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Feb. 27th, 2007
Books on Health
Tantalized by the Hint of a Cure for Autism
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
Tantalized by the Hint of a Cure for Autism
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
If lightning strikes once, then why not again? This irrational logic will tempt the victims of any senseless tragedy to believe in miracles, or so Portia Iversen assures us by way of explaining her long, determined slog toward a miracle of her own. Whether she actually found one or not, readers will have to decide for themselves.
Ms. Iversen’s second son, Dov, was born in 1992, a normal baby who suddenly was not normal at all. Before he was a year old he was reacting strangely to noises and making strange noises of his own. At 3, nonverbal and mesmerized by objects, he was given a diagnosis of autism. By the time he was 8, Dov still could not talk and was virtually impossible to communicate with. The family home was jammed with his toys, therapists and aides, and Ms. Iversen and her husband had established a foundation to speed autism research.
Then Ms. Iversen heard intriguing news about another autistic boy. In Bangalore, India, Soma Mukhopadhyay had single-handedly managed to teach her severely autistic son, Tito, to communicate with such sophistication that he was writing poetry on a laptop computer, and could articulate how it felt to be him.
“Men and women are puzzled by everything I do,” Tito wrote. “My parents and those who love me are embarrassed and worried. Doctors use different terminologies to describe me. I just wonder.”
And this from a boy who could barely speak, and whose hand-flapping, body-rocking, utterly asocial persona reminded Ms. Iversen of her own son. Surely if one boy could break through the wall around him, other boys could too. Ms. Iversen saw her miracle glimmering in the distance and was galvanized into action.
She persuaded her foundation to bring Soma and 14-year-old Tito to Southern California for what proved to be an exhausting and exhaustive monthslong effort by a network of neuroscientists and well-wishers to anatomize the miracle that was Tito. But few miracles withstand minute dissection, and this one was no exception. More