Published on 12, July, 2020
https://www.autism.org.uk/about/adult-life/resources/asperger-united/new-name.aspx
If the folk at the NAS are so easily swayed by some whiny emoting from a tiny minority of folk that seek to deny history, I don't know that I can be bothered to read the thing any more.
There was nothing wrong with the old name. It matched my diagnosis.
To avoid a load of pointless arguing, no, I really don't care what Asperger did, or whether he ate peeled, salted babies for his breakfast.
On a balance scale between logic and fact, versus the emotional burden of the entire human race throughout history, logic and facts must tip the scales every single time, or humanity is lost.
Yes, some people won't like it. So what?
"Was Autism a Nazi Invention?". Yep, that's a real headline.
I spoke to my second cousin today in NYC over Google Hangouts, her nephew is Autistic and I was talking about this subject. Her sister-in-law was there and heard what we were talking about. She was pretty incensed and got her to send me this link.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/books/review/aspergers-children-edith-sheffer.html
The Author debates that Asperger's research should be thrown out. People in this thread have expressed that they explicitly feared just this.
"Sheffer has larger goals than highlighting Asperger’s complicity in wartime atrocities; she also wants to upend notions of autism as a legitimate diagnostic category by locating its source in Nazi notions of mental health and sickness."
Her opinion seems to have a pretty disturbing agenda. The NY Times put a surprising spotlight on her bias.
"Sheffer is a careful and nuanced researcher, which made her clumsy effort to “destabilize” our notions of autism feel all the more out of place. Then, on the very last page of the book, at the bottom of her acknowledgments, she tells readers that her now-teenage son, to whom the book is dedicated, was diagnosed with autism when he was an infant. “Autism is not real,” she quotes him saying. “It is not a disability or a diagnosis, it is a stereotype for certain individuals.... It made me feel humiliated, and I wanted to put an end to the label of autism.” I was glad to hear his voice: Too often people diagnosed with autism are excluded from discussions about the condition. But I wish Sheffer had trusted her readers enough to let us know about her personal connection to this story at the outset of her book instead of inserting it as a concluding aside, where it became an unsettling coda to her ardent effort to undermine our notions of autism and its origins."
So it seems Sheffer wants Autism to not be real because of her and her son's feelings. What about the people who accept their diagnosis? What happened to "Too often people diagnosed with Autism are excluded from discussions about the condition"? I think that Sheffer is more concerned with her feelings to be honest and is using the Nazi connotations to completely try and redefine Autism because of her own egotistical, selfish needs. The comments section seems pretty damning too.
When this all surfaced a few months ago I said that research could be put into question. A few disagreed. Seems like authors that are given mainstream attention want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
This is getting ridiculous.