When confronted with a discussion as dumb as the stars of the CBS show The Talk recently had about autism, it's depressing to think, "This is completely typical of the state of the national discussion in 2011."
A few generalizations:
Grouping loosely related topics together does not lend itself to intelligent discussion. Holly Robinson Peete, whose son has autism, introduces two topics that do not belong together: new research that indicates autism is more closely linked to the environment than has recently believed and the use of unconventional treatments such as medical marijuana for autism. Each of these complex subjects is worthy of an individual segment, and putting them together keeps things at such a surface level that no one really gets past mouthing dumb things we've all heard before.
Celebrities routinely lie about their past and those lies go unchallenged. Holly suggests several times that she has been criticized for trying things like a gluten-free diet and hyperbaric oxygen to treat her son's autism, and that's simply not true. It's a lie. What she has been criticized for using her celebrity status to tell other people to do those things. When you write repeated pieces for the Huffington Post, telling people that the GFCF diet works, and there is no research that indicates it is anything other than a fad, it is legitimate to criticize you. In fact, it is irresponsible not to. It is great that Holly as gotten more responsible, and now says she would never give people medical advice. But it is the fact that that she wrote repeatedly that treatments that don't work are effective, not the fact that she tried them with her son, that people criticized her for. She needs to be honest about her bad behavior in the past, and stop lying about her critics.
People are incapable of a serious discussion of illegal drugs. Notice Sharon Osborne's need to turn the subject of medical marijuana into a joke. Notice that the audience shares this need.
People do not value objectivity. Sarah Gilbert criticizes doctors who say it's wrong to embrace and publicize quack remedies like GFCF and hyperbaric oxygen are not thinking about what they would do if their own children were affected. And I think that's the opposite of the truth. I think many people recognize that desperate people become irrational, and that they would probably be just as irrational in the same situation. So they try to protect people who are in difficult situations by giving them objective advice. That's a good thing, not a failure of compassion.
People do not understand the term "environment." Even though Holly specifically mentions "stress, diet, and infections" as likely environmental factors, Sarah says she believes the environment must have something to do with autism because there are so many unsafe chemicals around. Exposure to some chemicals may very well be related to risk of some kinds of autism, but the environment is more than just toxins.