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."

Comments

could it be due to Air polution?

[the_2nd_coming]

I mean they say that a baby breaths in twice the carsinogens in thre first day of life in california than what has been deemed safe for a life time.

what is the autism rate in other parts of the country or the world?

Taking the (flame)bait

[Yosemite Sue]

I'll bite ...

What economic motives are there for vaccine makers to produce a product that could cause autism?

Just FYI, most of the employees at the vaccine company I am familiar with insist on their families being inoculated with the vaccine produced by that company. They are aware of the stringent testing, QA/QC and improvements in the products made by the company. Of course, all vaccine manufacturers have to meet an extremely high standard of quality now, but it shows you the loyalty and security that these employees feel about their employer's products.

As for searching the newsgroups, I have to just laugh. What an unbiased and peer-reviewed source! (Admittedly, not all scientific publications can be regarded as unbiased ... but they are certainly peer-reviewed, and not completely anecdotal!)

With the recent upsurge of panicked parents refusing to let their children be vaccinated, I'm (pessimistically) awaiting the return of the scourges that our grandparents used to fear ...

YS

Re:Old news. 2 nerds = autist child

[Usquebaugh]

What about other areas with a high density of intelligent people? OR what does Silicon Valley have that no other area does?

I have no idea what causes the problem but neither does anyone else.

Re:Evolution?

[juuri]

Now that there are theories that heat proteins (like hsp90?) can buffer "mutations" until there is a significant change in environment, punctuated evolution theories have a lot more grounding and seem to make much more sense than long term slight evolution.

Re:Programmer ... I'm an excellent programer

[octalgirl]

I have a feeling that the answer to this question is going to shock and dismay us all.

Actually, I read an article once on how children (boys especially) of programmers and engineers tended to display autistic behaviors, often leading to a misdiagnosis of autism. I was interested because my own nephew, at over two years old, still had not spoken one word. The doctors were heading toward an autistic condition. But the article went on to explain how even though they tend to display these early symptoms that can last from birth to five years old, they are just fine, and tend to end up very smart bordering on genius level. The most common thread under these conditions was that they were children of programmers or engineers. My brother is a programmer, so I thought it was rather interesting. (and yes I do think my nephew (who is now 6) is quite a little genius. He could read some words at two but couldn't talk. A few months in speech therapy fixed that. He bypassed kids books by age four and has been reading encyclopedia style books on anything to do with fish, bugs, snakes or animals of any kind. At 6 he can tell you what an estuary is, knows everything about anything that lives in the deep sea, will gladly explain about any 'aquatic animals' found in a zoo, including their eating and 'reproductive' habits and sound out words like carnivorous'. His hero is Steve Erwin, Crocodile Hunter, of course.

Just search for autism engineer.
Here's a clip
A couple of years ago the UK magazine Professional Engineering published an article entitled "Is there a bit of the Rain Man in every engineer?" linking engineers with children who have autism. Autistic children don't develop normal social relationships and they tend to wander off by themselves and play with mechanical things. The article said that engineers and autistic children shared various characteristics including strong visualisation skills, strong affinity with physical objects and being "less interested in social activities and communication.

Another
Simon Baron-Cohen, an autism researcher at the University of Cambridge, found that there were 2 ½ times as many engineers in the family history of people with autism.

Re:Fat parents?

[xA40D]

What's changed in a big way in the last twenty years? Fast food. Tolerance for fat people.

On study I heard about suggested that the modern "fear of fat" - the fear of actually eating fat, not of being fat - was actually harming the development of children. Lack of fatty-acids imparing the development of brain tissue or something.

Would the parents age cause autism?

[t0qer]

My grandparents had their kids at 16, my parents had me around 20-22, my wife and I are 29-27 respectively. We haven't had children yet because we want to wait for things to become financially stable (we want our kids to have a good home)

Out of all the factors in the article, it didn't seem to touch too much on the age factor. I read somewhere once that older parents can lead to all sorts of abnormalities with pregnancy. Could it be age is playing a role here?

There are a lot of similiar couples/singles my wife and I know, they're slowly approaching 30's, no children yet. Compared with our parents who all had thier kids in their 20's we're a bit behind :)

It seems that the older we have children, the more that can go wrong. Silicon valley is a tough place to live (financially) and the burden of buying a house here and paying the bills has made alot of my friend put off having children till their 30's. It's an enviromentally prompted response to make sure we give our successive generation a strong foothold in life.

I think the answer is as simple as, people in silicon valley have children at an older age, therefore more autistic children are born as a result.

Evolution redefined?

[cryofan2]

Autism genes that enhance programming abilities may lead to less children for the autistic programmer (AP), but if the AP is programming in the area of, say, development of life-extending technology (e.g., beating old age, cancer etc.) then the AP genes may lead to greater disperal of human genes later down the road.

Is there a 'geek' syndrome?

[c13v3rm0nk3y]

The Globe and Mail (Saturday October 19, 2002) has a related article (with the title given in the subject line) in print and online.

They even have an "AQ" test to see where you are on the "autism spectrum".

I'm not sure I share the enthusiasm some of the quoted experts have for the idea that a number of talented people are having children with "good genes", which is causing this recent increase in autistic behaviour. Even assuming that exteme talent implies retarded social skills, I find it hard to believe that the basic talent it takes to write code, train users and invent documentation is extreme enough to warrant this kind of musing.

Add to that the skepticism I have for anything as complex as social interaction and family having a measurable genetic quality...

Good read nonetheless.

Autism is not alone.

[sam_handelman]

So, what might cause Asthma (Which may be leveling off as we speak), childhood Diabetes, increased incidence of autoimmune disorders and cancer, and increased incidence of autism?

It isn't vaccines! The science doesn't stand up. If you think it's vaccines, we'll agree to disagree, okay?

I blame the chlorinated carbon molecule.

Organochlorines have been absent from the earth, in any appreciable amounts, since before the appearance of multicelled life. They are immensely stable, but nothing natural creates them - for energetic reasons, they are purely synthetic. They have unique (powerful, TOXIC) chemistry that we can "exploit but never control", in the words of Pandora's Poison author Shalini Ramanathan. This is an excellent book if you're interested in which feature of our 20th century lifestyle is raising disease incidences.

Most geeks including myself are midly autistic

[Billly Gates]

I remember a very old 2-3 year slashdot news article mentioning this. It is no longer online. Basically a women did a study with nerdy and brilliant computer geniuses and mathematicians to find out if they are autistic to a mild degree. Turns out she discovered a separate syndrome which is in the mild autism category.

For the geeks reading this:

1.) Do you find certain social situations difficult or awkward?

2.) Do you feel out of place sometimes?

3.) Do you have bizarre certain interests that no on cares about? *computers cough cough

4.) Do you feel smart in certain area's but lack knowledge sometimes of other different area's?

5.) Do you find expressing emotions difficult even though you have them?

6.) Do you feel yourself to be somewhat clumsy ?

7.) As a kid did you feel more interested in complex things like science or weather rather then playing GI joe ?

8.) Do you find yourself to be somewhat compulsive?

Chances are you may be mildly autistic

Autism and its related aspergers syndrome is very complex. Its different then mental retardation and is hard to describe. I know because I have aspergers which is a mild variant of autism and have an IQ of 122.

I have both conditions that match autism and aspergers so I am unique. For example I can easily handle most social situations but I am clumsy and have poor eye and hand coordination. To this day I can not play a piano with two hands. The mechanism in the brain that divides the signals to my hands does not work properly. My left hand will play the rhythm of my right and my right would play the rhythms of my left. In complex situations like in relationships, I can notice my difficulties. I do not do well when women are not real direct about how they feel. Why do women do this?

As a kid I fell into the autism category but as I grew up I become less and less autistic. I use to daydream at school and go into my own world whenever the teacher wasn't looking. I no longer do this. I can do things today that I could not do a decade ago. Its weird and I can not explain it but I guess maybe my brain is re-wiring itself. I have brilliant in some area's but falter in others. Especially anything doing with 3d-space or mathematics. However I am great with logic and programming which uses the same area's of the brain.

Re:Most geeks including myself are midly autistic

[spectecjr]

Scientology 101:

For the geeks reading this:

1.) Do you find certain social situations difficult or awkward?

2.) Do you feel out of place sometimes?

3.) Do you have bizarre certain interests that no on cares about? *computers cough cough

4.) Do you feel smart in certain area's but lack knowledge sometimes of other different area's?

5.) Do you find expressing emotions difficult even though you have them?

6.) Do you feel yourself to be somewhat clumsy ?

7.) As a kid did you feel more interested in complex things like science or weather rather then playing GI joe ?

8.) Do you find yourself to be somewhat compulsive?

Chances are you may be mildly autistic


Scientologists use this mechanism;
They ask you to fill in a questionnaire with questions like "do you read the dictionary for pleasure?" or "do you feel sad and cry during movies?".

Questions which 99% of people will answer YES to.

They then put you in a white room with a guy in a labcoat who marks your paper for you... then comes in and puts his hand on yours, and says "But it's ok... we can help you"

But let's analyze this:

Question 1:
Do you find certain social situations difficult or awkward? ... because you had the shit beaten out of you by certain classmates with an IQ less than 50 because you were different?

Question 2:
Do you feel out of place sometimes? ... like when you go somewhere you've never been before? Or when you go somewhere on your own, without anyone you know? Or just because you've been beaten up because you were different and learned not to socialize because it was dangerous?

Question 3:
Do you have bizarre certain interests that no on cares about? ... like weird esoteric scientific subjects which no-one else understands and therefore don't care about? Did you retreat into books at an early age because others would beat you up and tease you?

Question 4:
Do you feel smart in certain area's but lack knowledge sometimes of other different area's?

This one's just classic. Let's see your options:
A. Answer No: This means you know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. Or think you do. Which makes you a conceited idiot.
B. Answer Yes: This means that you know enough to know that you DON'T know everything. Which if anything makes you honest about where you are in the scheme of things. How many electrical engineers do you know who can tell you the best way to make duck breast in duck confit?

Question 5:
Do you find expressing emotions difficult even though you have them? ... if so, Scientology can help!

Sorry... lost the plot there. Do people have trouble expressing emotions? Sure - all the time. That's because they're emotions. Feelings cannot be easily expressed because they just *are* - they have no meaning other than how they feel. There is no referent. You're somewhere between not at all and extremely on the sad/happy/angry/jealous/upset/whatever axes. These things lend to poetry more than anything else -- which is why people have difficulty expressing them; after all, not many people can write poetry.

Question 6:
Do you feel yourself to be somewhat clumsy ?


Clumsiness is for the most part a learned skill. It's spatial awareness, observation, remembering your body's space and limits, and body-eye coordination.

Question 7:
As a kid did you feel more interested in complex things like science or weather rather then playing GI joe?

Where you a conscientious objector in the back-yard wars?

Did your playmates call you a commie?

Did they lock you up and stick a white feather in your hair?

Some people don't like playing with dolls. Sorry. And some people have an interest in complex things *and* play games. Like pretending you have super powers. Or building traps in the back yard and having your very own Indiana Jones style base called Trapmania.

Question 8:
Do you find yourself to be somewhat compulsive?

I'm a smoker. Yes.
I go on shopping sprees when the discounts are on at Macy's. Yes.
I just can't be seen dead outside the house without putting on my makeup and toenail polish. Yes.
I watch Survivor every week. Yes.

I have both conditions that match autism and aspergers so I am unique. For example I can easily handle most social situations but I am clumsy and have poor eye and hand coordination. To this day I can not play a piano with two hands. The mechanism in the brain that divides the signals to my hands does not work properly. My left hand will play the rhythm of my right and my right would play the rhythms of my left.

Congratulations. That also happens to the rest of the population the older they are when they try to learn the piano. It also applies to juggling -- there is a hump you have to get over, after which it becomes easy. But getting over that hump is the hard part.

In complex situations like in relationships, I can notice my difficulties. I do not do well when women are not real direct about how they feel. Why do women do this?

To confuse men. Try listening to a men-orientated talk radio show some time. You'll see that you are not alone.

Hmm...maybe not.

[ColGraff]

First of all, note that I am not saying you don't have Asperger's. But it doesn't neccessarily follow from the definition you provided that Asperger's is even the most common cause for the behaviors described. For example, I was a bright little kid. I picked up reading early, enjoyed it greatly, and so of course I was made fun of often in elementary school. This, for a long time, made me reluctant to interact with other people or try to make friends - I thought they'd just make fun of me. (Sound familiar, slashdotters?) I got over it eventually, but for a lot of my early childhood, I missed out on a lot of the normal socialization process.

As a result, I'm a bit socially inept. A lot of social interactions other people take for granted - especially interacting with groups of people - I picked up later. But this isn't because of some sort of neurological problem - I just didn't have a normal social life, because the other kids made it hard to have one.

Likewise, I have above-average verbal skills (don't judge by this post, please), a strong interest in politics and history, and I'm a bit self-centered in my conversation. But this can all be easily enough explained as the product of social isolation and an affinity for the written word, not Asperger's. If you like to read, history (and politics, which is really just a subset of the same) is something you're going to have an easy time learning. And as for being a bit self-centered - again, that could be the result of social isolation. Or, I could just be an asshole, that's certainly a possibility. :-)

In the interests of intellectual honesty though, I feel the need to mention some things that I can't explain away with social/psychological factors. Asperger's suffers, if I read the definition write, tend to have mild speech problems - I had to visit a speech therapist for a while when I was seven. And my handwriting has always been very, very bad. And, as my friends and family can attest, I do seem to lack common sense. :-)

My point, however, is it makes no sense for the tends of thousands of fine people on /. to assume they have Asperger's - it's an easy explanation for nerdiness, but it needn't always (or even often) be the correct one.

Re:Programmer ... I'm an excellent programer

[ImaLamer]

You mention he didn't talk for a while... it is known that children that don't cry often while babies end up very smart children.

Maybe this non-talking is a sign also?

Re:Autoimmunity

[Thagg]

We think that this could have something to do with our five-year-old with autism, but it's hard to know. Our son was diagnosed with kidney reflux as a fetus using ultrasound, and at six months he was prescribed a low dose of amoxicillin to be taken every day to prevent bladder infections, which could back up into the kidneys a destroy them. We did this until he was about 22 months old or so.

While this is the kind of rediculous anecdote that shouldn't be given too much credence, it amazed me to find another patient of the same kidney specialist in our autism support group; with the same antibiotic program. Probably just a coincidence, but maybe not. Both syndromes are quite rare (although autism apparently becoming less so), and to find both in two kids is pretty darn unlikely, but of course possible.

thad

Re:Autism Quotient test (AQ)

[Fweeky]

The first thing I thought when I saw that was "There's no way I'm doing that manually".

So, er, I didn't ;)

That's based on the same code I used for the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, btw.

Socialization, "intelligence", and alienation

[electroniceric]

Kudos to the editors for posting this piece - it's an interesting forum in which to discuss this issue. Numerous people have posted personal experience with proper or improper diagnosis of Asperger's or autism.

One of the implicit themes I see here that has not gotten much open discussion is that of being smarter than other people, both as a kid and afterwards. This notion seems very deeply embedded in geek culture, and is tightly bound up the sense of alienation that seems so prevalent here. For some reason, being "smarter" than other kids seems to set one in the direction of alienting narcissism.

As Jay Matthews, a very well-spoken education columnist for the Washington Post puts it in a piece on college interviews:

Here is Hernandez's assessment of Ivy League admissions officers: "They may consist of graduate students, former teachers, spouses of professors and college staff; and career administrators. The majority of this group did not graduate from any highly selective college, let alone an Ivy League one. . . . [Many] are not expert readers . . . and most of them are not scholars or intellectuals. . . . What I am trying to say without shocking too much is that the very best of applicants will often be brighter than many of those who will be evaluating them."

Oh my. I can only imagine, with horror, what might happen if an applicant accepted this analysis as a guide for proper interview behavior. It is not a good idea to think you are smarter than other people, particularly those from whom you need a favorable report. Say, for example, a young applicant in the middle of an interview mentions his term paper on progressive education and, trying to be helpful, says, "Maybe you haven't heard of John Dewey, he helped launched that movement." Or what will an alumni interviewer think when he asks an applicant about her science fair entry and hears these words: "Well, this gets very complicated, but I will try to summarize it for you."

This is some of this wisest advice I can imagine giving a teenager. First of all the notion of being "smarter" than other people is suspect - you have to define smart in a very narrow way to believe that. Or put another way, there sure are a lot of "dumb jerks" out there who seem to be able to accomplish many of their life goals. Are they "smart"? Who cares, they're getting what they're after.

None of this is to contest the more knowledgeable points of view on autism or Asperger's, but simply to point out that there's a pretty strong link between alienation and one-dimensional estimations of intelligence (see the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences, and to encourage everyone in this very intellectual crowd, particularly those raising children (saw a couple disturbing posts of 40+ somethings who really think they're smarter than most others) to look hard at what it means to be smart, and at the consequences of teaching a child to be a particular kind of smart.

Re:Sickle-Cell Comparison

[timeOday]

But a child with two geeky parents is not just the recipient of geeky genes - s/he is also a child of two parents who are likely to find more satisfaction sitting alone at the office hacking code than at home playing patti-cake with the new arrival.

Its Genetic

[thogard]

Many forms of Autism are related to the link between both sides of the brain. People with less connections (or less effective connections -- which is a different problem) tend to be geeks. The other end of the spectrum seems are the socialites. Thouse with low levels of cross conects tend to be able to focus on a problem on one side of the brain but are hopeless for problems that require both. Men typicaly have fewer cross connects than women. A high level of cross connects are very importaint for verbal communication of ideas (and they play a part in strange moodyness as well).

If your mother's father was an Engineer, your very likly to be a geek if your male. When you throw this into a social context, you will find that most of the women who like hanging around with geeks, have a geeky father or or gradfather. This means they have the gene for this and have become conditioned to the "different" level of communication. If a geek breeds with a woman who has the gene, a geeky child is very likly. Its standard genetics and it explains why the best geeks of all time had a very short line of decendants.

Personal Experiences

[aebrain]

I'm sure there'll be a lot of comments about this one. I'd even be willing to bet that most /.ers have more symptoms of Aspergers than not.

Getting down to cases: I can only theorise based on my own internal experiences. So, here goes some facts and opinions, without attempt at analysis:

1. Until age 8, I had no understanding of the conspiracy called "common sense". I was constantly being told to use it, but there seemed to be no pattern to the illogical sets of behaviour it indicated. It was only when I saw the utility of playing the social game that I made a studied campaign to emulate something I couldn't process natively.
2. I look for sequences of words whose meanings do not correspond to the logical meaning of the individual components. If someone says "It's awful weather" then do not reply "It does not inspire Awe in me.", the symbol-set is a code for "Communication Request.". It should be ACK'd by a code such as "Yes, isn't it - but the rain will be good for the farmers." (thereby indicating willingness to continue meaningless social interaction - which can be useful, even if a waste of time), ACK'd by "Hmm, yes." indicating acknowledgement but no desire to continue this time (leaving open the possibility of communication should such be useful), or NAC'd by a grunt or just silence. This will be treated as a permanent stop on communication, so is to be used only after due consideration.
3. When living in a society which is illogical, and rubbing mud on one's belly and two feathers behind the right ear is compulsory, do so. Do not try to understand it, just review the consequences of not conforming. If it is important ethically not to conform (e.g. not joining in a lynch mob) then do so, but only after planning how to escape negative consequences.
4. Your wetware is running on actual hardware, subject to illness, hormones, and other non-logical interference. Take this into account as much as you can - and if you're young, do a lot of listening. Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. There is a pattern there, just not an easy one to recognise, and it's both complex and dynamic. But regardless of whether you can understand human society, it is possible to fake it enough to be useful. Take comfort in the fact that evolution has pre-disposed your brain to do it, even if there's no logic to it.
5. Do not attempt to understand logically human-human interaction: your brain is wired not just for algorithmetic processing, but is a neural-net. You can think without consciousness. A good exercise is to consider such actions as walking - try to do it by thinking about it, and you will be less efficient than letting the programmable firmware handle it. You can do the same for decyphering some non-verbal communications from others. (I'm still not very good at this.)
6. One effective strategy when playing Primate Games of Dominance, Office Politics etc - certainly enough to survive, which is all that we're interested in - is to be completely truthful, honest and open. Those whose brains are wired for deceit will not be able to find your hidden agenda, since you don't have one. This will cause confusion to them, they will think you're a better player than they are, so will leave you alone.

When I was about 6, I had a General Anaesthetic. It took me over 10 hours to come out of it. For much of that period I was dimly aware of external stimuli, they just weren't important. Eventually I managed to decode the face-slaps and sounds as attempts to wake me up, and thought it useful to do so. I guess (and I do mean guess) that a lot of autistic children just haven't seen a good reason to interact socially or with anything else in the Universe. Even a fingerprint can be endlessly fascinating, so why bother with the sounds that the universe (the bits that are other people) makes? They are just a distraction. You can make them go away by screaming, so why remember words? As for my own son - who's now 16 months old - I'm playing games with him with lots of mechanical toys (lots of fun to be had with swinging doors ), but also playing social-interaction games such as "pass the juice bottle" where we share a cup of juice, taking turns. And a lot of exaggerated facial grimaces for smiles, frowns and other non-verbal communications. I want to show him that things outside himself are interesting too. Because to lose speech and get too fascinated by internals is debilitating and very very not-useful, fun though it might be. You will get frustrated, and not know how to alter your environment to make it better. You will also upset people around you who care about you.