The Question of shutting down Curabees and Quackery

Post Reply New Topic

On July 4 a book will be published that is available for pre order on Amazon entitled "Preventing Autism: Advice from Medical Professionals". There is an online petition asking the publisher to abort the book that has gained 2900 or so signatures.

If this was two years ago I would have enthusiastically signed the petition to shut down this appearent offensive quackery. Now well it depends.

Over the last two years I have come too see both the moral and practical harm in trying to shut down conversations about ideas I find harmful. Prime example is anti vaxx. It was pretty much shamed out of the mainstream media only mentioned as something debunked and a part of history. That has not worked out so well. It just percolated on the internet out of site until exploding in our faces in the last year or so. I have also seen ideas I agree with shut down by Social Justice Warrior mentality.

The morality of shutting down a book like this becomes more dicey if the authors "advice" will do real harm by lets say by starving or poisoning kids. How is it not moral not to shut it down at this fairly early stage?. But again will trying to shut it down create a martyr?

It's already on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Choice-Cou ... 1510714669

The bits I read suggest to me that it's just more of the "same old" with a title that is exaggerated to increase sales.

I think that but did not want to make assumptions but this post is not about that book but the larger questions.

It's a hard one to answer; there are plenty of toxic books in the world on all sorts of topics, not just AS conditions. And they all shelter under "freedom of speech", as do many worthy but controversial books; however --- freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences, and the issue for me revolves around what consequences, and if they are adverse, how far should tolerance go?

In saying that I am thinking more of Jenny McCarthy and co. (I mean the MMR stuff, not sure if it's her or someone else or both at this stage). They still peddle their toxic "cure" which has been banned by the FDA, which has harmed children (even killed some and scarred others as I recall). The children bear the consequences. So what should a truly civilised society, with the goal and ideal of protecting defenceless children from harm, do?

Banning books is a dangerous mode of action. (There is always the risk that the wrong books will be the ones that are banned!) But there is a difference between unpopular views and harmful advice masquerading as helpful facts. I would argue it would be better to prosecute the McCarthys rather than ban their books; they deserve to be publicly discredited and sanctioned, just as Wakefield was.

There is no easy answer to the dilemma, though a civilised society prohibits other kinds of publications harmful to children - eg child pornographers are prohibited from publishing and promoting books depicting the harms they perpetrate on children. Some libertarians might construe that constraint on free speech as worse than the harm done by paedophile propaganda, though personally I think that is a ridiculous proposition.

The only set of guidelines in terms of how countries should show respect for and protect children are the UN Conventions relating to their well-being. It would be extremely difficult to assess books in terms of them though. And there is no will to do it.

While vaccinations may not be contributing to an autism epidemic, there is little incertitude in my view that a plethora of environmental biomarkers are playing a role in the cumulative autism rates in the past 30-40 years (they are "genuine but insignificant causes" - this notion may explicate the whole "autism puzzle" hypothesis and why it's challenging to avoid Argument from Authority and Texas Sharpshooter fallacy arguments by inculpating one single environmental or epigenetic cause to blame for a cumbersome amount of autism cases from data sampling) so it's certainly not down to just sufficiently ameliorated diagnostic methodologies or appending new diagnostic classifications to the ASD category like Asperger's Syndrome or PDD-NOS (although as variables, they have a played a significant role in our understanding of the epidemiological prevalence of autism).

As a political independent (formerly a Right-Libertarian) who takes libertarian ideals such as "freedom of speech, thought and association" very seriously; I would never censor books even I found it's views on whatever scientific/moral philosophical discipline that it elucidates deplorable, no matter how reputative the author's credentials are, and what the moral implications would be as retrospectively mentioned by another user "freedom of speech" does not mean "freedom from consequences" (if you avoid an appeal to definition). Counteracting autism's environmental & epigenetic factorial basis by let's say not eating foods containing HFCS or Aspartame (exemplified, yet to be corroborated and cherry picked causes) as they may act as prenatal toxicants or nutritional deficiencies to the CNS is of no exception, and there are other books expressing analogous views to preventing autism that have not subsequently resulted in petitions devised by the neurodiversity movement & autistic rights groups no doubt to censor it's publication (appeal to censorship). It's in no logical way to be construed as eugenicism to alleviate the prevalence of multifarious environmental variables that may contribute to the symptomatic manifestation of ASD (particularity regressive autism) in order to reduce it's worldwide incidence by whatever methods (proscribing the distribution and sale of products containing excitotoxins, or for a more radical approach, an intellectually and scientifically gifted aspie or autist that invented a free energy device inspired by the research of neurodivergent scientists like Nikola Tesla that if implemented by the government would result in an overwhelming amount of products/industries containing/utilizing toxicants obsolete) if they were affirmed officially by the scientific community to do so, as long as prenatal genetic causes including those attributed from the natural genome were left alone uninhibited; but many of them to a degree however, irrespective of the infamous Social Justice Warrior (SJW) collective mentality in the Neurodiversity Movement and Autistic Rights groups would still unfortunately imply otherwise (Argument From Adverse Consequences, Slippery Slope).

In regards to postulated "cures" peddled from alternative medicine practitioners and the biomedical movement (Age of Autism, The Autism Research Institute, Generation Rescue etc); irrespective of their regulatory status by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), no ASD subtype would respond positively/negatively to the same treatment (explicates the endless cherry picked cases of people cured of autism reported from the internet, case studies e.t.c ) as doctors/biomed scientists who administrate them are all from multidisciplinary fields in regards to their view of what Autism Spectrum conditions are, the causes are accountable for and the research metholdoiges they utilize (remediating the sole root cause is an argument common in the alternative medicine community as a means to reverse autism); and yes, by all infallible means I believe they are a big and dangerous no no for autistics with a classified genetic cause (whether it's a mutation, abnormality or systematically attributed to natural genome, which is the causation view predominantly upheld by many in the neurodiversity movement and the autistic rights community), especially accounting for Chelation Therapy, Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) and Lupron castration, even if they are pertinently handled by the physician. It nevertheless doesn't surprise me in the least why health conscious people (whether they are Progressives, Right-Libertarian Preppers, New Agers or Paleoconservatives) would want to cure their child with autism with biomedical treatments (the pharmacological interventions don't work) and/or to obviate the incidence of autism (especially environmentally induced regressive ASD) by whatever means possible, because they don't to bear the emotional and physical distress of taking care of a child 24/7 who is completely nonverbal, severely intellectually disabled, exhibits detrimental SIB'S and is afflicted with a plethora of physiological, immunological and metabolic health aliments of inexplicable origin.

Since I believe ASD has a multi-factorial pathogenesis (consisting of a classified solely genetic, epigenetic and solely environmental causes derived from prenatal, perinatal and postnatal origin - a great proportion of which are "genuine but insignificant causes" - in other words, I don't believe any scientific, ideological or philosophical group can "truly define" autism other than being a neurodevelopmental disorder) amongst all of the vacillated objectives/beliefs/theorizations regards to ASD this a troubling dilemma on who I can speak for in the global, highly multi-diverse and Hegelian dialectical autism community that I will never join due to my highly independent beliefs (for just about everyone there is no such thing as truth, just "individualized collectivist ideological perception"), but I am very much & undoubtedly concordant that the Anti-Vaccine movement can be very counter-productive to to people with Asperger's syndrome & High Functioning Autism who take pride in their identity and are not victims of the medical industrial complex (like myself, but no longer part of the neurodiversity movement); an epitome of their damaging postulations is one or two statements made in the upcoming publication (released late in the same month of Dara Berger's book relevant to this discussion) of Mark Blaxil's (SafeMinds) & Dan Olmsted's (Age of Autism director who passed away recently) book "Denial: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future," and in the summary on Amazon they contend in their argument (an intertwining of Appeal to Motive/Red Herring/False Dichotomy/Shill Gambit) that the scientific community and other researchers (inc those who advocate Neurodiversity or Autistic Rights) who correctly believe that ASD is an ancient disorder like most mental illnesses/genetically attributed neurological conditions are advertently suppressing the theorization of an autism epidemic as they are liable or secretively hindering research for developing cures (I won't be surprised if a petition will be later devised within under 2 months to have this book censored). However I also believe the neurodiversity movement is also detrimental to autistics who they may never be able to speak for.

If it claims to have answers on how to prevent autism as if there were a golden solution, that would be unscientific.

But It may be possible to reduce the statistical RISK of having an autistic child or his or her severity by genetic counseling, ensuring no environment insult to prenatal development, or how to raise a child to mitigate potential comorbities.

If it were titled "Reducing the potential risk of autism or at least the severity" it would be much more practical. If it looked at things such as nutrition and other environmental factors that PROVOKE autism and severity (notice I did not say "cause") that would be also much more practical. It's like crime, you cannot eradicate crime, you can however do what you can to control it.

An example is the rubella vaccination, rubella increase the risk of having an autistic child or maybe potential severity, even without rubella there is still a chance but each little increment like this can knock down some numbers from the percentages.
And what you do after you find out your child is autistic to increase the chances of improvement, which has happened, some have been born severely autistic but gained verbal abilities with intervention. This doesn't always work, there are some who will not respond to any therapy, but others might, and each one that does is less overall societal cost.

I think the real reason you guys are opposed to this book is it considers autism a disorder, you care more about autism being spoken badly about than people with autism being discriminated against. I take it you also have the assumption autism has no connection with environment or poor health, that it is entirely genetic and a natural variation like skin color. There is plenty of research into finding out how to prevent the onset of schizophrenia or bipolar in a predisposed person or preventing the accompanying degeneration when it does happen, to lessen it's severity when there is a window of opportunity. But I hear no objections from their communities.

If this was the kind of book that claimed autism could be prevented because it's caused by poor parenting or eating gluten, I would also object. If it's like the kinds of books which claim to show how to prevent a child from growing up gay with the implication being gay is a choice or from bad parenting I would object.

I looked at the description, and it seems to not be that kind of book, but the title is misleading according to the description, and I haven't read the contents so I don't know if it is promoting quackery like camels milk to fix autism. But the public really needs to be made aware of what they can do to ensure utilitarian benefit for all.

I wonder how many sheep will fall for it.