Spectrum 10K – Everything Is Better With Dragons

In case you haven’t heard, Cambridge Autism Research Centre, lead by Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen, have launched a new research initiative. They want 10,000 autistic people to send them their genetic material. There has been a bit of fuss in the Autistic community because of the unsatisfactory answers given by Spectrum 10K when asked about data safety and the way some ‘Ambassadors’ have behaved, including naturalist Chris Packham calling anyone who disagrees with the research a science denier and conspiracy theorist, and ‘comedian’ Paula White calling a respected autistic autism researcher ‘brainless’.

I haven’t commented on any of the Twitter threads, but I’ve been reading them and taking in the information. The main issue is that there isn’t any guarantee about the security of the data, which may be sold to companies at a later date, and that some of the people and organisations involved, even tangentially, are known to want to ‘cure’ autism. Yes, we’re scared of eugenics.