978-1572305441

132 A MIND APART
may continue to search for something concrete, hoping that would give
them a key to unlocking the mystery of treatment. The difficulty is that
there is no definite answer, so this search has the potential to go on forever
without a successful resolution. For some families, continuing to
search is a way of not accepting the diagnosis of autism. All answers are
ambiguous, and this ambiguity is very hard to live with. But the ambiguity
has to be experienced and tolerated. Only then can parents move
on to mourning for the “lost child” and then searching for an evidencebased
treatment program.
Understanding that autism is caused by multiple genes that affect
the development of the social brain does have implications for these
evidence-based treatments, even if the connection may seem far-fetched
at present. Because multiple genes are involved, interventions should
target several developmental domains and include both biological and
psychosocial methods. People often think that if a condition is caused
by genes, it must be fixed and therefore can’t be open to interventions.
That is simply not true. First, there are many genetic disorders that are
eminently treatable and can even be cured. Second, interventions can be
targeted to the gene products causing the problems, or the diet can be
supplemented to make up for the genetic defect (think of phenylketonuria).
Third, genes turn on and off during development. It is not
inconceivable that once some of the genes that cause autism are discovered
it may be possible to turn the gene off (if it is producing some abnormal
protein) or on (if it is not functioning for some reason). Discovering
the genetic causes of autism opens up the real possibility of
finding biomedical interventions aimed at the underlying causes of the
disorder that have more specific and long-lasting effects than the medications
we currently have available.