Thread by @mykola

Hey new journalist followers, do you know about the ABA “debate” regarding Autistic kids?

Do you want to blow the lid off a story of deception, manipulation, exploitation and the $4B driving it?

Because I have a story for you that will make you famous and make you enemies.

The short version is, there is a four billion dollar growth industry called Applied Behavioral Analysis.

This practice was based on work by Ivar Lovaas, who also invented gay conversion therapy.

The premise is that you can make an autistic child seem more normal through abuse.

I wish I was kidding.

This is the ONLY therapy covered by insurance in America for autistic people.

When I was diagnosed as an adult I asked my insurance company for help and they sent me a list of ABA providers.

ABA is purely behavioral: they work with the parent to identify behaviors they want to “extinguish” (say, flapping hands) and behaviors they want to encourage (say, saying hello when someone comes in).

There is ZERO regard for why the kid uses the behaviors.

Countless autistic people who have gone through ABA have testified that it harmed them severely. Research has shown that ABA leads to PTSD in Autistic people.

So why is ABA still the “gold standard” of autism “support”?

Because to this day most people think that “supporting autistic people” means “making autistic people indistinguishable from normal people”.

And that’s the service that ABA is happy to provide. How does it work?

Through operant conditioning. Yes, you read that right.

ABA works by taking away a child’s ability to make informed choices or provide/retract consent.

It says “we don’t care why you are flapping, we don’t care that you are saying no, we don’t care that you are terrified. You. Will. Comply.”

Because they *only* care about behavior.

How do they make kids comply?

Well, Lovaas has a famous quote about beating an autistic girl so badly that she “believed he would kill her”, and THAT got results. She started behaving.

Go figure, right?

“But modern ABA is different!” the ABA practitioners will insist. “Most of us don’t use aversives anymore!”

But do you see how this misses the point?

Achieving with praise and emotional manipulation what Lovaas achieved with violence still isn’t helping anyone.

The GOALS of this industry are to change autistic behavior through conditioning, full stop.

Autistic kids as young as 2 are subjected to as many as 40 hours a week of ABA training.

40 hours a week of learning their “no” doesn’t matter.

Of COURSE they get PTSD!!

So why is this allowed?

Well, it’s a great way for neurotypical people to make money. You see, you don’t need much training to open your own ABA franchise and start torturing autistic kids for profit.

Again, I wish I was kidding.

So, journalists, any takers? I can hook you up with interviews, personal testimonies, research and extensive writing about this subject.

I can introduce you to people far more qualified to talk about it than I am.

Will any of you take this gauntlet up?

This is why I’m loud, and this is why I’m thankful to everyone else amplifying me.

Because the media is telling the wrong stories and it’s killing us.

(I mean that literally - we tend to die under 60 from heart attacks and suicide. Look it up!)

And now, because I believe in letting the people I object to represent themselves, I'm going to do something a bit dangerous.

I'm going to invite #ABA practitioners (who have the #BCBA designation) to respond to this thread and tell us how you justify what you do for a living.

Whoops, broke the thread. Thread continues here:

https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1473077885510500354