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More Evidence of Increase in Profound Autism
I am Jack's username writes "The New York times has an article (no registration required) about an increase in profound autism in California of 273% between 1987 and 1998. Between 1999 and 2001 more than 6 500 cases were reported, similar to the number reported between 1970 to 1995. The increase cannot be accounted for by misdiagnosis, increased awareness, childhood immunizations, emigration, birth injuries, and genetics. Some autism experts think the actual cases to be dramatically more than reported in the UC study. See also previous discussions about high-function geek rich areas like silicon valley."
Surely the way to chase this down is to get some clever cross-disciplinary folk on the case. Meanwhile, here's two links that don't require registration:
The Independant's version of the same story.
The BBC is bringing up the MMR "link".
Current theories suggest it's more like sickle-cell mutations. If you have 'half' of autism, you're good at living within your mind/interacting with machines and information - the classic 'geek' skills.
:}
However, breed the right mix together and you get the full whammy, an individual incapable of interacting with social 'reality' at all. As of yet, there's no "niche" for the poor kids (no evolutionary advantage off getting on Maury Povich), but maybe they'd be killer ML coders had we direct-brain interfaces.
If this *is* a consequence of "geek inbreeding," it'd be interesting to consider the sociological factors that make it so widespread.
Of course, I don't think they've ruled out environmental factors yet, either. Could be another thalidomide at play.
This is also being discussed over at kuro5hin.
The cake is a pie
There is some pretty compelling evidence that gluten, a grain protein, triggers autism. Many parents of formerly autistic (!) children swear that a gluten-free diet "cured" their child's autism.
For some unknown reason the medical/scientific community has been very resistant to studying this phenomenon.
-Peter
The Telegraph had an article back in February of last year (no longer available) that set the rate of autism in the UK at 1 in 175 children, or 58 out of every 10,000 (compared to the 10 in 10,000 rate reported in California.)
/.'ers may find Mercola's website hard to stomach, since he's going to tell you to exercise and to stop eating McD's fries and twinkies. ;-)
The evidence is becoming very persuasive that immunizations do bear a large portion of the blame. See the National Vaccine Information Center for some good articles on links to this and other complications.
For our part, after reading dozens of books and talking to as many people, we made the decision not to vaccinate our now six year old. (Commence the flamebait about how we're playing with fire, yadda yadda yadda...)
Dr. Mercola, a naturopathic doctor out of Chicago, also has many good articles about the possible causes of austism. WARNING:
Crocuta
Could it be accounted for because of the change in population over the last few years in California? Perhaps there are more people having children now than before in that area, as it is becoming a place full of younger people, more apt to have children in order to start a family.
I don't think so. The article clearly states that they've excluded a wide array of conceivable factors. Something as obvious as a demographic shift would be very obvious. It also, in and of itself, would affect the absolute incdence, but no the overall rate of autism.
However, there is no shortage of theories to explain the surge in autism. There are two of them that seem to deserve some research:
- Autism is caused by mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines.
- Autism is caused by methylmercury in fish, when eaten during pregnancy.
The FDA already discourages eating some types of fish during pregnancy (they even publish mercury levels in seafood).I suggest you increase your "experiences" a bit more and read up on autism here.
:-)
Or check this out. It's a list of symptoms from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (commonly referred to as "The DSM IV").
Sure, a lot of us geeks fit the criteria, but one must be very careful to not confuse introversion with autism.
This gluten story is typical of bullshitotherapists. What happens is that *some* people have an intolerance to gluten (I think it's called coelial disease), and their body reacts badly to it, with very different symptoms from person to person.
It happens that, among those few people who have this disorder, the symptoms can look like ADHD or Autism. But those persons do not have ADHD or Autism, they really have gluten intolerance! The problem is that, IIRC, this disorder is pretty difficult to diagnose, and since it's quite rare, and as a result of the confusing symptoms, most of the victims are not properly treated.
Now here comes the bullshitotherapist stupidity: blame ADHD and Autism on gluten. Et voila!
But yeah, if you suffer from this gluten problem, and you stop eating gluten altogether, the symptoms will usually go away; now the difference is that psychostimulants won't do a thing to those people: they will still have the ADHD-like symptoms. Conversely, people with real ADHD won't get any benefit from removing gluten from their diet, they'll just waste a lot of their time.
The following data is lifted directly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/autism/au
Epidemiologic studies have shown no relationship between MMR vaccination in children and development of autism:
* In 1997, the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) was examined to see if there was any link between measles vaccine and neurological events. The researchers found no indication that measles vaccine contributes to the development of long-term neurological damage, including educational and behavioral deficits (Miller et al., 1997).
* A study by Gillberg and Heijbel (1998) examined the prevalence of autism in children born in Sweden from 1975-1984. There was no difference in the prevalence of autism among children born before the introduction of the MMR vaccine in Sweden and those born after the vaccine was introduced.
* In 1999, the British Committee on Safety of Medicines convened a "Working Party on MMR Vaccine" to conduct a systematic review of reports of autism, gastrointestinal disease, and similar disorders after receipt of MMR or measles/rubella vaccine. It was concluded that the available information did not support the posited associations between MMR and autism and other disorders.
* Taylor and colleagues (1999) studied 498 children with autism in the UK and found the age at which they were diagnosed was the same regardless of whether they received the MMR vaccine before or after 18 months of age or whether they were never vaccinated. Importantly, the first signs or diagnoses of autism were not more likely to occur within time periods following MMR vaccination than during other time periods. Also, there was no sudden increase in cases of autism after the introduction of MMR vaccine in the UK. Such a jump would have been expected if MMR vaccine was causing a substantial increase in autism.
* Kaye and colleagues (2001) assessed the relationship between the risk of autism among children in the UK and MMR vaccine. Among a subgroup of boys aged 2-5 years, the risk of autism increased almost 4 fold from 1988 to 1993, while MMR vaccination coverage remained constant at approximately 95% over these same years.
* Researchers in the U.S. found that among children born between 1980 and 1994 and enrolled in California kindergartens, there was a 373% relative increase in autism cases, though the relative increase in MMR vaccine coverage by the age of 24 months was only 14% (Dales et al., 2001). For more on this study, see California Data on Theory of Autism and MMR Immunization.
* Researchers in the UK (Frombonne & Chakrabarti, 2001) conducted a study to test the idea that a new form, or "new variant," of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) exists. This new variant IBD has been described as a combination of developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms occurring shortly after MMR immunization. Information on 96 children (95 immunized with MMR) who were born between 1992 and 1995 and were diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder were compared with data from 2 groups of autistic patients (one group of 98 born before MMR was ever used and one group of 68 who were likely to have received MMR vaccine). No evidence was found to support a new syndrome of MMR-induced IBD/autism. For instance, the researchers found that there were no differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups with regard to when their parents first became concerned about their child's development. Similarly, the rate of developmental regression reported in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups was not different; therefore, there was no suggestion that developmental regression had increased in frequency since MMR was introduced. Of the 96 children in the first group, no inflammatory bowel disorder was reported. Furthermore, there was no association found between developmental regression and gastrointestinal symptoms.
* Another group of researchers in the UK (Taylor et al., 2002) also examined whether MMR vaccination is associated with bowel problems and developmental regression in children with autism, looking for evidence of a "new variant" form of IBD/autism. The study included 278 cases of children with autism and 195 with atypical autism (cases with many of the features of childhood autism but not quite meeting the required criteria for that diagnosis, or with atypical features such as onset of symptoms after the age of 3 years). The cases included in this study were born between 1979 and 1998. The proportion of children with developmental regression or bowel symptoms did not change significantly from 1979 to 1988, a period which included the introduction of MMR vaccination in the UK in 1988. No significant difference was found in rates of bowel problems or regression in children who received the MMR vaccine before their parents became concerned about their development, compared with those who received it only after such concern and those who had not received the MMR vaccine. The findings provide no support for an MMR associated "new variant" form of autism and further evidence against involvement of MMR vaccine in autism.
Interestingly, the test result interpretation key says: Scores over 32 are generally taken to indicate Asperger's Syndrome or high-functioning autism, with more than 34 an "extreme" score. A "normal" score, based on control groups, is about 16 (or 15 for women and between 17 and 18 for men). A group of mathematics-contest winners scored an average of 24.5. A group of scientists scored an average of 18.5 (19 for men, 17 for women), with computer scientists at about 21, physicists at 19 and those in biology or medicine at about 15.
Who are "we", and who told you that "we" are moving towards a consensus? Yes, until recently many vaccines contained traces of mercury as part of the preservative agent thimerosal.
The Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academy of Sciences) reported in its October 2001 report Immunization Safety Review: Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Disorders that there was no correlation between thimerosal exposure and autism, ADHD, speech delays, or other developmental disorders. They did recommend that thimerosal use be eliminated as part of a campaign to reduce all exposures to mercury on principle.
UC Davis has just started (in 2001) a large-scale, controlled study to examine two thousand children. Quoting the principle investigator Isaac Pessah, "We will carry out the first comprehensive analysis anywhere of the blood levels of toxins, such as mercury, pesticides and pcbs, in children with autism, compared to children without the disorder".
Quite frankly, if the NAS has studied the issue and concluded that mercury in vaccines is not correlated with autism, and UC Davis is willing to sink $5 million into a study to characterize the effects of a wide range of environmental contaminants on the development of autism--well, that doens't sound like a consensus to me.
For a serious disorder like autism, it is always very appealling to be able to say, "Yes, that's the cause. I'm glad we can fix it, and punish the people who exposed our children to this debilitating syndrome." Unfortunately, the situation isn't that simple.
If you check the web, you'll find references that cite 1) high levels of mercury in hair samples from autistic children and 2) low levels of mercury in hair samples from autistic children as "evidence" of mercury poisoning causing autism. Still other sites (particularly those that are selling chelation therapy for autism) often suggest that there isn't a good noninvasive test for mercury levels in a child, so mercury poisoning should be diagnosed by indirect tests or through consideration of symptoms (that invariably look like autism.)
The "authorities" that assert that mercury is the cause of autism unfortunately often fall into two categories. The first group consists of doctors that believe in chelation therapy (there are no large-scale controlled studies to support this conclusion) and the second group contains lawyers who have launched large class-action suits against vaccine manufacturers.
I don't mean to imply that there are no legitimate physicians and scientists who consider mercury to be the cause of autism--I myself would not be surprised if there was some environmental cause to explain the increasing incidence. But the intellectually honest among us have to admit that there is by no means a consensus--or even a strong indication--that mercury is the major cause of the disorder.
~Idarubicin
Autism doesn't benefit programming. Autism is not like winning the nerd lottery, it's profoundly disabling. The high functioning autistics with rote skills are not lucky, their creative capacity is highly crippled and their comprehension of the appropriateness of language is low. They almost always have problems with mathematics, too.
Not even Asperger's is a beneficial disorder.
The evidence is becoming very persuasive that immunizations do bear a large portion of the blame...
There may be commonality between the vaccination figures and autism figures. That does not mean that the one causes the other.
(Commence the flamebait about how we're playing with fire, yadda yadda yadda...)
To be successful a vaccination programme needs to include over 95% of the population in order to achieve 'herd immunity'. Less than 95% and you run the risk of an epidemic. Remember, the ultimate aim is to erradicate the virus. Deciding not to vaccinate your children based on the unsubstantiated causality between vaccination and autism is selfish and irresponsible.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
As the commentary intimated, the spread of autism cannot be accounted for genetically since autistics rarely have children. (source: comprehensive Globe and Mail article on this very subject)
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I'm totally serious. There's a brief test at the end of this Globe and Mail article on the autism explosion and the apparent geek link.
:-)
Interestingly enough, I received an AQ of 12 (below the average of 18), meaning I'm more well-adjusted than "normal" people. Rather amusing I thought.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Some people have found gluten-free diets successful in helping autistic children.
The whole gluten-intolerance area is *way* behind other areas of research; hopefully someday there will be more discoveries that can help both conditions (especially autism).
Rather than slashdotting a specific site, I'll just mention that a google search for "gluten intolerance" and autism has a lot of related sites and articles.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I'm sorry, but how can any Autism study say there's a 273% increase in Autsim and not take into account that the DIAGNOSTIC RULES CHANGED IN 1994?
The DSM-IV came out in 1994 and significantly broadened the diagnostic criteria for Autism. In my not so humble opinion, this has to have contributed directly to the 273% number the UCD study spouts.
My 3-year-old son was diagnosed with Autism last year. There are a huge number of "autistic traits" scattered through out my family. I have no doubt that if born today, I would have been diagnosed on the "autism spectrum", my father certainly would have been, as well as two of my nephews and quite likely my sister.
As it is, we were simply called "different" or "challenging" or "problematic". "Autism" was reserved for the likes of "Rainman".
The study (at least as it's being reported) is invalid. There has not been a 273% increase in Autism, there has been a 273% percent increase in the Autism cases being diagnosed.
"Autism is caused by mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines [mercola.com]."
If this were true, in the future we should see a sharp drop in Autism cases, in children born right around now. The FDA passed down an instruction to reduce the use of thimerosal a while ago, and most manufacturers have either reformulated, or are in the process of reformulating to use other preservatives (a few never used thimerosal to begin with).
Mercury causes autism, mercury is in vaccines. In the past 2 or 3 years there has been a huge increase in fish consumption due to its health benefits. Fish has lots of mercury. Its also possible fossil fuel additives made to clean up the air in CA are creating mercury compounds.