A woman where I work sent out a request on an internal mailing list asking if anyone could recommend “a good autistic specialist who practices using the DAN philosophy” in our area. Here’s what I wish I could write her:
Dear XXXXX,
I don’t want this to come across too harshly, but I certainly hope nobody will help you find what you’re looking for. DAN is nothing but quackery, and their use of chelation and Lupron is both ill-advised and unethical.
I would encourage you to call Kennedy Krieger and talk to them about seeing a neurologist and whatever other therapists your child might need - they have all sorts. My son Jared has done wonderfully working with them.
Best of luck,
Jemal
There’s a hypothetical question that crops up every once in a while in online autism communities, and it’s this:
“We can give your child a shot now, and when he wakes up tomorrow he will no longer be autistic. Would you like us to give him the shot?”
Strangely, this question comes up a lot more online than it does in “the real world,” mostly because as hypotheticals go, it’s pretty far out. For instance, while we don’t know much about what causes autism, but we know quite a bit about its physical manifestation in the brains of autistics. One of these is that autistics have a different structure to their brain than other people. Instead of a spiderweb of interconnected neurons, autistics seem to have columns of brain tissue with more linear connections.
The reason this is important is that your brain is you. The structure of your brain determines not only the way you think, but the kind of thinking you can do. These differences in structure are a part of why it can be so difficult for autistics to learn certain kinds of information, and also why they can be so good at other kinds of thoughts.
So when you talk about a “cure” for autism, you’re talking about something that would require re-wiring the structure of the brain, taking it apart and putting it back together. And that’s impossible. Not just difficult - impossible. Have you seen the pictures of the enormous spiderweb in Texas? Imagine a spiderweb a hundred times larger and denser, and then imagine trying to use a pair of tweezers to reconnect every strand to turn it into the Taj Mahal.
Worse yet, all of our memories are wrapped up in the way that our neurons are connected, so even if you could rearrange everything, you’d be destroying every memory, every behavior, every function of the brain in question. So rearranging the brain would be like giving somebody a complete lobotomy - like turning them into an infant.
But even if you could get past all of the technical hurdles that make a cure impossible, you have to ask yourself, “what would a cure mean?” It would mean changing the fundamental identity of the person in question. The way that a person thinks defines who she is. So part of the “cure” question is, “Do you want to trade your autistic child for a different child?”
Would I trade Jared’s problems for somebody else’s? Would I give up his strengths in order to get rid of his weaknesses? If Jared didn’t scream and cry when things didn’t go his way, would he still be completely unwilling to lie to me? If Jared was better at making friends, would he still amaze me with his sense of humor? If he didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, would he still walk everywhere holding my hand telling me how much fun we were having?
So needless to say, I’m not looking for some impossible cure. I like my child and wouldn’t trade him for somebody else. Yes he can be difficult, but to be perfectly honest, an autistic boy is no more trouble and worry than a teenage girl. And in two months, I’ll have one of each.
Google Video has an episode of the BBC show “Horizon” about Temple Grandin. They discuss the history of autism treatment and research, and the way it relates to her life and her work. Ms. Grandin, it should be pointed out, has a very singular experience as an autistic and one shouldn’t draw too many conclusions about other autistics from this movie. Still, it’s a good introduction to autism, not to mention cattle handling.
The part I like least is the title, “The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow.” I’d have called it, “The Woman Who Can Think Like a Cow,” because that’s the point: her special abilities allow her to see things from an animal’s perspective, but she thinks like no one but herself.
Jared isn’t much like Temple. His chief emotion isn’t fear, though he doesn’t tolerate anxiety very well. Jared has issues with structure and socializing, but his sensory sensitivity is much lower than most autistics. He doesn’t mind loud sounds or bright lights, and while he likes deep pressure, he doesn’t mind light pressure at all.
So enjoy the movie, but remember that autistics are individuals, just like everyone else. And they certainly aren’t cattle.