Dr. Lintala is the mother of three boys, one diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, and one not officially diagnosed, but showing signs of an autism spectrum disorder by age 3. She remembers well the sense of grief and hopelessness in early 2003 when the oldest one’s diagnosis was confirmed, and then less than a year later realizing their youngest son was going onto the autism spectrum. The hardest part was being told that “there is no treatment, there is no cure”.

Since then, she and her husband, a medical doctor, researched and instituted the new biomedical therapies with their sons, and both sons no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for any form of autism. Her youngest, especially, shows no signs of autism. She and her husband regard these as “managed recoveries”, not cures.

Dr. Lintala has a B.S. in Genetics, and graduated as salutatorian, summa cum laude, from The National College of Chiropractic, a five-year postgraduate program near Chicago, IL. Dr. Lintala has taken the Defeat Autism Now! clinician training several times, attends many autism training conferences, and has completed two Mentorships at the RIMLAND Center under Dr. Liz Mumper, the former Medical Director of The Autism Research Institute. With the help and support of her husband, she opened the Autism Recovery Resource Center in southern West Virginia.