October 31, 2007
Olmsted on Autism: I'm not vaclempt!
Hysterical By Dan Olmsted
WASHINGTON, Oct 30 -- If there is one word I'd like to see banished forever
from the dictionary of autism cliches, it would be "emotional." You know
what I mean -- "Lawsuits and emotion vs. science and childhood vaccines,"
trumpets a piece in the Wall Street Journal; "confronting the contentious
and highly emotional issue of whether early childhood vaccinations might
have caused autism in thousands of children," as The New York Times
described the recent vaccine court hearing; "officials from federal health
agencies and medical societies tried to calm the fears around this
emotional issue," said NBC's Robert Bazell.
Get it? Concerns about vaccines causing autism are emotional; science that
refutes it is logical. Parents who believe their kid's autism came from
vaccines are fearful; experts who say otherwise are calming and rational.
If these overrought parents would just lie down in a bathtub filled with
ice and listen to reason, this debate would be over.
And who are those parents? Well, as far as the mainstream media is
concerned, they're mostly mothers. Wild-eyed, tangled hair, mangled
thinking – it's all part of the same game. Network TV has even managed to
cast Barbara Loe Fisher, a calm, rational, evidence-based critic of
vaccination policy, as a zealot who would have us all in iron lungs if she
had her wicked, wicked way.
Are you getting my drift that the word "emotional" as applied to autism is
basically sexist? Mostly moms are on the front lines of autism; they are up
against (mostly) men who represent the paternalistic structures of public
health, pediatric medical practice and the pharmaceutical companies. (And
of course, some women in power can be just as paternalistic as men.)
Around the turn of the last century, Freud and his followers were obsessed
with the idea of a disorder called "hysteria." The psychoanalysts, almost
all men, decided that "hysterics," almost all women, were suffering from
all manner of suppressed, submerged, repressed issues. A female cousin of
mine had a different definition: "Hysteria is a word men use to describe
women they can't control."
And so is "emotional." It reminds me of the dust-up when someone called
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "articulate." The use of that word was
criticized, and properly so, because of the unsavory implication that a
black woman who had reached the highest levels of the United States
government might NOT be articulate. Criticize her job performance, in other
words, but don't reveal your own surprise that there are plenty of
confident, capable – and articulate – black women in this country.
Olmsted on Autism: I'm not vaclempt!
Hysterical By Dan Olmsted
WASHINGTON, Oct 30 -- If there is one word I'd like to see banished forever
from the dictionary of autism cliches, it would be "emotional." You know
what I mean -- "Lawsuits and emotion vs. science and childhood vaccines,"
trumpets a piece in the Wall Street Journal; "confronting the contentious
and highly emotional issue of whether early childhood vaccinations might
have caused autism in thousands of children," as The New York Times
described the recent vaccine court hearing; "officials from federal health
agencies and medical societies tried to calm the fears around this
emotional issue," said NBC's Robert Bazell.
Get it? Concerns about vaccines causing autism are emotional; science that
refutes it is logical. Parents who believe their kid's autism came from
vaccines are fearful; experts who say otherwise are calming and rational.
If these overrought parents would just lie down in a bathtub filled with
ice and listen to reason, this debate would be over.
And who are those parents? Well, as far as the mainstream media is
concerned, they're mostly mothers. Wild-eyed, tangled hair, mangled
thinking – it's all part of the same game. Network TV has even managed to
cast Barbara Loe Fisher, a calm, rational, evidence-based critic of
vaccination policy, as a zealot who would have us all in iron lungs if she
had her wicked, wicked way.
Are you getting my drift that the word "emotional" as applied to autism is
basically sexist? Mostly moms are on the front lines of autism; they are up
against (mostly) men who represent the paternalistic structures of public
health, pediatric medical practice and the pharmaceutical companies. (And
of course, some women in power can be just as paternalistic as men.)
Around the turn of the last century, Freud and his followers were obsessed
with the idea of a disorder called "hysteria." The psychoanalysts, almost
all men, decided that "hysterics," almost all women, were suffering from
all manner of suppressed, submerged, repressed issues. A female cousin of
mine had a different definition: "Hysteria is a word men use to describe
women they can't control."
And so is "emotional." It reminds me of the dust-up when someone called
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "articulate." The use of that word was
criticized, and properly so, because of the unsavory implication that a
black woman who had reached the highest levels of the United States
government might NOT be articulate. Criticize her job performance, in other
words, but don't reveal your own surprise that there are plenty of
confident, capable – and articulate – black women in this country.
Calling autism parents "emotional" is especially odious given the long
habit of parent-blaming ("refrigerator moms," anyone?) that preceded the
current debate. Parents can't catch a break – first they were too cold and
unemotional, now they're all hot under the collar and beyond the reach of
reason.
Of course, strong feelings are part of the picture, and they should be --
that's true of just about every controversy from gun control to Christmas
trees in the town square. But there is nothing inherently more emotional
about figuring out what causes autism and what we can do to treat it. So
let's stop using the word.
One way that men could help out here is to make sure they are not so
woefully underrepresented on the front lines of the autism debate. Of
course, plenty of fathers are out there battling, but the autism
conferences are by and large a gathering of moms. At the Long Island autism
conference I attended last week, that was plain to see. The few men
attending stood out; as one autism mom said after spending the evening with
three of them: "Wow, it's been a long time since I drank beer with
good-looking guys at a bar!"
Maybe autism fathers could think of a special way to make an impact. How
about a thousand-man march on the CDC? An awards dinner for Autism Father
of the Year. A conference of, by and for fathers. Fathers and children
descending on Capitol Hill -- moms get the day off. Anyway, it's time to
stop letting the powers-that-be make the rest of us feel like Mike Myers
acting like Linda Richmond on Saturday Night Live. We are not vaclempt.
Posted at 03:54 AM | Permalink
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If I came to you and said, "I'm going to perform a little sexual assault on you---a small rape---because, one day you could meet a rapist and you could be raped. But, it won't be as bad the second time as the first time." This is exactly the same thing as giving someone a vaccine, or a little bit of disease. It's nonsense! An Interview With Guylaine Lanctot, M.D. By Kenneth & Dee Burke
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