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The Document SafeMinds Doesn’t Want You to Read

17 Feb

When someone asks about the Dr. Wakefield, or the GMC hearing, do you talk about the ruling or point people to read it for themselves? Well, according to Mark Blaxill (blogger for SafeMinds), you shouldn’t. In an “opposing view” from USA Today, he stated:

Anyone convinced that Wakefield is the problem should ask a simple question: Can you name a single instance of fraud or misconduct by Wakefield, describe it simply without deferring to the authority of some faceless tribunal and defend the evidence to an informed skeptic?

Just for the record, I am not convinced that Wakefield is *the* problem. There are lots of problems.

That said, I find the fact that Dr. Wakefield didn’t divulge his funding from the Legal Aid Board when directly asked by a U.S. Legislator to be misconduct. (From the congressional record, April 6, 2000)

Mr. Burton. Who funded your study, Dr. Wakefield?
Dr. Wakefield. We did. We have a small charitable contribution, but—
Mr. Burton. A charitable organization did; I see.
Dr. Wakefield. We found it a little difficult to get funding—-

I consider Dr. Wakefield not divulging his patent, which includes a claim for an alternate measles vaccine, during his news conference following the publication of the article in The Lancet to be misconduct.

I did those without even having to lean on all the information at BrianDeer.com, or Mr. Deer’s news articles.

I could have quoted many instances of Dr. Wakefield’s research which were mentioned in the Autism Omnibus Proceedings. A prime example would be Dr. Wakefield publishing claims that measles virus were detected in the guts of autistic kids, even after being told that his detection of measles virus in tissue samples were incorrect by Nicholas Chadwick. But, that wasn’t part of the GMC inquiry.

Mr. Blaxill made these comments in an “Opposing View” statement at USA Today. His opposing view was to the op-ed piece:

Our view on fighting disease: Vaccine fear-mongering endangers child health
When ‘herd immunity’ declines, deadly illnesses make a comeback.

Here is an amazing quote by Mr. Blaxill:

Dedicated scientists who simply reported a series of cases combining bowel symptoms, autistic regression and exposure to the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) stand accused of fraud and misconduct

Simply reporting? I guess if you throw out all the evidence, as Mr. Blaxill would have you do.

Simply reported? That downplays what happened. It makes it sound like they just found the data lying around and put it into a paper. Does performing lumbar punctures (spinal taps) to take cerebral spinal fluid from disabled children–without any clinical need–fall under the category of “simply reporting”? You can even take out the “without any clinical need” if you want to follow Mr. Blaxill’s call to ignore the GMC ruling.

“Simply reporting”…it sounds like they just looked at a bunch of kids’ records. If some major pharmaceutical house were taking samples from children using very invasive procedures, there would be no question of “simply reporting”.

As long as I am on the subject, Dr. Wakefield and his two colleagues are not “accused” of fraud and misconduct anymore. Most of the charges were “found proved”. Once again, a choice of words made to downplay the situation.

By the way, it is worth comparing Mr. Blaxill’s statement with that of Dr. Wakefield himself:

…I invite anyone to examine the contents of these proceedings and come to their own conclusion

I did. I have.

A Nasty Little Franchise

15 Feb

Wakefield may have the highest public profile but he is just one of many who seek to profit from autism and he is by no means the worst. Remember the Geiers? This father and son team from Silver Springs in Maryland have an unsavoury record that makes Wakefield seem almost reasonable.

Wakefield breached the terms of his hospital’s ethics committee. The Geiers, operating out of the family home, invented their own IRB and granted themselves ethical approval for experiments on children with a powerful drug called Lupron. Lupron is used to treat precocious puberty, a rare condition in young children. It is also used is also used to treat prostate cancer in men, to treat endometriosis in women, and to chemically castrate sex offenders. The Geiers use it on autistic children and young adults.

Kathleen Seidel has catalogued their bad science, plagiarism, inflated academic resumes, the fraudulent IRB, cruel and unnecessary blood draws, attempted deals with TAP pharmaceuticals and the Lupron Protocol itself on her Neurodiversity website. Trine Tsouderos at the Chicago Tribune covers all the basics in her recent profile of the Geiers,  ‘Miracle drug’ called junk science.

The most disturbing part of Tsouderos’ story was the news that the Geiers were rolling out a franchise for others to cash in on their unproven and dangerous protocol. According to their website they offer the following

  • Genetic Markers (DNA Fragile X Syndrome, Blood Chromosome, Chromosome Microarrays, DNA Rett Syndrome, Angelman/Prader Willi Syndrome)
  • Mitochondrial Dysfunction (Carnitine, Lactic Acid, Ammonia, Hand Muscle Testing)
  • Hormone Imbalances (Total Testosterone, Free Testosterone, DHEA, DHEA-S, Androstenedione, Dihydrotestosterone, Total Estrogens, Estrone, Estradiol, ACTH, Aldosterone, Prolactin, FSH, LH)
  • Oxidative Stress/Inflammation (Neopterin, Lipid Peroxides)
  • Detoxification Pathways (Glutathione, Cystathionine, Homocysteine, Methionine)
  • Immune System Function (Immune Deficiency Profile, HLA-Testing, Immune Complexes, Food Allergies, Celiac’s Disease)
  • Heavy Metals (Porphyrins, Blood Metals, Urinary Metals)
  • Neurological Dysfunction (Brain MRI scans, Brain SPECT scans)
  • General Health Status (Comphrensive Metabolic Panel)

And this is the team that will deliver these services.

  • Maryland: Mark Geier MD, geneticist and David Young MD, Obstetrician and gynaecologist.
  • Springfield, llinois: Mary Young MD, psychiatrist and neurologist.
  • Ft. Lauderdale, Florida: David Claymore, neuroradiologist.
  • Parsippany, New Jersey: Paul King, industrial chemist.
  • Indianapolis, Indiana: Melissa Troutman, radiologic technologist.
  • Dallas, Texas: Janet Kern, RN, neuroscientist.
  • Louisville, Kentucky: Janet Pope, RN

And that is it. The only member of the American Academy of Pediatrics is Mary Young who has worked as a child psychiatrist. There are no board certified endocrinologists or anybody with the board certification to diagnose and treat precocious puberty in children.

And what of David Geier BA? He remains vice-president of the non-profit 501(c)3 Institute of Chronic Illnesses, Inc. and the non-profit 501(c)3 CoMeD, Inc. Much of the profit from the franchise will be directed to “these corporations dedicated to
autism research and advocacy efforts.” sure. So families or their insurers will be paying for treatments for their children that have been condemned by real autism experts as junk science. And the profits from this enterprise will be used to fund more junk science. Do they have a GMC in America? Do they want to borrow ours?

Andrew Wakefield – I have no need of continued registration

14 Feb

In a remarkable and somewhat odd statement put out by Andrew Wakefield, he states:

I have no need of continued registration with the GMC…

Which is somewhat contrary to his statement of 2004 that;

It has been proposed that my role in this matter should be investigated by the GMC. I not only welcome this, I insist on it…

Why would someone insist upon being heard by an organisation he holds so little respect for he longer wants to be a member?

During the rest of the statement, he provides thanks to the support of his economic fan base – the parents, imcluding no doubt the parents of the children whom counr amongst the 11 counts of sticking tubes and needles into developmentally-challenged children without ethical approval, and nine counts of doing so contrary to the children’s wellbeing.

In a private email Brian Deer stated his opinion – which I share – that:

There can’t by any doubt that with four charges of dishonesty, including research and financial misconduct, that he knows he will be erased from the medical register.

Just _one_ of these substantiated charges would be enough to get a GP struck off. With the amount Andrew Wakefield has against his name it would be a small miracle if this didn’t happen and he is pre-emptively striking back at the GMC, declaring he doesn’t care if they do strip him of his right to be referred to as ‘doctor’.

I’ll leave the last words to Brian Deer, the man who single handedly brought down Andrew Wakefield:

His latest statement illustrates a more sinister aspect of Andrew Wakefield’s conduct: the mismatch between what has occurred outside the hearing and what has gone on inside. Outside – appealing to his economic base – he claims he is a victim of sinister forces – the drug industry and government and so forth – when he’s not the slightest evidence of this, (and neither have I). He was taken down by an old fashioned journalistic investigation, executed in the public interest.

And yet, inside the hearing, his behaviour was quite different. He called no witnesses whatsoever. While the prosecution called a parent who provided devastating evidence, he didn’t risk putting any of the ringleaders outside the building into the witness chair, where they could be cross-examined over how vulnerable children came to be brought to a hospital with no department or reputation for evaluating developmental disorders, and where doctors seemed all-but-entirely uninterested in the children’s futures. Nor did he put any questions whatsoever to the government’s vaccine chief, despite Wakefield supporters turning up for a much-hyped showdown. Nothing was asked, because Wakefield has nothing.

What the Wakefield project was all about was getting into the small intestines and spines of children without anybody finding out the reason. *And this is where, rightly, that project has brought him.*

Wakefield Monkey Study Withdrawn by Editor

12 Feb

In case you missed it, Dr. Wakefield is a co-author on a series of studies vaccinating macaques. They have been touted as “blockbuster” studies, and also critiqued sharply.

With a hat-tip to KWombles for the information: The paper has been withdrawn

If you check the Neurotoxicology website, the paper now has “Withdrawn” added to the tile:

“WITHDRAWN: Delayed acquisition of neonatal reflexes in newborn primates receiving a thimerosal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine: Influence of gestational age and birth weight”

with the statement at the bottom:

This article has been withdrawn at the request of the editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.

The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.

Note to users: Withdrawn Articles in Press are proofs of articles which have been peer reviewed and initially accepted, but have since been withdrawn before being published in this journal. Reasons for withdrawal may be due to a decision by the author and/or editor, accidental duplication of an article elsewhere, or because the content contravenes the Elsevier publishing policy in some way. Withdrawn Articles in Press are only visible to users when following an external link, e.g., an end user following a PubMed or DOI link. Such Withdrawn Articles in Press are not searchable or otherwise available in ScienceDirect.

If you follow the link for the Elsevier policy on withdrawing papers, you will find these statements:

Article Withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.

and

Article Withdrawal

Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors, may be “Withdrawn” from ScienceDirect. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the Elsevier Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.

Anthony Cox published in PJ Online

11 Feb

Our very own Anthony Cox was published today in PJ Online (gateway to the world of pharmacy and medicines) concerning the MMR saga. I’ll copy and paste a key paragraph then urge you to go read the whole piece which is an excellent summation of events thus far.

In US court testimony in 2007, Chadwick stated that he had tested all the samples from Wakefield’s ASD children and found no MVV present. Wakefield was made aware of this before the publication of the 1998 paper, but saw fit not to draw attention to this negative finding that undermined his hypothesis.

Wakefield’s Lancet study is like cold fusion?

9 Feb

Hey, I didn’t say it. Mike Adams, “The Health Ranger”, out at NaturalNews.com said it in a blog post called, The Lancet retraction of vaccine autism paper condemned as Big Pharma conspiracy to discredit Dr. Wakefield.

I’ll do the geek stuff below, but let’s just say, Cold Fusion is synonymous with weak (or bad) science touted followed by a press conference that made claims which were amazing if true…but they weren’t.

For most of the world, comparing research to cold fusion is not a compliment. But NaturalNews.com doesn’t see it that way. After the announcement of Cold Fusion:

The conventional physics community went berserk. They attacked Fleischmann and Pons relentlessly, attempting to destroy their character and any scientific credibility they might have held. They paraded a gang of “hot fusion” scientists through the mainstream media, telling everyone it was “impossible” to create nuclear fusion at tabletop temperatures. Through a repetition of lies, they convinced the world that Fleischmann and Pons were frauds.

Yep. Just like Big Physics killed cold fusion, Big Pharma is out to kill the MMR/Autism link.

As I said recently, just when I think the Wakefield/MMR story can’t get stranger, it does.

For the geeks:

Fusion is the process where nuclei are, well, fused together to form the nuclei of new atoms. For example, one can fuse two duterium (hydrogen nuclei with a proton and a neutron) nuclei and get helium. People study fusion because it might give us a huge source of energy. Fusion reactors are big, expensive creations that raise the temperature of the nuclei very high, and have yet to become a viable energy source.

Cold fusion was an idea that under the right conditions, fusion could be induced near room temperature. Two of the researchers who “discovered” cold fusion held a large press conference and touted their study well beyond what their data could support.

Wakefield’s research: from The Lancet to Medical Veritas?

9 Feb

The Lancet is one of the medical community’s premier journals. As such, tetting a paper into such a journal is a big accomplishment for any medical researcher. When Dr. Andrew Wakefield chose to submit his 1998 study to The Lancet, it is likely he wanted to put it in as high a profile journal as possible. One can speculate how the Andrew Wakefield of 1998 would have viewed publishing his work in Medical Veritas, a newer journal which, well, is not generally highly regarded. Somehow, this observer thinks Dr. Wakefield would not have welcomed a suggestion to submit to Medical Veritas had it existed at the time.

Frequent readers to LeftBrainRightBrain, or most places autism is discussed for that matter, will know that Dr. Wakefield’s study has been retracted by the editors at The Lancet.

Frequent readers here may be also familiar with the magazine, Medical Veritas as it has been the home for a number of questionable autism/vaccine articles. If you aren’t familiar with Medical Veritas, let’s just say that Medical Veritas is not in the same league as the Lancet, to put it mildly.

Why bring these two very disparate journals into this blog post? Well, Medical Veritas has offered to republish Dr. Wakefield’s study:

So with zero confidence in The Lancet, Dr. Horton, those paying his salary, and those criticizing him for his actions, Medical Veritas editors are inviting Dr. Wakefield to re-publish his controversial paper in their next issue.

Wow. What a strange move, and on so many fronts. The most obvious being–what sort of standards does Medical Veritas show when it is willing to publish a paper that has been found to be so fatally flawed? It is really hard to consider that this offer was serious. The Royal Free Hospital, Dr. Wakefield’s employer, assigned the copyright to his paper to The Lancet. The study, even retracted, likely remains the property of The Lancet. Also, it isn’t Dr. Wakefield’s right to decide for his coauthors whether to submit to another journal.

The strangeness goes on and on. Let me just pick out one more oddity of this offer by “the editors” of Medical Veritas. Dr. Wakefield is one of the editors. Yes, one read is that Dr. Wakefield has basically invited himself to reprint “his” paper in Medical Veritas.

Just when you thought the story of the Wakefied/Lancet paper couldn’t get stranger.

Jim Carrey Jenny McCarthy Definitely not anti-vaccine

6 Feb

In the recent statement released by Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy regarding Andrew Wakefield, the twosome made a number of references that clear up once and for all how they feel about vaccines. Because as we all know they’re not anti-vaccine.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers…

Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers…

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers…

The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the
possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.

No, definitely not anti-vaccine.

Is Wakefield being shut up, or are Jenny and Jim trying to get publicity for his research?

5 Feb

In a public statement, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey claim that “Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published”. Readers of LeftBrainRightBrain are already well aware that Dr. Andrew Wakefield was recently found to be “dishonest” and to have acted in a manner against the clinical interests of the children who were his research subjects. This recent statement is in support of the now discredited doctor.

Or, is it? A cynical mind might consider that this is a public relations ploy to get Dr. Wakefield’s current research in front of the media. His last paper was much hyped by Jenny McCarthy’s organization, but got little if any actual press coverage. But now, with the media focused on Dr. Wakefield, what better time to promote his research in hopes of getting some play in the media?

Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Carrey are prominent members of Generation Rescue (“Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey’s Autism Organization”) and have posted their statement on the Generation Rescue website with the full version on the blog sponsored by Generation Rescue, the Age of Autism.

This reader is somewhat amazed at the language used and the ignorance of the history of the General Medical Counsel proceeding that Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Carrey have shown.

The language puts the team well into the world conspiracy-theory:

It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues

We are to believe that the news reporting on the retraction of the paper in The Lancet is orchestrated by vaccine manufacturers. That’s worth considering a moment–two actors, people who depend on their public image for their livelihood–are claiming that the reporting on a major news event is “engineered by vaccine manufacturers”.

The fact is that Dr. Wakefield thrust himself into the limelight with a press conference to publicize the paper. This and the fact that he has kept himself in the public’s eye for 12 years appears to have been lost on the McCarthy/Carrey team. After over a decade of promoting his research well beyond its importance or scientific merit, of course the media would take to the story that Dr. Wakefield had been found guilty of misconduct and that his paper had been retracted.

If there is any doubt as the conspiracy-theory theme of the statement, phrases like “Kangaroo court” and “in the pocket of vaccine makers” should put that to rest:

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury.

The article goes on:

Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield’s original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet’s retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.

This is a very strange statement to have made by representatives of Generation Rescue. Generation Rescue states on their own website, in reference to Dr. Wakefield’s paper in The Lancet, “”This study demonstrates that the MMR vaccine triggered autistic behaviors and inflammatory bowel disease in autistic children”.

Much more to the point, the press release for Dr. Wakefield’s press conference on the release of his study in The Lancet states that “Their [Wakefield et. al] paper, to be published in The Lancet 28 February, suggests that the onset of behavioural symptoms was associated with MMR vaccination”

If the defense now is that there is a difference between “proven” and “associated with” in the minds of the public, the importance of that is lost on me. Dr. Wakefield himself put the idea in the public’s mind that the MMR was causing autism.

In a video interview about his 1998 study, Dr. Wakefield stated that the link was not proven. However, he went on to claim that the “risk of this particular syndrome developing is related to the combine vaccine”:

Again, this was very contentious and you would not get consensus from all members of the group on this, but that is my feeling, that the, the risk of this particular syndrome developing is related to the combined vaccine, the MMR, rather than the single vaccines.

If there is rampant misreporting of the notion that Dr. Wakefield’s study in The Lancet promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism, then it is the fault of Jenny and Jim’s own organization, together with Dr. Wakefield himself.

Much of the trouble resulting from Dr. Wakefield’s work (and by that I mean trouble caused to the world and the autism communities in particular, not trouble to Dr. Wakefield), stems from Dr. Wakefield overplaying the importance or the quality of his research. Even had the study been done as claimed in the publication, it was not a very strong study. It has been reported that four referees recommended rejecting the paper before publication. I don’t know the policy at The Lancet, but often 2 or 3 referees total are used to screen a paper for a journal.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. In this case, overplaying the importance of research well beyond its scientific merit. In their statement, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey promote Dr. Wakefield’s ongoing research as though it is so earth shattering that it must be stopped at all costs. They discuss a series of studies Dr. Wakefield’s new group is undertaking. This research has been discussed by Medical Researcher David Gorski in an article Monkey business in autism research.

We are to believe that there is a media campaign afoot to keep Dr. Wakefield from making his new research public. In the internet age, there is no way to keep information from the public. Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues are even editors of a new pseudo-journal for autism research.

At no point to Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Carrey address the ethical violations that Dr. Wakefield was found guilty of. No mention of whether it is appropriate for medical researchers to perform invasive procedures on disabled children when there is no clinical reason to do so.

In other words, Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Carrey never actually defend Dr. Wakefield for his actions. They never address the serious ethical lapses found proved by the General Medical Counsel.

I am left thinking that this is in reality a pre-release promotional event to get press coverage for Dr. Wakefield’s upcoming paper. The study is “on the brink” of being published. In other words, it is likely already in-press. The faux outrage that his work is being suppressed in light of this is painful to read.

IACC calls for $175 million in autism and the environment research

5 Feb

The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee has posted the revised Strategic Plan. I blogged it recently here on LeftBrainRightBrain. I made a note of the large commitment to environmental causation research. I thought it worthwhile to highlight that section, since this is the cause of so much criticism of the IACC.

Strangely, the criticism doesn’t come from those who are supposedly “It’s all genetic” types. No, the “it’s all environmental” groups seem to be very loud in complaining that all the research funding is going into genetics.

The Plan is divided by a number of questions. Research into causation is listed in Question 3: “What Caused This To Happen And Can This Be Prevented?”

Under that category, there are seven projects on environmental or gene-environment research. Seven out of 10 projects. The estimated budget for all these projects? $175,900,000.

In other words, 70% of the projects and, if I did my math right, nearly 70% of the funding for causation is estimated to be going to environment and gene-environment projects.

This would seem like a great victory for those who have lobbied for more environmental research. I have yet to see anyone from that group even mention the new Strategic Plan, much less the large commitment to environmental research. Where are the statements from SafeMinds (who have a very vocal member who sits on the IACC proper and another who is on a working group)? How about Generation Rescue? The National Autism Association?

In my opinion, these groups really don’t care much about environmental causation unless it is either mercury or vaccines. Hey, I could be wrong. Let’s see if they surprise me with some acknowledgment of this effort by the US Government.

Here are the objectives if you would like to read for yourself.

Short-Term Objectives

1. Coordinate and implement the inclusion of approximately 20,000 subjects for genome-wide association studies, as well as a sample of 1,200 for sequencing studies to examine more than 50 candidate genes by 2011. Studies should investigate factors contributing to phenotypic variation across individuals that share an identified genetic variant and stratify subjects according to behavioral, cognitive, and clinical features. IACC Recommended Budget: $43,700,000 over 4 years.
2. Within the highest priority categories of exposures for ASD, identify and standardize at least three measures for identifying markers of environmental exposure in biospecimens by 2011. IACC Recommended Budget: $3,500,000 over 3 years.

3. Initiate efforts to expand existing large case-control and other studies to enhance capabilities for targeted gene – environment research by 2011. IACC Recommended Budget: $27,800,000 over 5 years.
4. Enhance existing case-control studies to enroll racially and ethnically diverse populations affected by ASD by 2011. IACC Recommended Budget: $3,300,000 over 5 years.
5. New objective
Support at least two studies to determine if there are subpopulations that are more susceptible to environmental exposures (e.g., immune challenges related to infections, vaccinations, or underlying autoimmune problems) by 2012. IACC Recommended Budget: $8,000,000 over 2 years.

6. New objective
Initiate studies on at least 10 environmental factors identified in the recommendations from the 2007 IOM report “Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research” as potential causes of ASD by 2012. Estimated cost $56,000,000 over 2 years.

Long-Term Objectives

1. Conduct a multi-site study of the subsequent pregnancies of 1,000 women with a child with ASD to assess the impact of environmental factors in a period most relevant to the progression of ASD by 2014. IACC Recommended Budget: $11,100,000 over 5 years.
2. Identify genetic risk factors in at least 50% of people with ASD by 2014. IACC Recommended Budget: $33,900,000 over 6 years.
3. Determine the effect of at least five environmental factors on the risk for subtypes of ASD in the pre- and early postnatal period of development by 2015. IACC Recommended Budget: $25,100,000 over 7 years.
4. Support ancillary studies within one or more large-scale, population-based surveillance and epidemiological studies, including U.S. populations, to collect data on environmental factors during preconception, and during prenatal and early postnatal development, as well as genetic data, that could be pooled (as needed), to analyze targets for potential gene/environment interactions by 2015. IACC Recommended Budget: $44,400,000 over 5 years.

Read more: https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/02/iacc-strategic-plan-is-up/#ixzz0edI3Pe8h