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An Ontario father has lost custody of his children in part because he refused to stop trying to cure their autism through homeopathy.

“Not only were these treatments not effective, but they had negative effects,” reads a court decision granting sole custody to the children’s mother.

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The father, a 48-year-old computer programmer in the Greater Toronto Area, will now see the children three weekends a month, with shared access during holidays.

The two boys, aged nine and 10, suffer from “severe and profound” autism spectrum disorder. They do not speak, are not toilet-trained or able to dress or feed themselves.

At an October hearing, the children’s mother sought a court order barring her former husband from administering homeopathic treatments, arguing he was pointlessly “looking for a ‘cure’ for autism rather than trying to find a method of managing autism.”

Homeopathy, developed in Germany in the early 19th century, is an alternative therapy that holds that diseases can be cured by giving patients remedies that cause the same symptoms as the original illness.