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Wired on Autism in the Valley
digaman writes: "The December issue of Wired magazine contains an article of mine on what appears to be an upsurge in autism among the children of programmers and engineers in Silicon Valley: "The Geek Syndrome." A complicated issue, explored in depth. I hear the California Department of Developmental Services is launching a research project to investigate the questions raised in the article."
The BBC has an interesting article that gives some real numbers. The article says that about "pervasive developmental disorders" are running at a rate of about 46 per 10,000, and full out autism is about 17 per 10,000.
The future isn't what it used to be.
One of the things I have been finding out a lot about recently is aspergers due to living with the daughter of an expert.
We ahve been toying with ideas about links between people suffering from high functioning aspergers syndrome and people who work in professions such as IT, especially development. This is mainly because with aspergers the only major outward impairment of the individual is with social interraction and social awareness and this coupled with tendency to obsess over repetitive detail means that aspergers sufferers fit the mould of good programmers.
I don't know enough about the syndrome to know if it is passed on through genes, but one could postulate if there is a group with a higher than average make up of the disease who are breeding amongst themselves it might possibly lead to a significent level of new cases compared to the national average.
Even today a lot of aspergers cases are misdiagnosed as straight autism.
Here for more information on aspergers and the differences between it and autism
Working for the (other) man
This is a very unfortunate and common misconception; the first signs and symptoms of autism-spectrum disorders often appear around the time when the child begins to speak, and this coincides with the time when the MMR vaccine is given. The epidemiological evidence is strong against there being a causal link.
If you're seriously interested in reading about it rather than just deciding that the temporal correlation between the two is sufficient proof of causality, both BMJ and the Lancet have had a lot of original articles and correspondence on the topic in the past few years, for example the following study by Taylor et al.
Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association
Taylor et al.
Summary
Background We undertook an epidemiological study to investigate whether measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may be causally associated with autism.
Methods Children with autism born since 1979 were identified from special needs/disability registers and special schools in eight North Thames health districts, UK. Information from clinical records was linked to immunisation data held on the child health computing system. We looked for evidence of a change in trend in incidence or age at diagnosis associated with the introduction of MMR vaccination to the UK in 1988. Clustering of onsets within defined postvaccination periods was investigated by the case-series method.
Findings We identified 498 cases of autism (261 of core autism, 166 of atypical autism, and 71 of Asperger's syndrome). In 293 cases the diagnosis could be confirmed by the criteria of the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD10: 214 [82%] core autism, 52 [31%] atypical autism, 27 [38%] Asperger's syndrome). There was a steady increase in cases by year of birth with no sudden "step-up" or change in the trend line after the introduction of MMR vaccination. There was no difference in age at diagnosis between the cases vaccinated before or after 18 months of age and those never vaccinated. There was no temporal association between onset of autism within 1 or 2 years after vaccination with MMR (relative incidence compared with control period 094 [95% CI 060147] and 109 [079152]). Developmental regression was not clustered in the months after vaccination (relative incidence within 2 months and 4 months after MMR vaccination 092 [038221] and 100 [052195]). No significant temporal clustering for age at onset of parental concern was seen for cases of core autism or atypical autism with the exception of a single interval within 6 months of MMR vaccination. This appeared to be an artifact related to the difficulty of defining precisely the onset of symptoms in this disorder.
Interpretation Our analyses do not support a causal association between MMR vaccine and autism. If such an association occurs, it is so rare that it could not be identified in this large regional sample.
Lancet 1999; 353: 20262
I'd like to believe that when the right woman comes along I'll have the courage to say, "no thanks, I'm married."