This site has been put together by Dr Stephen Dealler, a UK
physician with an autistic niece.
The aim is to facilitate further research and current understanding by
highlighting areas of progress and helping specialists and researchers to
recognise discoveries worthy of consderation.
To navigate around this site click on the diagram to the left inside the box or circle of specific
subjects or see the index below.
I would like to pay tribute to all the work done by
scientists in so many fields and to the parents who have skilled themselves
to follow (and sometimes lead) the science.
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In
a field awash with distrust and commercial interests it is an attempt to sort
out the good science from the bad without fear or favour. If the science is good you will find it
here even if the governments of the UK
and the USA
excoriate the researchers and attempt to suppress their ideas. Contrariwise, if the science is bad or
non-existent you will not find any mention of it here no matter how many
people believe it or claim the preferred cure has transformed their
lives. This is not a place giving a
lot of credence to testimonials.
The
past ten years have seen an enormous increase in the amount of physiological research
into autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
But major problems remain:
- Although a great deal
has been learned it does not fit together to point coherently to any
particular direction. To an
unfortunate extent it resembles a car boot sale of facts, probably
relating to a jumble of symptomatically similar disorders.
- Most of the research
is still unknown to mainstream medicine, much of which continues to
labour under the illusion that nothing is known about ASD and nothing
can be done.
- Parents have chased
exciting potential treatments and spent a great deal on private
testing. Little of the resulting
information has been collated with a resulting chasm between the views
of many parents and mainstream medicine.
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