Interesting piece in the Guardian today about wacky autism treatments. Our observational study will be a useful part of the picture but we're a fair way from putting daylight between MC and the 'shadow industry' for autism.

The Hope branding may not be helpful either in this quest in the oz market

False hope: desperate families prey to ‘nonsense’ Disallowed treatments for autism

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/18/false-hope-desperate-families-prey-to-nonsense-Disallowed-treatments-for-autism

Advocates say a “shadow industry” has grown in the gulf between autism diagnosis and treatment – an industry that is selling false hope to desperate parents

Andrew Whitehouse, professor of autism at the Telethon Kids Institute and the research strategy director at the Autism Co-operative Research Centre, says the autism sector should “absolutely expect and only accept the same standards that we accept for other areas of health and medicine”.“And at the moment we don’t do that,” he says.

"The autism sector has had an acceptance of a shadow industry for many years with very poor evidence or no evidence whatsoever.There are things like hyperbaric oxygen therapies, dietary therapies like camel milk, gluten-free diets … special milkshakes. All of this stuff is nonsense.”

Whitehouse does not blame parents, but a regulatory system that allows non-evidence-based therapies to be offered not just privately, but through the public system – while not offering the support that parents actually need.“For public money, there’s no debate. It cannot and should not be spent on interventions with no evidence. Families need to be protected at a very vulnerable time in their lives.”