ABA Blog: FDA Comes Down on Chelation as Untested Autism Treatment

2010-11-07

FDA Comes Down on Chelation as Untested Autism Treatment - US News and World Report

And there's no evidence that chelation even works for autism; the treatment is based on the unproven theory that children with autism have heavy-metal poisoning. A 2008 study that evaluated the quality of research on various autism treatments gave chelation the lowest possible grade, saying there are no controlled trials on the safety and effectiveness of chelation as an autism treatment. (Behavioral therapies like applied behavior analysis are considered the best-researched option for treating autism.) That same year, the National Institutes of Health canceled plans to run a clinical trial on chelation for the treatment of autism in children, saying the risks outweighed any potential benefit.

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Discrete Trials Teaching with Children with Autism – A Self-Instructional Manual is the joint effort of Drs. Daniela Fazzio, PhD, BCBA-D and Garry L. Martin, PhD, to contribute to the continuously growing field of early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for children with autism. With the growing numbers of children diagnosed and of the availability of programs and practitioners using applied behavior analysis to teach them, comes a substantial need for effective training strategies to bring interventionists and educators up to speed. Discrete Trials Teaching (DTT) is one of the main instructional strategies used in EIBI and a good DTT package will require good instructional material and qualified professionals to supervise implementation. The DTT Manual provides the instructional material and the structure for mastery of the components of this DTT package; the manual has been extensively researched with good results on accuracy of DTT implementation in the training setting and generalization with actual children with autism.