Your article in Parade was quite good, especially considering the space constraints on an article that could have been thousands of words long.

I especially liked that you attributed the relatively recent high incidence of autism to the likely culprits: expansion of the diagnostic category (ASD) and to the heightened awareness among parents and pediatricians.

I also liked that you tried to put to rest the scientifically unsupportable theory that vaccines cause autism. Although we understand why parents’ might attribute their child’s autism to vaccines, their anecdotal reports simply do not hold up under scientific scrutiny. What’s odd in this case is that parents have taken on a very powerful role, which is not bad in the sense that they are assertively advocating for their children, but when they assume that they know more than the scientific community because they’ve seen it with their own eyes, it becomes very troubling and can actually have detrimental effects on their children, as when dangerous treatments, such as chelation are used.

I do, however, want to take issue with a few things in your article.

First, your statement that,” There currently is no single definitive treatment for autism. “One size fits all” does not work,” is simply not correct. Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is the only treatment that is backed up by solid scientific research, not only using traditional between-group designs, but, equally important, hundreds of studies using within-subject designs demonstrating that a wide range of behaviors can be successfully changed. Your statement that, “While behavioral programs claim a scientific basis, the reality is that it is difficult to test their effectiveness or even to compare one type of behavioral treatment with another,” is misleading. Applied behavior analysts claims a scientific basis because ABA is based on almost 100 years of basic scientific research on learning principles. The claim is backed up and is unquestionable. That is the reason that “these therapies win general endorsement by most professionals and many public school districts,” including the NIH and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among many others.

Finally, in the section “Does it Work?” your statements about these “alternative” treatments, in my opinion, were not strong enough. None of these interventions (including numerous others [e.g., floortime, facilitated communication, etc.] has any shred of scientific evidence supporting them, and as you correctly noted, many are downright harmful.

But, despite my concerns, I think the article will do a lot of good in dispelling some myths about autism.

Sincerely,

Hank Schlinger
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Hank Schlinger, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
California State University, Los Angeles
5151 State University Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90032-8227
Office Tel. (323) 343-2257
http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/hschlin/