Saturday, March 01, 2008

NY Times Falls for Hoax, Amanda Baggs

Amanda Baggs has found another victim to help her spread misinformation about autism. I wrote to the author of this nonsense, Tara Parker-Pope but she has not replied. I also commented on the NY Times site but they did not decide to publish the truth, that Amanda Baggs is not, and has never been autistic.

At the end of this piece, the Times links to an article they published in 2004 about not curing autism. This bit of misdirection says nothing at all about autism but discusses a kid with Asperger's. It's impossible to tell if the author is simply ignorant since she won't reply to my information letting her know that she was conned or if she is an active participant in the sham being perpetrated by Neuroinsanity.com.

To fully understand Amanda Baggs' fraud, one also has to understand the fraud coming from Neuroinsanity. Neuroinsanity exists for the sole purpose of bashing anyone who has anything to do with curing autism. The preferred method of attack by this band of psychopaths is character assassination. Neuroinsanity links back and forth to Quackbusters which is a Pharma financed group that exists to try to discredit all forms of alternative medicine.

In the case of curing autism, Neuroinsanity and Quackbusters would have us believe that chelation to remove mercury from poisoned children is some form of quackery practiced by witch doctors. The fact of the matter is that chelation has been used since the 1940's and is standard practice in mainstream medicine for cases of mercury poisoning. What Neuroinsanity and Quackbusters are really up to is an attempt to prevent people from curing autistic children because those cured children are evidence against Pharma for poisoning babies into autism with thimerosal in vaccines.

If this bunch of sadists can use Amanda Baggs to spread their deranged message, they can influence parents to forego treatments that will help their children. They can make naive people think that there is actually something good about having autism. They can also influence the general public through the NY Times and CNN into believing that autism is no big deal, that people like Amanda Baggs, who acts like a low functioning autistic person can get along in life with a minimum of support.

The truth of the matter is that children who act like Amanda Baggs will never improve without intense medical intervention. They will remain unable to communicate for the rest of their lives, will never be able to care for themselves and will require 24 hour a day care in an institution once they become too large for their parents to handle. By confusing the distinction between Asperger's and autism, Neuroinsanity and Amanda Baggs can deflect blame from the Pharmaceutical industry. They have a willing cult of adults with Asperger's who also spread this message that they do not want to be cured. The fact of that matter is that many of these cult members diagnosed themselves with Asperger's yet, they advertise themselves as autistic.

Ask yourself if you'd label yourself as a severely disabled person who can't even wipe your butt versus a college educated professional if you were applying for a job. That's what these adults, who claim to have Asperger's do when they refer to themselves as autistic. It just does not make sense. One would think they'd want to make sure they marked themselves with a wide distinction from the horrible nightmare that autism is. Who would ever consider hiring an autistic person for any job when they would have to have at least two other employees to care for them and, of course, the autistic person could never accomplish one single task in any form of employment?

That's what autism is, a condition in which no person will ever accomplish anything and will never be able to communicate anything but the most basic of needs, if that. With rare exceptions, it would be absolutely impossible to teach an autistic child to type coherent thoughts without treating the cause of the condition so their brain could function at something approaching normalcy.

The only reason Amanda Baggs can type coherent thoughts at 120 words per minute and make her own Youtube videos is beacuse she is a phoney. Amanda Baggs entered Simon's Rock College at age 13. She left her home in California, unaccompanied, and travelled to Massachusetts where she lived in a dormitory and took care of herself. While attending college, she used magic mushrooms and lots of LSD. She soon found herself out of college and in an asylum after threatening suicide. Later, in her delusional state which was diagnosed as schizophrenia, she decided she was an elf. Then, at age 19 or 20, she managed to find a doctor who gave her an autism diagnosis.

She became friends with a lesbian in Vermont and moved across the country again to live in her own apartment. At some point, she became involved with Neuroinsanity. The owner of that site visits her and has driven her places from her home in New Hampshire. When I discuss Amanda Baggs on certain forums, the husband of Neuroinsanity's owner shows up to try to defend Baggs. Of course, his only defense of her involves trying to assassinate my character, a trick I'm sure he learned from his wife. Baggs has also had a lawyer following discussions about her. This lawyer makes legal sounding threats, has comments about Baggs deleted and even went so far as to try to hold another autistic woman responsible for anonymous comments made on this blog that were uncomplimentary towards Baggs.

Tara Parker-Pope needs to meet a real autistic person some day. I'd love her to spend a day with my son so she could appreciate the full horror that autism is. Perhaps then, she could stop being conned by the likes of Amanda Baggs and write a piece that describes the nightmare that our Vaccine industry has perpetrated by negligently poisoning our babies.

This whole circus of Baggs, Neuroinsanity and lawyers is a disgrace. These people belong in prison for the scam they have engineered to obfuscate the truth about autism.

15 comments:

jonathan said...

you forgot to mention the wired piece about amanda, John.

Cindy said...

Interesting.

Thank you for sharing this

Anonymous said...

I have a question-How can anybody read this info on Amanda Baggs and still defend her and say that she has autism?? Do the people who take up for this drug damamged person (who has come up with this con to live off of taxpayers money)have anyone close to them who has autism?? Anyone who does ought to be able to see that she's a fake and she's taking away state money that could be helping a real person with autism??

Angie

John Best said...

Angie,
Amanda is the spokesmodel for Neuroinsanity. As such, her role is to raise doubt in the minds of parents as to whether or not they are doing the right thing by trying to cure their autistic children.

Pharma and right wing newspapers like the New York Times are happy to accommodate this scam since it is good for the stock prices of the vaccine manufacturers if no autistic children are cured.

While Neuroinsanity claims to be about gaining acceptance, services and respect for autistic people, that is just a front for its' true purpose of making parents think that some sane people would actually oppose curing autism.

Neuroinsanity is like agents who are sent undercover to disrupt an organization by causing conflict from within. Any intelligent person who studies their actions realizes this.

Anonymous said...

Message, as left on the New York Times commentary (which is moderated so don't hold your breath for it to actually appear there, but they sure won't have any excuse to say they don't know):

IS this a conspiracy or are there just a bunch of royal idiots running the media these days, or both?

Amanda Baggs is a fraud, albeit a carefully constructed and well planned scam which has been years in the development but quite the scam none the less who is willfully intentionally faking and feigning autism, ask anyone who knew her prior to her 20's (particularly ask somone who doesn't have something to gain or benefit from this charade) ask anyone she attended that gifted teens college and dropped acid with her, ask them about her complete state of normalcy prior to taking drugs, ask them about her silly purple hair, schizophrenia and thinking she's an elf and a god.

A simple google search on Baggs reveals all the names (and the many disabilities/diagnoses she traveled through, including 'dissociative disorder' and perhaps most accurately so 'factitiious disorder' on her way before landing and settling on autism makes it quite evident.

People, look up these user names on http://groups.google.com/

They're all Amanda Baggs over the years, in all her various disability-feigning attention-seeking glory:

roguealleycat
Galiganinda Dulin
nightsng
Amanda

If somehow all that fails to convey the undeniable truth,

This is a video by an autistic woman (a real one), the one Amanda Baggs, with the help of her cohorts, has been shamelessly using as the basis for her 'severely autistic' personna

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emPvLtOEs4Y

Funny how none of you media morons have picked on on any of this.

Anonymous said...

Amanda Baggs is simply the flavour of the day. When the media is bored with her they will turn on her like the pack of wild dogs they are.

Anonymous said...

I think I saw that pack of wild dogs that you are speaking of. While lurking on a rather large autism message board today, it seemed to me that the pack of dogs were there surrounding unexpecting people and trying to tear them apart...LOL

Anonymous said...

i was reading this whole thing and i went to google groups to see for myself. apparently she didn't even have a diagnosis of autism anything even in 1998, so how is she saying on getting truth out there site that she did at six? or is that someone else's story? because they don't make sense on there unless it is like 5 different stories, just her pictures. anyway....

"I really want to correspond with people here but I am afraid because I
don't have the diagnosis of autism or Asperger's and because I do have a
diagnosis (schizophrenia) that is supposed to be incompatible with
anything of that nature. My doctor says it is perfectly logical that I
could have something on the autistic spectrum and another diagnosis
because the two don't have to do with the same parts of the brain, but I
have never met anyone else like this. I do know that the sensory
problems were from day one and the other ones came later (the 6th/7th
grade thing I talked about above). They suspected something like pdd-nos
at one point...I don't want to sound like I am justifying myself by
symptoms or something; more that I am nervous about posting when I am not
sure how people will take it. "

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.autism/msg/b8f56531a66ef7e6?dmode=source

maybe somewhere she explains this? she also says another place she doesn't have schizophrenia, but everything i read says that's for life, biology, etc.

John Best said...

Anon,
Your diagnosis aside for the moment, you didn't forget how to speak or use a toilet and start flapping your hands like Amanda in your twenties, did you?

Being misdiagnosed as schizophrenic doesn't surprise me. You could find out if you are affected by mercury with a hair test and, if so, you might gain improvement in your symptoms by getting that mercury out of your head.

Anonymous said...

You might be interested to hear that Amanda has surfaced again on the ASpar blog. www.aspar.wordpress.com. ASpar is a group for now adult children who were "raised", if you could call it that, by autistic parents, and suffered greatly at their hands. The good folks at ASpar have slapped her down good. (Look under the tabs, "Controversies" and "Responses to our Critics".) Interestingly, ASpar was started by Judy Singer who was one of the key activists who started the AS movement with her academic articles, but she got disillusioned with the movement's infantilism and their attempts to suppress the truth about the awful lives of people raised by Aspies and Auties.

Anonymous said...

There is nothing to indicate that the Amanda on Aspar is Baggs, aside of course from the fact that she is a liar who would probably lir about anything. On Aspar the person called herself Amanda and claimed to be an autistic parent.

Autistics should not have children, they should not inflict their disability on innocent children. They have no natural parenting abilities, no protective instincts, and should all be steralized.

Anonymous said...

foresam- i guess my post was unclear. i do not have schizophrenia or any other illness. that quote is from amanda herself on internet groups. if you follow the link you will see.

i am just wondering how she could have schizophrenia but now not and not have autism then, but now suddenly does. it is not making sense to me.

Anonymous said...

Nice try
http://aspar.wordpress.com/controversy/

"to protect the privacy of the narrators and their families. Readers can be assume that professions and names are always altered."

Anonymous said...

"Autistics should not have children, they should not inflict their disability on innocent children. They have no natural parenting abilities, no protective instincts, and should all be steralized"

You've somehow managed to make a good point here- that autism is certainly genetic.
As for the rest of your ugly and distorted perceptions, it's most unfortunate that your own parents weren't sterilized so that no one had to put up with your complete ignorance, along with your bad spelling.

Aspie Perspective said...

I, as an Asperger's person, have always craved attention. A lot of Asperger's people are probably the same. They want to seem interesting to compensate for lack of personality. You know that aspies have been considered losers and social failures and self-involved individuals and saying "I have autism" is one of the ways they get the attention focused on them. Aspies are just sad about being losers. And they become over-excitable and have obsessive interests. They make this an obsessive interest. "I am autistic and I don't want to be cured! I am special and different!" Really, aspies are pathetic and that's why everyone hates them. But saying "autism" conjures up thoughts of savants and such and people think they are so fascinating.