Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com Recent headlines have trumpeted an FDA-approved clinical trial of cord blood-derived stem cells for autism, involving 30 children and two i.v. infusions of cells from each child’s own banked cord blood. The stated rationale is a link between inflammation and autism, but I, for one, find that rationale spurious. The inflammation-autism concept found its footing in part thanks to a study that appeared in 2005 [open access] and described findings linking inflammation in the post-mortem brain and autism. The researchers, based at Johns Hopkins, had examined donated brains from 11 people with autism, six of whom were children, and in particular found evidence of what they called an “inflammatory process” in the cerebellums of brains from autistic people. The autistic group in this study was highly heterogeneous in terms of ages, causes of death, and the presence of epilepsy. The Hopkins work and a handful of other…