Many parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids say that they’re worried vaccines cause autism.
I don’t order fast food from the a drive-up window very often, but when I do I brace myself for the inevitable upsell.
“Do you want fries with that?”
I resist the mighty urge to say something like, “If I wanted fries, I would have asked for fries, dammit!”
It’s like when a breathlessly enthusiastic telemarketer calls. I want to give them a thorough ear-scorching about how much I hate the pushy sales pitch. But I try to remember that they probably don’t enjoy annoying me either. They’re just working slobs doing what corporate commands. So I try to remember to say, “No, thank you.”
I went to White Castle recently and said to the drive-up speaker, “Two double cheeseburgers please.”
A garbled voice replied, “Anything else?”
“No thank you.” But I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. I braced.
“Would you like to donate a dollar for autism?”
Woah! That upsell took me by surprise! I didn’t know what to say.
“No, thank you?”
There’s a lot of irony going on here. The autism upsell was probably because April is World Autism Month. And there are headlines flying around about measles making a comeback as a disease because some parents won’t vaccinate their kids because they think the vaccines cause autism.
We all know that scientifically, this attitude is nonsense. But even if there was some chance that a measles vaccination could cause autism, not getting vaccinated is still a bad idea. It comes down to a belief that being on the autism spectrum is so horrible it must be avoided at all costs, even if it means that your child and others may contract measles.
The extra dollars that customers give to White Castle go to Autism Speaks, an organization devoted to “promoting solutions, across the spectrum and throughout the lifespan, for the needs of individuals with autism and their families through advocacy and support.” White Castle is listed as a “Champion” on Autism Speaks’ website for raising more than $7 million for the organization over the last decade.
But Autism Speaks could be responsible for spreading the abject fear of autism that fuels the anti-vaccination crowd.
The extra dollars that customers give to White Castle go to Autism Speaks, which could be responsible for spreading the abject fear of autism that fuels the anti-vaccination crowd.
In 2009, the group employed cheap fear tactics as a marketing technique when it put out a video called I Am Autism. Over a montage of people with autism, a sinister male voice says, “I am autism. I’m visible in your children, but if I can help it, I am invisible to you until it’s too late. I know where you live. And guess what? I live there too. I hover around all of you.”
The spooky voice goes on: “I work faster than pediatric AIDs, cancer, and diabetes combined. And if you’re happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands, and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain. . . . I am autism. I have no interest in right or wrong. I derive great pleasure out of your loneliness. I will fight to take away your hope. I will plot to rob you of your children and your dreams.”
Now it’s true that this was ten years ago and second half of the video features a variety of voices telling autism that the power of family and community love will kick his butt. But nowhere in this Autism Speaks video does anyone with autism speak.
It’s also true that after the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, an organization that “seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism,” howled about how the video perpetuates the worst stigma about people on the spectrum, Autism Speaks yanked the video from its website. But it’s still on YouTube. Search “I am autism” and there it is. It’s had more than 130,000 views.
Once you put a contagion like that out there, it nearly impossible to keep it from spreading and infecting masses of people. Just like measles.