Is Autism Speaks really as bad as people say it is?
Having been forced to deal with them and organizations like them, I can safely say âNo.â
You see, any idiot can look at things like âwe need a cureâ and their anti-vaccination advocacy and realize how ridiculously stupid that it.Â
But thatâs not what they sell to childrenâs hospitals. Instead, they push extremely unconventional medications to âhelpâ autistic children (usually by sedating them into a catatonic state). I mentioned earlier that Risperidol eases overstimulation, but Autism Speaks doesnât like Risperidol because itâs not controlling enough.
Autism Speaks absolutely loves âtreatmentsâ and âcounsellingâ based around controlling everything autistic children do. Stimming, self-coping mechanisms, even strange and oddball quirks like kids who wear gloves everywhere, all of these are taken from them and doled out as privileges. Itâs all about turning anything an autistic child likes into something they can control.
They treat these children like fucking animals and really enjoy forced isolation as a punishment. The IWK has several âSecure Isolation Roomsâ that they will place autistic children in their care into for hours at a time unsupervised when they start acting out. And not âhaving a meltdown and might accidentally hurt someoneâ kind of acting out, even just mouthing off or getting lippy with a nurse.
I am personally convinced that the whole âcureâ motto is a sham, because studies into Autism long ago disproved the theory that it was something that needed curing. Autism Speaks behaves more like a eugenics organization. And they are slippery bastards about it too.Â
Iâve had the displeasure of having to interact with them directly because they have such a stranglehold on Nova Scotiaâs youth mental health that any counseling group inevitably gets calls from them. Speaking to them and hearing the tone with which they spoke about these poor kids made my fucking skin crawl.
If youâre an autistic child and theyâre talking to your parents or counselor about you, they wonât even use your name. The Child, The Patient, and The Boy/Girl are all common ways to refer to these kids. On several occasions theyâve referred to some kid as âit.â
Iâve said before that Tumblr especially doesnât quit know what Autism Speaks is, and thatâs because their public persona is very carefully crafted. Their reputation is so cartoonish that doctors who donât know better wonât believe it, and so they swoop in with a lot of pretty language and faux-politeness. The skeezy, contemptuous way they behave when they think theyâre doing business is enough to make you fucking vomit.
You quickly learn why so many hospitals willingly work with them. They are very good at getting their claws into health care organizations because they have this almost sinister âFriendlinessâ to them, and when you combine this with the fact that a lot of child psychologists have absolutely no concern for the actual well-being of children (just making the parents happy so they continue footing the bill) you have a recipe for a truly horrifying experience.
I canât fully articulate just how sickening they are. Take however bad you THINK they are, multiply it by a hundred, and then think about how Quentin Tarantino would inflate that to make a movie out of it.
Thatâs how fucking gross and vile they really are when they think nobody is watching.
titsay
romaincrisis
snowghoul
janainaart
