What history tells us about autism research, redux

In 2015Autistica invited me to write a short blog post on lessons from history for autism research. Then they took down their entire blog (was it something I said?). What I wrote remains relevant and then some, so here it is again. There are two minor wording changes. The original (archivedhere) had no links; I ' ve added a token few of the countless possible.History tells us about the great importance of standards in human research —standards of science, standards of ethics. History also tells us that segregation harms human beings. The costs and injustices of segregated schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods are well known, but there are other more insidious ways to segregate. Denying a group of people the benefit and prote ction of standards in research is especially harmful and violates basic human rights. It is segregation at its worst, destructive to human well-being and scientific progress both. Yet in autism intervention research, these lessons have not been learned.Autistics have long been subject to separate, unequal standards in both research and practice. Claims that standards must be lower for autistics than would be acceptable for anyone else continue to prevail. When it comes to autism interventions, autism-specific low standards have proliferated, by popular demand, and are now nearly universal. History tells us to recognize this as segregation at its insidious worst, but this has not yet happened.Instead autism organizations and advocacy leaders, inclu...
Source: The Autism Crisis - Category: Child Development Source Type: blogs