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My friend Shawn of Along the Spectrum noted that mercury and vaccines are the “religion and politics” topic of Autismland and I think this is the case: Vaccines, once part of a child’s routine visits to the pediatrician, have become a topic that people will talk about with fire and brimstone fury. The topic of vaccines and autism does seem to monopolize discussions about autism in the media. In Ped Med: Doctors fight vaccine-autism fear (November 15) Lidia Wasosicz describes the frustration of medical practitioners who are seeing “persistent and problematic autism-related claims circulating on the Internet that unjustly give vaccines in particular and the medical establishment in general a black eye”; David Kirby in The Other Secret Bush Court? (November 15), wrote about the “official federal ‘vaccine court,’ some 4,750 autism-related cases have been pending for years.”
There is certainly plenty to talk about in Autismland regarding religion and politics, and I don’t only mean the Combating Autism Act. I mean the kind of conversation that got started at the Fordham University October 27th conference on Autism and Advocacy. An article on Fordham‘s website noted that
The conference, sponsored by the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham, included panel discussions about different kinds of advocacy practiced with and by persons with autism, especially those forms grounded in moral and religious traditions. Conference organizers hoped to promote dialogue and greater engagement, with autism advocacy as an integral component of work for social justice.
The morning session featured clergy from Jewish and Christian traditions sharing their experience in advocacy for persons with autism in liturgical and educational settings. The afternoon session focused on innovative forms of community, including a burgeoning Internet presence, building through the gifts of advocacy and self-advocacy. Many persons with autism and their families were in attendance throughout the day.
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Fordham president Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J. said that the conference was “part of a service to our city and nation,” and credited Fisher for “bringing to our attention matters that society would choose to forget.”
Working for social justice for autistic persons and promoting “innovative forms of community” to promote advocacy about autism are less well-defined topics than the claim that autism is caused by mercury poisoning from vaccines. It is not so easy to write an eye-catching headline about autism self-advocacy and “matters that society would choose to forget.”
It has been a few weeks since the conference and Jim Fisher, the organizer of the conference and my husband, has been saying frequently, “what next? where do we go form here?” How can we continue to foster the spirit of autism advocacy and of autistic persons self-advocating and get beyond talking about mercury and vaccines, about the purported causes of autism?
If you read Wasowicz‘s and Kirby‘s articles, you will note how little both actually talk about autistic persons—-about what it is like to be an autistic boy who did not want to get up or on the bus this morning. And shouldn’t a discussion about autism be all about autism—-about autistic persons?
