On CNN: Dr Sanjay Gupta dispels common myths about Autism

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This is a very good presentation in the media of what AS is, I wish that we had this on UK television as their seems to be a lot of harmful and offensive assumptions-especially since the shootings last year.

[url=http://http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/opinion/plank-autism-newtown[/url]

Corrected link:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/opini ... sm-newtown

They are giving Gupta another chance with the autism thing? I wouldn't think they would put him back on that story, I would have thought they would get somebody new for it after what happened before.

I do like him though and I do pretty much trust what he says, but networks are fickle.

It's good to see some accurate representation for a change.

What exactly "happened before"?

Oh, the controversy over that one girl, I dont' remember her name. He did a story on her and she was supposed to be pretty autistic and unable to speak but she talked to him on her computer. Then people started saying they knew her and she wasn't autistic before and she made it up, and that she had been saying she had all kinds of mental illnesses at different times and other people said she was always completely fine and still other people said she was always autistic but got worse as she got older. I had asked about her before and somebody misunderstood me and thought I was dissing her, which I wasn't. I don't know enough about her or the situation to form an opinion either way.

But, because of that I was just curious as to why they picked him to do this story, because somebody is bound to bring up that whole thing again and that could cause some people to not trust his reporting or to not trust CNN's reporting.

I thought networks were pretty strict about what people thought of their people. CNN may be different though. Didn't they hire Geraldo after that whole Al Capone's Vault fiasco? I know that came shortly after his special "Baby Breeders For Satan". I still don't trust Geraldo after all that.

a conversation on her may have been locked previously because the woman in question may still have a WP acount

People who feel different and know in their bones that they are different may struggle, and may try on different diagnoses to see if they feel right. And that's okay.

I never thought of Geraldo as someone to take seriously. I always thought he was just a sensationalist.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/opini ... sm-newtown

I like how Dr. Gupta about 1:50 into it, saying people on the spectrum may have trouble reading emotions, but they do have empathy. it fact, at times, we may feel too much

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The biggest shortcoming of this three minute video is that it talks zero about sensory issues.

I've never found any indication that Dr. Sanjay Gupta suffered anything because a group of people decided to spread gossip about Amanda Baggs after he did a story on her, and I've looked into this as extensively as I could.

These people never discredited Amanda, and they never discredited Dr. Gupta. I doubt CNN is going to start pulling people off stories because of online concern troll crusades.

I forgot to mention:

One reason someone may have thought you were having a go at Amanda is because every so often (~twice a year, I think) someone shows up out of nowhere to start a thread about how Amanda Baggs is supposedly faking autism. These people seem to be a mix of actual trolls and people who appear to genuinely wonder what's going on, but are possibly also trolls. These threads are typically deleted because they tend to be negative and Amanda Baggs is a member of this forum.

When I first came across Amanda's blog ~five years ago I read it from beginning to end, and her descriptions of her own history and behavior have been rather consistent, which strikes me as unlikely if she were actually pretending to be autistic.

As far as Sanjay Gupta goes, he apparently had access to Amanda's medical records - something her detractors do not have. I do not recall ever coming across any indication that CNN acknowledges these people, let alone whether it ever impacted any employees.

Well, I wasn't going after her or insulting her. I don't know her and it doesn't really matter that much to me what is and isn't true. I had just come across something, read several things and seen that more people seemed to think it wasn't true than it was, and I had questions I really didn't know the answer to and I asked them. I haven't thought about it either way until I read this about CNN, and I figured that if I had seen that stuff, so had other people and probably the people at CNN, because I imagine they have some kind of office there where people surf around and read all sorts of opinions on not only the stories but about the station, other stations, etc.

I have no problem with Amanda Baggs, nor really no opinion about the whole thing. I only read a few articles and wasn't really interested enough to look up more things, so I asked a few questions here where I thought I would probably have a really good chance of getting an answer. It's ok.

I realize this, and I wasn't trying to say anything about you in my posts, just explaining the history involved. I hope my posts were informative and I apologize if I came across as accusatory in any way.

Oh no you didn't come across that way at all. It was somebody else back then when I asked who accused me of going after her or something like that.