By Anne Dachel

June 26, 2012, the New York Times published the story, Autism Research Hindered by Scarcity of Brain Samples, by Benedict Carey. HERE It was about the loss of 150 brain specimens used for research due to a freezer malfunction. A number of them were the brains of individuals who had had autism.

Carey wrote, "The loss, while a setback for scientists studying disorders like Huntington's disease Alzheimer's and schizophrenia, especially mortified those working on autism, for it exposed what is emerging as the largest obstacle to progress: the shortage of high-quality autopsied brains from young people with a well-documented medical history." 

Carey included top experts Dr. Geraldine Dawson from Autism Speaks and Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, director of life sciences at the Simons Foundation, which promotes autism research.

Fischbach was quoted saying, ''There's just no question that human tissue is the gold standard for research. You absolutely need it to answer some very basic questions.'

Dawson said, 'This is indeed a setback, but it has motivated us more than ever to rebuild this precious resource.'

On the surface, it looks like a real effort is being made to study autism and these human specimens are important for finding the answers. However, anyone looking into the people involved in Carey's story will see it's clear the research is very controlled and guaranteed to tell us nothing about what's happening to our children. The Times used the incident at the Harvard brain bank to again promote the idea that autism is a genetic disorder and if we could just find the gene malfunction---we'd understand autism. In fact, genetics is the only research mentioned in connection with the brains from autistic individuals.

So what have we learned about autism from these specimens up to this point? Carey couldn't tell us.  I knew from the start that a story by NYT science reporter Benedict Carey that included Geraldine Dawson and Gerald Fischbach was sure to say nothing about vaccines as causal factors.

I've written about all three of these individuals in the last year and a half.

BENEDICT CAREY--

Jan 23, 2012, I wrote the piece, DSM-5: You're Still Autistic. You're Just Weird. You We're Not Sure About. Call Us Tomorrow, HERE about the changes to the DSM.

I noted what Carey said about the changes to the DSM. "Let's try to clarify this picture. There's no blood test for autism. There's no blood test for any psychiatric diagnosis. These are judgment calls made by therapists. In recent years, the rate of diagnosis has been going up very quickly. I think there's some concern there too. Not just for funding issues. Make sure we know what we have. Is this definition clear enough? I think that's partly what the work group is trying to do is to be clearer about what defines this diagnosis. What is autism or autism spectrum and what is something else? A sort of social awkwardness-whatever you want to call it."

Carey's clearly someone who's still not sure what autism even is.

(And back in Jan, 2010, I included another of Carey's NY Times stories where he talked about the one in 150 autism rate: HERE He wrote, "Prevalence estimates for these disorders have increased so sharply in recent years - to 1 in 150 in 2007, from 1 in 300 in the early 2000s - that scientists have debated whether in fact the disorder is more common, or diagnosed more often as a result of higher awareness." He gave us lots of reasons not to panic about the latest autism numbers and he didn't include any experts or officials who were worried.)

Carey is also someone who's long proclaimed that vaccines aren't linked to autism--all the science he's looked at says so. HERE