Sunday, November 2, 2008

Health Coverage

Many efforts are currently underway to mandate insurance and state coverage for the various types of autism medical treatment. These efforts are premature.

Not in any way certain of the condition it is dealing with, and ignoring its charge to first do no harm, the medical community is offering a scattershot and dangerous approach to autism treatment—oppressive applied behavioral analysis, overpowering pharmacology, wide-ranging interventive therapy, and a few doses of biomedical quackery thrown in for good measure. What these treatments have in common is that none are designed to promote autistic capacity; all are designed to shut it down.

When attitudes have changed, when humanity has examined autism for what it truly is, when medical efforts have turned from suppression and cure—and towards autistic achievement—only then will autism coverage become a worthwhile investment, and not the drain of resources and human dignity that it currently is.

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