By Sally Kirk; 431 pages. Subtitle: A Mother and Son Journey of Insight and Biomedical Intervention
For those who are curious about or committed to biomedical interventions for kids on the autism spectrum, this book will serve as a sympathetic, accessible guide to the research behind it, the rationales for it, and the routines parents must adapt to make it work. Some parents will be empowered by the ability to take their children's health into their own hands -- but readers with other theories about autism may be horrified instead.
- If you've ever wondered about biomedical interventions, you'll find lots of information here
- Written by a parent for parents, the book is easy to read and sympathetic to parents' concerns
- Provides a good overview of the research and rationale behind biomedical interventions
- Describes physical problems and then gives details on what to do about them
- Suggests places parents can look for additional information
- It's very long, and might have benefited from a drastic shortening of the memoir portion
- Memoir doesn't necessarily make the case that other interventions failed
- Folksy, just-a-mom tone in some parts is an odd fit with the more serious, technical passages
- Those with different theories about autism may find the book disturbing
- Part 1: Our Years of Searching
- Part 2: Our Years of Understanding
- Part 3: A Pivotal Discovery: Biomedical Intervention
- Part 4: Biomedical Problems and Interventions of the Autism Spectrum
- Appendix A: Will's Heroes Unveiled
- Appendix B: ARI Parent Ratings of Behavioral Effects of Biomedical Intervention
- Appendix C: Nutrient Supplementation
- Appendix D: Interpreting the Urinary Porphyrins Test
"In working to recover my son, I have learned a thing or three. One is that it pays to focus on results. Explanations are secondary. The medical profession is not far enough along in its quest to conquer autism to have all the answers. Though perfect understanding of why something works is desirable, it is not a necessity. It is enough for me to know that it has helped many others on the spectrum and has a good safety record. I want my child better now. All the scientific vindication can catch up to me later. In the meantime, I am not willing to wait around."
That attitude, as articulated by Sally Kirk in her book Hope for the Autism Spectrum, is one that many us have had when forced to find novel solutions for our kids' problems. When you have a suffering child, you're looking for something that works, whether it has the Conventional Wisdom Seal of Approval or not. It's a mindset that drives a lot of parents of children with autism to pursue biomedical intervention, and to attribute their children's ailments not to poorly understood neurological or genetic causes to but to specific and easily addressed medical ones.
If that's appealing to you, if you're open to the idea that things like vaccines and antibiotics and food additives may be causing your child's autistic symptoms and that special diets and supplements and detoxification can make all the difference, this book will serve as a sympathetic, accessible guide to all the biomedical possibilities, and an introduction to the work of Defeat Autism Now! and the Autism Research Institute.
On the other hand, if you have a different theory about autism and are disturbed by the idea of parents sending samples of bodily fluids to foreign labs that don't need doctor's notes, or writing 429-page books full of technical descriptions so that other parents can take their children's medical treatment into their own hands, you'll probably do well to skip this one. It will be bad for your blood pressure.
Kirk spends the first hundred-plus pages of this thick volume outlining the other things she tried as the parent of a child on the autism spectrum. In a story that resembles many an autism memoir, Kirk makes a case for herself as a conscientious mom struggling to find the right help for her child, and being let down time and again by doctors who fail to look at the big picture. She finally found the progress she'd been hoping for in biomedical intervention, and the rest of the book details that in a blend of technical detail and just-a-mom analogies.
Given the book's extreme length, I wish Kirk had foregone the memoir and gotten right to what worked. A quick chapter would have probably done the trick of helping parents relate to her journey. Even a lengthy account of that trip will not be enough to convert those whose roads have gone in a different direction, and those who wish to follow her footsteps would probably just as soon get there already.
