dropped comment post from left/right brain blog

I accept that the burden of "proof" is on me, but until it is "proven", it is not wrong, but unproven.
I know that "proof" will require research. Research require funding and resources which I don't currently have. Obtaining such funding requires research results. It is a catch-22. The senior NO researcher I am working with is moving his lab to another continent (because of funding issues). That has set back our work together over a year already. Realistically he won't be able to do anything for another 6 months. The focus of his work is not ASDs, but NO/NOx systems biology. They are all related, so there is no stretch at all me working with him.

I believe in the scientific method too, that is what has made me a successful inventor and scientist, and what has gotten me this far. As someone with Asperger's, the science part is easy, a simple continuation of how I live my everyday life. The interpersonal stuff necessary to convince NTs that my ideas are worthwhile is much more difficult.

Unfortunately VCs and pharmo/biotech companies are not beating a path to my door. They are in business to make money on things they understand, things like viagra knock-offs, things that are "sexy" to other NTs. They are not in the business of funding research that they do not understand. No agency is. My approach is considered to be "high risk". What that "means", is not that it is has the potential to harm any patients, but that it is so "far out" of the mainstream that if it is funded, and fails, then the NTs who funded it will look foolish. NTs can't abide being thought of as foolish. So the peers who (don't quite) understand NO physiology look to ASD experts, who look to NO experts, who look to ASD clinicians, who look to neurophysiologists, who look to geneticists. None of them understand enough pieces of the puzzle to see the big picture, even when it is explained to them.

It is unfortunate that many people have (wrongly) marketed what they (falsely) believe to be a universal biologic panacea. It has made my efforts more difficult. The false idea that "mercury causes autism", has really poisoned the field in terms of considering the real biologic correlations in ASD physiology.
That was the reason I become knowledgable about mercury, not because there is any basis for effects in ASDs, but because the senior clinician I was talking too regarding ASDs was too enamoured with mercury to have the mental capacity to think of anything else.

"Curing" ASDs is a tiny market compared to the rest of what my stuff is good for. It is important to me because I have suffered from the effects of ASDs for my entire life. I know what it is like to be bullied until one is suicidal. I know that many NTs are simply unable to stop bullying. I think my stuff will greatly reduce the effects of that bullying on ASDs.

Barbara, did you get the stuff on ATP that I sent you? If not, I need your email address.