This so-called ethics book is awful on so many levels that it's not even funny. In fact, it's almost impossible to convey just how thoroughly awful it is.

As an experiment, I spent a while using my colleagues as a pseudo-random number generator. I then opened the book up to the pages corresponding to the numbers I was given, and listed off the most dehumanizing, nonsensical, or blatantly prejudicial passage on said page. I didn't have any problems finding such passages (although someone did eventually give me a number that corresponded to a page which was taken up by a Seth Chwast painting). On the basis of this experiment, as well as a good bit of anecdotal evidence from reading it, I can pretty much definitively state that It's difficult to open this book up to a random page without finding attempts to dehumanize autistics, spectacularly poor and nonsensical passages posing as analysis, or worse.

Of course, this doesn't really explain the title of the review or why the book qualifies as hate propaganda -- it just helps convey the extent of the problem. Unfortunately, a thorough listing of the issues would take far too long to write -- there's enough material in the book to drive several pages of discussion. There also are a number of flaws -- including critical ones -- which undermine the book and render its "discussion" problematic at best.

That said, the single *largest* flaw is a bit more simple... and is central to the text. In discussing what autism is, the author considers several different theories (all of which are highly problematic and biased -- but that's another matter), then selects one based on the fact that it has the _most_ (and most interesting, to her) philosophic implications, without regard for its plausibility.

In other words, she literally went out, found the most hateful, most dehumanizing description of autism she could find and then assumed it to be true throughout the book... without regard to how that theory is regarded in the scientific community, its level of empirical support, or the fact that she was attributing attributes to a group of real, living people who might be harmed by her ivory tower proclamations.

In fact, the theory she chose -- the original, modular formulation of Baron-Cohen's "theory of mind" thesis -- has long since been discredited on multiple levels. The term "theory of mind" remains only due to Baron-Cohen's moving the goalposts and redefining the term on multiple levels. To make things worse, Barnbaum confuses the multiple formulations throughout the book -- despite the way that the contradictions that result should be readily apparent to a philosopher.

There is no such thing as "degrees" or "severity" when you're talking about a purely qualitative difference, for instance.

Despite this, however, Barnbaum remains focused on the most dehumanizing interpretation of the theory possible, _even when she considering evidence which refutes it_. When fact and dehumanization conflict and she can't rationalize around the evidence, Barnbaum chooses to dismiss the inconvenient facts -- something which becomes most apparent in her consideration of the existence of the autistic community.

Specifically, she rightfully notices that the notion that the existence of the autistic community is incompatible with the idea that autistic people have a categorical inability to understand that other people have thoughts, emotions, and feelings of their own. She correctly notes that community would be impossible if we were unable to recognize that other people existed as thinking and feeling beings.

Her response to this contradiction, however, is to simply dismiss the existence of the autistic community -- and its mores, and its culture, and its standards -- from consideration, arguing in essence that they *can't* exist despite empirical evidence that they do. Any competent philosopher or ethicist would do the exact opposite and realize that there may be a problem with the theory.

The consequences of this sort of thing are readily apparent throughout the book. The most dramatic example is the way we're afforded only incidental personhood (primarily *moral* personhood, but this is true of personhood in general as well) in the relevant discussion. Put another way -- we, according to the book, aren't *actually* people, and there's no real reason to actually regard us as people... but should be treated like people anyway because dehumanizing us hurts the non-autistic people doing the dehumanizing.

I shouldn't have to explain exactly why I consider this extraordinarily hurtful, damaging, and generally unethical... especially since Barnbaum bases this on a flawed, bigoted, and discredited theory... that she repeatedly disproves within her own book.