Customer Reviews

The Science and Fiction of Autism

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is for people who: want to understand how the medical community thinks about autism; want a comprehensive overview of the various autism treatements and theories; or would like a framework for evaluating theories and treatments for autism.

This book is not for people who: have embraced treatments not endorsed by the medical community and aren't interested in having those ideas challenged; want a book that entertains as well as educates; want to hear about the latest miracle cure.

The author of this book comes from the mainstream medical community. If the author didn't tell you this up front, it would still be obvious from the way the book is written. Even though the book is written for a lay audience, its tone reminds me of technical papers like you'd find in a professional journal. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you can understand it, which you can. Still, it doesn't exactly make for a "fun" reading experience.

Dr. Schreibman provides some truly useful information here. First, you get a pretty good overview of past and present theories of what causes autism. You get a similar overview of autism treatments, past and present. Third, you get a call for sanity when evaluating theories and treatments, and a framework in which to base that sanity (namely the scientific method). And finally, you get the author's science-rooted opinions of most of the theories and treatments she discusses.

I was at least somewhat familiar with just about everything discussed in the book. There weren't a lot of new ideas here. But having everything spelled out in a single resource, complete with the theoritical basis for treatments, comparisons between various approaches, and the results of scientific scrutiny, I came away with a much better understanding.

I also got a better feel for the medical community's perspective on these issues. I didn't always agree with Dr. Schriebman's conclusions, but that didn't diminish the book's value. As an aside, I find it interesting that in spite of the author's cheerleading for science-based evaluation, the medical community still seems to pick and choose which unproven aspects of autism to accept and which to disregard. With a complex and varied disorder like autism it is both impossible and inappropriate to completely remove subjectivity, as long as we don't ignore objective evidence. More of the medical community should learn to recognize that fact.

I learned a lot from this book, and found how to fit a lot of what I already knew into the bigger picture. With a more complete perspective, new questions came up. I would love to sit down with the author to talk about autism treatment and research. I'd ask her the questions the book didn't answer, and I'd debate some of the conclusions that didn't make sense to me. You know a book is good when it makes you ponder questions you didn't know you had. If it wasn't so dry I would have given it five stars.

How to write about autism in a populist tone and not lose the science pitch? This is the dilemma haunting this book. To be fair, it handles it it reasonably.

This book will be of interest to parents with autistic children (Kanner or classical autism, rather than Asperger Syndrome). Understandably the book trots out a lot of what is in other works (diagnosis, behaviours, etc). The upswing is review of various treatments and interventions, including facilitated communication. As the author point out many of the treatments have been debunked, but then comes down very positively on the side of ABA. It would have been helpful if some of the counterarguments against ABA had been laid out. There are several interesting recommedations for improving services which may possibly pan out for parents groups and activist committees.

It is difficult to make the transition from writing academic papers to popular print, and writing style is probably where the book is most shakey. It is not a page turner, but it is still relatively readable with a little perseverance.

If you know someone who is dealing with autism and desire to know the truth about what this is, read this book FIRST.

This book does not provide wishfull corollaries, inspiring anecdotes or mystical cures. It cuts to the bone in as simple a manner as is possible to tell you exactly what is known and just how much is not.

It will undoubtedly anger highly emotional people that are convinced that some treatment cured their child that this book claims has no scientific validation. What needs to be understood is that there are treatments that work and have been verified to work. If a person reads this book actively, taking notes throughout, it provides insight into not only effective techniques but also techniques beleived to work but not yet verified. Further research on these obscure little bits can provide a wealth of ways to encourage new development.

Of course it also provides a wealth of what NOT to do. Snake oil peddling that could cost a family their lifes' savings or drive them into bankruptcy and horrific debt.

This book is the ounce of prevention worth more than the pound of cure.

Here's an excellent summary of the problems associated with autism - its definitions, its possible causes, its possible treatments. This would be one of the first books to turn to when someone close to you has been diagnosed with autism. It will orient you on the subject. It is concise enough to address the full range of questions that might hit you; but it goes into enough depth to provide real insights into the different facets of this puzzling syndrome.

Even people who don't have an affected relative would probably find something interesting and worthwhile here. For example, the chapter that discusses different researchers' attempts to find the "core" deficit, the defining deficit of autism, carries readers into considerations of the very nature of consciousness itself. Does consciousness dawn when you attach affect to different perceptions? Or is consciousness a particular way of associating perceptions? Whatever it is, this book suggests more avenues of exploration on the subject than many of the more highly touted books that profess to "explain" consciousness.

Other chapters will also have meaning for a broader audience. The chapter on possible treatment procedures for autism reminds the reader of how easy it is to be misled into accepting unproven, unsound treatment modalities. It's a refresher course in the scientific method.

This book's conclusion is that some form of behavioral treatment has been shown to be of the most help to the most autistic patients. Here again, another consideration is suggested to the general reader. Surrounding a person with a structured environment that provides a strict regimen of rewards (and in some cases, mild punishments) for appropriate behavior, may go against our liberal grain. However, it may be just the sort of structuring that some people need to realize their full potential. Perhaps parents who take a blanket laissez faire approach with all their children, are not doing their children any favors. And conversely, perhaps parents who insist on meting out gold stars and dollar bills to even their most intrinsically motivated children, are not doing those children any favors. It's possible that people with autism represent one end of a spectrum of motivational need.

This book is a graphic reminder of the wisdom of "different strokes for different folks," and has something to offer readers who itch for knowledge in all sorts of different places.

My grandson was diagnosed on the autism spectrum when he was 2 years old. I have been reading as much as I can on the subject. My son, a pediatrician, recommended this book. I heartily recommend it also.

Schreibman contributes a new and comprehensive review of the current issues in autism.

This book will prove very discouraging to a parent looking for answers. It's all, "well on the one hand this may work but on the other hand it hasn't been proven" so what's a parent to do in the meantime - Dr. Schrieibman doesn't say. She also dimisses "Options" as a useful method without even getting its name right. If you're looking for hope, I recommend Let Me Hear Your Voice by Catherine Maurice for a well documented success story.

In her book, Schreibman dismisses therapies that have been proven effective, including Sensory Integration and facilitated communication. Anyone who quotes James Randi as a scientific source is flaky to begin with, but to write a supposedly "expert" review of FC and completely exclude any mention of Sue Rubin or the numerous others who have graduated from facilitated to completly independent communication and have confirmed that what they said under facilitation was what they wanted to say is a combination of laziness and stupidity.

Secondly pretending that there are any merits to the Lovaas approach prove her lack of qualification to speak as a supposed expert on autism. Perhaps by applying the tortures inflicted by Lovaas on defenseless children I could turn Schreibman into someone who actually does some critical thinking before writing patent nonsense.

The few, and very few, good points of this book are in the way Schreibman deals with the biomedical myths of autism. That said, writing this drivel and then taking down the easiest target there is does not excuse this drek.