Letter in the Mail Changes One Opinion

Gary Libman’s article “Unlocking Autism” (Nov. 17) is an interesting and balanced overview and case study of the technique of facilitated communication. I’d like to clarify a few points that it raises.

The issue of scientific verification of facilitated communication is a thorny one. It’s very well to call for “studies . . . in which the facilitator can’t see or hear what the autistic person is asked.” But the problem in implementing such studies is that the noble goal of scientific control and objectivity can taint the results.

Autistic people do not perform well in situations in which they are not supported emotionally, in which their intellect and abilities are called into question, in which they are made guinea pigs. How would you feel if all the world had treated you as an idiot all your life, and one day, reluctantly, they gave you a single opportunity to prove them wrong, with everything riding on this one test?

That none of the many purported treatments for autism’s symptoms has been “100% successful” is certainly an understatement. Historically, the treatment outlook has been dismal. At least one source of the skepticism surrounding facilitated communication has nothing to do with the technique itself but rather with the field of dashed hopes that has been produced by so many false leads, facile reductions, and hastily proclaimed “cures.”

People have become jaded and are waiting for facilitated communication to take its place on the shelf along with low-protein diets, vitamin supplements and shot-in-the-dark drug therapies.

I have never witnessed a jot of genuine, unequivocal improvement out of any of these, and I was skeptical of facilitated communication when I first heard of it. My opinion changed when I received a facilitated note in the mail from my older brother, who has autism and has never spoken a word.

MATTHEW BELMONTE

La Jolla