Sir

Although I am grateful that my book About Face was reviewed in Nature (390, 458; 1997), I should like to point out that, contrary to Stuart Sutherland's claim, I was not instrumental in setting up the charity Changing Faces.

Sutherland also says that I suggest that the emotional problems in autism stem from an inability to interpret others' facial expressions. I find it difficult to see how he arrives at this simplistic conclusion. In the book I write: “But autism, of course, is a widespread developmental disorder, not just a face thing. Do the many other problems [autistic people] have preclude too many conclusions about relatedness and social development based on facial action? Perhaps. But what if there were people with facial problems alone, and what if they experienced some similar difficulties in relatedness? Autism is a condition with problems in social interaction which are reflected in their problems with the face. What if we could turn this upside down? How might facial problems affect social development and selfhood?”

Although coming at the end of the chapter on autism, these questions are used as a bridge to refer to the next chapter on Möbius syndrome (in which people have congenital lack of facial movement). Sutherland seems to have missed this link.

Indeed, I write later: “Autism of course is not a face problem in the way Möbius Syndrome is”.