Looking for a book about autism?
There are a lot of good ones, including NeuroTribes and the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.
Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of bad ones too.
How to End the Epidemic of Bad Books About Autism
Why are there so many bad books about autism?
That’s easy.
Just about every anti-vaccine expert out there also thinks that they are an expert on autism. In fact, they think that they have all of the answers and can even help you cure and prevent autism.
That’s why there are books like:
- The Autism Book: What Every Parent Needs to Know About Early Detection, Treatment, Recovery, and Prevention by Dr. Bob Sears
- Preventing Autism: What You Can Do to Protect Your Children Before and After Birth by Dr. Jay Gordon
- Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism by Jenny McCarthy
- Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines – The Truth Behind a Tragedy by Andrew Wakefield
- Vaccines, Autism & Chronic Inflammation: The New Epidemic by Barbara Loe Fisher
- The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic by Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill
What do all of these books miss?
“Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child…”
Dr. Jerry Kartzinel writing in the introduction to Jenny McCarthy’s first autism book Louder Than Words
Besides the fact that there is no autism epidemic and that vaccines are not associated with autism, they miss that they are actually hurting autistic families.
“Doctors who first worked with children with regressive autism back in the early 1990s found that one of the biggest “wows” came from treating intestinal yeast overgrowth, and this benefit holds true today. Children whose diarrhea doesn’t go away with the GFCF diet usually show resolution with yeast medication.”
Bob Sears, MD on The Autism Book
From restrictive diets and antifungal drugs for yeast infections to bleach enemas and detox therapies, these books often push expensive, often unproven, sometimes disproven, and dangerous non-evidence based biomedical treatments and cures on hopeful parents of autistic kids.
Don’t help them by buying or promoting their books.
Instead, look for better books by folks who are really helping autistic kids and don’t think they are damaged, or books by someone who is actually autistic.
What to Know About the Epidemic of Bad Autism Books
There are a lot of good books out there with helpful information if you think that your child is autistic, has been recently diagnosed, or if you simply want to learn more about autism. It’s time to stop the epidemic of bad autism books.
More on the Epidemic of Bad Autism Books
- Anti-Vaxxer J.B. Handley on Vaccines & Autism
- Autistic Self Advocacy Network
- What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew
- Autism Spectrum Disorders: What Every Parent Needs to Know
- No, Dr. “Bob” Sears, you don’t represent the autistic children of California
- What? Removing thimerosal from vaccines caused the autism epidemic?
- Where Are All The Older Autistic People? Scotland, For Example
- Here’s How the Anti-Vaccination Movement Hurts Autistic People
- Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism, But That’s Not The Point. Stop Being Ableist.
- I’m Autistic, And Believe Me, It’s A Lot Better Than Measles
- Truth and Consequences – The Anti-Vaccination Movement Exacts a Price
- Busting Anti-Vaccine Myths While Supporting Autistic People
- Vaccine Advocates: Don’t Discriminate Against My Autistic Son
- “Autism biomed” and the murder of Alex Spourdalakis
- Repost: Autism, Vaccines, and Community: Steve Silberman Talks with Seth Mnookin circa 2011
- What Can Physicians Learn from the Neurodiversity Movement?
- Untwisting Perceptions: Autism, Parenting, and Victimhood
- Vaccines and Autism
- The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google
- Before I Stopped Believing Vaccines Caused My Son’s Autism
- Jenny McCarthy: Autism Moms “Fall in the the victim role…and they are loving it”
- Editorial: Anti-vaccination hurts everyone
- How anti-vaccine movement sounds to autistic community
- How My Daughter Taught Me that Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism
- Public Health Takes on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda: Damage done, Challenges Ahead
- Twisted Anti-Vaxxer Parents Choose Fatal Diseases Over Autism
- What the hell’s wrong with us? Autism, vaccines and why some people believe Jenny McCarthy over every doctor
Gordon’s book is so bad that he forgot to list references in the back of his book for 2 of the chapters.
I read Callous Disregard. That was painful. Andy’s attempts at prose were painful to read, just so bad. I also have The environmental causes of autism, by Lyons-Weiler. He sent it to me for free. I could send it to you, if you want!
What has caused the conspicuous increase in cases of autism from 1 in 200 in the 80’s to 1 in 36 today? Isn’t it worth discussing? Are we allowed to talk about this? It sounds like an epidemic to me.
Only in 1943 that “autism” was used as a diagnostic term. Before that, most of those who would fall on the spectrum were diagnosed as something else, or didn’t even get diagnosed, and for a long time Asperger’s wasn’t seen as autism. Girls often are underdiagnosed, and there is a myth that it’s more common in boys while it’s not true.
There is still a lot that we don’t know about it, but it’s not a disease, and it can’t be an epidemic, because “epidemic” means the rapid spread of an infectious disease, and it’s not infectious either.