Del Olmo on Autism
As the parents of a 3 1/2-year-old autistic boy, our hearts go out to Frank del Olmo and his family (Commentary, Dec. 20). In this season of joy and hope, we must not let Del Olmo and Frankie’s story be filed or forgotten. Let it be a call to action. Though many don’t know it, autism is not rare. More than 14 in 10,000 children are affected by it.
We have certainly come a long way from the 1950s, when Bruno Bettelheim proclaimed that autistic children were the result of “refrigerator mothers.” We now know that this is a serious neurological condition. Still, for too long, autistic children, because of their outwardly normal appearance, mysterious silences and occasional odd talents, have been the novelty acts of the intelligentsia, psychological oddities fit for magazine profiles or TV movies rather than the beneficiaries of our urgent attention.
We are an organization of parents of autistic children, clinicians and leading scientists who are dedicated to finding effective biological treatments and a cure for autism. Now, perhaps for the first time, researchers are making real progress in understanding the metabolic, genetic and immunological underpinnings of this devastating condition. The leaders in the field believe that real progress is possible.
The pace of medical progress can and must be accelerated. Together, we can make sure that this happens.
JONATHAN SHESTACK, Treasurer
Cure Autism Now
Los Angeles
* I am an elementary autism teacher for LAUSD schools, and the misinformation about autism abounds. So thank you for one of the more accurate discussions of autism that I’ve seen printed outside of the Advocate, the Autism Society’s periodical.
There is one area of potentially critical inaccuracy about autism that I have never understood. It appears in Del Olmo’s article as “challenges it will pose for Frankie and the rest of our family for as long as he lives.” The definition used by the Autism Society includes reference to autism being permanent or lifelong.
There is not sufficient evidence to justify such a hopeless conclusion or label.
Autism in all its shades and variations was not discovered, defined and accurately diagnosed long enough ago for a representative sample of children diagnosed with autism and receiving specialized teaching/therapy (for a lifetime) to have died of old age still being autistic. Consequently, the “permanent” label is unjustified. I don’t say this to raise false hope, but rather to say that approaching it from that viewpoint may be more helpful. There is far too much we don’t know about autism to be so pessimistic at this point.
RICHARD LARSON
Pasadena
* Thank you, Frank del Olmo, for sharing your son’s “long biography” with your readers. As you have learned, having an autistic child makes for “long biographies”--long hours, long doctor’s appointments, long searches for answers. We of the Los Angeles Autism Society have some of the needed tools to make your, and other parents’, searches shorter.
Our Los Angeles chapter of the Autism Society of America has a library at our office in Culver City with up-to-date books and publications on autism. We provide parent support groups for information and help in coping with the stresses of living with a child with autism.
Please call us at (310) 559-5664 for more information.
ANN L. SNOWHOOK, President
Autism Society of Los Angeles
Culver City
