"son's autism made mother kill him"

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All right, so I've never worked closely with a child with severe autism. The slant of this news article just disgusted me, though.

Am I viewing it with my own slant? It seems to me that rather than focusing on the mother's very obvious, serious personal problems, it makes it look like her son was just too great a burden on her, too much stress. She was such a great mother, it was obviously her son's pitiable condition that was to blame for breaking her and making her kill him. <---sarcasm

His immune system was attacking his brain?? WTH??! Am I just not up on the latest lab results or something? (which I know I'm not, but jeez, that notion sounds stupid...)

Someone please tell me this is a badly-done humor column and I'm just not getting it....

that's awful.

She had accesses to help and programs that most parents would never have because they don't have her money. How sad, she didn't give her son a chance because he didn't improve fast enough to suit her.

I have seen that kind of slant many times and have the same reactions. It's sad and pathetic too.

That's sad.

As stupid as it seems, Autism Speaks is probably at fault when a lot of this stuff happens. Their message and influence to people looking for help drives people to do things like this.

Utterly horrible.

NY Daily News is a cheap tabloid rag, sort of like the Daily Mail in London. The site looks professional, but any New Yorker can tell you that the Daily News is shoddy journalism. Stuff like this inevitably happens when mothers think they have to "fix" their autistic kids, and if they don't they've failed as a parent. I blame not only Autism Speaks but the whole "autism industry" for pushing quick fixes, then blaming the parent if the fix doesn't work. Some parents just can't take it, and snap. Wealthy parents seem more susceptible than poor parents to the fix-him-at-all-costs mentality. They get mired in stupendous debt and never make headway, and of course DAN is telling them that they're doing it wrong, no it's never the quack's fault. So some parents get to the point where they can't take it anymore. Money and connections are actually a detriment when it comes to autism-the working class can't afford quack medicine, so they just live with it. Look around at a DAN conference, you will NEVER see black faces, brown or red faces, or Southern good ole boys with a Tennessee drawl. It's always the upper middle class. The middle class has enough problems without being robbed blind by quacks.

Oh, the poor things. I guess they can't think for themselves either.

I think the article is completely one-sided, because it focuses on how the boy's autism drove the mother to kill him.

Good to know it at least isn't an attempt at real coverage---makes it easier to dismiss along with the crap at grocery check-out stands. Thanks.

That's awful. That woman should be given the death sentence.

They made it sound like she was the victim of her son's autism.

I hate it when people try to brand the murders of people with autism or developmental disorders as mercy killings. It's so insulting. And it only leads to more deaths. Look at the whole Katherine McCarron thing.

Actually, the New York Daily News is widely respected for the high quality of its contributors.