SafeMinds’ Blaxill Accuses CDC, NIH Of “the Medical Equivalent Of Securities Fraud” On Autism

PRLog (Press Release) - Nov. 29, 2012 - At the first Congressional inquiry in at least a decade into the activities of the two federal agencies responsible for autism research, the spokesman for a leading parents’ organization will charge the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health with “the medical equivalent of securities fraud.”

“Autism is a public health crisis of historic proportions,” says Mark Blaxill, a board member of SafeMinds.org and father of a teenager with autism, but “the federal agencies responsible for the health of our nation’s children have failed in their duty,” pursuing a genetic cause for the disease and closing their eyes to evidence of environmental factors.

In testimony prepared for delivery today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Blaxill will charge the CDC, under pressure from “powerful interests in the medical industry,” with having “actively covered up the evidence surrounding autism’s environmental causes,” using “statistical tricks” and “blackballing environmental researchers.”  

“Before 1930, the rate of autism was effectively zero,” Blaxill will testify.  “For a long time, reported U.S. autism rates were estimated at about 1 in 10,000.  Then, around 1990, something new and terrible happened to a generation of children.  Autism rates didn’t just rise, they multiplied…Today, reported autism rates are 1 in 88 American children born in the year 2000.  In Union County, New Jersey, 1 in 29 boys born in 2000 were diagnosed autistic.”

“There’s no such thing as a genetic epidemic,” Blaxill asserted.  

Congress in 2006 authorized $850 million to the National Institutes of Health to combat autism, but Blaxill will charge that “NIH spent most of that money on ‘the Great Autism Gene Hunt’ while blackballing environmental researchers and defying parent concerns.  It’s been a colossal waste of money and time.  Not a single case of autism has been prevented.  Not a single child received improved treatments.”

“We need accountable new leadership on autism at the NIH and the CDC,” Blaxill asserts, and “an advisory committee that believes in combating autism, not one newly stocked with appointees who oppose the mission, who want us to surrender to autism and oppose prevention and treatment research.”