So, Dr. G, can you tell us a little bit more about Meadow and what the offering would be for parents of children with autism?

Sure.

Yeah.

You know, first, why we developed Meadow was that Leucovorin was a great example of a situation where we had a treatment that had shown efficacy in four double-blind placebo-controlled trials, and yet a lot of major medical centers, pediatric hospitals, were not allowing physicians to write for the prescription.

And we're talking about a B vitamin, something that's been around for 70 years, extremely safe.

Not only that, but in those double-blinded trials, it showed improvements in core symptoms, things like language and development.

And even beyond that, it addressed some of the clear underlying root causes.

It

Are you already doing that in your-- just privately in your practice or publicly?

Oh, all the time.

And, and that's really part of that neurological training.

So in neurology, we're, we're trained to really ask the question where before we ask the question what.

And what I mean by that is we, we try to localize, and once we have a good sense of which part of the nervous system is involved, then we begin to search out what are the possible underlying causes.

And i-if you take that localization approach, you can actually see that there are different localizations that probably relate to different patterns of what's being called autism.

And, and that's really important because, for example, we might have some kids that are more rooted in the basal ganglia, and the, and the basal ganglia really do relate a lot to things like OCD, to attention quite a bit, to motor tics, um, but don't relate to intellect.

Yeah.

Are you already doing that in your-- just privately in your practice or publicly?

All, all the time.

And, and that's really part of that neurological training.

So in neurology, we're, we're trained to really ask the question where before we ask the question what.

And what I mean by that is we, we try to localize, and once we have a good sense of which part of the nervous system is involved, then we begin to search out what are the possible underlying causes.

And i-if you take that localization approach, you can actually see that there are different localizations that probably relate to different patterns of what's being called autism.

And, and that's really important because, for example, we might have some kids that are more rooted in the basal ganglia, and the, and the basal ganglia really do relate a lot to things like OCD, to attention quite a bit, to motor tics, um, but don't relate to intellect.

Yeah.

Yeah

... approach to autism, right? Um, and it's worth noting that the same people who claim we don't have data have to acknowledge that our data for the use of antipsychotics really only goes up to about eight weeks.

We have a couple of longer term trials, but, um, here we have a treatment in leucovorin that has been studied for longer on more patients and is far safer.

And so...

And it treats core symptoms.

So across the board, it's a win, but partly because of the resistance for doctors to write the script, partly because there is now a shortage because of this increased, uh, interest, and the fact that it's a generic.

It's a cheap med, easy and cheap to produce, so there's not a lot of incentive financially for anybody to produce more.

So what, what is it that you think is going on there?

And that's what I think it sounds like you're speaking to.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I think whether it's a, whether it's like a heart to heart thing or like a subconscious, you know, kind of more mental framework, it's, I think the fact remains that you're with your kids every day, you're intimately connected to them and you feel like you truly feel to some degree what they go through.

And when something more is wrong, you feel it and you feel that sense that we haven't searched enough.

But the physician doesn't get that sense.

They're really just looking at the numbers, the labs, right? And it's a little bit more cold and calculated.

So I think what happens is a lot of the moms have had that sense and they tried turning to their doctor, but their doctor didn't always listen.

So then they turn to other moms and other moms confirm what they're feeling.

It doesn't feel the same for this community.

Can you expand a little bit more about that concept?

And sometimes I, I'll, I'll admit, I readily will admit I often forget many of the things I say [chuckles] in conference.

So I'm sure I did say something along those lines.

Um, but I, I mean, I think we could think back to, like, again, my, my experience as a resident or a medical student, where the consensus has been, for example, that spelling is, uh, the word "debunked" comes up, right? So the consensus is that this is a debunked, uh, concept, that, that spelling is, because it's an outgrowth of facilitated communication, it's completely debunked.

It's really, really hard to-- So that's the consensus, okay? I'm gonna say we're, it's completely a wrong consensus.

I mean, we can't be any more wrong on that issue.

But when you actually sit with a kid who is sitting in front of you and, and typing or spelling, you, how on earth can you deny that, that that's coming from that child? I mean, you can't.

So just having a different mindset going in, um, and being more open and, and, and flexible becomes really important.

Welcome, Dr. Gaitanis.

Thanks for having me, Tony, and thanks for that great introduction to this really, really important topic.

The, um, first part, I wanna g-give a little shout-out to MAPS, the Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs.

That's an organization that's really working hard to retrain physicians towards a different path of how to treat, heal, and recover kids with autism spectrum disorders, as well as a host of other neurological conditions.

And it, it's a, it's a really critical part of what we have to do, is to retrain physicians from all that they learned.

And the reason that's important is, as you touched on, is that we have a lot of misconceptions within medicine, a lot of things that are accepted as doctrine that simply aren't so.

I'll give you one real simple example is this term autism spectrum disorder.