Fairness issues can be argued: should we be paying with our tax dollars for leukemia, MD, CF, and juvenile diabetes research that we don’t benefit from? Maybe we want to take our share of those tax dollars and put it into ASD, but we don’t get that choice. Do we want to force people suffering from those conditions to pay for autism?

Also, should we not instead be able to give that money directly to people researching the issues instead of letting the government get its cut first? Charities have a much better record than government in making sure the money they receive is well spent.

But really the biggest issue is that is expensive. No more expensive than heart surgery or leukemia treatment except that your kid is going to live and continue to need treatment and maybe they can stop paying for the other kids that die of the heart issues and the leukemia. So do the bills need to be introduced absolutely - the bill that says if insurance is covering your kids leukemia than by golly they can cover my kids disease (autism) too. I paid the same premiums that the leukemia patient’s parents did.

And you know what else is part of the fairness factor - the share of the research dollars. NIH has a budget (now you can believe that the private sector might be a better place for research, but the NIH is going to have research money). The most current breakdown is as follows:

HOW DOES FUNDING FOR AUTISM COMPARE TO OTHER CHILDHOOD DISORDERS & DISEASES?

* a. Leukemia 1 in 25,000 Funding: $300 million
* b. Muscular Dystrophy 1 in 20,000 Funding: $160 million
* c. Cystic Fibrosis 1 in 5000 Funding: $75 million
* d. Juvenile Diabetes 1 in 500 Funding: $140 million
* e. Autism 1 in 166 Funding: $15 million

And now they have raised the autism numbers to 1 in 150, so the ratio is that much worse.