Desperate US parents pay up to $20,000 a session for a procedure scientists say could be bogus
Autistic children as young as 18 months old are being injected with human stem cells derived from umbilical cords in unapproved, unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” that scientists warn are proliferating across the US under the active encouragement of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Clinics in Florida, Texas and other states are selling what they bill as “regenerative medicine” to families with autistic children who have intensive care needs. Parents who have taken their children through the process talked to the Guardian about their hopes and fears for a therapy that appears to be gaining ground in the US.
The procedure, which can involve the child being sedated with ketamine before receiving intravenous doses of millions of stem cells, costs up to $20,000 each treatment. Families are often advised to return for regular top-ups.
That’s not “autistic traits”, that’s brain damage.
And equating autism to brain damage is incredibly disrespectful to those whom are autistic (myself included, hence why I even dared to joke about the topic - it’s more self deprecation than just a random joke).
Autism is a mental disability. Not a culture or “next step of human evolution” as some dumb fucks on the internet seem to think.
Interesting, I don’t feel disabled even though I am autiaricm… differently abled? sure. but not disabled.
And it’s not a culture or wishful thinking, but rather, established scientific fact that most people with autism present a heavily increased ability focused on more objective matters - mathematics, pattern recognition, reasoning, etc.
Now, I’m not claiming that there aren’t cases of autism that are so severe that they classify as a disability. but calling it unequivocally a disability when it’s a whole ass spectrum, so please, bugger off with the fake outrage in our name.