Here is the original online post by Stewart in 2007 that got me interested in TSO:
My name is Stewart Johnson and I am the father of a 16
year old son with autism. After researching autism and
living through my son's extremely difficult behaviors
for 14 years, I came up with a hypothesis about the
cause of agitation, self-abusive behavior, and other
symptoms of this disorder. I researched the topic in
the medical literature and found support for the
hypothesis. Based on my hypothesis, I also found what
I believed to be a new potential treatment that is
currently being used for Crohn's Disease and
Ulcerative Colitis, two autoimmune disorders. I wrote
a research paper and presented it to my son's doctor,
who agreed that this was well researched, plausible,
and should be pursued.
I got the agent and we began treatment of my son.
After 10 weeks, all my son's symptoms of agitation,
self abusive behavior (smashing his head with his fist
and biting his hand), anxiety, obsessive thoughts and
behaviors, impulsivity, compulsivity, behavioral
rigidity, repeated questioning and stimming completely
disappeared. He went from smashing himself in the head
20 times a day and having to be physically restrained
to not doing it at all. All the OCD vanished. No more
inflexibility and extreme desire for sameness. No more
anxiety. No tantrums or melt-downs. He continues to
take the agent every two weeks and the symptoms have
not returned for 15 months so far.
Given the fact that my son had 13 years of intensive
therapies (including pharmacology) in an effort to
eliminate these behaviors (to no avail), the results
left me and his doctor speechless. He asked me to
present this to the entire research team at his
hospital (which I did back in November 2006) and I
will also be presenting it at the annual Autism
Research conference at Mount Sinai Medical Center in
New York coming up on October 28th.
We have filed for an NIH grant to conduct a double
blind, placebo controlled study of this agent in
autism.
In the meantime, I feel guilty not telling my story.
Maybe it's a fluke, maybe he just happened to lose all
these behaviors coincidentally after ten weeks on this
therapy. Or maybe not. I created a website to tell the
story and hopefully stimulate interest so that this
can be studied in a controlled fashion.
The entire story can be found at
www.autismtso.com
I am not selling anything, I have no affiliation with
the company that makes the treatment agent, and I
receive no compensation of any kind with regard to
this from anyone. All the costs associated with the
development and maintenance of the website are from my
own pocket. I'm not suggesting anyone try this. I just
think the story is too remarkable not to tell, and by
telling it to as wide an audience as possible, the
result may be that controlled studies happen sooner
rather than later.
