In this episode of FAB Gab, Jane Dryden talks about her recently-published paper about the way that microbiome research reflects and reinforces the imperative of normalcy in health and medicine. Through the two cases of obesity and of autism, Dryden argues that healthism and ablism are combined in the way that researchers and popular writers talk about the ‘promise to cure’ in microbiome research.

Here’s a sneak peak from the conversation:

…With autism, there’s a lot of studies that do show a correlation between being autistic and having and having various forms of gut issues. Like they’re just really common. The exact prevalence varies a lot depending on the study. But this correlation kind of comes up again and again. And so you can pretty reasonably ask, you know, would it be helpful if we found sort of useful, useful treatments for this? But the focus is so often on the behaviors. So for example, autistic people frequently stim, right? So kind of repetitive movements and motions and so forth that are aimed at sort of self soothing, and, you know, just interacting with the environment. And the, and so one of the measures of well, did this microbiome therapy work is, well, was there less stimming? And did the person make more eye contact? It’s like, Well, are we worried about this? Or are we worried about whether their stomachs feel okay?

Jane Dryden in conversation on FAB Gab

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FAB Gab is hosted and produced by Kathryn MacKay.