What's So Bad About Autism Speaks?

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No seriously I'm very curious about this as most people treat Autism Speaks like it's a horrible organization dedicated to dehumanizing people with Autism. Why?

They spread the message that autism is a bad thing and that it should be cured, rather than striving for a society where autism is accepted. They have also spread false statistics, negative stigma and stereotypes in the past which have harmed the acceptance of autism.

http://www.autismspeaks.org/about-us/mission

If you look at their mission you can even find them to go as far as to call autism a global health crisis.

1. They don't have a single autistic person on their board of directors or in senior leadership. "Nothing about us without us" has long been the mantra of the disability rights movement.

2. Their advertisements are based on fears-mongering, patronizing, and dehumanizing rhetoric. This includes a mother talking about how she wants to drive her son off a bridge, comparing autism to cancer, etc.

3. They push the idea, which is widely rejected by the scientific community that vaccines cause autism. Granted, they do so in a wishy-washy way.

4. They have recommended the Judge Rotherberg Center, which uses painful skin shocks as a means of punishment.

5. They endorse excuses for parents who abuse and neglect of autistic children. The excuse being "lack of services".

6. They threatened to pull support for the Autism CARES Act if an amendment went through guaranteeing that a majority of public members of IACC were autistic.

7. They threatened to sue autistic people for making parodies of their organization.

That scratches the surface. Here's a few links.

http://www.boycottautismspeaks.com/why-boycott-1.html
http://thecaffeinatedautistic.wordpress ... ted-62014/
http://autismwomensnetwork.org/is-autis ... ate-group/

Okay then thank you for letting me know, I'm not very aware of what's going on in the community and find it hard to keep up.

Wikipedia has a nice long list of contoversy links...
If you've ever got the time, read through some of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Auti ... ersy_links

If you have any more questions on this subject, I'll be happy to answer.

Autism Speaks does not speak for me. I ignore them and practice that in trying to avoid anything they have written or produced. I maintain a severed tie with them, and I might add there was never a tie to begin with. The support I maintain the closest tie to is the WrongPlanet, but I haven't been that active on here lately. I am going to try to be more active now.

They don't represent us, they represent parents who are "burdened" with one of us. If you were an alien whose only knowledge of autism came from their materials, you'd assume it with synonymous with "severely ret*d with severe impulse control problems."

They refuse to see us as anything more than animals.

What a new and original topic.I don't know much about autism speaks.I really don't know