Christopher Gillberg

Explore about the Famous Professor Christopher Gillberg, who was born in Sweden on April 19, 1950. Analyze Christopher Gillberg’s net worth, age, bio, birthday, dating, height-weight, wiki. Investigate who is Christopher Gillberg dating now? Look into this article to know how old is Christopher Gillberg?

Christopher Gillberg Biography

With the development of the ADHD concept, the previous, less precise, category of Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD), “a term almost universally employed in child psychiatry and developmental paediatrics from the 1950s to the early 1980s” was replaced. Gillberg began to study DAMP in the late 1970s, when ADHD was still called MBD and the DAMP concept has been adjusted as the term ADHD was introduced and became internationally used. Around 1990, DAMP had become a generally accepted diagnostic concept in two Nordic countries, but when the DSM-IV appeared in 1994, DAMP became considered a redundant term in many countries, since DAMP is essentially equivalent to ADHD in combination with DCD as defined by DSM-IV. Gillberg’s four criteria for DAMP are:

Lars Christopher Gillberg (born 19 April 1950), who has sometimes published as Gillberg and Gillberg with his wife Carina Gillberg, is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Gothenburg University in Gothenburg, Sweden, and an honorary professor at the Institute of Child Health (ICH), University College London. He has also been a visiting professor at the universities of Bergen, New York, Odense, St George’s (University of London), San Francisco, and Glasgow and Strathclyde.

In the 1970s, Gillberg played a leading role in developing the concept Deficits in Attention, Motor control and Perception (DAMP), a concept primarily used in Scandinavia. The DAMP concept as used in more recent publications, refers to Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in combination with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). According to Gillberg, it constitutes a “subgroup of the diagnostic category of ADHD, conceptually similar – but not clinically identical – to the WHO concept of HKD (hyperkinetic disorder)” and is diagnosed on the basis of “concomitant attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and developmental coordination disorder in children who do not have severe learning disability or cerebral palsy”.

Gillberg is also known for his role in a controversy relating to the confidentiality of medical records. The controversy involved public access under the Swedish Principle of Public Access (offentlighetsprincipen) to medical records and other personal data about a group of children participating in an early longitudinal study on ADHD/DAMP, commenced in 1977 at Gothenburg University. Two critics of DAMP and ADHD diagnoses, who had previously filed complaints that questioned the integrity of the study, invoked the Swedish Freedom of Information Act in order to gain access to the raw data of the study after their fraud allegations had been investigated and officially dismissed by the regional ethics committee. Gillberg and two chief physicians involved in the study stated that medical ethics principles prevented them from turning over sensitive personal and medical data as the participants’ parents had been promised confidentiality in writing before giving informed consent on behalf of their children. However, the court ruled that all files related to the study were to be released under the Principle of Public Access. Rather than breaking their promises of confidentiality to the participants, the two chief physicians, along with a university administrator, shredded the sensitive files of the study. The following year, Gillberg, as head of the University’s Neuropsychiatric Department, and the University Vice-Chancellor were convicted and fined for “breach of duty” in their capacity as public officials at a government institution that had failed to release the documents in accordance with the court order.

In the early 1980s, the concept of an ‘autism spectrum’ was introduced by Lorna Wing and Gillberg. Gillberg has done extensive research into autism throughout his academic career. In 2003, a French and Swedish research team at the Institut Pasteur and the psychiatric departments at Gothenburg University and University of Paris, led by Thomas Bourgeron, Marion Leboyer and Gillberg, discovered the first precisely identified genetic mutations in individuals with autism. The team identified mutations altering two genes on the X chromosome which seem to be implicated in the formation of synapses (communication spaces between neurons), in two families where several members are affected. Previous studies, such as the Paris Autism Research International Sib-Pair Study (PARIS), coordinated by Gillberg and Marion Leboyer, have more generally associated the X-chromosome regions with autism. The 2003 breakthrough indicated the location of the mutation to be on the NLGN4 gene and the NGLN3 gene. The mutation prevents a complete protein from forming and is inherited from the mother.

In 1989, Gillberg became instrumental in the publication of the first diagnostic criteria for Asperger syndrome. They are applied in clinical practice due to the adhesion to the original description of Hans Asperger. All of the following six criteria must be met for confirmation of diagnosis:

Professor Gillberg has received several awards for his research, including the Fernström prize in 1991, the Ingvar Award in 1995, The Ronald McDonald Major Award for Paediatrics in 1998, Ågrenska Major Medicine Prize in 2001, Philips Nordic Prize in 2004 – in the prize justification he was acknowledged for his commitment to the rights of patient privacy and confidentiality. In 2009, Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden presented Gillberg with The King’s Medal of the Seraphim order for his contributions in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. He received the Dahlberg award for his genetic research, and the Life Watch Award for Autism Research in 2010. In 2012 he was awarded one of Sweden’s most prestigious scientific honours: the Söderberg Prize for Medicine (“Little Nobel Prize”). The prize is financed by Torsten Söderberg’s Foundation and Ragnar Söderberg’s Foundation and was handed out at a ceremony held at The Swedish Society of Medicine in Stockholm. In the prize justification it was emphasized that Christopher Gillberg “in a wise way combines specific research results with a versatile view of the human being and the patient as a bio-psychosocial whole”. His commitment to the supervision of young researchers was also highlighted.

Beginning in 1996, pediatrician Leif Elinder criticized Gillberg’s research and alleged that the numbers reported by Gillberg were made up. Elinder became associated with the sociologist Eva Kärfve at Lund University, whose research had been devoted to early witch hunts and medieval myths in Europe. They coordinated their criticism and Kärfve wrote a book, published in 2000, rejecting most of the research on DAMP, and especially Gillberg’s. Other psychiatrists and neuroscientists in Sweden defended the Gillberg group and argued that Elinder and Kärfve had crossed the line from scientific criticism to personal attacks and vilification. The conflict escalated further in 2002, when Kärfve and Elinder wrote separate letters to Gothenburg University, accusing the Gillberg group of scientific misconduct. The accusations were investigated by the Ethics Council and dismissed.

In 2003, a bill was introduced in the Swedish parliament, Riksdagen, due to the secrecy issues raised during the trial that granted the two private individuals access to sensitive personal data. This bill did not pass, but in 2004, a new act on ethical review of research involving humans was introduced. Changes were put in place in order to strengthen the protection for human subjects participating in medical research and to expand the scope of the ethical councils, while bringing the Swedish legislation closer to the European Commission directive. The official act governing medical research was further adjusted in 2008: ethical review is now legally required in Sweden, the review committees have official status, and consent can be withdrawn by participants in medical research at any point. However, voices in the medical research community have raised concerns about law revisions’ lack of attention to additional safeguards for researchers falsely accused of scientific misconduct and are calling for procedures that would ensure that scientific misconduct investigations are handled in a correct and legally secure manner.

In April 2003, the University’s Vice-Chancellor set the conditions: one of the persons requesting access, the sociologist Eva Kärfve, would have to get her research project approved by the ethical review committee, and each concerned individual would have to consent before documents about her or him could be read by Eva Kärfve and Leif Elinder, the other person who had requested access. However, Kärfve and Elinder appealed the University’s conditions and the Administrative Court of Appeal ruled that the conditions were unreasonable. In an analysis of the case, Sven Ove Hansson, Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, a former member of the Swedish Government Research Advisory Board, wrote: “[I]t is particularly interesting to note that the Court of Administrative Appeal nullified the decision by Gothenburg University to require individual consent and approval from an ethical review committee before giving access to sensitive data on individual research subjects. These are two of the cornerstones of the scientific community’s own system for protecting research subjects.”

One of Gillberg’s research projects, the Gothenburg study, has become the center of a heated controversy. The controversy concerns the question to what extent the Principle of Public Access, which in Sweden supports transparency in publicly funded activities, can be applied to sensitive data collected in medical studies involving human subjects. In 2003, Gothenburg University was ordered by the court to release medical records and other sensitive data about a group of children who had participated in a longitudinal psychiatric study done by Gillberg and other researchers, to two individuals under the Freedom of Information Act; this was done despite the researchers’ assertion that anonymization was not considered feasible due to the nature and length of the study (a small group of participants had been followed for a period of 16 years and the data included a combination of taped interviews, medical records, criminal records, school records, and psychiatric evaluations). The court ordered the University to set conditions for the access so that the interests of the children and the families would be protected.

Some scholars disagree with the lumping of ADHD and DCD, with the argument that they are unrelated. Gillberg stated in 2003 that, although he feels that there is a “very real issue of how to deal with the conflict between splitting (ADHD plus developmental coordination disorder (DCD)) and lumping (DAMP),” he nevertheless feels that “the DAMP construct has been helpful in identifying a group of children with ADHD and multiple needs that will not be self evident if the diagnosis is just ADHD or just DCD.” Before the Scandinavian studies, recognition that individuals with attention problems may also have difficulties with movement, perception, and memory had received little attention in studies. According to various studies, half of the children with ADHD also have DCD.

In July 2005, the lower criminal court in Gothenburg upheld the right of Kärfve and Elinder to see any data from the Gothenburg study still held by the University. The court fined Gillberg for “misuse of office”.

Since 2006, Gillberg is involved in a large cross-disciplinary project titled “Autism spectrum conditions: the Gothenburg collaborative studies”, financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), expected to run until the end of 2009. The project is a collaboration between scientists specialized in child and youth psychiatry, molecular biology and neuroscience and involves a genetic part with an international study team of French, British and U.S. researchers examining various aspects autism. Some of the results were published during 2007. The project also includes a genetic study on the Faroe Islands.

The debate about the case between representatives from the social sciences and natural sciences has continued in the popular press and in media. In 2007, the controversy resulted in a book by science journalist Vanna Beckman, with a focus on the larger issues of biologism and sociologism as they played out in the debate, a book which also described the ideological battle against research in psychology and psychiatry driven by various religious groups. In April 2008, a hotly debated television documentary aired on Swedish television, where Kärfve and Erlinder returned to the spotlight to air their concerns about the shredding of the documents. However, the program was shut down in 2008 after the Board of Appeal condemned it for its lack of impartiality in relation to the said programme.

In 2006, Gillberg lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). On 17 June 2008, the ECHR announced a “Decision to Communicate” in the case and a request for comment was submitted to the Swedish government, with a 15 October 2008 deadline for the initial response to the charges.

In 2010, the Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Centre (GNC), within the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, was founded. The centre was officially inaugurated by HM Queen Silvia in May 2011. The GNC works actively to recruit young scientists in the research fields of autism, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder/ Conduct Disorder (ODD/CD), anorexia nervosa, intellectual developmental disorder, language disorder, dyslexia, epilepsy, cerebral paresis and other ESSENCE (Early Symptomatic Syndromes Eliciting Neurodevelopmental Clinical Examinations). In January 2013 around 58 researchers were linked to the GNC. The staff at GNC and collaborators in other countries, work in child and adolescent psychiatry, child neurology, molecular genetics, community medicine, primary care, epidemiology, statistics, and twin methodology. External collaborators include University College London, Glasgow University, University of Edinburgh, University of Bergen, Karolinska Institute, Kōchi University, Kochi Prefecture, Young Epilepsy, and INSERM and the Pasteur Institute. The GNC also works to ensure the dissemination of research, not only using scientific and popular science publications, but by continuous updating of the website (www.gnc.gu.se) and through the organization of international conferences.

Elinder and Kärfve also demanded access to the original research material for the main DAMP studies. Under a section of the Swedish basic law that grants citizens access to government documents, Elinder and Kärfve were given full access to the documents by an administrative court. The University, the Gillberg group, and the participants of the study were strongly opposed to this decision, on the grounds that the material contained medical records and other sensitive information, and that the participants had been promised full confidentiality. A higher court decided that neither the participants, the researchers, nor their institution, were formally entitled to appeal the decision. When all legal avenues had been exhausted, two of Gillberg’s coworkers and a university administrator destroyed the 12–27 years old research material. In the legal aftermath, Gillberg and the Rector of Gothenburg University were found guilty of “misuse of office” for not complying with the administrative court’s decision.

On May 12th Professor Christopher Gillberg was presented with the prestigious 2016 INSAR Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR), held in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. INSAR (The International Society for Autism Research), that nominates the laureate, is a scientific and professional organization devoted to advancing knowledge about autism spectrum disorders. INSAR Lifetime Achievement Award acknowledges an individual who has made significant fundamental contributions to research on autism spectrum disorders that have had a lasting impact on the field.

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