article_snippet.sent: I employed the term during an impromptu speech as I struggled to find an expression to convey the catastrophic tragedy of autism, which has now destroyed the lives of over 20 million children and shattered 20 million children families.
article_snippet.sent: First and foremost, vaccines do not cause autism.
article_snippet.sent: Second, he seems to think people with autism are "gone," people with autism lives "destroyed" and people with autism families "shattered.
article_snippet.sent: Autism is not a death sentence.
article_snippet.sent: People with autism are not missing or destroyed.
article_snippet.sent: People with autism are everywhere, trying to live People with autism lives in a society that too often demeans People with autism as subhuman, missing or worthless.
article_snippet.sent: People who believe autism is an environmental disease try to cure kids with quack treatments like giving kids bleach-based enemas.
article_snippet.sent: Others, believing autism functions as a death sentence, even kill Others children.
article_snippet.sent: I am worried about the effect of having such a powerful, high-profile member of our political class endorse this demeaning depiction of life with autism.
article_snippet.sent: I reached out to a number of autistic activists for comment.
article_snippet.sent: Henry Frost, an autistic teenager and writer, is devastated by this focus on burden.
article_snippet.sent: Meanwhile, Amy Sequenzia, an autistic activist and blogger, wrote, "I am very disabled, have most of the usual not autism but co-occurring conditions, seizures almost every day, but am happy, proud and accomplished, with the human supports I have.
article_snippet.sent: The solution lies in understanding autism and related conditions as part of human diversity.
article_snippet.sent: Michael S. Monje Jr., an autistic writer and editor with Autonomous Press, wrote, "The neurodiversity movement is a direct counter to this kind of attitude.
article_snippet.sent: It is a way for autistic people, as well as anyone else who experiences the world differently due to Michael S. Monje Jr., an autistic writer and editor with Autonomous Press neurology, to assert that these natural divergences in human development are just that -- natural.
article_snippet.sent: We fight those beliefs by celebrating neurodiversity, not by fearmongering.