New Autism Research Program: Big Pharma Profit Center with Taxpayers’ Help

The European Union has partnered with pharmaceutical corporations and Autism Speaks for the sole purpose of developing drugs to cram down the throats of autistics. Rather than doing honest research into the causes of this devastating condition, money is being poured into finding ways to suppress its symptoms.

A new organization, European Autism Interventions – A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications  (EU-AIMS), has been formed to benefit Big Pharma’s bottom line at the expense of autistics. The plan is to simply accept that autism is here, in spite of its nonexistence or near nonexistence a few decades ago. The organization has no interest in autism prevention.

Project Goals

EU-AIMS states its goals as:

• To develop and validate “translation research approaches” for the advancement of novel therapies.
• To set new standards in research and clinical development to aid the drug discovery process.
• Development of sites across Europe for clinical trials on autism, and create an “interactive platform for ASD professionals and patients”.

Let’s examine those goals:

Translational Research

Translational research is a new concept that’s being pushed by Big Pharma, as can be seen in this definition given by the Wellcome Trust,

Translational research helps turn early-stage innovations into new health products, advancing the innovation to the point where it becomes attractive for further development by the medical, pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries.

In other words, the goal of translational research is simply to bring more products to market more quickly. it is an attempt to streamline development of pharmaceutical drugs and bring them through the approval process more rapidly.

One must ask why this is a focus for treatment of autism. And why do they presume that it’s beneficial to autistics? The reality has been that drugs used for treating autistics, even though they’ve gone through a more extensive approval process, have proven to be harmful, not helpful. Why would an organization whose goal one would expect to benefit autistics choose to push such a plan?

Aiding the Drug Discovery Process

This is, of course, little more than a restatement of the first goal of promoting translational research. It does, though, clarify that the primary function of EU-AIMS is to find more drugs to cram down autistic throats and boost the Big Pharma bottom line.

Development of Autism Study Clinics & Creation of Interactive Platform for ASD Professionals & Patients

The fact that development of autism study clinics is combined with the idea of an interactive platform for ASD professionals and patients is rather worrisome. It sounds very much like the goal is to get people with autism—and, of course, their parents—to go along with the thrust of this project: finding more drugs to use on autistics.

The Players

There are, officially, three players in EU-AIMS. But, the reality is that there’s one more: the European taxpayer, who funds it. The three official players are Big Pharma, universities & research institutions, and Autism Speaks. The pharmaceutical corporations are:

• Roche
• Eli Lilly
• Servier
• Janssen Pharmaceutica
• Pfizer
• Vifor Pharm

The universities and research institutions are:

• King’s College London (UK)
• Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim (Germany)
• Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (The Netherlands)
• Cambridge University (UK)
• University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlands)
• Biozentrum, University of Basel (Switzerland)
• Institut Pasteur (France)
• Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Germany)
• European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Germany)
• Karolinska Institutet (Sweden)
• Birkbeck, University of London (UK)
• Institute of Education (UK)
• University “Campus Bio-Medico” (Italy)
• University Ulm (Gemany)
• Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et Aux Alternatives (France)

The pharmaceutical corporations and research institutes are the beneficiaries of this EU-AIMS, which is starting with a budget of €29.6 million (US$38.7 million). Researchers are receiving a nice boost in income and pharmaceutical corporations are anticipating more drugs with their associated profits. But they aren’t the primary source of funding. And neither is Autism Speaks, though they’re giving $1 million.

The European taxpayer is the big philanthropist, through the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking, which is funded primarily by the EU government, with additional funds from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, which of course, exists for the purpose of promoting Big Pharma’s bottom line.

Autism Speaks

Why is Autism Speaks so supportive of a pharmaceutical approach to autism? It starts with the fact that they completely deny any connection between vaccinations and autism, in spite of the fact that no decent research has ever demonstrated that claim. But, let’s quote Dan Olmstead of the Age of Autism in The Awful Truth About Autism Speaks to describe the organization:

Autism Speaks is The Man’s favorite autism org, preaching treacle and hogging the spotlight while doing nothing useful and letting the epidemic roll on. It is a leech upon the autism community, sucking resources and walk-a-thon energy away from cash-strapped families struggling to cope. If there was any value in its “awareness” campaign, it has been achieved; AS has no apparent further reason for being. It’s delaying progress, deflecting attention from the truth. It’s job, like any other business (or malignancy), is to grow. As Boyd Haley said of another such entity, “Bureaucracies don’t have a heart or a soul, but they do have a survival instinct.” AS is in survival mode and it will swat down or swallow anyone or anything that threatens it.

The simple fact is that Autism Speaks would suffer if  vaccines were admitted to be the cause. As long as there are autistics, they can grow, especially if they align themselves with Big Pharma’s profit-making juggernaut of vaccinations and drugs to treat the conditions they cause.

The simple fact is that autism is being caused by something, and the only thing that appears to make any sense as the cause is vaccinations. To spend millions on finding ways to suppress its symptoms, rather than curing and preventing it, is criminal. But that doesn’t benefit Big Pharma, and the researchers are aligning themselves with the sources of money—which are consistently manipulated by the ultimate profiteers, pharmaceutical corporations.

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