J.B. Handley, Founder of Generation Rescue, Kicked Off MEDIUM…

By Kent Heckenlively, JD

I do not have any better friend in the autism community than J.B. Handley.  I think you should simply know that up-front.

When he and his lovely wife, Lisa founded Generation Rescue, I made sure to meet him at a book-signing in Berkeley along with David Kirby, the author of Evidence of Harm.  That was well over a decade ago.  Since we were both Bay Area residents I thought I’d found my “autism dad” buddy.

Imagine my disappointment when he told me that he was moving to Oregon.

But the move to Oregon from California didn’t dampen our growing friendship.  He got me involved with the publication Rescue Post from the start, which later evolved into Age of Autism.  

For more than a decade I’d say I talk to J.B. at least every week or two.  We talk over issues in the movement, personalities, both pro and con, and try to figure out how to keep our fractious little band of rebels together as we fight the overwhelming power of pharma.

And since we’re both dads with vaccine-injured children who haven’t responded to the countless bio-medical interventions which have worked for other kids, he’s usually the first person I call when I learn about a new possible treatment.  It has been humorous over the years how often we independently find the next new treatment possibility.

I’ve been surprised that there aren’t more father warriors in our movement. 

Most of the burden seems to be shouldered by the mothers.

J.B. has been both a public and private warrior for autism.  Who else in our community has appeared on air with Larry King, or feuded at The Doctors?  And I’ll let you in on a little secret.  J.B. does a lot behind the scenes.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve run across some new venture, called J.B. about it, and he’ll say, “Yeah, I’m helping them out,” or “Did you like my idea?”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that J.B.’s dad was a Green Beret in Vietnam, or that J.B. graduated from Stanford University.  In many ways, he is his own Special Operations Team in the autism fight.  And he plays it close to the vest.  I am sure there is much more that he has done, or is planning to do, about which he has not yet told me.

Sometimes he reminds me of Obi Wan-Kenobi from Star Wars.  I need to ask him the right question before he will give me an answer.  I have tried to be a good padawan.

Which is why when he recently mentioned to me that he had been kicked off of MEDIUM, my ears suddenly pricked up.  He had laughed at my stories of my talk at the Commonwealth Club of California being cancelled because of protests, my being banned from Australia for three years, and the recent shadow-banning by Facebook.

Over the years we have talked about the so-called “intimidation” and while we believe what many have said, nobody has ever tried to intimidate us.  So, we just kept pushing to see what happened.

J.B. really liked the platform of MEDIUM, starting in September of 2015, writing twenty-seven articles, and amassing more than 1.5 million views.  In addition, MEDIUM named his a “Top Health Writer” for his work.

Which is why when he received the following email from MEDIUM on March 23, 2018, he was shocked:

“Hello,

We are writing to notify you that your Medium.com account is in violation of our rules, and your profile and posts will no longer be publicly available on Medium.

https://medium.com/policy/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4

Your work will remain accessible to you while signed in, and may be exported at any time by following the instructions here, but will appear as unavailable to others.

Your Medium membership, if you have one, will be canclled and an remaining funds you may have prepaid will be returned to you.

Medium Trust and Safety, 

J.B. tried to get some clarity as to which rules he violated, but received no answers.

I welcomed J.B. to the ranks of “the banned.”  

He knew about what I had gone through, and I told him how publisher, Tim Bolen had recently received his SECOND sentence of a week in Facebook jail, during which time he is not allowed to post any articles.  (We believe this to be related to the Australian government which has shut down access to certain anti-vaxx Facebook groups for people in Australia, while allowing it to appear to the rest of the world that the groups still exist.)

Desperate Days for our opposition…

“These are the desperate last days of the pharma tyranny,” I told him.  “It is so absurd what they are doing, which is why I have been attempting to fight their ham-handed efforts with humor.”

I asked J.B. what he was going to do next, and like the warrior he is, had already set up another website for his work.

You can view it at: www.jbhandleyblog.com

Why don’t you go over and visit it now and give him some love for all the great work he does?

By Kent Heckenlively, JD

Kent’s book PLAGUE was released by Skyhorse Publishing in 2014 and is now available in paperback.  Skyhorse also publishes the work of Mo Yan, the 2012 recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature.

The book is co-authored with Judy Mikovits PhD.  It is an indictment of the “Fake Science” we find so prevalent in the US.

 

Kent Heckenlively is also the author of INOCULATED: How Science Lost its Soul in Autism, available on Amazon and at Barnes&Noble.com

 

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