Sacha Baron Cohen's More Obnoxious Cousin Disqualifies Himself as an Autism Researcher
by Ginger Taylor
In response to JB Handley's new book, How to End the Autism Epidemic, long irrelevant researcher Simon Baron-Cohen has reached a new level of unethical, nonsensical obnoxiousness, by declaring that if you try to prevent autism, you are a Nazi eugenicist:
“I am disgusted by the #EndAutismNow campaign. This is hate speech and eugenics. How is this different to the Nazi EndJewsNow (1939-45) & the KKK white supremacist EndBlacksNow campaigns (1860-2018)? Treat symptoms in autistic people that cause suffering, but don't prevent autism.”
So many question here... my mind is reeling.
It is good of Mr. Cohen to give us permission to treat the symptoms of autism, but only, I guess, if they are symptoms that cause suffering. How that is measured and achieved, I am not sure. If for example, you treat brain inflammation, which in turn ends Self Injurious Behavior, but also flapping, do you have to figure out a way to put back the flapping?
And what if, a woman goes on a strict protocol where she detoxes starting a year before getting pregnant, avoids every known and suspected environmental trigger for autism, and gives birth to a healthy, typically developing child that never suffers an autistic regression. Did she murder her own child? We need to call in the police to investigate every NT child to see if they have been assassinated just in case.
Sure, an autism diagnosis for a child instantly makes them 40 times more likely than their peers to die young, cutting their life expectancy in half to age 36, and preventing a case of autism would jump that life expectancy back to the 77 or so years their peers have, but preventing an early death by preventing autism is also murder, so you are not allowed to do it.
Ok that does not make any sense to me either, but Simon is a scientist so just go with it.
Wait... Simon... if you are allowed to treat autism symptoms that cause a child's suffering, are you allowed to prevent autism symptoms that cause a child's suffering? Or does a child have to suffer with them first, THEN you can get rid of them? And how long do you make them live with it before you decide it meets your threshold for allowable treatment? 1 year? Long enough for them to report it? What if they are non-verbal and unable to successfully report which symptoms they suffer from and which they don't mind? Do we have to wait until they can type? Or until the age of consent, for them to contract with someone themselves for treatment/homicide? Suicide? Assisted suicide?
I am concerned that if we treat for an autistic symptom that is not actually causing suffering, that we might be killing the child. But I guess that if we wait until that child is an adult to seek treatment on their own, that technically they are committing suicide if they are accidentally treated for something else than simply the symptoms that cause suffering.
Hey... if a teenager goes on a gluten free casein free diet, are they committing self-harm? Would that require inpatient treatment, or is outpatient treatment sufficient?
OH NO! How many other people are we murdering by trying to prevent other conditions! I mean, if autism prevention is murder, then how many other people are in the path of a bullet because of our vast research programs into all manner of medical advances in every University and medical institution world wide!?
Quickly (and with out thinking this through) let's set up a human rights commission (in Europe of course) and force every medical provider and researcher to testify, under oath and penalty of death, so that we can route out all these killers. Because potentially (and probably) anyone with an MD or Ph D is a bigoted Nazi eugenicist.
We will need you to provide a full list of the DSM and ICD-9 codes for which prevention is murder.
Or is it just Autism prevention that makes one a heartless murder? Wait... it is all ASD or just full, classic, Kanner's, 299.00 DSM-5™ Autism Diagnostic Criteria? Or is it all DSM defined conditions? Please specify either DSM-4R or DSM-5 as applicable.
What is the criteria for which criteria prevention qualifies said preventer as a murder? And if they prevent a case of autism, it is first degree murder, or involuntary manslaughter? What are the criminal penalties? Wait... if you prevent a case of autism during gestation, is that immoral but legal? Or are you only legally allowed to prevent a case of autism BEFORE 20 weeks gestation? I guess we are going to have different laws in every state. Man... policing this is going to be very hard.
But I think we can all agree that any AUTISM researcher, who has worked on anything that could be used for autism prevention is a Nazi eugenicist.
Have you ever worked on anything related to autism prevention? Perhaps I should have you testify in our new human rights abuse court first?
Wait... I just realized... I don't care what you think.
Here is the thing, Simon... YOU don't get to withhold medical interventions from others because of your intellectually and morally challenged politics and philosophy.
This is NOT your call, and it ends your credibility, what little there was left, as an scientific investigator.
"How is this different to the Nazi EndJewsNow (1939-45) & the KKK white supremacist EndBlacksNow campaigns (1860-2018)?"
Are you kidding? Because instead of killing them, it seeks to make them more healthy and functional. Instead of imprisoning them, it intends to make them more free and independent. Instead of limiting their possibilities in life, it expands them. It is the exact opposite of that the Klan and the Nazi's wanted to do. What is wrong with you?
Again... autism cuts life expectancy in half to age 36, and makes a child 40 times more likely to die in an accident. HOW DARE YOU presume that you have the right to tell parents they are not allowed to prevent this life threatening condition in their children!
Further, it's the genetics cause autism squad that are working toward the prenatal genetic screening panel that actually will be used to ACTUALLY KILL children in the womb to "prevent" autism the way others "prevent" downs syndrome. Making autism, or even a mere predisposition for autism, an actual death sentence for many.
What you have done here is horrid and evil.
To attack parents who want to support good health so kids never suffer in the first place as NAZIs?! That is beyond the pale.
Who the hell do you think you are to issue this dictum? Shame on you for this attack.
Ethics complaint to University of Cambridge incoming.
What happened to Jenny McCarthy's #EndAutismNow video?
https://www.facebook.com/JennyMcCarthyOfficial/videos/endautismnow/2208721695811266/
Posted by: Autism Investigated | August 21, 2018 at 01:30 AM
John,
I was being sarcastic :).
Posted by: Linda1 | August 20, 2018 at 08:37 PM
At first - for a great number of years they just basically lied and did not really care if they got caught. I thought well they just hope that the ones that know they are lying, or even paying attention are not the majority. Playing the numbers.
Now they are just blatantly making insane, nonsensical statements. They just don't seem to care how bizarre their statements are. Puzzling.
Posted by: Benedetta | August 20, 2018 at 04:28 PM
Well, this is a blatant case of projection. As John noted, SBC has himself promoted the eugenicist myth that autism confers superior intellectual powers. As Edith Sheffer showed in her recent biography, this myth was invented by Hans Asperger, who himself was a Nazi sympathizer who participated in the medical murder of dozens of intellectually handicapped children. As for treating symptoms of autism that cause suffering, all major symptoms of autism cause at least some suffering. Autism is defined by its symptoms, so if you eliminate the symptoms, then for all practical purposes you have cured autism.
Posted by: Jonathan Rose | August 20, 2018 at 03:58 PM
SBC's comment is ludicrous. It would be like saying "Don't prevent brain injuries just treat the symptoms," or "Don't prevent AIDS just treat the symptoms." Sorry to SBC but my kid was NOT born autistic.
Posted by: Greta | August 20, 2018 at 03:32 PM
Excellent point Carolyn! If autism is down to genes, the most appropriate response to JB's aspiration to prevent autism would be to dismiss it as an impossibility.
Posted by: Greg | August 20, 2018 at 01:57 PM
Now that good science combined with common sense have helped us understand the predisposing factors that can lead to a child developing autism, it is time to apply prevention strategies.
Anyone who suggests otherwise is acting out of either ignorance or insanity!
Posted by: Maureen McDonnell,RN | August 20, 2018 at 01:47 PM
This pretty much illustrates the absurdity of his tweet. I personally see much projection in this tweet and in some other of the ND proclamations. This guy and many others of this bent have enabled a massive pharmaceutical assault on the health of an entire generation, particularly many of those with autism who, short a few miracles that I continue to pray for, will not go on to have their own children. Essentially their sacred "autism genes" are being culled, but do proclaimed ND people even notice? How is it not a eugencistic position to promote exposing someone who is proclaimed to be "genetically" vulnerable to developing a certain life-torturing and life-shortening condition with substances very scientifically plausibly likely to trigger such a condition? And then they invoke "science" while they ignore science they don't like and scream for no more science, especially vaccine causation science and vaccine injury reversal science... because that is hating your child?!? I can't fully blame someone who may be injured for not wanting to know and live with that knowing--it's hard to understand how in danger I am, my daughters are in a society in denial about how dangerous they are for us, as one example--but how is facing that dark possibility and braving the shaming and career destroying path of going against the many pharma-funded institutions, in untenable positions scientifically but in favor with the propagandized masses and so far can easily scare-monger, to seek out the truth that might help their child and protect other children anything but a loving and courageous act? Our vaccine truth-tellers deserve so much more the reverse of the angry treatment they get. I think those sincerely autistic and ND are really assigning the misery of some painful truths (some of which may not truly apply to their personal situation, making it easier to deny our reality) on the messengers. But those who are just advancing their careers by taking these ND stances...there's not much to say in their favor that I can see.
By the way, SBC's tweet may have backfired:
https://www.facebook.com/jbhandleyjr/photos/a.1397569723616512/2333624640011011/?type=3
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | August 20, 2018 at 12:23 PM
With this logic we will have to stop encouraging sufferers of anorexia to eat and those with anxiety disorders to relax, especially given that studies have confirmed that both can be triggered/caused by vaccination.
Posted by: Pete | August 20, 2018 at 12:04 PM
Grace, Linda
I don’t think there is any room for saying that Baron-Cohen has misunderstood the situation, he has just misrepresented it - sitting in silence for a quarter of century while the rate in school children went up 20 times. Equally, he will know that JB is writing about iatrogenic damage - if he is saying this is an acceptable fall out from the vaccine program let him say it, but it is a long way from bio-diversity.
Another stupidity is that there is something wrong about trying to improve your child’s cognitive performance - it used to be called education.
I would not pretend that the entire medical universe is aware of my UK autism data on BMJ Rapid Responses but I bet by now a lot of the key players are, and they say nothing. They have nothing to say. But there is something deeply unpleasant about SB-C’s taunts.
Posted by: John Stone | August 20, 2018 at 11:54 AM
This man is literally admitting that doing what jb says would prevent autism.
Posted by: Carolyn Kylesmom | August 20, 2018 at 11:50 AM
So i say lets pretend aspie is a diff thing. Lets say hey maybe Some of them were born that way. Lets say that is not the same thing so that they can stop high jacking the need to get help for Ronan and Kim’s daughters who have severe injuries totally diff from a character on tv. Yes i want acceptance for my child who went from autism to aspergers. But not at the cost of the deep help and cure that Kim and Cathy desperately need for their kids. This is NOT either or and we must change the discussion and make it clear the magician game they are playing.
Posted by: Carolyn Kylesmom | August 20, 2018 at 11:47 AM
Yes we need to change the semantics and labels. My child was more severely autistic and is now at the level of “quirky can pass.” That should have another name from the terrible tragedy that occurred to a child like Ronan , that may not ever be overcome. Autism is what happened to them. Vaccine injury. I fell off a horse anf got back up. Christopher Reeve did not.
Posted by: Carolyn Kylesmom | August 20, 2018 at 11:42 AM
Wow so then he must be against vaccines. If the polio vaccine supposedly eradicated polio, then all those people didnt get to share their talents ovecoming paralysis. And he must be against insulin and the gifts diabetics can contribute if we dont make them stable.. And also if someone has a fever that makes aome
creative so get rid of antibiotics. Lets not treat epilepticcs or migraine sufferers. They could be Joan of Arc and they deserve to suffer so they can broaden our collective experience. Finally bring back thalidomide! Again let the baby grow up with no fingers for the sake of us all. Oh but if you are against treating autism on these grounds you must also be against vaccines. You cant have it both ways. Either you are for intervening or you are not.
Posted by: Carolyn Kylesmom | August 20, 2018 at 11:34 AM
This is a linguistic problem, and in order to tackle it we need to choose our words carefully, and understand what the ND movement, clearly now lead by SB-C, mean in these sort of statements. Putting the best construction on it, they appear to believe that having autism is like having, say, skin. You can't end the autism without ending the person. Putting the worst construction on it, Simon Baron-Cohen at least knows that autism is caused by vaccines, but believes that vaccines are such a necessity that we just have to put up with some people becoming autistic as a result. Therefore, it would make sense to say we should be nice to them, and accept them as they are. We all know how to argue with the latter position, for example with research like that in the previous article (on MS), which interestingly only has 1 comment to 6 on this topic! The former position may be more difficult to argue with, except to say we/our children were NOT born with it. I noticed that one woman tweeting on #EndAutismNow said she had always been autistic. The question to put to her is, how does she know? I can't remember ever being different from the way I am now, but then I can't remember anything before I was about three years old. My cognitive and language difficulties cause me as much suffering as my GI pain, or mytachondrial disorder, so I wish they had all been prevented.
My two suggestions are, we invite SB-C or anyone else from the ND movement to debate us on here (I expect that is always on offer), or we stop calling ourselves "autistic" and agree on a better term. I recently read a quote from a doctor who said, "We only call it autism so that the patients can understand." I also heard Del Bigtree saying that medics call heart attack "myocardial infarcation" or something! So, come on, doctors who are on our side, tell us what the correct term for autism should be. We can all understand big words! If we want people still to be able to find us in searches we do what the M.E. people have done when they call it ME/CFS. We call it ************/Autism. No problem.
Posted by: Grace Green | August 20, 2018 at 11:22 AM
We need to revise the DSM to include the ND crowd as a subcategory if borderline personality, not autism.
Posted by: Debi | August 20, 2018 at 10:38 AM
Life long inadequate disease causing treatment instead of prevention or cure is the current medical paradigm. He's just being honest.
Posted by: Linda1 | August 20, 2018 at 10:11 AM
That statement about eugenics is idiotic. I yearn for the day, and I hope to see it soon, when the general public will be able to see such statements as laughably idiotic. May it come soon!
Posted by: Rebecca Lee | August 20, 2018 at 10:10 AM
This is very odd coming from Baron-Cohen: back in 2009 he seemed to be toying with a eugenics solution to autism, and did not so much rule it out on ethical grounds as warn that we might end up aborting mathematically talented fetuses if we should go down such a path.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7736196.stm
But as he very well knows that is the not the problem, the problem is that the numbers of neurologically injured children just go on escalating: the problem is not the children but the harm. The innuendo is that JB's book is somehow about eugenics, which could not be further from the case. It may very well be argued that not taking action is eugenics, if only by default (and sometimes you wonder).
While I have been grateful to BMJ in recent months for allowing me to highlight the rising trend in autism in the on-line letters I have also been horrified by the lack of professional or political response:
https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1674/rapid-responses
https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1116/rapid-responses
Just to examine the data from British schools, if we go back to 1999 the rate of Pervasive Development Disorder (the widest possible criterion) for British school children born between 1984 and 1988 was 1 in 500, while according to the latest survey from Northern Ireland (the only survey to be carried out by a British health department since 2004) the rate in schools was 1 in 35, and 1 in 21 in Belfast (there being various demographic variables, town vs country, income etc.), while 60% of cases were categorised as Stage 5 (the most impaired and costly level). Everywhere (as Anne Dachel tells us) across the UK services and funding for autism are in crisis (everywhere across the US too). Parents are devoted to their children and proud of them - they also want them to achieve the best they can - but terrified also at the negligence and insouciance of professionals who have made their fortune on the back of misleading everybody while a crisis of unimaginable proportions engulfs our society.
I am sure I have been rude about Baron-Cohen in the past but really leaving it at the most courteous level people deserve better than this: it will be ordinary people who have to pay and most particularly the children without futures, left ever more unsupported by our inevitably stretched services. When my MP recently forwarded data to our Department of Health and Social Care the minister did no more than note it and state what the government's autism policies are. There is no answer, they have no answer apparently except insouciant tweets, and public manipulation.
It won't be Bill Gates or Baron-Cohen who pays, it will be us and our children.
Posted by: John Stone | August 20, 2018 at 09:16 AM
What of Black and Jewish parents trying to recover or “end” or -gasp-dare I say- prevent autism? We must all be racist, anti-semetic, and let’s not forget, homophobic, morons.
Posted by: annie | August 20, 2018 at 08:41 AM
1,787 Likes??? WTF???
Posted by: Jill | August 20, 2018 at 08:02 AM
Does he not want us to help people with Down's Syndrome either?
It is those who use vaccines as tools of social engineering e.g. for fertility reduction who have most in common with the Nazi eugenicists.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz. The Rockefeller's were above the law, so never brought to justice. They have always had a lot of influence over Big Pharma, so much so that some people even nickname Western medicine as Rockefeller Medicine.
In this short clip David Rockefeller discusses how the UN should bring down the population, he says it has to be in a way which is sensitive to religion i.e. covert; sterilizing vaccines fit perfectly into the covert category.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClqUcScwnn8
Posted by: Pete | August 20, 2018 at 07:59 AM