Abuse and Behaviorism

Disability rights groups such as TASH and NDRN have been seeking to bring more attention to the serious problem of restraints, seclusion, and other abuse of students with disabilities in America's schools. Among other approaches to dealing with this problem, they have suggested implementing positive approaches to discipline in schools and school districts. They have cited Positive Behavioral Supports (PBS) as an example of such an approach.

These disability organizations are not advocating the use of PBS as a treatment for autism. Rather, they are suggesting that school-wide and district-wide programs, which are called PBIS (this stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports) and are intended to apply equally to all students, can improve the overall disciplinary environment and thereby help to prevent abuse and bullying of students with disabilities.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has been considering whether, and to what extent, it should support anti-abuse initiatives that promote the use of PBIS programs. Because the behavioral assessment methods used in PBS/PBIS have their roots in ABA, which has a long and sordid history of shoddy research and unethical practices when used as a treatment for autism (as thoroughly documented by Michelle Dawson on her website and blog), some members of the autistic community have questioned whether ASAN should support such initiatives.

The disability organizations that favor the use of PBIS are not relying on the ABA/autism research literature to support their position, however, but on data showing reduced disciplinary incidents among the entire student body in schools and districts that have adopted PBIS programs. Whether or not ABA should be used as a treatment for autism is irrelevant to an analysis of the use of PBIS for general disciplinary purposes. Moreover, many school districts do not even employ psychologists to run these programs, but instead arrange for district personnel to receive training from PBIS consultants. A school district that has a PBIS discipline program is using that program for purposes unrelated to autism and, in most cases, is not employing anyone who has ever used ABA as a treatment for autism.

Of course, in evaluating the effects of PBIS programs on students with disabilities, there are other factors that should be considered in addition to disciplinary incident data. It would be helpful to interview autistic students and their families regarding their experiences with such programs, taking into account a broad variety of quality of life issues. Also, as Ed discussed in a recent post, behavioral programs in the schools should "be critically scrutinized in order to see that their direction is productive and encourages more creativity rather than fewer freedoms."

Poof! The Vaccine Lawsuit

My graveyard now has a new resident—the vaccine lawsuit, along with the profiteering quacks who spawned it:





For the occasion, I've composed a new version of "Puff, the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul & Mary. Enjoy.


[Chorus:]
Poof! The vaccine lawsuit
Lacked all sanity
Deluded schemers dreamed of loot
In the land of fantasy.

Without a shred of science
The rascals spewed out guff
Tied up with strings and sealing wax
And other fancy stuff.

[Chorus]

Together they would travel
In search of easy marks
To conferences and parent groups
Just like so many sharks.

Autism societies
Would bow to their brash claims
Publishers would print their trash
When the editors saw their names.

[Chorus]

Some urban legends live forever
But not so greedy quacks
Whose marketing plan was nothing but
Junk science and nasty attacks.

One fine day it happened
The court knew that they lied
And Poof! The vaccine lawsuit
Shriveled up and died.

With no more easy targets
To cheat and abuse
The quacks no longer could invent
False epidemic news.

Now known for what they were
Their lies could not shock
So all those slimy quacks just
Crawled back under their rock.

[Chorus]

Autistic Monster Ad Yanked

After two and a half weeks of bluster and increasingly frantic and contradictory excuses for its disgusting "Dan's Story" advertisement depicting an autistic boy as a monster, Action for Children has finally (well, sort of) pulled its head out of its hindquarters and faced up to the reality that an ad campaign defaming autistic people wasn't a plus for its public image. The television ad has been withdrawn in response to the firestorm of protest from the British and international autistic community.

As Mike Stanton observes, however, Action for Children still won't admit the obvious fact that this ignorant ad campaign was a colossal blunder. The charity is now trying to save face by pretending that yesterday was the ad's scheduled ending date, despite previous statements that it would run longer.

By way of comparison, the protest against NYU's Ransom Notes ads in December 2007 was met with similar denials and excuses before the ads were taken down two weeks into their run. But at least NYU issued a statement acknowledging that the ads were being withdrawn in response to the concerns of the community. Action for Children hasn't even bothered with the pretense of caring what our community thinks.

Many thanks to all the bloggers and activists who relentlessly pressed to end this ad campaign, including Socrates, Sharon, Mike Stanton, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Dora Raymaker, Bev, and many others. Great work, everyone!


Edit, February 10: A British marketing magazine has published an article on the controversy. Let's hope that ad agencies will learn the right lessons from this debacle and will know better than to create stereotyped and insulting portrayals of autism in the future.

Employers, Think Before You Discriminate

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled last week in an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) case, Eshelman v. Agere Systems, that an employee was illegally terminated based on her employer's perception that she was substantially limited in the major life activities of working and thinking. The employee did not claim that she was actually disabled within the meaning of the ADA but contended that her termination was based on the employer’s belief that she was disabled or, alternatively, on her record of impairment.

The employee had undergone chemotherapy for breast cancer, which left her with short-term memory loss. She became disoriented at times while driving. After returning to work, she coped successfully with these problems by carrying a notebook, taking frequent notes, and riding with coworkers instead of driving. She received the highest possible performance rating on her appraisals for the two years following her return to work. She was promoted to a higher managerial position and earned raises and bonuses.

During a reduction in force, the facility where she worked was shut down. Supervisors planned to transfer her to another facility, based on her excellent performance history. However, when she mentioned her difficulty with driving and discussed the possibility of telecommuting, her performance rating was changed to one of the lowest scores and she was terminated. She was not given any opportunity to challenge this decision.

At trial, a supervisor testified that the change in the employee's performance rating was based in part on the employer’s perception that she would be unable to travel because of the residual effects of her chemotherapy and that she lacked the ability to perform the job. The jury found the employer liable for disability discrimination under the ADA. The Court of Appeals ruled that the evidence was sufficient to allow the jury to conclude that the employer had terminated the employee based on its perception that she was substantially limited in a major life activity.

The Court of Appeals noted that driving is not classified as a major life activity, which means that employees are not protected under the ADA from discrimination based on lack of driving ability. However, the jury reasonably could have inferred that the employer's concerns extended more generally to a belief that the employee was substantially limited in working and thinking, which are major life activities. Alternatively, the jury reasonably could have concluded that the decision to terminate the employee was based on her past history of having had such impairments. The Court of Appeals specifically stated that because the claim was based on the employer's perception of the employee's abilities, it was irrelevant whether the employee actually was disabled under the ADA.

There hasn't been much case law on the issue of thinking as a basis for a disability discrimination claim. However, because the recent amendments to the ADA have clarified that employees are protected from discrimination based on actual or perceived impairments in thinking, I expect that such lawsuits are likely to be brought more often.

Now, this is what I have to say to those who don't like the way their autistic workers think: Any employer who doesn't see a problem with discrimination on the basis of cognitive differences would be well advised to think twice about that.

Dan the Torpedoes, Full Monster Ahead

The British charity Action for Children is stubbornly continuing to run its Dan the Autistic Monster advertisements, despite widespread outrage in the autistic community and unequivocal condemnation from autism researchers and professionals including Simon Baron-Cohen, Tony Attwood, and Mitzi Waltz. Evidently, Action for Children has made a calculated decision to ignore the public fury about the ad, hoping that it will all be forgotten shortly. It's up to us to make sure that doesn't happen.

Dora Raymaker has written a post on Change.org with links and information about action alerts to complain to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority and to other authorities (with directions for how to make the action alert work from non-US addresses) regarding the ad. If you haven't already responded to this, please do so. Also, you can find contact information for the charity's major corporate supporters here, and a group on Facebook is protesting the ad. For those who blog, please write some more posts about the controversy and let your readers know how they can show their disgust with this hateful and exploitative ad.

Edit, February 5: Yesterday the ITV network cut from the ad's line "I used to lash out" to someone being punched in the face in an unrelated ad, during a football (soccer) game. You can find a video of it here (thanks to Socrates for the link). As if the ad hadn't already done quite enough to stereotype autistic people as violent monsters...