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My brother Mark is autistic. He wore diapers at age seven and didn't speak till he was eight. My parents were told to institutionalize him. Spurred on by his refusal to accept that his son's situation was hopeless, my father, Dr. Bernard Rimland, began a lifelong search for answers. When Mark was diagnosed, autism was relatively rare. Today, its incidence is reaching epidemic proportions.

Fortunately, there is hope. In 2003, the Autism Research Institute, a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Rimland, published Treating Autism, a book that outlined a revolutionary approach to the treatment of the disability using techniques such as administering massive doses of certain vitamins and removal of mercury from the system. Although these techniques do not work for every child, there has been such enormous progress toward eradicating autism using this biomedical approach that the second edition has a new title: Recovering Autistic Children.

This book is a must-read for families of autistic children and for anyone who works with people on the autism spectrum. It opens and closes with informational chapters by leading researchers in the field. But the meat of Recovering Autistic Children is the middle section, with its 31 accounts by parents of how biomedical treatments have transformed their children. I couldn't help being inspired by the courage and dedication of these parents, who would not accept a diagnosis of "hopeless."

The central message of Recovering Autistic Children is that there is, indeed, hope. Take my brother, for instance. Today, Mark is 50. He lives at home, attends a school for developmentally disabled adults and is a talented artist whose work has been featured in galleries, on television and in books. He is living proof that the methods discussed in Recovering Autistic Children work — that the words autism and hope belong together.

Helen Landalf is author of seven published books, including The Secret Night World of Cats, a children's book illustrated by her autistic brother, Mark Rimland. Her father, the late Dr. Bernard Rimland, was one of the leading pioneers in the field of autism.

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