Aspies For Freedom

Pediatric Bioscience Thursday announced the hiring of Dr. Thomas R. Anderson as the founding CEO and the licensing of three technologies from UC Davis.

Pediatric Bioscience was formed by a group of researchers, parents and experienced business leaders with the goal of bringing to market diagnostics and therapeutics to diagnose and eventually treat children with autism.

"Great advances in medicine are brought to market by a combination of public research and private enterprise," said Dr. Anderson. "By building on the work done by the research team at the UCD M.I.N.D. Institute, we can have a direct positive impact on children with autism and their families by bringing to market reliable diagnostic tests for autism."

Pediatric Bioscience has licensed three promising discoveries of the UCD M.I.N.D. Institute, a multidisciplinary research center striving to find causes, improved treatments and ultimately cures for neurodevelopmental disorders.

The licensed technologies include: A prenatal assessment of increased risk of delivering a child with autism by detecting certain auto-antibodies in the blood of the prospective mothers, and a method for detecting autism biochemically, rather than by observed behavior, allowing for much earlier identification of children with autism.

"The M.I.N.D. Institute was founded on the promise to parents to take the quickest path possible to finding answers to autism," said Dr. Robert Hendren, executive director of the UCD M.I.N.D. Institute. "We are coming closer every day to fulfilling that promise with new discoveries on the biological markers of autism. We're thrilled that our research outcomes will be developed further and will eventually be available to the broader community of scientists and clinicians."

Dr. Thomas R. Anderson is an experienced executive with successful tenures at several early stage bio-pharmaceutical companies.

He founded Berkeley Antibody Company and was instrumental in the growth of the company through its successful sale to Covance. He most recently served as the CEO of Lipomics Technologies of West Sacramento, a leading metabolomics company with capabilities in quantifying lipid metabolites and interpreting their biological significance.

Pediatric Bioscience LLC was formed in 2006 by a group of researchers, parents and experienced business leaders with the goal of bringing to market diagnostics and therapeutics to diagnose and eventually treat children with autism. The company is based in Sacramento.
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_4108240

M.I.N.D.? Ha, what a acronym for such mindless people.

I never was a fan of pansying words.

The trouble with this stuff is the cure = prenatal screening - abortion = genocide.

Wonder how long it is.

I smell an abortion-based genocide.

*slits her wrists and writes in her journal about how much her life sucks*

Not everyone will want prenatal testing.

The far majority of women don't have pre-natal testing, unless they're over 35 or aware of a genetic predisposition towards certain conditions.

still  the number of children born with autism will decrease.

This will cause an artificially created inbalance between aspies and NTs such as the inbalance between the sexes occuring in China right now.  I can forsee that eventually aspies will decrease in number in the wealthier nations where people can afford such prenatal test.  The rest of the world is too poor for such tests or to even care about such a thing as autism.  These people are more concerned with day to day survival. They outnumber the population of the wealthier nations by a factor of at least ten so I don't think we'll go extinct anytime soon.

But then again, as there does seem to be a genetic component, isn't it also up to us?

Maybe before I was aware of all this I would have opted for pre-natal tests, but I'm now in my late 30s and thinking about settling down.

If I'm offered testing for Down's Syndrome because of my age I'm going to tell them where to go.

Likewise, if I'm offered testing for autism.  I like being me.  I feel blessed to me.  I don't want to be cured.  I don't want to deny the existence of another Aspie just for being Aspie.

They can f*** right off with their eugenics.

Remember we're still only stressing about a hypothetical situation, here.

hypothecail but very posible, sitution.we're on prepare for the worst mode.

I think if people are worried, the key thing to do is educate the public - show them that autism and AS isn't an inherently bad thing.

but how we have austims speaks working agaist us, i saw on of thier comeracals  last night it said " the chace of a child getting in a car accident is 1 in 300,000 the chance of a child being diagoned with autism  only 1 in 166."
i thoughet: we have pride in  our selves and our way of thinking, why can you be.

Groups like CAN and Autism Speaks are sickly obsessed with comparing autism to stuff like cancer, bird flu, HIV, diabetes.  Just when I thought they couldn't get any lower, they compare it to getting in a car accident.

Some religious women have balked at prenatal testing because in any case they will not have an abortion.  For that they are hassled and considered "uncooperative" by medical professionals  and even monitored by "child protection" agencies once their child is born.  

   The reason for taking such prenatal tests is to "prepare" the parents for a child with autism.  Really?   Is knowing 6-8 months earlier really going to make a huge difference?  How does one prepare for an autistic child?  The tests could be done after birth.  The real purpose of the test is to make a decision to abort or not.  What pressures will women who decide not to abort an autistic child face?