Stop talking about autism as if it were a death sentence

I always thought I would end up on a kind of government observation list during the Trump administration, but I thought it would be because I would write OP EDs in a newspaper (something that foreign college students can be thrown into prison here on a student visa!) Or because I am pregnant or because I am married gay.

I did not think that the government would take care of my diagnosis of the disorder of autism spectrum 1. However, that was before the secretary for health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (possibly the worst Kennedy, and I include the one who killed someone in a drunken driving accident) the creation of an “autism register”.

Everyone with the slightest knowledge of history will know that when it starts to create lists of citizens, the government will never be good. Of course, there are some reasons for public health that we are infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and gonorrhea, but autism is not contagious (if it were my whole family, it would be autistic) and arguments can be made (and I am happy to do it!), It is not a illness.

Fortunately, HHS seems to have decreased his registration goals after enormous public outcry, but in view of what we have seen so far from this administration (a complete lack of consideration of personal freedom), we should probably keep an eye on them.

Recently, Kennedy said during a press conference that children with autism “never pay taxes, they never have a job, they will never play baseball, they will never write a poem, they will never make a date, many of them will never use a toilet without support.” If this is the case, I would like to reimburse 9,500 US dollars that I paid to federal taxes last year, please and thank you.

I would like to believe that it goes without saying, but I literally did all the things that the secretary says that I will never be able to play baseball (when I grew up, I did karate, cross-country and track). And somehow I managed to do everything, even though I have to struggle with eye contact and social clues.

One of the reasons why I am so open to be autistic is that the majority of the people in whom the disorder is diagnosed are children, which means that reactions and answers also filter through their parents. Thanks to the lousy, narrow -minded settings by RFK Jr. and people who think, as he think, there is this idea that autism is a death sentence or so. Parents freak out because they believe that their child cannot live good life. And I want people to know that they can.

I am autistic and my life is pretty great. I am married and expect a baby, I am financially independent and have my own home. I have dogs and hobbies and I am in a local school committee and yes, I constantly cowardly with my hair and eat the same for breakfast for breakfast every day and cannot exist in loud interiors.

“Oh, but Victoria,” you could say, “he didn't talk about autistic people like her. He talked about the other autistic people.”

First of all, when he did not talk about all autistic people, he should have said it instead of leaving his large, fat mouth flap like a loose dry shaft in the breeze. Talking about autism like a death sentence has real consequences. Bad. There were several cases in which parents murdered their autistic children. Other parents have had their autistic children drink bleach as quack salt hardness that were recommended to them on Facebook.

A few months ago, a 5-year-old boy was burned in a hyperly oxygen chamber by a company that, among other things, advertised as a healing for autism (according to the family lawyer, this special child was treated for sleep apnea and ADHD, who have many approved treatment options, of which is not an oxygen chamber).

I won't play the game “Good Autism/Bad Autism”. Or more precisely the game “productive autism/unproductive autism”. Because it's about, isn't it? There is a reason why the first concern in Kennedy's list of “things that are not autistic children” “pays taxes”.

The Nazis have divided autistic people in the same way. My autism brand was previously referred to as “Asperger syndrome” after the German scientist, who carried out a lot of earlier, most modern research on the autism spectrum, was mentioned. Dr. Asperger also worked with the Nazis to share the children he studied in two groups. A group consisted of children who, although they differ from their colleagues, could work. The Nazis even thought that some of their pattern recognition and mathematical skills for military code breaks could be useful. The other children were those who couldn't work. They belonged to a group called “useless eaters” and murdered by the Nazis, often in gas chambers as legal proceedings for the death camps in Auschwitz and Treblinka. The end of the street, which begins to see disabled people as social stress.

My house is decorated in works of art by the SpindleWorks Arts Center in Brunswick. SpindleWorks is a daily program of the Independence Association that Mainer's services offers with mental and cognitive disabilities. I have lifelike flower paintings, small statues of characters from the TV show “Get Smart” (one of the favorites of my family), a multifibular tapestry/ceilings that leads to kindergarten, printed feelings, some T-shirts and a multimedia-based relief sculpture, which is from a jany in a spiritual sense of a Jany destructors in a spiritual sense of a Jany-Vernacher in a spiritual sense.

The artists who created these pieces need more help to live their daily life than I do. They are also more artistically talented than me. I have absolutely zero talent when it comes to visual arts. If someone has ever doubted that people with disabilities can create beauty and culture for their communities and the world as a whole, I would invite them to visit the Spindleworks gallery.

Personally, it would grow up my children like Anna, Mitch or Emma as RFK Jr., who is not only scientifically wrong about pretty much every question he asks, which asks him, but also a terrible womanizer.

Disabled people can lead a good life and contribute to their community. Everything that requires is a little support and creativity. Even I know that and I have clinically rigid thinking.

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