Editorial #251: We’re back! And Lisa Jo Rudy is Gone!

We at Autism Politico have come out of retirement because Lisa Jo Rudy is going into hers (in a manner of speaking). She says:

Note: as this is the last blog post I’m writing for this site, I have closed the post to comments.  To those of you who enjoyed reading my blogs, thanks so much for the kind words!

Autism Politico doesn’t know why Lisa Jo has ended the comments but knows that Lisa Jo has a habit of closing comments when people who emphatically disagree with her decisions or opinions post their opinions. Such was the case with the notorious Zoey Roberts article she posted.

Many people in Facebook forums are cheering the exit of Rudy, who, for the duration of her reign at Autism.About.com, never really seemed to have a firm opinion on anything, never really seemed to take a firm stance against unproven therapies, and sometimes seemed to make her readers wonder if her son was a guinea pig for autism treatments.

Even as she exists, she throws in some parting shots at the autism community which some people are interpreting as bitter:

Many people on the autism spectrum are amazing human beings.  Many are not.

says Rudy, seemingly in exasperation. Our counter to that is a restatement of something we picked up from a poster in a WrongPlanet community: ALL autistics are amazing, even if some of them behave like jerks.

So we see now how Rudy has viewed the community which she allegedly served.

Rudy says:

This so-called “autism community” includes some very scary people.  Beware of these people, and try not to allow them to influence the decisions you make on behalf of your children.  When sites like Age of Autism LITERALLY photoshop images of horns and tails onto people with whom they disagree, you can make a shrewd guess that they have an agenda that they are trying to push.

But she posts this unaware that there is a big brew-ha-ha going on right this minute across Facebook about a person she featured in one of her articles. This person has many different online aliases and is badgering people with them to the point where people are visibly angry. Rudy billed this person as an advocate. So while Rudy may say that AofA photoshops images of horns and tails onto people, Rudy may have knowingly or unknowingly pasted a halo onto person many people consider to be a demon.

Another nugget of wisdom from Ms. Rudy, who invites us to follow her on her new blog:

Gold-plated, double-blind, controlled, expensive studies may tell you far less than you think they should.

Yes, Lisa, let us all disregard these studies, which are put together by a scientific method which is accepted worldwide by researchers. Let us all reject these studies, which are done in such a manner as to reduce error ratios to a minimum, and quantifiable, reproducible results to a maximum. Let us ignore the fact that there is a control group. What we should want, Autism Politico gathers, is a random sampling of people who give vague opinions on things, and this should be our source of knowledge.

Autism Politico notices that Lisa Jo Rudy was always “open-minded” about ABA therapy, but now that she has no interest in Autism.About.com, she tells us that for HER child:

We specifically stayed away from ABA because, quite frankly, when it’s done poorly (and it often is) it is dehumanizing and disrespectful.  Worse, it is focused entirely upon behavior, and not upon the human being that is your child. 

Never in our recollection did she try to discourage other people from ABA. Autism Politico guesses that while she certainly would not expose her own kid to ABA, she didn’t care as much what other parents did with their kids.

Now Autism Politico must state that we do not believe Rudy is a bad person. We actually LIKE some of the things she has to say. For instance, when Rudy says:

The goal of autism therapies and treatments, in my opinion, should be to help the individual with autism to become as fully human as they can be.  Being “fully human” means so much more than being typical.  It means learning, loving, creating, imagining, laughing, playing, singing, being silly, having fun.

Autism Politico hears two things:

1) Rudy genuinely wishes the best for autistics.

2) And she must be naive, because she seems to think we are less than fully human.

Autism Politico is pleased that Lisa Jo Rudy, who has expressed the idea that we are not as fully human as others, is leaving. Good riddance, and goodbye.

And no, we will not be reading your new blog.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #248: Government Healthcare and What It Means for Quack Therapy Believers

Autism Politico can’t wait until national healthcare comes into effect in the US because it will mean that all the curbies who believe in quack treatments will be required to buy health insurance which will not pay for the treatments they want to get for the autistics they supposedly love and care for.

It’s adding insult to injury and boy does it feel good!

Won’t it be great to see them lobby the government for legitimizing those treatments and see the government turn a deaf ear on their pleas? Won’t it be great to see the more militant among their numbers being labeled as “threats”? It’s a good way to shut up these people, and hopefully it will put an end to the quack treatments too.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #243: Are schools your friend?

Autism Politico would like its readers to carefully the implications of schools diagnosing children with any disorder.

If a child has a disorder, a child may be entitled to additional funding to meet the educational needs of this special needs child. Autism Politico agrees that all children are entitled to an education and that all special needs students are entitled to whatever funding they may be entitled to under the law.

But Autism Politico also questions whether or not schools are qualified to make a diagnosis of any kind. They are not medical professionals. As far as autism goes, there are, under the DSM IV, different kinds of autism, and a medical diagnosis can take years, rather than hours or days to reach and accurate diagnose.

If a school can identify a child with special needs, then they must develop an IEP for that child within a specific time period, and they may apply for certain kinds of funding, depending on where these schools are situated. The amount of funding they are entitled to is also dependent on what the laws are in their locality.

In a time when cuts in funding are made to education, it seems that schools have additional motivation to secure funding wherever they can, and so the question arises as to whether or not children who are quickly diagnosed are properly diagnosed, or whether or not a diagnosis even exists.

While we as taxpayers can rest easy when we know our tax dollars are used for good purposes, when we see the number of autism diagnosis climb dramatically over a period of years, and when we see most of these diagnoses being made by schools rather than qualified medical professionals, can we continue to rest easily?

Could it be that schools are diagnosing special needs children so that they can make up for cuts in funding to regular education elsewhere?

A diagnosis follows someone the rest of their life the same way a conviction for a crime follows them for the rest of their lives.

Isn’t a false diagnosis under these circumstances the equivalent of exploitation of children for monetary gain? In which case, are schools our friends?

Keep in mind that when a child is diagnosed falsely, the parent of that child may believe the diagnosis and subject that child to all manner of legitimate and quack cures, causing themselves considerable expense, and causing their own child considerable trauma. All so that schools can make money.

Is this what we want from out schools?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #217: Observation #9

Autism Politico observes that parents of autistics are willing to default to any theory but one about what caused autism in their children.

They’ll say:

-Vaccines caused my child’s autism, or

-Mercury toxicity caused my child’s autism, or

-Heavy metal poisoning caused my child’s autism, or

-Gluten caused my child’s autism, or

-Food additives caused my child’s autism, or

-Conspirators caused my child’s autism, or

-Genetics caused my child’s autism, or

-Etc.

But to Autism Politico’s knowledge, there isn’t a group on the internet where a bunch of parents, especially mothers, have congregated together to say they are in agreement with Bruno Bettelheim’s theories. I’ve known of no mother who has said “My poor parenting caused my child’s autism!!!”

Isn’t that interesting? Everyone wants to finger something else as being the cause of autism in their loved ones, but no one wants to think about whether or not their own behavior might exacerbate autism in their loved ones.

How egotistical.

Now of course Autism Politico knows Bruno Bettelheim’s theory doesn’t hold water these days given that the genes which cause autism have been identified. These scientists have begun to (politely) discount other theories as being so much patter. But it’s funny how quick people are to dismiss their own parenting skills as being the cause of autism, but cling to the idea that vaccines cause autism, or that there is an international conspiracy to make people autistic, or that coffee enemas can cure autism, isn’t it? At the very least, their egos, and also their fear of self-examination are cause for concern. Perhaps by being so closed-minded, they are endangering their autistic children?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #192: Read All About Wakefield

As a service  to its readers, Autism Politico is providing the links to the British Medical Journal’s series of articles about Andrew Wakefield, whom everyone in the autism world either knows about or should know about.

The idea here is that anti-vaxers can read the exhaustive details of what actually went on with the retracted study so they can make themselves look even more foolish when they claim that the British Medical Journal is partly behind a global plot to overrun the world with autism.

Part I: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full

Part II: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258.full

Part III: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7001.full

It may be that the British Medical Journal will publish more parts than just these three, but Autism Politico will NOT bother to post the additional links if that happens. The reason for this is that we don’t expect anti-vaxers to read past the first sentence of Part I, so why bother posting the additional links?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #175: Merry What?

Autism Politico wants to remind you…

1) If you are a caregiver who has subjected your autistic kid to quack therapies this year…

2) If you are a teacher who had subjected your autistic student to ABA therapy…

3) If you are a doctor who put an autistic patient on an autism registry…

4) If you are a government official who has denied funding for autistics…

5) If you are an employer who has denied a capable autistic employment…

6) If you are a person who made fun of someone with autism…

7) If you are a member of an autistic advocacy organization who bullied autistics who do not agree with your points of view on autism…

Holiday greetings and presents during the holiday season are hollow, meaningless gestures that only reinforce your disrespect for your fellow human beings and remind autistics that there isn’t much point in learning to socialize with people like you.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #171: As the Holidays Approach

Autism Politico would like to remind people that the Holiday Season is about giving, and it can also be about forgiving and forgetting. The problem is, when you have a disability or disorder, it is not so easy to forgive those who discriminate against people with disabilities and disorders.

Forgiving and forgetting can be good for the soul, but in the case of discrimination, forgiving and forgetting allows those who discriminate to continue discriminating with a free conscience.

Then of course there are the autism organizations who, through their work, deeds, and misdeeds, have made life worse for autistics, and have fogged the minds of people needing to understand autism in the first place.

A New Year’s goal would be to take pains to remember who said/did what to whom and to not patronize, promote, or affiliate with any organization or individual which/who have somehow hurt autistics. By doing this, you take a stand, but by the same token, you do not hurt anyone, except by keeping them from knowing people like you who care.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #144: ADHD Is Genetic Too!

Autism Politico was thrilled to read that a common comorbidity of autism, ADHD, is genetic in origin.

It’s funny how the vaccines cause autism brigade never really says that vaccines cause anything else BUT autism. But here is more news that works against them. With autism already shown to be genetic by 137 scientists in 50 locations in 9 countries around the world, we now have this: 

The research by a team of scientists in Cardiff University concluded that ADHD is a brain development disorder. The study involved genetic analysis of DNA from 366 children with the disorder and 1,047 without the condition. The researchers found that children with the disorder were much more likely to have small DNA segments duplicated or missing than the other children.

The researchers also found significant overlap between these segments and those linked to autism and schizophrenia. The research suggests there may be a shared biological basis to autism and the disorder.

So now, in addition to researchers studying autism who say the disorder is genetic, we now have researchers studying ADHD who say that autism is genetic.

Another thing Autism Politico likes about this article is what one researcher said:

She said the study proved that ADHD should be seen as a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism rather than as a behavioural problem.

So no more discipline for ADHD folks is necessary, and hopefully, we will see ABA made a thing of the past here as well as in autism spectrum disorders.

More and more it seems that love and acceptance are the way to deal with people who have disorders, and love and acceptance seem to be the hardest thing for curebies to give. Perhaps curebies have a disorder of their own. While we can love them and accept them, their refusal to believe in science causes other people pain. Perhaps these curebies deserve to be subjected to their own quack therapies to get them to change their minds?

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #140: Manganese Causes Lower IQ?

Autism Politico is aware that a new study claims that manganese in well water is linked to lower IQ scores in children.

“It’s pretty straight-up,” said lead author Maryse Bouchard, a researcher in environmental health at the University of Montreal.

“We saw that the average IQ decreased with increasing tap water manganese concentration,” Bouchard said from Montreal. “And the difference between the least exposed and the most exposed was in the order of six IQ points, which is a very big difference.”

Now mercury-causes-vaccine people will have something else on their plate to contend with, although in this case, the metal they will be nattering on about really DOES affect a child’s mental capacity.

Autism Politico knows that this story really doesn’t have anything to do with autism, but it a way it does.  Follow this reasoning please:

Children with low IQs grow up to be adults with low IQs. People with low IQs sometimes have trouble following scientific studies. Coincidentally, it would appear that anti-vaxers have trouble following scientific studies which have repeatedly shown that thimerosal  in vaccines does not cause autism.

So maybe anti-vaxers should be checked out to make sure they are not suffering from manganese poisoning.

And maybe if anti-vaxers could be chelated of manganese, maybe they would regain the intelligence they lost and understand that mercury doesn’t cause autism! Alternatively, maybe they could be subjected to ABA therapy so that through this [stimulus-response rat training] they become robots and conform to the rest of society. Could be doping them up might work also. Maybe putting them on gluten-free diets. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers might work too. Or perhaps they could be beaten into submission like abusive parents and caregivers do to autistics.

After all, if perseveration is symptomatic of autism, then aren’t anti-vaxers behaving like autistics when they perseverate on thimerosal causing autism when science has shown that not to be the case? Maybe it’s time that society begins treating these anti-vaxers the same way that it treats autistics: With a lack of empathy for their plight at best, and ignoring them, or trying to put them away in a loony bin at worst.

Replies to this editorial are welcome.

Editorial #133: Religious Convictions And Autism

Autism Politico is aware that Lisa Jo Rudy has asked the question:

“Do Your Religious Convictions Help You Cope with Autism?”

Autism Politico’s answer to this question is “No. We love our autism. What our religious convictions do help us with is having patience with ignorant blog writers who ask ignorant questions like Rudy’s.”

And so:

“Dear Lord,  please grant us the patience to put up with Lisa Jo Rudy, who refuses to pay any attention to the 137 scientists who have examined 1,600 autistics in over 50 locations in 9 countries around the world. As you in your infinite wisdom know, Lord, these scientists were given the skill and knowledge, by you to determine that autism has a genetic cause, and these scientists have determined after a close examination of the genes themselves that with each gene studied, it is being more and more proven that  there is no environmental “trigger” for autism, since the genes involved have no “switches” to be flipped on or off.

“And please grant us the patience with this woman who refuses to accept that with whole Canadian provinces dropping ABA as a therapy due to its proven ineffectiveness, and who believes despite the increasing number of studies to the contrary that ABA actually works.

“And please grant us the wisdom to know that despite her posts which allow ignorant parents to bask in ignorance, that there is hope for the future, as governments and medical associations increasingly adopt the stances and positions on autism which will void Rudy’s opinions.”

“Bless us, Holy Father, and bless this poor woman as well. Grant her the wisdom to see the light!

“Amen”

Replies to this editorial are welcome.