In The Politics of Autism, I write:
The conventional wisdom is that any kind of treatment is likely to be less effective as the child gets older, so parents of autistic children usually believe that they are working against the clock. They will not be satisfied with the ambiguities surrounding ABA, nor will they want to wait for some future research finding that might slightly increase its effectiveness. They want results now. Because there are no scientifically-validated drugs for the core symptoms of autism, they look outside the boundaries of mainstream medicine and FDA approval. Studies have found that anywhere from 28 to 54 percent of autistic children receive “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), and these numbers probably understate CAM usage.
Corinne Purtill at LAT:
Like many families with children on the autism spectrum, Jake’s parents sought treatments beyond traditional speech and behavioral therapies.
One that seemed promising was magnetic e-resonance therapy, or MERT, a magnetic brain stimulation therapy trademarked in 2016 by a Newport Beach-based company called Wave Neuroscience.
...
MERT is Wave’s trademarked version of a therapy called transcranial magnetic stimulation. The product of decades of research, TMS is approved by the FDA to treat major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and cigarette addiction.
...
Multiple researchers are currently examining whether TMS could improve certain symptoms of autism. But eight researchers interviewed for this article said there isn’t yet enough evidence to recommend TMS as an autism therapy, or to say with confidence that it works for that condition.
Lindsay Oberman, director of the Neurostimulation Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health, published a paper last year summarizing the current state of research on TMS and autistic children. Nearly all published studies on the treatment to date have been very small, open-label (meaning both patients and providers knew what treatment they were receiving) or focused on a very specific subgroup, she and her co-authors wrote.
Without large, randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in medicine — “broad off-label use of these techniques in this population is not supported by currently available evidence,” the paper concluded,
