Welcome to the third installment of this evaluation of a recent publication describing a putative urine panel for autism.

Our first installment, “A urine test that doesn’t hold water,” addressed the unstable foundation for this work. For further reading on this field of “gut dysbiosis” as a whole, I also recommend this perspective and review, which I mention again at the end of today’s third and final installment.

The second installment, “A urine test for autism? There’s piddling evidence,” addressed the multiplicity of statistical and other analytical gaps and weirdities that leave a pattern of findings full of holes and inconsistencies.

Today’s third and final installment examines potential motivations of the researchers involved in this work. This examination is not for the purpose of an ad hominem attack but because conflicts of interest (COIs) matter in the conduct of science, and they tend to be unavoidable. They are unavoidable because we all have personal beliefs, affinities, hopes, and dreams that can’t be untangled from our work, no matter how much people want to tell you that “science is objective.”

COIs extend beyond those simply concerned with money – although “follow the money” is always good advice and not poorly applied in this instance – and these conflicts can extend to commitments, affiliations, and personally held beliefs. And conflicts matter because it is important for all of us to know and recognize what motivates the scientific questions researchers ask, how they choose to answer them, and how they elect to present those answers. The key is for the established practice in science to be a declaration, within reason, of these potential COIs, both tangible and intangible.

The authors of this paper are as follows:

Christina K. Flynn, Kevin Carr, Paul Whiteley, Khemlal Nirmalkar, Andrew Bellinghiere, Juergen Hahn, Hongbin Liu, Halil Arici, Laura Hewitson, Morgan Devlin, Elena L. Pollard, Khyatiben V. Pathak, Krystine Garcia Mansfield, Anakaren Rosales Torres, Patrick Pirrotte, Daniel B. Kalb, Rebekah Keen, Victoria Kenyon, Alessio Fasano, Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, James B. Adams, and Sarah Kadzielski.

Many of them have a history of associations and cross-pollinations with names that are familiar to those of us who have spent years in the trenches addressing overgeneralized, unscientific, self-interested, exploitative, and even false scientific claims about autism. Here is their competing interests statement:

JBA, CKF, RKB, JH, PW, and KC have patents and/or pending patents related to the diagnosis of ASD. JBA and RKB are co-founders of Autism Diagnostics LLC. JBA is the founder of Autism Diagnostics Lab Inc. PW and KC are co-owners of Analutos. JBA and RKB are co-founders of Gut-Brain-Axis Therapeutics Inc.

At least three authors on this paper have worked together on a urine test for diagnosing autism. Here’s the commercialization site for that test, and yes, it is the one described in the just-published “urine panel” study that they characterize belatedly as a “pilot.” For the low, low price of $349, you can order a test kit that includes a “premium packing box” (how exciting), collect your child’s urine, and get results back in 7–10 business days. They make claims on the site of “Zero false-positives” and “90% precision.” They claim that the product is “backed by decades of autism research.” This is currently a “self-pay service.”

The Wayback Machine shows availability of this URL only from April 19, 2026. This group held a Webinar about their product on June 9, 2026. All of the news releases on the site date from May 28, 2026, or later. The paper that is the subject of these three newsletter analyses was published on May 26, 2026.

The Autism Diagnostics Lab website does not offer a “research” link, and this paper, as mentioned in some of its five news releases in less than a month, is the sole publication they provide as support for their claims. Yet it is a publication that they (belatedly) describe as a “pilot” study. Perhaps the children of eager parents forking over $349 for the “testing kit” will contribute to expanding the “pilot” nature of that study in some way. Meanwhile, on the site’s landing page they offer:

Proven Science: Results of the MDM System have been published in Molecular Psychiatry, a Nature journal, and over 40 other published studies have reported elevated microbial metabolites in ASD, some of which are known to cause autistic symptoms in animals.

There it is. One study to support the “results of the MDM System.” I admit that all of this makes me, let’s say, pugnacious on many fronts.

The authors list this company and a few others in their competing interests statement at the end of “urine test” publication. Below are some things that are not listed or mentioned.

The first author has said that their long-term vision is

to shift the perception of autism from being a permanent, lifelong condition to one that can be prevented and managed through early, science-based intervention.

Another author, James Adams, has made appearances in this newsletter before in our coverage of Kennedy the Lesser’s obsession with mitochondria and vaccines. Adams also appears three times (as JBA) in the brief competing interests statement on the “urine test” paper (“JBA and RKB are co-founders of Autism Diagnostics LLC. JBA is the founder of Autism Diagnostics Lab Inc. PW and KC are co-owners of Analutos. JBA and RKB are co-founders of Gut-Brain-Axis Therapeutics Inc.”).

In addition to being a co-founder of Autism Diagnostic Labs (with another study author, Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown), Adams is its president. He seems to be a firm believer in the idea that autistic children have “bacterial/yeast overgrowth in the gut” (no time to go into how difficult it would be to have both) and has been working on a “microbial transplant therapy [MTT]” to sell, presumably after results come back positive from the urine test.

And there also is his Autism Nutrition Research Center, which naturally has a “shop” where one can purchase the “Official Vitamin/Mineral Supplement of the Arizona State University Autism/Asperger's Research Program” (84 bucks for 180 capsules), and they have an app! Also, you can buy an ice pack from them? This website has published “extended guidelines” in which their microbiota transplant therapy (MTT) is suggested, with a link out to Gut Brain Axis Therapeutics, a.k.a. GBAT, where Adams is also a co-founder with Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown; the two are respectively the president/CEO and chief scientific officer of that company. In other words, if you land on one of their sites, you can be conveniently slingshotted to another one of their sites.

These authors actually mention MTT in the conclusion/takeaway section of the “urine test” publication that apparently serves as the sole research retaining wall for their MDM System claims. In fact, they suggest in that paper that MTT could be a way to “[restore] normal gut-brain axis equilibrium.” They say that MTT, in one study, at least, “substantially decreased p-cresol sulfate down to normal concentrations, along with substantially improving gut health and ASD-related symptoms.” Guess who the authors are on that one study. This group is currently seeking investors to support development of MTT. They raised $8 million in a first round of funding, and for the low, low entry threshold of a net worth over $1 million or a consistent and ongoing individual income >$200,000, you can get in on this thing.

This entire pattern is straight out of Making Bank 101. Tell people their child has a problem or frighten them over the possibility of risky “inaction,” sell them something to confirm the “problem,” and then sell them the solution to the problem. Voila.

Adams apparently found inspiration for these enterprises in the writings of Bernard Rimland, a great fellow who espoused chelation “therapy” for autistic children and thought “aversives” were A-OK. Rimland was a great believer in the ascientific concept that environment, not genetics, was the primary agent of autism, and by “environment,” he meant “vaccines” and “chemicals.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Adams has recently been characterized as “searching for a cure” for autism. He conducted a chelation study on autistic children and has presented at true-believer curebie conferences, including TACA and AutismNow, joining the sewer-level ranks of grifters who sell bleach as an autism cure. Oh, and he’s also published with both of the Geiers.

Chelation, gut, urine testing, mitochondria, supplements, cold packs, the Geiers – is there anything “alt” related Adams has not gotten into?

A picture is emerging. We see money, “preventing” autistic people, supplements, kits, a key antivaxxer, and “gut” claims. What else will fill out the details of this author group and their inclinations and affinities?

GBAT (the MTT seeking investors company) has an advisory board. On that board? Richard Frye (yes, that Richard Frye), along with Alessio Faisano, an author on the “urine test” publication who did not declare this association in the ethics statement (ad board participants typically receive compensation of some kind). Two of the authors are co-founders of this company.

Indeed, TPGA has written about a strange number of these authors in this newsletter in posts addressing pseudoscience, antivaxxers, and RFK the Lesser’s various bizarre and dangerous announcements and decisions (but I repeat myself). Among the latter is our coverage of Juergen Hahn, an author on the urine test paper and a beneficiary of a still-unspecified amount of money from Kennedy’s CDC “to investigate whether there is a link between vaccines and autism.” At the time that news broke, Reuters reported that Hahn is “the author of a 2017 paper that found statistical associations between heavy metals and autism.”

There is more (authors Whitely and Carr on “regressive autism”; author Kalb seems to be a massive fan of ABA), but you probably now have a sufficiently complete picture.

These names keep turning up like bad pennies in the “alt-med” curebie corners of the autism world. Over and over. In fact, these people are like the British acting establishment: There aren’t that many of them, so they show up in every single production. That’s great when it’s British actors, but not so much when it’s the curebie crowd.

The “Autism Diagnostics Lab” website landing page states boldly that “Approximately 85% of children with autism have gut infections,” an astonishingly wild, impossible claim. So I am going to leave you with this analysis, by Kevin Mitchell, Darren L. Dahly, and Dorothy Bishop, none of whom are new to this rodeo. They address the validity of studies suggesting a link between autism and gut “dysbiosis” or whatever else grifters call it. Here’s the gist of their argument, which offers an interesting parallel to the fiscally oriented triangulation taking place in the “gut dysbiosis” marketplace:

… all these approaches suffer from serious conceptual, methodological, and statistical flaws and … the claims of mutual support amount to ‘pseudo-triangulation,’ building an appearance of convergence from incommensurate and individually unconvincing lines of evidence. … The claim that the microbiome is causally involved in the etiology or pathophysiology of autism rests on three lines of evidence, which are taken to be mutually reinforcing. These are human observational studies, mouse experiments, and human clinical trials. Our examination of the evidence base in each of these areas highlights serious flaws, inconsistencies, and contradictions that, we argue, undermine any claims about the involvement of the gut microbiome in autism.

News you can use

• The US Department of Education has formally announced a shift of two key departments related to students with disabilities, placing them under the oversight of the Health Department, which means under the oversight of RFK the Lesser, who notoriously disdains the very existence of disabled people and specifically of autistic people. This is terrible news. The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network has a good plain-language explainer of why this move is a bad one for people with disabilities. The Arc also has weighed in:

  Moving IDEA oversight into the Department of Health and Human Services risks changing how the federal government understands and responds to students with disabilities. Instead of focusing on classroom access, instruction, inclusion, services, and school accountability, it could push decisions toward diagnosis, treatment, and care management. Students with disabilities may need health care and related services, but they are students first.

• RFK the Lesser apparently has the entire autism community living rent-free in his head, along with his worm, because he obsessively still wants access to our medical records.

• From a TPGA editor: A current DOJ memo wants to erode Olmstead anti-institutionalization protections, claiming the decision “increases homelessness.” That is absurd, as Olmstead is “one of the most effective tools in combating homelessness” by encouraging states to augment mental health and housing services outside institutions.

  Longtime respected community member and autism parent Matt Carey weighs in. He writes:

  When I am on my deathbed, I don’t want to be thinking my kid’s freedom can be taken away based on criteria that are ‘an open question.’ More to the point, I don’t want to think the Department of Justice will sit on their hands if my state makes that move. I want my kid’s rights defended.

  The “homelessness” angle especially sucks since recent research shows how gaps in education, work, and welfare support can push neurodivergent people into homelessness: “Respondents described patterns of persistent exclusion, starting in early life, that had paved the way to homelessness. Once in need of housing support, they found significant barriers to accessing services that had been designed by and for neurotypical people.”

• Also from the TPGA editors: An autistic non-speaker responds to the recent high profile hit pieces on his community's autonomy: "I can’t type independently. Will it take years for me to shed the need for support? Maybe. Maybe not. But let me be clear: No one gets to put words in my mouth. I am in control of what I type."

• As someone who has experienced intractable, unaddressed tooth pain, I can say that it can take over every waking and (attempted) sleeping moment, to the exclusion of everything else. There is a need to pay more attention to oral health for the neurodiverse community, as “oral health problems may sometimes masquerade as, or even exacerbate, symptoms commonly associated with autism and ADHD. Oral pain can affect sleep, mood, attention, behavior, and overall functioning. For children who have difficulty recognizing or communicating discomfort, pain may be expressed behaviorally rather than verbally. As a result, symptoms commonly attributed to autism or ADHD may sometimes be influenced by untreated oral discomfort.”

• Here is a palate cleanser: A cool ASAN video from self-advocates telling their own truths about autism.

• Speaking of turning up like bad pennies, Andrew Wakefield has a new book out, a novel, of all things, about an autistic child on the Oregon Trail in the mid-19th century. We’ve double-checked our vaccine history and confirmed that the MMR vaccine indeed did not exist at the time.

• And, speaking of retractions, a paper claiming a link between autism and vaccines has been retracted. RFK the Lesser is apparently Big Mad about it.

Thanks for reading, and here’s to following the money.

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