Autism conspiracy theories show the lengths parents will go to "cure" their kids

Like many autistic people, I do not handle background noise well. My senses and brain can not separate it from any other sounds. It's often just as loud, if not louder than, what I'm trying to listen to. And the effort is getting frustrated and drained.

I've been having a lot of trouble lately, this is a lot of information about this terrible combination of anti-science or pseudoscience and autism panic. Whenever I'm looking at a measles outbreak, or a headline like "Fake science led to a mom to feed bleach to her autistic sounds – and police did nothing to stop her," I get that same overwhelmed and panicked feeling – and I'm just as incapable of tuning it out.

While there are many reasons parents choose not to vaccinate their children, the American anti-vax movement is fueled in part by privileged white people who have bought into conspiracy theories about the risks of vaccines, one of the most pervasive of which vaccines cause autism. Meanwhile, we are currently experiencing a measles outbreak – 971 reported cases as of May 30, to be exact – that is the worst in the world. It's a worldwide trend, too, prompting the World Health Organization to declare vaccine resistance a top 10 health threat this year.

Then there's another type of story I keep seeing: the vast underground phenomenon of parents using everything from urine to urine in an effort to "cure" their children's autism. NBC News recently published an article on the dangerous and all-too-common practice of orally and badly administering bleach-based treatments to autistic children. In March, a UK ad watchdog organization ordered 150 homeopaths to stop claiming that they could cure the maximum recommended vitamin C dose. Amazon recently stopped selling books that promote an autism treatment or cure.

None of this news comes as a surprise to me. I have been aware of autism-related vaccine as long as I have been officially aware that I am autistic.

Anti-vax myths start and spread online

Many of these myths have flourished during the social media age. Emma Dalmayne, an autistic advocate with autistic children, revealed online groups dedicated to fake autism cures in 2014 and has been working to expose them ever since. These groups have operated under the radar for years, so it's hard to track their origin or how they've spread. But the treatment that most of them push – a sodium chlorite formula known as "Miracle Mineral Solution" that produces chlorine dioxide when used as instructed – can be traced back to The Miracle Mineral Solution of the 21st Century, a book self-published by Jim Humble Scientologist in 2006.

Humble and his followers have been pushing MMS as a cure for everything from HIV to the common cold. Now a subset of desperate parents who have convinced themselves that autism is caused by toxins or parasites they believe they can cleanse their autistic children by giving them MMS enemas, forcing the solution down their throats, or putting it into their baby bottles.

This news is not all say. The anti-vax situation has become dishearteningly worse since I first wrote about the movement. But so has the public's awareness of anti-vax narratives and fake autism cures.

Still, all of this adds up to the constant buzzing reminder that people continue to be ignorant and fearful about autism. It's hurtful on a personal level. To be constantly reminded that a chunk of the world would rather risk public health crises gold funnel bleach into their terrified child's orifices than have or love anyone like you can not help but weigh a person down. But what really bothers me is that innocent people are being overweighted and abused. The autism that terrifies these parents and guardians are as divorced from the realities of autistic life.

Autism is not some monstrous fate

When it is not being caricatured in shows The Good Doctor and Tea Big Bang Theoryis a horrible way to live. We cost too much to raise. We destroy marriages, even though the statistics around our home-wrecking powers were made up. A 2009 commercial for Autism Speaks directed by Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón asked that autism makes it "almost impossible for your family to go to a temple, birthday party, or public park without a struggle, without embarrbadment, without bread." That particular ad has since being pulled, but the sentiment remains.

If I did not have a lifetime of experience with autism, I might be scared by these constant messages of doom too. How can we expect people to react to the possibility of loving and caring for an autistic person? Our society is not going to make any meaningful progress against the vax or snake oil cure movements unless we change the way we talk about autism.

I'm not saying we should give it a shiny PR campaign. Autistic people can face significant challenges as a result of both our neurology and lack of understanding and acceptance. We – and our care partners, for those who need them – are desperate for better and more effective Even the most privileged among us faces suicide rate higher than the general population.

Just because it's worse than a death sentence, though. We have bad days, but we are good ones and neutral ones too. We are human beings, and our lives have value. We do not need to prevent or eradicate at all costs; we need better services and better public education than what we have now.

We are people, with all of the complexity of the entails, not a looming boogeyman. Treating us as such could be a more powerful weapon against anti-science conspiracy theories than any statistic.

Sarah Kurchak is an autistic writer from Toronto. Her first book, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, comes out in April 2020.

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