From part of the transcript of
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly:
GINNIE BREEN: We’ve used educational interventions, medical interventions. Why not spiritual interventions?
BOB FAW (correspondent): Parents of autistic children face a terrible dilemma. They are forced literally to experiment on their own children because the medical community has not tested and proven those treatments the way it has with treatments for physical conditions like heart disease or cancer.
DR. ROSTAIN: We are in very, very, very early stages of understanding how medications might improve functioning.
FAW: You don’t fault a parent for trying everything conceivable?
DR. ROSTAIN: I don’t, because if I had a child who wasn’t responding to treatments that were prescribed by the doctor, I might very well take that child to someone else and someone else and someone else.
FAW: What has happened to Elizabeth has happened with countless other autistic children—so many interventions with success only hit or miss. Ethicist Arthur Caplan:
PROFESSOR ARTHUR CAPLAN (Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania): I could take you online and find tons of quacks, rip-off artists, selling quote unquote “treatments” to parents of kids with autism. It is a huge problem.
FAW: It is also an ethical minefield: Does society have the responsibility and can it afford to help autistic children who lack the resources lavished on Elizabeth? If so, should that task fall, as it mostly now does, on local public schools?
PROFESSOR CAPLAN: You can’t do it that way. Obviously, different school districts have different amounts of money. We need a national policy to divvy up resources to autistic kids, not the school board budget. That makes no sense at all.
FAW: One intervention which has worked well for Elizabeth began five years ago in Austin, Texas with language therapist Soma Mukhopadhyay, who taught Elizabeth to use the letterboard. Then, a stunning turn in Elizabeth’s life: At the urging of her personal education aide, Terri Bird, Elizabeth began writing powerful, often deeply personal poetry, turning some of her frustration into inspiration, and for the first time, those around Elizabeth discovered her inner voice. For example: “…It’s not easy, you see, it’s very hard being me. / There is so much going on in my mind / All of the time.”
FAW (to Elizabeth): Why do you write poems?
Elizabeth (pictured) types out the word F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S
FAW: Your feelings—that’s why you write poems. Elizabeth is, says her mother, “a very spiritual child,” and some of her poems are religious.
GINNIE BREEN (reads from poem “God Loves You”): It does not matter who you are / It does not matter if you stray far / God is always there for you…
FAW: Elizabeth has written 90 poems thus far. Many reveal her yearning to be heard.
GINNIE BREEN (reads from poem “Me”): If only they could walk in my shoes / They would share my news / I am in here / And trying to speak / Every day in some kind of way.
FAW: Sentiments echoed in this anthem written for children with autism.
Vocal music: “Oh, don’t you know I’m trying to find a way to show you who I am…”
FAW: Because she can communicate, Elizabeth, accompanied by Terri, also attends a mainstream public school where she excels especially in math.
From part of the transcript of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly:
