To Treat Autism, Parents Take a Leap of Faith

Desperate parents of autistic children have tried almost everything - hormone injections, exotic diets, faith healing - in the hope of finding a cure. But more than 60 years after it was first identified, autism remains mystifying and stubbornly difficult to treat. About the only thing parents, doctors and policy makers agree on is that the best chance for autistic children to develop social and language skills is to enroll them in some type of intensive behavioral therapy. A government-appointed panel has endorsed such therapies, which can cost $40,000 to more than $60,000 per year. Parents fight to get their children placed in behavioral programs, encouraged by the claims of some therapists that they can produce astonishing improvement in up to 50 percent of cases. An estimated 141,000 children with autism receive special education services, in many cases including behavioral therapies, through public schools. Yet the science behind behavioral treatments is modest at best. Researchers have published very few rigorously controlled studies of the therapies, and the results of those studies have been mixed. While some children thrive, even joining regular classrooms, the studies have found that most show moderate or little improvement. And researchers say most parents now experiment with so many alternative treatments - including vitamins, diets, sensory therapies and computer games - that they muddy the results of behavior treatment, making it very hard to say what is causing a child to gain skills or to decline.