This paper has both theoretical and practical ambitions. The theoretical ambitions are to explore what would constitute both effective and ethical treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the practical ambition is perhaps more important: we argue that a dominant form of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which is widely taken to be far-and-away the best "treatment" for ASD, manifests systematic violations of the fundamental tenets of bioethics. Moreover, the supposed benefits of the treatment not only fail to mitigate these violations, but often exacerbate them. Warnings of the perils of ABA are not original to us-autism advocates have been ringing this bell for some years. However, their pleas have been largely unheeded, and ABA continues to be offered to and quite frequently pushed upon parents as the appropriate treatment for autistic children. Our contribution is to argue that, from a bioethical perspective, autism advocates are fully justified in their concerns-the rights of autistic children and their parents are being regularly infringed upon. Specifically, we will argue that employing ABA violates the principles of justice and nonmaleficence and, most critically, infringes on the autonomy of children and (when pushed aggressively) of parents as well.

中文翻译：

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自闭症谱系“疾病”的应用行为分析的伦理关注。

本文具有理论和实践野心。理论上的野心是探索什么将构成自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的有效和道德治疗。但是，实践的野心也许更重要：我们认为，应用行为分析（ABA）的一种主要形式被广泛认为是对ASD的最佳“治疗”，它明显违反了基本原则。生物伦理学。而且，治疗的所谓好处不仅不能减轻这些侵害，而且常常加剧这种侵害。关于ABA危险的警告并非美国独创。自闭症倡导者已经敲响了好几年。但是，他们的恳求基本上没有受到重视，ABA继续作为自闭症儿童的适当治疗方法被提供给父母，并且经常被推向父母。我们的贡献是，从生物学伦理的角度出发，自闭症倡导者的担忧是完全合理的-自闭症儿童及其父母的权利经常受到侵犯。具体而言，我们将辩称，雇用ABA违反了正义和非恶意行为的原则，最关键的是，侵犯了儿童和（当受到积极推动时）父母的自治。