PLT Test Blog

When used correctly, statistics are extremely useful to diagnose and solve all kinds of problems.  In the wrong hands, meaningless or mixed-up data can be portrayed as impressive statistics, on which other people faithfully rely, to form their opinions. Clearly there is nothing new in this; the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” was popularized by Mark Twain (1835-1910).  The advent of cheap computers and desktop publishing has made it possible for just about anyone to crunch some numbers and make impressive looking tables and graphs.   Along comes the internet and all of a sudden, somebody’s idea can go viral and be quoted back to them later, as a “fact”. This blog is based mainly on the blue skies research , being carried out at leading universities around the world.  I say “leading universities” because there are now so many universities/institutes, that not all academics are equal.  In the case of autism, it seems that the more someone publishes,...

Most readers of this blog are from the US, but in much of the rest of the world the diagnosis of autism is very much rarer.   Why is that?   And does it matter? I came across a perfect example of this recently.   A friend who lived in the Netherlands (north Europe), just relocated, back to the south of Europe.   In the Netherlands, his daughter was diagnosed with autism; the father, being a native of southern Europe, did not like this at all.   “On what basis do you say this?”, he asked the psychiatrist.   The psychiatrist would not discuss the diagnosis, other than to say that according to the American DSM , his daughter has autism. A few months later, the father takes his daughter for an assessment back home in southern Europe.   There he was told that it was nonsense to say the girl is autistic, she just has some mild obsessive compulsive behaviour.   The father now feels much better, the daughter feels no worse. We were discussing my Polypill...

You might be wondering, what does a time bomb have to do with all the above conditions.   The answer is a substance in the human body called PAK1.   PAK1 appears to have no useful bodily function, after birth, but it appears to be behind very many dysfunctions in the body.   One scientist suggested that it is there to ensure that we do not live forever. PAK1 is at the centre of a very expensive effort to develop effective cancer drugs; since the majority of cancers, for males or females, involve PAK1.   If you can block or inhibit PAK1, you can stop tumour growth in many types of cancer.   It turns out that PAK1 is also involved in Alzheimer’s, Huntington's Disease , N eurofibromatosis, Autism, Schizophrenia, Fragile X and Shank 3. Cancer drugs are big business and budgets seem to be almost limitless.   The good thing is that as long as the PAK1 inhibitor can cross the blood brain barrier (BBB), what works for cancer, is likely to have an effect in all th...