TAKE ACTION!

TAKE ACTION!

From the Autism Action Coalition:

First Bill to Stop the DSM-V. Get One in Your State

Take Action! http://capwiz.com/a-champ/issues/alert/?alertid=61066986&queueid=%5Bcapwiz%3Aqueue_id%5D

Protect your Child's Education, Healthcare, Services

Last week we said we’re not gonna take the self-appointed “experts” at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) putting our kids hard fought access to a free and appropriate education, health care, Medicaid and vitally needed services on the line because they think they have cooked up a better definition of autism. This week we are proud to announce that the Autism Action Network has been successful in our effort to introduce the first legislation in the US that puts the brakes on the APA’s self-serving drive to throw our kids lives into chaos. Assemblymember Tom Abinanti (D-Greenburgh) of New York has introduced Assembly Bill A 9180, which will define “autism” under New York state law as the currently used criteria set out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IVr (DSM-IVr), the definition that has been in use since 1994.

If we can do it in New York you can do it in your state. Please click on the Take Action link to send your state legislators a copy of A 9180 and ask them to introduce similar legislation in your state.

Autism Action Network has been warning for two years about the potential for huge disruption that would come from the DSM-V, and our fears were confirmed a couple of weeks ago when the Child Study Center at Yale announced that their analysis of the DSM-V autism criteria would result in 55% of people with autism losing their current diagnosis. Imagine what insurance companies could do with that. Imagine what a school district that wants to put your child into a completely inappropriate setting could do. Never mind the fact that the redefinition will completely invalidate the comparability of any epidemiology and provide the foundation for another twenty years of claims that “we just aren’t sure if the autism rate is really going up.” And to date the APA has been unable to come up with a single reason of how this would benefit anybody with autism in anyway.


Your child’s education, healthcare and services are on the line. This is the most serious threat facing the autism community and the only way we can stop it is if you get active.