Autism and Lupron
05/21/09 05:49 Filed in: Research
The Chicago Tribune has an excellent and disturbing article in today's paper about a small group of practitioners who are prescribing Lupron, a drug that shuts down the production of testosterone in males, for treatment of autism.
The author, Trine Tsourderos, does an excellent job of investigating many of the key points that we often discuss here in terms of investigating and critically analyzing claims. Among other key points, according to the article, it notes that the practitioners developing this "treatment" have no specialty or background in either autism, or the types of medicine subspecialties that would provide training and background either in the treatment of autism or in endocrinology, the type of specialty that would typically oversee treatment with Lupron.
But perhaps most telling is the fact that the developer himself is directly quoted as claiming that "Lupron is the miracle drug". As Carl Sagan once said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Any time someone - anyone - is claiming miraculous results it should be a red flag.
It is a sad but completely unsurprising fact that despite the completely unproven - and frankly uninvestigated - nature of this treatment, the practitioners have been opening clinics in a sort of franchise model across the country. This begins to make fairly clear the motivation behind their approach...
The author, Trine Tsourderos, does an excellent job of investigating many of the key points that we often discuss here in terms of investigating and critically analyzing claims. Among other key points, according to the article, it notes that the practitioners developing this "treatment" have no specialty or background in either autism, or the types of medicine subspecialties that would provide training and background either in the treatment of autism or in endocrinology, the type of specialty that would typically oversee treatment with Lupron.
But perhaps most telling is the fact that the developer himself is directly quoted as claiming that "Lupron is the miracle drug". As Carl Sagan once said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Any time someone - anyone - is claiming miraculous results it should be a red flag.
It is a sad but completely unsurprising fact that despite the completely unproven - and frankly uninvestigated - nature of this treatment, the practitioners have been opening clinics in a sort of franchise model across the country. This begins to make fairly clear the motivation behind their approach...
