Howard Hughes Medical Institute

For what it's worth, I thought this might be of interest to some of us.

I saw a piece on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for biomedical research located in Chevy Chase, Maryland on 60 Minutes. Apparently, Howard Hughes created the institute as a tax shelter when the air force threatened to pull all of their contracts with his company. Unbeknownst to him, it wound up becoming a premiere lab for biomedical research, as their are billions of dollars available for the scientists to conduct research without having to apply for grants and fill out mountains of paper work that can impede progress.

Of course, I immediately wondered if there is research being done on autism. It was not mentioned in the story, so I went to their site and typed "autism" under their search engine and 87 matches returned!

I don't know about you, but this is reassuring to me. I have been upset that the government has not launched and funded massive amounts of research into various aspects of autism, including vaccines.

The story did mention quite a lot of work being done with stem cells at the institute.

I believe there is a place to email the scientists. So, perhaps it would be worth a few minutes to leave our requests and comments for these folks at what looks like a wonderful place.