Dr. Joe Scarborough Has Some Important Misinformation About Autism

MSNBC continues to allow Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough to lead a campaign of lies and misinformation about Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) and mass murderers like UCSB shooter Elliot Rodger.

On Wednesday morning, Scarborough and company continued to insist that Rodger’s autism was a factor in the killings, and even made the completely unsubstantiated, contraindicated claim that Rodger refused to take a medication that he had been prescribed for autism.

Then, the “fun” really started.

The 15-minute segment was ostensibly devoted to yammering about the incredibly stupid premise that Seth Rogen is somehow to blame for the killings,  and while there was enough other stupid thrown in there to fill a hundred columns, the most egregious was directed at autism. Co-host Mika Brzezinski set the tone by saying that Elliot Rodger “had been in therapy since childhood, had a form of autism, and had blown off the medication that had been prescribed.”

Since this was the springboard for all of Joe Scarborough’s commentary on autism throughout the rest of the segment, in which he continued to falsely identify autism as a mental illness, this bit of reporting looms large, and it is categorically a lie. The medication that Rodger named in his manifesto, Risperidone, wasn’t prescribed to him for treatment of autism.

The coverage of these shootings is characterized by the proverbial kick in the crotch of naming and blaming the shooter’s unrelated neurodevelopmental disorder, and ignoring the actual mental illnesses that they may have had. In Elliot Rodger’s case, there has been no reporting on the specific mental illness he may have had.

Well, almost no reporting.

There is this, from RadarOnline:

“Elliot has always been troubled and couldn’t express himself,” the source tells us.

“His parents did everything they could to help him. It seemed that Elliot suffered from extreme paranoia and heard voices, but it was impossible to properly diagnose because he just wouldn’t talk. Having been prescribed psychiatric medication, Elliot refused to take it.

An unnamed source from RadarOnline isn’t all that compelling, by itself, but there is a more reliable source to debunk the notion that Rodger was prescribed Risperidone for autism, and to support Radar’s reporting: medical science. From the National Institutes of Health (emphasis mine):

Risperidone is used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia (a mental illness that causes disturbed or unusual thinking, loss of interest in life, and strong or inappropriate emotions) in adults and teenagers 13 years of age and older. It is also used to treat episodes of mania (frenzied, abnormally excited, or irritated mood) or mixed episodes (symptoms of mania and depression that happen together) in adults and in teenagers and children 10 years of age and older with bipolar disorder (manic depressive disorder; a disease that causes episodes of depression, episodes of mania, and other abnormal moods). Risperidone is also used to treat behavior problems such as aggression, self-injury, and sudden mood changes in teenagers and children 5 to 16 years of age who have autism (a condition that causes repetitive behavior, difficulty interacting with others, and problems with communication).

Whatever condition Elliot Rodger was prescribed Risperidone for last year, it wasn’t for an ASD, which isn’t a mental illness, and is not linked to violent crime…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.