Two Causes Of Autism
Whoops, sorry, that's my other blog. In this blog, I write about how the parents cause autism.
First, let's get this out of the way: that was a joke, ok? I do not think autism is caused by the parents. Science has already disproven that link. Science shows it caused by rain.
Before any science is discussed here, take a minute and examine your prejudices, which run so deeply that I can't write a blog about narcissism without getting accused of writing too much about narcissism.
Why, when I wrote that autism was caused by the parents, did you think that was so offensively preposterous as to merit rebuttal in ALL CAPS? Yet when I said it is rain, you were... intrigued?
Not that you actually believed it was rain, of course, you figured that was a proxy for something else; but you did not allow that "parents" might be a proxy for something else. Linking parenting to, well, anything, is so loaded with connotation that it is safely beyond consideration; yet a moment's reflection reveals that of course that's the best proxy.
Science in psychiatry, or in any field that pretends to examine behavior, is a false god. It's not just the results that are biased; the way questions are asked, the questions that are asked, that can be asked-- and the ones that none dare ask-- safely protect even the sexy calf of the truth from ever being revealed.
Take a break, Diogenes, it's going to be a long wait.
II.
Well, what about all that rain nonsense?
In general, autism rates are higher in the norther U.S. than in the southern.
Looking at three states, Washington, California and Oregon, a study found the counties with the highest precipitation in the 1990s lead to the highest autism rates in 2005. Additionally, kids under three who experienced higher than normal rainfall relative to other years had higher rates of autism.
What's nearly incomprehensible about this article is the next sentence:
There are a number of possibilities concerning what such an environmental trigger might be.
It goes on to list their top four explanations, but in case you don't see it, I'll spell it out: this environmental trigger is one that occurs to the child after he is born, not before, or to the parents.
They cite: rain means more TV watching; Vitamin D deficiency; household cleaners or some other indoor toxin; or the rain brings an atmospheric or ground toxin into play.
The obvious problems with the study are myriad, but
Because we do not provide direct clinical evidence of an environmental trigger for autism among genetically vulnerable children that is positively associated with precipitation, our results are clearly not definitive evidence in favor of the hypothesis. But the results are consistent with the hypothesis, and, therefore, further research focused on establishing whether such a trigger exists and on identifying it is warranted.No one on the planet is going to misinterpret this study as actually saying rain causes autism. What they will do, however, is hear your bias that it is something that happens to the child that leads to autism.
Which is exactly what you wanted, isn't it?
III.
Fortunately, there's an editorial, "Do These Results Warrant Publication?" in the same issue that critiques the study (e.g. reporting bias, etc) and then argues
that the authors' analysis and the editor's decision to publish it are to be lauded, despite the uncertain ultimate contribution of this work and the possibility (likelihood?) that nonprofessionals are going to misinterpret and misuse it.
You can say a study should be published despite misinterpretation, but why would you say it should be lauded if it is likely to be misinterpreted?
Not only was [cites numerous flaws in the study.] Nonetheless, I would argue, so what? The primary audience for the article of Waldman et al is not the practicing pediatrician, and certainly, it is not a member of the public at large. These individuals cannot take away any practical message from it.
Because people are idiots?
Of course, if a study's findings are no more than tentative ones... responsible authors will stress this, just in case members of the lay public are "eavesdropping" on the exchange of information between scientists.
He doesn't get it, at all. Or maybe he does? Repeatedly saying that the results are tentative, stressing the problems with the methodology, this masks and reinforces the ideological bias-- that autism is caused post-natally.
I believe that Waldman et al have indeed reported their results responsibly. They have made it clear that the message the public should take from their data regarding precipitation and autism is the same one suggested by an editorialist commenting on a recently observed modest association between prenatal exposure to cell phone use and behavior problems in childhood: "No call for alarm, stay tuned."
IV.
"Are you saying there can't be a component to autism that occurs after birth?"
How do I know? I have no idea. More importantly, they don't have any idea, either. I have the very same evidence available that they do; the question is simply impossible to answer so far.
I am aware, however, that there are plenty of possibilities, both post-natally and pre-natally. This study doesn't test the existence of "environmental triggers" because it could easily be explained by completely genetic factors: for example, that parents who are predisposed to having autistic kids choose to live in Oregon. (What, is that so insane?)
If his concern is misinterpretation and misapplication of a single study, then he should be aware enough to spot how it will be misinterpreted.
So it isn't misinterpretation that rain causes autism, but that this study has anything to tell us about environmental triggers at all.
The worry about the eavesdropping public isn't that they will read this study and hear, "rain might be involved somehow" but that they become convinced that there is an environmental trigger.
The study will adds to the study pool labeled "Evidence For Environmental Causes" and it simply isn't that. But when those studies are stacked up on top of each other, it looks like that.
V.
We can now reverse this discussion entirely.
There is considerable evidence that advanced paternal age, but not maternal age, increases the risk for certain psychiatric conditions but not others (e.g. schizophrenia yes, depression no) and increases massively the risk of autism.
I want you to take three seconds and come up with a plausible explanation for why that is.
You picked: defective sperm. Me, too.
However-- and this is the point-- you must recognize that there is nothing in the epidemiological evidence that allows you to jump to that conclusion. It is your bias that older father= defective sperm, i.e. that the older father is actually a proxy for a pre-conception risk factor, and NOT that he's too tired to play with the kid; or that any man who had to wait until later to have kids is semi-autistic himself, etc. All of those are prejudices, biases, unfounded in science, but they are exactly the same as believing it has to do with defective sperm.
There is circumstantial evidence, e.g. with mice, that older fathers produce progeny with various "problems": decreased exploratory activity, worse performance on avoidance tasks, etc, but nothing that would hold up in court.
Advanced paternal age could just as well be a post-natal risk factor as it could a pre-natal one; just as rain could just as well be a pre-natal risk factor as it could a post-natal one.
However, both camps have chosen a side and fail to consider the other side. They're already firm about when the problem started, or what kind of problem to look for. Dialogue is therefore impossible.
VI.
There is an additional twist to this story: the kind of autism (or schizophrenia) that is associated with advanced paternal age may be a different kind of autism or schizophrenia then the heritable kind.
To illustrate this, consider the happy discovery that in monozygotic twins (identical) have a 50% concordance for schizophrenia. Dizygotic twins (fraternal, non identical) have much less-- 10%-- the same as any other first degree relative. (For autism it's 60% MZ, 0% DZ.) This can easily be taken to mean, "it's genetic." End of debate.
Well, it really depends on what "genetic" means. You're going to want to sit down for this:
When MZ twins are divided between monochorionic (one placenta for both fetuses) vs. dichorionic (each MZ twin gets it's own placenta) you find slightly different concordances: 60% for the same placenta twins, and 10% for the separate placenta twins.
Remember, even though they have different placentas, their DNA is still completely identical. If schizophrenia was really mostly about DNA, then the placenta shouldn't matter. But it appears that placenta matters more than DNA.
The average reader will find this quite fascinating, but for me, the truly fascinating, jaw dropping part of it all is this: the article cited, above, was written in 1995. Since that time, no one has furthered this line of inquiry.
Not because the study was debunked-- no one tried to debunk it. It's simply too hard to study twins in this way, and since it is to hard, we pretend that it isn't important. The only analogy that comes to mind is a political one: it's way too hard to track down loose Russian nukes, so instead we'll continue to work on disarming ours.
Autism is a spectrum; schizophrenia is a spectrum, and not only are multiple factors involved, but likely specific factors are involved in specific subtypes only that we currently lump all together.
Add to that everyone's camping out in different corners of the nature/nurture octagon, and if you're wondering why over 40 years of research into the causes of both disorders we're still at the level of "rain," well, that's why.
VII.
It is my personal bias (emphasis mine and bold and underlined) that advanced paternal age is a proxy for both/either "defective sperm" or some diathesis of... developmental disorder... in the father. Either or both may be relevant for different cases. If someone wanted to do a second study, take the rain study and cross it against paternal age. Do older fathers live in Oregon?
So where is the real money in genetic research in autism and schizophrenia? More generally: where are we most likely to find "genetic" explanations for complex behavioral traits that defy simple "gene model" explanations?
Start by looking at the possible explanations for the genetic effects of advanced paternal age:
There are three main lines of thought.
1. Older sperm has longer time to suffer point mutations. Men's sperm is constantly (24 times a year) undergoing cell division, each time brings opportunity for mutation.
2. Expanding trinucleotide repeats.
3. Imprinting.
I believe with no hesitation that the money is in imprinting. Let me explain.
Part 3 In one week
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February 3, 2009 1:22 PM | Posted by : | Reply
This type of study is becoming common, and annoying. Seemingly interesting, or emotionally-charged results are written up and the authors stand back, hold their hands in the air and say "Don't draw any conclusions, we're just saying the results support the hypothesis. We've no idea why." (I'm assuming this is the case here, since I can't read the actual article, only your quotes). What led them form the hypothesis in the first place? And yeah, hypotheses are supposed to just be viewpoint-neutral statistical tools. Only they're not.
for example, that parents who are predisposed to having autistic kids choose to live in Oregon. (What, is that so insane?)Not insane, completely reasonable. These three states have a ton of tech companies, who employ a whole lot of geeks systemizers like me. These folks tend to make higher than average wages and can afford property near the coast, where there is more rain. Growing evidence (or at least media reports) exists that children who have two systemizers for parents have higher rates of autism. But, Alone, you already knew that.
BTW, what is your other blog? I looked here, but there are no entries posted.
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
February 3, 2009 1:26 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I laughed. I guess that means I have a sense of humor biased in favor of you?
A lot of tech people are in those cities too (well San francisco/silicon valley) . . . there was once a rumor that it's because uber geeky already lacking in social skills possibly already on the autistic spectrum techies were breeding together . . .
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February 3, 2009 1:58 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
"there was once a rumor that it's because uber geeky already lacking in social skills possibly already on the autistic spectrum techies were breeding together . . ."
Sorry, can you say that again in English please?
Score: -2 (2 votes cast)
February 3, 2009 2:30 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I always heard the higher rates of autism in the pacific northwest had to do with the fact this area was the heart of the late 90s early 2000 internet / tech boom.
I did not find it offensive when it was suggested parents might play a role in autism. We go from one extreme to the other; we shift away from this "refridgerator mother" nonsense to the complete opposite extreme, that ONLY biology determines autistic behaviors.
I personally have a great deal of autistic traits, and I can see both a genetic and parenting basis for them. It is genetic in the sense that autistic traits are present in all of my family members, especially my maternal grandfather (which I take after a lot). I clearly would not have these traits if I did not have genes from a more extroverted, less nerdish family.
It is parental in the sense that my parents did not put a lot of effort into "getting me out of my shell", they didn't stress the importance of people and learning social skills... furthermore, they supported and encouraged my obsessive focus on a few topics of interest (buying me building blocks, things to take apart/build, art supplies and never encouraging me to diversify my activities). This is probably because my parents, especially my mother, are also this way and they see nothing wrong with being an antisocial savant.
In adulthood I have made attempts to learn how to socialize and be less obsessive with my activities... I have had some success. I am still not normal and people treat me like I'm a weirdo, but the fact that I have had SOME success suggests to me that some degree of autistic traits are encouraged by the parents. If parents focus a great deal on integrating the child who tends to isolate, shows disinterest in others, and fixates on a few hobbies, I think it is likely that autistic traits in adulthood can be reduced.
Of course, I'm mostly talking about aspbergers syndrome and people with autistic traits. If we're talking about severe autism where the child is non-verbal, that is a more biological situation (as opposed to a biologically-driven tendency like the aspbergers syndrome and possessing autistic traits).
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 3, 2009 5:54 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I actually had the opposite reaction to the parent comment. My first instinct was, "I knew it was the parents all along..."
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February 3, 2009 6:09 PM | Posted by : | Reply
As someone that lives in Oregon, I can't really say anything to autism rates here, but whatever genes/upbringing factors assist people in learning to drive well are almost totally absent here. This was also true of San Jose when I lived there. Phoenix, where I'm from, there you just had to watch out for the insanely old.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
February 3, 2009 6:39 PM | Posted by : | Reply
The research was conducted by Michael Waldman, an economist. His hypothesis was that higher levels of television watching during childhood could trigger autism. Obviously, there are lots of problems with the study, but he was looking at rainfall because higher rates of rainfall are associated with higher rates of television viewing. Here is the abstract:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=989648
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 3, 2009 7:18 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Two comments:
1. Unlike everyone else in the world who theorizes on the internet on the subject, I am aware of the existence of non-middle class, non-white autistic children. The rise in autism is not explicable by geeks breeding with geeks because it has taken place in all classes and all races. If the cause were geeks breeding with geeks it would be very very clear, because there wouldn't be a proportionate number of nonwhite and nonwhite Asian autistic children. But 1) there are and 2) there is a disproportionately low number of Asian autistic children. So, bzz, sorry, try again.
2. I have never had such a drive to get the fuck out of dodge as I have to get the fuck out of Seattle. I moved here a year ago and I want OUT. Perhaps it is some kind of deep instinctual warning system trying to prevent me from reproducing away from healthful sunshine.
Score: 0 (2 votes cast)
February 4, 2009 9:01 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Wow, so many Oregonians in just 8 comments -- I too was born and raised in Oregon. And I have quite a few autistic traits as well. (Next article: "Oregonians with autistic traits read The Last Psychiatrist", heh.)
I was actually looking forward to reading about how it was attributable to parents too, since like ItsTheWooo I can see genetic and parental influences for my own autistic traits. Basically, I could write nearly the same post as ItsTheWooo, with a key difference being that my parents never (as in, never) allowed me to see friends outside of school and church. They'd moved to the Oregonian countryside precisely to make it as difficult as possible for their kids to go out as teens. Doesn't exactly help develop social skills. But like ItsTheWooo, adulthood has been a much richer experience.
Common Reader, some of the cleanest air in the world can be found in the Pacific Northwest! While sunshine is nice, with it come larger populations, less cleansing rain and thus more pollution. (Yeah, you can tell I'm a native Oregonian... wait, I think I see some moss growing on the soles of my feet again, darnit, and I just cleaned them last month...)
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February 4, 2009 12:00 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Gosh, I wonder how my stepsister who needed a tube down her throat managed to watch so much TV en utero. O_O
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February 4, 2009 12:01 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Who needed a tube down her throat because she did not suckle or respond to the outside world. Sorry, I should read these before I post them.
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February 4, 2009 3:05 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Fraise, it's totally mold. MOLD CAUSES AUTISM. YOU READ IT HERE FIRST.
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February 5, 2009 8:53 AM | Posted by : | Reply
thx for the tip on the placenta dimension. i am gonna get that article. i read a lot of health research literature, and have never heard this mentioned. can't wait for the follow-up.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 5, 2009 9:19 AM | Posted by : | Reply
This is starting to remind me alot of Gabor Maté's books, especially Scattered Minds which was regarding ADHD. In the course of the three books he's written, he has been exploring similar ideas -- one of the thing he mentions is that even something as "insignificant" as the amount that the mother's eyes dilate when interacting with her baby can have huge cognitive impacts down the line.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 5, 2009 11:53 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Interesting about the placenta.
There are some newer studies pointing out the higher incidence of autism among preemies.
How much is related to the factors that caused the prematurity, how much to the immediate post-natal issues, how much to a combination of other factors, has yet to be determined.
I also, from my years of work with autism and ASD, think that there are different types of autism.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
February 5, 2009 1:56 PM | Posted by : | Reply
i literally cheer while reading this blog more than i did when the steelers won last sunday.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 5, 2009 5:47 PM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
Who even knows how valid it is? My point in citing it is a) isn't that wild? and b) um, does no one else want to follow this up?
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 6, 2009 2:16 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I also, from my years of work with autism and ASD, think that there are different types of autism.
There totally are. And people who have worked with the kids all know it. And nobody listens to us.
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
February 6, 2009 12:46 PM | Posted by : | Reply
why can't we face the 'real' truth? 'society' has become something so horrible and fake that some children are allergic to it and don't want to be a part of it. I totally get it.
Pay attention to your own lives for one day – really pay attention. You’ll see what I mean.
Score: 3 (3 votes cast)
February 6, 2009 3:04 PM | Posted by : | Reply
In Pubmed, I crossed these two searches: (monochorial monochorionic dichoronial dichorionic) with (autism autistic aspergers asperger's) and the result was one article: pubmed number 10511337. Not relevant to autism etiology. Thus it is true: no one has gotten any pubs out about this.
on a related topic, as posted by iwdw:
I seriously doubt that pupil dilation can have an impact on newborn cognitive development. Please give a citation for such a remarkable claim. More likely is detection of a chance relation, due to multiple testing.
When exploring mother-infant dynamics, a prominent methodology is to observe videotapes of mother-infant interaction, and have trained raters rate various aspects. Typically, a researcher in this does many similar studies, with variants on relational hypotheses, and so could re-run pupil dilation as a predictor in several study samples. Several aspects are measured in each (pupil dilation, eye contact time and frequency, smiles, etc.). So, there is a good opportunity to go 'fishing' for a significant relation between all these measures. With p at .05, one out of twenty zero-order analyses will be positive. I did similar video coding rating, with maybe 20 independent subjective ratings to provide per adult interviewee (on defense mechanism profile). We obviously had to watch out for spurious relations.
on a related topic, as posted by trei:
a two-year-old realizes how fake society is, and goes autistic? Wow, that is a new one for me. My two-year old would not even take the fake-fruit grape out of his mouth last week, after discovering it was fake. The music box has come out of Barney, so now he knows Barney is not really singing. He (my son, not Barney) has not yet gone autistic.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 6, 2009 9:17 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Gah you got to the best part of the entry and then you ended it with a "Too be continued..."
Lame!
Great post though so far
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 6, 2009 10:27 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Ah, finally, a post about science only, that doesn't offend anyone.
Whoops, sorry, that's my other blog.
Ah, yes, where you write about the same things, but so inoffensively it's hard to stay awake. Seen that one. [It needs a better photo. I'm just saying.] This one's better.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 7, 2009 12:56 AM | Posted by : | Reply
VI.
There is an additional twist to this story: the kind of autism (or schizophrenia) that is associated with advanced paternal age may be a different kind of autism or schizophrenia then the heritable kind.
It should be a different kind.. than the heritable kind, not then. Sorry to interrupt the creative juices but I keep seeing this pop up every where and boy does it get on my nerves.
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February 7, 2009 11:12 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Correlation does not by itself prove causality.
Anyone who forgets this needs to do penance by recite this 25 times and then re-reading Cook and Campbell.
It is so awful discovering one's child has been diagnosed with autism that many parents do the ordinary human thing--they long to make sense of the horror by looking for A Reason, A Cause.
And this is all too readily exploited by sloppy journalists and by the nuts who have done scaremongering about the non existent link between vaccines and autism.
This has had serious consequences. Six adults I know contracted whooping cough and are still recovering.
Herd immunity for many communicable disease has been decreasting because too few parents are getting their kids immunized.
So...all of you reading this--go and see if you are up to date with your own immunizations.
I found out I was antibody negative to chicken pox.
It also also just my good luck that I had obtained a whooping cough booster before cases began showing up in my community.
And dont forget flu shots. I got flu and double pneumonia three years ago and wouldve died had it not been for modern antibiotics.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 7, 2009 11:27 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
you missed the whole point, I'm afraid.
does your kid 'realize' the force of gravity? then how come he stands up? must be magic
I hear many kids have asthma. are they aware of any threats? They must have a hell of an intuition. the system can't cope. maybe it's the system frailty, maybe it's the threat. this can't be 'this' or 'that'; it's the whole bunch of things that surround us. as long as we can't figure it out, it's 'everything'. The magic word being system. If you kids realize what that is.
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February 7, 2009 5:49 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Trei is right. And sorry to be like this, but if you don't realize it, you're part of the problem. But it isn't really about autism at all. Check it out: modern society is BETTER for the disordered, better than it ever has been. It's normal people who are getting hosed, starting out when they are normal children.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 7, 2009 7:25 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Any trait determined by phenotype (rather than genotype) is going to be very hard to study. Is there a genotype out there that definitively precludes or includes ANY behavioral trait? I don't think that could ever be proven. At least not in my lifetime. The developmental time frame is an entire life span. We can't even figure out all the variables that come into play in a fingerprint...and that's just a small window of gestation. The reality is that autism and schizophrenia rely on behavioral symptoms for classification and without any biological markers where do behaviorists get the idea that it's even compatible with the standards applied to genetics? Think of it this way: What if I said I wanted to figure out the DNA markers that caused someone to blink every 30-40 seconds? I think the perception of input and output as it relates to DNA is way off. There are endlessly related genotypes and phenotypes to the same behavioral trait. Which makes sense if you remember that classifications such as autism is just a grouping of commonly found symptoms that vary in intensity and breadth. It's complex and vague at the same time! (Which is my pet peeve.) Behavioral scientists should start with something a little less ambitious. All this circumstantial evidence will never play out into something productive.
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February 8, 2009 7:29 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Imprinting
In some of the current debates over autism, you hear the parents of autistic children saying how extremely difficult it is to care for them, but also people with autism saying that, from the point of view of someone with the condition, it isn't all that bad (and indeed, in some respects an advantage).
There's ascertainment bias, of course: the people with autistic spectrum conditions who are in a position to say how they feel about it tend to be the ones who are least severely affected. And there are exceptions in both directions (people with autism who find some of their symptoms really horrible, mothers of autistic children who say the difficulty of caring for them has been over-hyped).
But assuming this picture is broadly correct, it's an obvious candidate for imprinted gene(s) - the trait is more harmful to the mothers (and,indirectly, siblings) of people with the condition than it is to those who have it.
Possible counterargument: you often see families where the mother and daughters have very mild autistic traits, and the son is more severely effected. This suggests that being female deactivates autism in some way, but if mothers are passing it on to sons, the maternally inherited gene clearly isn't being imprinted.
I'm looking forward to part 3.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 8, 2009 9:36 PM | Posted by : | Reply
"Unlike everyone else in the world who theorizes on the internet on the subject, I am aware of the existence of non-middle class, non-white autistic children."
You are truly a hero of the blogosphere.
Score: -1 (1 votes cast)
February 11, 2009 8:50 AM | Posted by : | Reply
Imprinting
You mean genomic imprinting, not behavioral imprinting, right? Something like this?
There is something called a "biopsychosocial" model of disorders like autism and schizophrenia. Most of the people in the field also understand quite well that these disorders are most likely a number of diverse conditions that have been lumped together for historical/convenience reasons. It's getting that information out to teachers, therapists and physicians that's the problem.
Any one article will always contain a certain conclusion that is being "pushed". Supposedly, the number of different studies being done should balance that; what it does in actuality is allow people to write concluding remarks in the vein of Group X claims Y, but Group W claims Z and pass it off as "critical reflections".
I don't know what causes autism either, because I'm not sure what that question even means. What autism are we talking about? The whole spectrum, with Aspergers included, or the severe cases of "painting walls with your own shit" kind? The span is pretty wide.
A diagnosis is never strictly medical, it's also social, cultural and political. I don't see ways to remedy that. Do you?
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 11, 2009 8:52 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
The filter ate my link (it was supposed to show up in "something like this"), so I'll try again.
http://pt.wkhealth.com/pt/re/jevb/abstract.00009809-200607000-00001.htm;jsessionid=JSYJ2kZtzJycW5jYhB3xFGpBLcrJpyRYQgt1hh1GQcVv2C3pB6b7!-2118404334!181195629!8091!-1
If that doesn't work, just google-scholar "autism genomic imprinting".
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 15, 2009 3:47 AM | Posted by : | Reply
TL: here we are on valentine's night, wondering how long it'll be 'til we get to see Part 3. i, for one, am hoping to see at least some mention of epigenetics. the thought being that environmental factors, not "random mutations", might trigger the switching (on or off) of gene sequences, thereby producing genotypic changes without actually "dumping" the affected genes.
and, who can say for sure that the asperger's kids with their so-called delayed maturation aren't the wave of the future? try this---we may be looking at kids who will be better able to adapt to and cope with the mess they'll inherit.
of course, any such inheritance depends wholly on humankinds ability to bring this Handbasket back up out of the whirlpool, but that's a whole nother matter and a temptation to go way far afield from the specific topic of Autism. any Takers?
how's that for cryptic?
i
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 15, 2009 3:51 AM | Posted, in reply to , by : | Reply
o dang! i think i meant "phenotype" where i used "genotype". tired.
i
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February 17, 2009 10:54 AM | Posted by : | Reply
You say dizygotic twins haved same DNA, different placentas... That's not true: DNAs are different, too. It's after meiosis, I seem to remind from elementary biology: different pieces of the two alleles of parent genomes get into gonadic cells. So the difference in hereditability could be due to the chance to get the bad pieces of genome vs. the good ones.
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February 17, 2009 12:06 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Shame on me. You meant monochorionic vs dichorionic. I should shut up my mouth. Sorry.
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March 6, 2009 9:00 PM | Posted by : | Reply
I have a different hypothesis for why older fathers have more children on the autism spectrum. It induces stress in pregnant mothers which lowers NO levels.
http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2008/10/theory-of-mind-vs-theory-of-reality.html
Being on the autism spectrum is the generic phenotype response to stress in utero. It isn't a "bug", it is a "feature".
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April 25, 2010 7:24 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Monozygotic twins' DNA is not "completely identical." (See "Twin Studies, Post Genomics, and Behavioral Plasticity" by Evan Chalmers out of Duke)
Also, monozygotic twin concordance rates for schizophrenia are generally held to be less than 50%.
Score: 1 (1 votes cast)
February 17, 2011 10:13 AM | Posted by : | Reply
I'd love to read your thoughts on imprinting. Part 3?
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October 23, 2012 1:17 PM | Posted by : | Reply
Maybe this is going out on a limb but could it be that we are recognizing this disease in a greater frequency because the culture has changed? The whole idea of an autistic spectrum, where kids who are 'mildly autistic' seems premised on the idea that our present exhibitionist culture is the human norm. The emphasis we place on emotional revelations, experiences and acting out (where most language is reduced to phatic-responses as if we are all Marlon Brando in On the Water Front) seems relatively novel. Most of these sort of interactions, when acceptable, where in large part group activities, like when crowning a king, and I can see a lot of the mildly autistic doing quite well in those bygone eras.
It also can't be stressed enough that modernism and liberalism in terms of Christianity place a heavy emphasis on the non-rational experience of the believer. All of us in the Anglosphere are some type of ancestor to the non-conformists in British Christianity and we have adopted much of this from those roots. Quakerism, the Methodist, Liberal Protestants (with its truth/value dichtomy) and currently Pentecostals all influence what we see as "normal" and "abnormal" behavior and our religious standards of societal interactions.
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May 5, 2014 10:36 PM | Posted by : | Reply
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October 5, 2014 10:41 PM | Posted by : | Reply
And the third bias that isn't even mentioned is that both of these problems can be entirely psychological in origin and only exhibit biological and behavioral symptoms. Mind may not equal brain. Trip on that for a bit.
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