Autism Speaks exec steps down over vaccine dispute
January 16th, 2009
From Education Week’s On Special Education blog:
Alison Tepper Singer said Thursday she was stepping down from her post as executive vice president for communications and outreach for Autism Speaks. The cause was her disagreement with the organization over the need to research vaccines as a potential cause of autism.
The Autism Speaks organization has said vaccine safety studies should be a top research priority. Singer said she believes research money should instead be focused elsewhere, including possible environmental causes and better treatments and services for people with autism.
Singer resigned before a recent meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, a federal oversight body that guides the direction of autism research. A member of the committee and the mother of a child with autism, Singer voted with the majority at that meeting to decline to fund two vaccine-safety studies.
Singer said she resigned [from Autism Speaks] before the meeting, because she knew her vote would be in conflict with the organization’s views. “It would be unprofessional to vote in a way that the organization wouldn’t want. But it would have been disingenuous to vote against my conscience,” she said.
Autism Speaks blasted the committee’s decision to decline to fund the vaccine studies.
(Autism Speaks photo)
See also:
- Environment suspect in causes of autism — Monterey [CA] Herald
- Autism researcher: ‘Time to start looking’ at environmental causes — Los Angeles Times Booster Shots blog
- Autism Speaks withdraws support for strategic plan for autism research, decries unexpected change in final approval process – Autism Speaks website (press release)
UPDATE: Newsweek interview with Alison Singer — “This question has been asked and answered”
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January 17th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I agree with Mary M. and applaud Ms. Alison Tepper Singer’s decision to resign. Now is the time to create new ways to improve services for individuals with autism, pure and simple.
January 16th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
It is about time that Alison Tepper Singer left Autism Speaks. How can anyone be against vaccine safety studies?
January 16th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Bravo to Alison Tepper Singer. I support her stance on funding research into vaccines as a cause of Autism (i.e. a waste of time and money) and her principled actions in resigning from an organization whose executives do not agree with her beliefs. I am the mother of a young adult who is living with Autism and I have never felt that Autism Speaks speaks for me.