Got autism?
http://thewaxingmoon.blogspot.com/2008/11/got-autism.html

As a vegetarian/ vegan who has worked a fair bit on animal rights and animal welfare issues, I’ve been surprisingly oblivious to the animal welfare organisation known as PETA. They have come up in the news a fair bit lately, shaking me out of my blissful unawareness of their existence. What I have heard about PETA lately has ranged between annoying and scandalous.

For example: not long ago, PETA was in the news for having developed an ad campaign capitalising on the brutal, random murder of a Winnipeg resident aboard Greyhound bus. PETA had seen fit to draw comparisons between the young man’s gruesome murder and the gruesome slaughter of billions of farm animals which are bred, raised and killed for human consumption. While the plight of the farm animals is very real, PETA drew public criticism for having failed to show the respect for the deceased man’s family that many people expected.

Now PETA has popped up again. Just recently, I learned from Wrong Planet that PETA has stepped on another set of toes with an ad campaign regarding people with autism. As a parent of autistic children, and a person who has frequently spoken up for both human and non-human animals, I had to consider this ad from more than one angle.

My first thought is that the ad is misleading because it implies a causal link between dairy consumption and autism. There is no such link. Rather, some autistic children have responded well to a casein-free diet.

My next thought relates to the motive behind this ad. As I understand it, PETA’s intention is to fight the unethical use of non-human animals, not to improve the lives of people with autism. The dairy industry is one of the many sectors in agri-business that breed and consume animals. Given that a small fraction of children are autistic, and a fraction of those with autism benefit from a dairy-free diet, how is this ad campaign going to make a meaningful impact on animal agri-business?