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Mar 11 2023
Spectrum 10k and further misleading information is circling

I’m going to start with an admission. The text-based images in this article came to me via a DM. I am yet to find their original source, and as such, I can not confirm whether the people behind Spectrum 10k wrote this. I do, however, feel that as these statements are out there, it’s necessary to address the misleading information contained within.

Below are the screenshots that I have received. I will address this point by point to the best of my ability.

1. “Spectrum 10k are not looking for a prenatal test for autism”

This technically true if you take their publicised aims at face value. I do, however, feel it’s necessary to draw your attention to a study they are conducting into using amniocentesis and hormone levels in utero. They go on to talk in the screenshot about how a prenatal test could not work using genetics alone; perhaps Baron-Cohen would then like to address his involvement in a prenatal study that assesses more than genetics as a tool for prenatal screening.

I have written more about the aforementioned study in this article.

2. “We do not support cures or treatments for autism itself“

This is clever wording. It leaves it open to justify historical, current, or future involvement in cures and interventions for aspects of Autistic experience that technically fall outside of the remit of “autism itself”. This, of course, is conjecture to a certain extent. I do believe that we have to consider this wording in the wider context of the unethical responses to valid concerns by Autistic people.

Unfortunately, there is more to consider. We know that at least one of the leading researchers on the Spectrum 10k team has direct links to eugenics and curist rhetoric. We know that team members have had involvement with organisations that have overtly stated their intent to eliminate Autistic people from the human gene pool.

They claim that the study will not be used to create prenatal testing for autism but fail to address the concerns that these further studies and associations outside of the study raise. To be clear, we have had no reasonable explanation of how Spectrum 10k and the amniocentesis study will not work in tandem to increase the likelihood of a prenatal test. We have also had no meaningful response to our concerns around team members’ involvement with eugenics organisations.

Until such time that the Autism Research Centre can offer an actual alternative position, without subterfuge and misleading statements, I will still be encouraging you to boycott their research and speak out against them.

For more information on Spectrum 10k you can read our original statement here and a vast array of writing about it on this page.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Jan 25 2023
Spectrum 10k will never be acceptable: Here is why

During my time in the Autistic community, I often heard murmurings of eugenics projects, but in all honesty, I was unaware of the reality of just how many sought to eradicate Autistic people. Perhaps then you can understand just how upsetting Spectrum 10k has been; not just for me, but for tens of thousands of Autistic people, for whom eugenics has been a mythical creature. This project has served as a rude awakening to a world in which we are not welcome. Such a world as the ones found in dystopian fiction.

They say that ignorance is bliss, and truthfully, it was. I yearn for a world where experts are only wrong, and do not harbour genocidal ambitions. Unfortunately, the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, UK, are engaging on projects that each day take us closer to a world where Autistic people no longer exist.

Myself and the rest of the team at the Boycott Spectrum 10K campaign have literally given our wellbeing to this cause. Many, if not all of us, have been in some state of burnout since this started. We have fought hard to make it clear that we won’t stand idley by while things like this are enacted upon our community. So this latest attempt to draw us into consultation over this project has been a slap in the face.

Some may believe we can achieve more by coming to the table, but I want to tell you why that won’t work. There is no version of the current project that is acceptable. As the project stands, any input from Autistic people would be tokenistic. It would still have the same goals, it would still produce the same data with the same ethical issues. In order for this project to be acceptable, it would no longer be the same project. It would require new goals, new data collection, and new ethics approval. They would likely lose their funding as well as the people who provided it had very specific goals in mind.

For our input to mean anything, this entire project would need to be abandoned, and a new one co-produced with the Autistic community.

Unfortunately, this will not happen. The people involved in this project do not care for what research we actually need. Their values do not align with our community. If we came to the table, they would write down our views, and bin them once we left. Involvement with this project will bring nothing good, but it will empower them. If we come to the table, we legitimise their ambitions. We can not allow that to happen.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Jan 22 2023
Spectrum 10k researchers have given up on hiding their eugenics agenda

CW: Termination of pregnancies, amniocentesis, pre-natal testing, eugenics

Edit: This is just a focus group at this point, but it is terrifying none-the-less.

Spectrum 10k is being run by a team from the Autism Research Centre (ARC) attached to the University of Cambridge. The scandalous research project has been a source of contention for a couple of years now, with researchers showing their flagrant disregard for the wishes and wellbeing of Autistic people in overt ways. Despite their claims that this project has no ties to eugenics, a leaked communication from ARC has now confirmed their intentions.

Find images below

The above images detail a project that will use amniocentesis to investigate hormone levels during pregnancy and how that relates to the development of autism in infants. This is troubling for a number of reasons.

You have probably heard of amniocentesis if you have had a child. It’s a test that involves taking a sample of amniotic fluid from the womb. Typically, this is used to test for Down Syndrome. If a pregnancy is found to test positive, the mother is offered the opportunity to terminate the pregnancy. Regardless of the complex reasons why someone might choose this, it is still eugenics.

Amniocentesis represents a huge ethical issue in medicine. Not only does it put the viability of a pregnancy at risk, it also provides parents with the opportunity to abort disabled children. It raises questions about quality of life, and right to life. Many people have this test, it is an everyday occurrence. Unfortunately, most people are not active in disability communities and can not conceive of why such practices are harmful and upsetting to our community.

In fact, doctors and midwives can be very pushy about amniocentesis. I have heard stories of mothers being tricked into consenting to the test. It highlights an issue where disabled people are viewed as less-than human and as a drain on resources and parental wellbeing. We ate told it is a kindness to prevent the birth of disabled people because we have been conditioned into believing that disability is a tragedy.

So why is it significant that the ARC is running this study?

It has one logical conclusion. The development of a pre-natal test for autism, that will allow for the termination of Autistic pregnancies. When you consider this alongside the Spectrum 10k project, it really shows just how desperate this research centre are to end the existence of Autistic people.

This sort of research comes from the twisted “ethics” of people who are so unaware of their own privilege that they are unable to conceive of Autistic people’s humanity. These people do not care for Autistic people. They only care about eradicating us. Neuronormativity in society has reached a terminal point, where we are willing to end the lives of people who are unlikely to conform to cultural norms.

If you threaten the status quo, they threaten your right to life.

Simon Baron-Cohen and his team are eugenicists. There isn’t any question about it. The research that has come from them over the years has been harmful (to say the least), but now the future of the Autistic community is in jeopardy. All Autistic people have a right to life, no matter how inconvenient it is for others.

I ask any of you who are approached to join this project to refuse. Tell them why they are harmful. Tell them why we will not stand for this flagrant disregard for the sanctity of Autistic lives.

We owe it to the Autistic people yet to come to make this kind of research unviable. It needs to have career ending ramifications for anyone who tries to end us.

David Gray-Hammond 3 Comments
Sep 25 2021
The renaissance of ableism

Edit: I am in no way saying that Autistic researchers work is tokenistic in this post, I am trying to talk about how studies such as S10k claim to have included Autistics in the planning of their studies purely to try and justify unethical research.

It seems with each passing day there is a new article about a piece of autism research being conducted. There are always two common themes. The first is that the research is conducted by non-autistic researchers, who generally only include Autistics in a tokenistic way at best. The second is that pretty much all of the research aims to reduce the number of Autistic people, either by reducing diagnoses, or literally erasing us.

One could be forgiven for thinking that ableism is having a renaissance, but the truth is much more grim than that. The truth is, that ableism isn’t re-emerging, it never went anywhere. The main observable difference that I find now, is that people (researchers in particular) are being much louder about their efforts.

Their want to erase us, reduce us, eradicate us, has become much more overt.

Is it any wonder that Autistic people around the globe are suffering right now? Our entire lives we have endured systemic oppression and (not to mince my words) systemic violence, and now we face a world where we are literally being shown how much we are not wanted. It’s sickening.

We have the notorious Spectrum 10k project, who definitely don’t support eugenics *wink wink*, but also can’t guarantee that the data wont ultimately be used for that. Canada now has the Q1k study, which to me seems to just be S10k lite. We also have the study that pushed me into writing this. Reported by various news outlets as an “early-intervention baby therapy”.

This therapy, supposedly, reduces Autism diagnoses by teaching infants “better” social communication. One need only read the published study to realise that these researchers don’t care about the wellbeing of Autistic people.

The medical model is strong with this one.

The study is riddled with pathologising language. The study outcomes are also highly questionable. Why do you want to reduce the number of people receiving an autism diagnosis? From where I am sat, it seems that they either don’t want us to have support, or they have a problem with Autistic people and the number of us who exist.

No, there is no renaissance for ableism. It’s here, and it’s always been here. Society is afraid of us. To quote a term I recently saw used by Dr. Nick Walker, it’s autistiphobia. Something about our existence makes non-autistic society deeply uncomfortable, and in a more literal sense, hateful.

The thought that keeps going through my head is this; if they can’t bring themselves to actually improve our lives in a meaningful way, can they not at least let us live those lives? Why do we need constant reminders that our existence is so offensive to them that they will either ignore us, or erase us.

We are human beings with a right to live happy lives.

At what point did “Autistic” become synonymous with the word “broken” or “burden” in the non-autistic world? Even as I write this, researchers rush to speak over us, presuming, it seems, that we are incapable of speaking for ourselves. The world has a saviour complex, but we don’t want a saviour. We want people to listen to us.

We are treated like a perplexing puzzle that needs to be solved immediately. As if our existence is a public health crisis.

No.

We have been explaining ourselves for long enough. It’s time that society at large began to listen to us. Where millions are poured into erasing us, there is a deficit in the support of those Autistic people who have been trying to help us for years.

I am not a crisis to be fixed. I am a human being, and I am sick of being held down.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments
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