Some “Autism Treatments” Seem Perhaps Counterproductive
September 4th, 2008
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Autism is a real condition, and I’m certainly not questioning the fact that it exists and that it can be difficult for a person to live with, even debilitating. That being said, I’m starting to wonder if maybe some are taking things a bit too far with their desperation for a “cure” for the condition. For one thing, it seems like the current culture is to treat even mild cases as being tragic, insurmountable and disastrous. I’ve seen several sites dedicated to a kid who has shown signs of an Autism Spectrum Disorder with titles like “Hope for Jimmy” or “Pray for Johnny’s Future” – as if these (often mild) cases are somehow equivalent to having an aggressively matastrosizing cancer of multiple organs.
More than this, lets not forget that this is a condition which is social in nature and is characterized by a child not being able to communicate well with others, having inappropriate emotions and difficulty establishing bonds with others. Now, I’m not a doctor or anything, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to me that the best way to cultivate healthy social and emotion development of a kid is going to involve things like sticking them full of pins, putting them in a metal chamber, sticking tubes in various orafaces and things like that. Hell, if my parents had raised me like that, I doubt I’d be in any kind of stable condition right now!
Yet here are some of the common “therapies” which have used for autism treatment. Of course, all are totally unproven, carry risks and have no valid scientific basis for the claims that they treat what has been established as a hereditary condition.
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy – Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves putting an individual in a pressure-controlled chamber and increasing the ambient pressure sometimes up to several atmospheres. The individual generally then will breathe an oxygen enriched atmosphere. In some cases, the whole chamber is flooded with oxygen at up to near 100%, although in some cases, the oxygen is delivered by a mask, reducing fire hazards and allowing others to be in the chamber with the patient without breathing such a rich air mixture.
The technique was originally developed to treat divers who suffered from conditions like “the bends,” or more properly known as decompression sickness. Hyperbaric chambers have since been found to be useful in treating other conditions, such as persistent wounds which do not heal due to poor circulation, some traumatic injuries and respiratory conditions. The treatment increases the oxygen avaliable per-breath to patients with severely compromised breathing such as from a traumatic lung injury and can saturate the body’s tissues with oxygen.
However, with this comes the danger of hyperoxia, even to the point of oxygen toxicity, where oversaturation of oxygen can cause damage to tissue. For patients with compromised breathing, it is critical that they be closely monitored, as hyperbaric oxygen therapy above a certain pressure will exceed the limits of safe exposure, even with reduced respiration. For patients with full lung capacity, the danger may be even greater and extreme care must be taken to maintain O2 concentrations and pressures that do not approach dangerous levels. Other risks include inner ear damage, decompression sickness or joint problems.
In the US, the FDA has approved use of hyperbaric chambers outside of medical settings only for treatment of acute altitude sickness, and only at relatively low pressure levels, but their use off-label has become popular in treating autism. Some even rent them out for the purpose.
No major studies have ever shown the treatment to be effective, and it is worth nothing that while hyperbaric treatment can be a very effective method of treating some conditions, it has also been severely oversold by quacks as a method for treating everything from AIDS to “electrosensativity.” It has, however been touted as a near miricual cure by numerous mainstream media reports.
Chelation IV Therapy – Chelation therapy is an approved and established method for treatment of severe heavy metal poisoning and treatment of exposure to exposure to some other inorganic toxins. The process involves the use of IV-delivered solutions of binding agents which help to flush heavy metals out of the body. Studies have shown the treatment is effective for acute exposure to lead, mercury, arsenic and other toxic substances. The agents used include 2,3-dimercapto-1-propanesulfonic acid, Deferoxamine, synthetic amino acids. The therapy is occasionally used, although in a very mild form, for patients who exibit an iron imbalance.
The solutions delivered are very powerful compounds which should be administered by proper medical personnel, as they can be toxic in high doses. When properly used, the treatment can reduce kidney damage from heavy metal poisoning and help to draw heavy metals out of tissues and flush them from the body. It is sometimes used in conjunction with dialysis.
It has also become a “cure-all” in alternative medicine. Those who buy into the idea that autism is caused by heavy metals or other “toxins” will subject individuals to extended treatment by IV chelation. The treatment is becoming increasingly popular in the Autism and alternative medicine community. At least one individual is known to have died as a direct result of multiple treatments for autism and the doctor who administered the treatments was intially charged with the death – although it was apparently dropped. Numerous well established medical bodies, such as the Mayo Clynic have stated there is no evidence that the treament is effective and that it can be dangerous.
“Detoxification” - A number of “alternative” practitioners have suggested that the problem is not directly neurological but is really digestive. One of the causes which is often claimed is so-called “Leaky Gut Syndrome” a condition which supposedly involves a buildup of toxins in the digestive tract and the “leaking” of said toxins into the bloodsteam and the body. It is also claimed to be the root cause of everything from Crohn’s disease to asthma to AIDS. It has become an extremely popular alternative explanation for autism and therapy is as common as it is lucrative.
The treatment often involves herbal supplements, “detoxification” and specialized diets. One of the more common claims is that gluten is to blame. Gluten, of course, is just a protein found in wheat.
A more direct method for “removing the toxins” is also avaliable and perscribed by some for the treatment of autistic individuals.
Here’s an image of the setup for the “fluid detoxification” treatment:
And a home version of the same basic idea:
As for how these lovely pieces of equipment work, just use your imagination.
Acupuncture – Of course, always a mainstay of alternative medicine. Some evidence indicates that it might have some value for localized muscle pain, as the use of needles in the skin can stimulate nerves and dull pain, in a manner similar to how some “heat rub” products work. It’s never been shown to have any kind of general benefits beyond this narrow area of treatment, but “anecdotal evidence” abounds and it’s been around forever.
So why not stick a few pins in your socially inept kid, surely that’ll make him come out of his shell, right?
Alternative Medicine and Supplements – I kid you not, the following photo was posted on someone’s site as being the “medicine cabinet” of stuff they feed their son on a regular basis:
Other Crap – All manner of other stuff can be found on the internet and from various practitioners. The classics like homeopathics are always there as well as things like “ionic foot baths,” injections of calcium, vitamin, zync, iron, enzymes of various types, rubdowns with coconut oil and alike. And yes, many pages I’ve found refer to individuals who have been subjected to most or all of the above described “treatments” including some who are shuttled between hyperbaric chambers, IV detoxification, enemas, acupuncturists and alike on a weekly basis – and from the accounts on some of these pages, some of the individuals in question don’t even seem to even have the condition all that severely.
In conclusion, I’m not a doctor, and I’m not about to claim to have any kind of special knowledge or understanding about how to treat a condition of any kind, especially something as complex as a social developmental disorder. However, some of these treatments are so extreme and unrealistic that it’s unfathomable that they could be of any benefit. Furthermore, it just seems (at least to me) like sticking things in every part of a kids body and then forcing them into a diving bell is probably not going to help with social development.
Really, doctors and specialists are the ones who should be guiding treatment of this and any other medical or psycological condition. Your source of information on how to deal with something like autism should not look like this:
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Education, Not Even Wrong, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 4th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
What’s wrong with using the authority shown at the bottom as a source of information? Obviously she’s just trying to illustrate where autistic kids come from, right? Or where all kids come from, for that matter.
And who the hell ruined the demonstration with all those big pixels? I can’t see a damn thing!
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September 4th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
On hyperbaric chambers: They’re one of those strange things that is both badly overused and badly underused. They’re extremely good at treating a few conditions, some you mention, like poor circulation and diabetes where there is not good oxygen delivery to tissue. They’re shown to dramatically improve some traumatic injuries, because if there is not enough blood or breathing they make it so each breath is like ten in the super-rich pressurized air. So they’re very underused for that. But they’re horribly overused for things that they can’t do a damn thing for like autism or AIDS or other diseases. Also, you’re right that they’re very dangerous without very good supervision. I think it’s tragic that a kid is being put in a chamber that some other person might benefit from.
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September 4th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I wonder if anyone ever said something like “I don’t understand why things aren’t getting any better. We take our son to acupuncture every week. We’ve been giving him four complete enemas every day, he’s getting an IV drip to detoxify him for at least an hour a day, he spends a good two hours every afternoon in the hyperbaric chamber, we’ve been sticking him in the chamber to sleep every night, we start off each day with a course of nutrition injections, he’s never allowed to come back into the house without detoxifying in the foot bath first, we’re always sure to keep him covered in coconut oil and and we’re very strict about making sure he only eats the special seaweed and goatsmilk diet. but still, he still seems distant and almost like he doesn’t trust us.. he never talks to us and just seems to be unhappy all the time. What could we possibly be doing wrong?????”
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September 4th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
The real tragedy here is that you have a kid that’s already suffering with a condition, and then you torture them. What a violation of the instinctive trust a child puts in their parents.
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September 4th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
DV82XL said:
I agree with you. This is horribly sad, to think of what it must be like to start off with a condition like that and have your parents do things to you that must seem very strange and scary. I’m sure what an autistic child really wants is to be like other kids and to have a normal enjoyable childhood. It’s almost enough to make me tear up to think of how a child with social problems would be put on IV fluids and given all kinds of bizzar treatments. Think about how scary it would be for a really little kid to be put in a chamber by themselves and look out little port holes and hear gas valves and everything. They don’t understand what it means! All they know is there’s something wrong with them and mom and dad keep taking them scary and weird places and doing strange things to them.
I don’t know what the best way to deal with this is, but this just seems like it would ruin any chance they have at a good childhood. How can they bond with anyone when they’re subjected to this?
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September 4th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Regarding Chelation Therapy – You only need to look on Google to see that it has been made a cure for all kinds of things according to alternative medicine. Some supplements and oral sprays or pills are sold as Chelation therapy, but those are not as dangerous as the IV kind, but they’re just placebo, they’re not the real deal.
Chelation therapy via IV, as the post mentions is good and approved for heavy metal exposure, but it’s been sold as a cure for heart disease for years and now for stuff like autism. It’s all part of the whole “toxins” nonsense.
NEVER should this therapy be given except for those who need it for poisoning or something like that. It can cause hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) because it washes sugars out of the body. It can cause it so badly it can be fatal! In any decent hospital they would have very close monitoring and if needed a glucose IV to replace the dangerous sugar loss. It can also cause severe dehydration, anemia, fever, fluid buildup in joints, salt imbalances, liver failure.
It’s a very powerful therapy! You can read about this stuff here: http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/chelation.html
They started a study on it used on autistic children and the initial data said it did nothing, but they actually cut the study short because of the dangers and the side effects!
But just look at idiotic “holistic” pages like this one!!!! http://holisticonline.com/Chelation/hol_chelation.htm
There is a whole community of scammers over the whole EDTA/chelation IV treatment! It’s very dangerous when given outside very special circumstances!
I don’t see how they would not prosecute someone giving it because giving someone an IV seems like practicing medicine without license to me!
By the way, I know about this pretty well (I’m not a doctor either). because my father fell victim to this after he had a very minor heart attack about four years ago. I don’t know how he found this crap but some holistic/natural health place near him offered it and he started going. The lucky thing is that he got a bad IV bruise after it and his regular doctor noticed and asked him where it had come from. When he mentioned what he was up to, the doctor nearly hit the ceiling and told him that while his heart was still recovering it could kill him.
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
While I totally agree with you, and I KNOW that last image was just a bit of a joke – you of all people should know to be careful about ad hominem attacks. Yeah, she’s a total idiot, for all of the reasons you and good skeptics like Phil Plait say – but… they’re just dumb enough to take this sort of thing seriously, and we definitely don’t need to stoop to their level.
Keep it up though – you’re definitely speaking the truth!
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
U747 said:
Just for te record it is not an ad hominem fallacy to attack someones qualifications, if that issue is germane to the argument. This woman is not qualified to speak on medical issues at the depth she does, and she has leveraged he fame, starting as a nude model, to give voice to her ideas. Consequently it is valid to attack her on those grounds.
Now if the image was that of a private indiscretion of youth that had fallen in Doc’s hands and he was using it to try and discredit her – then it would be an ad hominem fallacy to claim that this somehow proved her incompetence.
Not all personal attacks are ad hominem attacks
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
U747 said:
There’s a point to it though, which I made more clear in a previous post. The reason she is well known, and the reason she is able to get a book out and get on television is she looks (or used to look) good naked. That’s it. The woman is famous because she was a playmate of the year and was in playboy I think four times. Other than that, that is it. She’s not even an actress: she’s been in only a few small parts like cameos. She was on an MTV game show as a co-host for two seasons.
Her message does not get out in the media because she is known for being knowledgeable on the topic or because she has some innovative message that has proven to be highly successful or because she has some kind of incite that is special. She has an autistic son, like hundreds of thousands of others. But… she’s famous because she looks good naked. That is it.
In general, I think it’s great when a celebrity wants to encourage some generic charity or some message like “donate blood” or “help feed hungry kids” or “reduce domestic violence” that’s great, because there’s no real message there other than they’re lending their image to a worthy cause. Here we have an example of someone trying to superseded doctors, researchers and alike because… she looked good naked.
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Oh yeah, I should add, incase it’s not clear, I’d commend her if she limited herself to “I have an autistic son and therefore I want to remind everyone about the importance of supporting research on this topic and improving tests for it and assuring our schools are ready for these kids and… ” (insert genetic good-cause stuff)
She’s basically saying “Listen to me. Don’t listen to the CDC or the AMA or the WHO. I’m Jenny McCarthy – 1993 Playmate of the year. Vaccines cause autism!”
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Oh yeah… and thirdly, some celebrities are VERY qualified to talk about very hard science issues and even go up against experts. For example, if Brian May wants to argue that a certain astronomy project is wastefully spending money when it should be going to another astronomy project that has been discredited… well, I’ll listen to him. Not really so much because he was the guitarist from Queen, but because he’s a legitimate astrophysicist.
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
You’re right. I definitely see that – I must’ve missed the previous post.
But you’re right in that she is using her fame as platform to make her voice heard.
I just wanted to make clear that, being a person who has posed naked does not necessarily disqualify someone as being an expert on something.
In this case, she is disqualified because her arguments are completely groundless.
But, DV82XL – I kind of disagree… by definition, ad hominem is a personal attack.
I mean, if Jenny spoke out as pro-vaccine, she would (hopefully) make scientifically correct arguments for it.. and she would be correct, based on the fact that she has researched these arguments somewhere (much like you and I have)… but the fact that she has posed naked would still make no difference.
But in the end, the point is – she clearly has no idea what she’s talking about, because her arguments fail – and anyone who makes those arguments would still be wrong.
drbuzz0 said:
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Oh definitely. I guess that was my point – being a celebrity has little to do with your qualifications.
The reason her argument fails is not because she has posed naked.
The only thing I was responding to was your last line:
“Your source of information on how to deal with something like autism should not look like this:”
Which is not [i]necessarily[/i] true, ya know?
But don’t get me wrong guys, I’m all with you here.
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
U747 said:
Yeah, you’re right. And to take it further, it’s not the messenger so much as the message that really matters. I’m not an expert in many things either, but I generally try to cite those who are or at least provide backup evidence other than “it’s because I say so.”
What she says could be true. It’s just not. And the only really selling point that she gets on is her general fame.
Also, I mean… I look damn good naked too.
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
U747 said:
The words mean “to (the) man” in Latin yes, and by misuse it has been redefined to mean any personal attack, as in the rhetorical vice that breaches of some sort of decorum. However it really is the logical fallacy of claiming that an argument is invalid because of WHO is making it (the opposite of appeal to authority).
The key thing in both these cases is to test for the validity of attack or appeal to see if it indeed surpurfulous, and only if it is can you technicaly make the call.
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
DV82XL said:
Right. Which is why saying “Your source of information on how to deal with something like autism should not look like this:” (in other words: ‘anyone who formerly looks good naked cannot be a source of valid information’) would be considered ad hominem.
As drbuzz0 said, he too, looks good naked (so do I!!).
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Cool hehhe
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September 4th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Well, I’ve said before: I don’t condone ad-hominem attacks, except against those who deserve it.
(Yeah, I know.. it’s intentionally a bit contradictory. Tongue-in-cheek and all)
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September 4th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Back to a more serious note. I never really understood this whole thing of people choosing to believe the alternative/nutty people over the medical authorities. The doctors will tell you they’re nuts and they’ll tell you the doctors and hospitals and drug companies are all nuts and/or evil. Why take the alternative word over the established mainstream? It sure seems like they’re the less credible ones. I guess the real thing to do though would be research it out for yourself and check the status of your sources, how the data was collected and why the conclusion was arrived at. It seems one would do that before doing something like this to their child. Do they just not bother?
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September 5th, 2008 at 12:17 am
I’m thinking it would be a bunch of reasons. When you’re a quack you’re not limited to reality so you can tell people what they want to hear. You can say to them “we can cure this with just a few more injections and hyperbaric sessions” where a normal legit doctor has to tell them that it probably can’t be turned around quickly. Also, quacks are good at appealing to all kinds of fallacies. They also help scapegoat the whole thing on the “big pharma” companies or whoever they choose.
Don’t forget that to be a successful doctor, you have to be good at identifying and treating diseases, but not necessarily a good salesperson or talker, but to be a successful quack you have to be an excellent salesperson, a very good liar and have a knack for finding suckers and feeding them what they want. That gives them something of an advantage.
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September 5th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Poor kids. Hard enough starting off life with autism. It’s so sad that a parent would be suckered into dishing out this kind of torture. IV’s? Hyperbaric chambers? Feeding the damn kid big pills and charcoal tablets all day? Enemas for Christ sake?
It’s both sad and angering. You know someone is making a lot of money here off of this crap too.
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September 5th, 2008 at 1:49 am
RTJ: Thank you for the good information on chelation IV therapy. One of the links you provided stated on a page that the average person needs 20-30 IV bag sessions for the “detoxification” to be complete! I’m not surprised at all that something like a treatment for heavy metal poisoning would be harsh on one’s system. It sounds like it could be very dangerous, especially on a child’s body, to be flushing them like that with big IV bags of binding agents. It makes my skin crawl that this is not considered illegal or requires a medical license and prescription per approved use! Simply giving any substance via IV is a serious issue. This is crazy! This should be criminal! That’s some very heavy duty toxicology treatment!
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September 5th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I feel really
DV82XL said:
Very much agreed. Very sad for the children subjected to this kind of quack-attack.
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September 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
That someone would consider to feed his/her child that “medicine cabinet” for something which doesn’t have a (known) cure is breathtaking.
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September 9th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I watched Jenny McCarthy on Larry King and felt frustrated as I heard all the softball questions and watched Larry pander to her misguided zeal. It’s funny to me that CNN can’t afford the researchers to find what the NY Times did in today’s editorial shown below:
Debunking an Autism Theory
The New York Times (editorial): September 9, 2008, pA26
Ten years ago, a clinical research paper triggered widespread and persistent fears that a combined vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella — the so-called MMR vaccine — causes autism in young children. That theory has been soundly refuted by a variety of other research over the years, and now a new study that tried to replicate the original study has provided further evidence that it was a false alarm.
The initial paper, published in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, drew an inferential link between the vaccine, the gastrointestinal problems found in many autistic children and autism. In later papers, researchers theorized that the measles part of the vaccine caused inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract that allowed toxins to enter the body and damage the central nervous system, causing autism.
Now, a team of researchers from Columbia University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tried and failed to replicate the earlier findings.
These researchers studied a group of 38 children with gastrointestinal problems, of whom 25 were autistic and 13 were not. All had received the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. The scientists found no evidence that it had caused harm. Only 5 of the 25 autistic children had been vaccinated before they developed gastrointestinal problems — and subsequently autism. Genetic tests found remnants of the measles virus in only two children, one of whom was autistic, the other not.
The new study adds weight to a growing body of epidemiological studies and reviews that have debunked the notion that childhood vaccines cause autism. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization have found no evidence of a causal link between vaccines and autism.
Meanwhile, the original paper’s publisher — The Lancet — complained in 2004 that the lead author had concealed a conflict of interest. Ten of his co-authors retracted the paper’s implication that the vaccine might be linked to autism. Three of the authors are now defending themselves before a fitness-to-practice panel in London on charges related to their autism research.
Sadly, even after all of this, many parents of autistic children still blame the vaccine. The big losers in this debate are the children who are not being vaccinated because of parental fears and are at risk of contracting serious — sometimes fatal — diseases.
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September 10th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Gordon:
“RTJ: Thank you for the good information on chelation IV therapy. One of the links you provided stated on a page that the average person needs 20-30 IV bag sessions for the “detoxification” to be complete! I’m not surprised at all that something like a treatment for heavy metal poisoning would be harsh on one’s system. It sounds like it could be very dangerous, especially on a child’s body, to be flushing them like that with big IV bags of binding agents. It makes my skin crawl that this is not considered illegal or requires a medical license and prescription per approved use! Simply giving any substance via IV is a serious issue. This is crazy! This should be criminal! That’s some very heavy duty toxicology treatment”
In the US, you do have to be a licensed medical practitioner to administer genuine chelation therapy. It is only approved for a very few indications — even most heavy metal poisoning cases have safer treatments these days. The quacks who push chelation therapy are actually licensed doctors. They’re also liars, because when they bill insurance providers for the chelation therapy, they bill it not as an autism/atherosclerosis/whatever therapy but as treatment for heavy metal toxicity. Many of them work with dubious labs to perform unlikely or downright skewed tests for heavy metal poisoning so that they can conveniently issue a diagnosis of heavy metal poisoning. In the case of autism, they are generally claiming mercury poisoning, based entirely on a bogus test and in the complete absence of clinical symptoms. But the marks don’t know that the diagnosis is bogus. In many cases, the marks don’t even know that the diagnosis was made. The purpose of the diagnosis is strictly to cover the practitioner’s butt. In other words, they are well aware that they are operating outside of the standard of care. This has been going on since long before the autism/mercury nonsense. They’ve just found additional marks, that’s all.
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September 11th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Such doctors should have their license taken away. It’s horrible to go through all the training doctors get to heal the sick and do good works and then turn around and do something like that for a quick buck. Nobody like that should be trusted with health or have a title of esteem like Doctor to put on their name. They should forfeit it for that kind of scam and the danger to children. Doctors can make good money doing legitimate medicine. Quacks deserve to be prosecuted even more if they’re a real doctor turned dishonest.
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September 11th, 2008 at 6:26 am
A big part of the issue here is that autism often presents as a developmental problem, meaning that almost all autistic children will improve over time. This is what these frauds depend on to bolster their claims that they are doing some good for their patient/victims.
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September 11th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Some years back there was a case study that reported that three children who had received a single injection of secretin (a gastrointestinal peptide that regulates bicarbonate secretion) in conjunction with endoscopy had experienced a dramatic improvement of their autistic symptoms.
Many parents went nuts. There was a huge run on secretin, to the point that the manufacturer had trouble meeting the demand. Over 2000 children were treated with the stuff. In due course, a double-blind clinical trial was carried out in which autistic children were injected with either secretin or a saline vehicle placebo. The secretin kids got better. So did the saline kids. No significant difference. People didn’t believe it; they did further studies: more doses, higher doses. Somebody even tried making it into an ointment and rubbing it on the skin. All yielded the same result: nada. Secretin was equivalent to a placebo. Fortunately, secretin turned out to be fairly benign stuff, so aside from unnecessary needle sticks and unnecessary expense, it is doubtful whether anybody was harmed.
The high level of placebo responding is very typical in autism clinical trials, and it is not at all unusual to see 20-30% of autistic children apparently “responding” to placebo. Of course, parents are often strongly motivated to see improvement, and sometimes autistic symptoms become less prominent as a child matures, and the treatment gets the credit. So parents of autistic children can be very vulnerable to fads and to quacks.
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March 13th, 2010 at 10:00 am
[...] The lack of understanding and misconceptions about the diagnostic criteria and the spectrum of autism disorders has only served to make the situation worse for those with autism spectrum disorders and those caring for children with these conditions. If that’s not bad enough, many of the same groups and individuals who spread this misinformati… [...]
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