Autism advocacy means more than curing autism
September 15, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Of vaccines and autism is the second article in a series which is “keeping an eye on autism” written for UPI’s Consumer Health Daily by Lidia Wasowicz. (The first article was Accelerating autism debate, which I posted about in Vaccines, autism, and parent advocacy).
Of vaccines and autism provides an overview of the “budding view of vaccine as agent of autism began sprouting in the 1980s.” The only individual quoted in this article is Michael Wagnitz, a senior chemist and trace-metal analyst at the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and a volunteer for Generation Rescue, whose webpages says that autism and other childhood neurological disorders “all misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning” and advocates for the “healing” their child through chelation therapy.
I am always interested in reading about autism in the news. In her first article, Accelerating autism debate, Ms. Wasowicz noted how parent advocates have helped to accelerate both awareness about autism and research into its causes and treatments. The parent advocate quoted in Accelerating autism debate was Peter Bell, executive director of Cure Autism Now which, like Generation Rescue, advocates for research to identify “causes, prevention, treatment and a cure for autism and related disorders.” I would like to point out that not all parents of autistic children—myself included—see curing autism as the focus of their advocacy and, indeed, would argue that their children do not need to be “cured” from autism.
Autistic children do need special educational programs and various therapies (both of which vary with the needs and skills of each child) that are tailored to them as individuals, and that acknowledge their neurological difference. These are what I advocate for, and these are at the center of the conference on Autism and Advocacy that my husband, Dr. James Fisher, is organizing for October 27th in New York City. The themes of the conference are “hope and witness,” and it is these—above and beyond defeating and curing autism—are what I think advocacy for our children can and ought to be based in.
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] The stated purpose of Lidia Wasowicz’s multi-part Ped Med series has been to “[keep] on eye on autism, [take] a backward glance at its history and surrounding controversies, [face] facts revealed by research and [look] forward to treatment enhancements and expansions.” Many of the articles have been more specifically focused on the topic of mercury and vaccines, and whether these might be connected to what causes autism. The Ped Med series has accordingly tended to refer to public health figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also from the National Institute of Mental Health. Wasowicz has also often noted the crucial role that parent advocates have played in advancing and funding research on autism (especially in regard to a cure for autism) and in championing new and novel methods of educating and treating autistic children. Again, despite the Ped Med series’ stated focus on “surrounding controversies” and “treatment enhancements and expansions,” Wasowicz has tended to focus on the mercury/vaccine issue. The “parent advocates” cited have more than once been administrators from Cure Autism Now, such as the organization’s executive director, Peter Bell. [...]