Another federal government mandate is research. A significant increase in ASD-specific research funding is urgently needed, with a focus on prevention and treatment.
The Canadian Autism Intervention Research Network, which we know as CAIRN, released a report this year entitled CAIRN: A guide through difficult terrain, which shared the results of an online survey asking participants what they felt research priorities should be. The number one response from 839 of the 1,003 survey participants was treatments. We need research to investigate emerging and unestablished behavioural and medical treatments, especially ones that have strong anecdotal and clinical evidence.
CASDA would like to see priority funding towards studies in the area of environmental triggers, for example. In October 2007, the Institute of Medicine released an online pre-publication of a workshop that took place April 18 to 19, 2007, called “Autism and the Environment”. The participants identified a broad range of research priorities, and they summarized it in eight pages in this document. The summary lists numerous items for further research, which we feel our federal government needs to be examining.
Dr. Landrigan told the interagency autism committee that:
It has been known for years that environmental toxicants are especially harmful to the developing brains of fetuses and infants. A 1993 report by the National Academies Press, “Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children,” stated that young children are not “little adults,” and they detoxify and excrete chemicals very differently than adults. It has also long been suspected that children with autism are more susceptible to environmental toxicants than other children.
It is time to make environmental triggers a priority.
The last point I'll make is on financial assistance to families. We need the office of the Minister of Finance to review the Income Tax Act so that expenditures for treatments and services can be used as medical expenses on families' federal tax returns.
We hear repeatedly from families that they are being audited for items that are being recommended by licensed professionals, such as pediatricians, psychologists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, and nutritionists. Lately families have been audited with regard to the qualifications of the service providers they've hired to provide behavioural interventions.
Families with members with ASD perceive they're being audited with greater than average frequency. Their lives are fraught with the continued need to fight for their family member's needs. They should not be left to fight the government too.