There was a story on CNN about a mother of an autistic 7 year old who has only a 100 word vocabulary. She enrolled him in a 40 hour per week therapy which costs a whopping $80,000 a year. To put that in perspective, you could put a medical student through 1 year of medical school for that kind of money. After 4 years you have a medical doctor who can save lives.
Has there ever been any evidence that therapy can normalize the development of an autistic child? Imagine how hard it is to catch up and read at age 12 or 17 or 21. Certainly, a healthy child who learns phonics from an early age will have a growing vocabulary of some 24,000 words by 4th grade and 100,000 by age 21. That’s an insurmountable lead. So many other issues need catching up as well. Will the $80,000 spent on an autistic child ever be recouped? Will they ever have independence? Will they ever be able to hold a real job? If you can’t outgrow your autism, then the answer is no on all counts.
The reason for mentioning this is that the mother is a lawyer who was able to get a law passed that forces insurance companies to pay remedial education as a medical treatment. Sounds fishy. Now, suppose you were against this law, could you use Collabotrade to organize and mobilize social activism to preserve your freedom? Could you solve the autism problem using private solutions, instead of state-sponsored coerced solutions? How can you use Collabotrade to improve life without restoring to extortion of your fellow citizens?
Since 2008 is an election year, it’s a good time to think about how you can use Collabotrade to build your own networks of activists trading placards, books, information, meet-ups, car pooling, and so forth to make your voice heard. LK
Filed under: Social Trading | Tagged: activism, autism, autistic, car pooling, election year, meet-ups, phonics, social, voice
