RFK Jr. is a Disaster for Science

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

Brandy Zadrozny at MSNBC:

A shooting outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters on Friday left a police officer dead and officials and scientists at the nation’s premier public health agency shaken. Many are now demanding answers from their health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long vilified the CDC and contributed to a culture of misinformation that they say makes them targets.

... 

CDC Director Susan Monarez convened an online all-hands meeting of the agency division that focuses on vaccines — the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

...

One employee described the shooting as “the culmination of ongoing animosity toward CDC and the work that we do — not a one-off incident.” Another named Kennedy in a comment that drew dozens of supportive emoji reactions, writing: “We need them to stop fanning the flames of hatred against us, stop spreading misinformation. We will not be safe until they stop their attacks against us.”    

For years, Kennedy attacked the CDC. In videos from anti-vaccine conferences between 2013 and 2019, he likened the agency’s vaccine work to “fascism” and “child abuse,” called it a “cesspool of corruption” and said it was filled with profiteers. At a 2013 conference, when asked about why the CDC had failed to acknowledge the autism epidemic (which he falsely linked to vaccines), Kennedy said it was like the Holocaust. On at least two occasions, Kennedy has apologized for comparing agencies, officials and public health measures to the Holocaust. During the pandemic, Kennedy repeatedly framed the CDC and other HHS agencies as “corrupt,” falsely suggested Covid-19 was a “bioweapon,” and lied about the dangers of Covid vaccines, calling them “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Maya Goldman at AXios:

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to cut federal funding for mRNA vaccine research is the latest in a series of moves that have the potential to crush future medical breakthroughs and accelerate a brain drain.

...

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to cut federal funding for mRNA vaccine research is the latest in a series of moves that have the potential to crush future medical breakthroughs and accelerate a brain drain. 

• Kennedy is working to implement massive staff cuts at HHS, reduce funding for research labs' overhead costs and end National Institutes of Health grants for a wide swath of projects.
• The cuts, along with the broader Trump administration's immigration restrictions, has already started to steer promising international scientific talent away from the country.
• Kennedy also is reportedly considering overhauling the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, whose independent experts establish care and coverage guidelines to account for advances in medical treatments and new disease trends. Its past work included recommending beginning mammograms at 40, which has been credited with saving thousands of lives.

Among the Hamas Victims: An Autistic Girl

 From The Times of Israel:

The bodies of Noya Dan, a 12-year-old Israeli girl with autism, and her grandmother Carmela, 80 — who were initially believed to have been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza — have been found, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

J.K. Rowling had retweeted a post highlighting the plight of Dan, who was a big Harry Potter fan.

No words💔 pic.twitter.com/w5RcG5ibDe

— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) October 19, 2023

Torture and Murder

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

Previous posts have discussed parents and caregivers who have killed or tried to kill their ASD children. 

Jerry Lambe at Law and Crime:

An incensed judge excoriated the woman convicted of murdering her 8-year-old stepson by forcing him to sleep in an unheated garage in the winter, calling her “evil” and saying that the maximum sentence of 25 years to life wasn’t a harsh enough punishment for the “torture” she inflicted on her stepchildren.

Angela Pollina, 45, had witnessed her husband Michael Valva turn a hose on young Thomas Valva before forcing him to sleep in the garage of their Long Island home in January of 2020. As temperatures dropped to 19 degrees Fahrenheit, Thomas eventually froze to death.

“I’ve had the opportunity to visit the prison where you’ll be sent,” Judge Timothy Mazzei said during Polina’s sentencing hearing on Tuesday. “My only regret, Ms. Pollina, is that they don’t have a garage there with no heat, and no mattress, and no blankets, and no pillows, and […] nothing that belongs in a bedroom. So you could sleep [there] for the rest of your life. Because that’s where you deserve to be for the rest of your natural life.”

A Suffolk County jury last month found Pollina guilty of second-degree murder and child endangerment for the death of her stepson. Thomas died of hypothermia after Pollina and Valva forced him and his 10-year-old brother Anthony Valva to sleep on the concrete floor of the garage after their father sprayed them with a hose. The torturous treatment was meant to punish Thomas, who had autism, for soiling himself.

Michael Valva, a former NYPD police officer, received the same sentence — 25 years to life — in December for his role in his son’s death.

Vigil for Disabled Murder Victims

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

Previous posts have discussed parents who have killed or tried to kill their ASD children. 

Emily Alpert Reyes at LAT:

In the Burbank chapel, as attendees braced to hear the names of the dead, Pastor Ryan Chaddick welcomed the sparse crowd with familiarity.

“I’m here tonight, and we’re doing this,” said Chaddick, dressed simply in black, “because for some reason in 2023 we have to say to the world that killing disabled people is wrong.”

It seemed ridiculous, he said, to even have to announce that.

“But as long as disabled people are killed for being disabled,” he said, “I will rage against the night and we will light candles as protest and we will cuss and we will pray.”

Roughly a dozen people had trickled into the Burbank church on that frigid evening at the beginning of March to mark Disability Day of Mourning. To hear the names of people killed by parents and other relatives or caregivers. To listen to poems, songs, and readings about the outrage of disabled people losing their lives to those who were supposed to safeguard them.

For the Lutheran pastor, like many others in the chapel, the horror of those killings hits home. He is an autistic man, diagnosed in adulthood. He is also the father of autistic children, one of whose diagnosis set in motion his own. And his own path to understanding his daughters and himself led him to rethinking things in his life and his church.

“All of us — um, pretty sure, because I know you, or I’ve talked to you — everyone here is disabled or crazy,” Chaddick, 38, told the attendees with a slight smile and a nod before the readings began. “Welcome.”

In the United States, people with disabilities are nearly four times as likely to be a victim of a violent crime as those without disabilities, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis. And when they are victimized, people with disabilities are twice as likely as other people to suffer violence at the hands of a family member — including their parents.

More than a decade ago, Zoe Gross helped launch the annual, now-international event in reaction to the framing of news stories about one such killing. Gross, director of advocacy for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, was appalled by news coverage after the killing of 22-year-old Sunnyvale resident George Hodgins, who was shot by his mother, who then shot herself.

Manslaughter and Suspected Suicide

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

People with disabilities are victims of violent crime three times as often as people without disabilities. The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report separately on autistic victims, but it does note that the victimization rate is especially high among those whose disabilities are cognitive. A small-sample study of Americans and Canadians found that adults with autism face a greater risk of sexual victimization than their peers. Autistic respondents were more than twice as likely to say that had been the victim of rape and over three times as likely to report unwanted sexual contact.

Previous posts have discussed parents who have killed or tried to kill their ASD children.  One victim was named Jude Mirra.  His killer -- his mother -- is now dead, too.

Shweta Sharma at The Independent:

A pharma millionaire who was convicted of manslaughter of her eight-year-old autistic son in 2014 was found dead in her home, hours after the Supreme Court revoked her bail.

Gigi Jordan, 62, was discovered dead around 12.30am on Friday at her apartment in Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn. The police are investigating the death as suspected suicide.

Jordan was convicted of manslaughtering her son Jude Mirra in February 2010 in a room of Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan. She gave her autistic son a deadly cocktail of painkillers, speeling pills, and tranquilisers mixed with juice and alcohol before she attempted to take her own life.

Her prosecutors argued that she killed him because he was emotionally disturbed and Jordan testified that he had been traumatised after being sexually abused by his biological father, Emil Tzekov, her second husband.

She was sentenced to 18 years in jail in 2015. However, her conviction for manslaughter charges was overturned in 2020 due to a procedural misstep.

Autism and Crime: A Review of Studies

Many posts have discussed autism and crime. Katie Maras, Sue Mulcahy, and Laura Crane write at Autism:

The journal, Autism, enjoys a wide readership that extends far beyond academia. We set out here, for the benefit of the whole readership, to debunk the myth that autism causes criminal behaviour. We review the little research on this topic and describe how easily negative stereotypes can be reinforced by press reports.

King and Murphy (2014) conducted a thorough review of the research in this area. They found that on the whole, there is no evidence that people with autism are more likely to engage in criminal activity than people without autism. The studies they reviewed presented conflicting information, however. Some studies have found that people with autism are less likely to commit offences such as probation violations and property offences (Cheely et al., 2012; Kumagami and Matsuura, 2009), and another study reported that people with autism are no more likely to commit violent crime than the general population (Woodbury-Smith et al., 2006). On the other hand, some people with autism may be more likely than the general population to commit certain types of offences such as arson (Hare et al., 1999; Mouridsen et al., 2008), sex offences (Cheely et al., 2012; Kumagami and Matsuura, 2009) and assault and robbery (Cheely et al., 2012).

Research on autism and offending needs to be interpreted with caution, however. Most studies rely on information from small samples that do not represent the general population. These studies also rarely include people without autism for comparison. This makes it inappropriate to attempt to generalise these studies to the autism population at large. For example, two studies found a disproportionately high prevalence of autism in high security hospitals (e.g. Hare et al., 1999; Scragg & Shah, 1994), but this does not mean that the autism population as a whole includes a disproportionate percentage of people who present a danger to society.

There are also several case reports of people with autism engaging in criminal behaviour (e.g. Baron-Cohen, 1988; Mawson et al., 1985). However, generalisations cannot be made on the basis of individual cases regardless of whether these reports originate in the research literature or in the press, not least because it is often the unusual characteristics in such cases (e.g. the bizarre and random acts of violence noted by Mawson et al., 1985) that initially draw attention for analysis.

Stapleton Gets 10-22 Years

MLive reports:

Kelli Stapleton, the mother who tried to kill herself and her violent, autistic daughter by carbon monoxide poisoning, has been sentenced to 10 to 22 years in prison.

Stapleton, 46, was sentenced Wednesday, Oct. 8, following a three-day hearing in Benzie County Circuit Court. She earlier pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse.

Benzie County Prosecutor Sara Swanson issued the following statement:

“My office strives to protect our most vulnerable victims,” she said. “In this case, Isabelle’s autism did not mean she deserved less protection. Her life has value, and she deserves justice for the attempt on her life. The right outcome was achieved in this case. The defendant was sentenced as recommended by our state’s sentencing guidelines, and justice was obtained for Isabelle.”

Stapleton's case has gained national attention. She was recently featured on "The Dr. Phil Show."

The case pitted those who believe Stapleton was overwhelmed by her 14-year-old daughter Issy's autism, and those who believed she just wanted to be rid of the troubled girl.

More on the Isla Vista Shooting

Elliot Rodger, the alleged Isla Vista shooter, reportedly had Asperger's. From Marketwatch:

Dr. Daniel Son, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, says Asperger’s actually does not exist as an official diagnosis among mental health professionals anymore, though it still is a commonly used term. He says as of a year ago, it now is simply considered part of the autism spectrum, and most who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s are thought to be high functioning and able to live relatively normal lives.

Son, who treats a number of young autism patients, says that obsessive behavior can result from the disease and patients can become fixated on certain issues. But other factors usually come into play when behavior becomes overwhelmingly violent.

“It’s really more associated with a troubled upbringing rather than the autism,” Son said.

Rodger’s parents split when Elliot was young and his father, Peter, in the film business and an assistant director on “The Hunger Games,” traveled extensively as part of his career.

Meanwhile, Lanza is thought to have possibly suffered from schizophrenia in addition to his Asperger’s. Academics said at the time that Lanza’s condition probably did not lead to his violent behavior, and Lanza’s father told Time Magazine that it shouldn’t be blamed for his son’s actions.

Lanza’s parents split when he was a teenager and his mother was a gun aficionado, who had a number of weapons at her home where Adam lived. Lanza’s father is a corporate executive.

But a life of privilege may not be to blame either, according to one professor at theUniversity of Southern California who was diagnosed with Asperger’s, Lars Perner. Perner told a USC publication recently that his well-to-do family may have had more members with autism, but it was hard to tell because many could afford to be eccentric. He wasn’t diagnosed until he was 31, he said.

“Where I come from, you could afford to be strange,” Perner told the publication. “I shudder to think what would have happened to me if I had come from a less privileged background.”

A Really Bad Study of Autism and Violence

A number of posts have discussed bad media coverage linking autism to violence. At Forbes, Emily Willingham kicks a bad academic study to the curb:

According to mental health professionals who personally diagnosed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, he had a personality disorder. That didn’t stop the authors of a recent paper attempting to link autism and mass murderers, serial killers, and other homicidal maniacs from listing Dahmer as “highly suspected” of having an autism spectrum disorder, along with a 61 other people who were never diagnosed with one, including Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Dylan Klebold.

I’ve seen some recklessness in my wanderings through the world of autism science, but these authors reach depths I cannot fathom. If you doubt that, let me just point out that they use the Daily Mail as one of their citations to demonstrate that a killer not diagnosed with autism might have it and cite an author who very much wants to make up a diagnostic category called “Criminal Autistic Psychopathy” as a subset of Asperger’s. Which no longer exists.

In their paper, which is making a splash, of course, Clare Allely and co-authors claim that 67 of the 239 “eligible killers” they evaluated in their review had “definite, highly probable, or possible” autism spectrum disorder. But a closer look at their numbers shows that of these, only six were in the “definite” category [ETA: details on those six summarized here]. That’s 2.5% of the total of 239 they examined. It’s a percentage that happens to be just slightly less than the 2.6% identified in the most thorough study of autism prevalence in the general population to date, in South Korea.

The evaluations of the South Korean population were thorough, but perhaps no other population receives more expert attention and evaluation than killers like these who survive their crimes, as Dahmer, McVeigh, and Ramirez did, and killers who do not but whose writings and other leavings undergo deep scrutiny from experts involved in their cases. Their evaluations are not a mystery. Psychologists had access to Dahmer and evaluated him. Psychologists had access to Richard Ramirez (the Nightstalker) and evaluated him. Ditto McVeigh. These are professionals who personally evaluated these killers, and “autism” was not on their list of labels.

It is inappropriate for anyone–much less these authors, giving the imprimatur of science and peer review–to diagnose from a distance someone they have never even met and with whose case they are not deeply familiar. Add to that their conflation of mass murderers and serial killers, whose psychic motivations can be very different, and this entire paper is one big, hot, irresponsible mess.

Suicide, Murder and Attempted Murder

Previous posts have discussed parents who have tried to kill their ASD children.  Unfortunately, here is another such post.

From AP:

A northern Lower Michigan woman charged with attempted murder in the carbon monoxide poisoning of her autistic 14-year-old daughter waived her right Thursday to a probable cause hearing.

Authorities say they found Kelli Stapleton and her daughter Isabelle unconscious Sept. 3 in the family's van in Benzie County's Blaine Township in an apparent murder-suicide attempt.

Kelli Stapleton's blog had chronicled the challenges her family faced caring for Isabelle, who has severe autism and sometimes had violent outbursts.

...

In her blog, Stapleton wrote that her daughter, nicknamed Issy, had completed an intense program for severely autistic children near Kalamazoo, but her education plan had been abruptly changed by school officials.

"I have to admit that I'm suffering from a severe case of battle fatigue," Stapleton wrote on her blog, The Status Woe, shortly before the incident.

In Alabama, WAFF-TV reported a couple of weeks ago:

Madison County Coroner Craig Whisenant confirmed Monday the cause of death of eight-year-old Randle Barrow and his mother, 42-year-old Delicia Barrow.

Randle's death was ruled a homicide by drowning. Delicia's death was ruled suicide by smoke inhalation.

Deputies found Randle's body in the Tennessee River in the Honeycomb area of Marshall County, early Sunday morning. Huntsville police started searching for the autistic child after a fire at his home.

Police responded to 4900 Alburta Road in Huntsville to check on the welfare of the child after he didn't show up to school for two days. Upon arrival, officers noticed smoke coming from the roof of the house. Firefighters were able to put the fire out. Police found Delicia Barrow, inside the residence. She was pronounced dead after being taken to the hospital.

Police said they couldn't find Randle inside the house and began a search for the missing child on Saturday.

In a statement Sunday night, the Marshall County Sheriff's Department said they received a tip earlier in the day from Huntsville Police that a note had been found inside the home with information on the whereabouts of Randle.

The news of both deaths came as a complete shock to those who knew them. Elizabeth Quarles, Randle's former teacher, said they "Never, never saw it coming. When we heard that he was missing, our initial reaction was to meet and let's go find him. Until we got more details, we thought he had ran."

Randle's behavioral therapist, Madison Brooks, also described the child in glowing terms.

"Randle made every kid in his classroom smile constantly. He was hilarious; the happiest kid. He would do anything for anybody. If he saw a child upset, he cried for that child. He understood," said Brooks.

Deaths in Santa Ana

The Daily Mail reports:

A suicidal mother has been charged with murder for killing both her children before a failed suicide attempt Saturday morning.

Marilyn Edge, 42, of Scottsdale, AZ., tried taking her own life in a car accident in Costa Mesa, CA before telling responding cops they would be able to find her 13-year-old autistic son Jaelen Edge and 10-year-old daughter Faith in a nearby hotel room. The young childrens' bodies were discovered just after 8:30am at a Hampton Inn in Santa Ana.

The cause of death for both children has not yet been made public, nor have their causes of death. Their identities have been revealed by MailOnline. Ms Edge previously sued the federal government alleging her son developed autism after a vaccination.

Many autism activists may object to the next line, about what may have "driven" the suspect.

It is not clear what brought the doomed trio to the California town, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, but a review of court records by MailOnline is starting to piece together part of what may have driven Ms Edge to Saturday's tragic events.

The doting mother sued the Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2004, alleging a vaccination gave her son autism, court records showed. The case was dismissed only last year.

Citing a lack of medical records supporting Ms Edge's claim, and the lack of a valid medical opinion to further bolster it, Chief Special Master Patricia Campbell-Smith dismissed the suit for 'insufficient proof.'

Ms Edge was awarded a judgement in the amount of $7,692 to settle legal fees owed for the suit. It is not clear if or when she ever received that money.

From The Kalamazoo Gazette:

"I think there certainly is a divide, and there has been for some time," said Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network in Washington, D.C. “The picture of autism that has been presented in the public eye is not consistent with how we see ourselves."

He said recent murder and attempted murder of autistic children “are the quintessential example of that.”

Autistic people deserve the same protection under law, he said, and “we are profoundly concerned when groups try to present murder as justified or understandable on the basis of the victim’s disability.”

Attempted Murder in Michigan

Previous posts have described instances in which parents have tried to kill their autistic children. In Michigan, MLive reports:

As national outlets such as People Magazine and Huffington post report on the story of a Michigan woman charged with attempted murder of her autistic daughter, a Kalamazoo man is pushing for federal charges against the mother, Kelli Stapleton.

"United States Department of Justice: Charge Mother who tried to Murder Autistic Child with Federal Hate Crime" urges the online petition by Zachary Lassiter of Kalamazoo, who has been a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Chicago chapter since its formation in June, 2012, according to his profile on that group's website.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is a nonprofit organization "run by and for Autistic people," and its slogan, posted on its website, is "Nothing about us without us."

Stapleton, 45, who has written extensively of her experiences with her 14-year-old daughter, Issy, in a blog, "The Status Woe," was ordered held without bond at her arraignment Thursday, Sept. 5 after she allegedly tried to kill her autistic teen-aged daughter and herself in a van filled with carbon monoxide last week.

Controversial TV Report on a Murder

CBS reports on the Spourdalakis case:

 



From Left Brain/Right Brain:

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism started a change.org petition: CBS News: Take down the video Behind the Tragedy: Mother Murders Autistic Son

The petition has over 1500 signatures as of today. Please read and consider signing. If you disagree with the way CBS portrayed the murder and the murderers of Alex Spourdalakis, please consider sending an email to CBS atcbsaudiencenews@cbs.com.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — Autistics and caregivers want CBS to remove a news video which frames autism as an excuse for the murder of a child.The CBS News video, Behind the Tragedy: Mother Murders Autistic Son, frames autism as an excuse for the murder of a child, Alex Spourdalakis, by his mother & caregiver. CBS should not be promoting what The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network’s Ari Ne’eman described as “a dangerous ideology that preaches that people are better off dead than disabled.”

Even though Mr. Ne’eman and his quote were included at the end of the video, the bulk of the video tries to justify the unjustifiable — Alex’s murder — and curries sympathy for his killers. Specifically, CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson says, “His murder might be just another unexplained tragedy, if it were not for a documentary following his family in the months leading up to his death.” This is unacceptable.

The petition can be found at cbs-news-take-down-the-video-behind-the-tragedy-mother-murders-autistic-son-2

CBS News can be reached at cbsaudiencenews@cbs.com.

The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is a book, website, and Facebook community run by Shannon Des Roches Rosa, Jennifer Byde Myers, Emily Willingham, and Carol Greenburg. Each woman writes, educates, and advocates within the autism communities.

Emily Willingham writes:

I strongly urge readers to review what is knownabout this case and to take note of those who were involved when Alex was not receiving the help heneeded.CBS has covered this story in a controversial report [I am a volunteer editor at the site that sponsored the mentioned petition] involving Sharyl Attkisson, whose views regarding vaccines and autism have previously come through in her reportage. The CBS coverage seems to imply that somehow, society’s failure to support this mother led her to brutally murder her son by stabbing him four times in the chest.

What society failed to do that led the godmother to be party to the murder remains unclear.
It’s become typical, again and again, for parents who murder their autistic children to get some kind of a “pass” from the commentariat and the news media because, well, autism is “such a challenge.” That’s in part because some autism organizations and members of the news media have successfully presented autism as a “monster” and a “ kidnapper” instead of as the developmental condition that it is. So in the public mind, an allegedly overwhelmed mother with “ no supports” should certainly be pitied and not judged harshly for killing the “monster.”

A Murder

A number of people with ASD have become murder victims. At Babble, Joslyn Gray writes of Alex Spourdalakis, a 14-year-old ASD boy who died at the hands of his mother and godmother.

An opinion piece by columnist Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune offers sympathy for the two women, saying that “the tragic circumstances here suggest desperation, sorrow, confusion and helplessness in the hearts of these women.” Dozens upon dozens of comments, while not excusing the act, agree with the advice to “feel pity rather than rage…to seek to understand even as we condemn.”

I don’t. I don’t feel pity. Just the rage. I don’t understand this as desperation, because when you’re desperate, you take the help that is offered.

Both the National Council on Disability (NCD) and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN) have called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Alex’s murder as a hate crime under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
“To do otherwise sends the message that the short life of Alex Spourdalakis was worth less than the lives of other children and reinforces the notion that killing one’s child if they are disabled, while regrettable, is understandable,” said NCD Chairperson Jeff Rosen in astatement. “This way of thinking should not go unchallenged, and the fervor with which we investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of crimes against people with disabilities should not be diminished.”

ASAN, an advocacy group run for and by autistic people, stated:

“In truth, Alex’s murder is about a reprehensible and repulsive ideology all too common within our society that preaches that it is better to be dead than disabled. As long as our society treats the lives of disabled people as worth less than those of the general population, more disabled children and adults will be subject to acts of violence and murder. As a result, we call for the prosecution of Alex’s killers to the fullest extent of the law.”

In contrast, Autism Speaks offered the following statement:

“On Sunday, 14-year-old Alex Spourdalakis was found stabbed to death in his suburban Chicago home. Alex was severely affected with autism and his mother and his caregiver have been charged in his death.

“We are deeply saddened by the incident involving Alex Spourdalakis. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved in this extremely unfortunate situation. In light of this tragic event, we encourage individuals with autism and their families who are experiencing a crisis situation to visit beta.samhsa.gov/find-help, or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255).”

With all due respect to Autism Speaks, the premeditated, gruesome, and cold-blooded murder of a 14-year-old is more than an “extremely unfortunate situation.”

Abuse and Death in Southern California

As many posts have shown, people on the spectrum can be vulnerable to abuse by those who should be caring for them. In San Diego, KNSD reports:

The mother of a severely autistic man gave an emotional testimony Thursday at a hearing in Vista for two caregivers accused of abusing her son.

Police say 50-year-old Michael Garritson and 27-year-old Matthew McDuffie were supposed to be caring for 23-year-old Jamie Oakley, a man with severe autism who can't verbally communicate, has to wear a diaper and tends to injure himself when he's distressed.

Kim Oakley said the caregivers were well aware of the fact that a camera was in her son's room and that she installed a motion operated camera before going on an overseas trip that spanned several weeks.
...
Oakley says the video shows both McDuffy and Garritson kneeing and hitting him, twisting his arms, and poking him in the eye to the point where it became infected.
...
A judge has yet to decide if enough evidence was presented for the defendants to stand trial. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to their charges.

Sometimes, family members murder ASD children.  In San Diego, KGTV reports:

A woman who drowned her 4-year-old autistic son in a bathtub, then drove his lifeless body to a police substation where she admitted the crime, pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree murder.

Patricia Corby, 37, sobbed as she admitted killing her son, Daniel, last March 31.
She will be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison on Jan. 28.

Autism and Murder

The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network has been sounding the alarm about family members who murder ASD children.  

Autism mom Jo Ashline writes in The Orange County Register:

It's not OK to kill your child - even if he has autism

Has the headline of my post gotten your attention?

Good. That's the whole point.

Now, for most of you, "It's not OK to kill your child" will illicit responses such as, "Of course it isn't!!" and, "Who in their right mind would think it's OK?!"

And yet, there's this strange phenomenon happening in our society whenever a news story breaks about another individual with autism dying at the hands of a parent. Rather than outrage, many people express feelings of sympathy for the perpetrator, which in many instances is the mother of the victim.

Yesterday a news story out of Grand Junction, Michigan, informed readers that Yodi Jackson, mother of 25-year-old Chad Jackson, who had autism, was arrested in connection with his 2011 death. It took investigators a full year but after gathering enough evidence, law enforcement charged Yodi yesterday with second-degree murder and second-degree felony abuse.

Now, let me remind you, a young man lost his life, and yet comments on the article all but justified Yodi's alleged actions.

...

My son, in all of his imperfect beauty, makes this imperfect mama feel blessed each and every day. He is my miracle and the world is a better place to live because of him, not in spite of him.
I am the rule, not the exception.

Which means that the moms and dads who end their autistic children's lives in a fit of anger, frustration, or as a "mercy killing" do not deserve our pity. These killings are just as wrong, just as deplorable, just as DISGUSTING as if it were any other child, and we need to knock it off with all of the earnest comments aimed at justifying the actions of these parents. Raising someone with autism, though challenging and difficult for many reasons, is an honor.