Thursday, April 07, 2005

A Matter of Perspective

If you watch some shows on early societies. They find sometimes a member that was crippled and obviously cared for. Now in those days survival was very iffy. They laud how advanced they were in caring for the less fortunate despite the burden.

Nowadays, Cost is measured indollars. and apparently there is a cutoff. If our society was just as advanced maybe we would tolerate and care for the downs baby, the autistic , or even the cleft lip baby despite the cost.

I remember the old saying. - when they came for jews i did nothing, they came for the catholics, I did nothing, When they came for me there was no one left to stand for me. Here the new version for this century.

They came for the downs syndrome. It was allright. None had an IQ above 100.
They came for the autistics. It was allright. None of them had a lick of common sense.
They came for the cleft lip and palate. It was allright. They were hard on eyes.
Then they came for those that %50 percent chance of developingdiabetes within their lifetime based on theirs genes. That was me.

Everybody had an IQ above 100 to see the logic.
Everybody valued being a member of the group so much not to risk ostracization by standingup. Everybody was too busy admiring themselves in the mirror for theywere beautiful. No one was left that would stand for me.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Met with my congressman yesterday

I met with Representive Tim Bishop, My congressman. There was his aide and me in his office.

I first identified who I was. I talked about AFF and our aims. I detailed ABA and aversives. I spoke about JRC. I did bring a lot of paper printed from the web so he can refer to them later. I spoke about documented deaths at JRC and in New Jersey. I also had with a printed version of the nevada law regarding aversives. I spoke about how some states are coming to grips on the issue of aversives. I said there should be a national consensus on what aversives are and better oversight on places like JRC.

I found out he just joined the congressional caucus on autism. He also has a nephew that is an aspie. I mentioned that we are concerned with the fact NAAR and CAN is listed as some of the organizations that the caucus relies on. I talked about my protest last year at the NAAR walk. I also spoke about seeing his colleague congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy at the NAAR walk. I told him I contacted the autism caucus on more than one occasion and they never got back to me. I told him that is also the case for the parent group in NJ that is campaigning against aversives.

I also spoke about why we are not pro-cure that we are against an autism cure. I told him we felt that this cure movement is really a rebirth of a sanitized version of eugenics. I said that there are well meaning good people invovled who in our opinion just have not thought thru the implications. I spoke about the supposed cure movement for downs syndrome and its implications for an autism cure. I spoke about in the future who will be next ? the person that has a 50% risk of diabetes or alzheimers when they get old due to the attendant rise of health care costs.

He said he will go to the autism fair on LI NY this april. I spoke to him about the organizer of that conference christine heeren. Who defended Dr. hayley's comment as autism being mad child disease. I handed him a partial printout of the petition to defend the dignity of autistic citizens from neurodiversity.com. Also I gave him a partial print out of the list at growlingjoel on the murders of autistics. I explained that society at large has a negative view. I handed him a print out an essay at raggedmagazine on the movie -"The US of leland". How the movie tried to portray the killer as sympathetic by casting the victim as an autistic boy.

He gave me a name and number of a person in his washington office. He said that person will contact me.

I thanked him for listening when I left.