Ethical challenges to autism treatment: Encyclopedia II - Ethical challenges to autism treatment - Ethical challenges to applied behavior analysis

Ethical challenges to autism treatment - Ethical challenges to applied behavior analysis

People have made ethical challenges to a popular treatment method known as Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). Critics of ABA argue that ABA does not actually improve the skills of autistic people, but instead only teaches them to mimic neurotypical behavior without really understanding the meaning of the social cues they are using. ABA critics also argue that ABA teaches the autistic person to suppress natural and harmless stimulatory behavior (which is called "stimming" for short). There have also been claims that ABA only "works" because of barbaric aversives that often cause posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety and clinical depression later in life. Since use of ABA has become widespread relatively recently, its long term consequences and risks have not been studied.

ABA critics have noted there have not been any double-blind studies that validate ABA. Many autistic children develop spoken language and other skills without ABA. Additionally, IQ increases claimed in ABA studies are believed to be meaningless by many due to flaws in intelligence testing.

Ethical challenges to autism treatment - The Michelle Dawson controversy

One critic of ABA is Michelle Dawson, an autistic individual, autism researcher, and autism rights activist. Dawson published an article The Misbehaviour of Behaviourists in January 2004, challenging the ethical practices and claimed scientific effectiveness of ABA.

Dawson's article sparked heated controversy in April 2004. Two examples of Dawson's critics are Lenny Schafer, who published a series of articles In Defense of Behavioral Treatment for Autism in the Schafer Autism Report, and Kit Weintraub, who published an article A Mother's Perspective. Many of Dawson's critics are parents of autistic children who feel her suggestions neglect the difficulties their children face and ruin their chances of a normal life. Some of Dawson's critics believe that there are ethical problems to what Michelle Dawson is suggesting, because they see it as unethical to refuse to give what they see as important treatment to autistic children. They also believe that Michelle Dawson and her supporters are too different from their children, who have no language skills at all, while Dawson and her supporters can write long articles about their own perspective.

Autism rights activists responded to this by pointing out that some of Dawson's critics at the same time have their children writing articles and speeches (such as those depicted in the Schafer Autism Report) in support of their parents' positions, and that this makes the idea that language skills are the real difference between their children and autistic activists dubious. In addition, autistics who support Michelle Dawson quickly published their own rebuttals to Schafer and Weintraub's articles. Autistics.org published an article In Support of Michelle Dawson and Her Work, claiming that the articles from Dawson's critics do nothing more than attack Michelle Dawson personally and fail to address the points in her article. The article also claims, using examples from the personal lives of the authors, that those of Dawson's critics who claim that autistics who support Dawson's work are very different from their own autistic children are making false assumptions about the abilities of Dawson and her autistic supporters. Dawson's autistic supporters claim their critics are judging their functioning abilities purely on their writing abilities and point out that it is possible for autistics to have good written language skills, but poor oral language skills and difficulty with areas of social functioning and living skills that are not necessarily related to written language skills.

Some neurotypical people might conclude that if Dawson's supporters really have such pervasive difficulties as the low-functioning children, they too should be cured. The people at Autistics.Org claim that even if they had to live their entire lives in negative circumstances, a cure would not be the answer [1].

Ethical challenges to autism treatment - Controversy about ABA among anti-cure advocates

There is some controversy about ABA among people who are critical of ABA and who hold the anti-cure perspective in autism. There are some with this perspective who see any ABA in any form a violation of an autistic person's uniqueness and individuality and potentially damaging to the autistic person's mental health. There are other anti-cure advocates who feel some forms of ABA can be helpful as long as there are no aversives and that it is done to teach skills instead of attempting to make autistics behave like neurotypicals.

Ethical challenges to autism treatment - Arguments from precedent

Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the DSM until it was removed in 1973 mostly due to political activism and controversy. Some ABA critics have noted there are still efforts to "cure" homosexuality through behavior modification. One of the techniques, called reparative therapy, claims a 30% to 70% success rate. Ivar Lovaas, generally considered to be the father of behavioral interventions for autism, is one of the authors of a 1974 article titled Behavioral treatment of deviant sex role behaviors in a male child published in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis [2].

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ethical challenges to applied behavior analysis", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki