Spend anytime in the online autism community, and you'll find a rich cast of characters offering a diverse perspective on what it means to be autistic. From clinically diagnosed autistics in early adulthood to late middle age to individuals who have self-identified as autistic, I've had the chance to read over 130 autistic bloggers on the directory, in addition to other autistics whose writings appear in print, on websites, forums, and facebook. 

In the category of "Duh?" for the week, we have a new article from France looking at how parental beliefs regarding autism dictate treatment choices. Dardennes et al. (2011) put 78 parents through a questionnaire called "the Lay-Beliefs about Autism Questionnaire (LBA-Q; Furnham&Buck, 2003). This questionnaire explores beliefs regarding the etiology and treatment of autism. LBA-Q’s authors considered two main academic theories of the possible causes and treatment of autism: the psychogenic model and the biomedical model" (Dardennes et al.).

ASAN and the IACC


On Monday, I went through an ASAN petition to the CDC that appears to have been intentionally hyperbolic and meant to get supporters foaming at the mouth. Since I posted the piece, I've continued to look into the ICD-9-CM, IACC's take on wandering, and when it was first mentioned at the IACC, of which Ari Ne'eman is a committee member.

This morning, Wendy Fournier commented at the article on Science 2.0, providing information that placed when Ari Ne'eman would have been first informed of the CDC's interest in wandering:

The online disability rights and autism advocacy movements intersect, with appeals from the autism advocacy movement appealing to the larger disability rights movement. Recently, a new petition has been started by the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network calling for individuals to "Tell the CDC 'No' on Abuse-Enabling 'Wandering' Code!"