Toni Braxton Autism Speaks Ad

To prepare for my Thursday presentation, I wanted to play Toni Braxton's Autism Speaks Ad. One of the things that Broderick speaks about is Autism Speaks' "virtual (though not complete) domination of popular autism rhetoric in the United States, as well as the exportation of its rhetoric on autism around the globe." Well, if you ask me, this is not hard to understand. When your cause is started by Bob Wright, CEO of NBC and NBC Universal, it's easy to believe.

One thing that I did notice from the reading is that AS completely does away with using "recovery" in their work. Rather they are using terms such as "early diagnosis" and stating there is no cure (found in other PSA's from Autism Speaks). This of course is a big turn around from the claims of recovery from Lovaas and Maurice. Broderick explains

Autism Speaks presently minimizes the presence of recovery rhetoric on its website and in its materials, in part in wake of a number of critiques over the years of Lovaas's use of the term "recovery," which resulted in Lovaas and his colleagues backpedaling somewhat on their own usage of the term (see Broderick, 2009 for a detailed discussion of this shift). Additionally, between 1993 and 2005, the rhetoric of "recovery" from autism was gradually appropriated by a different sub-discourse-community within autism rhetoric (those seeking biomedical treatments and cures through interventions such as chelation therapy, mercury detoxification, and nutritional/dietary regimens; see the Autism Research Institute and Defeat Autism Now! at www.autism.com ), a discourse community from which Autism Speaks takes pains to distance itself.

One thing that I really have a concern with this Broderick's claim that AS dominated autism rhetoric. I felt this was done merely through the power of media (Bob Wright) and Hollywood cosigning, rather than scientific fact driven proof that Lovaas and Maurice use. What do you think?

More coming soon.