Fight to overcome autism gets major boost, higher priority

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http://news.yahoo.com Op-Ed: Fight to overcome autism gets major boost, higher priority
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Washington, DC — Last Wednesday, President Obama visited the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to announce the single biggest investment in biomedical research in American history. Among the $5 billion in grants he announced are new explorations of longtime research targets from cancer to heart disease. But the grants also include the largest-ever investment in an Obama administration priority that has so far gone mostly unnoticed: autism research.

President Obama has made autism a focus from the first days of his presidency. Less than a week after he was sworn in, my department’s Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee released its first-ever strategic plan for government autism research. And President Obama has backed this plan by adding $1 billion to his budget for autism over the next eight years. Altogether, the federal government will provide nearly twice as much funding for autism research in the upcoming fiscal year as we had just three years ago.

We needed a new focus and new resources because autism has emerged as an urgent public health challenge. As recently as the 1990s, scientists thought autism was a rare disorder that affected 1 in every 2000 kids. Earlier this decade, we revised that estimate to say that 1 in every 150 kids was somewhere on the autism spectrum. Our most recent data suggest that autism may be even more common than that. Almost every American I talk to about this issue knows at least one family that is affected by autism.

Autism has created new challenges for families, schools, and health care providers. When parents discover that their child has autism today, they’re left with a lot of questions, but few answers. What causes autism? How can it be prevented? Which treatments can help? Where can I get needed services? These questions aren’t new. And the government has tried to address them in the past, most notably with the Combating Autism Act, which passed in 2006. But there has never been a comprehensive, well-funded effort across government to overcome autism – until now.

As Secretary of Health and Human Services, I oversee many of the agencies that are participating in this effort. At the NIH, new research funds are being used to address every aspect of autism from testing innovative treatments to exploring the unique needs of the growing number of adults with autism to searching for the genes underlying the disorder.

At the Health Resources and Services Administration, they’re helping train health professionals to recognize autism early when we know treatments can be more effective. They’ve also created two national autism research networks that will allow researchers to gather data from different sites in order to identify the most promising treatments for autism. These networks will also create channels for these best practices to flow back to parents and providers around the country, so that Americans can have the latest evidence on which treatments work and which don’t.

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services is working with states to provide targeted case management that helps kids with autism get the support they need at home and at school. And for the first time ever, they’re supporting medical home models that can help children with autism get the kind of coordinated, family-centered care that helps them thrive.

President Obama is also taking steps to make sure health insurance reform will address the needs of families with autism. Under the plan he has proposed, private insurance companies would no longer be able to deny you coverage just because you or someone in your family has a condition like autism. And in order to participate in new health insurance exchanges, insurance companies will have to agree to offer mental health services that help families with autism on par with other benefits.

Like public health challenges such as polio in the 1950s and HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, we must address the rising prevalence and complex needs of people with autism. We still have more questions than answers. But with additional funding and a new coordinated national strategy, we are working harder and more closely together to find those answers than ever before.

This is what really makes me annoyed. Autism is NOT a disease to be categorized with heart disease and cancer! It is NOT a disease PERIOD!! !

i especially like the last bit :

Like public health challenges such as polio in the 1950s and HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, we must address the rising prevalence and complex needs of people with autism.

yes autism really belongs in the same category as those 2.....

i can definatly understand why they would want to cure/prevent the kind of autism that renders people unable to take care of themselves but in This way the public will just think that autism is one type and everyone needs to get cured asap.

luckily i havent been confronted with many negative responses from people to my diagnosis(because i never tell any1) but if i had then i would be even more annoyed by this.

There is no magic pill for autism. Sorry. It cannot be cured, because it is NOT a disease!! ! Why are people so stuck on labeling people with autism diseased? Does this country or planet in general WANT to normalize people like us, turn us into sheep like them? If so, I ain't swallowing that pill. I don't care how bad off it might SEEM.

So maybe all this research will tell them to quit looking for a "cure" as though it were a virus and start looking for ways to help people with autism be productive? They're saying it stupidly, but maybe with some research and attention, they'll have a bit more info? As it is, nobody knows anything about autism, and there's not much help for it.
Most people here seem to believe that it's not possible to "cure" it anyway. Is the autism cure going to be like cold fusion? Somebody claims they've done it, and for the rest of eternity, everybody is on a wild goose chase?

The headlines are misleading; the announcement is that research into autism, its causes, and any possible palliative treatments will be better-funded. It's just that the soundbite engineers who create those headlines can't seem to think of autism without the "C" word creeping into their spongy little minds.

The cold-fusion comparison is apt, but a touch late - we've already had our Pons & Fleischman studies, from such scientific luminaries as famed neuropsychiatrist Dr. Jenny McCarthy (</sarcasm>), and floods of misguided parents trying desperately to find some kind of evidence to back up her contentions.

A Billion dollar welfare program for the wrong people.

Big government running up the debt on hopeless quests.

When the world thinks that autism is a disease what do I smell? Brimstone.

Don't the majority of aspies have trouble holding a job, if able to at all?
What if, and I'm not saying it would, because governments rarely do the smart thing, but what if they did the smart thing and put that money into finding out what would help people with autism live up to their potential? There are a lot of very intelligent people here who can't manage to hold a job for one reason or another, getting too overwhelmed, executive functioning problems, etc. What if these billion dollars of research went into finding treatments that would help people with autism deal with the problems that they have and use the talents that they have? What if all the aspies who can't work suddenly got proper support so that they could get off disability and get actual productive jobs? Not like the minimum-wage jobs that people getting off of disability usually get, but jobs that would properly utilize aspie traits? Given the level of talent a lot of aspies have, those billion dollars could come back to them in the form of taxes quite quickly.
Granted, that's unlikely to happen... but seriously, with proper support, a lot of aspies currently on disability could be really productive--not by getting off of disability and miserably working at walmart until they eventually kill themselves-- but actually truly productive. If they invested a billion dollars in decent treatment and support, rather than a wild goose chase for some cure that's never going to exist, it might be possible.

When the world gives you gas, give Obama some drama

I completely agree with this. Even though I am smart and I am capable, college classes aren't really an option at this time for me. They make me take too many classes that I'm really bad at that seem to have nothing to do with a degree I'm going for. As for the jobs, I do agree, even though I'm in a different situation. I'm lucky if I can even find a job here. I always do extremely well during the interviews, but in the end, they always choose someone that has more experience than I do.

How am I supposed to have experience if no one will let me gain any???

When the world ends, I'll be the last and you will go first.

Government has shown little interest in jobs, except ways to fund the people who work for government, which is what the most of the bailout went for, keeping the States functioning.

This program funds current employees.

We do have a natural 40% recovery rate, lots of people do work, but have no support for taking our diferent ideas to market. Government is against change.

The War on Autism will be fought and lost by government employees.

Somehow we do manage to get jobs, start businesses, in spite of social problems.

It is all hype, Autism has always been around, but the government is not ready for real problems, like the number of people recently who are a hundred pounds or more over weight. That is going to cost a fortune in health care. That is recent, and epidemic, with a great social cost.

I agree that the autistic could be a lot more productive, but I never had a social group till I came to WP.

We are not antisocial, not here, we do network, and could most likely learn to read each other in person. We are a focused lot who does like research, but WP is only five, and we are just starting to find our own way. I do not see Government NTs showing us the way to a better life.

We have to do that ourselves. No change, no cure, just what many of us have done, find a place and a way that works for us.

This government was bought by the big banks and oil, so they loan trillions at zero interest, and run wars in oil producing regions where the big money is, or wants to be. Government is reduced to population control.

We have to find our own future.

Inventor, I don't really understand what you mean. The government HAS budgeted a lot of money for autism. You're saying that money is just going to go to government employees and isn't going to be used for anything at all?
I mean, if they do research, maybe that research will tell them exactly what everybody here is saying-- that they're not going to find a cure for it, and supportive therapies to help people with autism, their families, and their employers (and anyone else I forgot to mention..) deal with it productively would be the only thing that might actually help.

Isn't a lot of the rationale for the whole government healthcare thing that the government has a vested interest in people being well enough to work and pay taxes?

Um, Krasher, why are you posting things that don't make any sense?

I was showing a bit of ignorance, thats what was going on.