Tag Archives: autism

A Different Perspective

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On Saturday, The Hindustan Times posted an article featuring comments by Bill Gates on autism. In the article, Bill Gates, who is on the autism spectrum, explains how this ‘disability’ is part of the reason for his success.

The article reports:

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, has expressed that he likely would have been diagnosed with autism as a child, if assessed today. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, ahead of the release of his memoir Source Code, the 69-year-old shared insights into his childhood behaviours that he now recognises as characteristics associated with autism.

Gates explained, “This whole thing of Asperger’s or on the spectrum is a fairly new thing, you know? It used to be autism had a fairly narrow definition that was you know clearly identifiable,” he said.

He reflected on his tendency to avoid social interaction and habits such as rocking, which he acknowledges might have been perceived as self-soothing behaviours linked to autism. “But this idea that if you’re slow socialising — you know, I have a behaviour where I rock that bothers people, but that’s also common so-called self-esteeming type thing. So I realized, wow, there’s a bit of a pattern match there,” he added.

…In his memoir, Gates delves into how these traits shaped his childhood and ultimately contributed to his success. Reflecting on his early years, he remarked, “Looking back on that, because I didn’t behave in a standard way, and yet, you know, that deep concentration that got applied to math and science and eventually to all those programming experiences I had, that became a strength.”

When asked about his parents’ concerns during his formative years, Gates revealed how they supported him in nurturing his unique abilities. “They worried about would I fit in,” said Gates. “The two things they did, one, send me to a therapist who got me thinking about how I applied my energy and then sending me to a really great school. Those were great for me,” he said.

As someone who married into a family with generations of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), I totally understand what he is saying. I see generations of inventors, computer geeks, and people who marched to the beat of a different drummer. We need to embrace these people and be grateful for the scientific contributions they make that result in a better life for all of us.

Stopping Transgenderism

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

The United States was once known for introducing the rest of the world to technological improvements that benefited all mankind. We are now, sadly, known for introducing destructive ideas. One case in point is transgenderism, which is the doctrine that a person can be any gender they choose, regardless of whether they were born male or female. America is leading the charge on this false doctrine. Now, other countries are choosing not to follow this absurd notion.

A recent article appearing in the Epoch Times reported that in April, the Cass Review was published in the United Kingdom. Described as “The most comprehensive summary on transgender youth medicine,” the review, chaired by Dr. Hillary Cass, British honorary physician and president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, stated that there was “insufficient evidence to demonstrate the long-term benefits of medicalizing children who want to identify as a different gender”. In short, they concluded that children should not be given hormones, puberty blockers, and other medical treatments that alter the physical characteristics of their birth gender. Instead, they should be considered for psychotherapy to address why they are dissatisfied with being their birth gender. It was noted in this extensive study that many of the children who express a desire to change their birth gender have other identifiable mental disorders such as depression and autism. It was also reported that most children grow out of their gender dysphoria over time, many without any treatment. Evidence also did not support the belief that prescribing hormones reduced the risk of suicide; quite the opposite is true, with children going through gender transition having a higher rate of suicide than non-transitioning children.

As a result of this science based information, the United Kingdom joins other countries such as Sweden and Norway in banning hormone treatment for minors. The Cass Review noted that the United States remains the main driver of hormone treatments for gender dysphoria, even though 18 conservative controlled states have implemented laws prohibiting this practice. The recent trend to place mental health social workers in public schools should raise a red flag to parents, since most of them would undoubtedly favor facilitating children’s expressed desire for gender change. The Biden regime’s recent efforts to change the wording of Title IX to prevent gender discrimination rather than the original intention to prevent discrimination based on biological sex must be stopped since it takes us further down the path of encouraging the idea that gender is a choice rather than a biological reality.

This entire effort by the left to push transgenderism points out the serious error of basing decisions on “consensus” rather than demonstrated scientific facts. Beliefs, based on the consensus of experts, led us to implement mask mandates and shutting down our economy during COVID19, neither of which did any good. Similarly, we are destroying our economy by eliminating fossil fuels, again based on consensus not facts. We must not allow ourselves to be persuaded by those who have an ideological agenda and use consensus to control us. Freedom can only survive when we demand rigorous scientific facts before taking any action. Otherwise we are being led by the Pied Piper to our own destruction. Truth has never been a leftist value!

 

The Slippery Slope

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On Thursday, The New York Post reported that doctors in the Netherlands are euthanizing patients with autism or other intellectual disabilities.

The article reports:

Nearly 40 people who identified as autistic or intellectually disabled were legally euthanized in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2021, according to a Kingston University investigation of Dutch euthanasia cases.

Five people younger than 30 who were killed at their own request cited autism as the sole or a major reason for their decision to end their lives, the UK study found.

With those cases, experts have questioned whether the law allowing doctors to kill suicidal patients via lethal injections has strayed too far from its initial intentions when passed in 2002.

Kasper Raus, an ethicist and public health professor at Belgium’s Ghent University, said the types of patients seeking out physician-assisted suicide have changed greatly over the past two decades in both the Netherlands and Belgium, where it is also legal.

The article notes:

In the roughly 10-year period the study focused on, nearly 60,000 people decided to die via euthanasia in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch government’s euthanasia review committee. Of those deaths, the committee has released documents and data on 900 cases in an effort of transparency.

Kingston University researchers looked at those 900 cases and found 39 of them had autism or an intellectual disability. Of the 39, 18 were younger than 50 years old.

Many of the patients cited a number of mental, physical and age-related ailments as the reason for ending their lives — including unbearable loneliness.

Eight people, however, named the sole cause of their suffering as factors related to their intellectual disability — such as social isolation, a lack of coping strategies, an inability to adjust to change or oversensitivity to stimuli.

The article concludes:

Dutch psychiatrist Dr. Bram Sizzo was disturbed by the trend.

“Some of them are almost excited at the prospect of death,” Sizoo said. “They think this will be the end of their problems and the end of their family’s problems.”

In a third of cases, Dutch doctors determined that there was “no prospect of improvement” for people with autism and intellectual disabilities, according to the study.

The director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, Simon Baron-Cohen, worried that people with such disabilities may not fully grasp the decision to end their lives. He called it “abhorrent” that they were not offered more support and were instead euthanized.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is disturbing. It is reminiscent of the road that Hitler marched down that ended with the killing of Jew.

This Is Happening In America

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On Tuesday, The City Journal posted an article about a recent event in Seattle, Washington.

This is the story:

Ahmed is a Pakistani immigrant, a faithful Muslim, and until recently, a financial consultant to Seattle’s high-tech sector. But when he reached me by phone in October 2020, he was just one more frightened father. Days earlier, he and his wife had checked their 16-year-old son into Seattle Children’s Hospital for credible threats of suicide. Now, Ahmed was worried that the white coats who had gently admitted his son to their care would refuse to return him.

“They sent an email to us, you know, ‘you should take your ‘daughter’ to the gender clinic,’” he told me.

At first, Ahmed (I have changed names in this essay to protect the identities of minor children) assumed there had been a mistake. He had dropped off a son, Syed, to the hospital, in a terrible state of distress. Now, the email he received from the mental health experts used a new name for that son and claimed he was Ahmed’s daughter. “They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to absolutely want to push us in that direction,” he said when I spoke to him again this May, recalling the horror of last October. “We had calls with counselors and therapists in the establishment, telling us how important it is for him to change his gender, because that’s the only way he’s going to be better out of this suicidal depressive state.”

The article goes on to explain the the child involved was autistic and during the Covid lockdowns had become fixated on the idea that he might be a girl.

The story continues:

But unlike some other parents I would later speak with, Ahmed’s cool head prevailed. Believing he might be walking into a trap, Ahmed reached out to both a lawyer and a psychiatrist friend he trusted. The psychiatrist gave him advice that he believes saved his son, saying, in Ahmed’s words: “You have to be very, very careful, because if you come across as just even a little bit anti-trans or anything, they’re going to call the Child Protective Services on you and take custody of your kid.” The lawyer told Ahmed the same: “What you want to do is agree with them and take your kid home. When the gender counselors advise you to ‘affirm,’ go along with it. Just say ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, let’s take him home, and we’ll go to the gender clinic.’”

Ahmed assured Seattle Children’s Hospital that he would take his son to a gender clinic and commence his son’s transition. Instead, he collected his son, quit his job, and moved his family of four out of Washington.

Was Ahmed’s reaction extreme? When I first heard it, back in October 2020, I wondered whether he hadn’t overreacted. But as a growing number of parents began contacting me with similar stories, and I delved into the state laws of Washington, Oregon, and California, I came to a different conclusion. Taken individually, no single law in any state completely strips parents’ rights over the care and mental health treatment of their troubled minor teens. But pieced together, laws in California, Oregon, and Washington place troubled minor teens as young as 13 in the driver’s seat when it comes to their own mental health care—including “gender affirming” care—and renders parents powerless to stop them.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes other examples of parents’ rights being trampled to further the transgender movement. This is a degree of government child abuse we have not seen before. Parents need to be very aware of what is being pushed on their children, and parents need to fight it legally to save their children from irreversible decisions that they will very likely come to regret later.