Michael Fitzpatrick (physician)

Michael Fitzpatrick (born 1950) is a British general practitioner (GP) and medical author from London, UK. Fitzpatrick is known for writing several books and newspaper articles about controversies in autism, from his perspective as someone who is both a GP and the parent of a son with autism. His book Defeating Autism: A Dangerous Delusion (2008) describes his views on the rising popularity of "biomedical" treatments for autism, as well as the MMR vaccine controversy.^[1]

Fitzpatrick's books have also focused on the pseudoscientific treatments for autism, such as Mark Geier's use of chelation therapy and Lupron as autism treatments, which Fitzpatrick has criticized as "dehumanising and dangerous."^[2] He also condemned the use of secretin as an autism treatment in his 2004 book MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know, in which he wrote that "the secretin bubble burst" when a randomized controlled trial found that it was ineffective. In an interview with The Guardian, he proposed that special diets are appealing to parents of children with autism because so little is known about the cause or possible treatments for autism, "And then someone else comes along and says your doctor's useless, that they know what caused it, and that you can do something about it".^[3]

Books

• The Tyranny of Health (2001). Routledge.
• MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know (2004). Routledge.
• Defeating Autism: A Dangerous Delusion (2009). Routledge.

References