PETA’s Misleading New Campaign Links Autism To Dairy Consumption
PETA aren't known for their subtlety, but this is a new low.
Animal rights group PETA have recently relaunched an old scare campaign, and soon they’ll probably wish that they hadn’t. Even for an organisation with an ‘ends justify the means’ mentality, an autism scare campaign is a pretty bold move — one that leaves them wide open to charges of using a seriously disadvantaged group to advance their agenda. The campaign has been tried before, too: In 2008, PETA erected a ‘Got Autism?’ billboard in New Jersey, but it was pulled after pressure from autism advocacy group ASAN.
Judging by an undated blog post that began circulating last week, PETA are giving it another shot. Just for the record, there is no established link between autism and dairy consumption, but as fellow fear-mongerers the Australian Vaccination Network (now known as the Australian Vaccination-skeptics Network) have proven, that need not be a problem. Here are some of the moves that PETA pull — most are straight out of the fear-mongering quack’s playbook.
There are references to obscure studies…
And another study done by researchers at the University of Rome showed a “marked improvement” in the behavior of autistic children who were taken off dairy products.
…appeals to a parent’s primal fears…
The Internet contains numerous heart-wrenching stories from parents of kids who had suffered the worst effects of autism for years before dairy foods were eliminated from their children’s diets.
…offers emotive (and irrelevant) testimony…
I realized that Miles’ ear infections had begun when he was 11 months old, just after we had switched him from soy formula to cow’s milk.
…and propagates outright factual errors.
It isn’t surprising that dairy products may worsen this condition, considering that milk has already been strongly linked to cancer.
To top it all off, all the studies that PETA mention deal with alleviation of autistic symptoms, rather than the triggering of autism in otherwise healthy, dairy-consuming children. Neat swerve, PETA.
Luckily, Emily Willingham has offered a comprehensive takedown of the pseudo-science behind PETA’s campaign over at Forbes. Willingham also observes that in exploiting the stigma surrounding people with disabilities such as autism, PETA pretty much forfeit the moral high ground upon which they habitually reside.
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Image via KSL.com