Autism Speaks Announces Plans to Fund "Complementary and Alternative Medicine"

Earlier this month, Autism Speaks began lobbying in PA for health insurance coverage.

They they opposed AB 16 in California that would have expanded the mandatory vaccine schedule in that state.

Last week JB Handley (no fan of AS) personally and publicly thanked them for supporting the Mercury Free Vaccines Act of 2007.

And today this:

Autism Speaks Seeking Requests for Applications for New Treatment Grants
On July 27, 2007, Autism Speaks called for research proposals targeting three broad treatment approaches for autism spectrum disorders. The "Pharmacological Treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders" RFA focuses on developing robust pilot data that evaluate the safety and efficacy of candidate pharmaceutical agents that could lead to larger clinical trials. Similar applications are sought for the "Special Interventions in Autism Spectrum Disorders" RFA, but instead of pharmaceutical agents, the focus is on behavioral and non-behavioral interventions such as educational, physiological, and technological treatments. Given the frequent use of non-traditional interventions within the autism community, the "Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Treating Autism Spectrum Disorders" RFA aims to provide preliminary but high quality data to help evaluate the safety and efficacy of some of these approaches and to identify promising protocols that warrant further investigation and development.

To assist researchers in developing high quality proposals for the Complementary and Alternative Medicine grants, Autism Speaks will hold information sessions for invited proposals where interested investigators can discuss their applications and the review process, as well as topics relevant to the preparation and submission of their applications, such as common challenges in study design.

“We are pleased to expand our treatment portfolio to include a variety of grant mechanisms that will advance our understanding of how to treat autism,” said Peter Bell, Autism Speaks executive vice president for programs and services. “Autism is clearly treatable but we need to understand which interventions are safe and effective and which children will benefit from them. Moreover, it's important to address both the biomedical and behavioral/educational aspects of the disorder to achieve the best outcome for those affected by autism.”

Read more about the Pharmacological Treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders RFA (PDF), the Special Interventions in Autism Spectrum Disorders RFA (PDF) and the Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Treating Autism Spectrum Disorders RFA (PDF).

(Of course I am not thrilled with researching the drug route, but the cynic in me thinks that they had to do that too in order to keep the pharma money flowing.)

The pdf begins this way:

Although medical care in the United States is increasingly driven by evidence based practice, societal pressure for tolerance and incorporation of complementary alternative forms of health care is significant. Many children (estimates vary from 50% to 75%) with autism spectrum disorders are treated with some form of complementary alternative intervention, and approximately 1/3 of these are being so treated at the time of diagnostic evaluation.

They begin their statement with the admission that most parents are treating autism with biomed and that the "pressure" they are bringing to bear is "significant".

Congratulations parents.

And Congratulations Autism Speaks.

This will be the best money you have ever spent. If you spend it right.

Of course the cynical optimist in me also wants to wait and see how the grants are distributed. I need to see the words, chelation, HBOT and Lymphoid Nodular Hyperplasia as well as the names of a few docs and researchers that the biomed community has come to know and trust, before I am going to sing love songs to Autism Speaks. But if they are doing this in earnest and actually get results, I will sing them love songs.

(However, if they give Eric Fombonne money to do a blood mercury study, I will be out in front of their building with a bull horn. But let's just assume that they are not pulling any shenanigans with this and just enjoy the moment.)

I think that it would be great if our trusted DAN! medical professionals could keep us parents abreast of their applications to this program. I would love to know who is applying for what and who is getting funded or turned down.

But as to not seem to be taking this to glibly, I want to thank Autism Speaks, because I am starting to believe that they are listening to us the way that they say that they would.

As an update to the Autism Speaks letters, I have not sent them in yet. I have been away from autism activism a good deal this month because I have been spending so much time on my boy's health. (We are finishing up a round of IV chelation (his first IV) on him and the results have been really exciting for us, but I will write about the whole thing in a week or so when he is done.) So if anyone still wants to include their letter, send it along.

The tide has turned.

How great would it be if a year from now if all I had to write about was plummeting autism rates, new treatment interventions that are covered by insurance and recovery stories.

How great would it be if this blog became irrelevant.

Something Has Happened

Two weeks ago I took a break from blogging to spend time with family who came to visit. Last week was a work catch up week, and I have only begun to catch up with all that has happened in the autism world while I was gone.

As I have been reading, I am seeing things that are surprising me. It is freaking me out a little.

Something has changed around the Cedillo Trial.

I have been following autism news for three years and I have never seen the kind of stories/events that are surfacing.

Dave Weldon and Carolyn Maloney have introduced bipartisan legislation, the Mercury Free Vaccines Act of 2007. Autism Speaks has uncharacteristically decided to back it and oppose AB 16 in Sacramento that would mandate that the State of California automatically adopt any vaccine that the CDC puts on the schedule (and pushed the HPV vaccine). They have never taken a stance on vaccines before. AS is also listing mercury research that was funded by CAN before the merger on their web site, but someone who spends a lot of time on the site said they didn't remember every seeing this page there before. (Anyone know if this is new, or remember seeing it in the past?)

AS has also stepped into the insurance coverage legislation in PA and announced legislative efforts on their web site.

The CDC issued a response to Verstraeten/VSD on their web site with lots of references to thimerosal studies. (I haven't had a chance to read it yet), but how long has it been there? It is not dated and David Kirby, who is a guy who keeps track of these things, didn't even know it was there until a few days ago.

The run up to the Wakefield MMR Trial has reignited doubt in the vaccine in the UK and articles like these are coming out:

At Last They Admit It, This Jab CAN Harm Your Child

The Truth About MMR

DANGERS OF MMR JAB 'COVERED UP'

The Autism Research Institute is now being backed by the giant Autism Society of America, which is now teaming up with Easter Seals who will now make Autism their priority.

Over the last three years, my blog has been visited occasionally by CDC and NIH and a few other government agencies. These visits were few and far between, and always interesting to me when they happened. But now, ramping up with increasing frequency since about April, my blog has been regularly visited by The Powers that Be CDC, NIH, FDA, EPA, HHS, the House and the Senate, The Department of Justice (who are the governments "defendants" in the Cedillo Trial), The Department of Veterans Affairs, The US Forestry Service, The Naval Research Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, The US Census Bureau, dozens of foreign, state and local governments, a slew of Canadian government agencies, dozens of medical centers/health organizations/universities/dental schools including CHOP (Paul Offit's hospital), Johns Hopkins, The Cleavland Clinic, our pharma friends at Johnson & Johnson and Glaxo Smith Klein, Immunize.org, media corporations Tribune and Gannett, The World Health Organization and even one visit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Apparently the Department of Justice is curious to know when and if the Evidence of Harm movie will be coming out.



Here is my blog traffic graph for the last three years.



2005 - nice little blog with decent traffic. 2006 - took a break from blogging for most of the year. 2007 - Started to write again. Feb/March stats broke but I didn't notice. April was Autism Awareness Month (Damn that is a lot of awareness). May - residual autism awareness?? June - suddenly I am twice as fascinating as I have ever been on my best month! July - on track to have 8,000 visitors despite the fact that I have been on vacation most of the time.

As much as I would love to believe that it is my brilliance that people are coming for, it is probably a safer bet that more people (and more people in positions of power to do something) are awakening to the reality that autism is preventable and treatable and are taking valuable time out of their day to investigate for themselves.

Last month I said that the tide had turned. I think I might have been righter than I thought I was and that the tide might start moving faster than I had anticipated.

Even if I had 40 hours a week to sort all this stuff out, I don't think I could do a decent job. I am just going to start posting references to stories with out much comment just so I can get as much out as possible.