Autism

"Lo and behold, it appeared that our child had been cured of autism"

by Kristina Chew

Published April 16, 2009 @ 12:13AM PT

So since I brought up the topic of recovery just yesterday.....

A 6-year-old boy, Henry, was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder in 2006 at the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust in Essex but, when the child's parents sought an assessment from their local authority (LEA) to determine services, the child's pediatrician withdrew his diagnosis. Yesterday's BBC reports that the health trust had to apologize to Channel 4 news reader Alex Thomson for bowing to pressure to change the child's diagnosis:

Mr Thomson said: "Lo and behold, it appeared that our child had been cured of autism, and that's when we began to think something very strange was going on."

Henry's diagnosis of autism was subsequently backed up by other medical specialists his parents consulted, and Mr Thomson and Ms Spiller complained to the General Medical Council.

During an official inquiry by the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, the family say they received a letter from the hospital's chief executive saying the paediatrician admitted she had felt compelled to downgrade the diagnosis of autism after pressure from local educational officials.

"They (local education officials) were going behind our backs to change a diagnosis," said Mr Thomson.

"Now that struck us as something incredibly serious, and the reason we're going public is we suspect this is happening the length and the breadth of the country."

This seems very puzzling indeed, though one wonders if such "collusion," as Thomson put it, might not occur more often than not, or at least more frequently than on would like think. A diagnosis of "autism" vs. "pdd-nos" can bring with it more services for a child, whether in a student-teacher ratio of 1:1, or more hours in a classroom, and so forth.

It also doesn't say too much for the whole practice of diagnosing autism in a child, for a doctor to proffer, and then remove, a diagnosis. If the reasons for doing this, as in the case of Henry Thomson, were (first of all) done without notifying his parents, and done with a view towards not providing him with services----these alone put the whole question of "getting a diagnosis" into question. Needless to say, reading about the local authority seeking to change Henry's diagnosis while knowing that he might qualify for more services with an autism diagnosis, is duplicitous.

The case also suggests that whole business of diagnosing a child as being on the autism spectrum is not always----is just not?---an objective process. Some other doctors might give a child a "more severe" diagnosis to help get a child more services---having a "pdd-nos diagnosis" or an "autism diagnosis" or an Asperger's one can make a huge difference. I do remember it being suggested at one point to us that "pdd" meant "mild autism" vs. a "classic case" with "just autism" like my son-----but these distinctions may not be what they appear to be or, rather, their meanings may be more fluid than we tend to assume.

But they certainly shouldn't be changed without notifying parents and not because of "pressure from local educational officials" who (you'd like to think) have a child's educational interests in mind.