Autism Street

A quick post, especially for the parent peers in AZ. 

It’s common to hear about the desire for more research among parents of children with autism (and I’m talking about the kind of research potentially destined for real medical journals as opposed to what many would consider the alternatives).

The 5th Annual International Meeting For Autism Research is scheduled for June of this year [Edit: in Montreal, Canada]. From the IMFAR 2006 website at UC, Davis:

Scientific progress in a field requires that scientists can share their findings quickly. As autism science spreads across the globe, and as the length of time it takes to publish findings can involve a year or more, we need to find new ways to share research findings quickly. The International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) was convened for the first time in November 2001, to provide autism researchers from around the world with a focused opportunity to share the rapidly moving scientific investigation of autism.

Until that meeting, autism researchers competed with many other groups for the opportunity to share their work at large scientific meetings that covered a wide range of topics. While other meetings provided some opportunity to share high quality autism research, none of them focused specifically on autism. Yet funding for autism science is increasing steadily and autism research is proliferating, highlighted by two NIH initiatives: the Collaborative Programs of Excellence in Autism (CPEA) and the STAART Centers, Stimulating more scientific progress in understanding autism requires dedicated yearly venue for autism researchers to share their findings and their resources.

Note to readers: Just because the research is presented at IMFAR, doesn’t necessarily mean that such research is later published. It’s an opportunity for the current events in autism science to be shared and discussed, but the research is never official until it’s been through the process of real peer-review and publication.

A couple of points of potential interest for Phoenix-area parents:

• R.D. Melmed apparently has 4 “poster” presentations.

You can search for “Melmed” in you browser and see the abstracts for yourself.

• No Autism Amongst Inuits From Northern Quebec? E. Fombonne, J. Morel, J. Macarthur

A population without autism, despite high pre- and post-natal levels of mercury?

• BLOOD METAL CONCENTRATIONS IN THE CHARGE STUDY I. Hertz-Picciotto, P. G. Green, L. A. Croen, R. Hansen, P. Krakowiak

Children with autism don’t have more mercury in their blood?

Speaking of mercury, don’t miss Kathleen’s post over at the Neurodiversity blog about the Geier and Geier father/son team (remember them from the other popular chelation study that produced Bradstreet et al.?). They’ve applied for patents of their “Lupron Protocol“. They had apparently hypothesized in the journal Medical Hypotheses, that somehow mercury binds with testosterone (even though the available research shows that forming a mercury-testosterone complex requires dissolution in hot benzene). Apparently,  they’re claiming that administering Lupron, which can potentially be interpreted as effectively chemically castrating, would allow for chelation therapy to be more effective. You might be wondering how such a concept made it to a medical journal in the first place. Here’s some more research done by Kathleen herself:

“That journal’s editors explicitly solicit “radical ideas, so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed,” and eschew traditional peer review. In other words, Medical Hypotheses is a vanity journal that offers space to anyone who can write a marginally readable article on any medically-related subject — no matter how outlandish or scientifically insupportable. The Geiers’ article was “received 9 November 2004; accepted 10 November 2004,” which suggests that it was not subjected to peer review.”