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Feb 26, 2008 12:18 am US/Pacific
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CBS 5 Investigates: Woman Promises Autism Cure?
(CBS 5)
There are thousands of children in the Bay Area diagnosed with autism, and parents are desperate for help. Families are looking at all kinds of treatments. A CBS 5 investigation uncovers an autism treatment that's promised as a cure.
It's being pitched at seminars across the country, several of which we attended with an undercover camera. At a seminar in Orange County, we heard that promise.
"We are talking about fixing the brain, fixing the brain forever," the program's inventor, Claudie Gordon-Pomares told parents. She said she can repair the brain through sensory stimulation called "Monitored Multi-cortical Activities for Additional Pathways and Synapses," or MAPS.
"Of course it works, because it's been proven" Gordon-Pomares said. "Doesn't matter the age, doesn't matter how long parents have tried something."
Who is Gordon-Pomares? Her Canadian center, the Brain Repair Institute, has been featured on local news. Her
website shows amazing before and after results, and parents who like it.
Gordon-Pomares says it's a miracle cure for the brain she's spreading all across North America. Reaching parents including Chris and Holly Wetz, whose 5-year-old son Matthew was diagnosed with a type of autism.
"Trying to decide what to do, what would be the best thing to do, was really overwhelming," Holly Wetz said. The family had already tried many treatments. "We took him off wheat, we took him off milk," she said, which failed to help.
Although it cost $5,000 for just six months, the Wetz's decided to give MAPS a try.
"When you're a parent with an autistic child and you've tried everything, you know, you're like, 'Wow! We're going to miss our opportunity, we better do it,'" Chris Wetz said.
But one year later, Wetz said "You know we weren't getting anything. We kept getting promises."
So CBS 5 Investigates went to ask Gordon-Pomares, who insisted the treatment works.
"I believe the brain can fix itself," she told CBS 5.
And why does she say that? "Any brain dysfunction, any mental disorder is fundamentally a serotonin and a dopamine issue," Gordon-Pomares said. "So it can be a child with Down's Syndrome who has a low level of serotonin. It's not really a specific diagnosis- more the dysfunction going to the function."
"That is what is sometimes termed as psychobabble," said Dr. Bryna Siegel, director of the Autism Clinic at UCSF. Siegel is a world renowned expert on autism who reviewed the MAPS program for CBS 5 Investigates.
"She's using concepts that on the surface sound like she knows what is going on," Siegel said.
Siegel was also shown undercover video of the seminar recorded by CBS 5 Investigates.
"I think I would feel absolutely comfortable saying that there is no way that this is a cure for any case of autism," Siegel said.
CBS 5 asked Gordon-Pomares why top experts have said her program is not good.
Gordon-Pomares replied, "Well there are quite a few who say it's good. Experts Gordon-Pomares said, like pioneering brain researcher and UC Berkeley professor Mark Rosenzweig. He said, 'there's no problem, I will put my name behind MAPS and demonstrate it, the validity of it, to the world'."
So CBS 5 Investigates went to ask Rosenzwig about the MAPS program.
"Now when you say MAPS, what is MAPS?" Rosenzwig responded.
When we asked if he had validated Gordon-Pomares' work as she claims, his reply was "In order to do that I would have to know about it and look into it carefully and I haven't done that, so I do not put my name behind her work."
"Are they taking advantage of the parents & families with autistic children?" CBS 5 asked Dr. Siegel.
"Absolutely, it's totally exploiting a very very vulnerable population," Siegel said.
Gordon-Pomares responded to Siegel's statement by saying "No, I don't believe a parent who's fighting the world to save their child is vulnerable."
So is Gordon-Pomares really doing anybody any harm? In Dr. Siegel's professional opinion, yes.
"She's taking people's money and she's misrepresenting science," Siegel said, "especially when parents are told to take their kids out of school, or in the case of the Wetz's, to stop other therapies." "That's the very definition of unethical conduct. Because you are withdrawing something that is of benefit and replacing it with something that has no theoretical or empirical basis."
Gordon-Pomares responded: "I believe that they have to trust parents more. Parents are very intelligent."
"We did the research and everything," Chris Wetz said. "But you know, we got duped."
Gordon-Pomares claims to be a neuroscientist with two degrees from a university in France. But that university says it has no record of anyone graduating by that name.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)