Leon Eisenberg, autism expert and advocate
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
From the New York Times, Harvard Crimson:
Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a pioneer in researching autism and other developmental and learning disabilities, has died of cancer at the age of 87.
Eisenberg was among the first to study possible drug treatments for attention deficit disorders, and to demonstrate that language problems could predict the severity of autism in children.
Dr. James Harris, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University, said that Dr. Eisenberg was “the pivotal person in 20th-century child psychiatry who moved the field from simple descriptions of childhood disorders to actually looking at the science behind both the diagnosis and treatment.”
… In his later years, Dr. Eisenberg became increasingly alarmed at trends in the field he helped establish, criticizing what he saw as a cozy relationships between drug makers and doctors and the expanding popularity of the attention deficit diagnosis.
(Harvard photo in the New York Times)

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