Despite numerous #kaleidotropic detours into other interests, I'm continuing to make progress through Steve #Silberman's #NeuroTribes (as well as other #autism and #ADHD literature). I'm currently going through Chapter 10, Section VI. It's infuriating reading, because of the topic: the work (if it can be dignified with that label) of the infamous Dr. Andrew #Wakefield, the #antivax fraudster who falsely claimed to have found strong evidence that the #MMR vaccine causes autism.

Despite the emotional tough going, this section has been quite rewarding, because it has revealed a historical linkage I had been unaware of: the link between the #LeakyGut theory — so often trumpeted in the media as the source of a wide variety of physical and psychological ills — and the antivax movement. Even before Wakefield, the leaky gut theory had been a staple of the group of parents following Dr. Bernard #Rimland, another notorious antivaxer. Wakefield had originally trained as a gastroenterologist, and the idea that intestinal wall leakage was the root of all evils delighted him.

One moral I intend to draw from this story: the elevation of ANY favorable mention of #LeakyGut to red-flag status, warranting strong suspicion of antiscientific and socially toxic influences.

@autistics

I'm still reading through Steve #Silberman's #NeuroTribes. I'm currently nearing the end of the longest chapter, "Fighting the monster", of which the latter part is largely about Ole Ivar #Lovaas and the origins of #ABA. It makes for harrowing reading. Samples:

#Lovaas: "You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense — they have hair, a nose, and a mouth — but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person."

#Lovaas describing an occasion on which he dealt with a self-injuring autistic girl: "I reached over and cracked her one right on the rear ... I noticed she had stopped hitting herself. I felt guilty, but I felt great. Then she hit herself again, and I really laid it on her ... So I let her know that there was no question in my mind that I was going to kill her if she hit herself once more, and that was pretty much it. She hit herself a few times more, but we had the problem licked."

#Silberman as narrator: 'In a subsequent round of trials, instead of the electrified floor, Lovaas employed a remote-controlled device called a Lee-Lectronic Trainer — a box the size of a cigarette pack used in canine obedience tests — affixed to the boys' buttocks.
...
Lovaas put Mike and Marty on a strict behaviorist diet: no food at all, seven days a week, but the token scraps earned by their acquiring the ability to perform a complex social task while pressing a bar to avoid shock. Water deprivation was also stringently enforced, though he noted that, "to avoid dehydration," water was available to the boys "ad libidinum" after six p.m. each day.'

There is much more, but this is quite enough to provide an idea of how the research on which #ABA is based, carried out by its founder, was conducted.

It is a scandal that #ABA is not UNIVERSALLY condemned by both the theoretical and the clinical wings of autism psychology.

#OrcsWithPretensions #OWP

@autistics

I am currently reading a book by #SteveSilberman called #Neurotribes, and I came across a nice thought that I agree with and that other autistic buddy's might also like.

I quote: "Autism is both a disorder and a gift, and I am valuable in a different way, not less valuable."

#ActuallyAutistic

About That Mensch, Steve Silberman, and How Much We Miss Him

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://thinkingautismguide.com/2026/01/about-that-mensch-steve-silberman-and-how-much-we-miss-him.html

Past the halfpoint in Silberman's NeuroTribes. It's really interesting read, although painful in places due to what has been done to us. I just read a sentence mentioning that in Asperger's files, there were many engineer fathers. My father was a graduate engineer...

#ActuallyAutistic #NeuroTribes @actuallyautistic

You knew Trump wants to eliminate the Department of Education. You've learned he's naming WWE wrestling executive Linda McMahon to head that agency.

But did you know that Project 2025's blueprint for dismantling the agency calls for disabled children's special education services to be overseen by... RFK Jr ? The guy who believes vaccines cause autism and that autism needs to be "cured"? #autism #audhd #neurotribes #ASD

Details in next post. 1/2

Meltdowns are not tantrums. How to hack them. #actuallyautistic #burnedout #neurotribes 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydc_uACJFpI

#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #Neurospicy #Neurodivergent #ND