Autistic Brain Samples Ruined..

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"Freezer failure at brain bank hampers autism research"

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/06/11/freezer_failure_at_brain_bank_hampers_autism_research/?p1=News_links

I just saw that article... it just gives me the creeps...

oh no, now they might not find the autism gene...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH97lImrr0Q[/youtube]

Brain freeze.

It's a shame that so many samples have been ruined, but I'd rather see data like this be lost than "real time" data. By that I mean losing fMRI data or something of the like. While postmortem studies allow the viewing of entire human brains and their tissues, the only ethically possible way to do this research, I'm much more in favor of research on living, working brains. No matter what findings come from postmortem studies, the fact remains that they always have the confound that the person's brain differences may in fact be from the death and not the disorder being studied.

What angered me the most in that article was the line about how the samples were from "neurological conditions," like Alzheimer's and autism, and "psychiatric conditions," like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. If bipolar disorder and schizophrenia weren't neurological in base, why would the brain sample even have been taken?! I cannot express how upsetting I find this dichotomy labeling of "neurological" vs. "psychiatric" disorder. All the disorders in question combine BOTH realms, and the proper term should be "neuropsychiatric disorder."

Why am I not surprised that this was Autism Speaks' brain collection? Yech.