've been reading their literature...did they get back to you?

It is nothing at all like saying that. Not at all. Honestly, if you either can't understand or if you are just refusing to understand that being autistic is not like being black, then I can't explain it to you.

I will say that being black is a race. Being autistic is having autism, which is a neurological disorder. Being black is not having a skin disorder. Being black doesn't cause some people to be able to communicate or not be able to eat but a few things or tolerate many things, or get a job or have relationships, or manage money or deal with stress. Being black may have it's degrees of skin color such as light skinned and dark skinned and that's a sort of spectrum of levels there, but that's pretty much where it stops. Blacks and autistics are both discriminated against somewhat and education can go a long way to fix both of those, but if you honestly can't see how having a neurological disorder is different from being black, then I'd actually have to call you a bigot. You are basically saying that being black is a disorder, so that makes you a bigot, doesn't it? I know of no medical publication that calls being black a disorder, but it does say that autism is.

No, I've looked at their site and read some things before, but I had my own views about autism before I ever heard of them. When my kids were babies I was terrified that they would get it from their shots or would be autistics. Even before I had ever been "contaminated" by reading a word from Autism Speaks I didn't want my kids to be autistic. You can't blame them for that then can you?

And they had called but I missed it. I was going to get back with them but I was busy all day yesterday and today my grandbaby was here and I woke up to my youngest son bringing all of his belongings back into my house and dropping them in the livingroom before going to work. He's left his gf and moving back here. He's 19. He believes a lot of conspiracies too, but it's the older one that thinks the government is responsible for 9/11, but my younger one still believes in a lot of crazy conspiracy theories. Mainly because there was a documentary on it or he read it somewhere or it just sounds like it could be true. Hopefully he will grow out of that. Hopefully my older one will too, but he's 25.

Maybe I sound like I've been reading their literature because it seems to be the common sense reaction to the idea of Autism Speaks.

No, but I think things will be easier for autistic prople in the future then they have been in the past. Just speculating, though.

Wow, that is amazing. Your own bias confirmation outright states that there's no cause found, and you do this mental gymnastics thing to turn that into meaning "multiple causes".

Let's say for arguments sake, that your bias confirmation DOES states a cause. Where is the evidence to back up such an outrageous claim? It certainly isn't in the "evidence" you proved.

Let's also say for arguments sake, that you did in fact find the cause for Autism and Asperger's. Shouldn't people be calling you "sir"? Where is your nobel peace price? Why aren't you raking in the cash from all the book deals alone? Oh, someone else found it? They just found the cause of this "horrid disease", right. So, where's the headlines in the news, who was it that was knighted then? lol





Are you kidding me? I provided a torrent of evidence for you, none of which you have even slightly addressed, or even acknowledged. No, replying to all that evidence by simply accusing detractors of Autism Speaks of coming up with conspiracy theories, sounds absolutely bonkers. Look at how easily brushed aside all those facts, and said they didn't exist.





Wait a second, so you're accusing AS people, of faking being on the spectrum, whenever they don't want to be stigmatised as diseased or defective?

Also, when you post an ego trip all about you, you then think people that aren't praising you, aren't even "real humans"?

If I knew someone that though and expressed those things, that train of thought is just sick and terrible, I would drop them so hard. To accuse everyone that doesn't agree with the bigotry, of being fake, holy hell. So many AS people, know that they're not diseased or defective, and experience first hand how those stigmas can greatly impact them. Trying to oust them as not the real AS people, it's a train of thought is incredibly selfish and callous. Even NTs from Speaks, even though they're bigoted curebies, never in a million years would I dehumanise them, or even try to. And over something like ego. I ask, what kind of person would consider, even for a second, such a thing.





More denialism, willful ignorance coupled with bizarre claims -- and no surprise, there's no evidence.

Last edited by Moromillas on 28 Jan 2015, 1:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

From now on, I only have one word for ya and that is..

HAMSTERWHEEL..

OR IS IT TWO WORDS..
Hamster Wheel

O.K., I'll give ya two..

Bye Bye.

So, Autism Speaks is a "hate group" because of what they do, right? So far here are the reasons that I've been told by people here that they hate Autism Speaks.

1. The commercials talking about autism like it's terrible.
2. Not having autistic people on their board
3. Not having a lot of services for adults
4. Not mentioning high functioning people
5. Putting most of their money into research

Is this all or are there others? I'm not asking for "Autism Speaks thinks this...." or "Autism Speaks hates us...." I'm asking for actual things you can list that they do or have done.

Also, Moromillias, please give me the list of how autism is a gift. I'm still waiting on the list of great things about autism that make it a gift. I'm interested in why you think it's so great.

I personally think that if my AS were to be suddenly and either magically cured or done by some future way to cure that we have no concept of now, I would still be the same person. I'd be interested in the same things, I'd have most of the same preferences, I'd still have the same sense of humor, I'd still love my family, I'd still basically have my same personality. I wouldn't be different, I would just not have all of the same negative things to the same degree.

There are plenty of NT's who are interested in the same special interests we are. There are plenty of NT's who have obsessive interests in things as well, so obsessive interest isn't just caused by AS. There are plenty of NT's who have the same sensory likes and dislikes we have but they are usually not as pronounced and severe.

Autism doesn't make you intelligent, it doesn't make you logical, it doesn't make you stupid, it doesn't make you slow, people are who they are whether they are autistic or not, whether they are smart or stupid, logical or illogical, magically changing their autistic status won't change that. However it would get rid of a lot of limitations they have that interfere with living their lives. Equating it with your personality is not fact. You would still have your personality whether or not you were autistic. You would of course be different somewhat but thats because you would be a person who hadn't been shaped by the limitations that autism put on you.

So you can't think of something and you decided to just post a douchebag answer? Guess what? NT's can do that too, curing autism won't take that away from you!

I hope for your parents sake that you grow out of this know it all, asshat phase. My kids went through one too, so you may, and it's not at all related to autism either.

You really have gotten a little too big for your britches here over the past couple days on these threads from what I've seen. You may have been this way, but I didn't see it. You seemed like a nice kid at first, but who knows.

Either way I don't argue with people who just get childish like that, so I'm not going to respond to you any more. Before you say some thinly veiled version of it, it's not because I "can't argue with your superior intellect and logical well thought out arguments" or anything at all like that. It's because you basically need a time out. Really. You started pushing my patience with your "willfully ignorant" remark and have just gotten worse. You're not going to talk to me that way and get a response.

I do hope you grow up soon. You will enjoy life much more with less teenage angst and drama and more perspective.

I will however discuss this with others who have the same point of view that you do. It's not the argument that I don't like, it's the arguer.

Toodleoo!