Mendacity at Age of Autism--Who Knew? And Autism Speaks Issues Legal Threat Against Person With Autism

Kev Dad o' Cameron (Do'C) at LeftBrain/RightBrain is deconstructing Ginger Taylor's claim at Age of Autism that the American Academy of Pediatrics believes that "Insulting parents will increase vaccination rates", in The Irrelevant Objection Fallacy - I’m Insulted! 

A previous LeftBrain/RightBrain post,  Green Our Vaccines - the reality garnered a rather heated discussion, fueled by a commenter named Lin, who felt that Kev's post misrepresented the "Green our Vaccines" march and that commenters who didn't agree with her position were  insulting to her. 

A previous post at Age of Autism by Julie Obradovic finds Obradovic insulted by Harvey Karp, MD, who reasonably asks vaccine rejectionists: "What disease do you want your child to get?".

Those folks who continue to believe that there is a causal connection between vaccination and autism sure are easily insulted.  But a very large autism organization also has thin skin.

Autism Speaks provided $44 million in program services in 2007, but isn't universally admired in the autism community. (Examples: Normal is Overrated; Whose Planet Is It Anyway?; and most notably, the row over the 2006 video "Autism Every Day", well-summarized by Mike Stanton.)

Early in 2008,  a teenager with autism made a parody of the Autism Speaks website, calling it NTspeaks.  Autism Speaks responded by threatening litigation, and the girl took the parody site down. 

This month, Zach, who runs  AspieWeb, created the tee-shirt pictured to the left, which he planned to sell at the AspieWeb store.  Autism Speaks had a different idea: it contacted the firm that manages the store, Zazzle.com, and demanded that the tee-shirt be removed from the product line.  Zazzle.com complied, fearing litigation.

Wrong Planet wrote:

Autism Speaks, which claims to speak for autism, has no autistic employees or board members with autism and is viewed as a bully by many autistic individuals who feel that the organization engages in tactics that marginalize their voices and contribute to an environment that hurts the lives of those with Autism. Their most recent move certainly supports such an argument.

Update June 28 2008: There is a website, Not Autism Speaks  (URL http://notautismspeaks.tk/), that details the criticisms of the not-for-profit organzation, Autism Speaks.  There is also a Squidoo lens, anti-Autism Speaks

Comments

[Kev]

I'd love to take credit for that post Liz, but it was actually Do'C in a Guest Blog.