D Seid,
That lawyer also sent a scary letter to an autistic woman who claimed Amanda Baggs had copied portions of her life. If you search for “Droopy” on my blog, you can find the whole story. The title of one post was “Amanda Baggs Lawyers Up”. They had this poor woman terrified and scared her into removing all of her Youtube videos that discussed the situation.
Oh hey, you too?
Well, mine wasn’t so scary, and nothing was threatened outright, but there was a definite tone thing going on, and a deliberate addition of Law Firm Address and contact information on the bottom that did not appear to be a default signature.
Woah there, pardner! There’s no evidence that Ms. Baggs’ drug use had anything to do with anything, and no evidence that “magic mushrooms” or LSD has ever cause brain damage to anyone. It’s far more likely that her schizophrenic symptoms appeared in her late teens or early twenties, as they usually do, and this was coincidentally the same time as she was experimenting with drugs, as is also fairly usual for the age.
I have spent almost the entire day writing my response to Kathleen Seidel’s message on the other thread which I see is now closed. I am feeling very frustrated that this information about Amanda Baggs is not getting out, and that threads are often closed, and comments deleted, whenever the truth about her history starts to surface. Here is my response, and if it stays, it stays. If it doesn’t at least I have done my best, once again, to Get the Truth out about Amanda Baggs.
KathleenSeidel:
I have no doubt that Amanda has a diagnosis of Autistic Disorder , but it was given to her in 2000 when she was 19 or 20 years old.
Questions that come to mind are: Why was she given that particular diagnosis? And how did she get it?
A PDD of that severity is normally diagnosed in very early childhood, and we know from Amanda’s early messages that she didn’t have a diagnosis of any description until after she’d used recreational drugs extensively and over a period of months, at university.
There are a number of students, who knew her well at the time, who confirm that she was normal when she went to college and that her craziness began after she started taking recreational drugs.
I do not believe that Amanda could have passed as a non-disabled person for fifteen years, and it would have been impossible for her to have hidden a pervasive developmental disorder from her numerous teachers from kindergarten onwards to age 15. In fact, they have described her as “a delight to have in the classroom”, and, what is more, she even describes herself in her earlier messages as “a very well-behaved child who only had to be told once not to do something". A child with a PDD has behavioural problems, and it would be impossible for them to hide their condition.
Another mystery is that Amanda claims in March 1999, at the age of 18, to have been “officially diagnosed with PDD-NOS/atypical autism”, and her response at the time was, “it seemed pretentious to believe that I was autistic in any way.” and, “I am still nervous about ‘using’ my diagnosis in public because I’ve had a lot of those (diagnoses) and am afraid people wouldn’t believe me.”
If, as she claimed, she was officially diagnosed with PDD-NOS/atypical autism in 1999 then, how could she also claim in her profile at Aspies for Freedom that the only diagnosis she has ever officially had on paper was “Autistic Disorder – low-functioning”? And how can someone get an atypical autism diagnosis one year, and just one year later, get the severe autism ie “Autistic Disorder” diagnosis? I would say it was highly improbable, if not impossible.
For what it’s worth, the only possible explanation that I can think of is that the psychiatrist who gave Amanda the diagnosis wanted to help in some way.
If he is the same psychiatrist who wrote the letter to Amanda’s mother on this page of her blog, when she was 18, I believe that he was deeply worried about her, and would have done anything to help, and, based on her mother’s recollections of her childhood, he was able to give her a diagnosis.
But, notice Amanda’s response to his letter of concern. She vilifies all psychiatrists. And yet, she wrote in her earlier messages that she was grateful for the help they had given her, that they had “dragged her kicking and screaming out of her little psychotic hole into reality again” and, in her diary, she wrote that she looked forward to meeting with her psychiatrist and wondered what interesting discussion they might have that day. Those early messages don’t reveal any fear of mental health professionals or “staff”, and she doesn’t mention maltreatment, physical abuse or restraints. But she was definitely frightened of other patients.
Ex-college friends have also said that her hair was shaved in the photo essay, not because she pulled her hair out, but because at the time she was going through a butch lesbian stage. That would be consistent with her meeting social activist Laura Tisoncik of the Lesbian Fat Activist Network (LFAN)
her friend and co-author of her websites.
My intent is clear. If I met anyone as disabled as Amanda appears to be, I would have the utmost sympathy for them. But no doubt Amanda would find any sympathy for her - and for anyone like her - to be demeaning, and my attitude towards disabled people would be interpreted by her to mean that I see them as inferior or non-persons. She adheres to the Neurodiversity philosophy of celebrating neurological differences, whereas I am saddened by any kind of disability.
This is not about the vaccine issue, Ms Seidel. It is about a woman pretending to have had Autism from birth, and who speaks vociferously against therapies such as Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) which she describes as abusive, as if she has had firsthand experience of this therapy. In case there is any doubt, Amanda Baggs’ article, Past, Present and Future gives the impression that she has always been a low-functioning, non-verbal, incontinent person with Autism who has been abused by such therapy. And she hasn’t.
ABA is a well-known, successful therapy for children with Autism and there is no doubt that it is most beneficial for many of our children. It might interest readers to know that the Neurodiversity movement is also against ABA, and Ms Seidel and other activists, such as Michelle Dawson, portray the therapy in the worst possible light, and paint Dr Ivor Lovaas as a heartless monster.
Sorry for butting in. I just want to say here that children have recovered from autism. Neurodiversity activists, like Ms Seidel, will no doubt argue that recovered children are not “normal”. However, if a child with autism makes such progress after intervention that they become indistinguishable from their peers, and therefore can no longer meet the criteria for autism, they are normal.
What is deemed “appropriate medical care” should be a decision made by parents, and parents alone, after consultation with medical professionals.
With regards to appropriate treatment and therapy for Autism, it is not the business of self-diagnosed “autistics”, or parents of children with mild Aspergers, atypical Aspergers, or autistic traits to dictate what is, and what is not, appropriate care for someone else’s child.
Ms Seidel, It is my belief that you are protecting Amanda Baggs because she is Neurodiversity’s representative for lower-functioning individuals, and has taken it upon herself to be their spokesperson. Individuals diagnosed in early childhood, disabled by their autism and Aspergers Syndrome, who are able to communicate and do want to be cured are being effectively silenced by Amanda Baggs, and other Neurodiversity activists.
Ms Seidel, you have not raised a child with Autism, so would you mind telling us how you got involved with the Neurodiversity Movement, and how you became a central figure in that movement.
Contrapuntal, your questions will never be answered because acivists, like Ms Seidel, will not allow the truth to surface.
WhyNot, Thank you for your message, and kind words. Your support is really appreciated.
Merged threads.
Gfactor, General Questions Moderator
Thank you, Gfactor!
Sweet Jesus!! Maybe Amanda really has MPD after all…
After further reading I’ve concluded, yeah, Ms. Baggs is a loony and a fake. For one thing, I’ve read that LSD was once used as an experimental drug to treat autism, until it was made illegal (LSD, not autism.) Naturally, the side effects precluded any widespread use…but I’ve known some people who, nowadays, would have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome until they “self-medicated” with LSD and started acting normal. (Standard disclaimer: All drugs are bad, mmmkay?)
OTOH, LSD can also trigger an underlying condition of paranoid schizophrenia. Which seems far more likely in poor pathetic Amanda’s case. (Maybe she’s too ashamed to admit the truth about her condition?)
Just my take.
So we have severe autism as a disorder where there are profound issues with continence, communication, coordination and abstraction; manifesting from early childhood. As is currently understood, ASD is a developmental disorder, akin to Down syndrome, in that it is present at birth, and emerges with development.
But now we apparently have a case of “adult onset” ASD in a person who presented a decidedly non-ASD childhood - normal education, continence, speech, abstraction. And apparently we have pseudo-Parkinsonian issues tossed in for effect. Not to mention the dissociative symptoms. And don’t even mention the political/persecution issues here. Is there a “I am Spartacus” button on that thing?
This from people linked to the doctrine that a diversity of neurological deficits are all equally-valid as part of a happy family of “neurodiversity,” and from a person who appears to use the DSM as some sort of playbook for performance art.
Bollocks.
If we can understand the genetic basis for ASD, we should screen for it, as we do for Down syndrome. If we can understand the risk factors for ASD, we should attempt primary prevention, as we do for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Neural Tube Defect/Spina Bifida.
These people remind me of the radical deaf movement, where the absence of a sensory capacity is viewed as the basis for a subculture, and where people actaully attempt to purposely select for congenital deafness.
Benign and compassionate treatment and enabling of existing cases of ASD is one thing; normalizing a serious developmental disability is something else entirely. The correct goal is to minimize or eliminate the occurrence of new cases of ASD, while optimizing the quality of life of existing cases.
Primary prevention of birth defects and developmental delay syndromes is not pejorative eugenics - it is the attenuation of human suffering mediated by theses disorders on innocent infants. If we can deal with ASD preventively, we should do so. If we can promote secondary prevention via effective adaptive therapies, we should do so. What we must not do is declare ASD as just another valid type of neurological configuration - here’s a clue: if we have to re-tool society to allow you to function “independently,” your problem isn’t a matter of diversity. It’s a matter of functional deficit or disability.
The critical steps to dealing with ASD, either in the preventive or therapeutic modes begin with the acceptance of ASD as a problem.
**TWEEEEET!!
[ Moderator Mode ]**
The issues raised in the original Great Debates thread (which remains the first post on this merged thread) are worth considering.
Obviously, the accuracy of the claims made in the linked website have a bearing on the discussion that proceeds from it.
Nevertheless, I am disinclined to have to moderate opposing factions from other message boards hammer on each other in our Forum.
For the purposes of this discussion, I see no reason to delve into the honesty or mendacity of Ms. Baggs to any greater extent than we have already done so. We already have had posted more personal information about an individual than we really want to know.
From this point forward, I expect the discussion to stick to a theoretical discussion of the topic presented in the OP.
I do not want to see any more attacks on Ms. Baggs.
I do not want to see any more attacks on persons defending the claims made by Ms. Baggs.
I do not want to see any more attacks on the persons challenging the claims of Ms. Baggs.
I REALLY do not want to see any attacks on any poster to this thread.
Those of you who have joined the Straight Dope Message Board for the purpose of continuing personal feuds that originated in other fora may now accept that that aspect of your posting has come to an end. If you wish to discuss the general aspects of the diagnosis and treatment of autism or autistic disorders, you are welcome. Any further personal attacks on persons who do or do not post on this message board will result in a loss of posting privileges–and I will determine what constitutes an attack and I am not going to provide any guidelines to allow posters to probe how far they can go, so I would advise everyone to stay far back from anything that might be (mis)construed as an attack.
Thank you and have a nice stay.
[ /Moderating ]
Monstro, The problem with the photoessay that you quote from is that it is in fact an advertisement for the Neurodiversity Movement. It is also exceptionally long and I suspect that many people never bother reading to the end.
As a parent, I am doing my utmost to enable my son to become as independent as he possibly can be. This has involved managing on one income and trying every treatment and therapy that we could afford, including ABA, kinesiology (Doman/Delcato), Auditory Integrated Training, biomed, homeopathy, cranial osteopathy and special diets. I have also homeschooled my son for the past nine years. Why? Because our son’s future is important to us. We cannot live forever, and one day he may very well have to rely on other people, and we cannot expect strangers to care for him, to understand him or love him as we do.
As you quite rightly say, Autism affects the entire family, and the people who are most vocal against any form of treatment and therapy, are the ones who have not experienced living with a child with Autism in the family. They are speaking from ignorance. Sadly, some parents of recently diagnosed young children are adopting Neurodiversity philosophy, believing that their children will in time morph without any kind of special intervention from a child with Autism into a higher-functioning communicative adult, such as the one in the picture essay, and that given acceptance, love and time they will one day be able to communicate with their parents.
Splinter skills which many of our children have are now considered to be indicative of high intelligence, instead of phenomena which are totally useless in the real world. To give you an example, my son can identify the shape of any country anywhere in the world and tell you its name. Name any country in the world and he can draw its flag. However, at sixteen, he still cannot safely cross a road by himself. He cannot go anywhere he wants without a family member or caregiver to watch over him.
Neurodiversity philosophy is harming children with autism because it is opposed to early intervention which is vitally important for the development and inclusion of these children in society. Society will not adapt to autistic children running amok, therefore the child with autism has to learn to adapt as well as he can to society.
My son was a danger to other children, including his younger brother, and a danger to himself. Like many other children with Autism, my son had no fear of being separated from his family, and would wander off unless watched constantly. He would walk or run into traffic, or wander off in busy shopping malls, never once looking back to see where his family was. He was violent and uncontrollable unless he was left alone to do as he pleased, which, for him, was to engage in his favourite obsessive activities of opening and closing doors and drawers, or switching lightswitches on and off for hours on end. He could not communicate his needs, and became violent when his needs were not met. He was also literally terrified of numerous ordinary, everyday sounds: vacuum cleaners, hand-driers, hair-driers, car horns, babies crying, and, he would attack those babies if he was not restrained. He was also hypersensitve to touch, which meant that we had to warn people not touch him, particularly on the head and shoulders. He would bite, scratch, punch and kick anyone who touched him without warning, and that included a pat on the head by a friendly ice-cream vendor, or a picture stamp on his hand by a friendly post office worker. The inability to relate to people and to one’s environment in a natural way, and to be continually terrified by every day events, must be a nightmare for the child, and, I know from experience that it is a nightmare for the family.
These behaviours are maladaptive, and intervention is necessary, otherwise the child and the family will become isolated from society, and by society.
Autism is not “a healthy variation in neurological hardwiring”, and it is not a cause for celebration.
Monstro, I would certainly like to hear your questions answered by Kathleen Seidel.
“…ASD is a developmental disorder, akin to Down syndrome, in that it is present at birth, …”
This is what the consensus has been since 1943. That began to change in 1998 and we now know that most autism is not present at birth.
True, the studies have not been done to prove this. However, the reports of normal babies regressing seem to represent the majority of cases which include my son.
Thousands of children have realized improvement in their symptoms with some being cured completely. Chelation, the prevalent treatment amongst those cured children, would have done absolutely nothing to help them if their disability had been genetic in origin.
This is the only reason I engage in any discussion concerning autism. Amanda Baggs is irrelevant to me since I have seen the truth via my autistic son’s transformation from a “vegetable” to a slowly developing child. Neurodiversity and MS Baggs only become relevant when their misinformation obfuscates the truth about autism and prevents parents from learning how to help their children.
Then how do we know it?
Can you point to some report, account, survey, anything that demonstrates the majority of cases being “normal” babies that regress?
Do you have any legitimate, empirical cite to support chelation as an effective treatment?
This is true, and it comes from a variety of sources.
Anecdotal evidence is irrelevant to the issue of cause and effect. Without controls, statistical evaluation, and proper categorization of the evidence, no valid conclusion can be drawn from an anecdote other than, “it seems to have worked here.”
Chelation can only be a successful therapy if the assumption about mercury poisoning as the cause of autism is correct. There are a host of both logical and statistical reasons why it is probably incorrect, not the least of which is the continuing expansion of new cases even in countries that have stopped using mercury in vaccines. I’m not going to reinitiate a debate on the subject here, given that we’ve debated that horse to death a few times on this message board. I’m only responding here to re-emphasize the point for our guest that the plural of anecdote is not data. 
Learning how mercury caused the autism epidemic need not be a debate. I prefer to discuss the facts in the interest of helping affected children.
If “no valid conclusion can be drawn from an anecdote…” is routed in legal opinion, that’s irrelevant when it comes to helping the kids. When cured children begin parading into courtrooms (outside the kangaroo court known as the Autism Omnibus case without a jury) with videos of their former selves, no jury is going be swayed by a drug company lawyer calling that unmistakeable proof anecdotal evidence.
Some people think the United States has stopped using mercury in vaccines. The largest increase in autism happened 3 years after the introduction of HepB on the day of birth, before infants have a Blood Brain Barrier. Is it just coincidence that the flu shot was added to the vaccine schedule for babies and pregnant women, thus ensuring mercury would enter the brains of fetuses after mercury was reduced or removed from most other vaccines?
You may ask for proof for two reasons; to defend negligent vaccine manufacturers or to decide on a proper course of treatment for an autistic child. While the burden of proof in court may be quite difficult at the moment, it is a simple matter for a parent who has watched their child in the process of recovery. Since my son was one of the most horrific cases of autism you could ever hope to encounter and I have the testimony of teachers, case workers, doctors, and videos to prove it, if I manage to cure him completely, I can walk into court without a lawyer and easily beat whatever legal talent the drug companies try to throw at me. That’s all beside the point. The only point worth considering is how to help the kids. We have more to learn. We also have a good starting point with kids who’ve already ben cured.
Maybe you could help the rest of us by first establishing that autism is caused by mercury? 'Cause the good evidence all seems to point the other way, your anecdotes notwithstanding.
Deciding the proper course of treatment depends entirely on proof for an effective treatment.
Encouraging parents to pursue crap treatments delays their engagement in treatments that have been empirically demonstrated to be effective. It is crucial that we weed out the nonsense and put forth the well-demonstrated treatments.
I’m a psychologist. I’m not beholden to any pharmaceutical company, since I can’t prescribe meds. I’m not a lawyer. Tell me why I should change my practice in terms of providing the explanatory model of autism that I do, and in terms of the treatment strategies I should recommend. These things very much require evidence.
Or show that there is an actual “autism epidemic,” foresam. One that cannot be explained by improved diagnoses, broadeniing the definition of autism, or any of the other changes that could have caused an apparent rise in numbers of autistic children.
[aside] Jenny McCarthy may be smokin’ hot and even surprisingly erudite, but her statement on Oprah that she she dislikes the term “autistic child,” preferring to say she has a “child with autism,” is a linguistic game with no real value. Dear, they mean the same damned thing. [/aside]
This has a lot of links for those seeking proof. I think it missed the link to what Richard Deth PhD told us though. Deth showed that mercury prevents methylation. Without being able to convert B-12 into methyl B-12, autistic kids have no methyl B-12 which makes it impossible for them to pay attention to anything. He thought 80% would improve by adding MB-12 but J Neubrander showed that over 90% improved with methyl B-12.
Hentor, I have no idea how you address autism for your clients. None of the therapies did a bit of good with my son since he, as Deth told us, was incapable of paying attention to anything.
I worked in an institution for a few months. The teens there were just like my son used to be. They had had the speech, OT, PT, etc. It had not helped. So, they grew too big for their parents to manage and were just being drugged into oblivion so they wouldn’t hurt themselves or others. While higher functioning kids may realize some benefit from things like ABA and the rest, it’s pretty much useless for the lowest functioning. And, it is beyond the scope of psychology to be able to offer any help. It’s also way beyond the scope of teachers to be expected to solve mercury poisoning but that’s the standard treatment, send the kid to school and pray that some teacher gets through to him. It’s simply not possible for them to help at all until the mercury is removed and the kid is capable of paying attention to something instead of spinning in circles all day.
If I were you, I’d suggest the kids have hair tests to test for deranged mineral transport, and/ or porphyrin tests, check with Andy Cutler to analyze the hair tests and see if mercury shows up as a problem from the tests. You can find Andy at the Yahoo group, Autism-Mercury where over 7,000 people have learned how to cure autism from Dr Cutler.
They do not mean the same damned thing. One label’s a person as the condition they have, the other is “person first” language that emphasizes that they are a person, and that there is a condition. To the person with the condition, it makes all the difference in the world, not because of the word order, but because of what the word order really means in terms of the thought processes involved on the part of those who that person meets.
Curiously, not all people with disabling conditions (and yes, we can get into a rousing debate on “disabled” v. “impaired”, etc.) prefer person first language. The deaf, for example, for the most part prefer to be called deaf people, not people with hearing impairments. But that’s because they consider themselves to be a separate culture within our society. [/end hijack (hopefully)]
Okie Dokie. Will do.
Except, could you show me anything at all suggesting why in the world I would do such a crazy thing?
(Your link, by the way, goes nowhere. But what I’m going to want to see are empirical studies, or at least descriptions of empirical studies and guidance as to where I would look to find the studies themselves.)
Hentor,
What I have suggested to you is to see what a man with a higher education than you and years of experience at curing autism has to tell you. Since you didn’t advise us about your methods of dealing with autistic clients, I’ll have to assume you are still using obsolete things such as ABA and other therapies that were developed before anyone knew that mercury is the cause of most autism.
I would never call a psychologist for help with mercury poisoning, I’d see a doctor who is licensed to treat it. You can search for all the studies you like. I prefer to help kids by simply taking advice from those who are curing autism.