Autistics Given Castration Drug--not cool!

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Nah, I just meant his sheer size from puberty made it possible for him to beat up and kill his mum. Plus apparently puberty hormones often spark off much worse aggression (Rage Cycles) in autistic boys when they reach it.

But yeah, there's huge potential for abuse with these drugs. I never said there wasn't. And it's not just autistics it happens/used to happen to; I remember reading of cases where people were going for sterilization. Mentally ill women undergoing forced sterilization, and women of racial minorities too, also sometimes purely because the women were poor.

Scary.
There's a tiny bit of harm minimisation in extreme cases where it could help the person, which is why I'm not screaming about NTs with the other posters, but most often it's just wrong and an abuse of power over the disadvantaged.

If I ever have a son, I will not be forcing such a thing, on him. The way that hippies look at me, I could be married to one, in 5 years, so anything is possible.

Frankly, I expected swastikas on the site.

I can only describe it as f*cked up.

Irresponsible? It's a serious abuse of power and of human rights.

Sheer size is also useful for self-defense...and autistic people are crime victims at a much, much higher rate than they are perpetrators. Actually, autistic people--the "severely autistic" people you're talking about--have a several-times-lower than NT crime rate (even Aspies have a significantly lower crime rate, but the more the autism, the less the crime, in general; many crimes are social activities). So if you deliberately made autistic children smaller, you would make them even more vulnerable, and play into the hands of the actual criminals. A large autistic teenage boy may cause damage during a meltdown; but if he were a small autistic teenage boy, he would be less likely to be able to escape if the local toughs or the staff at the group home took it into their heads to beat him within an inch of his life.

Not to say that he would still have been able to kill his mother if he had been smaller; sure, it makes sense that he mightn't have managed it. But nothing is without risk--and as far as autism is concerned, the risk of us becoming victims is so much greater than the risk of us becoming perpetrators that when they're balanced out, it's obvious that it would be extremely foolish to deliberately limit the growth of autistic children. Even in the cases of children who have violent meltdowns... because those kids are also the most likely to be restrained, and to die of injuries sustained because they are so much smaller than the half-dozen adults pinning them down.

Well, any dubious, unproven treatment plan should be given a wary eye. My advice has always been to weigh the pros and cons. If something does very little to no good with lots of negative side effects, don't do it, even if you are struggling while raising your child. Always seek people out and talk to them about it, look for support from others, ask them and see what has worked when they were having problems.

Largely irrelevant.

There are additives to many food products known to cause infertility that the general public is just now becoming aware of.

There is a move to eliminate over 80% of the world's population. Via foods, vaccines, water supply, etc. The desired method is to make it difficult for the common masses to reproduce effectively. I will not be surprised if in my grandchildren's lifetime you need to go on a government approved drug therapy to be able to bear children.

Well, if that's true, it's failing because the world's population has done nothing but go up for decades and it's continuing to escalate.

i might actualy start a campaign against this, this is too far

and whats this 'autistic people have high testosterone' crap, WHERE THE BLAZES DID THAT COME FROM?

I actualy have exactly the opposite problem from 'high testosterone' am i not autistic? sorry im not a sex addict, am i not autistic? this is rediculous and the people who caused this have bull-headedly ignored the truth again and again

who is behind this? and anyway to optain their mail address i wanna mail couple good choice'd words to them

EDIT: mail address of maryland medical group have fun http://www.mgmamd.org/


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4 pages of reply here... Similar post on Autism Speaks, 0 replies.

Ya who cares there about some child abuse....

Not cool at all.

It seems like it violates all sorts of medical ethics. At any rate, a number of physicians have spoken out against it. But unfortunately it doesn't seem to break any laws. It definately violates the Hippocratic Oath.

The thing is, it's not just a potential for abuse, it's when used for autism nearly always an abuse. Because it's not used for the reasons you talk about (even if those were as good reasons as you claim they are, which I don't believe). It's used with the intent to cure autism. That's why everyone is really pissed off here. You're acting like it's unreasonable because there are valid uses for the drug, even though everyone is upset about an entirely invalid use. And then you're giving reasons that are most of the time questionably valid themselves, even if they were the reasons it's being used on autistic people, which they aren't.

And trying to prevent puberty in disabled people is (even if that were what's going on here, which it isn't), as people have said said, a huge ethics violation. You cite one example where someone killed his parents. When the real risk between autistic people and our parents is that our parents will kill us, if you look at the actual statistics rather than the scaremongering. Even the idea of preventing puberty in lots and lots of autistic boys just because you think they might "become aggressive", isn't a valid use for the drug. Even preventing puberty in boys who are already "aggressive" isn't a valid use. That's a human rights violation, not a valid use for a powerful hormone.

I don't know if you realize that messing with hormones is far more dangerous to the human body, and the human mind for that matter, than messing with psychoactive drugs in general. Or the fact that often autistic people's "aggression" has a purpose, rather than just being this random thing that comes out of nowhere. The reason people are objecting to what you say is that your reasons are both not the ones that this is happening for, and not valid uses for the drug. As much as I hate even drugging people for "aggression" (because "aggression" usually has an actual cause, and the drugs merely suppress the symptom), drugging people with regular psychoactive drugs is much less invasive and dangerous than drugging people with Lupron or other things that affect hormones. You're essentially scaremongering (or rather, repeating scaremongering that you've clearly heard from other people -- it's a very classic way of making people afraid of disabled people, and autistic people in particular) and then suggesting a non-solution and then deciding that the reason people disagree with you is because we don't realize Lupron has valid uses.

The only actually valid uses for Lupron are ones that occur in both autistic and non-autistic people and have no actual connection to autism. For instance (these aren't all the uses) in transgendered people, and in people with genuine precocious puberty (and then only to delay puberty until the right time, and in much lower doses). The uses you're suggesting are mostly offensive and based in stereotyping and a lack of regard for basic human rights that developmentally disabled people have been fighting for for decades.

I find it really weird that even when you acknowledge that the harm minimization is "tiny", you claim that it being okay for a tiny tiny amount of people (people that it's probably not actually even okay for) is reason not to be upset about it being misused in lots and lots of people. Abusing lots and lots of people so that a tiny tiny amount of people might possibly (sort of) benefit, is just as bad as abusing lots and lots of people with no benefit. I don't understand why you're complaining about people being upset about this. Even when you hit on a valid reason, it's just... not enough reason to not be upset about this. If you're bothered by anything, you ought to be bothered by what's happening to autistic people who are being given this drug under false pretenses, rather than being bothered by people objecting to what is happening. I know it's okay for a tiny tiny amount of people too (for reasons like the ones I mentioned), but people aren't giving this drug to autistic people in order to do either the actually valid things, or the things you claim are valid (or the small overlap between those two things). They're giving it to autistic people based on ridiculous claims that it will cure us (sometimes because of "precocious puberty" that doesn't actually exist, sometimes just because of "Lupron must cure autism because some quack said it will"). If a few autistic people with genuine precocious puberty or transgenderism or etc. are helped by the random (as in, not because those conditions have been detected, but because people have been told "Lupron cures autism") application of Lupron, it won't mitigate at all the harm it has done to so many others, and it won't make it any less reason for people to be upset about this. That's like saying that it's okay to give all autistic people Prednisone (another powerful hormone) because a few autistic people who are given it randomly will actually randomly happen to have diseases that Prednisone treats (but that weren't detected in order to give the Prednisone), and also randomly happen to have a bunch of things that Prednisone shouldn't be given to treat but that you randomly claim it should. Just... no. There's no excuse.

Given the drug's effets... would you be just as okay with this if they were castrated by having their balls cut off? Or is it suddenly not okay when you do it with a knife?

Oh and parts of that history of mine include --

Being seen as "increasingly aggressive" as a teenager. (I was being physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. The people doing that were not treated as a threat in the same way I was even though all of them were larger than me.)

Being given hormones that would supposedly "make me less aggressive" (which didn't happen).

Being regarded as mindless even when I demonstrated clearly that I had a mind in ways that nobody would be even try to refute if I weren't in that position. (Also having terms like "low functioning" batted around, and various other things claiming I didn't understand things I understood.)

Experiencing both attempted murder by caregivers (as is far more common than the other way around for any kind of disabled person including autistic people), and situations that could have killed me accidentally due to overuse of force or negligence (also far more common than the reverse).

My experience in that regard is pretty normal for those regarded as having "no reason" for their actions and "a danger" to other people. (Meanwhile those who tried to kill me are probably still regarded as fine upstanding citizens and saintly for their devotion to "caring" for people like me. Because no matter how pointlessly aggressive they are, people are always willing to find some excuse for it.)

Oh and also I helped do research for a webpage that's no longer up (although it's in the Internet archive) that has a very long list of parents and other caregivers who have murdered autistic children. Do you think we should give Lupron to anyone who might have autistic kids in case it makes them "less aggressive"?

Oh and the reason that I'm trying to refute your points is because people otherwise might actually believe the stereotypes you're repeating, which are pretty damaging to autistic people (among other disabled people) when people do believe them. It's not because you're not going with the herd, nor because you're trying to look at all sides of things, but because you're saying things that conform to certain stereotypes, and when people read those things they tend to believe them because it doesn't contradict the beliefs of most people including many autistic people. Posting alternate information is necessary when that kind of thing happens.

"To treat an autistic child, the Geiers order $12,000 in lab tests, more than 50 in all. Some measure hormone levels. If at least one testosterone-related level falls outside the lab's reference range, the Geiers consider beginning injections of Lupron. The daily dose is 10 times the amount American doctors use to treat precocious puberty." - Chicago Tribune
In high doses it can shut down hormonal functions causing permanent impotency.


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