The National Institutes of Health (NIH) yesterday committed $60 million from the stimulus package to fund research goals for autism laid out in the first federal ’strategic plan’ for autism research. That plan, published 5 March, and crafted by a federal advisory panel over the past year, recommends 40 research studies with a projected cost of $800 million over the next decade.

In passing the Combating Autism Act in December 2006, Congress charged the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) — comprising 13 federal and 6 public members — with creating a strategic plan to help the Secretary of Health and Human Services set priorities for autism research. The IACC solicited input for this plan from both scientific experts and parent advocates, whose prerogatives were frequently in conflict.

The final plan recommends studying how autism affects people throughout life — from sequencing more than 50 candidate genes and identifying at least five environmental risk factors to studying the cost-effectiveness of services that aid adults with autism.

The strategic plan is “a landmark achievement,” says Paul Shattuck, assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies autism’s course and prevalence, and participated in one of the committee’s four scientific workshops.

The plan does not allocate money, nor can it dictate to federal agencies how to do so. The NIH, which funds the bulk of autism research in America, chooses projects based on the scientific merit of grant proposals.

Still, “[the plan] tells us what the community thinks are the highest priority areas to fund,” says Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and chair of the IACC.

In total, for both short- and long-term projects, the plan recommends $312.6 million for studying autism’s diagnosis and description, $216.4 million for genetic or environmental causes, $206.8 million for treatments, and $55.4 million for services and support.

Some researchers say the report — announced four days before President Obama issued a memorandum to “guarantee scientific integrity” in federal policy making — includes deliberately vague recommendations that cater to public opinion over sound science.

“Their priorities would definitely not have been my priorities for children with autism,” says Cathy Lord, director of the University of Michigan Autism & Communication Disorders Center, who led one of the workshops. Lord says that some of the recommendations that came out of those workshops — including research on how autism treatments and interventions affect non-white or low-income populations — were dropped from the final version, and replaced with an excessive number of projects on environmental causes.

…read the rest of my latest article from SFARI