The Fleecing of the Autism Community, Now With Insurance

Update 7/15/09:  the CARE clinic in Arizona has been closed and raided by agents from the FBI and IRS.

Back in March 2006, Daniel Dage wrote a heartfelt essay, The Fleecing of the Autism Community, on how unscrupulous cure vendors take advantage of families with autistic members. 

There's a new essay up at Autism Watch by Stephen Barrett, M.D.,  Be Wary of CARE Clinics and the Center for Autistic Spectrum Disorders (CASD).  CARE Clinics and CASD are two enterprises founded by Kazuko Irie Curtin.

Barret writes:

CARE Clinics and CASD offer services that are unsubstantiated and lack a plausible rationale. I am very skeptical of their activities.

Both CARE and CASD bill patients' insurance companies for tests and for "treatments". According to Barrett, the paid bills have been as high as $40,000. 

Kazuko Irie Curtin's son was diagnosed with autism about 14 years ago.  She founded the Center for Autistic Spectrum Disorders as a 501(c)3 charity in 2001, and the for-profit CARE Clinics sometime later.  Here is her biography from the November 2008 United States Autism and Asperger's Association conference

Kazuko A I Curtin is the founder and CEO of CARE Clinics. Over a decade ago, Kazuko set out to find the very best treatments for her son, James, who was diagnosed with autism at two years-of-age, and given no chance of recovery. Since that time, Kazuko has traveled the world in search of answers for her son.  First, Kazuko developed expertise in behavior therapy. She received training in ABA therapy, and invented “Autism Visual Learning Method”, which is patented in the U.S.,

According to Barrett, the method, a type of Picture Communication System, is not patented.

and is pending in 150 countries. Then she learned about biomedical treatments for James, and began building what later became CARE Clinics.  Kazuko was a successful entrepreneur since she was a college student in Tokyo. Among many achievements, Kazuko was a leader at DASCOM, which was an extremely successful computer software company that was later sold to IBM.

In addition to treating her son, Kazuko has recovered from chronic illness herself, by using the therapies at CARE Clinics. The success of treating both herself and her son has bolstered her resolve to create a world-class treatment center that helps both parents and children recover from difficult, chronic illnesses such as autism and cancer.  Kazuko is a frequent speaker at many autism conferences, including UCLA, ASA, ATF, GPL, CASD, which help parents make informed decisions for their children. Kazuko is the author of New Autism Treatment Paradigm, printed in Japanese, and leads a team at CARE Clinics that is authoring a New Autism Treatment Paradigm 2008, printed in English, and to be released April 1st, 2008.

I couldn't find publication records for New Autism Treatment Paradigm 2008.  However,  I did find CASD's IRS form 990.  You can read it for yourself:  Download CASD_990.pdf

Kazuko Irie Curtin's 2006 compensation from CASD was $203,833.  That's pretty good entrepreneurial change.  CASD has a board of three.  Curtin, Mary Y. Irie, and Jane N. Irie.  There appears to be a lack of independence on the board.

Dr. Barrett would like to speak with families who have used the services at CASD or CARE.  Please read his article--his phone number is at the bottom of the page.

Previous related blog posts and essays

• Daniel Dage: The Fleecing of the Autism Community March 20, 2006
• Kristina Chew: What Are the Costs? October 13, 2007
• Storkdok: Autism Quackery Every Day April 6 2008
• The UK's Daily Mail, June 4, 2008: The Great Autism Rip-Off
• Bruce Hall, September 23, 2008 Autism, the Fleecing of Desperate Parents Continues

Comments

[Broken Link]

Liz,
Thanks for linking to Dr. Barrett's article. It is amazing that parents will fall for this kind of expensive scam. And it seems the insurance companies are being fleeced as well.

It sure is a fancy website, though, at Care Clinics. One strange thing, despite the small number of testimonials - actually it is very few considering that 150 children are treated each year - there is nothing said about the progress of the first and most important client, Kazuko's son.

[Andrew W.]

I found this comment libellous so I took the vowels out.

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[Brian Elk]

A de-licensed physician? You mean like Andy Wakefield?

[Chris]

Andrew W. quoted from "bolenreport"...

What kind of two-bit loser believes the PR guy of a woman who claims to have a "cure" for ALL disease!? Especially since she claims they are caused by a critter that is only found in a small part of the world, which can be cured with a "zapper."

Here is a nice page dedicated to the author of the Bolen report:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/strange/timoranter.htm

(I also found out to my dismay that one can get subscribed to the "bolenreport" whether one wants to or not by participating in the Healthfraud listserv. Bolen will harvest email addresses of any who posts there and then spam them with his press releases and fact-free reports. This is why when I changed ISPs, I resubscribed to the Healthfraud listserv but only lurk.)

Also, Barrett is not a "de-licensed" physician, his is a RETIRED physician. This means he no longer practices as a doctor, and so does not need to continue to pay to maintain his licensing. Is that very hard to understand?

[mike stanton]

Andrew W
if we leave aside your unsubstantiated allegations about Dr Barrett's moral character, can you point to any substantive errors of fact in his report that Liz omitted to mention?

[FreeSpeaker]

Andy W, are you aware that Bolen has a financial stake in the Cavitat litigation and is barred by the settlement from speaking about it? Bolen defends doctors who sexually assaut their patients. Why would anyone with half a brain believe him? I guess you do not have half a brain.