Cure Autism Now | Autism Legislation Description: Senate Bill S512 & House Bills HR4365, HR997, HR274 | Aug. 2000 #AutisticHistory #StopBigAutism

[Note: Shared for #AutisticHistory archive purposes. This is NOT An Autistic Ally.]

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AUTISM LEGISLATION DESCRIPTION 

Senate Bill S-512, seeking Children’s Health Bill in the Senate

House Bills NEW HR4365 (combines HR997 and HR274 plus others ) – PASSED
     

This important legislation will:

• Create up to five Centers of Excellence for autism. These university sites would combine clinical and basic research in autism, draw the attention of the nationŐs top scientists, and exist as part of a network that enables findings to be rapidly disseminated and replicated. This exact approach has been very effective in Alzheimer’s and childhood leukemia. Currently, autism, if it is studied at all, is lumped in with large programs on mental retardation. 
  
• Establish at least three Centers of Expertise on autism epidemiology at the Centers of Disease Control (CDC). These centers will assist states in creating surveillance programs to track cases of autism and identify its trends. This is very important right now as there is a growing sense that incidence of autism is on the rise.
  
• Create a centralized and open facility for gene and brain banking. These are essential for scientific progress in autism. Because no such resources currently exist, family voluntary groups like CAN, ASA and NAAR have been forced to raise the money and create them on their own — a painfully expensive proposition for affected families.
  
• Develop an awareness campaign for the public and physicians. Greater awareness means earlier diagnosis – which leads to more effective early intervention – which leads to better outcomes and more independent people. Currently, physicians often do not understand autism or know how to diagnose it thus losing, in many cases, valuable months, and sometimes years, of potentially critical treatment.
  
• Legislate roughly $40 million a year for five years to autism. This more than doubles the amount the NIH is currently spending on autism research. 
  
• Bring together the resources of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to attack the problem of autism.

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Note/Warning:

Autistic people have fought the inclusion of ABA in therapy for us since before Autism Speaks, and other non-Autistic-led autism organizations, started lobbying legislation to get it covered by insurances and Medicaid. 

ABA is a myth originally sold to parents that it would keep their Autistic child out of an institution. Today, parents are told that with early intervention therapy their child will either be less Autistic or no longer Autistic by elementary school, and can be mainstreamed in typical education classes. ABA is very expensive to pay out of pocket. Essentially, Autism Speaks has justified the big price tag up front will offset the overall burden on resources for an Autistic’s lifetime. The recommendation for this therapy is 40 hours a week for children and toddlers.

The original study that showed the success rate of ABA to be at 50% has never been replicated. In fact, the study of ABA by United States Department of Defense was denounced as a failure. Not just once, but multiple times. Simply stated: ABA doesn’t work. In study after repeated study: ABA (conversion therapy) doesn’t work. 

What more recent studies do show: Autistics who experienced ABA therapy are at high risk to develop PTSD and other lifelong trauma-related conditions. Historically, the autism organizations promoting ABA as a cure or solution have silenced Autistic advocates’ opposition. ABA is also known as gay conversion therapy.

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[Note: Autism is NOT a disease, but a neurodevelopmental difference and disability.]

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Fact: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism.

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