"Stop It Before It Enters”: How the Resplice Institute Repackages Eugenics as Parental Love
Framed out before we’re even born
Hans India reports that in Vijayawada this week, at a free autism treatment camp hosted by the Resplice Institute, chairman Dr. Chandrasekhar Thodupunoori delivered a message that should chill every autistic person, parent and ethical clinician to the bone. Speaking before a crowd of families and school officials, he declared: "Autism begins in the womb, and parents must stop it before it enters their child’s life."
This is not science. This is not medicine. This is eugenics.
The Language of Elimination, Dressed as Care
What makes the quote so dangerous isn’t just its content but its context: it was delivered as medical advice, under the auspices of a respected institution, during an event billed as support for autistic children. There is no disclaimer, no framing caveat, no sense that autistic people even exist, let alone thrive. The only imagined future is one without us.
Dr. Thodupunoori’s phrasing is not a slip. It is a structural worldview: autism is an invading force, and parents are its first line of defense. This logic isn’t just about early intervention. It’s about preemption — about making sure autistic children are never fully allowed to emerge. The idea that autism is something to "stop" before it "enters" a child's life implies a moral obligation to prevent our existence.
The Institutional Harm Multiplier
That framing alone is harmful. But when it comes from the director of a medical institute, broadcast through major media, and deployed in public outreach events? It becomes something else entirely: structural narrative violence. Resplice is not a lone voice. It is a national actor, with clinical authority, funding access and a growing media footprint. When institutions promote erasure logic, it doesn’t matter how softly the words are spoken. The outcome is not misunderstanding. It is policy.
The Resplice Institute’s emphasis on Fecal Microbiota Transplants (FMT) and "gut-brain axis" repair may sound innovative to some ears. But it is rooted in the same logic that defines many forms of medical normalization: that autistic traits are symptoms of internal damage to be purged. Whether that damage is framed as neurological or gastrointestinal, the end goal remains the same: remediation of difference.
The Violence of Euphemism
To the average reader, the language used by Dr. Thodupunoori might not register as extreme. That’s part of the harm. Euphemistic erasure is still erasure. When institutions begin telling parents they can "prevent" autism with enough early treatment, we are no longer talking about support. We are talking about the instrumentalization of children’s bodies in service of normalcy.
And it will not stop at autism. If this framework is allowed to proliferate unchecked, it will extend to other neurodivergences, to disability, to any deviation from the state-approved bell curve. That is how eugenics survives in the modern era — not by declaring war on difference, but by redefining it as preventable suffering.
No Neutral Audience
Articles like the one published by The Hans India are not harmless. They are not neutral. They function as passive amplifiers of a deeply coercive worldview. By quoting Resplice uncritically and failing to include any autistic perspective, the outlet did more than report the news. It extended the institution's reach.
There is still time to refuse this frame. But that refusal will require more than polite correction. It will require autistic people, parents and medical professionals to say what should never have needed saying: our lives are not tragedies to be averted. And any institution that teaches otherwise cannot call itself a source of care.