A month ago, a friend told us about a clinical trial. He didn’t know too much about it, but said he’d been told it had produced results in children with autism, and some of those results had been spectacular. Total change in behavior, talking and eye contact where there’d been little or none before, things like that. And the treatment itself is as gentle and noninvasive as you could find. It involves listening to music.

Of course, I was intrigued. Excited? Maybe just a bit. I looked up the doctor, Stephen Porges, on the web, and emailed him through his site. The treatment has a name – The Listening Project – and is conducted out of the Brain-Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Porges sent a fast answer to my query. He sent papers describing the process and the theory behind it. I told him a few particulars about G.’s reactions to music, sounds, his difficulties with speech. Dr. Porges responded with his thoughts about what might be going on with G..

The treatment itself consists of five sessions of 45 minutes each, during which the subject listens to computer-altered speech and music over headphones. That’s it. As I understand it, the theory is that many people with autism have a deficit in the middle ear, which causes difficulties in differentiating between tones, background noises, and voices. This leads to a stimulated fight or flight response, activated in a part of the brain stem called the Vagus nerve. I read two case histories on the web with outcomes that sounded miraculous, and a rundown of an earlier study which reported a success rate – some sort of positive change – of 80%. Incredible. A bit eyebrow raising, too.

I don’t believe in miracle cures. I find the claims of, say, Jenny McCarthy, for instance, a bit hard to believe. But strange and seemingly impossible things can and do happen.

For a moment, just a moment, I allowed myself to dream, what if this treatment led to a turnaround, in which G. would be able to communicate, reason and act like other kids at his age. I couldn’t imagine it. I know the kid I know. I’m not dreaming of a more perfect kid. Just hoping – there’s that word again – to help him have a better chance of surviving in this lousy world.

We’d considered Namenda, a drug developed for Alzheimer’s patients which some say has done wonders in some children with autism. We haven’t ruled it out, but when the neurologist wouldn’t prescribe it (the same neurologist I wrote about in my last post, by the way), it went down the list of possibilities. Namenda is unproven, and we’re not at the point where we’ll experiment with drugs. Not yet, anyway.

Ultimately, G. didn’t qualify for the clinical trial. He doesn’t have enough language to participate in it. A clinic will be opening in the next few months, and we can give The Listening Project a try then.

I’m not disappointed. And I truly don’t expect to find a magic bullet. I do have a tendency towards magical thinking, to believe that I can find the cure, my own “Lorenzo’s Oil.” Well, that happened to someone else, once. I’ve learned the hard way that ain’t gonna happen here.

That doesn’t mean I can’t hope that it will. I just can’t believe it will.

Yesterday, my wife T. found an abstract for a study which proposed vitamin D supplements to help change the course of autism. She checked with our doctor, emailed the doctor who’d proposed the theory, and bought some chocolate flavored vitamin D supplements for G. He ate ‘em up. We’ll see what happens. If we see any change, I’ll write about it in the next post.