Autism Speaks Enters Into "PURE" Autism Research PACT; Excludes Autism With Intellectual Disability

Autism Speaks has entered into a Research PACT to continue its focus on "pure autism"  (referred to in the PACT as core symptom autism),   while ignoring 50% of the autism spectrum, those with intellectual disability (WHO, September 2013): "Working together, the PACT team is developing a platform of preclinical tests to evaluate and compare new medications for the core symptoms of autism." Vivanti and his colleagues offered the term "pure autism" to refer to the tendency of autism studies to intentionally exclude subjects with autism AND intellectual disability: "the question of the nature of the association between ID and ASD has received little attention. One common view in the current conceptualization of ASD is that ID is a comorbid condition that occurs over and above ASD symptomatology in some individuals with ASD (Nordin and Gillberg, 1998; Cashin et al., 2009; Matson and Worley, 2013). The term “comorbidity” is used in medicine to denote clinical entities “unrelated in etiology or causality to the principal diagnosis” (e.g., cancer diagnosed after a stroke), and therefore conceptually distinct from complications or sequelae of the principal diagnosis (Greenfield, 1989; Iezzoni, 1994, p. 52; see also Lilienfeld et al., 1994). Other authors suggest that ID and ASD are related in terms of their etiology (i.e., that which causes ID also causes ASD) but they are not themselves causally related (e.g., W...
Source: Facing Autism in New Brunswick - Category: Autism Authors: Source Type: blogs