I am not going to provide a link to the recent reports of autism facial studies. I am just going to ask our learned academics and researchers to quit indulging their silly notions, quit wasting research dollars and quit wasting the time of autistic children an adults who might benefit from research aimed at finding causes, treatments and yes, even cures, for autism disorders.
I am the father of a son with severe autistic disorder and intellectual disabilities. He was diagnosed 13 1/2 years ago at age 2 with autistic disorder. We didn’t seek medical attention for him because of his facial appearance which looked like any other child. We weren’t hoping to obtain an autism diagnosis for non existent autism services. We knew nothing about autism at that time and had barely even heard of it. We sought medical attention because of his lack of language development and because of some very unusual behaviors not because of his facial appearance.
Please don’t tell me that a study of 40, 50, 60 or any other sample size tells us how to identify autistic children or adults. In my humble, common sense opinion, autism facial studies are a crock.
Take a lesson from the late Dr. Ivar Lovaas and do some research that might actually help those whose lives are seriously impaired by autism disorders!
