Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Clinic Notes: The CDC's Proposed Autism Study

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a large-scale study that will look for pre and postnatal causes of autism. The $7.8 million dollar study will be conducted in 5 or 6 states and is the largest federally autism study to date. The press release said that the study would include as many as 2700 hundred children. Their sample includes both children with autism and normally developing children. For $7.8 million dollars I would expect a larger sample. We are now analyzing data on more than 2000 children with autism and normally developing children and even if we include our faculty salaries we are well under a $150,00 and we are not working on the study full time. I hope the autism community gets what they are paying for.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/11/08/11health-1.h26.html