{"id":1426,"date":"2006-03-01T06:09:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-01T06:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/03\/the-autism-club\/"},"modified":"2006-03-01T06:09:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-01T06:09:00","slug":"the-autism-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/the-autism-club\/","title":{"rendered":"The Autism Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a column at a local paper. I wrote this article<\/a> for last week’s paper, and a fellow blogger took offense<\/a>. My lede had been the story about Abubakar, the 5-year-old Maryland boy whom it is believed died of errors ascribed to his chelation treatment for autism. As I’ve said before<\/a>, there is a deep and severe division between autism parents as to whether autism is an illness from which one can recover, or whether it is a different neurological wiring to which one can adapt. Several friends on both sides of the chasm jumped to my defense, which made me feel really good, but I did wonder if I was wrong to come out so firmly on the side that questions recovery. I have been trying to straddle the gap, because that is who I am: a Libra who always tries to see all sides of an issue. I want to be fair. But I really do believe that there are kids out there who present with symptoms that look like features of autism but which are actually something else, and so the biomedical interventions might in those cases have an effect.<\/p>\n

The primary issue, to me, is not whether to treat, although I know that this is the issue for many. The issue for me is that when some kids’ issues improve and others’ do not, the parents feel like they have failed. That is the piece that moves me. A good friend of mine who tried many, many things to little avail has confided in me that people have sneered at her that she has not done enough, or has not done it right, or he would be “better” by now. This is the problem with the debate.<\/p>\n

It is my belief that we have to acknowledge that there are some forms of autism that look a certain way and act a certain way, while other forms do not. Or possibly, there are ways of being that look like autism and are not. There are also people who believe that their children are perfect exactly as is, “warts” and all, and who steer clear of non-traditional, even potentially harmful treatments. Others think they are crazy not to try every, single thing out there, devoting ones life to treatment (as one well-known autism-fighter<\/a> puts it, “No finer cause on the planet.”)<\/p>\n

I believe that an even better cause for the planet would be teaching tolerance for difference, whether it means tolerance for a different opinion from your own, or tolerance for the full spectrum of people we come across. Tolerance\/inclusion is not about hitting people over the head with your viewpoint, but by providing gentle example<\/a>. At any rate, if we’re all doing the best we can, which I assume we all are, that should be the bottom line. Autism should not be the club we use against each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a column at a local paper. I wrote this article for last week’s paper, and a fellow blogger took offense. My lede had been the story about Abubakar, the 5-year-old Maryland boy whom it is believed died of errors ascribed to his chelation treatment for autism. As I’ve said before, there is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-n0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}