In Canada people are milking autism... Making money by having their child categorized as being within the ‘autism’ spectrum and then collecting government handouts and tax breaks.
The real reason autism has become a pandemic is because, if you have a kid diagnosed as “autistic,” you get to collect a government check.
My nephew has an autistic boy. He cannot go to school, he becomes disruptive in a classroom being overwhelmed by extrasensory stimulation and begins to constantly rove around making a moaning sound which is pretty loud and does not stop.
He does not speak as yet either, he is eight.
Here is the punch line of this piece. It has to do with political correctness. They want a participation trophy.
“Underlying all these debates is a deeper concern that dividing autistic people into categories, or arranging them on a spectrum, can slip into judgments about their value to society. In the most extreme form, such hierarchies risk dehumanising those with higher support needs. It’s something some autistic campaigners warn could fuel harmful political agendas.
In the worst case, those judged as less useful for society become vulnerable to future genocides. This may seem far-fetched, but the political direction in the US, for example, is very worrying to many autistic people.”
The term "spectrum" leads to any kid who is slightly eccentric to be labeled autistic, any kid who is a disciplinary problem to be diagnosed as ADHD, and so on.
For a set of behavior patterns to be meaningfully defined as mental illness, the behaviors have to interfere with a person's ability to function. Simply having some characteristics in common with a mental illness doesn't make one mentally ill. Someone who checks to make sure that his stove is turned off twice rather than once doesn't have obsessive-compulsive disorder, the guy who needs to do it so many times that he won't leave the house really does have a serious condition that requires treatment. Similarly, the nerdy kid obsessed with dinosaurs or model trains isn't autistic - the kid who can barely speak and spends all day rocking back and forth is autistic.
The worst part of it is that perfectly normal but rambunctious kids who just need some discipline at school or at home are diagnosed as ADHD and medicated with ritalin.
Autism, like many other personality traits, is multi dimensional. The spectrum on one line was better than the previous one dot approach.
But it is better to recognize that rational ability, emotional ability, ability to function in society, etc can each have a range...a spectrum.
The author’s quibbling about semantics and bragging about her own expertise, hardly advances the problem. It appears to me that RFK is doing the right thing by dealing with facts, not profits. Who cares about what it is called.