Early Intervention in Babies May Eliminate Autism Symptoms by Toddlerhood

For instance there were 6 success out of a group of 7, which is wonderful news. But that still means there was 1 "failure"... were the parents to blame? Did they apply the "cure" wrong? Or was this an instance of a technique not having 100% applicability.

This technique is far too late for my autistic child, but this is exactly the kind of question I would think a parent of autistic children would have, not to mention their friends and relatives who usually have even less insight into the state of autism research but who do remember headlines involving "cures for autism".

This doesn't mean it shouldn't me midigated but you shouldn't make such sweeping claims about it.

I am tempted to make the comparison that I am female and that definitely comes with a raftload of disadvantages in this world yet that doesn't mean I wish I were born male, but, given the audience here, I am not sure that will make much sense as an analogy to suggest. (Yet, I seem to be making it anyway. Oh, well.)

Because of the wide range of the spectrum, you have some with autism who have advanced abilities who feel the need to advocate for low-functioning people who happen to share the same diagnosis. Unfortunately, the autism of my child is quite different than the autism of someone with the ability to speak out for others.

If you have been involved with charities or advocacy groups, you'll see the neurodiversity people on message boards and such.

Even the most profound and obvious disabilities are adopted by parents who refuse to see it as a disability. They take this so far that they will resist attempts to correct it. This is huge in the deaf community, for example. There is open aggressive opposition to cochlear implants, because they are seen as robbing deaf children of exposure to 'deaf culture'. It is a complex issue, because children need to be given cochlear implants long before they are capable of making decisions for themselves, so they are often crippled for life at the hands of their own parents - parents who can not share in the same treatment because they are too old. The lowest weaknesses of the human spirit are on display in some of these people, denying hearing to their children because they don't want their children to be 'better' than they are.

My point stems instead from a question: If the "cure" is attempted, and does not succeed, is that because the parent was a failure? Or did the "failure" we see reflect an even better outcome for a child who might have been even more severely autistic without that intervention?

We live in a world where a not-insubstantial number of people honestly believe that vaccines cause autism, so whatever the answer to the previous question actually is, I can tell you the perception of the answer may very well be much different. The "Refrigerator mother" concept pointed out by makomk is precisely what I was referring to in our past. I hope that such slanders will remain a part of our past and don't pop up again.

  They actually gave all 7 the therapy. There were controls
  but it wasn’t really random assignment. They definitely
  need to do a larger study to look into it more (which
  they will), but it seems promising as a pilot study.

There were enough red flags that I'm pretty sure this was not a very scientifically robust study. For instance, even for a very small sample, wouldn't you still say how many out of the control group caught up (e.g. 2 out of the 7 control group members).

Also, I wonder if the person evaluating the symptoms knew which were the control versus test subjects?