Auton V B.C. Facts: Petitioner Essay

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The Court did not address the issue of when, if ever, a province's public health plan under the Canada Health Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-6, is required to provide treatment outside of those core services administered by doctors and hospitals because resolving that issue was not necessary for resolution of the dispute before the Court.

Minority: There was no minority decision.

Discussion: What is interesting about this case is that, for several years the government had been providing the type of ABA/IBI therapy that petitioners were seeking, though not to the extent that petitioners were seeking the treatment. They ceased providing the funding for the treatment, and their reasons for doing so were partially financial, but partially due to ethical concerns about the requirements of ABA/IBI therapy. First, ABA/IBI therapy is only successful in treating some children, so that children previously diagnosed with autism lose that diagnosis. Second, and perhaps more importantly, not all people with autism believe that ABA/IBI therapy is desirable or appropriate for children with autism. Autism activist Michelle Dawson is among those who believe that ABA/IBI therapy is not appropriate for autistic children. She points out: that the science behind ABA/IBI therapy has not been proven in random clinical trials; that autism has erroneously been compared to fatal diseases like cancer when autism does not threaten life; that the assumption an autism diagnosis means that a child will not be able to be successful and will live in isolation is false (Dawson, 2004). Therefore, she has significant concerns that treating autistic children to deprive them of the very traits that make them autistic in order that they might better conform to the "normal" world might be discriminatory in and of itself.

Dawson's position can seem difficult to grasp, because it seems so obvious that autistic children would have a better quality of life if they were transformed into normal children. However, one has to acknowledge the history of discrimination that has gone along with education and issues about childhood.

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Not only in Canada, but in every country where white populations have come to dominate over native populations, there have been efforts to remove native children from their parents and educate them in a superior "white" manner. Not only have these efforts stripped children of a cultural heritage, but they have all been marred by significant abuse towards the children. By labeling the children as inferior, the prevailing normative society has set them up for abuse by care-takers, who assume an "any means necessary" attitude in their treatment of these children. Autism may not be as universally genetic as race, but it certainly seems to be a congenital condition over which people have no control. One must ask whether it is permissible for the majority of society to determine that these autistic children are sick people in need of treatment. Before reading this opinion and Dawson's commentary, my personal experience with a friend's autistic child would have taken that position because I feel so sad that he cannot interact with us in the same way as other children. However, Dawson's commentary certainly made me realize that my concerns stem from my feelings and do not reflect his feelings; I do not know how he feels about the matter. I find that I must agree with Dawson when she says that, "Societies and scientists have historically made serious errors in determining which kinds of people are acceptable and which behaviours should aggressively be treated. People with differences have been ostracized then forced into mandatory treatments for their own good: left-handed people, and homosexuals, and many others. Societal and scientific assumptions about what constitutes freedom and integrity for disabled people have often been wrong. There exists no reason to believe that our society and its scientists are uniquely immune to these defects" (Dawson, 2004)......

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