Movie review: Spellers

A grassroots educational revolution is allowing many people on the spectrum to communicate in extraordinary new ways

I. Backstory: meeting J.B. Handley for the first time

I started researching the political economy of autism in July of 2015, the week after my then-girlfriend’s son was diagnosed as being on the spectrum. Initially I assumed I could wrap my head around what was happening in one day. But the mainstream narrative fell apart almost instantly and I’ve been researching this topic ever since.

At the time, it was still possible to use Google and even social media to find alternative critiques of the mainstream autism literature (now the censorship is so severe that such a search is impossible). And the person doing the best independent research anywhere in the world was J.B. Handley, a quant genius who founded his own private equity firm and has a vaccine-injured son.

J.B. had created a website called 14 Studies where he dismantled the journal articles that were most frequently cited in support of the vaccine program. The site was amazing — J.B. understood the statistics and science better than any of the original authors. I spent days reading each of the takedowns and by the end, the mainstream narrative lay in smoldering ruins.

In November of that year I presented my initial research findings at a heterodox economics conference. I got some emotional pushback but no one could point out any factual flaws in my argument. With each day of research I grew more convinced that autism is the biggest political economy story in my lifetime. I was leaning toward changing my thesis topic to The Political Economy of Autism. But before I bet my career (and life) on that theory of the case, I needed to know if J.B. Handley was the real deal*.

(*I mean “the real deal” in the way that they used that term on The West Wing — a person so transformative that it was worth hitching one’s political fortunes to — with all of the trials and tribulations that go along with that.)

I returned to the U.S. for Christmas and just after the first of the year I flew up to Portland, Oregon to meet J.B. at his office in the Pearl District.

J.B. and I are one year apart in age. He’s a huge fan of hip hop and I had previously worked for the estate of Tupac Shakur. He tried to make a rivalry out of the fact that he went to Stanford and I went to Berkeley. But Stanford is a much better school and so I couldn’t do much other than shrug my shoulders and point that out. Over the course of our hour-long conversation we worked through the science of autism, the politics, and the various ways in which vaccine safety studies are rigged to hide harms.

I walked out of that meeting knowing that my life would never be the same because J.B. is absolutely brilliant and the cover up of the autism epidemic is indeed the biggest story in American history.

However, J.B. was not in a good place when I met him. A decade earlier, he had founded Generation Rescue with Jenny McCarthy. But he confessed that even though he was known for researching the biomedical approach to autism (detoxication and other alternative healing methods), nothing he tried with his son Jamison (Jamie) seemed to work. That morning he had just purchased a piece of property where he planned to build a residential facility for seven adults on the spectrum, so that his son would have a place to live after J.B. and his wife died. He was resigned to the fact that Jamie would likely always have severe autism and never be able to communicate beyond a few simple words and sounds.

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II. How to End the Autism Epidemic

In the three years that followed I went underground so that I could finish my thesis without Pharma swooping in to stop me. And J.B. quietly went about launching a revolution in our understanding of autism.

In 2018, Chelsea Green published J.B. Handley’s How to End the Autism Epidemic. In many ways, the book marked the end of the vaccines and autism debate. The book presents smoking gun documents from doctors and clear explanations about how neurotoxic aluminum adjuvants are transported to the brain. No one who reads that book will ever follow the CDC schedule again.

There were many factors, but I noticed that after the publication of the book, Pharma shifted from any pretense of scientific debate to PR campaigns based entirely on character assassinations of anyone who questions vaccines. And then, as you know, in 2020 Pharma declared war on all of humanity via the global Covid psyop.

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III. Underestimated: An Autism Miracle

In late 2020, as I fought in the trenches of the war against Pharma, I started hearing about a revolutionary new educational strategy for people on the spectrum called Spelling to Communicate. Lots of leaders in the medical freedom movement whose kids are on the spectrum had started using S2C as they call it, and were having fantastic results.

At a dinner in San Diego with Mark Blaxill, Jennifer Larson, and her son Cade Larson, Jennifer showed me video from earlier in the day of Cade using S2C and I was blown away by what I saw. Jen indicated that J.B. and his son Jamie were also having remarkable results — and that J.B. was the one who had introduced it to the wider autism community after hearing about it from warrior mom Honey Rinicella.

The idea of S2C is both simple and profound and reveals a lot about the inner workings of the autistic mind. Trained teachers hold up a letter board and ask a non-verbal person on the spectrum a question. The autistic person then spells out his/her reply by pointing to letters on the letter board that are then written down by the teacher who then reads out the words.

The theory of the case is that autism is a motor issue not a cognitive issue. Fine motor skills are impaired (holding a pencil, writing, speaking), but gross motor skills (large movements of the arms and legs) are usually still intact. Spelling to Communicate works because the message travels from the brain to the arm (gross motor) as the person on the spectrum pushes against a letter board. Evidence suggests that most people on the spectrum can do math and read by about age four but they cannot express themselves which leads to frustration and behavioral issues. S2C gives people on the spectrum a way to reveal the inner workings of their minds.

In 2021, Skyhorse published Underestimated: An Autism Miracle by J.B. and Jamison Handley. The book walks through their journey with Spelling to Communicate — studying with the originator of S2C, Elizabeth Vosseller, at the Growing Kids Therapy Center in Herndon, Virginia and then continuing the work with Dawnmarie Gaivin at Spellers Center San Diego.

Jamie’s ease and comfort with S2C grows over time as he moves from simple plastic stencil letter boards with just a few letters to letter boards with the full alphabet to supported typing and then typing independently. The most remarkable section of the book for me is a question & answer dialogue between J.B. and Jamie midway through the book where Jamie uses S2C to share his thoughts and reactions to what J.B. wrote about S2C and their journey.

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IV. Spellers the movie

As Jamie’s command of S2C increased, he expressed a desire to go to college and a passion for sharing S2C with the world. Not long after the book came out Jamie wrote that he wanted to create a movie to tell others about S2C. And so over the last two years, a remarkable team has come together to create the film Spellers to do just that.

J.B. sent me an advance copy of the film and I watched it with my mother, a speech language pathologist who has worked with kids on the spectrum for 30 years. The film follows various young people as they move through the different stages of learning to communicate via S2C. But it also shows Jamie and his friends hanging out, enjoying hip hop, and learning to surf — socializing and becoming full-fledged adults.

The film has attracted two high-profile executive producers — Jenny McCarthy and Donnie Wahlberg. The film is an official selection at the Phoenix Film Festival where it will be screened on March 31, April 1, and April 2. The entire autism community is encouraged to turn out to support the film.

This past Thursday, Del Bigtree interviewed J.B. and Jamie live in studio on The Highwire. It’s one of the most remarkable interviews I’ve ever seen. Live TV interviews are difficult under any circumstances but J.B. and Jamie carried it off with skill and grace. Del asked Jamie a series of questions about his experience and Jamie carefully typed out his replies that were then read out loud by a computer. For a person who was never expected to be able to communicate, this is a miracle indeed.

I don’t want to be Pollyanna. The S2C journey is arduous. As J.B. explains, they have worked at it several hours a day for several years in order to go from spelling simple words to becoming an independent typist. And there is still so much more to learn as Jamie hopes to fulfill his dream of studying neuroscience. But given that this population was labelled cognitively impaired, and are now sharing their thoughts and feelings with the world, this level of communication is extraordinary.

Like every good thing in this world there is some controversy. The American Speech and Hearing Association is protecting its turf (and outdated methods) and trying to cast doubt on S2C. But as J.B. points out, anyone who has seen S2C with their own eyes quickly becomes a convert and parents are bypassing the captured mainstream gatekeepers and learning these tools through independent S2C learning centers that are springing up across the country.

I look forward to living in a world where 1,000, then 100,000, then 1,000,000+ people with autism are able to use S2C to share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas with the world. I imagine that we will see a flourishing of art, literature, and politics as previously silenced voices become part of the national conversation.

And I believe that the implications of this communications revolution could go well beyond that. I feel like there are two waves heading toward each other. Over the next ten years there will be lots more people with disabilities as Pharma and other toxic industries continue to poison humanity. And at the same time, there will be lots more people with disabilities who will be able to use S2C and other technologies to share their innermost thoughts. At some point, these two waves may crash into each other. How will the debate change as those most affected are able to testify and give witness?

An official release date for Spellers has not yet been announced. But there will be an international screening event on April 30 and you can sign up to host a private screening at your home or in the community.

I’m so grateful to the entire Handley family for their courage in helping to lead our country out of this troubled era. Please help spread the word and share Spellers with everyone you know who could benefit from S2C.

p.s. My mom absolutely loved the film too and is now sharing it widely with her colleagues and friends.

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Blessings to the warriors. 🙌

Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏

Huzzah for everyone working to build the parallel society our hearts know is possible. ✊

In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.

As always, I welcome any corrections.

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