01-01-2008, 05:42 AM
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=87718&sc=392
A different brain. Not an inferior one
Michelle Dawson wants the world to see what's right about autism, not just what's wrong with it
ROGER COLLIER
CanWest News Service
Michelle Dawson walks to a table in a quiet Montreal cafe and removes her coat, exposing arms criss-crossed with scars from self-inflicted wounds. There are scars on her left cheek, too, and just above the collar of her V-neck T-shirt.
Dawson orders coffee. She doesn't often drink coffee but this morning she could use the caffeine. Yesterday, she rose at 3 a.m. to finish a written argument for a court case, the latest in a series of legal battles between Dawson and her employer, Canada Post.
Dawson, 46, delivered mail for 11 years. She enjoyed the job and was good at it. She worked when the weather was so awful most of her co-workers stayed home.
In 1999, Dawson told Canada Post she was autistic. Until her case is decided, she can't say much about what happened. But within a year she found herself on unpaid leave, which she is still on today.
"I can't believe how naive I was," says Dawson, "how unprepared I was for how autism is viewed."
Reducing the stigma surrounding autism is a goal of many autistic rights groups. Great Britain's National Autistic Society runs a campaign called "think differently about autism." In Canada, there's the Autism Acceptance Project, a year-old organization based in Toronto with a mission to "promote acceptance of and accommodation for autistic people in society." The loose network of people known as the neurodiversity movement, which promotes dignity for people however their brains are wired, has members all over the world.
Some in the autism community are critical of the acceptance movement and the various factions quarrel endlessly on the Internet. Autistic rights advocates insist black-and-white views of autism - pro-cure vs. anti-cure, pro-this-therapy vs. pro-that-therapy - aren't helping anybody. Autism is too complex, they claim, to reduce to us versus them.
Often dismissed
Dawson, who has become a prolific writer on science and ethics, believes many scientists underestimate autistics, dismissing their skills or talents as products of fortunate wiring in an otherwise dysfunctional brain. She believes some advocacy groups, in their attempts to pressure governments to pay for therapies, have painted far too bleak a picture of autism.
Laurent Mottron, a Montreal autism researcher, compares Dawson's writings on autistic rights to the works that ethnic minorities or women produced a century ago. "It is not only (she) who is ahead but, above all, us who are behind," writes Mottron in an endorsement on Dawson's website. "I am grateful to her for having opened my eyes to the human and historical dimensions of autism, when I saw it only as a handicap with a scientific enigma added."
In 2001, Dawson and Mottron both appeared in an autism documentary - he as the brilliant scientist, she as the unhappy autistic. Dawson remembers this time as a particularly bleak period in her life. Since being diagnosed in the mid-'90s, and especially after her Canada Post experience, she had come to believe it was wrong to be autistic. She recalls saying in the film: "I wish I were anybody but me."
Soon after, Dawson met Mottron, who confirmed her diagnosis. Mottron learned that Dawson struggled to perform many day-to-day activities, like banking and shopping, and offered his assistance. What followed was a two-year period Mottron describes as a "sad and funny time."
Each time he proposed something to help Dawson, she argued against it. She told him his ideas weren't precise enough. Sometimes she told him he was flat-out wrong. Mottron says he felt useless, so he tried a new tactic.
"I thought another way to help this person would be to use her intelligence to do something useful," says Mottron.
He gave Dawson one of his scientific papers in 2003 and asked her to edit it for grammar. A second paper followed, but this time Dawson did more than look for misplaced apostrophes. By now, Dawson had begun studying the science of autism in earnest. She found logical inconsistencies between the two papers and provided Mottron with a precise, and unexpected, criticism.
Above PhD students
"After four or five papers, she began giving comments that were above what any of my PhD students could do," says Mottron.
In 2004, Mottron asked Dawson to contribute to a book he was writing and, later, invited her to join his research team. She accepted both offers. She has since written or co-written numerous papers published in journals such as Brain and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
"She is known around the entire world," says Mottron. "It is absolutely amazing."
Dawson's research on autistic intelligence suggested to her that scientists, like much of society, underestimate autistics. Some scientific literature has reported that 75 per cent of autistics are of low intelligence. Dawson claims that percentage is inflated because researchers are often biased towards the type of intelligence exhibited by a typical mind.
So instead of trying to determine how autistic brains work, most scientists try to determine how autistic brains are broken. Dawson says a more useful approach is to consider autistic brains as profoundly different from, but not inferior to, non-autistic brains.
"She is someone who will change the way an entire sector of humanity is considered," says Mottron of Dawson.
Dawson became well-known - and at times hated - in autism advocacy circles after she began writing about ethics and questioning the advocacy practices of Canadian autism groups.
In 2003, she wrote an essay called No Autistics Allowed (which is also the name of her website), in which she accused autism advocates of excluding autistics from participating in any public discourse about autism. A web-savvy friend posted it on various Internet message boards.
In her next essay - The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists - Dawson criticized the ethics of proponents of a popular type of autism therapy based on a behavioural science called applied behaviour analysis, or ABA. This one bounced around the Internet like an ambitious piece of spam. And many people who read it took an immediate disliking to its author.
"That article made me notorious," says Dawson.
In The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists, Dawson questions the ethics of autism advocates who tout ABA therapies as the only means by which autistics can reach their full potential. She claims they are overselling the therapies, falsely describing them as "scientifically proven" or "medically necessary."
"The popularity has gotten way ahead of the evidence," says Dawson.
Some autism researchers are less critical of the evidence supporting ABA. Pat Mirenda, a University of British Columbia education professor and certified behaviour analyst, says ABA therapies have more scientific backing than any other autism service. She claims the therapies can teach autistics the basic life skills they need to exist in a non-autistic world - how to dress themselves, for example, or how to speak.
Mirenda acknowledges, however, that the results of ABA therapies vary widely from child to child, and that it's impossible to predict who will do well. She also concedes that the science supporting ABA is far from complete.
Many autistic rights supporters fear that by overvaluing a particular therapy, advocates are placing all parents of autistic children on a very slick slope: society may soon consider it unethical for them not to put their kids in ABA programs.
"What's going to happen if the government legislates that all schools do ABA?" says Estee Klar-Wolfond, a Toronto writer and founder of the Autism Acceptance Project. "Will my son be forced into an ABA program in which he won't benefit?"
When Klar-Wolfond first looked into assistance programs for her five-year-old autistic son, Adam, she was told there was only one type: ABA. She enrolled Adam in a program, but he regressed so she took him out. She will soon be taking him to the U.S. to learn how to use a text-to-speech computing device. Such devices are difficult to obtain in Canada, Klar-Wolfond says, because of all the focus on ABA.
Like Klar-Wolfond, Dawson is sometimes accused of being against any service for autistics. She's anything but, she says, describing herself as a "big fan" of assistance. She believes all autistic children should have access to technology that can help them communicate. She claims to not even be completely against ABA.
"I'm not anti-ABA," says Dawson. "I'm a much harsher critic of my own fields of study, cognitive science and neuroscience."
But unlike in the science world, where criticism is not only welcomed but encouraged, Dawson says objections to the practices of advocates are never well received.
Because of her frequent and detailed critiques of ABA, Dawson says she often receives hate mail. She's been accused of being a fraudulent researcher. Some ABA supporters claim she's lying about her diagnosis. Some parents claim she's trying to destroy their children.
"The point is not for you to be right and for your side to be right; the point is to try to do the best you can to understand autism and to make it possible for autistics to have good outcomes. To do that you need accurate information," she says.
A different brain. Not an inferior one
Michelle Dawson wants the world to see what's right about autism, not just what's wrong with it
ROGER COLLIER
CanWest News Service
Michelle Dawson walks to a table in a quiet Montreal cafe and removes her coat, exposing arms criss-crossed with scars from self-inflicted wounds. There are scars on her left cheek, too, and just above the collar of her V-neck T-shirt.
Dawson orders coffee. She doesn't often drink coffee but this morning she could use the caffeine. Yesterday, she rose at 3 a.m. to finish a written argument for a court case, the latest in a series of legal battles between Dawson and her employer, Canada Post.
Dawson, 46, delivered mail for 11 years. She enjoyed the job and was good at it. She worked when the weather was so awful most of her co-workers stayed home.
In 1999, Dawson told Canada Post she was autistic. Until her case is decided, she can't say much about what happened. But within a year she found herself on unpaid leave, which she is still on today.
"I can't believe how naive I was," says Dawson, "how unprepared I was for how autism is viewed."
Reducing the stigma surrounding autism is a goal of many autistic rights groups. Great Britain's National Autistic Society runs a campaign called "think differently about autism." In Canada, there's the Autism Acceptance Project, a year-old organization based in Toronto with a mission to "promote acceptance of and accommodation for autistic people in society." The loose network of people known as the neurodiversity movement, which promotes dignity for people however their brains are wired, has members all over the world.
Some in the autism community are critical of the acceptance movement and the various factions quarrel endlessly on the Internet. Autistic rights advocates insist black-and-white views of autism - pro-cure vs. anti-cure, pro-this-therapy vs. pro-that-therapy - aren't helping anybody. Autism is too complex, they claim, to reduce to us versus them.
Often dismissed
Dawson, who has become a prolific writer on science and ethics, believes many scientists underestimate autistics, dismissing their skills or talents as products of fortunate wiring in an otherwise dysfunctional brain. She believes some advocacy groups, in their attempts to pressure governments to pay for therapies, have painted far too bleak a picture of autism.
Laurent Mottron, a Montreal autism researcher, compares Dawson's writings on autistic rights to the works that ethnic minorities or women produced a century ago. "It is not only (she) who is ahead but, above all, us who are behind," writes Mottron in an endorsement on Dawson's website. "I am grateful to her for having opened my eyes to the human and historical dimensions of autism, when I saw it only as a handicap with a scientific enigma added."
In 2001, Dawson and Mottron both appeared in an autism documentary - he as the brilliant scientist, she as the unhappy autistic. Dawson remembers this time as a particularly bleak period in her life. Since being diagnosed in the mid-'90s, and especially after her Canada Post experience, she had come to believe it was wrong to be autistic. She recalls saying in the film: "I wish I were anybody but me."
Soon after, Dawson met Mottron, who confirmed her diagnosis. Mottron learned that Dawson struggled to perform many day-to-day activities, like banking and shopping, and offered his assistance. What followed was a two-year period Mottron describes as a "sad and funny time."
Each time he proposed something to help Dawson, she argued against it. She told him his ideas weren't precise enough. Sometimes she told him he was flat-out wrong. Mottron says he felt useless, so he tried a new tactic.
"I thought another way to help this person would be to use her intelligence to do something useful," says Mottron.
He gave Dawson one of his scientific papers in 2003 and asked her to edit it for grammar. A second paper followed, but this time Dawson did more than look for misplaced apostrophes. By now, Dawson had begun studying the science of autism in earnest. She found logical inconsistencies between the two papers and provided Mottron with a precise, and unexpected, criticism.
Above PhD students
"After four or five papers, she began giving comments that were above what any of my PhD students could do," says Mottron.
In 2004, Mottron asked Dawson to contribute to a book he was writing and, later, invited her to join his research team. She accepted both offers. She has since written or co-written numerous papers published in journals such as Brain and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
"She is known around the entire world," says Mottron. "It is absolutely amazing."
Dawson's research on autistic intelligence suggested to her that scientists, like much of society, underestimate autistics. Some scientific literature has reported that 75 per cent of autistics are of low intelligence. Dawson claims that percentage is inflated because researchers are often biased towards the type of intelligence exhibited by a typical mind.
So instead of trying to determine how autistic brains work, most scientists try to determine how autistic brains are broken. Dawson says a more useful approach is to consider autistic brains as profoundly different from, but not inferior to, non-autistic brains.
"She is someone who will change the way an entire sector of humanity is considered," says Mottron of Dawson.
Dawson became well-known - and at times hated - in autism advocacy circles after she began writing about ethics and questioning the advocacy practices of Canadian autism groups.
In 2003, she wrote an essay called No Autistics Allowed (which is also the name of her website), in which she accused autism advocates of excluding autistics from participating in any public discourse about autism. A web-savvy friend posted it on various Internet message boards.
In her next essay - The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists - Dawson criticized the ethics of proponents of a popular type of autism therapy based on a behavioural science called applied behaviour analysis, or ABA. This one bounced around the Internet like an ambitious piece of spam. And many people who read it took an immediate disliking to its author.
"That article made me notorious," says Dawson.
In The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists, Dawson questions the ethics of autism advocates who tout ABA therapies as the only means by which autistics can reach their full potential. She claims they are overselling the therapies, falsely describing them as "scientifically proven" or "medically necessary."
"The popularity has gotten way ahead of the evidence," says Dawson.
Some autism researchers are less critical of the evidence supporting ABA. Pat Mirenda, a University of British Columbia education professor and certified behaviour analyst, says ABA therapies have more scientific backing than any other autism service. She claims the therapies can teach autistics the basic life skills they need to exist in a non-autistic world - how to dress themselves, for example, or how to speak.
Mirenda acknowledges, however, that the results of ABA therapies vary widely from child to child, and that it's impossible to predict who will do well. She also concedes that the science supporting ABA is far from complete.
Many autistic rights supporters fear that by overvaluing a particular therapy, advocates are placing all parents of autistic children on a very slick slope: society may soon consider it unethical for them not to put their kids in ABA programs.
"What's going to happen if the government legislates that all schools do ABA?" says Estee Klar-Wolfond, a Toronto writer and founder of the Autism Acceptance Project. "Will my son be forced into an ABA program in which he won't benefit?"
When Klar-Wolfond first looked into assistance programs for her five-year-old autistic son, Adam, she was told there was only one type: ABA. She enrolled Adam in a program, but he regressed so she took him out. She will soon be taking him to the U.S. to learn how to use a text-to-speech computing device. Such devices are difficult to obtain in Canada, Klar-Wolfond says, because of all the focus on ABA.
Like Klar-Wolfond, Dawson is sometimes accused of being against any service for autistics. She's anything but, she says, describing herself as a "big fan" of assistance. She believes all autistic children should have access to technology that can help them communicate. She claims to not even be completely against ABA.
"I'm not anti-ABA," says Dawson. "I'm a much harsher critic of my own fields of study, cognitive science and neuroscience."
But unlike in the science world, where criticism is not only welcomed but encouraged, Dawson says objections to the practices of advocates are never well received.
Because of her frequent and detailed critiques of ABA, Dawson says she often receives hate mail. She's been accused of being a fraudulent researcher. Some ABA supporters claim she's lying about her diagnosis. Some parents claim she's trying to destroy their children.
"The point is not for you to be right and for your side to be right; the point is to try to do the best you can to understand autism and to make it possible for autistics to have good outcomes. To do that you need accurate information," she says.