By J.B. Handley
 
Is Alison Singer a ruthless sycophant who played Suzanne Wright “like a fiddle”? She is if you ask any number of current or former Autism Speaks employees who I recently spoke with, all of whom asked to remain anonymous.
 
This is my third consecutive post on Alison Singer (See Part 2 Alison Singer Mispeaks at Yale: Flaming Moron or a Flaming Liar?  and  Part 1 Alison Singer in Her Own Worlds.) Having watched her recent speech before the Yale Child Study Center audience, I was plagued with many of the same thoughts all of you had, including: what in the hell is wrong with this woman?
 
Why would the mother of a child with autism:
 
1. Deride biomedical treatment for autism and assume all DAN! Doctors are in it for the money, but block any sort of funding for research that may prove otherwise?
 
From an Autism Speaks employee:
 
“She really believes that DAN! docs are 100% focused on bilking parents, with treatments based on zero science. The problem here is that over the last decade, Alison HERSELF has been actively blocking potential funding which could have made some Biomed treatments more "evidence based". DAN practitioners and companies also share the blame in not putting more effort into having their treatments studied, but Alison has been a huge obstacle. Without studies to support treatments, how can insurance cover them?”
 
From a different employee:
 
“She only tried Dan! stuff herself for maybe a few months, it apparently didn’t help, she really knows very little about what parents do, and seems very uncurious to meet any recovered kids.”
 
2. Take up with so many of the people we hate, like Darth Vader himself, Dr. Paul Offit, and actually speaking at immunization conferences?
 
From a former employee:
 
“CAA is up for reauthorization. It's billions of dollars. Alison, through Autism Science Foundation, has an organization set up to harvest those federal dollars. Alison is doing what the Biomed orgs should have done years ago.  She is setting up the structure so federal dollars can flow. Which biomed organization is going to be able to apply for this pool of money?”
 
And:
 
“Working with Offit and the others on her ASF board tells NIH loud and clear that ASF will not use federal dollars to possibly damage the vaccine program.”
 
3. Continually bang the drum of autism being genetic despite an enormous lack of research to prove this point and the growing acknowledgement that the environment is playing a major role?