Haven't seen the infomercial (I'm in the wrong country for it) but programs that teach babies and toddlers to read have been around for many decades (the Glenn Doman book, Teach Your Baby To Read, which I think started it all, was published over 40 years ago); I don't think it's controversial that this works. (Famous last words...) Yes, any young child can be taught to read, given consistent instruction (and it doesn't have to be a lot: a few minutes per day). What's a (fallible, like them all) marker of high intelligence is spontanously learning to read, without being taught. But I think this is why those of us with spontaneously reading children get so much suspicion, and why it isn't treated as a definite marker of a bright child: early reading *is* something that can be achieved by parental choice.
In fact, before my DS was born, I did some reading around the topic with the idea that I'd make a rational decision about whether to teach him to read. I decided not to, basically on the grounds that it probably wasn't harmful, but why bother, when there was no hurry, plenty of other things to do in early childhood, easier in some ways to start school in step with the other kids, etc. Then he demonstrated that it isn't necessarily the parents' choice...
