The page you link is kind of messy, but I read most of it. Simon’s Rock is real (I went there) and none of the details presented about it were incorrect (e.g. they got the name of the girls’ dorm right), but I’ve now poked around the rest of “Autism Fraud” and am disinclined to trust it as a source (the blogger sounds like a crank who believes that vaccines cause autism, and that chelation cures it, and he says all of this in a combative, nasty way). Do you have any other, more neutral sources about Amanda Baggs’s allegedly autism-free childhood? I’m sort of tempted to call up my school and ask if she’s even a fellow alumna.
The page you link is kind of messy, but I read most of it. Simon’s Rock is real (I went there) and none of the details presented about it were incorrect (e.g. they got the name of the girls’ dorm right), but I’ve now poked around the rest of “Autism Fraud” and am disinclined to trust it as a source (the blogger sounds like a crank who believes that vaccines cause autism, and that chelation cures it, and he says all of this in a combative, nasty way). Do you have any other, more neutral sources about Amanda Baggs’s allegedly autism-free childhood? I’m sort of tempted to call up my school and ask if she’s even a fellow alumna.
.
This might interest you.
Certainly the author of that page seems very biased. Whether the writer of the letter is too, or whether the letter is real, I don’t know.
She couldn’t be called a neutral source by any stretch of the imagination, but Amanda herself (anbuend is Amanda Baggs) confirms that she went to college at 14 and that she was considered gifted. She also has a post up just to tell people that she has been able to speak.
Those posts put the allegations in more perspective and now I don’t feel like I ought to make a phone call. Thanks! I hate phones!
That would be very interesting.