Neurodiversity in the Mainstream News

Trigger Warning: cure language, filicide

 

With Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes having been released in 2015, it seems that the Neurodiversity Movement had reached a new chapter in its development. As a result, the concept of neurodiversity has slowly permeated into the mainstream media. A great piece of evidence that proves that notion is Lilia Luciano’s article (and video accompanying it), “Adults with Autism: Living neurodiverse in a neurotypical world,” from 2017. In the story, we see her exploring the perspectives of neurodiversity advocates that are part of the Autistic community, as well as those in the UC Davis MIND Institute, who fall more in line with the autism community.

Although it may seem that the Autistic and autism community essentially mean the same thing on the surface, there actually is a difference. the AUTISTIC community is comprised of autistic individuals and their allies who embrace neurodiversity and the social model of disability. The AUTISM community, on the other hand, consists of parents, medical professionals, and anti-vaxxers who embrace the medical model and wish to “fix” or “cure” autism.

Since autism-based stories in the news tend to focus on children, it is refreshing that Luciano’s story allows autistic adults to speak for themselves. The video starts by showing a support group of autistic women, which is great inclusion because women tend to fall under the radar or get misdiagnosed.

After only a few seconds, the video cuts to the UC Davis MIND Institute, where she interviews Dr. Lou Vismara, one of the founding members. He has an autistic son named Mark, who we briefly see shaking Luciano’s hand. With Mark using an exaggerated handshake to greet her, his father pushes his hand down. Then he recounts his feelings following Mark’s diagnosis, wishing he were cured and undergoing the stages of grief. The problem is, a parent should not have to go through the stages of grief just because their child was born differently than expected. Since Mark was diagnosed in the 1990’s when autism was not nearly as understood as it is today, it can be understandable why Vismara felt distraught, as resources and answers to help autistic children were rarely available. Although neurodiversity advocates did exist back then, it was still an underground movement and not in the media like they are now.

Once she interviews Irva Hertz-Picciotto, also at the MIND Institute, that’s where things get a little more troubling. Hertz-Picciotto discusses possible causes of autism, such as parents having children 18 months apart, or mothers living near or being exposed to the pesticide, chlorpyrifos. Although not explicitly stated, the fact that the people at the MIND Institute look so closely at potential causes for autism is rather concerning.

The UC Davis MIND Institute has conducted a series of projects and studies with the goal of discovering that cause. A significant one is the Autism Phenome Project (APP), which “is intended to gather biological and behavioral information on a large number of families affected by autism in order to define clinically meaningful subtypes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD),” according to their website. Although the site states that more effective diagnosis and better treatments would be achieved through the project, they also subtly say that, “there is no doubt that there are multiple causes and multiple types of ASD” in the very sentence before it. That statement seems to confirm the fact that the MIND Institute is indeed resolute on finding the cause of autism which, if found, could lead to parents discovering their child’s neurology prenatally. From the perspective of the Autistic person, such a discovery could have questionable, if not catastrophic consequences.

Once Hertz-Picciotto’s interview is over, the video takes a different direction, as Autistic activist Eve Reiland (Eve Hinson at the time) gets interviewed in San Francisco. In a rare instance in the mainstream news, Reiland is described as “neurodiverse,” per Luciano’s narration. “What I have seen is that outside us, we’re being told ‘you’re too high-functioning to have a voice, and you’re too low-functioning to have a voice,” Reiland said. “’You shouldn’t tell us that you don’t want a cure because you’re not thinking about these [Autistics] over here, and they can’t even talk.’ But we have nonverbal Autistics saying, ‘just because we’re not like you doesn’t mean that we’re better off dead than disabled.’”

Luciano adds her own enlightening commentary to the matter through narration by stating, “They [Autistics] say that they’re tired of campaigns that use negative labels, sick of scientists trying to speak for them, and family members getting all the empathy and attention.” As mainstream news outlets tend to sympathize with parents when they murder their Autistic children (or attempt to do so), this is a refreshing take from a journalist that is seldom seen.

Reiland also emphasizes that the problem lies not in Autistics themselves, but rather their civil rights, equality, and accommodations not being met. That is when the video cuts back to Lou Vismara, where he says that the unemployment rate for Autistics (at the time) is 84%. But with the $25 million in grants that the MIND Institute receives, as Luciano stated, you would think that they would try to use that money to lobby for companies to hire autistic workers. However, since they appeal more to the autism community, they are clearly more concerned with fixing autism rather than fixing society so that everyone can benefit.

Even Dr. Marjorie Solomon from the MIND Institute, who is also interviewed in the piece, states how eager Autistic people are to work. She also lists their attributes to Luciano such as being loyal and hardworking, as well as possessing a wonderful attention-to-detail. So that begs the question: why are they not trying to make companies more complicit in hiring Autistic individuals?

The video closes in a beautiful way, as Luciano talks to Jennifer Davis, who says how she raises her Autistic son to embrace his differences. “He just loves the fact that he’s autistic, and it’s made me realize how difficult it made my life trying to cover up the fact that I was not like everybody else,” Davis said. “It was this constant struggle to figure out, ‘do I want to embrace being different, or do I want to keep trying to fit in?’” That is a question many Autistic individuals ask themselves, as we live in a world not designed for us. With news stories like this, thanks to ABC 10’s open-mindedness, embracing our differences is starting to become a more valid option.