So-called ‘therapies’ amount to uncontrolled experimentation on children, experts say

Thousands of American children with autism are being subjected to “therapies” that are costly, unproven and may cause harm, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune has concluded.

Physicians are trading on hope to promote vitamins, intraveneous injections and even pressurized oxygen chambers to parents, saying they can “recover” children with autism. Yet science has not yet identified a cause or cure for the disorder.

The Tribune investigation found that laboratory tests used to justify the “therapies” are often misleading and misinterpreted, and said clinical trials have not found them to be effective.

Experts urged parents to exercise caution and demand to see documentation of beneficial results before agreeing to participate. An excerpt:

“They really should be seeing treatment of patients with unproven therapies as dangerous experimentation,” said pediatrician Dr. Steven Goodman, a clinical trial expert at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. “The problem with uncontrolled experiments … is that it is experimentation from which we can learn nothing.”

Related stories from the Chicago Tribune:

• Autism success stories more persuasive to some than hard data
• Questionable treatments for children with autism
• Experimental treatments

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 3:26 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, autism, drugs, parents. 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.  Email This Post