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Eric Michael Garcia @EricMGarcia
, 28 tweets, 14 min read Read on Twitter
Ok, so I have been trying to think of a tactful way to address Darla Shine's deeply misleading tweets about African Americans and autism and why they are harmful for autistic people of color but @ewerickson gives me a good inroad so
*Cracks knuckles* buckle up 1/
For background, @calebecarma and @yashar both reported Darla Shine, the wife of new WH comms director Bill Shine, tweeted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories 2/ mediaite.com/online/bill-sh…
huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-shi…
Bear with me because I am writing a book about autism and have been working on my chapter on autism and race so my jimmies are rustled on this, Particularly, @calebecarma reported a tweet by Darla where she said "1 in 10 Boys has autism." 3/
mediaite.com/online/bill-sh…
this goes to a canard among anti-vaxxers, that plays to fears between African Americans and medicine. In 2014, Brian Hooker published a study saying black infant boys who got the MMR vaccine "are more likely to receive an autism diagnosis." 4/
abcnews.go.com/Health/now-ret…
But The CDC said the study was "most likely a result of immunization requirements for preschool special education program attendance in children with autism." Hooker was said to have "manipulated the media in a very savvy and sophisticated way". 5/ sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/f…
The danger with this is it plays on (very legitimate) fears African Americans have of the medical community as the result of the Tuskegee experiment. Per @fivefifths, a study showed it "reduced life expectancy among black men over 45 by over a year" 6/ theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Oh and side note I forgot to add, Hooker's study in Translational Neurodegeneration was retracted. But I digress. 7/
abcnews.go.com/Health/now-ret…
Now here's where it gets weird, scary and dangerous. Per this great @jezebel piece by @annamerlan, the Nation of Islam has taken up the anti-vaccination cause, specifically saying "We’re going to say, ‘Not another Tuskegee on our watch" 8/ jezebel.com/the-anti-vacci…
Again referring to @annamerlan, the Nation of Islam teamed up with noted anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to prevent a personal belief clause from being stricken from California's laws on vaccines. Their attempts failed. 9/
jezebel.com/the-anti-vacci…
oh and @annamerlan also traveled on a conspiracy cruise with Andrew Wakefield who said 80 percent of American boys will be autistic in 15 years, which is similar to Shine's claim found by @yashar that half of all boys will be autistic in 2050. 10/
jezebel.com/sail-far-away-…
Of course by now, Wakefield is rightfully seen as a quack who lost his medical license by 2010 . But here's why this is very dangerous for autistic black people. So sit tight. 11/
One of the reasons why the allegation more black boys are autistic if they are vaccinated is so absurd is that study after study shows that in fact, black kids are much more likely to not get an autism diagnosis. 12/
In 2007, @dsmandell and others found undiagnosed autistic black kids "were 5.1 times more likely than white children to receive a diagnosis of adjustment disorder than of ADHD, and 2.4 times more likely to receive a diagnosis of conduct disorder..." 12/
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
So if we are to believe Darla Shine's numbers that 1 in 10 black boys are autistic, that would mean a full 10 percent of black boys are autistic, which is more than 1 in 59 children that the CDC announced earlier this year. 13/
cnn.com/2018/04/26/hea…
The ultimate kick in the gut for anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists? In the most recent CDC survey, the reason for the uptick was the racial gap in autism diagnosis was "were smaller when compared with estimates from previous years" 14/
cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/6…
Oh I missed this from @dsmandell's study, "Boys were 8.9 times more likely than girls to receive a diagnosis of adjustment disorder compared with ADHD and 3.5 times more likely to receive a diagnosis of conduct disorder compared with ADHD" 15/
Another reason why this whole thing is dangerous is because there is already huge (or should I say Yuge) stigma and misunderstanding about autism in communities of color that is detrimental. 16/
A 2012 study from then-FSU Professor Martell Teasley said African American families are more resistant to an autism diagnosis. 17/
socialworktoday.com/news/dn_022712…
Teasley also said black people are used to dealing with doctors with racial biases "so they may not readily accept what a doctor says" 18/
socialworktoday.com/news/dn_022712…
So one may think this is innocuous or as @ewerickson might say, it's part of a smear campaign and why does this matter? Well it matters because a lot of the same people whom Darla Shine cited have latched onto Trump world. 19/
Realizing I didn't properly threat these tweets so including this following tweet here so you can continue following here 12a/
Anyway, back to work. Of course, before running for President and during the campaign, Trump espoused anti-vaccine conspiracies. During the summer of 2016, Trump met with Andrew Wakefield, the discredited doctor and Wakefield went to an inaugural ball 20/
statnews.com/2016/11/30/don…
After Trump won and before the inauguration, Trump allegedly promised the aforementioned Robert Kennedy Jr. he would chair a vaccine safety commission. h/t @BySheilaKaplan and my former colleague @dylanlscott 21/ statnews.com/2017/01/10/tru…
Of course, Trump being Trump, he hasn't really followed through on it and Kennedy has expressed some disappointment. As @jpitney says, Trump did to anti-vaxxers what he did to many of his supporters and contractors. 22/
theguardian.com/us-news/2018/f…
Trump has expressed some shift in his views about autism His CDC Director Scott Gottlieb seems to support vaccination and sees them as a net plus. But coming into the administration, Bill Shine's own views about vaccines should come into question 23/
Anyway, TL;DR: anti-vaxxers have tried using the black community's mistrust of the medical community to make them skeptical of vaccines. and it is totally fair game for a WH Comms director to be asked about it 24/
Oh and one stray thought: here are some people you SHOULD follow who know a lot about autism and race. @BeingKaylaSmith @autistichoya, @MorenikeGO, @timgordonjr, @dsmandell and @stevesilberman. I'm going to bed. Good night.
Oh and if you want a comprehensive podcast that deals with the intersection of race and autism, check out @audreyqq’s #aftereffect podcast on @WNYC
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Misunderstanding of the Day. A thread.
"People with autism don’t understand standard rules and conventions therefore if they have to wait for an appointment they can shout and get agitated". I found that extraordinary sentence on a London Council page, talking about #autism /ctd
Firstly, autistic people are amongst the best of the best at understanding rules and conventions, so that is simply wrong. But, let's look at the reasons why autistic people might become distressed if kept waiting in NHS settings. Here we go... /ctd
Here's a photo. On the left, how you might see a medical room. On the right, how my brain processes it, under intense flickering fluorescent lighting, surrounded by deafening machinery noise and overwhelmed by the stench of medical chemicals. It is blinding, painful. /ctd
Read 16 tweets
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Dear world. It’s time to correct some assumptions about #autism. I am #actuallyautistic and fortunate enough to be professionally diagnosed. I would appreciate your taking the time to read this thread so you can learn about autism from a person with autism.
One of the biggest assumptions people make is that autism involves intellectual disability. This is incorrect. Autism often shows up in combination with a variety of other disorders and ID is one of them but the vast majority of people with autism do not have ID.
The official statistic most often quoted is between 31% (according to Autism Speaks) and 38% (according to the CDC) of autistic children have a diagnosis of intellectual disability. Note that this is a SEPARATE diagnosis. It is not inherent to autism.
Read 56 tweets
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Ok, a friend of mine just got a novel rejection saying that their #ownvoices autistic protagonist wasn't "autistic enough."

The editor's basis for saying this was that they, the editor, had been watching the show "Atypical."

Buckle up: I am going to talk about this AT LENGTH.
In this thread, if you are NT, I am going to explain several reasons why you SHOULD NOT EVER judge if a character is "autistic enough" by how well they match autistic characters on TV. Any TV.

Then when I am done with that I will suggest some things you can do instead.
Why should you not judge autistic characters by what you see on TV? There are several reasons.

There are several types of autistic representation on TV, from good to horrible. None of them should be used as a litmus test for another character's autisticness.
Read 25 tweets
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Getting ready to listen to Bryna Siegel on @KQEDForum, re: autism & the new prevalence rate.

Fun fact: I had lunch with Dr. Siegel & two autistic friends a few years ago. She talked about some of her theories for her new book. They both told her she was wrong. She ignored them.
@KQEDForum So even though Dr. Siegel has had “more than 40 years of clinical experience” with autism, if she ignores autistic insights, her opinion on autism is flawed.
@KQEDForum “Diagnosing for dollars” is absurd. We know from research that, if anything, #autism is under diagnosed, especially in girls, people of color, kids from low SES scenarios. Yes, there is always a small % of diagnostic error, but that is a dangerous misdirection.
Read 21 tweets
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Dear @NevilleSouthall,

Hi! You're a great human. I respect all you do. But you're letting a non-autistic person speak for #autistic people, and I - we - need to talk to you about why that isn't okay.

(A thread - that I am happy for others to post on.) #ActuallyAutistic
#ActuallyAutistic people, like myself and many others, are spoken for - a lot. We often find ourselves without the ability to speak freely.

Not because of our own difficulties, but because we are spoken over. And ignored.

This can be small-scale, like at home...
...or large scale. Like providing a platform for people who aren't autistic to talk about autism.

I'm also bisexual. You wouldn't invite a straight person to talk about LGBT+ stuff, would you?
Read 16 tweets
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If there is an autistic person in your midst this Christmas, please bear in mind the following pieces of advice to help them and you enjoy the season, from one of them 1/?

THREAD...
First of all, Christmas is a potential nightmare for autistic folk. The lights, noise, Slade, too many people squeezed into a front room, drunk people - it's a recipe for utter misery for some autistic people, children and adults. 2/?
They will need, first and foremost, and escape route from any busy locations, especially places they've never been before. But it's not enough to have a way out ready - people have to not make a big thing about them disappearing for a while! 3/?
Read 20 tweets

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