The TREATING AUTISM: THE PROMISES, PERILS AND POLITICS OF PHARMACEUTICAL INTERVENTION event that I chaired at the Institute of Psychiatry last night was an important, tough and often moving discussion of a very contentious subject. The lecture theatre was packed to the rafters. We were privileged to have a really wide variety of interests and perspectives on the panel and in the audience - far wider than one tends to see together in the same room at public or professional events about autism. I was delighted to see a mixture of familiar faces (chuffed that friends including Carmel, Dinah, Hannah, Maisie, Seth and Shirley were there) and new faces in the audience, and I was particularly impressed by the calibre of audience comments and questions. The event was audiorecorded, and - with the help of the lovely folk at Pod Academy - we hope to make a podcast of the discussion available in the not too distant future. I also intend to compile peoples many lively tweets about the event via Storify in the next few days. In the meantime, below is a link to the eight-minute video we showed at the beginning of last nights event. The video gives a brief overview of the large international research project - EUROPEAN AUTISM INTERVENTIONS: A MULTICENTRE STUDY FOR DEVELOPING NEW MEDICATIONS, or EU-AIMS for short - that was the main focus of debate. This video provoked such strong and contrasting views (there are certainly one or two things in it that raise my hackles) that we could quite easily have shown it and moved straight into a lively audience discussion. But our four panel speakers - Declan Murphy (Academic Coordinator of EU-AIMS), Richard Ashcroft (Co-Chair of the Ethics Advisory Board of EU-AIMS), Virginia Bovell (Vice-President of Ambitious about Autism) and Russell Stronach (Chair of Autistic UK) - did an invaluable job of elaborating upon the issues raised. I hope last nights event was the beginning of a conversation about EU-AIMS that will be inclusive and ongoing. I for one will be discussing the issues that were raised last night at an event that the Burgess Autistic Trust is organising on the evening of Friday 28 November. Watch this space for further details.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 07:57:23 +0000
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