Introduction

From the founder of AutismLibrary.org :

When we first heard our son's diagnosis, I went into research mode. I scoured the web for information on autism and therapies and the law. There was a lot of searching, backtracking and scrounging to get papers to read. I was lucky to have the research background and computer skills to do this search. This is a website to help others get access to information quickly.

New Items

blog added

There are items which don't really fit in the main site that I would like to bring up. A blog seemed like a good approach, so I'm trying it out.
8/07/2008

Vaccines

This is such a big topic that it needs to finally be included. Here is a page of links on vaccines and vaccine safety.
8/06/2008

Predictors

I realized today that I never put in a link for this page. It isn't really finished, which is why. But, perhaps it is useful even in this state. It discusses one of the big questions (and one that can't really be answered): what is the future going to be like? You can't answer it for any one kid specifically, and even in groups it doesn't seem to be doable. But, there is some information that I thought was useful. The page is here.
8/06/2008

Management of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

American Academy of Pediatrics report on Autism. This has a section on ABA. This is mentioned in the insurance and the best practices parts of this site.
11/29/2007

Outcome for Children with Autism who Began Intensive Behavioral Treatment Between Ages 4 and 7: A Comparison Controlled Study

4/25/2007

Why "Peer-Reviewed"

The law requires school districts and other agencies (such as regional centers) to use "evidence based" methodologies. This is at the Federal level (No Child Left Behind and Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act). Evidence that a method works is in the form of "peer reviewed literature". A lot of people don't know what "Peer reviewed literure" is. If they do know, it is difficult to obtain the actual papers. What this means is that:

    1) Someone had to do a well conducted study
    2) They had to write this in a paper
    3) They submitted the paper to a journal for publication
    4) One or more experts in the field read the paper and approved it for publication     5) The paper was published in the journal.

More information on IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act) and scientifically based education can be found on the WrightsLaw website.

More infornation on peer reviewed literature can be found here.

Autism Library Goals

This is a website to serve a very simple purpose--to give people a place to access peer reviewed papers on autism, and to give some indication of what the important parts of those papers are.

Many people are intimidated by research papers. Most of us aren't used to the language and the format of these papers. Also, just finding the papers and weeding through them to find the good ones takes time. While this is not my field, I am used to reading peer reviewed papers and so I will try to post the valuable papers here. Where possible I will add brief summaries to point my opinion of the important parts as I see them. However, I encourage you to take the time to read the papers and find your own conclusions. It is a fair bet that no one will agree with everything I write!

If you have some papers that you think might be good for people to see, send them to me. I can't guarantee that I'll put them up, but I'd like to make the site as thorough as I can.

The primary goal here is to provide a service for people to assist in advocating for younger people. I do not want to create yet another site for debating issues. As such, I will not be posting papers on proposed causes or biomedical treatments. This isn't a statement one way or the other on these issues, just a policy to make this site as open to all as I can imagine.

This site will grow as I get more time and papers. Let me know if there are subjects you would like to see, and if you have papers you can send.

disclaimerI am not an autism researcher nor am I a lawyer. I am not trying to give out advice--just papers I have found useful and my thoughts on them.

Autism Library