$2 Million GONE: Autism Grant Money, Misappropriated
Investigation of $2 Million Dollar Grant will begin soon (Flickr/ColumbusCameraOp)
Paul Thorsen, M.D., Ph.D, and former professor at the Drexel University’s School of Public Health, has been accused of misappropriating $2 million U.S. dollars in grants given from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to use in an Autism research program.
As one of the lead researchers involved in New England Journal of Medicine’s study on MMR and Autism, the new accusations have brought criticism to his studies that found no correlation of vaccines to autism. Public backlash has taken shape as anti-vaccine autism groups seize the opportunity to downplay and disregard these autism research results.
One who is particular outraged, Dan Olmstead, an Editor with the daily web newspaper Age of Autism commented, “I think someone allegedly capable of ripping off his own university by forging documents from the CDC is capable of pulling off anything.”
Despite the allegations brought against Thorsten, the CDC still backs up all the research, which as Olmstead pointed out may be the result of further scandal. Links have been made between Thorsen and the CDC as well other autism research facilities, most recently working with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) on re-writing the definition of autism.
The impact of the court’s decision may be affect the release of the manual and further autism studies in the way in which they are handled, operated and funded.
For more information on this story, please check back. The International Center for Autism Research and Education (Icare4autism) will continue to post on this topic, as new details are received.
The official link to this autism news website is www.icare4autism.org
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