Autism Speaks and the "Gold Standard" treatment

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The "evidence based" claims are particularly spurious and obnoxious too:

You could do "evidence based" studies that showed that people subjected to prolonged torture by police were willing to confess to crimes. You could then claim that torture was the "gold standard" in promoting law and order and provide the evidence-based "proof" - the tortured criminals confessed in 100% of cases.

Evidence is only any good if it does not come with hidden agendas; and the hidden agendas that Autism Speaks pushes are not very hidden to informed observers. The evidence based claim is a crock, but it draws in the naive as it is intended to do, and is used by naive politicians to push the Autism Speaks agenda (eg the Utah Bill of recent times).

I end this post with a quote from freelance writer Dave Farrell:

"There is a prevailing myth that ABA has solid evidence to support its continued prevalence as THE therapy for Autism and/or that it is the only evidence based therapy for Autism. Just last June, the most comprehensive analysis of the current (past 5 years of) research yet was done by a team of scientists led by Fernanda Dreux Miranda Fernandes. This study is significant because of the controversy of the early version of ABA therapy (which should be discounted) as well as important because the entire definition of ABA has morphed so much (and continues to do so) over the decades. It is also important because the entire definition of Autism has also morphed since the inception of ABA. The study looks at ABA only in the context of Autistic intervention/therapy. Okay so here is cut and paste of that abstract:

“Most of the literature review papers conclude that the intervention programs are controversial, expensive and dependent of external variables. Although the articles describing intervention processes include 663 participants, a meta-analysis is not possible due to the lack of comparable inclusion and characterization criteria. Conclusion: There is not enough evidence of ABA’s preponderance over other alternatives. “

In a nutshell: the gold standard and evidence-based claims continuously pushed by Autism Speaks are falsified claims.

This article on law, charities and the making of falsified claims also has relevance to what Autism Speaks is doing with the propaganda of "gold standard" and "evidence based" it disseminates relentlessly:

http://www.lawmart.com/forms/fnp-gr03.htm

Something that is labeled with "semantics" (similar to advertising industry campaigns) e.g., the "Gold Standard" treatment can be misleading. Even the term 'treatment' alone is a misnomer. There are no known, no one means of treating Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Is the point of the thread to point out that all ABA is bad, or just that it shouldn't be advertised as far and away the best way to treat autistic children?

I do think ABA has come a long way since shock therapy and hitting children with sticks for incorrect behavior choices. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of getting a reward for good behavior. I personally prefer the DIR-Floortime concepts, or shaping behaviors as you have pointed out in another thread.

I do believe though that most modern ABA programs are becoming more and more play-based, and share many methodologies of the floor-time and shaping models.

My son loves his ABA and therapist, and I believe it has helped him a great deal. He was showing behaviors that my wife and I had no idea how to handle, despite the research we have been doing, and just was not progressing under our watch. Again, I disagree with rewarding him with a sticker or food for a preferred behavior, as it can create artificial results, but I would argue that even artificial results have a better chance of turning into actual results than forming actual results from thin air.

In a short amount of time in his ABA preschool, my son has started to communicate his needs, acknowledge my wife and I when we enter or exit a room, and has shown improvement in being able to follow two-step commands. Would he be better off having not learned these things?

I certainly agree there is a big-business aspect to all of this, and there are those that are getting rich off of autistic children, but I for one am glad that there are people being trained to help my son.