By Brian Carnell

Monday, September 9, 2002

Autism researcher Christopher Gillberg last week told the BBC that there is little to no evidence that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is linked to autism, and more importantly that the intense focus on such a link is detracting from more promising avenues of autism research.

Gillberg, a professor of child and adolescent psychology at George's Medical School in London, has prepared a review of 40 studies looking into the causes of autism. His conclusion is that it is earlier diagnosis and better awareness of autism that is leading to the increase in cases.

Gillberg notes that today, children are often diagnosed as autistic when they are just 18-24 months old thanks to awareness of the symptoms of autism as well as changes in the way that babies are observed.

Gillberg told the BBC,

I think this whole MMR business has taken on proportions that have hampered research in autism. People are concentrating so much on disputing this or finding or finding that in relation to MMR, when there has never been any strong evidence that this would be a road we should be travelling.

And, Gillbert pointed out, this is hardly the first time that intense media focus has forced autism researchers down a blind alley.

A few years ago all of the rage was facilitated communication which supposedly allowed nonverbal autistic children to communicate. Facilitated communication, according to the American Psychological Association,

. . . is a process by which a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a communicatively impaired individual while using a keyboard or typing device. It has been claimed that this process enables persons with autism or mental retardation to communicate.

Researchers conducted numerous scientific evaluations of facilitated communication which, in the end, concluded that the practice "is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation." The information supposedly coming from the autistic patient was, in fact, actually communicated from the facilitator, either consciously or unconsciously.

Facilitated communication had an extremely dark side -- facilitators began interpreting communications from autistic children as reporting sexual abuse accusations. As Gina Green summed up these cases in The Skeptic,

Beliefs about FC, the complexities inherent in the method, and the fact that the alleged victim may be seen as particularly vulnerable because he or she is disabled, now began to interact with the zealous pursuit that seems to typify investigations of sex abuse allegations. School or program administrators were notified, who in turn called in representatives of social services and law enforcement agencies. If the accused was a family member with whom the FC user resided, that person was either required to leave the home or the FC user was placed in foster care. If a parent was accused, both parents often faced criminal charges, one for perpetrating the alleged abuse, the other for knowing about it and failing to act. Often actions were initiated by social service workers to terminate parental custody or guardianship. If the accused was a school or program employee, they may have been suspended from their job or even fired. A long and trying ordeal was virtually guaranteed for all involved. An investigation began. Police interrogated the accused, and questioned the alleged victim through their facilitator. Other evidence was sought in the results of medical and psychological examinations of the alleged victim, and interviews with others who may have had information about the alleged events. A presumably independent facilitator was sometimes called in to try to corroborate the allegation, introducing another complexity: There appear to be no established safeguards or objective criteria for ensuring that independent facilitators in fact have no access to information about cases, nor for deciding what constitutes corroborating "facilitated" content.

Unfortunately it was only after numerous children had been placed in foster homes and parents charged with sexual abuse that medical authorities started paying serious attention to facilitated communication and ended up debunking it.

Sources:

MMR row 'hampers autism research'. The BBC, September 6, 2002.

Facilitated Communication: Mental Miracle Or Sleight Of Hand? Gina Green, The Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 3, 1994, pp. 68-76.

Resolution on Facilitated Communication by the American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association, August 14, 1994.

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