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ANNOUNCER: These children cannot speak.

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No one knows what's going
on inside their heads.

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They're autistic.

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Tonight on FRONTLINE, the explosive story
of a revolutionary method of communication.

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Dr. Biklen: Here was a means of expression
for people who lacked expression

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and here was a way that you could find
out what people were feeling and

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what they were thinking.

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ANNOUNCER: FRONTLINE investigates
facilitated communication

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--the theory, the practice
and the controversy.

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PHIL WORDEN: God, it's really true.
This stuff is bogus.

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You know, it's just so
clear and so unmistakable

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as I was sitting there watching this.

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ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE,
"Prisoners of Silence."

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Funding for Frontline is provided

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by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

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and by annual financial support
from viewers like you.

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This is FRONTLINE

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CHILDREN: [singing] If you're happy
and you know it, clap your hands

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If you're happy and you know it,
clap your hands

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If you're happy and you know it--

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NARRATOR: Every American
child knows this song.

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They can feel happy and they know
what it is like to feel happy.

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But to children growing up

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with the strange condition of autism,

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like these at the Boston Higashi School,

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the words may not mean much at all.

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Something has gone wrong with
their developing brains.

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The children have a faraway look.

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Generally they shun human contact.

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The mysterious condition of autism

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affects close to 400,000 Americans.

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Most have little or no speech.

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Eighty percent are mentally retarded.

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While the condition can be treated,

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there's no cure.

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Until three years ago,

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this was the generally
accepted theory of autism.

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But then a radical and
controversial new technique

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called "facilitated communication"
took America by storm.

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Today, thanks to facilitated communication,

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Jeff Powell, once written
off as profoundly retarded,

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sits in class doing algebra.

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[applause]

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Profoundly autistic Ben Lehr can't speak,

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but can type his thoughts
to an audience of people.

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Dr. DOUGLAS BIKLEN: [reading Ben
Lehr's words] "Feel like you need

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patient friends like Michael.
They fight for me."

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[applause]

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NARRATOR: Professor Douglas Biklen
of Syracuse University thinks

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it is the most important
breakthrough in autism ever

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and is promoting it enthusiastically.

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The theory of facilitated
communication claims

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that many, perhaps most autistic people,

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are not retarded, but
have intelligent minds

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imprisoned in bad bodies.

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FACILITATOR: Are, either, for-- good.

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Go ahead. Delete. Did you
want to delete that?

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NARRATOR: Biklen argues
that autistic individuals

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like Ellen have many things to say

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but are unable to say them

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because her body will not
do what her mind wants.

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But with a little help,

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or facilitation -- holding her hand,

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wrist or elbow --

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her body's often jerky
movements can be smoothed out,

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allowing her to type letters on a keyboard.

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FACILITATOR: --TALK-- I, N, G--

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NARRATOR: When Douglas
Biklen discovered the method

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during a visit to Melbourne, Australia,

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he realized that everything known
about autism might be wrong.

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Dr. BIKLEN: I knew that I had seen

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something terribly important.

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Here was a means of expression

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for people who lacked expression

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and here was a way that you could find out

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what people were feeling and
what they were thinking.

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And, you know, these were people

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who had a disability the
very definition of which

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suggested that the people
might not have feelings

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and certainly no ability to empathize

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with other people's feelings.

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This was a disability the
very definition of which

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was that people lacked imaginative ability.

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Well, I mean, you know, how do you do

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higher order mathematics
without an imagination?

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How do you write poetry
without an imagination?

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So it was quite clear that this was

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a means of expression
that was revolutionary.

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NARRATOR: The O.D. Heck Center
for the Developmentally Disabled

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in Schenectady, New York,
runs a large autism program.

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Before facilitated communication,

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the staff never imagined that any

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of their nonverbal clients might
be of normal intelligence.

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But then speech pathologist Marian Pitsas

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heard about the new technique being
promoted at Syracuse University.

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Together with her colleague Jimmy Maruska,

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she went to find out how it worked.

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MARIAN PITSAS: Three of us
went for the training first

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and we rapidly trained
everyone in our program,

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all three shifts, and had
many, many clients typing

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at varying levels and with
varying degrees of success

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but it spread very, very quickly.

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I thought it was wonderful.

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At last we were going to-- we were going to

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help these people communicate.

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We would find out what
they really understood.

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JIMMY MARUSKA: Before, they
were just another person

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that I was helping with and teaching them

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some basic skills to help
them survive out there,

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but then here along comes a person
that can share their thoughts,

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that can talk to me.

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I can talk to them.

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We can have a conversation that's relevant.

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It was great. It was really super.

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I mean, you couldn't ask for anything more.

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All of a sudden, these people that

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we always treated as low-functioning

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were right up there with us.

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NARRATOR: Ray Paglieri,

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the director of the autism program,

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realized the enormous implications

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of the typed messages his
clients were now producing.

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RAY PAGLIERI: I was thinking

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that certainly a large number,

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if not all of the folks
that we were working with

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may, in fact, have normal intelligence.

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I mean, we had people typing sentences,

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paragraphs, alike.

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We were thinking here we were going to

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redefine the whole notion of
what autism is all about.

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We trained the rest of our staff, okay?

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We literally were encouraging people

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to work with everybody in the program.

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We were training as many
people as we could,

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training people out in the community.

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I mean, we were excited.

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We looked at it as literally
a breakthrough technique.

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NARRATOR: So did the media.

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ANNOUNCER: [January 25, 1992] PrimeTime.
Now, from New York, Diane Sawyer.

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DIANE SAWYER: And now a story about hope.

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For decades, autism has
been a dark mystery,

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a disorder that seems to turn
children in on themselves,

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against the world.

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Tonight, however, you are
going to see something

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that has changed that. Call it a miracle.

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Call it an awakening.

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NARRATOR: Word of the new miracle

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of facilitated communication
spread rapidly.

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Parents told teachers and
teachers told parents.

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TEACHER: The system that carries matter

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from one place to another?

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NARRATOR: Many schools embraced it.

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At Edward Smith Elementary
School in Syracuse,

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children previously thought to be retarded

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now sat in classes with their peers,

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receiving age-appropriate instruction,

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studying math, studying biology.

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TEACHER: Plasma is correct PJ, nice job.

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Dr. BIKLEN: Maybe you can say
what you want to point to.

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NARRATOR: A large group of individuals had,

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in Biklen's view, been greatly
underestimated simply

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because they could not speak
or control their bodies.

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Dr. BIKLEN: Why don't you show
us and then you try to say it.

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That's good.

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Dr BIKLEN: I had always
believed that it was important

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to treat people as competent,

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even though they didn't
give off the signs of it.

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To me,that was just the--
the humane thing to do.

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That was the sensitive thing to do.

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The wonderful thing about
facilitated communication

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is that once a person
begins to communicate,

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you can ask the person,
"What's going on here?"

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Dr BIKLEN: Excellent! You got it right.

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NARRATOR: The words that emerged

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from the electronic
communicators and letter boards

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spoke of loneliness,

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of being trapped in a prison of silence,

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of slavery and of freedom.

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For Biklen, a simple
technique had redefined

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an entire group of
disabled people.

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Jeff Powell, for example, is no longer seen

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by his teachers and peers
as mentally retarded.

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He has become a celebrity at
Baker High School in Syracuse.

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They stress he's an
academically gifted student

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who writes poetry for the school yearbook.

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But some people had their doubts

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about facilitated communication.

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Dr. Howard Shane has devoted his life

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to helping disabled nonverbal
people to communicate.

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At Boston Children's Hospital,

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he runs a center which finds
technological solutions

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enabling disabled people
like Tony Bonfiglio

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who has cerebral palsy, to
communicate independently.

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Dr. SHANE: We have this
saying in our center

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that no person is too physically disabled

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to be unable to communicate.

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The slightest movement, winking of an eye,

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moving of an eyebrow, sipping
and puffing on a switch--

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on--on a straw would control a switch--

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finding that subtle
movement is all you need

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to be able to control the technology.

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VOICE SYNTHESIZER: Yes, I
have made many good friends.

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NARRATOR: Thanks to computers,
thousands of nonverbal people

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can express themselves independently.

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With such equipment
available, Shane questioned,

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why should autistic people need
another person to hold their hands?

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Biklen says autism is special.

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Dr. BIKLEN: Last week, I had conversations

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with several people.

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One person said, "It slows me down.

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It helps me by slowing me down.

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When I'm not slowed down, I get garbage.

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I get unwanted words. I get a
lot of letters strung together

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that don't make a word.
When I'm slowed down,

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I can type what I want."

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NARRATOR: But critics
like Shane were amazed

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at the sophisticated output.

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Autistic children of 5 and 6 produced

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perfectly spelled sentences.

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Where had they learned to read and write?

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A difficult question had to be faced.

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Was the typing coming from
the autistic individual

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or from the facilitator?

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Dr. SHANE: The outcomes
that were being reported

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were just so far out of line

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with what anyone had ever found.

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They're communicating in
grammatically complete sentences.

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They're marking the tense correctly.

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Their spelling is accurate.

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They have insights that go
far beyond their years.

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Dr. BIKLEN: [reading]
"Understanding is so hard.

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I long to see it real.

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I just hope, really hope,
it's not a lost ideal.

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As I said, many of the accounts
coming from people with--

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who are using facilitated communication
as their means of expression

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have to do with loneliness.

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Dr. BILKEN: I think it's
rather obvious that the way

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in which these children learned to read

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was the way that most
of us learned to read--

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that is, by being immersed in
a language-rich environment.

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You go into good pre-school classrooms

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and you'll see words
everywhere, labeling objects,

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labeling pictures.

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You look at Sesame Street.

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We're introducing words.

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We're giving people whole words.

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We're also introducing
them to the alphabet.

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On the other hand, having said that,

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it does seem to me that there's
something unusual going on here

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when you see a number
of children with autism

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who seem to have precocious ability.

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00:13:45,394 --> 00:13:46,871
That is, they know a lot of words

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00:13:46,871 --> 00:13:51,970
and very often, you know, quite long words.

254
00:13:51,970 --> 00:13:54,790
You know, how is this? Is there something

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00:13:54,790 --> 00:13:58,551
about the disability that allows
them to focus in on language

256
00:13:58,551 --> 00:14:02,338
and to be able to put together words?

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00:14:03,518 --> 00:14:05,428
NARRATOR: A very small
number of autistic people,

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00:14:05,428 --> 00:14:08,684
"savants," have spectacular
abilities in narrow areas.

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EXPERIMENTER: The 17th of December, 1974.

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00:14:12,557 --> 00:14:17,145
SAVANT: That was a-- a Tuesday.

261
00:14:17,145 --> 00:14:21,524
EXPERIMENTER: The 10th of June, 1917.

262
00:14:21,524 --> 00:14:28,990
SAVANT: It-- it was a-- a Sunday.

263
00:14:28,990 --> 00:14:34,802
EXPERIMENTER: The 1st of March, 2044.

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00:14:34,802 --> 00:14:39,206
SAVANT: It-- it will be a Tuesday.