autism awareness

autism awareness

  • Submitted By: g00220605
  • Date Submitted: 11/18/2015 10:07 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 4333
  • Page: 18

AUTISM AWARENESS
Unit One
 OUTLINE OF LEARNING DISABILITIES
The Learning Outcomes for this assignment are:
Element
Learning Outcome
1
Understand how Learning disabilities can affect social and emotional development of children and young people
2
Identify the different Learning disabilities
3
Understand the causes of learning difficulties
Introduction
Autism is a condition which has been subject to many prejudices and discrimination over decades of misunderstanding. Even now, doctors are still learning about it. Every year new things are discovered, new definitions are created, and the old ones discarded. Because its parameters are not set in stone and it is a condition which can be subtle or extreme, there are many bizarre and sometimes dangerous myths out there which add to the prejudice and discrimination suffered by autistic people.
For example, once upon a time, people with autism were called ‘idiots’, often locked up in institutions for a lifetime. Later on, the condition was linked with intellectual or cognitive impairment. Yet the modern diagnostic tools of autism don’t include cognitive ability, it isn’t considered part of the condition.
This same kind of uninformed prejudice said that autism was caused by:
mothers who failed to bond with their child
vaccinations for spreading mercury poisoning, and
gastro-intestinal disease
as well as many more fallacies.
In fact one of the biggest scandals about autism was the one perpetrated by Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor who was struck off the Medical Register only in 2010.
He claimed that research showed that the MMR vaccine caused gastro-intestinal complaints and consequent development of autism. He wrote two research papers (one in 1998 and one in 2002), both of which were discredited through research by contemporaries all over the world, however not before the MMR vaccine had been brought into disrepute.
He was found to have a conflict of financial interests, and ultimately the...

Similar Essays