Amazon Pulls Two Books Claiming “Cures” for Autism

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From Book Riot:

 Amazon removed two books claiming to provide “cures” for autism on Tuesday. Both books were written several years ago and together had hundreds of reviews. A day earlier, Wired published a report on dangerous pseudoscientific titles for sale on Amazon, which included two of the books that were later removed. The book Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism contained the instruction that autistic children bathe in and drink chlorine dioxide, a very strong bleach used in industrial water treatment. The other book, Fight Autism and Win, supported giving children an antidote for mercury poisoning, a treatment known as chelation, which can cause potentially fatal kidney damage. Chelation is a response to the thoroughly debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Earlier this month, the New York Times covered (another) recently-published study that confirmed that there is no link between the measles vaccine and autism.

Link to the rest at Book Riot

6 thoughts on “Amazon Pulls Two Books Claiming “Cures” for Autism”

  1. Maybe I’m alone here, but I think that’s absolutely appalling. So now booksellers are going to start censoring the books they offer and sell only books that are ‘true’ and say things that should be believed? What utter horse manure.

    • This is nothing new. It’s not censoring. Book stores choose all the time what books they will and won’t sell for many reasons.

      In this case the books being sold were straight out snake oil and fraud. I don’t know what Amazon’s potential liability in terms of damages would be should there be a case against these books, but why take the chance? I don’t blame a seller for not wanting to sell a book that is potentially harmful and could invite lawsuits.

  2. The thin wedge slips in.

    Once in without protest they can later ban/pull books for disagreeing with whatever they want …

    • Which is exactly how it works right now. Amazon can and does make up whatever reason to pull books down. This is not a free speech issue or a censorship issue. This is an issue where individuals were perpetrating fraud against the public.

      How is it wrong to remove fraud from your sales platform? Could Amazon use the same excuse latter on to ban something legitimate? Sure, but then you call them out on it. You don’t let fraud get spread and lend it legitimacy because you fear something that *Might* happen in the future.

      Don’t feat to confront a problem now because you fear what might be done in the future. Amazon has a responsibility to not allow fraud to be perpetrated on their platform. In this particular instance, they are in the right.

      In the past Amazon has pulled down books for the wrong reasons and they have been criticized for it. Amazon automation has cost my friends significant money as their books were wrongly pulled down. I have no doubt they will be in the wrong in the future. But in this one instance, Amazon did the right thing.

      • “This is not a free speech issue or a censorship issue.”

        Never said it was.

        What it looks like though is Amazon bowing to a third party on what books they should allowed to be sold through them. There are many ‘concerned’ parties that would love to be able to tell/get Amazon to stop selling other books and things.

        Hopefully Jeff will break off the wedge so it can’t go any deeper, but we shall see.

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