Beware the ‘miracle cure’

While I was a communication disorders graduate student in the 90’s, a new buzzword emerged. Facilitated Communication was whispered by some as the new “miracle cure” for non-verbal Autistic people. There were life-changing stories of individuals suddenly beginning to communicate in what appeared to be an almost Ouija Board manner. While it was being touted as the latest, new fad diet in popular media which will let you lose 40 pounds in 3 weeks, I, and many others in the field, were suspicious. 

For those of you who are not familiar with Facilitated Communication, the idea is that facilitators can “help” severely impaired individuals type, or use a letter board to spell out in a hand-over-hand manner. Thanks to this seemingly magical intervention, individuals who lacked communication, even after years of special education, were suddenly communicating in complete thoughts, in perfect sentences with flawless spelling and punctuation. They weren’t actually impaired at all, the narrative went. In fact, many who had IQs in the 40s were suddenly scoring in the genius range. 

So why wouldn’t I embrace this practice? 

When I looked at this idea of Facilitated Communication, my only thought was — here is an individual who because of the severity of their disability never learned to speak or communicate in any way, be it speech, ASL or augmentative devices. For whatever reason, their neurology does not recognize language. But at 10 or 20 or 30 years old, they suddenly recognize letters, know that they must put those together into words, choose the correct words, along with the correct grammatical markers, put them in the correct order and communicate in a complex fashion? 

It seemed overly convenient and too good to be true. Human neurology is complex, and it has taken decades upon decades to understand. That can’t be undone with a wave of the magic wand. 

As you may have guessed by now, a multitude of blind studies ultimately proved that it was the facilitator who was “speaking,” not the individual with the disability.

While we may desperately wish it wasn’t so, the science is clear, and the vast majority of researchers and practitioners now understand that Facilitated Communication is little more than wishful thinking. 

That hasn’t stopped a small minority from preying on the desperation of the most vulnerable with hear-say anecdotes and pseudoscientific insistence that it’s a miracle cure. So, why am I discussing Facilitated Communication? Because when I read the story Climate Change Denial Heats Up at Wyoming Capital, all I could think about was Facilitated Communication. We all really want to believe what we want to believe, that which supports our narratives, that which reflects our egos. If the ego is fragile, the stronger the mirror. When we feel threatened, we look for a set of facilitating hands to guide us in our narrative. We cannot and do not want to accept what is behind the mirrors, whether that is fact, science or opinion.

There are Flat Earthers who do not believe the earth is round. There are certain factions of Christianity who do not believe in evolution. There are those who believe that Facilitated Communication is real. And there are those who deny climate change. 

The science behind climate change is based on decades of research and multitudes of studies. While we can argue until the farting cows come home over the causation, science has proven climate change is happening. There is no ‘miracle cure’, and denial will get us nowhere.

When we were young children, many of us believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny, or that babies arrived under cabbage leaves left by a stork, but there comes a time when those myths are broken. The myths were not intended to be harmful or traumatic, but I remember when I found out, and I flat out chose not to accept the truth, even though part of me knew. The popularity of the person who destroys this belief is not high. I sure didn’t go around telling any of my kindergarten friends that my older brother had told me definitively that none of it was true. Jeesh — no birthday party invites for me! And frankly, I didn’t want to believe it either. 

I do believe that when we go through these transformations from believing the myth to the acceptance of truth and science, we are a little heartbroken. The longer we believe the myth, the more heartbroken we are. But every time we allow our hearts to break, we open it to wisdom. How sad is it that there are elected officials in the 21st century who are climate change deniers, with all their access to scientific studies, factual weather patterns, and disappearing arctic ice and shorelines? Why do they need a charlatan who is guiding their narrative like those facilitators in the myth of Facilitated Communication? They are just sitting there blank and allowing someone else to guide their hands. Are they so afraid of knowledge and wisdom? Do they also still believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or the babies under the cabbage leaves (that might prove…interesting)? Do Freedom Caucus members go to the mall and sit on Santa’s lap? 

Being a child who is finally told about the reality of those childhood heroes hurts. Being the parent of a child with a disability who was told their child could suddenly communicate, and was communicating amazing things, like “I love you” must have been crushing when they learned it was a myth. Finding out that we, humans, are destroying our own planet is heartbreaking, but it’s true.

There is a story that is well-known in the field of special education. It is called Welcome to Holland. In this story, a person who planned and bought tickets to visit Italy finds out the plane just landed in Holland. The moral of the story is, we can be filled with regret, denial, and anger that we are not in Italy, but that would serve no purpose other than to ruin our time in Holland.

The first thing we must do is admit, we’re not in Italy. Then we must adjust. Then we must devise a plan. And then, we get to enjoy Holland. 

Sorry Senator Steinmetz — you are not in Italy. The Tooth Fairy does not exist. The earth is not flat. The hands that are guiding you are those of facilitators with their own egoistic narrative, and climate change is real. I challenge you to step out of the mirrored room of your own ego and open yourself up to wisdom. Or, maybe just put that on your list to Santa.