Sad but cautionary story - an American MD and father of two autistic children talks about his experiences with 'alternative medicine'


"I consider myself to be a very scientific person. While growing up, I was skeptical and inquiring and naturally gravitated to the sciences. My first brushes with pseudoscience and quackery in medical school left me convinced that "it could never happen to me." I was sure that my background and training would keep me from making the same mistake as "those people." I was wrong.

A year or so after my son was diagnosed with autism, with no hope for cure in sight, I was feeling desperate for anything that might help him. My wife attended a conference about "biological treatments for autism." She came back extremely excited, having heard story after story about "hopeless" cases of autism "cured" by a variety of simple treatments.
I was initially skeptical, but my desperation soon got the better of me.
We started out with the simple therapies—vitamins and minerals—but soon moved on to the "hard stuff": the gluten- and casein-free diet, secretin, and chelation. Some of it seemed to work—for a while—and that just spurred us to try the next therapy on the horizon.
I was "hooked" on hope, which is more addictive and dangerous than any "street" drug."

Dr Laidler goes on to describe the expensive regimes he and his wife placed their faith in and concludes

"Looking back on my experiences with "alternate" autism therapies, they seem almost unreal, like Alice's adventures in Wonderland. Utter nonsense treated like scientific data, people nodding in sage agreement with blatant contradictions, and theories made out of thin air and unrelated facts—and all of it happening happening right here and now, not in some book.
Real people are being deceived and hurt, and there won't be a happy ending unless enough of us get together and write one.

My personal journey through the looking glass has ended. I stepped into "alternative" medicine up to my neck and waded out again, poorer but wiser.
I now realize that the thing the "alternative" practitioners are really selling is hope—usually false hope—and hope is a very seductive thing to those who have lost it.
It is really not surprising that people will buy it even when their better judgment tells them not to do so.

I suspect that the majority of the people who promote "unconventional" or "alternative" treatments for autism truly believe in what they sell.
They deserve pity rather than scorn. Most of them will never realize what a disservice they provide to the very people they are trying to help. It is not my intent to make them "see the light." It is the autistic children (and adults), their parents, relatives and friends that I am trying to reach with this Web site, in the hope that they won't have to go through what my family has experienced. It is to them that I dedicate my efforts."

Autism Watch Your Scientific Guide to Autism