With Callous Disregard

This. Definitely click through on the links Liss has helpfully provided, they are worth the read. It's exhausting, infuriating, and despair-making, and I don't even have little ones, let alone ones with autism. I get why people distrust the medical establishment, but I also still insist that medical science is the best protection we have: paraphrasing Einstein's quote, "All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have." Science is only a tool, and it can be abused like any other. It has been before, and is, and will be again. Particularly in alt health, where all kinds of magical claims abound. Sometimes they turn out to be true, and most of the time not so much. Often measuring their truth claims is hampered by the limitations of current technology, or even sometimes how we think about them and frame research questions. It is true that changing your thinking and questioning your assumptions about what you think you know leads to breakthroughs and important new knowledge. Also, it is often those outside the priviliged class of knowledge makers, those on whom knowledge is deployed, who show that knowledge is incomplete, flawed, and/or comes from a deeply biased place that has no place in responsible science. Before this turns into a huge essay on Kuhn, Haraway and feminist standpoint theory, all I can say is let your own embodied knowledge guide you, but not blind you. Also, skepticism: embrace it.