Emily Willingham emilywillinghamphd.com We want April — Autism Acceptance Month — to matter, to help further acceptance and understanding of autistic experiences, happiness, and rights for autistic people of all ages and abilities. We will be publishing Autism Acceptance posts and pictures all month long. -TPGA Editors What does it mean to be neurotypical or […]
Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham Trigger warning: discussion of Judge Rotenberg Center, aversives, mistreatment of autistics Some practices used as “therapy” for autism in the United States amount to torture, a U.N. representative says. The U.N.’s Juan Mendez is the organization’s special rapporteur on torture, and in his report examining torture worldwide, he’s called out
Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham It’s happened again at Fox News. After taking down a story last year that was packed with misinformation about genetically modified foods — headlined “What you need to know“ — Fox has now offered up another similarly underevidenced article, this time headlined “Can autism be prevented?” Short answer: No, not usually.
Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham Let’s start with the headlines blaring the news about a recent autism study. They almost invariably use the phrase “grow out of autism,” even though the study itself does not use that phrase or even reference “grow” except to talk about head circumference. Instead, the authors of the report, published in
Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham When we wrote previously about the use of MMS, a bleach compound, administered orally or as enemas on the promise that it would “cure” autistic people, we received many, many comments in support (or defense) of using MMS. Many people exhorted us to ‘do our research,’ to not ‘jump to conclusions.’
Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham Image source: pixabay.com Chelation is a “treatment” for autism promoted by the likes of Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue group and others in which a chemical that binds metals is (usually) injected or infused into an autistic child with the intent of removing said metals from the blood. Now a review of
2012 was an eventful year at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Our book drew much acclaim, three new editors joined our team, we featured more than 30 profiles of Autistic kids and adults for April’s Slice of Life series, we went to the International Meeting for Autism Research in Toronto, our Facebook community hit and
Some news coverage in the last 24 hours has mentioned autism in the context of the tragedy in Connecticut, particularly referencing Aspergers or “high-functioning” autism. Talking heads have brought up the “empathy” factor when discussing autism, and I’d like to set some of the record on that straight. Empathic ability comes in two forms. One
Our science editor Emily Willingham live-tweeted Thursday’s Congressional autism hearing from the perspective of a scientist, autism parent, critical thinker, and human. She Storified and annotated the experience, turning offensive keywords and laughable pseudoscience terms into her own version of Autism Bingo. Enjoy!
Emily Willingham emilywillinghamphd.com Stomach Endoscopy. Source: Wikimedia Commons Are autism, gut inflammation, and immune issues linked? One recent sponsored supplement published in the journal Pediatrics argues that they are. There’s certainly some evidence, although quite mixed, hinting at a link between immune or gut issues and a subset of people with autism, although which one triggers
