The link to this, and the comments that follow are here:

http://www.care2.com/causes/health-polic...nt-1691282

I've commented on this site, gave a serve to Autism Speaks and pimped our own AFF site to those who want a truer representation of what Autism is.  

And here's the actual article, sans comments:

The news about autism this summer has been difficult.

A Bronx mother killed her 12-year-old autistic son Wednesday night before taking her own life, the July 29th New York Daily News reports. Last week, a mother in Dallas killed her two young autistic children. Another New York city mother and a mother in Wales killed their autistic sons earlier this year. A Colorado mother killed her baby because she thought he might be autistic. A Chinese mother who admitted to killing her autistic daughter in Canada walked free from prison. And many in the autism community will remember the case of Dr. Karen McCarron, an Indiana woman who killed her young autistic daughter, Katherine, and was sentenced to 36 years in prison in 2008.

Hard Questions

Are there really more parents---mothers---killing their autistic children?

Is it rather that, due to the explosion of interest in autism in the past decade, the media is reporting more about such crimes?

I don't know. I'm not sure that we can know.

The Rise of Autism Awareness in the Past Decade
All the interest in autism in the past couple of years has been fueled by the efforts to raise awareness about autism, by organizations like the Autism Society of America and Autism Speaks. There have been many, many more books, blogs, movies, charity fundraising events, more everything, all with the general belief that, by increasing the amount of information available to the public, people will understand more about autism and things will be better. Things will be better from better services, more understanding in the community, school programs.

But is all this autism awareness really helping autistic individuals and their families and caretakers? Or is it just promoting a rather sensationalistic and tragic view of what life with autism is?

For myself, I'm sticking with the example of the late Clara Claiborne Park, for whom the 'last word' was 'still love'----love and, for my husband Jim and me, a hectic, difficult, and richly meaningful, and good, life with our son Charlie.

If only "Autism Awareness" were the same as "Learning about Autism."  "Autism Awareness" seems to be increasing the number of times the word "autism" appears on bumper stickers, but doesn't seem to be increasing the number of people who have an idea of what it is all about.  Sometimes it seems to be doing the opposite; that is, it seems like there are more and more people who believe they are "aware" of autism, but in fact have misinformation and distorted views of what autism is.  I see a lot of parents of autistic kids joining a different site that is supposed to be supportive, but most of them talk about being "devastated."  

What if "Autism Awareness" campaigns focused more on messages like "Hey!  Some of us see things a lot differently than you do, OK?!"   ...instead of "Oh, those poor, wretched freaks..." ?

The AS rights movement is useful in the sense of promoting tolerance of autistics / AS people, but it isn't perfect.

People will compare the message that they get from the autistic rights movement to what they see on the ground. You can talk about how smart some autistics like Temple Grandin are, but if the autistics that people see are like just plain weird and keep on offending people (inadvertently), then people aren't gonna believe the autistic rights movement.  

There are some other effects:

Firstly, it encourages a victim mentality in many AS people -  some of them seem to think they are the only victims and that others don't have problems.

Secondly, it encourages a crutch mentality - i.e. oh we've got AS, and so you change and tolerate us on our terms and not we change to adapt to our environment. Hardly anywhere do I see anyone encouraging or giving guidance to Aspies to adapt to their environment, which is why I am here.

Thirdly (and the one I seem to hate most) is that the AS community seems to equate giftedness with AS. How not true indeed.

After all, it is difficult and time consuming for people to understand with and connect with autism. Don't expect people to bother to find out about by themselves.

190, you could say the same things about any minority rights movement. At first, it never seems like the majority is going to put in the time and energy to understand and connect with the minority in question. What usually ends up happening is the minority does most of the leg-work, and the majority ends up gradually seeing them as equal and valid human beings.

I added my support to the cause.

I just have to jump in here: not true?  Maybe not of all, but definitely true of a lot of us!  My splinter savantism is hyperlexia: facility with the written word.  People with Aspergers (not all, but a statistically high number) have been shown to have above-average IQs.  And our focus and ability to get every little detail from whatever we're interested in is legendary!

Why do you hate the idea that there are indeed some of us within the AS community who are gifted?  I would have thought that was a good thing.

Alison

This post was last modified: 02-20-2011 01:59 AM by Alison.

Just look at deaf culture! Can you imagine someone saying, "deaf and dumb" now?  Deaf people used to be considered retarded and were put in institutions (they still are in some countries).  

One day the term "idiot savant" will cause people to gasp the way that "deaf and dumb" does.  We'll get there, it just takes time.  

There are quite a few parallels between Temple Grandin's life story and Helen Keller's, now that I think about it.  They both came from well off families, both kids were written off as hopeless cases, both families hired outside help and never gave up on them, both women grew up to become well respected and well educated activists.

Are you interpreting "dumb" in the emboldened phrase to mean mentally retarded?  I'm not sure if that's your intention here.  In the context of "deaf and dumb" it means someone who is deaf and is also without speech.

I think she is trying to say from back then interpretation.

It's just that the use of "dumb" meaning "stupid" or "mentally retarded" is American English, although it does now have that meaning here as well, but more as a slang term, and not in the context of "deaf and dumb" which people would still take to mean someone who cannot speak.  In years past, deaf people were not allowed to use sign language because it marked them out as not "normal" and so great effort was expended in teaching them how to speak and to lip-read instead.  The Deaf community fought to use sign language instead of being forced to learn to speak.

This post was last modified: 02-20-2011 02:56 AM by Marcia.

Wow.... was this in and around Glasgow?

I think in the UK as a whole, but yes, definately in Glasgow.  My mother was a school dentist and she worked for a while in the School for the Deaf and at that time, mid 60's, sign language was actively discouraged at best or prohibited at worst, in favour of lip-reading and learning to speak without the help of signing.  The thinking behind it was that they would be more like hearing people if they could acquire those skills, whereas if they relied on sign language then they would be excluded from the hearing community.

I don't know for how long that thinking persisted, and certainly for many years now, sign language has been the norm.

wow

I don't think those who came up with this policy set out to be cruel or harsh.  They were well-intentioned, but misguided, and things did change.  What is the saying?  "The past is a different country" - even the recent past.

This post was last modified: 02-20-2011 03:14 AM by Marcia.

Hopefully there is good intentions for this Wired article to give people a clear light: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/maga...ntPage=all