There is a long history of trying to eradicate autism and/or cure autistic people (A selection of the wide range of unevidenced and often damaging 'treatments' used in an attempt to 'cure' autism are listed in the Unevidenced Treatments section).

 

We believe that the push to medicalise and transition autistic children and young people is relevant to this context, due to the very real risk posed to fertility, bodily integrity and long term health outcomes posed by so called 'gender affirming medical care'.  There are a growing number of de-transitioners who are speaking out, having been diagnosed autistic, and recognising that being autistic in a neurotypical world was a significant cause of their disconnection from themselves.​

 

In addition, we have grave concerns about the outcomes for medicalised children and young people. We know that treatment with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones will halt both physical and brain development in a manner that can't be compensated for later. Sterility and the inability to orgasm has also been identified as an outcome with this treatment. Surgical treatments, such as a double mastectomy to remove the breasts, are irreversible and more complex surgeries, e.g. phalloplasties and vaginoplasties, are experimental and extremely risky. 

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It is important that 'affirming health care' for children and young people is recognised as a highly experimental set of treatments that are causing irreversible harm to autistic children, however, the wider autistic community continues to experience a blind spot when it comes to the obvious harms posed by these treatments. 

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We hope that by outlining the history of harm to the autistic community by both eugenics and  poorly evidenced treatments, that this may begin to change.

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Eugenics and the 'feeble-minded' - 1883

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The term Eugenics was coined by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, in 1883. He proposed that society could be bettered by the selective breeding of so called 'superior' people and the sterilisation of anyone with socially undesirable traits; this followed a belief at the time that anti-social behaviour, criminal tendencies and negative traits were caused by genetics. This drive to produce a more socially 'desirable' society overwhelmingly affected those from ethnic minorities and the disabled.

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Although his ideas were never widely adopted in Britain, the United States eagerly embraced them. In 1896 a law was passed in Connecticut making it illegal for those who were epileptic or 'feeble-minded' to marry. This was followed in 1903 by the formation of the American Breeders Association and in 1911 by John Harvey Kellog forming the Race Betterment Foundation with it's attendant 'pedigree registry'.

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The Carrie Buck case  - 1927 

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Eugenics was written into law in 1927 with the Buck vs Bell case. 18 year old Carrie Buck was a patient at  the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, who had been raped by a cousin and given birth to a daughter Virginia. Due to the scandal, her family had her committed. While there, the Superintendent of the colony, a Dr Priddy, saw her as a candidate for sterilisation; primarily as a means of testing the recently passed law permitting compulsory sterilisation of the disabled.

 

This was contested and in court, however, rather than genuinely trying to support her, Carrie was defended by Irving P Whitehead, who was in support of the law and placed as a means of ensuring that Priddy would win his case.  When Priddy died, he was succeeded at the colony by John Hendren Bell. The majority of witnesses called in court had never met Carrie Buck and simply agreed with the  testimony placed in front of them by Priddy and Bell. In conjunction with Whitehead’s intentionally weak defence, the Virginia State Colony won their case. Due to a series of appeals, the case ended up at the Supreme Court. Two sitting judges were supporters of eugenics and Bell won his case at the Supreme Court. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted in his judgement that  'Three generations of imbeciles are enough'.  Afterwards, twenty five states adopted statutes which authorised the compulsory sterilization of the intellectually disabled.  

 

It is estimated that in the seventy years between 1909 and 1979, the State of California alone enforced sterilisations of 20,000 patients in state mental hospitals.

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Hitler and Aktion T4  1933-1945

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One of the most egregious examples of harm to the disabled, autistic and learning disabled communities, was the campaign of murder by the Nazi party during the period 1939 - 1945. Although the Holocaust refers to the systematic murder of Jews across Europe during the Second World War, Hitler's drive to instill racial hygiene and create the ideal Aryan race began with a period of eugenics.

Influenced by the eugenics movements of Europe, Canada and the United States in the early part of the twentieth century, in 11933 the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases was passed, leading to the compulsory sterilisation of those with certain inherited illnesses,  'imbecility', alcoholism or 'social deviance'.​

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It was managed by the Hereditary Health Council, via a system of checking patients in nursing homes, elderly care homes, special schools and asylums and selecting which should be sterilised. The Party's belief in racial cleansing wasn't confined to the Jewish population and the Roma and Sinti people, who were added to the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and made 'enemies of the race based state'.  The Nazi Euthanasia Programme (latterly named Aktion T4 after the address at Tiergartenstrasse 4 from which it was administered) was the planned murder of the disabled community between 1939 and 1941 – although it continued unofficially until 1945.

 

When Hitler introduced the sterilisation law in 1933, he was said to favour compulsory euthanasia of the disabled, but felt that ‘such a problem could be more smoothly and easily carried out in war’. 1939 saw the establishment of the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registering of Hereditary and Congenital Diseases to compile a register of disabled children, who were considered to be Lebensunwertes Leben (Life unworthy of life).Six psychiatric hospitals were earmarked as places where children would be killed. Perhaps the best known of these was Am Speigelgrund in Vienna, Austria, which, along with Gugging (also in Austria) was the site of 1000 murders of disabled children.

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Parents of children identified with disabilities were advised that they were being sent to special institutions where they would receive optimal treatments. Having arrived, they were assessed and then later murdered. Parents were then informed that their child had died of a common ailment and provided with a fake death certificate and jar of ashes. Any parents objecting to their child being removed, were threatened with losing custody of all their children; by 1941 approximately 5000 children had been killed.

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The scheme was extended to adults  and following a directive from Hitler, Psychiatrists and Physicians were recruited to identify and diagnose patients and inmates as ‘incurable’ and so provide a ‘mercy death’. All hospitals, care homers and asylums were required to list any patients resident for more than five years or with a listed illness or disability. Euthanasia centres started gassing disabled people in 1940, a method that was deemed successful then transferred to the death camps where the Jewish population were sent. Archives suggest that during this period, 300,000 disabled children and adults were murdered and 400,000 were sterilised.

 

Hans Asperger and the Third Reich 1938 - 1945

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Physician Hans Asperger is credited with identifying and naming the condition Autistic Psychopathy, (later renamed Asperger Syndrome) in 1938. He went on to publish his doctoral thesis on the diagnosis in 1944, but it wasn’t widely adopted until the 1980’s.

Psychiatrist Lorna Wing referenced his work in 1981. Developmental psychologist Uta Frith later translated Asperger’s work in her book Autism and Asperger Syndrome, published in 1991. Asperger Syndrome was officially added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, version four, in 1994.

The diagnosis has become extremely controversial in recent years, following  research by Herwig Czech, published in Molecular Autism in 2018, as well as a paper  by historian Edith Sheffer, Asperger’s Children: The origin of Autism in Nazi Vienna.

Both authors assert that Asperger was instrumental in supporting the Nazi programme of murdering disabled children, in his role as a registered psychiatrist responsible for assessing disabled children in Vienna, and deciding whether or not they should be sent to the Am Speigelgrund euthanasia centre.

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He has long been regarded as responsible for saving many disabled children from being killed, however this perception was based in the main on his own interviews. Czech’s research based on previously unseen papers from the period, suggest that he ingratiated himself with the Nazis in return for career progression during their regime. He certainly belonged to many Nazi related organisations although not the party itself. While he applied his diagnosis of autistic psychopathy to those children he regarded as intelligent enough to become contributing members of society, both Czech and Sheffer unearthed evidence that he signed documents referring children to Am Speigelgrund, suggesting that he was aware that he was sending children to be murdered.

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Both Neurotribes author Steve Silberman and Director of Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen have promoted the view that Asperger saved many children through the use of his diagnosis and should be regarded positively in that light. Latterly however, in the face of this new evidence, both have revised their opinion, acknowledging that the use of Asperger’s name in the diagnosis is controversial. Since 2013, individual diagnostic titles across the autism spectrum have been subsumed into the umbrella diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Many of those who were diagnosed before that time wish to continue using the diagnosis while others are keen to dissociate their diagnosis from him. It remains a topic of passionate debate within the autistic community on that basis.

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Autism Speaks 2005

American charity Autism Speaks caused controversy in 2014 when it partnered with Google to produce the MSSNG database of genetic samples from autistic people, with the intention of investigating the genetic basis of autism. Given that at the time their mission statement included finding a cure for autism, this led to a significant backlash.

Although they have since removed finding a cure from their stated objectives, the organisation has a history of pathologizing autism in a way that was at best, scaremongering. Founders Suzanne and Bob Wright used scare tactics when producing advertising and promotional material for the charity, likening Autism to cancer, AIDS and diabetes. Parents of autistic children were described as exhausted with little to no quality of life, compared to parents of neurotypical children.

 

The MMR and Vaccine theorists 2001

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Andrew Wakefield is an ex physician, struck off for his part in the publication of a study linking the MMR vaccine with Autism and inflammatory bowel disease. The original paper was published in The Lancet on 28 February 1998. It was finally retracted on 2 February 2010. The paper was authored by Andrew Wakefield, John Walker-Smith, and 11 others from the Royal Free Medical School in  London. Focusing on a small sample size of 12 children with developmental delays, it caused an enormous public health scare that led to a significant drop in the uptake of the MMR vaccine. According to the paper, “Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated by the parents with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children,”.

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The ensuing media coverage led to parents refusing to vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine. It led to a worldwide rise in measles and mumps, with children dying. Writing about it in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy in October 2011, Dennis K Flaherty described it as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". Journalist Brian Deer published a series of articles after a seven year investigation, debunking Wakefield’s paper. He found that Wakefield had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest. Wakefield was struck of the medical register in 2010, following a case review by the General Medical Council.

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One explanation for the widespread belief in the link between the MMR Vaccine and Autism is so-called ‘Folk Epidemiology’ surrounding Autism. This alludes to the understanding of autism and it’s causes by members of the public without medical training. Without this specialist knowledge, people are likely to take more seriously theories spread in the media and via social media.

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Because people are more likely believe theories that align with their worldview, it has been incredibly difficult to reverse the idea that autism and MMR are linked, despite significant evidence to the contrary and the thorough debunking of Wakefield’s paper.

Perhaps most troubling for the autistic community is the clear evidence that a number of parents perceive the risk of having an autistic child is worse that the risk of their child contracting measles, mumps or rubella.

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Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue

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Jenny McCarthy is an American actress and model, who latterly has been best known for her promotion of anti-vaxx theories relating to Autism, based on Wakefield’s debunked paper.

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She claimed that her young son was diagnosed autistic following his MMR vaccinations, but through determination to try everything possible, she then claimed that her son has been ‘cured’ and is no longer autistic. Among the treatments that she tried, was chelation therapy, a process used to treat poisoning by mercury, lead and arsenic compounds. It involves introducing chemicals into the body that form a bond with metal ions in the blood to create an inert substance which is then excreted from the body. With autism, the theory is that it is caused by the mercury related thiomersal component of vaccines, which is added as a preservative.

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There is no evidence that thiomersal in vaccines causes autism, and in fact, despite both the UK completely removing thiomersal in vaccines and the US removing it from all except combined flu shots, autism diagnosis rates have continued to rise.

McCarthy acted as a spokesperson for the organisation Talk About Curing Autism as well as currently being Director of Generation Rescue, an organisation promoting the view that autism is caused by vaccines.

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Generation Rescue held a number of conferences with charity Autism One, which shares it’s views and goals. These conferences were considered extremely controversial as they featured not only Andrew Wakefield as a speaker – after his paper had been debunked – but also representatives of a company selling an exceptionally dangerous compound sold as ‘Miracle Mineral Solution’. Comprising chlorine dioxide in water, this bleach compound has been promoted as a cure for autism by scientologist Jim Humble. He has also suggested that it is an effective cure for Cancer, Covid and HIV.

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In reality, it is extremely dangerous when ingested, causing irritation of the digestive track, diarrhoea, vomiting, and corrosive injuries that cause ‘rope worms’ of damaged digestive track to be passed out with stools. This has been used as ‘evidence’ that the process that causes autism is being reversed and the ‘illness’ is being passed out of the body.

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The Spectrum 10K controversy

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This was mirrored in 2021 when Cambridge University launched the Spectrum 10k research programme which aimed to collect DNA samples from 10,000 autistic people as part of a sponsored 10K run. Concerns were raised by the autistic community which resulted in a backlash based on a lack of transparency about consent issues and what the genetic samples would be used for.

 

The Spectrum 10K project was led by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, however, the co-principal investigator from UCLA, Daniel Geschwind, had affiliations with organisations Cure Autism Now and Autism Speaks. Both organisations are regarded by a significant proportion of the autistic community with suspicion and for many, as groups who wish to eradicate autism and autistic people.

 

Concerns were also raised about the involvement of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, who were partners, amid allegations of previous unethical handling of genetic material. Further concern was related to the small print, which stated that data may be shared with unspecified ‘commercial partners’; this raised ethical concerns regarding the possibility of information from genetic samples being used in unknown future research projects.

 

The stated aim of the research was to identify autistic genes and improve diagnoses, which again led to concerns about trying to eradicate autism and raised the spectre of pre-natal tests for autism, which would position autism as undesirable and open up the possibility of selective termination.

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