Mira wrote: Parents of autistic children are perfectly justified to be outraged.

What objective test is there for autism? Who performs the diagnosis? Is it by
the same quacks that diagnose gamblers, bipolars, shoppers, ADHD etc?
If anything, Leary is wrong about "over diagnosis" - that assumes there are
diagnoses that are legitimate.
Martin



To: thomasszaszdiscussion@...: mirah@...: Mon, 1 Dec 2008
21:45:23 +0100Subject: [ThomasSzaszDiscussion] Leary, was formerly: Reviews of
The Medicalization of Everyday Life and Coercion as Cure



Martin Kessler wrote:> Look at the outrage Dennis Leary got for his book on the
subject of> Autism - and the outrage was from an out of context>
misrepresentation of what Leary had written. Szasz's books have been> similarly
misinterpretedBeing over here in Europe I had never heard of Leary (Denis, not
Dennis), but I looked him up through Google. He strikes me as offensive,
obnoxious, and vulgar. Parents of autistic children are perfectly justified to
be outraged. The "out of context" excuse is classic and cliché. I cannot imagine
any context in which such remarks would be admissible.According to Wikipedia:
"Leary ... had been talking about the trend of overdiagnosis of Autism..."* How
would Leary know which cases are legitimately diagnosed and which are "over"?
His remarks contribute nothing to the discussion nor can I detect anything
humorous in them. They were clearly intended to offend, and offend they did. Who
would buy a book like that anyway?The concept of "overdiagnosis" only
legitimizes diagnosis. The real controversy i.m.o. should be whether the subject
of abilities and disabilities belongs in the domain of
medicine.*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Leary#Autism_remarks_controversyMir\
a





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