Lets struggle ASD together! Join our crowdfunding science project.

I had placed Neonytch on pre-mod so his posts were no longer visible without approval, hadn't realised you were getting email notifications. Thread locked. 

It is fortunate that Mods are deleting the posts, but possibly better to lock this thread. I've had two more email notifications, and the content would certainly be most offensive to UK readers.

OP is in Russia. Autism doesn't exist in Russia (a lot in common with Eton!). It is entirely treated as a psychiatric disorder without a neurological aspect. His concept of Autism includes Rett's Syndrome.

Is the a security issue over the way this poster is spamming UK autism support sites?

OP refers to crowdfunding. This is something maybe good, more likely bad that's currently going on. You can get anything funded if you can find the sponsors. By creating a market on the back of pressure selling regular payment contracts for charities there are lots of people out there willing to put small amounts of money into anything novel. If you can text £3 to anything from doggy hairdoes for abandoned dogs you can get droves of people to do the same for novel research.

The point is crowdfunding is an odd source for research on neuropeptides on rats to "cure" autism. It stongly suggests the research is too dodgy to get legitimate funding via a research council.

There is eeverything possible you could put under "don't go there" in what Neontych is trying to sell......wasn't he the one selling kitchens at knock down prices in Hull a while back.

I think the OP is a troll. He has done the same on Wrongplanet, talkaboutautism and community.autism and is clearly getting a kick out of winding people up.

I've had three more email notifications since I posted my last and I think NAS Moderator is deleting them as fast as they come, because they realise this man is being a pest.

The srticle he cited which I mentioned before however is no joke. It was published in "Drug Discovery Today:Disease Models" which is supposedly a refereed scientific journal, whose principal editor Andrew McCulloch is at the University of California san Diego.

Those sort of credentials shouldn't allow articles through with such dreadful faux pas about 75% of those with autism being retarded mentally and calling autism a disease.

The article authors are at the Universite Francoise-Rabelais at Tours in France, which in conjunction with the hospital in Tours is apparently a centre of excellence on autism. The authors of the article "Rodent Models for Autism: A Critical Review" in 2005 were Belzung, Lemon, Vausc'h and Andre.

So again what is a French high profile university doing peddling this sort of rubbish?

It doesn't do for universities to publish poor papers - it can lose them key funding and investment.

I received this notification in my inbox, although it has disappeared off the thread:

If you have any ideas about how to develop new therapies for complex disorders of brain development, or autism (www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism), I beg you to share them with me. I would like to note that without preclinical trials, involving laboratory animals, you will be not allowed to test them in the clinic. Studies involving children without preliminary experiments are not allowed, are you agree with that?

As for me, we can't treat children with Haloperidol (or other drugs with serious side effects, you can read about them re: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3934669/),
we need to find new approaches. We hope, that our peptides, witch have pronounced nootropic effect improving learning both with positive and negative reinforcement, are actively involved in the regulation of emotions and have antidepressant effect possess powerful neuroprotective effects could realy be
effective without side effects. 

We are not a pharmaceutical company, all the structures of our peptides are published and you can read about them. Article that describes our model I showed you
too. We are interested in scientific problem as ASD and we promise to tell everyone about our results. This ideology of Experiment croudfunding platform is to provide more open science. If you think that the issues of terminology is more important than the research in the field of new therapies, then I am afraid that I can not convince
you. With all respect, prayer in some cases does not help. 

Thank you.

My response to OP is this.  Autism Speaks is an organisation that is quite controversial in the autism world, because they (like you) treat autism as a sickness to be cured.  Animal testing, if done to ensure safety so far as it can be ensured, is one thing.  Claiming a substance will have the same effect on a human as it did on an animal with different physiology is another.  Even between humans there will be different reactions to drugs.

In the UK, the Government advises that autism must not be "treated" with medication.  Of course if an autistic person has e.g. co-morbid anxiety or another condition which is treatable that is another thing.

I would always fly the flag for natural treatments over pharmaceutical where possible and research is always necessary.  But if you are claiming autism is a dangerous psychiatric condition, which is factually incorrect, that's about more than incorrect terminology.

What would you say if it turned out that autism was an evolutionary development and that even severe autism was nature fine-tuning the evolutionary development?  You can't treat that with anything.  Without knowing the causes of autism, it is extremely unwise to 'treat' it with anything.  Of course your peptides may be harmless and natural, but if they are going to lead to false hope then advertising it this way is unethical.

Did you also know, that there are likely multiple types of autism?  You cannot have a one pill helps all approach.

The big issue here is available funding for research on autism. Autism research needs all the money that can be raised, especially in the current economic decline.

But these people aren't doing autism research. They've seen a way of implying that autism can somehow benefit from more of the kind of research they are engaged in using lab rats. They need to keep this unit going, so they need to attract funds.

However they are going out there implying that they can cure or help autism if benefactors will give them money. They aren't even bothered to get their facts right. They don't care about autism, but they are prepared to use autism to get funds.

The benefactors they are approaching might better give their funds to projects that would genuinely help autism. But they are prepared to deceive people to divert those funds.

These people really are the worst kind of leeches. What they are doing should be treated as criminal fraud.

Anyone genuinely proposing autism research and seeking funding would surely get their facts right. But presenting autism accurately wouldn't justify their kind of experiments.

And the fact that internationally renowned journals, supposedly refereed, allow this to go on appalls me

And all those learned psychology and psychiatry societies out there turning a blind eye.

Well said Longman.  I think the assertion that 75% of autistic people have mental retardation is a ridiculous figure.  Bearing in mind the likely thousands of undiagnosed Aspies and HF autistics out there this is just a made up number.  Or are they saying that there is a simply overwhelming number of autistics with mental retardation out there!

And I'm glad you said what you did about animals with autistic-like traits not being relevant to humans with autism, because it's exactly what I had been thinking too.  I was just flabbergasted by the type of language they used (poor English is no excuse, researchers should have the skills to check out correct terminology and facts before asking people to fund their research!) to focus on the anomaly.

Strange, I've just had an email alert "there's been a reply to a discussion you are subscribed to" - its listed as a message this morning, whuch is how I found it, but must have been deleted by the Moderators, as the last posting is mine of 4th April.

What the alert refers to is two links to articles. The first article, from a respectable journal (Disease Models) says about autism, amongst other things:

"Autism is characterised by a combination of abnormalities in three areas: social relations, communication and motor activity. Additional associated features are common. For example, mental retardation is present in about 75% of the patients, and anxiety is frequent" (The source given is a psychology journal paper in 1999).

"Why animal models in autism.

Autism seems to be a disorder specific to humans. Human psychiatric diseases are assessed mainly by interviews, and language in its full expression is certainly a unique feature of humans, although several animal species might be able to express parts of its characteristics. However, the understanding of interaction of several genes or genes and environment cannot be gained by human studies. We need both cellular and animal models".

Autism is not a "psychiatric disease" nor are 75% of people diagnosed with it "mentally retarded".  As explained above it is a human condition. The fact that genetic causes justify other studies in rats, is neither here nor there.

Autism should not be exploited to justify largely unconnected studies on live rats in an animal laboratory.

The other article is even less relevant.

NAS Moderators, please ask campaigns to draw the attention of the Minister for the Disabled to these kinds of abuses. These animal research labs are trying to get funding by claiming they are looking for a cure to autism, when they patently have little understanding or even empathy for people with autism.

Respectable scientic journals should NOT be providing a medium for this. And we need legislation to stop the exploitation of disability to needlessly fund research labs looking for an income. It is immoral.

"an interesting animal model which can be interpreted as ASD" - laboratory animals you treat with peptides to see how they perform simple tasks.

Sorry but what has this piece of information, however scientific within the context of your research community, got to do with autism in humans?

I'd be much happier if people studied autism in people rather than autism-like characteristics in rats, but if you do want to go about it that way, please, for all our sakes, get properly genned up on what autism in humans is about.

Sounds to me more like you are an animal testing centre looking for something else to do with your unwilling pets that makes you more money. Which really is of no relevance whatsoever to people on the spectrum - so why tell us about it?

Reading your explanation I'm ever so glad the link is closed.

I'm very sorry for my english, I'm not a native speaker.

I'm sorry if our terminology isn't quite correct, we didn't mean to offend anyone. However, this does not mean that scientifically our approach is fundamentally wrong. First of all, we are researchers (not clinicians), we found an intresting animal model which can be interpreted as ASD. Furthermore, we believe that some peptides indeed are able to exert a positive influence on physiological and behavioral parameters in laboratory animals. And we are going to prove it. And of course, all your comments will be useful for us in the future. Thank you.

We made some adjustments in the main text at Experiment. I sincerely hope that the text sounds better now. Thanks again for your comments.

...having clicked your link, I like it even less now I have  read this:

"Autism is one of the most dangerous children’s psychiatric disorders. In more than 80% of cases it leads to severe disability."

Not only is autism not a psychiatric disorder, (it's a neurological difference) and I've never heard the word "dangerous" used to describe it before, but I question your statistics.  Oh, I suppose you haven't heard of Asperger's syndrome.

But then you also describe autistic children as "sick children" further down your page, so I shouldn't be surprised at your fund being a scam, as no clinical expert (in any area) would use the type of language you have used to describe autism.

"childhood autism correction" ...slightly unfortunate terminology there.