Aspies For Freedom

Propaganda Watch: Cash Plea for ABA Northern Ireland:


Lack of government support for autistic children in Northern Ireland 'mirrors situation in Australia and parts of US'

BELFAST, Northern Ireland: Ulster parents campaigning for better services for children living with autism say the lack of government-funded support in the province mirrors the situation in Australia and parts of America.

Campaigners have learned that Australia is apparently experiencing a surge in autism spectrum disorders, where a ten-fold rise in diagnoses have been made in the past decade.

In the United States, the increase in diagnoses recently brought a mass rally to the streets of Washington DC in protest at government failure to address perceived links between use of vaccines containing mercury and autism.

In Australia, parents of autistic children forced to pay privately for early intervention treatment and applied behavioural analysis (ABA) have drawn attention to the financial burden. Some have had to re-mortgage or sell properties to pay treatment or therapy bills.

Ulster campaigner Gordon McKenzie said the situation in Northern Ireland was no different.While the Western Education and Library Board has provided financial assistance to his child for ABA, the true cost to his family stands at around £36,000 each year.

Campaigners in Ulster want a proper strategy, which will link health, education and children's services to help tackle and properly fund the needs of autistic children.

Government and health service help is needed specifically, because a number of treatments and therapies have benefited and improved the lives of autistic children across the globe.

"This money is well-used, it is not lost and not wasted and there are proven benefits,"  McKenzie said. "It is claimed that 39 per cent of children on the ABA programme after two years will be indistinguishable from their peers."

His wife, Margaret, said their four-year-old son was diagnosed at the age of two, but received only one block of speech and language therapy. She said 10 hours of speech therapy was not enough if problems were profound.

(Source: Belfast Newsletter, January 9, 2005)

"It is claimed that 39 per cent of children on the ABA programme after two years will be indistinguishable from their peers."


That's a rather chilling thought.

I put that up because I think we should keep an eye on their activities in the United Kingdom.

If, as is claimed here, each child is worth £36,000 a year to the ABA industry, we can see that its promoters will go to some lengths to try to establish it in the United Kingdom.

As there are no peer-reviewed clinical trials anywhere to support ABA and its claims, it seems unlikely that N.I.C.E. would approve it for NHS funding, though we can expect some court cases to challenge this.

Notice the guarded way of presenting their claims: "It is claimed that 39 per cent of children on the ABA programme after two years will be indistinguishable from their peers." - the kind of circumlocution often used in the advertising industry to promote anti-ageing creams and such.

And after two years the amount of money spent would be huge, and any child who didnt improve would just be one of the 'other percentage'.

There was a study by the NAS and they never found more inprovements with ABA than having no therapy.

I can see people mortgaging their houses and other desperate measures to raise the £72,000 for two years of ABA.  

Once the parents have made great financial sacrifices to pay for this "treatment" they will be highly resistant to any suggestion that it has all been in vain, and may even be harmful.

Perhaps we could start emailing our doubts about ABA to the Letters to the Editor pages of the newspapers who report this kind of story.

The core of an effective letter would stress the lack of any clinical evidence to suggest that ABA does what it claims, and that parents would do much better spending their hard-earned money elsewhere.